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From today's featured article

Map of the Vicksburg area. Canal begins near center and meanders to bottom left of map.

The Duckport Canal was constructed by Union forces during the Vicksburg campaign of the American Civil War. Ordered built in late March 1863 by Major General Ulysses S. Grant, the canal stretched from the Mississippi River near Duckport, Louisiana, to New Carthage, Louisiana, and utilized a series of bayous for much of its path. It was intended to provide a water-based supply route for a southward movement against Confederate-held Vicksburg, Mississippi (area map shown), as high water levels made overland travel difficult. The digging was done by 3,500 soldiers from Grant's army and was finished on April 12. The next day, the levee separating the canal cut and the river was breached, and water flowed into the canal. Trees in the bayous and water levels as low as 6 inches (15 cm) hampered the use of the canal, and the project was abandoned on May 4. Only one vessel ever passed from the river to New Carthage through the canal. After a lengthy siege, Vicksburg surrendered on July 4. (Full article...)

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In the news

Mojtaba Khamenei

Mojtaba Khamenei (pictured) is elected Supreme Leader of Iran following the assassination of his father, Ali Khamenei.
Flooding in Kenya leaves at least 43 people dead.
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A Lockheed C-130 Hercules of the Bolivian Air Force crashes into a road in El Alto, killing more than 20 people.

On this day

March 10: Harriet Tubman Day in some parts of the United States

Eliot Spitzer

1695 – Nine Years' War: At the Battle of Sant Esteve d'en Bas, Catalan miquelets attacked a column of French regular infantry and caused them to surrender.
1968 – Vietnam War/Laotian Civil War: North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao forces overwhelmed the American, Laotian, Thai, and Hmong defenders of Lima Site 85.
1977 – Astronomers using NASA's Kuiper Airborne Observatory discovered a faint ring system around Uranus.
2008 – The New York Times revealed that Eliot Spitzer (pictured), Governor of New York, had patronized a prostitution ring.
2019 – Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed six minutes after take-off from Addis Ababa International Airport due to a fault within the software of the plane, resulting in the deaths of all 157 people on board.

Tvrtko I of Bosnia (d. 1391)
Lillian Wald (b. 1867)
Marie-Eugénie de Jésus (d. 1898)
Rupert Bruce-Mitford (d. 1994)

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Today's featured picture

The plumed whistling duck (Dendrocygna eytoni), is a species of bird in the whistling duck subfamily of the family Anatidae. It is resident and breeds in Australia, in a broad arc covering the northern half and most of the eastern third of the continent. There are also non-breeding and seasonally uncertain populations in New Zealand, the Solomon Islands, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. It is a predominantly brown-coloured duck with a long neck and characteristic plumes arising from its flanks. The sexes are similar in appearance. This plumed whistling duck was photographed in Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory, Australia.

Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp

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