Ford Island is an islet in the center of Pearl Harbor, Oahu, in the US state of Hawaii. Its original area of 334 acres (135 ha) was increased during the 1930s to 441 acres (178 ha) with fill dirt after the US Navy dredged Pearl Harbor to accommodate battleships. The island was the site of an ancient Hawaiian fertility ritual, which was stopped by Christian missionaries during the 1830s. It was given by Kamehameha I to Spanish deserter Francisco de Paula Marín, and was later owned by Seth Porter Ford. In 1916 the US Army bought part of it for use by an aviation division, and by 1939 it was taken over by the US Navy, for whom it was a strategic center of operations in the Pacific Ocean. Ford Island was at the center of the attacks on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964. By the late 1990s hundreds of millions of dollars had been invested in real-estate development and infrastructure. Ford Island is home to the USS Arizona memorial, the USS Missouri museum, the Pacific Warfighting Center, and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. The island has been featured in films such as Tora! Tora! Tora! and Pearl Harbor. (Full article...)
1972 – The crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft took the photograph "The Blue Marble" (pictured), the first clear image of an illuminated face of Earth, on their way to the Moon.
The East Brother Island Lighthouse is a lighthouse located on the East Brother Island, near the tip of Point San Pablo in Richmond, California. This lighthouse was designed by Paul J. Pelz and completed in 1874, then operated manually until 1969. After the light was automated, the former keeper's house was converted into a bed and breakfast; the island is now a tourist attraction.
This Wikipedia is written in English. Started in 2001 (2001), it currently contains 4,665,583 articles.
Many other Wikipedias are available; some of the largest are listed below.
