Some paleontologists theorize that there was a human population bottleneck where the total number of humans in the world was about 2,000, prior to the late Stone Age, when populations began to expand.
During the stone age, which is a very broad period lasting 3.4 million years, floods occurred several times over the 2,000-year period between 15,000 and 13,000 years ago. These Missoula Floods and catastrophic, rapid drainage events scoured the countryside of eastern Washington state and northern Oregon. The Grand Coulee, the Willamette Valley and the Columbia River Gorge were created and expanded during these times.
Several glacial erratics still litter the countryside, including:
Yeager Rock: pic
Balancing Rock near Omak Lake: pic
ETA the info about Omak Rock (aka Balance Rock): Omak Rock - Wikipedia.
I was in that area two years ago. We found Yeager Rock but we didn’t know about Omak Rock - darn!
Katherine Gorge is a popular tourist attraction in the Northern Territory. It is made up of thirteen gorges, with rapids and falls, and follows the Katherine River, which begins in the Kakadu national park. During the Dry season, roughly from April to October, the Katherine Gorge waters are placid in most spots and ideal for swimming and canoeing. There may be freshwater crocodiles in most parts of the river, as they nest along the banks, but they are harmless to humans. Saltwater crocodiles regularly enter the river during the wet season, when the water levels are very high, and are subsequently removed and returned to the lower levels at the onset of the dry season. Thus, swimming in the wet season is prohibited.
Lake Placid, NY hosted the Winter Olympics in 1932, the first of four Winter Olympics hosted by the US. The games were opened by New York State Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt from Hyde Park, which is 200 miles to the south. FDR was elected President nine months later.
Jacob Cox, a graduate of Oberlin College, saved the center of the Federal line during the Confederate onslaught at the November 1864 Battle of Franklin, Tenn., and after the Civil War was elected Governor of Ohio. He also served as Secretary of the Interior during the Grant Administration.
Ulysses S Grant actually was not actually the name our former president was born with. It was actually the result of a careless paperwork error when Grant attended West Point. He was born Hiram Ulysses Grant. Congressman Thomas Hamer nominated Grant for West Point, but on the paperwork he inexplicably wrote his name as Ulysses S Grant. Rather than risk muddying the process, Grant adopted the new name going forward. His classmates soon nicknamed him “Sam” Short for Uncle Sam, to match his now over the top patriotic name of U.S. Grant.
The harbourside suburb of Wollstonecraft in Sydney was named for Edward Wollstonecraft, the first settler to receive a land grant of 500 acres in the area, in 1821. Wollstonecraft was the nephew of Mary Wollstonecraft, author of the book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
The Famous Five were a group of five Canadian women from Alberta who fought for women’s rights in the early part of the 20th century.
One of them, Emily Murphy, was appointed a provincial magistrate, the first woman to hold judicial office in the Empire since Eleanor of Aquitaine was justiciar during one of Henry II’s absences in France.
Another of the Five, Louise McKinney, was elected to the Alberta Legislature, the first woman in the Empire to be elected to a legislature.
Another one, Nellie McClung, was instrumental in getting the Manitoba government to recognise voting rights for women, the first jurisdiction in Canada to do so.
Together, the Five triggered the Persons Case, in which Lord Sankey of the Privy Council held that women were “persons” and could be called to the Senate of Canada. Sankey over-turned the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada, which had ruled to the contrary. The Persons Case also established the “living tree” principle of progressive constitutional interpretation in Canada.
Magistrates in Ohio are either appointed by a single judge of their court, or by the court collectively. If the former, they typically lose office when the appointing judge resigns, is defeated in an election or dies.
The motto of the editorial page of the Globe and Mail, one of Canada’s most influential newspapers, is: “The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise not submit to arbitrary measures.”
The quotation comes from one of the anonymous letters of Junius, who wrote in late 18th century England on the liberties of Englishmen.
George Brown, the first publisher of the Globe, chose it as his paper’s motto in1844, and it has been used ever since.
Lucius Junius Brutus was the founder of the Roman Republic and one of its first two consuls.
He is best remembered for the stoicism with which he ordered the execution of two of his sons after they had taken part in a conspiracy to restore the monarchy.
The Republic Aviation Corporation of Long Island, New York manufactured some key airplanes:
The P-47 Thunderbolt - the most produced fighter of WWII
The F-105 Thunderchief, the primary ground attack aircraft of the Vietnam War, until replaced by the F-4 Phantom
The A-10 Thunderbolt II
Shark Island is an island in Sydney Harbour, Australia. It lies offshore of the Sydney suburbs of Point Piper, Rose Bay and Vaucluse, in the eastern section of the harbour between the Harbour Bridge and the harbour entrance.
The island is 1.5 hectares in area and measures some 250 metres by 100 metres. It was used as an animal quarantine station until 1975. It is now part of Sydney Harbour national park.
Sharknado was set in Los Angeles, and Sharknado 2 was set in New York. Ian Ziering and Tara Reid, the stars of both, are now filming* Sharknado 3* in Orlando.
Before being known by its current name, Orlando was called Jernigan after the first permanent settler in the area.
Orlando Gibbons was an English composer of the late Tudor/early Jacobean period. One of his best known works is the madrigal The Silver Swan.
Gibbons are the only apes not included in the family Hominidae, or great apes (chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, bonobos and humans), even though they also lack tails. Some of the little sympathy Sheldon Cooper has expressed for others on “The Big Bang Theory” has gone to gibbons for having an entire family, Lesser Apes, created just for them with a demeaning name.
A cooper is a craftsman who makes wooden, staved vessels, bound together with hoops and possessing flat ends or heads. Examples of a cooper’s work include casks, barrels, buckets and tubs.
Charles Cooper and son John Cooper founded the Cooper Car Company in 1946. In the 1950s and 1960s their rear-engined cars changed the face of Indy car racing and Formula One car racing.
Euler’s formula e[sup]iπ[/sup] + 1 = 0 is often considered to be the most beautiful in maths.