<p>Black Combe is a fell in the south-west corner of the Lake District National Park, just four miles from the Irish Sea. It lies near the west coast of Cumbria in the borough of Copeland and more specifically, in the ancient district of Millom. It is 1970 feet  high and stands in isolation, some 10 miles away from any higher ground; this factor offers an excellent all-round panoramic view of land and sea; weather permitting.</p><br>
<p>Black Combe is a Marilyn and, at 600m, it is only 10m short of being a Hewitt. Sub-tops include White Combe, Stoupdale Head, Swinside Fell and Stoneside Hill. The first two but not the last two are included in the index of Wainwrights The Outlying Fells of Lakeland and thus in lists of "Outlying fells". (All four sub-tops are shown on Wainwrights map of the fell in that book</p><br>
<p>The view from Black Combe is unique, a result of its isolated position to the south and west of the main Lake District fells. William Wordsworth claimed that "the amplest range of unobstructed prospect may be seen that British ground commands." Half the view is the glittering sea, with the Isle of Man seen clearly to the west, and the hills of Wales and Scotland seen as shadowy silhouettes.</p><br>
<p>On the seaward side views extend from the Cumbrian coast, and from Criffel, 49 miles to the north, a mountain on the Scottish coast near Dumfries, round to the Isle of Man, 45 miles due west, then round to Snowdon which may be seen on days of exceptionally good visibility, 85 miles to the south, to the coast of Lancashire. On the landward side; views include the Scafell Group and the Coniston Group of fells in the Lake District National Park, including four 3000-foot mountains: Skiddaw, Scafell, Scafell Pike and Helvellyn. To the east and south the Pennine Hills, the Forest of Bowland and Blackpool Tower are visible. Closer by, there are also good views over the Duddon Estuary, Millom and the new wind farm just offshore.</p><br>
<p>Black Combe is easy to see across Morecambe Bay as the most westerly outlying fell of the Lake District National Park. The name of the Cumberland View public house in Morecambe reflects the fact that Black Combe used to stand in the historical county of Cumberland. It can also be seen from the top end of the Wirral peninsula, between the turbines of the new Burbo Bank Offshore Wind Farm.</p><br>
<p>Clearly visible in views of Black Combe from the south and east is the large, dark-coloured glacial corrie, known as Blackcombe, from which the fell&#39;s name is derived. Such corries are often known as combes in English place names, a word cognate with the Welsh word cwm. Adjacent to Blackcombe is a lighter-coloured corrie called Whitecombe.</p><br>
<p>Black Combe was one of the five stations in Cumberland used by the Ordnance Survey to measure the angles of Principal Triangles for their initial survey of Britain in the years up to and including 1809. The other stations were "Dent Hill", Scilly Banks (on the outskirts of Whitehaven), High Pike and Cross Fell.</p><br>
<p>The Black Combe Walking Festival takes place annually in June and the Black Combe fell race takes place in early March.</p><br>
<p>The Swinside, or Sunken Kirk, stone circle is on the eastern flanks of Swinside Fell, in the north east of Black Combe.</p><br>
<h2>Geology</h2><br>
<p>The rocks of Black Combe were formed during the Ordovician period, roughly 460 million years ago. Faulting has exposed an inlier of mudstones from the Skiddaw Group. These rocks, largely mudstones, siltstones and occasional sandstones or greywackes, were formed in deep seas when occasional slides of coastal sediments were redeposited at greater depth.</p><br>
<p>The nearby Millom Park includes Millom Rock Park, open to the public at all times.</p><br>
<h2>Routes</h2><br>
<p>Walks to the top of the fell begin at St Marys Church, Whicham to the south; St Marys Church, Whitbeck to the west or from the Corney Fell Road which crosses the fells at an altitude of 1,250 feet four miles to the north of the top. A more challenging and interesting route begins at Beckside Farm on the A595 road and follows Whitecombe Beck before ascending the Horse Back ridge. This ridge separates Blackcombe and Whitecombe on the eastern side of the fell, and gives good views into both combes.</p><br>
<p>The summit plateau is a very flat peat-covered area. There is a Triangulation Pillar on the top, surrounded by rough drystone wall which forms a wind shelter. 1286 feet due south from the peak is a lesser peak upon which stands a large cairn which is easily visible with the naked eye from Millom and the surrounding area. Between this cairn and the top, in a shallow valley, lies a small tarn.</p><br>
<p>Black Combe is the subject of a chapter of Wainwright&#39;s book The Outlying Fells of Lakeland. While most of the chapters of that book describe single, usually circular, walks, Black Combe is treated similarly to the summits in the main Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells: the author describes three distinct ascent routes (from the south at Whicham, the west on the A595 road, the north on the fell road) and a circuit of White Combe to the east.</p><br>
<p>The Rocky Hill Meeting House is a well-preserved New England meeting house located on Old Portsmouth Road in Amesbury, Massachusetts. Built about 1785, and not used as a church after 1840, it has the best-preserved example of an original 18th-century meeting house interior in New England. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. It is now a museum property owned and operated by Historic New England. It is open selected days each year; admission is charged.</p><br>
<h2>Description and history</h2><br>
<p>The Rocky Hill Meeting House is located east of downtown Amesbury, on Old Portsmouth Road, now a short spur between Elm Street and Interstate 495. It is a roughly square 2-1/2 story timber frame structure, with a gabled roof and clapboarded exterior. Each side is five bays wide, with entrances on three sides. The principal entrance is on the south side, in a projecting two-story stairhouse. The interior consists of a single large chamber with a second-floor gallery on three sides. It lacks the modern amenities of electricity, plumbing, and heat.</p><br>
<p>The meeting house was built to serve the west parish of Salisbury in approximately 1785, replacing a c. 1715 meeting house. George Washington greeted local townspeople in this meeting house on his northward journey in 1789. By the 1840s, regular religious services had come to an end. Historic New England acquired the meeting house in 1941.</p><br>
<p>Its interior has remained virtually unchanged since it was constructed, with the original high pulpit, pentagonal sounding board, deacon&#39;s desk, marbleized columns, box pews (complete with graffiti and foot warmers), unfinished stairs to the gallery, and sloping gallery on three sides. The pews have never been painted, the marbleized pulpit and pillars supporting the galleries still feature their original paint, and the building still contains its original hardware.</p><br>
<p>The John Greenleaf Whittier Home is a historic house located at 86 Friend Street, Amesbury, Massachusetts. It was the home of American poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier from 1836 until his death in 1892, and is now a nonprofit museum open to the public May 1 through October 31; an admission fee is charged. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1962, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>The John Greenleaf Whittier House was built in 1811. At that time it was a 1.5 story wood frame Cape style cottage, with four rooms on the ground floor and one in the attic. A kitchen ell and shed were added to the back. The house was purchased by Whittier in 1836 to provide accommodation for himself as well as his mother, aunt, and sister Eliza. He lived here until his death in 1892. Whittier wrote most of his poetry and prose in this house, including his classic Snow-Bound, which he wrote in the Garden Room.</p><br>
<p>The Whittier family made significant modifications to the house during their 80 years of ownership. Whittier added a bedroom to the southeast corner of the house not long after buying it. In 1847, with the financial assistance of Quaker philanthropist Joseph Sturge, the house was significantly enlarged. The new bedroom was enlarged and converted into a sitting room and study, a porch was added to the east side of the house, and a full second story was added over the eastern half of the house.</p><br>
<h3>Preservation</h3><br>
<p>After Whittiers death in 1892, his niece, Lizzy Pickard, was not interested in maintaining the house. The Whittier Home Association was established in 1898 as a vehicle to preserve the house and the Whittier legacy. Lizzies son, Greenleaf Pickard, in 1904 decided to live in the house, but made a series of additions in part to preserve the original portion used by Whittier. The west side of the house was also raised to a full two stories, and the kitchen ell was replaced by a two story addition. The present front porch is believed to date to this time period as well. The old kitchen ell was separated from the house and is now a small outbuilding.</p><br>
<p>The house was subsequently acquired by the Whittier Home Association, and opened as a museum. The house and its furnishings are essentially unchanged from the poets death, including living rooms, bedroom, and Whittiers writing study with all its furnishings.</p><br>
<p>Whittier&#39;s birthplace in nearby Haverhill, the John Greenleaf Whittier Homestead, is also open to the public.</p><br>
<p>Rothschild Island is an island 39 km long, mainly ice covered but surmounted by prominent peaks of Desko Mountains in Antarctica, 8 km west of the north part of Alexander Island in the north entrance to Wilkins Sound.</p><br>
<p>The island was sighted from a distance by the French Antarctic Expedition, 1908-1910, and named by Charcot in honor of Baron Edouard de Rothschild (1868-1949), head of the Rothschild banking family of France and president of de Rothschild Frères. In subsequent exploration by the British Graham Land Expedition (BGLE), 1934-1937, the feature was believed to be a mountain connected to Alexander Island, but its insularity was reaffirmed by the United States Antarctic Service (USAS), 1939-1941, who photographed and roughly mapped the island from the air. It was mapped in detail from air photos taken by the Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition (RARE), 1947-1948, by Searle of the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (FIDS) in 1960, and from USA satellite imagery taken in 1974.</p><br>
<p>Mount Stephenson a mountain in Antarctica. It is located within the central portion of the Douglas Range, standing at the heads of Toynbee Glacier and Sedgwick Glacier 8 miles west of George VI Sound, near the east coast of Alexander Island within the British Antarctic Territory. At an elevation of 2,987 m, Mount Stephenson is the highest mountain in the Douglas Range and the highest point on Alexander Island. Mount Egbert ranks second, standing at 2,895 m and lies 8 nmi south-southeast of Mount Stephenson.</p><br>
<p>The mountain was probably first seen in 1909 by the French Antarctic Expedition under Charcot, but not recognized as part of the Douglas Range. It was first surveyed in 1936 by Stephenson, Fleming, and Bertram of the British Graham Land Expedition (BGLE) under Rymill. The east side of the mountain was resurveyed in 1948 by the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (FIDS) who named the feature for Alfred Stephenson, surveyor and leader of the BGLE party to George VI Sound in 1936. Another landform on Alexander Island happens to be named for Alfred Stephenson, Stephenson Nunatak.</p><br>
<p>The Salem Maritime National Historic Site is a National Historic Site consisting of 12 historic structures, one replica tall-ship, and about 9 acres  of land along the waterfront of Salem Harbor in Salem, Massachusetts. Salem Maritime is the first National Historic Site established in the United States .</p><br>
<p>Salem Maritime National Historic Site, the first National Historic Site established in the United States (March 17, 1938).</p><br>
<p>It interprets the Triangle Trade during the colonial period, in cotton, rum, sugar and slaves; the actions of privateers during the American Revolution; and global maritime trade with the Far East, after independence. The National Park Service manages both the National Historic Site and a Regional Visitor Center in downtown Salem. The National Park Service (NPS) is an agency of the United States Department of the Interior.</p><br>
<p>In 2014, the National Park Service, which runs the Salem Maritime National Historic Site, released figures and statistics for 2012: there were 756,038 visitors to Salem who spent an estimated $40,000,000. The National Park Service celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2016.</p><br>
<h2>Properties</h2><br>
<p>The site preserves and interprets numerous maritime resources in the form of artifacts, collections and structures, including:</p><br>
<p>Derby House (1762) – built in 1762 by Captain Richard Derby as a wedding gift for his son, a fine example of Georgian architecture. Derby was the first millionaire in the New World.</p><br>
<p>Derby Wharf (1762, extended 1806) – Salem&#39;s longest wharf (nearly 1/2 mile). When in active use, it was lined with warehouses of goods from around the world. The Derby Wharf Light (1871) remains at the end of the wharf.</p><br>
<p>Friendship of Salem – a replica of a 1797 East Indiaman; the new ship was built in the Scarano Brothers Shipyard in Albany, New York, in 2000 and is operated as a museum ship. The original Friendship made 15 voyages during her career: to Batavia, India, China, South America, the Caribbean, England, Germany, the Mediterranean, and Russia. She was captured as a prize of the War of 1812 by the British in September 1812.</p><br>
<p>Hawkes House (1780, 1800) – designed by famous Salem architect Samuel McIntire, building was begun in 1780. The unfinished building was purchased and completed around 1800 by Benjamin Hawkes.</p><br>
<p>Narbonne House (1675) – The part of the house with the high peaked roof was built by butcher Thomas Ives, who later added a lean-to the south side and a kitchen lean-to at the back. Around 1740 the southern lean-to was replaced by today&#39;s gambrel-roofed addition. From 1750 to 1780, the house was owned by Capt. Joseph Hodges, and in 1780 the house was purchased by tanner Jonathan Andrew. The house was lived in by descendants of the Andrew family from 1780 to 1964, when the house was sold to the National Park Service.</p><br>
<p>Pedrick Store House, a three-story building, constructed around 1770, is a historic rigging and sail loft, which was relocated to the Salem Maritime National Historic Site from Marblehead, MA in 2007.</p><br>
<p>Salem Custom House (1819) – the 13th Customs House in Salem; the first was built in 1649. Taxes were collected on imported cargoes.</p><br>
<p>St. Joseph Hall (1909) – Original home of The St. Joseph Society (1897), a fraternal society established by Polish immigrants. The first floor was retail space that could be rented out to provide an income for the support of the building. The large hall on the second floor was the site of hundreds of weddings, dances, plays, and other social events in the Polish community, which expanded rapidly in the late 19th-early 20th-century immigration wave. On the top floor, the Society built several apartments to house new immigrants until they could get permanently settled. The building now serves as park headquarters.</p><br>
<p>West India Goods Store (1804) – Built by Captain Henry Prince about 1804 and was likely first used as a warehouse, where Prince kept goods imported from the East Indies, such as pepper, coffee, water buffalo hides, and tortoise shells. By 1836, Charles Dexter had a shop in this building. It was one of many that served the needs of Salem households by selling candles, oils, clothing, tin, and glassware. Besides stocking general groceries such as grain, cheese, dried beans and even rum, the store attracted customers with many foreign imported goods and luxuries from Europe, Asia and Africa. The store continued to operate as a retail space throughout the nineteenth century. Later occupants included painters, a tobacconist, and a wine and liquor merchant.</p><br>
<h2>Adjacent historic areas</h2><br>
<p>A short walk from the Salem Maritime National Historic Site are the Chestnut Street District, Federal Street District, Downtown Salem District, Bridge Street Neck Historic District, Charter Street Historic District, Crombie Street District, Derby Waterfront District, Essex Institute Historic District, Salem Willows Historic District and the Salem Common Historic District.</p><br>
<p>Rusanivka  is a man-made island and neighbourhood surrounded by a canal, the Rusanivs&#39;kyi Kanal. The canal is an artificial distributary of the Dnieper River. The river and canal make the neighborhood resemble an island. The island is located in the left-bank part of Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. Closer to the river, Rusanivka has a couple small beaches. The neighbourhood has many apartment buildings, most are which are 9 to 16 stories tall. There are many stores and cafés on the Rusanivs&#39;ka Naberezhna, the main street in Rusanivka.</p><br>
<p>Lacking industry, Rusanivka was conceived from the start as a purely residential neighbourhood according to the Soviet concept of allocating the so-called sleeping districts (dormitory neighbourhoods) in large industrial cities. It was envisaged, during creation of this neighbourhood, that the area would be served by two main types of public transportation — buses and river boats on Dnieper and canal – so private cars would not be necessary for the residents. The river boats would have created a Venice-like atmosphere in the area. In reality, mass transit based on river boats proved uneconomical and was discontinued. The legacy of this failed project lingers on, as the district was not built to cope with large numbers of private vehicles. Parking space is scarce, and residents often prefer to walk across bridges over the canal to catch buses, trolleybuses, or reach metro stations, particularly the nearby Livoberezhna&#39;station in the Livoberezhnyi neighborhood.</p><br>
<p>Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site in Cornish, New Hampshire, USA, preserves the home, gardens, and studios of Augustus Saint-Gaudens , one of Americas foremost sculptors. This was his summer residence from 1885 to 1897, his permanent home from 1900 until his death in 1907, and the center of the Cornish Art Colony. There are two hiking trails that explore the parks natural areas. Original sculptures are on exhibit, along with reproductions of his greatest masterpieces. It is located on Saint-Gaudens Road in Cornish, 0.5 mi off New Hampshire Route 12A.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Saint-Gaudens purchased the property in 1885 at the urging of Charles Cotesworth Beaman, Jr., a friend and New York City lawyer, who had purchased the nearby Blow-Me-Down Farm (now also part of the historic site) and established it as a summer residence. He called "Aspet" after the town of his fathers birth in France. Saint-Gaudens established a studio, and produced work here every summer, and lived here year-round from 1900 until his death in 1907. Beamans summer estate was a center of activity of the Cornish Art Colony. After the death of Saint-Gaudens&#39; wife Augusta in 1926, Aspet was transferred to the Saint-Gaudens Memorial, a non-profit organization, established by Augusta Saint-Gaudens in 1919. The Memorial ran the property as a museum from 1927 until it was transferred to the National Park Service (NPS) in 1965. The Trustees of the Memorial continue to support the preservation and development of the park and to provide public programming.</p><br>
<p>The estate was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1962 and administratively listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 15, 1966.</p><br>
<h2>Description</h2><br>
<p>The centerpieces of Aspet are its main house, built 1816-17 with Federal styling, which underwent a series of alterations by Saint-Gaudens, with design work by George Fletcher Babb, and the Little Studio, also designed by Babb and built in 1903-04 to replace earlier studios. The grounds are landscaped with hedges and terraced gardens, in which reproductions of works by Saint-Gaudens are displayed. The gardens were designed by Saint-Gaudens and landscape architect Ellen Shipman. The grounds also include an outdoor room, the Pan Grove, a collaborative design of Babb and Saint-Gaudens, featuring an 8-foot by 4-foot green marble pool set in a birch grove with a statue of the Greek god Pan.</p><br>
<h2>Artists-in-residence</h2><br>
<p>American sculptor Lawrence Nowlan was an artist-in-residence at Saint-Gaudens for five summers from 1995 to 1997 and again from 2001 to 2002. He received his first major commission to design the Wildland Firefighters National Monument while working and studying at Saint-Gaudens.</p><br>
<p>Mount Read is a mountain located in the West Coast region of Tasmania, Australia, and is at the north west edge of the West Coast Range.</p><br>
<p>With an elevation of 1,123 m above sea level, Mount Read has had as colourful a history, similar to that of Mount Lyell, with mines, settlements and other activities on its slopes for over a hundred years.</p><br>
<h2>Geology</h2><br>
<p>The main copper and gold ore bearing deposits in the West Coast Range are known as occurring in the Mount Read Volcanics relating to the complex geology of the area.</p><br>
<p>Mineralisation and deposits were being identified well beyond the life of the original mines utilised on Mount Read</p><br>
<p>To the south east of Mount Read are many features of glaciation in the Tyndall Range as well as glacial lakes of Lake Westwood, Lake Selina, and Lake Julia.</p><br>
<h2>Hercules Haulage</h2><br>
<p>The Hercules Mine on Mount Read was connected by a 1,642 ft haulage incline to Williamsford and then to the North East Dundas Tramway. The haulage was self-acting and 1 mi long and 1,642 ft high with a maximum gradient of 1 in 5.</p><br>
<p>The mine was in production in the late nineteenth century. It had a major strike in 1906 The mine produced well into the mid twentieth century The mine site had ceased operation and was subject to cleanup processes in the early 2000s.</p><br>
<p>The Hercules Gold and Silver Mining Company was an operating company that ceased in 1916. The Mount Read and Rosebery Mines Limited started as an ex-Mount Lyell offshoot, absorbed by EZ by 1925.</p><br>
<h2>Mount Read locality/community</h2><br>
<p>The community surrounding the Hercules minesite had various struggles for services and facilities</p><br>
<h2>Huon Pine</h2><br>
<p>Also, despite extensive historic mining and human activity on its slopes, Mount Read has unique and significant stands of Huon Pine forests on its slopes. The southern slopes of Mount Read have been identified as a special habitat enclosed in the Lake Johnston Nature Reserve.</p><br>
<h2>Climate</h2><br>
<p>Mount Read has a subpolar oceanic climate, closely bordering the tundra climate (ET). It currently has a Bureau of Meteorology automatic weather station in place, and it scores well in extreme weather conditions. Its extreme rainfall records for Autumn 2006 put it on a par with the Lake Margaret rainfall – which was still apparently recorded till 30 June 2006 by Hydro employees, but not appearing on the BOM website.</p><br>
<p>Swift Run Gap is a wind gap in the Blue Ridge Mountains located in the USA state of Virginia.</p><br>
<h2>Geography</h2><br>
<p>At an elevation of 2,365 ft, it is the site of the mountain crossing of USA Highway 33 between the Piedmont region on the eastern side and the Shenandoah Valley (or Great Valley of Virginia) to the west.</p><br>
<p>Generally following the mountain ridge tops, the bucolic Skyline Drive, which is part of Shenandoah National Park, has an entry point at Swift Run Gap, and the Appalachian Trail also passes through nearby. The mountain ridge forms the border between Greene County and Rockingham County. Swift Run Gap lies along a drainage divide between southeast-flowing streams in the James River watershed and northwest-flowing streams that drain to the Shenandoah River system.</p><br>
<h2>Geology</h2><br>
<p>The bedrock beneath Swift Run Gap is 1.05 billion year old granitic rocks of the Blue Ridge basement complex. The type location for the Swift Run Formation, a Neoproterozoic metasedimentary unit, is approximately 1.5 mi east of the gap. A steeply dipping, northwest-striking transverse fault cuts through Swift Run Gap, and differential erosion of the fractured bedrock along this fault may be responsible for the development of a gap at this location.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Swift Run Gap is a long-used and historic crossing in the Blue Ridge Mountains. In 1716, Royal Governor Alexander Spotswood of the Virginia Colony, with 62 other men and 74 horses, led a real estate speculation expedition up the Rapidan River valley during westward exploration of the interior of Virginia. The party reached the top of the Blue Ridge at Swift Run Gap on September 5, 1716. Upon descending into a portion of the Shenandoah Valley on the east side of Massanutten Mountain, they reached a point near the current town of Elkton, where they celebrated their arrival on the banks of the Shenandoah River with multiple volleys and special toasts of brandy and claret to the King and the Governor, naming a peak for each.</p><br>
<p>After the journey, Spotswood gave each member of the expedition a pin made of gold and shaped like a horseshoe on which he had inscribed the words in Latin "Sic jurat transcendere montes", which translates in English to "Thus he swears to cross the mountains." The members of Governor Spotswood&#39;s expedition soon became popularly known as the "Knights of the Golden Horseshoe." A historical plaque and pyramid-shaped stone mark their historic crossing of 1716.</p><br>
<p>The Swift Run Gap Turnpike, a privately owned toll road, was first completed through Swift Run Gap in the early 19th century. In the 1840s, plans for the Louisa Railroad (renamed the Virginia Central Railroad in 1850) originally anticipated crossing the Blue Ridge at Swift Run Gap to reach Harrisonburg, but projected construction costs after surveying were prohibitive. This was primarily due to the steepness of the terrain on the eastern slope. Addressing the dilemma, Claudius Crozet, the legendary Chief Engineer of the Virginia Board of Public Works, determined that a system of tunnels at Rockfish Gap, about 30 mi to the south, would be more feasible. Despite later technological advances, no railroad crossing was ever attempted at Swift Run Gap.</p><br>
<p>Today the two-lane USA Route 33 at the lower elevations follows a small creek named Swift Run west from Stanardsville, but then about halfway up, requires multiple horseshoe curves on the steep grades of the eastern slope, as it ascends an increasingly winding pathway to reach Swift Run Gap.</p><br>
<p>Crozet was also first commandant of the new Virginia Military Institute (VMI), where one of the young instructors during his tenure was Thomas Jonathan Jackson, later to become well known by his nickname of Stonewall Jackson. Jackson&#39;s intimate knowledge of this and other crossings of the Blue Ridge facilitated his tactics, and enabled him to intimidate Union leaders such as General George B. McClellan into being less aggressive with their own plans of advancement in the first years of the American Civil War (1861–1865). Jackson and his famous "foot cavalry" used Swift Run Gap (among others) to shift his troops rapidly from the Shenandoah Valley theatre to the Piedmont, which allowed him to appear unexpectedly before Union forces on several occasions.</p><br>
<p>The Îlots des Apôtres or Îles des Apôtres  are a group of small and uninhabited rocky islands in the north-western part of the Crozet Archipelago in the southern Indian Ocean, 10 km north of Île aux Cochons. Their total area is about 2 km².</p><br>
<h2>Description</h2><br>
<p>There are two larger islands (Île Grande - Big Island, and Île Petite - Little Island), together occupying almost 90 percent of the area. The highest peak is Mont Pierre (289 m on Île Grande. In addition, there are about 20 rocks, with elevations between 15 and. The islands are very steep. Despite their small size, Île Grande reaches a height of 289 m, and Île Petite 246 m.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>On the night of 1 July 1875, the Strathmore, a three-masted ship sailing between the United Kingdom and New Zealand, was wrecked in the vicinity after striking a reef. Of the 89 passengers on board, 44 survived on Île Grande until 21 January 1876, when they were rescued by another ship.</p><br>
<h2>Important Bird Area</h2><br>
<p>The islets have been identified as an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International as a breeding site for seabirds, with at least 25 species nesting there. The birds include wandering, grey-headed, light-mantled, sooty, black-browed and Indian yellow-nosed albatrosses, great-winged, soft-plumaged, white-chinned and blue petrels, medium-billed prions, northern giant petrels, common diving petrels, Crozet blue-eyed shags and Kerguelen terns.</p><br>
<h2>The islets</h2><br>
<p>Thornton Gap is a wind gap located in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia separating the Shenandoah Valley from the Piedmont region of the state.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Thornton Gap was named for Francis Thornton (1711&ndash;April 14, 1749), owner of the land to the east and the "F.T. Valley". In 1740, he built a mansion in the Piedmont region near Nethers in Rappahannock County.</p><br>
<p>The privately owned Thorntons Gap Turnpike Company was formed to build a road over the mountains at Thorntons Gap. The toll road opened in 1806.</p><br>
<p>Thornton Gap was one of the passages through the Blue Ridge Mountains between the Shenandoah Valley and the Piedmont region of Virginia used by Confederate General Stonewall Jackson to move his famous "foot cavalry" troops during the American Civil War.</p><br>
<p>Prior to the building of the Shenandoah National Park and the Skyline Drive by the federal Works Progress Administration (WPA) during the Great Depression, the town of Beahm was located at Thornton Gap.</p><br>
<p>Sculptor William Randolph Barbee was the son of a toll collector at Thornton Gap; his son Herbert later erected a bust in his memory at the site.</p><br>
<h2>Current information</h2><br>
<p>Thornton Gap is the site of the mountain crossing of USA Highway 211. It is located at the border of Page County and Rappahannock County. At Thornton Gap, there is an entry point for the bucolic Skyline Drive, which runs between Front Royal and the northern terminus with the Blue Ridge Parkway at Rockfish Gap. The Skyline Drive generally following the mountain ridge tops through the Shenandoah National Park, which has its headquarters near Thornton Gap in the Town of Luray. The Appalachian Trail also passes through Thornton Gap.</p><br>
<p>Pine Island Glacier  is a large ice stream, and the fastest melting glacier in Antarctica, responsible for about 25% of Antarctica&#39;s ice loss. The glacier ice streams flow west-northwest along the south side of the Hudson Mountains into Pine Island Bay, Amundsen Sea, Antarctica. It was mapped by the United States Geological Survey  from surveys and United States Navy  air photos, 1960–66, and named by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names  in association with Pine Island Bay.</p><br>
<p>The area drained by Pine Island Glacier comprises about 10% of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Satellite measurements have shown that the Pine Island Glacier Basin has a greater net contribution of ice to the sea than any other ice drainage basin in the world and this has increased due to recent acceleration of the ice stream.</p><br>
<p>The ice stream is extremely remote, with the nearest continually occupied research station at Rothera, nearly 1,300 km away. The area is not claimed by any nations and the Antarctic Treaty prohibits any new claims while it is in force.</p><br>
<h2>Ice sheet drainage</h2><br>
<p>The Antarctic ice sheet is the largest mass of ice on earth, containing a volume of water equivalent to 57 m of global sea level. The ice sheet forms from snow which falls onto the continent and compacts under its own weight. The ice then moves under its own weight toward the edges of the continent. Most of this transport to the sea is by ice streams (faster moving channels of ice surrounded by slower moving ice walls) and outlet glaciers. The Antarctic ice sheet consists of the large, relatively stable, East Antarctic Ice Sheet and a smaller, less stable, West Antarctic Ice Sheet. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is drained into the sea by several large ice streams, most of which flow into either Ross Ice Shelf, or Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf. Pine Island and Thwaites Glaciers are two major West Antarctic ice streams which do not flow into a large ice shelf. They are part of an area called the Amundsen Sea Embayment. A total area of 175,000 km&sup2, 10 percent of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, drains out to the sea via Pine Island Glacier, this area is known as the Pine Island Glacier drainage basin.</p><br>
<h2>Weak underbelly of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet</h2><br>
<p>The Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers are two of Antarctica&#39;s five largest ice streams. Scientists have found that the flow of these ice streams has accelerated in recent years, and suggested that if they were to melt, global sea levels would rise by 1 to 2 m, destabilising the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet and perhaps sections of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet.</p><br>
<p>In 1981 Terry Hughes proposed that the region around Pine Island Bay may be a "weak underbelly" of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. This is based on the fact that, unlike the majority of the large West Antarctic ice streams, those flowing into the Amundsen Sea are not protected from the ocean by large floating ice shelves. Also, although the surface of the glacier is above sea level, the base lies below sea level and slopes downward inland, this suggests that there is no geological barrier to stop a retreat of the ice once it has started.</p><br>
<h2>Acceleration and thinning</h2><br>
<p>The speed of Pine Island Glacier increased by 73 percent from 1974 to the end of 2007, with an 8 percent increase over the last 16 months of this period alone. This speed up has meant that by the end of 2007 the Pine Island Glacier system had a negative mass balance of 46 gigatonnes per year, which is equivalent to 0.13 mm per year global sea level rise. In other words, much more water was being put into the sea by PIG than was being replaced by snowfall. Measurements along the centre of the ice stream by GPS demonstrated that this acceleration is still high nearly 200 km inland, at around 4 percent over 2007. It has been suggested that this recent acceleration could have been triggered by warm ocean waters at the end of PIG, where it has a floating section (ice shelf) approximately 50 km long. It has also been shown that PIG underwent rapid thinning during the Holocene, and that this process may continue for centuries after it is initiated.</p><br>
<p>As the ice stream accelerates it is also getting steeper. The rate of thinning within the central trunk has quadrupled from 1995 to 2006. If the current rate of acceleration were to continue the main trunk of the glacier could be afloat within 100 years.</p><br>
<h2>Subglacial volcano</h2><br>
<p>In January 2008 the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) scientists, Hugh Corr and David Vaughan, reported that 2,200 years ago a volcano erupted under the Antarctic ice sheet. This was the biggest Antarctic eruption in the last 10,000 years. The volcano is situated in the Hudson Mountains, close to Pine Island Glacier. The eruption spread a layer of volcanic ash (or tephra) over the surface of the ice sheet. This ash was then buried under the snow and ice. Corr and Vaughan were able to map this ash layer using an airborne radar system and calculate the date of the eruption from the depth of burial of the ash. This method uses dates calculated from nearby ice cores. The presence of the volcano raises the possibility that volcanic activity could have contributed, or may contribute in the future, to increases in the flow of the glacier.</p><br>
<h2>History of fieldwork</h2><br>
<h3>On the ice</h3><br>
<p>Due to the remoteness of Pine Island Glacier, most of the information available on the ice stream comes from airborne or satellite-based measurements.</p><br>
<p>The first expedition to visit the ice stream was a United States over-snow traverse, where they spent around a week in the area of PIG during January 1961. They dug snow pits to measure snow accumulation and carried out seismic surveys to measure ice thickness. One of the scientists on this traverse was Charles R. Bentley, who claims "we didn&#39;t know we were crossing a glacier at the time." This is not surprising, because PIG is around 50 km wide at the point visited and at ground level cannot be visually distinguished from the surrounding ice. This expedition was called the Ellsworth Highland Traverse.</p><br>
<p>Then in the 2004/2005 field season a team of 9 using a British Antarctic Survey (BAS) Twin Otter aircraft, equipped with ice penetrating radar, completed an aerial survey of PIG and its adjacent ice sheet. The team of 7 British & 2 Americans led by Dave Vaughan & Hugh Corr flew 30 km grid patterns over the PIG until mid-January 5, mapping the sub-glacial terrain of that area roughly equal to the size of the State of Nevada.</p><br>
<p>Due to the remoteness of PIG and the logistical difficulties of caching enough fuel for the 04/05 expedition and future project(s), BAS used the resources of the United States Antarctic Program (USAP) and their ski-equipped LC130 aircraft.</p><br>
<p>After many weeks of weather delays the first four men (Ben Partan, Rob Smith, Dave Anderson & Martin Bell) arrived from McMurdo on 11/9/04 and began to establish camp and build a skiway for the C130’s. Camp was established on the upper end of the ice stream at S77.76973 x W095.12713. The remaining members of the team arrived from Rothera approximately 10 days later in the Twin Otter, flown by survey pilot Dave Leatherdale.</p><br>
<p>Because of unusually good weather in the area that season the survey completed flying their grids early (mid-January) and began flying 15 km grids of Thwaites Glacier for a USAP expedition who had been experiencing unusually poor weather in their area that year. Flying over Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier in a DC-8 research plane, scientists participating in NASA’s IceBridge mission made a startling discovery on October 14, 2011: a massive crack running about 29 km across the glacier’s floating tongue. The rift is 80 m wide on average and 50 to 60 m deep, and it marks the moment of creation for a new iceberg that will span about 880 km&sup2; once it breaks loose from the glacier.</p><br>
<p>All survey grids having been completed by the end of January, the survey crew flew back to Rothera leaving the two Americans and two British to dismantle the camp. A week later the remaining team members flew back to McMurdo leaving a fuel cache for future expeditions.</p><br>
<p>Another team from the British Antarctic Survey arrived at the ice stream on 8 December 2006 for the first of two field seasons. In the second field season, they spent three months there from November 2007 to February 2008. Work on the glacier included radar measurements and seismic surveys.</p><br>
<p>In January 2008 Bob Bindschadler (NASA) landed on the floating ice shelf of PIG, this is at the downstream end where it floats on the sea. This landing, by a Twin Otter plane fitted with skis, was the first ever landing on this ice shelf. The reason for landing on the ice shelf was for a reconnaissance mission to investigate the feasibility of drilling through around 500 m of ice, to lower instruments into the ocean cavity below. It is hoped that this will provide important information on the link between the ocean and Pine Island Glacier. It was decided that the small crevasse free area was too hard for further landings and so further fieldwork had to be postponed. Therefore, two GPS units and a weather station were positioned as near as possible to PIG.</p><br>
<p>Since then, the National Science Foundation has decided to establish a helicopter camp for the scientists to safely study the ice-ocean interaction. During the 2010–11 summer field season in Antarctica, it is planned that tractors and sleds will haul all of the equipment needed to establish a camp near the ice shelf. A tractor train traverse of about 700 km is needed to deliver the materials. The plan over the following two field seasons, 2011–12 and 2012–13, is for scientists to use helicopters to fly to sites on the ice shelf, where they will deploy specially designed profilers down through the ice shelf to measure various ocean properties.</p><br>
<p>2011-2012 field season: after five weeks of delays, the camp staff was finally able to establish the Main Camp just before New Years.</p><br>
<p>The following week Dr Bindschadler and his team were able to arrive. Due to additional weather delays, the helicopters werent able to arrive by the NSF drop dead&#39; date and the field season was essentially cancelled. Fortunately limited science was still accomplished by the team thanks to a series of flights by KBA back onto the glacier; its seems that conditions had changed drastically since the last twin otter flights.</p><br>
<p>The British Antarctic Survey deployed a small team of four (Dr Andrew Smith, Gabriel Chevailler, Ashly Fusiarski, Ian Hey) during the 2011-12 summer field season to carry out a series of seismic and radar surveys on PIG. They also installed a series of overwintering GPS stations. During this same field season, a separate BAS team (Dr Mark Clilverd, Tom Stroud) was inputted to the field parties location and they installed an overwintering autonomous VLF station. This was followed by a radar traverse upstream using skidoos. This survey linked previous radar lines.</p><br>
<h3>From the sea</h3><br>
<p>The first ship to reach Pine Island Glacier&#39;s ice shelf, in Pine Island Bay, was the USS/USCGC Glacier in 1985. This ship was an icebreaker operated by the USA Coast Guard. The mission, known as Deep Freeze, had scientists on board who took sediment samples from the ocean floor.</p><br>
<p>During the summer field season, over two months from January to February 2009, researchers aboard the USA Antarctic Program research vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer reached the ice shelf. This was the second time that the Palmer had successfully made it up to the glacier, the first time being in 1994. In collaboration with the British, the scientists used a robotic submarine to explore the glacier-carved channels on the continental shelf as well as the cavity below the ice shelf and glacier. The submarine, known as Autosub 3, was developed and built at the National Oceanography Centre in the UK. It completed six successful missions, travelling a total of 500 km under the ice shelf. Autosub is able to map the base of the ice shelf as well as the ocean floor and take various measurements and samples of the water on the way. The success of Autosub 3 was particularly notable because its predecessor Autosub 2 was lost beneath the Fimbul Ice Shelf on only its second such mission.</p><br>
<p>Grotta Gigante , also known as Riesengrotte or as Grotta di Brisciachi, is a giant cave on the Italian side of the Trieste Karst , close to the village of Borgo Grotta Gigante or Briščiki in the municipality of Sgonico. Its central cavern is 107 m high, 65 m wide and 130 m long, putting it in the 1995 Guinness Book of Records as the world&#39;s largest tourist cave. This record was broken in 2010 when La Verna cave  in the south west of France was opened to tourists.</p><br>
<h2>Overview</h2><br>
<p>The cave contains many large stalactites and stalagmites, many of exceptional beauty. A feature of the stalagmites is their "dish-pile" appearance, formed by water dropping from up to 80 m above and depositing calcium carbonate over a wide area.</p><br>
<p>The enormous hall is 107 m high, 130 m long and 65 m wide. A steep path with atmospheric electric lighting allows the visitor to spend about 45 minutes in this underground space, with its rich calcite concretions, the highest of which is no less than 12 m high.</p><br>
<p>Its available space and the constant temperatures throughout the year have led to the placement of two geodetic pendula (which hang down from about 100 m, and are the longest in the world) and other scientific instruments.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>The cave was first explored by Antonio Federico Lindner in 1840. At the time, the karst behind Trieste was being searched for underground water from the Timavo River so as to be able to plan the city&#39;s aqueduct. In 1897, it was fully mapped by Andrea Perko, properly equipped for guided tours in 1905 by Club Touristi Triestini, and inaugurated in 1908. After World War I, ownership went to the Julian Alpine Society. Tourism only really began in 1957, when electricity was installed, unveiling new perspectives and details.</p><br>
<h2>Museum</h2><br>
<p>The Museum of Speleology is near the cave, and besides the various speleological, geological, and paleontological finds, it also includes some valuable archeological pieces and a poster collection of the cave. Two wide parking lots are available on the outside. Visits are scheduled at regular intervals throughout the day with expert guides. A guided walk through the cave takes about an hour.</p><br>
<p>Mount Siple is a potentially active Antarctic shield volcano, rising to 3,110 m and dominating the northwest part of Siple Island, which is separated from the Bakutis Coast, Marie Byrd Land, by the Getz Ice Shelf. Its youthful appearance strongly suggests that it last erupted in the Holocene. It is capped by a 4 x summit caldera, and tuff cones lie on the lower flanks. Its volume of 1,800 km3 is comparable to that of Mount Erebus.</p><br>
<p>Mount Siple is named after Paul A. Siple (1908–68), a US Antarctic explorer and geographer who took part in six Antarctic expeditions, including the two Byrd expeditions of 1928-30 and 1933-35 (Siple Coast, Siple Island). He was in command of the West Base of the US Antarctic Service (USAS), 1939–41, and was navigator on all major exploratory flights from the base, including the flight on which Mount Siple was discovered.</p><br>
<p>The mountain has no known record of being climbed. If it is in fact unclimbed, it is one of the most prominent unclimbed mountains in the world (see highest unclimbed mountain).</p><br>
<p>Mount Siple receives very little publicity due to its remote location and its topography has only been recorded by a sketch map. Mount Siple has received fewer visits than many of its neighboring volcanoes.</p><br>
<p>The volcano was visited in February 2017 as part of the Swiss Polar Institute&#39;s Antarctic Circumnavigation Expedition. Al Jazeera English Science and Technology editor Tarek Bazley was on board and filed a news report on his visit to a colony of Adele penguins breeding there.</p><br>
<p>Drift Reservoir is a reservoir in Cornwall, England, UK, just north of the village of Drift and west of Penzance. The reservoir is just over a kilometre long and covers 26 ha. The dam is at the southern end of the reservoir, and the northern end, splits into north-western and north-eastern shallow arms. It is currently managed, jointly by the South West Lakes Trust and South West Water. There is public access to the dam and parking area only.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>The reservoir was first given statutory approval in 1938 (Under the Penzance Corporation Act 1938) but construction was deferred until after World War II and finally completed by the West Cornwall Water Board in 1961. It is the principal source of water for the Penwith area.</p><br>
<h2>Natural history and ecology</h2><br>
<p>Drift reservoir, due to its geographical location close to the sea, plus good areas of shallow water and exposed mud is an important landfall for migrating waders. The north-west arm of the reservoir is managed by the Cornwall Birdwatching and Preservation Society (CBWPS) and the bird hide, due to insurance considerations, is open to members of that organisation only. A successful bird reserve needs an area that is free of continuous disturbance and in 2001 a no fishing area was established in the north-west arm, along with a reed bed of Phragmites australis. A year later it was reported that the no fishing area had helped breeding birds which included common coot (Fulica atra), mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) and mute swan (Cygnus olor).</p><br>
<p>Although generally hosting only small numbers of birds (244 species recorded), the reservoir has attracted a considerable number of North American vagrant shorebirds and wildfowl, including a number of lesser scaup (Aythya affinis). In May 2016 a Dalmatian pelican (Pelecanus crispus) was seen in western Cornwall and was frequently seen on the reservoir. There are 5,000 year old fossil remains of this species from Somerset and this bird could be the first recorded in Britain since then. At the same time as the Dalmatian pelican, a cackling goose, (Branta hutchinsii), which is a scarce but regular North American vagrant was at the reservoir.</p><br>
<p>Rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and blue trout are released in the reservoir for trout fishing along with the native brown trout (Salmo trutta). The Cornish open float tube competition is held annually in May.</p><br>
<p>Mount Segers  is a mountain at the south extremity of Sullivan Heights in the Sentinel Range, Ellsworth Mountains in Antarctica, separated from Vinson Massif to the southwest by Vranya Pass. It is situated 11 km  east of Mount Tyree, on the east side of the head of Crosswell Glacier and surmounting Hinkley Glacier to the southeast.</p><br>
<p>The peak was discovered by US Navy Squadron VX-6 on photographic flights of Dec. 14-15, 1959, and mapped by USGS from these photos. Named by US-ACAN for Chester W. Segers, a Navy cook and a member of the first wintering party at the South Pole Station during the IGY in 1957.</p><br>
<h2>Maps</h2><br>
<p>* https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vinson-Map.jpg Vinson Massif. Scale 1:250 000 topographic map. Reston, Virginia: US Geological Survey, 1988.</p><br>
<p>Chirikof Island is located in the Gulf of Alaska approximately 80 mi southwest of Kodiak Island.</p><br>
<h2>Terrain</h2><br>
<p>Chirikof Island consists of 33,000 acre of grasses and sedges. Treeless, it lies west of the western tree line in Alaska. The island is shaped like a webbed duck foot with the heel to the north and the webbing to the south. The seas around Chirikof are treacherous and the island has a history of shipwrecks. The south shore has a wide beach suitable for aircraft landings and cautious watercraft landings. The island is open to general public access. Commercial carriers need a permit to visit; personal planes or boats need no permit.</p><br>
<h2>Habitation</h2><br>
<p>The first human inhabitants of the island were the Old Islanders, 4000-2000 BP (before present, i.e., before 1950.) A subsistence village existed up to the late 19th century, when it was succeeded first by fox farming and then by cattle farming. There has generally been continuous human habitation of Chirikof, relieved by short periods of abandoment. In 1980, the island became part of the Alaska Maritime Wildlife Refuge. The only inhabitants now are a herd of perhaps 700-800 feral cattle. Cattle have been present on the island since the late 19th century. In the 21st century, the herd has become the subject of an ongoing controversy between a small group of Kodiak ranchers and the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the refuge. (See National interest lands below.)</p><br>
<h2>Names</h2><br>
<p>Vitus Bering, captain of the St. Peter, and Alexei Chirikov, captain of the St. Paul, sailed from Kamchatka in 1741 with charts that called the island Tummenoi, a Russian word meaning foggy. The log of the St. Peter recorded a sighting of the island on August 2, 1741, which was St. Stephens day. For this reason, Bering renamed the island St. Stephen Island. Berings ship and Chirikof&#39;s had become separated early in the voyage and Chirikof never saw the island. Nonetheless, in 1794, explorer George Vancouver renamed the island Chirikof Island, observing that Capt. Chirikof’s “labors in the arduous task of discovery do not appear to have been thus commemorated.” Alutiiqs of the area still call the island Ukamok (ooo-KA-mok) for the ground squirrels common there.</p><br>
<h2>Russian-American Company</h2><br>
<p>In 1799 the Russian-American Company was given a charter by Tsar Paul I to govern the territory of Alaska and manage the exploitation of its resources. The company had already established a permanent colony for European settlers on Kodiak Island. Supported at first by the infamous fur trade, the Kodiak colonists later pursued cattle ranching and fox farming. During the Russian period (i.e., 1740&#39;s to 1867) a population of 60-100 villagers lived a subsistence life on nearby Chirikof. The villagers were Alutiiq, Tlingit, Russian and western Europeans. Some were creoles, the Alaskan word for mixed race. They worshiped in a small Russian orthodox church. The village was abandoned soon after the Russian church called the only priest on the island back to Kodiak in 1870.</p><br>
<h2>Alaska Commercial Company</h2><br>
<p>Alaska Commercial Company acquired the assets of the Russian-American Company in 1867 when Russia sold the territory to America. In 1887, an ACC subsidiary was formed to breed blue foxes on Chirikof. Voles were imported to feed the foxes. A small herd of cattle was brought in to provide meat for the American caretakers, who disliked seal meat. From time to time - 1892, 1912 - the company shipped additional cattle to the island. The cattle were not landed; the crew just drove them overboard and they swam to shore. Once on land, the cattle thrived unattended on the nutritious island grasses. They also lost many traits of domestication. They do not herd up; they charge horses and men; when spooked, they flee into the sea and swim around till it is safe to come out.</p><br>
<h2>Russian penal colony</h2><br>
<p>The late Dr. Lydia Black, a leading scholar of the Russian-American period in Alaska, rebutted the legend that there was once a Russian penal colony on Chirikof. Among those who perpetuated that myth was artist, traveler and writer Henry Wood Elliott, who wrote accurately and alarmingly of the fur trade slaughter but fictitiously of much else. Few people at the time were knowledgeable enough to refute Elliott&#39;s fantasies. One who could was Capt. Arthur Morris, administrator of Alaska in 1877, who once stated, “Don’t believe a word Elliott says except about fur seals.”</p><br>
<h2>Beef industry</h2><br>
<p>The beef industry on Chirikof began in earnest in 1925 and continued as late as 1983, when a $875,000 loan from the Alaska Agricultural Loan Board brought 600 new head to the island. The original venture was the brain-child of an Iowa farm boy with a law degree named Jack McCord. McCord formed the Chirikof Cattle Company and labored from 1925 to 1950 to build a successful beef industry on the island. The story is a long saga of shipwrecks, plane crashes, unruly feral cattle, unfulfilled contracts, spoiled meat and good money thrown after bad. A succession of hopeful owners since McCord has been unable to profitably market the beef from this remote island. Ranch workers report that the meat is virtually "inedible," tough and hard to digest.</p><br>
<h2>National interest lands</h2><br>
<p>As part of the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA), certain state lands reverted to federal ownership. In 1980, Chirikof Island was added to the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. The management plan for the refuge entails restoring the island&#39;s native species and requires removal of the cattle, which overgraze the land and damage bird habitat. However, the most recent attempt in 2003 to remove a small part of the herd - 37 head, by barge - resulted in injuries to the animals that attracted the attention of the Humane Society of the United States. Additionally, legal issues have delayed plans to remove the herd and restore the island as a bird sanctuary.</p><br>
<h2>Additional resources</h2><br>
<p>Ford, Corey, Where the Sea Breaks Its Back</p><br>
<p>Davidson, The Tracks and Landfalls of Bering and Chirikof</p><br>
<p>Golder, Bering’s Voyages</p><br>
<p>Waxell, The American Expedition</p><br>
<p>Steller, Journal of a Voyage with Bering</p><br>
<p>Beaglehole, The Life of Captain James Cook</p><br>
<p>Alaska Geographic, Vol 4 No 3, 1977, Kodiak, Island of Change</p><br>
<p>Alaska Magazine, August 2000, The Wild Cattle of Chirikof Island</p><br>
<p>Rivers, Raymond, Chirikof Adventure, 1949, printed 1961 in Mukluk Telegraph</p><br>
<p>Kashevaroff, Chirikof Never a Penal Colony, Jan 28, 1929, Daily Alaska Empire</p><br>
<p>McCord/Frye letters, Kodiak Historical Society</p><br>
<p>Personal communications from Woodworth, Hamilton, Homme, Stavelund and others</p><br>
<p>The Parlange Plantation House is a historic plantation house at Louisiana Highway 1 and Louisiana Highway 78 in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana. Built in 1750, it is a classic example of a large French Colonial plantation house in the United States. Exemplifying the style of the semi-tropical Louisiana river country house, the Parlange Plantation home is a two-story raised cottage. The main floor is set on a brick basement with brick pillars to support the veranda of the second story. The raised basement is of brick, manufactured by slaves on the plantation. The walls, both inside and out, were plastered with a native mixture of mud, sand, Spanish moss and animal hair , then painted. The ground story and second floors contain seven service rooms, arranged in a double line. The walls and ceiling throughout the house were constructed of close-fitting bald cypress planks.</p><br>
<p>There is an octagonal pigeonnier near the house. The home was once surrounded by a formal garden, but the garden was destroyed during the Civil War.</p><br>
<h2>History of the plantation and the Ternant-Parlange family</h2><br>
<p>Vincent de Ternant, known as the Marquis of Dansville-sur-Meuse, received the plantation grounds in a French land grant and developed the 10,000 acres (40 km²) into an active plantation facing False River. When de Ternant&#39;s son Claude inherited the plantation, he changed the cash crop from indigo to sugarcane and cotton.</p><br>
<p>When Claude de Ternant died, his second wife Virginie remarried. (By her first husband, Virginie was the maternal grandmother of Parisian socialite Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, who was the subject of John Singer Sargents portrait "Madame X".) Virginies second husband, another Frenchman, was Colonel Charles Parlange, from whom the plantation took its name.</p><br>
<p>During the American Civil War, Parlange alternatively served as Union headquarters for General Nathaniel Banks and Confederate headquarters for General Richard Taylor.</p><br>
<p>Colonel and Mrs. Parlange had one son, also named Charles, who survived the Civil War to begin a distinguished career as a State Senator, United States District Attorney, Lieutenant Governor, federal judge, and finally justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court.</p><br>
<p>After Virginie Parlange died in 1887, her son and his wife moved to New Orleans. Judge and Mrs. Charles Parlange leased the plantation to tenants for the next twenty years, until their son Walter Parlange returned to Pointe Coupée Parish to take up the life of a plantation farmer.</p><br>
<p>Today Parlange retains 1500 acres (6 km²), which are still used as a cattle and sugarcane plantation. It is owned and operated by descendants of the original owners. The plantation house remains largely intact and is occasionally available for private tours by appointment only. It is located near the intersection of Louisiana Highway 1 and Louisiana Highway 78.</p><br>
<h2>Popular culture</h2><br>
<p>The Parlange Plantation and the history of Virginie de Ternant was the inspiration for the Bagatelle Plantation and the heroine Virginie Tregan in the novel Louisiane by Maurice Denuzière.</p><br>
<p>The Ramapo Valley County Reservation, also known as the Ramapo Reservation, is a 4000+acre county park located in Mahwah, New Jersey in Bergen County, bordering Ringwood State Park to the north and the Ramapo Mountain State Forest to the south. The park lies on the border of the Piedmont and Highlands geologic provinces.</p><br>
<p>The park offers hiking along a mountain brook with a waterfall, fishing in the Ramapo River, Scarlet Oak Pond, MacMillan Reservoir, and tent camping. Trails connect to the network of trails in the adjoining state forest and state park. The park also affords carry-in access to the Ramapo River for canoe, kayak and raft owners.</p><br>
<p>The Reservation is popular among students from nearby Ramapo College, less than a mile away on Route 202, and acts as the school&#39;s Environmental Science laboratory.</p><br>
<p>The park is also a noted geocaching hotspot in conjunction with the aforementioned adjoining parks.</p><br>
<p>The former Bergen County Police substation near the parking lot serves as the headquarters for New Jersey Search and Rescue.</p><br>
<h2>October 2015 closure</h2><br>
<p>The Ramapo Mountain Reservation was closed indefinitely to visitors on October 15, 2015, while authorities investigated increased bear activity. The ban has since been lifted.</p><br>
<p>The Edmund Fowle House is a historic house and local history museum at 28 Marshall Street in Watertown, Massachusetts, USA. Built in 1772, it is the second-oldest surviving house in Watertown . Watertown was the seat of Massachusetts government during the British occupation of Boston in the American Revolution. The committees of the 2nd and 3rd Provincial Congress met in this house from April 22 to July 19, 1775, and the Executive Committee met here from July 19, 1775, to September 18, 1776.</p><br>
<p>The house was built by Edmund Fowle (1747–1821) and originally located on Mount Auburn St., then called Mill St. In 1776 the Treaty of Watertown, the first treaty signed between the newly formed United States of America and a foreign power, the St. Johns and Mikmaq First Nations of Nova Scotia, was signed in this house.</p><br>
<p>Sturgis and Brigham Architects (Charles Brigham and John Hubbard Sturgis) purchased the house in 1871, moved it to its present Marshall St. address and converted it into a two family residence. The Historical Society of Watertown purchased the house in 1922.</p><br>
<p>The Historical Society was awarded $500,000 in 2004 and another $200,000 in 2006 by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for the restoration of the Edmund Fowle House. The grand re-opening of the house took place in May 2008.</p><br>
<p>The Vassar College Observatory is an astronomical observatory of the private Vassar College, located near the eastern edge of the Poughkeepsie, New York colleges campus. Finished in 1865, it was the first building on the colleges campus, older even than the Main Building, with which it shares the status of National Historic Landmark. The observatory&#39;s significance is due to its association with Maria Mitchell, the first widely known woman astronomer in the United States.</p><br>
<p>As the college has built a new observatory on a hill near the edge of campus, the building is no longer used for astronomy. In 2008 it underwent a large restoration and renovation and now houses the offices of the Education Department and classrooms.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Mitchell, the first manager of the observatory, focused primarily on observing planets and their satellites. She was an avid advocate for using the observatory as part of courses of study. Students could frequently be found using both the main telescope and any number of smaller instruments. In addition to serving as an educational and research facility, the original observatory also served as a home for Maria and her father during and after her tenure as professor.</p><br>
<p>Professor Mary W. Whitney assumed the directorship in 1888. She had been a student of Mitchell&#39;s. Whitney focused on comets and published in 1890, 1892 and 1895 in the Astronomical Journal.</p><br>
<p>It was noted in Popular Astronomy in 1904, "In general the work done at Vassar is similar to that done at several of the smaller German and Italian Observatories."</p><br>
<p>The building was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1991.</p><br>
<p>Today, the old observatory is no longer used for research. While the building still stands, the telescope has been removed and most of the building is used as office space. In the late 1990s, a new observatory was built on the Vassar College campus. The Class of &#39;51 Observatory is a state-of-the-art facility that houses two telescopes; one 20-inch reflector used primarily for public outreach, and a 32-inch reflector used for teaching and research. It is tied with the Austin-Fellows telescope of the Stull Observatory at Alfred University for being the 2nd-largest optical telescope in the state of New York, the largest being the 40-inch reflector at SUNY Oneonta College Observatory.</p><br>
<h3>List of Directors</h3><br>
<p>Maria Mitchell (1865–1888)</p><br>
<p>Mary W. Whitney (1888–1895)</p><br>
<p>Caroline Furness (1895–1936)</p><br>
<p>Maud Worcester Makemson (1936-1957)</p><br>
<p>Henry Albers (1958–1990)</p><br>
<p>Fred Chromey (1990–2016)</p><br>
<p>Colette Salyk (2016-Present)</p><br>
<p>Saldae was an important port city in the ancient Roman Empire, located at today&#39;s Béjaïa . It was generally a crossroads between eastern and western segments of Northern Africa, from the time of Carthage to the end of the Byzantine Empire from the continent.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Saldae was first inhabited by Numidian Berbers. A minor port in Carthaginian and in early Roman times, it was a border town between Rome and Juba, located to the east of the ancient Berber kingdoms.</p><br>
<h3>Roman era</h3><br>
<p>It was made officially a Roman colony -named Civitas Salditana- during the reign of Roman emperor Octavianus Augustus. It is mentioned in Pliny the Elder&#39;s Naturalis Historia.</p><br>
<p>The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites reports:</p><br>
<p>The city grew in size with new buildings and the emperor Vespasian settled the city with many Roman veterans, increasing its population and importance in the province of Mauretania Caesariensis, and when that was divided, in the new Late Roman province of Mauretania Sitifensis.</p><br>
<p>The city was under the Roman ius (law) and its citizens were endowed with full civil rights. Saldae was a center of a Mauretania Caesariensis area fully Romanised, that in the late third century was even fully Christian.</p><br>
<p>In the 3rd century AD, Gaius Cornelius Peregrinus, a decurion (town councillor) of Saldae, was a tribunus (military tribune, a commander at cohort level) of the auxiliary garrison at Alauna Carvetiorum, in northern Britain. An altar dedicated by him was discovered shortly before 1587 in the north-west corner of the fort, where it had probably been re-used in a late-Roman building.</p><br>
<h3>Vandal, Byzantine and modern era</h3><br>
<p>In the 5th century, Saldae became the capital of the short-lived Vandal Kingdom of the Germanic Vandals, which ended in about 533 with the Byzantine conquest, which established an African prefecture and later the Exarchate of Carthage.</p><br>
<p>After the 7th-century Arab conquest, Saldae declined and had practically disappeared by the end of the first millennium.</p><br>
<p>In the 11th century, it was refounded as Béjaïa (v.) by the Berber Hammadid dynasty, which made it their capital, and it became an important port and centre of culture.</p><br>
<h2>Ecclesiastical history</h2><br>
<p>With the spread of Christianity, Saldae became a bishopric. Its bishop Paschasius was one of the Catholic bishops whom the Arian Vandal king Huneric summoned to the Council of Carthage (484) and then exiled.</p><br>
<p>Christianity survived the Arab conquest, the disappearance of the old city of Saldae, and the founding of the new city of Béjaïa. A letter of Pope Gregory VII (1073–1085) exists, addressed to clero et populo Buzee (the clergy and people of Béjaïa), in which he writes of the consecration of a bishop named Servandus for Christian north Africa.</p><br>
<h3>Titular see</h3><br>
<p>No longer a residential bishopric, Saldae is today listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see.</p><br>
<p>It has had a long list of incumbents, mostly of the lowest (episcopal) rank, a few of intermediate (archiepiscopal) rank:</p><br>
<p>Albertus, Friars Minor (O.F.M.) (1415–1442)</p><br>
<p>Johannes Frey, O.F.M. (1457.08.19 – 1474.04.08)</p><br>
<p>Erasmus Perchinger, O.F.M. (1482.11.06 – 1483.09.26)</p><br>
<p>Mathias Schach, Carthusians (O. Cart.) (1495.11.19 – 1515.11.05)</p><br>
<p>Konrad Mair (1517.07.21 – 1522)</p><br>
<p>Hieronim Antoni Szeptycki (1739.07.20 – 1759.09.24)</p><br>
<p>Ignatius Krzyzanowski (1762.06.14 – ?)</p><br>
<p>Bernard-Claude Panet (Titular bishop 1806.07.12 – 1819.01.12), later Titular Archbishop (1819.01.12 – 1825.12.04)</p><br>
<p>Daniel O’Connell, O.E.S.A. (1834.04.25 – 1867.07.10)</p><br>
<p>Joseph-Henri-Jean-Marie Prud’homme (1937.01.29 – 1952.01.05)</p><br>
<p>Hélder Pessoa Câmara (Titular Bishop 1952.03.03 – 1955.04.02), later Titular Archbishop (1955.04.02 – 1964.03.12)</p><br>
<p>Titular Archbishop Henri-Martin-Félix Jenny (1965.05.15 – 1966.02.15)</p><br>
<p>Marie-Joseph Lemieux (1966.09.24 – 1994.03.04), later bishop and still later Archbishop</p><br>
<p>Sylvester Carmel Magro, O.F.M., (1997.03.10 –...), Apostolic Vicar of Benghazi</p><br>
<p>This titular see has, confusingly, for a long time concurrently had a counterpart (also Latin) called Bugia, the Italian form of Béjaïa, the modern name of former Saldae. Thus Bugia was the alternative title borne lastly by George Hilary Brown, titular bishop from 5 June 1840 until 22 April 1842, when he became residential bishop of Liverpool.</p><br>
<p>Hartford is one of five unincorporated villages in the town of Hartford, Windsor County, Vermont, United States. It also referred to as Hartford Village.</p><br>
<p>Hartford is the birthplace of Horace Wells, the first dentist to use nitrous oxide or "laughing gas" as anesthesia.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Hartford village was first established in the late 18th century, when it was called White River Village. In its early years, it was the town&#39;s principal community center, but it was later supplanted in that role by White River Junction, which is approximately one mile east of Hartford village. In the 19th century Hartford village was the site of several industries, including a grain mill, a chair factory, and a woolen mill.</p><br>
<h3>Hartford Village Historic District</h3><br>
<p>The Hartford Village Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998. The 50 acre historic district includes portions of Hartford Main Street, Park Street, Pleasant Street, School Street, Summer Street, Elmwood Court, Mapleside Terrace. There are 80 contributing and 20 non-contributing buildings in the district, consisting mainly of 19th-century era residences.</p><br>
<p>Some of the more significant properties in the historic district are:</p><br>
<p>Second Congregational Church, 237 Hartford Main Street, 1828.</p><br>
<p>Hartford Library, 217 Hartford Main Street, 1893.</p><br>
<p>Gov. Samuel E. Pingree House, 13 School Street, c.1867.</p><br>
<p>Hartford Village Grammar School, 23 School Street, 1906.</p><br>
<p>Cascadnac Grange, 194 Hartford Main Street, c.1870.</p><br>
<p>Hartford Diner, 190 Hartford Main Street, c.1940.</p><br>
<p>Kneeland-Cone House, 173 Hartford Main Street, 1804, 1890/1897.</p><br>
<p>Wyllys Lyman House, 185 Hartford Main Street, 1828.</p><br>
<p>Brooks Store-Pease Block, 201-203 Hartford Main Street, c.1900.</p><br>
<p>French Mercantile Block, 209 Hartford Main Street, 1804.</p><br>
<p>Horace Pease House ("Sunnyacre")/Elks Lodge, 215 Hartford Main Street, 1884.</p><br>
<p>Ephraim Morris House, 221 Hartford Main Street, 1894.</p><br>
<p>House (Horace Wells birthplace), 9 School Street, c.1840.</p><br>
<p>Plantsville is a neighborhood in the town of Southington, Hartford County, Connecticut. It is centered at the merger between South Main Street  and West Main Street . As of the 2000 Census there were 10,387 people living in the Zip Code Tabulation Area for zip code 06479, which is assigned the postal city name Plantsville.</p><br>
<h2>Geography</h2><br>
<p>Plantsville is located in the south-central part of Southington at geographical coordinates 41° 34′ 56" North, 72° 53′ 25" West (41.5824, -72.8904). It is just south of the town center of Southington. The CDP border follows Prospect Street and Carter Lane on the north side, Old Turnpike Road on the east, Mulberry Street on the south, and Atwater Street and Interstate 84 on the west. Connecticut Route 10 (Main Street) passes through the center of Plantsville, leading north to the center of Southington and south to Cheshire.</p><br>
<p>The Quinnipiac River flows through the community, just west of Route 10.</p><br>
<h2>Demographics</h2><br>
<p>At the time of the 2000 Census there was a total of 10,387 people living within the Plantsville Zip Code Tabulation Area. The Median Age was 38.3. The median home value in Plantsville is $255,500.</p><br>
<h2>Attractions</h2><br>
<p>The Plantsville Historic District is a historic district that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.</p><br>
<h3>Education</h3><br>
<p>There are three schools located in Plantsville: Plantsville School, Strong Elementary School, and John F. Kennedy Middle School.</p><br>
<p>Musa Dagh  is a mountain in the Hatay province of Turkey. In 1915 it was the location of a successful Armenian resistance to the Armenian Genocide, an event that inspired Franz Werfel to write the novel The Forty Days of Musa Dagh.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>The deportation orders of the Armenian population of current Turkey, issued by the Ottoman government, in July 1915 reached the six Armenian villages of the Musa Dagh region: Kabusia (Kaboussieh), Yoghunoluk, Bitias, Vakef, Kheter Bey (Khodr Bey) and Haji Habibli. As Ottoman Turkish forces converged upon the town, the populace, aware of the impending danger, refused deportation and fell back upon Musa mountain, thwarting assaults for fifty-three days, from July to September 1915. One of the leaders of the revolt was Movses Der Kalousdian, whose Armenian first name was the same as that of the mountain. Allied warships, most notably the French 3rd squadron in the Mediterranean under command of Louis Dartige du Fournet, sighted the survivors, just as ammunition and food provisions were running out. French and British ships, beginning with the Guichen, evacuated 4,200 men, women and children from Musa Dagh to safety in Port Said. Starting in 1918, when the Sanjak of Alexandretta came under French control, the population of the six Armenian villages returned to their homes. In 1932 a monument was erected at the top of the mountain to commemorate the event.</p><br>
<p>On 29 June 1939, following an agreement between France and Turkey, the province was given to Turkey. Afterwards Armenians from six of the villages emigrated from Hatay, while some of the residents of Vakıflı village chose to stay. Vakıflı is the only remaining ethnic Armenian village in Turkey, with a population only 140 Turkish-Armenians. Most who left Hatay in 1939 emigrated to Lebanon where they resettled in the town of Anjar. Today, the town of Anjar is divided into six districts, each commemorating one of the villages of Musa Dagh.</p><br>
<p>As the French squads came to the rescue of the remaining survivors, the chief priest was quoted to say: "The evil only happened... to enable God to show us His goodness." This event was depicted in the 2016 movie The Promise.</p><br>
<h2>The Forty Days of Musa Dagh</h2><br>
<p>These historical events later inspired Franz Werfel to write his novel The Forty Days of Musa Dagh (1933), a fictionalized account based on his detailed research of historical sources. Werfel told reporters: "The struggle of 5,000 people on Musa Dagh had so fascinated me that I wished to aid the Armenian people by writing about it and bringing it to the world". A movie of the same name was released in 1982.</p><br>
<p>Tower Rock, also known as Grand Tower, is a rock formation and landmark island in the Mississippi River, in Brazeau Township, Perry County, Missouri, near the town of Wittenberg, Missouri, and across the river from Grand Tower, Illinois. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970.</p><br>
<p>Tower Rock has also been dubbed with many names over the centuries: Cap de Roche, Cap St. Croix la Tour, La Roche de la Croix, Rock of St. Cosme, Castle Rock and Devil&#39;s Tower.</p><br>
<p>The earliest mention by Europeans of this island is by French missionary Jacques Marquette in 1673:</p><br>
<p>...we found ourselves at a river called ouaboukigou, The mouth of which is at the 36th degree of latitude. Before reaching it, we passed by a Place that is dreaded by the Savages, because they believe that a manitou is there, — that is to say, a demon, — that devours travelers; and The savages, who wished to divert us from our undertaking, warned us against it. This is the demon: there is a small cove, surrounded by rocks 20 feet high, into which The whole Current of the river rushes; and, being pushed back against the waters following It, and checked by an Island near by, the Current is Compelled to pass through a narrow Channel. This is not done without a violent Struggle between all these waters, which force one another back, or without a great din, which inspires terror in the savages....</p><br>
<p>Another early mention of the rock was by French-Canadian seminarian priests: fathers Montigny, Davion and St. Cosme, who planted a cross on the rock in 1698.</p><br>
<p>A ridge directly across the river from the island is named Devil&#39;s Backbone.</p><br>
<p>Meriwether Lewis mentions the island in his journals, stating that rivermen who passed the rock would celebrate in a way similar to sailors crossing the equator, by raising a drink of spirits.</p><br>
<p>Lutherans from Germany considered this island their Plymouth Rock, for here they landed, after seeking a place where they could practice religious freedom.</p><br>
<p>In a Nov. 6, 2003, article in the Southern Illinoisan newspaper, Mike Keeley, manager of the Tower Rock National Historic Site for the Missouri Department of Conservation, said that it&#39;s possible to walk out to Tower Rock every year or so because of low water levels on the river.</p><br>
<p>Beech Fork Lake is a reservoir located near Lavalette in Wayne County, West Virginia. Beech Fork Lake is also partly located in neighboring Cabell County. Millers Fork and Stowers Branch join Beech Fork with their own river valleys contributing to the majority of the lakesurface of Beech Fork Lake. These streams are tributaries of Twelvepole Creek.</p><br>
<p>Beech Fork Lake as a flood control impoundment was authorized by the Flood Control Act of October 23, 1962 and was constructed by the USA Army Corps of Engineers in the mid-1970s. The lake was completed and dedicated in May 1978.</p><br>
<h2>History of Beech Fork</h2><br>
<p>Known in agrarian times as "Bean Capital Of The World" because of its abundant harvests, remote Beech Fork and its fertile farms had by the mid-20th century devolved into a "Tobacco Road" cut off from the opportunities of modern development.</p><br>
<p>Some tombstones in the park&#39;s Bowen Cemetery date to the 18th century; and family names adorning Civil War graves can be seen on roadside mailboxes even today. Government appropriation of private land for the lake caused rancor among locals with historic land holdings. The Beech Fork strain of Adkins family (appropriately known as "Beech Fork Adkinses") was largely driven out to the Huntington metropolitan area. So numerous were these displaced persons that townsfolk joked about an "Adkins factory" at Beech Fork which mass-produced persons of the surname. It has also been said that in the last days, "the Jews will go back to Palestine and the Adkinses will go back to Beech Fork."</p><br>
<h2>Recreation</h2><br>
<p>Boating, fishing, hiking, camping, and picnicking opportunities are available on site. Biking or walking along the roadways around the park, however inviting, is not generally recommended due to automobile traffic along the narrow rural routes.</p><br>
<h3>Birding</h3><br>
<p>The park is an excellent site for birdwatching. Thousands of square miles of Appalachian hardwood trees surround the Beech Fork Lake area, providing a habitat for wood warblers, vireos, thrushes, chats, cuckoos, ovenbirds, and many other forest dwelling birds. Due to a lack of extensive wetlands attractive to waterfowl, such species are comparatively less common.</p><br>
<p>The Schindler House, also known as the Schindler Chace House, or Kings Road House is a house in West Hollywood, California, 34.086362&deg; latitude, -118.372235&deg; longitude designed by architect Rudolph M. Schindler.</p><br>
<p>The Schindler House was such a departure from existing residential architecture because of what it did not have; there is no conventional living room, dining room or bedrooms in the house. The residence was meant to be a cooperative live/work space for two young families. The concrete walls and sliding glass panels made novel use of industrial materials, while the open floor plan integrated the external environment into the residence, setting a precedent for California architecture in particular.</p><br>
<h2>Site</h2><br>
<p>After completing the Hollyhock House, Schindler and his wife Pauline vacationed in Yosemite in October 1921. Inspired by the trip, Schindler returned to create a design for multiple families to share a modern living area, much like Curry Village, Yosemite National Park.</p><br>
<h2>Architecture</h2><br>
<p>The Schindler House is laid out as two interlinking "L" shaped apartments (referred to as the Schindler and Chace apartments) using the basic design of the camp site that he had seen a year before. Each apartment was designed for a separate family, consisting of 2 studios, connected by a utility room. The utility room was meant to serve the functions of a kitchen, laundry, sewing room, and storage. The four studios were originally designated for the four members of the household (Rudolph & Pauline Schindler and Clyde & Marian Chace). Each person was assigned a studio marked in the plans with his or her initials, and everyone converged in the communal kitchen for domestic chores. The house also has a guest studio with its own kitchen and bathroom. The house, at just under 3,500 ft&sup2, sits on a 20,000 ft&sup2; lot.</p><br>
<p>Instead of bedrooms, there are two rooftop sleeping baskets. The baskets were redwood four post canopies with beams at mitered corners, protected from the rain by canvas sides.</p><br>
<h2>Construction</h2><br>
<p>When Schindler first submitted plans to the local planning authorities, they were denied, citing this radical, at the time, new method of construction. After many trips to the local planning office and extensive talks to convince them of its merit, the Building department granted him a temporary permit, meaning that they reserved the right to halt construction at any stage.</p><br>
<p>The house is built on a flat concrete slab, which is both the foundation and the final floor. The walls are concrete tilt up slabs, poured into forms on top of the foundation. The tilt up slabs are separated by 3 in, filled with concrete, clear glass or frosted glass. The tilt up panels act as the hard sheltering wall at the back of the house, and a softer permeable screen at the front. Schindler had long been fascinated by the construction method of tilt up concrete slabs, having done extensive research on them in his early days working for Ottenheimer, Stern, and Reichert. He was now intent on using this method for the new home he was designing, along with his friend Clyde Chace.</p><br>
<p>With Schindler as architect and Chace as builder to save costs, construction began in November 1921. Construction was complete by May 1922, with a total cost of $12,550. The landscaping, furniture and sleeping baskets remained to be completed. The Chaces and Schindlers shared the house from the summer of 1922 until July 1924 when the Chaces moved to Florida.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Schindler&#39;s friend, partner and rival, Richard Neutra along with his wife Dione and son Frank lived in the Chace apartment from March 1925 until the summer of 1930.</p><br>
<p>Pauline Gibling Schindler left the house and her husband in August 1927, Rudolph remained at the house until his death in 1953. The Chace apartment had a variety of famous and creative people live in it, including; art dealer & collector Galka Scheyer, dancer John Bovingdon, novelist Theodore Dreiser, photographer Edward Weston and composer John Cage. Pauline Schindler returned to live in the Chace Studios part of the house, separate from her former husband, in the late 1930s and stayed until her death in May 1977.</p><br>
<p>Pauline Schindler died in May 1977, leaving the house in the Schindler family until the Friends of the Schindler House (FOSH), mostly friends of the Schindler family, purchased the property in June 1980</p><br>
<p>from the California State Office of Historic Preservation with the aid of a $160,000 state grant. The house was restored by FOSH in the mid-1980s. By this time, the West Hollywood neighborhood had been rezoned to allow four-story apartment buildings. Some FOSH members, including Gregory Ain (who greatly admired Schindler), advocated that the property should be sold and the house rebuilt in the desert, because its context had changed so profoundly. Some aspects of the restoration were criticized, as they erased changes Schindler had made to the structure over time. Over the years, the Schindler House received $200,000 for restoration from West Hollywood and the State of California, and $50,000 for operations from the College of Environmental Design at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.</p><br>
<h2>MAK Center for Art and Architecture</h2><br>
<p>In August 1994, the Friends of the Schindler House signed an agreement with the Museum für angewandte Kunst Wien or "MAK" (the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art, Vienna) to create the nonprofit MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House. The agreement allowed FOSH to retain full ownership of the property, with MAK being responsible for financial obligations and programming. The programming at the MAK Center at the Schindler House investigates the relationship between art and architecture, and includes exhibitions, lectures, symposia and concerts. A $250,000 grant MAK was used to restore the house as a study center for experimental architecture, and the museum also provided an undisclosed amount for operating costs.</p><br>
<p>To guarantee that the house survives financially, the MAK has sought early on to turn it into a public attraction, a rental venue for various functions and a conference center for design students and professionals. The MAK Center also sponsors six month residencies for art and architecture students annually. The residents live in Schindler&#39;s Mackey Apartments in Los Angeles, owned by the MAK Center. The third Schindler residence to come under the stewardship of the MAK Center, the 2,400-square-foot Fitzpatrick-Leland House was donated to the center by Russ Leland in 2008.</p><br>
<p>The Schindler House is open to the public for unguided visits from Wednesday to Sunday, 11 AM – 6 PM, and for tours on weekends. Group tours are available during the week by appointment only.</p><br>
<h2>Other</h2><br>
<p>In recent years, the Schindler House has had to contend with the rising density of the surrounding neighborhood. The surrounding neighborhood is currently dominated by 4-story condominium and apartment buildings designed by Lorcan O&#39;Herlihy, vastly different from the original expansive lots for single family residences.</p><br>
<p>The condominium was built despite efforts by numerous notable architects who were invited by the MAK Center in 2003 to submit alternative proposals for the site. Selected by a jury that included Frank Gehry, Chris Burden, Michael Asher and Richard Koshalek, all of the resulting proposals—including the three winning designs, by Odile Decq, Eric Owen Moss and Carl Pruscha—were organized into an exhibition, "A Tribute to Preserving Schindler&#39;s Paradise," at the house. Among the other competition entrants were prominent architects such as Coop Himmelb(l)au, Lebbeus Woods, Dominique Perrault, Zaha Hadid (who proposed a 21-story tower) and Peter Eisenman (who proposed building partly underground).</p><br>
<p>The Schindler House was included in a list of all-time top 10 houses in Los Angeles in a Los Angeles Times survey of experts in December 2008.</p><br>
<p>The Principality of Catalonia  is a historic territory and a medieval and early modern political entity and state in the northeastern Iberian Peninsula, mostly in Spain, with an adjoining portion in southern France. Between the 13th and the 18th centuries it was bordered by the Kingdom of Aragon to the west, the Kingdom of Valencia to the south, the Kingdom of France and the feudal lordship of Andorra to the north and by the Mediterranean sea to the east.</p><br>
<p>The first reference to Catalonia and the Catalans appears in the Liber maiolichinus de gestis Pisanorum illustribus, a Pisan chronicle (written between 1117 and 1125) of the conquest of Menorca by a joint force of Italians, Catalans, and Occitans. At the time, Catalonia did not yet exist as a political entity, though the use of this term seems to acknowledge Catalonia as a cultural or geographical entity.</p><br>
<p>The counties that would eventually make up the Principality of Catalonia were gradually unified under the rule of the Count of Barcelona. In 1137, the County of Barcelona and the Kingdom of Aragon were unified under a single dynasty, creating what modern historians call the Crown of Aragon; however, Aragon and Catalonia retained their own political structure and legal traditions. Because of these legal differences and their use of different language—Aragonese and Catalan—an official recognition of the Catalan Counties as a distinct political entity with its own institutions, laws and political community became necessary.</p><br>
<p>Under Alfons the Troubador (reigned 1164–1196), Catalonia was regarded as a legal entity for the first time. Still, the term Principality of Catalonia was not used legally until the 14th century, when it was applied to the territories ruled by the Courts of Catalonia.</p><br>
<p>The term "Principality of Catalonia" remained in use until the Second Spanish Republic, when its use declined because of its historical relation to the monarchy. Today, the term Principat (Principality) is used primarily by Catalan nationalists to refer to the Autonomous Community of Catalonia, as distinct from the other Catalan Countries.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<h3>Origins</h3><br>
<p>Like much of the Mediterranean coast of the Iberian Peninsula, it was colonized by Ancient Greeks, who chose to settle in Roses. Both Greeks and Carthaginians interacted with the main Iberian population. After the Carthaginian defeat, it became, along with the rest of Hispania, a part of the Roman Empire, Tarraco being one of the main Roman posts in the Iberian Peninsula.</p><br>
<p>The Visigoths ruled after the Western Roman Empires collapse near the end of the 5th century. Moorish Al-Andalus gained control in the early 8th century, after conquering the Visigothic kingdom in 711–718. After the defeat of Emir Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqiwass troops at Tours in 732, the Franks gradually gained control of the former Visigoth territories north of the Pyrenees, which had been captured by the Muslims or had become allied with them, in what is today Catalonia under French administration. In 795, Charlemagne created what came to be known as the Marca Hispanica, a buffer zone beyond the province of Septimania, made up of locally administered separate petty kingdoms which served as a defensive barrier between the Umayyad of Al-Andalus and the Frankish Kingdom.</p><br>
<p>A distinctive Catalan culture started to develop in the Middle Ages stemming from a number of these petty kingdoms organized as small counties throughout the northernmost part of Catalonia. The counts of Barcelona were Frankish vassals nominated by the Carolingian emperor then the king of the Franks, to whom they were feudatories (801–987). During the 9th century, Wifred the Hairy, Count of Barcelona, made its title hereditary and founded the dynasty of the House of Barcelona, which ruled Catalonia until the death of Martin I, its last member, in 1410.</p><br>
<p>In 987 Count Borrell II did not recognise the Frankish king Hugh Capet and his new dynasty, effectively taking Barcelona out of Frankish rule. At the start of eleventh century the Catalan Counties suffer an important process of feudalisation. Then, in 1137 Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona, married Petronilla of Aragon, establishing the dynastic union of the County of Barcelona and its dominions with the Kingdom of Aragon, which was to create the Crown of Aragon.</p><br>
<p>The Battle of Muret (12 September 1213) and the unexpected defeat of King Peter of Aragon and his vassals and allies, the counts of Toulouse, Comminges and Foix, resulted in the fading of the strong human, cultural and economic ties existing between the ancient territories of Catalonia and the Languedoc.</p><br>
<p>In the Treaty of Corbeil, 1258, James I of Aragon, descendant of Sunifred and Bello of Carcassonne and therefore heir of the House of Barcelona, relinquished his family rights and dominions in the Languedoc and recognized the Capetian king of France as heir of the Carolingian Dynasty. In return, the king of France formally renounced his nominal feudal lordship over all the Catalan counties. This treaty turned the de facto independence of the Catalan counties into a full de jure, but meant the irremediable separation between the people of Catalonia and the Languedoc.</p><br>
<p>As a coastal territory within the Crown of Aragon and with the increasing importance of the port of Barcelona, Catalonia became the main centre of the Crown&#39;s maritime power, helping to expand its influence and power by conquest and trade into Valencia, the Balearic Islands, Sardinia and Sicily.</p><br>
<h3>Catalan constitutions (1283–1716) and the 15th century</h3><br>
<p>At the same time, the Principality of Catalonia developed a complex institutional and political system based in the concept of pact between the estates of the realm and the king. The laws (called constitutions) had to be approved in the General Court of Catalonia, one of the first parliamentary bodies of Europe that banned the royal power to create legislation unilaterally (since 1283). The first Catalan constitutions are of the ones from the Catalan Courts (Corts) of Barcelona from 1283. The last ones were promulgated by the Courts of 1705–1706, presided by the disputed king Charles III. The compilations of the Constitutions and other rights of Catalonia followed the Roman tradition of the Codex. This constitutions developed an advanced compilation of rights for the whole citizens of the Principality and limited the power of the kings.</p><br>
<p>The General Court of Catalonia, dating from the 11th century, is one of the first parliaments in continental Europe. The Courts were composed by the three estates of the realm and were presided by the king of Aragon. The current Parliament of Catalonia is considered the symbolic and historic successor of this institution.</p><br>
<p>In order to recapt general taxes, the Courts of 1359 established a permanent representation of deputies, called Deputation of the General (in Catalan: Diputació del General) and later usually known as Generalitat, which gained an important political power during the next centuries.</p><br>
<p>The domains of the Aragonese Crown were severely affected by the Black Death pandemic and by later outbreaks of the plague. Between 1347 and 1497 Catalonia lost 37 percent of its population.</p><br>
<p>In 1410, King Martin I died without surviving descendants. Under the Compromise of Caspe, Ferdinand from the Castilian House of Trastámara received the Crown of Aragon as Ferdinand I of Aragon. During the reign of John II, social and political tensions caused the Catalan Civil War (1462–1472). Under his son, Ferdinand II, the Constitució de l&#39;Observança (1481) was approved, that established the submission of royal power to the laws approved in the Catalan Courts. After decades of conflict, the peasants of remença (a mode of serfdom) were liberated from the majority of feudal abuses by the Sentència Arbitral de Guadalupe (1486).</p><br>
<h3>Catalonia during the early modern period</h3><br>
<p>The marriage of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon (1469) unified two of the three major Christian kingdoms in the Iberian peninsula, while the Kingdom of Navarre was incorporated later following Ferdinand II&#39;s 1512 invasion of the Basque kingdom. This resulted in the reinforcement of the concept of Spain, which was already present in the mind of these kings, made up by the former Crown of Aragon, Castile, and a Navarre annexed to Castile (1515). In 1492, the last remaining portion of Al-Andalus around Granada was conquered and the Spanish conquest of the Americas began. Political power began to shift away from Aragon toward Castile and, subsequently, from Castile to the Spanish Empire, which engaged in frequent warfare in Europe striving for world domination.</p><br>
<p>For an extended period, Catalonia, as part of the late Crown of Aragon, continued to retain its own laws and constitutions but these gradually eroded in the course of the transition from a contractual territory to a centralized dominions and the king&#39;s struggle to get from the territories as much of the power as possible until they were finally suppressed as a result of the War of the Spanish Succession defeat.</p><br>
<p>Over the next few centuries, Catalonia was generally on the losing side of a series of wars that led steadily to more centralization of power in Spain. Despite this fact, between the 16th and 18th centuries, the participation of the political community in the local and the general government of the country was increased, while the royal powers remained restricted, specially after the two last Courts (1701–1702 and 1705–1706). Tensions between the constitutional Catalan institutions and the gradually more centralized Monarchy, alongside other factors such as the economic crisis, the presence of soldiers and the peasants revolts caused different conflicts, such as the Catalan Revolt, also called Reapers War (1640–1652), in the context of the Franco-Spanish War, in which Catalonia, led by the president of the Generalitat, Pau Claris, declared itself an independent republic under French protection in 1641, and later again as a principality of the Monarchy of France, but the Catalans were finally defeated in 1652.</p><br>
<p>In 1659, after the Treaty of the Pyrenees signed by Philip IV of Spain, the comarques (counties) of Roussillon, Conflent, Vallespir and part of la Cerdanya, now known as French Cerdagne, were ceded to France. In recent times, this area has come to be known by nationalist political parties in Catalonia as Northern Catalonia (Roussillon in French), part of the Catalan-spoken territories known as Catalan Countries.</p><br>
<p>Catalan institutions were suppressed in this part of the territory and public use of Catalan language was prohibited. Currently, this region is administratively part of French Départment of Pyrénées-Orientales.</p><br>
<p>At the end of the War of the Spanish Succession (in which the Catalans, alongside the other lands of the Crown of Aragon, supported the unsuccessful claim of the Archduke Charles of Austria as Charles III of Spain) the victorious Bourbon Duke of Anjou, now Philip V, occupied the capital of Catalonia after fighting against the army of the Principality of Catalonia long siege on 11 September 1714 and, later, signed the Nueva Planta decrees, which abolished the Crown of Aragon and all remaining Catalan institutions and laws (except the civil law) and prohibited the administrative use of Catalan language.</p><br>
<h3>After Nueva Planta</h3><br>
<p>So late as in the 18th and 19th centuries, despite the military occupation, the imposition of high new taxes and the political economy of the House of Bourbon, the Catalonia under Spanish administration (now as a province) continued the process of proto-industrialization, relatively helped at the end of the century from the beginning of open commerce to America and protectionist policies enacted by the Spanish government, becoming a center of Spain&#39;s industrialization; to this day it remains one of the most industrialized parts of Spain, along with Madrid and the Basque Country. In 1834, by decree of minister Javier de Burgos, all of Spain was organized into provinces, included Catalonia, which was divided in four provinces without a common administration.</p><br>
<p>On several occasions during the first third of the 20th century, Catalonia gained and lost varying degrees of autonomy, recovering, after the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic in 1931, the Generalitat as an institution of self-government, but as in most regions of Spain, Catalan autonomy and culture were crushed to an unprecedented degree after the defeat of the Second Spanish Republic (founded in 1931) in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) which brought Francisco Franco to power. Public use of the Catalan language was again banned after a brief period of general recuperation.</p><br>
<p>The Franco era ended with Franco&#39;s death in 1975; in the subsequent Spanish transition to democracy, Catalonia recovered political and cultural autonomy. It became one of the autonomous communities of Spain. In comparison, "Northern Catalonia" in France has no autonomy.</p><br>
<h2>Government and law</h2><br>
<h3>Institutions</h3><br>
<p>Cort General de Catalunya or Corts Catalanes (General Court of Catalonia or Catalan Courts): parliamentary body and main institution of the Principality, created during the 13th century. Summoned and presided by the king, it was composed by the three estates of the realm and approved the legislation and the economic donation to the crown. Also served as monarch&#39;s council and as a court of justice during the period of sessions.</p><br>
<p>Diputació del General or Generalitat de Catalunya (Deputation of the General or Generalitat of Catalonia): permanent council of deputes, created in 1359 by the Courts in order to collect the taxes of the General, and later gained political power and tasks of prosecutor, becoming the most relevant Catalan institution during the early modern age.</p><br>
<p>Consell de Cent de Barcelona (Council of One Hundred of Barcelona): institution of government of the city of Barcelona, created during the reign of James I. The municipal authority rested on five, later six, counselors (led by the Conseller en cap, Head Counselor) elected by a Council of hundred individuals (jurats).</p><br>
<p>Reial Audiència i Reial Consell de Catalunya (Royal Audience and Royal Council of Catalonia): supreme court of justice of Catalonia and seat of the government. Its members were elected by the king, and it was presided by the Chancellor (Canceller) during the absence of the king and the viceroy.</p><br>
<p>Conferència dels Tres Comuns (Conference of the Three Commons): joint meeting of the most dynamic institutions of the Catalan constitutional system during the 17th and 18th centuries, the Deputation of the General, the Military Estate and the Council of One Hundred, in order to discuss the political problems of the Principality.</p><br>
<p>Junta de Braços (General Estates): extraordinary council of the Generalitat, composed by some members of the Courts and working like this body, but without formal legislative powers.</p><br>
<p>Tribunal de Contrafaccions (Court of Contraventions): court of justice created by the Courts of 1701–1702 in order to ensure the application of the constitutions and solve and prosecute any act (included the ones done by the king or his officers) contrary to the Catalan legislation. Its members were elected in parity by the institutions of the land and the king. It represented an important advance in the guarantee of individual and civil rights, even in the European context.</p><br>
<h3>Legislation</h3><br>
<p>Usatges de Barcelona (Usages of Barcelona): compilation of customs and legislation based on the Roman and Visigothic law of the County of Barcelona, applied in practice to the entire Principality, that form the basis for the Catalan constitutions.</p><br>
<p>Constitucions de Catalunya (Catalan constitutions): laws promulgated by the king and approved by the Catalan Courts. They had pre-eminence over the other legal rules and could only be revoked by the Courts themselves.</p><br>
<p>Capítols de Cort (Chapters of Court): laws promulgated by the Courts and appoved by the king.</p><br>
<p>Actes de Cort (Acts of Court): minor legislative and other rules and decrees promulgated by the Courts, which didn&#39;t need the formal approval of the king.</p><br>
<h2>Symbols</h2><br>
<p>As State under royal sovereignty, Catalonia, like the other political entities of the period, didn&#39;t have an own flag or coat of arms in the modern sense. However, many royal and other symbols were used in order to identify the Principality and its institutions.</p><br>
<h2>The term Principality</h2><br>
<p>The counts of Barcelona were commonly considered the princeps or primus inter pares ("the first among equals") by the other counts of the Spanish March, both because of their military and economic power, and the supremacy of Barcelona over other cities.</p><br>
<p>Thus, the Count of Barcelona, Ramon Berenguer I, is called "Prince of Barcelona, Count of Girona and Marchis of Ausona" (princeps Barchinonensis, comes Gerundensis, marchio Ausonensis) in the Act of Consecration of the Cathedral of Barcelona (1058). There are also several references to the Prince in different sections of the Usages of Barcelona, the collection of laws that ruled the county since the early 11th century. Usage #64 calls principatus the group of counties of Barcelona, Girona, and Ausona, all of them under the authority of the count of Barcelona.</p><br>
<p>The first reference to the Principatus Cathaloniae is found in the convocation of Courts in Perpignan in 1350, presided by the king Peter IV of Aragon and III of Barcelona. It was intended to indicate that the territory under the laws produced by those Courts was not a kingdom, but the enlargement of the territory under the authority of the Count of Barcelona, who was also the king of Aragon, as seen in the "Actas de las cortes generales de la Corona de Aragón 1362–1363". However, there seems to be an older reference, in a more informal context, in Ramon Muntaner&#39;s chronicles.</p><br>
<p>As the Count of Barcelona and the Courts added more counties under his jurisdiction, such as the County of Urgell, the name of "Catalonia", which comprised several counties of different names including the County of Barcelona, was used for the whole. The terms Catalonia and catalans were commonly used to refer to the territory in Northeastern Spain and western Mediterranean France, as well as its inhabitants, and not just the county of Barcelona, at least since the beginnings of the 12th century, as shown in the earliest recordings of these names in the Liber Maiolichinus (around 1117–1125).</p><br>
<p>In 1931, Republican movements favoured its abandonment because it is historically related to the monarchy.</p><br>
<p>The name "Principality of Catalonia" is abundant in historical documentation that refers to Catalonia between mid-fourteenth century and early nineteenth century. According to research carried out in recent decades, is considered to be in the second half of the twelfth century when the Catalan counties form a unified and cohesive political entity, -although jurisdictionally divided- called "Catalonia". This happens because the counts of Barcelona became the one hand, the majority of sovereigns Catalan Counties and the other hand kings of Aragon, which helped them prevail in the rest of autonomous Catalan counts (Pallars, Urgell and Empúries) if they were not in their feudal vassals, while also incorporated its extensive domain the Islamic territories of Tortosa and Lleida. The political entity resulting from this process since the thirteenth century, was repeatedly mentioned the term "kingdom" as a medieval state, i.e. public domain political regime monarchist government.</p><br>
<p>However, it consolidated this denomination officially, because, for various historical reasons, the rulers of the Kingdom of Aragon never uses the title "King of Catalonia." This is where comes in the use of the term "principality", since at least since the twelfth century, the word was synonymous total term "kingdom" which alluded generically political entities which categorize historiographically the expression "Medieval States". Yet it was not until the fourteenth century -specifically, since 1350- that, greetings to work of Peter III of Aragon, the Principality of Catalonia became an official and popular name. This political entity was part of some composite monarchies or dynastic conglomerates as the Crown of Aragon, the Spanish Monarchy and the Kingdom of France (1641–1652), being on an equal footing with other political communities of the time, or external in relation to such great empires, as were the kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, Valencia, England or the Duchy of Milan for to mention a few.</p><br>
<p>With the destruction of the Catalan State by force as a result of the War of the Spanish Succession (1705–1714), the territory being annexed to Castile become a province of the new and more unified Kingdom of Bourbon Spain, but "principality" continued to be the name of the territory, as witness the Decree of New Plant created the Royal Audience of the Principality of Catalonia in 1716. This situation remained until the Kingdom of Spain was transformed permanently, despite several Carlist Wars, into a liberal state in 1833, when Secretary Javier de Burgos eliminated the province of the Principality of Catalonia, dividing the territory in four provinces that still exist. Thus, the term disappeared from the administrative and political reality of the country.</p><br>
<p>Neither the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia, Spanish Constitution nor French Constitution, mention this denomination, but, despite most of them being republican, it is moderately popular among Catalan nationalists and independentists.</p><br>
<h2>Language</h2><br>
<p>Catalonia constitutes the original nucleus where Catalan is spoken.</p><br>
<p>The Catalan language shares common traits with the Romance languages of Iberia and Gallo-Romance languages of southern France, it is regarded by a minority of linguists as being an Ibero-Romance language (the group that includes Spanish), and by a majority as a Gallo-Romance language, such as French or Occitan from which Catalan diverged between 11th and 14th centuries.</p><br>
<p>Catalan is one of the three official languages of autonomous community of Catalonia, as stated in the Catalan Statute of Autonomy; the other two are Spanish, and Occitan in its Aranese variety. Catalan has no official recognition in "Northern Catalonia".</p><br>
<p>Catalan has official status alongside Spanish in the Balearic Islands and in the Land of Valencia (where it is called Valencian), as well as Algherese Catalan alongside Italian in the city of Alghero and in Andorra as the sole official language.</p><br>
<h2>Culture</h2><br>
<p>Traditions of Catalonia</p><br>
<p>Category:Catalan culture</p><br>
<p>Category:Catalan literature</p><br>
<p>Category:Catalan art</p><br>
<p>Tatoosh Island is a small island and small group of islands about 0.5 mi offshore  of Cape Flattery, which is on the northwestern tip of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. Tatoosh is the largest of a small group of islands also often referred to as simply "Tatoosh Island", which are almost as far west as Cape Alava, about 15 mi to the south and the westernmost point in the contiguous 48 states. The islands are part of the Makah Reservation and a part of Clallam County. The total land area of the island group is 159,807 m&sup2;.</p><br>
<p>Historically, Tatoosh Island was inhabited seasonally by Makah fishing camps and employees of the United States Coast Guard, Weather Bureau, and Navy. Currently there is no resident population on the islands. Access to the island requires written permission of the Makah tribe. The island&#39;s name comes from a Makah chief known as Tatoosh (also Tatooche or Tetacus).</p><br>
<p>Tatoosh Island has been home to Cape Flattery Light, which overlooks the entrance to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, since December 28, 1857.</p><br>
<p>The whole island was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.</p><br>
<h2>Ecology</h2><br>
<p>Because of its isolation, climate, and location in the ecologically productive northeastern Pacific Ocean, Tatoosh Island is home to many nesting seabirds, several marine mammals, and a diverse community of marine plants and animals. Beginning in 1967, Professor Robert T. Paine of the University of Washington and his colleagues have undertaken detailed studies of marine ecology on the island. Consequently, it is now one of the most intensively studied field sites in the world. The research has revealed how species are linked to each other through a network of species interactions, and how environmental changes and species extinction are transmitted through the food web. Key ecological concepts explored by this research include keystone species, control by consumers and natural disturbances on ecosystem structure and spatial patterning, species interaction strength, body size-dependent population dynamics, and impacts of environmental changes such as ocean acidification and El Niño events on complex ecosystems.</p><br>
<h3>Climate</h3><br>
<p>Tatoosh Island has an extremely moderated oceanic climate with very cool but quite long summers, and long, moderate and wet winters. This is due to its exposed location for maritime winds that temper both heat and cold extremes year round.</p><br>
<p>The John C. Campbell Folk School, also referred to as "The Folk School" is located near Brasstown, North Carolina along the Cherokee County and Clay line. The school was founded to nurture and preserve the folk arts of the Appalachian Mountains, it is a non-profit adult educational organization based on non-competitive learning. Founded in 1925, the Folk School&#39;s motto is “I sing behind the plow”.</p><br>
<p>It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a national historic district in 1983.</p><br>
<p>The Folk School has week-long and weekend classes year-round in traditional and contemporary arts, including blacksmithing, music, dance, cooking, gardening, nature studies, photography, storytelling and writing. The school campus includes a history museum, craft shop, nature trails, lodging, campground and cafeteria. The school also holds a regular concert series and community dances. The School hosts Morris Dance, Garland Dance and Clogging Teams.</p><br>
<h2>History of the Folk School</h2><br>
<p>After spending eighteen months traveling between Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland, visiting local schools along the way, Olive Dame Campbell and her colleague Marguerite Butler, began forming the John C. Campbell Folk School in 1925 in Brasstown, North Carolina. This folk high school or folkehøjskole, was dedicated to her late husband, John C. Campbell and was based on the Danish Folk School style of non competitive education, where no grades were given. Instead, students and teachers formed a community that worked together to help each other advance in various crafts such as blacksmithing.</p><br>
<p>John C. Campbell, (1867–1919) was an American educator and reformer noted for his survey of social conditions in the southern Appalachia. He was born in Indiana and raised in Wisconsin; he studied education and theology in New England.</p><br>
<p>At the turn of the century, the Southern Appalachian region of the United States was viewed as being in need of educational and social missions. Recently married to Olive Dame of Massachusetts, John undertook a fact-finding survey of social conditions in the mountains in 1908-1909. The Campbells outfitted a wagon as a traveling home and studied mountain life from Georgia to West Virginia.</p><br>
<p>While John interviewed farmers about their agricultural practices, Olive collected Appalachian ballads and studied the handicrafts of the mountain people. Both were hopeful that the quality of life could be improved by education, and in turn, wanted to preserve and share with the rest of the world the crafts, techniques and tools that the people of the area used in everyday life.</p><br>
<p>The Folkehøjskole (folk high school) had long been a force in the rural life of Denmark. These schools for life helped transform the Danish countryside into a vibrant, creative force. The Campbells talked of establishing such a school in the rural southern United States as an alternative to the higher-education facilities that drew young people away from the family farm.</p><br>
<p>Several locations were under consideration for the experimental school. On an exploratory trip, Miss Butler discussed the idea with Fred O. Scroggs, Brasstown&#39;s local storekeeper, saying that she would be back in a few weeks to determine if area residents had any interest in the idea. When she returned, it was to a meeting of over 200 people at the local church. The people of far west North Carolina enthusiastically pledged labor, building materials and other support.</p><br>
<h2>Class types offered</h2><br>
<p>Craft classes include: Basketry; Carpentry; Glass beadmaking; Blacksmithing; Bookbinding; Broom Making; Dollmaking; Dyeing; Felt Making; Furniture Making; Lace; Leather; Metalwork; Needlework; Quilting; Rugs; Sewing; Soap Making; Spinning; Weaving; Woodturning; and Woodworking</p><br>
<p>Art classes include: Calligraphy; Clay; Drawing; Enameling; Glass; Jewelry; Kaleidoscopes; Knitting; Marbling; Mosaics; Painting; Paper Arts; Photography; Printmaking; Sculpture; and Woodcarving.</p><br>
<p>Other types of classes include: Baking; Cooking; Dance; Folklore; Gardening; Genealogy; Music; Nature Studies; Storytelling; Arborsculpture; and Writing.</p><br>
<p>Groote Schuur  is an estate in Cape Town, South Africa. In 1657, the estate was a plot of land owned by the Dutch East India Company which later became a farm and farmhouse in private hands.</p><br>
<p>Cecil Rhodes took out a lease on the house in 1891. He later bought it in 1893 for £60 000, and had it converted and refurbished by the architect Sir Herbert Baker. The Cape Dutch building, located in Rondebosch, on the slopes of Devils Peak, the outlying shoulder of Table Mountain, was originally part of the Dutch East India Companys granary constructed in the seventeenth century.</p><br>
<p>Little of the original house remained after a fire in 1896. The traditional thatched roof was replaced by sturdier Welsh slates. Rhodes gave no strict instructions as to what he wanted from Baker. Rhodes abhorred any mechanically made items (such as hinges for windows) in the house and set out to remove them and have them replaced with brass and bronze items that would be cast. Baker replaced the front of the house, added a long stoep in the back and constructed a new wing. The wing contained a billiard room and master bedroom above on the second floor that contained a large bay window overlooking Devil&#39;s Peak. He also added a grand hall with a massive fireplace.</p><br>
<p>Sir Herbert Baker also played a significant role in the furnishing of the house. After initially furnishing with modern furniture from London, Rhodes, influenced by Baker, began a shift from the modern to more traditional Cape furniture. This would mark the beginning of Cecil Rhodes’ collection of colonial furnishings.</p><br>
<p>The gardens of the house were as Rhodes demanded masses of colour. Surrounding the house was a mass of roses, hydrangeas, cannas, bougainvilleas and fuchsias. Farther away from the house on the slopes of Devil&#39;s Peak, Rhodes kept antelopes, zebra, eland, wildebeest and ostriches.</p><br>
<p>Rhodes was always a generous host while at Groote Schuur. He used the residence as much as a business and political headquarters as a home. His life at the time was one of dinner parties and meetings on the stoep, where he would be joined by as many as fifty people.</p><br>
<p>From 1910 to 1984, it was the official Cape residence of the Prime Ministers of South Africa and continued as a presidential residence of P. W. Botha and F. W. De Klerk. However, P.W. Botha never resided there, opting rather to live in Westbrooke.</p><br>
<p>In May 1956, Time magazine reported, "a party was held at Groote Schuur for South Africas Nationalist Prime Minister Johannes Strydom after he had won the parliamentary campaign to continue white supremacy in a land of 2.6 million whites and 10 million nonwhites. The party was given by some of the younger nationalists and their wives to honor him. They organized a caravan of 130 vehicles and slowly drove up to the Groote Schuur. After reaching the house, they began to sing old Boer war songs—the Volksliederen of the Transvaal and Orange Free State. A speech was given by Mrs. M.D.J. Koster, the only female member of the parliament, Every white woman and every white mother thanks you from the depth of her heart. Strydom’s response to this was, We must never be swerved from our goals...the struggle must continue.</p><br>
<p>The building was the site for the signing of the historic "Groote Schuur Minute" between Nelson Mandela of the African National Congress and F.W. De Klerk, the then President of South Africa, on 4 May 1990. The document was a commitment between the two parties towards the resolution of the existing climate of violence and intimidation as well as a commitment to stability and to a peaceful process of negotiations.</p><br>
<p>A working party was established to investigate the granting of temporary immunity to ANC cadres, to advise on how to deal with the release of political prisoners and to make recommendations on the definition of political offences.</p><br>
<p>Under Nelson Mandela, the Genadendal building (formerly called Westbrooke) became the Cape Town residence of the South African President. Groote Schuur is now a museum and open to the public only by appointment.</p><br>
<p>Lake Rosseau is located in Ontario, Canada, about 200 km north of Toronto. The lake is surrounded by many cottages, some dating back to the late 19th century. The south end of the lake is in the Township of Muskoka Lakes, and the north end is in Seguin Township. Lake Rosseau is connected to Lake Joseph through the narrows at Port Sandfield and the Joseph River. The lake is also connected to Lake Muskoka by the Indian River and the lock system at Port Carling. The village of Rosseau is located at the northern tip of Lake Rosseau and is the location of one of the original Ontario summer resorts which brought exposure to the area. Pratts Point and Rosseau House were well known and although the hotel was destroyed long ago, the vista and scenery remain. Windermere House is a resort located at Lake Rosseau. Many notable people have owned cottages on the lake, including Steve Yzerman, Martin Short, Ted Rogers, Goldie Hawn and William Eli Sanford. The President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson , frequently holidayed on Lake Rosseau, and eventually bought Formosa Island. There is a curious story that in 1914 he signed the register of the Bala Bay Inn after the outbreak of World War I; however, there is no official record of the president being in Canada at that time.</p><br>
<h2>Communities</h2><br>
<p>Communities on Lake Rosseau include Port Carling, Minett, Windermere, Rosseau and Port Sandfield.</p><br>
<h2>Community organizations</h2><br>
<p>There are many community groups based on Lake Rosseau. The largest of these is the Muskoka Lakes Association.</p><br>
<p>Lake Hiawatha is located just north of Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was purchased by the Minneapolis park system in 1922 for $550,000. At that time the lake was a marsh known as Rice Lake, but over four years, the park system transformed the wetland into a lake surrounded by a park.</p><br>
<h2>Recreation</h2><br>
<p>The lake and park have a fishing dock, wading pool, tennis courts, softball diamonds. There is a recreation center that hosts activities. The lake borders a municipal golf course. In the winter the park sets up ice and hockey rinks. There is a bike and walking path starting at Lake Hiawatha which veers onto Lake Nokomis or winds down the Minnehaha Creek right to the mouth of the Minnehaha Falls.</p><br>
<p>Lake Hiawatha is one of the few lakes through which the Minnehaha Creek flows, and the last one before it reaches Minnehaha Falls and then the Mississippi River.</p><br>
<h2>Fish</h2><br>
<p>The lake contains black bullhead, black crappie, bluegill, bowfin, carp, golden shiner, green sunfish, hybrid sunfish, largemouth bass, northern pike, pumpkinseed, walleye, white sucker, yellow bullhead, and yellow perch. Some fish consumption guideline restrictions have been placed on the lake&#39;s bluegill and northern pike due to mercury and/or PCB contamination.</p><br>
<h2>Water quality</h2><br>
<p>Lake Hiawatha has much more garbage than any other Minneapolis lake. The lake is a stormwater outlet for the Corcoran, Central, Bryant, and Northrop neighborhoods, as well as the park&#39;s golf course.</p><br>
<p>The Lake Hiawatha beach has been occasionally closed, such as in August 2014, because of unsafe levels of E. coli.</p><br>
<p>Lake Hiawatha has been officially declared infested by zebra mussels since 2010, and in September 2013 park workers began finding mussels.</p><br>
<p>The Ritz Theatre is an active live producing non-profit theatre located in Haddon Township, Camden County, New Jersey, United States. It is home to The Ritz Theatre Company  The company produces mainstage plays and musicals, childrens theater, runs a summer theatre arts day camp and reaches out to its community with educational and entertaining programming.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>The Ritz Theatre, built in a Colonial Revival, opened in September 1927 as a vaudeville theatre and quickly became the focal point of the community. The architecture is Greek Revival with the auditorium walls featuring 25-foot high neo-classical canvas murals with gilt trimmed columns and velvet draped balconies enclosed by classic carved balustrades.</p><br>
<p>In the 1950s and 1960s, the Ritz was known for its fine art and foreign film showings, drawing audiences from Philadelphia and the Southern New Jersey regions. In the 1970s, the Ritz then became an adult movie theater.</p><br>
<p>The theatre closed until 1985, when the Ritz returned to live theatre when Puttin’ on the Ritz, Inc., a production company led by Producing Artistic Director Bruce A. Curless, took over.</p><br>
<p>In January 1986, Puttin’ On The Ritz reopened the doors of the Ritz Theatre, to once again become the focal point of South Jersey entertainment. The first production of Puttin’ on The Ritz was the musical The Boy Friend by Sandy Wilson. In 1990, the theatre’s production of Children of a Lesser God would begin a long time commitment an ASL (American Sign Language) Initiative. This initiative would later turn into having Shadow Interpreters for the theatre’s annual Christmas tradition of Scrooge in 2006 and 2008, as well as mainstage shows such as Arsenic and Old Lace in 2010.</p><br>
<p>The Ritz Theatre Company, Inc. presents six mainstage productions and eight children’s productions each season. They serve more than 73,300 patrons annually. Also offered are holiday shows, special events, summer theatre camp, dramatic workshops and outreach programs. The Theatre building also boasts “The Gallery at the Ritz,” an in-house art gallery that offers professional monthly art exhibits.</p><br>
<p>Being a non-profit company, there is an active Board of Directors. In 2001, the group purchased the 466-seat theatre, making it the permanent home of the ensemble. In 2002, the Ritz was added to the New Jersey and National Register of Historic Places.</p><br>
<p>It is currently in the midst of renovation. To date, the roof has been replaced along with upgrading the electrical system and installing sprinklers. The lobby has been renovated with new carpeting and paint and work has begun on restoration of the front of the building and the classic marquee as well as the classical Greek interior murals.</p><br>
<p>In April 2014, the Ritz held its first ever fundraiser to help raise money to keep the building and theatre alive. The first annual “Rock The Ritz” fundraiser brought in over $11,000 to help the organization.</p><br>
<p>In 2015, The Ritz will enter its 30th season providing live theatre to South Jersey and the surrounding areas.</p><br>
<h2>Notable people</h2><br>
<p>•Cristin Milioti: Tony Award Nominated Actress for the Musical, Once. Currently playing The Mother on the final season of the popular TV series, How I Met Your Mother. Ritz productions include Carousel, Romeo and Juliet, as well as the Christmas tradition of Scrooge.</p><br>
<p>•Bryan Langlitz: Broadway Performer: Memphis. TV actor: Smash and Orange Is the New Black. Ritz productions include To Kill A Mockingbird and Big, among others.</p><br>
<p>•Krysten Cummings: Broadway Performer: Rent. Ritz productions include West Side Story.</p><br>
<p>•Phillip Spaeth: Broadway Performer, TV and Film actor. Broadway: Wicked, Mary Poppins, West Side Story, Matilda the Musical. TV and Film: Hairspray, Smash.</p><br>
<p>Samuel Perry Dinsmoor  was a United States teacher and eccentric sculptor from Lucas, Kansas, United States. Dinsmoor served in the Civil War for three years on the side of the north in the Union Army and then taught school in Kansas. When he retired in 1905 he began a second career as a sculptor.</p><br>
<h2>Garden of Eden</h2><br>
<p>Dinsmoor built and moved into a log cabin on a lot that he named the Garden of Eden. The cabin is a twelve-room house; the logs are made up of limestone quarried near Wilson Lake. Dinsmoor designed his landscape and spent the rest of his life creating the garden, which contains over 200 concrete sculptures. The sculptures and design of the house reflect Dinsmoor&#39;s belief in the Populist movement and his religious convictions, it includes a Labor Crucified figure that is surrounded by the people who put him on the Cross, a doctor, lawyer, preacher and capitalist.</p><br>
<p>The final resting place for Dinsmoor and his first wife, Frances A. Barlow Journey, is inside the mausoleum in one corner of the lot. As part of a tour, visitors are allowed to view Dinsmoor in his concrete coffin, which is sealed behind a glass wall. Inside the mausoleum is also a double-exposed photo of a live Dinsmoor viewing his deceased body inside the coffin.</p><br>
<p>The garden is open to the public and is on the National Register of Historic Places.</p><br>
<p>Kelimutu  is a volcano, close to the small town of Moni in central Flores island in Indonesia. The volcano is around 50 km to the east of Ende, Indonesia, the capital of Ende regency in East Nusa Tenggara province.The mountain has three volcanic crater lakes that differ in color, and as a result it seems quite mysterious to travelers, travel writers, and news reporters. There are relatively few volcanic lakes worldwide, but there do exist physical and chemical volcanic lake classification systems to guide the understanding of how these lakes function.</p><br>
<p>The science of the Kelimutu lakes is relatively well known, but more research is warranted. Lake colors periodically change due to adjustments in the oxidation-reduction status of the fluid of each lake, and also considering the abundance of different major elements, such as iron and manganese. Oxidation-reduction status depends on the balance of volcanic gas input and rainfall rate, and is thought to be mediated by the groundwater system in the volcano itself. The colors in the lakes change independently from each other, as each has its own unique connectivity to the underlying volcano&#39;s activity. Between January and November 2016, the colors of the craters changed six times. Although it is widely believed that the changes are unpredictable, it is more accurate to say that the lack of any regular monitoring of the volcanic system precludes scientists from having the data necessary to drive widely available predictive models.</p><br>
<h2>Geological details</h2><br>
<p>The volcano contains three striking summit crater lakes of varying colors. Tiwu Ata Bupu (Lake of Old People) is usually blue and is the westernmost of the three lakes. The other two lakes, Tiwu Ko&#39;o Fai Nuwa Muri (Lake of Young Men and Maidens) and Tiwu Ata Polo (Bewitched or Enchanted Lake) are separated by a shared crater wall and are typically green or red respectively. The lake colors vary on a periodic basis. Subaqueous fumaroles are the probable cause of active upwelling that occurs at the two eastern lakes.</p><br>
<p>The lakes have been a source of minor phreatic eruptions in historical time. The summit of the compound 1639-m-high Kelimutu volcano is elongated two km in a WNW-ESE direction; the older cones of Kelido and Kelibara are located respectively three km to the north and two km to the south. The scenic lakes are a popular tourist destination.</p><br>
<p>Kelimutu is also of interest to geologists because the three lakes have different colors yet are at the crest of the same volcano. According to Kelimutu National Park officials, the colour changes as a result of chemical reactions resulting from the minerals contained in the lake perhaps triggered by volcano gas activity. However, it is more accurate to refer to the color changes as being driven by oxidation-reduction chemical dynamics. Kawah Putih lake in West Java, south of Bandung, is another crater lake in Indonesia with some similarities to the lakes at Kelimutu.</p><br>
<h2>Tourism</h2><br>
<p>In the early days of developing the local national park in the Kelimutu area, there were some disputes with local communities over the use of the resources. More recently, forest rangers have worked to develop better relations with nearby village communities and overall management has improved.</p><br>
<p>Kelimutu is one of the mountains listed as a ribu in Indonesia which are mountains in Indonesia which are more than 1,000 meters high.</p><br>
<p>The area is said to have begun to attract attention after being noticed by a regional Dutch military commander, B. van Suchtelen in 1915 and became more well-known after Y. Bouman wrote about the site in 1929.</p><br>
<p>The closest airports are Maumere, and Ende. There are regular flights to Ende from Bali. The drive from Ende to Moni, the town at the base of Kelimutu where accommodation is available, takes about 3 hours, while from Moni to Kelimutu vehicle park, a 13 kilometers needs 45 minutes. Usually tourists sleep one night to catch sunrise at Kelimutu.</p><br>
<p>Peche Island , is an uninhabited, currently 86 acre  Canadian-owned island in the Detroit River, at its opening into Lake Saint Clair. It is 1.2 miles  east of USA-owned Belle Isle, and 360 yards  from the Windsor shore.</p><br>
<p>The island was formed from a peninsula of the Canadian shore by the action of the Detroit River. There is a central marsh on the island. The present channel was eroded until the core of the island remained. There are man-made channels cut through the island to ensure fresh water supply and recreational opportunities. The island&#39;s flora and fauna have been heavily affected by human activity, and the forest is the result of a rehabilitation programme.</p><br>
<p>Formerly an Ontario provincial park, ownership was transferred to the City of Windsor in 1999. The Detroit River passes 200 yards (183 m) off its northern shore and daily 1,000 ft ships pass.</p><br>
<p>The island offers attractive Detroit city views, a wide sandy beach and shallow river bottom, and is a favourite with summer boaters. There is no water taxi service to the island but boaters, canoers and kayakers can enjoy the island&#39;s trails and beaches and approximately 2.5 miles (4 km) of canals. The park is open only during the day. Sailors are advised to anchor along the southern shore of the island, abeam the Windsor Yacht Club. Speed between red buoy DP2 west of Peche Island and green buoy DP5 east of Peche Island must be held below 5 knots (9 km/h). For kayakers, the circumnavigation distance is approximately 3 miles (4.8 km).</p><br>
<p>From November through March large numbers of waterfowl, especially canvasback, redhead, lesser scaup, common goldeneye and common merganser, are all found in the nearby waters. Peregrine falcons and bald eagles are often attracted by these large flocks and can sometimes be seen perched in the islands larger treetops, or in the nesting platforms constructed by the Essex County Field Naturalists Club. Muskie and walleye, bigmouth bass, bluegill and perch are found in the waters surrounding the island, and fishing pressures are reported low. Water quality is good, and carefully monitored, as the City of Windsor&#39;s supply is drawn from nearby. Peche Island is one of the few places where the rare blue ash tree (Fraxinus quadrangulata) can be found.</p><br>
<h2>Name</h2><br>
<p>Early French explorers&#39; maps state the island was named Isle au Large, or Isle du Large. Possible meanings include "at a distance", since Peche Island is the farthest island upstream, on the Detroit River, before entering Lake St. Clair, or "keep your distance", because of dangerous shallows on the north side.</p><br>
<p>The island was next called variations of "Peche" Isle, including Isle aux Pecheurs and Isle a la Peche (Isle à la Peche), the French word for "fishing" - the island was once used as a fishing station. Local accounts from folk onomastics have incorrectly derived the name from a peach orchard once located there, or connected the name with the French word for "sin", claiming the island was once the preferred site for duels and assignations.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>The island was used by natives and Ottawa Native Chief Pontiac in the summer months. It was a known as a Native fishing village because of the abundance of white fish in the waters surrounding it. After the coming of the Europeans, Alexis Maisonville purchased the island in 1774 from the Ottawa Natives. This purchase was later revoked by Governor Dorchester, and all islands became Native lands.</p><br>
<p>The first and only known permanent residents of the island were a French-Canadian family named LaForest. In 1775 Louisa St. Aubin gave birth to an illegitimate (native) son Charles in 1774. She married on February 2 1780 at Ste Anne church Detroit to Antoine LaForest, son of William and Marguerite Tremblay, settlers at Grosse Pointe (Grand Marais) in 1750 when the King gave land grants for settlement in Detroit. She gave birth on January 15 1781 to her second child, Jean Marie Laforest, who may have been the first Laforest born on Peche Island. There is evidence that the LaForests were living with Indians, and treated as if they were natives at this time. There is also evidence that her grandmother, Louise Gauthier St. Aubin, was fluent in the native language and went to the Ottawa village to exchange her baked goods for honey and bear grease.</p><br>
<p>They shared the island with local natives. According to Laforest family records the LaForest dit Tineau families never had a deed to the island. They did ask for Liberty of the island in 1832. They received the right to fish on it. Even when ownership was transferred to the Crown by the Chippewa Indians in 1857, they were not asked to leave the island. A survey done by J. Barthey on February 14 1859 shows three homes on the island. They were log huts and 16 x 32 ft with an outhouse behind each one. The names on the homes were Charles Jr, Oliver and Benjamin. Charles and Benjamin were the sons of Charles LaForest dit Tineau and Ursula Soulliere. Oliver was the son of Joseph LaForest and Marie Anne Casavan. Oliver left the island and his brother Leon took it from him.</p><br>
<p>In the tax rolls of 1868 in Sandwich Ontario these three are listed as living on Peche Island: Charles Teno Lafforette, Benjamin Teno Lafforette and Leon Lafforette. They had 18 acres of land each. It was Charles LaForest dit Tineau&#39;s sons that sold the island for 300 dollars to William Gasper Hall. They left Peche Island to farm on land across from the island where their brothers Jean Baptist and Antoine had been farming since 1838.</p><br>
<p>Leon and his wife and family remained on the island after the sale. They were very poor. In 1877 he could not pay his taxes of $13.92 and was listed as a very poor person. He died in 1881 in Tecumseh, Ontario. His daughter Sophie Rose Champine, on behalf of her mother Rosalie Drouillard LaForest, started the inquiry into the sale of the island. They felt they did not agree to sell their share of it. They had moved to River Rouge at the time of this dispute. It was her mother Rosalie who supposedly gave the "curse of Peche island".</p><br>
<p>s sons purchased the property in 1883, from the estate of William G. Hall. There is a fable that the property was forcefully taken from the Laforet family by Hiram Walkers men and was cursed by the Laforets as they left.</p><br>
<p>It was used as a summer home by Hiram Walker, who attempted, for many years, to develop it. Canals were dug to bring in supplies and to ensure the flow of fresh water. Yachts were purchased - the Pastime and the Lurline - for travelling to the island from Walker&#39;s office and for cruises and parties on the river and lakes.</p><br>
<p>Walker built a 40-room mansion. He planted many trees and established an orchard, along with building a greenhouse to cultivate flowers. He next added a golf course, stables, icehouse and a carriage house. A generator for electric power was constructed. Today, the only visible construction on the island is the ruins of the Walker estate, the result of a 1929 fire.</p><br>
<p>According to The Ferry Steamers: The Story of the Detroit-Windsor Ferry Boats by William Oxford, the Detroit, Belle Isle, & Windsor Ferry Company, then owners of Boblo Island Park, bought the island in 1907. In 1913, the company announced plans to turn it into an amusement park. The ferry company president, Walter Campbell, lived in Walker&#39;s summer home while planning to turn it at least temporarily into the central pavilion of his new resort. He died there at the age of 71 in 1923.</p><br>
<p>The island passed to DWFC&#39;s successor, the Bob-Lo Excursion Company, in 1939. No further development took place, and the island was sold in 1956 and then again in 1962, this time to E. J. Harris, who envisioned a $30 million resort. He paid $1500 per month for the island, which he intended to expand by 500 acre with fill. Dredging started in 1965 for a 1000-well marina. The plan included an 18-hole golf course, plus Canadian-themed recreation areas: ice skating, a ski hill, restaurants, a hotel, reforestation, and possible cable car service from Windsor and Detroit. On-island transport would be by horse and carriage and dog sleds. The project was to be completed by 1972. As a 1968 newspaper ad advertised the area, at least some of this work had actually been done. He constructed several buildings, and sewage, hydro, water and telephone were connected to the mainland. The project operated for one season with ferry boats from Dieppe Park and barges from Riverside. However, due to mismanagement, Harris ran into stiff opposition from neighbours and local political leaders. By 1971 he had lost $700,000 and was over $500,000 in debt. He offered Peche Island for auction.</p><br>
<p>The island passed briefly through the hands of a developer who foresaw an exclusive residential community on the island before the Canadian government bought it back for $400,000. Early plans to develop the island as a nature area, with groomed trails, mooring facilities and shelters, stalled for lack of funds.</p><br>
<p>While originally hoping to obtain the island for $1.00, the City of Windsor acquired the land from the Province of Ontario on January 1, 1999 for a reported fee of $1.3 million. Included in the purchase, the city also got 276.7 acres of water lots and 1.3 acres on the mainland, on the north side of Riverside Drive East next to Lakeview Marina. There are no plans to develop the island beyond maintaining public toilets.</p><br>
<h2>Wrecks</h2><br>
<p>In 1865, the 38-ton schooner Eugenie wrecked on Peche Island. The steamship Oneida ran aground there in July 1871. On July 8, 1998, the Tadoussac ran aground 2 mi east of Peche Island.</p><br>
<h2>Lighthouse</h2><br>
<p>The Peche Island Rear Range Light was built of cast iron in 1908 to mark the narrow passage from Lake St. Clair to the Detroit River and guarded the reef for some 75 years. It was never manned.</p><br>
<p>In 1926 the height was raised to 66 ft and with that additional height the tower protected the passage until September 23, 1983, when it was scheduled for decommission and destruction. Learning of the plan to demolish the tower, a rescue effort was begun by Marine City, Michigan to relocate it to a site in the citys Waterworks Park. The towers weight is 35 tons and with the height of 66 ft and a diameter of 14 ft the move took ingenuity and perseverance, but was finally successful.</p><br>
<p>Mount Monroe is a 5,372 ft mountain peak southwest of Mount Washington in the Presidential Range of the White Mountains in New Hampshire, United States. It is named for American President James Monroe and is the fourth highest mountain on the 4000 footers list for New Hampshire. The Appalachian Trail skirts its summit, which is the next highest peak on or near the trail north of Mount Rogers in Virginia. The Lakes of the Clouds, and its AMC hut, lie nestled at the col between Mount Monroe and neighboring Mount Washington.</p><br>
<p>Lying between Mount Washington and Mount Eisenhower, Mount Monroe is inaccessible by road but may be reached by several hiking trails. The most direct route to its summit from the valley below is chiefly via the Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail which starts to the northwest near the base station of the Mount Washington Cog Railway. After ascending to the Lakes of the Clouds Hut, the eastern terminus of the trail, one proceeds to Monroe&#39;s summit via the Crawford Path and then the Monroe Loop trail. Other routes to the summit ascend via the Crawford Path from Crawford Notch, singly or in combination with the Edmands Path from Mount Clinton Road to the west of the mountain, with the final ascent to the summit accomplished by the Monroe Loop. From the east, one can trek to Monroe via a combination of the Boott Spur, Tuckerman Ravine, or Lion Head trails, among others, traversing via intervening trails, or descend from the summit of Mount Washington, which may be reached on foot, by car or by the Cog Railway, along the Crawford Path or by other routes. Very frequently hikers will visit Monroe in combination with Washington or Eisenhower and sometimes with other nearby peaks.</p><br>
<p>Mount Monroe offers majestic views across the Lakes of the Clouds to its grand neighbor to the northeast, Mount Washington, over 900 ft higher, to Mount Jefferson and Mount Clay north of Washington and to Boott Spur and Mount Isolation south of the dominant peak, as well as fine views to the west along the southern spine of the Presidential Range, through the Dry River valley, and out to more of the White Mountains to the south and west and to Vermont beyond.</p><br>
<p>As with Mount Washington, the upper reaches of Mount Monroe lie above tree-line in a sub-arctic tundra climate zone, characterized by highly variable and often very severe weather, especially from late fall through early spring. One distinguishing feature of the mountain is the largely flat Monroe Lawn south of the summit, traversed by the Crawford Path and home to several rare species of plant, including the endangered Robbins Cinquefoil, which survive in this harsh, outlying climate and terrain where other plants perish. Visitors traversing the Lawn are strictly limited to the trail in order to protect the many fragile flora which grow there.</p><br>
<p>Other notable features of the mountain include its subpeaks, "Little Monroe" to the west of the principal peak and approximately 175 ft shorter, and Mount Franklin, southwest of the summit and nearly 5,000 ft above sea level. The mountain, as with much of the Presidential Range, is characterized by steep walls on either side of the main ridge, to its northwest and southeast, making for strenuous climbs from the valley below and for numerous waterfalls - especially along the route followed by the Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail - and frequently scarred by landslides.</p><br>
<p>The Al. Ringling Theatre in Baraboo, Wisconsin, United States, opened its doors in November 1915 and has been operating continuously ever since. Designed by the architectural firm Rapp and Rapp, it was built by Albert Ringling, one of the circus Ringling Brothers, for $100,000. Over the years, it has featured performances from vaudeville and silent movies to grand opera starring such notables as Lionel Barrymore and Mary Pickford.</p><br>
<p>The design of the theater is based on the Orpheum Theatre, built by Rapp and Rapp in Champaign, Illinois in 1914. The decor of the auditorium is said to have derived from Ange-Jacques Gabriels opera house of 1763-1770 in the Palace of Versailles but some believe it to be at least equally based on Victor Louiss 1780 Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux.</p><br>
<p>Originally the theater had a Style 1 Wurlitzer theater pipe organ. Later a 9 rank, 3 manual Barton with a "circus wagon" style console replaced the Wurlitzer.</p><br>
<p>The Al Ringling Theater was featured in an episode of PBSs History Detectives, where they investigated whether it was the countrys first great movie palace.</p><br>
<p>Banpo  is an archaeological site discovered in 1953 and located in the Yellow River Valley just east of Xi&#39;an, China. It contains the remains of several well organized Neolithic settlements, like Jiangzhai, carbon dated to 6700&ndash;5600 years ago. The area of 5 to 6 ha is surrounded by a ditch, probably a defensive moat, 5 to 6 m wide. The houses were circular, built of mud and wood with overhanging thatched roofs. They sat on low foundations. There appear to be communal burial areas.</p><br>
<p>Banpo is the type site associated with Yangshao Culture. Archaeological sites with similarities to the first phase at Banpo are considered to be part of the “Banpo phase” (7th millennium&thinsp;) of the Yangshao culture. Banpo was excavated from 1954 to 1957.</p><br>
<p>The settlement was surrounded by a moat, with the graves and pottery kilns located outside the moat perimeter. Many of the houses were semisubterranean with the floor typically 1 m below the ground surface. The houses were supported by timber poles and had steeply pitched thatched roofs.</p><br>
<p>According to the Marxist paradigm of archaeology that was prevalent in the China during the time of the excavation of the site, Banpo was considered to be a matriarchal society; however, new research contradicts this claim and the Marxist paradigm is gradually being phased out in modern Chinese archaeological research. Currently, little can be said of the religious or political structure from these ruins from the archeological evidence.</p><br>
<p>The site is now home to the Xi&#39;an Banpo Museum, built in 1957 to preserve the archaeological collection.</p><br>
<p>Confederation Park  is a park in downtown Ottawa and a National Historic Site of Canada. It is bordered on the south by Laurier Avenue and Ottawa City Hall; on the east by the Rideau Canal and National Defence Headquarters; on the north by the Mackenzie King Bridge, the Rideau Centre, and the National Arts Centre; and, to the west, by Elgin Street and the Lord Elgin Hotel.</p><br>
<h2>Description</h2><br>
<p>Confederation Park is one of the Capital parks in Ottawa maintained by the National Capital Commission. It is an urban park, with paved pathways, monuments and an open lawn on the eastern side for gatherings. It is basically flat in its topology. A large fountain is located in the centre of the park. Constructed of Peterhead granite, it honors Colonel John By. The fountain was relocated from Trafalgar Square, London, where it had played from 1845 to 1948. A twin of the fountain, which had also stood in Trafalgar Square, is located in Wascana Park, Regina. The park also is the site of a totem pole donated to the City of Ottawa to commemorate British Columbia&#39;s 1971 centennial, the National Aboriginal Veterans Monument and a Boer War memorial statue.</p><br>
<p>The park is also home to the Canadian Animals in War Memorial. On November 3, 2012, the dedication to Animals in War memorial took place at Confederation Park in Ottawa. The memorial consists of three plaques and sculpture of a dog located next to the South African War Memorial. The memorial was overseen by Lloyd Swick, assisted by Shalindhi Perera and Laureen Harper as honorary patron. The bronze memorial is created by David Clendining.</p><br>
<p>A large plaque, erected in 1964 by the Polish Home Army Ex-Servicemen&#39;s Association of Canada, is dedicated to the memory of Canadian airmen who flew with the Polish Home Army while flying support missions during World War II. In 1993 when the airmen were posthumously awarded a Polish decoration, a bronze replica of the Polish Home Army Cross and a small plaque with inscription were added.</p><br>
<p>The park is surrounded on all sides by large buildings. On the east, on the other side of the Canal, is the Brutalist office tower of National Defense Headquarters. On the south, across Laurier Avenue is the complex of Ottawa City Hall and the Ottawa Courthouse. On the west, on Elgin, is the large Lord Elgin Hotel. To the north, the National Arts Centre complex can be seen.</p><br>
<p>The pathways through the park serve as a common shortcut for pedestrians heading from Elgin Street and/or Centretown to destinations to the north and east (the National Arts Centre, Rideau Street, Sussex Drive, the Rideau Centre and/or the Byward Market), since it is a more direct route than walking uphill on Elgin and Wellington Streets.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>The area was part of Ottawas downtown for many years, the site of businesses related to the nearby Rideau Canal, such as Deys Boat Works. The location was the site of The Arena from 1908 to 1927, where the original Ottawa Senators ice hockey team played. The land bordering the canal was cleared in 1927, including the demolition of the arena. The land was used to build "The Driveway" roadway along the canal, as a scenic improvement of the capital.</p><br>
<p>Along Elgin Street, the location was occupied by the Roxborough Apartments, a luxury apartment complex that had once been home to many Ottawa elites, such as Prime Ministers William Lyon Mackenzie King and Louis St. Laurent. As part of the 1949 Greber Plan, the site was to be cleared for a "Confederation Park" along the Canal from Laurier Avenue to Wellington Street surrounded by public buildings. The apartments and a number of buildings were expropriated and demolished by the federal government to build a "National Museum of Science" in 1965. The area north of the Mackenzie King bridge had already been cleared as part of the building of Confederation Square. That section was ultimately used for the construction of the National Arts Centre. In 1967, the Museum site was converted to parkland, to commemorate the Canadian Centennial (the 100th anniversary of Canadian Confederation).</p><br>
<p>From 1971 to 1993, the park was home to Ed Zelenak&#39;s massive sculpture, "Traffic." The controversial work was a large brown tube of fiberglass that was compared to a large worm or piece of dung, and led to much debate over modern art in Ottawa. It was later relocated to a more obscure location by the National Gallery.</p><br>
<p>In 2016, the park became a hub for players of the mobile game Pokémon Go.</p><br>
<p>In 2017, the community advocacy group Bookmark the Core proposed that the southeastern portion of the park could be annexed as a home for the new central branch of the Ottawa Public Library. This prompted Mayor Jim Watson to launch a counter "Save Confederation Park" campaign on Twitter. However, Confederation Park was never considered as a site by the library committee considering the location of a new central branch and any changes to the park would first need to be approved by the NCC.</p><br>
<h2>Events</h2><br>
<p>In the summer, the Ottawa International Jazz Festival&#39;s main events are held here. In the winter, Winterlude uses the location for displays, events and its ice sculpture competition. Events of Canada Day are held at the site as well. Other festivals that spill over from the neighbouring Cartier Square plaza in front of Ottawa City Hall use the park.</p><br>
<h2>Occupy Ottawa</h2><br>
<p>The Occupy movement&#39;s presence in Ottawa began on Saturday October 15, 2011 with around 500 people participating at Confederation Park. A march on Sussex Drive was held the second day, passing by the USA embassy. Around 75 people camped in tents, with the group planning to occupy the downtown park indefinitely. Many participants, prepared for the long haul, described Occupy Ottawa as a movement of presence, rather than just a protest.</p><br>
<p>The Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo House is a French Renaissance revival mansion located at 867 Madison Avenue on the corner of East 72nd Street in the Lenox Hill neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. Completed in 1898, it was designed by the architecture firm of Kimball & Thompson and has been more specifically credited to Alexander Mackintosh, a British-born architect who worked for Kimball & Thompson from 1893 until 1898.</p><br>
<p>Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo, the New York heiress who commissioned the mansion, never actually moved in.</p><br>
<h2>Architecture</h2><br>
<p>The mansion was modeled on the chateaux of the Loire Valley in France. Architecture critic Henry Hope Reed Jr. has observed about it:</p><br>
<p>The fortress heritage of the rural, royal residences of the Loire was not lost in the transfer to New York. The roof-line is very fine....The Gothic is found in the high-pitched roof of slate, the high, ornate dormers and the tall chimneys. The enrichment is early Renaissance, especially at the center dormers on both facades of the building, which boast colonnettes, broken entablatures, finials on high bases, finials in relief and volutes. In fact, although the dormers are ebullient, ornamentation is everywhere, even in the diamond-shaped pattern in relief on the chimneys (traceable to Chambord).</p><br>
<p>The first floor was a large center hall with rooms on each side for reception and servants activities. The second floor housed the main salon, the dining room and the butler&#39;s pantry. The third floor was where the master bedroom was located while the fourth floor housed the servants quarters and guest bedrooms.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Although the house had been commissioned by Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo, the eccentric heiress never moved into it, preferring to live across the street. The building remained vacant until 1921, at which time the first floor was converted into stores and two apartments were carved out of the upper four floors. Commercial enterprises which have used the location at various times include an antique store, Christies auction house and a Zabars-owned restaurant.</p><br>
<p>Photographer Edgar de Evia first saw the duplex apartment on the fourth and fifth floors when it was occupied by Dr. Stanton, a homeopathic physician who de Evia consulted on the recommendation of Dr. Guy Beckley Stearns, for whom de Evia worked as a researcher. When de Evia&#39;s photographic career was taking off in the late 1940s the duplex became available and he rented it as his home with his companion and business partner Robert Denning and his mother Miirrha Alhambra, the former Paula Joutard de Evia. It would remain his home for over 15 years.</p><br>
<p>The building was owned by the 867 Madison Corporation in the 1950s, which offered it to de Evia for sale or net lease in 1956. At that time he created Denvia Realty Corporation with his partner Denning and they entered into a ten-year net lease, becoming the landlords of the building. At this time de Evia and Denning began using the entire third floor for de Evias studios, while the fourth floor, the lower floor of their original duplex, contained the living room, dining room, ballroom and de Evias mothers bedroom. The fifth and top floor contained the master bedroom which had a bathroom at either end and the servants rooms. Offices on the second floor were rented to the interior decorators Tate and Hall, among others. The shops on the street level included the Pharmacy on the corner and the Rhinelander Florist on the Madison Avenue side.</p><br>
<p>After meeting Vincent Fourcade in 1959, Denning started to entertain prospective decorating clients in the apartment while de Evia was at his Greenwich, Connecticut estate. These included Ogden and Lillian Phipps and led to the forming of Denning & Fourcade.</p><br>
<p>By 1963, de Evia took the fifth floor and converted it into his own residence, opening up the smaller rooms. The 10 rooms on the fourth floor were at this time rented to the restaurateur Larry Ellman, owner of the Cattleman Restaurant.</p><br>
<p>During the Denvia net lease the building was sold by the 867 Madison Avenue Corporation to Central Ison, Ltd. for US$590,000. From 1967 until the early 1980s a nearby church used the top two floors for their offices.</p><br>
<p>Ralph Lauren obtained the net lease in 1983 and started a massive overhaul of the building to create his Ralph Lauren flagship store. Naomi Leff supervised the rehabilitation of the building. It took around 18 months working in the final months around the clock. Published figures put the cost around $14–15 million. Ownership of the building has changed several times during his lease; from US$6.4 million in 1984, five years later in 1989 it sold for US$43 million, and the most recent sale in 2005 was reported at a record US$80 million.</p><br>
<p>The Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo House was designated a New York City Landmark in 1976, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.</p><br>
<p>Mount Bassie is a large mountain in the center of Baranof Island, Alaska, United States, within the City and Borough of Sitka.</p><br>
<p>Mount Bassie is a massive hulk of rock, its footprint covering nearly five square miles. It is bordered by the Blue Lake and Medvejie Lake watersheds and the Baranof River watershed, effectively splitting the island in two (one can see both Chatham Strait and the Pacific Ocean from the peak and its surrounding ridges). Mount Bassie is adjacent to Camp Lake, from which ascents typically originate. It is fairly isolated in terms of sister peaks and has only two modest lower ridges running off the south and north sides of the mountain. The rest of the mountain slopes down steeply into surrounding river valleys. Mount Bassie is rarely summitted, although the western face is frequently traversed on the Baranof Cross-Island Trail.</p><br>
<p>Goose Lake is a large alkaline lake in the Goose Lake Valley on the Oregon&ndash;California border in the United States. Like many other lakes in the Great Basin, it is a pluvial lake that formed from precipitation and melting glaciers during the Pleistocene epoch. The north portion of the lake is in Lake County, Oregon, and the south portion is in Modoc County, California. The mountains at the north end of the lake are part of the Fremont National Forest, and the south end of the lake is adjacent to Modoc National Forest lands. Most of the valley property around the lake is privately owned agricultural land, though Goose Lake State Recreation Area is on the Oregon side of the lake.</p><br>
<p>Goose Lake is the center of a semi-closed drainage basin. Its watershed is normally endorheic, but sometimes flows into the Pit River, part of the Sacramento River watershed, during periods of high water following heavy rainfall or snowmelt. During the 1970s and 1980s, the USGS defined Goose Lake as part of the Sacramentos watershed, but has redefined Goose Lakes watershed as a closed basin.</p><br>
<h2>Background</h2><br>
<p>Goose Lake is part of a geological trough which runs from Oregon southward past Death Valley, the Walker Lane.</p><br>
<p>Goose Lake State Recreation Area includes a campground with various amenities. The park attracts wildlife watchers, campers, and boaters. The campground is open mid-April to mid-October. It is habitat to many flora and fauna including western grebe, long-billed curlew, and a large herd of mule deer which spend much of the time in the 48-site campground.</p><br>
<p>Recreational activities on or around the lake include kayaking, canoeing, and hunting, but not fishing. When the lake is full, it has a maximum depth of 24 ft.</p><br>
<p>The lake is located near the historic Fandango Pass route that 19th century settlers used to enter California. In the mid-19th century, particularly during the California Gold Rush, the Applegate-Lassen Cut-Off of the California Trail left the main route of that Trail near present-day Rye Patch Reservoir, and crossed the Black Rock Desert, on the way to Goose Lake and the California gold fields. The Lassen Cut-Off continued down the Pit River into California&#39;s Central Valley, while the Applegate Cut-Off went into southern Oregon along the Lost River.</p><br>
<p>The lake completely dried up in the years 1851, 1852, 1926, 1929–1934, 1992, 2009, 2013, 2014, and 2015. Goose Lake overflowed into the Pit River watershed in 1868. Formerly, Goose Lake was the regular source of the Pit River, but water diversion has caused the lake level to drop below its outlet. The Pit Rivers source is now south of Goose Lake, and the lakes salinity is increasing, threatening fish populations. During rare high water levels, Goose Lake still spills into the Pit River.</p><br>
<p>Fort Loudoun Lake is a reservoir in east Tennessee on the upper Tennessee River, extending about 50 mi along the river upstream from Fort Loudoun Dam, at Lenoir City, to Knoxville.</p><br>
<p>Fort Loudoun Reservoir takes its name from the 18th-century British fort built on a nearby site during the French and Indian War. The fort was named for John Campbell, the fourth Earl of Loudoun, commander of British forces in North America at the time.</p><br>
<p>Fort Loudoun is a popular recreation destination, known for bass fishing, boating, and birdwatching. The tailwater area immediately below the dam is an excellent site for viewing a variety of waterbirds, including herons, cormorants, gulls, osprey, and bald eagles.</p><br>
<p>The reservoir is connected by a short canal to Tellico Reservoir on the nearby Little Tennessee River. Water is diverted through the canal to Fort Loudoun for power production. The canal also offers commercial barges access to Tellico without the need for a lock. Barges passing through the Fort Loudoun lock carry about half a million tons of cargo a year.</p><br>
<h2>In popular culture</h2><br>
<p>The reservoir is mentioned in the Knoxville-based V-Roys song "Over the Mountain".</p><br>
<p>The ‘’’Atlanta City Hall’’’ building is the headquarters of the City of Atlanta government. It was constructed in 1930, and is located in Downtown Atlanta. It is a high-rise office tower very similar to dozens of other city halls built in the United States during the same time period. Located in South Downtown, it is near other governmental structures, such as the Georgia State Capitol and the Fulton County Courthouse. The Neo-Gothic structure features many architectural details that have helped to make the building a historical landmark. It is Atlanta’s fourth city hall.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<h3>Early city hall buildings</h3><br>
<p>After half a decade of makeshift meeting places for city business (including hotels and grocery stores), in 1853 mayor of Atlanta John Mims purchased the four-acre (16,000 m²) “Peters’s Reserve” from Richard Peters for $5,000. On this land (current site of the Georgia State Capitol) was built a two-story brick structure (with an additional two-story cupola) for the city hall as well as some court functions. Each floor was 70 by 100 ft providing nearly 15,000 ft&sup2; of space. It opened on October 17, 1854 and served for three decades during which time it served as campgrounds for the occupying Union army during the war and was briefly the state capitol during 1868 when the capital first moved from Milledgeville, Georgia. It was demolished in 1885. In 1882, Atlanta City Hall was relocated to the old chamber of commerce building, which was four stories tall and located on the northeast corner of Pryor and Hunter (now MLK Blvd). It was the city hall from 1882 to 1911.</p><br>
<h3>1911–1930 City Hall building</h3><br>
<p>In 1911, the city hall moved to what once the USA Post Office and Customs House (Atlanta), located on the north side of Marietta Street between Forsyth and Fairlie. Purchased from the USA federal government by Atlanta mayor Robert Maddox for $70,000, this imposing structure served as city hall for nearly twenty years. It was so solidly built that the first company hired to raze it actually went out of business before completing the job.</p><br>
<h3>Current building</h3><br>
<p>The current city hall, designed by G. Lloyd Preacher, was completed in February 1930. Located in South Downtown at 68 Mitchell Street SW, the building occupies the site of the house that General William Tecumseh Sherman took as the headquarters of his occupation after his Atlanta Campaign and before his March to the Sea (Sept.–Nov., 1864). The house was one of the few buildings in Atlanta that Sherman did not destroy. At the time, it belonged to Richard F. Lyon, an associate justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia. This building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. An annex was completed in 1989, and the building was designated a “landmark building exterior” on October 23 of that year.</p><br>
<p>On the fifth floor of the building, there is a 3,000 square foot area called the Green Roof. It was completed in 2003, and contains a garden with 2,800 plants from 31 species.</p><br>
<h3>City Hall East</h3><br>
<p>Between 1990–2010 some city hall services had been available at City Hall East, located on Ponce de Leon Avenue in the Old Fourth Ward neighborhood, northeast of downtown. The building formerly belonged to Sears. The city of Atlanta sold the building in June 2011 to Jamestown, a developer, which agreed to pay $27 million for the property. It was renamed Ponce City Market.</p><br>
<h2>Photo gallery</h2><br>
<p>The Normandie Hotel is a hotel located in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The hotel originally opened on October 10, 1942. Its design was inspired by the ocean liner S.S. Normandie. It features the same art deco design as the ship that inspired it, and the hotel&#39;s roof sign is one of the two signs that adorned the top deck of the Normandie but were removed from it during an early refitting. It is a fine example of what came to be known as the Streamline Moderne architecture style.</p><br>
<p>The Normandie Hotel was the brainchild of Puerto Rican engineer Félix Benítez Rexach. The engineer met his future wife while on a trip aboard the SS Normandie. As a tribute to his French wife, Moineau, Benítez decided to construct a structure that imitated the lavish settings of the ocean liner. Designed by architect Raúl Reichard (1908–1996), the hotel began construction in 1938. The hotel&#39;s exterior was designed to resemble a luxury liner, elongated and curved in front, with portal-shape windows and lights. Inside, the hotel features art deco design, complete with Roman, Egyptian, and French details, high ceilings, and corridors looking down into a central skylighted atrium.</p><br>
<p>Designers and artists from Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, France, and Spain all contributed to the hotels overall construction. When it opened on October 10, 1942, it became an instant sensation among the islands social elite. Completed at a cost of more than US$2,000,000, the hotel catered to many major Hollywood and Latin American film stars such as Cantinflas, Libertad Lamarque and Jorge Negrete. The hotel also served as a performing arts venue for many of Puerto Rico&#39;s top entertainers such as Ruth Fernández, Myrta Silva, Sylvia Rexach, and Carmen Delia Dipini.</p><br>
<p>After being closed and abandoned in the 1960s, the hotel was restored in the early 1990s; afterwards it underwent massive renovations due to heavy damage caused by Hurricane Georges in 1998. After storm-related damages were repaired, the hotel remained in business until 2004, when a renovation project commenced. In early 2005, the 173-room hotel reopened after its refurbishing, however it was closed once again by late 2009 and has remained closed and abandoned ever since.</p><br>
<p>Most recently, the Normandie Hotel was purchased on August 8, 2013 by Ben Medetsky and Jack Polatsek of Interra Capital Group, after initial plans for redevelopment of the hotel the group decided to put it on sale once again.</p><br>
<p>The Normandie Hotel was added to the USA National Register of Historic Places in 1980.</p><br>
<h2>Popular culture</h2><br>
<p>The music video for singer Sade Adu&#39;s song King of Sorrow (from her Lovers Rock album) was filmed in and around the hotel by director Sophie Muller.</p><br>
<p>The hotel served as a locale for one of the four stories that helped compose the storyline for the 2001 film 12 Horas directed by Puerto Rican director Raúl Marchand Sánchez.</p><br>
<p>The lobby of the hotel was used to shoot scenes from the 2009 film "A Perfect Getaway"</p><br>
<p>Potomac, Virginia, is an extinct incorporated town formerly located in Arlington County, Virginia . A planned community, its proximity to Washington D.C. made it a popular place for employees of the USA government to live. Potomac was located adjacent to the massive Potomac Yard of the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>The area was developed beginning in 1894 as the communities of Del Ray, St. Elmo, Mt. Ida, and Hume, following a grid plan independent of that of Old Town Alexandria. Potomac was incorporated as a town in 1908. In 1928, the town had 2,355 residents.</p><br>
<p>The Town of Potomac was annexed by the independent city of Alexandria in 1930. Today, the Town of Potomac Historic District in Alexandria designates this historic portion of the city, and includes 1,840 acre and 690 buildings. The Town of Potomac was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.</p><br>
<p>As of 2016, the United States Postal Service still recognizes "Potomac, VA" as an acceptable alternate address for ZIP code 22301, although "Alexandria, VA" is preferred.</p><br>
