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From today's featured article The Rosendale Trestle is a 940-foot (290 m) continuous truss bridge and former railroad trestle in Rosendale in Ulster County, New York. Originally constructed by the Wallkill Valley Railroad to continue its rail line from New Paltz to Kingston, the bridge rises 150 feet (46 m) above Rondout Creek, spanning both Route 213 and the former Delaware and Hudson Canal. Construction began in 1870; when it opened to rail traffic on April 6, 1872, it was the highest span bridge in the United States. The trestle was rebuilt in 1895 by the King Bridge Company to address public concerns regarding its stability and sturdiness, and it was repeatedly reinforced until 1977, when Conrail closed the Wallkill Valley rail line. The bridge was sold in 1986 for one dollar to a private businessman who tried unsuccessfully to operate it as a bungee jumping platform, and a similar attempt was made the following decade. The trestle was seized by the county in 2009 for tax nonpayment, and renovated for the Wallkill Valley Rail Trail as a pedestrian walkway that opened on June 29, 2013. (Full article...) Recently featured: Moonraker (novel) Jonathan Agnew Alan McNicoll Did you know... Courtenay Gate in Hove, pictured in 2007 ... that celebrity vet Buster Lloyd-Jones compared living in the penthouse flat of Courtenay Gate (pictured) in Hove to "living in a lighthouse"? ... that the Irish rugby player and physician Major Robertson Smyth was killed by the effects of gas exposure in World War I? ... that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the government can withhold Social Security payments to collect on student loans that have been delinquent for over 10 years? ... that Yun Bulong, Chairman of Inner Mongolia, was killed when a train hit his car at a railway crossing? ... that lean finely textured beef, also known as pink slime, in the U.S ground beef supply declined from 70% in March 2012 to around 5% in March 2013, in part due to news media coverage about it? ... that Hollyoaks character Diego Salvador Martinez Hernandez De La Cruz caused controversy with viewers because a Confederate flag decorated his van? ... that the battalions imported from Military Region 3 during Operation Sinsay held their objective for three days before being returned? ... that Doris Mackinnon had a reputation for never repeating a lecture in 30 years?

In the news Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson Amid the scandal caused by the Panama Papers, a leak of legal documents revealing information on 214,488 offshore companies, Iceland's prime minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson (pictured) steps down. In basketball, the Villanova Wildcats defeat the North Carolina Tar Heels to win the NCAA Men's Championship. In cricket, the West Indies win both the ICC World Twenty20 and ICC Women's World Twenty20. Clashes in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, disputed between Armenia and Azerbaijan, result in at least 30 deaths. Ongoing events: Zika virus outbreak Recent deaths: Joe Medicine Crow Cesare Maldini Hans-Dietrich Genscher Ronnie Corbett On this day... April 6 Cover of the official report of the 1896 Olympics 1320 – The Declaration of Arbroath, a declaration of Scottish independence, was adopted. 1866 – The Grand Army of the Republic, a fraternal organization composed of veterans of the Union Army who had served in the American Civil War, was founded in Decatur, Illinois. 1896 – The first modern Olympic Games (official report pictured) opened in Athens, with 241 athletes from 14 nations participating in 43 events in nine disciplines. 1941 – World War II: The Axis Powers began both Operation Marita and Directive no. 25, invading Greece and Yugoslavia, respectively. 2009 – A 6.3 Mw earthquake struck the region of Abruzzo in central Italy, killing 308 people and injuring more than 1,500 others. More anniversaries: April 5 April 6 April 7

Today's featured picture James Watson (b. 1928) is an American molecular biologist, geneticist and zoologist, best known for discovering the double helix structure of DNA in 1953 jointly with Francis Crick. Watson, Crick, and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material". Educated at the University of Chicago and Indiana University, Watson met Crick at the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory in England, where they were still working when they deduced the structure. Watson wrote of the discovery in his book, The Double Helix (1968), and promoted further study of molecular biology while serving as director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) on Long Island, New York. Photograph: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory; edit: Jan Arkesteijn Recently featured: Wadi Bani Khalid Pinwheel Galaxy Eckert IV projection

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