The Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal is a disused canal in Greater Manchester, North West England, built to link Bolton and Bury with Manchester. The canal, when fully opened, was 15 miles (24 km) and 1 furlong (200 m) long. It was accessed via a junction with the River Irwell in Salford. Seventeen locks were required to climb to the summit as it passed through Pendleton, heading northwest to Prestolee before it split northwest to Bolton and northeast to Bury. The canal was commissioned in 1791 by local landowners and businessmen and built between 1791 and 1808, during the Golden Age of canal building, at a cost of £127,700. Originally designed for narrow gauge boats, the canal was altered during its construction into a broad gauge canal to allow an ultimately unrealised connection with the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. The majority of the freight carried was coal from local collieries but, as the mines reached the end of their working lives, sections of the canal fell into disuse and disrepair and it was officially abandoned in 1961. In 1987, a society was formed with the aim of restoring the canal for leisure use and, in 2006, restoration began in the area around the junction with the River Irwell in Salford. The canal is currently navigable as far as East Ordsall Lane, in Salford.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Bolton_%26_Bury_Canal

_________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

655:

Penda of Mercia was defeated by Oswiu of Northumbria at the Battle of the Winwaed in what is modern-day Yorkshire. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Winwaed)

1889:

A military coup led by Field Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca overthrew Emperor Pedro II and declared Brazil a republic. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deodoro_da_Fonseca)

1920:

The first general assembly of the League of Nations was held in Geneva, Switzerland, with 42 founding members. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Nations)

1971:

Intel released the 4004 4-bit central processing unit, the world's first commercially available microprocessor, capable of executing approximately 60,000 instructions per second. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_4004)

1985:

Northern Ireland peace process: British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and the Irish Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement, giving the Irish Government an advisory role in Northern Ireland's government. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Irish_Agreement)

_______________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

panacea (n) 1. A remedy believed to cure all disease and prolong life; a cure-all. 2. Something that will solve all problems. (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/panacea)

______________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

The reason that clichés become clichés is that they are the hammers and screwdrivers in the toolbox of communication. --Terry Pratchett (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Terry_Pratchett)