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Firefighting team near the Frye Fire

The Frye Fire was a wildfire that burned 48,443 acres (19,604 ha) in Graham County, Arizona, United States, from June 7 to September 1, 2017. The fire was ignited by a lightning strike on Mount Graham, within the Coronado National Forest, and spread rapidly until it was mostly contained on July 12. The fire destroyed three buildings and briefly threatened the Mount Graham International Observatory. It cost $26 million (equivalent to $32 million in 2023) to contain and suppress, and involved more than 800 firefighters. There were no fatalities, but 63 firefighters were quarantined with strep throat. During seasonal rains beginning in July, ash and debris from the Frye Fire's burn scar washed off the mountain slopes, then clogged creeks and damaged infrastructure within Graham County. The fire particularly impacted the endangered Mount Graham red squirrel, whose remaining habitat on Mount Graham was devastated. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Nikolay Cherkasov as Ivan the Terrible

... that Sergei Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible (scene pictured) has been named as both one of the worst films and one of the greatest films of all time?
... that Olympian Sydney Francisco was named after the city where her mother competed at the Olympics?
... that the December 2010 Christchurch earthquake caused Boxing Day sales events six weeks later?
... that a judge compared the bankruptcy fraud of an Ohio TV station to a 1601 English court case?
... that the surviving copies of the Kitab-ı Bahriye contain a total of more than 5,700 maps?
... that the 1920 foxtrot song "I'll See You in C-U-B-A" was an example of Cuba being perceived as "America's playground"?
... that 30 royal portraits of Korean kings were completely destroyed in a 1954 fire in Busan, South Korea?
... that Babydog is "a fixture in West Virginia politics"?

In the news

Paralympics opening ceremony

A Mil Mi-8 helicopter crashes in Kamchatka, Russia, leaving 22 people dead.
The Summer Paralympics open (ceremony pictured) in Paris, France.
More than four hundred people are killed in an Islamist militant attack in Barsalogho Department, Burkina Faso.
The Islamic State claims responsibility for a mass stabbing that killed three people at a festival in Solingen, Germany.

On this day

September 6: Defence Day in Pakistan (1965)

Hurricane Irma

1492 – Christopher Columbus set sail from San Sebastián de La Gomera in the Canary Islands on his first voyage across the Atlantic to the Americas.
1566 – Suleiman the Magnificent, the longest-reigning sultan of the Ottoman Empire, died at the age of 71.
1970 – Black September: The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked four airliners, landing two at Dawson's Field in Jordan and one in Cairo, while the last hijacking attempt was foiled near London.
2017 – Hurricane Irma (pictured) reached peak intensity near the Caribbean islands of Barbuda, Saint Martin, and Virgin Gorda.
2022 – Liz Truss succeeded Boris Johnson as prime minister following the July 2022 United Kingdom government crisis.

Isabella Leonarda (b. 1620)
Geert Wilders (b. 1963)
Jillian Hall (b. 1980)
Clive Donner (d. 2010)

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From today's featured list

Miroslav Penkov

There have been eighteen recipients of the BBC National Short Story Award, an annual short-story contest that is open to residents and nationals of the United Kingdom. It is the richest literary prize in the world for a single short story. Established in 2005 and announced at that year's Edinburgh International Book Festival, the first winner of the award was James Lasdun for An Anxious Man in 2006. At the age of 26, Canadian writer D. W. Wilson became the youngest-ever recipient of the award in 2011. Sarah Hall, who won the award in 2013 and 2020, is the only writer to have won the award twice. In honour of the 2012 Summer Olympics hosted in London, the competition was open to a global audience that year; ten stories were shortlisted instead of five, and Bulgarian writer Miroslav Penkov (pictured) won. The winner of the 2024 award is scheduled to be announced on 12 September. (Full list...)

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The spinifex pigeon (Geophaps plumifera) is a bird in the pigeon family, Columbidae. It is endemic to Australia, occurring throughout much of the arid and semi-arid northern and central parts of the continent. It lives in stony habitats on rocky hills and mountainous terrain, gorges, dry rocky creek beds and nearby gibber plains. The spinifex pigeon weighs 80 to 110 grams (2.8 to 3.9 ounces), with a mean body length of 200 to 235 millimetres (7.9 to 9.3 inches) and a wingspan of 300 to 350 millimetres (12 to 14 inches). Its plumage is distinctively rufous-brown with thin black bars on the wings and back. The forehead, the sides of the crown and the ear coverts are grey, while the bill is black, and it has distinctive facial markings including a bright red facial mask and a white band extending from the chin to behind the eye. This spinifex pigeon was photographed in Watarrka National Park in Australia's Northern Territory.

Photograph credit: John Harrison

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