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On this day
- 1597 – Imjin War: About twelve Korean ships commanded by Admiral Yi Sun-sin defeated a large Japanese invasion fleet of at least 300 at the Battle of Myeongnyang in the Myeongnyang Strait. against waves of Japanese attackers during the Battle of Shanghai.
- 2001 – U.S. President George W. Bush signed the USA PATRIOT Act into law, significantly expanding the authority of U.S. law enforcement agencies in fighting terrorism in the United States and abroad.
- 2002 – Approximately 40 Chechen rebels and 130 hostages died when Russian forces stormed a theater building in Moscow to end a four-day hostage siege.
In the news
- Severe flooding in Yemen caused by Deep Depression ARB 02 (pictured) kills 58 and displaces 20,000.
- A bomb attack in Zagreb, Croatia kills Ivo Pukanić, the owner of the newspaper Nacional.
- The Indian Space Research Organisation successfully launches Chandrayaan-1, an unmanned lunar exploration mission.
- Several additional amino acids are found in vials from the 1953 Miller–Urey experiment that probed the origin of life.
- The United Nations General Assembly elects Turkey, Austria, Japan, Uganda, and Mexico to two-year terms on the Security Council.
Did you know...?
- ... that AMiBA (pictured) is a radio telescope located on Mauna Loa in Hawaii that is being used to observe the Cosmic Microwave Background and the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect in clusters of galaxies?
- ...that although the official government death toll of the 1997 Ardabil earthquake was given as 965 deaths, rescue workers at the scene claimed it was as much as three times higher?
- ... that Tang Dynasty general Li Na was, at one point, reduced to tears when he was under siege by another general, Liu Qia?
- ... that four of the candidates for either Governor or Lt. Governor in the 2008 American Samoa gubernatorial elections have ancestral ties to the Manu'a Islands?
Today's featured picture
Viviparus georgianus, commonly known as the banded mystery snail, is a species of large freshwater snail in the family Viviparidae, the river snails. It is native to North America, generally found from the northeastern United States to Florida and the Gulf of Mexico, and thrives in eutrophic lentic environments such as lakes, ponds and some low-flow streams. The snail has has two distinct sexes and reproduces more than once in a lifetime, with females laying eggs singly in albumen-filled capsules. It feeds on diatom clusters found on silt and mud substrates, but it may also require the ingestion of some grit to be able to break down algae. This image shows five views of a 2.1 cm high (0.83 in) V. georgianus shell, originally collected in the U.S. state of Georgia and now in the collection of the State Museum of Natural History Karlsruhe in Germany.
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