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Macrobdella decora, the North American medicinal leech, is a species of freshwater leech found in Canada, the United States, and Mexico. A medium-sized annelid growing up to 8.5 cm (3.3 in) long, it has a spotted greenish-brown back and a reddish underbelly. M. decora is commonly encountered by swimmers and lives in ponds, ditches, and wetlands. The leeches are both blood-sucking parasites and aggressive predators. They have three saw-like "jaws" which they use to penetrate their host's skin, and they can remain attached for up to two hours. Their hosts include fish, turtles, wading birds, and mammals, including humans. The leeches are also voracious predators who eat other invertebrates, amphibian eggs and larvae, and sometimes even members of their own species. M. decora was historically used for leeching by European colonists in North America, who found the native leeches "equally efficacious" as those from Europe. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

The restored Satank Bridge

... that Satank Bridge (pictured) to Satank, Colorado, was constructed in 1900 for $2,325, while its 2011 restoration was estimated to cost at least $750,000?
... that one newspaper labelled Caroline Hodgson the "wickedest woman in Melbourne"?
... that Gävle Hospital in Sweden was so overrun with scarlet fever in 1934 that it considered requisitioning a local gymnasium?
... that Gatot Wilotikto needed approval from the North Korean parliament to marry a local woman?
... that more than 30 women claimed to have gone into labor within 24 hours of eating a Labor Inducer?
... that Friedrich von Pernstein, the archbishop of Riga for 37 years, only spent less than five years there?
... that the former Natick station building became the basement of a liquor store?
... that a former Indonesian ambassador was spared by Khmer Rouge forces after repeatedly shouting "Indonesia"?
... that the Pokémon Heracross may have contributed to an increase in demand for rhinoceros beetles in both legal and illegal Japanese insect markets?

In the news

Lando Norris

In motorsport, Lando Norris (pictured) wins the Formula One World Drivers' Championship.
In Benin, a coup attempt by members of the armed forces is thwarted.
Architect and designer Frank Gehry dies at the age of 96.
In Saint Lucia, the Labour Party, led by Prime Minister Philip J. Pierre, retains its majority in the House of Assembly.
Playwright and screenwriter Tom Stoppard dies at the age of 88.

On this day

December 9: International Anti-Corruption Day

Electron micrograph of the smallpox virus

1775 – American Revolutionary War: After their loss in the Battle of Great Bridge, British authorities were forced to evacuate from the Colony of Virginia.
1940 – Second World War: British and Commonwealth forces began Operation Compass, the first major Allied military operation of the Western Desert campaign.
1965 – A large, brilliant fireball was seen by thousands in midwestern North America before landing in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania.
1979 – A World Health Organization commission of scientists certified the global eradication of smallpox (virus pictured), making it the only human infectious disease to date to have been completely eradicated.
1990 – In Serbia's first multi-party election, Slobodan Milošević won the presidential election and the Socialist Party of Serbia won the majority of seats in the National Assembly.

Nasr ibn Sayyar (d. 748)
Isabelle Urquhart (b. 1865)
Grete Wiesenthal (b. 1885)
McKayla Maroney (b. 1995)

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Today's featured picture

George Grossmith (9 December 1847 – 1 March 1912) was an English comedian, writer, composer, actor, and singer. As a writer and composer, he created eighteen comic operas, nearly a hundred musical sketches, some six hundred songs and piano pieces, three books (including the 1892 comic novel The Diary of a Nobody), and both serious and comic pieces for newspapers and magazines. In a four-decade career as a performer, Grossmith created a series of nine characters in Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas from 1877 to 1889, such as Major-General Stanley in The Pirates of Penzance. Grossmith then became the most popular British solo performer of the 1890s; some of his comic songs endure today. This 1881 photograph shows Grossmith posing in costume as Reginald Bunthorne in a production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience at the Opera Comique in London.

Photograph credit: unknown; restored by Adam Cuerden

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