Lots of News today...

I started off the day looking around for info on the 'lake' in China that they are attempting to release. This is the one caused by landslides from the earthquake that blocked a river. They estimate it is the size of 50,000 Olympic sizes pools! They have evacuated the area and are set to blast through to begin releasing water back into the dry riverbed BUT we all know about 'best laid plans'. Video at CNN showed the 'ghost towns' left behind and to be honest it looked surreal.

While checking up on that, a breaking news banner loaded. There was a 6.1 earthquake in Iceland today! It was located in the southern region and there are reports that roads and buildings are damage but no injuries are reported at this time. Anyone working but living in effected area was told to go home and check on family and personal property.

I did a scan of my Chaiten/volcano sites and looks like she's still puffing like a steel mill, steady. It's just amazing what you can find on the Internet. While browsing around I saw a picture of Ayers Rock in Australia. Fascinating reading, check it out:

http://www.crystalinks.com/ayersrock.html



Article says it extends 3-1/2 miles beneath the surface! It's one of those things that I will never see in real life but I can experience it vicariously through the Internet. Wish we'd had computers in school. Would have made it much more interesting!

Onto This Day In History:

May 29, 1917

John F. Kennedy is born

One of America’s best-loved presidents, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, is born into a politically and socially prominent family in Brookline, Massachusetts, on this day in 1917. He was the first American president to be born in the 20th century.

May 29, 1932

Bonus Marchers arrive in Washington

At the height of the Great Depression, the so-called "Bonus Expeditionary Force," a group of 1,000 World War I veterans seeking cash payments for their veterans' bonus certificates, arrive in Washington, D.C. One month later, other veteran groups spontaneously made their way to the nation's capital, swelling the Bonus Marchers to nearly 20,000 strong, most of them unemployed veterans in desperate financial straits. Camping in vacant government buildings and in open fields made available by District of Columbia Police Chief Pelham D. Glassford, they demanded passage of the veterans' payment bill introduced by Representative Wright Patman.

While awaiting a vote on the issue, the veterans conducted themselves in an orderly and peaceful fashion, and on June 15 the Patman bill passed in the House of Representatives. However, two days later, its defeat in the Senate infuriated the marchers, who refused to return home. In an increasingly tense situation, the federal government provided money for the protesters' trip home, but 2,000 refused the offer and continued to protest. On July 28, President Herbert Hoover ordered the army, under the command of General Douglas MacArthur, to evict them forcibly. MacArthur's men set their camps on fire, and the veterans were driven from the city. Hoover, increasingly regarded as insensitive to the needs of the nation's many poor, was much criticized by the public and press for the severity of his response. (We really should treat our veterans with more respect!!)

May 29, 1942

Jews in Paris are forced to sew a yellow star on their coats

On this day in 1942, on the advice of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler orders all Jews in occupied Paris to wear an identifying yellow star on the left side of their coats.

Joseph Goebbels had made the persecution, and ultimately the extermination, of Jews a personal priority from the earliest days of the war, often recording in his diary such statements as: "They are no longer people but beasts," and "[T]he Jews ... are now being evacuated eastward. The procedure is pretty barbaric and is not to be described here more definitely. Not much will remain of the Jews."

But Goebbels was not the first to suggest this particular form of isolation. "The yellow star may make some Catholics shudder," wrote a French newspaper at the time. "It renews the most strictly Catholic tradition." Intermittently, throughout the history of the papal states, that territory in central Italy controlled by the pope, Jews were often confined to ghettos and forced to wear either yellow hats or yellow stars.

and for my Wisconsin friends... ;)

May 29, 1848

Wisconsin enters the Union

Following approval of statehood by the territory's citizens, Wisconsin enters the Union as the 30th state.

In 1634, French explorer Jean Nicolet landed at Green Bay, becoming the first European to visit the lake-heavy northern region that would later become Wisconsin. In 1763, at the conclusion of the French and Indian Wars, the region, a major center of the American fur trade, passed into British control. Two decades later, at the end of the American Revolution, the region came under U.S. rule and was governed as part of the Northwest Territory. However, British fur traders continued to dominate Wisconsin from across the Canadian border, and it was not until the end of the War of 1812 that the region fell firmly under American control.

In the first decades of the 19th century, settlers began arriving via the Erie Canal and the Great Lakes to exploit Wisconsin's agricultural potential, and in 1832 the Black Hawk War ended Native American resistance to white settlement. In 1836, after several decades of governance as part of other territories, Wisconsin was made a separate entity, with Madison, located midway between Milwaukee and the western centers of population, marked as the territorial capital. By 1840, population in Wisconsin had risen above 130,000, but the people voted against statehood four times, fearing the higher taxes that would come with a stronger central government. Finally, in 1848, Wisconsin citizens, envious of the prosperity that federal programs brought to neighboring Midwestern states, voted to approve statehood. Wisconsin entered the Union the next May

That's all for now folks, thanks for stopping in! Make it a great day and catch ya on the blog...