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| June 20, 2011 |
| CONGRATULATIONS, RORY! |
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| Rory McIlroy clinched his maiden major title in memorable style as he fired a closing 69 to complete an emphatic eight-shot victory in the US Open at Congressional Country Club.
In doing so McIlroy, who finished on 16-under-par, eclipsed the previous record score in the event which came in 2000 at Pebble Beach when Tiger Woods blitzed the field to win by 15 shots on 12-under. As well as being the tournament's second successive Northern Irish champion, he also became the second youngest European winner of a major of all-time. |
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| COLUMBINE |
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| COLUMBINE |
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| COLUMBINE |
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| COLUMBINE |
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| THE FALLS OF ST. ANTHONY | |
| Saint Anthony Falls, or the Falls of Saint Anthony, located northeast of downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, was the only natural major waterfall on the Upper Mississippi River.
The natural falls was replaced by a concrete overflow spillway (also called an "apron") after it partially collapsed in 1869. Later, in the 1950s and 1960s, a series of locks and dams were constructed to extend navigation to points upstream. Named after the Catholic saint Anthony of Padua, the falls is the birthplace of the former city of St. Anthony and to Minneapolis when the two cities joined in 1872 to fully utilize its economic power for milling operations. From 1880 to about 1930, Minneapolis was the "Flour Milling Capital of the World." |  |
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| One of the dams making up St. Anthony Falls, photographed from downstream in October, 2005. One of the locks can be seen on the left.
Today, the falls is defined by the Lower Saint Anthony Falls which refers to a downstream lock of what is now officially referred to as Upper Saint Anthony Falls. These locks were built as part of the Upper Mississippi River 9-Foot Navigation Project. The area around the falls is designated the St. Anthony Falls Historic District. |
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| Before European exploration, the falls held cultural and political significance for native tribes who frequented the area. The falls was an important and sacred site to the Mdewakanton Dakota and they called the Mississippi River, hahawakpa, "river of the falls."
The falls (haha) themselves were given specific names, mnirara "curling waters," owahmenah "falling waters," or owamni, "whirlpool" (mniyomni in the Eastern Dakota dialect and owamniyomni in the Teton Dakota (Lakota) dialect. Dakota associated the falls with legends and spirits, including Oanktehi, god of waters and evil, who lived beneath the falling water. The sacred falls also enters into their oral tradition by a story of a warrior's first wife who killed herself and their two children in anguish and forlorn love for the husband who had assumed a second wife. The rocky islet where the woman had pointed her canoe towards doom thus was named Spirit Island which was once a nesting ground for eagles that fed on fish below the falls. Dakota also camped on Nicollet Island upstream of the falls to fish and to tap the sugar maple trees. |
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| Battle of Rocky Face Ridge (May 8-11, 1864) |
| The first major battle of Gen. William T. Sherman's Atlanta Campaign was fought in Whitfield County at a long mountain known as Rocky Face Ridge. The Battle of Rocky Face Ridge was a series of Union attacks on Confederate defenders at two passes through the mountain. The main gap was Mill Creek Gap (also known as Buzzard's Roost Pass), which led to Dalton, Georgia. on the eastern side of the mountain.
To the south was a smaller and more difficult pass known as Dug Gap. Confederate forces under Gen. Joseph E. Johnston were well entrenched to defend each pass. On May 8, a portion of Sherman's forces stormed Dug Gap. Two advances were thrown back under heavy fire by the Confederates, and Union commanders decided against further attempts to take the pass by sheer force of manpower. |
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| General William T. Sherman |
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| DOVER PLAINS |
| Dover Plains is a hamlet (and census-designated place) in Dutchess County, New York, United States. The population was 1,996 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Poughkeepsie–Newburgh–Middletown Metropolitan Statistical Area. |
 ONE HUNDRED FAMOUS VIEWS OF EDO (TOKYO) NUMBER SIXTY-FOUR |
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| HORIKIRI IRIS GARDEN |
| Less than a mile east of the mouth of the Ayase River, pictured in the previous print, lay the village of Horikiri, which, like many farm communities in suburban Edo, produced flowers for the city market. The gardeners of Horikiri grew a year-round variety of flowers, but the fame of the place derived from the flower we see here--a type of iris known as hanashobu, which was ideally suited to this swampy land.
The iris was one of several flowering plants, including the chrysanthemum, morning glory, and azalea, which attracted cultlike followings that competed to produce ever more colorful and exotic varieties. The major advances in hanashobu were actually made by two samurai retainers of the shogun, who passed on the fruits of their hobby to the Kodaka plantation for commercial exploitation. In the immediate foreground of Hiroshige's print, almost life size, are three carefully detailed specimens of these new nineteenth-century hanashobu hybrids. They are spatially separated from the background by water--not the Ayase River, but probably a small canal running through the iris bogs. The hanashobu was already on its way to international fame by the time this print appeared, for it had been introduced to the west by Philipp von Siebold in 1852. In the 1870s, the cultivation of hanashobu began to spread rapidly in Europe and America, where it was praised as a superior form of iris. |
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| A corn ear is actually an inflorescence that produces nearly 1,000 female flowers.
These flowers, or potential kernels, are arranged in an even number of rows (usually from 8 to about 22 rows). Row number is always an even number because corn spikelets are borne in pairs, and each spikelet produces two florets-- one fertile and one sterile. Stress at a particular stage in development could theoretically produce an ear with an odd number of rows. But if you looked under a microscope, you would find an unseen row that failed to develop fully. Most things in nature have an even number of rows or lines. Watermelon and cantaloupe have an even number of stripes. |
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| STARRUCCA VIADUCT PENNSYLVANIA | |
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| CHIVES |
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| STONECROP (SEDUM) |
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| POTENTILLA |
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| EARLY MORNING SUNLIGHT ON BIG BELT MOUNTAINS EAST OF TOWNSEND, MONTANA |
| DISCLAIMER: Material used in Bitts and Bytes is gathered from various sources--mainly the World Wide Web.
Authorship cannot always be credited nor the source defined. Authenticity of material is assumed to be correct, but is not guaranteed. |  |