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From today's featured article

Williamette River as it passes through Portland, Oregon

The Willamette River is a major tributary of the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest of North America. The Willamette's main stem is 187 miles (301 km) long, lying entirely in northwestern Oregon in the United States. Flowing northward between the Oregon Coast Range and the Cascade Range, the river and its tributaries form the Willamette Valley, which contains two-thirds of Oregon's population. The state's largest city, Portland, surrounds the Willamette's mouth at the Columbia. Due to prolific rainfall in the basin and sediments from the glacial Missoula Floods, the Willamette Valley is one of the most fertile agricultural regions in North America, and was thus the destination of many 19th-century pioneers traveling west along the Oregon Trail. Since 1900, more than 15 large dams and many smaller ones have been built in the Willamette's drainage basin. They are used primarily to produce hydroelectricity, to store water for irrigation, and to prevent flooding. The river and its tributaries support 60 fish species, including many species of salmon and trout; this is despite the dams, other alterations, and pollution (especially on the river's lower reaches). (Full article...)

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... that only two and a half pages survive today of the Bible of Queen Sophia, a priceless artifact of the Old Polish language?
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... that the Argentine miniseries Culpables received the Golden Martín Fierro award?
... that the birthday of the Egyptian goddess Isis was celebrated officially in the Roman Empire on August 12 at the Lychnapsia, a lamp-lighting festival?
... that Diane Harper, who formerly worked on the clinical trials of the HPV vaccine, has since questioned the vaccine's safety and efficacy?
... that The Master Singers brought "Highway Code" and "Weather Forecast" to the charts?

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In the news

Irish poet and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature Seamus Heaney (pictured) dies at the age of 74.
For the first time, Saudi Arabia enacts laws against domestic violence.
U.S. Army officer Nidal Malik Hasan is sentenced to death for killing thirteen people in the Fort Hood shooting.
In cricket, the Ashes series concludes with England defeating Australia in the series.
A riot at the Palmasola prison complex in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, kills more than thirty people.
U.S. soldier Robert Bales is sentenced to life in prison without parole for the murder of sixteen Afghan civilians in the Kandahar massacre.
Hundreds of people are reported killed by chemical attacks in the Ghouta region of Syria.

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On this day...

September 1: Start of the Liturgical year in the Eastern Orthodox Church; Father's Day in Australia, Fiji, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand (2013); Constitution Day in Slovakia

1529 – Sancti Spiritu, the first European settlement in Argentina, was destroyed by local natives.
1774 – Thomas Gage, royal governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, ordered soldiers to remove gunpowder from a magazine, causing Patriots to prepare for war.
1880 – The army of Mohammad Ayub Khan was routed by the British at the Battle of Kandahar, ending the Second Anglo-Afghan War.
1923 – The Great Kantō earthquake, measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale, struck the Kantō region of Japan, devastating Tokyo and Yokohama, and killing over an estimated 100,000 people.
1983 – Soviet jet interceptors shot down the civilian airliner Korean Air Lines Flight 007 (artist's rendition pictured) near Sakhalin Island in the North Pacific, killing all 246 passengers and 23 crew on board.

More anniversaries: August 31 – September 1 – September 2

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Today's featured picture

Maria Amalia of Saxony (1724–60) was a German princess who married the future Charles III of Spain in 1738, the year of this painting. She was of Queen of Naples and Sicily from 1738 until 1759, then Queen of Spain from 1759 until her death.

Painting: Louis de Silvestre

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