Upper Pine Bottom State Park is a 5-acre (2.0 ha) Pennsylvania state park near the southern end of what has been called the "Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania", Pine Creek Gorge. The park is in Lycoming County on Upper Pine Bottom Run, a tributary of Pine Creek in the West Branch Susquehanna River drainage basin. Local streams have cut through five major rock formations from the Devonian and Carboniferous periods. The earliest recorded inhabitants of the area were the Iroquoian-speaking Susquehannocks; they were followed by the Iroquois, Lenape, and Shawnee. Upper Pine Bottom Run was the site of a furnace for pig iron in 1814. The first sawmill was built on it in 1815, and in 1825 an earlier bridle path across its headwaters became a turnpike. The park is surrounded by 105,000 acres (42,000 ha) of the Tiadaghton State Forest, which was created after the lumber industry clearcut the area in the 19th century. Upper Pine Bottom State Park is one of the smallest state parks in Pennsylvania. ( Full article...)

The town house
where "Lofsöngur"
was composed

• ... that " Lofsöngur", the national anthem of Iceland, was composed in an Edinburgh town house (pictured)?
• ... that to portray events of The Blair Witch Project as real, its actors were listed on the IMDb website as "missing, presumed dead"?
• ... that pathologist Walter Lazarus-Barlow pricked his thumb during a postmortem examination and lost an arm as a result?
• ... that Violet Lake, a high-elevation lake on the slope of the West Maui Mountains, was believed to be the home of the Hawaiian lizard goddess Kihawahine?
• ... that the Estadio Tecnológico de Oaxaca was designed to mimic the ball court at Monte Albán?
• ... that the blackchin shiner was thought to have vanished from Ohio before 1940, until it was rediscovered there in the 1980s?
• ... that Mozart composed his motet Ave verum corpus for the church choir of St. Stephan in Baden on 17 June 1791?
• ... that Roy Ananny was a Canadian football player, a fireman, a police officer, a curling player, and a realtor?

Helmut Kohl

• Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl (pictured) dies at the age of 87.
• David Grossman wins the Man Booker International Prize for his novel A Horse Walks Into a Bar.
• The 24-storey Grenfell Tower in London is destroyed by fire, with at least thirty fatalities reported.
• An attack on members of the United States Congress in Alexandria, Virginia, injures five people.
• Following his election as leader of Fine Gael on 2 June, Leo Varadkar becomes Taoiseach of Ireland.

June 17: International Surfing Day (2017)

Vlad III Dracula

• 1462 – Forces led by Vlad III Dracula of Wallachia (pictured) attacked an Ottoman camp at night in an attempt to assassinate Mehmed II.
• 1843 – New Zealand Wars: An armed posse of Europeans set out from Nelson to arrest Ngāti Toa chief Te Rauparaha and clashed with Māori, resulting in 26 deaths.
• 1900 – Boxer Rebellion: Allied naval forces captured the Taku Forts after a brief but bloody battle.
• 1930 – U.S. President Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act into law, raising tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods to record levels.
• 1963 – Around 2,000 people rioted in South Vietnam, despite the signing of the Joint Communiqué to resolve the ongoing Buddhist crisis one day earlier.

John Kay (b. 1704) · M. C. Escher (b. 1898) · Annie S. Swan (d. 1943)