Thursday, October 16, 2008






















Okay, let's start going to the capital cities. I think I've done Providence, RI, Topeka, KS, Juneau, AK, Honolulu, HI. If I double up I apologize in advance. Let's start in the Northeast with Augusta, Maine.

The photos are: 1) a view of Augusta taken from the Kennebec River bridge; 2) an overcast view of downtown Augusta; 3) the Blaine House which serves as the Governor's Mansion; 4) the Maine Capitol Rotunda; 5) the former St. Dominic Regional School; 6) blue spruce on the University of Maine at Augusta campus; and 7) an autumn view of a stream running near Augusta.

Augusta is the capital of the U.S. state of Maine, county seat of Kennebec County, and center of population for Maine. The city's population is 18,560 (July 2006 est.). Located on the Kennebec River at the head of tide, it is home to the University of Maine at Augusta.

The area was first explored by members of the ill-fated Popham Colony in September 1607. It was first inhabited by English settlers from the Plymouth Colony in 1629 as a trading post on the Kennebec River. The settlement was known by its Indian name -- Cushnoc (or Coussinoc or Koussinoc), meaning "head of tide." Fur trading was at first profitable, but with Indian uprisings and declining revenues, the Plymouth Colony sold the Kennebec Patent in 1661. Cushnoc would remain empty for the next 75 years.
A hotbed of Abenaki hostility toward British settlements was located further up the Kennebec at Norridgewock. In 1722, the tribe and its allies attacked Fort Richmond (now Richmond) and destroyed Brunswick. In response, Norridgewock was sacked in 1724 during Dummer's War, when English forces gained tentative control of the Kennebec. In 1754, a blockhouse named Fort Western (now the oldest wooden fort in America), was built at Cushnoc on the eastern bank. It was intended as a supply depot for Fort Halifax upriver, as well as to protect its own region. In 1775, Benedict Arnold and his 1100 troops would use Fort Western as a staging area before continuing their journey up the Kennebec to the Battle of Quebec.
Cushnoc was incorporated as part of Hallowell in 1771. Known as "the Fort," it was set off and incorporated by the Massachusetts General Court in February 1797 as Harrington. In August, however, the name changed to Augusta after Augusta Dearborn, daughter of Henry Dearborn. In 1799, it became county seat for newly created Kennebec County. Maine became a state in 1820, and Augusta was designated its capital in 1827. The Maine State Legislature continued meeting in Portland, however, until completion in 1832 of the new Maine State House designed by Charles Bulfinch. Augusta was chartered as a city in 1849.
Excellent soil provided for agriculture, and water power from streams provided for industry. In 1837, a dam was built across the Kennebec where the falls drop 15 feet at the head of tide, and by 1838 10 sawmills were contracted. With the arrival of the Kennebec & Portland Railroad in 1851, Augusta became a mill town. In 1883, the property of A. & W. Spague Company was purchased by the Edwards Manufacturing Company, which erected extensive brick mills for manufacturing cotton textiles. Other Augusta firms produced lumber, sash, doors, shutters, broom handles, stone cutters' tools, shoes, cemetery monuments, ice and furniture. The city developed as a publishing and shipping center. Today, government and post-secondary education are important businesses.
Today's Jumble (10/16/08):
NILOG = LINGO; ARROD = ARDOR; RINMAT = MARTIN; LENKEN = KENNEL
CIRCLED LETTERS = GOAOAIKNL
What to do when its 'love at first sight.'
"LOOK AGAIN"

Today is National Bosses Day, Dictionary Day, and World Food Day.

Other things on this day in history:

456 - Magister militum Ricimer defeats the Emperor Avitus at Piacenza and becomes master of the western Roman Empire.
1775 - Portland, Maine burnt by the British.
1780 - Royalton, Vermont and Tunbridge, Vermont last major raid of the American Revolutionary War.
1781 - George Washington captures Yorktown, Virginia after the Siege of Yorktown.
1793 - Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI, is guillotined at the height of the French Revolution.
1793 - French Revolutionary Wars: Battle of Wattignies.
1813 - The Sixth Coalition attacks Napoleon Bonaparte in the Battle of Leipzig.
1834 - Much of the ancient structures of the Palace of Westminster in London is burnt down.
1841 - Queen's University is founded in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
1843 - Sir William Rowan Hamilton comes up with the idea of quaternions, a non-commutative extension of complex numbers.
1859 - John Brown leads raid on Harper's Ferry, West Virginia
1869 - Cardiff Giant, one of the most famous American hoaxes, is discovered.
1869 - England's first residential college for women, Girton College, Cambridge, is founded.
1875 - Brigham Young University is founded in Provo, Utah.
1882 - The Nickel Plate Railroad opens for business.
1905 - The Partition of Bengal (India) occurred.
1906 - The Captain of Köpenick fools the city hall of Köpenick and several soldiers by impersonating a Prussian officer.
1916 - Margaret Sanger founds Planned Parenthood by opening the first U.S. birth control clinic.
1923 - The Walt Disney Company is founded by Walt Disney and his brother, Roy Disney.
1934 - Chinese Communists begin the Long March; it ended a year and four days later, by which time Mao Zedong had regained his title as party chairman.
1939 - World War II: First attack on British territory by German Luftwaffe.
1940 - Benjamin O. Davis Sr. named first African American general in the United States Army.
1940 - World War II - Holocaust: Warsaw Ghetto established.
1945 - The Food and Agriculture Organization was founded in Quebec City, Canada.
1946 - Nuremberg Trials: Execution of the convicted Nazi leaders of the Main Trial. Please refer to Death section.
1949 - Nikolaos Zachariadis, leader of the Communist Party of Greece, announces a "temporary cease-fire", effectively ending the Greek Civil War.
1949 - The diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and German Democratic Republic were established.
1951 - The first Prime Minister of Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan, is assassinated in Rawalpindi.
1962 - Cuban Missile Crisis between the United States and Cuba began.
1964 - People's Republic of China detonates its first nuclear weapon; Soviet leaders Leonid Brezhnev and Aleksey Kosygin are inaugurated as General Secreaty of the CPSU and Premier, respectively.
1968 - United States athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos are kicked out of the USA's team for performing a Black Power salute during a medal ceremony.
1968 - Kingston, Jamaica is rocked by the Rodney Riots, inspired by the barring of Walter Rodney from the country.
1970 - Canada - In response to the October Crisis terrorist kidnapping, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau invokes the War Measures Act.
1973 - Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
1975 - The Balibo Five, a group of Australian television journalists based in the town of Balibo in the then Portuguese Timor (now East Timor), are killed by Indonesian troops.
1978 - Pope John Paul II is elected in Rome.
1984 - Desmond Tutu is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
1987 - Great Storm of 1987: hurricane force winds to hit much of the South of England killing 23 people.
1991 - Luby's massacre: George Hennard runs amok in Killeen, Texas, killing 23 and wounding 20 in Luby's Cafeteria.
1991 - Jharkhand Chhatra Yuva Morcha is founded at a conference in Ranchi, India.
1993 - Anti-Nazi riot breaks out in Welling in Kent, after police stop protesters approaching British National Party headquarters
1995 - The Million Man March occurs in Washington, DC.
1996 - Eighty-four people are killed and more than 180 injured as 47,000 football fans attempt to squeeze into the 36,000-seat Estadio Mateo Flores in Guatemala City.
1998 - Former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet is arrested in London on a warrant from Spain requesting his extradition on murder charges.
2002 - Bibliotheca Alexandrina in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, a commemoration of the Library of Alexandria that was lost in antiquity, is officially inaugurated.

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