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Glenn L. Jackson Memorial Bridge

Interstate 205 (I-205) is an Interstate Highway in the Portland metropolitan area of Oregon and Washington, United States. The north–south freeway is 37 miles (60 km) long and serves as a bypass route for I-5 east of Portland. Such a highway was conceived in a 1943 plan for the area, and in the 1950s was included in preliminary plans for the Interstate Highway System. Construction began in 1967 with work on the Abernethy Bridge over the Willamette River, which opened in 1970. By 1972, I-205 was extended west to Tualatin and north to Gladstone, but the Portland section was delayed by political opposition until 1977. The Glenn L. Jackson Memorial Bridge (pictured), spanning the Columbia River between Portland and Vancouver, opened on December 15, 1982. The remaining 6.6 miles (10.6 km) in Portland opened on March 8, 1983. From Oregon City to Vancouver, the corridor is paralleled by a multi-use bicycle and pedestrian trail, as well as portions of the MAX Light Rail system. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Size comparison of Sirius B and Earth

... that the star Sirius B is slightly smaller than Earth (comparison pictured)?
... that the father of Lithuanian scientific forestry also directed theatre, organized a school, compiled maps, and wrote a dictionary of plants, a mathematics textbook, and a collection of poetry?
... that the screenwriter of Haibane Renmei was given two days to finish the script for the finale?
... that Lisa Fagin Davis's analysis of handwriting differences in the Voynich manuscript concluded that it was likely the work of five scribes?
... that the Dorian Electra album Flamboyant is named both as a reference to a style of Gothic architecture and to reclaim a word historically used to shame gay men?
... that Jimmy Lawrence, the fifth player selected in the first NFL draft, was reported to have been killed in action no fewer than three times?
... that one of the leaders of the 2003 São Tomé and Príncipe coup d'état also participated in a failed coup attempt in 1988?
... that Chris Appelhans spent "six to eight years in the wilderness learning how to write" before directing his first film?
... that the Chess World Cup 1988–1989 featured a game of human chess between Anatoly Karpov and Jan Timman?

In the news

Lauren Betts

In NCAA Division I basketball, the UCLA Bruins win the women's championship (Most Outstanding Player Lauren Betts pictured).
NASA's Artemis II performs its lunar flyby maneuver, the farthest crewed mission from Earth to date.
In Mongolia, Nyam-Osoryn Uchral is sworn in as prime minister following the resignation of Gombojavyn Zandanshatar.
The Social Democrats, led by Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, remain the largest party after the Danish general election, with no political bloc winning a majority of seats.

On this day

April 7: National Beer Day in the United States

Artist's conception of 2001 Mars Odyssey

1831 – Pedro II became emperor of the Empire of Brazil.
1926 – Italian dictator Benito Mussolini survived an assassination attempt by Irishwoman Violet Gibson.
1994 – A FedEx employee tried to hijack Federal Express Flight 705 in a failed suicide attempt.
2001 – NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey (artist's conception pictured), the longest-surviving continually active spacecraft in orbit around a planet other than Earth, launched from Cape Canaveral.

Baha al-Din Qaraqush (d. 1201)
Flora Tristan (b. 1803)
Santa Barraza (b. 1951)
Teddy Riner (b. 1989)

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Today's featured picture

Goniobranchus reticulatus is a small, colourful species of sea slug in the family Chromodorididae. It is found in the western Indo-Pacific and originally described from Tongatapu, Tonga. It has a white mantle covered in a reddish reticulate pattern, with yellow edging on the foot and appendages. Several similar species occur within the G. tinctorius colour group, forming a complex of at least seven species, and the true G. reticulatus is probably not the species most commonly identified under that name. The length of the body is reported to reach 100 millimetres (3.9 in), but the original description is of an animal 27 to 34 millimetres (1.1 to 1.3 in) in length. Like other hermaphroditic gastropod molluscs, the species possesses both male and female organs, and can shed and rapidly regenerate the external portion of the penis after mating. This G. reticulatus sea slug was photographed off the coast of Anilao in the Philippines.

Photograph credit: Diego Delso

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