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From today's featured article

Takato Dam, a gravity dam in Japan

A dam is a structure that impounds water or restricts its flow. The four types are gravity dams (example pictured), embankment dams, buttress dams, and arch dams. Dams provide irrigation, hydropower, water supply, flood management, recreation, inland navigation, and fish farming. An early dam was the Jawa Dam in modern Jordan, built around 3000 BCE. From the late 18th century, the process of designing dams changed from an informal practice to an engineering discipline. In the 20th century, the widespread availability of concrete led to the creation of many large dams worldwide. Dams may include locks, fish ladders, spillways, and power stations. Dams occasionally fail, resulting in flooding and loss of life. Organized opposition to dam projects emerged in the modern era, focused on environmental and social impacts such as the loss of plant and animal habitats, reduced water and sediment flow, degraded landscape aesthetics, the submergence of cultural sites, and forced relocations of people. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Shayok Misha Chowdhury

... that Shayok Misha Chowdhury (pictured) staged his own mother's death in a play they wrote and performed together at The Bushwick Starr?
... that sandbags help salmon traverse Springbrook Creek?
... that Romanian literary historian Alexandru George once gifted a cooking pot and a saucepan to a poet whom he was courting?
... that the publication of a register of Egyptian dyke workers in 1788 marked the beginning of papyrology?
... that Rolf Lyssy's 1978 film The Swissmakers was still the most popular Swiss film of all time in 2025?
... that a graduation fashion show for a local arts school was held in a rapid transit station that had yet to open?
... that future Macau international footballer Alberto Carvalhal was involved in repatriating the remains of Pedro I to Brazil?
... that an asteroid collision in the Nysa–Polana complex might have caused an impact shower on the Moon 800 million years ago?
... that, despite Samuel Quincy's alignment with the British, he was fondly remembered in exile by U.S. president John Adams?

In the news

Bangkok floods

Flooding (pictured) in Bangkok, Thailand, and the surrounding area leaves at least 23 people dead.
The Chess Olympiad concludes with Uzbekistan winning the Open event and China winning the Women's event.
In Australian rules football, the Brisbane Lions win their third premiership in a row, defeating Fremantle in the AFL Grand Final.
An attack on a police complex in Kohat, Pakistan, leaves 31 people dead.

On this day

September 30: National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada; Martyrs' Day in China

A building damaged by the 2009 Sumatra earthquake

1342 – An Anglo-Breton army defeated a far larger Franco-Breton force in the first land battle of the Hundred Years' War.
1551 – Sue Takafusa, a retainer of the Ōuchi clan in western Japan, led a coup against the daimyō Ōuchi Yoshitaka, leading to the latter's forced suicide.
1863 – Georges Bizet's opera Les pêcheurs de perles premiered at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris.
1982 – Cheers, an American television sitcom, debuted with its pilot episode on NBC.
2009 – A 7.6 M_W earthquake struck off the southern coast of Sumatra, Indonesia (damage pictured), killing 1,115 and impacting an estimated 1.2 million people.

Fan Yanguang (d. 940)
Adelaide of Vianden (d. 1376)
John Thirtle (b. 1839)
Catie Ball (b. 1951)

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From today's featured list

Fyffe House

Ten sites in Kaikōura District have been listed as historic places on the New Zealand Heritage List / Rārangi Kōrero by Heritage New Zealand. Kaikōura District is a territorial authority of New Zealand located on the eastern coast of the South Island in northern Canterbury. The region was historically an important Māori settlement area from the earliest period of inhabitation. European inhabitation began in the 1840s with the establishment of whaling stations. The ten sites in Kaikōura District include Fyffe House (pictured), the only Category 1 Historic Place in the district, listed as a "place of special or outstanding historical or cultural significance"; one as a Historic Area for containing multiple related sites; and one wāhi tapu as a site of spiritual, traditional, or ritual importance to the Māori communities. Three more sites were formerly listed as historic places, but have since been destroyed. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

Stongdey is a village in the Zanskar valley in Ladakh, India, situated on the right bank of the Zanskar River, about 18 km (11 mi) northeast of Padum. Stongdey and the neighbouring village of Kumik had a combined population of 914 in the 2011 census. The local economy is largely agrarian, with snowmelt-fed irrigation compensating for the region's low precipitation. The villages have schools, electricity and mobile-phone service. Stongdey Monastery, founded in 1052, overlooks the village and is Zanskar's second-largest monastic institution. This photograph shows Stongdey from the northeast, with the Zanskar Range in the background.

Photograph credit: Timothy A. Gonsalves

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