Barren Island is a former island on the southeast shore of Brooklyn in
New York City. Located on Jamaica Bay, it was occupied by the Lenape
Native Americans prior to the arrival of Dutch settlers in the 17th
century. Its name is a corruption of Beeren Eylandt, the Dutch-language
term for "Bears' Island". From the 1850s to the mid-1930s, the island
was an industrial complex with plants for rendering fish and processing
the carcasses of the city's dead horses, converting them into industrial
products. Because of this, the body of water on the island's western
shore was nicknamed "Dead Horse Bay". By the 1920s, most of the
industrial activity had tapered off, and most residents were evicted in
the late 1920s for the construction of an airport called Floyd Bennett
Field. Since 1972, the former island's site has been part of the Gateway
National Recreation Area, managed by the National Park Service.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barren_Island,_Brooklyn>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1514:
Henry Grace à Dieu (depicted), the largest warship in the
world at the time, was launched from Woolwich Dockyard, England.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Grace_%C3%A0_Dieu>
1971:
The New York Times published the first excerpts from the
Pentagon Papers, a 7,000-page classified Department of Defense history
of the United States' political and military involvement in the Vietnam
War.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers>
1981:
English teenager Marcus Sarjeant fired six blanks at Queen
Elizabeth II as she rode down The Mall to the Trooping the Colour
ceremony.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Sarjeant>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
nitrox:
1. (metallurgy) An industrial process for case hardening (imparting
greater surface hardness to) metal objects, involving nitrocarburizing
(the diffusion of carbon and nitrogen into the metal) followed by
oxidation.
2. (underwater diving) A mixture of nitrogen and oxygen, the nitrogen
content being lower than what is normally present in air, which is used
in place of air as a breathing gas.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nitrox>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Let's be simple and calm, Like the trees and streams, And God
will love us, making us Us, even as the trees are trees And the
streams are streams, And will give us greenness in the spring, which is
its season, And a river to go to when we end... And he'll give us
nothing more, since to give us more would make us less us.
--Fernando Pessoa
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fernando_Pessoa>
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