Steppe

A large area of unforested grassland.

Fact of the Day

Highwayman Benjamin Child used his ill-gotten gains to discharge all the debtors in Salisbury jail. He was hanged in 1722.

"What recreation tooke I? How lawfull was it? ... Was it not affected with too much delight? "

~ Questions from the seventeenth-century puritan guidebook for women, 'A Fountaine of Tears'

1537 Henry VIII's third wife, Jane Seymour, died of a fever following the birth of her son.

1648 The Treaty of Westphalia marked the end of the Thirty Years War. The first six months of the peace conference was spent arguing about protocol.

1901 Annie Edson Taylor, a 63 year old schoolteacher was the first person to plunge over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

1945 The United Nations was founded.

2003 Concorde completed its final commercial passenger flight.