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I-90 on a map of the contiguous United States

Interstate 90 (I-90) is an east–west transcontinental freeway and the longest Interstate Highway in the United States at 3,021 miles (4,862 km). It runs from Seattle, Washington, to Boston, Massachusetts, passing through the Pacific Northwest, Mountain West, Great Plains, and Midwest. The highway serves 13 states and has 15 auxiliary routes, primarily in major cities such as Chicago, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Rochester. The route incorporates several toll roads that predate the Interstate Highway System, including the Ohio Turnpike, New York State Thruway, and Massachusetts Turnpike. These toll roads opened in the 1950s and were followed by toll-free sections a decade later. The Midwestern sections of I-90 were fully completed in 1978, and the majority of the route between Seattle and South Dakota opened by 1987. The final section, near the western terminus in Seattle, opened on September 12, 1993; an eastern extension in Boston was completed in 2003 as part of the Big Dig project. (Full article...)

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Frances Vorne in a parachute swimsuit

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In the news

Storm Daniel to the north of Libya

Storm Daniel (satellite image shown) causes flooding across Libya and the collapse of two dams, leaving more than 3,000 people dead.
An earthquake strikes Morocco, killing more than 2,800 people.
Tharman Shanmugaratnam is elected as the next president of Singapore.
In Johannesburg, South Africa, a residential fire kills 77 people.

On this day

September 12

Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

379 – Yax Nuun Ahiin I took the throne as the ruler (ajaw) of the Mayan city of Tikal.
1846 – The English poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning (pictured) eloped to Italy, marrying in secret to avoid their disapproving families.
1933 – Hungarian-American physicist Leo Szilard conceived of the idea of the nuclear chain reaction while waiting for a traffic light in Bloomsbury, London.
1948 – The People's Liberation Army launched the Liaoshen campaign, the first of the three major military campaigns during the late stage of the Chinese Civil War.
1995 – Hurricane Ismael formed off the southwest coast of Mexico; it went on to kill over a hundred people in the country.

Parsley Peel (d. 1795)
Alice Ayres (b. 1859)
Ion Agârbiceanu (b. 1882)
Steve Biko (d. 1977)

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Today's featured picture

Andrew George Scott (1842–1880), also known as Captain Moonlite, was an Irish-born New Zealand immigrant to the Colony of Victoria, a bushranger there and in the Colony of New South Wales, and an eventual and current-day Australian folk figure. This carte de visite of Scott is believed to have been taken by Charles Nettleton.

Photograph credit: Charles Nettleton (attributed); restored by Adam Cuerden

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