<p>It is located in La Paz Municipality and Los Cabos Municipality of southern Baja California Sur state.</p><br>
<p>The "Sierra de la Laguna High Point", at 6,857 ft in elevation, is the highest point of the range and in Baja California Sur state.</p><br>
<h2>Ecology</h2><br>
<p>The southern tip of the Baja California Peninsula, including the Sierra de la Laguna, was formerly an island in prehistoric times. It has a distinctive flora and fauna, with many affinities to Southwestern Mexico. The Sierra is home to many endemic species and subspecies.</p><br>
<p>The dry San Lucan xeric scrub ecoregion extends from the sea level at the coast to 250 m in elevation. The Sierra de la Laguna dry forests ecoregion occupy lower portion of the range, from 250 - in elevation.</p><br>
<p>Above 800 m in elevation, the dry forests transition to the Sierra de la Laguna pine-oak forests ecoregion. The composition of the pine-oak forests varies with elevation; oak woodlands predominate from 800 - in elevation, with oak-pine woodlands between 1,200 - in elevation, transitioning to pine-oak forests above 1,600 m in elevation. The predominant pine is a local subspecies of Mexican Pinyon, Pinus cembroides subsp. lagunae.</p><br>
<p>The forests are exploited commercially for timber, and cattle-raising is common in the oak woodland and dry forest zones.</p><br>
<h3>Biosphere reserve</h3><br>
<p>UNESCO has designated the Sierra de la Laguna a global biosphere reserve: "This semi arid to temperate subhumid climate area represents highly important and contrasted ecosystems, including arid zones, matorrales, low deciduous forest type, evergreen oak: Quercus devia (“encino”) woods, pine-evergreen oak mix woods and oases with palms and “guerivos” situated throughout the gallery forest following the long river basins." The Biosphere reserve was established by a Mexican presidential decree of 6 June 1994, which designated a core area and buffer zones.</p><br>
<p>The core area is centered on the higher-elevation oak-pine forests, while the transition area includes the communities of Todos Santos, El Pescadero, El Triunfo, San Antonio, San Bartolo, Buena Vista, Los Barriles, Las Cuevas, Santiago and Miraflores.</p><br>
<h2>Climate</h2><br>
<p>The climate is influenced by its altitude. At higher altitudes, it has a subtropical highland climate with cool temperatures year round and higher amounts of precipitation.</p><br>
<p>Makrakomi  is a town and a municipality in the western part of the Phthiotis regional unit, in Greece. The seat of the municipality is the town Spercheiada.</p><br>
<h2>Geography</h2><br>
<p>Makrakomi is built on the southern slopes of Western Othrys at an altitude of 280 m. It overlooks the river Spercheios and its valley. Makrakomi is located east of Karpenisi, ENE of Agrinio, south of Karditsa, west of Lamia and the GR-1/E65 and the E75 as well as the GR-3 and WNW of Amfissa. Makrakomi is linked with the GR-38 (Agrinio - Evrytania - Lamia).</p><br>
<h2>Municipality</h2><br>
<p>The Municipality of Makrakomi was formed at the 2011 local government reform by the merger of the following 4 former municipalities, that became municipal units (constituent communities in brackets):</p><br>
<p>Agios Georgios Tymfristou (Agios Georgios, Dikastro, Mavrilo, Megali Kapsi, Merkada, Mesaia Kapsi, Neochori, Palaiokastro, Perivlepto, Pitsiota, Ptelea, Vitoli)</p><br>
<p>Makrakomi (Archani, Asvesti, Giannitsou, Grammeni, Kastri, Litoselo, Makrakomi, Makri, Palaia Giannitsou, Pappa, Platystomo, Rovoliari, Trilofo, Tsoukka)</p><br>
<p>Spercheiada (Agios Sostis, Anatoli, Argyria, Fteri, Gardiki, Kallithea, Kampia, Kanalia, Kloni, Kolokythia, Kyriakochori, Lefkada, Marmara, Mesopotamia, Nikolitsi, Palaiochori, Palaiovracha, Perivoli, Pitsi, Platanos, Pougkakia, Spercheiada)</p><br>
<p>Tymfristos</p><br>
<p>The municipality has an area of 836.564 km, the municipal unit 271.298 km. In 2011 the population of Makrakomi municipal unit was assessed as 5,617 (2,825 male, 2,792 female).</p><br>
<h2>Historical population</h2><br>
<h2>History, monuments and sights</h2><br>
<p>See Ainis.</p><br>
<p>Makrakomi: This market town bears the name of the ancient Aenian town "Makra Kome" whose ruins can be seen on the small hill Profitis Ilias. "Makra Kome" is mentioned by the historian Livy (Titus Livius) in his description of the destruction of Sperchias by the Aetolians (198 B.C) (see Macra Come). The little church of Agia Paraskevi (set in an overgrown site with cypress trees), the Acropolis of Makrakomi (which affords a splendid view over the plain) and the hillock of Lavanitsa are all worth visiting.</p><br>
<p>Platistomo: A picturesque bath town with natural springs (known to ancient Aenians). The waters of these springs are recommended for stomach and skin ailments. This place is set in lush vegetation where the traveller can find peace and escape everyday reality under the shade of ancient plane trees.</p><br>
<p>Nea and Palea Gianitsou - Papas: There are traces of two ancient castles in this location.</p><br>
<p>Makri: It features a particularly beautiful square and the superb plane-tree wood of the River Spercheios. The only station for nursing and protecting animals in Phthiotis is also located in Makri. The Greek Army general Ioannis Zisis was born at Makri in 1888.</p><br>
<p>Archani: A place where we can wander off down the ravine with its springs and therapeutic waters.</p><br>
<p>Asvestis: It has a vaulted bridge made of stone.</p><br>
<p>Trilofo: It features a religious museum "I Vivlos".</p><br>
<p>Kastri: It has a splendid plane-tree forest on both sides of the Spercheios. The Castle is the most prominent building at the village centre.</p><br>
<p>Tsouka: The porch of Western Phthiotis. It features a fountain in the "chalkia gourna" while there are huge oak trees at Agios Giannis.</p><br>
<p>Litosselo: There is a Folklore Museum and a settlement called "Afentika".</p><br>
<p>Rovoliari: There are beautiful ancient fir-trees, chestnut-tree woods and oak-tree woods, as well as, a superb Folklore Museum.</p><br>
<h2>Food and entertainment</h2><br>
<p>Local meat from free range animals and delicious sausages traditionally produced. Wine and raki from the mountainous vineyards of Makrakomi, Tsouka and Platistomo. Famous local produce includes kiwi berries from Kastri and shelled peanuts from Makri. The taverns and restaurants in Makrakomi and the surrounding villages serve kokoretsi, splinantero, kontosouvli (skewered and grilled meats) and other local specialities.</p><br>
<h2>Cultural and other events</h2><br>
<p>Organized events in commemoration of the Battle of Makrakomi; three-day Carnival festivities in Makrakomi. Traditional festivals in Makrakomi (on Agiou Pnevmatos Day ) and all the other villages. Music nights, dedicated events, exhibitions and theatricals are also put on in summer.</p><br>
<p>The Suguta Valley, also known as the Suguta Mud Flats, is an arid part of the Great Rift Valley in Kenya , directly south of Lake Turkana.</p><br>
<h2>Location</h2><br>
<p>The Suguta valley today is one of the driest parts of Kenya, with annual rainfall below 300 mm.</p><br>
<p>Lake Logipi seasonally fills a small part of the northern end of the valley.</p><br>
<p>The valley has a relatively flat floor about 300 m above sea level.</p><br>
<p>It is bordered by land to the east and west rising to 1,000 m and dotted with volcanic cinder cones.</p><br>
<p>The Barrier Volcano, a broad volcanic complex, separates the valley from Lake Turkana.</p><br>
<p>Mount Ngiro rises to the east of the Suguta valley.</p><br>
<p>The Losiolo Escarpment, rising 2,000 m above the valley floor on the east side near Maralal provides one of the most dramatic views of the Kenyan rift valley.</p><br>
<p>Namarunu, a volcano active in historic times, extends into the valley from the western wall.</p><br>
<p>The Suguta Valley lies along the axis of the Gregory Rift, which has been faulting in this area since the Pliocene along a belt 35 km wide. The belt lies between the Ngiro basement uplift to the east and the Loriu Plateau to the west, and is thicker in the eastern part. Exposed volcanic rocks include basalts, tuffs and ash formed between 4.2 and 3.8 million years ago, the products of trachytic volcanism from 3,8 to 2.6 million years ago and basaltic and alkali basaltic rocks created from that period until the present.</p><br>
<p>In the early Pliocene the least horizontal stress direction - the direction of rift expansion - was NW-SE.</p><br>
<h2>Hydrology</h2><br>
<p>Lake Suguta once filled the valley, at times overflowing into Lake Turkana.</p><br>
<p>The lake level rose and fell several times in the last 18,000 years due to changes of rainfall during the African Humid Period that lasted from 14,800 to 5,500 years ago.</p><br>
<p>The lake level began to drop about 8,000 years ago, falling by 250 m.</p><br>
<p>The valley is drained by a seasonal stream, the Suguta River, which in the rainy season forms the temporary Lake Alablad, a playa lake that combines with Lake Logipi at the northern end of the valley.</p><br>
<p>In the dry season saline hot springs help maintain water levels in Lake Logipi, which is about 3 m to 5 m at its greatest depth, about 6 km wide and 3 km wide.</p><br>
<h2>Ecology</h2><br>
<p>The saline waters provide food for cyano-bacteria and other plankton, which in turn are food for flamingoes.</p><br>
<p>Due to the inaccessibility and harsh climate, with temperatures reaching 60 &deg;C, only the most determined tourists visit the site.</p><br>
<p>The valley is used as a hide-out by Pokot and Turkana cattle rustlers. It is considered a "no go" region by the police due to the extremely harsh environment and familiarity of the rustlers with the terrain.</p><br>
<h2>November 2012 Police Killings</h2><br>
<p>In November 2012 over 40 Kenya Police officers and reservists were killed in the Suguta Valley near Baragoi while on a mission to recover stolen cattle.</p><br>
<p>The Sierra Blanca  is a range of volcanic mountains in Lincoln and Otero counties in the south-central part of the USA state of New Mexico. The range is about 40 mi from north to south and 20 mi wide.</p><br>
<p>Sierra Blanca Peak (White Peak) is the highest mountain in the range at 11,981 ft. It is southern New Mexico&#39;s highest peak, as well as the most prominent (5,533 feet) and the 40th highest in the entire state. The peak is located on the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation, approximately 10 mi west-northwest of Ruidoso and 30 mi north-northeast of Alamogordo.</p><br>
<h2>Geography</h2><br>
<p>The majority of the Sierra Blanca range is within the Lincoln National Forest, and part of this is protected as the White Mountain Wilderness Area. Much of the southern half of the range, including the summit of Sierra Blanca Peak, is within the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation. The peak is sacred to the Mescalero Apache, and requires a permit from the tribe for access. To the south, across the valley of the Rio Tularosa, lie the Sacramento Mountains. To the north is Carrizozo Mountain, and to the northeast lie the Capitan Mountains. On the west side, the range rises high above the Tularosa Basin.</p><br>
<p>The range serves as the headwaters for the Rio Ruidoso, Rio Tularosa, and Rio Bonito, as well as numerous arroyos draining into the Tularosa Basin, including Nogal Arroyo at the north end of the range.</p><br>
<p>Sierra Blanca Peak dominates the range and can be seen for many miles, particularly within the Tularosa Basin. It is visible from as far away as Sandia Crest near Albuquerque. It is one of the southernmost points at which alpine ecosystems occur in the United States. Rising more than 8,000 ft above the adjacent Tularosa Basin, it has the highest topographic prominence in the state.</p><br>
<p>The eastern foothills of the Sierra Blanca range include the town of Ruidoso. The area has a number of popular hiking and camping destinations. Sierra Blanca Peak is the towering backdrop and snow-maker for Ski Apache, the southernmost major ski resort in North America. Ski Apache is located mostly on land within the Lincoln National Forest and is operated as a concession under contract to the USA Forest Service by the Mescalero Apache Tribe&#39;s Inn of the Mountain Gods.</p><br>
<h2>Volcanology</h2><br>
<p>Sierra Blanca is a massive complex of volcanic rocks, including pyroclastic materials, lava flows, and intrusions. An ancient and heavily eroded volcanic pile, it is the largest mid-Tertiary volcanic complex east of the Rio Grande, with an estimated volume of erupted products of 185 cumi. Eruptions began about 38 million years ago, and extended over a twelve-million-year period. Most of the eruptions produced voluminous lava flows and breccias, with numerous intrusive dikes emplaced throughout the complex. The final activity produced the intrusions which form the present-day Sierra Blanca Peak. Following the volcanic period, the range&#39;s topography was modified by Pleistocene glaciation, block faulting, and erosion.</p><br>
<p>Blombos Cave is an archaeological site located in Blombosfontein Nature Reserve, about 300 km east of Cape Town on the Southern Cape coastline, South Africa. The cave contains Middle Stone Age deposits currently dated at between c. 100,000 and 70,000 years before present , and a Late Stone Age sequence dated at between 2000 and 300 years BP. The cave site was first excavated in 1991 and field work has been conducted there on a regular basis since 1997 – and is ongoing.</p><br>
<p>The excavations at Blombos Cave have yielded important new information on the behavioural evolution of modern humans. The archaeological record from this cave site has been central in the ongoing debate on the cognitive and cultural origin of early humans and to the current understanding of when and where key behavioural innovations emerged among Homo sapiens in southern Africa during the Late Pleistocene. Archaeological material and faunal remains recovered from the Middle Stone Age phase in Blombos Cave – dated to ca. 100,000–70,000 years BP – are considered to represent greater ecological niche adaptation, a more diverse set of subsistence and procurements strategies, adoption of multi-step technology and manufacture of composite tools, stylistic elaboration, increased economic and social organisation and occurrence of symbolically mediated behaviour.</p><br>
<p>The most informative archaeological material from Blombos Cave includes engraved ochre, engraved bone ochre processing kits, refined bone and stone tools and a broad range of terrestrial and marine faunal remains, including shellfish, birds, tortoise and ostrich egg shell and mammals of various sizes. These findings, together with subsequent re-analysis and excavation of other Middle Stone Age sites in southern Africa, have resulted in a paradigm shift with regard to the understanding of the timing and location of the development of modern human behaviour.</p><br>
<p>On 29 May 2015 Heritage Western Cape formally protected the site as a provincial heritage site.</p><br>
<h2>Excavation history and research context</h2><br>
<p>Blombos Cave was first excavated in 1991–1992 as a part of Professor Christopher S. Henshilwood’s (1995) doctoral thesis. at the University of Cambridge: Holocene archaeology of the coastal Garcia State Forest, southern Cape, South Africa. Blombos Cave was originally one of nine Holocene Later Stone Age sites that Henshilwood excavated and it was first given the acronym GSF8 (Garcia State Forest, site no. 8). In 1997 GSF8 was renamed Blombos Cave and given its current acronym: BBC. From 1999 to 2011 in total ten field seasons, each six weeks long, have been carried out at the cave site.</p><br>
<p>From the initial excavations conducted in the early 1990s, the Blombos Cave project has adopted and established new and innovative research agendas in the study of southern African prehistory. While Henshilwood’s initial, doctoral research was directed towards the more recent Later Stone Age occupation levels, the focus since 1997 has been on the Middle Stone Age sequence. The Blombos Cave project has since then developed academically, economically and administratively; from being a local and small-scale test excavation to becoming an international, full scale, high-technological archaeological project. In 2010–2015 the cave site is the focus of the multi-disciplinary, pan-continental research program TRACSYMBOLS.</p><br>
<p>The TRACSYMBOLS project is led by Professor Christopher S. Henshilwood based at the Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion at the University of Bergen and the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, together with Professor Francesco d’Errico from the University of Bordeaux 1, France. The aim of TRACSYMBOLS project is to examine how key behavioural innovations emerged among Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis in southern Africa and Europe respectively, and to explore whether and how environmental variability influenced this development between 180,000 – 25,000 years ago; primarily by combining archaeological results, original multi‐proxy palaeoenvironmental data and climatic simulations for two continents.</p><br>
<h2>Site description</h2><br>
<p>The cave is situated in a south-facing cliff face 34.5 meter above sea level, ca. 100 meters from the present day shore line. The cave formation is set in calcretes of the Wankoe Formation, and the geological setting indicates that the cave was formed by wave action sometime during the Plio-Pleistocene.</p><br>
<p>The interior of Blombos Cave comprises a single main chamber, and the entire (accessible) interior cave floor is about 39m² behind the drip line. West of the cave&#39;s main chamber, anthropogenic deposit extends inwardly 3-5 meter. In this area, however, the cave ceiling lowers to a point where it falls in level with the surface, preventing access to the deposit beneath. In the area north-east of the main chamber, deposit expands into a low laying ante-chamber of unknown extent due to the sand filling it. By the end of the 2011 field season about 19.5m² of interior cave has been dug during the Blombos Cave excavations.</p><br>
<p>Blombos Caves outer talus forms a gently sloping platform of about 23m² that extends 4-5 meter southwards, before the terrain abruptly drops down towards shoreline that lies some 34,5 meters below the cave entrance. The talus, which primarily consists of Middle Stone Age deposit, rock fall and unconsolidated sediments, is stabilised by an area of large, exposed blocks (14m²). At some stage - and in between the prehistoric occupation of the cave site - these blocks have fallen down from the rock face above, effectively preventing site erosion and allowing sediments to stabilize and accumulate in front of the caves drip line.</p><br>
<p>Calcium carbonate (CaCO3) rich ground water seeps in from the cave roof and percolates through the interior sediments, resulting in an alkaline environment with good preservation conditions. The excavated Middle Stone Age deposit in Blombos Cave consists of aeolian (wind-borne) dune sand, blown in through the cave entrance, and roof spall from the cave ceiling. Intermixed with these sandy matrixes are decomposed marine and terrestrial faunal remains (fish, shell fish, egg shell and animal bones) and organic material Large combustion features, small basin-shaped hearths and carbonized horizons are recorded throughout the whole MSA sequence.</p><br>
<h2>Stratigraphy and dating</h2><br>
<p>When the excavation started at Blombos Cave in 1992 the cave entrance was partially sealed by dune sand, and about 20 cm of sterile Aeolian deposit covered the interior Later Stone Age deposit. Underneath the aeolian sand surface, seven main phases of occupation have been identified in the 2.5-3 meter deep Blombos Cave stratigraphic sequence; three in the Later Stone Age (L1-L3) and four in the Middle Stone Age (M1, Upper M2, Lower M2 and M3). These phases are further divided into finer lenses and sub-lenses, most of them less than 10 cm thick. The Later Stone Age and Middle Stone Age levels are separated by a 5–50 cm thick, sterile unit named ‘Hiatus’ or ‘DUN’. The Hiatus consists of yellow Aeolian sand that blew into the cave at about 68,000-70,000 years BP, and shows little disturbance from the overlying Later Stone Age units.</p><br>
<p>Humans have briefly and sporadically occupied Blombos Cave throughout the Middle Stone Age (101,000-70,000 years BP) and in the latter parts of the Later Stone Age (2,000–300 years BP). The occupational hiatus between ca. 68,000 and 2,000 years BP, combined with the geological evidence, indicates that the cave site was sealed off by aeolian sand during this period The cave entrance appear to have reopened during the mid-Holocene transgression (c. 4,000–3000 years ago), when high sea levels eroded away most of the dune. Remnants of this eroded calcarenite dune are still visible in the surrounding coastal landscape.</p><br>
<p>The Later Stone Age sequence has been radiocarbon dated to 2000–290 years BP, uranium-thorium series (U/Th) The lowest levels of the M3 phase has a preliminary age of &gt;130,000 years ago, while the unexcavated sediments below these levels remains undated (June 2013).</p><br>
<h3>Dating the Middle Stone Age sequence (detailed review)</h3><br>
<p>The hiatus level (DUN) composed of undisturbed aeolian sand overlying the M1 phase is dated by OSL to 69,000 ± 5,000 and 70,000 ± 5000 years BP, while OSL ages ranging from 74,900 ± 4,300 to 72,500 ± 4,600 years BP have been obtained for the upper part of the M1 phase; i.e. the units associated with the Still Bay techno-tradition. (see next paragraphs). TL ages for the M1 phase are 74,000 ± 5,000 and 78,000 ± 6,000 years BP.</p><br>
<p>The lower layers in the M2 phase (layer CG, CGAA, CGAB, CGAC) have been dated to between 78,900 ± 5,900 and 78,800 ± 5,600 years BP. The upper levels of the M3 phase are dated to ca. 100,000 years ago, coinciding with the high sea-level stand during Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5c. A preliminary age of &gt;130,000 years BP is attributed to the lower M3 phase (the lowest excavated level at the site).</p><br>
<p>Critical remarks were in 2013 raised towards the luminescence-based Middle Stone Age chronology established by Jacobs et al. 2008 on methodological grounds related to errors in the manipulation of the luminescence data and estimation of uncertainties in the dose rates. The Middle Stone Age chronology for Blombos Cave derived from optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) ages is, nonetheless, consistent with the ages obtained through alternative methods (TL, ESR, U/Th), and remains uncontested.</p><br>
<h2>Archaeological remains and material culture from the Middle Stone Age levels</h2><br>
<h3>Still Bay bifacial points</h3><br>
<p>The most extensive and well documented sample of so-called ‘Still Bay points’ in southern African comes from the Still Bay sequence in Blombos Cave. Still Bay points have bifacially retouched sides, are elliptic to lanceolate shaped and most often they have two pointed apices.</p><br>
<p>Since the excavation in Blombos Cave began more than 500 points or point fragments have been recovered, of which 352 have been described in detail The dominant raw material used for Still Bay point production in Blombos Cave is silcrete (72%), followed by quartzite (15%) and quartz (13%). Whereas the quartzite and quartz raw material is easily available in close vicinity to the cave, the exact source for silcrete has not been established. It is speculated that it may come from outcrops in Riversdale or Albertinia – some 30 km away – or from now underwater sources Ca. 90% of the Still Bay points recovered from Blombos Cave have been classified as "production rejects", and preliminary analysis of the lithic material from the ‘CC’ unit suggests that the majority of the lithic debitage are by-products of bifacial point manufacture. Villa et al. (2009:458) conclude that: Blombos was a workshop in the sense that the making of points was a primary – though not exclusive – activity at the site.</p><br>
<p>The manufacture sequence of Still Bay points has been divided into four main production phases. While hard hammer and direct percussion was used in the initial reduction phase (phase 1), followed by soft hammer and marginal percussion (phase 2), pressure flaking was only used during the final retouch phase (3), and a few points were also reworked by hard hammer percussion (phase 4) . For the moment, the Still Bay points from Blombos Cave represent some of the earliest evidence for pressure flaking, a technique more common in considerably more recent lithic techno-complexes. Experimental replication by Mourre et al. 2010 and microscopic study of Still Bay points from Blombos Cave indicates that some silcrete blanks were deliberately heat-treated, before pressure flaking was employed in the final reduction sequence; and thus improving the silcrete’s flaking quality.</p><br>
<p>It has been argued that the bifacial points were hafted and used primarily as spear points or both Some researchers have suggested that the seeming concern for the appearance of the finished point may represent evidence for social and stylistic elaboration during the MSA. similar to the ones observed ethnographically. Högberg and Larsson 2011 hypothesise that blanks and unfinished Still Bay points were purposely left behind in Hollow Rock Shelter, perhaps for being used at a later stage or as an act of solidarity with other hunter-gatherer groups.</p><br>
<h3>Pigments and engraved pieces of ochre</h3><br>
<p>In 2002 the recovery of two finely engraved ochre pieces – both deriving from the Still Bay units (M1 phase) – was reported in Science Magazine. Wonderwerk Cave and Klasies River Cave 1. Arguably, these engraved pieces of ochre represent – together with the engraved ostrich egg shells from Diepkloof – the earliest forms of abstract representation and conventional design tradition hitherto recorded.</p><br>
<p>Geometric or iconographic representations have traditionally been archaeological categories associated with modern human behaviour and cognitive complexity. The evidence from Blombos Cave – and from sites like Klasies River, Diepkloof Rock Shelter, Klein Kliphuis and Wonderwerk cave – implies that abstract representations were made in southern Africa at least 30,000 years earlier than in Europe and that stylistic elaboration and symbolic traditions were common in southern Africa 70,000–100,000 years ago. The incised ochre pieces recovered from Blombos Cave and various other Middle Stone Age sites indicates that there was a spatial and temporal continuity in the production and use of conventional symbols in the region.</p><br>
<p>Yet, recent studies also demonstrate that the mere occurrence of ochre in MSA contexts cannot be limited to a symbolic interpretation alone, but its use may also have served some functional role, e.g. as an ingredient in mastic, skin protection against sun or insects, as soft-hammers for delicate knapping, as a hide preservative or as medicine.</p><br>
<h3>Ochre processing workshop</h3><br>
<p>In 2008 an ochre processing workshop consisting of two toolkits was uncovered in the 100,000-year-old levels at Blombos Cave, South Africa. Analysis shows that a liquefied pigment-rich mixture was produced and stored in the shells of two Haliotis midae (abalone), and that ochre, bone, charcoal, grindstones and hammer-stones also formed a composite part of the toolkits. As both toolkits were left in situ, and as there are few other archaeological remains in the same layer, it seems the site was used primarily as a workshop and was abandoned shortly after the pigment-rich compounds were made. Dune sand then blew into the cave from the outside, encapsulated the toolkits and by happenstance ensured their preservation before the next occupants arrived, possibly several decades or centuries later.</p><br>
<p>The application or use of the compound is not self-evident. No resins or wax were detected that might indicate it was an adhesive for hafting. Possible uses could include painting a surface in order to decorate or protect it, or to create a design. The recovery of these toolkits at Blombos Cave nevertheless adds evidence for early technological and behavioural developments associated with Middle Stone Age humans. It documents the first known instance for the deliberate planning, production and curation of a pigmented compound and for the use of a container. Evidence for the complexity of the task includes procuring and combining raw materials from various sources (implying they had a mental template of the process they would follow), possibly using pyrotechnology to facilitate fat extraction from bone, using a probable recipe to produce the compound, and the use of shell containers for mixing and storage for later use. An elementary knowledge of chemistry and the ability for long-term planning suggests conceptual and cognitive abilities previously unknown for this time and serves as a benchmark during the early evolution of the technological and cognitive abilities of Homo sapiens in southern Africa.</p><br>
<h3>Bone tools</h3><br>
<p>Formal bone tools are relatively rare artefacts to find at MSA sites.</p><br>
<p>In addition to conventional bone tools, a modified bone fragment marked with eight parallel lines has also been recovered from the Still Bay phase. The bone incisions do not look like ordinary butchery marks. Microscopic analysis shows that the incisions most likely represent a deliberately engraved pattern made with a stone tool, and it may be comparable with the geometric design observed on the engraved pieces of ochre.</p><br>
<h3>Nassarius kraussianus marine shell beads</h3><br>
<p>More than 70 marine shell beads of the sea snail species Nassarius kraussianus have been found in the M1 and Upper M2 phases at Blombos Cave. The beads are exclusively confined to the Still Bay occupation units, and the majority have been found in the M1 phase. It has been argued that the marine shells were deliberately pierced through the aperture, probably with a bone tool, thus creating of a small-sized perforation. Contextual information, morphometric, technological and use-wear analysis of the Blombos Cave beads, alongside experimental reproduction of wear patterns, show that the Nassarius kraussianus shells were strung, perhaps on cord or sinew and worn as a personal ornament. A cluster of 24 perforated Nassarius kraussianus has been recovered from one of the Still Bay units and strengthens this interpretation, as it appears that these shells originated from a single beadwork. Beside the deliberate perforation of the Nassarius shells, repeated rubbing of the beads against one another and against the cord, have resulted in discrete use wear facets on each bead that are not observed on these shells in their natural environment. These use-wear patterns are the principal factor that defines the shells as beads. Also, the consistency in shell size and colour indicates that the Nassarius shells were carefully selected. Ochre has been detected inside some of the shell beads, implicating that they were subject to deliberate or indirect use of ochre as a colouring agent.</p><br>
<p>The wearing and display of personal ornaments during the Still Bay phase was not idiosyncratic. In-depth analyses of the Blombos Cave shell beads deriving from various levels and squares within the site demonstrate chronological regularities and variability, in terms of manufacture, stringing method and design of the bead works. Discrete groups of beads with wear patterns and colouring specific to that group have been recovered, a patterning that suggests that at least a number of individuals may have worn beads, perhaps on their person or attached to clothing or other artifacts. Thus, the Blombos Cave beads may document one of the first examples where changes in complex social conventions directly can be traced through distinct variations in the production and use of symbolic material culture over time.</p><br>
<p>The shell beads also provide insights into technological and behavioral aspects of the humans living in the Still Bay phase, including the ability to drill, the use of cord or gut for threading and the probable tying of knots to secure the beads. A comprehension of self-awareness or self-recognition is implied by the wearing of beads or other personal ornaments and was likely an important factor in cognitive evolution that was selected for long before the introduction of beads. Further, syntactical language would have been essential for the sharing and transmission of the symbolic meaning of personal ornaments within and between groups and also over generations, as is also suggested for the engraved ochre pieces.</p><br>
<p>Until recently, the first use of personal ornaments was thought to occur with the arrival of Homo sapiens in Europe, some 40,000 years ago. Most academics now believes that marine shells were used as beads in the Near East, North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa at least 30,000 years earlier than their first use in Europe. Besides Blombos Cave, there are a number of African and Middle East sites that all have yielded strong evidence for the early use of personal ornaments: Skul and Qafzeh, Israel, Oued Djebbana, Algeria,</p><br>
<h3>Human remains</h3><br>
<p>No skeletal remains have been found in Blombos Cave and the amount of other types of recovered human material from the Middle Stone Age units amounts only to seven teeth. The crown diameters of at least some of these teeth are morphometric "modern" in terms of tooth size reduction, implying that the humans occupying Blombos Cave were anatomically modern. This conclusion is supported by similar evidence from a nearby archaeological site, Klasies River, that dates to a similar time period.</p><br>
<h3>Faunal remains</h3><br>
<p>At Blombos Cave a great variety of terrestrial and marine faunal remains are consistently found throughout the Later Stone Age and Middle Stone age phases. The faunal record from Blombos Cave shows that Middle Stone Age people practiced a subsistence strategy that included a very broad range of animals. This means they were able to hunt large animals, such as eland, but also gathered, collected or trapped small animals such as tortoises, hyraxes and dune mole rats. They also brought seal, dolphin and probably whale meat back to the cave. The latter two were almost certainly scavenged from beach wash-ups, but seals may have been speared or clubbed.</p><br>
<p>The faunal remains recovered include specifically: fish, shellfish, birds, tortoise and ostrich egg shell and mammals of various sizes. The amount of shell fish recovered from the various Middle Stone Age units show that people were regularly collecting them at the shore and bringing them back to the cave for consumption. Common species include the giant periwinkle (Turbo sarmaticus), limpets (Patella spp.) and brown mussels (Perna perna).</p><br>
<p>Species variations may, with larger sample sizes, inform us of past changes in ocean palaeo-temperatures. In terms of kilograms of shell fish per cubic meter (kg/m³), Still Bay is the Middle Stone Age phase in Blombos Cave where shellfish are found in least abundance (17.5 kg/m³), and they seem to have been more intensively exploited in the earlier occupation phases. The changes observed in shellfish procurement through the various MSA phases may relate to fluctuating climatic conditions and changing sea levels, which have altered the cave’s proximity to the coastline and affected the sea level temperatures.</p><br>
<p>Fish remains are present, but not abundant, in all phases at Blombos Cave. Fish are more abundant in the Later Stone Age but a wider range of species are present in the Middle Stone Age sequence. Chemical analysis of fish bone from the Later Stone Age and Middle Stone Age levels, using the carbon/nitrogen method, confirms the antiquity of the Middle Stone Age specimens. Most of the species present are not known to wash up after cold water upwelling events, hence scavenging of wash-ups was not the primary source of fish. No artefacts that appear to be obvious fishing equipment have been found, but the range and sizes of species present indicate that a number of methods must have been employed. These may have included: baited hooks, spearing and tidal traps.</p><br>
<p>Where the same fish species have survived in both Later Stone Age and Middle Stone Age levels, analysis of relative bone element occurrence show a significant deficit in the Middle Stone Age. In other words, age-related taphonomic processes have resulted in the loss of many fish bones, and it is likely that more fish were originally deposited in the Middle Stone Age levels than have been recovered through archaeological excavations. Fish are seldom reported from other southern African MSA sites, and by implication, it was thought that Middle Stone Age people were incapable of exploiting coastal resources efficiently. The evidence for fishing at Blombos Cave and Klasies River contradicts this theory.</p><br>
<p>The huge variety of faunal and the shell fish remains recovered from all parts of the Blombos Cave Middle Stone Age sequence demonstrate that people during this period practiced a diverse set of subsistence and procurements strategies and were able to effectively hunt, trap and collect coastal, as well as terrestrial, resources. The subsistence behaviour inferred from the faunal assemblages can hardly be distinguished from the remains and behaviour seen in more recent Later Stone Age contexts.Thus, the overall subsistence pattern at Blombos Cave signifies that no clear distinction can be made between Later Stone Age and Middle Stone Age subsistence behaviour at the site.</p><br>
<h2>Palaeoenvironment</h2><br>
<h3>General overview of the current trends in MSA environmental research</h3><br>
<p>Episodes of past environmental change are typically defined by marine oxygen isotope stages (MIS) that are derived from oxygen isotope signals in planktonic foraminifera found in marine cores. The climatic fluctuations documented from MIS 6 through to MIS 3 spans the duration of the southern African MSA. These stages are therefore most pertinent. In the archaeological context, environmental proxies typically come from a broad range of sources such as microfauna, macrofauna, fossil pollen, dune sediments and speleothems. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in improving our understanding of the environments in which MSA peoples lived and interacted with each other This is because aspects of MSA behaviours related to artefact production, subsistence, pigment use and migration patterns are increasingly being linked to periods of climatic, and by extension environmental change</p><br>
<p>Establishing a link, if any, between MSA lifeways and the environmental context in which MSA behaviours developed is complex. While some researchers argue for links between extreme climate change and social change there is some debate. The aim of current research efforts focusing on MSA environments is therefore two-fold. Firstly, improving the temporal resolution of proxies by applying suitable dating methods such as radiocarbon, uranium-series, luminescence, etc. Secondly and most importantly, is to refine the available proxy database so that ambiguous and often, conflicting interpretations can be re-assessed as new information emerges. In light of this, two key studies have emerged; Jacobs and Roberts who evaluate and synthesise the dates for the Still Bay and Howiesons Poort periods across southern Africa and Chase who addresses the issues about MIS 4 environments and the role of climate forcing during this period. A current synthesis of environmental proxy evidence associated with MIS 4 indicates that the Still Bay and Howiesons Poort occurred during relatively humid conditions. It is however not clear what environmental conditions during earlier periods of the MSA (i.e. MSA I, II, III & MSA 2) were like. These early MSA periods are broadly correlated with MIS 6 and MIS 5 (b, c, d, e) but have not been investigated in any detail.</p><br>
<h2>Provincial Heritage Site</h2><br>
<p>Blombos Cave was declared a provincial heritage site by Heritage Western Cape on the 29 May 2015 in terms of Section 27 of the National Heritage Resources Act. This gives the site Grade II status and provides it with protection under South African heritage law.</p><br>
<p>Also in 2015, the South African government submitted a proposal to add the cave to the list of World Heritage Sites and it has been placed on the UNESCO list of tentative sites as a potential future serial nomination together with Pinnacle Point, Sibudu Cave, Klasies River Caves, Border Cave and Diepkloof Rock Shelter.</p><br>
<p>The Ravine Bluffs Development was commissioned in 1915 by Frank Lloyd Wright&#39;s attorney, Sherman Booth Jr. It is located in Glencoe, Illinois. Six houses, three poured concrete sculptures, and one bridge were built. Five of the houses were for rent when built. All 5 rental houses share the same basic floor plan as "A Fireproof House for $5000".</p><br>
<p>Client&#39;s home:</p><br>
<p>Sherman M. Booth House</p><br>
<p>Rentals:</p><br>
<p>Charles R. Perry House</p><br>
<p>Hollis R. Root House</p><br>
<p>William F. Kier House</p><br>
<p>Lute F. and Daniel Kissam House</p><br>
<p>William F. Ross House - differs in design from the other 4 rentals, has fireplace to the side - was purchased by architect John Eifler and was restored from 2011-2014.</p><br>
<h2>Bridge</h2><br>
<p>The Ravine Bluffs Development Bridge, also known as the Sylvan Road Bridge, was a bridge designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and located at the northeastern entrance of the Development. It crosses over the ravine from which the project gets its name. In the 1980s, the bridge was rebuilt. It was Wright&#39;s only bridge.</p><br>
<p>Lake Logipi is a saline, alkaline lake that lies at the northern end of the arid Suguta Valley in the northern Kenya Rift. It is separated from Lake Turkana by the Barrier volcanic complex, a group of young volcanoes that last erupted during the late 19th Century or early 20th Century. Saline hot springs discharge on the northern shoreline of Lake Logipi and at Cathedral Rocks near its southern limit, and help to maintain water at times of extreme aridity. During the rainy season, the lake is also recharged from the Suguta River which flows northward along the Suguta Valley, periodically forming a temporary lake  that unites with Logipi.</p><br>
<p>Lake Logipi has a maximum depth of 3 to 5 m, and is about 6 km wide by 3 km long. Its waters are of sodium bicarbonate composition with a pH of 9.5-10.5 and salinity (total dissolved salts) that varies from less than 20 g/l to greater than 50 g/l. Efflorescent salt crusts (trona) are present around its margins. Flamingoes frequently inhabit the saline waters feeding on cyanobacteria (Arthrospira spp. - formerly termed Spirulina) and other plankton.</p><br>
<p>The Wandel Sea  is a body of water in the Arctic Ocean, stretching from northeast of Greenland to Svalbard. It is obstructed by ice most of the year.</p><br>
<p>This sea is named after Danish polar explorer and hydrographer, Vice Admiral Carl Frederick Wandel (1843-1930), who in the years 1895-96 explored the coastal waters of Greenland as part of the Danish Ingolf Expedition.</p><br>
<h2>Geography</h2><br>
<p>This arctic sea is located at 82° north longitude and 21° west latitude. Seas farther north and northwest of the Wandel Sea are frozen year-round. The Wandel Sea stretches as far west as Cape Morris Jesup. Further west is the Lincoln Sea. In the south, it stretches to Nordostrundingen. The Wandel Sea connects to the Greenland Sea in the south through the Fram Strait.</p><br>
<p>The Independence Fjord and the Frederick E. Hyde Fjord are two great fjords of the far northeastern Greenland coast having their mouths in the Wandel Sea.</p><br>
<p>The Black Range  is an igneous mountain range running north-south in Sierra and Grant counties in west-central New Mexico, in the southwestern United States. Its central ridge forms the western and eastern borders, respectively, of the two counties through much of their contact. The range is about 55 miles  long from north to south and up to 18 miles  wide. The highest point is McKnight Mountain. The Black Range lies almost entirely within the Gila National Forest. The Mimbres River originates from the mountain snow pack and run-off. The Mimbres Mountains, the southernmost part of the range, are usually included as part of the Black Range.</p><br>
<p>Access to the range is primarily via New Mexico State Road 152, which crosses the Black Range on its way from the small town of Kingston on the east towards the equally small San Lorenzo on the west. NM 152 crosses the range at 8228-foot (2508 m) Emory Pass, where there is a hiking trail that covers the entire north-south length of the mountains along the central ridge. There are also a number of campgrounds, some with hiking trails, along NM 152 as it goes down Iron Canyon on the west side of the range. With the exception of the areas along NM 152, most of the range is very difficult to traverse and almost entirely undeveloped.</p><br>
<p>The Aldo Leopold Wilderness lies along the crest of the Black Range north of NM 152.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>The southern portion of the Black Range, which are also known as the Mimbres Mountains, was occupied by the Mimbres people whose culture peaked about 1000 C.E. and ended about 1150 C.E. Their most famous site is the Gila Cliff Dwellings.</p><br>
<p>Silver was discovered in the Black Range in the late 1870s, first in 1876 at Lake Valley, and then by Harry Pye in 1879 at Chloride. This led to a silver rush, and silver and gold mines flourished in the Black Range through the end of the 19th century.</p><br>
<p>Arambol is a traditional fisherman village, located approximately a one-hour drive from the Dabolim Airport  within the Pernem administrative region of northern Goa, India. The beach attracts many international tourists, mainly during the winter season between November and March.</p><br>
<p>The census town (CT) of Arambol is located in the Pernem taluk of North Goa district with an area of 9.66 km. and harbouring 1234 households with total population of 5322 as per the 2011 Census. The district headquarter Panaji is at a distance of 40 km. The state headquarter Panaji is at a distance of 40 km. Male population is 2780 and female population is 2542. Scheduled Caste population is 125 and Scheduled Tribes population is 0. Census Location Code of the town is 626658. Population wise class of the town is Class V (Population 5,000 to 9,999). The civic status of the town is Census Town. The nearest city with population more than 1 lakh is Belgaum at a distance of 161 km. The nearest city with population more than 5 lakh is Pune at a distance of 463 km. Railway station is at Pernem at a distance of 16 km.</p><br>
<h2>Weather</h2><br>
<p>Rainfall: 3117 mm</p><br>
<p>Maximum temperature: 34 °C</p><br>
<p>Minimum temperature: 23 °C</p><br>
<h2>Literacy</h2><br>
<p>Total literate population: 4280</p><br>
<p>Literate male population: 2346 (84.39%)</p><br>
<p>Literate female population: 1934 (76.08%)</p><br>
<h2>Utilities and services</h2><br>
<h3>Sanitation and drinking water</h3><br>
<p>The town has an open drainage system. Water is supplied from a service reservoir. The town gets it water as tap water from a treated source. The capacity of the water supply system is 650 kilo-litres.</p><br>
<p>The nearest fire fighting service is at Pernem (13 km).</p><br>
<h3>Health services</h3><br>
<p>The nearest Allopathic hospital facility is at 25 km. The nearest Alternative Medicine hospital is at 90 km. There is 1 Dispensary / Health Centre in the town. There is 1 Family Welfare Centre in the town. There is 1 Maternity and Child Welfare Centre in the town. The nearest Maternity Home is at 11 km. The nearest T.B. clinic is at 28 km. The nearest Nursing Home is at 0 km. The nearest Veterinary hospital is at 25 km. The nearest Mobile health clinic is at 0 km. The nearest Other medical amenities is at 40 km. There are 3 Non-Government medicine shops in the town.</p><br>
<h3>Educational facilities</h3><br>
<p>There are 2 government Primary Schools in the town. There are 2 private Primary Schools in the town.</p><br>
<p>There are 2 private Middle Schools in the town.</p><br>
<p>There are 2 private Secondary Schools in the town.</p><br>
<p>There is 1 private Senior Secondary School in the town.</p><br>
<p>The nearest private Degree College of Commerce only is at Mapusa (36 km.</p><br>
<p>The nearest private Degree College of Arts & Science is at Panaji (48 km).</p><br>
<p>The nearest government Degree College of Arts & Commerce is at Rural (16 km).</p><br>
<p>The nearest private Degree College of Arts, Science & Commerce is at Mapusa (36 km).</p><br>
<p>The nearest private Degree College - Law is at Panaji (48 km).</p><br>
<p>The nearest government Degree College - University is at Panaji (54 km).</p><br>
<p>The nearest private Degree College - Others is at Mapusa (36 km).</p><br>
<p>The nearest government Medical College is at Bambolim CT (54 km).</p><br>
<p>The nearest government Engineering College is at Bandora CT (78 km). The nearest government Non-formal Training Centre is at Penha de Franca CT (38 km).</p><br>
<p>The nearest government Management Institute is at Penha de Franca CT (42 km).</p><br>
<p>The nearest government Polytechnic is at Panaji (48 km).</p><br>
<p>The nearest government Vocational Training School is at Mapusa (26 km).</p><br>
<p>The nearest government Special School for Disabled is at Penha de Franca CT (38 km).</p><br>
<h3>Facilities</h3><br>
<p>The nearest private Orphanage Home is at Panaji (47 km).</p><br>
<p>The nearest government Working Women&#39;s Hostel is at Penha de Franca CT (42 km).</p><br>
<p>The nearest government Old Age Home is at Siolim CT (16 km).</p><br>
<p>The nearest government stadium is at Mapusa (30 km).</p><br>
<p>The nearest private Cinema Theatre is at Pernem (13 km).</p><br>
<p>There are 2 private Auditorium / Community Halls in the town.</p><br>
<p>There is 1 private Public Library in the town.</p><br>
<h3>Manufacturing</h3><br>
<p>Arambol (CT) is engaged in the manufacturing of following items (in decreasing order of importance): country liquor, chili products, dry fish</p><br>
<h3>Market and banking</h3><br>
<p>There is 1 Nationalised Bank in the town. There is 1 Co-operative Bank in the town.</p><br>
<h2>Religion</h2><br>
<p>The majority of the locals are Hindu. Christian and Muslim minorities are also present. The Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel serves the religious interests of the many Catholics in the area. Mother Mary is referred to as Saibinn Mai in the local Konkani language.</p><br>
<h2>Sports</h2><br>
<p>As in many other parts of Goa, both football and cricket are popular sports with the people of this area.</p><br>
<h2>Attractions</h2><br>
<p>A short walk north off the main beach is a smaller beach with a "fresh water lake" close to the sea. The jungle valley, enclosed between low hills, hides a banyan tree. Adjoining the banyan tree there is a stone sculpture created by an American conceptual and land art artist, Jacek Tylicki, titled Give if you can - Take if you have to (also called The Money Stone). It has become a pilgrimage destination.</p><br>
<p>Due to the composition of both national and international musicians, Arambol is home to a rich live music scene, dominated by Gypsie-Fusion bands.</p><br>
<h3>Activities</h3><br>
<p>Strong winds during the main season make it a significant location for leisure sports, like paragliding and kite surfing. A variety of practitioners in the healing arts offer courses in Yoga, meditation, Odissi dance, and musical instruments (like Tabla, Sitar and other traditional Indian as well as Western instruments).</p><br>
<h3>Events</h3><br>
<p>The Tribal Dance Festival and the Indian Juggling Convention take place in Arambol. The Goa Contact Festival and In-Touch Festival both offer Contact Improvisation Dance and Somatics. All are scheduled for late January/early February.</p><br>
<p>Emar  is an archaeological site in Aleppo Governorate, northern Syria. It sits in the great bend of the mid-Euphrates, now on the shoreline of the man-made Lake Assad near the town of Maskanah. It has been the source of many cuneiform tablets, making it rank with Ugarit, Mari and Ebla among the most important archeological sites of Syria. In these texts, dating from the 14th century BC to the fall of Emar in 1187 BC, and in excavations in several campaigns since the 1970s, Emar emerges as an important Bronze Age trade center, occupying a liminal position between the power centers of Upper Mesopotamia and Anatolia-Syria. Unlike other cities, the tablets preserved at Emar, most of them in Akkadian and of the thirteenth century BC, are not royal or official, but record private transactions, judicial records, dealings in real estate, marriages, last wills, formal adoptions. In the house of a priest, a library contained literary and lexical texts in the Mesopotamian tradition, and ritual texts for local cults.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Emar was strategically sited as a trans-shipping point where trade on the Euphrates was reloaded for shipping by overland route. In the middle of the third millennium BC Emar came under the influence of the rulers of Ebla; the city is mentioned in archives at Ebla. In Mari texts of the eighteenth century BC, (Middle Bronze Age), Emar was under the influence of the neighboring Amorite state of Yamhad. There was no local tradition of kingship at Emar. For the thirteenth and the early twelfth centuries BC (Late Bronze Age), there is written documentation from Emar itself, mostly in the Akkadian language, and also references in contemporaneous texts from Hattusa, Ugarit, and in Assyrian archives; at the time Emar was within the Hittite sphere of influence, subject to the king of Carchemish, a Hittite client-king.</p><br>
<p>It was the chief city of a Hittite border province known as</p><br>
<p>the Land of Astata which included Tell Fray. Correlating the kings of Emar with the known king-list of Carchemish provides some absolute dating.</p><br>
<p>Archeological and written documentation come to an end in the late twelfth century BC as a result of the Bronze Age collapse.</p><br>
<p>The actual date of destruction has been placed at 1187 BC</p><br>
<p>in the 2nd regnal year of king Meli-Shipak II of Babylon</p><br>
<p>The site remained desolate at the unstable eastern borders of the Roman Empire, resettled nearby as Barbalissos. In 253, it was the site of the Battle of Barbalissos between the Sassanid Persians under Shapur I and Roman troops. Its Byzantine history can be followed at Barbalissos.</p><br>
<h2>Archaeology</h2><br>
<p>The initial salvage excavations in advance of the rising waters of the Syrian Tabqa Dam project impounding Lake El Assad were undertaken by two French teams, in 1972-76, under the direction of Jean-Claude Margueron. Excavations revealed a temple area comprising the sanctuaries of the weathergod Ba’al and possibly of his consort Astarte of the Late Bronze Age (thirteenth and early twelfth century BC).</p><br>
<p>After the conclusion of the French excavations the site was left unguarded and was systematically looted, bringing many cuneiform tablets onto the antiquities gray market stripped of their context. In 1992, the Syrian Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums took charge of the site, and a fresh series of campaigns revealed earlier strata, of the Middle and Early Bronze Ages (second half of the third millennium and the first half of the second millennium BC) the Imar that was mentioned in the archives of Mari and elsewhere. Beginning in 1996, the Syrian effort</p><br>
<p>was joined by a team from the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen Germany.</p><br>
<p>U. Finkbeiner and F. Sakal, Emar after the closure of the Tabqa Dam</p><br>
<p>The Syrian-German Excavations 1996 - 2002. Volume I: Late Roman and Medieval Cemeteries and Environmental Studies, Brepols, 2010,</p><br>
<p>So far, around 1100 tablets in Akkadian have been recovered from the site,</p><br>
<p>800 from the excavation and around 300 emerging on the antiquities market. In</p><br>
<p>addition 100 tablets in Hurrian and 1 in Hittite have also</p><br>
<p>been found. All but one of the tablets are from the Late Bronze Age.</p><br>
<p>Istakhr  was an ancient city located in southern Iran, in Fars province, five kilometers north of Persepolis. It was a prosperous city under the Sasanian Empire and briefly served as its capital from 224 to 226 CE.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Istakhr first appears in history as an Achaemenid city. It gained its importance not only from its close association with Persepolis: it also commanded the western end of an ancient caravan-route that ran from the Indus Valley via Kandahar and Drangiana to Persia.</p><br>
<p>The city temporarily became the capital of the Sasanian Empire during the reign of Ardashir I (r. 224–242) before the capital was moved to Ctesiphon, in Mesopotamia. During the Sasanian period (224–651) the royal treasury of the empire, known as ganj ī šāhīgān, is said to have been in Istakhr. In 915–916, al-Masudi himself saw in a house at Istakhr owned by a Persian noble, "the large and very fine manuscript" of a work copied in 731 from original documents in the royal treasury.</p><br>
<h3>Massacre by Arabs</h3><br>
<p>The city was conquered by the Muslim Arab in 649CE. Two years later in 651 CE, the residents of Istakhr revolted. After the suppression of the revolt, 150,000 civilians were massacred in Istakhr by the victorious Arab forces as a reprisal for rebelling.</p><br>
<h3>Post-Arab conquests</h3><br>
<p>In 659 CE, caliph Ali sent Ziyad ibn Abi Sufyan to suppress a Persian rebellion in Istakhr. Ziyad succeeded at this and stayed on as governor. For a while, Abdallah ibn Mu&#39;awiya (the designated leader of a Kaysanites Shia sub-sect) established himself at Istakhr from where he ruled for a few years over Fars and other parts of Persia, including Ahvaz, Jibal, Isfahan and Kerman from 744 to 748 until fleeing to Khurasan from the advancing Umayyad forces.</p><br>
<p>During the last years of the reign of the Buyid ruler Abu Kalijar (r. 1024–1048), the hatred of his vizier, Dhul-Saadat, towards the dehqan of Istakhr made him send a group of soldiers under the Qutlumish, who sacked Istakhr, turning the city into a small village with no more than a hundred settlers, thus bringing its history to an end.</p><br>
<p>The Batchelder House is a historic home built in 1910 and located at 626 South Arroyo Boulevard in Pasadena, California. An important center of Pasadena cultural life in its day, the home was designed and built by Ernest A. Batchelder, a prominent leader of the Arts and Crafts Movement, and his wife, Alice Coleman, an accomplished musician. The house, a large bungalow, has a "woodsy" design with elements of a Swiss chalet style. Batchelders first craft shop was located in the structure, where decorative tiles were made for Greene and Greene, the Heineman Brothers, and other noted local architects of the era. Coleman also used the houses backyard stage to host chamber music concerts.</p><br>
<p>The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 14, 1978. It is part of the Lower Arroyo Seco Historic District.</p><br>
<p>Kuntur Wasi  is the name given to the ruins of a religious center with complex architecture and stone sculptures, located in the Andean highlands of Peru. It is believed the inhabitants had a link with the Chavín culture.</p><br>
<p>Kuntur Wasi is located in the Northern Mountain Range of Peru, specifically at the headwaters of the Jequetepeque River, in the region of the city of Cajamarca near the small town of San Pablo. The Jequetepeque valley provided a transportation corridor between the coastal region and the highlands. Kuntur Wasi was a center where people congregated.</p><br>
<p>It is thought to have been constructed around 1000-700 BCE, during the Initial Period. The architecture consists of a hill-top temple, quadrangular platforms, a sunken courtyard, and series of rooms. In the floor of one room there is an anthropomorphic figure made of clay, about 30 inches (75 cm) in height. It is painted with cinnabar red, malachite green, and black, yellow, and pink. Its face has big square eyes and a wide mouth with prominent canine teeth. There are also stepped platforms and funeral structures. Lithosculptures have been found, similar to the Chavín style. Kuntur Wasi was occupied between the years 1200-50 BC.</p><br>
<p>It was first discovered in 1945 by Julio C. Tello. In 1989, scientists from the University of Tokyo excavated four tombs at Kuntur Wasi. Valuable items, such as pectoral necklaces (decorative breastplates), gold crowns, ornamental stone beads, earrings, sets of dishes and iconographies of people were discovered in the burial area. Since the beginning of the University of Tokyo&#39;s archaeological mission, eight tombs have been found in the area.</p><br>
<p>The Kuntur Wasi Museum, managed by local citizens, opened in 1994.</p><br>
<p>Crawford Hill is located in Holmdel Township, New Jersey, United States. It is Monmouth County&#39;s highest point, standing at least 380 feet  above sea level. The hill is best known as the site of an annex to the Bell Labs Holmdel Complex.</p><br>
<p>Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson of Bell Labs used the Holmdel Horn Antenna located on Crawford Hill to take measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation. They were awarded the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics for these efforts that supported the Big Bang theory. For more information, see Discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation.</p><br>
<p>More recently the laboratory has undertaken research in the fields of wireless and fiber-optic communication and award winning Bell Laboratories researchers in these fields, working at Crawford Hill include Herwig Kogelnik and Gerard Foschini.</p><br>
<p>https://web.archive.org/web/20060325005531/http://www1.bell-labs.com/news/2001/february/13/1.html Herwig Kogelnik won the 2001 Marconi International Fellowship Award and IEEE Medal of Honor for his work in the development of fiber optic technology and the 2006 National Medal of Technology.</p><br>
<p>Gerard J. Foschini was the 2002 recipient of the Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award for his pioneering inventions having to do with the capacity of communications systems with multiple antennas.</p><br>
<p>Thurber House is a literary center for readers and writers located in Columbus, Ohio, in the historic former home of author, humorist, and New Yorker cartoonist James Thurber. Thurber House is dedicated to promoting the literary arts by presenting quality literary programming; increasing the awareness of literature as a significant art form; promoting excellence in writing; providing support for literary artists; and commemorating Thurber&#39;s literary and artistic achievements. The house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as James Thurber House.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>James Thurber was born in Columbus at a different home. Thurbers family rented this home on Jefferson Avenue while he was a student at Ohio State University. He and his family lived there until 1917. Thurber later wrote of his experience here in My Life and Hard Times. Thurber claimed to have experienced a ghost in the house on November 17, 1915, and the incident inspired his short story "The Night the Ghost Got In". Writer William ORourke, who lived at the house in 1984, wrote his own version titled "The Night the Ghost Didn&#39;t Get In", published in Poets & Writers Magazine in 1988.</p><br>
<p>Thurber&#39;s time in the house was challenging, particularly because of his experience at the university. Due to his physical limitations, including bad eyesight, he performed poorly at required gym classes and military drills. He was not invited to join a fraternity and, as such, found few social connections. Though he registered for classes in his sophomore year, 1914–1915, he mostly stopped going to classes and failed them all. Eventually, he befriended former child star Elliott Nugent, who helped Thurber become more outgoing. He eventually became co-editor of the campus newspaper and contributed to the humor magazine before becoming its editor.</p><br>
<p>Thurber left school in 1918 amidst World War I. For a few years he worked for the Columbus Dispatch before moving to New York. In 1927, he began his association with The New Yorker and contributed to that magazine for the rest of his career. Though he ultimately spent relatively little time in Columbus, Thurber&#39;s experience there influenced his writings. As he once noted, "Many of my books prove that I am never far away from Ohio in my thoughts, and that the clocks that strike in my dreams are often the clocks of Columbus."</p><br>
<h2>Thurber House today</h2><br>
<p>Thurber House opened its doors to the public in 1984 after extensive renovation to the historic house. Since then, it has become a gathering place for readers, writers, and Thurber enthusiasts of all ages. Its programs for both children and adults include author readings, writing classes, and celebrations of Thurber&#39;s life.</p><br>
<p>Through its Evenings with Authors, a series of readings and receptions with nationally known authors, Thurber House has attracted well-known writers such as John Updike, T.C. Boyle, Tracy Chevalier, and Scott Turow. The Thurber House also hosts two writers in residence each year through the John E. Nance Writer-in-Residence Program and the Childrens Writer in Residence Program. The Writer in Residence lives on the top floor of the Thurber House for four weeks. The Childrens Writer-in-Residence also teaches ten hours a week for the Thurber House Summer Writing Camp.</p><br>
<p>The annual Thurber Prize for American Humor has become the nations highest designation of the art of humor writing. Its childrens programs, including the popular Thurber Summer Writing Camp, and the winter program Writing Wizards have nurtured thousands of young writers.</p><br>
<p>Thurber House is part of The Jefferson Center for Learning and the Arts, a one-block stretch of Queen Anne Style Victorian homes that house cultural and social service nonprofit organizations. Its programs include author readings, writing classes for children, and celebrations of Thurber&#39;s life.</p><br>
<h2>Museum</h2><br>
<p>Thurber House is also a historic house museum that has been restored for the period when the Thurber family lived there from 1913 to 1917. Visitors can view the first two floors, which contain a formal parlor, living room, dining room, five bedrooms, and a bathroom. Guests are also allowed to interact with many museum materials, such as sitting on chairs or playing the piano. The parents bedroom features rotating displays of Thurber memorabilia, including a display of Thurbers drawings that became New Yorker covers.</p><br>
<p>The Gulf of Boothia is a body of water in Nunavut, Canada. Administratively it is divided between the Kitikmeot Region on the west and the Qikiqtaaluk Region on the east. It merges north into Prince Regent Inlet, the two forming a single bay with different names for its parts. It is surrounded by, clockwise, Baffin Island, Fury and Hecla Strait, the Melville Peninsula, the Canadian mainland, the Boothia Peninsula and perhaps Bellot Strait if the Gulf can be said to extend that far north. The south end is Committee Bay, northwest of which are the Simpson Peninsula and Pelly Bay. In addition to its connection to Prince Regent Inlet one can use an icebreaker to go east through the Fury and Hecla Strait, or, with luck, pass the Bellot Strait westward.</p><br>
<p>In 1822 it was seen by some of William Edward Parry&#39;s men who went on foot along the ice-choked Fury and Hecla Strait. In 1829 it was entered by John Ross (Arctic explorer) who was frozen in for four years and named it for his patron Sir Felix Booth. Its south end was explored by John Rae (explorer) in 1846/47 who reached it overland from the south.</p><br>
<h2>Further reading</h2><br>
<p>* Barber, D. G., and J. Iacozza. 2004. "Historical Analysis of Sea Ice Conditions in M&#39;Clintock Channel and the Gulf of Boothia, Nunavut: Implications for Ringed Seal and Polar Bear Habitat". Arctic. 57: 1-14.</p><br>
<p>* Collin, A. E. An Oceanographic Study of Prince Regent Inlet, the Gulf of Boothia and Adjacent Waters. S.l.: Atlantic Oceanographic Group, 1958.</p><br>
<p>* Markham, Albert Hastings, and Sherard Osborn. A Whaling Cruise to Baffin&#39;s Bay and the Gulf of Boothia. And an Account of the Rescue of the Crew of the "Polaris.". London: S. Low, Marston, Low, and Searle, 1875.</p><br>
<p>Prince Regent Inlet  is a body of water in Nunavut, Canada between the west end of Baffin Island  and Somerset Island on the west. It opens north into Lancaster Sound and to the south merges into the Gulf of Boothia. The Arctic inlet&#39;s northern portion is approximately 40 mi wide; the southern portion is approximately 65 mi wide. It is deep throughout and there are no islands within the inlet.</p><br>
<p>During the quest for the Northwest Passage it was entered several times until it was realized that Prince Regent Inlet-Gulf of Boothia is a cul-de-sac for practical purposes. In 1819 William Edward Parry penetrated more than 100 miles south before turning back. In 1829 John Ross (Arctic explorer) passed through it and was frozen in the Gulf of Boothia for four years before escaping. In 1852 Bellot Strait, the frozen western exit, was discovered. In 1858 Francis Leopold McClintock tried to pass this strait, gave up, and wintered near its mouth.</p><br>
<p>Lake Frome is a large endorheic lake in the Australian state of South Australia located to the east of the Northern Flinders Ranges. It is a large, shallow, unvegetated salt pan, 100 km long and 40 km wide, lying mostly below sea level and having a total surface area of 259,615 hectare. It only rarely fills with brackish water flowing down usually dry creeks in the Northern Flinders Ranges from the west, or exceptional flows down the Strzelecki Creek from the north.</p><br>
<p>It was named after Edward Charles Frome after his mapping of the area in 1843.</p><br>
<h2>Description</h2><br>
<p>The lake adjoins Vulkathunha-Gammon Ranges National Park to its west and lies adjacent to Lake Callabonna linked by Salt Creek to its north, the southern Strzelecki Desert to its east, and the Frome Downs pastoral lease to its south. The ancient Lake Mega-Frome (Lakes Frome, Blanche, Callabonna and Gregory) was last connected to Lake Eyre 50-47 thousand years ago. The region in which it is situated has little rainfall and is very sparsely settled, with the closest settlement to it being Arkaroola Village some 40 km north-west of its closest shore.</p><br>
<p>Public road access to Lake Frome is limited to a single, rough four-wheel drive track which commences from the Vulkathunha-Gammon Ranges National Park headquarters at Balcanoona (Virlkundhunha) station 30 km west. The route to Lake Frome traverses flat, stony terrain following Balcanoona Creek through the only completely protected arid catchment in Australia. After crossing both the Moomba-Adelaide natural gas pipeline and the dingo fence the track passes over low sand dunes before arriving at the western shore of Lake Frome. The protected area through which this access track travels is declared a Cultural Use zone for hunting by the local Adnyamathanha Aboriginal people between 3.00 pm and 5.00 am; during this period public access is prohibited.</p><br>
<p>Lake Frome forms part of the local Dreaming story told by the Adnyamathanha people explaining how the regions geology and species originated. According to this Dreaming story, Lake Frome was emptied of its water by the Rainbow Serpent Akurra when he ventured down Arkaroola Creek (which flows onto Lake Frome) to drink. Due to its Dreamtime significance the Adnyamathanha do not venture onto the lakes surface.</p><br>
<p>In April 2013, the full extent of Lake Frome was gazetted by the Government of South Australia as a locality with the name Lake Frome.</p><br>
<h2>Protected area status</h2><br>
<p>Due to its "regional geological significance" the full extent of the lake was proclaimed as the Lake Frome Regional Reserve in 1991.</p><br>
<p>The Land of Altena  is a historical region and former fiefdom of the Lords of Altena, historically part of the County of Holland, but since 1815 located in the Dutch province of North-Brabant.</p><br>
<p>The Land of Altena lies on a river island in the estuary of the rivers Rhine and Meuse. It is enclosed by the rivers Boven Merwede (north), Afgedamde Maas (east) and Oude Maasje/Bergse Maas (south) and by the regions De Biesbosch (west) and the (former) Land of Heusden (southeast). It contains the municipalities of Werkendam (the largest town of the island) and Woudrichem (the historical centre of the island and whose village Almkerk contains the site of the former castle of Altena).</p><br>
<p>Since 1904 it is united with the Land of Heusden (only the part above the Bergse Maas) as the Land of Heusden and Altena.</p><br>
<p>Unlike most parts of North Brabant the Land of Altena has a strong Protestant (Calvinist) character. Former Prime Minister Hendrikus Colijn (1869–1944) had his roots in this region.</p><br>
<p>Haddon Corner is a heritage-listed site in Tanbar, Shire of Barcoo, Queensland, Australia. It is in outback Channel Country at South-West Queensland, on the border corner with South Australia. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 9 November 2012.</p><br>
<p>It was first surveyed by Augustus Poeppel in 1880. Haddon Corner lies at the intersection of the 26th parallel south circle of latitude and the 141st meridian.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Haddon Corner, marked in 1880 during the official survey of the western section of the border between Queensland and South Australia undertaken in 1879-1880, defines the north-eastern corner between Queensland and South Australia. Its marking was a surveying feat of its time.</p><br>
<p>Letters patent issued by Queen Victoria in June 1859 separated the new Colony of Queensland from New South Wales (NSW). They described Queensland&#39;s border as the watershed from Point Danger (28°8"S) west to the Dumaresq River; the Dumaresq, Macintyre and Barwon Rivers to latitude 29 degrees South; and along latitude 29 degrees South to the 141st meridian of East longitude, which was the eastern boundary of South Australia.</p><br>
<p>Although legal opinion advised that the 141st meridian was the western boundary of Queensland, Surveyor-General Augustus Charles Gregory believed otherwise. In a memorandum of 28 September 1860 he wrote "the western boundary... appears to be the 141st meridian; but it is probable that it was not described in the Letters Patent erecting the Colony, with greater distinctness, expressly with a view to a future adjustment, when more certain information should have been collected as to the natural features of the country... It is now submitted that the 141st meridian passes through the tract of country known as the "Plains of Promise" and that the Eastern shore possesses no harbours. It would therefore be desirable to adopt the 138th meridian as the boundary; as that line would pass through a barren tract of country, and bring "Investigators Road within the limits of Queensland.&#39;</p><br>
<p>Furthermore, expeditions in 1861-1862 funded by the South Australian, Victorian and Queensland governments to rescue the missing explorers Burke and Wills, who had failed to return from a journey from Cooper Creek to the Gulf of Carpentaria, led to the exploration of an enormous area of the inland and were predicted to stimulate interest in this previously unknown tract of land beyond Queenslands western boundary. Writing to the Secretary of State for the Colonies on 5 September 1861, the Queensland Governor George Bowen indicated his colonys willingness to protect any settlers so attracted, provided that the western boundary could be extended to include the Gulf. The proposal was accepted on condition that the additional territory could be reclaimed later should another colony be formed in northern Australia.</p><br>
<p>In response, a despatch dated 14 December 1861 from the Secretary of State for the Colonies advised that the proposed annexation to the 138th Meridian of longitude should be revoked under Act 24 and 25 Victoria, c.44. This immediately provoked a despatch from Sir George Bowen, dated 18 January 1862, stating that Queensland had taken provisional control of this area. Subsequently, on 12 April 1862 Letters Patent were issued describing the accession of "so much of our Colony of New South Wales as lies to the northward of the 26th parallel of south latitude and between the 141st and 138th meridian of east longitude...". Thereby two more corners in Queensland&#39;s western boundary were created and the colony acquired part of the Barkly Tableland and the area which later became the Mount Isa mineral field. A revised definition of the extent of Queensland was subsequently proclaimed on 23 June 1862.</p><br>
<p>In July 1862 Sir Charles Nicholson reported to the Secretary of State for the Colonies that: "On the west, the whole of the basin of the Barcoo for several hundred miles, as far as the 142nd meridian of East longitude, is becoming rapidly occupied by squatters, and the authorised possession of the greater part of it has already, I believe, been secured under pastoral licenses". Pastoralists began settling the Cooper Creek and Bulloo River country and the adjacent portion of South Australia in 1864 with Bulloo Downs Station being the first run in the Bulloo area. By the end of the decade the Cooper country was also settled.</p><br>
<p>During the 1870s, settlement extended west to the Diamantina, Mulligan and Georgina areas. In 1873, the pastoral districts were named - Gregory South comprised the Bulloo and lower Cooper area and the remainder became Gregory North. Initially runs in both districts were stocked with cattle and sheep. By 1885 all available land in Queenslands far south-west had been claimed. This land, comprising the floodplains of the Mulligan, Georgina, Diamantina and Bulloo Rivers and Cooper Creek, which form part of a vast inland drainage system originating in Queenslands central west and north-west and eventually reaching Lake Eyre, became known as Channel Country. During floods, the semi-arid region becomes a network of channels, watering cattle-fattening grasslands.</p><br>
<p>Agitation by pastoralists in the Cooper region for surveying of the border because of uncertainty as to its position began in the 1870s. In 1877 James McLeod, the new owner of Cullamurra run, applied to the South Australian Commissioner of Crown Lands to have the colony&#39;s border surveyed urgently, after finding himself in dispute with his eastern neighbour John Conrick of Nappa Merrie over their station boundaries.</p><br>
<p>Another factor in the determination of Queensland&#39;s borders was the collection of customs duties at the border and establishment of border customs offices. Inter-colonial border duties were introduced in Australia in the 1850s, after the Murray River became the boundary between New South Wales and Victoria. Their introduction demonstrated that the Australian colonies were developing in divergent and independent ways. As each new colony was declared, it established its own customs administration, which was responsible for the collection of lucrative custom duties and the prevention of smuggling.</p><br>
<p>As the western regions of the colony developed and internal trade routes were established, custom facilities were required along the borders with New South Wales and South Australia. In mid-1862, the Queensland Government had assented to the provisions of the New South Wales Border Customs Act, introduced to provide for a mutual Queensland-New South Wales system of collecting customs duties payable on goods crossing their shared border. Queensland&#39;s Customs Duties Act 1870 provided the colony with independent legislation to regulate the collection of duties on goods imported from other colonies. A small Customs Border Patrol consisting of a police inspector, sub-inspector and four constables was appointed with powers to collect duties from 1 January 1871. They travelled along the Queensland-New South Wales border, collecting duties and keeping careful records regarding the type and value of goods and the amount of monies collected. They also recommended 11 sites suitable for custom offices and these were later established. Those near the South Australian border were at Beetoota, Birdsville and Oontoo.</p><br>
<p>The marking of the Queensland-South Australian border was undertaken in 1879-1880 by the South Australian Government as the final section of a survey of its border on the 141st meridian, which had started at the Murray River. The surveyor chosen to undertake the border survey was William Barron, who had recently accompanied an expedition to South Australia&#39;s western districts. In May 1879 Barron, accompanied by a survey team with horses and camels, set out from Mulligan Springs, 24 km east of Mount Hopeless in north-east South Australia. After checking the border line north to the end of the completed survey at the 29th parallel (Fort Grey), he began working towards the 26th parallel. The work was difficult and tedious, involving trudging over sand ridges and claypans, and marking the line by mileposts recording the distance from the survey starting point at the Murray River. William Barron marked the border from Cameron Corner 90 miles north to Cooper Creek, where his health failed and he was forced to return to Adelaide.</p><br>
<p>Surveyor Augustus Poeppel took over the survey in January 1880, assisted by Lawrence Allen Wells. Arriving at the survey camp at Innaminka on 3 February 1880, Poeppel spent the following month taking observations and preparing rations and equipment. On 5 March, with two months&#39; rations and the animals in good condition, the survey team returned to work. They continued the line to the 26th parallel where they met their Queensland colleague Alexander Hutchinson Salmond. Together the surveyors took star observations for latitude to fix the position at 26 degrees S and 141 degrees E (now known as Haddon Corner, named after the nearby pastoral lease). The corner was marked with a willow post, 12 feet (2.4 m) long, sunk over an iron bar flanked by rock trenches following the angle. The survey line was marked by mileposts still recording the distance from the surveying starting point at the Murray River.</p><br>
<p>The party continued on to survey to the next corner at 26 degrees South 138 degrees East.</p><br>
<p>Augustus Poeppel was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1839, the son of an architect. Emigrating with his family in 1849, he settled in South Australia before moving to Victoria to become a mining surveyor and architect. In 1878, after short periods in New Zealand and Western Australia, Poeppel joined the South Australian Lands Department and was soon appointed to the border surveys. During the Queensland-Northern Territory border survey, from the 142-mile post, he suffered from trachoma and lost 13 kg in weight, forcing his withdrawal in July 1885. His health was broken and he later lost sight in one eye. He retired to Melbourne where he died in 1891 aged 52.</p><br>
<p>Lawrence Wells, born in 1860 in South Australia, entered that colonys Survey Department in 1878. In the following year, at the age of 23, he joined the border surveys, eventually assisting with almost the entire survey of the Queensland-South Australian-Northern Territory borders, which was completed in 1886. Later Wells became a well-known explorer, known as "the last of the great inland explorers". In 1891-1892 he accompanied the Elder Scientific Exploring Expedition, which discovered the East Murchison goldfield; in 1896 he led the Calvert Scientific Exploring Expedition, investigating northern Western Australia; and in 1903 he led South Australias North-West Prospecting Expedition. Later Wells held administrative positions in the state and federal public services, and was appointed Order of the British Empire in 1937.</p><br>
<p>Alexander Hutchison Salmond was born in Scotland in 1850. He acquired navigational skills as a cadet in the British merchant navy before arriving with his family in Rockhampton in 1864. His career was spent working in the remote Australian inland. Salmond became a licensed surveyor in 1878 and was based in Cunnamulla until lured to the Western Australian goldfields in the early 1890s. Thereafter he worked in Kalgoorlie and in Carnarvon in the northwest. In 1903 he led an expedition into the Kimberley region and the Salmond River (near Wyndham) is named after him.</p><br>
<p>Following the completion of the Queensland-South Australian border survey in 1880, there was renewed interest in the land along the border as well-watered country had already been taken. Dependent for its water supplies on a scanty rainfall and the sinking of wells, this land had been ignored in favour of land further west on the Diamantina flood plains. In 1880 William and John Hastie Howie, who already held land on the Queensland side of the border, took up Haddon Downs, the north-eastern corner of South Australia which gave the border corner its name. Haddon Downs is now part of another early holding, Cordillo Downs.</p><br>
<p>Given the enormous physical difficulties which the surveyors faced in the task, their survey of the Queensland-South Australian border was impressive. Today, Global Positioning Systems (or GPS) are used pinpoint place by longitude and latitude more accurately, and now it is known that the intended corner between Queensland and South Australia at 26 degrees S 141 degrees E was not completely achieved. However, The Queensland Boundaries Declaratory Act 1982 confirmed "that each land boundary of the State... as... defined in the Letters Patent... by reference to a parallel of latitude or a meridian of longitude is and always has been the boundary... permanently fixed by marking it upon on the surface of the earth before 1900...". Also the movement of tectonic plates on the earth means that the longitude and latitude of any place on earth may change slowly over time.</p><br>
<p>The corner post as a survey mark is protected under the Survey and Mapping Infrastructure Act 2003 and the Survey and Mapping Infrastructure Regulation 2004 whereby a person must not interfere with a survey mark unless certain conditions are met.</p><br>
<p>The original timber corner post has been replaced by a concrete pillar.</p><br>
<p>Haddon Corner is a well-known tourist destination today.</p><br>
<h2>Description</h2><br>
<p>Haddon Corner is in south-western Queensland, adjacent to the Queensland-South Australia border, at the north-eastern corner of South Australia. It is located approximately 335 km north of Cameron Corner and approximately 300 km east of Poeppel Corner. The area is on a gentle divide of poorly coordinated drainage between Cooper Creek (to the east) and the Diamantina River (to the west). The wider region is part of Channel Country. The degree confluence 26 degrees S 141 degrees E (with no official marking) is found several hundred metres mainly south (and a little east) of the Corner post. Like Queensland&#39;s other borders, there is discrepancy between the specified latitude or longitude and the border fence or post.</p><br>
<h2>Heritage listing</h2><br>
<p>Haddon Corner was listed on the Queensland Heritage Register on 9 November 2012 having satisfied the following criteria.</p><br>
<p>The place is important in demonstrating the evolution or pattern of Queensland&apos;s history.</p><br>
<p>Haddon Corner (1880), marking the north-eastern extension of the Queensland-South Australia border, is important in demonstrating the priority placed on clear border demarcation by the governments of Queensland and South Australia. Set borders were an important part of colonial economic and administrative development, providing certainty for governments and pastoralists, and enabling the collection of customs duties.</p><br>
<p>Haddon Corner is the result of early cooperation between Australian colonies and provides lasting evidence of the feat of endurance which marking the Queensland-South Australia border involved.</p><br>
<p>The place is important in demonstrating a high degree of creative or technical achievement at a particular period.</p><br>
<p>Haddon Corner represents the culmination of a difficult feat of geodetic surveying and is an early application of this branch of surveying in Queensland.</p><br>
<p>The place has a strong or special association with a particular community or cultural group for social, cultural or spiritual reasons.</p><br>
<p>Haddon Corner is important to the Australian community as a geographical and cultural landmark, and is a well-known tourist attraction.</p><br>
<p>The place has a special association with the life or work of a particular person, group or organisation of importance in Queensland&apos;s history.</p><br>
<p>Haddon Corner has an important association with the life and career of Augustus Poeppel (1839–91) and Lawrence Allen Wells (1860-1938), who later surveyed Poeppel Corner and the Queensland-Northern Territory border.</p><br>
<p>The Monti Sabatini is a geologic region in Lazio, central Italy, a remnant of intense volcanism which started ca. 600,000 years ago, mainly with pyroclastic and maar forming eruptions which continued until 100,000 years ago. The mountains are part of the Lazio&#39;s Anti-Apennines. Included between the Monti Sabatini is the Lake Bracciano, which is a volcanotectonic depression formed about 3.7 Ma, and the Lake Martignano. The sedimentary base of the Sabatini complex lies buried under 200 m of volcanic ash and rocks.</p><br>
<p>The highest point is Monte Rocca Romana (a postcaldera stratocone), at 612 m.</p><br>
<p>Other mountains in the area include Monti della Tolfa, Monte Soratte, and more southwards, by the Monti Cornicolani.</p><br>
<p>Ripple Rock is an underwater mountain that had two peaks  in the Seymour Narrows of the Discovery Passage in British Columbia, Canada, a part of the marine trade route from Vancouver and coastal points north. The nearest town is Campbell River. Only 2.7 metres  underwater at low tide, it was a marine hazard in what the explorer George Vancouver described as "one of the vilest stretches of water in the world." The hazard was not only hitting the rock but also big, dangerous eddies caused by tidal currents round the rock. Ships using the strait preferred to wait until slack tide.</p><br>
<p>Its top was removed by a planned explosion on 5 April 1958. This is a National Historic Event in Canada. The Ripple Rock explosion was seen throughout Canada, live on CBC Television. It was one of the first live coast-to-coast television broadcasts of an event in Canada.</p><br>
<p>It was so named in 1860 by Captain Richards, RN, because its summits were about at sea level and made a prominent standing wave in the fast tidal current of the strait.</p><br>
<h2>Background</h2><br>
<p>The first known large ship to fall prey to Ripple Rock was the sidewheel steamer Saranac in 1875, as it was heading north to Alaska. At least 20 large and 100 smaller vessels were badly damaged or sunk between then and 1958. At least 110 people drowned in these accidents.</p><br>
<h2>Planning</h2><br>
<p>In the 1860s a plan was started to link Vancouver Island to the mainland at Bute Inlet, using Ripple Rock to support the bridge. This plan continued through the years, and caused political opposition to destroying Ripple Rock, until it was decided to destroy the rock to improve safety for mariners.</p><br>
<p>As early as 1931, a marine commission recommended removing Ripple Rock, but it was not until 1942 that the government authorized attempts to remove it.</p><br>
<p>The first attempts at planting explosive charges on Ripple Rock were made with floating drilling barges with the goal of blasting the rock into pieces. The first, in 1943, was secured with six 3.8 cm steel cables attached to anchors that altogether weighed 998 metric tons. This approach was abandoned when one cable broke on average every 48 hours. Another attempt in 1945, involving two large overhead steel lines was similarly abandoned after only 93 (out of 1,500 planned) controlled explosions were successful.</p><br>
<p>In 1953, the National Research Council of Canada commissioned a feasibility study on the idea of planting a large explosive charge underneath the peaks by drilling vertical and horizontal shafts from Maud Island in the sound. Based on the study, this approach was recommended. Dolmage and Mason Consulting Engineers were retained to plan the project, and three firms, Northern Construction Company, J.W. Stewart Limited and Boyles Brothers Drilling Company, were granted the contract, which cost in excess of 3 million Canadian dollars.</p><br>
<p>Although not planned as a test for nuclear weapons purposes, this large underground explosion at Ripple Rock was of interest to nuclear weapons scientists at the United Kingdom&#39;s Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston, which sent a delegation to Canada and set up various monitoring instruments to record data from the explosion. Little more is known of their objectives, although there are detailed accounts in two declassified documents in the National Archives in London.</p><br>
<h2>Explosion</h2><br>
<p>Between November 1955 and April 1958, a three-shift operation involving an average of 75 men worked to build 500 ft of vertical shaft from Maud Island, 2,370 ft of horizontal shaft to the base of Ripple Rock, and two main vertical shafts up into the twin peaks, from which "coyote" shafts were drilled for the explosives. The contract was awarded to two firms for $2,639,000. At the time of the contract it was estimated the tunnels and shafts would not be completed until either 1957 or 1958. 1,270 metric tons of Nitramex 2H explosive was placed in these shafts, estimated at ten times the amount needed for a similar explosion above water.</p><br>
<p>The explosion took place at 9:31:02 am on 5 April 1958. 635,000 metric tons of rock and water were displaced by the explosion, spewing debris at least 300 metres in the air which fell on land on either side of the narrows. The blast increased the clearing at low tide to about 14 metres (45 feet). After this, its two peaks were 13.7 m (45 ft) and 15.2 m (50 ft) underwater.</p><br>
<p>The Royal Canadian Mounted Police had cleared the area of people within 3 miles of the explosion, and the engineers and TV crew that witnessed the explosion were housed in a bunker.</p><br>
<p>The explosion was noted as one of the largest non-nuclear planned explosions on record, though Soviet authorities reported a larger explosion in the Ural Mountains to carve a new channel for the Kolonga River and in China to open a copper mine.</p><br>
<h2>Cultural references</h2><br>
<p>Vancouver based punk rock band the Evaporators&#39; 2004 album was named after Ripple Rock and includes a song that details its history and destruction.</p><br>
<p>The first song recorded about the blasting of Ripple Rock was named "Ripple Rock" and was recorded by Canadian folk and country singer Stu Davis.</p><br>
<p>In 2008 Campbell River celebrated the 50th anniversary of the blast with a commemorative blast done by a Vancouver special effects company. It took place at 9:31:02 AM, on 5 April 2008.</p><br>
<p>The Styx Valley is a valley located adjacent to the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Site on the island of Tasmania, Australia. The Styx River is the main drainage system of the valley that lies about 100 km northwest of Hobart, with the nearest town being Maydena.</p><br>
<h2>Location and features</h2><br>
<p>Temperate wet eucalypt forests in the region are home to the world&#39;s tallest flowering plants, Eucalyptus regnans. Rainforest gullies are carpeted in mosses and lichens and shaded by the tree ferns Dicksonia antarctica, known locally as Man-ferns, and other rainforest tree species including Southern Sassafras (Atherosperma moschatum), Myrtle Beech (Nothofagus cunninghamii) and Celery-top pine (Phyllocladus aspleniifolius).</p><br>
<p>In 2002, Australia&#39;s most massive tree, nicknamed El Grande, was discovered. It died in an autumn burn in 2003.</p><br>
<p>The valley has been the site of an ongoing conflict between environmentalists, who have proposed the protection of the site as a national park, and supporters of the logging industry. One of the environmentalists&#39; arguments, as well as the environmental benefits, was that a tourism-based economy would be more beneficial for the local economy than logging the area.</p><br>
<p>Community blockades including tree sits have been supported by Greenpeace and the Tasmanian Wilderness Society. Gandalf&#39;s Staff, an 85 m tall eucalypt, holds the world record for supporting the highest tree sit platform. The campaign was successful in gaining protection for the proposed clearfell coupe containing some of the tallest trees, and protection was proposed by the Latham opposition in 2004 for an area of the northern Styx Valley containing high conservation value old growth forest.</p><br>
<p>Lake Murray is a reservoir in the USA state of South Carolina. It is approximately 50,000 acre in size, and has roughly 500 mi of shoreline. It was impounded in the late 1920s to provide hydroelectric power to the state of South Carolina. Lake Murray is fed by the Saluda River, which flows from upstate South Carolina near the North Carolina state line. The Saluda Dam  was an engineering feat at the time of its construction. The dam, using the native red clay soil and bedrock, was the largest earthen dam in the world when it was completed in 1930. Lake Murray itself is named after the projects chief engineer, William S. Murray. The Saluda Dam is approximately 1.5 mi long and 220 ft high. Lake Murray is 41 mi long, and 14 mi wide at its widest point. At the time when the lake was finished, it was the worlds largest man-made reservoir.</p><br>
<p>In addition to serving as a source of hydroelectric power for the region, the lake has become a recreational attraction, with fishing and boating being popular activities. Also, Dreher Island State Recreation Area, located in the Western part of the lake, provides multiple activities—all focused on the lake.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<h3>Early Settlement</h3><br>
<p>The Saluda River was named after the Saluda Indian tribe, which lived along the banks of the river. For reasons unclear, the Saluda tribe migrated to Pennsylvania beginning in the early 18th century and were replaced by Cherokee from the north.</p><br>
<p>In 1755, the Cherokee signed a peace treaty with the British and the Cherokee withdrew from the area, leaving much of the land for open settlement. The Dutch Fork was the most densely settled, becoming home to 483 settler families by 1760. It has been estimated that by the year 1765 there were about 8000 Dutch-Germans and German-Swiss and an additional 1000 Moravians of German origin who had come to the province of South Carolina. A total of 9000 Germans was the number or 8.4% of population in 1765.</p><br>
<p>Because of this common nationality and language, the Dutch Fork community remained very cohesive and somewhat isolated through the years. Today, the surnames of area reflect this: Sligh, Bickley, Cannon, Drafts, Lindler, Amick, Corley, Shealy, Sease, Bouknight, Bowers, Rikard, Kinard, Koon, Summer, Wise, Dreher, Derrick, Dominic, Geiger, Epting, Frick, Huffstetler, McCartha, Wessinger, etc. Many of these family groups live on land that is under the original land grant from the King of England still today.</p><br>
<p>During the American Revolution, the Dutch Fork area was mostly patriot, unlike the surrounding regions that held large groups of English settlers. The only major engagement of the Revolution that was fought in the vicinity occurred in the nearby town of Ninety-Six, located up the Saluda River. It was the first land battle south of New England in the war.</p><br>
<p>The Saluda River was a strategic boundary, and since there was no bridge on the river at that time, the ferries near the Dutch Fork area were vital to the movement of troops and material westward toward the frontier. The most important of these ferries were Wyses Ferry and Kimpsons Ferry.</p><br>
<p>During the war, Hessian mercenaries came to South Carolina to fight for the British. Many of them had been pressed into the service and brought to the Colonies against their will, and therefore many deserted the army and found shelter in Dutch-German settlements such as the Dutch Fork. Today, many locals know of specific ancestors that were brought to fight the young United States and became citizens.</p><br>
<p>By 1928, about 5,000 people were living in the Saluda River valley. The community included 3 churches, 6 schools, and 193 graveyards.</p><br>
<h3>Hydroelectric Power</h3><br>
<p>There had been interest in water power generation on the Saluda River for more than a hundred years. As the demand for electricity in the developing Southern United States increased, it became apparent that harnessing the flow of large rivers such as the Saluda would be needed.</p><br>
<p>In 1904, Lexington Water Power Company was incorporated by G.A. Guignard of Columbia, South Carolina. The company acquired the flowage rights on the Saluda River from Dreher Shoals to 20 mi upstream. Originally, two dams were considered to be built, one at Dreher Shoals, which was approximately 10 mi west of Columbia, and the other at Bear Creek, five miles (8 km) upstream. However, in 1907 the company sold the lands necessary for construction of the lower dam at Dreher Shoals to James W. Jackson, of Augusta, Georgia and W. T. Van Brunt of New York.</p><br>
<p>Between 1908 and 1911, ownership of the Dreher Shoals property shifted several times but it was eventually purchased by the Richland Public Service Company, a subsidiary of Columbia Railway, Gas & Electric Company.</p><br>
<p>Since 1916, a man named Thomas Clay Williams had been proposing the development of hydroelectric power on the Saluda, Santee and Cooper rivers in South Carolina, but his propositions did not generate much serious interest. T. C. Williams was not an engineer, and his belief that massive power could be generated from the swamps and coastal plains of the state did not meet much enthusiasm with the leading engineers of South Carolina. It was not until the plans were brought before an engineer from New York, William Spencer Murray, that an engineer truly realized Williams&#39; dream and its potential.</p><br>
<p>William S. Murray was an engineer with much experience in electric power systems and generation. In 1920, Congress authorized Murray to head a study undertaken by the United States Geological Survey for the establishment of a large-scale electric power grid in the industrial northeast. He also had been the chief engineer on the project to electrify the New Haven Railroad out of New York City.</p><br>
<p>Once Williams came to Murray to make his proposal in 1923, Murray and his partner, Henry Flood, Jr., pored over topographic maps of the region and worked on estimates. It looked as if they might be able to generate enormous power at very low cost. It was said that here, as Murray looked over a topographic map of the Saluda River Valley, his eyes glanced at the 360 ft contour line. He followed the line as it meandered through the valley and noticed that the contour did not touch a railroad, and its highest elevation was never less than 40 feet (12 m) below the divide separating the Saluda Valley from the neighboring Broad River Valley. After winding around the valley of the Saluda for nearly 300 miles (500 km), about 10 miles (15 km) west of Columbia its position the north side of the valley approached within 8,000 feet (2.4 km) of its position on the south side. Murray realized that a dam across such an expanse would be ideal for power development. He visited South Carolina to investigate.</p><br>
<p>While in South Carolina conducting his survey, Murray envisioned a system much larger than Williams&#39; plan for one dam on the Santee River. Murray envisioned a system of three dams, one at the site on the Saluda, which, in addition to power generation, would keep a constant flow of water into the Santee where another dam would bring the water of that river together with the Cooper River on a vast diversion dam that fed the water into a power canal with a third dam and power house. The dimensions of the project quickly overshadowed the 60,000 horsepower (40 MW) system that Williams envisioned and grew to over 400,000 horsepower (300 MW).</p><br>
<h4>Securing the land</h4><br>
<p>On July 8, 1927, the Federal Power Commission granted a license to Lexington Water Power Company for construction of a dam and powerhouse at Dreher Shoals. Immediately, the company went to work on securing the land needed for construction of the lake and dam. The reservoir and its protective margins covered an area of about 65,000 acres (260 km²) and to secure this, it was necessary to purchase a total of approximately 100,000 acres (400 km²) of which approximately 75% was woodland.</p><br>
<p>To secure the land necessary for the construction, 1,100 parcels of land needed to be purchased, on which approximately 5,000 people lived. The work of acquiring land was made more difficult because many properties had passed from fathers to sons with no legal transfer, with certain lands conveyed under crown grants from King James II of England, and other tracts were heir properties or had no written records.</p><br>
<p>The work of securing these lands was entrusted to T. C. Williams and he carried it through to a successful conclusion. Not only did he acquire the lands necessary, he made arrangements for the removal of three churches, six schools, and 193 graveyards containing 2,323 graves. In general, the landowners and local officials showed a positive spirit of cooperation with Williams and a large number of landowners took up lands adjacent to, or in the vicinity of the project, and continued farming or other pursuits in the same general neighborhood, so that their removal from the valley was not a loss to the community. Presumably, though, the movement was destructive to some smaller rural micro-communities in the lake bottom.</p><br>
<h4>Clearing the way</h4><br>
<p>The work of clearing the site for the project was started in April 1927. Clearing of the woodland up to the 360 ft elevation line, which would later become the high-water mark, was completed in the summer of 1928, when 2,000 men were employed and 37 saw mills were operating. Approximately 100 million board feet (240,000 m³) of lumber was manufactured. Practically all of the lumber required for construction of the dam was supplied from the clearing operation.</p><br>
<p>With the start of the work on the dam, the necessary field office and camp buildings were built near the site. A village of nine dwellings, a community house, and church were built half a mile (800 m) away for operators. Dotted throughout the area were the camp sites of the contractors. The Arundel Corporation camps accommodated from 1,500 to 1,800 workmen at different times. The Barstow & Company camps provided quarters for 1,000 to 1,500 men. Smaller camps of subcontractors housed about 500.</p><br>
<p>One of the first operations was to build a railroad spur three miles (5 km) long connecting with the Columbia, Newberry & Laurens Railroad at Irmo. Grading of this transportation link was begun September 12, 1927 and the line was in operation November 25. Prior to the completion of the railroad, construction material and equipment were hauled to the site by truck.</p><br>
<h3>1940s</h3><br>
<p>Throughout the 1940s, a number of B-25 Mitchell bombers (flying out of nearby Columbia) crashed into Lake Murray during training exercises for World War II. A few were able to be recovered, but three remained until September 2005, when a B-25C Mitchell bomber that crashed in 1943 was raised from the depths of the lake. Dr. Bob Seigler who spearheaded the project, John Hodge and Dr. Bill Vartorella, formed the Lake Murray B-25 Rescue Project to salvage the aircraft from the bottom of Lake Murray. After recovery the remains of the aircraft were moved to the Southern Museum of Flight in Birmingham, Alabama for conservation and museum display. A video crew, including maritime video experts Nautilus Productions Rick Allen (2nd camera & underwater camera) and Ric Hase (sound), documented the recovery for the Mega Movers series on the History Channel.</p><br>
<p>Khopyor  is a river in European Russia, the biggest left tributary of the Don River. It is 979 km long, with a watershed of 61,100 km&sup2;. The mouth width is 300 m. The Khopyor is navigable up to 323 km from the mouth. The maximum discharge is 3,720 m3/s; the average discharge is 150 m3/s, and the minimum discharge is 45 m3/s.</p><br>
<p>Fish in the river include bream, zander, common roach, rudd, European chub, ide, bleak, catfish, pike, perch, asp and burbot.</p><br>
<h2>Towns</h2><br>
<p>Towns on the Khopyor River in orographic sequence (from source to mouth) are:</p><br>
<p>*Balashov,</p><br>
<p>*Borisoglebsk</p><br>
<p>*Uryupinsk</p><br>
<p>*Novokhopyorsk</p><br>
<p>*Serafimovich.</p><br>
<p>Downstream from Borisoglebsk, is the Khopyor Nature Reserve, populated with protected beavers, wisents and Russian desman. It also has various protected flora including Iris tenuifloia.</p><br>
<h2>Cultural associations</h2><br>
<p>In 1834, Mikhail Zagoskin published a collection of ghost stories entitled An Evening on the Khoper River.</p><br>
<p>According to legend, an oldman Hopper lived in these places of Penza Oblast. One day he went by steppe and saw 12 springs. The old man took a shovel and assembled all the springs in one big stream. On this stream oldman Hopper built a mill to grind grain for the peasants from nearby villages. Later the river was given the name of its creator.</p><br>
<p>The river gave its name to the Khoper-Invest company, infamous for its pyramid scheme fraud.</p><br>
<p>Vaca Key is an island in the middle Florida Keys, located entirely within the borders of the city of Marathon, Florida. It is often incorrectly identified as "Marathon Key".</p><br>
<h2>Geography</h2><br>
<p>Vaca Key is located in between Fat Deer Key and Knight&#39;s Key. Vaca Key was also connected via bridge to Boot Key until the city of Marathon neglected the bridge so long it had to be torn down causing hardships to the business on Boot Key. Vaca Key comprises most of the north shore of Boot Key Harbor.</p><br>
<h2>Nomenclature</h2><br>
<p>Various theories as to the origin of the name exist. The most likely example is that the island was named after Alavar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, who wrote a detailed account of the 16th-century exploration of Florida. Other theories revolve around the word vaca, meaning "cattle" in Spanish. The 1957 book The Florida Keys indicates that the island&#39;s name comes from wild cattle that used to live on the island. Evidence of these cattle has never been found. The name may also refer to manatees, "sea cows" that thrived in the area prior to the 1950s.</p><br>
<p>Because it lies completely within the borders of Marathon, the island is often incorrectly referred to as "Marathon Key".</p><br>
<h2>Climate</h2><br>
<p>Vaca Key is located at 24.718N, 81.069W, geographically in the subtropics, but with a completely tropical climate. Because of the proximity of the Gulf Stream to the southeast, and the tempering effects of the Gulf of Mexico to the west and north, Vaca Key has a notably mild, tropical-maritime climate, (Köppen climate classification Aw, similar to the Caribbean islands). Cold fronts are strongly modified by the warm water as they move in from the north in winter. The average low and high temperatures in January are 58 °F and 77 °F.</p><br>
<p>In the summer, temperatures are somewhat higher than in Key West, due to the island&#39;s proximity to the shallower waters of Florida Bay, which are heated more easily than the deeper waters of the Florida Strait, south of Key West. The season is characterized by hot, humid conditions and sharp, sudden thunderstorms that often drop substantial amounts of rain on the island. Hurricanes are a common threat during the summer, and sometimes affect the island directly, as was the case with the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 and Hurricane Donna in 1960. The average low and high temperatures in August are 79 °F and 89 °F, with temperatures sometimes approaching the 100° mark.</p><br>
<h2>Transportation</h2><br>
<p>USA 1, also known as the Overseas Highway, crosses the key at approximately mile markers 47.5–53.5. Prior to the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, Vaca Key was a major rail stop along the Key West Extension of the Florida East Coast Railway. It was home to a turnaround wye and several machine and repair shops. During the Great Depression and the construction of the Overseas Highway, Vaca Key was home to Camp No. 10, a home for several hundred World War I veterans working on the project.</p><br>
<p>Vaca Key is accessible by water, primarily through Boot Key Harbor, which lies on the south side of the island. Due to the shallow waters of the harbor, deep-draft ships cannot be unloaded there. Between 1906 and 1912, Vaca Key functioned as a temporary deep-water port with the addition of the Knight&#39;s Key Trestle three miles to the west of the island. Built in order to provide a supply line for the growing Overseas Railroad, the trestle was dismantled and burnt when the railroad was completed.</p><br>
<p>During World War II, Vaca Key gained an airport. Originally intended to be a training field for pilots flying between Homestead and Miami, the airport was turned over to the county after the conclusion of the war.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Bacons Castle, also variously known as "Allens Brick House" or the "Arthur Allen House" is located in Surry County, Virginia, United States, and is the oldest documented brick dwelling in what is now the United States. Built in 1665, it is noted as an extremely rare example of Jacobean architecture in the New World.</p><br>
<p>The house became known as "Bacons Castle" because it was occupied as a fort or "castle" by the followers of Nathaniel Bacon during Bacons Rebellion in 1676. However, contrary to popular folklore, Bacon never lived at Bacon&#39;s Castle, nor is he even known to have visited it.</p><br>
<p>Today Bacons Castle is an historic house museum and historic site open for guest visitation. Bacons Castle is an official Preservation Virginia historic site and operates under its 501 (c)(3) not-for-profit status.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Soon after Surry County was formed in the Royal Colony of Virginia in 1652, Arthur Allen built a high style Jacobean brick house in 1665 near the James River, where he and his wife Alice (née Tucker) Allen lived. He was a wealthy merchant and a Justice of the Peace in Surry County. Allen died in 1669, but his son, Major Arthur Allen II, inherited the house and property. Major Allen was a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses.</p><br>
<p>About mid-September, 1676, a number of the rebel followers of frontiersman Nathaniel Bacon seized the brick house of Major Allen and fortified it. The garrison, commanded at various times by William Rookings, Arthur Long, Joseph Rogers and John Clements, retained control of the house for over three months while their cause declined. The death of Bacon in October left his forces under the leadership of Joseph Ingram, who proved to be unsuited to the command. Ingram dispersed his army in small garrisons, and as the demoralized troops began to plunder indiscriminately, the condition of the colony was soon deplorable.</p><br>
<p>Royal Governor Sir William Berkeley began to conquer the isolated posts one by one, some by force and some by persuasion. On December 29, a loyal force aboard the vessel Young Prince, captured an unidentified "fort" which many historians have identified as Bacon&#39;s Castle. After withstanding a brief siege early in January, 1677, the loyalists used the "fort" as a base of operations for the last engagements of the rebellion, which ended before the month was out.</p><br>
<p>The Allen familys brick home became known as "Bacons Castle" because it was occupied as a fort or "castle" by the followers of Nathaniel Bacon during Bacons Rebellion in 1676. However, contrary to popular folklore, Bacon never lived at Bacons Castle, nor is he even known to have visited it. Bacon was the proprietor of Curles Neck Plantation in Henrico County, about 30 miles upriver on the northern bank of the James River. Many historians believe the name "Bacons Castle" was not used until many years after Bacons Rebellion. In 1769, the Virginia Gazette newspaper in the capital city of Williamsburg used that name when it published several articles about Bacon&#39;s Rebellion.</p><br>
<p>During the Civil War, Private Sidney Lanier (2nd Battalion, Macon Volunteers) was stationed at nearby Burwells Bay from May 1863 to October 1864 with the Confederate signal corps. He later became one of the great poets of the South, his early poetry singing the beauty of the nights at Burwells Bay. He and his brother Clifford were devoted friends of the Hankins family, then owners of Bacons Castle, and the brothers often visited the estate when they were on duty at Burwells Bay. Virginia Hankins, or Ginna, as she was called, rejected Sidney Lanier&#39;s May 1867 proposal of marriage solely because of the obligation she felt towards her motherless younger brothers and sisters, but they remained lifelong friends.</p><br>
<p>Ginna&#39;s brother, James DeWitt Hankins, was a law student at the University of Virginia at the outbreak of the war. He was a member of the Jefferson Society, a literary society at the University. He was commissioned June 22, 1861 as first lieutenant of artillery, Fourth Regiment, Virginia Militia. Later, he was promoted to Captain of the Surry Light Artillery and served through Appomattox. Captain Hankins was killed by William Underwood in a duel on October 18, 1866 at Isle of Wight Courthouse over insults previously exchanged between the two men while drinking in a tavern. The tragedy created intense excitement throughout the Virginia Tidewater where the families of both parties were prominent and well known, and started a long running feud between the Hankins and Underwood families. Despite the fact that dueling had been outlawed in Virginia in 1810 following the famous duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, and the fact that the so-called "duel" was essentially a shootout, Underwood pleaded not guilty at his murder trial on May 16, 1867. On May 30, the jury unanimously voted to acquit.</p><br>
<p>At the request of Virginia Hankins, Sidney Lanier wrote "In Memoriam" for her brother who had been his friend.</p><br>
<p>Like other James River Plantations, Bacons Castle faced the problems of loss of manpower due to the emancipation of slaves, and insurmountable debt following the Civil War. Financially strapped, Ginnas Father John Hankins had mortgaged the property prior to his death in 1870. Unable to raise money to pay the mortgage, Virginia Hankins sold the 1,200 acre estate in 1872 to the mortgage holder to pay off the debt and provide for her brothers and sisters education. The family moved to Richmond where she became a schoolteacher, learned in Latin, French, and German. She also wrote poetry and an unpublished novel. She never married. She died December 24, 1888 and is buried in Hollywood Cemetery.</p><br>
<p>William Allen Warren, purchased the estate in 1880 and sold it to his son Charles Allen Warren in 1909. When Charles died in 1931 the estate passed through inheritance to his son Walker Pegram Warren who had been born in the mansion. Walker Warren and his wife used Bacon&#39;s Castle as a second home until their deaths in an automobile accident in 1973. The Warrens had no children and, the mansion and outbuildings and 40 acres of the plantation were acquired from their estate by the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities. The remaining 1,130 acres of the plantation were acquired by Virginia State Senator Garland Gray and later passed through inheritance to his son Elmon T. Gray and remain devoted to agriculture.</p><br>
<h2>Preservation and current operations</h2><br>
<p>Bacons Castle was acquired by Preservation Virginia (formerly known as the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities) in the 1970s and restored. Preservation activities continue while guests visit the Site. Bacons Castle now operates as a house museum and historic site with 40-acres of outbuildings and dependencies including barns, slave and tenant quarters, smokehouses, and a rare example of a 17th-century English formal garden. Visitors may self-tour the grounds, outbuildings and gardens throughout the year. Between March and November guests may tour the Castle and purchase merchandise in its gift shop on Fridays and Saturdays between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. and Sundays between 12 and 4 p.m. Group tours are available with advance reservations.</p><br>
<p>In 2015 the Virginia Outdoors Foundation received a $257,996 grant from the Virginia Land Conservation Foundation to help the group purchase a conservation easement on 1,260 acres of privately owned farmland surrounding Bacon&#39;s Castle. The easement ensures the land will be permanently protected from residential and commercial development.</p><br>
<h2>Architecture</h2><br>
<p>Bacon&#39;s Castle is a rare example of American Jacobean architecture and the only surviving "high-style" house from the 17th century. It is one of only three surviving Jacobean great houses west of the Atlantic — the other two are in Barbados. They are Drax Hall Estate and the Great House at St. Nicholas Abbey Plantation. Notable architectural features include the triple-stacked chimneys, shaped Flemish gables, and carved compass roses decorating the cross beams in many of the public rooms. The house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960.</p><br>
<p>Between the mid to late-nineteenth century, Bacon&#39;s Castle underwent several modifications. An original one story service wing was replaced by a taller Greek Revival wing. Around this time, the entrance was moved from the center of the main block to the hyphen between the original house and addition, and diamond-pane casement windows were exchanged for double-hung sash windows. Moving the door left a scar in the location of the original pedimented surround. All of these changes were maintained in the restoration.</p><br>
<p>The Gunnamatta Bay is a small bay in southern Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.</p><br>
<p>Gunnamatta Bay is located off the Port Hacking estuary, in the Sutherland Shire. The foreshore is a natural boundary for the suburbs of Cronulla to the east, Woolooware to the north and Burraneer to the west.</p><br>
<h2>Transport</h2><br>
<p>Cronulla and National Park Ferry Cruises operate a ferry service from the wharf on Gunnamatta Bay, which provides a link between Cronulla and Bundeena across Port Hacking, on the edge of the Royal National Park.</p><br>
<h2>Parks</h2><br>
<p>Gunnamatta Park and Darook Park are located on its eastern foreshore. Tonkin Oval on the northern foreshore features a large cricket oval and is also used for baseball. Cronulla Public School is located nearby.</p><br>
<p>Gunnamatta park holds a valuable remnant of bushland canopy and a more limited but equally valuable understorey remnant. An unusual but natural occurrence of Rough-Barked Apple-Gums (Angophora floribunda) grow in the park and are usually typical of the nearby Wianamatta Shale soil as opposed the Hawkesbury Sandstone on the site; this tree is virtually extinct in the Sutherland shire due to a complete lack of comprehensive reserves on shale soils, though this tree is still relatively common on the Cumberland Plain in western Sydney and elsewhere in Australia Earth.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Matthew Flinders and George Bass explored and mapped the coastline and Port Hacking estuary in 1796 and the southernmost point of Cronulla is named Bass and Flinders Point, in their honour. Thomas Holt (1811–88) owned most of the land that stretched from Sutherland to Cronulla in the 1860s.</p><br>
<p>The area around the bay was subdivided in 1895 and land was offered for sale at 10 pounds per acre. In 1899, the government named the area Gunnamatta, which means sandy hills. On 26 February 1908 it was officially changed to Cronulla and Gunnamatta was used for the name of the bay, on the western side.</p><br>
<p>Cronulla is derived from kurranulla, meaning ‘‘place of the pink seashells’’ in the dialect of the area&#39;s Aboriginal inhabitants, the Dharawal people. The beaches were named by Surveyor Robert Dixon who surveyed here in 1827-28 and by 1840, the main beach was still known as Karranulla.</p><br>
<p>Gunnamatta Pavilion.JPGGunnamatta Pavilion</p><br>
<p>Gunnamatta Park.JPGGunnamatta Park</p><br>
<p>Tonkin Oval Cronulla.JPGTonkin Oval, Cronulla</p><br>
<p>Cronulla Burraneer 2.JPGGunnamatta Bay, view from Burraneer</p><br>
<p>Gunnamatta Pavilion 2.JPGGunnamatta Pavilion</p><br>
<p>Devilbend Natural Features Reserve is a 1,005 ha park on the Mornington Peninsula 55 km south-east of Melbourne, Australia, between Hastings and Mount Martha in the traditional country of the Bunurong people. It contains two decommissioned water-supply reservoirs, Devilbend and Bittern, which were the original reason the land now in the park was not developed and was protected from general public access.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>The smaller Bittern Reservoir, with a capacity of 573 ML, was built in the 1930s and Devilbend Reservoir, with a capacity of 14,600 ML, in the 1960s, being opened in 1965. The Devilbend Reservoir is the largest freshwater body in the Shire of Mornington Peninsula. The two reservoirs provided backup drinking water to the Peninsula until they were made redundant in December 2000 by the completion of a water pipeline between the Cardinia Reservoir and Pearcedale. In September 2006, most of the Devilbend reserve land was transferred to the Crown with the Devilbend Natural Features Reserve being gazetted on 8 March 2007.</p><br>
<h2>Environment</h2><br>
<p>Much of the Mornington Peninsula&#39;s native bushland has been cleared, and it is estimated that less than 5% of the original habitat remains. Devilbend is one of just a few sites on the Peninsula containing significant areas of remnant native vegetation. Over 200 species of indigenous plants have been recorded in and around the reserve, including trees, shrubs, ground plants, aquatics, orchids and their associated communities. Other sizeable fragments of bushland remaining on the Peninsula are at Point Nepean (333 ha), Green’s Bush (1100 ha) and HMAS Cerberus (1700 ha).</p><br>
<p>Past restrictions on public access to the Devilbend reserve have created favourable conditions for wildlife, as shown by large numbers of waterbirds and frogs recorded there. The 243 ha Devilbend Reservoir has been identified by BirdLife International as an Important Bird Area (IBA) because it supports, seasonally, over 1% of the global population of the near-threatened blue-billed duck. The reserve also contains the only nesting site of the white-bellied sea eagle on the Mornington Peninsula. The growling grass frog and dwarf galaxias have been recorded in the reserve.</p><br>
<p>The Samana Range is a mountain ridge in the Hangu District of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa of Pakistan, commanding the southern boundary of Tirah. The ridge lies between the Khanki Valley on the north and the Miranzai Valley on the south, and extends for some 30 m. west from Hangu to the Samana Suk. It is some 6000 to 7000 ft. high.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Beyond the Samana Suk lies the pass, known as the Chagru Kotal, across which the Tirah Campaign marched in 1897. On the opposite hill on the other side of this road is the famous position of Dargai. After the Miranzai Expedition of 1891 this range was occupied by British troops and eleven posts were established along its crest, the two chief posts being Fort Lockhart and Fort Gulistan. In 1897 all the forts on the Samana were attacked by the Orakzais, this is when the Battle of Saragarhi took place and this and the Afridi attack on the Khyber Pass were the two chief causes of the Tirah Expedition. When Lord Curzon reorganized the frontier in 1900, British garrisons were withdrawn from the Samana forts, which were then held by a corps of tribal police 450 strong, called the Samana Rifles.</p><br>
<p>Lake Murray is a reservoir in San Diego, California, operated by the City of San Diegos Public Utilities Department. It is located within Mission Trails Regional Park. When full, the reservoir covers 171.1 acre, has a maximum water depth of 95 ft, and a shoreline of 3.2 mi. The asphalt-paved service road lining roughly two-thirds of the lakes perimeter is a popular recreation site for the Navajo community. It lies south of Cowles Mountain and is an important reporting point for aircraft inbound to land at Montgomery Field Airport .</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>The reservoir was formed in 1894 with the construction of an earthen dam, and was known as La Mesa Reservoir. The dam and lake were renamed in 1924 after James A. Murray, one of Fletcher&#39;s investors in the water company. Fletcher sold the Cuyamaca Water Company, including Lake Murray, to the La Mesa, Lemon Grove and Spring Valley Irrigation District in 1926. The irrigation district then sold the lake to the city of San Diego in 1932.</p><br>
<h2>Ecology</h2><br>
<p>At least 149 species of birds have been observed and recorded at Lake Murray. Among other species, the lake supports flocks of the endangered tricolored blackbird. The reservoir also has Florida-strain largemouth bass, bluegill, channel catfish, black crappie, and trout (stocked November–May).</p><br>
<h2>Recreational usage</h2><br>
<p>Kayaking and catch-and-release fishing are both allowed on the reservoir. Birdwatchers enjoy visiting Lake Murray where ducks, geese, and herons abound. At least 149 bird species have been observed and recorded here.</p><br>
<p>Lake Murray is open for shore fishing and private boats, kayaks, and float tubes seven days a week from 5:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. On days or times when the concession is closed, patrons can purchase permits from the iron ranger boxes (envelope system) at the lake. The reservoir is stocked with Florida-strain largemouth bass, bluegill, channel catfish, black crappie, and trout. Minimum size limit for bass is 12 inches. Fish limits are five trout, five bass, five catfish, and twenty-five crappie and bluegill in aggregate, with no limit on other species. Anglers 16 years of age or older must have a California state fishing license. Fish catch information is weekly.</p><br>
<p>Shiloh Indian Mounds Site  is an archaeological site of the South Appalachian Mississippian culture . It is located beside the Tennessee River on the grounds of the Shiloh National Military Park, in Hardin County of southwestern Tennessee. A National Historic Landmark, it is one of the largest Woodland era sites in the southeastern United States.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>The site was inhabited starting around 1000 CE by a Late Woodland culture indigenous peoples, and then later by those of an Early Mississippian culture, until it was abandoned in approximately 1350 CE.</p><br>
<h3>Site</h3><br>
<p>The Shiloh Indian Mounds Site is situated on a high bluff, between two ravines, overlooking the Tennessee River at the edge of the Shiloh Plateau. The village was encircled by a wooden palisade, while the village itself consisted of more than 100 wattle and daub houses, over three dozen individual house mounds, and eight mounds. The southernmost mound served as a burial place for leaders and other important people. This mound was oval shaped with a round top. A map of the site can be found on the website.</p><br>
<h2>Agriculture and food</h2><br>
<p>The people of Shiloh Mounds were intensely involved in maize agriculture, as well as other food crops originating in the Americas, such as squash, sunflowers, goosefoot, marshelder, and maygrass. They also gathered wild foodstuffs such as acorns and hickory nuts. The hunting of whitetail deer, squirrel, rabbit, turkey, and raccoon as well as fishing were also important.</p><br>
<h2>Contemporaries</h2><br>
<p>In addition to the Shiloh site, the chiefdom included six smaller towns (each with one or two mounds such as the Swallow Bluff Island Mounds site), and isolated farmsteads scattered on higher ground in the river valley. Downstream on the river’s eastern bank, at the present location of Savannah, Tennessee, was another palisaded multiple mound settlement, although it is still unclear if the sites were occupied at the same time. Other neighbors had communities all along the Tennessee and Tombigbee Rivers, with sites in Alabama, Mississippi, and western Tennessee. Archaeologists think the presence of prestige goods from the Cahokia site in Illinois means the people of Shiloh Mounds were more closely tied politically to that area than to chiefdoms in the Middle Tennessee area.</p><br>
<h2>Archaeology</h2><br>
<p>Because the site has been included within the Shiloh National Military Park boundaries for so long it has never been disturbed by modern farming techniques. The remains of the original structures of wattle and daub are still visible as low rings or mounds. It is one of the few places in the eastern USA where such remains are still visible. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, and declared a National Historic Landmark in 1986.</p><br>
<h3>Excavations</h3><br>
<p>Cornelius Cadle, chairman of the Shiloh Park Commission, undertook the first archaeological excavations Shiloh 1899. He had a trench dug into the conical burial mound, Mound C. Amongst the discoveries was a large stone effigy pipe in the shape of a kneeling man. It has since become the site’s most famous artifact and is on display in the Tennessee River Museum in Savannah. The pipe is carved from a distinctive material, Missouri flint clay, and in the same style as other statuettes from the Cahokia site in Collinsville, Illinois.</p><br>
<p>In the winter of 1933-34 survey work was undertaken at the site and many 10 ft to 20 ft diameter house mounds were discovered. Many contained the remains of wattle and daub houses, which had been built with walls of vertical posts interlaced with branches and coated with a thick layer of clay. It was at this time that the encircling palisade was also discovered.</p><br>
<p>Malvern Hill stands on the north bank of the James River in Henrico County, Virginia, USA, about eighteen miles southeast of Richmond. On 1 July 1862, it was the scene of the Battle of Malvern Hill, one of the Seven Days Battles of the American Civil War.</p><br>
<p>The name referred primarily to the house built by Thomas Cocke in the 17th century, which remained in his family for many years. It was named after the Malvern Hills in England. The historic home was gutted by a fire in 1905 and all that now remains are end gables, including a fireplace. Nevertheless, the ruins are architecturally significant as the remains of one of few known cruciform design houses in Virginia. "The one surviving chimney is perhaps the finest example of seventeenth century diaper brickwork in the state."</p><br>
<p>The home site figured in three wars. Lafayette camped there twice in 1781 during the American Revolutionary War. Virginia militia also camped there in the War of 1812. However, it is best known as the site of bloody American Civil War Battle of Malvern Hill in 1862.</p><br>
<p>The Pfänder is a mountain in western Austria close to Lake Constance . The town of Bregenz lies at the foot of the mountain on the shores of the lake. With its views over the lake and the surrounding mountain peaks, the Pfänder is one of the most famous lookout points of the region.</p><br>
<p>With good visibility, the view from the summit reaches from the Allgäu and Lech valley Alps in the east, over to the Bregenz Forest, the steep mountain peaks of Arlberg region, Silvretta, and the Rätikon to the Swiss mountains and the foothills of the Black Forest in the west. Below is Lake Constance, surrounded by the Rhine valley and the Swabian hills.</p><br>
<p>The mountain is a popular tourist destination, with hiking paths, an alpine park and restaurants.</p><br>
<h2>Transport</h2><br>
<p>The Pfänder Tunnel takes the A14 motorway underneath the Pfänder, bypassing Bregenz. This is a now a dual tunnel, having opened in July 2013</p><br>
<p>The summit of the Pfänder can be reached by a cable car called the Pfänderbahn, with the base station in the town of Bregenz. The cable car covers a height difference of over 600m in around 6 minutes.</p><br>
<p>Fort Worden and accompanying Fort Worden State Park are located in Port Townsend, along Admiralty Inlet in Washington state. It is on 433 acres  that originally was a United States Army installation to protect Puget Sound. Fort Worden was named after USA Navy Rear Admiral John Lorimer Worden, commander of the USS Monitor during its famous battle during the American Civil War.</p><br>
<p>Constructed between 1898 and 1920, Fort Worden was the only post built according to the precepts of the Endicott Board on land that was already occupied by an older fortification, and it was one of the largest Endicott system forts to be built. It was also the only one within range of a potential (if unlikely) enemy fortification, a British military post on Vancouver Island in Canada. The fort was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Fort Worden was an active US Army base from 1902 to 1953. It was purchased by the State of Washington in 1957 to house a juvenile detention facility. In 1971, use was transferred to the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission and Fort Worden State Park was opened in 1973.</p><br>
<h3>Strategic location</h3><br>
<p>In the 1890s, Admiralty Inlet was considered strategic to the defense of Puget Sound in the that three forts -- Fort Worden, Fort Flagler, and Fort Casey -- were built at the entrance with their powerful artillery creating a "Triangle of Fire" to thwart any invasion attempt by sea. Fort Worden, on the Quimper Peninsula, at the extreme northeastern tip of the Olympic Peninsula, sits on a bluff near Port Townsend, anchoring the northwest side of the triangle. The three posts were designed to prevent a hostile fleet from reaching such targets as the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and the cities of Seattle, Tacoma and Everett.</p><br>
<p>The forts never fired a hostile shot and the guns were removed during World War I for use in Europe. Subsequently, Fort Worden was used for training a variety of military personnel and for other defense purposes.</p><br>
<h3>Construction</h3><br>
<p>Construction on Fort Worden began in 1897 and continued in one form or another until the fort was closed in 1953.</p><br>
<p>Designed as part of the massive modernization program of USA seacoast fortifications initiated by the Endicott Board, construction work on the initial fortifications above Point Wilson were delayed until July 1897. The property was privately owned and the government had to clear title to the land through condemnation proceedings. The Army Corps of Engineers took charge of building the construction dock, warehouses, and a tramway to haul concrete for the gun emplacements from the dock to the mixing plant. To meet construction needs, the Army laid a pipeline from Port Townsend and pumped water into large storage tanks inside the fort. The arrival of wet winter weather slowed progress on the batteries. It took 200 men almost three years to complete the excavation and concrete work for the gun emplacements.</p><br>
<p>In March 1900, the fort was ready for installation of the initial armaments. Sixteen artillery pieces, shipped from the armory at Columbus, Ohio, arrived from Tacoma by barge. A special tramway was constructed to haul the heavy artillery pieces from the dock area to top of the bluff. In March 1901 the guns were moved to their assigned positions and mounted in the batteries, ready for test firing.</p><br>
<p>Fort Worden was activated in 1902. The 126th Coast Artillery Company, consisting of 87 soldiers, commanded by Captain Manus McCloskey, was the first detachment assigned to Fort Worden. They arrived from Seattle on board the steamer SS Majestic on May 3, 1902, and were quartered in tents pending the completion of the barracks. Twenty-three permanent buildings were under construction at a cost of $59,450. A communication system, connecting the three forts by cable, was installed in 1903.</p><br>
<h3>Military use</h3><br>
<p>On September 4, 1904, the headquarters of the Harbor Defense Command of Puget Sound was transferred from Fort Flagler to Fort Worden along with the 6th Artillery Band. Once work on the main batteries and army post had been completed, more troops were assigned there. By the fall of 1905, Fort Worden was fully staffed with four Coast Artillery companies, and the harbor defense system, costing approximately $7.5 million, was considered complete and operational. The initial armaments consisted of six gun emplacements: Batteries Ash, Powell, Brannon, Quarles, Randol, and Vicars. Between 1905 and 1910, six additional gun emplacements were added: Batteries Tolles, Stoddard, Benson, Putnam, Walker, and Kinzie. When completed, Fort Worden had 41 artillery pieces, completing its part of the "Triangle of Fire": two 12-inch disappearing guns, two 12-inch barbette guns, two 10-inch disappearing guns, five 10-inch barbette guns, eight 6-inch disappearing guns, two 5-inch balanced pillar guns, four 3-inch pedestal guns, and sixteen 12-inch mortars.</p><br>
<p>During World War I, the complement at Fort Worden was greatly expanded as soldiers arrived for training prior to being sent to European battlefields. To keep up with the demand, construction of new barracks and buildings continued throughout the war. Thirty-six of the forts 41 artillery pieces were dismantled and shipped to European battlefields. After World War I, the forts staffing was reduced to 50 officers and 884 enlisted men. Aircraft and balloons began to claim an important role in Puget Sound&#39;s defensive strategy, diminishing the role of coastal artillery. In the 1920s, a balloon hangar was built at Fort Worden at a cost of $85,000. During this time, some of the batteries were modernized and made "bomb-proof."</p><br>
<p>During World War II, Fort Worden remained the headquarters of the Harbor Defense Command and it was jointly operated by the Army and Navy. The fort was home to the 14th Coast Artillery Regiment of the USA Army, the 248th Coast Artillery Regiment of the Washington National Guard, the 2nd Amphibious Engineers, and miscellaneous USA Navy personnel. The Army operated radar sites and coordinated Canadian and USA defense activities in the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound. The Navy, responsible for the detection and identification of all vessels entering and leaving Puget Sound, monitored new underwater sonar and sensing devices. Most of the gun emplacements were modified for anti-aircraft guns, which replaced the outdated coastal artillery pieces. Fort Worden personnel also manned batteries and fire control towers at the Cape George Military Reservation, six miles (10 km) southwest of Port Townsend on the Strait of Juan de Fuca at the entrance to Discovery Bay.</p><br>
<p>After World War II, the Coast Artillery units at Fort Worden were disbanded and the gun batteries were dismantled. It remained active as an administrative unit until June 30, 1953, when the Harbor Defense Command was deactivated and the fort officially closed, ending fifty-one years of military jurisdiction.</p><br>
<p>Following World War II, the 2nd Engineer Special Brigade was stationed at Fort Worden. At the outset of the Korean war, the 2nd Engineer Special brigade was among the first Army units ordered to Korea to reinforce the Far East Command. After the departure in the summer of 1950 of the 2nd Engineer Special Brigade for Korea, an Army Reserve unit, the 369th Engineer Boat and Shore Regiment (later redesignated the 369th Engineer Amphibious Support Regiment), was stationed at Fort Worden where the regiment trained engineer replacements. The 369th was a suborinate unit of the 409th Engineer Special Brigade. The regimental headquarters and the boat battalion were stationed at Fort Worden. The regiment&#39;s shore battalion was at Fort Flagler. The 369th Engineer Amphibious Support Regiment was demobilized in 1953.</p><br>
<p>On July 1, 1957, the State of Washington purchased Fort Worden for $127,533 for use as a diagnostic and treatment center for troubled youths.</p><br>
<h2>Batteries</h2><br>
<p>Coastal artillery batteries located at Fort Worden were:</p><br>
<p>Battery Brannan (1901–1943), located on Artillery Hill. It had two plotting rooms for eight 12-inch mortars, in 1906 command was split and removed one plotting room, in 1918 half the mortars were removed from each pit. It was named for Brevet Maj. General John Milton Brannan who served in the USA-Mexican War and Civil War</p><br>
<p>Battery Powell (1901–1943), located next to Battery Brannan. Also contained eight 12-inch mortars. Named after Major Powell who died on April 6, 1862 at the Battle of Shiloh.</p><br>
<p>Battery Ash (1900–1942), located on Artillery Hill. Contained two 12-inch barbette guns. It was named after Brevet Lt. Col Ash who died on May 8, 1864 at Todd&#39;s Tavern, Virginia</p><br>
<p>Battery Kinzie (1910–1944), located on Point Wilson, contained two 12-inch M1895 disappearing guns.</p><br>
<p>Battery Benson (1907–1943), located on Artillery Hill. It contained two 10 inch disappearing guns. It was named after Captain Benson who died on August 11, 1862 from wounds received in action. Battery Benson has a tunnel that runs to buildings (now in ruins) on the hill peak, two "Barrancas buildings" used for command and plotting, a barracks, a 2,000,000 USgal water reservoir, the switchboard, and signal station.</p><br>
<p>Battery Quarles (1900–1941), located on Artillery Hill. It contained three 10 inch barbette guns. It was named for Captain Quarles who died on August 30, 1847 at the Battle of Churubusco, Mexico</p><br>
<p>Battery Randol (1900–1918), located on Artillery Hill. It contained two 10 inch barbette guns. It was named for Brevet Brigadier General Randol a Civil War hero.</p><br>
<p>Battery Stoddard (1906–1917), located on the bluff facing Admiralty Inlet. Contained four 6 in guns.</p><br>
<p>Battery Tolles (1905–1943), located along the beach bluff below Artillery Hill. Contained four 6 in guns, two guns were removed in 1918.</p><br>
<p>Battery Tolles B (1937–1946)</p><br>
<p>Battery Vicars (1902–1917), located on Point Wilson. Contained two 5 in guns.</p><br>
<p>Battery Putnam (1907–1945), located on the bluff facing Admiralty Inlet. Contained two 3 in guns.</p><br>
<p>Battery Walker (1907–1946), located on the bluff facing the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Contained two 3 in guns.</p><br>
<p>AMTB Battery Point Wilson (1943–1946), (2 fixed and 2 towed 90 mm guns) of which one gunblock is now in the surf.</p><br>
<h2>Fort Worden State Park</h2><br>
<p>The Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission acquired most of Fort Worden on September 30, 1971, when the state closed the juvenile treatment center. The 433 acre Fort Worden State Park was opened on August 18, 1973. Today the 2.1 miles (3.4 km) of sandy beaches and high bluffs attract residents from around the region to the multi-use recreation facility.</p><br>
<p>The extensive system of large, abandoned bunkers are available for exploration. The state park includes the Puget Sound Coast Artillery Museum, a balloon hangar that was used for airships, three 3-inch anti-aircraft gun emplacements, and several restored quarters on Officers&#39; Row. The Point Wilson Lighthouse is also located here.</p><br>
<p>The Commanding Officer&#39;s Quarters have been restored to reflect the early 20th century Victorian period, and are open in the summer for tours.</p><br>
<p>The independent publisher of poetry, Copper Canyon Press, located permanently at Fort Worden in 1974.</p><br>
<p>The park also is the home of the Port Townsend Marine Science Center, whose natural history museum, hands-on tidepool exhibits and educational programs promote understanding about coastal ecosystems.</p><br>
<p>The 1982 movie An Officer and a Gentleman was filmed at Fort Worden, as well as the 2002 film The Ring.</p><br>
<p>Goddard College&#39;s Port Townsend campus hosts several of its program residencies at Fort Worden.</p><br>
<p>One notable feature of the park is the underground Dan Harpole Cistern, originally built to hold water for fire-fighting, in the event that the fort was attacked and put to the torch. The cistern was drained in the 1950s when the Fort was closed, leaving an underground space more than 200 feet in diameter and 14 feet deep. This huge subterranean chamber has an acoustical reverberation time of around 45 seconds, and has attracted the interest of various musicians and recording artists, among them Wayne Horvitz, Pauline Oliveros, and Stuart Dempster. The Park management rents out the cistern for recording events, on a day-to-day basis.</p><br>
<p>As of 2014, the cistern has been closed to access.</p><br>
<h2>Military cemetery</h2><br>
<p>A small military cemetery, maintained by the Public Works Directorate at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, is located at the south side of the state park.</p><br>
<p>American Temperance University opened in 1893 in the planned town of Harriman, Tennessee, which was developed as a community with no alcoholic beverages permitted. In its second year of operation the institution enrolled 345 students from 20 states. However, it closed in 1908. Those who attended included two students who later became members of the USA House of Representatives, John Jennings, Jr. and James Willis Taylor.</p><br>
<p>The universitys main building, Temperance Hall, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It now houses Harriman city government offices. The universitys Bushrod W. James Hall of Domestic Science for Young Ladies, named for benefactor Bushrod Washington James, is now an inn; it is included in the Cornstalk Heights Historic District.</p><br>
<h2>Sources</h2><br>
<p>Furnas, J. C. The Life and Times of the Late Demon Rum. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1965.</p><br>
<p>The Boundary Ranges, also known in the singular and as the Alaska Boundary Range, are the largest and most northerly subrange of the Coast Mountains. They begin at the Nass River, near the southern end of the Alaska Panhandle in the Canadian province of British Columbia and run to the Kelsall River, near the Chilkoot Pass, beyond which are the Alsek Ranges of the Saint Elias Mountains, and northwards into the Yukon Territory flanking the west side of the Yukon River drainage as far as Champagne Pass, north of which being the Yukon Ranges. To their east are the Skeena Mountains and Stikine Plateau of the Interior Mountains complex that lies northwest of the Interior Plateau; the immediately adjoining subregion of the Stikine Plateau is the Tahltan Highland. To their northeast is the Tagish Highland, which is a subregion of the Yukon Plateau. Both highlands are considered in some descriptions as included in the Coast Mountains. The Alexander Archipelago lies offshore and is entirely within Alaska.</p><br>
<p>The Boundary Ranges include several large icefields, including the Juneau Icefield, between the Alaskan city of the same name and Atlin Lake in B.C. and the Stikine Icecap, which lies between the lower Stikine River and the Whiting River. Some of the highest mountains in the Boundary Ranges are: Mount Ratz, 3090 m (10138 ft), Chutine Peak, 2910 m (9547 ft), and Devils Thumb, 2766 m (9077 ft), all in the Stikine Icecap region; and Devils Paw, 2593 m (8507 ft), in the Juneau Icefield. (Other peaks in the Stikine Icecap are higher than 2600 m (8500 ft), but they have relatively low topographic prominence.)</p><br>
<p>Despite the height of Mount Ratz and its neighbours, most of the Boundary Ranges are considerably lower than the Pacific Ranges of the southern Coast Mountains. The larger icefields of the Boundary Ranges are at a much lower elevation than their southern counterparts in the Pacific Ranges because of the difference in latitude.</p><br>
<p>Physiographically, they are a section of the larger Pacific Border province, which in turn is part of the larger Pacific Mountain System physiographic division.</p><br>
<p>The granitic intrusions that form the Boundary Ranges are remnants of a Late Cretaceous volcanic arc system called the Coast Range Arc.</p><br>
<h2>Subranges</h2><br>
<p>Boundary Range</p><br>
<p>Cheja Range</p><br>
<p>Chechidla Range</p><br>
<p>Chutine Icefield</p><br>
<p>Adam Mountains</p><br>
<p>Ashington Range</p><br>
<p>Burniston Range</p><br>
<p>Dezadeash Range</p><br>
<p>Florence Range</p><br>
<p>Halleck Range</p><br>
<p>Juneau Icefield</p><br>
<p>Kahpo Mountains</p><br>
<p>Kakuhan Range</p><br>
<p>Lincoln Mountains</p><br>
<p>Longview Range</p><br>
<p>Peabody Mountains</p><br>
<p>Rousseau Range</p><br>
<p>Seward Mountains</p><br>
<p>Snowslide Range</p><br>
<p>Spectrum Range</p><br>
<p>Stikine Icecap</p><br>
<h2>Rivers</h2><br>
<p>Rivers draining or transiting the Boundary Ranges include the:</p><br>
<p>Chilkat River</p><br>
<p>Choquette River</p><br>
<p>Craig River</p><br>
<p>Iskut River</p><br>
<p>Kelsall River</p><br>
<p>Keta River</p><br>
<p>King Salmon Creek</p><br>
<p>Klehini River</p><br>
<p>Lava Fork</p><br>
<p>Nass River</p><br>
<p>Porcupine River</p><br>
<p>Salmon River</p><br>
<p>Skagway River</p><br>
<p>Stikine River</p><br>
<p>Taiya River</p><br>
<p>Taku River</p><br>
<p>Tulsequah River</p><br>
<p>Unuk River</p><br>
<p>Whiting River</p><br>
<p>Lewis Cass Building is a state government office in downtown Lansing, Michigan named for territorial governor Lewis Cass. It is Michigan&#39;s oldest standing office building, and served as the state office building until the completion of the first part of a new state government complex in 1953. The building is now a six-story U-shaped Classical Revival structure, a seventh story having been removed after a major fire in 1951.</p><br>
<p>The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places as "State Office Building" in 1984.</p><br>
<h2>Government Agencies</h2><br>
<p>State of Michigan government agencies located in Cass Building:</p><br>
<p>Department of Management and Budget http://michigan.gov/dmb</p><br>
<p>Department of Community Health http://michigan.gov/mdch</p><br>
<p>The Lewis Cass Building is getting a first-floor facelift as of early 2009.</p><br>
<p>Kivesjärvi is a medium-sized lake in Paltamo, Finland. Its average depth is four metres and the deepest point is sixteen metres deep. There is a village of the same name on the coast of the lake. The lake&#39;s area is 27 square kilometres. It is the 136th biggest lake in Finland. The lake has many islands and islets.</p><br>
<p>Kivesjärvi is a bifurcation lake, because there are two outflows: the original route is river Alanteenjoki to the lake Alanteenjärvi. In the 19th century the timber rafting workers needed a shorter route to the Oulujärvi. They made a new river named Varisjoki, and most of the outflow started to flow via it, although Kivesjärvi is still a bifurcation lake.</p><br>
<p>Curiously, the name Kivesjärvi literally means "testicle lake". Some say that the name derive from old giant-related folklore around the region, some say that the name originally related to the ancient word for gillnet weight, "kives", and only later became associated with the modern meaning of the word.</p><br>
<p>St Alouarn Islands are a group of islands and rocks south-east of Cape Leeuwin in Western Australia, approximately 11 km south of Augusta.</p><br>
<h2>Discovery</h2><br>
<p>In 1772 Louis de St Alouarn in the Le Gros Ventre was in the region as part of the expedition of Kerguelen, and subsequently the islands were named in 1792, after Captain de St Alouarn, by French navigator Antoine d&#39;Entrecasteaux.</p><br>
<h2>Location</h2><br>
<p>The Point Matthew lookout on the road between Augusta and Cape Leeuwin, that has the islands identified in a brass compass plate that also identifies distances.</p><br>
<h2>Wrecks</h2><br>
<p>There are a number of wrecks in the vicinity of Cape Leeuwin.</p><br>
<p>The best-known wreck near the islands was that of the Aberdeen White Star ship SS Pericles on an uncharted rock on 13 March 1910, within sight of the Cape Leeuwin lighthouse in daylight hours.</p><br>
<p>Whale watching boats leaving from Augusta or Barrack Point (Flinders Bay) tend not to venture into this group of islands and rocks, but travel around Flinders Bay to the east of the islands.</p><br>
<p>The islands are significant for their bird colonies - with Seal Island and St Alouarn Island being reserves for that purpose.</p><br>
<p>The named islands, in order of distance from mainland are:</p><br>
<h2>Named islands and rocks</h2><br>
<h3>Seal Island</h3><br>
<p>Seal Island (Augusta, Western Australia) - is a large flat brownish rock, 1.5 km south of Point Matthew.</p><br>
<h3>Saint Alouarn Island</h3><br>
<p>Saint Alouarn Island 34 24 15 115 11 30</p><br>
<h3>Flinders Island</h3><br>
<p>Flinders Islet (also Flinders Island) - 34 21 00 115 20 00</p><br>
<p>(also identified by some sources as Flinders Island</p><br>
<h3>Rocks</h3><br>
<p>Therer are a few named rocks in the group</p><br>
<p>Square Rock - 7.5 km south east of Point Matthew</p><br>
<p>South-West Breaker - approximately 9 km ssw of Point Matthew is the farthest named rock from the mainland.</p><br>
<p>Unnamed rocks run parallel to the line of named islands above, between Cape Leeuwin and South-West Breaker, with one exception - Spout Rock, west of Flinders Islet.</p><br>
<h2>Augusta Port</h2><br>
<p>In 2009, the gazettal of the Augusta Port Area delineated the port in reference to the northernmost point (at High water level) on Saint Alouarn Island (with truncated spelling), as well as Seal Island, and Point Matthew.</p><br>
<p>In 2013 - 2013, the Western Australian government, through the Royalties for Regions programme, constructed a new harbour outside of the Hardy Inlet area of the Blackwood River mouth.</p><br>
<p>The port is to the south, and within view of Flinders Bay settlement and boat ramp. It is located adjacent to the road that goes to Cape Leeuwin lighthouse.</p><br>
<p>Oceangoing vessels had previously anchored in Flinders Bay, or used the Flinders Bay jetty; however, its short-term operation between the 1890s and 1930s subsequently left the bay with no port facility.</p><br>
<p>Malapascua is a Philippine island situated in the Visayan Sea, 6.8 km across a shallow strait from the northernmost tip of Cebu Island. Administratively, it is part of the insular barangay of Logon, Daanbantayan, Cebu. Malapascua is a small island, only about 2.5 by, and has eight hamlets.</p><br>
<p>Malapascua became famous fairly recently, only in the early 1990s as a dive destination. Prior to this, the island was known for its wide white sand beach, known as Bounty Beach; it has also become known for its beautiful coral gardens, coral walls and excellent local dive spots, as well as further-out sites including Gato Island, Monad Shoal, and Kemod Shoal. Monad Shoal is an underwater plateau where thresher sharks and manta rays can regularly be sighted.</p><br>
<p>Most of the islanders derive their livelihood from tourism, while some still rely on subsistence fishing and farming.</p><br>
<p>Religiously, Malapascua Island or barangay Logon is believed to be the place where the Virgin de los Desamparados made a miracle sometime in 1890 when the island had only nine households of the Monteclar, Deogrades, Rosales, Gulfan, Rubio, Bohol and Bruces families. It was said to be a piece of wood that had never burnt. In 1907 the parish priest of Kandaya, now Daanbantayan town, Rev. Fr. Maga,</p><br>
<p>baptized it of its name upon the request of the local residents. The size of the image is not the original size and it is said to be growing until present. Devotees from different parts of the country and even abroad come during the feast days on May 11 and 12. The chapel was originally made of coconut palm and leaves but now it is made of steel and cement.</p><br>
<p>Similar to other islands, natives were dependent on fishing as a source of livelihood. Agricultural products such as corn and rice were supplied from neighboring islands, such as Cebu and Leyte. With the population increasing and fish stocks dwindling, tourism came to the rescue. Nowadays, the majority of islanders either directly or indirectly make a living out of tourism, which is developing rapidly. The growth of tourism has also increased local immigration to the island, thus the demand for housing. The lack of a pier for bigger boats - due to financial constraints - is keeping a brake on construction growth.</p><br>
<h2>Monad Shoal</h2><br>
<p>The number-one dive site of Malapascua is Monad Shoal, a natural cleaning station for fish located 7.8 km from the island (11&deg;18&prime;30&Prime;N latitude, 124&deg;11&prime;30&Prime;E longitude – 30–35 minutes boat ride). The shoal is a rather unremarkable 1.5 km long rock stump at the edge of a 200 m drop and has a flattish top at a depth of 20 to 24 m. The site is best known as the only place in the world where thresher sharks can be seen regularly at and just before sunrise. They use the seamount as a cleaning station for bluestreak and moon cleaner wrasse to remove ectoparasites such as gnathiids from their skin and clean their gills and mouths. The shoal also attracts other pelagic fish such as devil rays and eagle rays. Manta rays and hammerheads are seasonal. Unfortunately most of the coral reefs of the shoal have been damaged by destructive fishing methods, as has happened all over the Philippines, and elsewhere. In June 2016 a ship ran aground on the shoal, damaging three hectares of the protected area.</p><br>
<p>The Blackwood River is a major river and catchment in the South West of Western Australia.</p><br>
<h2>Course</h2><br>
<p>The river begins at the junction of Arthur River and Balgarup River near Quelarup and travels in a south westerly direction through the town of Bridgetown then through Nannup until it discharges into the Southern Ocean at Hardy Inlet near the town of Augusta.</p><br>
<p>Hardy Inlet has a number of islands – namely Molloy Island and Thomas Island. The mouth of the river has attracted interest in its various points of opening and closing over the last 100 years, Duke Head at the west side being a benchmark location for the shifting mouth.</p><br>
<p>The river has 41 tributaries including Dinninup Brook, Balingup Brook, St John Brook, Boyup Brook, Tweed River, Ti Tree Gully, Christmas Creek and Tanjannerup Creek.</p><br>
<h2>Catchment</h2><br>
<p>The river has a total catchment area of 28,100 km&sup2; stretching from Kukerin in the east to Hardy Inlet in the west,</p><br>
<p>Several major towns are found within the catchment including Katanning, Narrogin, Bridgetown and Nannup.</p><br>
<p>The upper or larger catchment area of the river is in agricultural areas, while the middle catchment area passes through forest areas, and the lower portion of the river passes into mixed forest, agricultural and residential lands. The river emerges into Flinders Bay at Augusta.</p><br>
<p>The majority of the basin, 78%, is devoted to Agriculture including ceral production and grazing. There are still many significant water resources including over 1,000 wetlands, as well as the river itself.</p><br>
<p>The basin is habitat for an estimated 8,000 species of flora including three threatened ecological communities. A total of 42 rare and priority vertebrate fauna species and 143 rare and priority flora species are found within the basin catchment area.</p><br>
<h2>Bridges</h2><br>
<p>Occur where the river passes through localities and towns, as well as isolated bridges at places like Alexander Bridge.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>It was discovered in 1827 by Captain James Stirling and named by Stirling after Vice-Admiral Sir Henry Blackwood, under whom he served as a Midshipman on in 1808–1909 during the Napoleonic Wars, in the North Sea and the Mediterranean.</p><br>
<p>Historically it was of considerable importance in the early days of the Swan River Colony, and more recently of importance in the ecology of the Augusta-Margaret River region due to conflicts in land use policy. The upper catchment contains Toolibin Lake, a nature reserve and Ramsar site.</p><br>
<p>The river is prone to occasional flooding. In 1945 it rose to the highest level recorded to that date, running 1.1 m over the Russell Street bridge in Nannup. The river flooded again in 1946 and 1947 closing roads but not causing any significant damage to towns along the river.</p><br>
<p>In 1949 Nannup received 174 mm of rain in a period of seven hours, causing flooding. A bridge over the Blackwood connecting the town to Busselton was swept away.</p><br>
<p>In 1982 after the remnants of a Tropical cyclone passed through the southwest, the town and surrounding areas were inundated by heavy rains. The Blackwood rose 11.6 m, submerging over 50 houses in Nannup.</p><br>
<p>Newton Upper Falls is a village situated on the east bank of the Charles River in the city of Newton, Massachusetts, in the United States.</p><br>
<p>The area borders Needham, Massachusetts to the south/southwest, Wellesley, Massachusetts to the west, the West Roxbury neighborhood of Boston to the extreme southeast, and the Newton villages of Waban, Newton Highlands and Newton Center to the north and east.</p><br>
<p>The village is served partially by Eliot "T" station, part of the Green Line "D" Branch of the MBTA, with rapid light rail service inbound into downtown Boston and outbound to Riverside. Major roads that serve the village are Route 128, and Route 9 (Boylston Street), which provides a direct, 6 mile commute into downtown Boston.</p><br>
<p>Newtons first mill on the Charles River was built in 1688 in Upper Falls. Over the next 150 years, the water power available at Upper Falls led to the villages steady growth as many more mills were built along that stretch of the river. By 1850 the village had 1300 inhabitants which was 25% of the entire population of Newton.</p><br>
<p>Newton Upper Falls is home to the Hemlock Gorge and Echo Bridge, a large aqueduct turned pedestrian walkway over the Charles River. It is said to be the only village that has retained its original name from when the area was founded in the 17th century. It has over 150 homes on the historic register despite its small area.</p><br>
<p>In 1909, a Roman Catholic church called Mary Immaculate of Lourdes opened in Upper Falls.</p><br>
<p>Sullivan Avenue, an unpaved private road in Newton Upper Falls is the last remaining portion of the ancient highway connecting Boston and Cambridge with Newton and points west in the 17th century (back then it was called Cambridge Village). Also on Sullivan Avenue is a famous pothole; not the kind you avoid with your car, but a geological anomaly where a boulder that was originally pushed down the cliff by a now extinct waterfall got caught and became round. The boulder spun around in its place carving a shaft over thousands of years. Since then half the shaft collapsed and now all that can be seen is half of a cylindrical shaft through the cliff at the corner of Sullivan and Elliot Streets.</p><br>
<p>A 60 acre area, including much of the area between Route 9 and Elliot Street, and east from the Charles River to Cottage Street and Hickory Cliff Road, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.</p><br>
<p>Matagi , sometimes written Matangi, is an island the Vanua Levu Group in northern Fiji, situated 16°44 South 179° West. It is one of three tiny volcanic islands grouped to the east of Thurston Point on the island of Taveuni, the others being Qamea and Laucala. The horseshoe-shaped islet of 97 hectares  lies 10 km east of Thurston Point. Inaccessible until recently, this privately owned island has been turned into an up-market resort. Apart from diving, activities include fishing, windsurfing, sailing, water-skiing, and snorkelling. There is a speedboat link between Matagi and Taveuni.</p><br>
<p>The beach forest and flooded volcanic caldera of the island contribute to its national significance as outlined in Fiji&#39;s Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>It is believed the Fiji Islands were first settled about 3,500 years ago. In 1643, Dutch Navigator Abel Tasman was the first European to discover Fiji’s Northern group of islands including Matagi Island. A whole century had passed before the next explorer came into contact with the “Cannibal Isles”, as Fiji was known then. During this period, conflict and warfare between Fiji’s indigenous tribes, and attempts by the nearby Tongan islanders to occupy the Eastern part of Fiji were rife. Early settlers at this time were a mixture of shipwrecked sailors, whalers, “Blackbirders”, missionaries and traders of mostly sandalwood, sea cucumber and turtle shell.</p><br>
<p>In 1874, an offer of cession by the Fijian Chiefs at that time was accepted, and Fiji was proclaimed a possession and dependency of the British Crown. In 1878, The Island was owned by Frederick Mitchell who at that time owned half of Qamea, laucala island and Matagi island. Frederick Mitchell an immigrant and businessman from Australia used the island as a copra farm and on the island of Qamea used that as a cotton plantation. Mr. Mitchell was at Levuka at the time of the vere vakabau deception and imprisoned of the people of Lovoni Village in Levuka. The people of lovoni was put in inhuman of ways and paraded around Levuka town as barbarians, the captured people of Lovoni were sold to slavery to rich planters around the country out of Ovalau. Mr. Mitchell at this time was in levuka and he bought slaves and one of the ladies was to become his wife. She was the daughter of the Tui Wailevu of lovoni – Adi Matila Nakaiviwa. they had 3 children – Flora mitchell, Frank Mitchell and Ella Mitchell – When Freddrick Mitchell died, all the land was willed to his wife and when she died the land was given to her three children. Frank got Qamea Island, Flora who married Joseph Smith got Silana in Levuka and Ella the youngest Daughter got Matagi island – because Ella and her Husband did not have Children the land was given to Flora&#39;s son Stanley who was brought up on matagi and was Ella&#39;s husband&#39;s namesake Stanley Smith who came from England. Two brothers Smith married the two Mitchell ladies. Over the years, Stanley Smith sold the island to his brother Fredrick Smith who married Zillah Whitcombe and the couple created a copra (coconut) plantation on the island. They had two daughters, Flora and Penelope (known as Chick), who are the current trustees of the island. Flora Smith married Noel Douglas, a 4th generation Taveuni planter of Scottish and Irish descent. In 1986 Noel and Flora discontinued the plantation and developed the 240-acre Matangi Private Island Resort.</p><br>
<h2>Climate</h2><br>
<p>Climate is warm and tropical year-round, even in the islands’ “winter” months. The average temperature in Fiji is 25 °C (77 °F), but it can climb to above 30 °C (86 °F) in summer (December and January) and sink to 18 °C (64 °F) in winter (July and August). The trade winds, which blow from the southeast, usually prevail from May to October (the drier winter months). In December and January, the winds often shift and come from the east, bringing rainfall with them.</p><br>
<p>Qila Rai Pithora, also known as Rai Pithora&#39;s Fort, was a fortified city built in the 12th century by Chauhan king, Prithviraj Chauhan. Chauhan Rajputs had taken over the city of Delhi, from Tomar Rajputs. It also incorporated, much older Lal Kot built earlier by 8th-century Tomar Rajput ruler, Anang Pal I. Qila is a Persian word meaning a fort or castle. At that time it was either called Durg or Garh Rai Pithora. Durg and Garh are a Sanskrit words meaning Fort and/or citadel. It was from the fort that the Tomar, Chauhan and the Slave Dynasty ruled over Delhi from 12th to 13th century.</p><br>
<p>Remains of the fort walls are scattered across South Delhi, visible in present Saket, Mehrauli around Qutb complex, Kishangarh and Vasant Kunj areas.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>In 1160 AD, the Chauhan rulers took over Delhi from Tomars, along with it the fort city of Lal Kot, the first extant city of Delhi. Thereafter Prithviraj Chauhan whose capital was Ajmer in Rajasthan, enlarged the Lal Kot, which had large rubble walls and ramparts, and renamed it Qila (Fort) of Rai Pithora or Qila Rai Pithora. The combined fort extended to six and a half km, and city existed with the fort, while older Lal Kot served as the citadel. However, the Chauhans didnt rule long over the city, in 1190s the Afghans started attacking. Though Chauhans defeated Muhammad Ghori in the First Battle of Tarain in 1191, a year later in 1192, his general Qutubuddin Aibak defeated Prithviraj Chauhan in the Second Battle of Tarain, ending their dynasty. This in turn established Muslim rule in India, with his Mamluk dynasty also known as Slave dynasty, the first Sultanate of Delhi. However, Aibak didn&#39;t extend or change the fort structure, it remained same through his early successors as well.</p><br>
<h2>Important sections</h2><br>
<p>Marsco is a peak in the Red Hills on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. It lies on the east of Glen Sligachan, and may be climbed from the right-of-way through the glen from Sligachan to Loch Coruisk. Alternatively, it may also be reached from Coire nam Bruadaran on the western side.</p><br>
<p>Marsco has magnificent views of the main Cuillin ridge as well as out to sea; many walkers reckon it is perhaps the finest of all the Grahams.</p><br>
<p>A photograph of Marsco and Glen Sligachan, taken by Richard Nutt, features on the cover of the second album by British synthpop band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD), Organisation, released in October 1980.</p><br>
<p>The folk group Runrig released a song called "Nightfall on Marsco" on their 1981 album Recovery.</p><br>
<p>White Head Island is a Canadian island located in the Bay of Fundy.</p><br>
<p>Located within Grand Manan Parish which is part of Charlotte County, New Brunswick, the island is located off the east coast of Grand Manan Island. In 2011 the island had a population of 162. White Head Island is governed as a local service district.</p><br>
<p>Its economy is based largely around aquaculture and fishing.</p><br>
<p>The island has an elementary school which has kindergarten to grade 2 and grades 3 to 6 in two separate classrooms. Recently there have been efforts to move children to the larger Grand Manan Community School however the younger grades remain on White Head due to the ferry crossing. It&#39;s the smallest school within the Anglophone South School District of Southern New Brunswick.</p><br>
<p>Coastal Transport Limited provides car ferry service between White Head and Grand Manan. The ferry William Frankland operates year-round and is free of charge.</p><br>
<p>The community has a small general store located at the dock where the ferry arrives at the island.</p><br>
<p>There is a Baptist church on the island that was completed in 1981. However, there are records of a religious house in use until 1928, when the second of three churches was dedicated.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<h2>Notable people</h2><br>
<p>The Pythian Home of Missouri, also known as Pythian Castle, in Springfield, Missouri, was built in 1913 by the Knights of Pythias and later owned by the USA military. It is now privately owned and open to the public by appointment.</p><br>
<p>German and Italian prisoners-of-war were assigned here during World War II for medical treatment and as laborers. Some prisoners were kept in the detached powerhouse and laundry room behind the castle. The laundry room is still owned by the USA Army.</p><br>
<p>The building was listed on the USA National Register of Historic Places on October 7, 2009.</p><br>
<h2>Construction</h2><br>
<p>The main building was designed to give the structure the appearance of a castle which reflected the theme of the Knights of Pythias. Its foundation and exterior is constructed of "Carthage Stone", an especially hard variety of limestone commonly quarried in the Ozarks. The interior construction is composed of steel framework with poured concrete floors, ceilings, and stairways. The interior walls consist of layered hollow-core "Pyrobar Blocks" (a gypsum-based fireproofing material developed in the early 1900s), with a wire mesh covering that was coated with several layers of plaster. The original main floor features a grand foyer, meeting room, ballroom, dining hall, and sitting parlors. The second floor, which is accessed by dual staircases on either wall, was designed with dormitory style rooms for children and bedrooms for adults. The second floor also features a theater with original ticket booth, seats, upper projection and lighting room as well as changing rooms backstage. The building also features a full basement. The power house was located directly behind the main building and housed the boiler as well as the institution&#39;s laundry facilities.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<h3>Knights of Pythias</h3><br>
<p>The Knights of Pythias, a fraternal organization, originally constructed the castle and detached power plant as a retirement home for needy members of the order and their widows and children. It was called The Pythian Home of Missouri. Springfield was one of seven cities competing for the construction of the Pythian home and sold 53 acres of land to the knights for $1 in 1909. It served as a meeting hall for the order and served in this capacity until in 1942.</p><br>
<h3>WW II</h3><br>
<p>In 1942, during World War II, the United States Military commandeered the facility for use in conjunction with the adjacent OReilly General Hospital in entertaining and rehabilitating injured USA troops. It was renamed The Enlisted Mens Service Club. The facility featured a movie theater, ballroom, bowling alley, pool hall, library, and arts and crafts area. Some of the most famous movie stars, comedians, and entertainers of the era performed in the theater while the ballroom was host to big bands playing for the dancing pleasure of the troops. After the war the building was retained by the military for use as a reserve center until it was sold as surplus in 1993.</p><br>
<h3>Present</h3><br>
<p>It is now privately owned by Tamara Finocchiaro. Renovations have been completed to the property including a new driveway and parking area. As of August 1, 2010 the castle has been reopened to the public for use as a cultural arts and events facility. It is available for special event rental including weddings, proms and corporate parties and offers public events such as history tours, murder mystery dinners, ghost tours, and holiday events. To add to the castle&#39;s identity, it was investigated by the television series Ghost Lab in early 2011 and Ghost Adventures in November 2017.</p><br>
<p>Jefferson Avenue Footbridge is a historic Footbridge located at Springfield, Greene County, Missouri. It was built in 1902, measures 562 ft long, and allows pedestrians to cross 13 sets of railroad tracks.</p><br>
<p>It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.</p><br>
<p>As the footbridge approached its 100th anniversary, it became apparent that a major rehabilitation was required to preserve the aging structure. The City of Springfield partnered with the Commercial Club of Springfield to obtain federal transportation enhancement grants and Community Development Block Grant funding to save the historic footbridge.</p><br>
<p>In addition to the extensive rehabilitation work on the footbridge, a gathering place plaza was created adjacent to the Commercial Street terminus. The rehabilitation work was conducted in 2001 and 2002 at a cost of just over $518,000. Nearly 100 years after the original footbridge was constructed, the rehabilitated structure was reopened to pedestrian traffic and rededicated April 17, 2002.</p><br>
<p>Trainwatching from the bridge is a popular activity.</p><br>
<p>Frisco Pedestrian Footbridge.jpg</p><br>
<p>Footbridge along Historic Commercial Street.jpg</p><br>
<p>Springfield-jeff ave foot bridge.jpg</p><br>
