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From today's featured article

State Route 94 (SR 94) is a 63.3-mile (101.9 km) highway in the U.S. state of California. The western portion, known as the Martin Luther King Jr. Freeway, begins at Interstate 5 (I-5) in downtown San Diego and continues to the end of the freeway portion past SR 125 in Spring Valley. The non-freeway segment of SR 94 that continues east through the mountains to I-8 near Boulevard is known as Campo Road. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, this section was a wagon road providing access to eastern San Diego County. The Campo road was often the only road through the Peninsular Ranges to stay open for the entire winter; other roads, at higher elevations, were closed due to snow, leading to increased traffic along this road. It was added to the state highway system in 1933, and signs for Route 94 were posted along local roads later that decade. Efforts to convert the western half of the route to a freeway got underway in the 1950s, and the freeway was complete by 1962 west of the road that became SR 125. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Pioneer Helmet

• ... that the boar-crested Pioneer Helmet (pictured) was initially mistaken for a bucket?
• ... that Ramize Erer said that when she published a cartoon of a masturbating girl, "all hell broke loose"?
• ... that the use of asset management plan periods in the water industry of England and Wales has been criticised for creating a boom and bust cycle of investment?
• ... that golfer Sally Sessions tied for second place in the 1947 U.S. Women's Open as an amateur?
• ... that groups of common whirligig beetles often spin round rapidly on the water surface?
• ... that Ghanaian accountant and paramount chief Ogyeahohoo Yaw Gyebi II is also the president of all chiefs in the Western Region of Ghana?
• ... that the Ottawa Art Gallery acquired the Firestone Collection of over 1,600 pieces of Canadian art, including landscapes by the Group of Seven, in 1992?
• ... that the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program was initiated by United States Senator Harry Reid in 2007 to secretly study the topic of UFOs?

In the news

Steve Smith

• At least 18 people are killed after mudflows strike the area of Montecito, California, in the area affected by the recent Thomas Fire.
• In cricket, the Ashes series concludes with Australia (captain and man of the series Steve Smith pictured) beating England.
• The National Unity Party wins the most seats in the parliamentary election in Northern Cyprus.
• Two cargo ships collide off the east coast of China, leaving MV Sanchi on fire with 3 people dead and 29 others missing.
• A passenger train collides with a truck on a level crossing near Kroonstad, South Africa, killing 19 people and injuring more than 250 others.

Ongoing:

• Iranian protests

Recent deaths:

• Edgar Ray Killen
• Odvar Nordli
• Kato Ottio
• George Maxwell Richards
• Ray Thomas

On this day...

January 14: National Forest Conservation Day in Thailand; Ratification Day in the United States (1784)

"Recondita armonia" from Tosca, performed by Enrico Caruso

• 1900 – Giacomo Puccini's opera Tosca (audio featured), based on the play La Tosca by French dramatist Victorien Sardou, premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome.
• 1933 – Harold Larwood, of the England cricket team, employing the controversial tactic known as Bodyline, bowled a ball into the chest of the Australian cricket captain, Bill Woodfull, during play, an event that was once voted the most important event in cricket history.
• 1943 – Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Charles de Gaulle, and Henri Giraud met in Casablanca to plan the Allied European strategy for the next phase of World War II.
• 1953 – Josip Broz Tito was inaugurated as the first President of Yugoslavia.
• 1978 – Austrian logician Kurt Gödel, who suffered from an obsessive fear of being poisoned, died of starvation after his wife was hospitalized and unable to cook for him.

Andrew III of Hungary (d. 1301) · Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (d. 1867) · Jess Fishlock (b. 1987)

More anniversaries:

• January 13
• January 14
• January 15

Today's featured picture

Interior with Portraits is an 1865 genre scene painted by American artist Thomas Le Clear, commissioned by Franklin Sidway. It features Sidway's siblings, James and Parnell, posing for a photograph in an artist's studio. The children were painted posthumously based on family daguerreotypes, and the painting has been read as representing the tension between its medium and the emergent medium of photography. Interior with Portraits is held by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.

Painting: Thomas Le Clear

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