- The official state gem of Washington is petrified wood.
- The number of times a cricket chirps in 15 seconds, plus 37, will give you the current air temperature.
Giovanni Boldini was an Italian genre and portrait painter who lived and worked in Paris for most of his career. According to a 1933 article in Time magazine, he was known as the "Master of Swish" because of his flowing style of painting.
Daniel Joseph Berrigan SJ was an American Jesuit priest, anti-war activist, Christian pacifist, playwright, poet, and author.
Berrigan's active protest against the Vietnam War earned him both scorn and admiration, especially regarding his association with the Catonsville Nine. It also landed him on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's "most wanted list", on the cover of Time magazine, and in prison.
For the rest of his life, Berrigan remained one of the United States' leading anti-war activists. In 1980, he founded the Plowshares movement, an anti-nuclear protest group, that put him back into the national spotlight. He was also an award-winning and prolific author of some 50 books, a teacher, and a university educator. He, along with his activist brother Philip Berrigan, was nominated in 1998 for the Nobel Peace Prize by 1976 laureate Mairead Maguire.
Ichi-no-Tani was a Taira defensive position at Suma, to the west of present-day Kobe, Japan. It sat on a very narrow strip of shore, between mountains on the north, and the sea to the south. This made it quite defensible, but also made it difficult to maneuver troops inside the fortress. The Taira suffered a crucial defeat to the forces of Yoshitsune and Noriyori.
Yoshitsune split his force in two. Noriyori's force attacked the Taira at Ikuta Shrine, in the woods a short distance to the east. A second detachment, no more than a hundred horsemen under Yoshitsune, attacked the Taira at Ichinotani from the mountain ridge to the north. At the chosen hour, the Minamoto forces attacked causing confusion amongst the Taira who neither deploy nor retreat. Only about 3000 Taira escaped to Yashima, while Tadanori was killed and Shigehira captured. Also killed from the Taira clan were Lord Michimori, Tsunemasa, Noritsune, Atsumori, Moromori, Tomoakira, Tsunetoshi, and Moritoshi.
Ichi-no-Tani is one of the most famous battles of the Genpei War, in large part due to the individual combats that occurred here.