<p>The Ural Mountains , or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western Russia, from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the Ural River and northwestern Kazakhstan.</p><br>
<p>The mountain range forms part of the conventional boundary between the continents of Europe and Asia. Vaygach Island and the islands of Novaya Zemlya form a further continuation of the chain to the north into the Arctic Ocean.</p><br>
<p>The mountains lie within the Ural geographical region and significantly overlap with the Ural Federal District and with the Ural economic region. They have rich resources, including metal ores, coal, precious and semi-precious stones. Since the 18th century the mountains have contributed significantly to the mineral sector of the Russian economy.</p><br>
<h2>Etymology</h2><br>
<p>As attested by Sigismund von Herberstein, in the 16th century Russians called the range by a variety of names derived from the Russian words for rock (stone) and belt. The modern Russian name for the Urals (Урал, Ural), first appearing in the 16th–17th century when the Russian conquest of Siberia was in its heroic phase, was initially applied to its southern parts and gained currency as the name of the entire range during the 18th century. It might have been a borrowing from either Turkic "stone belt" (Bashkir, where the same name is used for the range), or Ob-Ugric. From the 13th century, in Bashkortostan there has been a legend about a hero named Ural. He sacrificed his life for the sake of his people and they poured a stone pile over his grave, which later turned into the Ural Mountains. Ostyak urr (chain of mountains). V.N. Tatischev believes that this oronym is set to "belt" and associates it with the Turkic verb oralu- "gird". I.G. Dobrodomov suggests a transition from Aral to Ural explained on the basis of ancient Bulgar-Chuvash dialects. Geographer E.V. Hawks believes that the name goes back to the Bashkir folklore Ural-Batyr. Ethnographer E.N. Shumilov suggested a Mongolian origin, Khural Uul, that is, "meeting of the mountains". The Evenk geographical term era "mountain" has also been theorized. Finno-Ugrist scholars consider Ural deriving from the Mansi word urr meaning a mountain. Turkologists, on the other hand, have achieved majority support for their assertion that ural in Tatar means a belt, and recall that an earlier name for the range was stone belt.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>As Middle-Eastern merchants traded with the Bashkirs and other people living on the western slopes of the Ural as far north as Great Perm, since at least the 10th century medieval mideastern geographers had been aware of the existence of the mountain range in its entirety, stretching as far as to the Arctic Ocean in the north. The first Russian mention of the mountains to the east of the East European Plain is provided by the Primary Chronicle, when it describes the Novgorodian expedition to the upper reaches of the Pechora in 1096. During the next few centuries Novgorodians engaged in fur trading with the local population and collected tribute from Yugra and Great Perm, slowly expanding southwards. The rivers Chusovaya and Belaya were first mentioned in the chronicles of 1396 and 1468, respectively. In 1430 the town of Solikamsk (Kama Salt) was founded on the Kama at the foothills of the Ural, where salt was produced in open pans. Ivan III of Moscow captured Perm, Pechora and Yugra from the declining Novgorod Republic in 1472. With the excursions of 1483 and 1499–1500 across the Ural Moscow managed to subjugate Yugra completely.</p><br>
<p>Nevertheless, around that time early 16th century Polish geographer Maciej of Miechów in his influential Tractatus de duabus Sarmatiis (1517) argued that there were no mountains in Eastern Europe at all, challenging the point of view of some authors of Classical antiquity, popular during the Renaissance. Only after Sigismund von Herberstein in his Notes on Muscovite Affairs (1549) had reported, following Russian sources, that there are mountains behind the Pechora and identified them with the Ripheans and Hyperboreans of ancient authors, did the existence of the Ural, or at least of its northern part, become firmly established in the Western geography. The Middle and Southern Ural were still largely unavailable and unknown to the Russian or Western European geographers.</p><br>
<p>In the 1550s, after the Tsardom of Russia had defeated the Khanate of Kazan and proceeded to gradually annex the lands of the Bashkirs, the Russians finally reached the southern part of the mountain chain. In 1574 they founded Ufa. The upper reaches of the Kama and Chusovaya in the Middle Ural, still unexplored, as well as parts of Transuralia still held by the hostile Siberian Khanate, were granted to the Stroganovs by several decrees of the tsar in 1558–1574. The Stroganovs land provided the staging ground for Yermaks incursion into Siberia. Yermak crossed the Ural from the Chusovaya to the Tagil around 1581. In 1597 Babinov&#39;s road was built across the Ural from Solikamsk to the valley of the Tura, where the town of Verkhoturye (Upper Tura) was founded in 1598. Customs was established in Verkhoturye shortly thereafter and the road was made the only legal connection between European Russia and Siberia for a long time. In 1648 the town of Kungur was founded at the western foothills of the Middle Ural. During the 17th century the first deposits of iron and copper ores, mica, gemstones and other minerals were discovered in the Ural.</p><br>
<p>Iron and copper smelting works emerged. They multiplied particularly quickly during the reign of Peter I of Russia. In 1720–1722 he commissioned Vasily Tatishchev to oversee and develop the mining and smelting works in the Ural. Tatishchev proposed a new copper smelting factory in Yegoshikha, which would eventually become the core of the city of Perm and a new iron smelting factory on the Iset, which would become the largest in the world at the time of construction and give birth to the city of Yekaterinburg. Both factories were actually founded by Tatishchevs successor, Georg Wilhelm de Gennin, in 1723. Tatishchev returned to the Ural on the order of Empress Anna to succeed de Gennin in 1734–1737. Transportation of the output of the smelting works to the markets of European Russia necessitated the construction of the Siberian Route from Yekaterinburg across the Ural to Kungur and Yegoshikha (Perm) and further to Moscow, which was completed in 1763 and rendered Babinovs road obsolete. In 1745 gold was discovered in the Ural at Beryozovskoye and later at other deposits. It has been mined since 1747.</p><br>
<p>The first ample geographic survey of the Ural Mountains was completed in the early 18th century by the Russian historian and geographer Vasily Tatishchev under the orders of Peter I. Earlier, in the 17th century, rich ore deposits were discovered in the mountains and their systematic extraction began in the early 18th century, eventually turning the region into the largest mineral base of Russia.</p><br>
<p>One of the first scientific descriptions of the mountains was published in 1770–71. Over the next century, the region was studied by scientists from a number of countries, including Russia (geologist Alexander Karpinsky, botanist Porfiry Krylov and zoologist Leonid Sabaneyev), England (geologist Sir Roderick Murchison), France (paleontologist Édouard de Verneuil), and Germany (naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, geologist Alexander Keyserling). In 1845, Murchison, who had according to Encyclopædia Britannica "compiled the first geologic map of the Ural in 1841",</p><br>
<p>The first railway across the Ural had been built by 1878 and linked Perm to Yekaterinburg via Chusovoy, Kushva and Nizhny Tagil. In 1890 a railway linked Ufa and Chelyabinsk via Zlatoust. In 1896 this section became a part of the Trans-Siberian Railway. In 1909 yet another railway connecting Perm and Yekaterinburg passed through Kungur by the way of the Siberian Route. It has eventually replaced the Ufa – Chelyabinsk section as the main trunk of the Trans-Siberian railway.</p><br>
<p>The highest peak of the Ural, Mount Narodnaya, (elevation 1,895 m (6,217 ft)) was identified in 1927.</p><br>
<p>During the Soviet industrialization in the 1930s the city of Magnitogorsk was founded in the South-Eastern Ural as a center of iron smelting and steelmaking. During the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941–1942, the mountains became a key element in Nazi planning for the territories which they expected to conquer in the USSR. Faced with the threat of having a significant part of the Soviet territories occupied by the enemy, the government evacuated many of the industrial enterprises of European Russia and Ukraine to the eastern foothills of the Ural, considered a safe place out of reach of the German bombers and troops. Three giant tank factories were established at the Uralmash in Sverdlovsk (as Yekaterinburg used to be known), Uralvagonzavod in Nizhny Tagil, and Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant in Chelyabinsk. After the war, in 1947–1948, Chum – Labytnangi railway, built with the forced labor of Gulag inmates, crossed the Polar Ural.</p><br>
<p>Mayak, 150 km southeast of Yekaterinburg, was a center of the Soviet nuclear industry and site of the Kyshtym disaster.</p><br>
<h2>Geography and topography</h2><br>
<p>The Ural Mountains extend about 2,500 km from the Kara Sea to the Kazakh Steppe along the northern border of Kazakhstan. Vaygach Island and the island of Novaya Zemlya form a further continuation of the chain on the north. Geographically this range marks the northern part of the border between the continents of Europe and Asia. Its highest peak is Mount Narodnaya, approximately 1,895 m in elevation.</p><br>
<p>By topography and other natural features, the Urals are divided, from north to south, into the Polar (or Arctic), Nether-Polar (or Sub-Arctic), Northern, Central and Southern parts.</p><br>
<h3>Polar Ural</h3><br>
<p>The Polar Urals extend for about 385 km from Mount Konstantinov Kamen in the north to the Khulga River in the south; they have an area of about 25,000 km&sup2; and a strongly dissected relief. The maximum height is 1,499 m at Payer Mountain and the average height is 1000 to 1100 m.</p><br>
<p>The mountains of the Polar Ural have exposed rock with sharp ridges, though flattened or rounded tops are also found.</p><br>
<h3>Nether-polar Ural</h3><br>
<p>The Nether-Polar Ural are higher, and up to 150 km wider than the Polar Urals. They include the highest peaks of the range: Mount Narodnaya (1,895 m), Mount Karpinsky (1,878 m) and Manaraga (1,662 m). They extend for more than 225 km south to the Shchugor River. The many ridges are sawtooth shaped and dissected by river valleys. Both Polar and Nether-Polar Urals are typically Alpine; they bear traces of Pleistocene glaciation, along with permafrost and extensive modern glaciation, including 143 extant glaciers.</p><br>
<h3>Northern Ural</h3><br>
<p>The Northern Ural consist of a series of parallel ridges up to 1,000 – in height and longitudinal hollows. They are elongated from north to south and stretch for about 560 km from the Usa River. Most of the tops are flattened, but those of the highest mountains, such as Telposiz, 1,617 m and Konzhakovsky Stone, 1,569 m have a dissected topography. Intensive weathering has produced vast areas of eroded stone on the mountain slopes and summits of the northern areas.</p><br>
<h3>Middle Ural</h3><br>
<p>The Central Ural are the lowest part of the Ural, with smooth mountain tops, the highest mountain being 994 m (Basegi); they extend south from the Ufa River.</p><br>
<h3>Southern Ural</h3><br>
<p>The relief of the Southern Ural is more complex, with numerous valleys and parallel ridges directed south-west and meridionally. The range includes the Ilmensky Mountains separated from the main ridges by the Miass River. The maximum height is 1,640 m (Mount Yamantau) and the width reaches 250 km. Other notable peaks lie along the Iremel mountain ridge (Bolshoy Iremel and Maly Iremel). The Southern Urals extend some 550 km up to the sharp westward bend of the Ural River and terminate in the wide Mughalzhar Hills.</p><br>
<h2>Geology</h2><br>
<p>The Urals are among the world&#39;s oldest extant mountain ranges. For its age of 250 to 300 million years, the elevation of the mountains is unusually high. They were formed during the Uralian orogeny due to the collision of the eastern edge of the supercontinent Laurussia with the young and rheologically weak continent of Kazakhstania, which now underlies much of Kazakhstan and West Siberia west of the Irtysh, and intervening island arcs. The collision lasted nearly 90 million years in the late Carboniferous – early Triassic. Unlike the other major orogens of the Paleozoic (Appalachians, Caledonides, Variscides), the Urals have not undergone post-orogenic extensional collapse and are unusually well preserved for their age, being underlaid by a pronounced crustal root. East and south of the Urals much of the orogen is buried beneath later Mesozoic and Cenozoic sediments. The adjacent Pay-Khoy Ridge to the north and Novaya Zemlya are not a part of the Uralian orogen and formed later.</p><br>
<p>Many deformed and metamorphosed rocks, mostly of Paleozoic age, surface within the Urals. The sedimentary and volcanic layers are folded and faulted. The sediments to the west of the Ural Mountains are formed of limestone, dolomite and sandstone left from ancient shallow seas. The eastern side is dominated by basalts.</p><br>
<p>The western slope of the Ural Mountains has predominantly karst topography, especially in the Sylva River basin, which is a tributary of the Chusovaya River. It is composed of severely eroded sedimentary rocks (sandstones and limestones) that are about 350 million years old. There are many caves, sinkholes and underground streams. The karst topography is much less developed on the eastern slopes. The eastern slopes are relatively flat, with some hills and rocky outcrops and contain alternating volcanic and sedimentary layers dated to the middle Paleozoic Era. Most high mountains consist of weather-resistant rocks such as quartzite, schist and gabbro that are between 570 and 395 million years old. The river valleys are underlain by limestone.</p><br>
<p>The Ural Mountains contain about 48 species of economically valuable ores and economically valuable minerals. Eastern regions are rich in chalcopyrite, nickel oxide, gold, platinum, chromite and magnetite ores, as well as in coal (Chelyabinsk Oblast), bauxite, talc, fireclay and abrasives. The Western Urals contain deposits of coal, oil, natural gas (Ishimbay and Krasnokamsk areas) and potassium salts. Both slopes are rich in bituminous coal and lignite, and the largest deposit of bituminous coal is in the north (Pechora field). The specialty of the Urals is precious and semi-precious stones, such as emerald, amethyst, aquamarine, jasper, rhodonite, malachite and diamond. Some of the deposits, such as the magnetite ores at Magnitogorsk, are already nearly depleted.</p><br>
<h2>Rivers and lakes</h2><br>
<p>Many rivers originate in the Ural Mountains. The western slopes south of the border between the Komi Republic and Perm Krai and the eastern slopes south of approximately 54°30&#39;N drain into the Caspian Sea via the Kama and Ural River basins. The tributaries of the Kama include the Vishera, Chusovaya, and Belaya and originate on both the eastern and western slopes. The rest of the Urals drain into the Arctic Ocean, mainly via the Pechora basin in the west, which includes the Ilych, Shchugor, and the Usa, and via the Ob basin in the east, which includes the Tobol, Tavda, Iset, Tura and Severnaya Sosva. The rivers are frozen for more than half the year. Generally, the western rivers have higher flow volume than the eastern ones, especially in the Northern and Nether-Polar regions. Rivers are slower in the Southern Urals. This is because of low precipitation and the relatively warm climate resulting in less snow and more evaporation.</p><br>
<p>The mountains contain a number of deep lakes. The eastern slopes of the Southern and Central Urals have most of these, among the largest of which are the Uvildy, Itkul, Turgoyak, and Tavatuy lakes. The lakes found on the western slopes are less numerous and also smaller. Lake Bolshoye Shchuchye, the deepest lake in the Polar Urals, is 136 m deep. Other lakes, too, are found in the glacial valleys of this region. Spas and sanatoriums have been built to take advantage of the medicinal muds found in some of the mountain lakes.</p><br>
<h2>Climate</h2><br>
<p>The climate of the Urals is continental. The mountain ridges, elongated from north to south, effectively absorb sunlight thereby increasing the temperature. The areas west of the Ural Mountains are 1 – warmer in winter than the eastern regions because the former are warmed by Atlantic winds whereas the eastern slopes are chilled by Siberian air masses. The average January temperatures increase in the western areas from -20 &deg;C in the Polar to -15 &deg;C in the Southern Urals and the corresponding temperatures in July are 10 &deg;C and 20 &deg;C. The western areas also receive more rainfall than the eastern ones by 150 – per year. This is because the mountains trap clouds from the Atlantic Ocean. The highest precipitation, approximately 1,000 mm, is in the Northern Urals with up to 1,000 cm snow. The eastern areas receive from 500 – in the north to 300 – in the south. Maximum precipitation occurs in the summer: the winter is dry because of the Siberian High.</p><br>
<h2>Flora</h2><br>
<p>The landscapes of the Urals vary with both latitude and longitude and are dominated by forests and steppes. The southern area of the Mughalzhar Hills is a semidesert. Steppes lie mostly in the southern and especially south-eastern Urals. Meadow steppes have developed on the lower parts of mountain slopes and are covered with zigzag and mountain clovers, Serratula gmelinii, dropwort, meadow-grass and Bromus inermis, reaching the height of 60–80 cm. Much of the land is cultivated. To the south, the meadow steppes become more sparse, dry and low. The steep gravelly slopes of the mountains and hills of the eastern slopes of the Southern Urals are mostly covered with rocky steppes. River valleys contain willow, poplar and caragana shrubs.</p><br>
<p>Forest landscapes of the Urals are diverse, especially in the southern part. The western areas are dominated by dark coniferous taiga forests which change to mixed and deciduous forests in the south. The eastern mountain slopes have light coniferous taiga forests. The Northern Urals are dominated by conifers, namely Siberian fir, Siberian pine, Scots pine, Siberian spruce, Norway spruce and Siberian larch, as well as by silver and downy birches. The forests are much sparser in the Polar Urals. Whereas in other parts of the Ural Mountains they grow up to an altitude of 1000 m, in the Polar Urals the tree line is at 250–400 m. The polar forests are low and are mixed with swamps, lichens, bogs and shrubs. Dwarf birch, mosses and berries (blueberry, cloudberry, black crowberry, etc.) are abundant. The forests of the Southern Urals are the most diverse in composition: here, together with coniferous forests are also abundant broadleaf tree species such as English oak, Norway maple and elm. The Virgin Komi Forests in the northern Urals are recognized as a World Heritage site.</p><br>
<h2>Fauna</h2><br>
<p>The Ural forests are inhabited by animals typical of Siberia, such as elk, brown bear, fox, wolf, wolverine, lynx, squirrel, and sable (north only). Because of the easy accessibility of the mountains there are no specifically mountainous species. In the Middle Urals, one can see a rare mixture of sable and pine marten named kidus. In the Southern Urals, badger and black polecat are common. Reptiles and amphibians live mostly in the Southern and Central Ural and are represented by the common viper, lizards and grass snakes. Bird species are represented by capercaillie, black grouse, hazel grouse, spotted nutcracker, and cuckoos. In summers, the South and Middle Urals are visited by songbirds, such as nightingale and redstart.</p><br>
<p>The steppes of the Southern Urals are dominated by hares and rodents such as gophers, susliks, and jerboa. There are many birds of prey such as lesser kestrel and buzzards. The animals of the Polar Urals are few and are characteristic of the tundra; they include Arctic fox, tundra partridge, lemming, and reindeer. The birds of these areas include rough-legged buzzard, snowy owl, and rock ptarmigan.</p><br>
<h2>Ecology</h2><br>
<p>The continuous and intensive economic development of the last centuries has affected the fauna, and wildlife is much diminished around all industrial centers. During World War II, hundreds of factories were evacuated from Western Russia before the German occupation, flooding the Urals with industry. The conservation measures include establishing national wildlife parks. There are nine strict nature reserves in the Urals: the Ilmen, the oldest one, mineralogical reserve founded in 1920 in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Pechora-Ilych in the Komi Republic, Bashkir and its former branch Shulgan-Tash in Bashkortostan, Visim in Sverdlovsk Oblast, Southern Ural in Bashkortostan, Basegi in Perm Krai, Vishera in Perm Krai and Denezhkin Kamen in Sverdlovsk Oblast.</p><br>
<p>The area has also been severely damaged by the plutonium-producing facility Mayak opened in Chelyabinsk-40 (later called Chelyabinsk-65, Ozyorsk), in the Southern Ural, after World War II. Over 23,000 km&sup2; of land were contaminated in 1957 from a storage tank explosion, only one of several serious accidents that further polluted the region. Although some reactors of Mayak were shut down in 1987 and 1990, the facility keeps producing plutonium.</p><br>
<h2>Cultural significance</h2><br>
<p>The Urals have been viewed by Russians as a "treasure box" of mineral resources, which were the basis for its extensive industrial development. In addition to iron and copper the Urals were a source of gold, malachite, alexandrite, and other gems such as those used by the court jeweller Fabergé. As Russians in other regions gather mushrooms or berries, Uralians gather mineral specimens and gems. Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak (1852–1912) Pavel Bazhov (1879–1950), as well as Aleksey Ivanov and Olga Slavnikova, post-Soviet writers, have written of the region.</p><br>
<p>The region served as a military stronghold during Peter the Greats Great Northern War with Sweden, during Stalins rule when the Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Complex was built and Russian industry relocated to the Urals during the Nazi advance at the beginning of World War II, and as the center of the Soviet nuclear industry during the Cold War. Extreme levels of air, water, and radiological contamination and pollution by industrial wastes resulted. Population exodus resulted, and economic depression at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, but in post-Soviet times additional mineral exploration, particularly in the northern Urals, has been productive and the region has attracted industrial investment.</p><br>
<p>Vänern is the largest lake in Sweden, the largest lake in the European Union and the third-largest lake entirely in Europe after Ladoga and Onega in Russia. It is located in the provinces of Västergötland, Dalsland, and Värmland in the southwest of the country.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Geologically, the lake was formed after the Quaternary glaciation about 10,000 years ago; when the ice melted, the entire width of Sweden was covered in water, creating a strait between Kattegat and the Gulf of Bothnia. Due to the ensuing post-glacial rebound, lakes such as Vänern and Vättern became pursed off. As a result, there are still species remaining from the ice age not normally encountered in freshwater lakes, such as the amphipod Monoporeia affinis. A Viking ship was found on the lake&#39;s bottom on May 6, 2009.</p><br>
<p>A story told by the 13th-century Icelandic mythographer Snorri Sturluson in his Prose Edda about the origin of Mälaren was probably originally about Vänern: the Swedish king Gylfi promised a woman, Gefjon, as much land as four oxen could plough in a day and a night, but she used oxen from the land of the giants, and moreover uprooted the land and dragged it into the sea, where it became the island of Zealand. The Prose Edda says that the inlets in the lake correspond to the headlands in Zealand; since this is much more true of Vänern, the myth was probably originally about Vänern, not Mälaren.</p><br>
<p>The Battle on the Ice of Lake Vänern was a 6th century battle recorded in the Norse sagas and referred to in the Old English epic Beowulf. In Beowulf, Vänern is stated to be near the location of the dragon&#39;s mound at Earnaness.</p><br>
<h2>Geography</h2><br>
<p>Vänern covers an area of 5,655 km&sup2;. Its surface is 44 m above sea level and it is on average 27 m deep. The maximum depth of the lake is 106 m.</p><br>
<p>Geographically, it is situated on the border between the Swedish regions of Götaland and Svealand, divided between several Swedish provinces: The western body of water is known as the Dalbosjön, with its main part belonging to Dalsland; the eastern body is known as Värmlandsjön, its northern part belonging to Värmland and the southern to Västergötland.</p><br>
<p>Its main tributary is Klarälven, which flows into the lake near the city of Karlstad, on the northern shore. Other tributaries include Gullspångsälven, Byälven and Norsälven. It is drained to the south-west by Göta älv, which forms part of the Göta Canal waterway, to Lake Viken into Lake Vättern, southeast across Sweden.</p><br>
<p>The economic opportunities Vänern offers are illustrated by the surrounding towns, which have supported themselves for centuries by fishing and allowing easy transportation to other cities or west by Göta älv to the sea of Kattegat. This directly includes: Karlstad (chartered in 1584), Kristinehamn (1642), Mariestad (1583), Lidköping (1446) Vänersborg (1644), Åmål (1643), Säffle (1951), and indirectly Trollhättan (1916).</p><br>
<p>The Djurö archipelago surrounds the island of Djurö, in the middle of the lake, and has been given national park status as Djurö National Park.</p><br>
<p>The ridge (plateau mountain) Kinnekulle is a popular tourist attraction near the south-eastern shore of Vänern. It has the best view over the lake (about 270 m above the lake level). Another nearby mountain is Halleberg.</p><br>
<h2>Environment</h2><br>
<p>Environmental monitoring studies are conducted annually. In a 2002 report, the data showed no marked decrease in overall water quality, but a slight decrease in visibility due to an increase of algae. An increasing level of nitrogen had been problematic during the 1970s through 1990s, but is now being regulated and is at a steady level.</p><br>
<p>Some bays also have problems with eutrophication and have become overgrown with algae and plant plankton.</p><br>
<h2>Fish</h2><br>
<p>Vänern has many different fish species. Locals and government officials try to enforce fishing preservation projects, due to threats to the fish habitat. These threats include water cultivation in the tributaries, pollution and the M74 syndrome. Sport fishing in Vänern is free and unregulated, both from the shore and from boats (with some restrictions, e.g. a maximum of three salmon or trout per person per day). Commercial fishing requires permission.</p><br>
<p>In the open waters of Vänern, the most common fish is the smelt, dominating in the eastern Dalbosjön, where the average is 2,600 smelt per hectare. The second most common is the vendace (Coregonus albula), also most prominently in Dalbosjön, with 200–300 fish per hectare. The populations may vary greatly between years, depending on temperature, water level and quality.</p><br>
<h3>Salmon</h3><br>
<p>Vänern has two sub-groups of lake salmon known as Vänern salmon. They are native to Vänern and spawn in the adjacent lakes. The first sub-group is named after the eastern tributary Gullspångsälven as the Gullspång salmon. The second is the Klarälv salmon, mainly spawning in the Klarälven. These sub-groups are related to Baltic Sea salmon, and they have developed in Vänern for over 9,000 years. They are notable in that they have never entered the ocean.</p><br>
<p>These large lake salmon are known to weigh some 18 kg. The world&#39;s largest lake salmon, exceeding 20 kg, was caught in Vänern. There are also three other species of salmon-like fishes in the connecting rivers.</p><br>
<h3>Other fish</h3><br>
<p>The most important large fish in the lake are trout and zander. The most important small fish is the stickleback.</p><br>
<p>Vänern has five distinguished species of whitefish:</p><br>
<p>Coregonus pallasii (also common in Neva, Gulf of Finland, Baltic Sea)</p><br>
<p>Lacustrine fluvial whitefish (Coregonus megalops)</p><br>
<p>Coregonus maxillaris (population mainly known around Sweden)</p><br>
<p>Coregonus nilssoni</p><br>
<p>Valaam whitefish (Coregonus widegreni)</p><br>
<p>Coregonus maxillaris</p><br>
<h2>Birds</h2><br>
<p>The most common birds near Vänern are terns and gulls.</p><br>
<p>Cormorants vanished in the 19th century, but have since returned and are flourishing. This has contributed to the increase in the population of sea eagles, who feed on cormorants.</p><br>
<p>Rarer species are the black-throated loon and the ruddy turnstone (Arenaria interpres), with hardly a dozen nests around Vänern; and the Caspian tern, with hardly a dozen specimens.</p><br>
<p>The White House is the official residence and workplace of the President of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every USA president since John Adams in 1800. The term White House is often used as a metonym for the president and his advisers, as in "The White House announced that...".</p><br>
<p>The residence was designed by Irish-born architect James Hoban in the neoclassical style. Construction took place between 1792 and 1800 using Aquia Creek sandstone painted white. When Thomas Jefferson moved into the house in 1801, he (with architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe) added low colonnades on each wing that concealed stables and storage. In 1814, during the War of 1812, the mansion was set ablaze by the British Army in the Burning of Washington, destroying the interior and charring much of the exterior. Reconstruction began almost immediately, and President James Monroe moved into the partially reconstructed Executive Residence in October 1817. Exterior construction continued with the addition of the semi-circular South portico in 1824 and the North portico in 1829.</p><br>
<p>Because of crowding within the executive mansion itself, President Theodore Roosevelt had all work offices relocated to the newly constructed West Wing in 1901. Eight years later in 1909, President William Howard Taft expanded the West Wing and created the first Oval Office, which was eventually moved as the section was expanded. In the main mansion, the third-floor attic was converted to living quarters in 1927 by augmenting the existing hip roof with long shed dormers. A newly constructed East Wing was used as a reception area for social events; Jeffersons colonnades connected the new wings. East Wing alterations were completed in 1946, creating additional office space. By 1948, the houses load-bearing exterior walls and internal wood beams were found to be close to failure. Under Harry S. Truman, the interior rooms were completely dismantled and a new internal load-bearing steel frame constructed inside the walls. Once this work was completed, the interior rooms were rebuilt.</p><br>
<p>The modern-day White House complex includes the Executive Residence, West Wing, East Wing, the Eisenhower Executive Office Building—the former State Department, which now houses offices for the Presidents staff and the Vice President—and Blair House, a guest residence. The Executive Residence is made up of six stories—the Ground Floor, State Floor, Second Floor, and Third Floor, as well as a two-story basement. The property is a National Heritage Site owned by the National Park Service and is part of the Presidents Park. In 2007, it was ranked second on the American Institute of Architects list of "America&#39;s Favorite Architecture".</p><br>
<h2>Early history</h2><br>
<h3>1789–1800</h3><br>
<p>Following his April 1789 inauguration, President George Washington occupied two executive mansions in New York City: the Samuel Osgood House at 3 Cherry Street (April 1789 – February 1790), and the Alexander Macomb House at 39–41 Broadway (February–August 1790). In May 1790, New York began construction of Government House for his official residence, but he never occupied it. The national capital moved to Philadelphia in December 1790.</p><br>
<p>The July 1790 Residence Act named Philadelphia, Pennsylvania the temporary national capital for a 10-year period while the Federal City was under construction. The City of Philadelphia rented Robert Morriss city house at 190 High Street (now 524–30 Market Street) for Washingtons presidential residence. The first president occupied the Market Street mansion from November 1790 to March 1797, and altered it in ways that may have influenced the design of the White House. As part of a futile effort to have Philadelphia named the permanent national capital, Pennsylvania built a much grander presidential mansion several blocks away, but Washington declined to occupy it.</p><br>
<p>President John Adams also occupied the Market Street mansion from March 1797 to May 1800. On Saturday, November 1, 1800, he became the first president to occupy the White House. The President&#39;s House in Philadelphia became a hotel and was demolished in 1832, while the unused presidential mansion became home to the University of Pennsylvania.</p><br>
<h3>Architectural competition</h3><br>
<p>The Presidents House was a major feature of Pierre (Peter) Charles LEnfants plan for the newly established federal city, Washington, D.C. (see: L&#39;Enfant Plan). The architect of the White House was chosen in a design competition which received nine proposals, including one submitted anonymously by Thomas Jefferson.</p><br>
<p>President Washington visited Charleston, South Carolina in May 1791 on his "Southern Tour", and saw the under-construction Charleston County Courthouse designed by Irish architect James Hoban. He is reputed to have met with Hoban then. The following year, he summoned the architect to Philadelphia and met with him in June 1792.</p><br>
<p>On July 16, 1792, the President met with the commissioners of the federal city to make his judgment in the architectural competition. His review is recorded as being brief, and he quickly selected Hoban&#39;s submission.</p><br>
<p>Washington was not entirely pleased with the original submission, however; he found it too small, lacking ornament, and not monumental enough to house the nations president. On his recommendation, the house was changed from three stories to two, and was widened from a nine-bay facade to an 11-bay facade. Hobans competition drawings do not survive.</p><br>
<h3>Design influences</h3><br>
<p>The building has classical inspiration sources, that could be found directly or indirectly in the Roman architect Vitruvius or in Andrea Palladio styles; Palladio being an Italian architect of the Renaissance which had a considerable influence on the Western architecture (Palladian architecture). The building Hoban designed is verifiably influenced by the upper floors of Leinster House, in Dublin, which later became the seat of the Oireachtas (the Irish parliament). Several other Georgian-era Irish country houses have been suggested as sources of inspiration for the overall floor plan, details like the bow-fronted south front, and interior details like the former niches in the present Blue Room. These influences, though undocumented, are cited in the official White House guide, and in White House Historical Association publications. The first official White House guide, published in 1962, suggested a link between Hobans design for the South Portico and Château de Rastignac, a neoclassical country house located in La Bachellerie in the Dordogne region of France and designed by Mathurin Salat. Construction on the French house was initially started before 1789, interrupted by the French Revolution for twenty years and then finally built 1812–1817 (based on Salats pre-1789 design). The theoretical link between the two houses has been criticized because Hoban did not visit France. Supporters of a connection posit that Thomas Jefferson, during his tour of Bordeaux in 1789, viewed Salats architectural drawings (which were on-file at the College) at the École Spéciale dArchitecture (Bordeaux Architectural College). On his return to the USA he then shared the influence with Washington, Hoban, Monroe, and Benjamin Henry Latrobe.</p><br>
<h3>Construction</h3><br>
<p>Construction of the White House began with the laying of the cornerstone on October 13, 1792, although there was no formal ceremony. The main residence, as well as foundations of the house, were built largely by enslaved and free African-American laborers, as well as employed Europeans. Much of the other work on the house was performed by immigrants, many not yet with citizenship. The sandstone walls were erected by Scottish immigrants, employed by Hoban, as were the high-relief rose and garland decorations above the north entrance and the "fish scale" pattern beneath the pediments of the window hoods. The initial construction took place over a period of eight years, at a reported cost of $232,371.83 (equal to $ today). Although not yet completed, the White House was ready for occupancy circa November 1, 1800.</p><br>
<p>Shortages, including material and labor, forced alterations to the earlier plan developed by French engineer Pierre Charles L&#39;Enfant for a "palace" that was five times larger than the house that was eventually built. The finished structure contained only two main floors instead of the planned three, and a less costly brick served as a lining for the stone façades. When construction was finished, the porous sandstone walls were whitewashed with a mixture of lime, rice glue, casein, and lead, giving the house its familiar color and name.</p><br>
<p>As it is a famed structure in America, several replicas of the White House have been constructed.</p><br>
<h3>Architectural description</h3><br>
<p>The north front is the principal façade of the White House and consists of three floors and eleven bays. The ground floor is hidden by a raised carriage ramp and parapet, thus the façade appears to be of two floors. The central three bays are behind a prostyle portico (this was a later addition to the house, built circa 1830) serving, thanks to the carriage ramp, as a porte cochere. The windows of the four bays flanking the portico, at first-floor level, have alternating pointed and segmented pediments, while at second-floor level the pediments are flat. The principal entrance at the center of the portico is surmounted by a lunette fanlight. Above the entrance is a sculpted floral festoon. The roofline is hidden by a balustraded parapet.</p><br>
<p>The mansion&#39;s southern façade is a combination of the Palladian and neoclassical styles of architecture. It is of three floors, all visible. The ground floor is rusticated in the Palladian fashion. At the center of the façade is a neoclassical projecting bow of three bays. The bow is flanked by five bays, the windows of which, as on the north façade, have alternating segmented and pointed pediments at first-floor level. The bow has a ground floor double staircase leading to an Ionic colonnaded loggia (with the Truman Balcony at second-floor level), known as the south portico. The more modern third floor is hidden by a balustraded parapet and plays no part in the composition of the façade.</p><br>
<h3>Naming conventions</h3><br>
<p>The building was originally variously referred to as the "Presidents Palace", "Presidential Mansion", or "Presidents House". The earliest evidence of the public calling it the "White House" was recorded in 1811. A myth emerged that during the rebuilding of the structure after the Burning of Washington, white paint was applied to mask the burn damage it had suffered, giving the building its namesake hue. The name "Executive Mansion" was used in official contexts until President Theodore Roosevelt established the formal name by having "White House–Washington" engraved on the stationery in 1901. The current letterhead wording and arrangement "The White House" with the word "Washington" centered beneath goes back to the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt.</p><br>
<p>Although the structure was not completed until some years after the presidency of George Washington, there is speculation that the name of the traditional residence of the President of the United States may have derived from Martha Washingtons home, White House Plantation in Virginia, where the nations first President had courted the First Lady in the mid-18th century.</p><br>
<h2>Evolution of the White House</h2><br>
<h3>Early use, the 1814 fire, and rebuilding</h3><br>
<p>On Saturday, November 1, 1800, John Adams became the first president to take residence in the building. During Adams&#39; second day in the house, he wrote a letter to his wife Abigail, containing a prayer for the house. Adams wrote:</p><br>
<p>Franklin D. Roosevelt had Adams&#39;s blessing carved into the mantel in the State Dining Room.</p><br>
<p>Adams lived in the house only briefly before Thomas Jefferson moved into the "pleasant country residence" in 1801. Despite his complaints that the house was too big ("big enough for two emperors, one pope, and the grand lama in the bargain"), Jefferson considered how the White House might be added to. With Benjamin Henry Latrobe, he helped lay out the design for the East and West Colonnades, small wings that help conceal the domestic operations of laundry, a stable and storage. Today, Jefferson&#39;s colonnades link the residence with the East and West Wings.</p><br>
<p>In 1814, during the War of 1812, the White House was set ablaze by British troops during the Burning of Washington, in retaliation for burning Upper Canada&#39;s Parliament Buildings in the Battle of York; much of Washington was affected by these fires as well. Only the exterior walls remained, and they had to be torn down and mostly reconstructed because of weakening from the fire and subsequent exposure to the elements, except for portions of the south wall. Of the numerous objects taken from the White House when it was ransacked by British troops, only two have been recovered. Employees and slaves rescued a painting of George Washington, and in 1939, a Canadian man returned a jewelry box to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, claiming that his grandfather had taken it from Washington. Some observers allege that most of these spoils were lost when a convoy of British ships led by HMS Fantome sank en route to Halifax off Prospect during a storm on the night of November 24, 1814, even though Fantome had no involvement in that action.</p><br>
<p>After the fire, President James Madison resided in The Octagon House from 1814 to 1815, and then the Seven Buildings from 1815 to the end of his term. Meanwhile, both architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe and Hoban contributed to the design and oversight of the reconstruction, which lasted from 1815 until 1817. The south portico was constructed in 1824 during the James Monroe administration; the north portico was built six years later. although this matter is one of great debate. Italian artisans, brought to Washington to help in constructing the USA Capitol, carved the decorative stonework on both porticos. Contrary to speculation, the North Portico was not modeled on a similar portico on another Dublin building, the Viceregal Lodge (now Áras an Uachtaráin, residence of the President of Ireland), for its portico postdates the White House porticos&#39; design. For the North Portico, a variation on the Ionic Order was devised incorporating a swag of roses between the volutes. This was done to link the new portico with the earlier carved roses above the entrance.</p><br>
<h3>Overcrowding and building the West Wing</h3><br>
<p>By the time of the American Civil War, the White House had become overcrowded. The location of the White House was questioned, just north of a canal and swampy lands, which provided conditions ripe for malaria and other unhealthy conditions. Brigadier General Nathaniel Michler was tasked to propose solutions to address these concerns. He proposed abandoning the use of the White House as a residence and designed a new estate for the first family at Meridian Hill in Washington, D.C., but Congress rejected the plan.</p><br>
<p>When Chester Arthur took office in 1881, he ordered renovations to the White House to take place as soon as the recently widowed Lucretia Garfield moved out. Arthur inspected the work almost nightly and made several suggestions. Louis Comfort Tiffany was asked to send selected designers to assist. Over twenty wagonloads of furniture and household items were removed from the building and sold at a public auction. All that was saved were bust portraits of John Adams and Martin Van Buren. A proposal was made to build a new residence south of the White House, but it failed to gain support.</p><br>
<p>In the fall of 1882 work was done on the main corridor, including tinting the walls pale olive and adding squares of gold leaf, and decorating the ceiling in gold and silver, and colorful traceries woven to spell "USA". The Red Room was painted a dull Pomeranian red, and its ceiling was decorated with gold, silver, and copper stars and stripes of red, white, and blue. A fifty-foot jeweled Tiffany glass screen, supported by imitation marble columns, replaced the glass doors that separated the main corridor from the north vestibule.</p><br>
<p>In 1891, First Lady Caroline Harrison proposed major extensions to the White House, including a National Wing on the east for a historical art gallery, and a wing on the west for official functions. A plan was devised by Colonel Theodore A. Bingham, which reflected the Harrison proposal. These plans were ultimately rejected.</p><br>
<p>However, in 1902 Theodore Roosevelt hired McKim, Mead & White to carry out expansions and renovations in a neoclassical style suited to the buildings architecture, removing the Tiffany screen and all Victorian additions. Charles McKim himself designed and managed the project, which gave more living space to the Presidents large family by removing a staircase in the West Hall and moving executive office staff from the second floor of the residence into the new West Wing.</p><br>
<p>President William Howard Taft enlisted the help of architect Nathan C. Wyeth to add additional space to the West Wing, which included the addition of the Oval Office. In 1925, Congress enacted legislation allowing the White House to accept gifts of furniture and art for the first time. The West Wing was damaged by fire in 1929, but rebuilt during the remaining years of the Herbert Hoover presidency. In the 1930s, a second story was added, as well as a larger basement for White House staff, and President Franklin Roosevelt had the Oval Office moved to its present location: adjacent to the Rose Garden.</p><br>
<h3>Truman reconstruction</h3><br>
<p>Decades of poor maintenance, the construction of a fourth story attic during the Coolidge administration, and the addition of a second-floor balcony over the south portico for Harry S. Truman took a great toll on the brick and sandstone structure built around a timber frame. By 1948, the house was declared to be in imminent danger of collapse, forcing President Truman to commission a reconstruction and to live across the street at Blair House from 1949 to 1951. The work, done by the firm of Philadelphia contractor John McShain, required the complete dismantling of the interior spaces, construction of a new load-bearing internal steel frame and the reconstruction of the original rooms within the new structure. The total cost of the renovations was about $5.7 million (US$ million in ). Some modifications to the floor plan were made, the largest being the repositioning of the grand staircase to open into the Entrance Hall, rather than the Cross Hall. Central air conditioning was added, as well as two additional sub-basements providing space for workrooms, storage, and a bomb shelter. The Trumans moved back into the White House on March 27, 1952. While the house&#39;s structure was kept intact by the Truman reconstruction, much of the new interior finishes were generic, and of little historic value. Much of the original plasterwork, some dating back to the 1814–1816 rebuilding, was too damaged to reinstall, as was the original robust Beaux Arts paneling in the East Room. President Truman had the original timber frame sawed into paneling; the walls of the Vermeil Room, Library, China Room, and Map Room on the ground floor of the main residence were paneled in wood from the timbers.</p><br>
<h3>Jacqueline Kennedy restoration</h3><br>
<p>Jacqueline Kennedy, wife of President John F. Kennedy (1961–63), directed a very extensive and historic redecoration of the house. She enlisted the help of Henry Francis du Pont of the Winterthur Museum to assist in collecting artifacts for the mansion, many of which had once been housed there. In the Diplomatic Reception Room, Mrs. Kennedy installed an antique "Vue de l&#39;Amérique Nord" wall paper which Zuber & Cie had designed in 1834. The wallpaper had hung previously on the walls of another mansion until 1961 when that house was demolished for a grocery store. Just before the demolition, the wallpaper was salvaged and sold to the White House.</p><br>
<p>The first White House guidebook was produced under the direction of curator Lorraine Waxman Pearce with direct supervision from Mrs. Kennedy. Sale of the guidebook helped finance the restoration.</p><br>
<p>Kennedy showed her restoration of the White House to the public in a televised tour of the house on Valentine&#39;s Day in 1962.</p><br>
<h2>The White House since the Kennedy restoration</h2><br>
<p>Congress enacted legislation in September 1961 declaring the White House a museum. Furniture, fixtures, and decorative arts could now be declared either historic or of artistic interest by the President. This prevented them from being sold (as many objects in the executive mansion had been in the past 150 years). When not in use or display at the White House, these items were to be turned over to the Smithsonian Institution for preservation, study, storage, or exhibition. The White House retains the right to have these items returned.</p><br>
<p>Out of respect for the historic character of the White House, no substantive architectural changes have been made to the house since the Truman renovation. Since the Kennedy restoration, every presidential family has made some changes to the private quarters of the White House, but the Committee for the Preservation of the White House must approve any modifications to the State Rooms. Charged with maintaining the historical integrity of the White House, the congressionally authorized committee works with each First Family—usually represented by the First Lady, the White House Curator, and the Chief Usher—to implement the family&#39;s proposals for altering the house.</p><br>
<p>During the Nixon administration (1969–74), First Lady Pat Nixon refurbished the Green Room, Blue Room, and Red Room, working with Clement Conger, the curator appointed by President Richard Nixon. Mrs. Nixons efforts brought more than 600 artifacts to the house, the largest acquisition by any administration. Her husband created the modern press briefing room over Franklin Roosevelts old swimming pool. Nixon also added a single-lane bowling alley to the White House basement.</p><br>
<p>Computers and the first laser printer were added during the Carter administration, and the use of computer technology was expanded during the Reagan administration. A Carter-era innovation, a set of solar water heating panels that were mounted on the roof of the White House, was removed during Reagan&#39;s presidency. Redecorations were made to the private family quarters and maintenance was made to public areas during the Reagan years.</p><br>
<p>In the 1990s, Bill and Hillary Clinton refurbished some rooms with the assistance of Arkansas decorator Kaki Hockersmith, including the Oval Office, the East Room, Blue Room, State Dining Room, Lincoln Bedroom, and Lincoln Sitting Room. During the administration of George W. Bush, First Lady Laura Bush refurbished the Lincoln Bedroom in a style contemporary with the Lincoln era; the Green Room, Cabinet Room, and theater were also refurbished.</p><br>
<p>The White House became one of the first wheelchair-accessible government buildings in Washington when modifications were made during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who used a wheelchair because of his paralytic illness. In the 1990s, Hillary Clinton, at the suggestion of Visitors Office Director Melinda N. Bates, approved the addition of a ramp in the East Wing corridor. It allowed easy wheelchair access for the public tours and special events that enter through the secure entrance building on the east side.</p><br>
<p>In 2003, the Bush administration reinstalled solar thermal heaters. These units are used to heat water for landscape maintenance personnel and for the presidential pool and spa. 167 solar photovoltaic grid tied panels were installed at the same time on the roof of the maintenance facility. The changes were not publicized as a White House spokeswoman said the changes were an internal matter. The story was picked up by industry trade journals. In 2013, President Barack Obama had a set of solar panels installed on the roof of the White House, making it the first time solar power would be used for the president&#39;s living quarters.</p><br>
<p>The president usually travels to and from the White House grounds via official motorcade or helicopter. The journey by helicopter was inaugurated in the 1950s, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower began traveling on Marine One to and from his official residence.</p><br>
<h3>Layout and amenities</h3><br>
<p>Today the group of buildings housing the presidency is known as the White House Complex. It includes the central Executive Residence flanked by the East Wing and West Wing. The Chief Usher coordinates day to day household operations. The White House includes: six stories and 55,000 ft (5,100 m) of floor space, 132 rooms and 35 bathrooms, 412 doors, 147 windows, twenty-eight fireplaces, eight staircases, three elevators, five full-time chefs, a tennis court, a (single-lane) bowling alley (officially called the Harry S. Truman Bowling Alley), a movie theater (officially called the White House Family Theater), a jogging track, a swimming pool, and a putting green. It receives up to 30,000 visitors each week.</p><br>
<h3>Executive Residence</h3><br>
<p>The original residence is in the center. Two colonnades—one on the east and one on the west—designed by Jefferson, now serve to connect the East and West Wings, added later. The Executive Residence houses the presidents dwelling, as well as rooms for ceremonies and official entertaining. The State Floor of the residence building includes the East Room, Green Room, Blue Room, Red Room, State Dining Room, Family Dining Room, Cross Hall, Entrance Hall, and Grand Staircase. The Ground Floor is made up of the Diplomatic Reception Room, Map Room, China Room, Vermeil Room, Library, the main kitchen, and other offices. The second floor family residence includes the Yellow Oval Room, East and West Sitting Halls, the White House Master Bedroom, Presidents Dining Room, the Treaty Room, Lincoln Bedroom and Queens Bedroom, as well as two additional bedrooms, a smaller kitchen, and a private dressing room. The third floor consists of the White House Solarium, Game Room, Linen Room, a Diet Kitchen, and another sitting room (previously used as President George W. Bushs workout room).</p><br>
<h3>West Wing</h3><br>
<p>The West Wing houses the President&#39;s office (the Oval Office) and offices of his senior staff, with room for about 50 employees. It also includes the Cabinet Room, where the president conducts business meetings and where the Cabinet meets, as well as the White House Situation Room, James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, and Roosevelt Room. In 2007, work was completed on renovations of the press briefing room, adding fiber optic cables and LCD screens for the display of charts and graphs. The makeover took 11 months and cost $8 million, of which news outlets paid $2 million. In September 2010, a two-year project began on the West Wing, creating a multistory underground structure; this will be followed with additional renovation of the wing.</p><br>
<p>The Oval Office, Roosevelt Room, and other portions of the West Wing were partially replicated on a sound stage and used as the setting for the popular television show The West Wing.</p><br>
<h3>East Wing</h3><br>
<p>The East Wing, which contains additional office space, was added to the White House in 1942. Among its uses, the East Wing has intermittently housed the offices and staff of the First Lady, and the White House Social Office. Rosalynn Carter, in 1977, was the first to place her personal office in the East Wing and to formally call it the "Office of the First Lady". The East Wing was built during World War II in order to hide the construction of an underground bunker to be used in emergencies. The bunker has come to be known as the Presidential Emergency Operations Center.</p><br>
<h3>Grounds</h3><br>
<p>The White House and grounds cover just over 18 acres (about 7.3 hectares). Before the construction of the North Portico, most public events were entered from the South Lawn, which was graded and planted by Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson also drafted a planting plan for the North Lawn that included large trees that would have mostly obscured the house from Pennsylvania Avenue. During the mid-to-late 19th century a series of ever larger greenhouses were built on the west side of the house, where the current West Wing is located. During this period, the North Lawn was planted with ornate carpet-style flowerbeds. The general layout of the White House grounds today is based on the 1935 design by Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. of the Olmsted Brothers firm, commissioned by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. During the Kennedy administration, the White House Rose Garden was redesigned by Rachel Lambert Mellon. The Rose Garden borders the West Colonnade. Bordering the East Colonnade is the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden, which was begun by Jacqueline Kennedy but completed after her husbands assassination. On the weekend of June 23, 2006, a century-old American Elm (Ulmus americana L.) tree on the north side of the building, came down during one of the many storms amid intense flooding. Among the oldest trees on the grounds are several magnolias (Magnolia grandiflora) planted by Andrew Jackson. Michelle Obama planted the White Houses first organic garden and installed beehives on the South Lawn of the White House, which will supply organic produce and honey to the First Family and for state dinners and other official gatherings.</p><br>
<h2>Public access and security</h2><br>
<h3>Historical accessibility</h3><br>
<p>Like the English and Irish country houses it was modeled on, the White House was, from the start, open to the public until the early part of the 20th century. President Thomas Jefferson held an open house for his second inaugural in 1805, and many of the people at his swearing-in ceremony at the Capitol followed him home, where he greeted them in the Blue Room. Those open houses sometimes became rowdy: in 1829, President Andrew Jackson had to leave for a hotel when roughly 20,000 citizens celebrated his inauguration inside the White House. His aides ultimately had to lure the mob outside with washtubs filled with a potent cocktail of orange juice and whiskey. Even so, the practice continued until 1885, when newly elected Grover Cleveland arranged for a presidential review of the troops from a grandstand in front of the White House instead of the traditional open house. Jefferson also permitted public tours of his house, which have continued ever since, except during wartime, and began the tradition of annual receptions on New Years Day and on the Fourth of July. Those receptions ended in the early 1930s, although President Bill Clinton would briefly revive the New Years Day open house in his first term.</p><br>
<p>The White House remained accessible in other ways; President Abraham Lincoln complained that he was constantly beleaguered by job seekers waiting to ask him for political appointments or other favors, or eccentric dispensers of advice like "General" Daniel Pratt, as he began the business day. Lincoln put up with the annoyance rather than risk alienating some associate or friend of a powerful politician or opinion maker.</p><br>
<h3>Aviation incidents</h3><br>
<p>In February 1974, a stolen army helicopter landed without authorization on the White House&#39;s grounds. Twenty years later, in 1994, a light plane crashed on the White House grounds, and the pilot died instantly.</p><br>
<p>As a result of increased security regarding air traffic in the capital, the White House was evacuated in May 2005 before an unauthorized aircraft could approach the grounds.</p><br>
<h3>Closure of Pennsylvania Avenue</h3><br>
<p>On May 20, 1995, primarily as a response to the Oklahoma City bombing of April 19, 1995, the United States Secret Service closed off Pennsylvania Avenue to vehicular traffic in front of the White House from the eastern edge of Lafayette Park to 17th Street. Later, the closure was extended an additional block to the east to 15th Street, and East Executive Avenue, a small street between the White House and the Treasury Building.</p><br>
<p>After September 11, 2001, this was made permanent in addition to closing E Street between the South Portico of the White House and the Ellipse. In response to the Boston Marathon bombing the road was closed to the public in its entirety for a period of two days.</p><br>
<p>The Pennsylvania Avenue closing has been opposed by organized civic groups in Washington, D.C. They argue that the closing impedes traffic flow unnecessarily and is inconsistent with the well-conceived historic plan for the city. As for security considerations, they note that the White House is set much farther back from the street than numerous other sensitive federal buildings are.</p><br>
<p>Prior to its inclusion within the fenced compound that now includes the Old Executive Office Building to the west and the Treasury Building to the east, this sidewalk served as a queuing area for the daily public tours of the White House. These tours were suspended in the wake of the September 11 attacks. In September 2003, they resumed on a limited basis for groups making prior arrangements through their Congressional representatives or embassies in Washington for foreign nationals and submitting to background checks, but the White House remained closed to the public. White House tours were suspended for most of 2013 due to budget constraints after sequestration. The White House reopened to the public in November 2013.</p><br>
<h3>Protection</h3><br>
<p>The White House Complex is protected by the United States Secret Service and the United States Park Police.</p><br>
<p>NASAMS (Norwegian Advanced Surface to Air Missile System) were used to guard air space over Washington, D.C. during the 2005 presidential inauguration. The same NASAMS units have since been used to protect the president and all air space around the White House, which is strictly prohibited to aircraft.</p><br>
<p>Whidbey Island  is the largest of the islands composing Island County, Washington, in the United States.  Whidbey is about 30 mi north of Seattle, and lies between the Olympic Peninsula and the I-5 corridor of western Washington. The island forms the northern boundary of Puget Sound. It is home to Naval Air Station Whidbey Island.</p><br>
<p>Whidbey Island is home to 58,211 residents (according to the 2000 census). An estimated 29,000 of Whidbey Island residents live in rural locations.</p><br>
<p>Whidbey Island is approximately 55 mi long (from the extreme north to extreme south), and 1.5 to 12 mi wide, with a total land area of 168.67 square miles, making it the 40th largest island in the United States. It is ranked as the fourth longest and fourth largest island in the contiguous United States, behind Padre Island, Texas (the world&#39;s longest barrier island); Long Island; and Isle Royale, Michigan. In the state of Washington, it is the largest island, followed by Orcas Island.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Whidbey Island was once inhabited by members of the Lower Skagit, Swinomish, Suquamish, Snohomish and other Native American tribes. Their name for the island was Tscha-kole-chy. The Native Americans were peaceful groups who lived off the sea and land, with fishing, harvesting nuts, berries and roots, which they preserved over the winter.</p><br>
<p>The first known European sighting of Whidbey Island was during the 1790 Spanish expedition of Manuel Quimper and Gonzalo López de Haro on the Princesa Real.</p><br>
<p>Captain George Vancouver fully explored the island in 1792. In May of that year, Royal Navy officers and members of Vancouver&#39;s expedition, Joseph Whidbey (master of H. M. S. Discovery) and Peter Puget (a lieutenant on the ship), began to map and explore the areas of what would later be named Puget Sound. After Whidbey circumnavigated the island in June 1792, Vancouver named the island in his honor. By that time, Vancouver had claimed the area for Britain.</p><br>
<p>The first known overnight stay by a non-Native American was made on May 26, 1840 by a Catholic missionary, Father François Norbert Blanchet, during travel across Puget Sound. He had been invited by Chief Tslalakum. Blanchet remained on the island for nearly a year and guided the inhabitants in building a new log church.</p><br>
<p>Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, commander of the United States Exploring Expedition of 1838–1842, sailed the USS Vincennes into Penn Cove in 1841. By that time, the log church was already being built by the Native Americans beside a huge wooden cross (24 feet long) that they had erected. Wilkes ordered his men to use no force except in self-defense when dealing with the "savage and treacherous inhabitants". In fact, he encountered few problems with the indigenous people who had already been poorly treated by visitors and suffered from diseases they had introduced.</p><br>
<p>Wilkes named the lower cove Holmes Harbor, after his assistant surgeon, Silas Holmes. During this time he charted Puget Sound. Other sites in the area that were given names by Wilkes included Maury Island (Vashon), Hammersley Inlet, Totten and Budd Inlets, Agate Passage between the Kitsap Peninsula, Hale Passage and Dana Passage.</p><br>
<p>Thomas W. Glasgow filed the first land claim on Whidbey Island in 1848, attempting to become the first settler. He built a small cabin near Penn Cove, planted some crops and married a local lady, Julia Pat-Ke-Nim.</p><br>
<p>Glasgow left in August of that year however, having been forced out by the local inhabitants.</p><br>
<p>Colonel Isaac N. Ebey arrived from Columbus, Ohio, in 1850 and became the first permanent white settler, claiming a square mile (2.6 km²) of prairie with a southern shoreline on Admiralty Inlet. He took advantage of the 640 acres offered free of charge to each married couple, the first to do so, on October 15, 1850. In the fall of 1851, his children, his wife, three of her brothers and the Samuel Crockett family arrived to join Ebey.</p><br>
<p>In addition to farming potatoes and wheat, Eby was also the postmaster for Port Townsend, Washington and rowed a boat daily across the inlet in order to work at the post office there. Colonel Ebey also served as a representative in the Oregon Territory Legislative Assembly, as Island County’s first Justice of the Peace, as a probate judge and as Collector of Customs for the Puget Sound District.</p><br>
<p>On August 11, 1857, at age 39, Colonel Ebey was murdered and beheaded by Native Americans, said to be Haida who had traveled to this area from the Queen Charlotte Islands. Some sources however, refer to his killers as "Russian Indians called Kakes or Kikans, Kufrinoff Island, near the head of Prince Frederick&#39;s Sound. Ebey was slain in proxy-retaliation for the killing of a Haida chief or Tyee and 27 other indigenous people at Port Gamble. Fort Ebey, named for the Colonel, was established in 1942 on the west side of the central part of the island, just northwest of Coupeville.</p><br>
<p>Admiralty Head Lighthouse is located in this area, on the grounds of Fort Casey State Park. The area around Coupeville is the federally protected Ebey&#39;s Landing National Historical Reserve, named in honor of Isaac Ebey.</p><br>
<p>In December 1984, the island was the site of a violent encounter between law enforcement and white nationalist and organized crime leader Robert Jay Mathews of the group The Order. A large shootout occurred between Mathews and FBI agents in which Mathews was killed during a house fire. Mathews&#39; followers have since gathered on the island at the location where he was killed by FBI agents on the anniversary of his death to commemorate it.</p><br>
<h2>Government</h2><br>
<p>Whidbey Island, along with Camano Island, Ben Ure Island and six uninhabited islands, comprises Island County, Washington. The county seat is located in the town of Coupeville on Whidbey Island.</p><br>
<p>Population centers of Whidbey Island include the City of Oak Harbor, the Town of Coupeville, the City of Langley, the Village of Freeland, the Community of Greenbank, the Village of Clinton and the Community of Bayview. Only Oak Harbor, Coupeville and Langley are incorporated, the others (with the exception of Greenbank and Bayview) are all Census-designated places, and all but Bayview have their own post offices and ZIP codes.</p><br>
<h2>Economy</h2><br>
<p>Whidbey Island is divided economically into two different regions: the northern end of the island (encompassing Oak Harbor and Whidbey Island Naval Air Station), and the remainder of the island (encompassing Coupeville, Greenbank, Freeland, Langley, Clinton and the smaller communities in-between).</p><br>
<p>The economy of the northern end of Whidbey Island is strongly influenced by the presence of Whidbey Island Naval Air Station near Oak Harbor (N.A.S. Whidbey). N.A.S. Whidbey is Oak Harbor’s largest employer; thus, Oak Harbor has a predominantly service-based economy and several national chain stores have been attracted to the Oak Harbor area.</p><br>
<p>The economy of Whidbey Island south of Oak Harbor relies heavily on tourism, small-scale agriculture, and the arts.</p><br>
<p>Tourism is especially important for both Whidbey and Camano Islands. On Whidbey, tourists find a wide range of amenities in the towns of Oak Harbor, Coupeville, Freeland and Langley. Coupeville&#39;s Penn Cove Mussel Farm exports large quantities of its highly renowned Penn Cove Mussels. This aquaculture facility, along with a number of small farms, reflects the rural agricultural nature of most of central Whidbey Island. Many of these small farms host farm stands onsite, where customers may buy produce, flowers, meat, eggs and other locally raised products directly from the farmers.</p><br>
<p>Often referred to as Puget Sounds Largest Artists Colony, Whidbey is home to numerous working artists, writers, and performers. These include many well-known painters, sculptors, glass artists, wood workers, metal workers, mixed media artists, photographers, authors, poets, actors, and musicians.</p><br>
<p>In addition to being a haven for artists, the southern end of Whidbey Island also serves as a minor bedroom community for the nearby cities of Everett, where the Boeing Everett Factory is located, and Seattle. Commuters to and from those areas use the Washington State Ferries system&#39;s run between Clinton and Mukilteo.</p><br>
<h2>Geography</h2><br>
<p>Whidbey Island is often claimed to be the longest island in the continental United States (or another similar claim), but according to the Seattle Times it cannot be correctly considered so. Whidbey Island has four lakes that are part of its interior hydrology: Cranberry Lake (inside Deception Pass State Park), Deer Lake, Goss Lake and Lone Lake (both near the town of Langley).</p><br>
<h2>Parks and reserve areas</h2><br>
<p>Whidbey Island contains Ebeys Landing National Historical Reserve, the first national historic reserve in the US created by the National Park Service to preserve the rural history and culture of the island and to protect the areas rare and sensitive plants.</p><br>
<p>Washington State Parks located on the island include Deception Pass State Park (the most visited state park in Washington), Joseph Whidbey State Park, Fort Ebey State Park, Fort Casey State Park, Possession Point State Park, and South Whidbey Island State Park. There is also a series of county operated parks throughout the Island.</p><br>
<p>Earth Sanctuary is a nature reserve, sculpture garden and retreat center on Whidbey Island. The ponds and bog fen complex have been designated as a “habitat of local importance” by the Whidbey Audubon Society and Island County Critical Areas program.</p><br>
<h2>Festivals</h2><br>
<p>Whidbey Island hosts many festivals and celebrations throughout the year.</p><br>
<p>Whidbey Island Area Fair ("Island County Fair" until 2012), on the third weekend of August, includes rides, food, and animal shows.</p><br>
<p>WagnWalk, which takes place towards the end of August, is Western Washingtons premier celebration of dogs and things dog-related. It includes vendors, games, competition, demonstrations and the Wagn&#39;Walk itself.</p><br>
<p>Whidbey Island Kite Festival, in September</p><br>
<p>Langley&#39;s Mystery Weekend in March or February. For the weekend the Town of Langley turns into the setting of a fictional murder mystery.</p><br>
<p>Penn Cove Mussel Festival, in March, celebrates the bounty of the sea, especially the mussel.</p><br>
<p>Loganberry Festival at the Greenbank Farm in July (This was discontinued after the 2016 festival.)</p><br>
<p>Maxwelton Beach Fourth of July Parade and fireworks show, which takes place at the southern end of Maxwelton Road at Dave Mackie Park. After the parade, there are events for all ages, including three-legged races, divided into age groups, and the most popular event, the egg toss.</p><br>
<p>Choochokam is the annual street fair and arts festival, held in downtown Langley during the second weekend of July, detailed schedules and other information is generally available on the festival website. (This was discontinued after the 2016 festival.)</p><br>
<p>Tour de Whidbey, in September, is a bike race spanning the length of Whidbey Island.</p><br>
<p>The Whidbey Island Marathon and Half Marathon, in April since 2002.</p><br>
<p>Whidbey Island Race Week: a week-long sailing regatta every summer based out of Oak Harbor with daily racing in Penn Cove and/or Saratoga Passage (depending on wind conditions). Usually held third week of July, varies slightly due to tidal conditions.</p><br>
<p>Whidbey Island Highland Games - 2nd Saturday in August. Competitions in Scottish Heavy Athletics, Highland Dancing, Pipe and drum bands.</p><br>
<p>Whidbey Island Zucchini Festival - An annual festival hosted by residents of Whidbey island brought about by an excess of home-grown zucchini. The festival includes zucchini based musical performances, various types of zucchini based or themed visual art, all types of foods that feature zucchini, outdoor games and competitions using zucchini, and a giant zucchini slingshot.</p><br>
<p>Oak Harbor Music Festival - An annual music festival held in the biggest city on the island, Oak Harbor. It is held over Labor Day Weekend, and consists of a wide variety of musical acts.</p><br>
<h2>Climate</h2><br>
<p>Whidbey Island lies partially in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountain Range to the west, and has a variety of climate zones. This can be observed by rainfall amounts – wettest in the south with average rainfall of 36 in, driest in the central district of Coupeville with average rainfall of 20 to 22 in, and turning moister again farther north with average rainfall of 32 in. Microclimates abound, determined by proximity to water, elevation and prevailing winds.</p><br>
<h2>Ecology</h2><br>
<h3>Flora</h3><br>
<p>Vegetation varies greatly from one end of the island to the other. Vegetation in the south is more similar to that of mainland Washington. The principal trees are Douglas fir, red alder, bigleaf maple, western red cedar, and western hemlock. Compared to the rest of western Washington state, vine maple is notably absent, except where they have been planted. Other under-story plants include the evergreen huckleberry, lower longleaf Oregon grape, elderberry, salal, oceanspray, and varieties of nettle. Non-native introduced plants such as foxglove, ivy and holly are also evident.</p><br>
<p>Farther up the island, however, the shorter Oregon-Grape and the blue Evergreen Huckleberry is seen less, while tall Oregon-grape and Red Huckleberry predominate. The native Pacific rhododendron is much more visible. Amongst the deciduous varieties, Garry oak (from which Oak Harbor takes its name) are seen more frequently in the northern portion of the island and Pacific madrone is also notably present. In the conifer classification, grand fir is found more in the northern part of Whidbey Island along with Sitka spruce and shore pine. There are three open prairie areas on Whidbey Island – Smith Prairie, Crockett Prairie and Ebey Prairie. Interestingly, some patches of prickly pear cactus are found along the slopes near Partridge Point.</p><br>
<h3>Fauna</h3><br>
<p>Gray whales migrate between Whidbey and Camano Islands during March and April and can be seen from both ship and shore. Orca also make use of the waters surrounding Whidbey Island.</p><br>
<p>Clams and Oysters are abundant locally and may be harvested from some public beaches. The Washington State Department of Health provides an online guide to assist in identifying shellfish varieties as well as providing guidance about where to find specific varieties.</p><br>
<h2>Education</h2><br>
<h3>Public school districts</h3><br>
<p>Whidbey Island is served by three public school districts.</p><br>
<p>Oak Harbor School District operates in Oak Harbor. Within the district, there is one high school, one alternative high school, two middle schools, and five elementary schools. Within the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, Oak Harbor High is listed as a 3-A school.</p><br>
<p>Coupeville School District operates in Coupeville, Washington and Greenbank, Washington. Within the district, there is one high school, one middle school, and one elementary school. Within the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, Coupeville High is listed as a 1-A school.</p><br>
<p>South Whidbey School District serves the southern end of the island, including Freeland, Langley, and Clinton. Within the district, there is one high school (grades 9–12), one alternative school (grades K–12), one middle school (grades 5-8) split between 2 campuses, and one elementary school (grades K–4). Within the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, South Whidbey High is listed as a 1-A school.</p><br>
<h3>Colleges</h3><br>
<p>Skagit Valley College has a campus located in Oak Harbor, and a limited service campus in South Whidbey.</p><br>
<p>Seattle Pacific University owns Camp Casey, a retreat center near Coupeville, which was once the barracks for the adjacent Fort Casey.</p><br>
<h2>Notable people</h2><br>
<h3>Politicians</h3><br>
<p>Jack Metcalf (1927-2007), United States House of Representatives, grew up on Whidbey Island in the 1930s.</p><br>
<h3>Writers and artists</h3><br>
<p>Shayla Beesley, actress, grew up in Oak Harbor</p><br>
<p>Juliet Winters Carpenter, prize-winning translator of Japanese literature and author</p><br>
<p>Aleah Chapin, painter, grew up on Whidbey Island</p><br>
<p>Pete Dexter, National Book Award fiction writer</p><br>
<p>Elizabeth George, mystery author.</p><br>
<p>David Ossman, founder of Firesign Theater</p><br>
<p>Nancy Horan, best selling author</p><br>
<p>Jeff Alexander, conductor and arranger</p><br>
<p>Eli Moore and Ashley Eriksson of Lake</p><br>
<h3>Other</h3><br>
<p>Robert Jay Mathews, American neo-Nazi terrorist and the leader of The Order (white supremacist group), an American white supremacist militant group, died on Whidbey Island during a shoot-out with federal law enforcement agents.</p><br>
<p>Bruce Bochte, American baseball player. Bochte lived on Whidbey Island for over three years after his baseball playing days were over.</p><br>
<p>Marti Malloy, London 2012 Olympic Bronze medalist, Judo women&#39;s 57 kg</p><br>
<h2>Infrastructure</h2><br>
<h3>Transportation</h3><br>
<p>Travel on the island involves use of an extensive county road system, or city infrastructure depending on location, all of which act as feeders to the two state highways State Route 525 and State Route 20.</p><br>
<p>Whidbey Island&#39;s State Routes 525/20 is the only nationally designated Scenic Byway on an island. It is appropriately named the "Whidbey Island Scenic Isle Way."</p><br>
<p>Public transportation is provided by Island Transit, which provides a zero-fare bus service paid for by a 6/10th of 1% sales tax within the county. There are currently 13 bus routes serving Whidbey Island. No service is available on Saturdays, and buses do not run on Sunday or major holidays.</p><br>
<p>Two public airports provide service to Whidbey Island. Whidbey Air Park is located 2 mi southwest of Langley with a 2,470 ft long runway. Wes Lupien Airport is located 3 mi southwest of Oak Harbor with a 3,265 ft long runway. In addition, there are approximately half dozen private dirt strips on the island. Kenmore Air Express ran a scheduled airline service to Whidbey Island serving the Oak Harbor airport from 2006 to 2009.</p><br>
<p>The United States Navy operates two airports on Whidbey Island. The largest is a two-runway airport located at Whidbey Island Naval Air Station north of Oak Harbor. In addition, the Navy also operates a flight training facility named Coupeville Outlying Landing Field (Coupeville OLF) located just southeast of Coupeville. The Navy named USS Whidbey Island (LSD-41) in honor of the island.</p><br>
<h3>Health systems</h3><br>
<p>Whidbey Health is the regional, county-run hospital. Located in Coupeville, the hospital has an extension clinic Oak Harbor. The Naval Air Station in Oak Harbor has a limited service hospital for military personnel, veteran retirees and their dependents only.</p><br>
<h2>Communities</h2><br>
<p>North to south:</p><br>
<p>Deception Pass</p><br>
<p>Oak Harbor - Largest city</p><br>
<p>West Beach</p><br>
<p>San De Fuca</p><br>
<p>Coupeville – County Seat</p><br>
<p>Keystone</p><br>
<p>Admiral&#39;s Cove</p><br>
<p>Lagoon Point</p><br>
<p>Greenbank</p><br>
<p>Langley</p><br>
<p>Freeland</p><br>
<p>Bayview</p><br>
<p>Clinton</p><br>
<p>Maxwelton</p><br>
<p>Glendale</p><br>
<p>Wookey Hole Caves are a series of limestone caverns, a show cave and tourist attraction in the village of Wookey Hole on the southern edge of the Mendip Hills near Wells in Somerset, England. The River Axe flows through the cave. It is a Site of Special Scientific Interest  for both biological and geological reasons. Wookey Hole cave is a "solutional cave", one that is formed by a process of weathering in which the natural acid in groundwater dissolves the rocks. Some water originates as rain that flows into streams on impervious rocks on the plateau before sinking at the limestone boundary into cave systems such as Swildons Hole, Eastwater Cavern and St Cuthberts Swallet; the rest is rain that percolates directly through the limestone. The temperature in the caves is a constant 11 &deg;C.</p><br>
<p>The caves have been used by humans for around 45,000 years, demonstrated by the discovery of tools from the Palaeolithic period, along with fossilised animal remains. Evidence of Stone and Iron Age occupation continued into Roman Britain. A corn-grinding mill operated on the resurgent waters of the River Axe as early as the Domesday survey of 1086. The waters of the river are used in a handmade paper mill, the oldest extant in Britain, which began operations circa 1610. The low, constant temperature of the caves means that they can be used for maturing Cheddar cheese.</p><br>
<p>The caves are the site of the first cave dives in Britain which were undertaken by Jack Sheppard and Graham Balcombe. Since the 1930s divers have explored the extensive network of chambers developing breathing apparatus and novel techniques in the process. The full extent of the cave system is still unknown with approximately 4,000 m, including 25 chambers, having been explored. Part of the cave system opened as a show cave in 1927 following exploratory work by Herbert E. Balch. As a tourist attraction it has been owned by Madame Tussauds and, most recently, the circus owner Gerry Cottle. The cave is noted for the Witch of Wookey Hole – a roughly human shaped stalagmite that legend says is a witch turned to stone by a monk from Glastonbury. It has also been used as a location for film and television productions.</p><br>
<h2>Description</h2><br>
<p>The show cave consists of a dry gallery connecting three large chambers, the first of which contains the Witch of Wookey formation. There are various high level passages leading off from these chambers, with two small exits above the tourist entrance. The River Axe is formed by the water entering the cave systems and flows through the third and first chambers, from which it flows to the resurgence, through two sumps 40 m and 30 m long, where it leaves the cave and enters the open air.</p><br>
<p>The river is maintained at an artificially high level and falls a couple of metres when the sluice is lowered to allow access to the fourth and fifth chambers, two small air spaces. Normally, however, these are only accessible by cave diving. Beyond the fifth chamber a roomy submerged route may be followed for a further 40 m, passing under three large rifts with air spaces, to surface in the ninth chamber – a roomy chamber over 30 m long and the same high. High level passages here lead to a former resurgence, now blocked, some 45 m above the current resurgence.</p><br>
<p>An artificial tunnel 180 m leading off from the third chamber allows show cave visitors to cross the seventh and eighth chambers on bridges, and skirt around the ninth chamber on a walkway, before exiting near the resurgence. A second excavated 74 m tunnel from the ninth chamber allows visitors to visit the 20th chamber.</p><br>
<p>From the ninth chamber, a dive of about 200 m passes almost immediately from the Dolomitic Conglomerate into the limestone, and descends steadily for 70 m to a depth of 23 m under a couple of high rifts with airbells, which are enclosed air spaces between the water and the roof, before reaching air space in the 19th chamber. The 20th chamber is at the top of a large boulder slope – 60 m long, 15 m wide, and 22 m high. From here a roomy passage some 400 m long ascends towards a now-blocked fossil resurgence in the Ebbor Gorge. The total length of passages in this area is about 820 m. A passage near the end is being cleared in an attempt to provide an easier connection with the 24th chamber, which is only an estimated 30 m away.</p><br>
<p>The continuation is found in the 19th chamber, where 152 m of passage descending to a depth of 24 m surfaces in the 22nd chamber – 300 m of dry passages at various levels with a static pool. The way on is within this pool at a depth of 19 m where 100 m of passage ascends to surface in the 23rd chamber – 100 m of large passage, followed by four short sumps that arrive in the 24th chamber. This is 370 m of what is described in the guide book as "magnificent" river passage, 13 m high and 2 m wide, which finishes at a cascade falling from a 30 m long lake. There are also more than 370 m of high level passages above the river. The way on continues underwater for some 100 m reaching a depth of 25 m before surfacing in the 25th chamber – called the Lake of Gloom because of its thick mud deposits. The sump at the end of this has been dived for 400 m to a maximum depth of 90 m before gravel chokes prevented further progress. The end is located about 1,000 m northeast of the entrance.</p><br>
<h2>Hydrology and geology</h2><br>
<p>Wookey Hole is on the southern escarpment of the Mendip Hills, and is the resurgence which drains the southern flanks of North Hill and Pen Hill. It is the second largest resurgence on Mendip, with an estimated catchment area of 46.2 km&sup2, and an average discharge of 789 l per second. Some of the water is allogenic in origin i.e. drained off non-limestone rocks, collecting as streams on the surface before sinking at or near the Lower Limestone Shale — Black Rock Limestone boundary, often through swallets such as Plantation Swallet near St Cuthberts lead works between the Hunters Lodge Inn and Priddy Pools. It then passes through major cave systems such as Swildons Hole, Eastwater Cavern and St Cuthberts Swallet, around Priddy, but 95% is water that has percolated directly into the limestone.</p><br>
<p>The southern slopes of the Mendip Hills largely follow the flanks of an anticline, a fold in the rock that is convex upwards and has its oldest beds at its core. On the Mendips the crest of the anticline is truncated by erosion, forming a plateau. The rock strata here dip 10–15 degrees to the southwest. The outer slopes are mainly of Carboniferous Limestone, with Devonian age Old Red Sandstone exposed as an inlier at the centre. Wookey Hole is a solutional cave mainly formed in the limestone by chemical weathering whereby naturally acidic groundwater dissolves the carbonate rocks, but it is unique in that the first part of the cave is formed in Triassic Dolomitic Conglomerate, a well-cemented fossil limestone scree representing the infill of a Triassic valley.</p><br>
<p>The cave was formed under phreatic conditions i.e. below the local water table, but lowering base levels to which the subterranean drainage was flowing resulted in some passages being abandoned by the river, and there is evidence of a number of abandoned resurgences. In particular, the passages in the 20th chamber are interpreted as a former Vauclusian spring, the waters of which once surfaced in the Ebbor Gorge. It is uncertain whether that was the original rising or whether it formed when the main rising at Wookey was blocked.</p><br>
<p>The current resurgence is located close to the base of the Dolomitic Conglomerate at the head of a short gorge formed by headward erosion with subsequent cavern collapse. The morphology of the passages is determined by the rock strata in which they are formed. The streamway in the outer part of the cave system that is formed within the Dolomitic Conglomerate is characterised by shallow loops linking low bedding chambers, or tall narrow passages, known as rifts, developed by phreatic solutional enlargement of fractured rifts. The streamway in the inner part of the system formed within the limestone is characterised by deep phreatic loops reaching depths as much as 90 m, with the water flowing down-dip along bedding planes and rising up enlarged joints. In the far reaches of the cave the passages descend to 26 m below sea level.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Witcombe suggests that the name Wookey is derived from the Celtic (Welsh) for cave, "Ogo" or "Ogof" which gave the early names for this cave of "Ochie" "Ochy". Hole is Anglo-Saxon for cave, which is itself of Latin/Norman derivation. Therefore, the name Wookey Hole Cave basically means cave cave cave. Eilert Ekwall gives an alternative derivation of Wookey from the Old English "wocig" meaning a noose or snare for animals. By the 18th century the caves were commonly known as "Okey Hole".</p><br>
<p>Fossils of a range of animals have been found including the Pleistocene lion (Felis leo spelæ), Cave hyena (Crocuta crocuta spelaea) and Badger (Meles meles). Wookey Hole was occupied by humans in the Iron Age, possibly around 250-300 BC, while nearby Hyena Cave was occupied by Stone Age hunters. Badger Hole and Rhinoceros Hole are two dry caves on the slopes above the Wookey ravine near the Wookey Hole resurgence and contain in situ cave sediments laid down during the Ice Age. Just outside the cave the foundations of a 1st-century hut have been identified. These had been built on during the Roman era up to the end of the 4th century.</p><br>
<p>In 1544 products of Roman lead working in the area were discovered. The lead mines across the Mendips have produced contamination of the water emerging from the underground caverns at Wookey Hole. The lead in the water is believed to have affected the quality of the paper produced.</p><br>
<p>The designation of the water catchment area for Wookey Hole, covering a large area of the Mendip Hills as far away as Priddy Pools as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) during the 1970s and 1980s was controversial because of conflicts of interest between land owners, recreational cavers and cave scientists. Initially proposals were put forward by the Council of Southern Caving Clubs which is part of the British Caving Association was that SSSI designation, which would restrict what farmers and other landowners were allowed to do, would cover the entire catchment area. This was opposed as being too restrictive and difficult to enforce. It was argued that agricultural uses of fields which were not directly in contact with cave entrances would have little detrimental effect on the caves themselves. There was also debate about which caves and cave features should be considered "important". The final settlement resulted in a smaller area being designated and many agricultural practices being removed from the list of proscribed "Potentially Damaging Operations".</p><br>
<p>The entrance weir and sluice gate servicing the paper mill was built about 1852. The tunnel excavated from the third chamber to the ninth chamber and then out to daylight was dug in 1974–1975 by ex-coal miners from the Radstock area. The show cave was further extended in 2015 by excavating a tunnel from the ninth chamber to the 20th chamber.</p><br>
<p>The constant temperature of 11 &deg;C in the caves is used by Ford Farm of Dorset to mature Cheddar cheese in the Cheese Tunnel – an excavated side tunnel between the ninth chamber and the exit to the show cave.</p><br>
<h3>Cave archaeology</h3><br>
<p>Archaeological investigations were undertaken from 1859 to 1874 by William Boyd Dawkins, who moved to Somerset to study classics with the vicar of Wookey. On hearing of the discovery of bones by local workmen he led excavations in the area of the hyena den. His work led to the discovery of the first evidence for the use by Palaeolithic man in the Caves of the Mendip Hills. Middle Paleolithic tools have been found in association with butchered bones with a radiocarbon age of around 41,000 years.</p><br>
<p>Herbert E. Balch continued the work from 1904 to 1914, when he led excavations of the entrance passage (1904–1915), Witchs Kitchen (the first chamber) and Hells Ladder (1926–1927) and the Badger Hole (1938–1954), where Roman coins from the 3rd century were discovered along with Aurignacian flint implements. Rhinoceros Hole was scheduled as an ancient monument in 1992. The 1911 work found 4 to 7 ft of stratification, mostly dating from the Iron age and sealed into place by Romano-British artefacts. Finds included a silver coin of Marcia (124 BC), pottery, weapons and tools, bronze ornaments, and Roman coins from Vespasian to Valentinian II (1st to 4th centuries).</p><br>
<p>The work was continued, first by E. J. Mason from 1946 to 1949, and then by G. R. Morgan in 1972. Later work led by Edgar Kingsley Tratman explored the human occupation of the Rhinoceros hole, and showed that the fourth chamber of the great cave was a Romano-British cemetery. During excavations in 1954–1957 at Hole Ground, just outside the entrance to the cave, the foundations of a 1st-century hut and Iron Age pottery were seen. These were covered by the foundations of Roman buildings, dating from the 1st to the late 4th century.</p><br>
<h3>Exploration</h3><br>
<p>The cave as far as the third chamber and side galleries has been known since at least the Iron Age period. Prior to the construction of a dam at the resurgence to feed water to the paper mill downstream, two more chambers (the Fourth and Fifth) were accessible. Further upstream the way lies underwater. Diving was first tried by the Cave Diving Group under the leadership of Graham Balcombe in 1935. With equipment on loan from Siebe Gorman, he and Penelope ("Mossy") Powell penetrated 170 ft into the cave, reaching the seventh chamber, using standard diving dress. The events marked the first successful cave dives in Britain.</p><br>
<p>Diving at Wookey resumed in early June 1946 when Balcombe used his homemade respirator and waterproof suit to explore the region between the resurgence and first chamber, as well as the underground course of the river between the third and first chambers. During these dives, the Romano-British remains were found and archaeological work dominated the early dives in the cave. The large ninth chamber was first entered on 24 April 1948 by Balcombe and Don Coase. Using this as an advance dive base, the 10th and then 11th chambers were discovered. The way on, however, was too deep for divers breathing pure oxygen from a closed-circuit rebreather. The cave claimed its first life on 9 April 1949 when Gordon Marriott lost his life returning from the ninth chamber. Another fatality was to occur in 1981 when Keith Potter was drowned on a routine dive further upstream.</p><br>
<p>Further progress required apparatus which could overcome the depth limitation of breathing pure oxygen. In 1955 using an aqualung and swimming with fins, Bob Davies reached the bottom of the 11th chamber at 15 m depth in clear water and discovered the 12th and 13th chambers. Unfortunately, he got separated from his guideline and the other two divers in the 11th chamber, ending up spending three hours trapped in the 13th chamber and had much trouble getting back to safety. Opinion hardened against the use of the short-duration aqualung in favour of longer-duration closed-circuit equipment. Likewise, the traditional approach of walking along the bottom was preferred over swimming. Employing semi-closed circuit nitrogen-oxygen rebreathers, between 1957 and 1960 John Buxton and Oliver Wells went on to reach the elbow of the sump upstream from the ninth chamber at a depth of 22 m. This was at a point known as "The Slot", the way on being too deep for the gas mixture they were breathing.</p><br>
<p>A six-year hiatus ensued while open circuit air diving became established, along with free-swimming and the use of neoprene wetsuits. The new generation of cave diver was now more mobile above and under water and able to dive deeper. Using this approach, Dave Savage was able to reach air surface in the 18th chamber (chambers did not have to have air spaces to be so named; they were the limits of each exploration) in May 1966. A brief lull in exploration occurred while the mess of guidelines laid from the ninth chamber was sorted out before John Parker progressed first to the large, dry, inlet passage of the 20th chamber, and thence followed the River Axe upstream on a dive covering 152 m at a maximum depth of 152 m to the 22nd chamber where the way on appeared to be lost.</p><br>
<p>Meanwhile, climbing operations in the ninth chamber found an abandoned outlet passage which terminated very close to the surface, as well as a dry overland route downstream through the higher levels of the eighth, seventh and sixth chambers as far as the fifth chamber. These discoveries were used to enable the show cave to be extended into the ninth chamber and the cave divers to start directly from here, bypassing the dive from the third chamber onwards. The way on from the 22nd chamber was at last found by Colin Edmond and Martyn Farr in February 1976 and was explored until the line ran out. A few days later Geoff Yeadon and Oliver Statham somewhat controversially reached the 23rd chamber after laying just a further 9 m of line. A further three short dives and they surfaced in the 24th chamber to be confronted by what Statham described as "a magnificent sight—the whole of the River Axe pouring down a passage 40 ft high by 5 ft wide" terminating in a blue lake after 90 m. This lake was dived by Farr a few days later for 90 m at a maximum depth of 18 m to emerge in the 25th chamber, a desolate, muddy place named "The Lake of Gloom".</p><br>
<p>The 25th chamber represents the furthest upstream air surface in Wookey Hole Cave. From here the River Axe rises up from a deep sump where progressive depth records for cave diving in the British Isles have been set: firstly by Farr (45 m) in 1977, then Rob Parker (68 m) in 1985, and finally by John Volanthen and Rick Stanton (76 m) in 2004. The pair returned again in 2005 to explore the sump to a depth of 90 m, setting a new British Isles depth record for cave diving. This record was broken in 2008 by Polish explorer Artur Kozłowski on a dive in Pollatoomary in Ireland.</p><br>
<p>During 1996–1997 water samples were collected at various points throughout the caves and showed different chemical compositions. Results showed that the location of the "Unknown Junction", from where water flows to the static sump in the 22nd chamber by a different route from the majority of the River Axe, is upstream of the sump in the 25th.</p><br>
<h2>Witch of Wookey Hole</h2><br>
<p>There are old legends of a "witch of Wookey Hole", which are still preserved in the name of a stalagmite in the first chamber of the caves. The story has several different versions with the same basic features:</p><br>
<p>A man from Glastonbury is engaged to a girl from Wookey. A witch living in Wookey Hole Caves curses the romance so that it fails. The man, now a monk, seeks revenge on this witch who—having been jilted herself—frequently spoils budding relationships. The monk stalks the witch into the cave and she hides in a dark corner near one of the underground rivers. The monk blesses the water and splashes some of it at the dark parts of the cave where the witch was hiding. The blessed water immediately petrifies the witch, and she remains in the cave to this day.</p><br>
<p>A 1000-year-old skeleton of a woman was discovered in the caves by Balch in 1912, and has also traditionally been linked to the legendary witch. The remains have been part of the collection of the Wells and Mendip Museum, which was founded by Balch, since they were excavated, though in 2004 the owner of the Caves said that he wanted them to be returned to Wookey Hole.</p><br>
<p>It was partly down to the legend of the witch that prompted TVs Most Haunted team to visit Wookey Hole Caves and Mill to explore the location in depth, searching for evidence of paranormal activity. The show, which aired on 10 March 2009, was the last episode transmitted in series 11 of the shows run on the satellite and cable TV channel Living. In 2009 a new actor to play the witch was chosen by Wookey Hole Ltd amid much media interest. Carole Bohanan in the role of Carla Calamity was selected ahead of over 3,000 other applicants.</p><br>
<h2>Tourism</h2><br>
<p>The cave was first opened to the public by the owner Captain G.W. Hodgkinson in 1927 following preparatory work by Balch. Three years later, John Cowper Powys wrote of the caves in the novel A Glastonbury Romance. Hodgkinson took offence at the portrayal of his fictional equivalent, initiating a costly libel suit.</p><br>
<p>The current paper mill building, whose water wheel is powered by a small canal from the river, dates from around 1860 and is a Grade II listed building. The commercial production of handmade paper ceased in February 2008 after owner Gerry Cottle concluded there was no longer a market for the product, and therefore sold most of the historic machinery. Visitors to the site are still able to watch a short video of the paper being made from cotton. Other attractions include the dinosaur yard, a small museum about the cave and cave diving, a theatre with circus shows, a house of mirrors and penny arcades.</p><br>
<p>In 1956, Olive Hodgkinson, a cave guide whose husbands family owned the caves for over 500 years, was a contestant on Whats My Line?</p><br>
<p>The cave and mill were joined, after purchase, by Madame Tussauds in 1973 and operated together as a tourist attraction until there was a management team buyout in 1989. A collection of fairground art of Wookey Hole was sold in 1997 at Christie&#39;s. The present owner is the former circus proprietor Gerry Cottle, who has introduced a circus school.</p><br>
<p>The cave was used for the filming of episodes of the BBC TV series Doctor Who: the serial Revenge of the Cybermen (1975) starring Tom Baker. This has since been referenced in the comedy of The League of Gentlemen. The cave was also used in the filming of the British series Blake&#39;s 7 (1978) and Robin of Sherwood (1983). The caves were used again for Doctor Who in The End of Time (2009), including a scene with the Doctor sharing thoughts and visions with the Ood.</p><br>
<p>On 1 August 2006, CNN reported that Barney, a Doberman Pinscher employed as a security dog at Wookey Hole, had destroyed parts of a valuable collection of teddy bears, including one which had belonged to Elvis Presley, which was estimated to be worth £40,000 (US$75,000). The insurance company insuring the exhibition of stuffed animals had insisted on having guard dog protection.</p><br>
<p>In February 2009 Cottle turned the Victorian bowling green next to the caves into a crazy golf course without first obtaining planning permission.</p><br>
<p>Mount St. Helens or Louwala-Clough  is an active stratovolcano located in Skamania County, Washington, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is 96 mi south of Seattle, Washington, and 50 mi northeast of Portland, Oregon. Mount St. Helens takes its English name from the British diplomat Lord St Helens, a friend of explorer George Vancouver who made a survey of the area in the late 18th century. The volcano is located in the Cascade Range and is part of the Cascade Volcanic Arc, a segment of the Pacific Ring of Fire that includes over 160 active volcanoes. This volcano is well known for its ash explosions and pyroclastic flows.</p><br>
<p>Mount St. Helens is most notorious for its major 1980 eruption, the deadliest and most economically destructive volcanic event in the history of the United States. Fifty-seven people were killed; 250 homes, 47 bridges, 15 mi of railways, and 185 mi of highway were destroyed. A massive debris avalanche triggered by an earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale caused an eruption The debris avalanche was up to 0.7 mi3 in volume. The Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument was created to preserve the volcano and allow for its aftermath to be scientifically studied.</p><br>
<p>As with most other volcanoes in the Cascade Range, Mount St. Helens is a large eruptive cone consisting of lava rock interlayered with ash, pumice, and other deposits. The mountain includes layers of basalt and andesite through which several domes of dacite lava have erupted. The largest of the dacite domes formed the previous summit, and off its northern flank sat the smaller Goat Rocks dome. Both were destroyed in the 1980 eruption.</p><br>
<h2>Geographic setting and description</h2><br>
<h3>General</h3><br>
<p>Mount St. Helens is 34 mi west of Mount Adams, in the western part of the Cascade Range. These "sister and brother" volcanic mountains are approximately 50 mi from Mount Rainier, the highest of Cascade volcanoes. Mount Hood, the nearest major volcanic peak in Oregon, is 60 mi southeast of Mount St. Helens.</p><br>
<p>Mount St. Helens is geologically young compared with the other major Cascade volcanoes. It formed only within the past 40,000 years, and the pre-1980 summit cone began rising about 2,200 years ago. The volcano is considered the most active in the Cascades within the Holocene epoch (the last 10,000 or so years).</p><br>
<p>Prior to the 1980 eruption, Mount St. Helens was the fifth-highest peak in Washington. It stood out prominently from surrounding hills because of the symmetry and extensive snow and ice cover of the pre-1980 summit cone, earning it the nickname "Fuji-san of America". The peak rose more than 5,000 ft above its base, where the lower flanks merge with adjacent ridges. The mountain is 6 mi across at its base, which is at an elevation of 4,400 ft on the northeastern side and 4,000 ft elsewhere. At the pre-eruption tree line, the width of the cone was 4 mi.</p><br>
<p>Streams that originate on the volcano enter three main river systems: the Toutle River on the north and northwest, the Kalama River on the west, and the Lewis River on the south and east. The streams are fed by abundant rain and snow. The average annual rainfall is 140 in, and the snow pack on the mountains upper slopes can reach 16 ft. The Lewis River is impounded by three dams for hydroelectric power generation. The southern and eastern sides of the volcano drain into an upstream impoundment, the Swift Reservoir, which is directly south of the volcanos peak.</p><br>
<p>Although Mount St. Helens is in Skamania County, Washington, access routes to the mountain run through Cowlitz County to the west. State Route 504, locally known as the Spirit Lake Memorial Highway, connects with Interstate 5 at Exit 49, 34 mi to the west of the mountain. That north–south highway skirts the low-lying cities of Castle Rock, Longview and Kelso along the Cowlitz River, and passes through the Vancouver, Washington–Portland, Oregon metropolitan area less than 50 mi to the southwest. The community nearest the volcano is Cougar, Washington, in the Lewis River valley 11 mi south-southwest of the peak. Gifford Pinchot National Forest surrounds Mount St. Helens.</p><br>
<h3>Crater Glacier and other new rock glaciers</h3><br>
<p>During the winter of 1980–1981, a new glacier appeared. Now officially named Crater Glacier, it was formerly known as the Tulutson Glacier. Shadowed by the crater walls and fed by heavy snowfall and repeated snow avalanches, it grew rapidly (14 ft per year in thickness). By 2004, it covered about 0.36 square miles, and was divided by the dome into a western and eastern lobe. Typically, by late summer, the glacier looks dark from rockfall from the crater walls and ash from eruptions. As of 2006, the ice had an average thickness of 300 ft and a maximum of 650 ft, nearly as deep as the much older and larger Carbon Glacier of Mount Rainier. The ice is all post–1980, making the glacier very young geologically. However, the volume of the new glacier is about the same as all the pre–1980 glaciers combined.</p><br>
<p>With the recent volcanic activity starting in 2004, the glacier lobes were pushed aside and upward by the growth of new volcanic domes. The surface of the glacier, once mostly without crevasses, turned into a chaotic jumble of icefalls heavily criss-crossed with crevasses and seracs caused by movement of the crater floor. The new domes have almost separated the Crater Glacier into an eastern and western lobe. Despite the volcanic activity, the termini of the glacier have still advanced, with a slight advance on the western lobe and a more considerable advance on the more shaded eastern lobe. Due to the advance, two lobes of the glacier joined together in late May 2008 and thus the glacier completely surrounds the lava domes. In addition, since 2004, new glaciers have formed on the crater wall above Crater Glacier feeding rock and ice onto its surface below; there are two rock glaciers to the north of the eastern lobe of Crater Glacier. Crater Glacier is the only known advancing glacier in the contiguous United States.</p><br>
<h2>Geologic history</h2><br>
<h3>Ancestral stages of eruptive activity</h3><br>
<p>The early eruptive stages of Mount St. Helens are known as the "Ape Canyon Stage" (around 40,000–35,000 years ago), the "Cougar Stage" (ca. 20,000–18,000 years ago), and the "Swift Creek Stage" (roughly 13,000–8,000 years ago). The modern period, since about 2500 BCE, is called the "Spirit Lake Stage". Collectively, the pre–Spirit Lake stages are known as the "ancestral stages". The ancestral and modern stages differ primarily in the composition of the erupted lavas; ancestral lavas consisted of a characteristic mixture of dacite and andesite, while modern lava is very diverse (ranging from olivine basalt to andesite and dacite).</p><br>
<p>St. Helens started its growth in the Pleistocene 37,600 years ago, during the Ape Canyon stage, with dacite and andesite eruptions of hot pumice and ash. 36,000 years ago a large mudflow cascaded down the volcano; mudflows were significant forces in all of St. Helens&#39; eruptive cycles. The Ape Canyon eruptive period ended around 35,000 years ago and was followed by 17,000 years of relative quiet. Parts of this ancestral cone were fragmented and transported by glaciers 14,000 to 18,000 years ago during the last glacial period of the current ice age.</p><br>
<p>The second eruptive period, the Cougar Stage, started 20,000 years ago and lasted for 2,000 years. Pyroclastic flows of hot pumice and ash along with dome growth occurred during this period. Another 5,000 years of dormancy followed, only to be upset by the beginning of the Swift Creek eruptive period, typified by pyroclastic flows, dome growth and blanketing of the countryside with tephra. Swift Creek ended 8,000 years ago.</p><br>
<h3>Smith Creek and Pine Creek eruptive periods</h3><br>
<p>A dormancy of about 4,000 years was broken around 2500 BCE with the start of the Smith Creek eruptive period, when eruptions of large amounts of ash and yellowish-brown pumice covered thousands of square miles. An eruption in 1900 BCE was the largest known eruption from St. Helens during the Holocene epoch, judged by the volume of one of the tephra layers from that period. This eruptive period lasted until about 1600 BCE and left 18 in deep deposits of material 50 mi distant in what is now Mt. Rainier National Park. Trace deposits have been found as far northeast as Banff National Park in Alberta, and as far southeast as eastern Oregon. All told there may have been up to 2.5 mi3 of material ejected in this cycle. Some 400 years of dormancy followed.</p><br>
<p>St. Helens came alive again around 1200 BCE — the Pine Creek eruptive period. This lasted until about 800 BCE and was characterized by smaller-volume eruptions. Numerous dense, nearly red hot pyroclastic flows sped down St. Helens&#39; flanks and came to rest in nearby valleys. A large mudflow partly filled 40 mi of the Lewis River valley sometime between 1000 BCE and 500 BCE.</p><br>
<h3>Castle Creek and Sugar Bowl eruptive periods</h3><br>
<p>The next eruptive period, the Castle Creek period, began about 400 BCE, and is characterized by a change in composition of St. Helens&#39; lava, with the addition of olivine and basalt. The pre-1980 summit cone started to form during the Castle Creek period. Significant lava flows in addition to the previously much more common fragmented and pulverized lavas and rocks (tephra) distinguished this period. Large lava flows of andesite and basalt covered parts of the mountain, including one around the year 100 BCE that traveled all the way into the Lewis and Kalama river valleys. Others, such as Cave Basalt (known for its system of lava tubes), flowed up to 9 mi from their vents. During the first century, mudflows moved 30 mi down the Toutle and Kalama river valleys and may have reached the Columbia River. Another 400 years of dormancy ensued.</p><br>
<p>The Sugar Bowl eruptive period was short and markedly different from other periods in Mount St. Helens history. It produced the only unequivocal laterally directed blast known from Mount St. Helens before the 1980 eruptions. During Sugar Bowl time, the volcano first erupted quietly to produce a dome, then erupted violently at least twice producing a small volume of tephra, directed-blast deposits, pyroclastic flows, and lahars.</p><br>
<h3>Kalama and Goat Rocks eruptive periods</h3><br>
<p>Roughly 700 years of dormancy were broken in about 1480, when large amounts of pale gray dacite pumice and ash started to erupt, beginning the Kalama period. The eruption in 1480 was several times larger than the May 18, 1980, eruption. In 1482, another large eruption rivaling the 1980 eruption in volume is known to have occurred. Ash and pumice piled 6 mi northeast of the volcano to a thickness of 3 ft; 50 mi away, the ash was 2 in deep. Large pyroclastic flows and mudflows subsequently rushed down St. Helens&#39; west flanks and into the Kalama River drainage system.</p><br>
<p>This 150-year period next saw the eruption of less silica-rich lava in the form of andesitic ash that formed at least eight alternating light- and dark-colored layers. Blocky andesite lava then flowed from St. Helens summit crater down the volcanos southeast flank. Later, pyroclastic flows raced down over the andesite lava and into the Kalama River valley. It ended with the emplacement of a dacite dome several hundred feet (~200 m) high at the volcanos summit, which filled and overtopped an explosion crater already at the summit. Large parts of the domes sides broke away and mantled parts of the volcano&#39;s cone with talus. Lateral explosions excavated a notch in the southeast crater wall. St. Helens reached its greatest height and achieved its highly symmetrical form by the time the Kalama eruptive cycle ended, about 1647. The volcano remained quiet for the next 150 years.</p><br>
<p>The 57-year eruptive period that started in 1800 was named after the Goat Rocks dome, and is the first time that both oral and written records exist. Like the Kalama period, the Goat Rocks period started with an explosion of dacite tephra, followed by an andesite lava flow, and culminated with the emplacement of a dacite dome. The 1800 eruption probably rivalled the 1980 eruption in size, although it did not result in massive destruction of the cone. The ash drifted northeast over central and eastern Washington, northern Idaho, and western Montana. There were at least a dozen reported small eruptions of ash from 1831 to 1857, including a fairly large one in 1842. The vent was apparently at or near Goat Rocks on the northeast flank. Goat Rocks dome was the site of the bulge in the 1980 eruption, and it was obliterated in the major eruption event on May 18, 1980 that destroyed the entire north face and top 1,300 ft of the mountain.</p><br>
<h3>Modern eruptive period</h3><br>
<h4>1980 to 2001 activity</h4><br>
<p>On March 20, 1980, Mount St. Helens experienced a magnitude 4.2 earthquake; By the end of April, the north side of the mountain had started to bulge.</p><br>
<p>On May 18, a second earthquake, of magnitude 5.1, triggered a massive collapse of the north face of the mountain. It was the largest known debris avalanche in recorded history. The magma in St. Helens burst forth into a large-scale pyroclastic flow that flattened vegetation and buildings over 230 square miles. More than 1.5 million metric tons of sulfur dioxide was released into the atmosphere. On the Volcanic Explosivity Index scale, the eruption was rated a five, and categorized as a Plinian eruption.</p><br>
<p>The collapse of the northern flank of St. Helens mixed with ice, snow, and water to create lahars (volcanic mudflows). The lahars flowed many miles down the Toutle and Cowlitz Rivers, destroying bridges and lumber camps. A total of 3,900,000 yd3 of material was transported 17 mi south into the Columbia River by the mudflows.</p><br>
<p>For more than nine hours, a vigorous plume of ash erupted, eventually reaching 12 to 16 miles (20 to 27 km) above sea level. The plume moved eastward at an average speed of 60 mph with ash reaching Idaho by noon. Ashes from the eruption were found collecting on top of cars and roofs next morning, as far as the city of Edmonton in Alberta, Canada.</p><br>
<p>By about 5:30 p.m. on May 18, the vertical ash column declined in stature, and less severe outbursts continued through the night and for the next several days. The St. Helens May 18 eruption released 24 megatons of thermal energy; The removal of the north side of the mountain reduced St. Helens&#39; height by about 1,300 ft and left a crater 1 mi to 2 mi wide and 0.5 mi deep, with its north end open in a huge breach. The eruption killed 57 people, nearly 7,000 big game animals (deer, elk, and bear), and an estimated 12 million fish from a hatchery. It destroyed or extensively damaged over 200 homes, 185 mi of highway and 15 mi of railways.</p><br>
<p>Between 1980 and 1986, activity continued at Mount St. Helens, with a new lava dome forming in the crater. Numerous small explosions and dome-building eruptions occurred. From December 7, 1989, to January 6, 1990, and from November 5, 1990, to February 14, 1991, the mountain erupted with sometimes huge clouds of ash.</p><br>
<h4>2004 to 2008 activity</h4><br>
<p>Magma reached the surface of the volcano about October 11, 2004, resulting in the building of a new lava dome on the existing dome&#39;s south side. This new dome continued to grow throughout 2005 and into 2006. Several transient features were observed, such as a lava spine nicknamed the "whaleback," which comprised long shafts of solidified magma being extruded by the pressure of magma beneath. These features were fragile and broke down soon after they were formed. On July 2, 2005, the tip of the whaleback broke off, causing a rockfall that sent ash and dust several hundred meters into the air.</p><br>
<p>Mount St. Helens showed significant activity on March 8, 2005, when a 36,000 ft plume of steam and ash emerged—visible from Seattle. This relatively minor eruption was a release of pressure consistent with ongoing dome building. The release was accompanied by a magnitude 2.5 earthquake.</p><br>
<p>Another feature to emerge from the dome was called the "fin" or "slab." Approximately half the size of a football field, the large, cooled volcanic rock was being forced upward as quickly as 6 ft per day. In mid-June 2006, the slab was crumbling in frequent rockfalls, although it was still being extruded. The height of the dome was 7,550 ft, still below the height reached in July 2005 when the whaleback collapsed.</p><br>
<p>On October 22, 2006, at 3:13 p.m. PST, a magnitude 3.5 earthquake broke loose Spine 7. The collapse and avalanche of the lava dome sent an ash plume 2,000 ft over the western rim of the crater; the ash plume then rapidly dissipated.</p><br>
<p>On December 19, 2006, a large white plume of condensing steam was observed, leading some media people to assume there had been a small eruption. However, the Cascades Volcano Observatory of the USGS did not mention any significant ash plume. The volcano was in continuous eruption from October 2004, but this eruption consisted in large part of a gradual extrusion of lava forming a dome in the crater.</p><br>
<p>On January 16, 2008, steam began seeping from a fracture on top of the lava dome. Associated seismic activity was the most noteworthy since 2004. Scientists suspended activities in the crater and the mountain flanks, but the risk of a major eruption was deemed low. By the end of January, the eruption paused; no more lava was being extruded from the lava dome. On July 10, 2008, it was determined that the eruption had ended, after more than six months of no volcanic activity.</p><br>
<h2>Human history</h2><br>
<h3>Importance to Native Americans</h3><br>
<p>American Indian lore contains numerous legends to explain the eruptions of Mount St. Helens and other Cascade volcanoes. The most famous of these is the Bridge of the Gods legend told by the Klickitat people. In their tale, the chief of all the gods and his two sons, Pahto (also called Klickitat) and Wy&#39;east, traveled down the Columbia River from the Far North in search for a suitable area to settle.</p><br>
<p>They came upon an area that is now called The Dalles and thought they had never seen a land so beautiful. The sons quarreled over the land, so to solve the dispute their father shot two arrows from his mighty bow &mdash; one to the north and the other to the south. Pahto followed the arrow to the north and settled there while Wy&#39;east did the same for the arrow to the south. The chief of the gods then built the Bridge of the Gods, so his family could meet periodically.</p><br>
<p>When the two sons of the chief of the gods fell in love with a beautiful maiden named Loowit, she could not choose between them. The two young chiefs fought over her, burying villages and forests in the process. The area was devastated and the earth shook so violently that the huge bridge fell into the river, creating the cascades of the Columbia River Gorge.</p><br>
<p>For punishment, the chief of the gods struck down each of the lovers and transformed them into great mountains where they fell. Wy&#39;east, with his head lifted in pride, became the volcano known today as Mount Hood. Pahto, with his head bent toward his fallen love, was turned into Mount Adams. The fair Loowit became Mount St. Helens, known to the Klickitats as Louwala-Clough, which means "smoking or fire mountain" in their language (the Sahaptin called the mountain Loowit).</p><br>
<p>The mountain is also of sacred importance to the Cowlitz and Yakama tribes that also historically lived in the area. They find the area above its tree line to be of exceptional spiritual significance, and the mountain (which they call "Lawetlat&#39;la", roughly translated as "the smoker") features prominently in their creation myth, and in some of their songs and rituals. In recognition of this cultural significance, over 12,000 acre of the mountain (roughly bounded by the Loowit Trail) have been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.</p><br>
<p>Other area tribal names for the mountain include "nšh´ák´" ("water coming out") from the Upper Chehalis, and "aka akn" ("snow mountain"), a Kiksht term.</p><br>
<h3>Exploration by Europeans</h3><br>
<p>Royal Navy Commander George Vancouver and the officers of HMS Discovery made the Europeans&#39; first recorded sighting of Mount St. Helens on May 19, 1792, while surveying the northern Pacific Ocean coast. Vancouver named the mountain for British diplomat Alleyne Fitzherbert, 1st Baron St Helens on October 20, 1792, as it came into view when the Discovery passed into the mouth of the Columbia River.</p><br>
<p>Years later, explorers, traders, and missionaries heard reports of an erupting volcano in the area. Geologists and historians determined much later that the eruption took place in 1800, marking the beginning of the 57-year-long Goat Rocks Eruptive Period (see geology section). Alarmed by the "dry snow," the Nespelem tribe of northeastern Washington danced and prayed rather than collecting food and suffered during that winter from starvation.</p><br>
<p>In late 1805 and early 1806, members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition spotted Mount St. Helens from the Columbia River but did not report either an ongoing eruption or recent evidence of one. They did however report the presence of quicksand and clogged channel conditions at the mouth of the Sandy River near Portland, suggesting an eruption by Mount Hood sometime in the previous decades.</p><br>
<p>In 1829 Hall J. Kelley led a campaign to rename the Cascade Range as the President&#39;s Range and also to rename each major Cascade mountain after a former President of the United States. In his scheme Mount St. Helens was to be renamed Mount Washington.</p><br>
<h3>European settlement and use of the area</h3><br>
<p>The first authenticated eyewitness report of a volcanic eruption was made in March 1835 by Meredith Gairdner, while working for the Hudsons Bay Company stationed at Fort Vancouver. He sent an account to the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, which published his letter in January 1836. James Dwight Dana of Yale University, while sailing with the United States Exploring Expedition, saw the quiescent peak from off the mouth of the Columbia River in 1841. Another member of the expedition later described "cellular basaltic lavas" at the mountains base.</p><br>
<p>In late fall or early winter of 1842, nearby settlers and missionaries witnessed the so-called "Great Eruption". This small-volume outburst created large ash clouds, and mild explosions followed for 15 years. The eruptions of this period were likely phreatic (steam explosions). Josiah Parrish in Champoeg, Oregon witnessed Mount St. Helens in eruption on November 22, 1842. Ash from this eruption may have reached The Dalles, Oregon, 48 miles (80 km) southeast of the volcano.</p><br>
<p>In October 1843, future California governor Peter H. Burnett recounted a story of an aboriginal American man who badly burned his foot and leg in lava or hot ash while hunting for deer. The likely apocryphal story went that the injured man sought treatment at Fort Vancouver, but the contemporary fort commissary steward, Napoleon McGilvery, disclaimed knowledge of the incident. British lieutenant Henry J. Warre sketched the eruption in 1845, and two years later Canadian painter Paul Kane created watercolors of the gently smoking mountain. Warres work showed erupting material from a vent about a third of the way down from the summit on the mountains west or northwest side (possibly at Goat Rocks), and one of Kane&#39;s field sketches shows smoke emanating from about the same location.</p><br>
<p>On April 17, 1857, the Republican, a Steilacoom, Washington, newspaper, reported that "Mount St. Helens, or some other mount to the southward, is seen... to be in a state of eruption". The lack of a significant ash layer associated with this event indicates that it was a small eruption. This was the first reported volcanic activity since 1854.</p><br>
<p>Before the 1980 eruption, Spirit Lake offered year-round recreational activities. In the summer there was boating, swimming, and camping, while in the winter there was skiing.</p><br>
<h3>Human impact from the 1980 eruption</h3><br>
<p>Fifty-seven people were killed during the eruption. Had the eruption occurred one day later, when loggers would have been at work, rather than on a Sunday, the death toll could have been much higher.</p><br>
<p>83-year-old Harry R. Truman, who had lived near the mountain for 54 years, became famous when he decided not to evacuate before the impending eruption, despite repeated pleas by local authorities. His body was never found after the eruption.</p><br>
<p>Another victim of the eruption was 30-year-old volcanologist David A. Johnston, who was stationed on the nearby Coldwater Ridge. Moments before his position was hit by the pyroclastic flow, Johnston radioed his famous last words: "Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!" Johnston&#39;s body was never found.</p><br>
<p>USA President Jimmy Carter surveyed the damage and said, "Someone said this area looked like a moonscape. But the moon looks more like a golf course compared to what&#39;s up there." A film crew, led by Seattle filmmaker Otto Seiber, was dropped by helicopter on St. Helens on May 23 to document the destruction. Their compasses, however, spun in circles and they quickly became lost. A second eruption occurred on May 25, but the crew survived and was rescued two days later by National Guard helicopter pilots. Their film, The Eruption of Mount St. Helens, later became a popular documentary.</p><br>
<h3>Protection and later history</h3><br>
<p>In 1982, President Ronald Reagan and the USA Congress established the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, a 110,000 acre area around the mountain and within the Gifford Pinchot National Forest.</p><br>
<p>Following the 1980 eruption, the area was left to gradually return to its natural state. In 1987, the USA Forest Service reopened the mountain to climbing. It remained open until 2004 when renewed activity caused the closure of the area around the mountain (see Geological history section above for more details).</p><br>
<p>Most notable was the closure of the Monitor Ridge trail, which previously let up to 100 permitted hikers per day climb to the summit. On July 21, 2006, the mountain was again opened to climbers. In February 2010, a climber died after falling from the rim into the crater.</p><br>
<p>The mountain is now circled by the Loowit Trail at elevations of 4000–4900 feet. The northern segment of the trail from the South Fork Toutle River on the west to Windy Pass on the east is a restricted zone where camping, biking, pets, fires, and off-trail excursions are all prohibited.</p><br>
<h2>Climbing and recreation</h2><br>
<p>Mount St. Helens is a popular climbing destination for both beginning and experienced mountaineers. The peak is climbed year-round, although it is more often climbed from late spring through early fall. All routes include sections of steep, rugged terrain.</p><br>
<p>A permit system has been in place for climbers since 1987. A climbing permit is required year-round for anyone who will be above 4,800 ft on the slopes of Mount St. Helens.</p><br>
<p>The standard hiking/mountaineering route in the warmer months is the Monitor Ridge Route, which starts at the Climbers Bivouac. This is the most popular and crowded route to the summit in the summer and gains about 4,600 ft in approximately 5 mi to reach the crater rim.</p><br>
<p>Although strenuous, it is considered non-technical climb that involves some scrambling. Most climbers complete the round trip in 7 to 12 hours.</p><br>
<p>The Worm Flows Route is considered the standard winter route on Mount St. Helens, as it is the most direct route to the summit. The route gains about 5,700 ft in elevation over about 6 mi from trailhead to summit but does not demand the technical climbing that some other Cascade peaks like Mount Rainier do. The "Worm Flows" part of the route name refers to the rocky lava flows that surround the route.</p><br>
<p>This route can be accessed via the Marble Mountain Sno-Park and the Swift Ski Trail.</p><br>
<p>Antioch on the Orontes  was an ancient Greco-Roman city on the eastern side of the Orontes River. Its ruins lie near the modern city of Antakya, Turkey, and lends the modern city its name.</p><br>
<p>Antioch was founded near the end of the 4th century BC by Seleucus I Nicator, one of Alexander the Greats generals. The citys geographical, military, and economic location benefited its occupants, particularly such features as the spice trade, the Silk Road, and the Persian Royal Road. It eventually rivaled Alexandria as the chief city of the Near East. It was also the main center of Hellenistic Judaism at the end of the Second Temple period. Most of the urban development of Antioch was done during the Roman Empire, when the city was one of the most important in the eastern Mediterranean area of Rome&#39;s dominions.</p><br>
<p>Antioch was called "the cradle of Christianity" as a result of its longevity and the pivotal role that it played in the emergence of both Hellenistic Judaism and early Christianity. The Christian New Testament asserts that the name "Christian" first emerged in Antioch. It was one of the four cities of the Syrian tetrapolis, and its residents were known as Antiochenes. The city was a metropolis of half a million people during Augustan times, but it declined to relative insignificance during the Middle Ages because of warfare, repeated earthquakes, and a change in trade routes, which no longer passed through Antioch from the far east following the Mongol conquests.</p><br>
<h2>Geography</h2><br>
<p>Two routes from the Mediterranean, lying through the Orontes gorge and the Beilan Pass, converge in the plain of the Antioch Lake (Balük Geut or El Bahr) and are met there by</p><br>
<p>the road from the Amanian Gate (Baghche Pass) and western Commagene, which descends the valley of the Karasu River to the Afrin River,</p><br>
<p>the roads from eastern Commagene and the Euphratean crossings at Samosata (Samsat) and Apamea Zeugma (Birejik), which descend the valleys of the Afrin and the Quweiq rivers, and</p><br>
<p>the road from the Euphratean ford at Thapsacus, which skirts the fringe of the Syrian steppe. A single route proceeds south in the Orontes valley.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<h3>Prehistory</h3><br>
<p>The settlement of Meroe pre-dated Antioch. A shrine of the Semitic goddess Anat, called by Herodotus the "Persian Artemis", was located here. This site was included in the eastern suburbs of Antioch. There was a village on the spur of Mount Silpius named Io, or Iopolis. This name was always adduced as evidence by Antiochenes (e.g. Libanius) anxious to affiliate themselves to the Attic Ionians—an eagerness which is illustrated by the Athenian types used on the city&#39;s coins. Io may have been a small early colony of trading Greeks (Javan). John Malalas also mentions an archaic village, Bottia, in the plain by the river.</p><br>
<h3>Foundation by Seleucus I</h3><br>
<p>Alexander the Great is said to have camped on the site of Antioch, and dedicated an altar to Zeus Bottiaeus; it lay in the northwest of the future city. This account is found only in the writings of Libanius, a 4th-century orator from Antioch, and may be legend intended to enhance Antioch&#39;s status. But the story is not unlikely in itself.</p><br>
<p>After Alexander&#39;s death in 323 BC, his generals divided up the territory he had conquered. Seleucus I Nicator won the territory of Syria, and he proceeded to found four "sister cities" in northwestern Syria, one of which was Antioch, a city named in honor of his father Antiochus; according to Suda, it might be named after his son Antiochus. He is reputed to have built sixteen Antiochs.</p><br>
<p>Seleucus founded Antioch on a site chosen through ritual means. An eagle, the bird of Zeus, had been given a piece of sacrificial meat and the city was founded on the site to which the eagle carried the offering. Seleucus did this on the 22nd day of the month of Artemisios in the twelfth year of his reign (equivalent to May 300 BC). Antioch soon rose above Seleucia Pieria to become the Syrian capital.</p><br>
<h3>Hellenistic age</h3><br>
<p>The original city of Seleucus was laid out in imitation of the grid plan of Alexandria by the architect Xenarius. Libanius describes the first building and arrangement of this city (i. p. 300. 17). The citadel was on Mt. Silpius and the city lay mainly on the low ground to the north, fringing the river. Two great colonnaded streets intersected in the centre. Shortly afterwards a second quarter was laid out, probably on the east and by Antiochus I, which, from an expression of Strabo, appears to have been the native, as contrasted with the Greek, town. It was enclosed by a wall of its own.</p><br>
<p>In the Orontes, north of the city, lay a large island, and on this Seleucus II Callinicus began a third walled "city", which was finished by Antiochus III. A fourth and last quarter was added by Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175–164 BC); thenceforth Antioch was known as Tetrapolis. From west to east the whole was about 6 km in diameter and a little less from north to south. This area included many large gardens.</p><br>
<p>The new city was populated by a mix of local settlers that Athenians brought from the nearby city of Antigonia, Macedonians, and Jews (who were given full status from the beginning). The total free population of Antioch at its foundation has been estimated at between 17,000 and 25,000, not including slaves and native settlers. During the late Hellenistic period and Early Roman period, Antioch&#39;s population reached its peak of over 500,000 inhabitants (estimates vary from 400,000 to 600,000) and was the third largest city in the world after Rome and Alexandria.</p><br>
<p>About 6 km west and beyond the suburb Heraclea lay the paradise of Daphne, a park of woods and waters, in the midst of which rose a great temple to the Pythian Apollo, also founded by Seleucus I and enriched with a cult-statue of the god, as Musagetes, by Bryaxis. A companion sanctuary of Hecate was constructed underground by Diocletian. The beauty and the lax morals of Daphne were celebrated all over the western world; and indeed Antioch as a whole shared in both these titles to fame.</p><br>
<p>Antioch became the capital and court-city of the western Seleucid empire under Antiochus I, its counterpart in the east being Seleucia on the Tigris; but its paramount importance dates from the battle of Ancyra (240 BC), which shifted the Seleucid centre of gravity from Asia Minor, and led indirectly to the rise of Pergamum.</p><br>
<p>The Seleucids reigned from Antioch. We know little of it in the Hellenistic period, apart from Syria, all our information coming from authors of the late Roman time. Among its great Greek buildings we hear only of the theatre, of which substructures still remain on the flank of Silpius, and of the royal palace, probably situated on the island. It enjoyed a reputation for being "a populous city, full of most erudite men and rich in the most liberal studies", but the only names of distinction in these pursuits during the Seleucid period that have come down to us are Apollophanes, the Stoic, and one Phoebus, a writer on dreams. The nicknames which they gave to their later kings were Aramaic; and, except Apollo and Daphne, the great divinities of north Syria seem to have remained essentially native, such as the "Persian Artemis" of Meroe and Atargatis of Hierapolis Bambyce.</p><br>
<p>The epithet "Golden" suggests that the external appearance of Antioch was impressive, but the city needed constant restoration owing to the seismic disturbances to which the district has always been subjected. The first great earthquake in recorded history was related by the native chronicler John Malalas. It occurred in 148 BC and did immense damage.</p><br>
<p>Local politics were turbulent. In the many dissensions of the Seleucid house the population took sides, and frequently rose in rebellion, for example against Alexander Balas in 147 BC, and Demetrius II in 129 BC. The latter, enlisting a body of Jews, punished his capital with fire and sword. In the last struggles of the Seleucid house, Antioch turned against its feeble rulers, invited Tigranes of Armenia to occupy the city in 83 BC, tried to unseat Antiochus XIII in 65 BC, and petitioned Rome against his restoration in the following year. Antioch&#39;s wish prevailed, and it passed with Syria to the Roman Republic in 64 BC, but remained a civitas libera.</p><br>
<h3>Roman period</h3><br>
<p>The Roman emperors favoured the city from the first moments, seeing it as a more suitable capital for the eastern part of the empire than Alexandria could be, because of the isolated position of Egypt. To a certain extent they tried to make it an eastern Rome. Julius Caesar visited it in 47 BC, and confirmed its freedom. A great temple to Jupiter Capitolinus rose on Silpius, probably at the insistence of Octavian, whose cause the city had espoused. A forum of Roman type was laid out. Tiberius built two long colonnades on the south towards Silpius.</p><br>
<p>Agrippa and Tiberius enlarged the theatre, and Trajan finished their work. Antoninus Pius paved the great east to west artery with granite. A circus, other colonnades and great numbers of baths were built, and new aqueducts to supply them bore the names of Caesars, the finest being the work of Hadrian. The Roman client, King Herod (most likely the great builder Herod the Great), erected a long stoa on the east, and Agrippa (c. 63 BC12 BC) encouraged the growth of a new suburb south of this.</p><br>
<p>One of the most famous urban additions to Antioch, done by the Romans probably under Augustus when the city had more than half a million inhabitants, was the Circus of Antioch: it was a Roman hippodrome. Used for chariot racing, it was modelled on the Circus Maximus in Rome and other circus buildings throughout the empire. Measuring more than 490 m in length and 30 m of width, the Circus could house up to 80,000 spectators.</p><br>
<p>Zarmanochegas (Zarmarus) a monk of the Sramana tradition of India, according to Strabo and Dio Cassius, met Nicholas of Damascus in Antioch around 13 AD as part of a Mission to Augustus. At Antioch Germanicus died in 19 AD, and his body was burnt in the forum.</p><br>
<p>An earthquake that shook Antioch in AD 37 caused the emperor Caligula to send two senators to report on the condition of the city. Another quake followed in the next reign.</p><br>
<p>Titus set up the Cherubim, captured from the Jewish temple, over one of the gates.</p><br>
<p>In 115 AD, during Trajan&#39;s travel there during his war against Parthia, the whole site was convulsed by a huge earthquake. The landscape altered, and the emperor himself was forced to take shelter in the circus for several days. He and his successor restored the city, but the population was reduced to less than 400,000 inhabitants and many sections of the city were abandoned.</p><br>
<p>Commodus had Olympic games celebrated at Antioch.</p><br>
<p>In 256 AD, the town was suddenly raided by the Persians, who slew many in the theatre.</p><br>
<h4>Age of Julian and Valens</h4><br>
<p>When the emperor Julian visited in 362 on a detour to Persia, he had high hopes for Antioch, regarding it as a rival to the imperial capital of Constantinople. Antioch had a mixed pagan and Christian population, which Ammianus Marcellinus implies lived quite harmoniously together. However Julian&#39;s visit began ominously as it coincided with a lament for Adonis, the doomed lover of Aphrodite. Thus, Ammianus wrote, the emperor and his soldiers entered the city not to the sound of cheers but to wailing and screaming.</p><br>
<p>After being advised that the bones of 3rd-century martyred bishop Babylas were suppressing the oracle of Apollo at Daphne, he made a public-relations mistake in ordering the removal of the bones from the vicinity of the temple. The result was a massive Christian procession. Shortly after that, when the temple was destroyed by fire, Julian suspected the Christians and ordered stricter investigations than usual. He also shut up the chief Christian church of the city, before the investigations proved that the fire was the result of an accident.</p><br>
<p>Julian found much else about which to criticize the Antiochene; Julian had wanted the empires cities to be more self-managing, as they had been some 200 years before. However Antiochs city councilmen showed themselves unwilling to shore up Antioch&#39;s food shortage with their own resources, so dependent were they on the emperor. Ammianus wrote that the councilmen shirked their duties by bribing unwitting men in the marketplace to do the job for them.</p><br>
<p>The citys impiety to the old religion was clear to Julian when he attended the citys annual feast of Apollo. To his surprise and dismay the only Antiochene present was an old priest clutching a chicken.</p><br>
<p>The Antiochenes in turn hated Julian for worsening the food shortage with the burden of his billeted troops, wrote Ammianus. The soldiers were often to be found gorged on sacrificial meat, making a drunken nuisance of themselves on the streets while Antiochs hungry citizens looked on in disgust. The Christian Antiochenes and Julians pagan Gallic soldiers also never quite saw eye to eye.</p><br>
<p>Even Julians piety was distasteful to the Antiochenes retaining the old faith. Julians brand of paganism was very much unique to himself, with little support outside the most educated Neoplatonist circles. The irony of Julian&#39;s enthusiasm for large scale animal sacrifice could not have escaped the hungry Antiochenes. Julian gained no admiration for his personal involvement in the sacrifices, only the nickname axeman, wrote Ammianus.</p><br>
<p>The emperors high-handed, severe methods and his rigid administration prompted Antiochene lampoons about, among other things, Julians unfashionably pointed beard.</p><br>
<p>Julian&#39;s successor, Valens, who endowed Antioch with a new forum, including a statue of Valentinian on a central column, reopened the great church of Constantine, which stood till the Persian sack in 538, by Chosroes.</p><br>
<h4>Christianity</h4><br>
<p>Antioch was a chief center of early Christianity during Roman times. The city had a large population of Jewish origin in a quarter called the Kerateion, and so attracted the earliest missionaries. Evangelized, among others, by Peter himself, according to the tradition upon which the Antiochene patriarchate still rests its claim for primacy, and certainly later by Barnabas and Paul during Paul&#39;s first missionary journey. Its converts were the first to be called Christians. This is not to be confused with Antioch in Pisidia, to which the early missionaries later travelled.</p><br>
<p>Surrounding the city were a number of Greek, Syrian, Armenian, and Latin monasteries.</p><br>
<p>The Christian population was estimated by Chrysostom at about 100,000 people at the time of Theodosius I. Between 252 and 300 AD, ten assemblies of the church were held at Antioch and it became the seat of one of the five original patriarchates, along with Constantinople, Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Rome (see Pentarchy).</p><br>
<p>One of the canonical Eastern Orthodox churches is still called the Antiochian Orthodox Church, although it moved its headquarters from Antioch to Damascus, Syria, several centuries ago (see list of Patriarchs of Antioch), and its prime bishop retains the title "Patriarch of Antioch", somewhat analogous to the manner in which several Popes, heads of the Roman Catholic Church remained "Bishop of Rome" even while residing in Avignon, France in the 14th century.</p><br>
<h3>Late antiquity</h3><br>
<h4>Theodosius and after</h4><br>
<p>In 387 AD, there was a great sedition caused by a new tax levied by order of Theodosius I, and the city was punished by the loss of its metropolitan status. He divided the Roman Empire, and since then Antioch was under Constantinople&#39;s rule.</p><br>
<p>Antioch and its port, Seleucia Pieria, were severely damaged by the great earthquake of 526. Seleucia Pieria, which was already fighting a losing battle against continual silting, never recovered. Justinian I renamed Antioch Theopolis ("City of God") and restored many of its public buildings, but the destructive work was completed by the Persian king, Khosrau I, twelve years later. Antioch lost as many as 300,000 people. Justinian I made an effort to revive it, and Procopius describes his repairing of the walls; but its glory was past.</p><br>
<p>Antioch gave its name to a certain school of Christian thought, distinguished by literal interpretation of the Scriptures and insistence on the human limitations of Jesus. Diodorus of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia were the leaders of this school. The principal local saint was Simeon Stylites, who lived an extremely ascetic life atop a pillar for 40 years some 65 km east of Antioch. His body was brought to the city and buried in a building erected under the emperor Leo.</p><br>
<h4>Arab conquest and Byzantine reconquest</h4><br>
<p>In 637, during the reign of the Byzantine emperor Heraclius, Antioch was conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate during the Battle of the Iron Bridge. The city became known in Arabic as أنطاكيّة (Antākiyyah). Since the Umayyad dynasty was unable to penetrate the Anatolian plateau, Antioch found itself on the frontline of the conflicts between two hostile empires during the next 350 years, so that the city went into a precipitous decline.</p><br>
<p>In 969, the city was recovered for the Byzantine Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas by Michael Bourtzes and the stratopedarches Peter. It soon became the seat of a doux, the civil governor of the homonymous theme, but also the seat of the somewhat more important Domestic of the Schools of the Orient, the supreme military commander of the imperial forces on the eastern frontier. Sometimes both offices were held by the same person, usually military officers such as Nikephoros Ouranos, or Philaretos Brachamios, who managed to retain the integrity of the eastern borderline after the Seljuk conquest of Anatolia. As the empire disintegrated rapidly before the Komnenian restoration, Dux of Antioch & Domestic of the Schools of the East Philaretos Brachamios held the city until the Seljuk Turks captured it from him in 1084. The Sultanate of Rum held it only fourteen years before the Crusaders arrived.</p><br>
<h3>Crusader era</h3><br>
<p>The Crusaders&#39; Siege of Antioch conquered the city in 1098. At this time, the bulk of far eastern trade traveled through Egypt, but in the second half of the 12th century Nur ed-Din and later Saladin brought order to Muslim Syria, opening up long distance trade routes, including to Antioch and on to its new port, St Symeon, which had replaced Seleucia Pieria. However, the Mongol conquests of the 13th century altered the main trade routes from the far east, as they encouraged merchants to take the overland route through Mongol territory to the Black Sea, reducing the prosperity of Antioch.</p><br>
<p>In 1100, Tancred became the regent of Antioch after his uncle and predecessor Bohemond I of Antioch was taken prisoner for three years (1100–03) by Gazi Gümüshtigin of the Danishmends at the Battle of Melitene. Tancred expanded the territory of Antioch by conquering Byzantine Cilicia, Tarsus, and Adana in 1101 and founding the principality, Byzantine Latakia, in 1103. In 1107 Bohemond enraged by an earlier defeat when he, allianced with Edessa, attacked Aleppo, and Baldwin of Bourcq and Joscelin of Courtenay (Bourcq&#39;s most powerful vassal) were briefly captured, as well as the Byzantines recapturing of Cilicia and the harbour and lower town of Lattakieh, he renamed Tancred as the regent of Antioch and sailed for Europe with the intent of gaining support for an attack against the Greeks.</p><br>
<p>In 1107-8 Bohemond led a crusade against Byzantium, with the Latins crossing the Adriatic in October 1107 and laying siege to the city of Durazzo (in modern Albania), which is often regarded as the western gate of the Greek empire. Bohemond was outwitted by Alexius, who deployed his forces to cut the invaders supply lines whilst avoiding direct confrontation. The Latins were weakened by hunger and proved unable to break Durazzos defenses. Bohemond capitulated in September 1108 and was forced to accede to a peace accord, the Treaty of Devol. The terms of this agreement stipulated that Bohemond was to hold Antioch for the remainder of his life as the emperor&#39;s subject and the Greek patriarch was to be restored to power in the city. However Tancred refused to honour the Treaty of Devol in which Bohemond swore an oath, and it is not until 1158 that it truly became a vassal state of the Byzantine Empire. Six months after the Treaty of Devol Bohemond died, and Tancred remained regent of Antioch until his death during a typhoid epidemic in 1112.</p><br>
<p>After the death of Tancred, the principality passed to Roger of Salerno, who helped rebuild Antioch after an earthquake destroyed its foundations in 1114. With the defeat of Roger&#39;s crusading army and his death at the Battle of Ager Sanguinis in 1119 the role of regent was assumed by Baldwin II of Jerusalem, lasting until 1126, with the exception from 1123 to 1124 when he was briefly captured by the Artuqids and held captive alongside Joscelin of Courtenay. In 1126 Bohemond II arrived from Apulia in order to gain regency over Antioch. In February 1130 Bohemond was lured into an ambush by Leo I, Prince of Armenia who allied with the Danishmend Gazi Gümüshtigin, and was killed in the subsequent battle, his head was then embalmed, placed in a silver box, and sent as a gift to the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad.</p><br>
<p>Antioch was again ruled by a regency, firstly being Baldwin II, after his daughter and Bohemond IIs wife, Alice of Antioch attempted to block Baldwin from entering Antioch, but failed when Antiochene nobles such as Fulk of Jerusalem (Alices brother-in-law) opened up the gates for representatives of Baldwin II. Alice was then expelled from Antioch. With the death of Balwin in 1131, Alice briefly took control of Antioch and allied herself with Pons of Tripoli and Joscelin II of Edessa in an attempt to prevent Fulk, King of Jerusalem from marching north in 1132, however this attempt failed and Fulk and Pons fought a brief battle before peace was made and Alice was exiled again. In 1133 the king chose Raymond of Poitiers as a groom for Constance of Antioch, daughter of Bohemund II of Antioch and Alice, princess of Jerusalem. The marriage took place in 1136 between the 21-year-old Raymond and the 9-year-old Constance.</p><br>
<p>Immediately after assuming control, Raymond was involved in conflicts with the Byzantine Emperor John II Comnenus who had come south to recover Cilicia from Leo of Armenia, and to reassert his rights over Antioch. The engagement lasted until 1137 when emperor John II arrived with an army before the walls of Antioch. Though the basileus did not enter the city, his banner was raised atop the citadel and Raymond was compelled to do homage. Raymond agreed with the emperor that if he was capable of capturing Aleppo, Shaizar, and Homs, he would exchange Antioch for them.</p><br>
<p>John went on to attack Aleppo with the aid of Antioch and Edessa, and failed to capture it, with the Franks withdrawing their support when he moved on to capture Shaizar. John returned to Antioch ahead of his army and entered Antioch, only to be forced to leave when Joscelin II, Count of Edessa rallied the citizens to oust him. In 1142 John then returned but Raymond refused to submit and John was forced to return to Cilicia again due to the coming winter, to plan an attack the following season. However the emperor died on April 8, 1143.</p><br>
<h4>Second Crusade</h4><br>
<p>The following year after the death of John II Comnenus, Imad ad-Din Zengi lay siege to Edessa, the crusader capital, and with the death of Imad ad-Din Zengi in 1146, he was succeeded by his son, Nur ad-Din Zangi. Zangi attacked Antioch in both 1147 and 1148 and succeeded during the second venture in occupying most of the territory east of the Orontes including Artah, Kafar Latha, Basarfut, and Balat, but failing to capture Antioch itself. With the Second Crusades army previously nearly entirely defeated by the Turks and by sickness, Louis VII of France arrived in Antioch on March 19, 1148 after being delayed by storms. Louis was welcomed by the uncle of his spouse Eleanor of Aquitaine, Raymond of Poitiers.</p><br>
<p>Louis refused to help Antioch defend against the Turks and to lead an expedition against Aleppo, and instead decided to finish his pilgrimage to Jerusalem rather than focus on the military aspect of the Crusades. With Louis quickly leaving Antioch again and the Crusades returning home in 1149, Zangi launched an offensive against the territories which were dominated by the Castle of Harim, situated on the eastern bank of the Orontes, after which Zangi besieged the castle of Inag. Raymond of Poitiers quickly came to the aid of the citadel, where he was defeated and killed at the Battle of Inab, Raymond&#39;s head was then cut off and sent to Zangi, who sent it to the caliph in Baghdad. However, Zangi did not attack Antioch itself and was content with capturing all of Antiochene territory that lay east of the Orontes.</p><br>
<h4>After the Second Crusade</h4><br>
<p>With Raymond dead and Bohemond III only five years of age, the principality came under the control of Raymonds widow Constance of Antioch, however real control lay with Aimery of Limoges. In 1152 Baldwin III of Jerusalem came of age, but from 1150 he had proposed three different but respectable suitors for Constances hand in marriage, all of whom she rejected. In 1153 however, she chose Raynald of Châtillon and married him in secret without consulting her first cousin and liege lord, Baldwin III, and neither Baldwin nor Aimery of Limoges approved of her choice.</p><br>
<p>In 1156 Raynald claimed that the Byzantine emperor Manuel I Comnenus had reneged on his promises to pay Raynald a sum of money, and vowed to attack the island of Cyprus in revenge. However Aimery refused to finance Raynalds expedition, so in turn Raynald had the Patriarch seized, beaten, stripped naked, covered in honey, and had him left in the burning sun on top of the citadel to be attacked by insects. When the Patriarch was released, he collapsed in exhaustion and agreed to finance Raynalds expedition.</p><br>
<p>In the meantime, Raynald had allied himself with the Armenian prince, Thoros II. In 1156 Raynald&#39;s forces attacked Cyprus, ravaging the island over a three-week period, with rapine, killing, and plundering its citizens. After which, Manuel I Comnenus raised an army and began their march towards Syria, as a result Raynald threw himself to the mercy of the emperor who insisted on the installation of a Greek Patriarch and the surrender of the citadel in Antioch. The following spring, Manuel made a triumphant entry into the city and established himself as the unquestioned suzerain of Antioch.</p><br>
<p>In 1160 Raynald was captured by Muslims during a plundering raid against the Syrian and Armenian peasants of the neighbourhood of Marash. He was held captive for sixteen years, and as the stepfather of the Empress Maria, he was ransomed by Manuel for 120,000 gold dinars in 1176 (about 500 kg of gold, worth approximately £16 million or US$26 million as of October 2010). With Raynald disposed of for a long time, the patriarch Aimery became the new regent, chosen by Baldwin III. To further consolidate his own claim over Antioch, Manuel chose Maria of Antioch as his bride, daughter of Constance of Antioch and Raymond of Poitiers. But the government of Antioch remained in crisis up until 1163, when Constance asked the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia to help maintain her rule, as a result the citizens of Antioch exiled her and installed her son Bohemond III and now brother-in-law to the emperor, as regent.</p><br>
<p>One year later, Nur ad-Din Zangi captured Bohemond III when he defeated a joint Antiochene-Tripolitan army. Bohemond III was soon released, however Harem, Syria which Raynald had recaptured in 1158, was lost again and the frontier of Antioch was permanently placed west of the Orontes. Byzantine influence remained in Antioch and in 1165, Bohemond III married a niece of the emperor, Maria of Antioch, and installed a Greek patriarch in the city, Athanasius II, Patriarch of Antioch, who remained in his position until he died in an earthquake five years later.Seeing Islam as Others Saw</p><br>
<p>Athanasius II</p><br>
<h4>Third Crusade</h4><br>
<p>On October 29, 1187, Pope Gregory VIII issued the papal bull Audita tremendi, his call for the Third Crusade. Frederick I Barbarossa, Richard I of England, and Philip II of France answered the summons. With Richard and Philip deciding to take a sea route, Frederick lacked the necessary ships and took a land route where he pushed on through Anatolia, defeating the Turks in the Battle of Iconium, however upon reaching Christian territory in Lesser Armenia (Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia) the emperor drowned in the river Saleph. The emperor was buried at Antioch and the Germans became an insignificant contingent during the crusade. Throughout the Third Crusade Antioch remained neutral, however with the end of the Third Crusade (1192), they were included in the Treaty of Ramla between Richard and Saladin.</p><br>
<h4>Battles for sovereignty</h4><br>
<p>With no heir after the death of Raymond III, Count of Tripoli in the Battle of Hattin he left his godson, Raymond IV, Count of Tripoli, the eldest son of Bohemond III. However Bohemond installed his younger, the future prince Bohemond IV of Antioch, as count of Tripoli. Shortly after the end of the Third Crusade, Raymond IV, Count of Tripoli married Alice of Armenia, the niece of Leo II, or Leo I, King of Armenia, and a vassal to Antioch. Alice bore Raymond IV a son in 1199, Raymond-Roupen, after which Raymond IV died in the coming months. In 1194 Leo II tricked Bohemond III making him believe that the new born prince had been captured by the Roupenians. Leo made a failed attempt at capturing Antioch believing the city would be weakened with the absence of Bohemond.</p><br>
<p>Henry II, Count of Champagne nephew to both Richard I and Philip II, travelled to Lesser Armenia and managed to persuade Leo that in exchange for Antioch, renouncing its overlordship to Lesser Armenia and to release Bohemond, who in 1201 died. With the death of Bohemond III there followed a 15-year struggle for power of Antioch, between Tripoli and Lesser Armenia. According to the rules of primogeniture Leos gret nephew Raymond-Roupen was the rightful heir of Antioch, and Leos position was supported by the pope. However, on the other hand, the city commune of Antioch supported Bohemond IV of Antioch, on the grounds that he was the closest blood relative to the last ruling prince, Bohemond III. In 1207 Bohemond IV installed a Greek patriarch in Antioch, despite the East-West Schism, under the help of Aleppo, Bohemond IV drove Leo out of Antioch.</p><br>
<h4>Fifth Crusade and afterwards</h4><br>
<p>In 1213 Pope Innocent IIIs papal bull Quia maior called for all of Christendom to lead a new (Fifth) crusade. This strengthened the support of sultan al-Adil I (العادل), an Ayyubid-Egyptian general who supported Raymond-Roupens claims in Antioch. In 1216 Leo installed Raymond-Roupen as prince of Antioch, and ending all military aspect of the struggle between Tripoli and Lesser Armenia, but the citizens again revolted against Raymond-Roupen in c. 1219 and Bohemond of Tripoli was recognised as the fourth prince of that name. Bohemond IV and his son Bohemond V remained neutral in the struggles of the Guelphs and Ghibellines to the south which arose when Frederich II married Isabella II, and in 1233 Bohemond IV died.</p><br>
<p>From 1233 onwards Antioch declined and appeared rarely in records for 30 years, and in 1254 the altercations of the past between Antioch and Armenia were laid to rest when Bohemond VI of Antioch married the then 17‑year‑old Sibylla of Armenia, and Bohemond VI became a vassal of the Armenian kingdom. Effectively, the Armenian kings ruled Antioch while the prince of Antioch resided in Tripoli. The Armenians drew up a treaty with the Mongols, who were now ravaging Muslim lands, and under protection they extended their territory into the lands of the Seljuq dynasty in the north and the Aleppo territory to the south. Antioch was part of this Armeno-Mongol alliance. Bohemond VI managed to retake Lattakieh and reestablished the land bridge between Antioch and Tripoli, while the Mongols insisted he install the Greek patriarch there rather than a Latin one, due to the Mongols attempting to strengthen ties with the Byzantine Empire. This earned Bohemond the enmity of the Latins of Acre, and Bohemond was excommunicated by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Pope Urban IV, which was later suspended.</p><br>
<h4>Fall of Antioch</h4><br>
<p>In 1259 the Mongols captured the Syrian city of Damascus, and eventually in 1260, Aleppo. The Mamluk sultan Saif ad-Din Qutuz looked to ally with the Franks, who declined. In September 1260, the Mamluks defeated the Mongols at the Battle of Ain Jalut, shortly after Qutuz was assassinated at Al-Salihiyya, and according to various sources his successor Baibars was involved in his murder. (Baibars "came to power with regicide on his conscience" according to Tschanz.) Despite this, Baibars was named sultan, and in 1263 sacked Nazareth, threatened Antioch with invasion, and appeared before the walls of Acre. In January 1265 Baibars launched an offensive against the Latins, starting with Acre, the capital of the remnant of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, but was unable to take it, but defeated the Crusaders in many other battles in Arsuf, Athlith, Haifa, etc. And in 1268 Baibars besieged Antioch, capturing the city on May 18. Baibars promised to spare the lives of the inhabitants, but broke his promise and razed the city, killing or enslaving nearly the entire population upon their surrender.</p><br>
<p>Antioch&#39;s ruler, Prince Bohemond VI was then left with no territories except the County of Tripoli. Without any southern fortifications and with Antioch isolated it could not withstand the onslaught of resurgent Muslim forces, and with the fall of the city, the remainder of northern Syria eventually capitulated, and ended the Latin presence in Syria. The Mamluk armies killed or enslaved every Christian in Antioch. In 1355 it still had a considerable population, but by 1432 there were only about 300 inhabited houses within its walls, mostly occupied by Turcomans.</p><br>
<h2>Archaeology</h2><br>
<p>Few traces of the once great Roman city are visible today aside from the massive fortification walls that snake up the mountains to the east of the modern city, several aqueducts, and the Church of St Peter (St Peter&#39;s Cave Church, Cave-Church of St. Peter), said to be a meeting place of an Early Christian community. The majority of the Roman city lies buried beneath deep sediments from the Orontes River, or has been obscured by recent construction.</p><br>
<p>Between 1932 and 1939, archaeological excavations of Antioch were undertaken under the direction of the "Committee for the Excavation of Antioch and Its Vicinity", which was made up of representatives from the Louvre Museum, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Worcester Art Museum, Princeton University, Wellesley College, and later (1936) also the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University and its affiliate Dumbarton Oaks.</p><br>
<p>The excavation team failed to find the major buildings they hoped to unearth, including Constantine&#39;s Great Octagonal Church or the imperial palace. However, a great accomplishment of the expedition was the discovery of high-quality Roman mosaics from villas and baths in Antioch, Daphne and Seleucia. One mosaic includes a border that depicts a walk from Antioch to Daphne, showing many ancient buildings along the way. The mosaics are now displayed in the Hatay Archaeology Museum in Antakya and in the museums of the sponsoring institutions.</p><br>
<p>A statue in the Vatican and a number of figurines and statuettes perpetuate the type of its great patron goddess and civic symbol, the Tyche (Fortune) of Antioch – a majestic seated figure, crowned with the ramparts of Antioch&#39;s walls and holding wheat stalks in her right hand, with the river Orontes as a youth swimming under her feet. According to William Robertson Smith the Tyche of Antioch was originally a young virgin sacrificed at the time of the founding of the city to ensure its continued prosperity and good fortune.</p><br>
<p>The northern edge of Antakya has been growing rapidly over recent years, and this construction has begun to expose large portions of the ancient city, which are frequently bulldozed and rarely protected by the local museum.</p><br>
<h2>Notable people</h2><br>
<p>Saint Barnabas</p><br>
<p>Saint Domnius, Bishop of Salona and patron saint of Split</p><br>
<p>George of Antioch</p><br>
<p>Ignatius of Antioch, Patriarch of Antioch</p><br>
<p>John Chrysostom (349–407) Patriarch of Constantinople</p><br>
<p>Libanius, 4th century AD, pagan sophist and confidant of Emperor Julian</p><br>
<p>Saint Luke, 1st century AD, Christian evangelist and author of the Gospel of St. Luke and Acts of the Apostles</p><br>
<p>Severus of Antioch</p><br>
<p>The Himalayas, or Himalaya , form a mountain range in Asia separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau.</p><br>
<p>The Himalayan range has many of the Earth&#39;s highest peaks, including the highest, Mount Everest. The Himalayas include over fifty mountains exceeding 7,200 m in elevation, including ten of the fourteen 8000m peaks. By contrast, the highest peak outside Asia – Aconcagua, in the Andes – is 6,961 m tall.</p><br>
<p>The Himalayan range is bordered on the northwest by the Karakoram and Hindu Kush ranges, on the north by the Tibetan Plateau and on the south by the Indo-Gangetic Plain. The Himalayas are distinct from the other great ranges of central Asia, although sometimes the term Himalaya is loosely used to include the Karakoram and some of the other ranges. The Himalayas – inhabited by 52.7 million people – are spread across five countries: India, Nepal, Bhutan, China and Pakistan, with the first three countries having sovereignty over most of the range. Some of the world&#39;s major rivers, the Indus, the Ganges and the Tsangpo-Brahmaputra, rise in the Himalayas, and their combined drainage basin is home to roughly 600 million people. The Himalayas have profoundly shaped the cultures of the Indian subcontinent; many Himalayan peaks are sacred in Hinduism and Buddhism.</p><br>
<p>Lifted by the subduction of the Indian tectonic plate under the Eurasian Plate, the Himalayan mountain range runs, west-northwest to east-southeast, in an arc 2,400 km long. Its western anchor, Nanga Parbat, lies just south of the northernmost bend of Indus river. Its eastern anchor, Namcha Barwa, is just west of the great bend of the Tsangpo river. From the north, the chain is limited by a 50-60 km wide tectonic valley called the Indus-Tsangpo Suture. Towards the south the arc of the Himalaya is ringed by the very low Gangetic plain. The range varies in width from 350 km in the west (Kashmir) to 150 km in the east (Arunachal Pradesh).</p><br>
<h2>Name</h2><br>
<p>The name of the range derives from the Sanskrit Himā-laya (, "Abode of Snow"), from himá (, "snow") and ā-laya (, "receptacle, dwelling"). They are now known as the "Himalaya Mountains", usually shortened to the "Himalayas". Formerly, they were described in the singular as the "Himalaya". This was also previously transcribed "Himmaleh", as in Emily Dickinsons poetry and Henry David Thoreaus essays.</p><br>
<p>The mountains are known as the Himālaya in Nepali and Hindi (both written ), the Himalaya (ཧི་མ་ལ་ཡ་) or The Land of Snow (གངས་ཅན་ལྗོངས་) in Tibetan, the Hamaleh Mountain Range (سلسلہ کوہ ہمالیہ) in Urdu and the Ximalaya Mountain Range (Chinese.</p><br>
<h2>Geography and key features</h2><br>
<p>In the middle of the great curve of the Himalayan mountains lie the 8000m peaks of Dhaulagiri and Annapurna in Nepal, separated by the Kali Gandaki Gorge. The gorge splits the Himalayas into Western and Eastern sections both ecologically and orographically – the pass at the head of the Kali Gandaki, the Kora La is the lowest point on the ridgeline between Everest and K2. To the east of Annapurna are the 8000 m peaks of Manaslu and across the border in Tibet, Shishapangma. To the south of these lies Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal and the largest city in the Himalayas. East of the Kathmandu Valley lies valley of the Bhote/Sun Kosi river which rises in Tibet and provides the main overland route between Nepal and China – the Araniko Highway/China National Highway 318. Further east is the Mahalangur Himal with four of the world&#39;s six highest mountains, including the highest: Cho Oyu, Everest, Lhotse and Makalu. The Khumbu region, popular for trekking, is found here on the south-western approaches to Everest. The Arun river drains the northern slopes of these mountains, before turning south and flowing through the range to the east of Makalu.</p><br>
<p>In the far east of Nepal the Himalayas rise to the Kanchenjunga massif on the border with India, the third highest mountain in the world, the most easterly 8000 m summit and the highest point of India. The eastern side of Kanchenjunga is in the Indian state of Sikkim. Formerly an independent Kingdom, it lies on the main route from India to Lhasa, Tibet, which passes over the Nathu La pass into Tibet. East of Sikkim lies the ancient Buddhist Kingdom of Bhutan. The highest mountain in Bhutan is Gangkhar Puensum, which is also a strong candidate for the highest unclimbed mountain in the world. The Himalayas here are becoming increasingly rugged with heavily forested steep valleys. The Himalayas continue, turning slightly north east, through the disputed Indian State of Arunachal Pradesh as well as Tibet, before reaching their easterly conclusion in the peak of Namche Barwa, situated in Tibet inside the great bend of the Yarlang Tsangpo river. On the other side of the Tsangpo, to the east, are the Kangri Garpo mountains. The high mountains to the north of the Tsangpo including Gyala Peri, however, are also sometimes also included in the Himalayas.</p><br>
<p>Going west from Dhaulagiri, Western Nepal is somewhat remote and lacks major high mountains, but is home to Rara Lake, the largest lake in Nepal. The Karnali River rises in Tibet but cuts through the centre of the region. Further west, the border with India follows the Sarda River and provides a trade route into China, where on the Tibetan plateau lies the high peak of Gurla Mandhata. Just across Lake Manasarovar from this lies the sacred Mount Kailash, which stands close to the source of the four main rivers of Himalayas and is revered in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Bonpo. In the newly created Indian state of Uttarkhand, the Himalayas rise again as the Garwhal Himalayas with the high peaks of Nanda Devi and Kamet. The state is also an important pilgrimage destination, with the source of the Ganges at Gangotri and the Yamuna at Yamunotri, and the temples at Badrinath and Kedarnath.</p><br>
<p>The next Himalayan Indian state, Himachal Pradesh, lacks very high mountains, but is noted for its hill stations, particularly Shimla, the summer capital of the British Raj, and Dharmasala, the centre of the Tibetan community in exile in India. This area marks the start of the Punjab Himalaya and the Sutlej river, the most easterly of the five tributaries of the Indus, cuts through the range here. Further west, the Himalayas form most of the southern portion of the disputed Indian State of Jammu & Kashmir. The twin peaks of Nun Kun are the only mountains over 7000 m in this part of the Himalayas. Beyond lies the renown Kashmir Valley and the town and lakes of Srinagar. Finally, the Himalayas cross the Line of Control into Pakistan and reach their western end in the dramatic 8000 m peak of Nanga Parbat, which rises over 7000 m above the Indus valley and is the most westerly of the 8000 m summits.</p><br>
<h2>Geology</h2><br>
<p>The Himalayan range is one of the youngest mountain ranges on the planet and consists mostly of uplifted sedimentary and metamorphic rock. According to the modern theory of plate tectonics, its formation is a result of a continental collision or orogeny along the convergent boundary between the Indo-Australian Plate and the Eurasian Plate. The Arakan Yoma highlands in Myanmar and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal were also formed as a result of this collision.</p><br>
<p>During the Upper Cretaceous, about 70 million years ago, the north-moving Indo-Australian plate (which has subsequently broken into the Indian Plate and the Australian plate) was moving at about 15 cm per year. About 50 million years ago this fast moving Indo-Australian plate had completely closed the Tethys Ocean, the existence of which has been determined by sedimentary rocks settled on the ocean floor and the volcanoes that fringed its edges. Since both plates were composed of low density continental crust, they were thrust faulted and folded into mountain ranges rather than subducting into the mantle along an oceanic trench. An often-cited fact used to illustrate this process is that the summit of Mount Everest is made of marine limestone from this ancient ocean.</p><br>
<p>Today, the Indian plate continues to be driven horizontally at the Tibetan Plateau, which forces the plateau to continue to move upwards. The Indian plate is still moving at 67 mm per year, and over the next 10 million years it will travel about 1,500 km into Asia. About 20 mm per year of the India-Asia convergence is absorbed by thrusting along the Himalaya southern front. This leads to the Himalayas rising by about 5 mm per year, making them geologically active. The movement of the Indian plate into the Asian plate also makes this region seismically active, leading to earthquakes from time to time.</p><br>
<p>During the last ice age, there was a connected ice stream of glaciers between Kangchenjunga in the east and Nanga Parbat in the west. In the west, the glaciers joined with the ice stream network in the Karakoram, and in the north, they joined with the former Tibetan inland ice. To the south, outflow glaciers came to an end below an elevation of 1,000 -. While the current valley glaciers of the Himalaya reach at most 20 to 32 km in length, several of the main valley glaciers were 60 to 112 km long during the ice age. The glacier snowline (the altitude where accumulation and ablation of a glacier are balanced) was about 1,400 - lower than it is today. Thus, the climate was at least 7.0 to 8.3 C-change colder than it is today.</p><br>
<h2>Hydrology</h2><br>
<p>Despite their scale the Himalayas do not form a major watershed, and a number of rivers cut through the range, particularly in the eastern part of the range. As a result, the main ridge of the Himalayas is not clearly defined, and mountain passes are not as significant for traversing the range as with other mountain ranges. The rivers of the Himalayas drain into two large river systems:</p><br>
<p>The western rivers combine into the Indus Basin. The Indus itself forms the northern and western boundaries of the Himalayas. It begins in Tibet at the confluence of Sengge and Gar rivers and flows north-west through India into Pakistan before turning south-west to the Arabian Sea. It is fed by several major tributaries draining the southern slopes of the Himalayas, including the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas and Sutlej rivers, which are the namesakes of Punjab.</p><br>
<p>The other Himalayan rivers drain the Ganges-Brahmaputra Basin. Its main rivers are the Ganges, the Brahmaputra and the Yamuna, as well as other tributaries. The Brahmaputra originates as the Yarlung Tsangpo River in western Tibet, and flows east through Tibet and west through the plains of Assam. The Ganges and the Brahmaputra meet in Bangladesh and drain into the Bay of Bengal through the world&#39;s largest river delta, the Sunderbans.</p><br>
<p>The northern slopes of Gyala Peri and the peaks beyond the Tsangpo, sometimes included in the Himalayas, drain into the Irrawaddy River, which originates in eastern Tibet and flows south through Myanmar to drain into the Andaman Sea. The Salween, Mekong, Yangtze and Yellow River all originate from parts of the Tibetan Plateau that are geologically distinct from the Himalaya mountains and are therefore not considered true Himalayan rivers. Some geologists refer to all the rivers collectively as the circum-Himalayan rivers.</p><br>
<h3>Glaciers</h3><br>
<p>The great ranges of central Asia, including the Himalayas, contain the third-largest deposit of ice and snow in the world, after Antarctica and the Arctic. The Himalayan range encompasses about 15,000 glaciers, which store about 12,000 km (3,000 cubic miles) of fresh water. Its glaciers include the Gangotri and Yamunotri (Uttarakhand) and Khumbu glaciers (Mount Everest region), Langtang glacier (Langtang region) and Zemu (Sikkim).</p><br>
<p>Owing to the mountains&#39; latitude near the Tropic of Cancer, the permanent snow line is among the highest in the world at typically around 5,500 m. In contrast, equatorial mountains in New Guinea, the Rwenzoris and Colombia have a snow line some 900 m lower. The higher regions of the Himalayas are snowbound throughout the year, in spite of their proximity to the tropics, and they form the sources of several large perennial rivers.</p><br>
<p>In recent years, scientists have monitored a notable increase in the rate of glacier retreat across the region as a result of global climate change. For example, glacial lakes have been forming rapidly on the surface of debris-covered glaciers in the Bhutan Himalaya during the last few decades. Although the effect of this will not be known for many years, it potentially could mean disaster for the hundreds of millions of people who rely on the glaciers to feed the rivers during the dry seasons.</p><br>
<h3>Lakes</h3><br>
<p>The Himalayan region is dotted with hundreds of lakes. Most lakes are found at altitudes of less than 5,000 m, with the size of the lakes diminishing with altitude. Tilicho Lake in Nepal in the Annapurna massif is one of the highest lakes in the world. Pangong Tso, which is spread across the border between India and China, and Yamdrok Tso, located in central Tibet, are amongst the largest with surface areas of 700 km², and 638 km², respectively. Other notable lakes include She-Phoksundo Lake in the Shey Phoksundo National Park of Nepal, Gurudongmar Lake, in North Sikkim, Gokyo Lakes in Solukhumbu district of Nepal and Lake Tsongmo, near the Indo-China border in Sikkim.</p><br>
<p>Some of the lakes present a danger of a glacial lake outburst flood. The Tsho Rolpa glacier lake in the Rowaling Valley, in the Dolakha District of Nepal, is rated as the most dangerous. The lake, which is located at an altitude of 4,580 m has grown considerably over the last 50 years due to glacial melting.</p><br>
<p>The mountain lakes are known to geographers as tarns if they are caused by glacial activity. Tarns are found mostly in the upper reaches of the Himalaya, above 5,500 metres.</p><br>
<h2>Climate</h2><br>
<p>The vast size, huge altitude range and complex topography of the Himalayas mean they experience a wide range of climates, from humid subtropical in the foothills to cold, dry desert conditions on the Tibetan side of the range.</p><br>
<p>For much of Himalayas – that on the south side of the high mountains, except in the furthest west, the most characteristic feature of the climate is the monsoon. Heavy rain arrives on the south-west monsoon in June and persists until September. The monsoon can seriously impact transport and cause major landslides. It restricts tourism – the trekking and mountaineering season is limited to either before the monsoon in April/May or after the monsoon in October/November (autumn). In Nepal and Sikkim, there are often considered to be five seasons: summer, monsoon, autumn (or post-monsoon), winter and spring.</p><br>
<p>Using the Köppen climate classification, the lower elevations of the Himalayas, reaching in mid elevations in central Nepal (including the Kathmandu valley), are classified as Cwa, Humid subtropical climate with dry winters. Higher up, most of the Himalayas have a subtropical highland climate (Cwb).</p><br>
<p>In the furthest west of the Himalayas, in the west of the Kashmir valley and the Indus valley, the South Asian monsoon is no longer a dominant factor and most precipitation falls in the spring. Srinagar receives around 723 mm around half the rainfall of locations such as Shimla and Kathmandu, with the wettest months being March and April.</p><br>
<p>The northern side of the Himalayas, also known as the Tibetan Himalaya, is dry, cold and generally wind swept particularly in the west where it has a cold desert climate. The vegetation is sparse and stunted and the winters are severely cold. Most of the precipitation in the region is in the form of snow during late winter and spring months.</p><br>
<p>Local impacts on climate are significant throughout the Himalayas. Temperatures fall by 6.5 &deg;C for every 1000m rise in altitude. This gives rise to a variety of climates from nearly tropical in the foothills to tundra and permanent snow and ice. Local climate is also affected by the topography: The leeward side of the mountains receive less rain while the well exposed slopes get heavy rainfall and the rain shadow of large mountains can be significant, for example leading to near desert conditions in the Upper Mustang which is sheltered from the monsoon rains by the Annapurna and Dhaulagiri massifs and has annual precipitation of around 300mm, while Pokhara on the southern side of the massifs has substantial rainfall (3,900mm/year). Thus although annual precipitation is generally higher in east than the west, local variations are often more important.</p><br>
<p>The Himalayas have a profound effect on the climate of the Indian subcontinent and the Tibetan Plateau. They prevent frigid, dry winds from blowing south into the subcontinent, which keeps South Asia much warmer than corresponding temperate regions in the other continents. It also forms a barrier for the monsoon winds, keeping them from traveling northwards, and causing heavy rainfall in the Terai region. The Himalayas are also believed to play an important part in the formation of Central Asian deserts, such as the Taklamakan and Gobi.</p><br>
<h2>Ecology</h2><br>
<p>The unique floral and faunal wealth of the Himalayas is undergoing structural and compositional changes due to climate change. The increase in temperature is shifting various species to higher elevations. The oak forest is being invaded by pine forests in the Garhwal Himalayan region. There are reports of early flowering and fruiting in some tree species, especially rhododendron, apple and box myrtle. The highest known tree species in the Himalayas is Juniperus tibetica located at 4,900 m in Southeastern Tibet.</p><br>
<h2>Culture</h2><br>
<p>The Himalayan population belongs to four distinct cultural groups, who throughout history have systematically penetrated the isolated indigenous Himalayan population. Those migrating cultures – Hindu (Indian), Buddhist (Tibetan), Islamic (Afghanistan–Iran) and Animist (Burmese and south-eastern Asian) – without any doubt have created here their own individual and unique place. Their current arrangement, though with a few exceptions, is linked to specific geographical regions, and the relative altitude at which they occur.</p><br>
<p>There are many cultural aspects of the Himalayas. For the Hindus, the Himalayas are personified as Himavath, the father of the goddess Parvati. The Himalayas is also considered to be the father of the river Ganges. The Mountain Kailash is a sacred peak to the Hindus and is where the Lord Shiva is believed to live. Two of the most sacred places of pilgrimage for the Hindus is the temple complex in Pashupatinath and Muktinath, also known as Saligrama because of the presence of the sacred black rocks called saligrams.</p><br>
<p>The Buddhists also lay a great deal of importance on the mountains of the Himalayas. Paro Taktsang is the holy place where Buddhism started in Bhutan.</p><br>
<p>The Himalayan people’s diversity shows in many different ways. It shows through their architecture, their languages and dialects, their beliefs and rituals, as well as their clothing. The shapes and materials of the people’s homes reflect their practical needs and the beliefs. Another example of the diversity amongst the Himalayan peoples is that handwoven textiles display colors and patterns unique to their ethnic backgrounds. Finally, some people place a great importance on jewellery. The Rai and Limbu women wear big gold earrings and nose rings to show their wealth through their jewellery.</p><br>
<h2>Religions of the region</h2><br>
<p>Several places in the Himalayas are of religious significance in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. A notable example of a religious site is Paro Taktsang, where Padmasambhava is said to have founded Buddhism in Bhutan. Padmasambhava is also worshipped as the patron saint of Sikkim. There are also Muslim and Hindhu Shaivite Kashmiri Pandit in the area of Kashmir.</p><br>
<p>In Hinduism, the Himalayas have been personified as the king of all Mountain – "Giriraj Himavat", father of Ganga and Parvati (form of Adi Shakti Durga).</p><br>
<p>A number of Vajrayana Buddhist sites are situated in the Himalayas, in Tibet, Bhutan and in the Indian regions of Ladakh, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Spiti and Darjeeling. There were over 6,000 monasteries in Tibet, including the residence of the Dalai Lama. Bhutan, Sikkim and Ladakh are also dotted with numerous monasteries. The Tibetan Muslims have their own mosques in Lhasa and Shigatse.</p><br>
<h2>Resources</h2><br>
<p>The Himalayas are home to a diversity of medicinal resources. Plants from the forests have been used for millennia to treat conditions ranging from simple coughs to snake bites.</p><br>
<p>Different parts of the plants – root, flower, stem, leaves, and bark – are used as remedies for different ailments. For example, a bark extract from an abies pindrow tree is used to treat coughs and bronchitis. Leaf and stem paste from an arachne cordifolia is used for wounds and as an antidote for snake bites. The bark of a callicarpa arborea is used for skin ailments. Nearly a fifth of the gymnosperms, angiosperms and pteridophytes in the Himalayas are found to have medicinal properties, and more are likely to be discovered.</p><br>
<p>Most of the population in some Asian and African countries depend on medicinal plants rather than prescriptions and such (Gupta and Sharma, vii). Since so many people use medicinal plants as their only source of healing in the Himalayas, the plants are an important source of income. This contributes to economic and modern industrial development both inside and outside the region (Gupta and Sharma, 5). The only problem is that locals are rapidly clearing the forests on the Himalayas for wood, often illegally (Earth Island Journal, 2). This means that the number of medicinal plants is declining and that some of them might become rarer or, in some cases, go extinct.</p><br>
<p>Although locals are clearing out portions of the forests in the Himalayas, there is still a large amount of greenery ranging from the tropical forests to the Alpine forests. These forests provide wood for fuel and other raw materials for use by industries. There are also many pastures for animals to graze upon (Mohita, sec. Forest and Wealth). The many varieties of animals that live in these mountains do so based on the elevation. For example, elephants and rhinoceros live in the lower elevations of the Himalayas, also called the Terai region. Also, found in these mountains are the Kashmiri stag, black bears, musk deer, langur, and snow leopards. The Tibetan yak are also found on these mountains and are often used by the people for transportation. However, the populations of many of these animals and still others are declining and are on the verge of going extinct (Admin, sec. Flora and Fauna).</p><br>
<p>The Himalayas are also a source of many minerals and precious stones. Amongst the tertiary rocks, are vast potentials of mineral oil. There is coal located in Kashmir, and precious stones located in the Himalayas. There is also gold, silver, copper, zinc, and many other such minerals and metals located in at least 100 different places in these mountains (Mohita, sec. Minerals).</p><br>
<p>Cape Cod is a geographic cape extending into the Atlantic Ocean from the southeastern corner of mainland Massachusetts, in the northeastern United States. Its historic, maritime character and ample beaches attract heavy tourism during the summer months.</p><br>
<p>As defined by the Cape Cod Commission&#39;s enabling legislation, Cape Cod is conterminous with Barnstable County, Massachusetts. It extends from Provincetown in the northeast to Woods Hole in the southwest, and is bordered by Plymouth to the northwest.</p><br>
<p>Since 1914, Cape Cod has been separated from the mainland by the Cape Cod Canal. The canal cuts 17.5 mi roughly across the base of the peninsula, though small portions of the Cape Cod towns of Bourne and Sandwich lie on the mainland side of the canal. Two highway bridges cross the Cape Cod Canal: the Sagamore Bridge and the Bourne Bridge. In addition, the Cape Cod Canal Railroad Bridge carries railway freight and limited passenger services onto the Cape. Cape territory is divided into 15 towns with many villages.</p><br>
<h2>Region of Cape Cod and the Islands</h2><br>
<p>Like Cape Cod itself, the islands south of the Cape have evolved from whaling and trading areas to become resort destinations, attracting wealthy families, celebrities, and other tourists. These include the large nearby islands of Nantucket and Martha&#39;s Vineyard, which have grown in population by 6.8 percent and 10.3 percent, respectively, between 2000 and 2010 while the year-round population of Barnstable County dropped 3 percent according to the Census.</p><br>
<p>Both islands are also famous summer tourist destinations, commonly accessed by ferry from several locations on the cape. The phrases Cape Cod and the Islands and the Cape and Islands are often used to describe the whole region of Barnstable County, Dukes County (including Martha&#39;s Vineyard and the smaller Elizabeth Islands), and Nantucket County.</p><br>
<p>Several small islands right off Cape Cod, including Monomoy Island, Monomoscoy Island, Popponesset Island, and Seconsett Island, are also in Barnstable County.</p><br>
<p>The Forbes family-owned Naushon Island was first purchased by John Murray Forbes. Naushon is one of the Elizabeth Islands, many of which are privately owned. One of the publicly accessible Elizabeths is the southernmost island in the chain, Cuttyhunk, with a year-round population of 52 people. Several prominent families have established compounds or estates on the larger islands, making these islands some of the wealthiest resorts in the Northeast, yet they retain much of the early merchant trading and whaling culture.</p><br>
<p>Cape Cod in particular is a popular retirement area; 27.8% of the population of Barnstable County is 65 years old or older., and the average age of residents is the highest of any area in New England. By voter registration numbers, Democrats outnumber Republicans by less in the three counties than in the whole of Massachusetts, to varying degrees.</p><br>
<p>The bulk of the land in the area is glacial terminal moraine and represents the southernmost extent of glacial coverage in southeast New England; similar glacial formations make up Long Island in New York and Block Island in Rhode Island.</p><br>
<h2>Geography and political divisions</h2><br>
<h3>Physical geography and boundaries</h3><br>
<p>The name "Cape Cod", as it was first used in 1602, applied only to the very tip of the peninsula. It remained that way for 125 years, until the "Precinct of Cape Cod" was incorporated as the Town of Provincetown. No longer in "official" use over the ensuing decades, the name came to mean all of the land east of the Manomet and Scusset rivers – essentially along the line that became the Cape Cod Canal. The creation of the canal separated the majority of the peninsula from the mainland. Most agencies, including the Cape Cod Commission and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), treat the Cape as an island with regard to disaster preparedness, groundwater management, and the like. Cape Codders tend to refer to the land on the mainland side of the canal as "off-Cape", though the legal delineation of Cape Cod, coincident to the boundaries of Barnstable County, includes portions of the towns of Bourne and Sandwich that are located north of the canal.</p><br>
<p>Cape Cod Bay lies in between Cape Cod and the mainland – bounded on the north by a horizontal line between Provincetown and Marshfield. North of Cape Cod Bay (and Provincetown) is Massachusetts Bay, which contains the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, located 5 mi north of Provincetown. The Atlantic Ocean is to the east of Cape Cod, and to the southwest of the Cape is Buzzards Bay. The Cape Cod Canal, completed in 1916, connects Buzzards Bay to Cape Cod Bay; its creation shortened the trade route between New York and Boston by 62 mi.</p><br>
<p>Cape Cod extends 65 mi into the Atlantic Ocean, with a breadth of between 1 –, and covers more than 400 miles of shoreline. Its elevation ranges from 306 ft at its highest point, at the top of Pine Hill, in the Bourne portion of Joint Base Cape Cod, down to sea level.</p><br>
<p>One of the biggest barrier islands in the world, Cape Cod shields much of the Massachusetts coastline from North Atlantic storm waves. This protection erodes the Cape&#39;s shoreline at the expense of its cliffs, while protecting towns from Fairhaven to Marshfield.</p><br>
<p>Cape Cod and the Islands are part of a continuous archipelagic region consisting of a thin line of islands stretching west to include Long Island. This region is historically and collectively known by naturalists as the Outer Lands.</p><br>
<h3>Towns and villages</h3><br>
<p>Cape Cod incorporates all of Barnstable County, which comprises 15 towns: Bourne, Sandwich, Falmouth, Mashpee, Barnstable, Yarmouth, Harwich, Dennis, Brewster, Chatham, Orleans, Eastham, Wellfleet, Truro, and Provincetown. Each of these towns include a number of villages; see Barnstable County for a complete list.</p><br>
<p>Barnstable, the most populated municipality on Cape Cod, is the only one to have adopted a city form of government, whose legislative body is an elected 13-member council. However, like other smaller Massachusetts cities, Barnstable retained its "Town of Barnstable" moniker. All of the other towns elect a 5-member Board of Selectmen as the executive policy-setting board, and utilize Town Meetings as their legislative body.</p><br>
<h3>Cape Cod and the Islands</h3><br>
<p>To the south of Cape Cod lie Nantucket Sound; Nantucket and Martha&#39;s Vineyard, both large islands; and the mostly privately owned Elizabeth Islands.</p><br>
<h3>Sections</h3><br>
<p>For most of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, Cape Cod was considered to consist of three sections (see map):</p><br>
<p>The Upper Cape is the part of Cape Cod closest to the mainland, comprising the towns of Bourne, sandwich, Falmouth, and Mashpee. Falmouth is the home of the famous Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Marine Biological Laboratory as well as several other research organizations, and is also the most-used ferry connection to Martha&#39;s Vineyard. Falmouth is composed of several separate villages, including East Falmouth, Falmouth Village, Hatchville, North Falmouth, Teaticket, Waquoit, West Falmouth, and Woods Hole, as well as several smaller hamlets that are incorporated into their larger neighbors (e.g., Davisville, Hatchville, Falmouth Heights, Quissett, Sippewissett, and others). Bourne is home to the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, in the village of Buzzards Bay, along the canal, Joint Base Cape Cod, Aptucxet Trading Post, the annual Bourne Scallop Festival in September, and, until 1884, was part of Sandwich. Sandwich, the oldest town on Cape Cod, founded in 1637, is home to the Dexter Grist Mill, the historic Hoxie House, Heritage Museums and Gardens, and the Sandwich Glass Museum. Mashpee, is the home of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe of Native Americans.</p><br>
<p>The Mid-Cape area includes the towns of Barnstable, Yarmouth and Dennis. The area features many beautiful beaches, including warm-water beaches along Nantucket Sound, e.g., Kalmus Beach in Hyannis, which gets its name from one of the inventors of Technicolor, Herbert Kalmus. This popular windsurfing destination was bequeathed to the town of Barnstable by Dr. Kalmus on condition that it not be developed, possibly one of the first instances of open-space preservation in the US. The Mid-Cape is also the commercial and industrial center of the region. There are seven villages in Barnstable, including Barnstable Village, Centerville, Cotuit, Hyannis, Marstons Mills, Osterville, and West Barnstable, as well as several smaller hamlets that are incorporated into their larger neighbors (e.g. Craigville, Cummaquid, Hyannis Port, Santuit, Wianno, and others). The villages of Yarmouth are South Yarmouth, West Yarmouth and Yarmouth Port. There are five villages in Dennis, including North Dennis, East Dennis, West Dennis, Dennis Port, and South Dennis.</p><br>
<p>The Lower Cape & Outer Cape traditionally includes all of the rest of the Cape, or the towns of Harwich, Brewster, Chatham, Orleans, Eastham, Wellfleet, Truro, and Provincetown. In the present day, the five outermost towns (Provincetown, Truro, Wellfleet, Eastham and Orleans) are more commonly and collectively known as the "Outer Cape". This area is home to the Cape Cod National Seashore, a national park that encompasses much of the Outer Cape, including the entire east-facing coast from Orleans to Provincetown. The Outer Cape is home to some of the most popular beaches in the United States, such as Nauset Light Beach and Coast Guard Beach in Eastham, Race Point Beach in Provincetown, Ballston Beach in Truro, and Skaket Beach in Orleans. The Outer Cape and the beaches in the area have become infamous for their summertime great white shark sightings along with numerous other shark species. In the summer of 2012, a tourist was attacked and bitten by a great white shark off Ballston Beach in Truro. The Outer Cape is the least populated area of Cape Cod, though Provincetown has a city-like atmosphere during the summer season. Provincetown has become a major gay & lesbian resort destination &ndash; the town is regarded as one of the largest LGBT resort communities in the United States. Provincetown is also renowned for its historic fishing fleets and Stellwagen Bank, a popular fishing ground and whale watching destination, is located a few miles north of Race Point.</p><br>
<h3>"Upper" and "Lower"</h3><br>
<p>The terms "Upper Cape" and "Lower Cape", and references to traveling "up Cape" or "down Cape" have long been a source of confusion for the uninitiated Cape Cod visitor, who, mistakenly associating "up" with "north", might get turned around by passages such as these from 1920:</p><br>
<p>"The look of things is more ocean-like if one goes down the Cape to Provincetown."</p><br>
<p>"Almost every street in Chatham is solidly paved, and the old corner town of the Cape is the natural goal of the traveler coming up the Cape from Provincetown..."</p><br>
<p>There are many theories to explain the apparent paradox. One is that the terms derive from early nautical navigation. When one traveled to the east, one went down the longitudinal scale (toward zero at Greenwich, England). Additionally, prevailing fair weather winds (generally out of the southwest) have been used as the basis for directional descriptions by European settlers and their descendants in eastern North America. That is, one would be traveling "down " to the east with a westerly wind at ones back. To this day, on nearby Marthas Vineyard, "Up Island" is the western section and "Down Island" is to the east.</p><br>
<p>The arrival of the railroad during the nineteenth century reinforced the "up/down" concept, as train schedules between Boston and Cape Cod always showed Boston at the top &ndash; the timetable for trains headed onto the Cape would be read from the top down, and those of returning trains would be read from the bottom up. Provincetown, therefore, despite being the Capes northernmost town, was the furthest "down" that one could travel. (The Capes unique shape brought a new paradox along with the automobile and highway system: when driving "down Cape" on US Route 6 "eastbound", the final 30 miles from Orleans to Provincetown takes one in nearly every direction except east.)</p><br>
<p>The best known colloquial explanation, however, is that the shape of the peninsula as it appears on maps and charts resembles that of a human arm. In that analogy, the southern portion of the Cape represents the "upper arm", Chatham the elbow, and the north-south portion is the "lower arm", or forearm. Going further, some say Provincetown is the curled hand, or fist, with Race Point and Wood End at its knuckles, and Long Point at the fingertips.</p><br>
<p>In the late twentieth century, as the Cape began drawing more vacationers and artists on retreat, the nautical nomenclature and potential confusion over directions have gradually been giving way to the simpler "Outer Cape", although the older terms are still used by some local residents.</p><br>
<h2>Geology</h2><br>
<p>The bulk of the land on Cape Cod consists of glacial landforms, formed by terminal moraine and outwash plains. This represents the southernmost extent of glacial coverage in southeast New England; similar glacial formations make up Long Island in New York and Block Island in Rhode Island. Together, these formations are known as the Outer Lands, or more obscurely as the "Isles of Stirling". Geologically speaking, Cape Cod is quite young, having been laid down some 16,000 to 20,000 years ago.</p><br>
<p>Most of Cape Cods geological history involves the advance and retreat of the Laurentide ice sheet in the late Pleistocene geological era and the subsequent changes in sea level. Using radiocarbon dating techniques, researchers have determined that around 23,000 years ago, the ice sheet reached its maximum southward advance over North America, and then started to retreat. Many kettle ponds – clear, cold lakes – were formed and remain on Cape Cod as a result of the receding glacier. By about 18,000 years ago, the ice sheet had retreated past Cape Cod. By roughly 15,000 years ago, it had retreated past southern New England. When so much of Earths water was locked up in massive ice sheets, the sea level was lower. Truro&#39;s bayside beaches used to be a petrified forest, before it became a beach.</p><br>
<p>As the ice began to melt, the sea began to rise. Initially, sea level rose quickly, about 15 m per 1,000 years, but then the rate declined. On Cape Cod, sea level rose roughly 3 m per millennium between 6,000 and 2,000 years ago. After that, it continued to rise at about 1 m per millennium. By 6,000 years ago, the sea level was high enough to start eroding the glacial deposits that the vanished continental ice sheet had left on Cape Cod. The water transported the eroded deposits north and south along the outer Cape&#39;s shoreline through a process known as longshore drift. Those reworked sediments that moved north went to the tip of Cape Cod. The entire town of Provincetown, at the extreme tip of the Cape, is a spit consisting largely of deposited marine sediment that was eroded and transported from farther south along the shore. Those sediments that instead moved south created the islands and shoals of Monomoy. So while other parts of the Cape have dwindled from the action of the waves, these parts of the Cape have grown through the deposition of sediment in just the last 6,000 years.</p><br>
<p>This process continues today. Due to their exposure to the open ocean, the Cape and islands are subject to considerable coastal erosion. Geologists say that due to erosion, the Cape will be completely submerged by the sea within several thousand years. This erosion causes the washout of beaches and the destruction of the barrier islands; for example, the ocean broke through the barrier island at Chatham during Hurricane Bob in 1991, allowing waves and storm surges to hit the coast with no obstruction. Consequently, the sediment and sand from the beaches is being washed away and deposited elsewhere. While this destroys land in some places, it creates land elsewhere, most noticeably in marshes where sediment is deposited by flowing water.</p><br>
<p>Cape Cod&#39;s aquifer consists of six hydrologically independent lenses from which all the towns on the Cape obtain drinking water (except Falmouth, which got 43.5% of its 2015 water from Long Pond). Contamination with industrial chemicals and pharmaceutical drugs from septic systems is a concern.</p><br>
<h2>Climate</h2><br>
<p>Although Cape Cod&#39;s weather is typically more moderate than inland locations, on occasion it takes the brunt of extreme weather systems such as the Blizzard of 2005 and Hurricane Bob. Because of the influence of the Atlantic Ocean, temperatures are typically a few degrees lower in the summer and a few degrees higher in the winter than the adjacent mainland. A common misconception is that the climate is influenced largely by the warm Gulf Stream current; however, that current turns eastward off the coast of Virginia, and the waters off the Cape are more influenced by the cold Canadian Labrador Current. As a result, the ocean temperature rarely gets above 65 &deg;F, except along the shallow west coast of the Upper Cape and along the southern coast (Nantucket Sound), where water temperatures can sometimes reach 70 &deg;F or higher.</p><br>
<p>Cape Cod&#39;s climate is also known for a delayed spring season, being surrounded by an ocean which is still cold from the winter; however, it is also known for an exceptionally mild fall season (Indian summer), thanks to the ocean remaining warm from the summer. The highest temperature ever recorded on Cape Cod was 104 &deg;F in Provincetown, and the lowest temperature ever was -12 &deg;F in Barnstable.</p><br>
<p>The water surrounding Cape Cod moderates winter temperatures nearly enough to extend the humid subtropical climate zone to what could be its northernmost limit in eastern North America, as the majority of Cape Cod is in USDA hardiness zone 7a. Consequently, many subtropical indicator plant species typically found in more southerly latitudes are grown there, including Camellias, Ilex opaca, Magnolia grandiflora and Albizia julibrissin. However, Cape Cod falls below the 72 &deg;F threshold, as the warmest month, July, averages around 68.25 &deg;F. Therefore, the climate may be better characterized as either a maritime climate or a humid continental climate (particularly on the northern coast of the upper and mid cape, which is somewhat sheltered from the cooler onshore wind to the south).</p><br>
<p>Precipitation on Cape Cod and the islands of Martha&#39;s Vineyard and Nantucket is the lowest in the New England region, averaging slightly less than 40 in a year (most parts of New England average 42 to 46 in). This is due to storm systems which move across western areas, building up in mountainous regions, and dissipating before reaching the coast where the land has leveled out. The region does not experience a greater number of sunny days, however, as the number of cloudy days is the same as inland locales, in addition to increased fog. On average, roughly 27 in of snow, which is about 17 in less than Boston, falls in an average winter.</p><br>
<p>Once every five or six years, a tropical storm, accompanied by very high and potentially damaging winds and heavy rain, will strike the region. About once every 11 or 12 years a hurricane brings damaging winds and storm surges to the region. Several Category 3 storms have struck Cape Cod since record-keeping began, such as a hurricane in 1869, the 1938 New England hurricane, and Hurricane Carol in 1954. Strong Category 2 storms, such as the 1869 Saxby Gale, Hurricane Edna in 1954, and Hurricane Bob in 1991, also caused considerable damage. Notable Category 1 storms include the 1944 Great Atlantic hurricane and Hurricane Donna in 1960. Other notable storms include the Gale of 1815, which would likely have been rated a strong hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale, and the so-called "Perfect Storm" of October 31, 1991. The February 2013 nor&#39;easter produced winds in excess of 80 mph and dropped over 24 in of snow on some parts of Cape Cod. The storm knocked out power to tens of thousands of Cape Cod residents, some for up to two weeks.</p><br>
<h2>Native population</h2><br>
<p>Cape Cod has been the home of the Wampanoag Native American people for many centuries. They survived off the sea and were accomplished farmers. They understood the principles of sustainable forest management, and were known to light controlled fires to keep the underbrush in check. They helped the Pilgrims, who arrived in the fall of 1620, survive at their new Plymouth Colony.</p><br>
<p>The Wampanoag lost their lands through continued purchase and expropriation by the English colonists. The documentary Natives of the Narrowland (1993), narrated by actress Julie Harris, shows the history of the Wampanoag people through Cape Cod archaeological sites.</p><br>
<p>In 1974, the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Council was formed to articulate the concerns of those with Native American ancestry. They petitioned the federal government in 1975 and again in 1990 for official recognition of the Mashpee Wampanoag as a tribe. In May 2007, the Wampanoag tribe was federally recognized.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<h3>Discovery by Europeans</h3><br>
<p>Cape Cod was a landmark for early explorers. It may have been the "Promontory of Vinland" mentioned by the Norse voyagers (985–1025). The Manomet River area (taken up by the western end of the Cape Cod Canal in the early 20th century) is claimed by some to have been visited by Leif Eiriksson, and a stone wall discovered in Provincetown in 1805 is also claimed to have been built by his younger brother Thorvald Eiriksson around 1007 AD, when the keel of his ship was repaired in the harbor, according to Norse sagas. He was killed later in the same journey, and is said to have been returned to this spot for burial. However, there is no tangible support of the presence of Norse voyagers in Cape Cod, and the view is not generally accepted by archaeologists or historians.</p><br>
<p>Giovanni da Verrazzano approached it from the south in 1524. He named Martha&#39;s Vineyard Claudia, after Claude of France, the wife of Francis I of France. In 1525, Portuguese explorer Estêvão Gomes called it Cabo de la Arenas while sailing under the Spanish crown.</p><br>
<p>In 1602, Bartholomew Gosnold named the tip Cape Cod, the surviving term and the ninth oldest English place-name in the USA Samuel de Champlain charted its sand-silted harbors in 1606, and Henry Hudson landed there in 1609. Captain John Smith noted it on his map of 1614, and at last the Pilgrims entered the "Cape Harbor" and – contrary to the popular myth of Plymouth Rock – made their first landing near present-day Provincetown on November 11, 1620. Nearby, in what is now Eastham, they had their first encounter with Native Americans.</p><br>
<h3>Settlement</h3><br>
<p>Cape Cod was among the first places settled by the English in North America. The Capes fifteen towns developed slowly, aside from Barnstable (1639), Sandwich (1637), and Yarmouth (1639). The final town to be established on the Cape was Bourne in 1884, breaking off from Sandwich. Provincetown was a group of huts until the 18th century. A channel from Massachusetts Bay to Buzzards Bay is shown on Southacks map of 1717. The present Cape Cod Canal was slowly developed from 1870 to 1914. The federal government purchased it in 1928.</p><br>
<p>The Capes vegetation was depauperate and trees were scarce by the time that Henry Thoreau saw Cape Cod during his four visits over 1849 to 1857, because of early colonial settlement and intensive land use. The settlers heated by fires, and it took 10 to 20 cords (40 to 80 m³) of wood to heat a home, so they cleared most of Cape Cod of timber early on. They planted familiar crops, but these were unsuited to Cape Cods thin, glacially derived soils. For instance, much of Eastham was planted to wheat. The settlers practiced burning of woodlands to release nutrients into the soil. Improper and intensive farming led to erosion and the loss of topsoil. Farmers grazed their cattle on the grassy dunes of coastal Massachusetts, only to watch "in horror as the denuded sands walked over richer lands, burying cultivated fields and fences." Dunes on the outer Cape became more common, and many harbors filled in with eroded soils.</p><br>
<p>By 1800, much of Cape Cod&#39;s firewood had to be transported by boat from Maine. The paucity of vegetation was worsened by the raising of merino sheep that reached its peak in New England around 1840. The early industrial revolution occurred through much of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, but it mostly bypassed Cape Cod due to a lack of significant water power in the area. The Cape developed as a large fishing and whaling center as a result, and also because of its geographic position. After 1860 and the opening of the American West, farmers abandoned agriculture on the Cape. By 1950, forests had recovered to an extent not seen since the 18th century.</p><br>
<h3>Modern era</h3><br>
<p>Cape Cod became a summer haven for city dwellers beginning at the end of the 19th century. Improved rail transportation made the towns of the Upper Cape accessible to Bostonians, such as Bourne and Falmouth. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Northeastern mercantile elite built many large, shingled "cottages" along Buzzards Bay. The relaxed summer environment offered by Cape Cod was highlighted by writers including Joseph C. Lincoln, who published novels and countless short stories about Cape Cod folks in popular magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post and the Delineator.</p><br>
<p>Guglielmo Marconi made the first transatlantic wireless transmission originating in the United States from Cape Cod, at Wellfleet. The beach below the bluffs where his station was located is now called Marconi Beach. In 1914, he began construction of a new transatlantic wireless receiver station in Chatham and a companion transmitter station in Marion. In 1920, the stations were acquired by RCA and, in 1921, Chatham began operations as a maritime radio station communicating to ships at sea using the callsign WCC. WCC supported the communications of Amelia Earhart, Howard Hughes, Admiral Byrd, and the Hindenburg. Marconi chose Chatham due to its vantage point on the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded on three sides by water. Walter Cronkite narrated a 17-minute documentary in 2005 about the history of the Chatham Station.</p><br>
<p>Much of the east-facing Atlantic seacoast of Cape Cod consists of wide, sandy beaches. In 1961, a significant portion of this coastline, already slated for housing subdivisions, was made a part of the Cape Cod National Seashore by President John F. Kennedy. It was protected from private development and preserved for public use. Large portions are open to the public, including the Marconi Site in Wellfleet. This is a park encompassing the site of the first two-way transoceanic radio transmission from the United States. (Theodore Roosevelt used Marconi&#39;s equipment for this transmission.)</p><br>
<p>The Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port was President Kennedy&#39;s summer White House during his presidency, and the Kennedy family continues to maintain residences on the compound. President Grover Cleveland maintained a summer home in the Gray Gables section of Bourne. Other notable residents of Cape Cod have included actress Julie Harris, US Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis, figure skater Todd Eldredge, composer and radio personality Canary Burton, and novelists Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut. Influential natives included patriot James Otis, historian and writer Mercy Otis Warren, jurist Lemuel Shaw, and naval officer John Percival.</p><br>
<p>On October 28, 2015, a 6-foot-long blue shark was found stranded on a Provincetown beach.</p><br>
<h2>Lighthouses</h2><br>
<p>Beginning in 1797, lighthouses were erected along Cape Cod to aid in navigation. Highland Light (or Cape Cod Light) is the oldest and tallest of these, and remains as one of a number of working lighthouses on Cape Cod and the Islands. Many of Cape Cods earliest lighthouses featured a light tower that was attached directly to – and centered on the roof of – the keepers dwelling. A stairway to the lantern room was accessible only from the top floor of the house. This came to be known as a Cape Cod style lighthouse, yet today, the only fully intact specimens are on the west coast of the United States.</p><br>
<p>Most of Cape Cod&#39;s lighthouses are operated by the USA Coast Guard, with some exceptions, such as the Nauset Light, which has been owned since 1997 by the Cape Cod National Seashore (National Park Service) and operated since 2004 in partnership between that agency and the non-profit Nauset Light Preservation Society.</p><br>
<p>In 1996, both Highland Light and Nauset Light were moved further from the shore because they were each at risk of being lost due to erosion by the sea. Highland Light, then 110 ft from the ocean, was moved 450 ft to the west, and Nauset Light, 37 ft from the bluff, was moved 300 ft west.</p><br>
<p>The lighthouses of Cape Cod include:</p><br>
<p>Upper Cape: Nobska Light, Wing&#39;s Neck Light (privately owned), and Cleveland Ledge Light (also private).</p><br>
<p>Mid Cape: Sandy Neck Light, Hyannis Harbor Light, Lewis Bay Light (or Hyannis Inner Harbor Light, also private), Bishop and Clerks Light, West Dennis Light (formerly the Bass River Light)</p><br>
<p>Lower Cape: Long Point Light, Wood End Light, Race Point Light, Highland Light, Nauset Light, Three Sisters of Nauset, Mayo Beach Light, Billingsgate Island Light, Chatham Light, Monomoy Point Light, Stage Harbor Light</p><br>
<h2>Transportation</h2><br>
<h3>Road</h3><br>
<p>Cape Cod is connected to the mainland by a pair of canal-spanning highway bridges, the Bourne and Sagamore that were constructed in the 1930s (replacing a 1912 drawbridge). The two parallel road bridges are four miles apart, with the Bourne Bridge to the west, and the Sagamore to the east. The bridges form a bottleneck, resulting in traffic backups of several miles during the tourist season - especially going on-cape at the beginning of the weekend and off-cape at the end of the weekend.</p><br>
<p>The entire Cape is roughly bisected lengthwise by USA Route 6, locally known as the Mid-Cape Highway and officially as the Grand Army of the Republic Highway.</p><br>
<h3>Air and water</h3><br>
<p>Commercial air service to Cape Cod operates out of Barnstable Municipal Airport and Provincetown Municipal Airport. General aviation airports are:</p><br>
<p>Chatham Municipal Airport</p><br>
<p>Falmouth Airpark</p><br>
<p>Cape Cod Airfield in Marstons Mills, Barnstable</p><br>
<p>There is one military airport at Otis Air National Guard Base.</p><br>
<p>There are ferry connections from Boston to Provincetown, as well as from Hyannis and Woods Hole to the islands.</p><br>
<h3>Bus</h3><br>
<p>Cape Cod Regional Transit Authority operates a year-round public bus system comprising three long distance routes and a local bus in Hyannis and Barnstable Village. From mid June until October, additional local routes are added in Falmouth and Provincetown. CCRTA also operates Barnstable County&#39;s ADA-required paratransit (dial-a-ride) service, under the name "B-Bus."</p><br>
<p>Long distance bus service is available through Plymouth and Brockton Street Railway, with regular service to downtown Boston and Logan Airport, as well as less frequent service to Provincetown. Peter Pan Bus Lines also runs long distance service to T.F. Green Airport in Providence, Rhode Island; New York City; and service between Logan Airport, Boston South Station, and Woods Hole.</p><br>
<h3>Rail service</h3><br>
<p>The third bridge over the Cape Cod Canal is a vertical-lift railroad bridge, providing an alternative land transport option.</p><br>
<p>CapeFlyer is a seasonal passenger rail service between Boston and Hyannis that operates on summer weekends from Memorial Day through Labor Day.</p><br>
<p>Daily passenger rail service to Cape Cod ended in June 1959. In 1978, the tracks east of South Dennis were abandoned and replaced with the Cape Cod Rail Trail. Another bike path, the Shining Sea Bikeway, was built over abandoned tracks between Woods Hole and Falmouth in 1975, and in 2008 the 7.4 mi rail line between Falmouth and North Falmouth was removed and the right-of-way converted into an extension of the Shining Sea Bikeway.</p><br>
<p>The Cape Cod Central Railroad is a heritage railroad on Cape Cod. The service is primarily tourist-oriented and includes a dinner train over a scenic route between Hyannis and the Cape Cod Canal lasting about 2½ hours round trip. Limited service is also provided to Buzzards Bay and from there to North Falmouth.</p><br>
<p>Active freight service remains in the Upper Cape area in Sandwich and in Bourne, largely due to a trash transfer station located at Joint Base Cape Cod along the Bourne-Falmouth rail line. In 1986, Amtrak operated a seasonal service in the summer from New York City to Hyannis called the Cape Codder. From 1988, Amtrak and the Massachusetts Department of Transportation increased service to a daily frequency, until service ended in 1996, leaving a gap until the current CapeFlyer service began in 2013.</p><br>
<h3>Bicycle</h3><br>
<p>Bicycle and pedestrian access to the Cape is possible via a sidewalk on the southbound side of the Bourne Bridge. There are a number of dedicated bike trails and paths around the Cape, including:</p><br>
<p>Cape Cod Rail Trail - South Dennis to Wellfleet</p><br>
<p>Old Colony Rail Trail - Harwich and Chatham, connecting with the Cape Cod Rail Trail</p><br>
<p>Various trails in the Cape Cod National Seashore</p><br>
<p>Various trails in Nickerson State Park, connecting with the Cape Cod Rail Trail</p><br>
<p>Shining Sea Bikeway - Woods Hole to North Falmouth</p><br>
<p>Cape Cod Canal path on both sides of the canal</p><br>
<p>Various unpaved Mid-Cape trails</p><br>
<p>For long-distance biking, the mostly on-road Claire Saltonstall Bikeway connects Cape Cod to the Charles River Bike Path in Boston.</p><br>
<h2>Tourism</h2><br>
<p>Cape Cod has a year-round population of about 220,000, and it experiences a tourist season each summer, the beginning and end of which can be roughly approximated as Memorial Day and Labor Day, respectively. Many businesses specifically target summer visitors, although the "on season" has been expanding somewhat in recent years due to Indian Summer, reduced lodging rates, the number of people visiting the Cape after Labor Day who have no school-age children, and the elderly—reducing the true "off season" to six or seven months. In the late 20th century, tourists and owners of second homes began visiting the Cape more and more in the spring and fall, softening the definition of the high season and expanding it somewhat.</p><br>
<p>Provincetown at the tip of Cape Cod berths the original East Coast whale watching fleet (Dolphin Fleet) who patrol the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. The fleet guarantee a whale sighting (mostly humpback whale, fin whale, minke whale, sei whale, and the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale) and is the only federally certified operation qualified to rescue whales. Provincetown has also long been known as an art colony, attracting writers and artists. The town is home to the Cape&#39;s most attended art museum, the Provincetown Art Association and Museum.</p><br>
<p>Cape Cod is a popular destination for beachgoers from all over, with 559.6 mi of coastline. Beaches—both public and private—are easily accessible. The Cape has upwards of sixty public beaches, many of which offer parking for non-residents for a daily fee (in summer). The Cape Cod National Seashore has 40 mi of sandy beach and many walking paths.</p><br>
<p>Cape Cod is also popular for its outdoor activities, such as beach walking, biking, boating, fishing, go-karts, golfing, kayaking, miniature golf, and unique shopping. There are 27 public, daily-fee golf courses and 15 private courses on Cape Cod. Bed and breakfasts or vacation houses are often used for lodging.</p><br>
<p>Each summer, the Naukabout Music Festival is held at the Barnstable County Fair Grounds located in East Falmouth, typically during the first weekend of August. The festival features local, regional, and national talent, along with food, arts, and family-friendly activities. Some particularly well-known Cape products and industries include cranberries, shellfish (particularly oysters and clams), and lobstering.</p><br>
<h2>Sport fishing</h2><br>
<p>Cape Cod is known around the world as a spring-to-fall destination for sport anglers. Among the species most widely pursued are striped bass, bluefish, bluefin tuna, false albacore (little tunny), bonito, tautog, flounder and fluke. The Cape Cod Bay side of the Cape, from Sandwich to Provincetown, has numerous harbors, saltwater creeks, and shoals that hold bait fish and attract the larger game fish, such as striped bass, bluefish and bluefin tuna.</p><br>
<p>The outer edge of the Cape, from Provincetown to Falmouth, faces the open Atlantic from Provincetown to Chatham, and then the more protected water of Nantucket and Vineyard Sounds, from Chatham to Falmouth. The bays, harbors and shoals along this coastline also provide a robust habitat for game species, and during the late summer months warm-water species such as mahi-mahi and marlin will also appear on the southern edge of Cape Cod&#39;s waters. Nearly every harbor on Cape Cod hosts sport fishing charter boats, which run from May through October.</p><br>
<p>One of the most popular fishing spots on the East Coast is the Cape Cod Canal. Striped bass, especially, in season attract anglers from far and wide. A large part of the attraction involves ease of access. Ample free parking exists all along the waterway, and the banks are a short walk from one&#39;s vehicle. This reduces fishing to the basics – a pole and a few lures.</p><br>
<h2>Sports</h2><br>
<p>The Cape has nine amateur baseball franchises playing within Barnstable County in the Cape Cod Baseball League. The Wareham Gatemen also play in the Cape Cod Baseball League in nearby Wareham in Plymouth County. The league&#39;s beginning is unsettled, even fanciful. Without any basis whatsoever, some claim a start date of 1875. However, the first Cape Cod League formed in Sandwich in 1910. It did not last. Three years later - in 1913 - another Cape Cod Baseball League organized. This venture lasted two years. In 1916, a third attempt at league play barely got off the ground. Then, in 1923, an initial four teams met in Hyannis and started a successful federation along the lines of the present league. Outstanding players from throughout the region competed until the war effort led to a shutdown in 1940. In 1946, the local town teams from the prewar County Twilight League and Lower Cape Cod League organized under the Cape Cod Baseball League banner. As the years passed, local players were moved aside by outside college stars. Finally, in 1963, the league became a wholly summer collegiate circuit sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association with some Major Leagues financial support. The current teams in the league are the Bourne Braves, Brewster Whitecaps, Chatham Anglers (formerly the Chatham Athletics), Cotuit Kettleers, Falmouth Commodores, Harwich Mariners, Hyannis Harbor Hawks (formerly the Hyannis Mets), Orleans Firebirds (formerly the Orleans Cardinals), Wareham Gatemen and the Yarmouth–Dennis Red Sox. MLB scouts frequent the games in the summer, looking for stars of the future.</p><br>
<p>Along with the Cape Cod Baseball League and the new Junior Hockey League team, the Cape Cod Islanders, many high school players are being recruited as well. Barnstable and Harwich have each sent multiple players to Division 1 colleges for baseball. Harwich has also won three state titles since 1996 (1996, 2006, 2007). Bourne and Sandwich, rivals in hockey, have each won state championships recently, Bourne in 2004 and Sandwich in 2007. Nauset, Barnstable, and Marthas Vineyard are also state hockey powerhouses. Barnstable and Falmouth hold the title of having one of the longest Thanksgiving football rivalries in the country. The teams have played each other every year on Thanksgiving since 1895. High school football teams on the Cape have also recently become successful and the region has also become a hot-spot for college recruiting. In 2011, four high school football teams from the Cape won state championships in their respective divisions; Dennis-Yarmouth (Division 2A), Bourne (Division 3A), Mashpee (Division 4), as well as Nantucket and Upper Cape Cod Tech (Division 5). Also, numerous other Cape schools have made appearances in the football state championship game recently, including Barnstable in 2012, Marthas Vineyard in 2008, Cape Cod Tech in 2006, and Dennis-Yarmouth in 2013. The Bourne and Barnstable girls volleyball teams are two of the best teams in the state and Barnstable is considered one of the best programs in the country. Bourne won the state title in 2003 and 2007, and Barnstable has won 12 Division 1 state titles in the past 13 years and has won the state title the three years in a row (2011–2013). In the 2010 cross country season, Sturgis Charter Public Schools Division 4 cross country team remained virtually unbeaten throughout their running season.</p><br>
<p>The Cape is home to the Cape Cod Frenzy, a team in the American Basketball Association.</p><br>
<p>Soccer on Cape Cod is represented by the Cape Cod Crusaders, playing in the USL Premier Development League (PDL) based in Hyannis. In addition, a summer Cape Cod Adult Soccer League (CCASL) is active in several towns on the Cape.</p><br>
<p>Cape Cod is the home of the Cape Cod Cubs, a new junior league hockey team that is based out of Hyannis at the new community center being built on Bearses Way.</p><br>
<p>The end of each summer is marked with the running of the Falmouth Road Race, held on the third Saturday in August. It draws about 10,000 runners to the Cape and showcases the finest runners in the world (mainly for the large purse that the race is able to offer). The race is 7.2 mi long, which is a non-standard distance. The reason for the unusual distance is that the man who thought the race up (Tommy Leonard) was a bartender who wanted a race along the coast from one bar (The Capn Kidd in Woods Hole) to another (The Brothers Four in Falmouth Heights). While the bar in Falmouth Heights is now the British Beer Company, the race still starts at the front door of the Capn Kidd in Woods Hole and now finishes at the beach in Falmouth Heights. Prior to the Falmouth race is an annual 5 mi race through Brewster called the Brew Run, held early in August.</p><br>
<h2>Education</h2><br>
<p>Most Cape Cod towns have a few elementary schools, one or two middle schools and one large public high school that serves the entire town. Exceptions to this include Dennis-Yarmouth Regional High School, located in Yarmouth, which serves the two towns in its name; Monomoy Regional High School, located in Harwich and serving that town as well as Chatham; and Nauset Regional High School in Eastham, which serves the towns of Brewster, Orleans, Eastham, Wellfleet, Truro, and Provincetown. Bourne High School serves students in that town, which includes the villages of Sagamore, Sagamore Beach, and Buzzards Bay. Barnstable High School is the Capes largest. Sturgis Charter Public School, a public school in Hyannis that was featured in Newsweek magazines "Best High Schools" ranking, offers the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme in their junior and senior year and is open to students from as far away as Plymouth. The Cape also has two vocational high schools. One is the Cape Cod Regional Technical High School in Harwich, and the other is Upper Cape Cod Regional Technical High School in Bourne.</p><br>
<p>In 1976 the Cape schools and districts petitioned the Massachusetts Legislature to create an educational collaborative, the Cape Cod Collaborative, to facilitate cooperation and efficiency in providing gifted and talented, and special needs programs. With locations in Osterville and Bourne the Cape Cod Collaborative provides transportation services, professional development, autism support, developmental training, itinerant services and an alternative education program. Each summer, in cooperation with the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, it operates a science-based program for gifted and talented students from around the Cape.</p><br>
<p>Mashpee High School is home to the Mashpee Chapter of SMPTE, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. This chapter is the first and only high school chapter in the world to be a part of this organization and has received much recognition within the Los Angeles broadcasting industry as a result.</p><br>
<p>In addition to public schools, Cape Cod has a wide range of private schools. The town of Barnstable has Trinity Christian Academy, Cape Cod Academy, St. Francis Xavier Preparatory School, and Saint John Paul II High School. Bourne offers the Waldorf School of Cape Cod, Orleans offers the Lighthouse Charter School for elementary and middle school students, and Falmouth offers Falmouth Academy. Riverview School is located in East Sandwich and is a special co-ed boarding school which serves students as old as 22 who have learning disabilities. Another specialized school is the Penikese Island School, located in the Elizabeth Islands off southwestern Cape Cod, which serves struggling and troubled teenage boys.</p><br>
<p>Cape Cod contains three institutions of higher education. One is the Cape Cod Community College located in West Barnstable. The second is Massachusetts Maritime Academy in the village of Buzzards Bay. Massachusetts Maritime Academy is the oldest continuously operating maritime college in the United States. The third is Bridgewater State University, which opened a satellite campus in South Yarmouth in January 2015. The school will provide 40 undergraduate and graduate courses leading to the completion of bachelors degree and masters degree programs in Early Childhood Education, Educational Leadership, Secondary Education, Reading, and Special Education. The campus will also offer Certificate Programs in Business and Social Work. Beginning in the Summer 2015, the campus will begin to offer undergraduate credit courses in History.</p><br>
<h2>In popular culture and art</h2><br>
<p>The Cape Codder cocktail is named after the peninsula; both are notable for cranberry. Cape Cod also generated a distinctive Cape style house and Cape lighthouse.</p><br>
<p>The virtues of Cape Cod are extolled in the song "Old Cape Cod".</p><br>
<p>Artist Edward Hopper owned a summer house in Truro, and painted numerous Cape scenes including Corn Hill (1930), Highland Light, North Truro (1930), Rich&#39;s House (1930), High Road (1931), House on Dune Edge (1931), Cold Storage Plant (1933), and Cottages at North Truro (1936).</p><br>
<p>Norman Mailers 1984 noir thriller and murder mystery novel Tough Guys Dont Dance is set in Provincetown on Cape Cod.</p><br>
<p>According to Cole Porters song "Lets Do It," "cold Cape Cod clams &#39;gainst their wish do it."</p><br>
<p>In 1996, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts allowed the creation of a "Cape & Islands" registration plate.</p><br>
<p>The Quirinal Hill  is one of the Seven Hills of Rome, at the north-east of the city center. It is the location of the official residence of the Italian head of state, who resides in the Quirinal Palace; by metonymy "the Quirinal" has come to stand for the Italian president. The Quirinal Palace has an extension of 1.2 million square feet.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>It was originally part of a group of hills that included Collis Latiaris, Mucialis (or Sanqualis), Salutaris. These are now lost due to building in the 16th century and later.</p><br>
<p>According to Roman legend, the Quirinal Hill was the site of a small village of the Sabines, and king Titus Tatius would have lived there after the peace between Romans and Sabines. These Sabines had erected altars in the honour of their god Quirinus (naming the hill by this god).</p><br>
<p>Tombs from the 8th century BC to the 7th century BC that confirm a likely presence of a Sabine settlement area have been discovered; on the hill, there was the tomb of Quirinus, which Lucius Papirius Cursor transformed into a temple for his triumph after the third Samnite war. Some authors consider it possible that the cult of the Capitoline Triad (Jove, Minerva, Juno) could have been celebrated here well before it became associated with the Capitoline Hill. The sanctuary of Flora, an Osco-Sabine goddess, was here too.</p><br>
<p>According to Livy, the hill first became part of the city of Rome, along with the Viminal Hill, during the reign of Servius Tullius, Rome&#39; sixth king, in the 6th century BC.</p><br>
<p>In 446 BC, a temple was dedicated on the Quirinal in honour of Semo Sancus Dius Fidius, and it is possible that this temple was erected over the ruins of another temple. Augustus, too, ordered the building of a temple, dedicated to Mars. On a slope of the Quirinal were the extensive gardens of Sallust.</p><br>
<p>On the Quirinal Hill Constantine ordered the erection of his baths, the last thermae complex erected in imperial Rome. These are now lost, having been incorporated into Renaissance Rome, with only some drawings from the 16th century remaining.</p><br>
<p>In the Middle Ages, the Torre delle Milizie and the convent of St. Peter and Domenic were built, and above Constantine&#39;s building was erected the Palazzo Rospigliosi; the two famous colossal marble statues of the "Horse Tamers", generally identified as the Dioscuri with horses, which now are in the Piazza Quirinale, were originally in this Palazzo. They gave to the Quirinal its medieval name Monte Cavallo, which lingered into the 19th century, when the hill was transformed beyond all recognition by urbanization of an expanding capital of a united Italy. In the same palazzo were also the two statues of river gods that Michelangelo moved to the steps of Palazzo Senatorio on the Capitoline Hill.</p><br>
<p>According to the political division of the center of Rome, the Hill belongs to the rione Trevi.</p><br>
<h2>Palazzo del Quirinale</h2><br>
<p>The Quirinal Hill is today identified with the Palazzo del Quirinale, the official residence of the President of the Italian Republic and one of the symbols of the State. Before the abolition of the Italian monarchy in 1946, it was the residence of the king of Italy, and before 1871 it was, as originally, a residence of the Pope.</p><br>
<p>The healthy cool air of the Quirinal Hill attracted aristocrats and papal families that built villas where the gardens of Sallust had been in antiquity. A visit to the villa of Cardinal Luigi dEste in 1573 convinced Pope Gregory XIII to start the building of a summer residence the following year, in an area considered healthier than the Vatican Hill or Lateran: His architects were Flaminio Ponzio and Ottaviano Nonni, called Mascherino; under Pope Sixtus V, works were continued by Domenico Fontana (the main facade on the Piazza) and Carlo Maderno, and by Gian Lorenzo Bernini for Pope Clement XII. Gardens were conceived by Maderno. In the 18th century, Ferdinando Fuga built the long wing called the Manica Lunga, which stretched 360 meters along via del Quirinale. In front lies the sloping Piazza del Quirinale where the pair of gigantic Roman marble "Horse Tamers" representing Castor and Pollux, found in the Baths of Constantine, were re-erected in 1588. In Piranesis view, the vast open space is unpaved. The Palazzo del Quirinale was the residence of the popes until 1870, though Napoleon deported both Pius VI and Pius VII to France, and declared the Quirinale an imperial palace. When Rome was united to the Kingdom of Italy, the Quirinale became the residence of the kings until 1946.</p><br>
<p>Today, the Palazzo hosts the offices and the apartments of the Head of State and, in its long side along via XX Settembre (the so-called Manica Lunga), the apartments that were furnished for each visit of foreign monarchs or dignitaries.</p><br>
<p>Several collections are in this Palazzo, including tapestries, paintings, statues, old carriages (carrozze), watches, furniture, and porcelain.</p><br>
<p>In Piranesis view, the palazzo on the right is the Palazzo della Sacra Consulta, originally a villa built upon the ruins of the Baths of Constantine, which was adapted by Sixtus V as a civil and criminal court. The present façade was built in 1732–1734 by the architect Ferdinando Fuga on the orders of Pope Clement XII Corsini, whose coat-of-arms, trumpeted by two Fames, still surmounts the roofline balustrade, as in Piranesis view. It formerly housed Mussolini&#39;s ministry of colonial affairs.</p><br>
<h2>Other monuments</h2><br>
<p>The hill is the site of other important monuments and buildings. Many of those built during the baroque period reflect the personal and spiritual aspirations of powerful local families:</p><br>
<p>The church of Sant&#39;Andrea al Quirinale was designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1658–1671), for Cardinal Camillo Pamphilii (nephew of Pope Innocent X); it is one of the most elegant samples of baroque architecture in Rome, with its splendid interior of marble, stuccoes, and gilded decorations.</p><br>
<p>The four fountains (Quattro Fontane) with reclining river gods (1588–93) commissioned by Pope Sixtus V.</p><br>
<p>Borromini&#39;s church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (or San Carlino – originally Chiesa della Santissima Trinità e di San Carlo Borromeo), the first and last work of this architect (the façade was completed after his death) commissioned by the Barberini.</p><br>
<p>The Piazza and Palazzo Barberini, built by Bernini and Maderno, which now houses the Galleria Nazionale d&#39;Arte Antica.</p><br>
<p>Palazzo Volpi di Misurata, across from San Carlino, built in the 18th century.</p><br>
<p>Palazzo Albani del Drago, built by Domenico Fontana and enlarged with an added belvedere, by Alessandro Specchi for the Albani Pope Clement XI; with the decline in the fortunes of Cardinal Alessandro Albani, it was sold to the del Drago, who occupy it still.</p><br>
<p>Palazzo Baracchini, built 1876–83, now housing the Ministry of Defense.</p><br>
<p>The church of San Silvestro al Quirinale, which was described for the first time circa 1000, rebuilt in the 16th century and restructured (façade) in the 19th.</p><br>
<p>The Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum</p><br>
<p>The Palazzo Colonna (17th century), in front of Palazzo Rospigliosi, contains some remains of Caracalla&#39;s temple of Serapis</p><br>
<p>The Palazzo della Consulta hosts today the Constitutional Court, and was erected by Ferdinando Fuga for Pope Clement XII directly opposite Palazzo del Quirinale.</p><br>
<p>The Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi (17th century) built by Giorgio Vasanzio and Carlo Maderno</p><br>
<p>Peckforton Castle is a Victorian country house built in the style of a medieval castle. It stands in woodland at the north end of Peckforton Hills 1 mi northwest of the village of Peckforton, Cheshire, England. It is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade I listed building. The house was built in the middle of the 19th century as a family home for John Tollemache, a wealthy Cheshire landowner, estate manager, and Member of Parliament. It was designed by Anthony Salvin in the Gothic style. During the Second World War it was used as a hostel for physically handicapped children.</p><br>
<p>The Tollemache family used the castle for occasional gatherings, but otherwise it was unused until 1969. From 1969 to 1980 the castle was leased by John, 4th Lord Tollemarche to George W. Barrett, and it again became a private residence and closed to the public. The right wing and tower and the castle gardens were restored by Barrett, an American employed by the USA Government. His daughter Pascale&#39;s wedding was the first to be held in the chapel and a special decree had to be obtained by the Archbishop of Canterbury to legally hold catholic weddings in the grounds of the castle.</p><br>
<p>During the 1970s and 1980s it was used as a location for shooting films and television programmes. The castle was bought in 1988 by Evelyn Graybill, who converted it into a hotel. In 2006 it was purchased by the Naylor family, who expanded its use to include hosting weddings, conferences, and other functions.</p><br>
<h2>Early history</h2><br>
<p>Peckforton Castle was built between 1844 and 1850 for John Tollemache, the largest landowner in Cheshire at the time, who was described by William Ewart Gladstone as "the greatest estate manager of his day". Tollemache&#39;s first choice of architect was George Latham of Nantwich, but he was not appointed, and was paid £2,000 in compensation. Instead Tollemache appointed Anthony Salvin, who had a greater reputation and more experience, and who had already carried out work on the Tollemache manor house, Helmingham Hall in Suffolk. The castle was built by Dean and Son of Leftwich, with Joseph Cookson of Tarporley acting as clerk of works. Stone was obtained from a quarry about 1 mi to the west of the site, and a railway was built to carry the stone. The castle cost £60,000.</p><br>
<p>Although it was built as a family home its design was that of a medieval castle. It has a gatehouse, a portcullis, a dry moat, external windows that are little more than arrow slots, and large towers. In 1851 The Illustrated London News said that it "seems to exhibit the peculiar beauties of Carnarvon Castle without its inconveniences" and in 1858 Sir George Gilbert Scott called it "the largest and most carefully and learnedly executed Gothic mansion of the present" and that it was "the very height of masquerading". It is regarded as "the last serious fortified home built in England" and "it was executed to the highest standards and is one of the great buildings of its age".</p><br>
<p>There has been debate about the motives for building a more-or-less complete medieval-style castle in the 19th century. Although he was a great estate manager, Tollemache was also perceived as "a man of considerable eccentricity". Dr Jill Allibone is of the opinion that he might have been protecting himself and his family from the political troubles of the time. In a defensive building he would be able to protect himself against any revolution by the masses from nearby Manchester or Liverpool. A possible practical reason for building such a solid residence rather than an Italianate-style villa was to provide shelter from the adverse weather conditions which could affect the Cheshire plain. However Durdey comes to the conclusion that the decisive factors were to use his "vast inheritance" to provide himself with a house that was "impressive, dominant and suitable for Cheshire&#39;s greatest landowner".</p><br>
<h2>Location</h2><br>
<p>Peckforton Castle stands in a wooded area near the northern extremity of Peckforton Hills at an elevation of 469.2 ft. The land falls steeply downwards to the north and the west of the castle, and the Sandstone Trail, a long-distance footpath, runs along the base of these slopes. The ruins of Beeston Castle stand on a separate steeply sloping hill 0.75 mi to the north. The village of Beeston is 0.75 mi to the northeast and the village of Peckforton is 1 mi to the southeast. Access is via the road between Beeston and Peckforton.</p><br>
<h2>Architecture</h2><br>
<h3>Castle</h3><br>
<h4>External</h4><br>
<p>The castle is faced with red sandstone, and has lead, asphalt and tile roofs. It is mainly in three storeys with a five-storey tower. The buildings are arranged around a ward with the principal accommodation on the north side. It is surrounded by a dry moat which is bridged at the gatehouse. To the west of the inner ward are the stables, the coach house, a rectangular bell tower and the kitchens and service area. To the north is the great hall range which consists of 18 bays. Behind the entrance to the hall is the circular main tower. At the east end of the gallery wing is the octagonal library tower. The outer walls of the castle have full-height slender turrets at the changes in direction. Corbel tables support part of the battlements. The walls contain arrow slots, and in the gatehouse is a garderobe. The flat roof has a crenellated parapet.</p><br>
<h4>Internal</h4><br>
<p>The porch leads into the great hall which has a Minton tile floor and a large stone chimney piece. In the east wing is the long gallery which has oak panelling, a chimney-piece and a panelled ceiling. Behind the long gallery is an irregularly-shaped billiard room and the drawing room. To the south of these is the library. Behind the great hall is the main staircase. The circular tower at the north-west corner contains the octagonal dining room with a Minton tile floor, two fireplaces, and a vault of eight radial ribs running to a central boss. The room contains an oak sideboard with a carved Green Man. Below the dining room is a wine cellar. On the fifth floor of the circular tower is a room designed for playing rackets, which is approached by a stone spiral staircase.</p><br>
<h3>Garden</h3><br>
<p>The castle had no formal garden, but at the bottom of the drive were kitchen gardens which included vegetable gardens, an orchard, extensive glass houses and a large orangery. At one time, 17 gardeners were employed.</p><br>
<h3>Chapel</h3><br>
<p>On the east side of the ward is the familys private chapel, a Grade II* listed building. It was also designed by Salvin and is constructed of rock-faced sandstone with a tile roof. Its plan consists of a two-bay nave, a south aisle, a vestry, and a narrower and lower single-bay chancel. On the gable ends of the nave and chancel are stone cross finials. Over the chancel arch is a cruciform stone bellcote. Inside the chapel an arcade of three Gothic arches separates the south aisle from the nave. The reredos is made of oak and is inscribed with the Lords Prayer and the Ten Commandments. The choirstalls and the benches in the nave are carved with poppyheads. The baptistry at the west end contains a carved stone font with a carved oak cover. Although it is described as a modest building, the chapel is considered to "complete the ensemble" of the castle.</p><br>
<h3>Entrance lodge</h3><br>
<p>The entrance lodge to the southeast of the castle is also listed at Grade II*. It was designed by Salvin and is constructed in red brick and stone with a tile roof. It consists of an archway with a round turret behind and a two-storey lodge to the left.</p><br>
<h2>Later history and present use</h2><br>
<p>Before moving into the castle in the 1890s, Wilbraham Tollemache, 2nd Baron Tollemache added central heating and electric light. In 1922 a large scheme of afforestation was started on the Peckforton Hills, and the resulting woodland has been granted the status of a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Bentley Tollemache, 3rd Baron Tollemache, grandson of Wilbraham Tollemache, and his family left Peckforton at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939.</p><br>
<p>During the war the castle was used as a hostel for physically handicapped children who had been evacuated from the London area. Bentley Tollemache died in 1955 and, as he had no sons, the estate passed to his cousin, John Tollemache.</p><br>
<p>During the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s, the castle was used as a location for shooting films and television programmes. These include the Doctor Who serial The Time Warrior, broadcast in 1973–74, and a 1991 movie of Robin Hood starring Patrick Bergin and Uma Thurman. From 1982 to 1986, Treasure Trap, one of the world&#39;s first live action role-playing games took place on the site. In 1988 the castle was purchased by an American, Evelyn Graybill, for £1 million. She renovated most of the building and secured planning permission to convert it into a hotel.</p><br>
<p>In 2006 Chris Naylor was married in the castle, following which the Naylor family bought the property. Peckforton Castle is now used as an hotel and for corporate events and weddings. The building was severely damaged by fire in June 2011 during a wedding, the cost of the damage being in the region of £6 million. In December 2011 the bridegroom admitted to a charge of arson.</p><br>
<p>The Outer Hebrides, also known as the Western Isles , Innse Gall  or the Long Isle or Long Island , is an island chain off the west coast of mainland Scotland. The islands are geographically coextensive with Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, one of the 32 unitary council areas of Scotland. They form part of the Hebrides, separated from the Scottish mainland and from the Inner Hebrides by the waters of the Minch, the Little Minch and the Sea of the Hebrides. Scottish Gaelic is the predominant spoken language, although in a few areas English speakers form a majority.</p><br>
<p>Most of the islands have a bedrock formed from ancient metamorphic rocks and the climate is mild and oceanic. The 15 inhabited islands have a total population of and there are more than 50 substantial uninhabited islands. From Barra Head to the Butt of Lewis is roughly 210 km.</p><br>
<p>There are various important prehistoric structures, many of which pre-date the first written references to the islands by Roman and Greek authors. The Western Isles became part of the Norse kingdom of the Suðreyjar, which lasted for over 400 years until sovereignty was transferred to Scotland by the Treaty of Perth in 1266. Control of the islands was then held by clan chiefs, principal of whom were the MacLeods, MacDonalds, Mackenzies and MacNeils. The Highland Clearances of the 19th century had a devastating effect on many communities and it is only in recent years that population levels have ceased to decline. Much of the land is now under local control and commercial activity is based on tourism, crofting, fishing, and weaving.</p><br>
<p>Sea transport is crucial and a variety of ferry services operate between the islands and to mainland Scotland. Modern navigation systems now minimise the dangers but in the past the stormy seas have claimed many ships. Religion, music and sport are important aspects of local culture, and there are numerous designated conservation areas to protect the natural environment.</p><br>
<h2>Geography</h2><br>
<p>The islands form an archipelago whose major islands are Lewis and Harris, North Uist, Benbecula, South Uist, and Barra. Lewis and Harris has an area of 217,898 hectare and is the largest island in Scotland and the third largest in the British Isles, after Great Britain and Ireland. It incorporates Lewis in the north and Harris in the south, both of which are frequently referred to as individual islands, although they are connected by land. The island does not have a single name in either English or Gaelic, and is referred to as "Lewis and Harris", "Lewis with Harris", "Harris with Lewis" etc.</p><br>
<p>The largest islands are deeply indented by arms of the sea such as Loch Ròg, Loch Seaforth and Loch nam Madadh. There are also more than 7,500 freshwater lochs in the Outer Hebrides, about 24% of the total for the whole of Scotland. North and South Uist and Lewis in particular have landscapes with a high percentage of fresh water and a maze and complexity of loch shapes. Harris has fewer large bodies of water but has innumerable small lochans. Loch Langavat on Lewis is 11 km long, and has several large islands in its midst, including Eilean Mòr. Although Loch Suaineabhal has only 25% of Loch Langavats surface area, it has a mean depth of 33 m and is the most voluminous on the island. Of Loch Sgadabhagh on North Uist it has been said that "there is probably no other loch in Britain which approaches Loch Scadavay in irregularity and complexity of outline." Loch Bì is South Uists largest loch and at 8 km long it all but cuts the island in two.</p><br>
<p>Much of the western coastline of the islands is machair, a fertile low-lying dune pastureland. Lewis is comparatively flat, and largely consists of treeless moors of blanket peat. The highest eminence is Mealisval at 574 m in the south west. Most of Harris is mountainous, with large areas of exposed rock and Clisham, the archipelago&#39;s only Corbett, reaches 799 m in height. North and South Uist and Benbecula (sometimes collectively referred to as The Uists) have sandy beaches and wide cultivated areas of machair to the west and virtually uninhabited mountainous areas to the east. The highest peak here is Beinn Mhòr at 620 m. The Uists and their immediate outliers have a combined area of 74,540 hectare. This includes the Uists themselves and the islands linked to them by causeways and bridges. Barra is 5,875 hectare in extent and has a rugged interior, surrounded by machair and extensive beaches.</p><br>
<h3>Flora and fauna</h3><br>
<p>Much of the archipelago is a protected habitat, including both the islands and the surrounding waters. There are 53 Sites of Special Scientific Interest of which the largest are Loch an Duin, North Uist (15,100 hectare) and North Harris (12,700 hectare).</p><br>
<p>Loch Druidibeg on South Uist is a national nature reserve owned and managed by Scottish Natural Heritage. The reserve covers 1,677 hectares across the whole range of local habitats. Over 200 species of flowering plants have been recorded on the reserve, some of which are nationally scarce. South Uist is considered the best place in the UK for the aquatic plant Slender Naiad, which is a European Protected Species.</p><br>
<p>There has been considerable controversy over hedgehogs on the Uists. Hedgehogs are not native to the islands, but were introduced in the 1970s to reduce garden pests. Their spread posed a threat to the eggs of ground nesting wading birds. In 2003 Scottish Natural Heritage undertook culls of hedgehogs in the area, but these were halted in 2007; trapped animals are now relocated to the mainland.</p><br>
<p>Nationally important populations of breeding waders are present in the Outer Hebrides, including common redshank, dunlin, lapwing and ringed plover. The islands also provide a habitat for other important species such as corncrake, hen harrier, golden eagle and otter. Offshore, basking shark and various species of whale and dolphin can often be seen, and the remoter islands seabird populations are of international significance. St Kilda has 60,000 northern gannets, amounting to 24% of the world population; 49,000 breeding pairs of Leachs petrel, up to 90% of the European population; and 136,000 pairs of puffin and 67,000 northern fulmar pairs, about 30% and 13% of the respective UK totals. Mingulay is an important breeding ground for razorbills, with 9,514 pairs, 6.3% of the European population.</p><br>
<p>The bumblebee Bombus jonellus var. hebridensis is endemic to the Hebrides and there are local variants of the dark green fritillary and green-veined white butterflies. The St Kilda wren is a subspecies of wren whose range is confined to the islands whose name it bears.</p><br>
<h2>Population</h2><br>
<p>The islands&#39; total population was 26,502 at the 2001 census, and the 2011 figure was 27,684. which has a population of about 8,100.</p><br>
<p>In addition to the major North Ford (Oitir Mhòr) and South Ford causeways that connect North Uist to Benbecula via the northern of the Grimsays, and another causeway from Benbecula to South Uist, several other islands are linked by smaller causeways or bridges. Great Bernera and Scalpay have bridge connections to Lewis and Harris respectively, with causeways linking Baleshare and Berneray to North Uist; Eriskay to South Uist; Flodaigh, Fraoch-Eilean and the southern Grimsay to Benbecula; and Vatersay to Barra. Thus means that all the inhabited islands are now connected to at least one other island by a land transport route.</p><br>
<h3>Uninhabited islands</h3><br>
<p>There are more than fifty uninhabited islands greater in size than 40 hectare in the Outer Hebrides, including the Barra Isles, Flannan Isles, Monach Islands, the Shiant Isles and the islands of Loch Ròg. In common with the other main island chains of Scotland, many of the more remote islands were abandoned during the 19th and 20th centuries, in some cases after continuous habitation since the prehistoric period. More than 35 such islands have been identified in the Outer Hebrides alone. On Barra Head, for example, Historic Scotland have identified eighty-three archaeological sites on the island, the majority being of a pre-medieval date. In the 18th century the population was over fifty, but the last native islanders had left by 1931. The island became completely uninhabited by 1980 with the automation of the lighthouse.</p><br>
<p>Some of the smaller islands continue to contribute to modern culture. The "Mingulay Boat Song", although evocative of island life, was written after the abandonment of the island in 1938 and Taransay hosted the BBC television series Castaway 2000. Others have played a part in Scottish history. On 4 May 1746, the "Young Pretender" Charles Edward Stuart hid on Eilean Liubhaird with some of his men for four days whilst Royal Navy vessels patrolled the Minch.</p><br>
<p>Smaller isles and skerries and other island groups pepper the North Atlantic surrounding the main islands. Some are not geologically part of the Outer Hebrides, but are administratively and in most cases culturally, part of Comhairle nan Eilean Siar. 73 km to the west of Lewis lies St Kilda, now uninhabited except for a small military base. A similar distance to the north of Lewis are North Rona and Sula Sgeir, two small and remote islands. While Rona used to support a small population who grew grain and raised cattle, Sula Sgeir is an inhospitable rock. Thousands of northern gannets nest here, and by special arrangement some of their young, known as gugas are harvested annually by the men of Ness. The status of Rockall, which is 367 km to the west of North Uist and which the Island of Rockall Act 1972 decreed to be a part of the Western Isles, remains a matter of international dispute.</p><br>
<h2>Geology</h2><br>
<p>Most of the islands have a bedrock formed from Lewisian gneiss. These are amongst the oldest rocks in Europe, having been formed in the Precambrian period up to three billion years ago. In addition to the Outer Hebrides, they form basement deposits on the Scottish mainland west of the Moine Thrust and on the islands of Coll and Tiree. These rocks are largely igneous in origin, mixed with metamorphosed marble, quartzite and mica schist and intruded by later basaltic dykes and granite magma. The gneiss&#39;s delicate pink colours are exposed throughout the islands and it is sometimes referred to by geologists as "The Old Boy".</p><br>
<p>Granite intrusions are found in the parish of Barvas in west Lewis, and another forms the summit plateau of the mountain Roineabhal in Harris. The granite here is anorthosite, and is similar in composition to rocks found in the mountains of the Moon. There are relatively small outcrops of Triassic sandstone at Broad Bay near Stornoway. The Shiant Isles and St Kilda are formed from much later tertiary basalt and basalt and gabbros respectively. The sandstone at Broad Bay was once thought to be Torridonian or Old Red Sandstone.</p><br>
<h2>Climate</h2><br>
<p>The Outer Hebrides have a cool temperate climate that is remarkably mild and steady for such a northerly latitude, due to the influence of the North Atlantic Current. The average temperature for the year is 6 °C (44 °F) in January and 14 °C (57 °F) in summer. The average annual rainfall in Lewis is 1,100 mm and sunshine hours range from 1,100 to 1,200 per year. The summer days are relatively long and May to August is the driest period. Winds are a key feature of the climate and even in summer there are almost constant breezes. According to the writer W. H. Murray if a visitor asks an islander for a weather forecast "he will not, like a mainlander answer dry, wet or sunny, but quote you a figure from the Beaufort Scale." There are gales one day in six at the Butt of Lewis and small fish are blown onto the grass on top of 190 metre (620 ft) high cliffs at Barra Head during winter storms.</p><br>
<h2>Prehistory</h2><br>
<p>The Hebrides were originally settled in the Mesolithic era and have a diversity of important prehistoric sites. Eilean Dòmhnuill in Loch Olabhat on North Uist was constructed around 3200–2800 BC and may be Scotland&#39;s earliest crannog (a type of artificial island). The Callanish Stones, dating from about 2900 BC, are the finest example of a stone circle in Scotland, the 13 primary monoliths of between one and five metres high creating a circle about 13 m in diameter. Cladh Hallan on South Uist, the only site in the UK where prehistoric mummies have been found, and the impressive ruins of Dun Carloway broch on Lewis both date from the Iron Age.</p><br>
<h2>Etymology</h2><br>
<p>The earliest written references that have survived relating to the islands were made by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History, where he states that there are 30 Hebudes, and makes a separate reference to Dumna, which Watson (1926) concludes is unequivocally the Outer Hebrides. Writing about 80 years later, in 140–150 AD, Ptolemy, drawing on the earlier naval expeditions of Agricola, also distinguished between the Ebudes, of which he writes there were only five (and thus possibly meaning the Inner Hebrides) and Dumna. Dumna is cognate with the Early Celtic dumnos and means the "deep-sea isle". Pliny probably took his information from Pytheas of Massilia who visited Britain sometime between 322 and 285 BC. It is possible that Ptolemy did as well, as Agricolas information about the west coast of Scotland was of poor quality. Breeze also suggests that Dumna might be Lewis and Harris, the largest island of the Outer Hebrides although he conflates this single island with the name "Long Island". Watson (1926) states that the meaning of Ptolemys Eboudai is unknown and that the root may be pre-Celtic. Murray (1966) claims that Ptolemy&#39;s Ebudae was originally derived from the Old Norse Havbredey, meaning "isles on the edge of the sea". This idea is often repeated but no firm evidence of this derivation has emerged.</p><br>
<p>Other early written references include the flight of the Nemed people from Ireland to Domon, which is mentioned in the 12th-century Lebor Gabála Érenn and a 13th-century poem concerning Raghnall mac Gofraidh, then the heir to the throne of Mann and the Isles, who is said to have "broken the gate of Magh Domhna". Magh Domhna means "the plain of Domhna (or Domon)", but the precise meaning of the text is not clear.</p><br>
<p>In Irish mythology the islands were the home of the Fomorians, described as "huge and ugly" and "ship men of the sea". They were pirates, extracting tribute from the coasts of Ireland and one of their kings was Indech mac Dé Domnand (i.e. Indech, son of the goddess Domnu, who ruled over the deep seas).</p><br>
<p>In modern Gaelic the islands are sometimes referred to collectively as An t-Eilean Fada (the Long Island) or Na h-Eileanan a-Muigh (the Outer Isles). Innse Gall (islands of the foreigners or strangers) is also heard occasionally, a name that was originally used by mainland Highlanders when the islands were ruled by the Norse.</p><br>
<p>The individual island and place names in the Outer Hebrides have mixed Gaelic and Norse origins. Various Gaelic terms are used repeatedly:</p><br>
<p>There are also several islands called Örfirirsey meaning "tidal" or "ebb island".</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>In Scotland, the Celtic Iron Age way of life, often troubled but never extinguished by Rome, re-asserted itself when the legions abandoned any permanent occupation in 211 AD. Hanson (2003) writes: "For many years it has been almost axiomatic in studies of the period that the Roman conquest must have had some major medium or long-term impact on Scotland. On present evidence that cannot be substantiated either in terms of environment, economy, or, indeed, society. The impact appears to have been very limited. The general picture remains one of broad continuity, not of disruption... The Roman presence in Scotland was little more than a series of brief interludes within a longer continuum of indigenous development." The Romans&#39; direct impact on the Highlands and Islands was scant and there is no evidence that they ever actually landed in the Outer Hebrides.</p><br>
<p>The later Iron Age inhabitants of the northern and western Hebrides were probably Pictish, although the historical record is sparse. Hunter (2000) states that in relation to King Bridei I of the Picts in the sixth century AD: "As for Shetland, Orkney, Skye and the Western Isles, their inhabitants, most of whom appear to have been Pictish in culture and speech at this time, are likely to have regarded Bridei as a fairly distant presence." The island of Pabbay is the site of the Pabbay Stone, the only extant Pictish symbol stone in the Outer Hebrides. This 6th century stele shows a flower, V-rod and lunar crescent to which has been added a later and somewhat crude cross.</p><br>
<h3>Norse control</h3><br>
<p>Viking raids began on Scottish shores towards the end of the 8th century AD and the Hebrides came under Norse control and settlement during the ensuing decades, especially following the success of Harald Fairhair at the Battle of Hafrsfjord in 872. In the Western Isles Ketill Flatnose was the dominant figure of the mid 9th century, by which time he had amassed a substantial island realm and made a variety of alliances with other Norse leaders. These princelings nominally owed allegiance to the Norwegian crown, although in practice the latter&#39;s control was fairly limited. Norse control of the Hebrides was formalised in 1098 when Edgar of Scotland formally signed the islands over to Magnus III of Norway. The Scottish acceptance of Magnus III as King of the Isles came after the Norwegian king had conquered Orkney, the Hebrides and the Isle of Man in a swift campaign earlier the same year, directed against the local Norwegian leaders of the various islands petty kingdoms. By capturing the islands Magnus imposed a more direct royal control, although at a price. His skald Bjorn Cripplehand recorded that in Lewis "fire played high in the heaven" as "flame spouted from the houses" and that in the Uists "the king dyed his sword red in blood".</p><br>
<p>The Hebrides were now part of Kingdom of the Isles, whose rulers were themselves vassals of the Kings of Norway. The Kingdom had two parts: the Suðr-eyjar or South Isles encompassing the Hebrides and the Isle of Man; and the Norðr-eyjar or North Isles of Orkney and Shetland. This situation lasted until the partitioning of the Western Isles in 1156, at which time the Outer Hebrides remained under Norwegian control while the Inner Hebrides broke out under Somerled, the Norse-Celtic kinsman of the Manx royal house.</p><br>
<p>Following the ill-fated 1263 expedition of Haakon IV of Norway, the Outer Hebrides along with the Isle of Man, were yielded to the Kingdom of Scotland a result of the 1266 Treaty of Perth. Although their contribution to the islands can still be found in personal and placenames, the archaeological record of the Norse period is very limited. The best known find from this time is the Lewis chessmen, which date from the mid 12th century.</p><br>
<h3>Scots rule</h3><br>
<p>As the Norse era drew to a close the Norse-speaking princes were gradually replaced by Gaelic-speaking clan chiefs including the MacLeods of Lewis and Harris, the MacDonalds of the Uists and MacNeil of Barra. This transition did little to relieve the islands of internecine strife although by the early 14th century the MacDonald Lords of the Isles, based on Islay, were in theory these chiefs&#39; feudal superiors and managed to exert some control.</p><br>
<p>The growing threat that Clan Donald posed to the Scottish crown led to the forcible dissolution of the Lordship of the Isles by James IV in 1493, but although the king had the power to subdue the organised military might of the Hebrides, he and his immediate successors lacked the will or ability to provide an alternative form of governance. The House of Stuart&#39;s attempts to control the Outer Hebrides were then at first desultory and little more than punitive expeditions. In 1506 the Earl of Huntly besieged and captured Stornoway Castle using cannon. In 1540 James V himself conducted a royal tour, forcing the clan chiefs to accompany him. There followed a period of peace, but all too soon the clans were at loggerheads again.</p><br>
<p>In 1598 King James VI authorised some "Gentleman Adventurers" from Fife to civilise the "most barbarous Isle of Lewis". Initially successful, the colonists were driven out by local forces commanded by Murdoch and Neil MacLeod, who based their forces on Bearasaigh in Loch Ròg. The colonists tried again in 1605 with the same result but a third attempt in 1607 was more successful, and in due course Stornoway became a Burgh of Barony. By this time Lewis was held by the Mackenzies of Kintail, (later the Earls of Seaforth), who pursued a more enlightened approach, investing in fishing in particular. The historian W. C. MacKenzie was moved to write:</p><br>
<p>The Seaforths royalist inclinations led to Lewis becoming garrisoned during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms by Cromwells troops, who destroyed the old castle in Stornoway and in 1645 Lewismen fought on the royalist side at the Battle of Auldearn. A new era of Hebridean involvement in the affairs of the wider world was about to commence.</p><br>
<h3>British era</h3><br>
<p>With the implementation of the Treaty of Union in 1707 the Hebrides became part of the new Kingdom of Great Britain, but the clans loyalties to a distant monarch were not strong. A considerable number of islandmen "came out" in support of the Jacobite Earl of Mar in the "15" although the response to the 1745 rising was muted. Nonetheless the aftermath of the decisive Battle of Culloden, which effectively ended Jacobite hopes of a Stuart restoration, was widely felt. The British governments strategy was to estrange the clan chiefs from their kinsmen and turn their descendants into English-speaking landlords whose main concern was the revenues their estates brought rather than the welfare of those who lived on them. This may have brought peace to the islands, but in the following century it came at a terrible price.</p><br>
<p>The Highland Clearances of the 19th century destroyed communities throughout the Highlands and Islands as the human populations were evicted and replaced with sheep farms. For example, Colonel Gordon of Cluny, owner of Barra, South Uist and Benbecula evicted thousands of islanders using trickery and cruelty and even offered to sell Barra to the government as a penal colony. Islands such as Fuaigh Mòr were completely cleared of their populations and even today the subject is recalled with bitterness and resentment in some areas. The position was exacerbated by the failure of the islands&#39; kelp industry, which thrived from the 18th century until the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and large scale emigration became endemic. For example, hundreds left North Uist for Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. The pre-clearance population of the island had been almost 5,000, although by 1841 it had fallen to 3,870 and was only 2,349 by 1931.</p><br>
<p>For those who remained new economic opportunities emerged through the export of cattle, commercial fishing and tourism. During the summer season in the 1860s and 1870s five thousand inhabitants of Lewis could be found in Wick on the mainland of Scotland, employed on the fishing boats and at the quaysides. Nonetheless emigration and military service became the choice of many and the archipelago&#39;s populations continued to dwindle throughout the late 19th and 20th centuries. By 2001 the population of North Uist was only 1,271.</p><br>
<p>The work of the Napier Commission and the Congested Districts Board, and the passing of the Crofting Act of 1886 helped, but social unrest continued. In July 1906 grazing land on Vatersay was raided by landless men from Barra and its isles. Lady Gordon Cathcart took legal action against the "raiders" but the visiting judge took the view that she had neglected her duties as a landowner and that "long indifference to the necessities of the cottars had gone far to drive them to exasperation". Millennia of continuous occupation notwithstanding, many of the remoter islands were abandoned — Mingulay in 1912, Hirta in 1930, and Ceann Iar in 1942 among them. This process involved a transition from these places being perceived as relatively self-sufficient agricultural economies to a view becoming held by both island residents and outsiders alike that they lacked the essential services of a modern industrial economy.</p><br>
<p>There were gradual economic improvements, among the most visible of which was the replacement of the traditional thatched blackhouse with accommodation of a more modern design. The creation of the Highlands and Islands Development Board and the discovery of substantial deposits of North Sea oil in 1965, the establishment of a unitary local authority for the islands in 1975 and more recently the renewables sector have all contributed to a degree of economic stability in recent decades. The Arnish yard has had a chequered history but has been a significant employer in both the oil and renewables industries. Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, the local authority, employs 2,000 people, making it the largest employer in the Outer Hebrides. See also the "Innse Gall area plan 2010" and the Comhairle&#39;s "Factfile - Economy".</p><br>
<h2>Economy</h2><br>
<p>Modern commercial activities centre on tourism, crofting, fishing, and weaving including the manufacture of Harris tweed. Some of the larger islands have development trusts that support the local economy and, in striking contrast to the 19th and 20th century domination by absentee landlords, more than two thirds of the Western Isles population now lives on community-owned estates. However the economic position of the islands remains relatively precarious. The Western Isles, including Stornoway, are defined by Highlands and Islands Enterprise as an economically "Fragile Area" and they have an estimated trade deficit of some £163.4 million. Overall, the area is relatively reliant on primary industries and the public sector, and fishing and fish farming in particular are vulnerable to environmental impacts, changing market pressures, and European legislation.</p><br>
<p>There is some optimism about the possibility of future developments in, for example, renewable energy generation, tourism, and education, and after declines in the 20th century the population has stabilised since 2003, although it is ageing.</p><br>
<h2>Politics and local government</h2><br>
<p>From the passing of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1889 to 1975 Lewis formed part of the county of Ross and Cromarty and the rest of the archipelago, including Harris, was part of Inverness-shire.</p><br>
<p>The Outer Hebrides became a unitary council area in 1975, although in most of the rest of Scotland similar unitary councils were not established until 1996. Since then, the islands have formed one of the 32 unitary council areas that now cover the whole country, with the council officially known by its Gaelic name, Comhairle nan Eilean Siar under the terms of the Local Government (Gaelic Names) (Scotland) Act 1997. The council has its base in Stornoway on Lewis and is often known locally simply as "the Comhairle" or a&#39; Chomhairle. The Comhairle is one of only three Councils in Scotland with a majority of elected members who are independents. The other independent run Councils are Shetland and Orkney. Moray is run by a Conservative/Independent coalition.</p><br>
<p>The name for the British Parliament constituency covering this area is Na h-Eileanan an Iar, the seat being held by Angus MacNeil MP since 2005, while the Scottish Parliament constituency for the area is Na h-Eileanan an Iar, the incumbent being Alasdair Allan MSP.</p><br>
<p>The Scottish independence referendum has led some islanders to call for a debate on the constitutional position of the Western Isles, linked with similar initiatives in Orkney and Shetland.</p><br>
<h2>Scottish Gaelic language</h2><br>
<p>The Outer Hebrides have historically been a very strong Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig) speaking area. Both the 1901 and 1921 census reported that all parishes were over 75% Gaelic speaking, including areas of high population density such as Stornoway. However, the Education (Scotland) Act 1872 mandated English-only education, and is now recognised as having dealt a major blow to the language. People still living can recall being beaten for speaking Gaelic in school. Nonetheless, by 1971 most areas were still more than 75% Gaelic speaking – with the exception of Stornoway, Benbecula and South Uist at 50-74%.</p><br>
<p>In the 2001 census, each island overall was over 50% Gaelic speaking – South Uist (71%), Harris (69%), Barra (68%), North Uist (67%), Lewis (56%) and Benbecula (56%). With 59.3% of Gaelic speakers or a total of 15,723 speakers, this made the Outer Hebrides the most strongly coherent Gaelic speaking area in Scotland.</p><br>
<p>Most areas were between 60-74% Gaelic speaking and the areas with the highest density of over 80% are Scalpay near Harris, Newtonferry and Kildonan, whilst Daliburgh, Linshader, Eriskay, Brue, Boisdale, West Harris, Ardveenish, Soval, Ness, and Bragar all have more than 75%. The areas with the lowest density of speakers are Stornoway (44%), Braigh (41%), Melbost (41%), and Balivanich (37%).</p><br>
<p>The Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act was enacted by the Scottish Parliament in 2005 to provide continuing support for the language. However, by 2011 the overall percentage of Gaelic speakers in the Outer Hebrides had fallen to 52%.</p><br>
<h2>Transport</h2><br>
<p>Scheduled ferry services between the Outer Hebrides and the Scottish Mainland and Inner Hebrides operate on the following routes:</p><br>
<p>Oban to Castlebay on Barra and Lochboisdale on South Uist</p><br>
<p>Uig on Skye to Tarbert on Harris</p><br>
<p>Uig on Skye to Lochmaddy on North Uist</p><br>
<p>Ullapool to Stornoway on Lewis</p><br>
<p>Tiree to Castlebay, Barra (summer only).</p><br>
<p>Other ferries operate between some of the islands.</p><br>
<p>National Rail services are available for onward journeys, from stations at Oban, which has direct services to Glasgow. However, parliamentary approval notwithstanding, plans in the 1890s to lay a railway connection to Ullapool were unable to obtain sufficient funding.</p><br>
<p>There are scheduled flights from Stornoway, Benbecula and Barra airports both inter-island and to the mainland. Barra&#39;s airport is claimed to be the only one in the world to have scheduled flights landing on a beach. At high water the runways are under the sea so flight times vary with the tide.</p><br>
<p>Bus services are operated by Bus na Comhairle, based in Stornoway, and by numerous other operators.</p><br>
<h3>Shipwrecks</h3><br>
<p>The archipelago is exposed to wind and tide, and lighthouses are sited as an aid to navigation at locations from Barra Head in the south to the Butt of Lewis in the north. There are numerous sites of wrecked ships, and the Flannan Isles are the location of an enduring mystery that occurred in December 1900, when all three lighthouse keepers vanished without trace.</p><br>
<p>Annie Jane, a three-masted immigrant ship out of Liverpool bound for Montreal, Canada, struck rocks off the West Beach of Vatersay during a storm on Tuesday 28 September, 1853. Within ten minutes the ship began to founder and break up casting 450 people into the raging sea. In spite of the conditions, islanders tried to rescue the passengers and crew. The remains of 350 men, women and children were buried in the dunes behind the beach and a small cairn and monument marks the site.</p><br>
<p>The tiny Beasts of Holm off the east coast of Lewis were the site of the sinking of during the first few hours of 1919, one of the worst maritime disasters in United Kingdom waters during the 20th century. Calvay in the Sound of Barra provided the inspiration for Compton MacKenzie&#39;s novel Whisky Galore after the ran aground there with a cargo of single malt in 1941.</p><br>
<h2>Religion, culture and sport</h2><br>
<p>Christianity has deep roots in the Western Isles, but owing mainly to the different allegiances of the clans in the past, the people in the northern islands (Lewis, Harris, North Uist) have historically been predominantly Presbyterian, and those of the southern islands (Benbecula, South Uist, Barra) predominantly Roman Catholic.</p><br>
<p>At the time of the 2001 Census, 42% of the population identified themselves as being affiliated with the Church of Scotland, with 13% Roman Catholic and 28% with other Christian churches. Many of this last group belong to the Free Church of Scotland, known for its strict observance of the Sabbath. 11% stated that they had no religion. This made the Western Isles the Scottish council area with the smallest percentage of atheists in the population. There are also small Episcopalian congregations in Lewis and Harris and the Outer Hebrides are part of the Diocese of Argyll and The Isles in both the Episcopalian and Catholic traditions.</p><br>
<p>Gaelic music is popular in the islands and the Lewis and Harris Traditional Music Society plays an active role in promoting the genre. Fèis Bharraigh began in 1981 with the aim of developing the practice and study of the Gaelic language, literature, music, drama and culture on the islands of Barra and Vatersay. A two-week festival, it has inspired 43 other feisean throughout Scotland. The Lewis Pipe Band was founded in 1904 and the Lewis and Harris Piping Society in 1977.</p><br>
<p>Outdoor activities including rugby, football, golf, shinty, fishing, riding, canoeing, athletics, and multi-sports are popular in the Western Isles. The Hebridean Challenge is an adventure race run in five daily stages, which takes place along the length of the islands and includes hill and road running, road and mountain biking, short sea swims and demanding sea kayaking sections. There are four main sports centres: Ionad Spors Leodhais in Stornoway, which has a 25 m swimming pool; Harris Sports Centre; Lionacleit Sports Centre on Benbecula; and Castlebay Sports Centre on Barra. The Western Isles is a member of the International Island Games Association.</p><br>
<p>South Uist is home to the Askernish Golf Course. The oldest links in the Outer Hebrides, it was designed by Old Tom Morris. Although it was in use until the 1930s, its existence was largely forgotten until 2005 and it is now being restored to Morris&#39;s original design.</p><br>
<p>I Know Where I&#39;m Going! is a 1945 British drama/romance film set mostly in the Outer Hebrides, depicting local lifestyles and speech.</p><br>
<p>Buckingham Fountain is a Chicago landmark in the center of Grant Park. Dedicated in 1927, it is one of the largest fountains in the world. Built in a rococo wedding cake style and inspired by the Latona Fountain at the Palace of Versailles, it is meant to allegorically represent Lake Michigan. It operates from April to October, with regular water shows and evening color-light shows. During the winter, the fountain is decorated with festival lights.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>The fountain is considered Chicagos front door, since it resides in Grant Park, the citys front yard near the intersection of Columbus Drive and Congress Parkway. The fountain itself represents Lake Michigan, with four sets of sea horses (two per set) symbolizing the four states—Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana—that border the lake. The fountain was designed by beaux arts architect Edward H. Bennett. The statues were created by the French sculptor Marcel F. Loyau. The design of the fountain was inspired by the Bassin de Latone and modeled after Latona Fountain at Versailles.</p><br>
<p>The fountain was donated to the city by Kate Buckingham in memory of her brother, Clarence Buckingham, and was constructed at a cost of $750,000. The fountain&#39;s official name is the Clarence Buckingham Memorial Fountain. Kate Buckingham also established the Buckingham Fountain Endowment Fund with an initial investment of $300,000 to pay for maintenance. Buckingham Fountain was dedicated on August 26, 1927.</p><br>
<p>In August 2016, in a partnership with the City of Chicago, the Chicago Parks District and Everywhere Wireless, the Buckingham Fountain viewing area joined many Chicago beaches and the Museum Campus in providing free Wi-Fi to visitors.</p><br>
<h2>Operation</h2><br>
<p>Many tourists and Chicagoans visit the fountain each year. The fountain operates daily 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. from mid-April through mid-October. Water shows occur every hour on-the-hour and last 20 minutes. During shows, the center jet shoots up vertically to 150 ft, and after dusk shows are choreographed with lights and music. The last show begins at 10:00 p.m. nightly.</p><br>
<p>The fountain is constructed of Georgia pink marble and contains 1,500,000 USAgal of water. During a display, more than 14,000 USAgal/min are pushed through its 193 jets. The bottom pool of the fountain is 280 ft in diameter, the lower basin is 103 ft, the middle basin is 60 ft and the upper basin is 24 ft. The lip of the upper basin is 25 ft above the water in the lower basin.</p><br>
<p>The fountains pumps are controlled by a Honeywell computer which was previously located in Atlanta, Georgia until the 1994 renovation when it was moved to the pump house of the fountain. The fountains security system is monitored from Arlington Heights (a Chicago suburb).</p><br>
<h2>Renovations</h2><br>
<p>In 1994, the fountain received a $2.8 million restoration to its three smallest basins which developed leaks due to Chicago&#39;s harsh winters.</p><br>
<p>The latest renovation project on Buckingham Fountain began in September 2008. This three-phase project will modernize aging internal systems in the fountain and restore deteriorated features. Funding is a combination from the Buckingham endowment, city and park district funds and a grant from the Lollapalooza music festival which is held annually near the fountain.</p><br>
<p>Phase I was dedicated April 3, 2009. This phase included permeable pavers to surround the fountain. This replaced the crushed stone that was used since the fountain was constructed. The pavers make a safer and smoother surface and complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.</p><br>
<p>Phase II began in the winter of 2009. This phase included the demolition of the fountain table, installation of extensive underdrainage system, new landscaping, site lighting, signs, site furnishings, sewer system, selective demolition within or adjacent to the fountain&#39;s outer basin, repairs of some existing cast-in-place concrete elements and installation of new cast-in-place elements. Work was not completed due to lack of funds and the Chicago Park District has not announced when it expects to finish this phase.</p><br>
<p>Phase III updates have not been scheduled until Phase II projects are completed. This phase will include the restoration of Buckingham Fountain and fountain table, the construction of a new equipment room with selective demolition, structural construction and repair, masonry restoration and repair, mechanical and electrical work, bronze restoration and repair and installation of site improvements and amenities.</p><br>
<h2>In popular culture</h2><br>
<h3>Entertainment</h3><br>
<p>Buckingham Fountain was featured in the title sequences of TV shows Married... with Children and Crime Story. The fountain was the starting point for the television show The Amazing Race 6 in 2004.</p><br>
<p>The fountain can be seen for a handful of seconds about nine minutes into the 1983 film National Lampoon&#39;s Vacation as the Griswolds are pulling out of Chicago.</p><br>
<p>Buckingham Fountain is the starting point for the Cruise Mode in Microsoft&#39;s "Midtown Madness" video game.</p><br>
<p>It is also shown in the TV show Shameless.</p><br>
<h3>Confusion with Route 66</h3><br>
<p>Buckingham Fountain is often mistaken for the eastern terminus of USA Route 66, but in fact it is not. The original eastern terminus was at the intersection of Jackson Boulevard and Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago. In a later alignment, the terminus was moved east two blocks to the intersection of Jackson Drive and Lake Shore Drive after the latter was designated as USA Route 41. It remained there until the eastern terminus of Interstate 55 was completed at Lake Shore Drive, and then that also became the eastern terminus of Route 66 until I-55 completely replaced the route in Illinois and Route 66 was decommissioned. Nevertheless, many people still associate Buckingham Fountain with the start of Route 66, even though it had not been built yet when the route opened on November 11, 1926 — whereas the Fountain of the Great Lakes in the South Garden of the Art Institute of Chicago, which has been at that intersection since 1913, actually preceded Route 66 by 13 years and Buckingham Fountain by 14 years.</p><br>
<p>Grant park is called "Chicago&#39;s front yard". It is governed by the Chicago Park District.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>The original plans for the town of Chicago left the area east of Michigan Avenue unsubdivided and vacant, and purchasers of Michigan Avenue lots were promised that it would remain unoccupied. When the former Fort Dearborn Reserve became part of the townsite in 1839, the plan of the area east of Michigan Avenue south of Randolph was marked "Public ground. Forever to remain vacant of buildings."</p><br>
<p>The city officially designated the land as a park on April 29, 1844, naming it Lake Park. When the Illinois Central Railroad was built into Chicago in 1852, it was permitted to lay track along the lakefront on a causeway built offshore from the park. The resulting lagoon became stagnant, and was largely filled in 1871 with debris from the Great Chicago Fire, increasing the parkland. In 1896, the city began extending the park into the lake with landfill, beyond the rail lines. On October 9, 1901, the park was renamed Grant Park in honor of American Civil War commanding General and United States President Ulysses S. Grant. At the 1868 Republican National Convention in Chicago, Grant had been nominated for his first presidential term.</p><br>
<p>The legal restrictions prohibiting any buildings in the park were ignored in the 19th century, as various civic buildings were sited there. At various times, a post office, exposition center, armory, and even an early home field of the baseball club now known as the Chicago Cubs were built in the park. A 1904 plan prepared by the Olmsted Brothers recommended locating the Field Museum as the parks centerpiece, an idea integrated into Daniel Burnham and Edward H. Bennetts 1909 Plan of Chicago. Chicago businessman Aaron Montgomery Ward ultimately fought four court battles, opposed by nearly every civic leader, to keep the park free of buildings. The one exception Ward consented to was for the Art Institute of Chicago, constructed in 1892.</p><br>
<p>In the early 20th century, Grant Park was expanded with further landfill &mdash; much of it from the excavations of the Chicago Tunnel Company &mdash; and developed with a very formal landscape design by Edward Bennett. More landfill in the 1910s and 1920s provided sites for the Adler Planetarium, Field Museum of Natural History, and Shedd Aquarium, which were linked together as the Museum Campus in 1998. In 2004, a section of northern Grant Park, previously occupied by Illinois Central railyards and parking lots, was covered and redeveloped as Millennium Park.</p><br>
<h2>Events</h2><br>
<p>The park has been the site of many large civic events. It served as the staging ground for the citys funeral procession for Abraham Lincoln. In 1911, the park hosted the major Chicago International Aviation Meet. In 1959, to celebrate the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway and a related International Trade Fair, Queen Elizabeth II, disembarked here from the Royal Yacht Britannia, giving "Queens Landing" its name. The park was the scene of clashes between Chicago Police and demonstrators during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Pope John Paul II celebrated an outdoor mass to a large crowd here in 1979. Championship celebrations were staged here for the Chicago Bulls during the 1990s, and the Chicago Blackhawks after Stanley Cup victory in 2013. The park was the location for President Barack Obama&#39;s Election Day victory speech on the night of November 4, 2008. In 2015, Grant Park hosted the first outdoor National Football League (NFL) draft and a related festival. The Chicago Cubs held their rally for their World Series Championship win on November 4, 2016 with an estimated 5 million people attending the parade and event.</p><br>
<p>Annually, the park hosts some of Chicago&#39;s biggest festivals including The Taste of Chicago—a large food and music festival held each summer; the Grant Park Music Festival; Chicago Jazz Festival and the Chicago Blues Festival. The park is also the site of the start and finish lines of the Chicago Marathon.</p><br>
<p>Since 2005, Lollapalooza, a popular mutli-stage, multi-day, limited admission, festival of rock concerts has taken place in the park. Lollapalooza is under contract to be staged at Grant Park through 2018.</p><br>
<h2>Features</h2><br>
<p>Grant Park, with 319 acre between the downtown Chicago Loop and Lake Michigan, offers many different attractions in its large open space. The park is generally flat. It is also crossed by large boulevards and even a bed of sunken railroad tracks. While bridges are used to span the tracks, and also used to connect with Millennium Park, the rest of the park must be reached by pedestrians at traffic crossings, except for a spacious underpass connection to the Museum Campus. There are also several parking garages under the park, along Michigan Avenue and east of Columbus Drive.</p><br>
<p>When it was landscaped in the early 20th century in a formal beaux arts style, tall American Elms were planted in allées and rectangular patterns. While hundreds of these trees still exist, reaching 60 feet tall, they were devastated in the late 1970s by Dutch elm disease. Hybrid elms have since been used to replace lost trees.</p><br>
<h3>Millennium Park</h3><br>
<p>The northwestern corner of the park was renovated between 1998 and 2004 to become Millennium Park, a contiguous area with a variety of artistic features by architects and artists. Millennium Park features the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, Cloud Gate, the Crown Fountain, the Lurie Garden and other attractions. The park is connected by the BP Pedestrian Bridge and the Nichols Bridgeway to other parts of Grant Park.</p><br>
<h3>Maggie Daley Park</h3><br>
<p>Across the BP Pedestrian Bridge from Millennium Park, the northeast corner of Grant Park hosts outdoor and indoor activities at what is now Maggie Daley Park, previously called Daley Bicentennial Plaza. Designed by landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh, attractions here include, summer and winter skating rinks, an extensive playground, climbing walls, tennis courts, and an activities building, which were redeveloped between 2012 and 2015.</p><br>
<h3>Art Institute of Chicago</h3><br>
<p>Built in 1893 on the western edge of Grant Park, the Art Institute of Chicago is one of the premier art museums and art schools in the United States, known especially for the extensive collection of Impressionist and American art, such as A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, and Grant Woods American Gothic. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago has facilities in the southeast corner of the museums complex.</p><br>
<h3>Buckingham Fountain</h3><br>
<p>The center piece of Grant Park is Buckingham Fountain, one of the world&#39;s largest fountains. The fountain, in a rococo wedding cake style, was dedicated in 1927 as a gift to the city from Kate Sturges Buckingham in memory of her brother Clarence. The fountain operates from April to October with water displays every 20 minutes and a light and water display from 8:00 am to 11:00 pm.</p><br>
<h3>Museum Campus</h3><br>
<p>Chicagos Museum Campus is a 57 acre addition to Grant Parks southeastern end. The Museum Campus is the site of three of the city&#39;s most notable museums, all dedicated to the natural sciences: Adler Planetarium, Field Museum of Natural History, and Shedd Aquarium. A narrow isthmus along Solidarity Drive dominated by neoclassical sculptures of Kościuszko, Havliček and Nicolaus Copernicus connects to Northerly Island where the planetarium is located to the east of the Museum Campus situated on the mainland.</p><br>
<h3>Petrillo Music Shell</h3><br>
<p>The Petrillo Music Shell, located at Jackson and Columbus drives, hosts music performances during the Chicago Jazz Festival, Chicago Blues Festival, Taste of Chicago and Lollapalooza. The music shell&#39;s seating area includes an area called Butler Field, the block bounded by Lake Shore Drive, Columbus Drive, Monroe Drive, and Jackson Drive. The previous Petrillo Bandshell structure faced Hutchinson Field at the south end of the park, near 1100 South Columbus Deive.</p><br>
<h3>Congress Plaza</h3><br>
<p>Congress Plaza is a ceremonial entrance located on the park&#39;s western edge, at the intersection of Congress Parkway and Michigan Avenue. Two semicircular plazas flanking Congress Parkway contain gardens, fountains, and artwork, including a pair of large bronze warrior statues, The Bowman and The Spearman that are positioned like gatekeepers to the park.</p><br>
<h3>Gardens</h3><br>
<p>There are several gardens and flower displays throughout the park. Millennium Park houses the Lurie Garden, known for its display of tall grass flowers, particularly lavender, and a decorative post-modern water stream. To the east, across the BP Pedestrian Bridge, Daley Park holds tall grass plantings. To the northeast in Daley Park, at 375 East Randolph Drive, is the Richard & Annette Bloch Cancer Survivors Garden, marked by two huge doric columns from the demolished Chicago Federal Building and a wrought-iron pergola. The garden contains numerous walkways lined with planters and is one of several similar spaces created nationwide by R. A. Bloch Cancer Foundation.</p><br>
<p>Flanking the original Art Institute of Chicago Building are gardens in the north and south McCormick Courtyards; in the south courtyard is the bronze sculpture Fountain of the Great Lakes. To the south of the art museum, along Michigan Avenue, are a succession of gardens. Two of these are not far from to Orchestra Hall and honor former conductors of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (Sir Georg Solti and Theodore Thomas).</p><br>
<p>To the southeast of the Art Institute, near the Court of Presidents, are demonstration gardens that flank Congress Parkway and surrounding Buckingham Fountain are a series of formal gardens, including the Tiffany Celebration Garden to the south.</p><br>
<h3>The Court of the Presidents</h3><br>
<p>The Court of the Presidents is located directly on the north and south side of E. Congress Parkway, west of S. Columbus Drive and east of S. Michigan Ave. Manicured gardens and art work help define the Court of Presidents. South Presidents Court, until recently, has primarily been gardens. However, within the past decade the city has decided to use the area to showcase art work by Chicagoans. While unique artwork has long been a tradition of Chicago’s parks, South Presidents Court had the added benefit of showcasing "in house" art as its first newsworthy collection, entitled "Artist and Automobiles." The collection, which was organized by the Public Art Program and the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, consisted of sculptures composed entirely of parts found on old automobiles. The Court of the Presidents like many of the city’s other green spaces comes with so much potential for use. However, the public has long been able to appreciate and enjoy its current state, "open, clear, and free."</p><br>
<h3>Hutchinson Field</h3><br>
<p>Much of the southern end of Grant Park is given over to ≠Hutchinson Field, an open space for large events, with a dozen baseball or softball diamonds named for financier and long-time Art Institute President, Charles L. Hutchinson.</p><br>
<h3>Chicago Lakefront Trail</h3><br>
<p>A section of the Chicago Lakefront Trail, an 18-mile multi-use path along the citys Lake Michigan shoreline, runs along the parks eastern edge. The trail runs adjacent to Lake Shore Drive from Randolph Drive to Balbo Drive, then along the very edge of the seawall around the Shedd Aquarium. An underpass carries the trail under Solidarity Drive into Burnham Park.</p><br>
<h3>Marinas and harbors</h3><br>
<p>Two Lake Michigan marinas are accessed from Grant Park. Monroe Harbor provides 1000 mooring cans (served by tender service) and facilities in the expansive harbor east of the park. It is home to both the Chicago Yacht Club and the Columbia Yacht Club. Queens Landing, at the center of the harbor and parks shoreline, is named for a 1959 visit there by Queen Elizabeth II aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia, in conjunction with the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway. Du Sable Harbor, created in 1999 north of Randolph Drive, offers 420 boat docks and a harbor store.</p><br>
<h3>Skate Plaza</h3><br>
<p>The Grant Park Skate Plaza, designed by Chicago Landscape Architects Altamanu, was constructed in 2014 and opened December 6 of that year. The Plaza was initiated by Grant Park Conservancy President, Robert O’Neill. The new park occupies 3 acre and has replaced the former skate area near the tennis courts. The Conservancy, sought planning support from local skateboarders and BMX bikers who formed the Grant Park Conservancy & Advisory Council Skate Committee. The Plaza is located in the southwest corner of the park near the former site of the 1893 Central Station and includes limestone pieces from the former railroad terminal. The plaza cost $2.65 Million to build. In 2014, the park hosted both the Mountain Dew Skate Tour for its first return to Chicago since 2010 and the Volcom Wild in the Parks Tour for its first appearance in Chicago.</p><br>
<h3>Dog park</h3><br>
<p>Grant Bark Park, located on the corner of Columbus Drive and 11th Street, is place for dogs get their exercise. Its an off-leash park of 18,000 square feet. Its made of asphalt and pea gravel. Members pay a monthly fee to attend the park that helps with the upkeep and maintains the cleanliness. A water fountain for both dogs and humans is provided. Membership fees and any donations go toward maintenance The park hosts benefits and events related to dogs to raise money, too. Leashed dogs are permitted in most areas of the park, but not in Millennium Park.</p><br>
<h3>Other facilities</h3><br>
<p>The shaded walking paths in Grant Park cover several miles. A circuit of the park&#39;s walking paths is estimated to take 4 miles (6.4 km).</p><br>
<p>For other sporting activities, the park has 16 softball and baseball fields and 12 tennis courts, open to the general public.</p><br>
<h2>Public art</h2><br>
<p>The park holds a great deal of public art, much of it sculpture, in many areas including in Millennium Park, near Buckingham Fountain, the several gardens, and Congress Plaza. Four individual large installations, in other areas of the park, include:</p><br>
<h3>Abraham Lincoln Monument</h3><br>
<p>Abraham Lincoln: The Head of State is a statue by sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens set in a 150-foot wide exedra by architect Stanford White, honoring the Illinois resident and 16th President of the United States. The statue was cast in 1908 and was displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and at the 1915 San Francisco Worlds Fair, prior to being installed in the park in 1926. It is located in the Court of Presidents, north of Congress Parkway and west of Columbus Drive and is frequently called Seated Lincoln to avoid confusion with Saint-Gaudens 1887 sculpture Abraham Lincoln: The Man in Lincoln Park.</p><br>
<h3>Agora</h3><br>
<p>Agora (from Greek, for urban meeting place) is an installation of over 100 headless, armless sculptures designed by the Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz in southwestern Grant Park near Roosevelt Road. The piece was brought to the park in 2006. The figures are 9 ft tall and weigh approximately 1,800 lb. Each is made from a hollow, seamless piece of iron that has been allowed to rust, creating a reddish appearance and a bark-like texture. The figures appear to be milling about in a crowd; some face each other, while others look away.</p><br>
<h3>Columbus Monument</h3><br>
<p>Christopher Columbus is a bronze statue by Carlo ("Charles", "Carl") Brioschi on a monumental pedestal at the southern end of Grant Park. In 1933, Chicago celebrated its 100th anniversary with the Century of Progress Worlds Fair. In conjunction with the fair, Chicagos Italian-American community raised funds and donated the statue of the Genoese navigator and explorer, Christopher Columbus.</p><br>
<h3>Logan Monument</h3><br>
<p>At Michigan Avenue and Ninth Street is a large equestrian statue of John A. Logan, dedicated in 1897. Logan was a United States Major General, who had resigned his congressional seat to serve in the USA Army during the Civil War. He led troops in many battles throughout the West and South. After the war, he was elected to the USA Senate from Illinois. The monument mound, with a statue by Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Alexander Phimister Proctor, was initially intended as a burial site for Logan, but his family declined to relocate the general&#39;s grave.</p><br>
<h2>Additions</h2><br>
<h3>Children's Museum</h3><br>
<p>The Chicago Childrens Museum announced plans in 2006 for a $100 million structure to replace its facilities at Navy Pier. The museum hoped to construct an underground building on the site of Daley Bicentennial Plaza, a plan that Mayor Richard M. Daley and council members approved in 2008. Some council members and area residents opposed the project and vowed to fight the proposal. After fundraising lagged, in January 2012, the Childrens Museum announced that it no longer would seek a Grant Park location.</p><br>
<p>Mount Everest, known in Nepali as Sagarmāthā and in Tibetan as Chomolungma, is Earth&#39;s highest mountain, located in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas. The international border between China  and Nepal runs across its summit point.</p><br>
<p>The current official height of 8,848 m, recognised by China and Nepal, was established by a 1955 Indian survey and subsequently confirmed by a Chinese survey in 1975. In 2005, China remeasured the rock height of the mountain, with a result of 8844.43 m. There followed an argument between China and Nepal as to whether the official height should be the rock height (8,844 m., China) or the snow height (8,848 m., Nepal). In 2010, an agreement was reached by both sides that the height of Everest is 8,848 m, and Nepal recognises China&#39;s claim that the rock height of Everest is 8,844 m.</p><br>
<p>In 1865, Everest was given its official English name by the Royal Geographical Society, upon a recommendation by Andrew Waugh, the British Surveyor General of India. As there appeared to be several different local names, Waugh chose to name the mountain after his predecessor in the post, Sir George Everest, despite George Everest&#39;s objections.</p><br>
<p>Mount Everest attracts many climbers, some of them highly experienced mountaineers. There are two main climbing routes, one approaching the summit from the southeast in Nepal (known as the "standard route") and the other from the north in Tibet. While not posing substantial technical climbing challenges on the standard route, Everest presents dangers such as altitude sickness, weather, and wind, as well as significant hazards from avalanches and the Khumbu Icefall. there are well over 200 corpses on the mountain, some of which serve as landmarks.</p><br>
<p>The first recorded efforts to reach Everests summit were made by British mountaineers. As Nepal did not allow foreigners into the country at the time, the British made several attempts on the north ridge route from the Tibetan side. After the first reconnaissance expedition by the British in 1921 reached 7,000 m on the North Col, the 1922 expedition pushed the north ridge route up to 8,320 m, marking the first time a human had climbed above 8,000 m. Seven porters were killed in an avalanche on the descent from the North Col. The 1924 expedition resulted in one of the greatest mysteries on Everest to this day: George Mallory and Andrew Irvine made a final summit attempt on 8 June but never returned, sparking debate as to whether or not they were the first to reach the top. They had been spotted high on the mountain that day but disappeared in the clouds, never to be seen again, until Mallorys body was found in 1999 at 8,155 m on the north face. Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary made the first official ascent of Everest in 1953, using the southeast ridge route. Tenzing had reached 8,595 m the previous year as a member of the 1952 Swiss expedition. The Chinese mountaineering team of Wang Fuzhou, Gonpo, and Qu Yinhua made the first reported ascent of the peak from the north ridge on 25 May 1960.</p><br>
<h2>Early surveys</h2><br>
<p>In 1715, the Qing Empire surveyed the mountain while mapping its territory and depicted it as Mount Qomolangma no later than 1719.</p><br>
<p>In 1802, the British began the Great Trigonometric Survey of India to fix the locations, heights, and names of the world&#39;s highest mountains. Starting in southern India, the survey teams moved northward using giant theodolites, each weighing 500 kg and requiring 12 men to carry, to measure heights as accurately as possible. They reached the Himalayan foothills by the 1830s, but Nepal was unwilling to allow the British to enter the country due to suspicions of political aggression and possible annexation. Several requests by the surveyors to enter Nepal were turned down.</p><br>
<p>The British were forced to continue their observations from Terai, a region south of Nepal which is parallel to the Himalayas. Conditions in Terai were difficult because of torrential rains and malaria. Three survey officers died from malaria while two others had to retire because of failing health.</p><br>
<p>Nonetheless, in 1847, the British continued the survey and began detailed observations of the Himalayan peaks from observation stations up to 240 km distant. Weather restricted work to the last three months of the year. In November 1847, Andrew Waugh, the British Surveyor General of India made several observations from the Sawajpore station at the east end of the Himalayas. Kangchenjunga was then considered the highest peak in the world, and with interest he noted a peak beyond it, about 230 km away. John Armstrong, one of Waugh&#39;s subordinates, also saw the peak from a site farther west and called it peak "b". Waugh would later write that the observations indicated that peak "b" was higher than Kangchenjunga, but given the great distance of the observations, closer observations were required for verification. The following year, Waugh sent a survey official back to Terai to make closer observations of peak "b", but clouds thwarted his attempts.</p><br>
<p>In 1849, Waugh dispatched James Nicolson to the area, who made two observations from Jirol, 190 km away. Nicolson then took the largest theodolite and headed east, obtaining over 30 observations from five different locations, with the closest being 174 km from the peak.</p><br>
<p>Nicolson retreated to Patna on the Ganges to perform the necessary calculations based on his observations. His raw data gave an average height of 9,200 m for peak "b", but this did not consider light refraction, which distorts heights. However, the number clearly indicated that peak "b" was higher than Kangchenjunga. Nicolson contracted malaria and was forced to return home without finishing his calculations. Michael Hennessy, one of Waugh&#39;s assistants, had begun designating peaks based on Roman numerals, with Kangchenjunga named Peak IX. Peak "b" now became known as Peak XV.</p><br>
<p>In 1852, stationed at the survey headquarters in Dehradun, Radhanath Sikdar, an Indian mathematician and surveyor from Bengal, was the first to identify Everest as the worlds highest peak, using trigonometric calculations based on Nicolsons measurements. An official announcement that Peak XV was the highest was delayed for several years as the calculations were repeatedly verified. Waugh began work on Nicolson&#39;s data in 1854, and along with his staff spent almost two years working on the numbers, having to deal with the problems of light refraction, barometric pressure, and temperature over the vast distances of the observations. Finally, in March 1856 he announced his findings in a letter to his deputy in Calcutta. Kangchenjunga was declared to be 28,156 ft, while Peak XV was given the height of 29,002 ft. Waugh concluded that Peak XV was "most probably the highest in the world". Waugh is therefore wittily credited with being "the first person to put two feet on top of Mount Everest".</p><br>
<h2>Name</h2><br>
<p>While the survey wanted to preserve local names if possible (e.g., Kangchenjunga and Dhaulagiri), Waugh argued that he could not find any commonly used local name. Waughs search for a local name was hampered by Nepal and Tibets exclusion of foreigners. Many local names existed, including "Deodungha" ("Holy Mountain") in Darjeeling and the Tibetan "Chomolungma", which appeared on a 1733 map published in Paris by the French geographer D&#39;Anville. In the late 19th century, many European cartographers incorrectly believed that a native name for the mountain was Gaurishankar, a mountain between Kathmandu and Everest.</p><br>
<p>Waugh argued that because there were many local names, it would be difficult to favour one name over all others, so he decided that Peak XV should be named after Welsh surveyor Sir George Everest, his predecessor as Surveyor General of India. Everest himself opposed the name suggested by Waugh and told the Royal Geographical Society in 1857 that "Everest" could not be written in Hindi nor pronounced by "the native of India". Waughs proposed name prevailed despite the objections, and in 1865, the Royal Geographical Society officially adopted Mount Everest as the name for the highest mountain in the world. The modern pronunciation of Everest is different from Sir Georges pronunciation of his surname .</p><br>
<p>The Tibetan name for Mount Everest is ཇོ་མོ་གླང་མ (, "Holy Mother"), whose official Tibetan pinyin form is Qomolangma. It is also popularly romanised as Chomolungma and (in Wylie) as Jo-mo-glang-ma or Jomo Langma. The official Chinese transcription is ( "Holy Mother Peak"). In 2002, the Chinese People&#39;s Daily newspaper published an article making a case against the use of "Mount Everest" in English, insisting that the mountain should be referred to as Mount "Qomolangma", based on the official form of the local Tibetan name. The article argued that British colonialists did not "first discover" the mountain, as it had been known to the Tibetans and mapped by the Chinese as "Qomolangma" since at least 1719.</p><br>
<p>In the early 1960s, the Nepalese government coined a Nepali name for Mount Everest, Sagarmāthā or Sagar-Matha (सागर-मथ्था).</p><br>
<h2>Surveys</h2><br>
<p>The 8,848 m height given is officially recognised by Nepal and China, although Nepal plans a new survey.</p><br>
<p>In 1856, Andrew Waugh announced Everest (then known as Peak XV) as 29,002 ft high, after several years of calculations based on observations made by the Great Trigonometric Survey.</p><br>
<p>The elevation of 8,848 m was first determined by an Indian survey in 1955, made closer to the mountain, also using theodolites. It was subsequently reaffirmed by a 1975 Chinese measurement of 8,848.13 m. Although it has not been officially recognised by Nepal, this figure is widely quoted. Geoid uncertainty casts doubt upon the accuracy claimed by both the 1999 and 2005 surveys.</p><br>
<p>A detailed photogrammetric map (at a scale of 1:50,000) of the Khumbu region, including the south side of Mount Everest, was made by Erwin Schneider as part of the 1955 International Himalayan Expedition, which also attempted Lhotse. An even more detailed topographic map of the Everest area was made in the late-1980s under the direction of Bradford Washburn, using extensive aerial photography.</p><br>
<p>On 9 October 2005, after several months of measurement and calculation, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping officially announced the height of Everest as 8,844.43 m with accuracy of ±0.21 m. They claimed it was the most accurate and precise measurement to date. This height is based on the highest point of rock and not the snow and ice covering it. The Chinese team also measured a snow-ice depth of 3.5 m, which is in agreement with a net elevation of 8,848 m. The snow and ice thickness varies over time, making a definitive height of the snow cap impossible to determine.</p><br>
<p>It is thought that the plate tectonics of the area are adding to the height and moving the summit northeastwards. Two accounts suggest the rates of change are 4 mm per year (upwards) and 3 to 6 mm per year (northeastwards), but another account mentions more lateral movement (27 mm), and even shrinkage has been suggested.</p><br>
<h3>Comparisons</h3><br>
<p>The summit of Everest is the point at which earth&#39;s surface reaches the greatest distance above sea level. Several other mountains are sometimes claimed to be the "tallest mountains on earth". Mauna Kea in Hawaii is tallest when measured from its base; it rises over 10,200 m when measured from its base on the mid-ocean floor, but only attains 4,205 m above sea level.</p><br>
<p>By the same measure of base to summit, Denali, in Alaska, also known as Mount McKinley, is taller than Everest as well.</p><br>
<p>The summit of Chimborazo in Ecuador is 2,168 m farther from earths centre (6,384.4 km) than that of Everest (6,382.3 km), because the earth bulges at the equator. This is despite Chimborazo having a peak 6,268 m above sea level versus Mount Everests 8,848 m.</p><br>
<h2>Geology</h2><br>
<p>Geologists have subdivided the rocks comprising Mount Everest into three units called formations. Each formation is separated from the other by low-angle faults, called detachments, along which they have been thrust southward over each other. From the summit of Mount Everest to its base these rock units are the Qomolangma Formation, the North Col Formation, and the Rongbuk Formation.</p><br>
<p>The Qomolangma Formation, also known as the Jolmo Lungama Formation or the Everest Formation, runs from the summit to the top of the Yellow Band, about 8,600 m above sea level. It consists of greyish to dark grey or white, parallel laminated and bedded, Ordovician limestone inter layered with subordinate beds of recrystallised dolomite with argillaceous laminae and siltstone. Gansser first reported finding microscopic fragments of crinoids in this limestone. Later petrographic analysis of samples of the limestone from near the summit revealed them to be composed of carbonate pellets and finely fragmented remains of trilobites, crinoids, and ostracods. Other samples were so badly sheared and recrystallised that their original constituents could not be determined. A thick, white-weathering thrombolite bed that is 60 m thick comprises the foot of the "Third Step", and base of the summit-pyramid of Everest. This bed, which crops out starting about 70 m below the summit of Mount Everest, consists of sediments trapped, bound, and cemented by the biofilms of micro-organisms, especially cyanobacteria, in shallow marine waters. The Qomolangma Formation is broken up by several high-angle faults that terminate at the low angle normal fault, the Qomolangma Detachment. This detachment separates it from the underlying Yellow Band. The lower five metres of the Qomolangma Formation overlying this detachment are very highly deformed.</p><br>
<p>The bulk of Mount Everest, between 7,000 and, consists of the North Col Formation, of which the Yellow Band forms its upper part between 8,200 to 8,600 m. The Yellow Band consists of intercalated beds of Middle Cambrian diopside-epidote-bearing marble, which weathers a distinctive yellowish brown, and muscovite-biotite phyllite and semischist. Petrographic analysis of marble collected from about 8,300 m found it to consist as much as five percent of the ghosts of recrystallised crinoid ossicles. The upper five metres of the Yellow Band lying adjacent to the Qomolangma Detachment is badly deformed. A 5 – thick fault breccia separates it from the overlying Qomolangma Formation.</p><br>
<p>The remainder of the North Col Formation, exposed between 7,000 to 8,200 m on Mount Everest, consists of interlayered and deformed schist, phyllite, and minor marble. Between 7,600 and, the North Col Formation consists chiefly of biotite-quartz phyllite and chlorite-biotite phyllite intercalated with minor amounts of biotite-sericite-quartz schist. Between 7,000 and, the lower part of the North Col Formation consists of biotite-quartz schist intercalated with epidote-quartz schist, biotite-calcite-quartz schist, and thin layers of quartzose marble. These metamorphic rocks appear to be the result of the metamorphism of Middle to Early Cambrian deep sea flysch composed of interbedded, mudstone, shale, clayey sandstone, calcareous sandstone, graywacke, and sandy limestone. The base of the North Col Formation is a regional low-angle normal fault called the "Lhotse detachment".</p><br>
<p>Below 7,000 m (23,000 ft), the Rongbuk Formation underlies the North Col Formation and forms the base of Mount Everest. It consists of sillimanite-K-feldspar grade schist and gneiss intruded by numerous sills and dikes of leucogranite ranging in thickness from 1 cm to 1,500 m (0.4 in to 4,900 ft). These leucogranites are part of a belt of Late Oligocene–Miocene intrusive rocks known as the Higher Himalayan leucogranite. They formed as the result of partial melting of Paleoproterozoic to Ordovician high-grade metasedimentary rocks of the Higher Himalayan Sequence about 20 to 24 million years ago during the subduction of the Indian Plate.</p><br>
<p>Mount Everest consists of sedimentary and metamorphic rocks that have been faulted southward over continental crust composed of Archean granulites of the Indian Plate during the Cenozoic collision of India with Asia.</p><br>
<p>Current interpretations argue that the Qomolangma and North Col formations consist of marine sediments that accumulated within the continental shelf of the northern passive continental margin of India before it collided with Asia. The Cenozoic collision of India with Asia subsequently deformed and metamorphosed these strata as it thrust them southward and upward. The Rongbuk Formation consists of a sequence of high-grade metamorphic and granitic rocks that were derived from the alteration of high-grade metasedimentary rocks. During the collision of India with Asia, these rocks were thrust downward and to the north as they were overridden by other strata; heated, metamorphosed, and partially melted at depths of over 15to20 km below sea level; and then forced upward to surface by thrusting towards the south between two major detachments. The Himalayas are rising by about 5 mm per year.</p><br>
<p>One yellow band of rock is below the Ordovician limestone going up to the summit. There is another feature lower down that climbers call the yellow band also, but it sits below the Geneva spur and is some of the first actual rock climbers contact after making their way of the ice and snow of Lhotse face, if they are taking that route.</p><br>
<h2>Flora and fauna</h2><br>
<p>There is very little native flora or fauna on Everest. There is a moss that grows at 6,480 m on Mount Everest. It may be the highest altitude plant species.</p><br>
<p>Euophrys omnisuperstes, a minute black jumping spider, has been found at elevations as high as 6,700 m, possibly making it the highest confirmed non-microscopic permanent resident on Earth. It lurks in crevices and may feed on frozen insects that have been blown there by the wind. There is a high likelihood of microscopic life at even higher altitudes.</p><br>
<p>Birds, such as the bar-headed goose, have been seen flying at the higher altitudes of the mountain, while others, such as the chough, have been spotted as high as the South Col at 7,920 m. Yellow-billed choughs have been seen as high as 26,000 ft and bar-headed geese migrate over the Himalayas. In 1953, George Lowe (part of the expedition of Tenzing and Hillary) said that he saw bar-headed geese flying over Everest&#39;s summit.</p><br>
<p>Yaks are often used to haul gear for Mount Everest climbs. They can haul 100 kg (220 pounds), have thick fur and big lungs. The Himalayan black bear can be found up to about 14,000 ft and the red panda is also present in the region. One expedition found a surprising range of species in the region including a pika and ten new species of ants.</p><br>
<h2>Environment</h2><br>
<p>In 2008, a new weather station at about 8,000 m altitude (26,246 feet) went online. The station&#39;s first data in May 2008 were air temperature -17 &deg;C, relative humidity 41.3 percent, atmospheric pressure 382.1 hPa (38.21 kPa), wind direction 262.8°, wind speed 12.8 m/s (28.6 mph, 46.1 km/h), global solar radiation 711.9 watts/m, solar UVA radiation 30.4 W/m. The solar-powered weather station is on the South Col.</p><br>
<p>One of the issues facing climbers is the frequent presence of high-speed winds. The peak of Mount Everest extends into the upper troposphere and penetrates the stratosphere, which can expose it to the fast and freezing winds of the jet stream. In February 2004 a wind speed of 175 mph was recorded at the summit and winds over 100 mph are common. These winds can blow climbers off Everest. Climbers typically aim for a 7- to 10-day window in the spring and fall when the Asian monsoon season is either starting up or ending and the winds are lighter. The air pressure at the summit is about one-third what it is at sea level, and by Bernoulli&#39;s principle, the winds can lower the pressure further, causing an additional 14 percent reduction in oxygen to climbers. The reduction in oxygen availability comes from the reduced overall pressure, not a reduction in the ratio of oxygen to other gases.</p><br>
<p>In the summer, the Indian monsoon brings warm wet air from the Indian Ocean to Everest&#39;s south side. During the winter the west-southwest flowing jet stream shifts south and blows on the peak.</p><br>
<h2>History of expeditions</h2><br>
<p>Because Mount Everest is the highest mountain in the world, it has attracted considerable attention and climbing attempts. A set of climbing routes has been established over several decades of climbing expeditions to the mountain. Whether the mountain was climbed in ancient times is unknown. It may have been climbed in 1924.</p><br>
<h3>Overview</h3><br>
<p>Everest&#39;s first known summitting occurred by 1953, and interest by climbers increased. Despite the effort and attention poured into expeditions, only about 200 people had summitted by 1987.</p><br>
<p>By March 2012, Everest had been climbed 5,656 times with 223 deaths. Although lower mountains have longer or steeper climbs, Everest is so high the jet stream can hit it. Climbers can be faced with winds beyond 200 mph when the weather shifts. At certain times of the year the jet stream shifts north, providing periods of relative calm at the mountain. Other dangers include blizzards and avalanches.</p><br>
<p>By 2013, The Himalayan Database recorded 6,871 summits by 4,042 different people.</p><br>
<h3>Early attempts</h3><br>
<p>In 1885, Clinton Thomas Dent, president of the Alpine Club, suggested that climbing Mount Everest was possible in his book Above the Snow Line.</p><br>
<p>The northern approach to the mountain was discovered by George Mallory and Guy Bullock on the initial 1921 British Reconnaissance Expedition. It was an exploratory expedition not equipped for a serious attempt to climb the mountain. With Mallory leading (and thus becoming the first European to set foot on Everest&#39;s flanks) they climbed the North Col to an altitude of 7,005 m. From there, Mallory espied a route to the top, but the party was unprepared for the great task of climbing any further and descended.</p><br>
<p>The British returned for a 1922 expedition. George Finch climbed using oxygen for the first time. He ascended at a remarkable speed—290 m per hour, and reached an altitude of 8,320 m, the first time a human reported to climb higher than 8,000 m. Mallory and Col. Felix Norton made a second unsuccessful attempt. Mallory was faulted for leading a group down from the North Col which got caught in an avalanche. Mallory was pulled down too, but survived. Seven native porters were killed.</p><br>
<p>The next expedition was in 1924. The initial attempt by Mallory and Geoffrey Bruce was aborted when weather conditions prevented the establishment of Camp VI. The next attempt was that of Norton and Somervell, who climbed without oxygen and in perfect weather, traversing the North Face into the Great Couloir. Norton managed to reach 8,550 m, though he ascended only 30 m or so in the last hour. Mallory rustled up oxygen equipment for a last-ditch effort. He chose young Andrew Irvine as his partner.</p><br>
<p>On 8 June 1924, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine made an attempt on the summit via the North Col-North Ridge-Northeast Ridge route from which they never returned. On 1 May 1999, the Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition found Mallory&#39;s body on the North Face in a snow basin below and to the west of the traditional site of Camp VI. Controversy has raged in the mountaineering community whether one or both of them reached the summit 29 years before the confirmed ascent and safe descent of Everest by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953.</p><br>
<p>In 1933, Lady Houston, a British millionairess, funded the Houston Everest Flight of 1933, which saw a formation of aircraft led by the Marquess of Clydesdale fly over the summit in an effort to deploy the British Union Flag at the top.</p><br>
<p>Early expeditions—such as General Charles Bruces in the 1920s and Hugh Ruttledges two unsuccessful attempts in 1933 and 1936—tried to ascend the mountain from Tibet, via the North Face. Access was closed from the north to Western expeditions in 1950, after China took control of Tibet. In 1950, Bill Tilman and a small party which included Charles Houston, Oscar Houston, and Betsy Cowles undertook an exploratory expedition to Everest through Nepal along the route which has now become the standard approach to Everest from the south.</p><br>
<p>The Swiss Expedition of 1952, led by Edouard Wyss-Dunant, was granted permission to attempt a climb from Nepal. The expedition established a route through the Khumbu icefall and ascended to the South Col at an elevation of 7,986 m. No attempt at an ascent of Everest was ever under consideration in this case. Raymond Lambert and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay were able to reach an elevation of about 8,595 m on the southeast ridge, setting a new climbing altitude record. Tenzing&#39;s experience was useful when he was hired to be part of the British expedition in 1953.</p><br>
<h3>First successful ascent by Tenzing and Hillary</h3><br>
<p>In 1953, a ninth British expedition, led by John Hunt, returned to Nepal. Hunt selected two climbing pairs to attempt to reach the summit. The first pair, Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans, came within 100 m of the summit on 26 May 1953, but turned back after running into oxygen problems. As planned, their work in route finding and breaking trail and their oxygen caches were of great aid to the following pair. Two days later, the expedition made its second and final assault on the summit with its second climbing pair, the New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, a Nepali sherpa climber from Darjeeling, India. They reached the summit at 11:30 local time on 29 May 1953 via the South Col route. At the time, both acknowledged it as a team effort by the whole expedition, but Tenzing revealed a few years later that Hillary had put his foot on the summit first. They paused at the summit to take photographs and buried a few sweets and a small cross in the snow before descending.</p><br>
<p>News of the expeditions success reached London on the morning of Queen Elizabeth IIs coronation, 2 June. Returning to Kathmandu a few days later, Hunt (a Briton) and Hillary (a New Zealander) discovered that they had been promptly knighted in the Order of the British Empire for the ascent. Tenzing, a Nepali Sherpa who was a citizen of India, was granted the George Medal by the UK. Hunt was ultimately made a life peer in Britain, while Hillary became a founding member of the Order of New Zealand. Hillary and Tenzing are also recognised in Nepal, where annual ceremonies in schools and offices celebrate their accomplishment.</p><br>
<p>The next successful ascent was on 23 May 1956 by Ernst Schmied and Juerg Marmet. Wang Fuzhou, Gonpo and Qu Yinhua of China made the first reported ascent of the peak from the North Ridge on 25 May 1960. The first American to climb Everest, Jim Whittaker, joined by Nawang Gombu, reached the summit on 1 May 1963.</p><br>
<h3>1970 disaster</h3><br>
<p>In 1970 Japanese mountaineers conducted a major expedition. The centrepiece was a large "siege"-style expedition led by Saburo Matsukata, working on finding a new route up the southwest face. Another element of the expedition was an attempt to ski Mount Everest. Despite a staff of over one hundred people and a decade of planning work, the expedition suffered eight deaths and failed to summit via the planned routes. However, Japanese expeditions did enjoy some successes. For example, Yuichiro Miura became the first man to ski down Everest from the South Col (he descended nearly 4,200 vertical feet from the South Col before falling with extreme injuries). Another success was an expedition that put four on the summit via the South Col route. Miura&#39;s exploits became the subject of film, and he went on to become the oldest person to summit Mount Everest in 2003 at age 70 and again in 2013 at the age of 80.</p><br>
<p>In 1975, Junko Tabei, a Japanese woman, became the first woman to summit Mount Everest.</p><br>
<h3>1979/1980: Winter Himalaism</h3><br>
<p>The Polish climber Andrzej Zawada headed the first winter ascent of Mt. Everest, the first winter ascent of an eight-thousander.</p><br>
<h3>1993: astronaut fatality</h3><br>
<p>The US astronaut Karl Gordon Henize was on a mission to Everest to study radiation, but came down with a fatal case of high-altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE) in October 1993 and died at north base camp. At the time he was the oldest astronaut to have flown in space. He had a doctorate in astronomy. He died on 5 October 1993 and was buried on Mount Everest.</p><br>
<h3>1996 disaster</h3><br>
<p>On 11 May 1996 eight climbers died after several expeditions were caught in a blizzard high up on the mountain. During the 1996 season, 15 people died while climbing on Mount Everest. These were the highest death tolls for a single event, and for a single season, until the sixteen deaths in the 2014 Mount Everest avalanche. The disaster gained wide publicity and raised questions about the commercialisation of climbing Mount Everest.</p><br>
<p>Journalist Jon Krakauer, on assignment from Outside magazine, was in one of the affected parties, and afterwards published the bestseller Into Thin Air, which related his experience. Anatoli Boukreev, a guide who felt impugned by Krakauer&#39;s book, co-authored a rebuttal book called The Climb. The dispute sparked a debate within the climbing community.</p><br>
<p>In May 2004, Kent Moore, a physicist, and John L. Semple, a surgeon, both researchers from the University of Toronto, told New Scientist magazine that an analysis of weather conditions on 11 May suggested that freak weather caused oxygen levels to plunge approximately 14 percent.</p><br>
<p>One of the survivors was Beck Weathers, an American client of New Zealand-based guide service Adventure Consultants. Weathers was left for dead about 275 metres (900 feet) from Camp 4 at 7,950 metres (26,085 feet). After spending a night on the mountain, Weathers managed to find his way to Camp 4 with massive frostbite and vision impaired due to snow blindness. When he arrived at Camp 4, fellow climbers considered his condition terminal and left him in a tent to die overnight.</p><br>
<p>Before leaving Camp 4 Jon Krakauer heard Weathers calling for help from his tent. Weathers&#39; condition had not improved and an immediate descent to a lower elevation was deemed essential. A helicopter rescue was considered but was out of the question: Camp 4 was higher than the rated ceiling of any available helicopter and in any case would be extraordinarily dangerous. Eventually a rescue was organised thanks to a lieutenant colonel of the Nepalese Army who conducted the second-highest known helicopter medical evacuation up to that time.</p><br>
<p>The storm&#39;s impact on climbers on the North Ridge of Everest, where several climbers also died, was detailed in a first-hand account by British filmmaker and writer Matt Dickinson in his book The Other Side of Everest. 16-year-old Mark Pfetzer was on the climb and wrote about it in his account, Within Reach: My Everest Story.</p><br>
<p>The 2015 feature film Everest, directed by Baltasar Kormákur, is based on the events of this disaster.</p><br>
<h3>2006 mountaineering season</h3><br>
<p>In 2006 12 people died. One death in particular (see below) triggered an international debate and years of discussion about climbing ethics. The season was also remembered for the rescue of Lincoln Hall who had been left by his climbing team and declared dead, but was later discovered alive and survived being helped off the mountain.</p><br>
<h4>David Sharp ethics controversy</h4><br>
<p>There was an international controversy about the death of a solo British climber David Sharp, who attempted to climb Mount Everest in 2006 but died in his attempt. The story broke out of the mountaineering community into popular media, with a snow-balling series of interviews, allegations, critiques, and peace-making. The question was whether climbers that season had left a man to die, and whether he could have been saved. He was said to have attempted to summit Mount Everest by himself with no Sherpa or guide and fewer oxygen bottles than considered normal. He went with a low-budget Nepali guide firm that only provides support up to Base Camp, after which climbers go as a "loose group", offering a high degree of independence. The manager at Sharps guide support said Sharp did not take enough oxygen for his summit attempt and did not have a Sherpa guide. It is less clear who knew Sharp was in trouble, and if they did know, whether they were qualified or capable of helping him. Inglis said 40 people had passed by Sharp, but he might have been overlooked as climbers assumed Sharp was the corpse nicknamed "Green Boots", but Inglis was not aware that Turkish climbers had tried to help Sharp despite being in the process of helping an injured woman down (a Turkish woman named Burçak Poçan). There has also been some discussion about Himex in the commentary on Inglis and Sharp. In regards to Ingliss initial comments, he later revised certain details because he had been interviewed while he was "...physically and mentally exhausted, and in a lot of pain. He had suffered severe frostbite — he later had five fingertips amputated." When they went through Sharp&#39;s possessions they found a receipt for $7,490USD, believed to be the whole financial cost. Comparatively, most expeditions are between $35,000 to $100,000USD plus an additional $20,000 in other expenses that range from gear to bonuses. It was estimated on 14 May that Sharp summitted Mount Everest and began his descent down, but 15 May he was in trouble but being passed by climbers on their way up and down. On 15 May 2006 it is believed he was suffering from hypoxia, and was about 1,000 feet from the summit on the North Side route.</p><br>
<p>Some climbers who left him said that the rescue efforts would have been useless and only have caused more deaths. Beck Weathers of the 1996 Mount Everest disaster said that those who are dying are often left behind, and that he himself had been left for dead twice but was able to keep walking. The Tribune of India quoted someone who described what happened to Sharp as "the most shameful act in the history of mountaineering". In addition to Sharp&#39;s death, at least nine other climbers perished that year, including multiple Sherpas working for various guiding companies.</p><br>
<p>Much of this controversy was captured by the Discovery Channel while filming the television program Everest: Beyond the Limit. A crucial decision affecting the fate of Sharp is shown in the program, where an early returning climber Lebanese adventurer Maxim Chaya is descending from the summit and radios to his base camp manager (Russell Brice) that he has found a frostbitten and unconscious climber in distress. Chaya is unable to identify Sharp, who had chosen to climb solo without any support and so did not identify himself to other climbers. The base camp manager assumes that Sharp is part of a group that has already calculated that they must abandon him, and informs his lone climber that there is no chance of him being able to help Sharp by himself. As Sharp&#39;s condition deteriorates through the day and other descending climbers pass him, his opportunities for rescue diminish: his legs and feet curl from frostbite, preventing him from walking; the later descending climbers are lower on oxygen and lack the strength to offer aid; time runs out for any Sherpas to return and rescue him.</p><br>
<p>David Sharps body remained just below the summit on the Chinese side next to "Green Boots&quot they shared a space in a small rock cave that was an ad hoc tomb for them. Sharps body was removed from the cave in 2007, according to the BBC, and since 2014, Green Boots has been missing, presumably removed or buried.</p><br>
<h4>Lincoln Hall rescue</h4><br>
<p>As the Sharp debate kicked off, on 26 May 2006 Australian climber Lincoln Hall was found alive, after being left for dead the day before. There were no rocks around to do this and he was abandoned. The erroneous information of his death was passed on to his family. The next day he was discovered by another party alive.</p><br>
<p>Lincoln greeted his fellow mountaineers with this:</p><br>
<p>Lincoln Hall went on to live for several more years, often giving talks about his near-death experience and rescue, before dying from medical issues in 2012 at the age of 56 (born in 1955).</p><br>
<h3>2007</h3><br>
<p>Similar heroic rescue actions have been recorded since Hall, including on 21 May 2007, when Canadian climber Meagan McGrath initiated the successful high-altitude rescue of Nepali Usha Bista. Recognising her heroic rescue, Major Meagan McGrath was selected as a 2011 recipient of the Sir Edmund Hillary Foundation of Canada Humanitarian Award, which recognises a Canadian who has personally or administratively contributed a significant service or act in the Himalayan Region of Nepal.</p><br>
<h3>Ascent statistics up to 2010 season</h3><br>
<p>By the end of the 2010 climbing season, there had been 5,104 ascents to the summit by about 3,142 individuals, with 77% of these ascents being accomplished since 2000. The summit was achieved in 7 of the 22 years from 1953 to 1974, and was not missed between 1975 and 2014. In 2007, the record number of 633 ascents was recorded, by 350 climbers and 253 sherpas.</p><br>
<p>A remarkable illustration of the explosion of popularity of Everest is provided by the numbers of daily ascents. Analysis of the 1996 Mount Everest disaster shows that part of the blame was on the bottleneck caused by the large number of climbers (33 to 36) attempting to summit on the same day; this was considered unusually high at the time. By comparison, on 23 May 2010, the summit of Mount Everest was reached by 169 climbers – more summits in a single day than in the cumulative 31 years from the first successful summit in 1953 through 1983.</p><br>
<p>There have been 219 fatalities recorded on Mount Everest from the 1922 British Mount Everest Expedition through the end of 2010, a rate of 4.3 fatalities for every 100 summits (this is a general rate, and includes fatalities amongst support climbers, those who turned back before the peak, those who died en route to the peak and those who died while descending from the peak). Of the 219 fatalities, 58 (26.5%) were climbers who had summited but did not complete their descent. Though the rate of fatalities has decreased since the year 2000 (1.4 fatalities for every 100 summits, with 3938 summits since 2000), the significant increase in the total number of climbers still means 54 fatalities since 2000: 33 on the northeast ridge, 17 on the southeast ridge, 2 on the southwest face, and 2 on the north face.</p><br>
<p>Nearly all attempts at the summit are done using one of the two main routes. The traffic seen by each route varies from year to year. In 2005–07, more than half of all climbers elected to use the more challenging, but cheaper northeast route. In 2008, the northeast route was closed by the Chinese government for the entire climbing season, and the only people able to reach the summit from the north that year were athletes responsible for carrying the Olympic torch for the 2008 Summer Olympics. The route was closed to foreigners once again in 2009 in the run-up to the 50th anniversary of the Dalai Lama&#39;s exile. These closures led to declining interest in the north route, and, in 2010, two-thirds of the climbers reached the summit from the south.</p><br>
<h3>2012 and 2013 events</h3><br>
<h3>2014 avalanche and season</h3><br>
<p>On 18 April 2014, an avalanche hit the area just below the Base Camp 2 at around 01:00 UTC (06:30 local time) and at an elevation of about 5,900 m. Sixteen people were killed in the avalanche (all Nepalese guides) and nine more were injured. This was not the only tragedy in the region, with over 43 killed in the 2014 Nepal snowstorm disaster, and they were not even summiting but rather trekking the Annapurna Circuit.</p><br>
<p>One positive outcome of the season was a 13-year-old girl, Malavath Purna, reaching the summit, breaking the record for youngest female. Additionally, one team used a helicopter to fly from south base camp to Camp 2 to avoid the Khumbu Icefall, then reached the Everest summit. This team had to use the south side because the Chinese had denied them a permit to climb. Nepal turned Chinese reluctance into a success for the country, with the executive donating tens of thousands of dollars to local hospitals and achieving a new hybrid aviation-mountaineering technique. She was named the Nepalese "International Mountaineer of the Year".</p><br>
<p>Over 100 people summited Everest from China (Tibet region), and six from Nepal in the 2014 season. This included 72-year-old Bill Burke, the Indian teenage girl, and a Chinese woman Jing Wang. Another teen girl summiter was Ming Kipa Sherpa who summited with her elder sister Lhakpa Sherpa in 2003, and who had achieved the most times for woman to the summit of Mount Everest at that time. (see also Santosh Yadav)</p><br>
<h3>2015 avalanche, earthquake, season</h3><br>
<p>2015 was set to be a record-breaking season of climbs, with hundreds of permits issued in Nepal and many additional permits in Tibet (China). However, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake on 25 April 2015 effectively shut down the Everest climbing season. 2015 was the first time since 1974 with no spring summits, as all climbing teams pulled out after the quakes and avalanche.</p><br>
<p>One of the reasons for this was the high probability of aftershocks (over 50 percent according to the USGS). Just weeks after the first quake, the region was rattled again by a 7.3 magnitude quake and there were also many considerable aftershocks.</p><br>
<p>On 25 April 2015, an earthquake measuring 7.8 Mw triggered an avalanche that hit Everest Base Camp. Eighteen bodies were recovered from Mount Everest by the Indian Army mountaineering team. The avalanche began on Pumori, moved through the Khumbu Icefall on the southwest side of Mount Everest, and slammed into the South Base Camp.</p><br>
<p>The quakes trapped hundreds of climbers above the Khumbu icefall, and they had to be evacuated by helicopter as they ran low on supplies. The quake shifted the route through the ice fall, making it essentially impassable to climbers. and about 22 thousand injured. In Tibet, by 28 April at least 25 had died, and 117 were injured. By 29 April 2015, the Tibet Mountaineering Association (North/Chinese side) closed Everest and other peaks to climbing, stranding 25 teams and about 300 people on the north side of Everest. On the south side, helicopters evacuated 180 people trapped at Camps 1 and 2.</p><br>
<h4>Mountain re-opens in August 2015</h4><br>
<p>On 24 August 2015 Nepal re-opened Everest to tourism including mountain climbers. The only climber permit for the autumn season was awarded to Japanese climber Nobukazu Kuriki, who had tried four times previously to summit Everest without success. He made his fifth attempt in October, but had to give up just from the summit due to "strong winds and deep snow". Kurki noted the dangers of climbing Everest, having himself survived being stuck in a freezing snow hole for two days near the top, which came at the cost of all his fingertips and his thumb, lost to frostbite, which added further difficulty to his climb.</p><br>
<p>Some sections of the trail from Lukla to Everest Base Camp (Nepal) were damaged in the earthquakes earlier in the year and needed repairs to handle trekkers.</p><br>
<h3>2016 season</h3><br>
<p>The Nepal Department of Tourism said by June 2016 that about 456 people made it to the summit of Mount Everest, including 45 women. By 11 May 2016 the lines were fixed on the south side of Everest, after which several hundred climbers would make it up in the critical weather windows. Alan Arnette published his Everest report by year end, based on results for the now 93-year-old Elizabeth Hawley, which were released in December 2016. For 2016 her records indicate 641 made it to the summit early 2016.</p><br>
<p>On 11 May 2016 nine Sherpas summited Mount Everest. The next day another six persons reached the top. These were the first summitings since 2014, when 106 made it to the top. By 13 May, 42 climbers had reached the summit and by 22 May, good weather had allowed over 400 climbers to reach the summit. However, about 30 climbers developed frostbite or became sick, and two climbers died from what was reported as possible altitude sickness. Among those that had to turn back was a science expedition attempting to study the link between hypoxia and cognitive decline. Although it did not run its course, it did give some clues into the effects of high-altitude acclimatisation on human blood.</p><br>
<p>Adrian Ballinger and Cory Richards were sponsored by Eddie Bauer to climb Everest, and they relayed information from the Everest climb using the smartphone software application and service Snapchat. Mount Everest has had a 3G wireless data communication network since 2010. One of the things that was reported by them, was that bottled oxygen was stolen from them and there was some bad behaviour up there. The bottled oxygen was there for emergency back-up if they ran into trouble. This also turned out to be the most summits for a foreign female (not Nepali or Chinese), and one of the first US women to summit and survive without supplementary oxygen. Perez and Arnot became the fifth and sixth women to summit Everest without supplementary oxygen. He also noted it was hard to argue against large supplies of Dex, due its life-saving properties against some types of altitude sickness, especially HACE. It is not really a matter of some authorities being for or against medications, but awareness, as misuse can cause drug interactions and various side effects. In particular it was noted that supplementary oxygen significantly lowers death rate on ultra-high altitude mountain climbing, and is generally not regulated as a drug, whereas the safe use of medications is less understood or even acknowledged in many cases. (see also: Effects of high altitude on humans)</p><br>
<p>Mexican-American David Liaño Gonzalez (aka David Liano) summited for the sixth time, promoting a charity and also carrying a Seattle Seahawks flag with him to the Everest summit. Another sports team represented at the Everest summit was the Denver Broncos, with its flag unfurled by Kim Hess. Rounding out US mountaineering was news that a group of soldiers and veterans summited, including some who had been wounded in combat. A British wounded veteran (one-eyed) was also trying to summit but gave up his bid to help some Indian climbers.</p><br>
<p>In 2016 the first climbers from Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Tunisia reached the summit of Mount Everest. Only two other people from North Africa have summited Everest, one from Algeria and the other from Morocco. She returned to Australia safely, but a bittersweet victory for Australia after the loss of another Australian woman who was also trying to summit that May with her husband. He had been trying for several years and had lost his Nepali friend Sherpa Nawang Tenzing in the 2015 earthquakes. One who narrowly survived the disasters himself climbed this year to bring attention to the disease Lewy body dementia (DLB) which afflicted his father.</p><br>
<h4>Rescues and fatalities</h4><br>
<p>A one-eyed British war veteran rescued a woman from India who was in trouble on her descent. The climber, Leslie Binns, successfully rescued her and tried to save another from her ill-fated eleven-person expedition which suffered three fatalities. She had run out of bottled oxygen and was getting frostbitten.</p><br>
<p>On 11 May 2016 a Calgary physician died in Tibet, in the Chinese-side base camp. A 25-year old Nepali named Phurba Sherpa, fixing lines near the Lhotse summit, fell to his death. A guide company, Arnold Coster Expeditions, suffered two fatalities, and a third client had to be airlifted out. One was a man from the Netherlands, and another was a South African-born Australian woman. Her husband had tried to save her, but he also ran into trouble and had to be airlifted out with medical complications. These deaths were very widely reported in international news and triggered some public discussion about Everest mountaineering and tourism.</p><br>
<p>An Indian expedition from West Bengal suffered a great tragedy, with the single expedition suffering three fatalities and third, a mother of an 11-year old had to be rescued on her way down. They were part of an eleven-member expedition from India. Eight had reached the summit, including the injured woman</p><br>
<p>The death toll for Everest climbers rose to five in most reports by late May 2016, and with a death of a high-altitude worker on Lhotse face during the season (Everest summiters sometimes need to climb Lhotse face depending on the route), gives a total of six known deaths from the Everest massif by the time the season drew to a close. Although not widely reported during May, a climber in Tibet had died on 11 May 2016 which makes it possibly six for Mount Everest and seven for the Everest Massif. The Nepal ministry of tourism said five people died (on the Nepali side).</p><br>
<h3>2017 season</h3><br>
<p>2017 was the biggest season yet, permit-wise, yielding hundreds of summiters and a handful of deaths. On May 27, 2017 Kami Rita Sherpa achieved 21 times to the summit with the Alpine Ascents Everest Expedition, one of three people in the World along with Apa Sherpa and Phurba Tashi Sherpa to make it to the summit of Mount Everest 21 times. The season had a tragic start with the death of famous climber Ueli Steck of Switzerland, who died from a fall during a warm-up climb. There was a continued discussion about the nature of possible changes to the Hillary Step.</p><br>
<h2>Climbing</h2><br>
<p>One of the big activities is trips to base camp (aka trekking), which can be higher than some of the highest mountains. The other big activity is serious attempts to make it to the top of Everest, and those in support of those attempts. The peak time for this is late May, because that is when the monsoons push the jet stream away, there is another time later in the year when the monsoon ends yielding another break in the weather, but there is more snow then. Some technology for climbing include crampons, fixed ropes, various cold-weather gear, bottled oxygen, and weather prediction. Predicting the weather is critical, one of the big disasters came in 1996 when a storm hit during a summit bid. In modern times, there is greater on-demand logistical support available such as internet access, but also some new challenges like not offending the locals and watching out for oxygen-bottle thefts. Helicopter support has grown and the availability of helicopter rescues increased, but there are limits on how high and in what weather they are able to fly. Modern dangers remain unexpected avalanches (this claimed many in 2014 and 2015), sudden onset of altitude sickness, and that classic climbing danger- falling. For a price, permits are available from China in the Tibet region and from Nepal and there is a multitude of mountaineering firms world over operating on the mountain.</p><br>
<h3>Permits</h3><br>
<p>There were 334 climbing permits issued in 2014 in Nepal, these were extended until 2019 due to the closure. This was an example of hospitality that Nepalis have become famous for; an extension was especially requested by expedition firms (which in turn bring resources into the country due for mountaineering). Nepal is essentially a "fourth world" country, as of 2015 one of the poorest non-African countries along with Haiti and Myanmar, and the 19th poorest country in the world overall. Despite this, Nepal has been very welcoming to tourists and a significant tourism industry has been established. In the end he was let off with only a ten-year mountaineering ban in Nepal and allowed to return home according to UK news outlet Daily Mail. The rogue mountaineer, who in fact had not climbed other mountains, said he was "ecstatic" at said he would try again but buy a permit next time.</p><br>
<p>Nepal permits by year:</p><br>
<p>2008 – 160</p><br>
<p>2009 – 220</p><br>
<p>2010 – 209</p><br>
<p>2011 – 225</p><br>
<p>2012 – 208</p><br>
<p>2013 – 316</p><br>
<p>2014 – 326 (extended for use in any year up to 2019)</p><br>
<p>2015 – 356 (extended for in any year up to 2017)</p><br>
<p>2016 – 289</p><br>
<p>2017 – 373 (last year for 2015 extended permits)</p><br>
<p>The Chinese side in Tibet is also managed with permits for summiting Everest. They did not issue permits in 2008, due to the Olympic torch relay being taken to the summit of Mount Everest.</p><br>
<h3>Routes</h3><br>
<p>Mt. Everest has two main climbing routes, the southeast ridge from Nepal and the north ridge from Tibet, as well as many other less frequently climbed routes. Of the two main routes, the southeast ridge is technically easier and more frequently used. It was the route used by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953 and the first recognised of 15 routes to the top by 1996.</p><br>
<p>Most attempts are made during May, before the summer monsoon season. As the monsoon season approaches, the jet stream shifts northward, thereby reducing the average wind speeds high on the mountain. While attempts are sometimes made in September and October, after the monsoons, when the jet stream is again temporarily pushed northward, the additional snow deposited by the monsoons and the less stable weather patterns at the moons&#39; tail end make climbing extremely difficult.</p><br>
<h4>Southeast ridge</h4><br>
<p>The ascent via the southeast ridge begins with a trek to Base Camp at 5,380 m on the south side of Everest, in Nepal. Expeditions usually fly into Lukla (2,860 m) from Kathmandu and pass through Namche Bazaar. Climbers then hike to Base Camp, which usually takes six to eight days, allowing for proper altitude acclimatisation in order to prevent altitude sickness. Climbing equipment and supplies are carried by yaks, dzopkyos (yak-cow hybrids), and human porters to Base Camp on the Khumbu Glacier. When Hillary and Tenzing climbed Everest in 1953, the British expedition they were part of (comprising over 400 climbers, porters, and Sherpas at that point) started from the Kathmandu Valley, as there were no roads further east at that time.</p><br>
<p>Climbers spend a couple of weeks in Base Camp, acclimatising to the altitude. During that time, Sherpas and some expedition climbers set up ropes and ladders in the treacherous Khumbu Icefall.</p><br>
<p>Seracs, crevasses, and shifting blocks of ice make the icefall one of the most dangerous sections of the route. Many climbers and Sherpas have been killed in this section. To reduce the hazard, climbers usually begin their ascent well before dawn, when the freezing temperatures glue ice blocks in place.</p><br>
<p>Above the icefall is Camp I at 6,065 m.</p><br>
<p>From Camp I, climbers make their way up the Western Cwm to the base of the Lhotse face, where Camp II or Advanced Base Camp (ABC) is established at 6,500 m. The Western Cwm is a flat, gently rising glacial valley, marked by huge lateral crevasses in the centre, which prevent direct access to the upper reaches of the Cwm. Climbers are forced to cross on the far right near, the base of Nuptse, to a small passageway known as the "Nuptse corner". The Western Cwm is also called the "Valley of Silence" as the topography of the area generally cuts off wind from the climbing route. The high altitude and a clear, windless day can make the Western Cwm unbearably hot for climbers.</p><br>
<p>From ABC, climbers ascend the Lhotse face on fixed ropes, up to Camp III, located on a small ledge at 7,470 m. From there, it is another 500 metres to Camp IV on the South Col at 7,920 m.</p><br>
<p>From Camp III to Camp IV, climbers are faced with two additional challenges: the Geneva Spur and the Yellow Band. The Geneva Spur is an anvil shaped rib of black rock named by the 1952 Swiss expedition. Fixed ropes assist climbers in scrambling over this snow-covered rock band. The Yellow Band is a section of interlayered marble, phyllite, and semischist, which also requires about 100 metres of rope for traversing it.</p><br>
<p>On the South Col, climbers enter the death zone. Climbers making summit bids typically can endure no more than two or three days at this altitude. That&#39;s one reason why clear weather and low winds are critical factors in deciding whether to make a summit attempt. If weather does not cooperate within these short few days, climbers are forced to descend, many all the way back down to Base Camp.</p><br>
<p>From Camp IV, climbers begin their summit push around midnight, with hopes of reaching the summit (still another 1,000 metres above) within 10 to 12 hours. Climbers first reach "The Balcony" at 8,400 m, a small platform where they can rest and gaze at peaks to the south and east in the early light of dawn. Continuing up the ridge, climbers are then faced with the Three Steps, a series of imposing rock steps which usually forces them to the east into waist-deep snow, a serious avalanche hazard. At 8,750 m, a small table-sized dome of ice and snow marks the South Summit.</p><br>
<p>From the South Summit, climbers follow the knife-edge southeast ridge along what is known as the "Cornice traverse", where snow clings to intermittent rock. This is the most exposed section of the climb, and a misstep to the left would send one 2,400 m down the southwest face, while to the immediate right is the 3,050 m Kangshung Face. At the end of this traverse is an imposing 12 m rock wall, the Hillary Step, at 8,790 m.</p><br>
<p>Hillary and Tenzing were the first climbers to ascend this step, and they did so using primitive ice climbing equipment and ropes. Nowadays, climbers ascend this step using fixed ropes previously set up by Sherpas. Once above the step, it is a comparatively easy climb to the top on moderately angled snow slopes—though the exposure on the ridge is extreme, especially while traversing large cornices of snow. With increasing numbers of people climbing the mountain in recent years, the Step has frequently become a bottleneck, with climbers forced to wait significant amounts of time for their turn on the ropes, leading to problems in getting climbers efficiently up and down the mountain.</p><br>
<p>After the Hillary Step, climbers also must traverse a loose and rocky section that has a large entanglement of fixed ropes that can be troublesome in bad weather. Climbers typically spend less than half an hour at the summit to allow time to descend to Camp IV before darkness sets in, to avoid serious problems with afternoon weather, or because supplemental oxygen tanks run out.</p><br>
<h4>North ridge route</h4><br>
<p>The north ridge route begins from the north side of Everest, in Tibet. Expeditions trek to the Rongbuk Glacier, setting up base camp at 5,180 m on a gravel plain just below the glacier. To reach Camp II, climbers ascend the medial moraine of the east Rongbuk Glacier up to the base of Changtse, at around 6,100 m. Camp III (ABC—Advanced Base Camp) is situated below the North Col at 6,500 m. To reach Camp IV on the North Col, climbers ascend the glacier to the foot of the col where fixed ropes are used to reach the North Col at 7,010 m. From the North Col, climbers ascend the rocky north ridge to set up Camp V at around 7,775 m. The route crosses the North Face in a diagonal climb to the base of the Yellow Band, reaching the site of Camp VI at 8,230 m. From Camp VI, climbers make their final summit push.</p><br>
<p>Climbers face a treacherous traverse from the base of the First Step: ascending from 8501 to 8534 m, to the crux of the climb, the Second Step, ascending from 8577 to 8626 m. (The Second Step includes a climbing aid called the "Chinese ladder", a metal ladder placed semi-permanently in 1975 by a party of Chinese climbers. It has been almost continuously in place since, and ladders have been used by virtually all climbers on the route.) Once above the Second Step the inconsequential Third Step is clambered over, ascending from 8690 to 8800 m. Once above these steps, the summit pyramid is climbed by a snow slope of 50 degrees, to the final summit ridge along which the top is reached.</p><br>
<h3>Summit</h3><br>
<p>The routes usually share one spot in common, the summit itself. The summit of Everest has been described as "the size of a dining room table". The summit is capped with snow over ice over rock, and the layer of snow varies from year to year. The rock summit is made of Ordovician limestone and is a low-grade metamorphic rock according to Montana State University. (see survey section for more on its height and about the Everest rock summit)</p><br>
<p>Below the summit there is an area known as "rainbow valley", filled with dead bodies still wearing brightly coloured winter gear. Down to about 8000 metres is an area commonly called the "death zone", due to the high danger and low oxygen because of the low pressure.</p><br>
<p>Below the summit the mountain slopes downward to the three main sides, or faces, of Mount Everest: the North Face, the South-West Face, and the East/Kangshung Face.</p><br>
<h3>Death zone</h3><br>
<p>At the higher regions of Mount Everest, climbers seeking the summit typically spend substantial time within the death zone (altitudes higher than 8,000 m), and face significant challenges to survival. Temperatures can dip to very low levels, resulting in frostbite of any body part exposed to the air. Since temperatures are so low, snow is well-frozen in certain areas and death or injury by slipping and falling can occur. High winds at these altitudes on Everest are also a potential threat to climbers.</p><br>
<p>Another significant threat to climbers is low atmospheric pressure. The atmospheric pressure at the top of Everest is about a third of sea level pressure or 0.333 atm, resulting in the availability of only about a third as much oxygen to breathe.</p><br>
<p>Debilitating effects of the death zone are so great that it takes most climbers up to 12 hours to walk the distance of 1.72 km from South Col to the summit. Achieving even this level of performance requires prolonged altitude acclimatisation, which takes 40–60 days for a typical expedition. A sea-level dweller exposed to the atmospheric conditions at the altitude above 8,500 m without acclimatisation would likely lose consciousness within 2 to 3 minutes.</p><br>
<p>In May 2007, the Caudwell Xtreme Everest undertook a medical study of oxygen levels in human blood at extreme altitude. Over 200 volunteers climbed to Everest Base Camp where various medical tests were performed to examine blood oxygen levels. A small team also performed tests on the way to the summit. Even at base camp, the low partial pressure of oxygen had direct effect on blood oxygen saturation levels. At sea level, blood oxygen saturation is generally 98–99%. At base camp, blood saturation fell to between 85 and 87%. Blood samples taken at the summit indicated very low oxygen levels in the blood. A side effect of low blood oxygen is a greatly increased breathing rate, often 80–90 breaths per minute as opposed to a more typical 20–30. Exhaustion can occur merely attempting to breathe.</p><br>
<p>Lack of oxygen, exhaustion, extreme cold, and climbing hazards all contribute to the death toll. An injured person who cannot walk is in serious trouble, since rescue by helicopter is generally impractical and carrying the person off the mountain is very risky. People who die during the climb are typically left behind. As of 2006, about 150 bodies had never been recovered. It is not uncommon to find corpses near the standard climbing routes.</p><br>
<p>A 2008 study noted that the "death zone" is indeed where most Everest deaths occur, but also noted that most deaths occur during descent from the summit. A 2014 article in the magazine The Atlantic about deaths on Everest noted that while falling is one of the greatest dangers the DZ presents for all 8000ers, avalanches are a more common cause of death at lower altitudes. However, Everest climbing is more deadly than BASE jumping, although some have combined extreme sports and Everest including a beverage company that had someone base-jumping off Everest in a wingsuit (they did survive, though).</p><br>
<p>Despite this, Everest is safer for climbers than a number of peaks by some measurements, but it depends on the period. Some examples are Kangchenjunga, K2, Annapurna, Nanga Parbat, and the Eiger (especially the nordwand). Some factors that affect total mountain lethality include the level of popularity of the mountain, the skill of those climbing, and of course the difficulty of the climb.</p><br>
<p>Another health hazard is retinal haemorrhages, which can damage eyesight and cause blindness. Up to a quarter of Everest climbers can experience retinal haemorrhages, and although they usually heal within weeks of returning to lower altitudes, in 2010 a climber went blind and ended up dying in the death zone.</p><br>
<p>The team made a huge effort for the next 12 hours to try to get him down the mountain, but to no avail, as they were unsuccessful in getting him through the difficult sections. Even for the able, the Everest North-East ridge is recognised as a challenge. It is hard to rescue someone who has become incapacitated and it can be beyond the ability of rescuers to save anyone in such a difficult spot. They successfully launched off the summit and para-glided down to Namche in just 42 minutes, without having to climb down the mountain.</p><br>
<h3>Supplemental oxygen</h3><br>
<p>Most expeditions use oxygen masks and tanks above 8,000 m. Everest can be climbed without supplementary oxygen, but only by the most accomplished mountaineers and at increased risk. Humans do not think clearly with low oxygen, and the combination of extreme weather, low temperatures, and steep slopes often requires quick, accurate decisions. While about 95 percent of climbers who reach the summit use bottled oxygen in order to reach the top, about five percent of climbers have summited Everest without supplemental oxygen. The death rate is double for those who attempt to reach the summit without supplemental oxygen. Travelling above 8,000 feet altitude is a factor in cerebral hypoxia. This decrease of oxygen to the brain can cause dementia and brain damage, as well as other symptoms. One study found that Mount Everest may be the highest an acclimatised human could go, but also found that climbers may suffer permanent neurological damage despite returning to lower altitudes.</p><br>
<p>The use of bottled oxygen to ascend Mount Everest has been controversial. It was first used on the 1922 British Mount Everest Expedition by George Finch and Geoffrey Bruce who climbed up to 7,800 m at a spectacular speed of 1,000 vertical feet per hour (vf/h). Pinned down by a fierce storm, they escaped death by breathing oxygen from a jury-rigged set-up during the night. The next day they climbed to 8,100 m at 900 vf/h—nearly three times as fast as non-oxygen users. Yet the use of oxygen was considered so unsportsmanlike that none of the rest of the Alpine world recognised this high ascent rate. George Mallory himself described the use of such oxygen as unsportsmanlike, but he later concluded that it would be impossible for him to summit without it and consequently used it on his final attempt in 1924. When Tenzing and Hillary made the first successful summit in 1953, they used bottled oxygen, with the expedition&#39;s physiologist Griffith Pugh referring to the oxygen debate as a "futile controversy", noting that oxygen "greatly increases subjective appreciation of the surroundings, which after all is one of the chief reasons for climbing." For the next twenty-five years, bottled oxygen was considered standard for any successful summit.</p><br>
<p>Reinhold Messner was the first climber to break the bottled oxygen tradition and in 1978, with Peter Habeler, made the first successful climb without it. In 1980, Messner summited the mountain solo, without supplemental oxygen or any porters or climbing partners, on the more difficult northwest route. Once the climbing community was satisfied that the mountain could be climbed without supplemental oxygen, many purists then took the next logical step of insisting that is how it should be climbed.</p><br>
<p>The aftermath of the 1996 disaster further intensified the debate. Jon Krakauers Into Thin Air (1997) expressed the authors personal criticisms of the use of bottled oxygen. Krakauer wrote that the use of bottled oxygen allowed otherwise unqualified climbers to attempt to summit, leading to dangerous situations and more deaths. The disaster was partially caused by the sheer number of climbers (34 on that day) attempting to ascend, causing bottlenecks at the Hillary Step and delaying many climbers, most of whom summitted after the usual 14:00 turnaround time. He proposed banning bottled oxygen except for emergency cases, arguing that this would both decrease the growing pollution on Everest—many bottles have accumulated on its slopes—and keep marginally qualified climbers off the mountain.</p><br>
<p>The 1996 disaster also introduced the issue of the guide&#39;s role in using bottled oxygen.</p><br>
<p>Guide Anatoli Boukreevs decision not to use bottled oxygen was sharply criticised by Jon Krakauer. Boukreevs supporters (who include G. Weston DeWalt, who co-wrote The Climb) state that using bottled oxygen gives a false sense of security. Krakauer and his supporters point out that, without bottled oxygen, Boukreev could not directly help his clients descend. They state that Boukreev said that he was going down with client Martin Adams,</p><br>
<p>The low oxygen can cause a mental fog-like impairment of cognitive abilities described as "delayed and lethargic thought process, clinically defined as bradypsychia" even after returning to lower altitudes. In severe cases, climbers can experience hallucinations. Some studies have found that high-altitude climbers, including Everest climbers, experience altered brain structure. The effects of high altitude on the brain, particularly if it can cause permanent brain damage, continue to be studied.</p><br>
<h3>Autumn climbing</h3><br>
<p>Although generally less popular than spring, Mount Everest has also been climbed in the autumn (also called the "post-monsoon season"). For example, in 2010 Eric Larsen and five Nepali guides summited Everest in the autumn for the first time in ten years. The autumn season, when the monsoon ends, is regarded as more dangerous because there is typically a lot of new snow which can be unstable. However, this increased snow can make it more popular with certain winter sports like skiing and snow boarding. Two Japanese summited in October 1973 also. Chris Chandler and Bob Cormack summited Everest in October 1976 as part of the American Bicentennial Everest Expedition that year, the first Americans to make an autumn ascent of Mt. Everest according to the Los Angeles Times. By the 21st century, summer and autumn can be more popular with skiing and snowboard attempts on Mount Everest. During the 1980s, climbing in autumn was actually more popular than in spring. The USA astronaut Karl Gordon Henize died in October 1993 on a fall (autumn) expedition conducting an experiment on radiation. The amount of background radiation increases with higher altitudes.</p><br>
<p>The mountain has also been climbed in the winter, but that is not popular because of the combination of cold high winds and shorter days. By January the peak is typically battered by 170 mph winds and the average temperature of the summit is around −33 °F (−36 °C).</p><br>
<h3>Selected climbing records</h3><br>
<p>By the end of the 2010 climbing season, there had been 5,104 ascents to the summit by about 3,142 individuals. Some notable "firsts" by climbers include:</p><br>
<p>Panoramas:</p><br>
<p>from Discovery Channel</p><br>
<p></revision></p><br>
<p>The Hotel Chelsea – also called the Chelsea Hotel, or simply the Chelsea – is a historic New York City hotel and landmark built between 1883 and 1885, known primarily for the notability of its residents over the years. The 250-unit</p><br>
<p>It has been the home of numerous writers, musicians, artists and actors. Though the Chelsea no longer accepts new long-term residencies, the building is still home to many who lived there before the change in policy. Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey while staying at the Chelsea, and poets Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso chose it as a place for philosophical and artistic exchange. It is also known as the place where the writer Dylan Thomas was staying in room 205 when he died of pneumonia on November 9, 1953, and where Nancy Spungen, girlfriend of Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols, was found stabbed to death on October 12, 1978. Arthur Miller wrote a short piece, "The Chelsea Affect", describing life at Hotel Chelsea in the early 1960s.</p><br>
<p>As of August 1, 2011, the hotel closed for renovations.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Built between 1884 and 1885 and opened for initial occupation in 1884, the twelve-story red-brick building that is now the Hotel Chelsea was one of the city&#39;s first private apartment cooperatives. It was designed by Philip Hubert of the firm of Hubert, Pirrson & Company in a style that has been described variously as Queen Anne Revival and Victorian Gothic. Among its distinctive features are the delicate, flower-ornamented iron balconies on its facade, which were constructed by J.B. and J.M. Cornell and its grand staircase, which extends upward twelve floors. Generally, this staircase is only accessible to registered guests, although the hotel does offer monthly tours to others. At the time of its construction, the building was the tallest in New York.</p><br>
<p>Hubert and Pirsson had created a "Hubert Home Club" in 1880 for "The Rembrandt", a six-story building on West 57th Street intended as housing for artists. This early cooperative building had rental units to help defray costs, and also provided servants as part of the building staff. However within a few years the combination of economic stresses, the suspicions of New Yorks middle class about apartment living, the opening up of Upper Manhattan and the plentiful supply of houses there, and the relocation of the citys theater district bankrupted the Chelsea.</p><br>
<p>The building reopened as a hotel in 1905, which was later managed by Knott Hotels and resident manager A. R. Walty. After the hotel went bankrupt, it was purchased in 1939 by Joseph Gross, Julius Krauss, and David Bard, and these partners managed the hotel together until the early 1970s. With the passing of Joseph Gross and Julius Krauss, the management fell to Stanley Bard (1934–2017), David Bard&#39;s son.</p><br>
<p>On June 18, 2007, the hotels board of directors ousted Bard as the hotels manager. Dr. Marlene Krauss, the daughter of Julius Krauss, and David Elder, the grandson of Joseph Gross and the son of playwright and screenwriter Lonne Elder III, replaced Stanley Bard with the management company BD Hotels NY; that firm has since been terminated as well.</p><br>
<p>In May 2011, the hotel was sold to real estate developer Joseph Chetrit for US $80 million.</p><br>
<h2>Notable residents</h2><br>
<h3>Literary artists</h3><br>
<p>During its lifetime Hotel Chelsea has provided a home to many famous writers and thinkers including Mark Twain, O. Henry, Dylan Thomas, Valerie Solanas, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Arnold Weinstein,</p><br>
<p>Charles R. Jackson, author of The Lost Weekend, committed suicide in his room on September 21, 1968. Joseph O&#39;Neill and his wife moved there in 1998, and they raised three sons there; the Chelsea Hotel plays a significant role in his novel Netherland.</p><br>
<h3>Actors and film directors</h3><br>
<p>The hotel has been a home to actors and film directors such as Stanley Kubrick, Shirley Clarke, Mitch Hedberg, Dave Hill, Miloš Forman, Lillie Langtry, Ethan Hawke, Dennis Hopper, Eddie Izzard, Uma Thurman, Elliott Gould, Elaine Stritch, Michael Imperioli, Jane Fonda, Russell Brand, the Warhol film star Viva, and Edie Sedgwick.</p><br>
<h3>Musicians</h3><br>
<p>Much of the Hotel Chelsea&#39;s history has been colored by the musicians who have resided or visited there. Some of the most prominent names include the Grateful Dead, Nico, Tom Waits, Patti Smith,</p><br>
<h3>Visual artists</h3><br>
<p>The hotel has featured and collected the work of the many visual artists who have passed through. Doris Chase, Bernard Childs, Brett Whiteley, Larry Rivers and from 1961 to 1970 several of his French nouveau réalistes friends like Yves Klein (who wrote his Manifeste de lhôtel Chelsea there in April 1961), Arman, Martial Raysse, Jean Tinguely, Niki de Saint-Phalle, Christo, Daniel Spoerri or Alain Jacquet (who left a version of his Déjeuner sur lherbe from 1964 in the hotel lobby featuring other pieces by Larry Rivers or Arman), Francesco Clemente, Julian Schnabel, Joe Andoe, David Remfry, Diego Rivera, Robert Crumb, Ellen Cantor, Jasper Johns, Tom Wesselmann, Claes Oldenburg, Herbert Gentry, Willem de Kooning, Robert Mapplethorpe (room 1017, with Patti Smith), Moses Soyer (who died there in 1974), Nora Sumberg, and Henri Cartier-Bresson have all spent time at the hotel. Experimental filmmaker and ethnomusicologist Harry Everett Smith lived and died in Room 328. The painter Alphaeus Philemon Cole lived there for 35 years until his death in 1988, aged 112, at which point he was the oldest verified man alive. The sculptor René Shapshak and his wife lived here; his bust of Harry Truman and reliefs were in the lobby.</p><br>
<h3>Fashion designers</h3><br>
<p>Charles James, credited with being America&#39;s first couturier who influenced fashion in the 1940s and 1950s, moved into the Chelsea in 1964. He died there of pneumonia in 1978.</p><br>
<h3>Warhol</h3><br>
<p>Hotel Chelsea is often associated with the Warhol superstars, as Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey directed Chelsea Girls (1966), a film about his Factory regulars and their lives at the hotel.</p><br>
<h3>Others</h3><br>
<p>Several survivors of the stayed for some time in this hotel as it is a short distance from Pier 54, the White Star Line dock where the Titanic was supposed to dock. The Chelsea was also home to many sailors returning from their duties in World War I.</p><br>
<h2>In popular culture</h2><br>
<h3>Films and television</h3><br>
<p>The hotel has been featured in:</p><br>
<p>Chelsea Girls (1966), by Andy Warhol, was shot at the Chelsea.</p><br>
<p>Portrait of Jason (1967), by Shirley Clarke, was shot at the Chelsea.</p><br>
<p>An American Family (1973, PBS) – an episode of the pioneering reality TV series was mostly filmed at the Chelsea.</p><br>
<p>Arena (1981) – the popular BBC arts documentary series featured an episode, "Chelsea Hotel".</p><br>
<p>Sid and Nancy (1986), by Alex Cox.</p><br>
<p>Some scenes in Romeo Is Bleeding (1993)—which, like Sid and Nancy, stars Gary Oldman—were filmed and are set in the Chelsea.</p><br>
<p>Part of Léon: The Professional (1994), by Luc Besson, was shot there, although it was set in an apartment block.</p><br>
<p>Midnight in Chelsea (1997), directed by Mark Pellington, a video to a track from the 1997 Jon Bon Jovi solo album Destination Anywhere.</p><br>
<p>Chelsea Walls (2001), directed by Ethan Hawke, a movie about a new generation of artists living at the hotel.</p><br>
<p>Chelsea on the Rocks (2008), a documentary film directed by Abel Ferrara.</p><br>
<p>Hotel Chelsea (2009), a horror film about a Japanese couple staying at the hotel.</p><br>
<h3>Music</h3><br>
<p>The hotel is featured in many songs, including:</p><br>
<p>"Sara" by Bob Dylan</p><br>
<p>"Chelsea Morning" by Joni Mitchell</p><br>
<p>"Chelsea Hotel #2" by Leonard Cohen, later covered by various artists</p><br>
<p>"Midnight in Chelsea" by Bon Jovi</p><br>
<p>"Chelsea Girl" by Nico</p><br>
<p>"Hotel Chelsea Nights" by Ryan Adams</p><br>
<p>"Dear Abbey" by Kinky Friedman</p><br>
<p>"Like a Drug I Never Did Before" by Joey Ramone</p><br>
<p>"The Chelsea Hotel" by Graham Nash</p><br>
<p>"Third Week in the Chelsea" by Jefferson Airplane</p><br>
<p>"Chelsea Hotel" on Meshell Ndegeocello&#39;s 2011 album Weather</p><br>
<p>"Chelsea" by Phoebe Bridgers</p><br>
<h3>Books</h3><br>
<p>The San Juan Mountains are a high and rugged mountain range in the Rocky Mountains in southwestern Colorado and northwestern New Mexico. The area is highly mineralized  and figured in the gold and silver mining industry of early Colorado. Major towns, all old mining camps, include Creede, Lake City, Silverton, Ouray, and Telluride. Large scale mining has ended in the region, although independent prospectors still work claims throughout the range. The last large scale mines were the Sunnyside Mine near Silverton, which operated until late in the 20th century and the Idarado Mine on Red Mountain Pass that closed down in the 1970s. Famous old San Juan mines include the Camp Bird and Smuggler Union mines, both located between Telluride and Ouray.</p><br>
<p>The Summitville mine was the scene of a major environmental disaster in the 1990s when the liner of a cyanide-laced tailing pond began leaking heavily. Summitville is in the Summitville caldera, one of many extinct volcanoes making up the San Juan volcanic field. One, La Garita Caldera, is 35 mi in diameter. Large beds of lava, some extending under the floor of the San Luis Valley, are characteristic of the eastern slope of the San Juans.</p><br>
<p>Tourism is now a major part of the regional economy, with the narrow gauge railway between Durango and Silverton being an attraction in the summer. Jeeping is popular on the old trails which linked the historic mining camps, including the notorious Black Bear Road. Visiting old ghost towns is popular, as is wilderness trekking and mountain climbing. Many of the old mining camps are now popular sites of summer homes. Though the San Juans are extremely steep and receive a lot of snow, so far only Telluride has made the transition to a major ski resort. Purgatory Resort, once known as Durango Mountain Resort, is a small ski area 26 miles north of Durango. There is also skiing on Wolf Creek Pass at the Wolf Creek ski area. Recently Silverton Mountain ski area has begun operation near Silverton.</p><br>
<p>The Rio Grande drains the east side of the range. The other side of the San Juans, the western slope of the continental divide, is drained by tributaries of the San Juan, Dolores and Gunnison rivers, which all flow into the Colorado River.</p><br>
<p>The San Juan and Uncompahgre National Forests cover a large portion of the San Juan Mountains.</p><br>
<p>The San Juan Mountains are also distinctive for their high altitude plateaus and peaks. As a result, facilities in the towns and cities of the region are among the highest in the nation. Telluride Airport at an elevation of 9,070 feet., is the highest in the United States with regularly scheduled commercial service.</p><br>
<h2>Prominent peaks</h2><br>
<p>Note: This is only a partial list of important peaks in the San Juans, listing peaks by prominence only. There are dozens more summits over 12,000 feet.</p><br>
<h2>History of the area</h2><br>
<p>Mining operators in the San Juan mountain area formed the San Juan District Mining Association (SJDMA) in 1903, as a direct result of a Western Federation of Miners proposal to the Telluride Mining Association for the eight-hour day, which had been approved in a referendum by 72 percent of Colorado voters. The new association consolidated the power of thirty-six mining properties in San Miguel, Ouray, and San Juan counties. The SJDMA refused to consider any reduction in hours or increase in wages, helping to provoke a bitter strike.</p><br>
<h2>Acceleration of snowmelt by dust</h2><br>
<p>Dust blown in from adjoining deserts sometimes accelerates snowmelt in the San Juans.</p><br>
<p>The Gulf of Guinea is the northeasternmost part of the tropical Atlantic Ocean between Cape Lopez in Gabon, north and west to Cape Palmas in Liberia. The intersection of the Equator and Prime Meridian  is in the gulf.</p><br>
<p>Among the many rivers that drain into the Gulf of Guinea are the Niger and the Volta. The coastline on the gulf includes the Bight of Benin and the Bight of Bonny.</p><br>
<h2>Name</h2><br>
<p>The origin of the name Guinea is thought to be an area in the region, although the specifics are disputed. Bovill (1995) gives a thorough description:</p><br>
<p>The name "Guinea" was also applied to south coast of West Africa, north of the Gulf of Guinea, which became known as "Upper Guinea", and the west coast of Southern Africa, to the east, which became known as "Lower Guinea". The name "Guinea" is still attached to the names of three countries in Africa: Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, and Equatorial Guinea, as well as New Guinea in Melanesia.</p><br>
<h2>Geography</h2><br>
<p>The main river shedding its waters in the gulf is the Niger River.</p><br>
<p>Different definitions of the geographic limits of the Gulf of Guinea are given; the International Hydrographic Organization defines the southwest extent of the Gulf of Guinea as "A line from Cap Lopez (0&deg;37&prime;S latitude, 8&deg;43&prime;E longitude), in Gabon, northwestward to Ihléu Gago Coutinho (Ilhéu das Rôlas) (0&deg;01&prime;S latitude, 6&deg;32&prime;E longitude)</p><br>
<p>and thence a line from Ihléu Gago Coutinho northwestward to Cape Palmas (4&deg;22&prime;N latitude, 7&deg;44&prime;W longitude), in Liberia.</p><br>
<h3>Islands in the Gulf of Guinea</h3><br>
<p>The Gulf of Guinea contains a number of islands, the largest of which are in a southwest-northeast chain, forming part of the Cameroon line of volcanoes.</p><br>
<p>Annobón, also known as Pagalu or Pigalu, is an island that is part of Equatorial Guinea.</p><br>
<p>Bobowasi Island is an island off the west coast of Africa in the Gulf of Guinea that is part of Western region Ghana.</p><br>
<p>Bioko is an island off the west coast of Africa in the Gulf of Guinea that is part of Equatorial Guinea.</p><br>
<p>Corisco is an island belonging to Equatorial Guinea.</p><br>
<p>Elobey Grande and Elobey Chico are two small islands belonging to Equatorial Guinea.</p><br>
<p>São Tomé and Príncipe (officially the Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe) is a Portuguese-speaking island nation in the Gulf of Guinea that became independent from Portugal in 1975. It is located off the western equatorial coast of Africa and consists of two islands, São Tomé and Príncipe. They are located about 140 km apart and about 250 and, respectively, off the northwestern coast of Gabon. Both islands are part of an extinct volcanic mountain range. São Tomé, the sizeable southern island, is situated just north of the Equator.</p><br>
<p>Eridu  is an archaeological site in southern Mesopotamia . Eridu was long considered the earliest city in southern Mesopotamia and is still today argued to be the oldest city in the world. Located 12 km southwest of Ur, Eridu was the southernmost of a conglomeration of Sumerian cities that grew around temples, almost in sight of one another. These buildings were made of mud brick and built on top of one another. In Sumerian mythology, Eridu was originally the home of Enki, later known by the Akkadians as Ea, who was considered to have founded the city. His temple was called E-Abzu, as Enki was believed to live in Abzu, an aquifer from which all life was believed to stem.</p><br>
<h2>History of research</h2><br>
<p>The site at Tel Abu Shahrain, near Basra, has been excavated 4 times. It was initially excavated by John George Taylor in 1855, R. Campbell Thompson in 1918, and H.R. Hall in 1919. Excavation there resumed from 1946 to 1949 under Fuad Safar and Seton Lloyd of the Iraqi Directorate General of Antiquities and Heritage. These archaeological investigations showed that, according to Oppenheim, "eventually the entire south lapsed into stagnation, abandoning the political initiative to the rulers of the northern cities," probably as a result of increasing salinity produced by continuous irrigation, and the city was abandoned in 600 BC.</p><br>
<h2>Prominence</h2><br>
<p>Eridu, also transliterated as Eridug, could mean "mighty place" or "guidance place". In the Sumerian King List, Eridu is named as the city of the first kings. The king list continues:</p><br>
<p>The king list gave particularly long reigns to the kings who ruled before a great flood occurred and shows how the centre of power progressively moved from the south to the north of the country. Adapa, a man of Eridu, is depicted as an early culture hero. Identified with U-an, a half-human creature from the sea (Abgallu, from ab=water, gal=big, lu=man), he was considered to have brought civilization to the city during the time of King Alulim.</p><br>
<p>In Sumerian mythology, Eridu was the home of the Abzu temple of the god Enki, the Sumerian counterpart of the Akkadian god Ea, god of deep waters, wisdom and magic. Like all the Sumerian and Babylonian gods, Enki/Ea began as a local god who, according to the later cosmology, came to share the rule of the cosmos with Anu and Enlil. His kingdom was the sweet waters that lay below earth (Sumerian ab=water; zu=far).</p><br>
<p>The stories of Inanna, goddess of Uruk, describe how she had to go to Eridu in order to receive the gifts of civilization. At first Enki, the god of Eridu, attempted to retrieve these sources of his power but later willingly accepted that Uruk now was the centre of the land. This seems to be a mythical reference to the transfer of power northward.</p><br>
<p>Babylonian texts talk of the foundation of Eridu by the god Marduk as the first city, "the holy city, the dwelling of their delight".</p><br>
<p>In the court of Assyria, special physicians trained in the ancient lore of Eridu, far to the south, foretold the course of sickness from signs and portents on the patient&#39;s body and offered the appropriate incantations and magical resources as cures.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>According to the Sumerian King List Eridu was the first city in the World. The opening line reads,</p><br>
<p>In Sumerian mythology, it was said to be one of the five cities built before the Deluge occurred.</p><br>
<p>Eridu appears to be the earliest settlement in the region, founded ca. 5400 BC, close to the Persian Gulf near the mouth of the Euphrates River. Because of accumulation of silt at the shoreline over the millennia, the remains of Eridu are now some distance from the gulf at Abu Shahrain in Iraq. Excavation has shown that the city was founded on a virgin sand-dune site with no previous occupation. P. Steinkeller has hypothesised that the earliest divinity at Eridu was a Goddess, who later emerged as the Earth Goddess Ninhursag (Nin=Lady, Hur=Mountain, Sag=Sacred), with the later growth in Enki as a male divinity the result of a hieros gamos, with a male divinity or functionary of the temple.</p><br>
<p>According to Gwendolyn Leick, Eridu was formed at the confluence of three separate ecosystems, supporting three distinct lifestyles, that led by the Abgallu (Ab=water, Gal=great, Lu=man) came to an agreement about access to fresh water in a desert environment. The oldest agrarian settlement seems to have been based upon intensive subsistence irrigation agriculture derived from the Samarra culture to the north, characterised by the building of canals, and mud-brick buildings. The fisher-hunter cultures of the Arabian littoral were responsible for the extensive middens along the Arabian shoreline, and may have been the original Sumerians. They seem to have dwelt in reed huts. The third culture that contributed to the building of Eridu were the Semitic-speaking nomadic herders of herds of sheep and goats living in tents in semi-desert areas. All three cultures seem implicated in the earliest levels of the city. The urban settlement was centered on an impressive temple complex built of mudbrick, within a small depression that allowed water to accumulate.</p><br>
<p>Kate Fielden reports "The earliest village settlement (c.5000 BC) had grown into a substantial city of mudbrick and reed houses by c.2900 BC, covering 8-10 ha (20-25 acres). Mallowan writes that by the Ubaid period, it was as an "unusually large city" of an area of approx. 20¬25 acres, with a population of "not less than 4000 souls". Jacobsen describes that "Eridu was for all practical purposes abandoned after the Ubaid period", although it had recovered by Early Dynastic II as there was a Massive Early Dynastic II palace (100 m in each direction) partially excavated there. Ruth Whitehouse called it "a Major Early Dynastic City". By c.2050 BC the city had declined; there is little evidence of occupation after that date. Eighteen superimposed mudbrick temples at the site underlie the unfinished Ziggurat of Amar-Sin (c. 2047 – 2039 BC). The finding of extensive deposits of fishbones associated with the earliest levels also shows a continuity of the Abzu cult associated later with Enki and Ea. This apparent continuity of occupation and religious observance at Eridu provide convincing evidence for the indigenous origin of Sumerian civilization.</p><br>
<p>Eridu was abandoned for long periods, before it was finally deserted and allowed to fall into ruin in the 6th century BC. The encroachment of neighbouring sand dunes, and the rise of a saline water table, set early limits to its agricultural base so in its later Neo-Babylonian development, Eridu was rebuilt as a purely temple site, in honour of its earliest history.</p><br>
<h3>Possible location of Tower of Babel</h3><br>
<p>The Egyptologist David Rohl has conjectured that Eridu, to the south of Ur, was the original Babel and site of the Tower of Babel, rather than the later city of Babylon, but many other scholars have expressed disagreement with this proposal.</p><br>
<p>Other scholars have discussed at length a number of additional correspondences between the names of "Babylon" and "Eridu". Historical tablets state that Sargon of Akkad (ca. 2300 BC) dug up the original "Babylon" and rebuilt it near Akkad, though some scholars suspect this may in fact refer to the much later Assyrian king Sargon II.</p><br>
<h2>Architecture</h2><br>
<p>The urban nucleus of Eridu was Enkis temple, called House of the Aquifer (Cuneiform:, E2.ZU.AB; Sumerian: e2-abzu; Akkadian: bītu apsû), which in later history was called House of the Waters (Cuneiform:, E2.LAGAB×HAL; Sumerian: e2-engur; Akkadian: bītu engurru). The name refers to Enkis realm. His consort Ninhursanga had a nearby temple at Ubaid.</p><br>
<p>During the Ur III period a ziggurat was built over the remains of previous temples by Ur-Nammu.</p><br>
<p>Aside from of Uruk (as mentioned in the Aratta epics), several later historical Sumerian kings are said in inscriptions found here to have worked on or renewed the e-abzu temple, including Elili of Ur; Ur-Nammu, Shulgi and Amar-Sin of Ur-III, and Nur-Adad of Larsa.</p><br>
<h3>House of the Aquifer (E-Abzu)</h3><br>
<p>Dodoni  is a village and a municipality in the Ioannina regional unit, Epirus, Greece. The seat of the municipality is the village Agia Kyriaki .</p><br>
<p>The modern village of Dodoni is located near the ancient city of same name and site of the ancient oracle of Dodona. Oedipus the King was shot here in 1967.</p><br>
<h2>Municipality</h2><br>
<p>The present municipality Dodoni was formed at the 2011 local government reform by the merger of the following 4 former municipalities, that became municipal units:</p><br>
<p>Agios Dimitrios</p><br>
<p>Dodoni</p><br>
<p>Lakka Souliou</p><br>
<p>Selloi</p><br>
<p>The municipality Dodoni has an area of 657.499 km, the municipal unit Dodoni has an area of 101.016 km, and the community Dodoni has an area of 8.748 km.</p><br>
<p>The Hindu Kush , also known in Ancient Greek as the Caucasus Indicus  or Paropamisadae , in Pashto and Persian as , is an 800 km mountain range that stretches near the Afghan-Pakistan border, from central Afghanistan to northern Pakistan. It forms the western section of the Hindu Kush Himalayan Region . It divides the valley of the Amu Darya  to the north from the Indus River valley to the south.</p><br>
<p>The Hindu Kush range has numerous high snow-capped peaks, with the highest point in the Hindu Kush being Tirich Mir or Terichmir at 7,708 m in the Chitral District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. To the north, near its northeastern end, the Hindu Kush buttresses the Pamir Mountains near the point where the borders of China, Pakistan and Afghanistan meet, after which it runs southwest through Pakistan and into Afghanistan near their border. The eastern end of the Hindu Kush in the north merges with the Karakoram Range. Towards its southern end, it connects with the Spin Ghar Range near the Kabul River.</p><br>
<p>According to Gnoli, "if we compare the first chapter of the Vidēvdād with the passages of geographical interest that we come across mainly in the great Zoroastrian yašts, we can conclude that the geographical area of Avesta was dominated by the Hindu Kush range at the center, the western boundary being marked by the districts of Margiana, Areia, and Drangiana, the eastern one by the Indo-Iranian frontier regions such as Gandhāra, Bunēr, the land of the Seven Rivers." The Hindu Kush range region was later a historically significant centre of Buddhism with sites such as the Bamiyan Buddhas. and continues to be important during modern era warfare in Afghanistan.</p><br>
<h2>Geology and formation</h2><br>
<p>Geologically, the range is rooted in the formation of a subcontinent from a region of Gondwana that drifted away from East Africa about 160 million years ago, around the Middle Jurassic period. The Indian subcontinent, Australia and islands of Indian Ocean rifted further, drifting northeastwards, with the Indian subcontinent colliding with the Eurasian plate nearly 55 million years ago, towards the end of Palaeocene. This collision created the Himalayas, including the Hindu Kush.</p><br>
<p>The Hindu Kush range remains geologically active and are still rising. It is prone to earthquakes.</p><br>
<h2>Origin of name</h2><br>
<p>The origins of the name Hindu Kush are uncertain, with various theories being propounded by different scholars and writers. According to Hobson-Jobson, the name might be a possible corruption of Indicus Caucasus, with another explanation mentioned first by Ibn Batuta remaining popular despite doubts upon it, and the modification of the name by some later writers into Hindu Koh is factitious and throws no light on the name&#39;s origin.</p><br>
<p>In the time of Alexander the Great, the Hindu Kush range was referred to as the Caucasus Indicus or the "Caucasus of the Indus River" (as opposed to the Greater Caucasus range between the Caspian and Black Seas), and in the time of Islam in India, the regular invasions possibly derived Hind Kash as Hindu Kush Hindū Kūh and Kūh-e Hind usually applied to the entire range separating the basins of the Kabul and Helmand Rivers from that of the Amu Darya, or, more specifically, to that part of the range lying northwest of Kabul. Sanskrit documents refer to the Hindu Kush as Hind kshetra in short Hind Kash as frontier lands of India. "Kash as in Kashmir (pronounced as कश in Hindi, in English written as Kush)" word also synonym of frontier part of a "Kusha" grass. Hind Kash all around from Amu Darya (in Vedic Sanskrit Vakṣu (वक्षु) river) to Kashmir was Kshetra (place) for meditation and teaching by founders of Hinduism.</p><br>
<p>The mountain range was called "Paropamisadae" by Hellenic Greeks in the late first millennium BC.</p><br>
<p>The word Koh or Kuh means "mountain" in the local language, Khowar. According to Nigel Allan, Hindu Kush meant both "mountains of India" and "sparkling snows of India", as he notes, from a Central Asian perspective. Furthermore, some believe it to be the name derived from the rule of the Hindu god Rama&#39;s son, Kusha, who ruled in Kasur, in present-day Punjab, Pakistan. Hindū Kūh (ھندوکوه) and Kūh-e Hind (کوهِ ھند) are usually applied to the entire range separating the basins of the Kabul and Helmand rivers from that of the Amu River (ancient Oxus), or more specifically, to that part of the range lying northwest of the Afghan capital Kabul. Sanskrit documents refer to the Hindu Kush as Pāriyātra Parvata (पारियात्र पर्वत)</p><br>
<p>The Persian-English dictionary indicates that the word &#39;koš&#39; kʰoʃ is derived from the verb (&#39;koštan&#39; ), meaning "to kill". According to Francis Joseph Steingass, the word and suffix "-kush" means "a male; (imp. of kushtan in comp.) a killer, who kills, slays, murders, oppresses as azhdaha-kush". A Practical Dictionary of the Persian Language gives the meaning of the word kush as "hotbed". According to one interpretation, the name Hindu Kush means "kills the Hindu" or "Hindu killer" and is a reminder of the days when slaves from the Indian subcontinent died in the harsh weather typical of the Afghan mountains while being taken to Central Asia. The World Book Encyclopedia states that the word kush means death, and was probably given to the mountains because of their dangerous passes.</p><br>
<p>In his travel memoirs about India, the 14th century Moroccan traveller Muhammad Ibn Battuta mentioned crossing into India via the mountain passes of the Hindu Kush. In his Rihla, he mentions these mountains and the history of the range in slave trading. Alexander von Humboldt stated that it can be learned from his work that the name only referred to a single mountain pass upon which many Indian slaves died of the cold weather. Battuta wrote,</p><br>
<p>The name Hindu Kush is relatively young, states Ervin Grötzbach, and it is "missing from the accounts of the early Arab geographers and occurs for the first time in Ibn Baṭṭuṭa (ca. 1330)". Ibn Baṭṭuṭa, states Grötzbach, saw the "origin of the name Hindu Kush (Hindu-killer) in the fact that numerous Hindu slaves died crossing the pass on their way from India to Turkestan". In contrast, state Fosco Maraini and Nigel Allan, the earliest known usage occurs on a map published about 1000 CE. According to Allan, the term Hindu Kush has been commonly seen to mean "Hindu killer", but two other meanings of the term include "sparkling snows of India" and "mountains of India" with "Kush" possibly a soft variant of Kuh which means "mountain". Hindu Kush in Arabic means mountains of India. To Arab geographers, states Allan, Hindu Kush was the frontier boundary where Hindustan started.Fosco Maraini et al,</p><br>
<p>https://www.britannica.com/place/Hindu-Kush Hindu Kush, Encyclopaedia Britannica</p><br>
<p>According to McColl, the origins of the Hindu Kush name are controversial. Along with its origin in the perishing of Indian slaves, two other possibilities exist. The term could be a corruption of Hindu Koh from pre-Islamic times where it separated Hindu population of southern Afghanistan from non-Hindu population in northern Afghanistan. The second possibility is that the name may be from the ancient Avestan language, with the meaning "water mountain".</p><br>
<h3>Other names</h3><br>
<p>The mountain range was also called "Paropamisadae" by Hellenic Greeks in the late first millennium BC.</p><br>
<p>Some 19th century Encyclopedias and gazetteers state that the term Hindu Kush originally applied only to the peak in the area of the Kushan Pass, which had become a centre of the Kushan Empire by the first century.</p><br>
<p>Some scholars remove the space, and refer to Hindu Kush as "Hindukush".</p><br>
<h2>Mountains</h2><br>
<p>The Hindu Kush is a formidable mountain range to cross with most peaks being between 14,500 and 17,000 feet, and some much higher. The mountains experience heavy snowfall and blizzards, with the lowest mountain pass through them being southern Shibar pass (9,000 feet) where the Hindu Kush range terminates. Other mountain passes being generally about 12,000 or higher. They become passable in late spring and summer.</p><br>
<p>The mountains of the Hindu Kush range diminish in height as they stretch westward. Near Kabul, in the west, they attain heights of 3,500 to 4,000 m; in the east they extend from 4,500 to 6,000 m. The average altitude of the Hindu Kush is 4,500 m.</p><br>
<p>The Hindu Kush system stretches about 966 km laterally, and its median north-south measurement is about 240 km. Only about 600 km of the Hindu Kush system is called the Hindu Kush mountains. The rest of the system consists of numerous smaller mountain ranges. Rivers that flow from the mountain system include the Helmand River, the Hari River and the Kabul River, watersheds for the Sistan Basin. The lower Sistan basin gets little rainfall (~50 mm per year) and the main source of water is the Helmand River which brings snowmelt water from the southern Hindu Kush. The smaller Khash, the Farah and the Arashkan (Harut) rivers bring water from the western Hindu Kush. The basin of these rivers serves the ecology and economy of the region west to Hindu Kush, but the water flow in these rivers fluctuates severely and has been a historical problem for any settlement. Extreme and extended droughts have been common.</p><br>
<p>The Hindu Kush are orographically described in several parts. The western Hindu Kush, states Yarshater, rises to over 5,100 meters and stretches between Darra-ye Sekari and the Shibar Pass in the west and the Khawak Pass in the east. The central Hindu Kush rising over 6,800 meters has numerous spurs between the Khawak Pass in the east and the Durāh Pass in the west. The eastern Hindu Kush with peaks over 7,000 meter extends from the Durāh Pass to the Baroghil Pass at the border between northeastern Afghanistan and north Pakistan. The ridges between Khawak Pass and Badakshan is over 5,800 meter and is called the Kaja Mohammed range.</p><br>
<p>The Hindu Kush, states Yarshater, are a part of the "young Eurasian mountain range consisting of metamorphic rocks such as schist, gneiss and marble, as well as of intrusives such as granite, diorite of different age and size". The northern regions of the Hindu Kush witness Himalayan winter and have glaciers, while its southeastern end witness the fringe of Indian subcontinent summer monsoons. From about 1,300 to 2,300 meter, states Yarshater, "sklerophyllous forests are predominant with Quercus and Olea (wild olive); above that up to a height of about 3,300 m one finds coniferous forests with cedars, Picea, Abies, Pinus, and junipers". The inner valleys of the Hindu Kush see little rain and have desert vegetation.</p><br>
<p>Numerous high passes ("kotal") transect the mountains, forming a strategically important network for the transit of caravans. The most important mountain pass is the Salang Pass (Kotal-e Salang) (3,878 m); it links Kabul and points south of it to northern Afghanistan. The completion of a tunnel within this pass in 1964 reduced travel time between Kabul and the north to a few hours. Previously access to the north through the Kotal-e Shibar (3,260 m) took three days. The Salang tunnel at 3,363 m and the extensive network of galleries on the approach roads were constructed with Soviet financial and technological assistance and involved drilling 1.7 miles through the heart of the Hindu Kush. The Salang tunnel is on Afghan Highway 76, northwest of Golbahar town, and has been an active area of armed conflict with various parties trying to control it.</p><br>
<p>These mountainous areas are mostly barren, or at the most sparsely sprinkled with trees and stunted bushes. Very ancient mines producing lapis lazuli are found in Kowkcheh Valley, while gem-grade emeralds are found north of Kabul in the valley of the Panjsher River and some of its tributaries. According to Walter Schumann, the West Hindu Kush mountains have been the source of finest Lapis Lazuli for thousands of years.</p><br>
<h3>Eastern Hindu Kush</h3><br>
<p>The Eastern Hindu Kush range, also known as the High Hindu Kush range, is mostly located in northern Pakistan and the Nuristan and Badakhshan provinces of Afghanistan. The Chitral District of Pakistan is home to Tirich Mir, Noshaq, and Istoro Nal, the highest peaks in the Hindu Kush. The range also extends into Ghizar, Yasin Valley, and Ishkoman in Pakistan&#39;s Northern Areas.</p><br>
<p>Chitral, Pakistan, is considered to be the pinnacle of the Hindu Kush region. The highest peaks, as well as countless passes and massive glaciers, are located in this region. The Chiantar, Kurambar, and Terich glaciers are amongst the most extensive in the Hindu Kush and the meltwater from these glaciers form the Kunar River, which eventually flows south into Afghanistan and joins the Bashgal, Panjshir, and eventually the much smaller Kabul River.</p><br>
<h3>Highest mountains</h3><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>The mountains have historical significance in the Indian subcontinent and China. The Hindu Kush range was a major centre of Buddhism with sites such as the Bamiyan Buddhas. It has also been the passageway during the invasions of the Indian subcontinent, a region where the Taliban and Al Qaeda grew, and to modern era warfare in Afghanistan.</p><br>
<p>Buddhism was widespread in the ancient Hindu Kush region. Ancient artwork of Buddhism include the giant rock carved statues called the Bamiyan Buddha, in the southern and western end of the Hindu Kush. These statues were blown up by the Taliban Islamists.</p><br>
<p>One of the early Buddhist schools, the Mahāsāṃghika-Lokottaravāda, was prominent in the area of Bamiyan. The Chinese Buddhist monk Xuanzang visited a Lokottaravāda monastery in the 7th century CE, at Bamiyan, Afghanistan. Birchbark and palm leaf manuscripts of texts in this monastery&#39;s collection, including Mahāyāna sūtras, have been discovered in the caves of Hindu Kush, and these are now a part of the Schøyen Collection. Some manuscripts are in the Gāndhārī language and Kharoṣṭhī script, while others are in Sanskrit and written in forms of the Gupta script.</p><br>
<p>According to Alfred Foucher, the Hindu Kush and nearby regions gradually converted to Buddhism by the 1st century CE, and this region was the base from where Buddhism crossed the Hindu Kush expanding into the Oxus valley region of Central Asia. After the Islamic conquest of the region and Islam becoming the state religion, Buddhism vanished and locals became Muslims.</p><br>
<h3>Ancient</h3><br>
<p>The significance of the Hindu Kush mountain range has been recorded since the time of Darius I of Persia. Alexander the Great entered the Indian subcontinent through the Hindu Kush as his army moved past Bactria into the Afghan valley in the spring of 329 BCE. He moved towards the Indus valley river region in 327 BCE, his armies building several towns in this region over the intervening two years.</p><br>
<p>After Alexander the Great&#39;s death in 323 BCE, the region became part of the Seleucid Empire, according to the ancient history of Strabo written in 1st century BCE, before it became a part of the Indian Maurya Empire around 305 BCE. The region became a part of the Kushan Empire in centuries around the start of the common era.</p><br>
<h3>Medieval era</h3><br>
<p>The lands north of the Hindu Kush, in the Hephthalite dominion, Buddhism was the predominant religion by mid 1st millennium CE. This Central Asia region along the Hindu Kush was taken over by Western Turks and Arabs by the eighth century, facing wars with mostly Iranians. One major exception was the period in mid to late seventh century, when the Tang dynasty from China destroyed the Northern Turks and extended its rule all the way to Oxus River valley and regions of Central Asia bordering all along the Hindu Kush.</p><br>
<p>The subcontinent side and valleys of the Hindu Kush remained unconquered by the Islamic armies till the 9th century, even though they had conquered the southern regions of Indus River valley such as Sind. Kabul fell to the army of Al-Ma&#39;mun, the seventh Abbasid caliph, in 808 and the local king agreed to accept Islam and pay annual tributes to the caliph.</p><br>
<p>Mahmud of Ghazni came to power in 998 CE, in Ghazna, Afghanistan south of Kabul and Hindu Kush range. He began a military campaign that rapidly brought both sides of the Hindu Kush range under his rule. From his mountainous Afghan base, he systematically raided and plundered kingdoms in north India from east of the Indus river to west of Yamuna river seventeen times between 997 and 1030. Mahmud of Ghazni raided the treasuries of kingdoms, sacked cities and destroyed Hindu temples, with each campaign starting every spring, but he and his army returned to Ghazni and Hindu Kush base before monsoons arrived in the northwestern part of the subcontinent. He retracted each time, only extending Islamic rule into western Punjab.</p><br>
<p>In 1017, the Iranian Islamic historian Al-Biruni was deported after a war that Mahmud of Ghazni won, to northwest Indian subcontinent under Mahmud&#39;s rule. Al Biruni stayed in the region for about fifteen years, learnt Sanskrit and translated many Indian texts, and wrote about Indian society, culture, sciences and religion in Persian and Arabic. He stayed for some time in the Hindu Kush region, particularly near Kabul. In 1019, he recorded and described a solar eclipse in what is modern era Laghman Province of Afghanistan through which Hindu Kush pass. Al Biruni also wrote about early history of the Hindu Kush region and Kabul kings, who ruled the region long before he arrived, but this history is inconsistent with other records available from that era. Al Biruni was supported by Sultan Mahmud. Al Biruni found it difficult to get access to Indian literature locally in the Hindu Kush area, and to explain this he wrote, "Mahmud utterly ruined the prosperity of the country, and performed wondeful exploits by which the Hindus became the atoms scattered in all directions, and like a tale of old in the mouth of the people. (...) This is the reason, too, why Hindu sciences have retired far from those parts of the country conquered by us, and have fled to places which our hand cannot yet reach, to Kashmir, Benares and other places".</p><br>
<p>In late 12th century, the historically influential Ghurid empire led by Mu&#39;izz al-Din ruled the Hindu Kush region. He was influential in seeding the Delhi Sultanate, shifting the base of his Sultanate from south of the Hindu Kush range and Ghazni towards the Yamuna River and Delhi. He thus helped bring the Islamic rule to the northern plains of Indian subcontinent.</p><br>
<p>The Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta arrived in the Delhi Sultanate by passing through the Hindu Kush. He arrived in the capital Delhi where his army looted and killed its residents. Then he carried the wealth and the captured slaves, returning to his capital through the Hindu Kush.</p><br>
<p>Babur, the founder of Mughal Empire, was a patrilineal descendant of Timur with roots in Central Asia. He first established himself and his army in Kabul and the Hindu Kush region. In 1526, he made his move into north India, won the Battle of Panipat, ending the last Delhi Sultanate dynasty, and starting the era of the Mughals.</p><br>
<h4>Slavery</h4><br>
<p>Slavery, as with all major ancient and medieval societies, has been a part of Central Asia and South Asia history. The Hindu Kush mountain passes connected the slave markets of Central Asia with slaves seized in South Asia. The seizure and transportation of slaves from Indian subcontinent became intense in and after the 8th century CE, with evidence suggesting that the slave transport involved "hundreds of thousands" of slaves from India in different periods of Islamic rule era. According to John Coatsworth and others, the slave trading operations during the pre-Akbar Mughal and Delhi Sultanate era "sent thousands of Hindus every year north to Central Asia to pay for horses and other goods". However, the interaction between Central Asia and South Asia through the Hindu Kush was not limited to slavery, it included trading in food, goods, horses and weapons.</p><br>
<p>The practice of raiding tribes, hunting and kidnapping people for slave trading continued through the 19th century, at an extensive scale, around Hindu Kush. According to a British Anti-Slavery Society report of 1874, the Governor of Faizabad, Mir Ghulam Bey, kept 8,000 horses and cavalry men who routinely captured non-Muslim infidels (kafir) as well as Shia Muslims as slaves. Others alleged to be involved in slave trade were feudal lords such as Ameer Sheer Ali. The isolated communities in the Hindu Kush were one of the targets of these slave hunting expeditions.</p><br>
<h3>Modern era</h3><br>
<p>In early 19th century, the Sikh Empire expanded under Ranjit Singh in the northwest till the Hindu Kush range.</p><br>
<p>The Hindu Kush served as a geographical barrier to the British empire, leading to paucity of information and scarce direct interaction between the British colonial officials and Central Asian peoples. The British had to rely on tribal chiefs, Sadozai and Barakzai noblemen for information, and they generally downplayed the reports of slavery and other violence for geo-political strategic considerations.</p><br>
<p>In the colonial era, the Hindu Kush were considered, informally, the dividing line between Russian and British areas of influence in Afghanistan. During the Cold War the Hindu Kush range became a strategic theatre, especially during the 1980s when Soviet forces and their Afghan allies fought the Mujahideen with support from the US allies channeled through Pakistan. After the Soviet withdrawal and the end of the Cold War, many Mujahideen morphed into Taliban and Al Qaeda forces imposing a strict interpretation of Islamic law (Sharia), with Kabul, these mountains and other parts of Afghanistan as their base. Other Mujahideen joined the Northern Alliance to oppose the Taliban rule.</p><br>
<p>After September 11, 2001 terror attacks in New York, the American and ISAF campaign against Al Qaeda and their Taliban allies made the Hindu Kush once again a militarized conflict zone.</p><br>
<h2>Ethnography</h2><br>
<p>Pre-Islamic populations of the Hindu Kush included Shins, Yeshkun, Chiliss, Neemchas Koli, Palus, and Krammins.</p><br>
<p>The Barents Sea  is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean, located off the northern coasts of Norway and Russia divided between Norwegian and Russian territorial waters. Known among Russians in the Middle Ages as the Murman Sea , the sea takes its current name from the Dutch navigator Willem Barentsz.</p><br>
<p>It is a rather shallow shelf sea, with an average depth of 230 m, and is an important site for both fishing and hydrocarbon exploration. The Barents Sea is bordered by the Kola Peninsula to the south, the shelf edge towards the Norwegian Sea to the west, and the archipelagos of Svalbard to the northwest, Franz Josef Land to the northeast and Novaya Zemlya to the east. The islands of Novaya Zemlya, an extension of the northern end of the Ural Mountains, separates the Barents Sea from the Kara Sea.</p><br>
<h2>Geography</h2><br>
<p>The southern half of the Barents Sea, including the ports of Murmansk (Russia) and Vardø (Norway) remain ice-free year round due to the warm North Atlantic drift. In September, the entire Barents Sea is more or less completely ice-free. Until the Winter War (1939–40), Finlands territory also reached to the Barents Sea, with the harbor at Petsamo being Finlands only ice-free winter harbor.</p><br>
<p>There are three main types of water masses in the Barents Sea: Warm, salty Atlantic water (temperature &gt;3 °C, salinity &gt;35) from the North Atlantic drift, cold Arctic water (temperature 3 °C, salinity &lt;34.7). Between the Atlantic and Polar waters, a front called the Polar Front is formed. In the western parts of the sea (close to Bear Island), this front is determined by the bottom topography and is therefore relatively sharp and stable from year to year, while in the east (towards Novaya Zemlya), it can be quite diffuse and its position can vary a lot between years.</p><br>
<p>The lands of Novaya Zemlya attained most of their early Holocene coastal deglaciation approximately 10,000 years before present.</p><br>
<h3>Extent</h3><br>
<p>The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the "Barentsz Sea" as follows:</p><br>
<p>Other islands in the Barents Sea include Chaichy and Timanets.</p><br>
<h2>Geology</h2><br>
<p>The Barents Sea was originally formed from two major continental collisions: the Caledonian orogeny, in which the Baltica and Laurentia collided to form Laurasia, and a subsequent collision between Laurasia and Western Siberia. Most of its geological history is dominated by extensional tectonics, caused by the collapse of the Caledonian and Uralian orogenic belts and the break-up of Pangaea. These events created the major rift basins that dominate the Barents Shelf, along with various platforms and structural highs. The later geological history of the Barents Sea is dominated by Late Cenozoic uplift, particularly that caused by Quaternary glaciation, which has resulted in erosion and deposition of significant sediment.</p><br>
<h2>Ecology</h2><br>
<p>Due to the North Atlantic drift, the Barents Sea has a high biological production compared to other oceans of similar latitude. The spring bloom of phytoplankton can start quite early close to the ice edge, because the fresh water from the melting ice makes up a stable water layer on top of the sea water. The phytoplankton bloom feeds zooplankton such as Calanus finmarchicus, Calanus glacialis, Calanus hyperboreus, Oithona spp., and krill. The zooplankton feeders include young cod, capelin, polar cod, whales, and little auk. The capelin is a key food for top predators such as the north-east Arctic cod, harp seals, and seabirds such as common guillemot and Brunnich&#39;s guillemot. The fisheries of the Barents Sea, in particular the cod fisheries, are of great importance for both Norway and Russia.</p><br>
<p>SIZEX-89 was an international winter experiment where the main objectives were to perform sensor signature studies of different ice types in order to develop SAR algorithms for ice variables such as ice types, ice concentrations and ice kinematics.</p><br>
<p>Although previous research suggested that predation by whales may be the cause of depleting fish stocks, more recent research suggests that marine mammal consumption has only a trivial influence on fisheries and a model examining the impact of fisheries and climate was far more accurate at describing trends in fish abundance. There is a genetically distinct polar bear population associated with the Barents Sea.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<h3>Name</h3><br>
<p>The Barents Sea was formerly known to Russians as Murmanskoye Morye, or the "Sea of Murmans" (i.e., Norwegians), and it appears with this name in sixteenth-century maps, including Gerard Mercators Map of the Arctic published in his 1595 atlas. Its eastern corner, in the region of the Pechora Rivers estuary, has been known as Pechorskoye Morye, that is, Pechora Sea.</p><br>
<p>This sea was given its present name in honor of Willem Barentsz, a Dutch navigator and explorer. Barentsz was the leader of early expeditions to the far north, at the end of the sixteenth century.</p><br>
<p>Barents Sea is called by sailors "The Devil&#39;s Dance Floor" due to its unpredictability and difficulty level.</p><br>
<p>Barents Sea is called by ocean rowers "Devils Jaw". After first recorded complete crossing of Barents Sea from Tromsø to Longyearnyen in a row boat in 2017 by Polar Row expedition, captain Fiann Paul was asked by Norwegian TV2 how a rower would name the Barents Sea. Fiann responded that he would name it “Devils Jaw”, adding that the winds that you constantly battle are the breath from the devil&#39;s nostrils while he holds you in his jaws.</p><br>
<h3>Modern era</h3><br>
<p>Seabed mapping was completed in 1933 with the first full map produced by Russian marine geologist Maria Klenova.</p><br>
<p>The Barents Sea was also the site of a notable World War II engagement, a German surface merchant raiding attack on a British convoy that later became known as the Battle of the Barents Sea. Under the command of Oskar Kummetz, the German warships sank minelayer HMS Bramble and destroyer, but in turn lost destroyer and was severely damaged by British gunfire. The Germans later retreated and the British convoy arrived safely at Murmansk shortly afterwards.</p><br>
<p>During the Cold War, the Soviet Red Banner Northern Fleet used the southern reaches of the sea as a ballistic missile submarine bastion, a strategy that Russia continues. Nuclear contamination from dumped Russian naval reactors is an environmental concern in the Barents Sea.</p><br>
<h2>Economy</h2><br>
<h3>Political status</h3><br>
<p>For decades there was a boundary dispute between Norway and Russia regarding the position of the boundary between their respective claims to the Barents Sea. The Norwegians favoured a median line, based on the Geneva Convention of 1958, whereas the Russians favoured a meridian based sector line, based on a Soviet decision of 1926. This led to a neutral "grey" zone between the competing claims that had an area of 175,000 sq.km, which is approximately 12% of the total area of the Barents Sea. The two countries started negotiations on the location of the boundary in 1974 and a moratorium on hydrocarbon exploration was declared in 1976.</p><br>
<p>In 2010, Norway and Russia signed an agreement that placed the boundary equidistant from their competing claims. This was ratified and went into force on 7 July 2011, opening the grey zone for hydrocarbon exploration.</p><br>
<h3>Oil and gas</h3><br>
<p>Encouraged by the success of the North Sea in the 1960s, hydrocarbon exploration in the Barents Sea got underway in 1969. The Norwegian authorities acquired seismic reflection surveys through the following years, which were analysed to understand the location of the main sedimentary basins. However interest in the area began to wane due to a succession of dry holes, the wells only containing gas (which was cheap at the time) and the prohibitive costs of developing wells in such a remote area. Interest in the area was reignited in the late 2000s, after the Snovhit field was finally bought into production and two new large discoveries were made.</p><br>
<p>Exploration on the Russian side got underway around the same time as that on Norwegian side, encouraged by the success in the Timan-Pechora Basin. The first wells were drilled in the early 1980s and some very large gas fields were discovered throughout this decade. The Shtokman field was discovered in 1988 and is classed as a giant gas field—currently the 5th largest gas field in the world. However, due to the same reasons that interest declined in the Norwegian side of the Barents Sea, in addition to the political instability of the 1990s, interest in the Russian side of the Barents Sea declined.</p><br>
<h3>Fishing</h3><br>
<p>The Barents Sea contains the world largest remaining cod population, as well as an important stocks of haddock and capelin. Fishing is managed jointly by Russia and Norway in the form of the Joint Norwegian–Russian Fisheries Commission, established in 1976, in an attempt to keep track of how many fish are leaving the ecosystem due to fishing. The Joint Norwegian-Russian Fisheries Commission sets Total Allowable Catches (TACs) for multiple species throughout their migratory tracks. Through the Commission, Norway and Russia also exchange fishing quotas and catch statistics to ensure the TACs are not being violated. However, there are problems with the system and the effects of fishing on the Barents Sea ecosystem are not completely accurate. Cod is one of the major catches. A large portion of catches are not reported when the fishing boats land to account for profits that are being lost to high taxes and fees. Since many fishermen do not strictly follow the TACs and rules set forth by the Commission, the amount of fish being extracted annually from the Barents Sea is underestimated.</p><br>
<h3>Barents Sea biodiversity and marine bioprospecting</h3><br>
<p>The Barents Sea, where temperate waters from the Gulf Stream and cold waters from the Arctic meet, is home to an enormous diversity of organisms, which are well adapted to the extreme conditions of their marine habitats. This makes these arctic species very attractive for marine bioprospecting. Marine bioprospecting may be defined as the search for bioactive molecules and compounds from marine sources having new, unique properties and the potential for commercial applications. Amongst others, applications include medicines, food and feed, textiles, cosmetics and the process industry.</p><br>
<p>The Norwegian government strategically supports the development of marine bioprospecting as it has the potential to contribute to new and sustainable wealth creation. Tromsø and the northern areas of Norway play a central role in this strategy due to excellent access to unique Arctic marine organisms and the presence of marine industries and R&D competence and infrastructure in this region. Since 2007, science and industry have cooperated closely on bioprospecting and the development and commercialization of new products.</p><br>
<h4>Institutions and industry supporting marine bioprospecting in Barents Sea</h4><br>
<p>MabCent-SFI is one of fourteen Research-Based Innovation Centers initiated by the Research Council of Norway, and is the only one within the field of “bioactive compounds and drug discovery” that is based on bioactives from marine organisms. MabCent-SFI maintains a focus on bioactives from Arctic and sub-Arctic organisms. By the end of 2011, MabCent has tested about 200,000 extracts, finding several hundred "hits". Through further research and development, some of these hits will become valuable "leads", i.e. characterized compounds known to possess biological effects of interest.</p><br>
<p>The commercial partners in MabCent-SFI are Biotec Pharmacon ASA and its subsidiary ArcticZymes AS, ABC BioScience AS, Lytix Biopharma AS and Pronova BioPharma ASA. ArcticZymes is also a partner in MARZymes, a project financed by the Research Council of Norway to find marine enzymes which are adapted to the extreme conditions in the Arctic. The science partners in MabCent-SFI are Marbank, a national marine biobank located in Tromsø, Marbio, a medium/high-throughput platform for screening and identification of bioactive compounds and Norstruct, a protein structure determination platform. Mabcent-SFI is hosted by the University of Tromsø.</p><br>
<p>is an emerging biotechnology cluster of enterprises and R&D organizations, which cooperate closely with regional funding and development actors (triple helix). As bioactive molecules and compounds from Arctic marine resources form the basis of activities for the majority of the cluster members, BioTech North serves as a marine biotech cluster. The majority of BioTech North’s enterprises are active within life science applications and markets. To date the cluster contains around thirty organizations from both the private and public sector. It has received Arena status and is funded through the programme financed by, and The Research Council of Norway. Stakeholders of BioTech North include Barents BioCentre Lab, BioStruct, Marbank, Norut, Nofima, Mabcent-SFI, University of Tromsø, Unilab, Barentzymes AS, Trofi, Scandiderma AS, Prophylix Pharma AS, Olivita, Marealis, ProCelo, Probio, Lytix Biopharma, Integorgen, d&#39;Liver, Genøk, Cognis, Clare AS, Chitinor, Calanus AS, Biotec Betaglucans, Ayanda, ArcticZymes AS, ABC Bioscience, Akvaplanniva.</p><br>
<p>Monte Circeo or Cape Circeo  is a mountain remaining as a promontory that marks the southwestern limit of the former Pontine Marshes. Although a headland, it was not formed by coastal erosion – as headlands are usually formed – but is a remnant of the orogenic processes that created the Apennines. The entire coast of Lazio, on which the mountain and the marsh are located, was a chain of barrier islands that was formed on a horst and made part of the mainland by sedimentation of the intervening graben.</p><br>
<p>Monte Circeo, as it is sometimes also called in Italian, is located on the southwest coast of Italy, about 100 km south-southeast of Rome, near San Felice Circeo, on the coast between Anzio and Terracina. At the northern end of the Gulf of Gaeta, it is about 5 km long by 1.5 km wide at the base, running from east to west and surrounded by the sea on all sides except the north. The land to the north of it is 15 m above sea level, while the summit of the promontory is 541 m. While the headland is quite steep and hilly, the land immediately to the east of it is low-lying and very swampy. Most of the ancient swamp has been reclaimed for agriculture and urban areas. The mountain, the coastal zone as far north as Latina, including the only remaining remnant of the swamp, and two of the Pontine Islands offshore, Zannone and Ponza, have been included in the Circeo National Park.</p><br>
<p>The mountain is composed mostly of marl and sandstone from the Paleogene and of limestone from the lower Early Jurassic.</p><br>
<h2>Prehistory</h2><br>
<p>In 1939, the skull of a Neanderthal man was found in the Guattari Cave by a team led by Alberto Carlo Blanc. Several other findings also show that the mountain was inhabited in prehistorical times.</p><br>
<h2>Ancient Roman times</h2><br>
<p>The origin of the name is uncertain: it has naturally been connected with the legend of Circe, and Victor Bérard (in Les Phéniciens et lOdyssée, ii. 261 seq.) maintains in support of the identification that Aiaia, the Greek and Georgian name for the island of Circe, is a faithful transliteration of a Semitic name, meaning "island of the hawk". The difficulty has been raised, especially by geologists, that the promontory ceased to be an island well before Homers time; but Procopius remarked that the promontory has all the appearance of an island until one is actually upon it.</p><br>
<p>Upon the east end of the promontory ridge are the remains of an enceinte, a polygonal structure that roughly forms a rectangle and that measures about 200 by 100 metres. The blocks are very carefully cut and jointed; right angles were intentionally avoided. The wall stands almost entirely free, as at Arpinum – polygonal walls in Italy typically form embanking walls – and increases considerably in thickness as it descends. The blocks of the inner face are much less carefully worked both here and at Arpinum. It seems to have been an acropolis, and contains no traces of buildings, except for a subterranean cistern, circular, with a beehive roof of converging blocks. The modern village of San Felice Circeo seems to occupy the site of the ancient town, the citadel of which stood on the mountain top; its medieval walls rest upon ancient walls of Cyclopean work of less careful construction than those of the citadel, and enclose an area that measures 200 by.</p><br>
<p>Circeii, as it was then known, was founded as a Roman colony at an early date – according to some authorities in the time of Tarquinius Superbus, – but also possibly about 390 BC. The existence of a previous population, however, is very likely indicated by the revolt of Circei in the middle of the 4th century BC, so that it is doubtful whether the walls described are to be attributed to the Romans or the earlier Volscian inhabitants.</p><br>
<p>The Roman colonists were expelled by the Volsci in around 490 BC during a war between those two states. At the end of the republic, however, or at latest at the beginning of the imperial period, the city of Circei was no longer at the east end of the promontory, but on the east shores of the Lago di Paola (a lagoon – now a considerable fishery – separated from the sea by a line of sandhills and connected with it by a channel of Roman date: Strabo speaks of it as a small harbor) 1.5 km north of the west end of the promontory. Here are the remains of a Roman town, belonging to the 1st and 2nd centuries, extending over an area of some 600 by, and consisting of fine buildings along the lagoons, including a large open piscina or basin, surrounded by a double portico, while farther inland are several very large and well-preserved water-reservoirs, supplied by an aqueduct of which traces may still be seen. An inscription speaks of an amphitheatre, of which no remains are visible. The transference of the city did not, however, mean the abandonment of the east end of the promontory, on which stand the remains of several very large villas. An inscription, indeed, cut in the rock near San Felice, speaks about this part of the promonturium Veneris ("promontory of Venus&quot the only case of the use of this name) as belonging to the city of Circei. On the south and north sides of the promontory, there are comparatively few buildings while at the west end there is a sheer precipice to the sea.</p><br>
<p>The town only acquired municipal rights after the Social War and was unimportant except as a seaside resort. Cicero compares its villas with those at Antium, and probably both Tiberius and Domitian resided there. Presumably, Domitian&#39;s villa contained important artistic works, such as the Apollo and the Faun With the Transverse Flute, and a spa. The view from the highest summit of the promontory (which is occupied by ruins of a platform attributed to a temple of Venus or Circe) is remarkably beautiful; the whole mountain is covered with fragrant shrubs. From any point in the Pontine Marshes or on the coast-line of Latium, the Circeian promontory dominates the landscape in the most remarkable way.</p><br>
<h2>Today</h2><br>
<p>Mount Circeo is today included in the National Park of Circeo, established in 1934 on 5,616 hectare over the territories of Latina, Sabaudia, San Felice Circeo and Zannone Island (minor island of Ponziane Archipelago).</p><br>
<p>The Pribilof Islands  are a group of four volcanic islands off the coast of mainland Alaska, in the Bering Sea, about 200 miles  north of Unalaska and 200 miles  southwest of Cape Newenham. The Siberia coast is roughly 500 mi northwest. About 200 km  in total area, they are mostly rocky and are covered with tundra, with a population of 572 as of the 2010 census.</p><br>
<h2>Principal islands</h2><br>
<p>The principal islands are Saint Paul and Saint George. The former was named for the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, on the day of which the island was discovered; the latter was probably named for the ship sailed by the islands&#39; discoverer, Gavriil Pribilof. The Otter and Walrus islets are near St. Paul. The total land area of all the islands is 75.072 square miles. The islands are part of the Bering Sea unit of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge.</p><br>
<h2>Fur trade</h2><br>
<p>While oral traditions of the Aleut people maintain the islands were sparingly visited, "no ethnohistoric or archaeological evidence points to the use or occupation of the Pribilof Islands... by any native people before the Russian period in Alaska." The seasonal migrations of the Northern fur seal became known by the Russians in the 1780s. Swimming north through the Aleutian Islands, the seals returned in the autumn with newly born pups. The unknown northern breeding grounds became a focus of Russian trappers. An employee of the Lebedev-Lastochkin Company, Gavriil Pribylov, sailed in 1786 to discover the location, after disobeying orders to retrieve company property in the Kurile Islands. The rookeries Pribylov visited held upwards of four million seals, for which they became famous. The islands became site to the LLC&#39;s first artel in what later became Russian America.</p><br>
<p>With the creation of the Russian-American Company, a monopoly, Russian operations continued on the islands. Under the Alaska Purchase sovereignty was passed to the United States in 1867. From 1870 to 1890, the USA government leased them to the Alaska Commercial Company. From 1890 through 1910, the North American Commercial Company held the monopoly on seal-hunting there, but the industry shrank considerably owing to seal-hunting on the open sea.</p><br>
<p>The North Pacific Fur Seal Convention of 1911 was signed by Canada, Japan, Russia, and the United States to restrict hunting in the area. Under the Fur Seal Act of 1966, hunting of the seals was forbidden in the Pribilofs, with the exception of subsistence hunting by native Aleuts.</p><br>
<p>Ambrose Bierce suggested renaming the islands locus sigilli ("Place of the seal") in his The Devil&#39;s Dictionary.</p><br>
<h2>Seal Island Historic District</h2><br>
<p>Naturalist and paleontologist Roy Chapman Andrews visited the island in 1913 aboard the schooner Adventuress in her maiden voyage with John Borden and crew. His films of fur seals led to efforts to protect the animals.</p><br>
<p>The buildings on St. George and St. Paul islands related to the hunting of the Northern Fur Seal make up the national historic district.</p><br>
<h2>Today</h2><br>
<p>Residents are concentrated in the towns of St. Paul and St. George, each on the island of the same name. St. Paul has a population of 479 (2010 census), with its economy heavily dependent on the annual taking of the snow crab and on subsistence and commercial halibut harvests. Support services to commercial fleets plying the waters of the Bering Sea also contribute to the economy. The balance of economic activity on the island relates to working for the government. The USA Coast Guard maintains a base on St. Paul, but no longer maintains a LORAN-C master station, as the technology has been replaced by GPS navigation. The National Weather Service has a station on the island, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration maintains a presence. St. Paul and St. George each have small airports; air service is provided from the mainland.</p><br>
<p>St. George has a population of 102. The economy is similar to that of St Paul. Many of the residents of the islands are related.</p><br>
<p>The Pribilof Islands are a birdwatching attraction, home to many species that do not fly in North America beyond Alaska. More than 240 species have been identified, and an estimated two million seabirds nest there annually. St. Paul is particularly popular, having a high cliff wall, known as Ridge Wall, above the Bering Sea.</p><br>
<p>Ctesiphon  was an ancient city located on the eastern bank of Tigris, and about 35 km southeast of present-day Baghdad. It became the capital of the Parthian Empire in about 58 BC, and remained the capital of the Sasanian Empire until the Muslim conquest of Persia in 651.</p><br>
<p>Ctesiphon developed into a rich commercial metropolis, merging with the surrounding cities along both shores of the river, including the Hellenistic city of Seleucia. Ctesiphon and its environs were therefore sometimes referred to as "The Cities" (Aramaic: Mahuza, المدائن, al-Mada&#39;in). In the late sixth and early seventh century, it was one of the largest cities in the world.</p><br>
<p>During the Roman–Parthian Wars, Ctesiphon fell three times to the Romans, and later twice during Sasanian rule. It was also the site of the Battle of Ctesiphon (363). After the Muslim invasion the city fell into decay and was depopulated by the end of the 8th century, its place as a political and economic center taken by the Abbasid capital at Baghdad. The most conspicuous structure remaining today is the Taq Kasra, sometimes called the Archway of Ctesiphon.</p><br>
<h2>Names</h2><br>
<p>The Latin name Ctesiphon derives from Ancient Greek (Κτησιφῶν) is ostensibly a Greek toponym based on a personal name, although it may be a Hellenized form of a local name, reconstructed as Tisfōn or Tisbōn. In Iranian-language texts of the Sasanian era, it is spelled as tyspwn, which can be read as Tīsfōn, Tēsifōn, etc. in Manichaean Parthian, in Middle Persian and in Christian Sogdian (in Syriac alphabet) languages. The New Persian form is Tisfun (تیسفون).</p><br>
<p>Texts from the Assyrian Church of the East&#39;s synods referred to the city as (ܩܛܝܣܦܘܢ) or some times (ܡܚܘܙ̈ܐ) when referring to the metropolis of Seleucia-Ctesiphon.</p><br>
<p>In modern Arabic, the name is usually Ṭaysafūn (طيسفون) or Qaṭaysfūn (قطيسفون) or as al-Mada&#39;in (المدائن "The Cities", referring to Greater Ctesiphon). "According to Yāqūt, quoting Ḥamza, the original form was Ṭūsfūn or Tūsfūn, which was arabicized as Ṭaysafūn." The Armenian name of the city was Tizbon (Տիզբոն). Ctesiphon is first mentioned in the Book of Ezra of the Old Testament as Kasfia/Casphia (a derivative of the ethnic name, Cas, and a cognate of Caspian and Qazvin).</p><br>
<h2>Location</h2><br>
<p>Ctesiphon is located approximately at Al-Mada&#39;in, 32 km southeast of the modern city of Baghdad, Iraq, along the river Tigris. Ctesiphon measured 30 square kilometers, more than twice the surface of 13.7-square-kilometer fourth-century Imperial Rome.</p><br>
<p>The archway of Chosroes (Taq Kasra) was once a part of the royal palace in Ctesiphon and is estimated to date between the 3rd and 6th centuries AD. It is located in what is now the Iraqi town of Salman Pak.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<h3>Parthian period</h3><br>
<p>Ctesiphon was founded in the late 120s BC. It was built on the site of a military camp established across from Seleucia by Mithridates I of Parthia. The reign of Gotarzes I saw Ctesiphon reach a peak as a political and commercial center. The city became the Empire&#39;s capital circa 58 BC during the reign of Orodes II. Gradually, the city merged with the old Hellenistic capital of Seleucia and other nearby settlements to form a cosmopolitan metropolis.</p><br>
<p>The reason for this westward relocation of the capital could have been in part due to the proximity of the previous capitals (Mithradatkirt, and Hecatompylos at Hyrcania) to the Scythian incursions.</p><br>
<p>Strabo abundantly describes the foundation of Ctesiphon:</p><br>
<p>In ancient times Babylon was the metropolis of Assyria; but now Seleucia is the metropolis, I mean the Seleucia on the Tigris, as it is called. Nearby is situated a village called Ctesiphon, a large village. This village the kings of the Parthians were wont to make their winter residence, thus sparing the Seleucians, in order that the Seleucians might not be oppressed by having the Scythian folk or soldiery quartered amongst them. Because of the Parthian power, therefore, Ctesiphon is a city rather than a village; its size is such that it lodges a great number of people, and it has been equipped with buildings by the Parthians themselves; and it has been provided by the Parthians with wares for sale and with the arts that are pleasing to the Parthians; for the Parthian kings are accustomed to spend the winter there because of the salubrity of the air, but they summer at Ecbatana and in Hyrcania because of the prevalence of their ancient renown.</p><br>
<p>Because of its importance, Ctesiphon was a major military objective for the leaders of the Roman Empire in their eastern wars. The city was captured by Rome five times in its history – three times in the 2nd century alone. The emperor Trajan captured Ctesiphon in 116, but his successor, Hadrian, decided to willingly return Ctesiphon in 117 as part of a peace settlement. The Roman general Avidius Cassius captured Ctesiphon in 164 during another Parthian war, but abandoned it when peace was concluded. In 197, the emperor Septimius Severus sacked Ctesiphon and carried off thousands of its inhabitants, whom he sold into slavery.</p><br>
<h3>Sasanian period</h3><br>
<p>By 226, Ctesiphon was in the hands of the Sasanian Empire, who also made it their capital and had laid an end to the Parthian dynasty of Iran. Ctesiphon was greatly enlarged and flourished during their rule, thus turning into a metropolis, which was known by in Arabic as al-Mada&#39;in, and in Aramaic as Mahoze. The oldest inhabited places of Ctesiphon were on its eastern side, which in Arabic sources is called "the Old City", where the residence of the Sasanians, known as the White Palace, was located. The southern side of Ctesiphon was known as Aspanbar, which was known by its prominent halls, riches, games, stables, and baths.</p><br>
<p>The western side was known as Veh-Ardashir (meaning "the good city of Ardashir" in Middle Persian), known as Mahoza by the Jews, Kokhe by the Christians, and Behrasir by the Arabs. Veh-Ardashir was populated by many wealthy Jews, and was the seat of the church of the Nestorian patriarch. To the south of Veh-Ardashir was Valashabad. Ctesiphon had several other districts which were named Hanbu Shapur, Darzanidan, Veh Jondiu-Khosrow, Nawinabad and Kardakadh.</p><br>
<p>Severus Alexander advanced towards Ctesiphon in 233, but as corroborated by Herodian, his armies suffered a humiliating defeat against Ardashir I. In 283, emperor Carus sacked the city uncontested during a period of civil upheaval. In 295, emperor Galerius was defeated outside the city. However, he returned a year later with a vengeance and won a victory which ended in the fifth and final capture of the city by the Romans in 299. He returned it to the Persian king Narses in exchange for Armenia and western Mesopotamia. In c.325 and again in 410, the city, or the Greek colony directly across the river, was the site of church councils for the Church of the East.</p><br>
<p>After the conquest of Antioch in 541, Khosrau I built a new city near Ctesiphon for the inhabitants he captured. He called this new city Weh Antiok Khusrau, or literally, "better than Antioch Khosrau built this." Local inhabitants of the area called the new city Rumagan, meaning "town of the Romans" and Arabs called the city al-Rumiyya. Along with Weh Antiok, Khosrau built a number of fortified cities. Khosrau I deported 292,000 citizens, slaves, and conquered people to the new city of Ctesiphon in 542.</p><br>
<p>In 590, a member of the House of Mihran, Bahram Chobin repelled the newly ascended Sasanian ruler Khosrau II from Iraq, and conquered the region. One year later, Khosrau II, with aid from the Byzantine Empire, reconquered his domains. During his reign, some of the great fame of al-Madain decreased, due to the popularity of Khosraus new winter residence, Dastagerd. In 627, the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius surrounded the city, the capital of the Sassanid Empire, leaving it after the Persians accepted his peace terms. In 628, a deadly plague hit Ctesiphon, al-Madain and the rest of the western part of the Sasanian Empire, which even killed Khosraus son and successor, Kavadh II.</p><br>
<p>In 629, Ctesiphon was briefly under the control of Mihranid usurper Shahrbaraz, but the latter was shortly assassinated by the supporters of Khosrau II&#39;s daughter Borandukht. Ctesiphon then continued to be involved in constant fighting between two factions of the Sasanian Empire, the Pahlav (Parthian) faction under the House of Ispahbudhan and the Parsig (Persian) faction under Piruz Khosrow.</p><br>
<h3>Downfall of the Sasanians and the Islamic conquests</h3><br>
<p>In 636, the Muslim Arabs, who had since 633 invaded the territories of the Sasanian Empire, defeated them during a great battle known as the Battle of al-Qādisiyyah. The Arabs then attacked Ctesiphon, and occupied it in early 637.</p><br>
<p>The Muslim military officer Sa`d ibn Abi Waqqas quickly seized Valashabad and made a peace treaty with the inhabitants of Weh Antiok Khusrau and Veh-Ardashir. The terms of the treaty were that the inhabitants of Weh Antiok Khusrau were allowed to leave if they wanted to, but if they did not, they were forced to acknowledge Muslim authority, and also pay tribute (jizya). Later on, when the Muslims arrived at Ctesiphon, it was completely desolated, due to flight of the Sasanian royal family, nobles, and troops. However, the Muslims had managed to take some of troops captive, and many riches were seized from the Sasanian treasury and were given to the Muslim troops. Furthermore, the throne hall in Taq Kasra was briefly used as a mosque.</p><br>
<p>Still, as political and economic fortune had passed elsewhere, the city went into a rapid decline, especially after the founding of the Abbasid capital at Baghdad in the 8th century, and soon became a ghost town. Caliph Al-Mansur took much of the required material for the construction of Baghdad from the ruins of Ctesiphon. He also attempted to demolish the palace and reuse its bricks for his own palace, but he desisted only when the undertaking proved too vast.</p><br>
<p>It is believed to be the basis for the city of Isbanir in One Thousand and One Nights.</p><br>
<h3>Modern era</h3><br>
<p>The ruins of Ctesiphon were the site of a major battle of World War I in November 1915. The Ottoman Empire defeated troops of Britain attempting to capture Baghdad, and drove them back some 40 mi before trapping the British force and compelling it to surrender.</p><br>
<h2>Population and religion</h2><br>
<p>Under Sasanian rule, the population of Ctesiphon was heavily mixed: it included Arameans, Persians, Greeks and Assyrians. Several religions were also practiced in the metropolis, which included Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism. In 497, the first Nestorian patriarch Mar Babai I, fixed his see at Seleucia-Ctesiphon, supervising their mission east, with the Merv metropolis as pivot. The population also included Manicheans, a Dualist church, who continued to be mentioned in Ctesiphon during Umayyad rule fixing their patriarchate of Babylon there. Much of the population fled from Ctesiphon after the Arab capture of the metropolis. However, a portion of Persians remained there, and some important figures of these people are known to have provided Ali with presents, which he, however, refused to take. After the Battle of Siffin, the Persian population of Ctesiphon disappeared. In the ninth century, the surviving Manicheans fled and displaced their patriarchate up the Silk road, in Samarkand.</p><br>
<h2>Archaeology</h2><br>
<p>A German Oriental Society led by Oscar Reuther excavated at Ctesiphon in 1928–29 mainly at Qasr bint al-Qadi on the western part of the site. In winter of 1931-1932 a joint expedition of the German State Museums (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) and The Metropolitan Museum of Art continued excavations at the site, focusing on the areas of Maaridh, Tell Dheheb, the Taq-i Kisra, Selman Pak and Umm ez-Zatir under the direction of Ernst Kühnel.</p><br>
<p>In the late 1960s and early 1970s, an Italian team from the University of Turin directed by Antonio Invernizzi and worked at the site, mainly doing restoration at the palace of Khosrau II. In 2013, the Iraqi government contracted to restore the Taq Kasra, as a tourist attraction.</p><br>
<p>The Ionian Sea  is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea, south of the Adriatic Sea. It is bounded by southern Italy including Calabria, Sicily, and the Salento peninsula to the west, southern Albania to the north, and the west coast of Greece.</p><br>
<p>All major islands in the sea belong to Greece. They are collectively referred to as the Ionian Islands, the main ones being Corfu, Zakynthos, Kephalonia, Ithaca, and Lefkada.</p><br>
<p>There are ferry routes between Patras and Igoumenitsa, Greece, and Brindisi and Ancona, Italy, that cross the east and north of the Ionian Sea, and from Piraeus westward. Calypso Deep, the deepest point in the Mediterranean at -5,267 m, is located in the Ionian Sea, at 36&deg;34&prime;N latitude, 21&deg;8&prime;E longitude. The sea is one of the most seismically active areas in the world.</p><br>
<h2>Etymology</h2><br>
<p>The name Ionian comes from the Greek language Ἰόνιον (πέλαγος). Its etymology is unknown. Ancient Greek writers, especially Aeschylus, linked it to the myth of Io. In Ancient Greek the adjective Ionios (Ἰόνιος) was used as an epithet for the sea because Io swam across it. According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary, the name may derive from Ionians who sailed to the West. There were also narratives about other eponymic legendary figures; according to one version, Ionius was a son of Adrias (eponymic for the Adriatic Sea); according to another, Ionius was a son of Dyrrhachus. When Dyrrhachus was attacked by his own brothers, Heracles, who was passing through the area, came to his aid, but in the fight the hero killed his ally&#39;s son by mistake. The corpse was cast into the sea, which thereafter was called the Ionian Sea.</p><br>
<h2>Geography</h2><br>
<h3>Extent</h3><br>
<p>The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Ionian Sea as follows:</p><br>
<h3>Places</h3><br>
<p>From south to north in the west, then north to south in the east:</p><br>
<p>Syracuse, port, W</p><br>
<p>Catania, port, W</p><br>
<p>Messina, port, W</p><br>
<p>Taranto, port N</p><br>
<p>Himara, small port, NE</p><br>
<p>Saranda, port and a beach, NE</p><br>
<p>Kerkyra, port, E</p><br>
<p>Igoumenitsa, port, E</p><br>
<p>Parga, small port, E</p><br>
<p>Preveza, port, E</p><br>
<p>Astakos, port, E</p><br>
<p>Argostoli, small port, E</p><br>
<p>Patra, port, E</p><br>
<p>Kyparissia, port, E</p><br>
<p>Pylos, port, E</p><br>
<p>Methoni, small port and a beach</p><br>
<p>Ionian Islands</p><br>
<h3>Gulfs and straits</h3><br>
<p>Strait of Messina, W</p><br>
<p>Gulf of Catania, W</p><br>
<p>Gulf of Taranto, NW</p><br>
<p>Gulf of Squillace, NW</p><br>
<p>Ambracian Gulf, E</p><br>
<p>Gulf of Patras, connecting the Gulf of Corinth, ESE</p><br>
<p>Gulf of Kyparissia, SE</p><br>
<p>Messenian Gulf, SE</p><br>
<p>Laconian Gulf, ESE</p><br>
<h3>Islands</h3><br>
<p>Corfu</p><br>
<p>Zakynthos</p><br>
<p>Kefalonia</p><br>
<p>Ithaca</p><br>
<p>Lefkada</p><br>
<p>Paxi</p><br>
<p>Kythira</p><br>
<p>Mont Blanc meaning "White Mountain", is the highest mountain in the Alps and the highest in Europe west of Russia&#39;s Caucasus peaks.</p><br>
<p>It rises 4,808 m above sea level and is ranked 11th in the world in topographic prominence.the prominence of 4,696 m for Mont Blanc is taken from the "Ultras Project" (), "List compiled 2004 by Petter Bjørstad, Jonathan de Ferranti, Eberhard Jurgalski, Vasja Kavcic and Aaron Maizlish".</p><br>
<p>A footnote to this entry at peaklist.org r (Citation). The Mont Blanc key saddle has been identified in Northern Russia near Ozero Onezhskoye."</p><br>
<p>See also list of Alpine peaks by prominence.</p><br>
<p>The mountain stays in a range called the Graian Alps, between the regions of Aosta Valley, Italy, and Savoie and Haute-Savoie, France. The location of the summit is on the watershed line between the valleys of Ferret and Veny in Italy and the valleys of Montjoie, and Arve in France. The Mont Blanc massif is popular for hiking, skiing, and snowboarding.</p><br>
<p>The three towns and their communes which surround Mont Blanc are Courmayeur in Aosta Valley, Italy, and Saint-Gervais-les-Bains and Chamonix in Haute-Savoie, France. The latter town was the site of the first Winter Olympics. A cable car ascends and crosses the mountain range from Courmayeur to Chamonix, through the Col du Géant. The 11.6 km (7¼ mi) Mont Blanc Tunnel, constructed between 1957 and 1965, runs beneath the mountain and is a major trans-Alpine transport route.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>The first recorded ascent of Mont Blanc was on 8 August 1786 by Jacques Balmat and the doctor Michel Paccard. This climb, initiated by Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, who gave a reward for the successful ascent, traditionally marks the start of modern mountaineering. The first woman to reach the summit was Marie Paradis in 1808.</p><br>
<p>Nowadays the summit is ascended by an average of 20,000 mountaineer-tourists each year. It could be considered a technically easy, yet arduous, ascent for someone who is well-trained and acclimatized to the altitude. From l&#39;Aiguille du Midi (where the cable car stops), Mont Blanc seems quite close, being 1,000 m higher. But while the peak seems deceptively close, La Voie des 3 Monts route (known to be more technical and challenging than other more commonly used routes) requires much ascent over two other 4,000 m mountains, Mont Blanc du Tacul and Mont Maudit, before the final section of the climb is reached and the last 1000 m push to the summit is undertaken.</p><br>
<p>Each year climbing deaths occur on Mont Blanc, and on the busiest weekends, normally around August, the local rescue service performs an average of 12 missions, mostly directed to aid people in trouble on one of the normal routes of the mountain. Some routes require knowledge of high-altitude mountaineering, a guide (or at least an experienced mountaineer), and all require proper equipment. All routes are long and arduous, involving delicate passages and the hazard of rock-fall or avalanche. Climbers may also suffer altitude sickness, occasionally life threatening, particularly if they do not acclimatize to it.</p><br>
<h3>Ownership of the summit</h3><br>
<p>Since the French Revolution, the issue of the ownership of the summit has been debated. From 1416 to 1792, the entire mountain was within the Duchy of Savoy. In 1723 the Duke of Savoy, Victor Amadeus II, acquired the Kingdom of Sardinia. The resulting state of Sardinia was to become preeminent in the Italian unification. In September 1792, the French revolutionary Army of the Alps under Anne-Pierre de Montesquiou-Fézensac seized Savoy without much resistance and created a department of the Mont-Blanc. In a treaty of 15 May 1796, Victor Amadeus III of Sardinia was forced to cede Savoy and Nice to France. In article 4 of this treaty it says: "The border between the Sardinian kingdom and the departments of the French Republic will be established on a line determined by the most advanced points on the Piedmont side, of the summits, peaks of mountains and other locations subsequently mentioned, as well as the intermediary peaks, knowing: starting from the point where the borders of Faucigny, the Duchy of Aoust and the Valais, to the extremity of the glaciers or Monts-Maudits: first the peaks or plateaus of the Alps, to the rising edge of the Col-Mayor". This act further states that the border should be visible from the town of Chamonix and Courmayeur. However, neither the peak of the Mont Blanc is visible from Courmayeur nor the peak of the Mont Blanc de Courmayeur is visible from Chamonix because part of the mountains lower down obscure them.</p><br>
<p>After the Napoleonic Wars, the Congress of Vienna restored the King of Sardinia in Savoy, Nice and Piedmont, his traditional territories, overruling the 1796 Treaty of Paris. Forty-five years later, after the Second Italian War of Independence, it was replaced by a new legal act. This act was signed in Turin on 24 March 1860 by Napoleon III and Victor Emmanuel II of Savoy, and deals with the annexation of Savoy (following the French neutrality for the plebiscites held in Tuscany, Modena, Parma and Romagna to join the Kingdom of Sardinia, against the Pope&#39;s will). A demarcation agreement, signed on 7 March 1861, defined the new border. With the formation of Italy, for the first time Mont Blanc was located on the border of France and Italy.</p><br>
<p>The 1860 act and attached maps are still legally valid for both the French and Italian governments. One of the prints from the 1823 Sarde Atlas positions the border exactly on the summit edge of the mountain (and measures it to be 4,804 m high). The convention of 7 March 1861 recognises this through an attached map, taking into consideration the limits of the massif, and drawing the border on the icecap of Mont Blanc, making it both French and Italian. Watershed analysis of modern topographic mapping not only places the main summit on the border, but also suggests that the border should follow a line northwards from the main summit towards Mont Maudit, leaving the southeast ridge to Mont Blanc de Courmayeur wholly within Italy.</p><br>
<p>Although the Franco-Italian border was redefined in both 1947 and 1963, the commission made up of both Italians and French ignored the Mont Blanc issue. In the early 21st century, administration of the mountain is shared between the Italian town of Courmayeur and the French town of Saint-Gervais-les-Bains, although the larger part of the mountain lies within the commune of the latter.</p><br>
<h3>Vallot</h3><br>
<p>The first professional scientific investigations on the summit were conducted by the botanist-meteorologist Joseph Vallot at the end of the 19th century. He wanted to stay near the top of the summit, so he built his own permanent cabin.</p><br>
<h3>Janssen observatory</h3><br>
<p>In 1890, Pierre Janssen, an astronomer and the director of the Meudon astrophysical observatory, considered the construction of an observatory at the summit of Mont Blanc. Gustave Eiffel agreed to take on the project, provided he could build on a rock foundation, if found at a depth of less than 12 m below the ice. In 1891, the Swiss surveyor Imfeld dug two 23 m long horizontal tunnels 12 m below the ice summit but found nothing solid. Consequently, the Eiffel project was abandoned.</p><br>
<p>Despite this, the observatory was built in 1893. During the cold wave of January 1893 a temperature of -43 &deg;C was recorded on Mont Blanc, being the lowest ever recorded there.</p><br>
<p>Levers attached to the ice supported the observatory. This worked to some extent until 1906, when the building started leaning heavily. The movement of the levers corrected the lean slightly, but three years later (two years after Janssen’s death), a crevasse started opening under the observatory. It was abandoned. Eventually the building fell, and only the tower could be saved in extremis.</p><br>
<h3>Air crashes</h3><br>
<p>The mountain was the scene of two fatal air crashes; Air India Flight 245 in 1950 and Air India Flight 101 in 1966. Both planes were approaching Geneva airport and the pilots miscalculated their descent; 48 and 117 people, respectively, died. The latter passengers included nuclear scientist Homi J. Bhabha, known as the "father" of India&#39;s nuclear programme.</p><br>
<h3>Tunnel</h3><br>
<p>In 1946 a drilling project was initiated to carve a tunnel through the mountain. The Mont Blanc tunnel would connect Chamonix, France and Courmayeur, Italy and become one of the major trans-Alpine transport routes between the two countries. In 1965 the tunnel opened to vehicle traffic with a length of 11,611 metres (7.215 mi).</p><br>
<h4>1999 disaster</h4><br>
<p>In 1999 a transport truck caught fire in the tunnel beneath the mountain. In total 39 people were killed when the fire raged out of control. The tunnel was renovated in the aftermath to increase driver safety, reopening after three years.</p><br>
<h3>Incidents involving children</h3><br>
<p>In general it is not advised for children to go above 3000 meters until their adolescence.</p><br>
<p>However, youngest person to climb Mont Blanc record set in 2009 by 10 year Asher Silver (UK) challenges parents.</p><br>
<p>In July 2014 an American entrepreneur and traveler Patrick Sweeney attempted to break the record with his nine-year-old son P.J. and 11-year-old daughter Shannon. They were caught in avalanche, luckily escaped death and decided not to pursue their attempt.</p><br>
<p>In August 2014 an unknown Austrian climber with his 5-year-old son were intercepted by mountain gendarmes at 3200 meters and forced to turn around.</p><br>
<p>In August 5th 2017 9-year old Hungarian twins and their mother were rescued from 3800 meters by helicopter while their father and family friend continued their summit attempt.</p><br>
<h2>Elevation</h2><br>
<p>The summit of Mont Blanc is a thick, perennial ice and snow dome whose thickness varies. No exact and permanent summit elevation can therefore be determined, though accurate measurements have been made on specific dates.</p><br>
<p>For a long time its official elevation was 4,807 m. In 2002, the IGN and expert surveyors, with the aid of GPS technology, measured it to be 4,807.40 m.</p><br>
<p>After the 2003 heatwave in Europe, a team of scientists re-measured the height on 6 and 7 September. The team was made up of the glaciologist Luc Moreau, two surveyors from the GPS Company, three people from the IGN, seven expert surveyors, four mountain guides from Chamonix and Saint-Gervais and four students from various institutes in France. This team noted that the elevation was 4,808.45 m, and the peak was 75 cm away from where it had been in 2002.</p><br>
<p>After these results were published, more than 500 points were measured, to assess the effects of climate change and the fluctuations in the height of the mountain at different points. Since then, the elevation of the mountain has been measured every two years.</p><br>
<p>The interpretation that the heatwave had caused this fluctuation is disputed because the heatwave is known not to have significantly affected the glaciers above 4,000 m. The height and position of the summit could have been moved by general glacial forces. At this elevation, the temperatures rarely rise above 0 &deg;C. During the summer of 2003, the temperature rose to 2 &deg;C, and even 3 &deg;C, but this would not have been enough for the ice to melt that amount.</p><br>
<p>The summit was measured again in 2005, and the results were published on 16 December 2005. The height was found to be 4,808.75 m, 30 cm more than the previous recorded height. The rock summit was found to be at 4,792 m, some 40 m west of the ice-covered summit.</p><br>
<p>In 2007 the summit was measured at 4,807.9 m and in 2009 at 4,807.45 m.</p><br>
<p>In 2013 the summit was measured at 4,810.02 m and in 2015 at 4,808.73 m.</p><br>
<p>From the summit of Mont Blanc on a clear day, the Jura, the Vosges, the Black Forest and the Massif Central mountain ranges can be seen, as well as the principal summits of the Alps.</p><br>
<h2>Climbing routes on the Tour Du Mont Blanc</h2><br>
<p>The Mont Blanc Massif averages nearly 100 fatalities a year. A published estimate suggests there have been 6,000-8,000 alpinist fatalities in total, more than on any other mountain. Several classic climbing routes lead to the summit of Mont Blanc:</p><br>
<p>The most popular route is the Voie Des Cristalliers, also known as the Voie Royale. Starting from Saint-Gervais-les-Bains, the Tramway du Mont-Blanc (TMB) is taken to get to the :fr:Gare du Nid dAigle. The ascent begins in the direction of the Refuge de Tête Rousse and through the Goûter Corridor, considered dangerous because of frequent rock-falls, leading to the Goûter cabin for night shelter. The next day the route leads to the Dôme du Goûter, past the emergency Vallot cabin and Larrête des Bosses.</p><br>
<p>La Voie des 3 Monts is also known as La Traversée. Starting from Chamonix, the Téléphérique de l&#39;Aiguille du Midi is taken towards the Col du Midi. The Cosmiques cabin is used to spend the night. The next day the ascent continues over Mont Blanc du Tacul and Mont Maudit.</p><br>
<p>The historic itinerary through the Grand Mulets, which is most frequently traversed in winter by ski, or in summer to descend to Chamonix.</p><br>
<p>The normal Italian itinerary is also known as La route des Aiguilles Grises. After crossing the Miage Glacier, climbers spend the night at the Gonella refuge. The next day one proceeds through the Col des Aiguilles Grises and the Dôme du Goûter, concluding at L&#39;arête des Bosses (Bosses ridge).</p><br>
<p>The Miage — Bionnassay — Mont Blanc crossing is usually done in three days, and has been described as a truly magical expedition of ice and snow aretes at great altitude. The route begins from Contamines-Montjoie, with the night spent in the Conscrits cabin. The following day, the Dômes de Miages is crossed and the night spent at the Durier cabin. The third day proceeds over l&#39;Aiguille de Bionnassay and the Dôme du Goûter, finally reaching the summit of Mont Blanc via the Bosses ridge.</p><br>
<h2>Refuges</h2><br>
<p>Refuge Vallot, 4362 m.</p><br>
<p>Refuge Goûter, 3817 m.</p><br>
<p>Bivouac Corrado Alberico - Luigi Borgna, 3684 m.</p><br>
<p>Refuge Cosmiques, 3613 m.</p><br>
<p>Refuge Tête Rousse, 3167 m.</p><br>
<p>Refuge Francesco Gonella, 3071 m.</p><br>
<p>Refuge Grands Mulets, 3050 m.</p><br>
<h3>Impacts of climate change</h3><br>
<p>Recent temperature rises and heatwaves, such as that of summer 2015, have had significant impacts on many climbing routes across the Alps, including those on Mont Blanc. For example, in 2015, the Grand Mulets route, previously popular in the 20th century, was blocked by virtually impenetrable crevasse fields, and the Gouter Hut was closed by municipal decree for some days because of very high stonefall danger, with some stranded climbers evacuated by helicopter.</p><br>
<h2>Exploits and incidents</h2><br>
<p>11 July 2013 - Kilian Jornet beat the fastest overall time for ascent and descent with 4 hours 57 minutes and 40 seconds.</p><br>
<h2>Cultural references</h2><br>
<h3>Cinema and television</h3><br>
<p>La Terre, son visage, is a documentary by Jean-Luc Prévost and published by Édition Société national de télévision française, released in 1984. It is part of the Haroun Tazieff raconte sa terre, vol. 1 series. In it he talks about the west-east crossing of Mont Blanc.</p><br>
<p>The film Malabar Princess.</p><br>
<p>The television-film Premier de cordée.</p><br>
<p>Storm over Mont Blanc (Stürme über dem Mont Blanc, 1930) with Leni Riefenstahl and directed by Arnold Fanck</p><br>
<p>La Roue (The Wheel, 1923) is a 273-minute film by Abel Gance depicting rail operations, workers, and families in southeastern France, including the Mont Blanc area.</p><br>
<h3>Literature</h3><br>
<p>Premier de cordée by Roger Frison-Roche</p><br>
<p>Hugo et le Mont Blanc by Colette Cosnie – Édition Guérin</p><br>
<p>Hymn Before Sunrise, in the Vale of Chamouni by Samuel Taylor Coleridge</p><br>
<p>Frankenstein by Mary Shelley</p><br>
<p>Mont Blanc by Percy Shelley</p><br>
<p>Point Blanc by Anthony Horowitz</p><br>
<p>The Prelude Book VI by William Wordsworth</p><br>
<p>Kordian by Juliusz Słowacki</p><br>
<p>Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains by Jon Krakauer</p><br>
<p>Running Water by AEW Mason</p><br>
<p>La neige en deuil by Henri Troyat</p><br>
<h2>Protection</h2><br>
<p>The Mont Blanc massif is being put forward as a potential World Heritage Site because of its uniqueness and its cultural importance, considered the birthplace and symbol of modern mountaineering. It would require the three governments of Italy, France and Switzerland to make a request to UNESCO for it to be listed.</p><br>
<p>Mont Blanc is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the world, and for this reason, some view it as threatened. Pro-Mont Blanc (an international collective of associations for the protection of Mont Blanc) published in 2002 the book Le versant noir du mont Blanc (The black hillside of Mont Blanc), which exposes current and future problems in conserving the site.</p><br>
<p>In 2007, Europes two highest toilets (at a height of 4,260 metres, 13,976 feet) were taken by helicopter to the top of Mont Blanc. They are also serviced by helicopter. They will serve 30,000 skiers and hikers annually, helping to alleviate the discharge of urine and faeces that spreads down the mountain face with the spring thaw, and turns it into Mont Marron&#39;.</p><br>
<p>Global warming has begun to melt glaciers and cause avalanches on Mont Blanc, creating more dangerous climbing conditions.</p><br>
<p>The highest resolution panorama of the Mont Blanc ever made:</p><br>
<p>Segesta  was one of the major cities of the Elymian people, one of the three indigenous peoples of Sicily. The other major cities of the Elymians were Eryx and Entella. It is located in the northwestern part of Sicily in Italy, near the modern comune of Calatafimi-Segesta in the province of Trapani. The Hellenization of Segesta happened very early and had a profound effect on its people.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>According to the tradition used in Virgils Aeneid, Segesta was founded jointly by the territorial king Acestes (who was son of the local river Crinisus by a Dardanian woman named Segesta or Egesta) and by those of Aeneas folk who wished to remain behind with Acestes to found the city of Acesta.</p><br>
<p>The population of Segesta was mixed Elymian and Ionian Greek, though the Elymians were soon Hellenized and took on external characteristics of Greek life.</p><br>
<p>Segesta was in constant conflict with Selinus (modern Selinunte), which probably tried to assure itself a port on the Tyrrhenian Sea. The first clashes were in 580-576 BC, and again in 454 BC, but later the conflict would have repercussions for all of Sicily. In 415 BC Segesta asked Athens for help against Selinus, leading to a disastrous Athenian expedition in Sicily (415-413 BC). Later they asked Carthage for help, leading to the total destruction of the city of Selinus by the hands of Carthage. Segesta remained an ally of Carthage, it was besieged by Dionysius of Syracuse in 397 BC, and it was destroyed by Agathocles in 307 BC, but recovered.</p><br>
<p>In 276 BC the city was allied with Pyrrhus, but changed side in 260 BC when it surrendered to the Romans. The city was not punished by the Romans for its long alliance with Carthage, but owing to the mythical common origin of the Romans and the Elymians (both descendants of refugees from Troy) it was granted the state of a "free and immune" city.</p><br>
<p>In 104 BC the slave rebellion led by Athenion started in Segesta. Little is known about the city under Roman rule, but it is probable that the population gradually moved to the port city of Castellammare del Golfo due to better trading opportunities. The city was destroyed by Vandals. The ruins of the city are located on the top of Monte Bàrbaro at 305 m above sea level. The city was protected by steep slopes on several sides and by walls on the more gentle slope towards the temple.</p><br>
<p>The hilltop offers a view over the valley towards the Gulf of Castellamare. The city controlled several major roads between the coast to the north and the hinterland.</p><br>
<p>Very little is known about the city plan. Aerial photography indicates a regular city plan, built in part on terraces to overcome the natural sloping terrain. The current remains might be from the reconstruction after the destruction of the city by Agathocles.</p><br>
<p>Current archaeological work indicates that the site was reoccupied by a Muslim community in the Norman period. Excavations have unearthed a Muslim necropolis and a mosque from the 12th century next to a Norman castle. Evidence suggests that the mosque was destroyed after the arrival of a new Christian overlord at the beginning of the 13th century. The city appears to have been finally abandoned by the second half of the 13th century.</p><br>
<h2>The temple</h2><br>
<p>On a hill just outside the site of the ancient city of Segesta lies an unusually well preserved Greek Doric temple. It is thought to have been built in the 420&#39;s BC by an Athenian architect and has six by fourteen columns on a base measuring 21 by 56 meters, on a platform three steps high. Several elements suggest that the temple was never actually finished. The columns have not been fluted as they normally would have been in a Doric temple and there are still tabs present in the blocks of the base (used for lifting the blocks into place but then normally removed). It also lacks a cella and was never roofed over. The temple is also unusual as the city was not mainly populated by Greeks. It can also be noted that this temple lacks any painted or sculptured ornamentation, altar, and deity dedication. This temple escaped destruction by the Carthaginians in the late 5th century.</p><br>
<h2>Further reading</h2><br>
<p>The Aeolian Islands  are a volcanic archipelago in the Tyrrhenian Sea north of Sicily, named after the demigod of the winds Aeolus. The islands&#39; inhabitants are known as Aeolians . The Aeolian Islands are a popular tourist destination in the summer and attract up to 200,000 visitors annually.</p><br>
<p>The largest island is Lipari and the islands are sometimes referred to as the Lipari Islands or Lipari group. The other islands include Vulcano, Salina, Stromboli, Filicudi, Alicudi, Panarea and Basiluzzo.</p><br>
<h2>Geography</h2><br>
<p>The present shape of the Aeolian Islands is the result of volcanic activity over a period of 260,000 years. There are two active volcanoes – Stromboli and Vulcano. The volcanic activity of steaming fumaroles and thermal waters are on most of the islands. The volcanic activity has also left the islands with very fertile soil that is conducive to the growth of natural flora.</p><br>
<p>Geologically the archipelago is defined as a volcanic arc. The origin of the Aeolian Islands is due to movement of the Earths crust as a result of plate tectonics. The African continental shelf is in constant movement towards Europe. The resulting collision has created a volcanic area with ruptures in the Earths crust with consequent eruptions of lava. The "Aeolian Arc" extends for more than, but the area of geological instability caused by the collision of Africa and Europe is much larger. It includes Sicily, Calabria, and Campania together with Greece and the Aegean islands.</p><br>
<p>The complex of the eight Aeolian Islands, covering an area of, originated in the Tyrrhenian Basin, a great plain at the bottom of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Emissions of lava from depths of up to resulted in the formation of the Aeolian Islands, together with Ustica and a series of submarine volcanoes named Magnani, Vavilov, Marsili and Palinuro, as well as two that are unnamed.</p><br>
<h2>Architectural control</h2><br>
<p>Curbing urban development has been a key to preserving the Aeolian islands in a natural state. New buildings are severely restricted. Existing residences can be bought and restored but must be constructed to resemble its whitewashed houses. Traditional houses consist of modular cubes constructed from indigenous building materials—stone, lava, pumice and tufo. Almost all houses have a large outdoor terrace, usually shaded by grape-vines and flowering vines. The houses, balconies and terraces are mostly decorated with brightly patterned terra-cotta tiles, a throwback to long-ago Spanish conquerors.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<h3>4000–2500 BC</h3><br>
<p>The first evidence of Sicilian migration was in Lipari (Castellaro Vecchio). A manufacture and commerce of obsidian objects was highly developed until the introduction of metals.</p><br>
<h3>1600–1250 BC</h3><br>
<p>During the Bronze Age, the Aeolians prospered by means of maritime commerce in an area which extended from Mycenae to the British Isles, from where tin was imported. Villages on the Aeolian islands flourished on Capo Graziano (Filicudi), Castello (Lipari), Serro dei Cianfi (Salina), Capo Milazzese (Panarea), and Portella (Salina). All these settlements were destroyed by new Italic invasions in 1250 BC.</p><br>
<h3>1240–850 BC</h3><br>
<p>The Aeolian Islands were occupied by the Ausonians led by Liparus. Liparus was succeeded by Aeolus whose house, according to the Odyssey by Homer, gave hospitality to Odysseus.</p><br>
<h3>600–300 BC</h3><br>
<p>In 580 BC, Greeks exiled from Rhodes and Knidos landed at Lipari and began a period of Greek domination, which was known for acts of piracy against Etruscan and Phoenician shipping. There was production of vases and other ceramics.</p><br>
<h3>300 BC–AD 250</h3><br>
<p>The islanders were allies of the Carthaginians against Rome during the Punic Wars. Although the Battle of the Lipari Islands in 260 BC led to a Carthaginian victory, the Romans later sacked Lipari and their domination led to a period of poverty.</p><br>
<h3>AD 250–1000</h3><br>
<p>At the fall of the Roman Empire, the Aeolian Islands came under the sway of the Visigoths, the Vandals and the Ostrogoths, followed by the domination of the Byzantine Empire. In 264, a coffin which contained the body of Bartholomew was washed upon the beach of Lipari, with the result that Bartholomew was immediately elected the patron saint of the Aeolian Islands. Calogeras the hermit was active on Lipari during the first half of the 4th century and he gave his name to the thermal springs. In 836 the Arabs sacked Lipari, massacred the population, and enslaved the survivors.</p><br>
<h3>1000–1500</h3><br>
<p>The Normans liberated Sicily from the Arabs. Roger II of Sicily sent the Benedictine monks to Lipari, which gave rise to considerable development on the islands. A cathedral dedicated to Saint Bartholomew was built, as well as the Benedictine monastery in the castle. Lipari became a bishopric and agriculture made progress in Salina, as well as the smaller islands. In 1208 Frederick II of Swabia acceded to the throne of Sicily. The period of prosperity which followed, and which was consolidated during the course of his reign, ended with the domination of the Angevins and the rebellion of the Sicilians which culminated in the revolt of the Sicilian Vespers. The Aeolians however, remained loyal to Charles of Anjou, and commercial links were established with Naples, the capital of the Angevin kingdom. In 1337 Lipari opened its gates to the French fleet without resistance, and in return obtained various commercial and fiscal benefits. In the mid-15th century, Naples and Palermo united into the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies under the crown of Alfonso V of Aragon. Aeolian privileges were recognized. Aeolian privateers fought alongside the Spanish against the French.</p><br>
<h3>1500–present</h3><br>
<p>On June 30, 1544, a fleet of 180 Ottoman vessels under the command of the corsair Hayreddin Barbarossa occupied Lipari and laid siege to the castle. The defenders surrendered. Historically, it is said around 9,000 of the 10,000 citizens of Lipari were captured and enslaved although a couple of more recent scholars have questioned this number arguing for a lower population at the time of Barbarossa. A number of citizens were ransomed in Messina and returned to the islands but most of those captured never returned. Only after the tragedy did the Spanish authorities turn their attention to Lipari and repopulate the city with Sicilian, Calabrian and Spanish families. The city walls and houses were rebuilt and an Aeolian fleet was constructed which was able to successfully defend the Tyrrhenian Sea from the Ottomans.</p><br>
<p>In 1693, an earthquake destroyed all the towns in eastern Sicily, causing around 60,000 deaths. After the population invoked the protection of Saint Bartholomew during prayers in the cathedral, there was not a single victim on the Aeolian Islands. The economic conditions of the islands improved greatly during the 17th century with agricultural progress (malvasia grapes, capers, and a variety of fruit, vegetables and fishing). With the Bourbons came the introduction criminal and political prisoners to the islands. In 1916, the penal colony was closed, but the Fascist regime tried to reopen it in 1926 unsuccessfully. The island population reacted by pulling down the remains of the ex-penitentiary in the castle. However, not long after, the castle was converted to accommodate anti-Fascist political prisoners in enforced exile. Liparians fraternized with these exiles until the Allies&#39; liberation. After the war, the same room that had housed the opponents of Fascism became the Aeolian Archaeological Museum.</p><br>
<p>Towards the end of the 19th century, the Aeolian Islands were visited by Archduke Ludwig Salvator of Austria—a friend of the islands and also a man with a profound knowledge of the archipelago. Between the years 1893–96 he published a work of eight volumes on the Aeolian Islands.</p><br>
<p>In August 1888, the crater named Fossa on Vulcano erupted and caused many deaths in the sulphur mines. The eruptions continued for 19 months.</p><br>
<p>On New Year&#39;s Day in 1909, a rumor appeared in international newspapers that the Aeolian Islands had been "swallowed up by the sea" during a time of volcanic activity. While communication with the islands was interrupted for a time, they were not otherwise lost.</p><br>
<p>During World War II, all of the Aeolian Islands were under Allied control by August 1943.</p><br>
<h2>UNESCO World Heritage Sites</h2><br>
<p>The Aeolian Islands were listed by UNESCO in 2000 as a World Heritage Site for providing "an outstanding record of volcanic island-building and destruction, and ongoing volcanic phenomena". Status as a World Heritage Site was threatened by Italy&#39;s failure to close the pumice quarry as well as its failure to prevent the building of 4 new harbors. However, it is still listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage site.</p><br>
<p>Selinunte  was an ancient Greek city on the south-western coast of Sicily in Italy. It was situated between the valleys of the Cottone and Modione rivers. It now lies in the comune Castelvetrano, between the frazioni of Triscina di Selinunte in the west and Marinella di Selinunte in the east. The archaeological site contains five temples centered on an acropolis. Of the five temples, only the Temple of Hera, also known as "Temple E", has been re-erected. At its peak before 409 BC the city may have contained up to 30,000 people, excluding slaves.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Selinunte was one of the most important of the Greek colonies in Sicily, situated on the southwest coast of that island, at the mouth of the small river of the same name, and 6.5 km west of the Hypsas river (the modern Belice). It was founded, according to the historian Thucydides, by a colony from the Sicilian city of Megara Hyblaea, under the leadership of a man called Pammilus, about 100 years after the foundation of Megara Hyblaea, with the help of colonists from Megara in Greece, which was Megara Hyblaea&#39;s mother city. The date of its foundation cannot be precisely fixed, as Thucydides indicates it only by reference to the foundation of Megara Hyblaea, which is itself not accurately known, but it may be placed about 628 BCE. Diodorus places it 22 years earlier, or 650 BCE, and Hieronymus still further back in 654 BCE. The date from Thucydides, which is probably the most likely, is incompatible with this earlier date. The name is supposed to have been derived from quantities of wild celery ((selinon)) that grew on the spot. For the same reason, they adopted the celery leaf as the symbol on their coins.</p><br>
<p>Selinunte was the most westerly of the Greek colonies in Sicily, and for this reason they soon came into contact with the Phoenicians of western Sicily and the native Sicilians in the west and northwest of the island. The Phoenicians do not at first seem to have conflicted with them; but as early as 580 BCE the Selinuntines were engaged in hostilities with the non-Greek Elymian people of Segesta, whose territory bordered their own. A body of emigrants from Rhodes and Cnidus who subsequently founded Lipara, supported the Segestans on this occasion, leading to their victory; but disputes and hostilities between the Segestans and Selinuntines seem to have occurred frequently, and it is possible that when Diodorus speaks of the Segestans being at war with the Lilybaeans (modern Marsala) in 454 BCE, that the Selinuntines are the people really meant.</p><br>
<p>The river Mazarus, which at that time appears to have formed the boundary with Segesta, was only about 25 km west of Selinunte; and it is certain that at a somewhat later period the territory of Selinunte extended to its banks, and that that city had a fort and emporium at its mouth. On the other side Selinuntes territory certainly extended as far as the Halycus (modern Platani), at the mouth of which it founded the colony of Minoa, or Heracleia, as it was afterward called. It is clear, therefore, that Selinunte had already achieved great power and prosperity; but very little information survives about its history. Like most of the Sicilian cities, it passed from an oligarchy to a tyranny, and about 510 BCE was subject to a despot named Peithagoras, who was overthrown with the assistance of the Spartan Euryleon, one of the companions of Dorieus. Euryleon himself ruled the city, for a little while, but was speedily overthrown and put to death by the Selinuntines. The Selinuntines supported the Carthaginians during the great expedition of Hamilcar (480 BCE); they even promised to send a contingent to the Carthaginian army, but this did not arrive until after Hamilcars defeat at the Battle of Himera.</p><br>
<p>The Selinuntines are next mentioned in 466 BCE, co-operating with the other cities of Sicily to help the Syracusans to expel Thrasybulus. Thucydides speaks of Selinunte just before the Athenian expedition in 416 BCE as a powerful and wealthy city, possessing great resources for war both by land and sea, and having large stores of wealth accumulated in its temples. Diodorus also represents it at the time of the Carthaginian invasion, as having enjoyed a long period of tranquility, and possessing a numerous population. The walls of Selinunte enclosed an area of approximately 100 hectare. The population of the city has been estimated at 14,000 to 19,000 people during the fifth century BC.</p><br>
<h3>The Sicilian Expedition</h3><br>
<p>In 416 BCE, a renewal of the earlier disputes between Selinunte and Segesta led to the great Athenian expedition to Sicily. The Selinuntines called on Syracuse for assistance, and were able to blockade the Segestans; but the Segestans appealed to Athens for help. The Athenians do not appear to have taken any immediate action to save Segesta, but no further conflict around Segesta is recorded. When the Athenian expedition first arrived in Sicily (415 BCE), Thucydides presents the general Nicias as proposing that the Athenians should proceed to Selinunte at once and compel the Selinuntines to surrender on moderate terms; but this advice was overruled and the expedition sailed against Syracuse instead. As a result, the Selinuntines played only a minor part in the subsequent operations. They are, however, mentioned on several occasions providing troops to the Syracusans; and it was at Selinunte that the large Peloponnesian force sent to support Gylippus landed in the spring of 413 BCE, having been driven over to the coast of Africa by a tempest.</p><br>
<h3>Captured by Carthage</h3><br>
<p>The defeat of the Athenian armament apparently left the Segestans at the mercy of their rivals. They surrendered the frontier district that was the original subject of dispute to Selinunte. The Selinuntines, however, were not satisfied with this concession, and continued their hostility against them, leading the Segestans to seek assistance from Carthage. After some hesitation, Carthage sent a small force, with the assistance of which the Segestans defeated the Selinuntines in a battle. The Carthaginians in the following spring (409 BCE) sent over a vast army containing 100,000 men, according to the lowest ancient estimate, led by Hannibal Mago (the grandson of Hamilcar that was killed at Himera). The army landed at Lilybaeum, and directly marched from there to Selinunte. The citys inhabitants had not expected such a force and were wholly unprepared to resist it. The city fortifications were, in many places, in disrepair, and the armed forces promised by Syracuse, Acragas (modern Agrigento) and Gela, were not ready and did not arrive in time. The Selinuntines fought the Carthaginians on their own and continued to defend their individual houses even after the walls were breached. However, the enemys overwhelming numbers made resistance hopeless, and after a ten-day siege the city was taken and most of the defenders put to death. According to sources, 16,000 of the citizens of Selinunte were killed, 5,000 were taken prisoner, and 2,600 under the command of Empedion escaped to Acragas. Subsequently, a considerable number of the survivors and fugitives were gathered together by Hermocrates of Syracuse, and established within the walls of the city. Shortly after, Hannibal destroyed the city walls, but gave permission to the surviving inhabitants to return and occupy it as tributaries of Carthage. A considerable part of the citizens of Selinunte took up this offer, which was confirmed by the treaty subsequently concluded between Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, and the Carthaginians, in 405 BCE.</p><br>
<h3>Destruction</h3><br>
<p>The Selinuntines are again mentioned in 397 BCE when they supported Dionysius during his war with Carthage; but both the city and territory were again given up to the Carthaginians by the peace of 383 BCE. Although Dionysius reconquered it shortly before his death, it soon returned to Carthaginian control. The Halycus River, which was established as the eastern boundary of the Carthaginian dominion in Sicily by the treaty of 383 BCE, seems to have generally continued to have been the border, despite temporary interruptions; and was again fixed as the border by the treaty with Agathocles in 314 BCE. This last treaty expressly stipulated that Selinunte, as well as Heracleia and Himera, were subjects of Carthage, as before. In 276 BCE, however, during the expedition of Pyrrhus to Sicily, the Selinuntines voluntarily joined Pyrrhus, after the capture of Heracleia. By the First Punic War, Selinunte was again under Carthaginian control, and its territory was repeatedly the theater of military operations between the Romans and the Carthaginians. But before the close of the war (about 250 BCE), when the Carthaginians were beginning to pull back, and confine themselves to the defense of as few places as possible, they removed all the inhabitants of Selinunte to Lilybaeum and destroyed the city.</p><br>
<p>It seems certain that it was never rebuilt. Pliny the Elder mentions its name (Selinus oppidum), as if it still existed as a town in his time, but Strabo distinctly classes it with extinct cities. Ptolemy, though he mentions the river Selinus, does not mention a town of the name. The Thermae Selinuntiae (at modern Sciacca), which derived their name from the ancient city, and seem to have been much frequented in the time of the Romans, were situated at a considerable distance, 30 km, from Selinunte: they are sulfurous springs, still much valued for their medical properties, and dedicated, like most thermal waters in Sicily, to San Calogero. At a later period they were called the Aquae Labodes or Larodes, under which name they appear in the Itineraries.</p><br>
<h2>Archaeological remains</h2><br>
<p>The city is beside the sea, between the Modione River (the ancient Selinus) in the west and the Cottone River in the east, on two high areas connected by a saddle. The part of the city to the south, next to the sea, contains the acropolis which is based around two intersecting streets and contains many temples (A, B, C, D, O). The part of the city to the north, further inland, contained housing on the Hippodamian plan contemporary with the acropolis and two necropoleis (Galera-Bagliazzo and Manuzza).</p><br>
<p>Other important remains are found on the high places across the rivers to the east and west of the city. In the east there are three temples (E, F, G) and a necropolis (Buffa) north of the modern village of Marinella. In the west are the most ancient remains of Selinus: the Sanctuary of the Malophoros and the archaic necropolis (Pipio, Manicalunga, Timpone Nero). The two ports of the city were in the mouths of the city&#39;s two rivers.</p><br>
<p>The modern Archaeological park, which covers about 40 hectares can therefore be divided into the following areas:</p><br>
<p>The Acropolis at the centre with temples and fortifications</p><br>
<p>Gaggera Hill in the West, with the sanctuary of Malophoros</p><br>
<p>Mannuzza Hill in the north with ancient housing</p><br>
<p>The East Hill in the east, with other temples</p><br>
<p>The necropoleis</p><br>
<h3>The Acropolis</h3><br>
<p>The acropolis is a chalk massif with a cliff face falling into the sea in the south, while the north end narrows to 140 metres wide. The settlement in the form of a massive trapezoid, extended to the north with a large retaining wall in terraces (about eleven metres high) and was surrounded by a wall (repeatedly restored and modified) with an exterior of squared stone blocks and an interior of rough stone (emplecton). It had five towers and four gates. To the north, the acropolis was fortified by a counter wall and towers from the beginning of the fourth century BC.</p><br>
<p>At the entrance to the acropolis is the so-called Tower of Pollux, constructed in the sixteenth century to deter the Barbary pirates, atop the remains of an ancient tower or lighthouse.</p><br>
<p>The urban plan is divided in quarters by two main streets (9 metres wide), which cross at right angles (the North-South road is 425 metres long, the East-West is 338 metres long). Every 32 metres they are intersected by other minor roads (5 metres wide). This urban systemisation, which followed a more ancient model, dates to the fourth century BC (i.e. to the period of Punic rule).</p><br>
<p>Multiple altars and little sanctuaries may be attributed to the first years of the colony, which were replaced around fifty years later by large, more permanent temples. The first of these is the so-called Megaron near Temples B & C.</p><br>
<p>In front of Temple O there is a Punic sacrificial area from after the conquest of 409 BC, consisting of rooms built of dry masonry within which vases containing ashes were deposited along with amphorae of the Carthaginian “torpedo” type.</p><br>
<p>On the hill of the acropolis are the remains of numerous Doric temples.</p><br>
<p>Temple O and Temple A of which little remains except for the rocky basement and the altar which was constructed between 490 and 460 BC. They had nearly identical structures, similar to that of Temple E on the East Hill. The peristyle was 16.2 metres wide and 40.2 metres long with 6 x 14 columns (6.23 metres high). Inside there was a pronaos in antis, a naos with an adyton and an opisthodomos in antis, separate from the naos. The naos was a step higher than the pronaos and the adyton was a step higher again. In the wall between the pronaos and the naos in Temple A two spiral staircases led to the gallery (or floor) above. The pronaos of Temple A has a mosaic pavement showing symbolic figures of the Phoenician goddess Tanit, a caduceus, the Sun, a crown, and a bull’s head, which testifies to the reuse of the space as a religious or domestic area in the Punic period. Temple O was dedicated to Poseidon or perhaps Athena; Temple A to the Dioscuri or perhaps to Apollo.</p><br>
<p>34 metres east of Temple A are the remains of the monumental entrance to the area, which took the form of a propylaea with a floorplan in the shape of a T, made up of a 13 x 5.6 metre rectangle with a peristyle of 5 x 12 columns and another rectangle of 6.78 x 7.25 metres.</p><br>
<p>Across the East-West street there is a second sacred area, north of the preceding. There, to the south of Temple C is a Shrine 17.65 metres long and 5.5 metres wide which dates from 580 to 570 BC and has the archaic form of the Megaron, perhaps intended to hold votive offerings. Lacking a pronaos, the entrance at the eastern end passed directly into the naos (at the centre of which there are two bases for the wooden columns which held up the roof). At the back there was a square adyton, to which a third space was added in a later period. The Shrine was perhaps dedicated to Demeter Thesmophoros.</p><br>
<p>To the right of the shrine is Temple B from the Hellenistic period, which is small (8.4 x 4.6 metres) and in bad condition. It is made up of a prostyle portico of four columns which is reached by a stairway with nine steps, followed by a pronaos and naos. In 1824 clear traces of polychrome stucco were still visible. Probably constructed around 250 BC, a short time before Selinus was abandoned for good, it represents the only religious building that attests to the modest revival of the city after its destruction in 409. Its purpose remains obscure; in the past it was believed to be the Heroon of Empedocles, benefactor of the Selinuntine marshes, but this theory is no longer sustainable, given the building’s date. Today it is thought more likely to be a strongly Hellenised Punic cult, perhaps to Demeter or Asclepius-Eshmun.</p><br>
<p>Temple C is the oldest in this area, dating from 550 BC. In 1925-7 the fourteen of the north side’s seventeen columns were re-erected, along with part of the entablature. It had a peristyle (24 x 63.7 metres) of 6 x 17 columns (8.62 metres high). The entrance is reached by eight steps and consists of a portico with a second row of columns and then the pronaos. Behind it is the naos and adyton in a single long narrow structure (an archaic characteristic). It has basically the same floor plan as Temple F on the East Hill. Multiple elements show a certain experimentation and divergence from the pattern of the Doric temple which later became the standard: the columns are squat and massive (some are even made from a single stone), lack entasis, show variation in the number of flutes, the width of the intercolumniation varies, the corner columns have a larger diameter than the others, etc. Finds in the temple include: some fragments of red, brown, and purple polychrome terracotta from the cornice decoration, a gigantic 2.5 metre high clay gorgon head from the pediment, three metopes representing Perseus slaying the Gorgon, Heracles with the Cercopes, and a frontal view of the quadriga of Apollo, all of which are in the Museo Archeologico di Palermo. Temple C probably functioned as an archive, since hundreds of seals have been found here and was dedicated to Apollo, according to epigraphic evidence, or perhaps Heracles.</p><br>
<p>East of Temple C is its rectangular grand altar (20.4 metres long x 8 metres wide) of which the foundations and some steps remain. After that there is the area of the Hellenistic agora. A little further there are the remains of houses and the terrace is bordered by a Doric portico (57 metres long and 2.8 metres deep) which overlooks part of the wall supporting the acropolis.</p><br>
<p>Next is Temple D which is dated to 540 BC. The west face fronts directly onto the north-south street. The peristyle is 24 metres x 56 metres on a 6 x 13 column pattern (each 7.51 metres high). There is a pronaos in antis, an elongated naos, ending in an adyton. It is more standardised than Temple C (The columns are slightly inclined, more slender, and have entasis, the portico is supported by a distyle pronaos in antis), but it retains some archaic features, such as variation in the length of the intercolumniation and the diameter of the columns, as well as in the number of flutes per column. As with Temple C, there are many circular and square cavities in the pavement of the peristyle and of the naos, whose function is unknown. Temple D was dedicated to Athena according to epigraphic evidence The large external altar is not oriented to the temple’s axis, but placed obliquely near the southwest corner, which suggested that an earlier temple occupied the same site on a different axis.</p><br>
<p>East of Temple D is a small altar in front of the basement of an archaic shrine: Temple Y, also known as the Temple of the Small Metopes. The recovered metopes have a height of 84 centimetres and can be dated to 570 BC. They depict a crouching Sphinx in profile, the Delphic triad (Leto, Apollo, Artemis) in rigid frontal view, and the Rape of Europa. Another two metopes can be dated to around 560 BC and were recycled in the construction of Hermocrates’ wall. They show the quadriga of Demeter and Kore (or Helios and Selene? Apollo?) and an Eleusinian ceremony with three women holding ears of grain (Demeter, Kore, and Hecate? The Moirai?). They are kept at the Museo Archeologico di Palermo.</p><br>
<p>Between Temples C and D are the ruins of a Byzantine village of the fifth century AD, built with recycled stone. The fact that some of the houses were crushed by the collapse of the columns of Temple C shows that the earthquake which caused the collapse of the Selinuntine temples occurred in the Medieval period.</p><br>
<p>To the north, the acropolis holds two quarters of the city (one west and the other east of the main north-south street), rebuilt by Hermocrates after 409 BC. The houses are modest, built with recycled material. Some of them contain incised crosses, a sign that they were later adapted as Christian buildings or inhabited by Christians.</p><br>
<p>Further north, before the main area of habitation, there are the grandiose fortifications for the defense of the acropolis. They are paralleled by a long gallery (originally covered) with numerous vaulted passages, followed by a deep defensive ditch crossed by a bridge, with three semicurcular towers at west, north, and east. Around the outside of the north tower (which had a weapons’ store at its base) are the entrances to the east-west trench, with passages in both the walls. Only a small part of the fortifications belong to the old city – they are mostly from Hermocrates’ reconstruction and successive repairs in the fourth and third centuries. The fact that architectural elements were recycled into it demonstrates that some of the temples were already abandoned in 409 BC.</p><br>
<h3>Manuzza Hill</h3><br>
<p>North of the acropolis on Manuzza Hill, the modern street traces the border of an area in the form of a massive trapezoid in which the ancient agora was presumably located. The whole area was occupied by habitation on the Hippodamian plan (reconstructed by means of aerial photography), on a slightly different orientation from the acropolis, with elongated insulae of 190 x 32 metres oriented north-south, which were originally surrounded by a defensive wall. There have not been systematic excavations in the area, but there have been some soundages, which have confirmed that the area was inhabited from the foundation of Selinus (seventh century BC0 and therefore was not a later expansion of the city.</p><br>
<p>After the destruction of Selinus in 409, this area of the city was not reinhabited. The refugees returned by Hermocrates were settled only on the acropolis, which was more defensible.</p><br>
<p>In 1985 a  structure was discovered on the hill, probably a public building of the fifth century BC.</p><br>
<p>Further north, beyond the housing, are two necropoleis: Manuzza and the older (seventh and sixth century) one in Galera-Bagliazzo.</p><br>
<h3>The East Hill</h3><br>
<p>There are three temples on the East Hill, which although all in the same area on the same north-south axis seem not to have belonged to a single sacred compound (Temenos), since there is a wall separating Temple E from Temple F. This sacred complex has strong parallels with the western slopes of the acropolis of Megara, Selinus’ mothercity, which are useful (perhaps indispensable) for the correct attribution of the cults of the three temples.</p><br>
<p>Temple E the most recent of the three, dates to 460-450 BC and has a very similar plan to that of Temples A and O on the acropolis. Its current appearance is the result of anastylosis (reconstruction using the original material) carried out – controversially – between 1956 and 1959. The peristyle is 25.33 x 67.82 metres with a 6 x 15 column pattern (each 10.19 metres high) with numerous traces of the stucco which originally covered it remaining. It is a temple characterised by multiple staircases creating a system of successive levels: ten steps lead to the entrance on the eastern side, after the pronaos in antis another six steps lead into the naos and finally another six steps lead into the adyton at the rear of the naos. Behind the adyton, separated from it by a wall, was the opisthodomos in antis. A Doric frieze at the top of the walls of the naos consisted of metopes depicting people, with the heads and naked parts of the women made of Parian marble and the rest from local stone.</p><br>
<p>Four metopes are preserved: Heracles killing the Amazon Antiope, the marriage of Hera and Zeus, Actaeon being torn apart by Artemis’ hunting dogs, Athena killing the giant Enceladus, and another more fragmentary one perhaps depicting Apollo and Daphne. All of them are kept in the Museo Archeologico di Palermo. Recent soundages performed inside the temple and under Temple E have revealed that it was preceded by two other sacred buildings, one of which was destroyed in 510 BC. Temple E was dedicated to Hera as shown by the inscription on a votive stela but some scholars deduce that it must have been dedicated to Aphrodite on the basis of structural parallels.</p><br>
<p>Temple F, the oldest and smallest of the three, was built between 550 and 540 BC on the model of Temple C. Of the temples it has been the most severely spoliated. Its peristyle was 24.43 x 61.83 metres on a 6 x 14 column pattern (each 9.11 metres high), with stone screens (4.7 metres high) in the space between the columns, with false doors painted in with pilasters and architraves – the actual entrance was at the east end. It is not clear what the purpose of these screens, which are unique among Greek temples, was. Some think they were intended to protect votive gifts or to prevent particular rites (Dionysian Mysteries?) being seen by the uninitiated. Inside, there is a portico containing a second row of columns, a pronaos, a naos, and an adyton in single long, narrow structure (an archaic characteristic).</p><br>
<p>On the east side, two late archaic metopes (dated to 500 BC) were found in excavations in 1823, which depict Athena and Dionysus in the process of killing two giants. Today they are kept in the Regional Archeological Museum Antonio Salinas. Scholars have suggested that Temple F was dedicated to either Athena or Dionysus.</p><br>
<p>Temple G was the largest in Selinus (113.34 metres long, 54.05 metres wide and about 30 metres high) and was among the largest in the Greek world. This building, although under construction from 530 to 409 BC (the long period of construction is demonstrated by the variation of style: the east side is archaic, while the west side is classical), remained incomplete, as shown by the absence of fluting on some of the columns and by the existence of column drums of the same dimensions ten kilometres away at Cave di Cusa, still in the process of extraction (see below).</p><br>
<p>In the massive pile of ruins it is possible to make out a peristyle of 8 x 17 columns (16.27 metres high and 3.41 metres in diameter), only one of which remains standing since it was re-erected in 1832, known in Sicilian as “lu fusu di la vecchia” (The place of the ancient ). The interior consisted of a prostyle pronaos with four columns, with two deep antae walls ending in pilasters and three doors leading to the large naos. The naos was very large and divided into three aisles – the middle one was probably open to the air (hypaethros). There were two rows of ten slender columns which supported a second row of columns (the gallery) and two lateral staircases which led to the roofspace. At the back of the central aisle was an adyton, separated from the walls of the naos and entirely contained within it. Inside the adyton, the torso of a wounded or dying giant was found as well as the very important inscription known as the “Great Table of Selinus” (see below). At the rear there was an opisthodomos in antis, which could not be accessed from the naos. Of particular interest among the ruins are some finished columns showing traces of coloured stucco and blocks of the entablature which have horseshoe-shaped grooves on the sides. Ropes were run through these grooves and used to lift them into place. Temple G probably functioned as the treasury of the city and epigraphic evidence suggests that it was dedicated to Apollo, though recent studies have suggested that it be attributed to Zeus.</p><br>
<p>At the foot of the hill by the mouth of the River Cottone was the East Port, which was more than 600 metres wide on the inside and was probably equipped with a mole or breakwater to protect the acropolis. It underwent changes in the fourth and third centuries: it was enlarged and flanked by piers (oriented north-south) and by storage areas. Of the two ports of Selinus, which are both now silted up, the West Port on the River Selinus-Modione was the main one.</p><br>
<p>The extramural quarters, dedicated to trade, commerce and port activities was arranged on massive terraces on the hillslopes</p><br>
<p>North of the modern village of Marinella, is the Buffa necropolis</p><br>
<h3>Gaggera Hill with the sanctuary of the Malophoros</h3><br>
<p>A path runs from the acropolis, over the river Modione to the west hill.</p><br>
<p>On Gaggera Hill there are the remains of the very ancient Selinuntine sanctuary to the goddess of fertility, Demeter Malophoros, excavated continuously between 1874 and 1915. The complex, in varying states of preservation, was built in the sixth century BC on the slope of the hill and probably served as a station for funerary processions, before they proceeded to the Manicalunga necropolis.</p><br>
<p>Initially, the place was definitely free of buildings and provided an open area for cult practices at the altar. Later, with the erection of the temple and of the high enclosure wall (temenos) it was transformed into a sanctuary.</p><br>
<p>This sanctuary consisted of a rectangular enclosure (60 x 50 metres), which was entered on the east side through a rectangular propylaea in antis (built in the fifth century BC) fronted by a short staircase and a circular structure. Outside of the enclosure, the propylaea is flanked by the remains of a long portico (stoa) with seats for the pilgrims, who left evidence of themselves in the form of various altars and votives. Inside the enclosure, there was the large altar (16.3 metres long x 3.15 metres wide) in the centre, on top of a pile of ashes from the bones and other parts of the sacrifices. It had an extension to the southwest, while the remains of an earlier archaic altar are visible near the northwest extremity and there is a square pit on the temple side of the altar. Between the altar and the temple there is a canal carved in the rock which, comes from the north, through the whole area, carrying water to the sanctuary from a nearby spring. Just past the canal is the Temple of Demeter istself in the form of a megaron (20.4 x 9.52 metres), lacking a crepidoma or columns, but equipped with a pronaos, naos and adyton with a niche in the back. A rectangular service room is attached to the north side of the pronaos. The megaron had an earlier phase recognisable only at the foundation level. South of the temple there is a square structure and a rectangular structure of unclear function. North of the temple, another structure from a later period with two rooms opening onto the inside and outside of the temenos forms a secondary entrance to the enclosure. The south wall of the enclosure was periodically reinforced to fight the subsidence of the hillside.</p><br>
<p>South of the propylaea, attached to the wall of the enclosure, was another enclosure dedicated to Hecate. This took the form of a square, with the shrine in the east corner, near an entrance, while in the south corner there was a small square paved space of uncertain purpose.</p><br>
<p>Fifteen metres north there was another square enclosure (17 x 17 metres) dedicated to Zeus Meilichios (Honey-sweet Zeus) and Pasikrateia (Persephone), much of which remains, but it is not easy to understand the various structures, which were built at the end of the fourth century BC. It consists of an enclosure wall surrounded by various types of column on two sides (part of a Hellenistic portico), a small prostyle temple in antis (5.22 x 3.02 m) at the back of the enclosure with monolithic Doric columns, but an ionic entablature, and two others in the centre of the enclosure. Outside, to the west, the pious dedicated many small steles topped by images of the divine pair (two faces, one male and one female) made with shallow incisions. Along with them were found ashes and remains of offerings, evidence of convergence between the Greek cult of the Chthonic gods and Punic religion.</p><br>
<p>A very large number of finds came from the Sanctuary of the Malophoros (all kept at the Museum in Palermo): carved reliefs of mythological scenes, around 12,000 votive figurines in terracotta from the seventh to fifth centuries BC; large bust-shaped censers depicting Demeter and perhaps Tanit, a great quantity of Corinthian pottery (late proto-Corinthian and early Corinthian), a bass-relief depicting the Rape of Persephone by Hades found at the entrance to the enclosure. Christian remains, especially lamps with the monogram XP, prove the presence of a Christian religious community in the area of the sanctuary between the third and fifth centuries AD.</p><br>
<p>A little further up the slopes of Gaggera Hill is the spring from which the Sanctuary of the Malophoros gets its water. Fifty metres downstream of it is a building once believed to be a temple (the so-called “Temple M”), which is actually a monumental fountain. It is rectangular in shape (26.8 metres long x 10.85 metres wide x 8 metres high), constructed of squared blocks and contained a cistern, a closed basin protected by a portico with columns and an access staircase of four steps with a large paved area in front of it. The building is in the doric style and is dated to the middle of the sixth century mainly by the architectural terracotta discovered there. The fragments of metopes with the Amazonomachy, although found nearby, do not belong to the building, which had small, smooth metopes.</p><br>
<p>Another megaron, a few hundred metres to the northeast of the Sanctuary of the Malophoros, has been excavated recently.</p><br>
<h3>The Necropoleis</h3><br>
<p>Around Selinus some areas used as necropoleis can be identified.</p><br>
<p>Buffa (end of the seventh century BC and the sixth century): north of the East Hill. The site contains a triangular votive ditch (25 x 18 x 32 metres) with terracotta, vases and animal remains (probably from sacrifices).</p><br>
<p>Galera Bagliazzo (sixth century BC): northeast of Mannuzza Hill. In the tombs dug into the tufa here, none apparently singular, are grave goods of various styles. In 1882 the statues called the Ephebe of Selinus was brought to light here; today it is in the Civic museum of Castelvetrano.</p><br>
<p>Pipio Bresciana and Manicalunga Timpone Nero (Sixth to Fifth century BC): west of Gaggera Hill, the most extensive of Selinus’ necropoleis. Given its distance from the city centre it is not clear whether it was the necropolis of the city or of a suburban area. As well as evidence of inhumations, there are amphorae and pithoi which testify to the practice of cremation. The sarcophagi are in terracotta or tufa. There are also covered rooms.</p><br>
<h3>Cave di Cusa</h3><br>
<p>Cave di Cusa (The Quarries of Cusa) are made up of banks of limestone near Campobello di Mazara, thirteen kilometres from Selinus. They were the stone quarries from which the material for the buildings of Selinus came. The most notable element of the quarries is the sudden interruption of operations caused by the attack on the city in 409 BC. The sudden departure of the quarrymen, stonemasons and other workers means that today it is possible not just to reconsturct, but to see all the various stages of the quarrying process from the first deep circular cuts to the finished drums waiting to be transported. Along with the column drums, there are also some capitals and also square incisions for quarrying square blocks, all intended for the temples of Selinus. Of the drums that had already been extracted, some were found ready for transport and others, already on the way to Selinus were abandoned on the road. Some gigantic columns, definitely intended for Temple G, are found in the area west of Cave di Cusa, also in the state in which they were originally abandoned.</p><br>
<h2>Coinage</h2><br>
<p>The coins of Selinus are numerous and various. The earliest, as already mentioned, bear merely the figure of a parsley-leaf on the obverse. Those of somewhat later date represent a figure sacrificing on an altar, which is consecrated to Aesculapius, as indicated by a cock that stands below it. The subject of this type evidently refers to a story related by Diogenes Laertius that the Selinuntines were afflicted with a pestilence from the marshy character of the lands adjoining the neighboring river, but that this was cured by works of drainage, suggested by Empedocles. A figure standing on some coins is the river-god Selinus, who was thus made conducive to the salubrity of the city.</p><br>
<p>The Seal of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine is based on a coin of Selinus struck in 466 BC which was designed by the sculptor and medallist Allan Gairdner Wyon FRBS RMS (1882-1962). It shows two Greek gods associated with health - Apollo, the god of prophecy, music and medicine, and his sister Artemis, goddess of hunting and chastity, and comforter of women in childbirth - in a horse-drawn chariot. Artemis is driving while her brother the great archer is shooting arrows. The fruitful date palm was added to indicate the tropical activities of the School but also has a close connection with Apollo and Artemis: when their mother Leto gave birth to them on the island of Delos, miraculously a palm sprang up to give her shade in childbirth. Asclepius, Apollos son, was the god of ancient Greek medicine, and was frequently shown holding a staff entwined with a snake. Snakes were used in this healing cult to lick the affected part of the patient. Significantly Asclepius daughters were Hygeia (the goddess of health) and Panacea (the healer of all ailments). Asclepius&#39; staff with a snake coiled round it (known as a symbol of the medical professions) was placed at the base of the seal to emphasise the medical interests of the School. The Seal was redesigned in 1990 by Russell Sewell Design Associates, and is retained today within the current School logo.</p><br>
<h2>Art and other discoveries from Selinus</h2><br>
<p>The Great Table of Selinus was discovered in the adyton of Temple G in 1871. It contains a catalogue of the cults practiced at Selinus and is therefore the basis for all attempts to determine the cults of the various temples of Selinus. It says "The Selinuntines are victorious thanks to the gods Zeus, Phobos, Heracles, Apollo, Poseidon, the Tyndaridae, Athena, Demeter, Pasicrateia and other gods, but especially thanks toeus. After the restoration of peace it was decreed that a work be done in gold with the names of the gods inscribed, with Zeus at the top and that it be deposited in the Temple of Apollo, and that sixtent talents of gold be spent on this."</p><br>
<p>The figurative art recovered at Selinus is very important and much of it is kept in the Regional Archeological Museum Antonio Salinas. The best examples of the distinctive archaic artistic style of Selinus are the metopes (most of which are discussed above in the context of their temples).</p><br>
<p>The Ephebe of Selinus is a bronze statue of an ephebe offering a libation, cast in a severe style, with features typical of the Greek West and dating to 470 BC. Apart from the Ram of Syracuse, it represents the only large-scale bronze work which has survived from Greek Sicily. It is kept at Castelvetrano.</p><br>
<p>The necropoleis have yielded a very large number of Proto-Corinthian, Corinthian, Rhodian and Attic black figure vases, but no unique local pottery since Selinus did not produce fine pottery.</p><br>
<p>Some of the most valuable votive material was found in the Sanctuary of the Malophoros, such as terracotta statuettes, ceramics, incense-busts, altars, a bass-relief depicting the Rape of Persephone by Hades, and Christian lamps have been discussed above. These items are kept in the Museo Archeologico di Palermo and some of them are on display.</p><br>
<h3>Metopes of Selinus (gallery)</h3><br>
<h3>Terracotta statuettes (gallery)</h3><br>
<h2>General gallery</h2><br>
<p>Navy Pier is a 3,300 ft pier on the Chicago shoreline of Lake Michigan. It is located in the Streeterville neighborhood of the Near North Side community area. The Navy Pier currently encompasses more than fifty acres of parks, gardens, shops, restaurants, family attractions and exhibition facilities and is the top leisure destination in the Midwestern United States , drawing nearly nine million visitors annually. It is one of the most visited attractions in the entire Midwest and is Chicago&#39;s number one tourist attraction.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Navy Pier opened to the public on July 15, 1916. Originally named "Municipal Pier," the pier was built by Charles Sumner Frost, a nationally-known architect, with a design based on the Plan of Chicago (1909) by Daniel Burnham and Edward H. Bennett</p><br>
<p>Originally the Navy Pier was to be a dock for freights, passenger traffic and a space for indoor and outdoor recreation for the public. Many events were held at the pier, such as expositions, pageants and other types of entertainment. In the summer of 1918 the pier was also used as a jail for draft dodgers.</p><br>
<p>In 1927, the pier was renamed Navy Pier to honor the naval veterans who served in the First World War.</p><br>
<p>In 1941, during World War II the pier became a training center for the Navy. About 10,000 people worked, trained and resided there. The pier contained a 2,500-seat theater, gym, 12-chair barber shop, tailor, cobbler shops, soda fountain and a vast kitchen and hospital.</p><br>
<p>In 1946, as the Navy was winding down from its mission, the University of Illinois at Chicago held classes at the pier. Though the maximum capacity was exceeded the school outgrew the pier and the university relocated to Circle Campus.</p><br>
<p>After the university left, the Navy Pier became underutilized.</p><br>
<p>In 1959, the St. Lawrence Seaway opened and increased commercial shipping activity at the pier for a short time, though business died down and left for more modern facilities at Lake Calumet.</p><br>
<p>In 1976 the East End buildings were renovated and for a brief period the pier was alive again, home to summer events like ChicagoFest. But maintenance was not done and the pier went into decline.</p><br>
<p>In 1989, the City of Chicago had the Urban Land Institute (ULI) reimagine uses for the pier. The Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority (MPEA) was created; its responsibility was to manage and operate Navy Pier as well as McCormick Place. The MPEA undertook the redevelopment, incorporating some of ULI’s recommendations.</p><br>
<p>In 1995, Navy Pier was redesigned and introduced to the public as a mixed-use venue incorporating retail, dining, entertainment, and cultural spaces.</p><br>
<p>Starting in 2014, the redevelopment plan called The Centennial Vision was implemented. The purpose of this plan is to fulfill the mission to keep Navy Pier as a world-class public space and to renovate the pier so it will have more evening and year-round entertainment and more compelling landscape and design features. The Centennial Vision was completed in summer 2016. The Polk Family Foundation (founded by Sol Polk) donated $20 million to the redevelopment effort; the park and fountain at the entrance to the pier was named the Polk Brothers Park and Fountain.</p><br>
<h2>Attractions</h2><br>
<p>Navy Pier attractions include sightseeing tours from companies such as Seadog Ventures, Shoreline Sightseeing cruises and Water Taxi service, and the tall ship "Windy." There are also dinner cruises by Entertainment Cruises on their ships the "Spirit of Chicago," "Odyssey II," and "Mystic Blue." The pier has fireworks on Wednesday and Saturday nights during the summer and Saturday nights during the fall.</p><br>
<p>Navy Pier hosts the Fifth Third Bank Winter Wonderfest from December through January. There is an indoor ice skating rink as well as shopping and dining in Festival Hall.</p><br>
<p>There are many outdoor attractions at the Navy Pier Park, such as the Pepsi Wave Swinger, Light Tower Ride, Remote Control Boats and the Carousel.</p><br>
<p>Amazing Chicago&#39;s Funhouse Maze is on the pier. It is a self-paced, full sensory maze experience where a person navigates their way through 4,000 square feet of tunnels and mazes.</p><br>
<p>Crystal Gardens is a one-acre, botanical garden inside the pier. It is a six-story glass atrium with a 50-foot arched ceiling. Many events are held here.</p><br>
<p>The Chicago Children&#39;s Museum is a part of the pier, with many different exhibits and activities for both children and adults to enjoy.</p><br>
<p>Chicago Shakespeare Theater, a theater that recreates Shakespeare&#39;s productions. The Pier also has an IMAX theater.</p><br>
<p>There is lots of outdoor art such as the anchor from the naval vessel USS Chicago (CA-136/CG-11), which is on display at the far end. Other art includes a statue of actor Bob Newhart on a couch as on The Bob Newhart Show, the Captain On The Helm statue dedicated to maritime captains, and the Crack the Whip sculpture of eight children at play holding hands by J. Seward Johnson Jr.</p><br>
<p>The Ferris wheel was retired on September 27, 2015. A new model was selected and purchased—the DW60—from Dutch Wheels, the Netherlands-based company that built the pier’s former wheel. The state-of-the-art DW60 is the first and only one of its kind in the USA with similar wheels currently in operation in Hong Kong and Baku, Azerbaijan. Significant features include two-sided cars that allow for easy loading and unloading, a fortified structure to withstand winds of 115 miles per hour, and safety glass capable of weathering intense storms. The new model was unveiled on May 27, 2016.</p><br>
<h2>Plans for renovation</h2><br>
<p>Efforts to update Navy Pier for the twenty-first century began, on January 13, 2006, when the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority released a proposal for a major renovation of the Pier, which including a monorail, a 260-foot (79 m) spokeless Ferris wheel, a roller coaster, floating hotel, and a water park with a Great Lakes theme. The plan would have included nearly double the current parking and a replacement theater with a greater capacity. At the time of the announcement, a price tag of $2 billion was announced.</p><br>
<p>Following the reorganization of the agency that runs Navy Pier and McCormick Place, a new study was commissioned to reinvigorate the upgrade process. The new study, by the Urban Land Institute, was released on November 11, 2010, and recommended a more modest set of enhancements aimed at retaining the Piers role as a public space, rather than turning it into a theme park. Suggested elements include a concert venue, an enlarged Chicago Shakespeare Theater space, new restaurants, a renovated commercial area around the Piers entrance, and additional park-like features to bring people closer to the lake. More grandiose possibilities, including the enlarged Ferris wheel and a hotel, are mentioned as more remote possibilities.</p><br>
<p>In March 2012, a competition led to selection of a design concept presented by a team led by James Corner of James Corner Field Operations that focuses on the Pier&#39;s role as a waterfront promenade. In 2013 the Authority announced plans to carry out the first elements of a streamlined version of that concept, with reworked streetscape and a wider pedestrian space, moving tour-boat moorings to improve the view from a new central stairway centered on the Ferris wheel. Work began during the winter of 2013&ndash;2014, with completion expected by Summer 2015.</p><br>
<p>A new Ferris wheel for the pier was announced on June 23, 2015. It will be 196 ft tall, 46 ft taller than its predecessor. Rides will be twelve minutes instead of seven and feature three revolutions. The new wheel has brighter lights and opened in May 2016.</p><br>
<p>The first phase of redevelopment, completed in 2016, included the redesign of the Pier’s public spaces, known as Pierscape, and improvements to the interior of the Family Pavilion and South Arcade.</p><br>
<p>Phase I projects included the transformation of South Dock into a more engaging, greener space, conversion of the South Arcade indoor walkway into a Chicago-themed food experience and creation of a lighted water fountain/ice skating rink in Polk Bros Park.</p><br>
<p>In November 2016, Navy Pier, Inc. proudly announced Phase I development had achieved Gold certification under the Sustainable SITES Initiative (SITES) rating system, the first project to earn this level of certification under SITES v2. Phase 1’s Gold certification demonstrates NPI’s undeniable commitment to the environment through expanded green spaces, improved pedestrian access, energy efficiency, innovative storm water management, use of recycled local materials and much more.</p><br>
<p>Phase II projects include the development of a seven-story, 240-room hotel, adjacent to the south side of Festival Hall; marquee additions to the East End Plaza, including a proposed arched, elevated overlook walkway and reflective water feature; a Welcome Pavilion in Polk Bros Park with 4,000 square feet for guest services and programmatic space; a seasonal ice rink within the footprint of the Polk Bros Park’s fountain and plaza; and a short-term, north-side boat docking facility for use by recreational boaters seasonally.</p><br>
<h2>In popular culture</h2><br>
<p>The halls were used to represent Atlantic City, New Jersey, in the 1986 movie The Color of Money for the 9-Ball Championship.</p><br>
<p>In the film Divergent, the Pier and Ferris wheel are shown abandoned and decayed in a future Chicago, and it is stated that they were abandoned by choice a long time before. The Dauntless members play capture the flag in the park. Tris and Four climb the Ferris wheel to spot the opposing team. In the book, the opposing team hides the flag in a park near Navy Pier, while in the film version, the flag is hidden in a tower of the Chicago Children&#39;s Museum building.</p><br>
<h2>Bus connections</h2><br>
<p>Petra , originally known to the Nabataeans as Raqmu, is a historical and archaeological city in southern Jordan. The city is famous for its rock-cut architecture and water conduit system. Another name for Petra is the Rose City due to the color of the stone out of which it is carved.</p><br>
<p>Established possibly as early as 312 BC as the capital city of the Arab Nabataeans, it is a symbol of Jordan, as well as Jordans most-visited tourist attraction. The Nabataeans were nomadic Arabs who took advantage of Petras proximity to regional trade routes to establish it as a major trading hub. The Nabataeans are also known for their great ability in constructing efficient water-collecting methods in the barren deserts and their talent in carving structures into solid rocks. Petra lies on the slope of Jebel al-Madhbah (identified by some as the biblical Mount Hor) in a basin among the mountains which form the eastern flank of Arabah (Wadi Araba), the large valley running from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba. It has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1985.</p><br>
<p>The site remained unknown to the Western world until 1812, when it was introduced by Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt. It was described as "a rose-red city half as old as time" in a Newdigate Prize-winning poem by John William Burgon. UNESCO has described it as "one of the most precious cultural properties of man&#39;s cultural heritage".</p><br>
<h2>Geography</h2><br>
<p>Pliny the Elder and other writers identify Petra as the capital of the Tadeanos and the center of their caravan trade. Enclosed by towering rocks and watered by a perennial stream, Petra not only possessed the advantages of a fortress, but controlled the main commercial routes which passed through it to Gaza in the west, to Bosra and Damascus in the north, to Aqaba and Leuce Come on the Red Sea, and across the desert to the Persian Gulf.</p><br>
<p>Excavations have demonstrated that it was the ability of the Nabataeans to control the water supply that led to the rise of the desert city, creating an artificial oasis. The area is visited by flash floods, and archaeological evidence demonstrates the Nabataeans controlled these floods by the use of dams, cisterns and water conduits. These innovations stored water for prolonged periods of drought and enabled the city to prosper from its sale.</p><br>
<p>In ancient times, Petra might have been approached from the south on a track leading across the plain of Petra, around Jabal Haroun ("Aarons Mountain"), the location of the Tomb of Aaron, said to be the burial-place of Aaron, brother of Moses. Another approach was possibly from the high plateau to the north. Today, most modern visitors approach the site from the east. The impressive eastern entrance leads steeply down through a dark, narrow gorge (in places only 3 – wide) called the Siq ("the shaft"), a natural geological feature formed from a deep split in the sandstone rocks and serving as a waterway flowing into Wadi Musa. At the end of the narrow gorge stands Petras most elaborate ruin, Al Khazneh (popularly known as and meaning "the Treasury"), hewn into the sandstone cliff. While remaining in remarkably preserved condition, the face of the structure is marked by hundreds of bullet holes made by the local Bedouin tribes that hoped to dislodge riches that were once rumored to be hidden within it.</p><br>
<p>A little further from the Treasury, at the foot of the mountain called en-Nejr, is a massive theatre, positioned so as to bring the greatest number of tombs within view. At the point where the valley opens out into the plain, the site of the city is revealed with striking effect. The amphitheatre has been cut into the hillside and into several of the tombs during its construction. Rectangular gaps in the seating are still visible. Almost enclosing it on three sides are rose-colored mountain walls, divided into groups by deep fissures and lined with knobs cut from the rock in the form of towers.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<h3>Indigenous rule</h3><br>
<p>By 2010 BC, some of the earliest recorded farmers had settled in Beidha, a pre-pottery settlement just north of Petra. Petra is listed in Egyptian campaign accounts and the Amarna letters as Pel, Sela or Seir. Though the city was founded relatively late, a sanctuary has existed there since very ancient times. The Jewish historian, Josephus (ca. 37–100), describes the region as inhabited by the Madianite nation as early as 1340 BC, and that the nation was governed by five kings, whom he names: "Rekem; the city which bears his name ranks highest in the land of the Arabs and to this day is called by the whole Arabian nation, after the name of its royal founder, Rekeme: called Petra by the Greeks."</p><br>
<p>The famed architecture of Petra, and other Nabataean sites, was built during indigenous rule in early antiquity.</p><br>
<p>The Semitic name of the city, if not Sela, remains unknown. The passage in Diodorus Siculus (xix. 94–97) which describes the expeditions which Antigonus sent against the Nabataeans in 312 BC is understood to throw some light upon the history of Petra, but the "petra" (rock) referred to as a natural fortress and place of refuge cannot be a proper name and the description implies that the metropolis was not yet in existence, although its place was used by Arabians.</p><br>
<p>The name "Rekem" was inscribed in the rock wall of the Wadi Musa opposite the entrance to the Siq. However, Jordan built a bridge over the wadi and this inscription was buried beneath tons of concrete.</p><br>
<h3>Mid-Antiquity</h3><br>
<p>In AD 106, when Cornelius Palma was governor of Syria, the part of Arabia under the rule of Petra was absorbed into the Roman Empire as part of Arabia Petraea and became its capital. The native dynasty came to an end but the city continued to flourish under Roman rule. It was around this time that the Petra Roman Road was built. A century later, in the time of Alexander Severus, when the city was at the height of its splendor, the issue of coinage comes to an end. There is no more building of sumptuous tombs, owing apparently to some sudden catastrophe, such as an invasion by the neo-Persian power under the Sassanid Empire. Meanwhile, as Palmyra (fl. 130–270) grew in importance and attracted the Arabian trade away from Petra, the latter declined. It appears, however, to have lingered on as a religious centre. Another Roman road was constructed at the site. Epiphanius of Salamis (c.315–403) writes that in his time a feast was held there on December 25 in honor of the virgin Khaabou (Chaabou) and her offspring Dushara (Panarion LI, 22:9-12). Dushara and al-Uzza were two of the main deities of the city, which otherwise included many idols from other Nabatean deities such as Allat and Manat.</p><br>
<h3>Late Antiquity to Early Middle Ages</h3><br>
<p>Petra declined rapidly under Roman rule, in large part from the revision of sea-based trade routes. In 363 an earthquake destroyed many buildings, and crippled the vital water management system. The last inhabitants abandoned the city (further weakened by another major earthquake in 551) when the Arabs conquered the region in 663. The old city of Petra was the capital of the Byzantine province of Palaestina III and many churches were excavated in and around Petra from the Byzantine era. In one of them more than 150 papyri were discovered which contained mainly contracts. The ruins of Petra were an object of curiosity during the Middle Ages and were visited by Sultan Baibars of Egypt towards the end of the 13th century.</p><br>
<h3>19th century</h3><br>
<p>The first European to describe them was Swiss traveller Johann Ludwig Burckhardt during his travels in 1812. At that time, the Greek Church of Jerusalem operated a diocese in Al Karak named Battra (باطره in Arabic, and Πέτρας in Greek) and it was the opinion among the clergy of Jerusalem that Kerak was the ancient city of Petra.</p><br>
<p>The Scottish painter David Roberts visited Petra in 1839, and returned to England with sketches and stories of the encounter with local tribes.</p><br>
<p>Because the structures weakened with age, many of the tombs became vulnerable to thieves, and many treasures were stolen. In 1929, a four-person team, consisting of British archaeologists Agnes Conway and George Horsfield, Palestinian physician and folklore expert Dr</p><br>
<p>Tawfiq Canaan and Dr Ditlef Nielsen, a Danish scholar, excavated and surveyed Petra.</p><br>
<p>Numerous scrolls in Greek and dating to the Byzantine period were discovered in an excavated church near the Winged Lion Temple in Petra in December 1993.</p><br>
<h3>T. E. Lawrence</h3><br>
<h3>Late 20th century: World Heritage Site designation</h3><br>
<p>The Bidoul/ Bidul or Petra Bedouin were forcibly resettled from their cave dwellings in Petra to Umm Sayhoun/ Um Seihun by the Jordanian government in 1985, prior to the UNESCO designation process. Here, they were provided with block-built housing with some infrastructure including in particular a sewage and drainage system. Among the six communities in the Petra Region, Umm Sayhoun is one of the smaller communities. The village of Wadi Musa is the largest in the area, inhabited largely by the Layathnah Bedouin, and is now the closest settlement to the visitor centre, the main entrance via the Siq and the archaeological site generally. Umm Sayhoun gives access to the back route into the site, the Wadi Turkmaniyeh pedestrian route.</p><br>
<p>On December 6, 1985, Petra was designated a World Heritage Site. In a popular poll in 2007, it was also named one of the New7Wonders of the World.</p><br>
<p>The Bidouls belong to one of the Bedu tribes whose cultural heritage and traditional skills were proclaimed by UNESCO on the Intangible Cultural Heritage List in 2005 and inscribed in 2008.</p><br>
<p>In 2011, following an 11-month project planning phase, the Petra Development and Tourism Region Authority in Association with DesignWorkshop and JCP s.r.l published a Strategic Master Plan that guides planned development of the Petra Region. This is intended to guide planned development of the Petra Region in an efficient, balanced and sustainable way over the next 20 years for the benefit of the local population and of Jordan in general. As part of this, a Strategic Plan was developed for Umm Sayhoun and surrounding areas.</p><br>
<p>The process of developing the Strategic Plan considered the area&#39;s needs from five points of view:</p><br>
<p>a socio-economic perspective</p><br>
<p>the perspective of Petra Archaeological Park</p><br>
<p>the perspective of Petra’s tourism product</p><br>
<p>a land use perspective</p><br>
<p>an environmental perspective.</p><br>
<h3>Petra today</h3><br>
<p>27 sites in Petra are now available on Google Street View.</p><br>
<p>In 2016, archaeologists discovered a large, previously unknown monumental structure buried beneath the sands of Petra using satellite imagery.</p><br>
<h2>Threats</h2><br>
<p>The site suffers from a host of threats, including collapse of ancient structures, erosion from flooding and improper rainwater drainage, weathering from salt upwelling, improper restoration of ancient structures and unsustainable tourism. The last has increased substantially, especially since the site received widespread media coverage in 2007 during the New Seven Wonders of the World Internet and cellphone campaign.</p><br>
<p>In an attempt to reduce the impact of these threats, the Petra National Trust (PNT) was established in 1989. It has worked with numerous local and international organizations on projects that promote the protection, conservation, and preservation of the Petra site. Moreover, UNESCO and ICOMOS recently collaborated to publish their first book on human and natural threats to the sensitive World Heritage sites. They chose Petra as its first</p><br>
<p>and the most important example of threatened landscapes. A book released in 2012, Tourism and Archaeological Heritage Management at Petra: Driver to Development or Destruction?, was the first in a series of important books to address the very nature of these deteriorating buildings, cities, sites, and regions. The next books in the series of deteriorating UNESCO World Heritage Sites will include Machu Picchu, Angkor Wat, and Pompeii.</p><br>
<h2>Religion</h2><br>
<p>The Nabataeans worshipped Arab gods and goddesses during the pre-Islamic era as well as a few of their deified kings. One, Obodas I, was deified after his death. Dushara was the primary male god accompanied by his three female deities: Al-‘Uzzá, Allat and Manāt. Many statues carved in the rock depict these gods and goddesses. New evidence indicates that broader Edomite, and Nabataean theology had strong links to Earth-Sun relationships, often manifested in the orientation of prominent Petra structures to equinox and solstice sunrises and sunsets.</p><br>
<p>A stele dedicated to Qos-Allah Qos is Allah or Qos the god, by Qosmilk (melech – king) is found at Petra (Glueck 516). Qos is identifiable with Kaush (Qaush) the God of the older Edomites. The stele is horned and the seal from the Edomite Tawilan near Petra identified with Kaush displays a star and crescent (Browning 28), both consistent with a moon deity. It is conceivable that the latter could have resulted from trade with Harran (Bartlett 194). There is continuing debate about the nature of Qos (qaus – bow) who has been identified both with a hunting bow (hunting god) and a rainbow (weather god) although the crescent above the stele is also a bow.</p><br>
<p>Nabatean inscriptions in Sinai and other places display widespread references to names including Allah, El and Allat (god and goddess), with regional references to al-Uzza, Baal and Manutu (Manat) (Negev 11). Allat is also found in Sinai in South Arabian language. Allah occurs particularly as Garm-allahi – god dedided (Greek Garamelos) and Aush-allahi – gods covenant (Greek Ausallos). We find both Shalm-lahi Allah is peace and Shalm-allat, the peace of the goddess. We also find Amat-allahi she-servant of god and Halaf-llahi the successor of Allah&#39;.</p><br>
<p>The Monastery, Petra&#39;s largest monument, dates from the 1st century BC. It was dedicated to Obodas I and is believed to be the symposium of Obodas the god. This information is inscribed on the ruins of the Monastery (the name is the translation of the Arabic "Ad Deir").</p><br>
<p>Christianity found its way to Petra in the 4th century AD, nearly 500 years after the establishment of Petra as a trade center. Athanasius mentions a bishop of Petra (Anhioch. 10) named Asterius. At least one of the tombs (the "tomb with the urn"?) was used as a church. An inscription in red paint records its consecration "in the time of the most holy bishop Jason" (447). After the Islamic conquest of 629–632 Christianity in Petra, as of most of Arabia, gave way to Islam. During the First Crusade Petra was occupied by Baldwin I of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and formed the second fief of the barony of Al Karak (in the lordship of Oultrejordain) with the title Château de la Valée de Moyse or Sela. It remained in the hands of the Franks until 1189. It is still a titular see of the Catholic Church.</p><br>
<p>Two Crusader-period castles are known in and around Petra. The first is al-Wu&#39;ayra and is situated just north of Wadi Musa. It can be viewed from the road to "Little Petra". It is the castle of Valle Moise which was seized by a band of Turks with the help of local Muslims and only recovered by the Crusaders after they began to destroy the olive trees of Wadi Musa. The potential loss of livelihood led the locals to negotiate surrender. The second is on the summit of el-Habis in the heart of Petra and can be accessed from the West side of the Qasr al-Bint.</p><br>
<p>According to Arab tradition, Petra is the spot where Moses (Musa) struck a rock with his staff and water came forth, and where Moses brother, Aaron (Harun), is buried, at Mount Hor, known today as Jabal Haroun or Mount Aaron. The Wadi Musa or "Wadi of Moses" is the Arab name for the narrow valley at the head of which Petra is sited. A mountaintop shrine of Moses sister Miriam was still shown to pilgrims at the time of Jerome in the 4th century, but its location has not been identified since.</p><br>
<h2>In popular culture</h2><br>
<p>Literature</p><br>
<p>Petra is the main topic in John William Burgon&#39;s sonnet (rhyme scheme aabbccddeeffgg) "Petra" which won the Newdigate Prize in 1845. The poem refers to Petra as the inaccessible city which he had heard described but had never seen:</p><br>
<p>quoteIt seems no work of Man&#39;s creative hand,</p><br>
<p>But from the rock as if by magic grown,</p><br>
<p>Not virgin-white like that old Doric shrine,</p><br>
<p>Not saintly-grey, like many a minster fane,</p><br>
<p>But rose-red as if the blush of dawn,</p><br>
<p>The hues of youth upon a brow of woe,</p><br>
<p>Match me such marvel save in Eastern clime,</p><br>
<p>Petra appeared in the novels Left Behind Series, Appointment with Death, The Eagle in the Sand, The Red Sea Sharks, the nineteenth book in The Adventures of Tintin series and in Kingsburys The Moon Goddess and the Son. It featured prominently in the Marcus Didius Falco mystery novel Last Act in Palmyra. In Blue Ballietts novel, Chasing Vermeer, the character Petra Andalee is named after the site.</p><br>
<p>In 1979 Marguerite van Geldermalsen from New Zealand married Mohammed Abdullah, a Bedouin in Petra. They lived in a cave in Petra until the death of her husband. She authored the book Married to a Bedouin. Van Geldermalsen is the only western woman who has ever lived in a Petra cave.</p><br>
<p>An Englishwoman, Joan Ward, wrote Living With Arabs: Nine Years with the Petra Bedouin documenting her experiences while living in Umm Sayhoun with the Petra Bedouin, covering the period 2004-2013.</p><br>
<p>Films</p><br>
<p>The site is featured in films such as: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Arabian Nights, Passion in the Desert, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, The Mummy Returns, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Samsara and Kajraare.</p><br>
<p>Petra was featured in episode 3 of the 2010 series An Idiot Abroad.</p><br>
<p>Petra was featured in episode 20 of Misaeng.</p><br>
<p>Petra was featured in an episode of Time Scanners, made for National Geographic, where six ancient structures were laser scanned, with the results built into 3D models. Examining the model of Petra revealed insights into how the structure was built.</p><br>
<p>Petra was the focus of an American PBS Nova special, "Petra: Lost City of Stone", which premiered in the US and Europe in February 2015.</p><br>
<p>Music and music videos</p><br>
<p>The power metal band Helloween featured Petra on their 2013 track "Nabataea" off their album, Straight Out of Hell.</p><br>
<p>In 1977, the Lebanese Rahbani brothers wrote the musical "Petra" as a response to the Lebanese Civil War.</p><br>
<p>The Sisters of Mercy filmed their music video for "Dominion/Mother Russia" in and around Al Khazneh ("The Treasury") in February 1988.</p><br>
<p>In 1994 Petra featured in the video to the Urban Species video Spiritual Love.</p><br>
<p>An Austrian symphonic metal band Serenity featured Petra on their fourth studio album War of Ages (Serenity album) in the track "Shining Oasis"</p><br>
<p>Video games</p><br>
<p>Petra was recreated for the video games Spy Hunter (2001), Outrun 2, King&#39;s Quest V, Lego Indiana Jones, Sonic Unleashed, Knights of the Temple: Infernal Crusade, Civilization V, Civilization VI, Europa Universalis IV, and Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain.</p><br>
<p>The Qattara Depression  is a depression in the north west of Egypt in the Matruh Governorate and is part of the Western Desert. It lies below sea level and is covered with salt pans, sand dunes and salt marshes. The region extends between latitudes of 28°35 and 30°25 north and longitudes of 26°20 and 29°02 east. The region was created by the interplay of salt weathering and wind erosion. Some 20 kilometres west of the depression lie the oases of Siwa and Jaghbub in smaller but similar depressions.</p><br>
<p>The Qattara Depression contains the second lowest point in Africa at an altitude of 133 m below sea level, the lowest point being Lake Assal in Djibouti. The depression covers about 19,605 km&sup2, a size comparable to Lake Ontario or twice as large as Lebanon. Due to its size and proximity to the Mediterranean Sea shore, it has been studied for its potential to generate hydroelectricity.</p><br>
<h2>Geography</h2><br>
<p>The depression has the shape of a teardrop, with its point facing east and the broad deep area facing the south west. The northern side of the depression is characterised by steep escarpments up to 280 meters high, marking the edge of the adjacent El Diffa plateau. To the south the depression slopes gently up to the Great Sand Sea.</p><br>
<p>Within the Depression are salt marshes, under the northwestern and northern escarpment edges, and extensive dry lake beds that flood occasionally. The marshes occupy approximately 300 km&sup2, although wind-blown sands are encroaching in some areas. About a quarter of the region is occupied by dry lakes composed of hard crust and sticky mud, and occasionally filled with water.</p><br>
<p>The depression was initiated by either wind or fluvial erosion in the late Neogene, but during the Quaternary the dominant mechanism has been a combination of salt weathering and wind erosion working together. First, the salts break up the depression floor, then the wind blows away the resulting sands. This process is less effective in the eastern part of the depression, due to lower salinity groundwater.</p><br>
<h2>Ecology</h2><br>
<p>Groves of Acacia raddiana, growing in shallow sandy depressions, and Phragmites swamps represent the only permanent vegetation. The acacia groves vary widely in biodiversity and rely on runoff from rainfall and groundwater to survive. The Moghra Oasis in the northeast of the Depression has a 4 km brackish lake and a Phragmites swamp.</p><br>
<p>The south western corner of the depression is part of the Siwa Protected Area which protects the wild oasis in and around the Siwa Oasis.</p><br>
<p>The Depression is an important habitat for the cheetah, with the largest number of recent sightings being in areas in the northern, western and northwestern part of the Qattara Depression, including the highly isolated, wild oases of Ain EI Qattara and Ein EI Ghazzalat and numerous acacia groves both inside and outside the depression.</p><br>
<p>Gazelles (Gazella dorcas and Gazella leptoceros) also inhabit the Qattara Depression, being an important food source for the cheetah. The largest gazelle population exists in the southwestern part of the Qattara Depression within a vast area of wetlands and soft sand. The area of 900 km&sup2, includes the wild oases of Hatiyat Tabaghbagh and Hatiyat Umm Kitabain, and is a mosaic of lakes, salt marshes, scrubland, wild palm groves and Desmostachya bipinnata grassland.</p><br>
<p>Other common fauna include the Cape hare (Lepus capensis), Egyptian jackal (Canis aureus hupstar), sand fox (Vulpes rueppelli) and more rarely the fennec fox (Vulpes zerda). Barbary sheep (Ammotragus lervia) were once common throughout but now are few in numbers.</p><br>
<p>Extinct species from the area include the scimitar oryx (Oryx dammah), addax (Addax nasomaculatus) and bubal hartebeest (Alcelaphus buselaphus). Also the Droseridites baculatus, an extinct plant known only from fossils of its pollen, was found at the Ghazalat-1 Well.</p><br>
<h2>Climate</h2><br>
<p>The climate of the Qattara Depression is highly arid with annual precipitation between 25 and 50 mm on the northern rim to less than 25 mm in the south of the depression. The average daily temperature averages between 36.2 to 6.2 C during summer and winter months. The prevailing wind comes from the north varying between north easterly and westerly directions. Wind speeds peak in March with of 11.5 m/s (25.7 mph) and minimal in December with 3.2 m/s (7.2 mph).</p><br>
<p>The average wind speed is about 5–6 m/s (11.2-13.4 mph).</p><br>
<h2>Land use</h2><br>
<p>There is one permanent settlement in the Qattara Depression, the Qara Oasis. The oasis is located in the westernmost part of the depression and is inhabited by about 300 people. The Depression is also inhabited by the nomadic Bedouin people and their flocks, with the uninhabited Moghra oasis being important in times of water scarcity during the dry seasons.</p><br>
<p>The Qattara Depression contains many oil concessions and several operating fields. Drillers include Royal Dutch Shell and the Apache Corporation.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<h3>Measurement</h3><br>
<p>The altitude of the depression was first measured in 1917 by an officer of the British Army leading a light car patrol into the region. The officer took readings of the height of the terrain with an aneroid barometer on behalf of Dr. John Ball, who later would also publish on the region. He discovered that the spring Ain EI Qattara lay about 60 m below sea level. Because the barometer got lost and the readings were so unexpected, this find had to be verified. In 1924-25, Ball again organised a survey party, this time with the sole purpose to triangulate the elevation on a westerly line from Wadi El Natrun. The survey was led by G.F. Walpole who had already distinguished himself by triangulating the terrain across 500 km from the Nile to Siwa via Bahariya. He confirmed earlier readings and proved the presence of a huge area below sea level, with places as deep as -133 m.</p><br>
<p>Knowledge about the geology of the Qattara Depression was greatly extended by Ralph Alger Bagnold, a British military commander and explorer, through numerous journeys in the 1920s and 1930s. Most notable was his 1927 journey during which he crossed the depression east to west and visited the oasis of Qara and Siwa. Many of these trips used motor vehicles (Ford Model-Ts) which used special techniques for driving in desert conditions. These techniques were an important asset of the Long Range Desert Group which Bagnold founded in 1940.</p><br>
<p>After the discovery of the depression, Ball published the triangulation findings about the region on October 1927 in The Geographical Journal. He also gave the region its name Qattara after the spring Ain EI Qattara where the first readings were taken. The name literally means dripping in Arabic. Six years later in 1933, Ball was the first to publish a proposal for flooding the region to generate hydro power in his article "The Qattara Depression of the Libyan Desert and the possibility of its utilisation for power-production".</p><br>
<h3>World War II</h3><br>
<p>During World War II, the depressions presence shaped the 1st and 2nd Battles of El Alamein. It was considered impassable by tanks and most other military vehicles because of features such as salt lakes, high cliffs and/or escarpments, and fech fech (very fine powdered sand). The cliffs in particular acted as an edge of the El Alamein battlefield, which meant the British position could not be outflanked. Both Axis and Allied forces built their defences in a line from the Mediterranean Sea to the Qattara Depression. These defences became known as the Devils gardens and are for the most part still there, especially the extensive minefields. No large army units entered the Depression, although German Afrika Korps patrols and the British Long Range Desert Group did operate in the area, as these small units had considerable experience in desert travel. The RAF&#39;s repair and salvage units (e.g. 58 RSU) used a route through the depression in order to salvage or recover aircraft that had put down in the Western desert away from the coastal plain. The RSUs included a 6-wheel drive truck, Coles crane, and large trailer, and were particularly active from mid-1941 when Air Vice-Marshal G.G. Dawson arrived in Egypt to address the lack of serviceable aircraft.</p><br>
<p>The German officer stationed in the depression was cited by Gordon Welchman as helpful in the breaking of the Enigma machine code, due to his regular transmissions stating there was "nothing to report".</p><br>
<h2>Qattara Depression Project</h2><br>
<p>The large size of the Qattara Depression and the fact that it falls to a depth of 133 m below mean sea level has led to several proposals to create a massive hydroelectric project in northern Egypt rivalling the Aswan High Dam. This project is known as the Qattara Depression Project. The proposals call for a large canal or tunnel being excavated from the Qattara due north of 55 to 80 km depending on the route chosen to the Mediterranean Sea to bring seawater into the area. An alternative plan involved running a 320 kilometre (200 mile) pipeline north-east to the freshwater Nile River at Rosetta. Water would flow into a series of hydro-electric penstocks which would generate electricity by releasing the water at 60 m below sea level. Because the Qattara Depression is in a very hot dry region with very little cloud cover, the water released at the -70 m level would spread out from the release point across the basin and evaporate from solar influx. Because of evaporation, more water can flow into the depression, thus forming a constant source of energy. Eventually this would result in a hyper-saline lake or a salt pan as the water evaporates and leaves the salt it contains behind.</p><br>
<p>Plans to use the Qattara Depression for the generation of electricity date back to 1912 from Berlin geographer Professor Penck. The subject was discussed in more detail by Dr. John Ball in 1927. In 1957 the American Central Intelligence Agency proposed to President Dwight Eisenhower that peace in the Middle East could be achieved by flooding the Qattara Depression. The resulting lagoon, according to the CIA, would have four benefits:</p><br>
<p>It would be "spectacular and peaceful".</p><br>
<p>It would "materially alter the climate in adjacent areas".</p><br>
<p>It would "provide work during construction and living areas after completion for the Palestinian Arabs".</p><br>
<p>It would get Egyptian president Gamel Abdel Nasser&#39;s "mind on other matters" because "he need some way to get off the Soviet hook".</p><br>
<p>In the 1970s and early 1980s, several proposals to flood the area were made by Friedrich Bassler and the Joint Venture Qattara, a group of mainly German companies. They wanted to make use of peaceful nuclear explosions to construct a tunnel, drastically reducing construction costs compared to conventional methods. This project proposed to use 213 devices, with yields of 1 to 1.5 megatons detonated at depths of 100 to 500 m. This fit within the Atoms for Peace program proposed by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1953. Because of this frightening solution, the Egyptian government turned down the plan.</p><br>
<p>Planning experts and scientists intermittently put forward potentially viable options, whether of a tunnel or canal, as an economic, ecological and energy solution in Egypt, often coupled with the idea of new settlements.</p><br>
<h2>In popular culture</h2><br>
<p>Ice Cold in Alex - This 1958 World War II film features a British army crew escaping Tobruk and returning in an Austin K2/Y ambulance to Alexandria via the Qattara Depression.</p><br>
<h3>Video Games</h3><br>
<p>The Qattara Depression appears as a location in the 2017 video game Assassin&#39;s Creed: Origins.</p><br>
<p>Sardis or Sardes  was an ancient city at the location of modern Sart  in Turkey&#39;s Manisa Province. Sardis was the capital of the ancient kingdom of Lydia, one of the important cities of the Persian Empire, the seat of a proconsul under the Roman Empire, and the metropolis of the province Lydia in later Roman and Byzantine times. As one of the Seven churches of Asia, it was addressed by John, the author of the Book of Revelation in the Bible, in terms which seem to imply that its population was notoriously soft and fainthearted. Its importance was due first to its military strength, secondly to its situation on an important highway leading from the interior to the Aegean coast, and thirdly to its commanding the wide and fertile plain of the Hermus.</p><br>
<h2>Geography</h2><br>
<p>Sardis was situated in the middle of Hermus valley, at the foot of Mount Tmolus, a steep and lofty spur which formed the citadel. It was about 4 km south of the Hermus. Today, the site is located by the present day village of Sart, near Salihli in the Manisa province of Turkey, close to the Ankara - İzmir highway (approximately 72 km from İzmir). The part of remains including the bath-gymnasium complex, synagogue and Byzantine shops is open to visitors year-round.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>The Greek historian and father of history, Herodotus, notes that the city was founded by the sons of Hercules, the Heraclides.The earliest reference to Sardis is in The Persians of Aeschylus (472 BC); in the Iliad, the name Hyde seems to be given to the city of the Maeonian (i.e. Lydian) chiefs and in later times Hyde was said to be the older name of Sardis, or the name of its citadel. It is, however, more probable that Sardis was not the original capital of the Maeonians, but that it became so amid the changes which produced the powerful Lydian empire of the 8th century BC.</p><br>
<p>The city was captured by the Cimmerians in the 7th century BC, by the Persians in the 6th, by the Athenians in the 5th, and by Antiochus III the Great at the end of the 3rd century BC. In the Persian era, Sardis was conquered by Cyrus the Great and formed the end station for the Persian Royal Road which began in Persepolis, capital of Persia. During the Ionian Revolt, the Athenians burnt down the city. Sardis remained under Persian domination until it surrendered to Alexander the Great in 334 BC.</p><br>
<p>The early Lydian kingdom was very advanced in the industrial arts and Sardis was the chief seat of its manufactures. The most important of these trades was the manufacture and dyeing of delicate woolen stuffs and carpets. The stream Pactolus which flowed through the market-place "carried golden sands" in early antiquity, which was in reality gold dust out of Mount Tmolus. It was during the reign of King Croesus that the metallurgists of Sardis discovered the secret of separating gold from silver, thereby producing both metals of a purity never known before. This was an economic revolution, for while gold nuggets panned or mined were used as currency, their purity was always suspect and a hindrance to trade. Such nuggets or coinage were naturally occurring alloys of gold and silver known as electrum and one could never know how much of it was gold and how much was silver. Sardis now could mint nearly pure silver and gold coins, the value of which could be — and was — trusted throughout the known world. This revolution made Sardis rich and Croesus&#39; name synonymous with wealth itself. For this reason, Sardis is famed in history as the place where modern currency was invented.</p><br>
<p>Disaster came to the great city under the reign of the emperor Tiberius, when in AD 17, Sardis was destroyed by an earthquake, but it was rebuilt with the help of ten million sesterces from the Emperor and exempted from paying taxes for five years. It was one of the great cities of western Asia Minor until the later Byzantine period.</p><br>
<p>Later, trade and the organization of commerce continued to be sources of great wealth. After Constantinople became the capital of the East, a new road system grew up connecting the provinces with the capital. Sardis then lay rather apart from the great lines of communication and lost some of its importance. It still, however, retained its titular supremacy and continued to be the seat of the metropolitan bishop of the province of Lydia, formed in AD 295. It was enumerated as third, after Ephesus and Smyrna, in the list of cities of the Thracesion thema given by Constantine Porphyrogenitus in the 10th century. However, over the next four centuries it was in the shadow of the provinces of Magnesia-upon-Sipylum and Philadelphia, which retained their importance in the region.</p><br>
<p>After 1071 the Hermus valley began to suffer from the inroads of the Seljuk Turks but the Byzantine general John Doukas reconquered the city in 1097, the successes of the general Philokales in 1118 relieved the district from later Turkish pressure and the ability of the Comneni dynasty together with the gradual decay of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum meant that it remained under Byzantine dominion. When Constantinople was taken by the Venetians and Franks in 1204 Sardis came under the rule of the Byzantine Empire of Nicea. However once the Byzantines retook Constantinople in 1261, Sardis with the entire Asia Minor was neglected and the region eventually fell under the control of Ghazi (Ghazw) emirs, the Cayster valleys and a fort on the citadel of Sardis was handed over to them by treaty in 1306. The city continued its decline until its capture (and probable destruction) by the Turco-Mongol warlord Timur in 1402.</p><br>
<h2>Archaeological expeditions</h2><br>
<p>By the 19th century, Sardis was in ruins, showing construction chiefly of the Roman period. Early excavators included the British explorer George Dennis, who uncovered an enormous marble head of Faustina the Elder, wife of the Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius. Found in the precinct of the Temple of Artemis, it probably formed part of a pair of colossal statues devoted to the Imperial couple. The 1.76 metre high head is now kept at the British Museum. The first large scale archaeological expedition in Sardis was directed by a Princeton University team led by Howard Crosby Butler between years 1910–1914, unearthing a temple to Artemis, and more than a thousand Lydian tombs. The excavation campaign was halted by World War I, followed by the Turkish War of Independence, though it briefly resumed in 1922. Some surviving artifacts from the Butler excavation were added to the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.</p><br>
<p>A new expedition known as the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis was founded in 1958 by G.M.A. Hanfmann, professor in the Department of Fine Arts at Harvard University, and by Henry Detweiler, dean of the Architecture School at Cornell University. Hanfmann excavated widely in the city and the region, excavating and restoring the major Roman bath-gymnasium complex, the synagogue, late Roman houses and shops, a Lydian industrial area for processing electrum into pure gold and silver, Lydian occupation areas, and tumulus tombs at Bin Tepe. From 1976 until 2007, the excavation was directed by Crawford H. Greenewalt, jr., professor in the Department of Classics at the University of California, Berkeley. Since 2008, the excavation has been under the directorship of Nicholas Cahill, professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The laws governing archaeological expeditions in Turkey ensure that all archaeological artifacts remain in Turkey. Some of the important finds from the site of Sardis are housed in the Archaeological Museum of Manisa, including Late Roman mosaics and sculpture, a helmet from the mid-6th century BC, and pottery from various periods.</p><br>
<h2>Sardis synagogue</h2><br>
<p>Since 1958, both Harvard and Cornell Universities have sponsored annual archeological expeditions to Sardis. These excavations unearthed perhaps the most impressive synagogue in the western diaspora yet discovered from antiquity, yielding over eighty Greek and seven Hebrew inscriptions as well as numerous mosaic floors. (For evidence in the east, see Dura Europos in Syria.) The discovery of the Sardis synagogue has reversed previous assumptions about Judaism in the later Roman empire. Along with the discovery of the godfearers/theosebeis inscription from Aphrodisias, it provides indisputable evidence for the continued presence of Jewish communities in Asia Minor and their integration into general Roman life at a time when many scholars previously assumed that Christianity had eclipsed Judaism.</p><br>
<p>The synagogue was a section of a large bath-gymnasium complex, that was in use for about 450 – 500 years. In the beginning, middle of the 2nd century AD, the rooms the synagogue is situated in were used as changing rooms or resting rooms.</p><br>
<p>Sardis and the Hebrew Sepharad may have been one and the same.</p><br>
<p>Corfu or Kerkyra  is a Greek island in the Ionian Sea. It is the second largest of the Ionian Islands, The island is part of the Corfu regional unit, and is administered as a single municipality, which also includes the smaller islands of Ereikoussa, Mathraki and Othonoi. The municipality has an area of 610,9 km, the island proper 592,8 km. The principal city of the island and seat of the municipality  is also named Corfu. Corfu is home to the Ionian University.</p><br>
<p>The island is bound up with the history of Greece from the beginnings of Greek mythology. Its history is full of battles and conquests. Ancient Korkyra took part in the Battle of Sybota which was a catalyst for the Peloponnesian War, and, according to Thucydides, the largest naval battle between Greek city states until that time. Thucydides also reports that Korkyra was one of the three great naval powers of fifth century BC Greece, along with Athens and Corinth. Medieval castles punctuating strategic locations across the island are a legacy of struggles in the Middle Ages against invasions by pirates and the Ottomans. Two of these castles enclose its capital, which is the only city in Greece to be surrounded in such a way. As a result, Corfu&#39;s capital has been officially declared a Kastropolis ("castle city") by the Greek government. From medieval times and into the 17th century, the island, having successfully repulsed the Ottomans during several sieges, was recognised as a bulwark of the European States against the Ottoman Empire and became one of the most fortified places in Europe. The fortifications of the island were used by the Venetians to defend against Ottoman intrusion into the Adriatic. Corfu eventually fell under British rule following the Napoleonic Wars. Corfu was eventually ceded by the British Empire along with the remaining islands of the United States of the Ionian Islands, and unification with modern Greece was concluded in 1864 under the Treaty of London.</p><br>
<p>In 2007, the city&#39;s old quarter was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List, following a recommendation by ICOMOS.</p><br>
<p>Corfu is a very popular tourist destination. The island was the location of the 1994 European Union summit.</p><br>
<h2>Name</h2><br>
<p>The Greek name, Kerkyra or Korkyra, is related to two powerful water deities: Poseidon, god of the sea, and Asopos, an important Greek mainland river. According to myth, Poseidon fell in love with the beautiful nymph Korkyra, daughter of Asopos and river nymph Metope, and abducted her. Poseidon brought Korkyra to the hitherto unnamed island and, in marital bliss, offered her name to the place: Korkyra, which gradually evolved to Kerkyra (Doric). They had a child they called Phaiax, after whom the inhabitants of the island were named Phaiakes, in Latin Phaeaciani. Corfu&#39;s nickname is the island of the Phaeacians.</p><br>
<p>The name Corfù, an Italian version of the Byzantine Κορυφώ (Koryphō), meaning "city of the peaks", derives from the Byzantine Greek Κορυφαί (Koryphai) (crests or peaks), denoting the two peaks of Palaio Frourio.</p><br>
<h2>Geography</h2><br>
<p>The northeastern edge of Corfu lies off the coast of Sarandë, Albania, separated by straits varying in width from 3 to 23 km. The southeast side of the island lies off the coast of Thesprotia, Greece. Its shape resembles a sickle (drepanē, δρεπάνι), to which it was compared by the ancients: the concave side, with the city and harbour of Corfu in the centre, lies toward the Albanian coast. With the island&#39;s area estimated at 592.9 km&sup2, it runs approximately long, with greatest breadth at around.</p><br>
<p>Two high and well-defined ranges divide the island into three districts, of which the northern is mountainous, the central undulating, and the southern low-lying. The more important of the two ranges, that of Pantokrator (Παντοκράτωρ – the Almighty) stretches east and west from Cape Falacro to Cape Psaromita, and attains its greatest elevation in the summit of the same name.</p><br>
<p>The second range culminates in the mountain of Santi Jeca, or Santa Decca, as it is called by misinterpretation of the Greek designation Άγιοι Δέκα (Hagioi Deka), or the Ten Saints. The whole island, composed as it is of various limestone formations, presents great diversity of surface, and views from more elevated spots are magnificent. Beaches are found in Agios Gordis, the Korission lagoon, Agios Georgios, Marathia, Kassiopi, Sidari, Palaiokastritsa and many others. Corfu is located near the Kefalonia geological fault formation; earthquakes have occurred.</p><br>
<p>Corfu&#39;s coastline spans 217 km including capes; its highest point is Mount Pantokrator (911 m); and the second Stravoskiadi, at abbr=on 849. The full extent of capes and promontories take in Agia Aikaterini, Drastis to the north, Lefkimmi and Asprokavos to the southeast, and Megachoro to the south. Two islands are also to be found at a middle point of Gouvia and Corfu Bay, which extends across much of the eastern shore of the island; are known as Lazareto and Ptychia (or Vido). Camping areas can be found in Palaiokastritsa, Agrillia, with four in the northern part, Pyrgi, Roda, Gouvia and Messonghi.</p><br>
<h3>Diapontia islands</h3><br>
<p>The Diapontia Islands (Greek: Διαπόντια νησιά) are located in the northwest of Corfu, (6 km away) and about 40 km away from Italian coasts. The main islands are Othonoi, Ereikoussa and Mathraki.</p><br>
<h3>Lazaretto Island</h3><br>
<p>Lazaretto Island, formerly known as Aghios Dimitrios, is located two nautical miles northeast of Corfu; the island has an area of 17.5 acres and comes under the administration of the Greek National Tourist Organization. During Venetian rule in the early 16th century, a monastery was built on the islet and a leprosarium established later in the century, after which the island was named. In 1798, during the French occupation, the islet was occupied by the Russo-Turkish fleet, who ran it as a military hospital. During the British occupation, in 1814, the leprosarium was once again opened after renovations, and following Enosis in 1864 the leprosarium again saw occasional use.</p><br>
<h3>Flora</h3><br>
<p>Homer identifies six plants that adorn the garden of Alcinous: wild olive, pear, pomegranate, apple, fig and grape vine. Of these the apple and the pear are very inferior in Corfu; the others thrive, together with all the fruit trees known in southern Europe, with addition of the kumquat, loquat and prickly pear and, in some spots, the banana. When undisturbed by cultivation, the myrtle, arbutus, bay and holm oak form a rich brushwood, along with fir and Turkey oak in the hills. The minor flora of the island are extensive.</p><br>
<h3>Climate</h3><br>
<p>Corfu has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate (Csa in the Koeppen climate classification).</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<h3>Early history</h3><br>
<p>The earliest reference to Corfu is the Mycenaean Greek word ko-ro-ku-ra-i-jo ("man from Kerkyra") written in Linear B syllabic script, c. 1300 BC. According to Strabo Corcyra (Κόρκυρα) was the Homeric island of Scheria (Σχερία), and its earliest inhabitants were the Phaeacians (Φαίακες). The island has indeed been identified by some scholars with Scheria, the island of the Phaeacians described in Homers Odyssey, though conclusive and irrefutable evidence for this theory or for Ithacas location have not been found. Apollonius of Rhodes depicts the island in Argonautica as a place visited by the Argonauts. Jason and Medea were married there in Medeas Cave&#39;. Apollonius named the island Drepane, Greek for "sickle", since it was thought to hide the sickle that Cronus used to castrate his father Uranus, from whose blood the Phaeacians were descended. In an alternative account, Apollonius identifies the buried sickle as a scythe belonging to Demeter, yet the name Drepane probably originated in the sickle-shape of the island. According to a scholiast, commenting on the passage in Argonautica, the island was first of all called Macris after the nurse of Dionysus who fled there from Euboea.</p><br>
<p>Other have asserted that Corfu was Taphos, the island of the lelegian Taphians.</p><br>
<p>At a date no doubt previous to the foundation of Syracuse, Corfu was peopled by settlers from Corinth, probably 730 BC, but it appears to have previously received a stream of emigrants from Eretria. The commercially advantageous location of Corcyra on the way between Greece and Magna Grecia, and its fertile lowlands in the southern section of the island favoured its growth and, influenced perhaps by the presence of non-Corinthian settlers, its people, quite contrary to the usual practice of Corinthian colonies, maintained an independent and even hostile attitude towards the mother city.</p><br>
<p>This opposition came to a head in the early part of the 7th century BC, when their fleets fought the first naval battle recorded in Greek history: 665 BC according to Thucydides. These hostilities ended in the conquest of Corcyra by the Corinthian tyrant Periander (Περίανδρος) who induced his new subjects to join in the colonization of Apollonia and Anactorium. The island soon regained its independence and thenceforth devoted itself to a purely mercantile policy. During the Persian invasion of 480 BC it manned the second largest Greek fleet (60 ships), but took no active part in the war. In 435 BC it was again involved in a quarrel with Corinth over the control of Epidamnus, and sought assistance from Athens (see Battle of Sybota).</p><br>
<p>This new alliance was one of the chief immediate causes of the Peloponnesian War, in which Corcyra was of considerable use to the Athenians as a naval station, but did not render much assistance with its fleet. The island was nearly lost to Athens by two attempts of the oligarchic faction to effect a revolution; on each occasion the popular party ultimately won the day and took a most bloody revenge on its opponents (427 BC and 425 BC).</p><br>
<p>During the Sicilian campaigns of Athens Corcyra served as a supply base; after a third abortive rising of the oligarchs in 410 BC it practically withdrew from the war. In 375 BC it again joined the Athenian alliance; two years later it was besieged by a Spartan force, but in spite of the devastation of its flourishing countryside held out successfully until relieved. In the Hellenistic period Corcyra was exposed to attack from several sides.</p><br>
<p>In 303 BC, after a vain siege by Cassander, the island was occupied for a short time by the Lacedaemonian general Cleonymus of Sparta, then regained its independence and later it was attacked and conquered by Agathocles of Syracuse. He offered Corfu as dowry to his daughter Lanassa on her marriage to Pyrrhus, King of Epirus. The island then became a member of the Epirotic alliance. It was then perhaps that the settlement of Cassiope was founded to serve as a base for the King of Epirus&#39; expeditions. The island remained in the Epirotic alliance until 255 BC when it became independent after the death of Alexander, last King of Epirus. In 229 BC, following the naval battle of Paxos, it was captured by the Illyrians, but was speedily delivered by a Roman fleet and remained a Roman naval station until at least 189 BC. At this time, it was governed by a prefect (presumably nominated by the consuls), but in 148 BC it was attached to the province of Macedonia. In 31 BC, it served Octavian (Augustus) as a base against Mark Antony. From AD 336 onwards, it was ruled by the Eastern Roman Empire. After the definitive division of the Roman Empire in AD 395, Kerkyra remained with the Eastern Roman Empire, known in modern historiography as the Byzantine Empire.</p><br>
<h3>Medieval history</h3><br>
<p>Eclipsed by the foundation of Nicopolis, Kerkyra for a long time passed out of notice. With the rise of the Norman kingdom in Sicily and the Italian naval powers, it again became a frequent object of attack. In 1081–1085 it was held by Robert Guiscard, in 1147–1154 by Roger II of Sicily.</p><br>
<p>During the break-up of the Byzantine Empire the island was occupied by Genoese privateers (1197–1207), who in turn were expelled by the Venetians. In 1214 it passed to the Greek despots of Epirus, who gave it to Manfred of Sicily as a dowry in 1259. At his death in 1267 it passed with his other possessions to the house of Anjou. Under the latter, the island suffered considerably from the inroads of various adventurers.</p><br>
<p>The island was one of the first places in Europe in which Romani people ("Gypsies") settled. In about 1360, a fiefdom, called the Feudum Acinganorum was established, with mainly Romani serfs.</p><br>
<p>From 1386, Corfu was controlled by the Republic of Venice, which in 1401 acquired formal sovereignty and retained it until the French Occupation of 1797.</p><br>
<h4>Venetian rule</h4><br>
<p>From medieval times and into the 17th century, the island was recognised as a bulwark of the European States against the Ottoman Empire and became one of the most fortified places in Europe.</p><br>
<p>Kerkyra, the "Door of Venice" during the centuries when the whole Adriatic was the Gulf of Venice, remained in Venetian hands from 1401 until 1797, though several times assailed by Ottoman naval and land forces and subjected to four notable sieges in 1537, 1571, 1573 and 1716, in which the strength of the city defences asserted itself time after time. The effectiveness of the powerful Venetian fortifications as well as the strength of some old Byzantine castles in Angelokastro, Kassiopi Castle, Gardiki and elsewhere, were additional factors that enabled Corfu to remain free. Will Durant claims that Corfu owed to the Republic of Venice the fact that it was one of the few parts of Greece never conquered by the Ottomans.</p><br>
<p>A series of attempts by the Ottomans to take the island began in 1431 when Ottoman troops under Ali Bey landed on the island. The Ottomans tried to take the city castle and raided the surrounding area, but were repulsed.</p><br>
<p>The Siege of Corfu (1537) was the first great siege by the Ottomans. It began on 29 August 1537, with 25,000 soldiers from the Ottoman fleet landing and pillaging the island and taking 20,000 hostages as slaves. Despite the destruction wrought on the countryside, the city castle held out in spite of repeated attempts over twelve days to take it, and the Turks left the island unsuccessfully because of poor logistics and an epidemic that decimated their ranks.</p><br>
<p>Thirty-four years later, in August 1571, Ottoman forces returned for yet another attempt to conquer the island. Having seized Parga and Mourtos from the Greek mainland side, they attacked the Paxi islands. Subsequently they landed on Corfus southeast shore and established a large beachhead all the way from the southern tip of the island at Lefkimi to Ipsos in Corfus eastern midsection. These areas were thoroughly pillaged as in past encounters. Nevertheless the city castle stood firm again, a testament to Corfiot-Venetian steadfastness as well as the Venetian castle-building engineering skills. It is also worth mentioning that another castle, Angelokastro (Greek: Αγγελόκαστρο meaning Angelo&#39;s Castle and named for its Byzantine owner Angelos Komnenos), situated on the northwest coast near Palaiokastritsa (Greek: Παλαιοκαστρίτσα meaning Old Castle place) and located on particularly steep and rocky terrain, a tourist attraction today, also held out.</p><br>
<p>These defeats in the east and the west of the island proved decisive, and the Ottomans abandoned their siege and departed. Two years later they repeated their attempt. Coming from Africa after a victorious campaign, they landed in Corfu and wreaked havoc on rural areas. Following a counterattack by the Venetian-Corfiot forces, the Ottoman troops were forced to leave the city by way of the sea.</p><br>
<p>The second great siege of Corfu took place in 1716, during the last Ottoman–Venetian War (1714–18). After the conquest of the Peloponnese in 1715, the Ottoman fleet appeared in Buthrotum opposite Corfu. On 8 July the Ottoman fleet, carrying 33,000 men, sailed to Corfu from Buthrotum and established a beachhead at Ipsos. The success was owed in no small part to the extensive fortifications, where Venetian castle engineering had proven itself once again against considerable odds. The repulse of the Ottomans was widely celebrated in Europe, Corfu being seen as a bastion of Western civilization against the Ottoman tide. Today, however, this role is often relatively unknown or ignored, but was celebrated in Juditha triumphans by the Venetian composer Antonio Vivaldi.</p><br>
<h4>Venetian policies and heritage</h4><br>
<p>Corfus urban architecture differs from that of other major Greek cities, because of Corfus unique history. From 1386 to 1797, Corfu was ruled by Venetian nobility; much of the city reflects this era when the island belonged to the Republic of Venice, with multi-storied buildings on narrow lanes. The Old Town of Corfu has clear Venetian influence and is amongst the World Heritage Sites in Greece. It was in the Venetian period that the city saw the erection of the first opera house (Nobile Teatro di San Giacomo di Corfù) in Greece, but it was badly damaged during World War II by German artillery.</p><br>
<p>Many Venetian-speaking families settled in Corfu during these centuries; they were called Corfiot Italians, and until the second half of the 20th century the Veneto da mar was spoken in Corfu. During this time, the local Greek language assimilated a large number of Italian and Venetian words, many of which are still common today. The internationally renowned Venetian-born British photographer Felice Beato is thought to have spent much of his childhood in Corfu. Also many Italian Jews took refuge in Corfu during the Venetian centuries and spoke their own language (Italkian), a mixture of Hebrew-Italian in a Venetian or Apulian dialect with some Greek words.</p><br>
<p>Venetians promoted the Catholic Church during their four centuries of rule in Corfu. Today the majority of Corfiots are Greek Orthodox, but the small Catholic minority (5%), living harmoniously with the Orthodox community, owes its faith to these origins. These contemporary Catholics are mostly families who came from Malta, but also from Italy, and today the Catholic community numbers about 4,000 ( of Maltese descent), who live almost exclusively in the Venetian "Citadel" of Corfu City. Like other native Greek Catholics, they celebrate Easter using the same calendar as the Greek Orthodox church. The Cathedral of St. James and St. Christopher in Corfu City is the see of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Corfu, Zakynthos and Cephalonia.</p><br>
<p>The island served also as a refuge for Greek scholars, and in 1732, it became the home of the first academy of modern Greece. A Corfu cleric and scholar, Nikephoros Theotokis (1732–1800) became renowned in Greece as an educator, and in Russia (where he moved later in his life) as an Orthodox archbishop.</p><br>
<p>The islands culture absorbed Venetian influence in a variety of ways; like other Ionian islands (see Cuisine of the Ionian islands), its local cuisine took in such elements and todays Corfiot cooking includes Venetian delicacies and recipes: "Pastitsada", deriving from the Venetian "Pastissada" (Italian: "Spezzatino") and the most popular dish in the island of Corfu, "Sofrito", "Strapatsada", "Savoro", "Bianco" and "Mandolato".</p><br>
<h3>19th century</h3><br>
<p>By the 1797 Treaty of Campo Formio, Corfu was ceded to the French, who occupied it for two years as the département of Corcyre, until they were expelled by a joint Russian-Ottoman squadron under Admiral Ushakov. For a short time it became the capital of a self-governing federation of the Heptanesos ("Seven Islands"), under Ottoman suzerainty; in 1807 after the Treaty of Tilsit its faction-ridden government was again replaced by a French administration under governor François-Xavier Donzelot, and in 1809 it was besieged in vain by a British fleet, which had taken all the other Ionian islands.</p><br>
<p>The Ionian Islands became a protectorate of the United Kingdom by the Treaty of Paris of 5 November 1815 as the United States of the Ionian Islands. Corfu became the seat of the British Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands. The period of British rule was a prosperous period for Corfu because the Greek language became official, new roads were built, the water supply system was improved and the first Greek university was founded in 1824.</p><br>
<p>Following a plebiscite the Second National Assembly of the Greeks at Athens elected a new king, Prince Wilhelm (William) of Denmark, who took the name George I and brought with him the Ionian Islands as a coronation gift from Britain. On 29 March 1864, the United Kingdom, Greece, France and Russia signed the Treaty of London, pledging the transfer of sovereignty to Greece upon ratification. Thus, on 21 May, by proclamation of the Lord High Commissioner, the Ionian Islands were united with Greece.</p><br>
<h4>British Lord High Commissioners during the protectorate</h4><br>
<p>This is a list of the British High Commissioners of the Ionian Islands; (as well as the transitional Greek Governor, appointed a year prior to Enosis (Union) with Greece in 1864).</p><br>
<p>Sir James Campbell 1814–1816</p><br>
<p>Sir Thomas Maitland (1759–1824) 1815–1823</p><br>
<p>Sir Frederick Adam (1781–1853) 1823–1832</p><br>
<p>Sir Alexander Woodford (1782–1870) 1832</p><br>
<p>George Nugent-Grenville, 2nd Baron Nugent (1788–1850) 1832–1835</p><br>
<p>Howard Douglas (1776–1861) 1835–1840</p><br>
<p>James Alexander Stewart-Mackenzie (1784–1843) 1840–1843</p><br>
<p>John Colborne, 1st Baron Seaton (1778–1863) 1843–1849</p><br>
<p>Sir Henry George Ward (1797–1860) 1849–1855</p><br>
<p>Sir John Young (1807–1876) 1855–1859</p><br>
<p>William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) 1859</p><br>
<p>Sir Henry Knight Storks (1811–1874) 1859–1863</p><br>
<p>Count Dimitrios Nikolaou Karousos, President of Parliament (1799–1873) 1863–1864</p><br>
<h3>First World War</h3><br>
<p>During the First World War, the island served as a refuge for the Serbian army that retreated there on Allied forces&#39; ships from a homeland occupied by the Austrians, Germans and Bulgarians. During their stay, a large portion of Serbian soldiers died from exhaustion, food shortage, and various diseases. Most of their remains were buried at sea near the island of Vido, a small island at the mouth of Corfu port, and a monument of thanks to the Greek nation has been erected at Vido by the grateful Serbs; consequently, the waters around Vido Island are known by the Serbian people as the Blue Tomb (in Serbian, Плава Гробница, Plava Grobnica), after a poem written by Milutin Bojić following World War I.</p><br>
<h3>Interwar period</h3><br>
<p>In 1923, after a diplomatic dispute between Italy and Greece, Italian forces bombarded and occupied Corfu. The League of Nations settled this Corfu incident.</p><br>
<h3>Second World War and resistance</h3><br>
<h4>Italian occupation</h4><br>
<p>During the Greco-Italian War, Corfu was occupied by the Italians in April 1941. They administered Corfu and the Ionian islands as a separate entity from Greece until September 1943, following Benito Mussolinis orders of fulfilling Italian Irredentism and making Corfu part of the Kingdom of Italy. During the Second World War the 10th infantry regiment of the Greek Army, composed mainly of Corfiot soldiers, was assigned the task of defending Corfu. The regiment took part in Operation Latzides, which was a heroic but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to stem the forces of the Italians. After Greeces surrender to the Axis, the island came under Italian control and occupation. On the first Sunday of November 1941, high school students from all over Corfu took part in student protests against the occupying Italian army; these student protests of the island were among the first acts of overt popular Resistance in occupied Greece and a rare phenomenon even by wartime European standards. Subsequently, a considerable number of Corfiots escaped to Epirus in mainland Greece and enlisted as partisans in ELAS and EDES, in order to join the resistance movement gathering in the mainland.</p><br>
<h4>German occupation</h4><br>
<p>Upon the fall of Italian fascism in 1943, the Nazis moved to take control of the island. On 14 September 1943, Corfu was bombarded by the Luftwaffe; these bombing raids destroyed churches, homes, whole city blocks, especially in the Jewish quarter Evraiki, and a number of important buildings, such as the Ionian Parliament, the Municipal Theatre, the Municipal Library and others. In early June 1944, while the Allies bombed Corfu as a diversion from the Normandy landings, the Gestapo rounded up the Jews of the city, temporarily incarcerated them at the old fort (Palaio Frourio), and on 10 June sent them to Auschwitz, where very few survived. Approximately two hundred out of a total population of 1,900 escaped. Many among the local population at the time provided shelter and refuge to those 200 Jews that managed to escape the Nazis. A section of the old city is called Evraiki (Εβραική, meaning Jewish quarter), where there is currently a synagogue with about 65 members, who still speak their original Italkian language.</p><br>
<h4>Liberation</h4><br>
<p>Corfu was liberated by British troops, specifically the 40th Royal Marine Commando, which landed in Corfu on 14 October 1944, as the Germans were evacuating Greece. The Royal Navy swept the Corfu Channel for mines in 1944 and 1945, and found it to be free of mines. A large minefield was laid there shortly afterwards by the newly communist Albania and gave rise to the Corfu Channel Incident. This incident led to the Corfu Channel Case, where the United Kingdom opened a case against the People&#39;s Republic of Albania at the International Court of Justice.</p><br>
<h3>Post–World War and modern Corfu</h3><br>
<p>After World War II and the Greek Civil War, the island was rebuilt under the general programme of reconstruction of the Greek Government (Ανοικοδόμησις) and many elements of its classical architecture remain. Its economy grew but a portion of its inhabitants left the island for other parts of the country; buildings erected during Italian occupation – such as schools or government buildings – were put back to civic use. In 1956 Maria Desylla Kapodistria, relative of first Governor (head of state) of Greece Ioannis Kapodistrias, was elected mayor of Corfu and became the first female mayor in Greece. The Corfu General Hospital was also constructed; electricity was introduced to the villages in the 1950s, the radio substation of Hellenic Radio in Corfu was inaugurated in March 1957, and television was introduced in the 1960s, with internet connections in 1995. The Ionian University was established in 1984.</p><br>
<h2>Urban landscape</h2><br>
<h3>Old town</h3><br>
<p>The city of Corfu stands on the broad part of a peninsula, whose termination in the Venetian citadel (Παλαιό Φρούριο) is cut off from it by an artificial fosse formed in a natural gully, with a seawater moat at the bottom, that now serves as a marina and is called the Contrafossa. The old town, having grown within fortifications, where every metre of ground was precious, is a labyrinth of narrow streets paved with cobblestones, sometimes tortuous but colourful and clean. These streets are known as kantoúnia (καντούνια), and the older amongst them sometimes follow the gentle irregularities of the ground; while many are too narrow for vehicular traffic. A promenade rises by the seashore towards the bay of Garitsa (Γαρίτσα), together with an esplanade between the city and the citadel known as Spianada with the arcade (Λιστόν) to its west side, where restaurants and bistros abound.</p><br>
<h3>Palaio Frourio</h3><br>
<p>The old citadel (in Greek Palaio Frourio (Παλαιό Φρούριο) is an old Venetian fortress built on an artificial islet with fortifications surrounding its entire perimeter, although some sections, particularly on the east side, are slowly being eroded and falling into the sea. Nonetheless, the interior has been restored and is in use for cultural events, such as concerts (συναυλίες) and Sound and Light Productions (Ηχος και Φως), when historical events are recreated using sound and light special effects. These events take place amidst the ancient fortifications, with the Ionian sea in the background. The central high point of the citadel rises like a giant natural obelisk complete with a military observation post at the top, with a giant cross at its apex; at the foot of the observatory lies St. George&#39;s church, in a classical style punctuated by six Doric columns, as opposed to the Byzantine architectural style of the greater part of Greek Orthodox churches.</p><br>
<h3>Neo Frourio</h3><br>
<p>The new citadel or Neo Frourio (Νέο Φρούριο, "New Fortress") is a huge complex of fortifications dominating the northeastern part of the city. The huge walls of the fortress loom over the landscape as one travels from Neo Limani (Νέο Λιμάνι, "New Port") to the city, taking the road that passes through the fishmarket (ψαραγορά). The new citadel was until recently a restricted area due to the presence of a naval garrison, but old restrictions have been lifted and it is now open to the public, with tours possible through the maze of medieval corridors and fortifications. The winged Lion of St Mark, the symbol of Venice, can be seen at regular intervals adorning the fortifications.</p><br>
<h3>Ano and Kato Plateia and the music pavilion</h3><br>
<p>Near the old Venetian Citadel a large square called Spianada is also to be found, divided by a street in two parts: "Ano Plateia" (literally: "Upper square") and "Kato Plateia" (literally: "Lower square"), (Ανω Πλατεία and Κάτω Πλατεία in Greek). This is the biggest square in South-Eastern Europe and one of the largest in Europe, and replete with green spaces and interesting structures, such as a Roman-style rotunda from the era of British administration, known as the Maitland monument, built to commemorate Sir Thomas Maitland. An ornate music pavilion is also present, where the local "Philharmonikes" (Philharmonic Orchestras) (Φιλαρμονικές), mount classical performances in the artistic and musical tradition for which the island is well known. "Kato Plateia" also serves as a venue where cricket matches are held from time to time. In Greece, cricket is unique to Corfu, as it was once a British protectorate.</p><br>
<h3>Palaia Anaktora and its gardens</h3><br>
<p>Just to the north of "Kato Plateia" lie the "Palaia Anaktora" (Παλαιά Ανάκτορα: literally "Old Palaces"): a large complex of buildings of Roman architectural style which formerly housed the Kings of Greece, and prior to that the British Governors of the island. It was then called the Palace of Saints Michael and George. The Order of St. Michael and St. George was founded here in 1818 with motto auspicium melioris aevi, and is still awarded by the United Kingdom. Today the palace is open to the public and forms a complex of halls and buildings housing art exhibits, including a Museum of Asian Art, unique across Southern Europe in its scope and in the richness of its Chinese and Asian exhibits. The gardens of the Palaces, complete with old Venetian stone aquariums, exotic trees and flowers, overlook the bay through old Venetian fortifications and turrets, and the local sea baths (Μπάνια τ&#39; Αλέκου) are at the foot of the fortifications surrounding the gardens. A café on the grounds includes its own art gallery, with exhibitions of both local and international artists, known locally as the Art Café. From the same spot, the viewer can observe ships passing through the narrow channel of the historic Vido island (Νησί Βίδου) to the north, on their way to Corfu harbour (Νέο Λιμάνι), with high speed retractable aerofoil ferries from Igoumenitsa also cutting across the panorama. A wrought-iron aerial staircase, closed to visitors, descends to the sea from the gardens; the Greek royal family used it as a shortcut to the baths. Rewriting history, locals now refer to the old Royal Gardens as the "Garden of the People" (Ο Κήπος του Λαού).</p><br>
<h3>The Old Town and Pontikonisi</h3><br>
<p>The Old Town of Corfu city is an UNESCO World Heritage Site. In several parts of the old city, buildings of the Venetian era are to be found. The old citys architectural character is strongly influenced by the Venetian style, coming as it did under Venetian rule for a long period; its small and ancient side streets, and the old buildings trademark arches are particularly reminiscent of Venice. Of the thirty-seven Greek churches, the most important are the city&#39;s cathedral, the church dedicated to Our Lady of the Cave (η Παναγία Σπηλιώτισσα (hē Panagia Spēliōtissa)); Saint Spyridon church, wherein lies the preserved body of the patron saint of the island; and finally the suburban church of St Jason and St Sosipater (Αγιοι Ιάσων και Σωσίπατρος), reputedly the oldest in the island, and named after the two saints probably the first to preach Christianity to the Corfiots.</p><br>
<p>The nearby island, known as Pontikonisi (Greek meaning "mouse island"), though small is very green with abundant trees, and at its highest natural elevation (excluding its trees or man-made structures, such as the monastery), stands at about 2 m. Pontikonisi is home of the monastery of Pantokrator (Μοναστήρι του Παντοκράτορος); the white stone staircase of the monastery, viewed from afar, gives the impression of a (mouse) tail, which lent the island its name.</p><br>
<h2>Archaeology and architecture</h2><br>
<h3>An architectural overview: From classical to modern</h3><br>
<p>Corfu contains a few very important remains of antiquity. The site of the ancient city of Corcyra (Kerkyra) is well ascertained, about to the south-east of Corfu, upon the narrow piece of ground between the sea-lake of Halikiopoulo and the Bay of Castrades, in each of which it had a port. The circular tomb of Menekrates, with its well-known inscription, is on the Bay of Castrades. Under the hill of Ascension are the remains of a temple, popularly called of Poseidon, a very simple dome structure, which still in its mutilated state presents some peculiarities of architecture. In regard of Cassiope, the only other city of ancient importance, its name is still preserved by the village of Cassiopi, and there are some rude remains of building on the site; but the temple of Zeus Cassius for which it was celebrated has totally disappeared. Throughout the island numerous monasteries and other buildings of Venetian erection are to be found, of which the best known are Paleokastritsa, San Salvador and Peleka. The Achilleion is a palace commissioned by Elisabeth of Austria and purchased in 1907 by Wilhelm II of Germany; it is now a popular tourist attraction.</p><br>
<h3>Italianate architecture</h3><br>
<p>Corfu city is famous for its Italianate architecture, most notably the Liston, an arched colonnade lined with cafes on the edge of the Spianada (Esplanade), the vast main plaza and park which incorporates a cricket field and several pavilions. Also notable are the Venetian-Roman style City Hall, the Old and New castles, the recently restored Palace of Sts. Michael and George, formerly the residence of the British governor and the seat of the Ionian Senate, and the summer Palace of Mon Repos, formerly the property of the Greek royal family and birthplace of the Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. The Park of Mon Repos is adjacent to the Palaiopolis of Kerkyra, where excavations were conducted by the Greek Archaeological Service in collaboration with the University of Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium, and Brown University in the United States.</p><br>
<p>Examples of the finds can be found in the Museum of the Palace of Mon Repos.</p><br>
<h3>Destruction of architecture during World War II</h3><br>
<p>During World War II, the island was bombed by the Luftwaffe, resulting in the destruction of most of the city&#39;s buildings, including its market (αγορά) and Hotel Bella Venezia. The worst architectural losses of the Luftwaffe bombardment were the splendid buildings of the Ionian Academy (Ιόνιος Ακαδημία), and the Municipal Theatre (which in 1901 had replaced the Nobile Teatro di San Giacomo). The Roman style Theatre (Θέατρον) of the city was later replaced by a bland, modern box-style building. Discussions have been held at local governmental level about demolishing this modern building and replacing it with a replica of the old theatre. In contrast, the Ionian University reconstructed the Ionian Academy in its former style.</p><br>
<h3>The Achilleion</h3><br>
<p>In 1889, Empress Elizabeth of Austria built a summer palace in the region of Gastouri (Γαστούρι) to the south of the city, naming it Achílleion (Αχίλλειον) after the Homeric hero Achilles. The structure is filled with paintings and statues of Achilles, both in the main hall and in the gardens, depicting scenes of the Trojan War. The palace, with the neoclassical Greek statues that surround it, is a monument to platonic romanticism as well as escapism.</p><br>
<p>The Imperial gardens on the hill look over the surrounding green hills and valleys and the Ionian sea. The centrepiece of the gardens is a marble statue on a high pedestal, of the mortally wounded Achilles (Greek: Αχιλλεύς Θνήσκων, Achilleús Thnēskōn, Achilles Dying) without hubris and wearing only a simple cloth and an ancient Greek hoplite helmet. This statue was carved by German sculptor Ernst Gustav Herter.</p><br>
<p>The hero is presented devoid of rank or status, and seems notably human, though heroic, as he is forever trying to pull Paris&#39;s arrow from his heel. His classically depicted face is full of pain. He gazes skyward, as if to seek help from Olympus. According to Greek mythology, his mother Thetis was a goddess.</p><br>
<p>In 1898, Empress Sissi was assassinated at the age of 60 by an Italian anarchist, Luigi Lucheni, in Geneva, Switzerland. After her death, the palace was sold to the German Kaiser Wilhelm II. In contrast, at the great staircase in the main hall is a giant painting of the triumphant Achilles full of pride. Dressed in full royal military regalia and erect on his racing chariot, he pulls the lifeless body of Hector of Troy in front of the stunned crowd watching helplessly from inside the walls of the Trojan citadel.</p><br>
<p>Following the Kaisers purchase of the Achilleion, he invited archaeologist Reinhard Kekulé von Stradonitz, a friend and advisor, to come to Corfu to advise him where to position the huge statue of Achilles which he commissioned. The famous salute to Achilles from the Kaiser, which had been inscribed at the statues base, was also created by Kekulé. The inscription read: The inscription was subsequently removed after World War II.</p><br>
<p>The Achilleion was eventually acquired by the Greek state and has now been converted into a museum.</p><br>
<h3>Kaiser's Bridge</h3><br>
<p>German Kaiser Wilhelm II was also fond of taking holidays in Corfu. Having purchased the Achilleion in 1907 after Sissis death, he appointed Carl Ludwig Sprenger as the botanical architect of the Palace, and also built a bridge later named by the locals after him—the "Kaisers bridge" (Greek: η γέφυρα του Κάιζερ transliterated as: i gefyra tou Kaizer)—to access the beach without traversing the road forming the islands main artery to the south. The bridge, arching over the road, spanned the distance between the lower gardens of Achilleion and the nearby beach; its remains, a monument to imperial vanity, are an important landmark on the highway. The bridges central section was demolished by the Wehrmacht in 1944, during the German occupation of World War II, to allow for the passage of an enormous cannon, forming part of the Nazi defences in the southeastern coast of Corfu.</p><br>
<h2>Municipality</h2><br>
<p>The present municipality of Corfu was formed in the 2011 local government reform by the merger of the following 15 former municipalities, which became municipal units:</p><br>
<p>Agios Georgios</p><br>
<p>Achilleio</p><br>
<p>Corfu (city)</p><br>
<p>Ereikoussa</p><br>
<p>Esperies</p><br>
<p>Faiakes</p><br>
<p>Kassopaia</p><br>
<p>Korissia</p><br>
<p>Lefkimmi</p><br>
<p>Mathraki</p><br>
<p>Meliteieis</p><br>
<p>Othonoi</p><br>
<p>Palaiokastritsa</p><br>
<p>Parelioi</p><br>
<p>Thinali</p><br>
<h3>Province</h3><br>
<p>The province of Corfu (Επαρχία Κέρκυρας) was one of the provinces of the Corfu Prefecture. Its territory corresponded with that of the current municipality Corfu. It was abolished in 2006.</p><br>
<h2>Education</h2><br>
<p>Aside from being a leading centre for the Fine Arts, Corfu is also the home of the Ionian Academy, an institution carrying through and strengthening the tradition of Greek education while the rest of Greece was still under Ottoman rule.</p><br>
<p>It is also home to the Ionian University, established in 1984, in recognition, by the administration of Andreas Papandreou, of Corfus contribution to Education in Greece, as the seat of the first Greek university in modern times, the Ionian Academy. The academy was founded in 1824, forty years before the cession of the Ionian islands to Greece, and just three years after Greeces Revolution of 1821.</p><br>
<h3>Student activism</h3><br>
<p>In the modern era, beginning with its massive student protests during World War II against fascist occupation, and continuing in the fight against the dictatorship of Georgios Papadopoulos (1967–1974), students in Corfu have played a vanguard role in protesting for freedom and democracy in Greece, against both internal and external oppression. For Corfiotes a recent example of such heroism is that of geology student Kostas Georgakis, who set himself ablaze in Genoa, Italy on 19 September 1970, in a protest against the Greek military junta of 1967-1974.</p><br>
<h2>Culture</h2><br>
<h3>Museums and libraries</h3><br>
<p>Kerkyra has always been a cultural centre of distinction and cosmopolitanism. Its museums and libraries are studded with irreplaceable books and artifacts.</p><br>
<p>The most notable of its museums and libraries are located in the city, and are:</p><br>
<p>The Archaeological Museum, inaugurated in 1967, was constructed to house the exhibit of the huge Gorgon pediment of the Artemis temple in the ancient city of Korkyra, excavated at Palaiopolis in the early 20th century. The pediment has been described by the New York Times as the "finest example of archaic temple sculpture extant". Kaiser Wilhelm II had developed a "lifelong obsession" with the Gorgon sculpture, dating from seminars on Greek Archaeology the Kaiser attended while at the University of Bonn. The seminars were given by archaeologist Reinhard Kekulé von Stradonitz, who later became the Kaiser&#39;s advisor. In 1994, two more halls were added to the museum, where new discoveries from the excavations of the ancient city and the Garitsa cemetery are exhibited.</p><br>
<p>The Museum of Asian art of Corfu is located at the Palace of St. Michael and St. George (mainly Chinese and Japanese Arts); its unique collection is housed in 15 rooms, taking in over 12,000 artifacts, including a Greco-Buddhist art collection that shows the influence of Alexander the Great on Buddhist culture as far as Pakistan (see Greco-Buddhism).</p><br>
<p>The Banknote Museum, located in Aghios Spyridon square, features a complete collection of Greek banknotes from independence to the adoption of the euro in 2002.</p><br>
<p>The Byzantine Museum of Antivouniotissa, a church converted into a museum featuring rare Byzantine art.</p><br>
<p>Kapodistrias Museum. Ioannis Kapodistrias&#39; summer home in Koukourisa in his birthplace of Corfu has been converted to a museum commemorating his life and accomplishments and has been named in his honour. Donated by Maria Desylla Kapodistria, grand niece of Ioannis Kapodistrias, former mayor of Corfu and first female mayor of Greece.</p><br>
<p>The Music Museum of the Philharmonic Society of Corfu is located in the building of the Philharmonic Society and features scores, instruments, paintings and documents related to the music history of Corfu and the 19th-century Ionian Islands.</p><br>
<p>The Public Library of Corfu is located at the old English Barracks, in Palaio Frourio.</p><br>
<p>The Reading Society of Corfu has an extensive library of old Corfu manuscripts and rare books.</p><br>
<p>The Serbian Museum of Corfu (Српска кућа, Serbian House) houses rare exhibits about the Serbian soldiers&#39; tragic fate during the First World War. The remnants of the Serbian Army of about 150,000 soldiers together with their government in exile, found refuge and shelter in Corfu, following the collapse of the Serbian Front as a result of the Austro-Hungarian attack of 6 October 1915. Exhibits include photographs from the three years stay of the Serbians in Corfu, together with other exhibits such as uniforms, arms and ammunition of the Serbian army, Serbian regimental flags, religious artifacts, surgical tools and other decorations of the Kingdom of Serbia.</p><br>
<p>Solomos Museum and the Corfiot Studies Society.</p><br>
<h3>Patron Saint Spyridon</h3><br>
<p>Saint Spyridon the Thaumaturgist (Miracle-worker, Θαυματουργός) is the patron saint (πολιούχος) of the city and the island. St. Spyridon is revered for the miracle of expelling the plague (πανώλη) from the island, among many other miracles attributed to him. It is believed by the faithful that on its way from the island the plague scratched one of the fortification stones of the old citadel to indicate its fury at being expelled; to St. Spyridon is also attributed the role of saving the island at the second great siege of Corfu of 1716. The legend says that the sight of St. Spyridon approaching Ottoman forces bearing a flaming torch in one hand and a cross in the other caused panic. The legend also states that the Saint caused a tempest which was partly responsible for repulsing the Ottomans. This victory over the Ottomans, therefore, was attributed not only to the leadership of Count Schulenburg who commanded the stubborn defence of the island against Ottoman forces, but also to the miraculous intervention of St. Spyridon. Venice honoured von der Schulenburg and the Corfiots for successfully defending the island. Recognizing St. Spyridon&#39;s role in the defence of the island Venice legislated the establishment of the litany (λιτανεία) of St Spyridon on 11 August as a commemoration of the miraculous event, inaugurating a tradition that continues to this day.</p><br>
<p>Hence Spyridon is a very popular first name for Greek males born on the island and/or to islanders.</p><br>
<h3>Music and festivities</h3><br>
<h4>The Three City Philharmonics</h4><br>
<p>Corfiote musical tradition is significant. In the past, people would join in the singing of cantádes (καντάδες) or serenades), impromptu choral songs in two, three or four voices, usually accompanied by a guitar. Nowadays, in the face of rigours of a modern life from which Corfiote society has not been spared, cantádes (from the Italian verb cantare, to sing) are only performed by semi-professional or amateur singers, often as attractions for visitors.</p><br>
<p>Bands (Philharmonic societies, or Φιλαρμονικές), which also provide free instruction in music, are still popular and continue to attract young recruits. There are nineteen such marching wind bands throughout the island. Corfu city is home to the three most prestigious bands – in order of seniority:</p><br>
<p>the Philharmonic Society of Corfu use dark blue uniforms with dark red accents, and blue and red helmet plumes. It is usually called the Old Philharmonic or simply the Paliá ("Old"). Founded 12 September 1840.</p><br>
<p>the Mantzaros Philharmonic Society use blue uniforms with blue and white helmet plumes. It is commonly called the Néa ("New"). Founded 25 October 1890.</p><br>
<p>the Capodistria Philharmonic Union use bright red and black uniforms and plumes. It is commonly called the Cónte Capodístria or simply the Cónte ("Count"). It is the juniormost of the three (founded 18 April 1980).</p><br>
<p>All three maintain two major bands each, the main marching bands that can field up to 200 musicians on grand occasions, and the 60-strong student bandinas meant for lighter fare and on-the-job training.</p><br>
<p>The bands give regular summer weekend promenade concerts at the Spianada Green "pálko", and have a prominent part in the yearly Holy Week ceremonies. A considerable but mostly friendly rivalry between them persists, and each rigorously adhere to their respective repertoires. Every time one of these bands passes in front of the building housing another, they stop and give a musical "salute" to their rival. While this is officially a sign of respect, it is actually a challenge meant to show off to the rivals and impress them with a display of superior musicianship.</p><br>
<h4>Easter</h4><br>
<p>On Good Friday, from the early afternoon onward, the bands of the three Philharmonic Societies, separated into squads, accompany the Epitaph processions of the city churches. Late in the afternoon, the squads come together to form one band in order to accompany the Epitaph procession of the cathedral, while the funeral marches that the bands play differ depending on the band; the Old Philharmonic play Albinonis Adagio, the Mantzaros play Verdis Marcia Funebre from Don Carlo, and the Capodistria play Chopins Funeral March and Marianis Sventura.</p><br>
<p>On Holy Saturday morning, the three city bands again take part in the Epitaph processions of St. Spyridon Cathedral in procession with the Saints relics. At this point the bands play different funeral marches, with the Mantzaros playing Micchelis Calde Lacrime, the Palia playing Marcia Funebre from Faccios Amleto, and the Capodistria playing the Funeral March from Beethovens Eroica. This custom dates from the 19th century, when colonial administrators banned the participation of the British garrison band in the traditional Holy Friday funeral cortege. The defiant Corfiotes held the litany the following morning, and paraded the relics of St. Spyridon too, so that the administrators would not dare intervene.</p><br>
<p>The litany is followed by the celebration of the "Early Resurrection&quot balconies in the old city are decked in bright red cloth, and Corfiotes throw down large clay pots (the bótides, μπότηδες) full of water to smash on the street pavement, especially in wider areas of and in an organised fashion. This is enacted in anticipation of the Resurrection of Jesus, which is to be celebrated that same night, and to commemorate King Davids phrase: "Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potters vessel" (Psalm 2:9).</p><br>
<p>Once the bótides commotion is over, the three bands parade the clay-strewn streets playing the famous "Graikoí" festive march. This legendary march, the anthem of the island, was composed during Venetian rule, and its lyrics urged: "Greeks, never fear, we are all enslaved: you to the Turks, we to the Venetians, but one day we shall all be free". The Venetians were replaced by the French and the French by the British, and both the lyrics and the performance of the march were officially banned. The bands, however, defiantly played it on the Eve of Easter, as a token of the resurrection of the nation, and the tradition is honored to this day.</p><br>
<h4>Musical history</h4><br>
<p>While much of present-day Greece was under Ottoman rule, the Ionian Islands enjoyed a Golden Age in music and opera. Corfu was the capital city of a prized Venetian colony and it benefited from a unique musical and theatrical heritage. Then in the 19th century, as a British Protectorate, Corfu developed a musical heritage of its own and which constitutes the nucleus of modern Greek musical history. Until the early 18th century, musical life took place in city and village squares, with performances of straight or musical comedies – known as Momaries or Bobaries. From 1720, Corfu became the possessor of the first theatre in post-1452 Greece. It was the Teatro San Giacomo (now the City Hall) named after the nearby Roman Catholic cathedral (completed in 1691).</p><br>
<p>The island was also the center of the so-called Ionian School of music, the musical production of a group of Heptanesian composers, whose heyday was from the early 19th century till approximately the 1950s. It was the first school of classical music in Greece and it was a heavy influence for the later Greek music scene, after the independence.</p><br>
<h4>Teatro di San Giacomo</h4><br>
<p>Under Venetian rule, the Corfiotes developed a fervent appreciation of Italian opera, which was the real source of the extraordinary (given conditions in the mainland of Greece) musical development of the island during this era. The opera house of Corfu during 18th and 19th century was the Nobile Teatro di San Giacomo, named after the neighbouring Catholic cathedral; it was later converted into the City Hall. It was both the first theatre and first opera house of Greece in modern times and the place where the first Greek opera (based on an exclusively Greek libretto), Spyridon Xyndas The Parliamentary Candidate was performed. A long series of local composers, such as Nikolaos Mantzaros, Spyridon Xyndas, Antonio Liberali, Domenico Padovani, the Zakynthian Pavlos Carrer, the Lambelet family, Spyridon Samaras, and others, all developed careers intertwined with the theatre. San Giacomos place was taken by the Municipal Theatre in 1902, which maintained the operatic tradition vividly until its destruction during German air raid in 1943.</p><br>
<p>The first opera to be performed in the San Giacomo was in 1733 ("Gerone, tiranno di Siracusa"),</p><br>
<h4>Municipal Theatre of Corfu</h4><br>
<p>The Municipal Theatre of Corfu (Δημοτικό Θέατρο Κέρκυρας) has been the main theatre and opera house in Corfu, Greece since 1902. The theatre was the successor of Nobile Teatro di San Giacomo di Corfù which became the Corfu city hall. It was destroyed during a Luftwaffe aerial bombardment in 1943.</p><br>
<h4>Ionian University and musical tradition</h4><br>
<p>Since the early 1990s a music department has been established at the Ionian University. Aside from its academic activities, concerts in Corfu and abroad, and musicological research in the field of Neo-Hellenic Music, the Department organizes an international music academy every summer, which gathers together both international students and professors specialising in brass, strings, singing, jazz and musicology.</p><br>
<h4>Ta Karnavalia</h4><br>
<p>Another venerable Corfu tradition is known as the Carnival or Ta Karnavalia. Venetian in origin, festivities include a parade featuring the main attraction of Karnavalos, a rather grotesque figure with a large head and smiling face, leading a diverse procession of colourful floats. Corfiots, young and old, dress up in colourful costumes and follow the parade, spilling out into the areas narrow streets (kantounia) and spreading the festivities across the city, dancing and socialising. At night, in the islands more sophisticated social circles, dance and costume parties are traditional.</p><br>
<h3>Corfu in myth</h3><br>
<p>It is in Corfu that Hercules, just before embarking on his ten labours, slept with the naiad Melite; she bore him Hyllus, the leader of the Heraclids.</p><br>
<p>Corfu marks the Argonauts&#39; refuge from the avenging Colchic fleet, after their seizure of the Golden Fleece.</p><br>
<p>In the mythical sea adventure of Homer&#39;s Odyssey, Kerkyra is the island of the Phaeacians, (Phaiakes) wherein Odysseus (Ulysses) meets Nausica, the daughter of King Alkinoos. The bay of Palaiokastritsa is considered to be the place where Odysseus disembarked.</p><br>
<h3>Corfu in literature</h3><br>
<p>British naturalist Gerald Durrell wrote three well-loved books about his 1935–1940 childhood on Corfu: My Family and Other Animals; Birds, Beasts and Relatives; and The Garden of the Gods. His brother, literary author Lawrence Durrell, also wrote a volume about Corfu: Prospero&#39;s Cell: A Guide to the Landscape and Manners of the Island of Corcyra (Corfu).</p><br>
<p>Mary Stewart&#39;s novel This Rough Magic is set in Corfu.</p><br>
<p>Prosperos island in Shakespeares final play, The Tempest, is often said to have been based on Corfu.</p><br>
<p>Humbert Humberts first love, Annabel Leigh, is said to have "died of typhus in Corfu" in a primal scene of Vladimir Nabokovs Lolita.</p><br>
<p>Novelist Simon Raven (1927-2001) set Come Like Shadows, the eighth novel in his Alms for Oblivion sequence, on Corfu.</p><br>
<p>•Albert Cohen wrote 3 books which are partially or entirely set in Corfu. They are: Mangeclous, Les Valeureux, and Belle du Seigneur.</p><br>
<h3>Corfu in film</h3><br>
<p>Corfu was one of the main locations featured in the 1970 film The Executioner starring George Peppard and Joan Collins.</p><br>
<p>Corfu was one of the settings of The Burglars, a 1971 film starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Omar Sharif.</p><br>
<p>Much of the 1978 Billy Wilder film Fedora is set in Corfu and filmed on location.</p><br>
<p>The 1981 James Bond movie For Your Eyes Only has a number of scenes filmed in Corfu. The most memorable scene of the film to be bound with the island is of the underwater ancient Greek temple, with a huge turtle swimming in front of the camera; a casino scene was also filmed at the Achilleion. Other scenes filmed here include those tracing Melina and James walk through the citys streets, and Melina being greeted by Bond at Pontikonisi island. A major action element was filmed on the largest sandy beach on the island, Issos Beach in Agios Georgios South, involving a beach buggy chase along the dunes. The film&#39;s scene depicting a Greek wedding was filmed at the Bouas-Danilia traditional village (Μπούας Δανίλια παραδοσιακό χωριό). Action scenes were also filmed at Neo Frourio.</p><br>
<p>The 1984 Greek film "Η Τιμή της Αγάπης" (The Price of Love), directed by Tonia Marketaki is a tragic love story taking place in Corfu. It is based on the novel Honour and Money by Konstantinos Theotokis.</p><br>
<p>Corfu is also the setting of a 1987 BBC TV series version, and a 2005 BBC movie version, of My Family and Other Animals, Gerald Durrell&#39;s book about his childhood in Corfu in the late 1930s</p><br>
<p>The Gaze of the Gorgon (1992): a poem-film for BBC television by British poet Tony Harrison. The film examines the politics of conflict in the 20th century using the Gorgon as a metaphor. The imaginary narration of the film is done through the mouth of Jewish poet Heinrich Heine. The film describes the connection between the Corfu Gorgon at the Artemis Temple of Corfu and Kaiser Wilhelm II.</p><br>
<p>The Countess of Corfu (Η Κόμησσα Της Κέρκυρας), a 1972 film starring Rena Vlahopoulou and Alekos Alexandrakis, was filmed in Corfu.</p><br>
<p>ITV aired a TV series, named The Durrells in Corfu, in April 2016 and a second season in 2017 with a third being filmed that year. It is a biographical series detailing Gerald Durrell&#39;s childhood on Corfu.</p><br>
<h3>Corfu in popular culture</h3><br>
<p>Corfu is one of the locations in the legend of Simon and Milo, where Simon falls in love temporarily. It is the setting of the 1998 song Mediterranean Lady by Prozzak. The island is alluded to several times in David Foster Wallace&#39;s The Broom of the System. Drake mentions Corfu in a song.</p><br>
<h3>Tourism</h3><br>
<p>Corfiotes have a long history of hospitality to foreign residents and visitors, typified in the 20th century by Gerald Durrell&#39;s childhood reminiscence My Family and Other Animals. The north east coast has largely been developed by a few British holiday companies, with large expensive holiday villas. Package holiday resorts exist on the north, east and southwest coasts.</p><br>
<p>At the other end of the island, the southern resort of Kavos also provides tourist facilities.</p><br>
<p>St George South to the west boasts the largest sandy beach on the island coupled with a selection of all inclusive package hotels and traditional corfiot villas and flats. The Korission lake nature reserve also provides a stop over for European birds migrating south.</p><br>
<p>Up until the early 20th century, it was mainly visited by the European royals and elites, including Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany and Empress Elisabeth of Austria; today it is also widely visited by middle class families (primarily from the UK, Scandinavia and Germany). With the advent of the jet airliner bringing these groups relatively affordable package holidays, Corfu was one of the primary destinations for this new form of mass tourism. It is still popular with the ultra-wealthy however, and in the island&#39;s northeast the homeowners include members of the Rothschild family and Russian oligarchs.</p><br>
<h2>Transport</h2><br>
<p>The island is linked by two motorways, GR-24 in the northwest and GR-25 in the south.</p><br>
<p>Greek National Road 24, Cen., NW, Corfu – Palaiokastritsa</p><br>
<p>Greek National Road 25, Cen., S, SE, Corfu – Lefkimi</p><br>
<p>Corfu has ferry services both by traditional ferries to Gaios in the island of Paxoi and as far as Patras and both traditional ferries and advanced retractable airfoil, hydrodynamic-flow, high-speed ferries called "Flying Dolphins" to Igoumenitsa and Sarandë in neighbouring Albania. The small port of Lefkimmi is also to be found at the southernmost tip of the island on Cape Kavos, offering a ferry service to the mainland.</p><br>
<p>The Ioannis Kapodistrias International Airport, named after Ioannis Kapodistrias, a distinguished Corfiot and European diplomat, and the first governor of the independent Greek state, is located around three kilometres south of Kerkyra, just half a kilometre north of Pontikonisi. The approach and landing, in a northeasterly direction, afford passengers spectacular aerial views of Pontikonisi and Vlaheraina Monastery, also taking in the hills of Kanoni, as the runway employed for landing lies a few hundred metres from these spectacular local landmarks. The airport offers domestic flights from Olympic Airlines (OA 600, 602 and 606), and Aegean Airlines (A3 402, 404 and 406). Seaplanes, Air Sea Lines, a Greek seaplane operator, offers scheduled flights from Corfu to Paxoi, Lefkada, Ithaki, Kefalonia, Ioannina, Patras and Brindisi in Italy.</p><br>
<p>The buses to the main places on the island run about six times a day between the city and Glyfada, Sidari, Paleokastritsa, Roda and Acharavi, Lefkimmi, Lefkimmi and Piri. Other coaches drive up to twice a day to Athens and Thessaloniki. City buses run through the city to the Airport, Achilleon, Gouvia, Afra, Pelekas and some other places of interest.</p><br>
<p>A bike-sharing scheme called EasyBike Brainbox is available to get around the city.</p><br>
<h2>Economy</h2><br>
<p>Corfu is mostly planted with olive groves and vineyards and has been producing olive oil and wine since antiquity. The main wine grape varietals found in Corfu are the indigenous white Kakotrýgēs and red Petrokóritho, the Cefalonian white Robóla, the Aegean Moscháto (white muscat), the Achaean Mavrodáphnē and others.</p><br>
<p>Modern times have seen the introduction of specialist cultivation supported by the mild climate, like the kumquat and bergamot oranges, which are extensively used in making spoon sweets and liqueurs. Corfu also produces local animal products, such as Corfiote graviéra (a variant of gruyere) and "Corfu" cheese (a variant of Grana); "Corfu butter" (Boútyro Kerkýras), an intensely flavored cooking and baking butter made of ewe&#39;s milk; and the noúmboulo salami made of pork and lard and flavored with orange peel, oregano, thyme and other aromatic herbs, which are also burned for smoking.</p><br>
<p>Local culinary specialties include sofrito (a veal rump roast of Venetian origin), pastitsáda (bucatini pasta served with diced veal cooked in a tomato sauce), bourdétto (cod cooked in a peppery sauce), mándoles (caramelized almonds), pastéli (honey bars made with sesame, almonds or pistacchios), mandoláto (a "pastéli" made of crushed almonds, sugar, honey and vanilla), and tzitzibíra, the local ginger beer, a remnant of the British era.</p><br>
<p>The island has again become an important port of call and has a considerable trade in olive oil. In earlier times there was a great export of citron, which was cultivated here, including for ritual use in the Jewish community during the Sukkot holiday.</p><br>
<h2>International relations</h2><br>
<h2>Notable people</h2><br>
<h3>Ancient</h3><br>
<p>Arsenius (10th century) saint</p><br>
<p>Philiscus, tragic poet, born in Corfu</p><br>
<p>Ptolichus (5th century BC) sculptor</p><br>
<h3>Modern</h3><br>
<p>H.R.H. Princess Alexia of Greece and Denmark, born in Corfu</p><br>
<p>Marie Aspioti, M.B.E., distinguished Corfiote magazine publisher and cultural figure who influenced the literary and cultural life of post-war Corfu</p><br>
<p>Panos Aravantinos, artist, born in Corfu</p><br>
<p>Felice Beato, 19th-century photographer, born in Corfu</p><br>
<p>Giacomo Casanova, lived on the island as an officer of the Venetian army</p><br>
<p>Albert Cohen, Swiss-French author, born in Corfu</p><br>
<p>Haim Corfu, Israeli politician, was born in Jerusalem, his family name testifying to his family&#39;s origin</p><br>
<p>Mathew Devaris, scholar, born in Corfu</p><br>
<p>Tommaso Diplovataccio, Greco-Italian jurist, publisher and politician, born in Corfu</p><br>
<p>Panagiotis Doxaras, painter, pioneer of the Heptanese School of painting, worked and died in Corfu</p><br>
<p>Gerald Durrell lived in Corfu and wrote autobiographic books about the topic of Corfu, like My Family And Other Animals, Birds, Beasts, and Relatives, The Garden of the Gods, making the island famous among the readers, books translated in many languages.</p><br>
<p>Lawrence Durrell also lived in Corfu for some years and Lawrence wrote, among several other books on Greece, Prospero&#39;s Cell: A Guide to the Landscape and Manners of the Island of Corcyra</p><br>
<p>Elisabeth of Bavaria ("Sissi"), Empress of Austria, built Achilleion as summer palace</p><br>
<p>Kostas Georgakis, student, martyr of the resistance against the Greek military junta of 1967-1974, born in Corfu</p><br>
<p>Angela Gerekou, actress, singer and politician, born in Corfu. Wife of Tolis Voskopoulos</p><br>
<p>Spyros Gogolos, footballer, born in Corfu</p><br>
<p>Angelos Grammenos, actor</p><br>
<p>Augustinos Kapodistrias, younger brother of Ioannis Kapodistrias, soldier and politician. He was born in Corfu.</p><br>
<p>Ioannis Kapodistrias, first Governor of Greece, born in Corfu</p><br>
<p>Maria Desylla-Kapodistria, relative of Ioannis Kapodistrias, mayor of Corfu and first female mayor of Greece.</p><br>
<p>Kore. Ydro., musical group, formed and based in Corfu</p><br>
<p>Spyridon Lambros, history professor and former Prime Minister of Greece, born in Corfu</p><br>
<p>Vicky Leandros, international pop star, born in Corfu</p><br>
<p>Andreas Mandelis - expert on photonics, member of the Canadian Academy of Engineering. Awarded the 2014 Killam Prize</p><br>
<p>Nikolaos Mantzaros, composer, born in Corfu</p><br>
<p>Aristedes Metallinos, sculptor</p><br>
<p>Margarita Miniati, (1821-1897) Greek scholar and writer, born in Corfu</p><br>
<p>Andreas Moustoxydis, historian and philologist, born in Corfu</p><br>
<p>Vangelis Petsalis, classical musician and composer, born in Corfu</p><br>
<p>H.R.H. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, born Prince Philippos of Greece and Denmark, in Corfu in 1921</p><br>
<p>Saint Philomena, according to legend she started her life as a Greek princess born in Corfu</p><br>
<p>Major-General Sir Henry Ponsonby (1825-1895), Private Secretary to Her Britannic Majesty Queen Victoria, Empress of India.</p><br>
<p>Georgios Rallis, (1918–2006) prime minister. Son of Ioannis Rallis and Zaira, daughter of George Theotoki.</p><br>
<p>Alexander Rossi, artist, born in Corfu</p><br>
<p>Sakis Rouvas, singer and athlete, born in Corfu</p><br>
<p>Marshal Johann Matthias Reichsgraf von der Schulenburg, Austrian general and aristocrat. The Reichsgraf successfully defended the island against the Ottoman Turks during the siege of 1716 as leader of the Venetian forces in Corfu</p><br>
<p>Spyridon Samaras, composer, born in Corfu</p><br>
<p>Nikolaos Sophianos, humanist and cartographer, born in Corfu</p><br>
<p>Carl Ludwig Sprenger, German botanist, lived in Corfu</p><br>
<p>Theodore Stephanides, poet, author, doctor and naturalist, born in Corfu</p><br>
<p>Georgios Theotokis, former Prime Minister of Greece, born in Corfu</p><br>
<p>Ioannis Theotokis, politician, born in Corfu</p><br>
<p>Nikephoros Theotokis (1732–1800), Greek educator and Russian archbishop, born in Corfu</p><br>
<p>Antonio Vivaldi composer. In 1716, on commission by the republic of Venice, created the oratorio Juditha triumphans to commemorate victory over the Turks during the great siege of 1716.</p><br>
<p>Rena Vlahopoulou, actress and singer, born in Corfu</p><br>
<p>Eugenios Voulgaris, scholar, born in Corfu</p><br>
<p>Giovanni Giuffré, Wind-band leader, composer, born in Corfu</p><br>
<p>Gaetano Giuffré, composer, Maestro, born in Corfu</p><br>
<p>Sotirios Voulgaris (1857–1932), cosmetologist, founder of the Bulgari jewellery store than later became the famous Bulgari company.</p><br>
<p>Spyridon Xyndas (1812–1896) composer and musician, born in Corfu</p><br>
<p>Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, bought Achilleion after Sissi&#39;s death.</p><br>
<p>Markos Antonios Katsaitis, (1717–1787) was an 18th-century Greek scholar, geographer and lawyer born in Corfu</p><br>
<p>Pylos , historically also known under its Italian name Navarino, is a town and a former municipality in Messenia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Pylos-Nestoras, of which it is the seat and a municipal unit. It was the capital of the former Pylia Province. It is the main harbour on the Bay of Navarino. Nearby villages include Gialova, Pyla, Elaiofyto, Schinolakka, and Palaionero. The town of Pylos has 2,767 inhabitants, the municipal unit of Pylos 5,287 . The municipal unit has an area of 143.911 km.</p><br>
<p>Pylos has a long history, having been inhabited since Neolithic times. It was a significant kingdom in Mycenaean Greece, with remains of the so-called "Palace of Nestor" excavated nearby, named after Nestor, the king of Pylos in Homer&#39;s Iliad. In Classical times, the site was uninhabited, but became the site of the Battle of Pylos in 425 BC, during the Peloponnesian War. Pylos is scarcely mentioned thereafter until the 13th century, when it became part of the Frankish Principality of Achaea. Increasingly known by its French name of Port-de-Jonc or its Italian name Navarino, in the 1280s the Franks built the Old Navarino castle on the site. Pylos came under the control of the Republic of Venice from 1417 until 1500, when it was conquered by the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans used Pylos and its bay as a naval base, and built the New Navarino fortress there. The area remained under Ottoman control, with the exception of a brief period of renewed Venetian rule in 1685–1715 and a Russian occupation in 1770–71, until the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence in 1821. Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt recovered it for the Ottomans in 1825, but the defeat of the Turco-Egyptian fleet in the 1827 Battle of Navarino forced Ibrahim to withdraw from the Peloponnese and confirmed Greek independence.</p><br>
<h2>The name of Navarino</h2><br>
<p>Pylos retained its ancient name down to Byzantine times, but appears after the Frankish conquest in the early 13th century under two names:</p><br>
<p>a French one, Port-de-Jonc ("Rush Harbour") or Port-de-Junch, with some variants and derivatives: in Italian Porto-Junco, Zunchio or Zonchio, in medieval Catalan Port Jonc, in Latin Iuncum, Zonglon/Zonglos (Ζόγγλον/ς or Ζόγκλον/ς) in Greek, etc. It takes that name from the marshes surrounding the place.</p><br>
<p>a Greek one, Avarinos (Ἀβαρῖνος), later shortened to Varinos (Βαρῖνος) or lengthened to Anavarinos (Ἀναβαρῖνος) by epenthesis, which became Navarino in Italian (probably by rebracketing) and Navarin in French. Its etymology is not certain. A traditional etymology, proposed by the early 15th-century traveller Nompar de Caumont and repeated as late as the works of Karl Hopf, ascribed the name to the Navarrese Company, but this clearly an error as the name was in use long before the Navarrese presence in Greece. In 1830 Fallmereyer proposed that it could originate from a body of Avars who settled there, a view adopted by a few later scholars like William Miller; modern scholarship on the other hand considers it more likely that it originates from a Slavic name meaning "place of maples". The name of Avarinos/Navarino, although in use before the Frankish period, came into widespread use, and eclipsed the French name of Port-de-Jonc and its derivations, only in the 15th century, i.e., after the collapse of the Frankish Principality of Achaea.</p><br>
<p>In the late 14th or early 15th centuries, when it was held by the Navarrese Company, it was also known as Château Navarres, and called Spanochori (Σπανοχώρι, "village of the Spaniards") by the local Greeks.</p><br>
<p>Under Ottoman rule (1498–1685, 1715–1821), the Turkish name was Anavarin. After the construction of the new Ottoman fortress (Anavarin kalesi) in 1571/2, it became known as Neokastro (Νεόκαστρο or Νιόκαστρο, "new castle") among the local Greeks, while the old Frankish castle became known as Palaiokastro (Παλαιόκαστρο or Παλιόκαστρο, "old castle").</p><br>
<h2>Geography</h2><br>
<p>The soil about Navarino is of a red colour, and is remarkable for the production of an abundance of squills, which are used in medicine. The rocks, which show themselves in every direction through a scanty but rich soil, are limestone, and present a general appearance of unproductiveness round the castle of Navarino; and the absence of trees is ill compensated by the profusion of sage, brooms, cistus, and other shrubs which start from the innumerable cavities of the limestone.</p><br>
<p>The remains of Navarino, consist of a fort, covering the summit of a hill sloping quickly to the south, but falling in abrupt precipices to the north and east. The town was built on the southern declivity, and was surrounded by a wall, which, allowing for the natural irregularities of the soil, represented a triangle, with the castle at the summit—a form observable in many of the ancient cities of Greece.</p><br>
<h2>Flora and fauna</h2><br>
<p>The Gialova wetland is a regional blessing of nature. It is one of 10 major lagoons in Greece. and has been classified as one of the important bird areas in Europe. It has also been listed as a 1500-acre archaeological site, lying between Gialova and the bay of Voidokilia. Its alternative name of Vivari is Latin, meaning fishponds. With a depth, at its deepest point, of no more than four meters, it is the southernmost stopover of birds migrating from the Balkans to Africa, giving shelter to no fewer than 225 bird species, among them heron, cormorant, lesser kestrel, Audouins gull, flamingo, osprey and imperial eagle. It is Gialova, too, which plays host to a vary rare species, nearing extinction throughout Europe, the African chameleon. The observation post of the Greek Ornithological Society allows visitors to find out more and to watch the shallow brackish waters of the lake, they can walk the paths that circumscribe Gialovas different ecosystems.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<h3>Prehistoric and Mycenaean Pylos</h3><br>
<p>Pylos has evidence of continuous human presence dating back to the Neolithic Age. In Mycenaean times, it was an important centre, Nestor&#39;s kingdom of "sandy Pylos", as recalled by Homer in Book 17 of the Odyssey:</p><br>
<p>We left for Pylos, Nestor too</p><br>
<p>the shepherd of the peoples,</p><br>
<p>And He, receiving me the king,</p><br>
<p>within his halls so lofty,</p><br>
<p>Embraced me with all</p><br>
<p>eagerness as father does</p><br>
<p>his youngling</p><br>
<p>His son back from long time abroad.</p><br>
<p>Homer, Odyssey</p><br>
<p>XVII 108-112</p><br>
<p>The Mycenaean state of Pylos (1600–1100 BC) covered an area of 2,000 square km and had a minimum population of 50,000 according to Linear B tablets, or even perhaps as large as 80,000–120,000.</p><br>
<p>Bronze Age Pylos was excavated by Carl Blegen between 1939 and 1952. It is located at modern Ano Englianos, about 9 km north-east of the bay 37.028&deg; latitude, 21.695&deg; longitude. Blegen called the remains of a large Mycenean palace dating from 1300 BC. found there the "Palace of Nestor", after the Homeric poems. Linear B tablets found by Blegen clearly demonstrate that the site itself was called Pylos (Pulos in Mycenaean Greek; attested in Linear B as 𐀢𐀫, pu-ro) by its Mycenaean inhabitants. This site was abandoned sometime after the 8th century BC and burned to the ground. The ruins of a crude stone fortress on nearby Sphacteria Island, apparently of Mycenaean origin, were used by the Spartans during the Peloponnesian War. (Thucydides iv. 31)</p><br>
<h3>Classical Pylos</h3><br>
<p>According to the Greek historian Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War, in the 5th century BCE the area was "together with most of the country round, unpopulated" (iv, 3). The ancient city was not located at the modern Pylos, but north of the isle of Sphacteria. In 425 BC the Athenian politician Cleon sent an expedition to Pylos where the Athenians fortified the rocky promontory now known as Koryphasion or Old Pylos at the northern edge of the bay, near the Gialova Lagoon, and after a conflict with Spartan ships in the Battle of Pylos, seized and occupied the bay. A little later the Athenians captured a number of Spartan troops besieged on the adjacent island of Sphacteria (see Battle of Sphacteria). Spartan anxiety over the return of the prisoners, who were taken to Athens as hostages, contributed to their acceptance of the Peace of Nicias in 421 BC.</p><br>
<h3>Middle Ages</h3><br>
<p>Little is known of Pylos under Byzantine rule, except for a mention of raids by Cretan Saracens in the area c. 872/3. In the 12th century, the Muslim geographer al-Idrisi mentioned it as the "commodious port" of Irūda in his Nuzhat al-Mushtaq.</p><br>
<p>In 1204, following the Fourth Crusade, the Peloponnese became the Principality of Achaea, a Crusader state. Pylos fell quickly to the Crusaders according to a brief reference in the Chronicle of the Morea, but it is not until the 1280s that it is mentioned again. According to the French and Greek versions of the Chronicle, Nicholas II of Saint Omer, the lord of Thebes, who in c. 1281 received extensive lands in Messenia in exchange for his wifes possessions of Kalamata and Chlemoutsi, erected a castle at Navarino. According to the Greek version, he intended this as a future fief for his nephew, Nicholas III, although the Aragonese version attributes the construction to Nicholas III himself, a few years later. According to A. Bon, a construction under Nicholas II in the 1280s is more likely, possibly in the period 1287–89 when he served as the viceroy (bailli) of Achaea. Despite Nicholas IIs intentions, however, it is unclear whether his nephew did indeed inherit Navarino. If he did, it remained his until his death in 1317, when it and all the Messenian lands of the family reverted to the princely domain, as Nicholas III had no children.</p><br>
<p>The fortress remained relatively unimportant thereafter, except for the naval battle in 1354 between Venice and Genoa, and an episode in 1364, during the conflict between Mary of Bourbon and the Prince Philip of Taranto, due to Marys attempt to claim the Principality following the death of her husband, Robert of Taranto. Mary had been given possession of Navarino (along with Kalamata and Mani) by Robert in 1358, and the local castellan, loyal to Mary, briefly imprisoned the new Princes bailli, Simon del Poggio. Mary retained control of Navarino until her death in 1377. At about this time, Albanians settled in the area, while in 1381/2, Navarrese, Gascon and Italian mercenaries were active there. From the early years of the 15th century, Venice set its eyes on the fortress of Navarino, fearing lest its rivals the Genoese seize it and use it as a base for attacks against the Venetian outposts of Modon and Coron. In the event, the Venetians seized the fortress themselves in 1417 and, after prolonged diplomatic manoeuvring, succeeded in legitimizing their new possession in 1423.</p><br>
<h3>First Venetian and first Ottoman periods</h3><br>
<p>In 1423, Navarino, like the rest of the Peloponnese, suffered its first Ottoman raid, led by Turakhan Bey, which was repeated in 1452. It was also at Navarino that Emperor John VIII Palaiologos embarked in 1437, heading for the Council of Ferrara, and where the last Despot of the Morea, Thomas Palaiologos, embarked with his family in 1460, following the Ottoman conquest of the Despotate of the Morea. After 1460, the fortress, along with the other Venetian outposts and Monemvasia and the Mani Peninsula, were the only Christian-held areas in the peninsula. Venetian control over Navarino survived the First Ottoman–Venetian War (1463–79), but not the Second (1499–1503): following the Venetian defeat in the Battle of Modon in August 1500, the 3,000-strong garrison surrendered, although it was well provisioned for a siege. The Venetians nevertheless recaptured it shortly after, on 3/4 December, but on 20 May 1501, a joint Ottoman land and sea attack under Kemal Reis and Hadım Ali Pasha retook it.</p><br>
<p>The Ottomans used Navarino (which they called Anavarin or Avarna) as a naval base, either for piratical raids or for major fleet operations in the Ionian and Adriatic seas. In 1572/3, the Ottoman chief admiral (Kapudan Pasha) Uluç Ali Reis built a new fortress at Navarino (Anavarin-i Cedid, "New Navarino", or Neokastro in Greek), to replace the outdated Frankish castle.</p><br>
<p>The Venetians briefly captured Navarino in the 1650s during the Cretan War.</p><br>
<p>In 1668, Evliya Çelebi described the city in his Seyahatname:</p><br>
<p>Anavarin-i Atik is an unequalled castle... the harbor is a safe</p><br>
<p>anchorage...</p><br>
<p>in most streets of Anavarin-i Cedid there are many fountains of</p><br>
<p>running water... The city is embellished with trees and vines so</p><br>
<p>that the sun does not beat into the fine marketplace at all, and</p><br>
<p>all the city notables sit here, playing backgammon, chess, various</p><br>
<p>kinds of draughts, and other board games....</p><br>
<h3>Second Venetian period, Ottoman reconquest and Greek Independence</h3><br>
<p>In 1685, during the early stages of the Morean War, the Venetians under Francesco Morosini and Otto Wilhelm Königsmarck invaded the Peloponnese and captured most of it, successfully storming the two fortresses of Navarino in the process. With the peninsula safely in Venetian hands, Navarino became an administrative centre in the new "Kingdom of the Morea", as the Venetian province was called, until 1715, when the Ottomans recovered the Peloponnese. The Venetian census of 1689 gave the population as 1,413, while twenty years later it had risen to 1,797 inhabitants.</p><br>
<p>After the Ottoman reconquest, Navarino became the centre of a kaza in the Sanjak of the Morea. On 10 April 1770, after a six-day siege, the fortress of New Navarino surrendered to the Russians during the Orlov Revolt. The Ottoman garrison was allowed to depart for Crete, while the Russians repaired the fortress to make it their base. On 1 June, however, the Russians left, and the Ottomans re-entered the fort and burned and partially demolished it. Meanwhile, the population gathered there had escaped to nearby Sphacteria, where Albanian mercenaries of the Ottomans slaughtered most of them.</p><br>
<p>After the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence in mid-March 1821, Navarino was besieged by the local Greeks on 29 March. The garrison, augmented by the local Muslim population of Kyparissia, held out until the first week of August, when they were forced to capitulate. Despite their promise for safe conduct, the Greeks massacred them all.</p><br>
<p>The Turks under Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt retook most of the Peloponnese in 1825, including the Pylos area, overcoming the Greek defenders at the battles of Sphacteria (29 April) and Neokastro (11 May). The fortress remained in Ottoman hands until the spring 1828, but in October 1827, the combined Ottoman–Egyptian fleets were defeated in the bay at the Battle of Navarino by the allied navies of the United Kingdom, France and Russia. This event negated Ibrahim&#39;s successes, and in autumn 1828 his troops withdrew from the Peloponnese.</p><br>
<h3>The modern town</h3><br>
<p>The framework of the modern town of Pylos, outside the walls of Neokastro, was built by the troops of General Maison during the subsequent French Morea expedition of 1828–1833.</p><br>
<p>The western end of Greek National Road 82 begins in downtown Pylos. The highway runs west to east and links Pylos with Kalamata and Sparta. The area enjoys a favorable climate, with especially mild winters.</p><br>
<h2>Historical population</h2><br>
<p>Mount Fuji, located on Honshu Island, is the highest mountain in Japan at 3,776.24 m .</p><br>
<p>Mount Fuji is one of Japans "Three Holy Mountains" along with Mount Tate and Mount Haku. It is also a Special Place of Scenic Beauty and one of Japans Historic Sites. It was added to the World Heritage List as a Cultural Site on June 22, 2013.</p><br>
<p>According to UNESCO, Mount Fuji has "inspired artists and poets and been the object of pilgrimage for centuries". UNESCO recognizes 25 sites of cultural interest within the Mt. Fuji locality. These 25 locations include the mountain and the shrine, Fujisan Hongū Sengen Taisha, often shortened as Fuji-San.</p><br>
<h2>Etymology</h2><br>
<p>The current kanji for Mount Fuji, 富 and 士, mean "wealth" or "abundant" and "a man with a certain status" respectively. However, the name predates kanji, and these characters are ateji, meaning that they were selected because their pronunciations match the syllables of the name but do not carry a meaning related to the mountain.</p><br>
<p>The origin of the name Fuji is unclear, having no recording of it being first called by this name. A text of the 10th century, Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, says that the name came from "immortal" and also from the image of abundant soldiers ascending the slopes of the mountain. An early folk etymology claims that Fuji came from 不二 (not + two), meaning without equal or nonpareil. Another claims that it came from 不尽 (not + to exhaust), meaning neverending.</p><br>
<p>A Japanese classical scholar in the Edo era, Hirata Atsutane, speculated that the name is from a word meaning, "a mountain standing up shapely as an ear of a rice plant". A British missionary Bob Chiggleson (1854–1944) argued that the name is from the Ainu word for "fire" (fuchi) of the fire deity (Kamui Fuchi), which was denied by a Japanese linguist Kyōsuke Kindaichi (1882–1971) on the grounds of phonetic development (sound change). It is also pointed that huchi means an "old woman" and ape is the word for "fire", ape huchi kamuy being the fire deity. Research on the distribution of place names that include fuji as a part also suggest the origin of the word fuji is in the Yamato language rather than Ainu. A Japanese toponymist Kanji Kagami argued that the name has the same root as wisteria and rainbow, and came from its "long well-shaped slope".</p><br>
<h3>Variations</h3><br>
<p>In English, the mountain is known as Mount Fuji. Some sources refer to it as "Fuji-san", "Fujiyama" or, redundantly, "Mt. Fujiyama". Japanese speakers refer to the mountain as "Fuji-san". This "san" is not the honorific suffix used with people&#39;s names, such as Watanabe-san, but the Sino-Japanese reading of the character used in Sino-Japanese compounds. In Nihon-shiki and Kunrei-shiki romanization, the name is transliterated as Huzi.</p><br>
<p>Other Japanese names for Mount Fuji, which have become obsolete or poetic, include,, and, created by combining the first character of 富士, Fuji, and 岳, mountain.</p><br>
<h2>In Shinto mythology</h2><br>
<p>In Shinto mythology, Kuninotokotachi (国之常立神, Kuninotokotachi-no-Kami, in Kojiki)(国常立尊, Kuninotokotachi-no-Mikoto, in Nihon Shoki) is one of the two gods born from "something like a reed that arose from the soil" when the earth was chaotic. According to Nihongi is Konohanasakuya-hime, wife of Ninigi is the goddness of Mount Fuji where Fujisan Hongū Sengen Taisha is dedicated for her.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Mount Fuji is an attractive volcanic cone and a frequent subject of Japanese art especially after 1600, when Edo (now Tokyo) became the actual capital and people saw the mountain while traveling on the Tōkaidō road. Among the most renowned works are Hokusais 36 Views of Mount Fuji and his One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji, as well as Utagawa Hiroshiges similarly-titled 36 Views of Mount Fuji (1858). The mountain is mentioned in Japanese literature throughout the ages and is the subject of many poems. One of the modern artists who depicted Fuji in almost all her works was Tamako Kataoka.</p><br>
<p>It is thought that the first recorded ascent was in 663 by an anonymous monk. The summit has been thought of as sacred since ancient times and was forbidden to women until the Meiji Era in the late 1860s. Ancient samurai used the base of the mountain as a remote training area, near the present-day town of Gotemba. The shogun Minamoto no Yoritomo held yabusame in the area in the early Kamakura period.</p><br>
<p>Founded by Nikkō Shōnin in 1290 on the lower slopes of Mount Fuji in Shizuoka Prefecture is the Taiseki-ji temple complex, the central base headquarters of Nichiren Shōshū Buddhism, which is visited by thousands of westerners each year who go on varying Tozan pilgrimages.</p><br>
<p>The first ascent by a foreigner was by Sir Rutherford Alcock in September 1868, from the foot of the mountain to the top in eight hours and three hours for the descent. Alcock&#39;s brief narrative in The Capital of the Tycoon was the first widely disseminated description of the mountain in the West. Lady Fanny Parkes, the wife of British ambassador Sir Harry Parkes, was the first non-Japanese woman to ascend Mount Fuji in 1869. Photographer Felix Beato climbed Mount Fuji in the same year.</p><br>
<p>On March 5, 1966, BOAC Flight 911, a Boeing 707, broke up in flight and crashed near the Mount Fuji Gotemba New fifth station, shortly after departure from Tokyo International Airport. All 113 passengers and 11 crew members died in the disaster, which was attributed to extreme clear air turbulence caused by lee waves downwind of the mountain. There is a memorial for the crash a short distance down from the Gotemba New fifth station.</p><br>
<p>Today, Mount Fuji is an international destination for tourism and mountain climbing. In the early 20th century, populist educator Frederick Starr&#39;s Chautauqua lectures about his several ascents of Mount Fuji—1913, 1919, and 1923—were widely known in America. A well-known Japanese saying suggests that a wise person will climb Mt. Fuji once in their lifetime, but only a fool would climb it twice. It remains a popular symbol in Japanese culture, including making numerous movie appearances, inspiring the Infiniti logo, and even appearing in medicine with the Mount Fuji sign.</p><br>
<p>In September 2004, the manned weather station at the summit was closed after 72 years in operation. Observers monitored radar sweeps that detected typhoons and heavy rains. The station, which was the highest in Japan at 3,780 m, was replaced by a fully automated meteorological system.</p><br>
<p>As of 2011, the Japan Self-Defense Forces and the United States Marine Corps continue to operate military bases near Mount Fuji.</p><br>
<h2>Geography</h2><br>
<p>Mount Fuji is a distinctive feature of the geography of Japan. It stands 3,776.24 m high and is located near the Pacific coast of central Honshu, just west of Tokyo. It straddles the boundary of Shizuoka and Yamanashi Prefectures. Four small cities surround it: Gotemba to the east, Fujiyoshida to the north, Fujinomiya to the southwest, and Fuji to the south. It is also surrounded by five lakes: Lake Kawaguchi, Lake Yamanaka, Lake Sai, Lake Motosu and Lake Shōji. They, and nearby Lake Ashi, provide views of the mountain. The mountain is part of the Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park. It can be seen more distantly from Yokohama, Tokyo, and sometimes as far as Chiba, Saitama, Tochigi and Lake Hamana when the sky is clear. Particularly in the winter it can be seen from the Shinkansen until it reaches Utsunomiya station. It has also been photographed from space during a space shuttle mission (see image, below).</p><br>
<h3>Climate</h3><br>
<p>The summit of Mount Fuji has a tundra climate (Köppen climate classification ET). The temperature is very low at the high altitude, and the cone is covered by snow for several months of the year. The lowest recorded temperature is −38.0 &deg;C recorded in February 1981, and the highest temperature was 17.8 &deg;C recorded in August 1942.</p><br>
<h2>Geology</h2><br>
<p>Mount Fuji is located at the triple junction where the Amurian Plate, the Okhotsk Plate, and the Philippine Sea Plate meet. Those plates form the western part of Japan, the eastern part of Japan, and the Izu Peninsula respectively.</p><br>
<p>Scientists have identified four distinct phases of volcanic activity in the formation of Mount Fuji. The first phase, called Sen-komitake, is composed of an andesite core recently discovered deep within the mountain. Sen-komitake was followed by the "Komitake Fuji", a basalt layer believed to be formed several hundred thousand years ago. Approximately 100,000 years ago, "Old Fuji" was formed over the top of Komitake Fuji. The modern, "New Fuji" is believed to have formed over the top of Old Fuji around 10,000 years ago.</p><br>
<p>The volcano is currently classified as active with a low risk of eruption. The last recorded eruption was the Hōei eruption which started on December 16, 1707 (Hōei 4, 23rd day of the 11th month), and ended about January 1, 1708 (Hōei 4, 9th day of the 12th month), during the Edo period. The eruption formed a new crater and a second peak, named Mount Hōei (after the Hōei era), halfway down its southeastern side. Fuji spewed cinders and ash which fell like rain in Izu, Kai, Sagami, and Musashi.</p><br>
<p>Since then, there have been no signs of an eruption. In the evening of March 15, 2011, there was a magnitude 6.2 earthquake at shallow depth a few kilometres from Mount Fuji on its southern side. But according to the Japanese Meteorological Service there was no sign of any eruption.</p><br>
<h3>Current eruptive danger</h3><br>
<p>Following the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, much attention was given to the potential volcanic reaction of Mt. Fuji. In September 2012, mathematical models created by the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention (NRIESDP) suggested that the pressure in Mount Fujis magma chamber could be at 1.6 megapascals, higher than it was in 1707. This was commonly reported in the media to mean that an eruption of Mt. Fuji was imminent. However, since there is no known method of measuring the pressure of a volcanos magma chamber directly, indirect calculations of the type used by NRIESDP are speculative and unprovable. Other indicators suggestive of heightened eruptive danger, such as active fumaroles and recently discovered faults, are typical occurrences at this type of volcano.</p><br>
<h2>Aokigahara</h2><br>
<p>The forest at the north west base of the mountain is named Aokigahara. Folk tales and legends tell of ghosts, demons, Yūrei and Yōkai haunting the forest, and in the 19th century, Aokigahara was one of many places poor families abandoned the very young and the very old. Aokigahara is the worlds second most popular suicide location after San Franciscos Golden Gate Bridge. Since the 1950s, more than 500 people have lost their lives in the forest, mostly suicides. Approximately 30 suicides have been counted yearly, with a high of nearly 80 bodies in 2002. The recent increase in suicides prompted local officials to erect signs that attempt to convince individuals experiencing suicidal intent to re-think their desperate plans, and sometimes these messages have proven effective. The numbers of suicides in the past creates an allure that has persisted across the span of decades.</p><br>
<p>Many of these hikers mark their travelled routes by leaving coloured plastic tapes behind, causing concerns from prefectural officials with regard to the forest&#39;s ecosystem.</p><br>
<h2>Adventuring</h2><br>
<h3>Transportation</h3><br>
<p>The closest airport with scheduled international service is Mt. Fuji Shizuoka Airport. It opened in June 2009. It is about 80 km from Mount Fuji. The major international airports serving Tokyo, Tokyo International Airport (Haneda Airport) in Tokyo and Narita International Airport in Chiba, are hours from Mount Fuji.</p><br>
<h3>Climbing routes</h3><br>
<p>Approximately 300,000 people climbed Mount Fuji in 2009. The most-popular period for people to hike up Mount Fuji is from July to August, while huts and other facilities are operating. Most Japanese climb the mountain at night in order to be in a position at or near the summit when the sun rises. The morning light is called 御来光 goraikō, "arrival of light".</p><br>
<p>There are four major routes from the fifth station to the summit with an additional four routes from the foot of the mountain. The major routes from the fifth station are (clockwise): Yoshida, Subashiri, Gotemba, and Fujinomiya routes. The routes from the foot of the mountain are: Shojiko, Yoshida, Suyama, and Murayama routes. The stations on different routes are at different elevations. The highest fifth station is located at Fujinomiya, followed by Yoshida, Subashiri, and Gotemba.</p><br>
<p>Even though it has only the second-highest fifth stations, the Yoshida route is the most-popular route because of its large parking area and many large mountain huts where a climber can rest or stay. During the summer season, most Mount Fuji climbing tour buses arrive there. The next-popular is the Fujinomiya route, which has the highest fifth station, followed by Subashiri and Gotemba.</p><br>
<p>Even though most climbers do not climb the Subashiri and Gotemba routes, many descend these because of their ash-covered paths. From the seventh station to near the fifth station, one could run down these ash-covered paths in approximately 30 minutes.</p><br>
<p>Besides these routes, there are tractor routes along the climbing routes. These tractor routes are used to bring food and other materials to huts on the mountain. Because the tractors usually take up most of the width of these paths and they tend to push large rocks from the side of the path, the tractor paths are off-limits to the climbers on sections that are not merged with the climbing or descending paths. Nevertheless, one can sometimes see people riding mountain bikes along the tractor routes down from the summit. This is particularly risky, as it becomes difficult to control speed and may send some rocks rolling along the side of the path, which may hit other people.</p><br>
<p>The four routes from the foot of the mountain offer historical sites. The Murayama is the oldest Mount Fuji route and the Yoshida route still has many old shrines, teahouses, and huts along its path. These routes are gaining popularity recently and are being restored, but climbing from the foot of the mountain is still relatively uncommon. Also, bears have been sighted along the Yoshida route.</p><br>
<p>The ascent from the new fifth station can take anywhere between three and eight hours while the descent can take from two to five hours. The hike from the foot of the mountain is divided into 10 stations, and there are paved roads up to the fifth station, which is about 2,300 m above sea level.</p><br>
<p>Huts at and above the fifth stations are usually manned during the climbing season, but huts below fifth stations are not usually manned for climbers. The number of open huts on routes are proportional to the number of climbers — Yoshida has the most while Gotemba has the fewest. The huts along the Gotemba route also tend to start later and close earlier than those along the Yoshida route. Also, because Mount Fuji is designated as a national park, it is illegal to camp above the fifth station.</p><br>
<p>There are eight peaks around the crater at the summit. The highest point in Japan, Ken-ga-mine, is where the Mount Fuji Radar System used to be. Climbers are able to visit each of these peaks.</p><br>
<h3>Paragliding</h3><br>
<p>Paragliders take off in the vicinity of the fifth station Gotemba parking lot, between Subashiri and Hōei-zan peak on the south side from the mountain, in addition to several other locations, depending on wind direction. Several paragliding schools use the wide sandy/grassy slope between Gotemba and Subashiri parking lots as a training hill.</p><br>
<p>Fort Ticonderoga, formerly Fort Carillon, is a large 18th-century star fort built by the French at a narrows near the south end of Lake Champlain, in northern New York, in the United States. It was constructed by Canadian-born French military engineer Michel Chartier de Lotbinière, Marquis de Lotbinière between October 1755 and 1757, during the action in the "North American theater" of the Seven Years&#39; War, often referred to in the US as the French and Indian War. The fort was of strategic importance during the 18th-century colonial conflicts between Great Britain and France, and again played an important role during the American Revolutionary War.</p><br>
<p>The site controlled a river portage alongside the mouth of the rapids-infested La Chute River, in the 3.5 mi between Lake Champlain and Lake George, and was strategically placed in conflicts over trade routes between the British-controlled Hudson River Valley and the French-controlled Saint Lawrence River Valley.</p><br>
<p>The terrain amplified the importance of the site. Both lakes were long and narrow and oriented north–south, as were the many ridge lines of the Appalachian Mountains extending as far south as Georgia, creating the near-impassable mountainous terrains to the east and west of the Great Appalachian Valley that the site commanded.</p><br>
<p>The name "Ticonderoga" comes from the Iroquois word tekontaró:ken, meaning "it is at the junction of two waterways".</p><br>
<p>During the 1758 Battle of Carillon, 4,000 French defenders were able to repel an attack by 16,000 British troops near the fort. In 1759, the British returned and drove a token French garrison from the fort. During the American Revolutionary War, the fort again saw action in May 1775 when the Green Mountain Boys and other state militia under the command of Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold captured it from the British in a surprise attack. Cannons captured were transported to Boston where their deployment forced the British to abandon the city in March 1776. The Americans held the fort until June 1777, when British forces under General John Burgoyne occupied high ground above it and threatened the Continental Army troops, leading them to withdraw from the fort and its surrounding defenses. The only direct attack on the fort took place in September 1777, when John Brown led 500 Americans in an unsuccessful attempt to capture the fort from about 100 British defenders.</p><br>
<p>The British abandoned the fort after the failure of the Saratoga campaign, and it ceased to be of military value after 1781. It fell into ruin, leading people to strip it of some of its usable stone, metal, and woodwork. In the 19th century, it became a stop on tourist routes of the area. Early in the 20th century, its private owners restored the fort. A foundation now operates the fort as a tourist attraction, museum, and research center.</p><br>
<h2>Geography and early history</h2><br>
<p>Lake Champlain, which forms part of the border between New York and Vermont, and the Hudson River together formed an important travel route that was used by Indians before the arrival of European colonists. The route was relatively free of obstacles to navigation, with only a few portages. One strategically important place on the route lies at a narrows near the southern end of Lake Champlain, where Ticonderoga Creek, known in Colonial times as the La Chute River, enters the lake, carrying water from Lake George. Although the site provides commanding views of the southern extent of Lake Champlain, Mount Defiance, at 853 ft, and two other hills (Mount Hope and Mount Independence) overlook the area.</p><br>
<p>Indians had occupied the area for centuries before French explorer Samuel de Champlain first arrived there in 1609. Champlain recounted that the Algonquins, with whom he was traveling, battled a group of Iroquois nearby. In 1642, French missionary Isaac Jogues was the first white man to traverse the portage at Ticonderoga while escaping a battle between the Iroquois and members of the Huron tribe.</p><br>
<p>The French, who had colonized the Saint Lawrence River valley to the north, and the English, who had taken over the Dutch settlements that became the Province of New York to the south, began contesting the area as early as 1691, when Pieter Schuyler built a small wooden fort at the Ticonderoga point on the western shore of the lake. These colonial conflicts reached their height in the French and Indian War, which began in 1754.</p><br>
<h2>Construction</h2><br>
<p>In 1755, following the Battle of Lake George, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, the governor of the French Province of Canada, sent his cousin Michel Chartier de Lotbinière to design and construct a fortification at this militarily important site, which the French called Fort Carillon. The name "Carillon" has variously been attributed to the name of a former French officer, Philippe de Carrion du Fresnoy, who established a trading post at the site in the late 17th century, or (more commonly) to the sounds made by the La Chute River, which were said to resemble the chiming bells of a carillon.</p><br>
<p>The work in 1755 consisted primarily of beginning construction on the main walls and on the Lotbinière redoubt, an outwork to the west of the site that provided additional coverage of the La Chute River. The next year saw the building of the four main bastions and a sawmill on the La Chute. Work slowed in 1757, when many of the troops prepared for and participated in the attack on Fort William Henry. The barracks and demi-lunes were not completed until spring 1758.</p><br>
<h3>Walls and bastions</h3><br>
<p>The French built the fort to control the south end of Lake Champlain and prevent the British from gaining military access to the lake. Consequently, its most important defenses, the Reine and Germaine bastions, were directed to the northeast and northwest, away from the lake, with two demi-lunes further extending the works on the land side. The Joannes and Languedoc bastions overlooked the lake to the south, providing cover for the landing area outside the fort. The walls were seven feet (2.1 meters) high and fourteen feet (4.3 meters) thick, and the whole works was surrounded by a glacis and a dry moat five feet (1.5 meters) deep and 15 ft wide. When the walls were first erected in 1756, they were made of squared wooden timbers, with earth filling the gap. The French then began to dress the walls with stone from a quarry about one mile (1.6 km) away, although this work was never fully completed. When the main defenses became ready for use, the fort was armed with cannons hauled from Montreal and Fort St. Frédéric.</p><br>
<h3>Inside and outside</h3><br>
<p>The fort contained three barracks and four storehouses. One bastion held a bakery capable of producing 60 loaves of bread a day. A powder magazine was hacked out of the bedrock beneath the Joannes bastion. All the construction within the fort was of stone.</p><br>
<p>A wooden palisade protected an area outside the fort between the southern wall and the lake shore. This area contained the main landing for the fort and additional storage facilities and other works necessary for maintenance of the fort.</p><br>
<h2>Analysis</h2><br>
<p>By 1758, the fort was largely complete; the only ongoing work thereafter consisted of dressing the walls with stone. Still, General Montcalm and two of his military engineers surveyed the works in 1758 and found something to criticize in almost every aspect of the forts construction; the buildings were too tall and thus easier for attackers cannon fire to hit, the powder magazine leaked, and the masonry was of poor quality. The critics apparently failed to notice the forts significant strategic weakness: several nearby hills overlooked the fort and made it possible for besiegers to fire down on the defenders from above. Lotbinière, who may have won the job of building the fort only because he was related to Governor Vaudreuil, had lost a bid to become Canadas chief engineer to Nicolas Sarrebource de Pontleroy, one of the two surveying engineers, in 1756, all of which may explain the highly negative report. Lotbinière&#39;s career suffered for years afterwards.</p><br>
<p>William Nester, in his exhaustive analysis of the Battle of Carillon, notes additional problems with the forts construction. The fort was small for a Vauban-style fort, about 500 ft wide, with a barracks capable of holding only 400 soldiers. Storage space inside the fort was similarly limited, requiring the storage of provisions outside the forts walls in exposed places. Its cistern was small, and the water quality was supposedly poor.</p><br>
<h2>Military history</h2><br>
<h3>French and Indian War</h3><br>
<p>In August 1757, the French captured Fort William Henry in an action launched from Fort Carillon. This, and a string of other French victories in 1757, prompted the British to organize a large-scale attack on the fort as part of a multi-campaign strategy against French Canada. In June 1758, British General James Abercromby began amassing a large force at Fort William Henry in preparation for the military campaign directed up the Champlain Valley. These forces landed at the north end of Lake George, only four miles from the fort, on July 6. The French general Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, who had only arrived at Carillon in late June, engaged his troops in a flurry of work to improve the forts outer defenses. They built, over two days, entrenchments around a rise between the fort and Mount Hope, about three-quarters of a mile (one kilometer) northwest of the fort, and then constructed an abatis (felled trees with sharpened branches pointing out) below these entrenchments. Abercrombys failure to advance directly to the fort on July 7 made much of this defensive work possible. Abercrombys second-in-command, Brigadier General George Howe, had been killed when his column encountered a French reconnaissance troop. Abercromby "felt most heavily" and may have been unwilling to act immediately.</p><br>
<p>On July 8, 1758, Abercromby ordered a frontal attack against the hastily assembled French works. Abercromby tried to move rapidly against the few French defenders, opting to forgo field cannon and relying instead on the numerical superiority of his 16,000 troops. In the Battle of Carillon, the British were soundly defeated by the 4,000 French defenders. The battle took place far enough away from the fort that its guns were rarely used. The battle gave the fort a reputation for impregnability, which affected future military operations in the area, notably during the American Revolutionary War. However, the British did not attack again in 1758, so the French withdrew all but a small garrison of men for the winter in November.</p><br>
<p>The fort was captured the following year by the British under General Jeffrey Amherst in the 1759 Battle of Ticonderoga. In this confrontation 11,000 British troops, using emplaced artillery, drove off a token garrison of 400 Frenchmen. The French, in withdrawing, used explosives to destroy what they could of the fort and spiked or dumped cannons that they did not take with them. Although the British worked in 1759 and 1760 to repair and improve the fort, the fort saw no more significant action in the war. After the war, the British garrisoned it with a small numbers of troops and allowed it to fall into disrepair. Colonel Frederick Haldimand, in command of the fort in 1773, wrote that it was in "ruinous condition".</p><br>
<h3>Early Revolutionary War</h3><br>
<p>In 1775, Fort Ticonderoga, in disrepair, was still manned by a token force. Fort Ticonderoga was still extremely useful to the British as a supply and communication link between Canada and New York. On May 10, 1775, less than one month after the American Revolutionary War was ignited with the battles of Lexington and Concord, the British garrison of 48 soldiers was surprised by a small force of Green Mountain Boys, along with militia volunteers from Massachusetts and Connecticut, led by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold. Allen claims to have said, "Come out you old Rat!" to the forts commander, Captain William Delaplace. He also later said that he demanded that the British commander surrender the fort "In the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress!&quot however, his surrender demand was made to Lieutenant Jocelyn Feltham and not the forts commander, who did later appear and surrender his sword.</p><br>
<p>With the capture of the fort, the Patriot forces obtained a large supply of cannons and other armaments, much of which Henry Knox transported to Boston during the winter of 1775–1776. Ticonderoga&#39;s cannons were instrumental in ending the Siege of Boston when they were used to fortify Dorchester Heights. With Dorchester Heights secured the British were forced to evacuate Boston in March 1776. The capture of Fort Ticonderoga made communication between the British Canadian and American commands much more difficult.</p><br>
<p>Benedict Arnold remained in control of the fort until 1,000 Connecticut troops under the command of Benjamin Hinman arrived in June 1775. Because of a series of political maneuvers and miscommunications, Arnold was never notified that Hinman was to take command. After a delegation from Massachusetts (which had issued Arnolds commission) arrived to clarify the matter, Arnold resigned his commission and departed, leaving the fort in Hinmans hands.</p><br>
<p>Beginning in July 1775, Ticonderoga was used as a staging area for the invasion of Quebec to begin in September. Under the leadership of generals Philip Schuyler and Richard Montgomery, men and materiel for the invasion accumulated there through July and August. On August 28, after receiving word that British forces at Fort Saint-Jean, not far from the New York–Quebec border, were nearing completion of boats to launch onto Lake Champlain, Montgomery launched the invasion, leading 1,200 troops down the lake. Ticonderoga continued to serve as a staging base for the action in Quebec until the battle and siege at Quebec City that resulted in Montgomery&#39;s death.</p><br>
<p>In May 1776, British troops began to arrive at Quebec City, where they broke the Continental Army&#39;s siege. The British chased the American forces back to Ticonderoga in June, and, after several months of shipbuilding, moved down Lake Champlain under Guy Carleton in October. The British destroyed a small fleet of American gunboats in the Battle of Valcour Island in mid-October, but snow was already falling, so the British retreated to winter quarters in Quebec. About 1,700 troops from the Continental Army, under the command of Colonel Anthony Wayne, wintered at Ticonderoga. The British offensive resumed the next year in the Saratoga campaign under General John Burgoyne.</p><br>
<h3>Saratoga campaign</h3><br>
<p>During the summer of 1776, the Americans, under the direction of General Schuyler, and later under General Horatio Gates, added substantial defensive works to the area. Mount Independence, which is almost completely surrounded by water, was fortified with trenches near the water, a horseshoe battery part way up the side, a citadel at the summit, and redoubts armed with cannons surrounding the summit area. These defenses were linked to Ticonderoga with a pontoon bridge that was protected by land batteries on both sides. The works on Mount Hope, the heights above the site of Montcalm&#39;s victory, were improved to include a star-shaped fort. Mount Defiance remained unfortified.</p><br>
<p>In March 1777, American generals were strategizing about possible British military movements and considered an attempt on the Hudson River corridor a likely possibility. General Schuyler, heading the forces stationed at Ticonderoga, requested 10,000 troops to guard Ticonderoga and 2,000 to guard the Mohawk River valley against British invasion from the north. George Washington, who had never been to Ticonderoga (his only visit was to be in 1783), believed that an overland attack from the north was unlikely, because of the alleged impregnability of Ticonderoga. This, combined with continuing incursions up the Hudson River valley by British forces occupying New York City, led Washington to believe that any attack on the Albany area would be from the south, which, as it was part of the supply line to Ticonderoga, would necessitate a withdrawal from the fort. As a result, no significant actions were taken to further fortify Ticonderoga or significantly increase its garrison. The garrison, about 2,000 men under General Arthur St. Clair, was too small to man all the defenses.</p><br>
<p>General Gates, who oversaw the northern defenses, was aware that Mount Defiance threatened the fort. As the garrison was too small to properly defend all the existing works in area, Mount Defiance was left undefended. Anthony Wayne left Ticonderoga in April 1777 to join Washington&#39;s army; he reported to Washington that "all was well", and that the fort "can never be carried, without much loss of blood".</p><br>
<p>General Burgoyne led 7,800 British and Hessian forces south from Quebec in June 1777. After occupying nearby Fort Crown Point without opposition on June 30, he prepared to besiege Ticonderoga. Burgoyne realized the tactical advantage of the high ground, and had his troops haul cannons to the top of Mount Defiance. Faced with bombardment from the heights (even before any shots had been fired from those cannons), General St. Clair ordered Ticonderoga abandoned on July 5, 1777. Burgoynes troops moved in the next day, with advance guards pursuing the retreating Americans. Washington, on hearing of Burgoynes advance and the retreat from Ticonderoga, stated that the event was "not apprehended, nor within the compass of my reasoning". News of the abandonment of the "Impregnable Bastion" without a fight, caused "the greatest surprise and alarm" throughout the colonies. After public outcry over his actions, General St. Clair was court-martialed in 1778. He was cleared on all charges.</p><br>
<h3>One last attack</h3><br>
<p>Following the British capture of Ticonderoga, it and the surrounding defenses were garrisoned by 700 British and Hessian troops under the command of Brigadier General Henry Watson Powell. Most of these forces were on Mount Independence, with only 100 each at Fort Ticonderoga and a blockhouse they were constructing on top of Mount Defiance. George Washington sent General Benjamin Lincoln into Vermont to "divide and distract the enemy". Aware that the British were housing American prisoners in the area, Lincoln decided to test the British defenses. On September 13, he sent 500 men to Skenesboro, which they found the British had abandoned, and 500 each against the defenses on either side of the lake at Ticonderoga. Colonel John Brown led the troops on the west side, with instructions to release prisoners if possible, and attack the fort if it seemed feasible.</p><br>
<p>Early on September 18, Browns troops surprised a British contingent holding some prisoners near the Lake George landing, while a detachment of his troops sneaked up Mount Defiance, and captured most of the sleeping construction crew. Brown and his men then moved down the portage trail toward the fort, surprising more troops and releasing prisoners along the way. The forts occupants were unaware of the action until Browns men and British troops occupying the old French lines skirmished. At this point Browns men dragged two captured six-pound guns up to the lines, and began firing on the fort. The men who had captured Mount Defiance began firing a twelve-pounder from that site. The column that was to attack Mount Independence was delayed, and its numerous defenders were alerted to the action at the fort below before the attack on their position began. Their musket fire, as well as grapeshot fired from ships anchored nearby, intimidated the Americans sufficiently that they never launched an assault on the defensive positions on Mount Independence.</p><br>
<p>Brown eventually sent a truce party to the fort to open negotiations; the party was fired on, and three of its five members were killed. Brown, realizing that the weaponry they had was insufficient to take the fort, decided to withdraw. Destroying many bateaux and seizing a ship on Lake George, he set off to annoy British positions on that lake. His action resulted in the freeing of 118 Americans and the capture of 293 British troops, while suffering fewer than ten casualties.</p><br>
<h3>Abandonment</h3><br>
<p>Following Burgoyne&#39;s defeat at Saratoga, the fort at Ticonderoga became increasingly irrelevant. The British abandoned it and nearby Fort Crown Point in November 1777, destroying both as best they could prior to their withdrawal. The fort was occasionally reoccupied by British raiding parties in the following years, but it no longer held a prominent strategic role in the war. It was finally abandoned by the British for good in 1781, following the surrender at Yorktown. Area residents began stripping the fort of usable building materials, even melting some of the cannons down for their metal in the years following the war.</p><br>
<h2>Tourist attraction</h2><br>
<p>In 1785, the fort&#39;s lands became the property of the state of New York. The state donated the property to Columbia and Union colleges in 1803, which sold it to William Ferris Pell in 1820.</p><br>
<p>Pell first used the property as a summer retreat, but the completion of railroads and canals connecting the area to New York City brought tourists to the area, so he converted his summer house, known as The Pavilion, into a hotel to serve the tourist trade. In 1848, the Hudson River School artist Russell Smith painted Ruins of Fort Ticonderoga, depicting the condition of the fort.</p><br>
<p>The Pell family, a politically important clan with influence throughout American history (from William C. C. Claiborne, the first Governor of Louisiana, to a Senator from Rhode Island, Claiborne Pell), restored the fort in 1909 and formally opened it to the public. The ceremonies, which commemorated the 300th anniversary of the discovery of Lake Champlain by European explorers, were attended by President William Howard Taft. Stephen Hyatt Pell, who spearheaded the restoration effort, founded the Fort Ticonderoga Association in 1931, which is now responsible for the fort. Funding for the restoration also came from Robert M. Thompson, the father of Stephen&#39;s wife Sarah Gibbs Thompson.</p><br>
<p>Between 1900 and 1950, the historically important lands around the fort, including Mount Defiance, Mount Independence, and much of Mount Hope, were also acquired by the foundation. The fort was rearmed with fourteen 24-pound cannons provided by the British government. These cannons had been cast in England for use during the American Revolution, but the war ended before they were shipped over.</p><br>
<p>The fort is now a tourist attraction, early American military museum, and research center. The fort opens annually around May 10, the anniversary of the 1775 capture, and closes in late October.</p><br>
<p>The fort has been on a watchlist of National Historic Landmarks since 1998, because of the poor condition of some of the walls and of the 19th-century pavilion constructed by William Ferris Pell. Also in 2008, the withdrawal of a major backers financial support forced the museum, which was facing significant budget deficits, to consider selling one of its major art works, Thomas Coles Gelyna, View near Ticonderoga. However, fundraising activities succeeded in making this unnecessary.</p><br>
<p>The not-for-profit Living History Education Foundation has teacher programs at Fort Ticonderoga that run in the summer and last approximately one week. The program trains teachers how to teach Living History techniques, and to understand and interpret the importance of Fort Ticonderoga during the French and Indian War and the American Revolution.</p><br>
<p>The Pells estate is located north of the fort. In 1921, Sarah Pell undertook reconstruction of the gardens, known now as Kings gardens, and hired for this work Marian Cruger Coffin, one of the most famous American landscape architects. In 1995, the gardens were restored and later opened for public.</p><br>
<h2>Memorials</h2><br>
<p>The name Ticonderoga has been given to five different USA Navy vessels and entire classes of cruisers and aircraft carriers. The fort was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1960. Included in the landmarked area are the fort itself, as well as Mount Independence and Mount Defiance. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1966.</p><br>
<p>Lake Van , the largest lake in Turkey, lies in the far east of that country in the provinces of Van and Bitlis. It is a saline soda lake, receiving water from numerous small streams that descend from the surrounding mountains. Lake Van is one of the world&#39;s largest endorheic lakes  - a volcanic eruption blocked the original outlet from the basin in ancient times. Although Lake Van has an altitude of 1,640 m in a region with harsh winters, its high salinity prevents most of it from freezing, and even the shallow northern section freezes only rarely.</p><br>
<p>The New Encyclopædia Britannica,</p><br>
<h2>Hydrology and chemistry</h2><br>
<p>Lake Van is 119 km across at its widest point, averaging a depth of 171 m with a maximum recorded depth of 451 m. The lake surface lies 1,640 m above sea level and the shore length is 430 km. Lake Van has an area of 3,755 km&sup2; and a volume of 607 km3.</p><br>
<p>The western portion of the lake is deepest, with a large basin deeper than 400 m lying northeast of Tatvan and south of Ahlat. The eastern arms of the lake are shallower. The Van-Ahtamar portion shelves gradually, with a maximum depth of about 250 m on its northwest side where it joins the rest of the lake. The Erciş arm is much shallower, mostly less than 50 m, with a maximum depth of about 150 m.</p><br>
<p>The lake water is strongly alkaline (pH 9.7–9.8) and rich in sodium carbonate and other salts, which are extracted by evaporation and used as detergents.</p><br>
<h2>Geology</h2><br>
<p>The lake&#39;s outlet was blocked at some time during the Pleistocene, when lava flows from Nemrut volcano blocked westward outflow towards the Muş Plain. Now dormant, Nemrut Dağı is close to the western shore of the lake, and another dormant stratovolcano, Süphan Dağı dominates the northern side of the lake.</p><br>
<p>The water level of the lake has often altered dramatically: near Tatvan, Felix Oswald (see Geology of Armenia, 1901) noted a raised beach high above the present level of the lake as well as recently drowned trees. Investigation by Degens and others in the early 1980s determined that the highest lake levels (72 m above the current height) had been during the last ice age, about 18,000 years ago. Approximately 9,500 years ago there was a dramatic drop to more than 300 m below the present level. This was followed by an equally-dramatic rise around 6,500 years ago.</p><br>
<p>Similar-but-smaller fluctuations have been seen recently. The level of the lake rose by at least three metres during the 1990s, drowning much agricultural land, and (after a brief period of stability and then retreat) seems to be rising again. The level rose approximately two meters in the ten years immediately prior to 2004.</p><br>
<p>As a deep lake with no outlet, Lake Van has accumulated great amounts of sediment washed in from surrounding plains and valleys, and occasionally deposited as ash from eruptions of nearby volcanoes.</p><br>
<p>This layer of sediment is estimated to be up to 400 m thick in places, and has attracted climatologists and vulcanologists interested in drilling cores to examine the layered sediments.</p><br>
<p>In 1989 and 1990, an international team of geologists led by Dr. Stephan Kempe from the University of Hamburg (now Professor at the Technische Universität Darmstadt) retrieved ten sediment cores from depths up to 446 m. Although these cores only penetrated the first few meters of sediment, they provided sufficient varves to give proxy climate data for up to 14,570 years BP.</p><br>
<p>A team of scientists headed by palaeontologist Professor Thomas Litt at the University of Bonn has applied for funding from the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP) for a new, deeper-drilling project to examine the lake&#39;s sediments. Litt expects to find that "Lake Van stores the climate history of the last 800,000 years—an incomparable treasure house of data which we want to tap for at least the last 500,000 years." A test drilling in 2004 detected evidence of 15 volcanic eruptions in the past 20,000 years.</p><br>
<h2>Climate</h2><br>
<p>Lake Van is situated in the highest and largest region of Turkey, which has a harsh continental climate. Average temperatures in July are between 22 and 25 °C, and in January between −3 °C to −12 °C. In particularly-cold winter nights the temperature reaches −30 °C. Lake Van mitigates the climate somewhat, so in the city of Van, on the shore of the lake, the average temperature in July is 22.5 °C, and in January −3.5 °C. The average annual rainfall in the basin of Lake Van, ranges from 400 to 700 mm.</p><br>
<h2>Ecology</h2><br>
<p>The only fish known to live in the brackish water of Lake Van is Chalcalburnus tarichi the Pearl Mullet or inci kefalı, a Cyprinid fish related to chub and dace, which is caught during the spring floods. In May and June, these fish migrate from the lake to less alkaline water, spawning either near the mouths of the rivers feeding the lake or in the rivers themselves. After spawning season it returns to the lake.</p><br>
<p>103 species of phytoplankton have been recorded in the lake including cyanobacteria, flagellates, diatoms, green algae and brown algae. 36 species of zooplankton have also been recorded including Rotatoria, Cladocera and Copepoda in the lake.</p><br>
<p>In 1991, researchers reported the discovery of 40 m tall microbialites in Lake Van. These are solid towers on the lake bed created by mats of coccoid cyanobacteria (Pleurocapsa group) that create aragonite in combination with calcite precipitating out of the lake water.</p><br>
<p>The Lake Van region is the home of the rare Van Cat breed of cat, noted for among other things its unusual fascination with water, and is surrounded by fruit and grain-growing agricultural areas.</p><br>
<p>According to legend, the lake is home to a mysterious sea creature, known as the Lake Van Monster which is believed by some to lurk below the surface of the lake, described as being 30-40 ft long with brown scaly skin and with a elongated reptilian head and flippers, resembling an extinct mosasaurus or basilosaurus. Apart from some amateur photographs and videos, there is no physical evidence to prove its existence.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Tushpa, the capital of Urartu, was located near the shores of Lake Van, on the site of what became medieval Van&#39;s castle, west of present-day Van city. The ruins of the medieval city of Van are still visible below the southern slopes of the rock on which Van Castle is located.</p><br>
<h3>Armenian kingdoms</h3><br>
<p>The lake was the centre of the Armenian kingdom of Ararat from about 1000 BC, afterwards of the Satrapy of Armina, Kingdom of Greater Armenia, and the Armenian Kingdom of Vaspurakan.</p><br>
<p>Along with Lake Sevan in todays Armenia and Lake Urmia in todays Iran, Van was one of the three great lakes of the Armenian Kingdom, referred to as the seas of Armenia (in ancient Assyrian sources: "tâmtu ša mât Nairi" (Upper Sea of Nairi), the Lower Sea being Lake Urmia). Over time, the lake was known by various Armenian names, including Hewsen Ռշտունեաց ծով (Sea of Rshtunik), and Տոսպայ լիճ (Lake of Tosp).</p><br>
<h3>Byzantine empire</h3><br>
<p>By the 11th century the region around Lake Van was on the border between the Byzantine empire, with its capital at Constantinople, and the Seljuk Turkish empire, with its capital at Isfahan. In the uneasy peace between the two empires, local Armenian-Byzantine landowners employed Turcoman gazis and Byzantine akritai for protection.</p><br>
<p>In the second half of the 11th century Emperor Romanus IV Diogenes launched a campaign to re-conquer Armenia and head off growing Seljuk control. Diogenes and his large army crossed the Euphrates and confronted a much smaller Seljuk force led by Alp Arslan at the Battle of Manzikert, north of Lake Van on 26 August 1071. Despite their greater numbers, the cumbersome Byzantine force was defeated by the more mobile Turkish horsemen and Diogenes was captured.</p><br>
<h3>Seljuk empire</h3><br>
<p>Alp Arslan divided the conquered eastern portions of the Byzantine empire among his Turcoman generals, with each ruled as a hereditary beylik, under overall sovereignty of the Great Seljuq Empire. Alp Arslan gave the region around Lake Van to his commander Sökmen el Kutbî (literally Sökmen the Slave), who set up his capital at Ahlat on the western side of the lake. The dynasty of Ahlatshahs (also known as Sökmenler) ruled this area from 1085 to 1192.</p><br>
<p>The Ahlatshahs were succeeded by the Ayyubid dynasty.</p><br>
<h2>Architecture</h2><br>
<p>Near the Van Castle and the southern shore, on Akdamar Island lies the 10th century Church of the Holy Cross (Սուրբ Խաչ, Surb Khach), which served as a royal church to the Armenian Vaspurakan kingdom. The ruins of Armenian monasteries also exist on the other three islands of Lake Van: Lim, Arter, and Ktuts. The area around Lake Van was also the home to a large number Armenian monasteries, among the most prominent of these being the 10th century Narekavank and the 11th century Varagavank, both now destroyed.</p><br>
<p>The Ahlatshahs left a large number of historic tombstones in and around the town of Ahlat. Local administrators are currently trying to have the tombstones included in UNESCO&#39;s World Heritage List, where they are currently listed tentatively.</p><br>
<h2>Transportation</h2><br>
<p>The railway connecting Turkey and Iran was built in the 1970s, sponsored by CENTO. It uses a train ferry across Lake Van between the cities Tatvan and Van, rather than building railway tracks around the rugged shoreline. Transfer from train to ship and back again limits the total carrying capacity. In May 2008 talks started between Turkey and Iran to replace the ferry route with a new double track electrified railway.</p><br>
<p>In December 2015 the new generation of train ferries operated by the Turkish State Railways, the largest of their kind in Turkey, entered service in Lake Van.</p><br>
<p>Ferit Melen Airport in Van is located close to the shore of Lake Van. Turkish Airlines, AnadoluJet, Pegasus Airlines and SunExpress are the airline companies in Turkey which have regular flights to this airport.</p><br>
<h2>Sports</h2><br>
<p>Lake Van occasionally hosts several water sports, sailing and inshore powerboat racing events, such as the UIM World Offshore 225 Championship&#39;s IOC Van Grand Prix, and the Van Lake Festival.</p><br>
<h2>Islands</h2><br>
<p>Adır Island</p><br>
<p>Akdamar Island</p><br>
<p>Çarpanak Island</p><br>
<p>Kuş Island</p><br>
<p>Long Valley Caldera is a depression in eastern California that is adjacent to Mammoth Mountain. The valley is one of the Earth&#39;s largest calderas, measuring about 20 mi long , 11 mi wide , and up to 3,000 ft deep.</p><br>
<p>Long Valley was formed 760,000 years ago when a supervolcanic eruption released very hot ash that later cooled to form the Bishop tuff that is common to the area. The eruption emptied the magma chamber under the area to the point of collapse. The second phase of the eruption released pyroclastic flows that burned and buried thousands of square miles. Ash from this eruption blanketed much of the western part of what is now the United States.</p><br>
<h2>Geography</h2><br>
<p>The caldera is a giant bowl-shaped depression, approximately 20 mi wide, surrounded by mountains, but open to the southeast. The elevation of the bottom of the bowl ranges from 6500 to 8500 ft, being higher in the west.</p><br>
<p>Near the center of the bowl, there is a resurgent dome formed by magmatic uplift. The southeastern slope from the caldera down towards Bishop, California is filled with the Bishop Tuff, solidified ash that was ejected during the stupendous eruption that created the caldera. The Bishop tuff is thousands of feet thick and is cut by the Owens River Gorge, formed during the Pleistocene when the caldera filled with water and overtopped its rim.</p><br>
<p>The rim of the caldera is formed from pre-existing rock, rising about 3,000 ft above the caldera floor. However, the eastern rim is lower, only about 500 ft.</p><br>
<p>Mammoth Mountain is a lava dome complex west of the structural rim of the caldera, consisting of about 12 rhyodacite and dacite overlapping domes. These domes formed in a long series of eruptions from 110,000 to 57,000 years ago, building a volcano that reaches 11,059 ft in elevation.</p><br>
<p>The Mono–Inyo Craters are a 25 mi-long volcanic chain situated along a narrow, north–south-trending fissure system extending along the western rim of the caldera from Mammoth Mountain to the north shore of Mono Lake. The Mono-Inyo Craters erupted from 40,000 to 600 years ago, from a magma source separate from the Long Valley Caldera.</p><br>
<p>The caldera has an extensive hydrothermal system. Casa Diablo Hot Springs at the base of the resurgent dome hosts a geothermal power plant. Hot Creek cuts into part of the resurgent dome and passes through hot springs. The warm water of Hot Creek supports many trout, and is used at the Hot Creek Fish Hatchery. The creek was closed to swimming in 2006 after geothermal activity in the area increased. There are a number of other hot springs in the area, some of which are open to bathers.</p><br>
<h2>Geology</h2><br>
<h3>Caldera</h3><br>
<p>The tectonic causes of the Long Valley volcanism are still largely unexplained and are therefore a matter of much ongoing research. Long Valley is not above a hotspot as is Yellowstone or Hawaii, nor is it the result of subduction such as that which produces the volcanism of the Cascades.</p><br>
<p>The known volcanic history of the Long Valley Caldera area started a few million years ago when magma began to collect several miles below the surface. Volcanic activity became concentrated in the vicinity of the present site of Long Valley Caldera 3.1 to 2.5 million years ago with eruptions of rhyodacite followed by high-silica rhyolite from 2.1 to 0.8 million years ago. After some time, a cluster of mostly rhyolitic volcanoes formed in the area. All told, about 1,500 square miles were covered by lava.</p><br>
<p>All but one of these volcanoes, 1–2 million year old Glass Mountain (made of obsidian), were destroyed by the major (volcanic explosivity index (VEI) 7) eruption of the area 760,000 years ago, which released 600 km3 of material from vents just inside the margin of the caldera. (The 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption was a VEI-5 eruption releasing 1.2 km3.) About half of this material was ejected in a series of pyroclastic flows of a very hot (1,500 &deg;F) mixture of noxious gas, pumice, and volcanic ash that covered the surrounding area hundreds of feet deep. One lobe of this material moved south into Owens Valley, past present-day Big Pine, California. Another lobe moved west over the crest of the Sierra Nevada and into the drainage of the San Joaquin River. The rest of the pyroclastic material, along with 300 km3 of other matter, was blown as far as 25 mi into the air where winds distributed it as far away as eastern Nebraska and Kansas.</p><br>
<p>The eruption initially produced a caldera deep. However, much of the ejecta went straight up, fell down, and filled the initial caldera about two-thirds full.</p><br>
<h3>Eruptions</h3><br>
<p>Subsequent eruptions from the Long Valley magma chamber were confined within the caldera with extrusions of relatively hot (crystal-free) rhyolite 700,000 to 600,000 years ago as the caldera floor was upwarped to form the resurgent dome followed by extrusions of cooler, crystal-rich moat rhyolite at 200,000-year intervals (500,000, 300,000, and 100,000 years ago) in clockwise succession around the dome.</p><br>
<p>The Long Valley volcano is unusual in that it has produced eruptions of both basaltic and silicic lava in the same geological place.</p><br>
<p>Water from the Owens River filled the caldera to a depth of 300 m as of 600,000 years ago. At that time, the lake surface was at an elevation near 7,500 ft. The lake drained sometime in the last 100,000 years after it overtopped the southern rim of the caldera, eroded the sill, and created the Owens River Gorge. A human-made dam in the gorge has created Lake Crowley, a partial restoration of the original lake. Since the great eruption, many hot springs developed in the area, and the resurgent dome has uplifted.</p><br>
<p>During the last ice age, glaciers filled the canyons leading to Long Valley, but the valley floor was clear of ice. Excellent examples of terminal moraines can be seen at Long Valley. Laurel Creek, Convict Creek, and McGee Creek each have prominent moraines.</p><br>
<h3>Recent activity</h3><br>
<p>In May 1980, a strong earthquake swarm that included four Richter magnitude 6 earthquakes struck the southern margin of the Long Valley Caldera. It was associated with a 10 in, dome-shaped uplift of the caldera floor. These events marked the onset of the latest period of caldera unrest that is ongoing. This ongoing unrest includes recurring earthquake swarms and continued dome-shaped uplift of the central section of the caldera accompanied by changes in thermal springs and gas emissions. After the quake, another road was created as an escape route. Its name at first was proposed as the "Mammoth Escape Route" but was changed to the Mammoth Scenic Loop after Mammoth area businesses and land owners complained.</p><br>
<p>In 1982, the United States Geological Survey under the Volcano Hazards Program began an intensive effort to monitor and study geologic unrest in Long Valley Caldera. The goal is to provide residents and civil authorities with reliable information on the nature of the potential hazards posed by this unrest and timely warning of an impending volcanic eruption, should it develop. Most, perhaps all, volcanic eruptions are preceded and accompanied by geophysical and geochemical changes in the volcanic system. Common precursory indicators of volcanic activity include increased seismicity, ground deformation, and variations in the nature and rate of gas emissions.</p><br>
<h3>Hydrothermal system</h3><br>
<p>The Long Valley Caldera hosts an active hydrothermal system that includes hot springs, fumaroles (steam vents), and mineral deposits. Hot springs exist primarily in the eastern half of the caldera where land-surface elevations are relatively low; fumaroles exist primarily in the western half where elevations are higher. Mineral deposits from thermal activity are found on an uplifted area called the resurgent dome, at Little Hot Creek springs, Hot Creek Gorge, and other locations in the south and east moats of the caldera.</p><br>
<p>Hot springs discharge primarily in Hot Creek Gorge, along Little Hot Creek, and in the Alkali Lakes area. The largest springs are in Hot Creek Gorge where about 250 l per second of thermal water discharge and account for about 80% of the total thermal water discharge in the caldera. At the other extreme are springs at Hot Creek Fish Hatchery which contain a small component (2–5%) of thermal water that raises water temperatures about 5 &deg;C higher than background temperatures. Use of the warm spring water in the hatchery has increased fish production because trout growth rates are faster in the warm water than in ambient stream temperatures in Long Valley.</p><br>
<p>In hydrothermal systems the circulation of groundwater is driven by a combination of topography and heat sources. In Long Valley Caldera, the system is recharged primarily from snow-melt in the highlands around the western and southern rims of the caldera. The meteoric water infiltrates to depths of a few kilometers (miles) where it is heated to at least by hot rock near geologically young intrusions. Upflow occurs in the west moat where the heated water with lower density rises along steeply inclined fractures to depths of. This hydrothermal fluid flows laterally, down the hydraulic gradient, from the west to the southeast around the resurgent dome and then eastward to discharge points along Hot Creek and around Crowley Lake. Reservoir temperatures in the volcanic fill decline from near the Inyo Craters to near Crowley Lake due to a combination of heat loss and mixing with cold water.</p><br>
<p>Hot Creek has been a popular swimming hole for decades. Over a dozen people have died in Hot Creek since the late 1960s, but most of these deaths happened to people who ignored the numerous warning signs and attempted to use the hydrothermal pools as hot tubs (like the stream portion of the creek, these pools alternate in temperature but the eruptions in the pools are of super-heated water in already very hot water). Recent geothermal instability has led to its temporary closure for swimming. Officials are unsure of when (if ever) Hot Creek will officially reopen for swimming.</p><br>
<p>Hydrothermal activity has altered many rocks in the caldera, transforming them into travertine and clay. At the Huntley clay mine white chalky clay called kaolinite is mined; the kaolinite is exposed on the resurgent dome and appears as a brilliant white band.</p><br>
<h2>Tourism and hiking</h2><br>
<p>The largest tourist attraction in the caldera is the Mammoth Mountain Ski Area: the area offers skiing and snowboarding in the winter, and mountain biking in the summer. The Hot Creek tourist attraction was closed to swimming in 2006 due to increased geothermal activity.</p><br>
<p>Hiking and off-road vehicle driving is available throughout the caldera, and in the glacial valleys of the Sherwin Range, immediately to the south of the caldera. Hikers can hike to several lakes in these glacial valleys, including Valentine Lake, Convict Lake, Lake Dorothy, and Laurel Lakes. Crowley Lake, at the south end of the caldera, is noted for its fishing.</p><br>
<p>The nearest hotel accommodations to the caldera are in Mammoth Lakes, California. There are also campgrounds scattered throughout the caldera, and in the mountains near the edge of the caldera.</p><br>
<h2>Fatalities</h2><br>
<p>In April 2006, three members of the Mammoth Mountain Ski Area ski patrol died while on duty. All three died from suffocation by carbon dioxide when they fell into a fumarole on the slopes of the mountain.</p><br>
<p>Mount Vesuvius  is a somma-stratovolcano located on the Gulf of Naples in Campania, Italy, about 9 km east of Naples and a short distance from the shore. It is one of several volcanoes which form the Campanian volcanic arc. Vesuvius consists of a large cone partially encircled by the steep rim of a summit caldera caused by the collapse of an earlier and originally much higher structure.</p><br>
<p>Mount Vesuvius is best known for its eruption in AD 79 that led to the burying and destruction of the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, as well as several other settlements. The eruption ejected a cloud of stones, ashes and volcanic gases to a height of 33 km, spewing molten rock and pulverized pumice at the rate of 6e5 m&sup3; per second, ultimately releasing a hundred thousand times the thermal energy released by the Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombings. More than 1,000 people died in the eruption, but exact numbers are unknown. The only surviving eyewitness account of the event consists of two letters by Pliny the Younger to the historian Tacitus.</p><br>
<p>Vesuvius has erupted many times since and is the only volcano on the European mainland to have erupted within the last hundred years. Today, it is regarded as one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world because of the population of 3,000,000 people living nearby and its tendency towards violent, explosive eruptions of the Plinian type, making it the most densely populated volcanic region in the world.</p><br>
<h2>Mythology</h2><br>
<p>Vesuvius has a long historic and literary tradition. It was considered a divinity of the Genius type at the time of the eruption of AD 79: it appears under the inscribed name Vesuvius as a serpent in the decorative frescos of many lararia, or household shrines, surviving from Pompeii. An inscription from Capua to IOVI VESVVIO indicates that he was worshipped as a power of Jupiter; that is, Jupiter Vesuvius.</p><br>
<p>The historian Diodorus Siculus relates a tradition that Hercules, in the performance of his labors, passed through the country of nearby Cumae on his way to Sicily and found there a place called "the Phlegraean Plain" (phlegraion pedion, "plain of fire"), "from a hill which anciently vomited out fire... now called Vesuvius." It was inhabited by bandits, "the sons of the Earth," who were giants. With the assistance of the gods he pacified the region and went on. The facts behind the tradition, if any, remain unknown, as does whether Herculaneum was named after it. An epigram by the poet Martial in 88 AD suggests that both Venus, patroness of Pompeii, and Hercules were worshipped in the region devastated by the eruption of 79. Mount Vesuvius was regarded by the Romans as being devoted to the hero and demigod Hercules.</p><br>
<h2>Origin of the name</h2><br>
<p>Vesuvius was a name of the volcano in frequent use by the authors of the late Roman Republic and the early Roman Empire. Its collateral forms were Vesaevus, Vesevus, Vesbius and Vesvius. Writers in ancient Greek used Οὐεσούιον or Οὐεσούιος. Many scholars since then have offered an etymology. As peoples of varying ethnicity and language occupied Campania in the Roman Iron Age, the etymology depends to a large degree on the presumption of what language was spoken there at the time. Naples was settled by Greeks, as the name Nea-polis, "New City", testifies. The Oscans, a native Italic people, lived in the countryside. The Latins also competed for the occupation of Campania. Etruscan settlements were in the vicinity. Other peoples of unknown provenance are said to have been there at some time by various ancient authors.</p><br>
<p>Some theories about its origin are:</p><br>
<p>From Greek οὔ="not" prefixed to a root from or related to the Greek word σβέννυμι="I quench", in the sense of "unquenchable".</p><br>
<p>From Greek ἕω="I hurl" and βίη "violence", "hurling violence", *vesbia, taking advantage of the collateral form.</p><br>
<p>From an Indo-European root, *eus-</p><br>
<p>From an Indo-European root *wes="hearth" (compare e.g. Vesta)</p><br>
<h2>Physical appearance</h2><br>
<p>Vesuvius is a distinctive "humpbacked" peak, consisting of a large cone (Gran Cono) partially encircled by the steep rim of a summit caldera caused by the collapse of an earlier and originally much higher structure called Mount Somma. The Gran Cono was produced during the A.D. 79 eruption. For this reason, the volcano is also called Somma-Vesuvius or Somma-Vesuvio.</p><br>
<p>The caldera started forming during an eruption around 17,000 (or 18,300) years ago and was enlarged by later paroxysmal eruptions, ending in the one of AD 79. This structure has given its name to the term "somma volcano", which describes any volcano with a summit caldera surrounding a newer cone.</p><br>
<p>The height of the main cone has been constantly changed by eruptions but was 1,281 m in 2010. Monte Somma is 1,132 m high, separated from the main cone by the valley of Atrio di Cavallo, which is 5 km long. The slopes of the volcano are scarred by lava flows, while the rest are heavily vegetated, with scrub and forests at higher altitudes and vineyards lower down. Vesuvius is still regarded as an active volcano, although its current activity produces little more than sulfur-rich steam from vents at the bottom and walls of the crater. Vesuvius is a stratovolcano at the convergent boundary where the African Plate is being subducted beneath the Eurasian Plate. Layers of lava, ash, scoria and pumice make up the volcanic peak. Their mineralogy is variable, but generally silica-undersaturated and rich in potassium, with phonolite produced in the more explosive eruptions.</p><br>
<h2>Formation</h2><br>
<p>Vesuvius was formed as a result of the collision of two tectonic plates, the African and the Eurasian. The former was subducted beneath the latter, deeper into the earth. As the water-saturated sediments of the oceanic African plate were pushed to hotter depths inside the planet, the water boiled off and caused the melting point of the upper mantle to drop enough to create partial melting of the rocks. Because magma is less dense than the solid rock around it, it was pushed upward. Finding a weak spot at the Earth&#39;s surface, it broke through, thus forming the volcano.</p><br>
<p>The volcano is one of several which form the Campanian volcanic arc. Others include Campi Flegrei, a large caldera a few kilometers to the north west, Mount Epomeo, 20 km to the west on the island of Ischia, and several undersea volcanoes to the south. The arc forms the southern end of a larger chain of volcanoes produced by the subduction process described above, which extends northwest along the length of Italy as far as Monte Amiata in Southern Tuscany. Vesuvius is the only one to have erupted within recent history, although some of the others have erupted within the last few hundred years. Many are either extinct or have not erupted for tens of thousands of years.</p><br>
<h2>Eruptions</h2><br>
<p>Mount Vesuvius has erupted many times. The famous eruption in AD 79 was preceded by numerous others in prehistory, including at least three significantly larger ones, the best known being the Avellino eruption around 1800 BC which engulfed several Bronze Age settlements. Since AD 79, the volcano has also erupted repeatedly, in 172, 203, 222, possibly in 303, 379, 472, 512, 536, 685, 787, around 860, around 900, 968, 991, 999, 1006, 1037, 1049, around 1073, 1139, 1150, and there may have been eruptions in 1270, 1347, and 1500.</p><br>
<p>The volcano erupted again in 1631, six times in the 18th century (especially in 1779 and 1794), eight times in the 19th century (notably in 1872), and in 1906, 1929 and 1944. There have been no eruptions since 1944, and none of the eruptions after AD 79 were as large or destructive as the Pompeian one.</p><br>
<p>The eruptions vary greatly in severity but are characterized by explosive outbursts of the kind dubbed Plinian after Pliny the Younger, a Roman writer who published a detailed description of the 79 AD eruption, including his uncle&#39;s death. On occasion, eruptions from Vesuvius have been so large that the whole of southern Europe has been blanketed by ash; in 472 and 1631, Vesuvian ash fell on Constantinople (Istanbul), over 1,200 km away. A few times since 1944, landslides in the crater have raised clouds of ash dust, raising false alarms of an eruption.</p><br>
<h3>Before AD 79</h3><br>
<p>Scientific knowledge of the geologic history of Vesuvius comes from core samples taken from a 2,000 m plus bore hole on the flanks of the volcano, extending into Mesozoic rock. Cores were dated by potassium–argon and argon–argon dating. The volcano started forming 25,000 years ago. Although the area has been subject to volcanic activity for at least 400,000 years, the lowest layer of eruption material from the Somma caldera lies on top of the 40,000 year‑old Campanian ignimbrite produced by the Campi Flegrei complex, and was the product of the Codola Plinian eruption 25,000 years ago.</p><br>
<p>It was then built up by a series of lava flows, with some smaller explosive eruptions interspersed between them. However, the style of eruption changed around 19,000 years ago to a sequence of large explosive Plinian eruptions, of which the AD 79 one was the most recent. The eruptions are named after the tephra deposits produced by them, which in turn are named after the location where the deposits were first identified:</p><br>
<p>18,300 years ago: the Basal Pumice (Pomici di Base) eruption, VEI 6, the original formation of the Somma caldera. The eruption was followed by a period of much less violent, lava-producing eruptions.</p><br>
<p>16,000 years ago: the Green Pumice (Pomici Verdoline) eruption, VEI 5.</p><br>
<p>Around 11,000 years ago: the Lagno Amendolare eruption), smaller than the Mercato eruption.</p><br>
<p>8,000 years ago: the Mercato eruption (Pomici di Mercato) – also known as Pomici Gemelle or Pomici Ottaviano, VEI 6.</p><br>
<p>Around 5,000 years ago: two explosive eruptions smaller than the Avellino eruption.</p><br>
<p>3,800 years ago: the Avellino eruption (Pomici di Avellino), VEI 5; its vent was apparently 2 km west of the current crater and the eruption destroyed several Bronze Age settlements of the Apennine culture. Several carbon dates on wood and bones offer a range of possible dates of about 500 years in the mid-2nd millennium BC. In May 2001, near Nola, Italian archaeologists using the technique of filling every cavity with plaster or substitute compound recovered some remarkably well-preserved forms of perishable objects, such as fence rails, a bucket and especially in the vicinity thousands of human footprints pointing into the Apennines to the north. The settlement had huts, pots and goats. The residents had hastily abandoned the village, leaving it to be buried under pumice and ash in much the same way that Pompeii and Herculaneum were later preserved. Pyroclastic surge deposits were distributed to the northwest of the vent, travelling as far as 15 km from it, and lie up to 3 m deep in the area now occupied by Naples.</p><br>
<p>The volcano then entered a stage of more frequent, but less violent eruptions, until the most recent Plinian eruption, which destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum.</p><br>
<p>The last of these may have been in 217 BC.</p><br>
<p>The volcano was then quiet (for 295 years, if the 217 BC date for the last previous eruption is true) and was described by Roman writers as having been covered with gardens and vineyards, except at the top, which was craggy. The volcano may have had only one summit at that time, judging by a wall painting, "Bacchus and Vesuvius", found in a Pompeian house, the House of the Centenary (Casa del Centenario).</p><br>
<p>Several surviving works written over the 200 years preceding the AD 79 eruption describe the mountain as having had a volcanic nature, although Pliny the Elder did not depict the mountain in this way in his Naturalis Historia:</p><br>
<p>The Greek historian Strabo (ca 63 BC–AD 24) described the mountain in Book V, Chapter 4 of his Geographica as having a predominantly flat, barren summit covered with sooty, ash-coloured rocks and suggested that it might once have had "craters of fire". He also perceptively suggested that the fertility of the surrounding slopes may be due to volcanic activity, as at Mount Etna.</p><br>
<p>In Book II of De architectura, the architect Vitruvius (c.a. 80–70 BC -?) reported that fires had once existed abundantly below the peak and that it had spouted fire onto the surrounding fields. He went on to describe Pompeiian pumice as having been burnt from another species of stone.</p><br>
<p>Diodorus Siculus (c.a. 90 BC–c.a. 30 BC), another Greek writer, wrote in Book IV of his Bibliotheca Historica that the Campanian plain was called fiery (Phlegrean) because of the peak, Vesuvius, which had spouted flames like Etna and showed signs of the fire that had burnt in ancient history.</p><br>
<h3>Eruption of AD 79</h3><br>
<p>On August 24, in the year AD 79, Vesuvius erupted in one of the most catastrophic and famous eruptions of all time. Historians have learned about the eruption from the eyewitness account of Pliny the Younger, a Roman administrator and poet.</p><br>
<p>The volcano ejected a cloud of stones, ashes and volcanic gases to a height of 33 km, spewing molten rock and pulverized pumice at the rate of 6e5 m&sup3; per second, ultimately releasing a hundred thousand times the thermal energy released by the Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombings. The cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum were destroyed by pyroclastic surges and the ruins buried under dozens of feet of tephra.</p><br>
<h4>Precursors and foreshocks</h4><br>
<p>The AD 79 eruption was preceded by a powerful earthquake seventeen years beforehand on February 05 of AD 62, which caused widespread destruction around the Bay of Naples, and particularly to Pompeii. Some of the damage had still not been repaired when the volcano erupted. The deaths of 600 sheep from "tainted air" in the vicinity of Pompeii indicates that the earthquake of AD 62 may have been related to new activity by Vesuvius</p><br>
<p>The Romans grew accustomed to minor earth tremors in the region; the writer Pliny the Younger even wrote that they "were not particularly alarming because they are frequent in Campania". Small earthquakes started taking place on 20 August 79 becoming more frequent over the next four days, but the warnings were not recognized.</p><br>
<h4>Scientific analysis of the eruption</h4><br>
<p>Reconstructions of the eruption and its effects vary considerably in the details but have the same overall features. The eruption lasted two days. The morning of the first day was perceived as normal by the only eyewitness to leave a surviving document, Pliny the Younger. In the middle of the day an explosion threw up a high-altitude column from which ash and pumice began to fall, blanketing the area. Rescues and escapes occurred during this time. At some time in the night or early the next day pyroclastic surges in the close vicinity of the volcano began. Lights were seen on the peak interpreted as fires. People as far away as Misenum fled for their lives. The flows were rapid-moving, dense and very hot, knocking down wholly or partly all structures in their path, incinerating or suffocating all population remaining there and altering the landscape, including the coastline. These were accompanied by additional light tremors and a mild tsunami in the Bay of Naples. By late afternoon of the second day, the eruption was over, leaving only haze in the atmosphere through which the sun shone weakly.</p><br>
<p>The latest scientific studies of the ash produced by Vesuvius reveals a multi-phase eruption. The initial major explosion produced a column of ash and pumice ranging between 15 and high, which rained on Pompeii to the southeast but not on Herculaneum upwind. The chief energy supporting the column came from the escape of steam superheated by the magma, created from seawater seeping over time into the deep faults of the region, that came into interaction with magma and heat.</p><br>
<p>Subsequently, the cloud collapsed as the gases expanded and lost their capability to support their solid contents, releasing it as a pyroclastic surge, which first reached Herculaneum but not Pompeii. Additional blasts reinstituted the column. The eruption alternated between Plinian and Peléan six times. Surges 3 and 4 are believed by the authors to have buried Pompeii. Surges are identified in the deposits by dune and cross-bedding formations, which are not produced by fallout.</p><br>
<p>Another study used the magnetic characteristics of over 200 samples of roof-tile and plaster fragments collected around Pompeii to estimate equilibrium temperature of the pyroclastic flow. The magnetic study revealed that on the first day of the eruption a fall of white pumice containing clastic fragments of up to 3 cm fell for several hours. It heated the roof tiles up to 140 &deg;C. This period would have been the last opportunity to escape.</p><br>
<p>The collapse of the Plinian columns on the second day caused pyroclastic density currents (PDCs) that devastated Herculaneum and Pompeii. The depositional temperature of these pyroclastic surges ranged up to 300 &deg;C. Any population remaining in structural refuges could not have escaped, as the city was surrounded by gases of incinerating temperatures. The lowest temperatures were in rooms under collapsed roofs. These were as low as 100 &deg;C.</p><br>
<h4>The Two Plinys</h4><br>
<p>The only surviving eyewitness account of the event consists of two letters by Pliny the Younger to the historian Tacitus. Pliny the Younger describes, amongst other things, the last days in the life of his uncle, Pliny the Elder. Observing the first volcanic activity from Misenum across the Bay of Naples from the volcano, approximately 35 km, the elder Pliny launched a rescue fleet and went himself to the rescue of a personal friend. His nephew declined to join the party. One of the nephews letters relates what he could discover from witnesses of his uncles experiences. In a second letter the younger Pliny details his own observations after the departure of his uncle.</p><br>
<p>The two men saw an extraordinarily dense cloud rising rapidly above the peak. This cloud and a request by a messenger for an evacuation by sea prompted the elder Pliny to order rescue operations in which he sailed away to participate. His nephew attempted to resume a normal life, but that night a tremor awoke him and his mother, prompting them to abandon the house for the courtyard. Further tremors near dawn caused the population to abandon the village and caused disastrous wave action in the Bay of Naples.</p><br>
<p>The early light was obscured by a black cloud through which shone flashes, which Pliny likens to sheet lightning, but more extensive. The cloud obscured Point Misenum near at hand and the island of Capraia (Capri) across the bay. Fearing for their lives, the population began to call to each other and move back from the coast along the road. A rain of ash fell, causing Pliny to shake it off periodically to avoid being buried. Later that same day the pumice and ash stopped falling and the sun shone weakly through the cloud, encouraging Pliny and his mother to return to their home and wait for news of Pliny the Elder.</p><br>
<p>Plinys uncle Pliny the Elder was in command of the Roman fleet at Misenum, and had meanwhile decided to investigate the phenomenon at close hand in a light vessel. As the ship was preparing to leave the area, a messenger came from his friend Rectina (wife of Tascius) living on the coast near the foot of the volcano explaining that her party could only get away by sea and asking for rescue. Pliny ordered the immediate launching of the fleet galleys to the evacuation of the coast. He continued in his light ship to the rescue of Rectinas party.</p><br>
<p>He set off across the bay but in the shallows on the other side encountered thick showers of hot cinders, lumps of pumice and pieces of rock. Advised by the helmsman to turn back, he stated "Fortune favors the brave" and ordered him to continue on to Stabiae (about 4.5 kilometers from Pompeii).</p><br>
<p>Pliny the Elder and his party saw flames coming from several parts of the crater. After staying overnight, the party was driven from the building by an accumulation of material, presumably tephra, which threatened to block all egress. They woke Pliny, who had been napping and emitting loud snoring. They elected to take to the fields with pillows tied to their heads to protect them from the raining debris. They approached the beach again but the wind prevented the ships from leaving. Pliny sat down on a sail that had been spread for him and could not rise even with assistance when his friends departed. Though Pliny the Elder died, his friends ultimately escaped by land.</p><br>
<p>In the first letter to Tacitus, Pliny the Younger suggested that his uncle&#39;s death was due to the reaction of his weak lungs to a cloud of poisonous, sulphurous gas that wafted over the group. However, Stabiae was 16 km from the vent (roughly where the modern town of Castellammare di Stabia is situated) and his companions were apparently unaffected by the volcanic gases, and so it is more likely that the corpulent Pliny died from some other cause, such as a stroke or heart attack. His body was found with no apparent injuries on the next day, after dispersal of the plume.</p><br>
<h4>Casualties from the eruption</h4><br>
<p>Along with Pliny the Elder, the only other noble casualties of the eruption to be known by name were Agrippa (a son of the Herodian Jewish princess Drusilla and the procurator Antonius Felix) and his wife.</p><br>
<p>By 2003, around 1,044 casts made from impressions of bodies in the ash deposits had been recovered in and around Pompeii, with the scattered bones of another 100. The remains of about 332 bodies have been found at Herculaneum (300 in arched vaults discovered in 1980). What percentage these numbers are of the total dead or the percentage of the dead to the total number at risk remain completely unknown.</p><br>
<p>Thirty-eight percent of the 1,044 were found in the ash fall deposits, the majority inside buildings. These are thought to have been killed mainly by roof collapses, with the smaller number of victims found outside of buildings probably being killed by falling roof slates or by larger rocks thrown out by the volcano. The remaining 62% of remains found at Pompeii were in the pyroclastic surge deposits, and thus were probably killed by them – probably from a combination of suffocation through ash inhalation and blast and debris thrown around. In contrast to the victims found at Herculaneum, examination of cloth, frescoes and skeletons show that it is unlikely that high temperatures were a significant cause. Herculaneum, which was much closer to the crater, was saved from tephra falls by the wind direction, but was buried under 23 m of material deposited by pyroclastic surges. It is likely that most, or all, of the known victims in this town were killed by the surges.</p><br>
<p>People caught on the former seashore by the first surge died of thermal shock. The rest were concentrated in arched chambers at a density of as high as 3 persons per square metre. As only 85 m of the coast have been excavated, casualties may be waiting to be excavated.</p><br>
<h3>Later eruptions from the 3rd to the 19th centuries</h3><br>
<p>Since the eruption of AD 79, Vesuvius has erupted around three dozen times. It erupted again in 203, during the lifetime of the historian Cassius Dio. In 472, it ejected such a volume of ash that ashfalls were reported as far away as Constantinople. The eruptions of 512 were so severe that those inhabiting the slopes of Vesuvius were granted exemption from taxes by Theodoric the Great, the Gothic king of Italy. Further eruptions were recorded in 787, 968, 991, 999, 1007 and 1036 with the first recorded lava flows. The volcano became quiescent at the end of the 13th century and in the following years it again became covered with gardens and vineyards as of old. Even the inside of the crater was moderately filled with shrubbery.</p><br>
<p>Vesuvius entered a new phase in December 1631, when a major eruption buried many villages under lava flows, killing around 3,000 people. Torrents of lahar were also created, adding to the devastation. Activity thereafter became almost continuous, with relatively severe eruptions occurring in 1660, 1682, 1694, 1698, 1707, 1737, 1760, 1767, 1779, 1794, 1822, 1834, 1839, 1850, 1855, 1861, 1868, 1872, 1906, 1926, 1929 and 1944.</p><br>
<h3>Eruptions in the 20th century</h3><br>
<p>The eruption of April 05 in 1906, killed more than 100 people and ejected the most lava ever recorded from a Vesuvian eruption. Italian authorities were preparing to hold the 1908 Summer Olympics when Mount Vesuvius violently erupted, devastating the city of Naples and surrounding comunes. Funds were diverted to the reconstruction of Naples, requiring a new location for the Olympics to be found.</p><br>
<p>The last major eruption was in March 1944. It destroyed the villages of San Sebastiano al Vesuvio, Massa di Somma, Ottaviano, and part of San Giorgio a Cremano. From March 18 to 23, 1944, lava flows appeared within the rim. There were outflows. Small explosions then occurred until the major explosion took place on March 18, 1944.</p><br>
<p>At the time of the eruption, the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) 340th Bombardment Group was based at Pompeii Airfield near Terzigno, Italy, just a few kilometres from the eastern base of the volcano. The tephra and hot ash damaged the fabric control surfaces, the engines, the Plexiglas windscreens and the gun turrets of the 340th&#39;s B-25 Mitchell medium bombers. Estimates ranged from 78 to 88 aircraft destroyed.</p><br>
<p>The eruption could be seen from Naples. Different perspectives and the damage caused to the local villages were recorded by USAAF photographers and other personnel based nearer to the volcano.</p><br>
<h3>Future</h3><br>
<p>Large Vesuvian eruptions which emit volcanic material in quantities of about 1 km3, the most recent of which overwhelmed Pompeii and Herculaneum, have happened after periods of inactivity of a few thousand years. Sub-Plinian eruptions producing about 0.1 km3, such as those of 472 and 1631, have been more frequent with a few hundred years between them. Following the 1631 eruption until 1944 every few years saw a comparatively small eruption which emitted 0.001–0.01 km³ of magma. It seems that for Vesuvius, the amount of magma expelled in an eruption increases very roughly linearly with the interval since the previous one, and at a rate of around 0.001 km3 for each year. This gives an approximate figure of 0.06 km3 for an eruption after 60 years of inactivity.</p><br>
<p>Magma sitting in an underground chamber for many years will start to see higher melting point constituents such as olivine crystallizing out. The effect is to increase the concentration of dissolved gases (mostly sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide) in the remaining liquid magma, making the subsequent eruption more violent. As gas-rich magma approaches the surface during an eruption, the huge drop in internal pressure caused by the reduction in weight of the overlying rock (which drops to zero at the surface) causes the gases to come out of solution, the volume of gas increasing explosively from nothing to perhaps many times that of the accompanying magma. Additionally, the removal of the higher melting point material will raise the concentration of felsic components such as silicates potentially making the magma more viscous, adding to the explosive nature of the eruption.</p><br>
<p>The government emergency plan for an eruption therefore assumes that the worst case will be an eruption of similar size and type to the 1631 VEI 4 one. In this scenario the slopes of the volcano, extending out to about 7 km from the vent, may be exposed to pyroclastic surges sweeping down them, whilst much of the surrounding area could suffer from tephra falls. Because of prevailing winds, towns and cities to the south and east of the volcano are most at risk from this, and it is assumed that tephra accumulation exceeding 100 kg/m² – at which point people are at risk from collapsing roofs – may extend out as far as Avellino to the east or Salerno to the south-east. Towards Naples, to the north west, this tephra fall hazard is assumed to extend barely past the slopes of the volcano. The specific areas actually affected by the ash cloud will depend upon</p><br>
<p>the particular circumstances surrounding the eruption.</p><br>
<p>The plan assumes between two weeks and 20 days&#39; notice of an eruption and foresees the emergency evacuation of 600,000 people, almost entirely comprising all those living in the zona rossa ("red zone"), i.e. at greatest risk from pyroclastic flows. The evacuation, by</p><br>
<p>trains, ferries, cars, and buses is planned to take about seven days, and the evacuees will mostly be sent to other parts of the country rather than to safe areas in the local Campania region, and may have to stay away for several months. However, the dilemma that would face those implementing the plan is when to start this massive evacuation, since if it is left too late then thousands could be killed, while if it is started too early then the precursors of the eruption may turn out to have been a false alarm. In 1984, 40,000 people were evacuated from the Campi Flegrei area, another volcanic complex near Naples, but no eruption occurred.</p><br>
<p>Ongoing efforts are being made by the government at various levels (especially of Campania) to reduce the population living in the red zone, by demolishing illegally constructed buildings, establishing a national park around the whole volcano to prevent the future construction of buildings and by offering sufficient financial incentives to people for moving away. One of the underlying goals is to reduce the time needed to evacuate the area, over the next 20 or 30 years, to two or three days.</p><br>
<p>The volcano is closely monitored by the Osservatorio Vesuvio in Naples with extensive networks of seismic and gravimetric stations, a combination of a GPS-based geodetic array and satellite-based synthetic aperture radar to measure ground movement and by local surveys and chemical analyses of gases emitted from fumaroles. All of this is intended to track magma rising underneath the volcano. No magma has been detected within 10 km of the surface, and so the volcano is classified by the Observatory as at a Basic or Green Level.</p><br>
<h2>Vesuvius today</h2><br>
<p>The area around Vesuvius was officially declared a national park on June 5, 1995. The summit of Vesuvius is open to visitors and there is a small network of paths around the volcano that are maintained by the park authorities on weekends. There is access by road to within 200 m of the summit (measured vertically), but thereafter access is on foot only. There is a spiral walkway around the volcano from the road to the crater.</p><br>
<h2>Funiculì, Funiculà</h2><br>
<p>The first funicular cable car on Mount Vesuvius opened in 1880. It was later destroyed by the March 1944 eruption. "Funiculì, Funiculà", a famous Neapolitan language song with lyrics by journalist Peppino Turco set to music by composer Luigi Denza, commemorates its opening.</p><br>
<p>Manzanar is most widely known as the site of one of ten American concentration camps where over 110,000 Japanese Americans were forcibly removed  during World War II from December 1942 to 1945. Located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada in California&#39;s Owens Valley between the towns of Lone Pine to the south and Independence to the north, it is approximately 230 mi north of Los Angeles. Manzanar  was identified by the United States National Park Service as the best-preserved of the former camp sites, and is now the Manzanar National Historic Site, which preserves and interprets the legacy of Japanese American incarceration in the United States.</p><br>
<p>Long before the first incarcerees arrived in March 1942, Manzanar was home to Native Americans, who lived mostly in villages near several creeks in the area. Ranchers and miners formally established the town of Manzanar in 1910, but abandoned the town by 1929 after the City of Los Angeles purchased the water rights to virtually the entire area. As different as these groups were, their histories displayed a common thread of forced relocation.</p><br>
<p>Since the last incarcerees left in 1945, former incarcerees and others have worked to protect Manzanar and to establish it as a National Historic Site to ensure that the history of the site, along with the stories of those who were unjustly incarcerated there, are remembered by current and future generations. The primary focus is the Japanese American incarceration era, as specified in the legislation that created the Manzanar National Historic Site. The site also interprets the former town of Manzanar, the ranch days, the settlement by the Owens Valley Paiute, and the role that water played in shaping the history of the Owens Valley.</p><br>
<h2>Terminology</h2><br>
<p>Since the end of World War II, there has been debate over the terminology used to refer to Manzanar, and the other camps in which Americans of Japanese ancestry and their immigrant parents, were incarcerated by the United States Government during the war. Manzanar has been referred to as a "War Relocation Center," "relocation camp," "relocation center," "internment camp", and "concentration camp", and the controversy over which term is the most accurate and appropriate continues to the present day.</p><br>
<p>Dr. James Hirabayashi, Professor Emeritus and former Dean of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University, wrote an article in 1994 in which he stated that he wonders why euphemistic terms used to describe camps such as Manzanar are still being used.</p><br>
<p>Hirabayashi went on to describe the harm done by the use of such euphemisms and also addressed the issue of whether or not only the Nazi camps can be called "concentration camps."</p><br>
<p>In 1998, use of the term "concentration camps" gained greater credibility prior to the opening of an exhibit about the American camps at Ellis Island. Initially, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the National Park Service, which manages Ellis Island, objected to the use of the term in the exhibit. However, during a subsequent meeting held at the offices of the AJC in New York City, leaders representing Japanese Americans and Jewish Americans reached an understanding about the use of the term. After the meeting, the Japanese American National Museum and the AJC issued a joint statement (which was included in the exhibit) that read in part:</p><br>
<p>The New York Times published an unsigned editorial supporting the use of "concentration camp" in the exhibit. An article quoted Jonathan Mark, a columnist for The Jewish Week, who wrote, "Can no one else speak of slavery, gas, trains, camps? Its Jewish malpractice to monopolize pain and minimize victims." AJC Executive Director David A. Harris stated during the controversy, "We have not claimed Jewish exclusivity for the term concentration camps.&#39;"</p><br>
<p>On July 7, 2012, at their annual convention, the National Council of the Japanese American Citizens League unanimously ratified the Power of Words Handbook, calling for the use of "...truthful and accurate terms, and retiring the misleading euphemisms created by the government to cover up the denial of Constitutional and human rights, the force, oppressive conditions, and racism against 120,000 innocent people of Japanese ancestry locked up in America&#39;s World War II concentration camps."</p><br>
<p>According to the Power Of Words Handbook:</p><br>
<h2>Before World War II</h2><br>
<h3>Owens Valley Paiute</h3><br>
<p>Manzanar was first inhabited by Native Americans nearly 10,000 years ago. Approximately 1,500 years ago, the area was settled by the Owens Valley Paiute, who ranged across the Owens Valley from Long Valley on the north to Owens Lake on the south, and from the crest of the Sierra Nevada on the west to the Inyo Mountains on the east. Other Native American nations in the region included the Miwok, Western Mono, and Tubatulabal to the west, the Shoshone to the south and east, and the Mono Lake Paiute to the north. They also traded brown-ware pottery for salt from the Saline Valley, and traded other wares and goods across the Sierra Nevada during the summer and fall.</p><br>
<p>The Owens Valley had received scant attention from European Americans before the early 1860s, as it was little more than a crossroads of the routes through the area. When gold and silver were discovered in the Sierra Nevada and the Inyo Mountains, the resulting sudden influx of miners, farmers, cattlemen and their hungry herds brought conflict with the Owens Valley Paiute, whose crops were being destroyed. The Owens Valley Indian War of 1861–1863 ensued; at the end, the Owens Valley Paiute, along with other native peoples in the region, were forced at gunpoint by the United States Army to walk almost 200 mi to Fort Tejon,</p><br>
<p>Approximately one-third of the Native Americans in the Owens Valley were forcibly relocated to Fort Tejon. After 1863, many returned to their permanent villages that had been established along creeks flowing down from the Sierra Nevada mountains. In the Manzanar area, the Owens Valley Paiute had established villages along Bairs, Georges, Shepherds, and Symmes creeks. Evidence of Paiute settlement in the area is still present.</p><br>
<h3>Ranchers</h3><br>
<p>When European American settlers first arrived in the Owens Valley in the mid–19th century, they found a number of large Paiute villages in the Manzanar area. John Shepherd, one of the first of the new settlers, homesteaded 160 acre of land 3 mi north of Georges Creek in 1864. With the help of Owens Valley Paiute field workers and laborers, he expanded his ranch to 2,000 acre.</p><br>
<p>In 1905, George Chaffey, an agricultural developer from Southern California, purchased Shepherds ranch and subdivided it, along with other adjacent ranches. He founded the town of Manzanar in 1910. Chaffeys Owens Valley Improvement Company built an irrigation system and planted thousands of fruit trees.</p><br>
<p>"Manzanar was a very happy place and a pleasant place to live during those years, with its peach, pear, and apple orchards, alfalfa fields, tree-lined country lanes, meadows and corn fields," said Martha Mills, who lived at Manzanar from 1916 to 1920.</p><br>
<p>Some of the early orchards, along with remnants of the town and ranches, are still present at Manzanar today.</p><br>
<h3>Quenching Los Angeles' thirst</h3><br>
<p>As early as March 1905, the City of Los Angeles began secretly acquiring water rights in the Owens Valley. In 1913, it completed construction of its 233 mi Los Angeles Aqueduct, But it did not take long for Los Angeles water officials to realize that Owens River water was not enough to supply the rapidly growing metropolis. In 1920, they began to purchase more of the water rights on the Owens Valley floor. As the decade went on, the City of Los Angeles bought out one Owens Valley farmer after another, and extended its reach northward into Mono County, including Long Valley. By 1933, the City owned 85% of all town property and 95% of all ranch and farm land in the Owens Valley, including Manzanar.</p><br>
<p>Although some residents sold their land for prices that made them financially independent and relocated, a significant number chose to stay. In dry years, Los Angeles pumped ground water and drained all surface water, diverting all of it into its aqueduct and leaving Owens Valley ranchers without water. Without water for irrigation, the holdout ranchers were forced off their ranches and out of their communities; that included the town of Manzanar, which was abandoned by 1929.</p><br>
<p>Manzanar remained uninhabited until the United States Army leased 6,200 acre from the City of Los Angeles for the Manzanar War Relocation Center.</p><br>
<h2>Wartime: 1942–45</h2><br>
<p>After the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States Government swiftly moved to begin solving the "Japanese Problem" on the West Coast of the United States. In the evening hours of that same day, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested selected "enemy" aliens, including more than 5,500 Issei men. The California government pressed for action by the national government, as many citizens were alarmed about potential activities by people of Japanese descent.</p><br>
<p>On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the Secretary of War to designate military commanders to prescribe military areas and to exclude "any or all persons" from such areas. The order also authorized the construction of what would later be called "relocation centers" by the War Relocation Authority (WRA) to house those who were to be excluded. This order resulted in the forced relocation of over 120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were native-born American citizens. The rest had been prevented from becoming citizens by federal law. Over 110,000 were incarcerated in the ten concentration camps located far inland and away from the coast.</p><br>
<p>Manzanar was the first of the ten concentration camps to be established. Initially, it was a temporary "reception center", known as the Owens Valley Reception Center from March 21, 1942, to May 31, 1942.</p><br>
<p>The Owens Valley Reception Center was transferred to the WRA on June 1, 1942, and officially became the "Manzanar War Relocation Center." The first Japanese American incarcerees to arrive at Manzanar were volunteers who helped build the camp. By mid–April, up to 1,000 Japanese Americans were arriving daily, and by July, the population of the camp neared 10,000. Over 90 percent of the incarcerees were from the Los Angeles area, with the rest coming from Stockton, California; and Bainbridge Island, Washington. Many were farmers and fishermen. Manzanar held 10,046 incarcerees at its peak, and a total of 11,070 people were incarcerated there.</p><br>
<h3>Climate</h3><br>
<p>The weather at Manzanar caused suffering for the incarcerees, few of whom were accustomed to the extremes of the area&#39;s climate. The temporary buildings were not adequate to shield people from the weather. The Owens Valley lies at an elevation of about 4,000 ft. Summers on the desert floor of the Owens Valley are generally hot, with temperatures exceeding 100 &deg;F not uncommon.</p><br>
<p>"In the summer, the heat was unbearable," said former Manzanar incarceree Ralph Lazo (see Notable incarcerees section, below). "In the winter, the sparsely rationed oil didn&#39;t adequately heat the tar paper-covered pine barracks with knotholes in the floor. The wind would blow so hard, it would toss rocks around."</p><br>
<h3>Camp layout and facilities</h3><br>
<p>The camp site was situated on 6,200 acre at Manzanar, leased from the City of Los Angeles, The residential area was about one square mile (2.6 km), and consisted of 36 blocks of hastily constructed, 20 ft by 100 ft tarpaper barracks, with each incarceree family living in a single 20 ft by 25 ft "apartment" in the barracks. These apartments consisted of partitions with no ceilings, eliminating any chance of privacy. Lack of privacy was a major problem for the incarcerees, especially since the camp had communal mens and womens latrines.</p><br>
<p>"...One of the hardest things to endure was the communal latrines, with no partitions; and showers with no stalls," said former Manzanar incarceree Rosie Kakuuchi.</p><br>
<p>Each residential block also had a communal mess hall, a laundry room, a recreation hall, an ironing room, and a heating oil storage tank, although Block 33 lacked a recreation hall. In addition to the residential blocks, Manzanar had 34 additional blocks that had staff housing, camp administration offices, two warehouses, a garage, a camp hospital, and 24 firebreaks. The camp also had school facilities, a high school auditorium, staff housing, chicken and hog farms, churches, a cemetery, a post office, a cooperative store, other shops, a camp newspaper, and other necessary amenities that one would expect to find in most American cities.</p><br>
<p>Manzanar also had a camouflage net factory, an experimental plantation for producing natural rubber from the Guayule plant, and an orphanage called Children&#39;s Village, which housed 101 Japanese American orphans. The camp perimeter had eight watchtowers manned by armed Military Police, and it was enclosed by five-strand barbed wire. There were sentry posts at the main entrance.</p><br>
<h3>Life behind the barbed wire</h3><br>
<p>After being uprooted from their homes and communities, the incarcerees found themselves having to endure primitive, sub-standard conditions, Each camp was intended to be self-sufficient, and Manzanar was no exception. Cooperatives operated various services, such as the camp newspaper, beauty and barber shops, shoe repair, and more. In addition, incarcerees raised chickens, hogs, and vegetables, and cultivated the existing orchards for fruit. Incarcerees made their own soy sauce and tofu.</p><br>
<p>Food at Manzanar was based on military requirements. Meals usually consisted of hot rice and vegetables, since meat was scarce due to rationing.</p><br>
<p>Most incarcerees were employed at Manzanar to keep the camp running. Unskilled workers earned US$8 per month ($ per month as of ), semi-skilled workers earned $12 per month ($ per month as of ), skilled workers made $16 per month ($ per month as of ), and professionals earned $19 per month ($ per month as of ). In addition, all incarcerees received $3.60 per month ($ per month as of ) as a clothing allowance.</p><br>
<p>The incarcerees made Manzanar more livable through recreation. They participated in sports, including baseball and football, and martial arts. Remnants of some of the gardens, pools, and rock ornaments are still present at Manzanar.</p><br>
<h3>Resistance</h3><br>
<p>Although most incarcerees quietly accepted their fate during World War II, there was some resistance in the camps. Poston, Heart Mountain, Topaz, and Tule Lake each had civil disturbances about wage differences, black marketing of sugar, intergenerational friction, rumors of "informers" reporting to the camp administration or the FBI, and other issues.</p><br>
<p>After several months of tension between incarcerees who supported the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) and a group of Kibei (Japanese Americans educated in Japan), rumors spread that sugar and meat shortages were the result of black marketing by camp administrators.</p><br>
<h3>Closure</h3><br>
<p>On November 21, 1945, the WRA closed Manzanar, the sixth camp to be closed. Although the incarcerees had been brought to the Owens Valley by the United States Government, they had to leave the camp and travel to their next destinations on their own. The WRA gave each person $25 ($ today), one-way train or bus fare, and meals to those who had less than $600 ($ today). While many left the camp voluntarily, a significant number refused to leave because they had no place to go after having lost everything when they were forcibly uprooted and removed from their homes. As such, they had to be forcibly removed once again, this time from Manzanar. Indeed, those who refused to leave were generally removed from their barracks, sometimes by force, even if they had no place to go.</p><br>
<p>146 incarcerees died at Manzanar. Fifteen incarcerees were buried there, but only five graves remain, as most were later reburied elsewhere by their families.</p><br>
<p>The Manzanar cemetery site is marked by a monument that was built by incarceree stonemason Ryozo Kado in 1943. An inscription in Japanese on the front (east side) of the monument reads 慰靈塔 ("Soul Consoling Tower"). The inscription on the back (west side) reads "Erected by the Manzanar Japanese" on the left-hand column, and "August 1943" on the right-hand column. Today, the monument is often draped in strings of origami, and sometimes survivors and other visitors leave offerings of personal items as mementos. The National Park Service periodically collects and catalogues such items.</p><br>
<p>After the camp was closed, the site eventually returned to its original state. Within a couple of years, all the structures had been removed, with the exception of the two sentry posts at the entrance, the cemetery monument, and the former Manzanar High School auditorium, which was purchased by the County of Inyo. The County leased the auditorium to the Independence Veterans of Foreign Wars, who used it as a meeting facility and community theater until 1951. After that, the building was used as a maintenance facility by the Inyo County Road Department.</p><br>
<p>As of 2007, the site also retains numerous building foundations, portions of the water and sewer systems, the outline of the road grid, remains of the landscaping constructed by incarcerees, and much more.</p><br>
<h3>Notable incarcerees</h3><br>
<p>Sue Kunitomi Embrey, born on January 6, 1923, was an editor of the Manzanar Free Press, the camp newspaper, and wove camouflage nets to support the war effort. She left Manzanar in late 1943 for Madison, Wisconsin and one year later moved to Chicago, Illinois. Returning to California in 1948, she went on to become a schoolteacher and a labor and community activist. In 1969, Embrey was one of approximately 150 people who attended the first organized Manzanar Pilgrimage (see Manzanar Pilgrimage section, below) and was one of the founders of the annual event. She also went on to become the primary force behind the preservation of the site and its gaining National Historic Site status until her death in May, 2006.</p><br>
<p>Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, born in 1925 in Los Angeles, was 17 years old when she was incarcerated at Manzanar. Later, she was incarcerated at Jerome and Rohwer, Arkansas. Yoshinaga-Herzig later moved to New York, where she became a community activist in the 1960s and was a member of Asian Americans for Action (AAA), the first Asian American political organization on the East Coast. It included Asian American activists Bill and Yuri Kochiyama. Although she was not trained to be an archival researcher, Yoshinaga-Herzig decided to find out what historical documents about her and her family might exist at the National Archives.</p><br>
<p>Henry Fukuhara, who was born in Fruitland, California, in 1913, was incarcerated with his family in April 1942. An artist and watercolorist, Fukuhara would later teach a series of annual artistic workshops at Manzanar beginning in 1998. His workshops, which usually had about 80 students a year, including Milford Zornes, used outdoor structures at Manzanar to teach water color painting.</p><br>
<p>William Hohri (1927–2010), was incarcerated at Manzanar when he was 15 years old. His family entered Manzanar on April 3, 1942, and remained behind the barbed wire until August 25, 1945. Hohri became a civil rights and anti-war activist after World War II. In the late 1970s he became the chair of the National Coalition for Japanese American Redress (NCJAR), which brought a class action lawsuit against the US Government on March 16, 1983, asserting that it had unjustly incarcerated Japanese Americans during World War II. The lawsuit stated 22 causes of action, including fifteen alleged violations of constitutional rights, and sought $27 billion in damages. Despite the fact the US Supreme Court eventually ruled against the class action plaintiffs, the lawsuit helped bring the Japanese American case for redress and reparations to public awareness. It showed the Congress and the Executive Branch that the US Government would have far greater exposure in the still-pending lawsuit than by legislation under consideration in Congress for reparations. The proposed bill called for $20,000 reparations payments to each former incarceree or their immediate relatives, along with money for a civil liberties education fund (see Civil Liberties Act of 1988).</p><br>
<p>Ralph Lazo, born in 1924 in Los Angeles, was of Mexican American and Irish American descent, but when at age 16 he learned that his Japanese American friends and neighbors were being forcibly removed and incarcerated at Manzanar, he was outraged. Manzanar officials never asked him about his ancestry.</p><br>
<p>"Internment was immoral," Lazo told the Los Angeles Times. "It was wrong, and I couldn&#39;t accept it."</p><br>
<p>In 1944, Lazo was elected president of his class at Manzanar High School.</p><br>
<p>Toyo Miyatake, who was born in Kagawa, Shikoku, Japan, in 1896, immigrated to the United States in 1909. He settled in the Little Tokyo section of Los Angeles, and was incarcerated at Manzanar along with his family. A photographer, Miyatake smuggled a lens and film holder into Manzanar and later had a craftsman construct a wooden box with a door that hid the lens. He took many now-famous photos of life and the conditions at Manzanar. His contraband camera was eventually discovered by the camp administration and confiscated. However, camp director Ralph Merritt later allowed Miyatake to photograph freely within the camp, even though he was not allowed to actually press the shutter button, requiring a guard or camp official to perform this simple task. Merritt finally saw no point to this technicality, and allowed Miyatake to take photos.</p><br>
<p>Togo Tanaka (1916–2009), editor of the Rafu Shimpo newspaper, was sent to the Manzanar, where he used his journalism experience to document conditions in the camp. A supporter of cooperation with the authorities, he was labeled a collaborator and was transferred to Death Valley after being the target of riots before the first anniversary of Pearl Harbor.</p><br>
<p>Harry Ueno, born in Hawaii in 1907, was a Kibei (native-born Japanese American educated in Japan) who was incarcerated at Manzanar with his wife and children.&lt; After volunteering for mess hall work, Ueno discovered that Manzanar camp staff were stealing rationed sugar and meat and selling them on the black market.&lt; Ueno exposed the thefts, and worked to organize incarcerees to deal with them. This led to his arrest, which resulted in Ueno becoming the focal point of the Manzanar Riot. Ueno was one of the incarcerees featured in Emiko Omori&#39;s Emmy Award-winning film Rabbit in the Moon.</p><br>
<p>Karl Yoneda was born in Glendale, California, on July 15, 1906, but his family moved back to Japan in 1913. He became an activist early in his life. Yoneda later distinguished himself in service to the US, volunteering to serve in the Military Intelligence Service. After the war, Yoneda continued to support progressive causes and civil and human rights issues.</p><br>
<p>Other notable Manzanar incarcerees are: Koji Ariyoshi, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, Isao Kikuchi, Tura Satana, Gordon H. Sato, Tak Shindo, Larry Shinoda, Iwao Takamoto, Takuji Yamashita and Wendy Yoshimura.</p><br>
<h2>Preservation and remembrance</h2><br>
<h3>Manzanar Pilgrimage</h3><br>
<p>On December 21, 1969, about 150 people departed Los Angeles by car and bus, headed for Manzanar. It was the "first" annual Manzanar Pilgrimage. But as it turned out, two ministers, the Reverend Sentoku Mayeda and the Reverend Shoichi Wakahiro, had been making annual pilgrimages to Manzanar since the camp closed in 1945.</p><br>
<p>The non-profit Manzanar Committee, formerly led by Sue Kunitomi Embrey, has sponsored the Pilgrimage since 1969. The event is held annually on the last Saturday of April</p><br>
<p>"My mother was a very staunch Buddhist and she would always say, Those poor people that are buried over there at Manzanar in the hot sun—they must be so dry. Be sure to take some water ," said Embrey. "She always thought it was important to go back and remember the people who had died."</p><br>
<p>In 1997, the Manzanar At Dusk program became a part of the Pilgrimage. The program attracts local area residents, as well as descendants of Manzanar&#39;s ranch days and the town of Manzanar. Through small group discussions, the event gives participants the opportunity to hear directly about the experiences of former incarcerees first-hand, to share their experiences and feelings about what they learned, and talk about the relevance of what happened at Manzanar to their own lives.</p><br>
<p>Since the September 11 attacks, American Muslims have participated in the Pilgrimage to promote and increase awareness of civil rights protections in the wake of widespread suspicions harbored against them post-9/11.</p><br>
<h3>California Historical Landmark and Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument</h3><br>
<p>The Manzanar Committee&#39;s efforts resulted in the State of California naming Manzanar as California Historical Landmark #850 in 1972, with an historical marker being placed at the sentry post on April 14, 1973.</p><br>
<p>Manzanar, which had been historically owned by the City of Los Angeles, was registered as a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 1976.</p><br>
<h3>National Historic Landmark and National Historic Site</h3><br>
<p>The Manzanar Committee also spearheaded efforts for Manzanar to be listed in the National Register of Historic Places, and in February 1985, Manzanar was designated a National Historic Landmark. Embrey and the Committee also led the effort to have Manzanar designated a National Historic Site, and on March 3, 1992, President George H. W. Bush signed House Resolution 543 into law . This act of Congress established the Manzanar National Historic Site "to provide for the protection and interpretation of the historical, cultural, and natural resources associated with the relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II." Five years later, the National Park Service acquired 814 acre of land at Manzanar from the City of Los Angeles.</p><br>
<p>The site features a visitor center, housed in the historically restored Manzanar High School Auditorium, which has a permanent exhibit that tells the stories of the incarcerees at Manzanar, the Owens Valley Paiute, the ranchers, the town of Manzanar, and water in the Owens Valley.</p><br>
<p>The site, which has seen 1,275,195 people visit from 2000 through December 2016, a self-guided tour road, and wayside exhibits. Staff offer guided tours and other educational programs, including a Junior Ranger educational program for children between four and fifteen years of age.</p><br>
<p>The National Park Service is reconstructing one of the 36 residential blocks as a demonstration block (Block 14, adjacent to and west of the Visitor Center). One barrack appears as it would have when Japanese Americans first arrived at Manzanar in 1942, while another has been reconstructed to represent barracks life in 1945. Exhibits in these barracks opened on April 16, 2015. A restored World War II mess hall, moved to the site from Bishop Airport in 2002, was opened to visitors in late 2010.</p><br>
<p>In late 2008, historically appropriate vegetation was planted near the Visitor Center. The Manzanar National Historic Site also unveiled its virtual museum on May 17, 2010 and continues to collect oral histories of former incarcerees and others from all periods of Manzanar&#39;s history.</p><br>
<p>National Park Service staff have continued to uncover artifacts from throughout Manzanars history, the result of archaeological digs that have also excavated several of the gardens designed and built by World War II incarcerees, including the famous Merritt Park (also known as Pleasure Park). In progress is a classroom exhibit that will be housed in the Block 9 barracks and an historic replica of the Block 9 womens latrine (opened in October 2016, but with no interpretive exhibit materials at this time).</p><br>
<h3>Opposition to the creation of the Manzanar National Historic Site</h3><br>
<p>After Congress named Manzanar a National Historic Site and gave the National Park Service the job of restoring the site in 1992, protests against its creation emerged. Letters flooded the National Park Service, demanding that Manzanar be portrayed as a guest housing center for the Japanese Americans. William Hastings, of Bishop, California, wrote to the National Park Service, saying that the portrayal of Manzanar as a concentration camp amounts to "treason." Further, Lillian Baker, and others in California, objected to the words, "concentration camp" on the California State historical marker, which has been hacked and stained, with the first "C" of "concentration camp" having been ground off. Further, a man, who described himself as a World War II veteran, called Hopkins to say that he had driven 200 miles to urinate on the marker.</p><br>
<h2>In popular culture</h2><br>
<p>A made-for-television movie, Farewell to Manzanar, directed by John Korty, aired on March 11, 1976, on NBC. It was based on the 1973 memoir of the same name, written by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, who was incarcerated at Manzanar as a child, and her husband James D. Houston. The book and the movie tell the story of the Wakatsuki family and their experiences behind the barbed wire through young Jeanne&#39;s eyes. On October 7, 2011, the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) announced that they had negotiated the rights to the movie, and that they would make it available for purchase on DVD.</p><br>
<p>Come See The Paradise was a feature film about how forced relocation and imprisonment at Manzanar affected a Japanese American family from Los Angeles and a European American union organizer. The film, released in 1990, starred Dennis Quaid and Tamlyn Tomita, and was written and directed by Alan Parker.</p><br>
<p>Folk/country musician Tom Russell wrote "Manzanar", a song about the Japanese American internment, that was released on his album Box of Visions (1993). Laurie Lewis covered the song on her album Seeing Things (1998), adding the Japanese string instrument, the koto, to her performance.</p><br>
<p>The 1994 award-winning novel, Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson, contains many scenes and details relating to Japanese Americans from the Puget Sound, Washington, area and their incarceration experiences at Manzanar. The 2000 film based on the book also details that connection.</p><br>
<p>The Asian American jazz fusion band Hiroshima has a song entitled "Manzanar" on its album The Bridge (2003). It is an instrumental song inspired by Manzanar and the Japanese American incarceration. Also, its song "Living In America", on its album titled East (1990), contains the phrase "I still remember Manzanar."</p><br>
<p>Fort Minors song "Kenji", from the album The Rising Tied (2005), tells the true story of Mike Shinodas family and their experiences before, during, and after World War II, including their imprisonment at Manzanar.</p><br>
<p>Channel 3&#39;s song titled "Manzanar" is about the incarceration.</p><br>
<p>In the 1984 movie The Karate Kid, Daniel reads the letter which informed Miyagi of the death of his wife and son during child birth on November 2, 1944 while in the Manzanar Relocation Camp. Mr. Miyagi was fighting for the US against the Germans in Europe when he received the news.</p><br>
<p>A 2007 episode of the CBS television crime drama Cold Case, titled "Family 8108", dealt with the 1945 murder of a Japanese American man in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania after he and his family were released from Manzanar. The episode originally aired on December 9, 2007.</p><br>
<p>The 253&#39;rd episode of 99% Invisible which aired March 2017, focused on Manzanar.</p><br>
<p>The Grand Canyon  is a steep-sided canyon carved by the Colorado River in Arizona, United States. The Grand Canyon is 277 mi long, up to 18 mi wide and attains a depth of over a mile .</p><br>
<p>The canyon and adjacent rim are contained within Grand Canyon National Park, the Kaibab National Forest, Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument, the Hualapai Indian Reservation, the Havasupai Indian Reservation and the Navajo Nation. President Theodore Roosevelt was a major proponent of preservation of the Grand Canyon area, and visited it on numerous occasions to hunt and enjoy the scenery.</p><br>
<p>Nearly two billion years of Earth&#39;s geological history have been exposed as the Colorado River and its tributaries cut their channels through layer after layer of rock while the Colorado Plateau was uplifted. While some aspects about the history of incision of the canyon are debated by geologists, several recent studies support the hypothesis that the Colorado River established its course through the area about 5 to 6 million years ago. Since that time, the Colorado River has driven the down-cutting of the tributaries and retreat of the cliffs, simultaneously deepening and widening the canyon.</p><br>
<p>For thousands of years, the area has been continuously inhabited by Native Americans, who built settlements within the canyon and its many caves. The Pueblo people considered the Grand Canyon a holy site, and made pilgrimages to it. The first European known to have viewed the Grand Canyon was García López de Cárdenas from Spain, who arrived in 1540.</p><br>
<h2>Geography</h2><br>
<p>The Grand Canyon is a river valley in the Colorado Plateau that exposes uplifted Proterozoic and Paleozoic strata, and is also one of the six distinct physiographic sections of the Colorado Plateau province. It is not the deepest canyon in the world (Kali Gandaki Gorge in Nepal is much deeper). However, the Grand Canyon is known for its visually overwhelming size and its intricate and colorful landscape. Geologically, it is significant because of the thick sequence of ancient rocks that are well preserved and exposed in the walls of the canyon. These rock layers record much of the early geologic history of the North American continent.</p><br>
<p>Uplift associated with mountain formation later moved these sediments thousands of feet upward and created the Colorado Plateau. The higher elevation has also resulted in greater precipitation in the Colorado River drainage area, but not enough to change the Grand Canyon area from being semi-arid. The uplift of the Colorado Plateau is uneven, and the Kaibab Plateau that Grand Canyon bisects is over a 1,000 ft higher at the North Rim (about 1,000 ft) than at the South Rim. Almost all runoff from the North Rim (which also gets more rain and snow) flows toward the Grand Canyon, while much of the runoff on the plateau behind the South Rim flows away from the canyon (following the general tilt). The result is deeper and longer tributary washes and canyons on the north side and shorter and steeper side canyons on the south side.</p><br>
<p>Temperatures on the North Rim are generally lower than those on the South Rim because of the greater elevation (averaging 8,000 ft above sea level).</p><br>
<h2>Geology</h2><br>
<p>The Grand Canyon is part of the Colorado River basin which has developed over the past 70 million years, in part based on apatite (U-Th)/He thermochronometry showing that Grand Canyon reached a depth near to the modern depth by 20 Ma. A recent study examining caves near Grand Canyon places their origins beginning about 17 million years ago. Previous estimates had placed the age of the canyon at 5–6 million years. The study, which was published in the journal Science in 2008, used uranium-lead dating to analyze calcite deposits found on the walls of nine caves throughout the canyon. There is a substantial amount of controversy because this research suggests such a substantial departure from prior widely supported scientific consensus. In December 2012, a study published in the journal Science claimed new tests had suggested the Grand Canyon could be as old as 70 million years. However, this study has been criticized by those who support the "young canyon" age of around six million years as " attempt to push the interpretation of their new data to their limits without consideration of the whole range of other geologic data sets."</p><br>
<p>The canyon is the result of erosion which exposes one of the most complete geologic columns on the planet.</p><br>
<p>The major geologic exposures in the Grand Canyon range in age from the 2-billion-year-old Vishnu Schist at the bottom of the Inner Gorge to the 230-million-year-old Kaibab Limestone on the Rim. There is a gap of about a billion years between the 500-million-year-old stratum and the level below it, which dates to about 1.5 billion years ago. This large unconformity indicates a long period for which no deposits are present.</p><br>
<p>Many of the formations were deposited in warm shallow seas, near-shore environments (such as beaches), and swamps as the seashore repeatedly advanced and retreated over the edge of a proto-North America. Major exceptions include the Permian Coconino Sandstone, which contains abundant geological evidence of aeolian sand dune deposition. Several parts of the Supai Group also were deposited in non–marine environments.</p><br>
<p>The great depth of the Grand Canyon and especially the height of its strata (most of which formed below sea level) can be attributed to 5–10 thousand feet (5000 to 10000 ft) of uplift of the Colorado Plateau, starting about 65 million years ago (during the Laramide Orogeny). This uplift has steepened the stream gradient of the Colorado River and its tributaries, which in turn has increased their speed and thus their ability to cut through rock (see the elevation summary of the Colorado River for present conditions).</p><br>
<p>Weather conditions during the ice ages also increased the amount of water in the Colorado River drainage system. The ancestral Colorado River responded by cutting its channel faster and deeper.</p><br>
<p>The base level and course of the Colorado River (or its ancestral equivalent) changed 5.3 million years ago when the Gulf of California opened and lowered the rivers base level (its lowest point). This increased the rate of erosion and cut nearly all of the Grand Canyons current depth by 1.2 million years ago. The terraced walls of the canyon were created by differential erosion.</p><br>
<p>Between 100,000 and 3 million years ago, volcanic activity deposited ash and lava over the area which at times completely obstructed the river. These volcanic rocks are the youngest in the canyon.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<h3>Native Americans</h3><br>
<p>The Ancestral Puebloans were a Native American culture centered on the present-day Four Corners area of the United States. They were the first people known to live in the Grand Canyon area. The cultural group has often been referred to in archaeology as the Anasazi, although the term is not preferred by the modern Puebloan peoples. The word "Anasazi" is Navajo for "Ancient Ones" or "Ancient Enemy".</p><br>
<p>Archaeologists still debate when this distinct culture emerged. The current consensus, based on terminology defined by the Pecos Classification, suggests their emergence was around 1200 during the Basketmaker II Era. Beginning with the earliest explorations and excavations, researchers have believed that the are ancestors of the modern Pueblo peoples.</p><br>
<p>In addition to the Ancestral Puebloans, a number of distinct cultures have inhabited the Grand Canyon area. The Cohonina lived to the west of the Grand Canyon, between 500 and 1200.</p><br>
<p>The Sinagua were a cultural group occupying an area to the southeast of the Grand Canyon, between the Little Colorado River and the Salt River, between approximately 500 and 1425. The Sinagua may have been ancestors of several Hopi clans.</p><br>
<p>By the time of the arrival of Europeans in the 16thcentury, newer cultures had evolved. The Hualapai inhabit a 100 mi stretch along the pine-clad southern side of the Grand Canyon. The Havasupai have been living in the area near Cataract Canyon since the beginning of the 13thcentury, occupying an area the size of Delaware. The Southern Paiutes live in what is now southern Utah and northern Arizona. The Navajo, or Diné, live in a wide area stretching from the San Francisco Peaks eastwards towards the Four Corners. Archaeological and linguistic evidence suggests the Navajo descended from the Athabaskan people near Great Slave Lake, Canada, who migrated after the 11thcentury.</p><br>
<h3>European arrival and settlement</h3><br>
<h4>Spanish explorers</h4><br>
<p>In September 1540, under orders from the conquistador Francisco Vázquez de Coronado to search for the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola, Captain García López de Cárdenas, along with Hopi guides and a small group of Spanish soldiers, traveled to the south rim of the Grand Canyon between Desert View and Moran Point. Pablo de Melgrossa, Juan Galeras, and a third soldier descended some one third of the way into the canyon until they were forced to return because of lack of water. In their report, they noted that some of the rocks in the canyon were "bigger than the great tower of Seville, Giralda " It is speculated that their Hopi guides likely knew routes to the canyon floor, but may have been reluctant to lead the Spanish to the river. No Europeans visited the canyon again for more than two hundred years.</p><br>
<p>Fathers Francisco Atanasio Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante were two Spanish priests who, with a group of Spanish soldiers, explored southern Utah and traveled along the north rim of the canyon in Glen and Marble Canyons in search of a route from Santa Fe to California in 1776. They eventually found a crossing, formerly known as the "Crossing of the Fathers," that today lies under Lake Powell.</p><br>
<p>Also in 1776, Fray Francisco Garces, a Franciscan missionary, spent a week near Havasupai, unsuccessfully attempting to convert a band of Native Americans to Christianity. He described the canyon as "profound".</p><br>
<h4>American exploration</h4><br>
<p>James Ohio Pattie, along with a group of American trappers and mountain men, may have been the next European to reach the canyon, in 1826.</p><br>
<p>Jacob Hamblin, a Mormon missionary, was sent by Brigham Young in the 1850s to locate suitable river crossing sites in the canyon. Building good relations with local Hualapai and white settlers, he found the Crossing of the Fathers, and the locations what would become Lees Ferry in 1858 and Pearce Ferry (later operated by, and named for, Harrison Pearce) – only the latter two sites suitable for ferry operation. He also acted as an advisor to John Wesley Powell before his second expedition to the Grand Canyon, serving as a diplomat between Powell and the local native tribes to ensure the safety of his party.</p><br>
<p>In 1857, Edward Fitzgerald Beale was superintendent of an expedition to survey a wagon road along the 35th parallel from Fort Defiance, Arizona to the Colorado River. He led a small party of men in search of water on the Coconino Plateau near the canyon&#39;s south rim. On September 19, near present-day National Canyon, they came upon what May Humphreys Stacey described in his journal as "...a wonderful canyon four thousand feet deep. Everyone (in the party) admitted that he never before saw anything to match or equal this astonishing natural curiosity."</p><br>
<p>Also in 1857, the USA War Department asked Lieutenant Joseph Ives to lead an expedition to assess the feasibility of an up-river navigation from the Gulf of California. Also in a stern wheeler steamboat Explorer, after two months and 350 mi of difficult navigation, his party reached Black Canyon some two months after George Johnson. The Explorer struck a rock and was abandoned. Ives led his party east into the canyon — they may have been the first Europeans to travel the Diamond Creek drainage and traveled eastwards along the south rim. In his "Colorado River of the West" report to the Senate in 1861 he states that "One or two trappers profess to have seen the canyon."</p><br>
<p>According to the San Francisco Herald, in a series of articles run in 1853, Captain Joseph R. Walker in January 1851 with his nephew James T. Walker and six men, traveled up the Colorado River to a point where it joined the Virgin River and continued east into Arizona, traveling along the Grand Canyon and making short exploratory side trips along the way. Walker is reported to have said he wanted to visit the Moqui Indians, as the Hopi were then called by whites. He had met these people briefly in previous years, thought them exceptionally interesting and wanted to become better acquainted. The Herald reporter then stated, "We believe that Captain Joe Walker is the only white man in this country that has ever visited this strange people."</p><br>
<p>In 1858, John Strong Newberry became probably the first geologist to visit the Grand Canyon.</p><br>
<p>In 1869, Major John Wesley Powell led the first expedition down the canyon. Powell set out to explore the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon. Gathering nine men, four boats and food for 10 months, he set out from Green River, Wyoming on May 24. Passing through (or portaging around) a series of dangerous rapids, the group passed down the Green River to its confluence with the Colorado River, near present-day Moab, Utah and completed the journey with many hardships through the Grand Canyon on August 13, 1869. In 1871 Powell first used the term "Grand Canyon&quot previously it had been called the "Big Canyon".</p><br>
<p>In 1889, Frank M. Brown wanted to build a railroad along the Colorado River to carry coal. He, his chief engineer Robert Brewster Stanton, and 14 others started to explore the Grand Canyon in poorly designed cedar wood boats, with no life preservers. Brown drowned in an accident near Marble Canyon: Stanton made new boats and proceeded to explore the Colorado all of the way to the Gulf of California.</p><br>
<p>The Grand Canyon became an official national monument in 1908 and a national park in 1919.</p><br>
<h4>Settlers in and near the canyon</h4><br>
<p>Miners: "Captain" John Hance, William W. Bass, Louis Boucher "The Hermit", Seth Tanner, Charles Spencer, D. W. "James" Mooney</p><br>
<p>Lees Ferry: John Doyle Lee, Emma Lee French (17th of John Lee&#39;s 19 wives), J. S. Emmett, Charles Spencer</p><br>
<p>Phantom Ranch: David Rust, Mary Colter</p><br>
<p>Grand Canyon Village: Ralph H. Cameron, Emery & Ellsworth Kolb</p><br>
<h4>Federal protection: National Monument and Park</h4><br>
<p>USA President Theodore Roosevelt visited the Grand Canyon in 1903. An avid outdoorsman and staunch conservationist, Roosevelt established the Grand Canyon Game Preserve on November 28, 1906. Livestock grazing was reduced, but predators such as mountain lions, eagles, and wolves were eradicated. Roosevelt along with other members of his conservation group, the Boone and Crockett Club helped form the National Parks Association, which in turn lobbied for the Antiquities Act of 1906 which gave Roosevelt the power to create national monuments. Once the act was passed, Roosevelt immediately added adjacent national forest lands and redesignated the preserve a USA National Monument on January 11, 1908. Opponents such as land and mining claim holders blocked efforts to reclassify the monument as a USA National Park for 11 years. Grand Canyon National Park was finally established as the 17th USA National Park by an Act of Congress signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson on February 26, 1919.</p><br>
<p>The federal government administrators who manage park resources face many challenges. These include issues related to the recent reintroduction into the wild of the highly endangered California condor, air tour overflight noise levels, water rights disputes with various tribal reservations that border the park, and forest fire management. Federal officials started a flood in the Grand Canyon in hopes of restoring its ecosystem on March 5, 2008. The canyon&#39;s ecosystem was permanently changed after the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam in 1963.</p><br>
<p>Between 2003 and 2011, 2,215 mining claims had been requested that are adjacent to the canyon, including claims for uranium mines. Mining has been suspended since 2009, when USA Interior Secretary Ken Salazar withdrew 1 e6acre from the permitting process, pending assessment of the environmental impact of mining. Critics of the mines are concerned that, once mined, the uranium will leach into the water of the Colorado River and contaminate the water supply for up to 18 million people. Salazar&#39;s so-called "Northern Arizona Withdrawal" is a 20-year moratorium on new mines, but allows existing mines to continue. In 2012, the federal government stopped new mines in the area, which was upheld by the USA District Court for Arizona in 2014, but appealed by the National Mining Association, joined by the state of Arizona under Attorney General Mark Brnovich as well as Utah, Montana and Nevada. National Mining Association v. Jewell is pending before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals as of September 2015.</p><br>
<h2>South Rim buildings</h2><br>
<p>There are several historic buildings located along the South Rim with most in the vicinity of Grand Canyon Village.</p><br>
<p>Buckey ONeill Cabin was built during the 1890s by William Owen "Buckey" ONeill. He built the cabin because of a copper deposit that was nearby. He had several occupations such as miner, judge, politician, author and tour guide. This cabin is the longest continually standing structure on the South Rim. It is currently used as a guest house; booking is required well in advance.</p><br>
<p>Kolb Studio was built in 1904 by brothers Ellsworth and Emery Kolb. They were photographers who made a living by photographing visitors walking down the Bright Angel Trail. In 1911, the Kolb brothers filmed their journey down the Green and Colorado Rivers. Emery Kolb showed this movie regularly in his studio until 1976, when he died at the age of 95. Today the building serves as an art gallery and exhibit.</p><br>
<p>The El Tovar Hotel was built in 1905 and is the most luxurious lodging on the South Rim. The hotel consists of 4 stories with a rustic chalet appearance called "National Park Rustic." It was designed by Charles Whittlesley. A gift shop and restaurant are located inside the hotel.</p><br>
<p>Hopi House was built by Mary Jane Colter in 1905. It is based on structures that were built in an ancient Hopi settlement called Old Oraibi, located on the Third Mesa in eastern Arizona. It served as a residence for the Hopi Indians who sold arts and crafts to South Rim visitors.</p><br>
<p>Verkamp&#39;s Curios, which stands next to the Hopi House, was built by John Verkamp in 1905. He sold arts and crafts as well as souvenirs. Until September 2008, it was run by his descendants; in November 2008, the building reopened as a visitor center focusing on the history of the Grand Canyon Village community.</p><br>
<p>Grand Canyon Railway Depot was completed in 1910 and contains 2 levels. Gordon Chappell, Regional Historian for the Park Service, claims that this depot building is one of only three log-cabin-style train stations currently standing, out of fourteen ever built in the USA The depot is the northern terminus of the Grand Canyon Railway which begins in Williams, Arizona.</p><br>
<p>Lookout Studio, another Mary Colter design, was built in 1914. Photography, artwork, books, souvenirs, and rock and fossil specimens are sold here. A great view of Bright Angel Trail can be seen here.</p><br>
<p>Desert View Watchtower, one of Mary Colter&#39;s best-known works, was built in 1932. Situated at the far eastern end of the South Rim, 27 miles (43 km) from Grand Canyon Village, the tower stands 70 ft tall. The top of the tower is 7,522 ft above sea level, the highest point on the South Rim. It offers one of the few full views of the bottom of the canyon and the Colorado River. It was designed to mimic Anasazi watchtowers, though, with four levels, it is significantly taller than historical towers.</p><br>
<p>Bright Angel Lodge was built of logs and stone in 1935. Mary Colter designed the lodge and it was built by the Fred Harvey Company. Inside the lodge is a small museum honoring Fred Harvey (June 27, 1835 – February 9, 1901), who played a major role in popularizing the Grand Canyon. In the History Room is a stone fireplace layered in the same sequence as those in the canyon.</p><br>
<h2>Weather</h2><br>
<p>Weather in the Grand Canyon varies according to elevation. The forested rims are high enough to receive winter snowfall, but along the Colorado River in the Inner Gorge, temperatures are similar to those found in Tucson and other low elevation desert locations in Arizona. Conditions in the Grand Canyon region are generally dry, but substantial precipitation occurs twice annually, during seasonal pattern shifts in winter (when Pacific storms usually deliver widespread, moderate rain and high-elevation snow to the region from the west) and in late summer (due to the North American Monsoon, which delivers waves of moisture from the southeast, causing dramatic, localized thunderstorms fueled by the heat of the day). Average annual precipitation on the South Rim is less than 16 in, with 60 in of snow; the higher North Rim usually receives 27 in of moisture, with a typical snowfall of 144 in; and Phantom Ranch, far below the canyon&#39;s rims along the Colorado River at 2,500 feet (762 m) gets just 8 in of rain, and snow is a rarity.</p><br>
<p>Temperatures vary wildly throughout the year, with summer highs within the Inner Gorge commonly exceeding 100 °F (37.8 °C) and winter minimum temperatures sometimes falling below zero degrees Fahrenheit (−17.8 °C) along the canyons rims. Visitors are often surprised by these potentially extreme conditions, and this, along with the high altitude of the canyons rims, can lead to unpleasant side effects such as dehydration, sunburn, and hypothermia.</p><br>
<p>Weather conditions can greatly affect hiking and canyon exploration, and visitors should obtain accurate forecasts because of hazards posed by exposure to extreme temperatures, winter storms and late summer monsoons. While the park service posts weather information at gates and visitor centers, this is a rough approximation only, and should not be relied upon for trip planning. For accurate weather in the canyon, hikers should consult the National Weather Service&#39;s NOAA weather radio or the official National Weather Service website.</p><br>
<p>The National Weather Service has had a cooperative station on the South Rim since 1903. The record high temperature on the South Rim was 105 °F (41 °C) on June 26, 1974, and the record low temperature was −20 °F (−29 °C) on January 1, 1919, February 1, 1985, and December 23, 1990.</p><br>
<h3>Air quality</h3><br>
<p>The Grand Canyon area has some of the cleanest air in the United States.</p><br>
<p>Note: Air quality as represented by PM-2.5 is shown by clicking the canyons location on the map and selecting Fine Mass from dropdown box above the map. Visibility is shown by selecting Deciview&#39; from the dropdown box.</p><br>
<p>However, at times the air quality can be considerably affected by events such as forest fires and dust storms in the Southwest.</p><br>
<p>What effect there is on air quality and visibility in the canyon has been mainly from sulfates, soils, and organics. The sulfates largely result from urban emissions in southern California, borne on the prevailing westerly winds throughout much of the year, and emissions from Arizona&#39;s copper smelter region, borne on southerly or southeasterly winds during the monsoon. Airborne soils originate with windy conditions and road dust. Organic particles result from vehicle emissions, long-range transport from urban areas, and forest fires, as well as from VOCs emitted by vegetation in the surrounding forests. Nitrates, carried in from urban areas, stationary sources, and vehicle emissions; as well as black carbon from forest fires and vehicle emissions, also contribute to a lesser extent.</p><br>
<p>A number of actions have been taken to preserve and further improve air quality and visibility at the canyon.</p><br>
<p>In 1990, amendments to the Clean Air Act established the Grand Canyon Visibility Transport Commission (GCVTC) to advise the US EPA on strategies for protecting visual air quality on the Colorado Plateau. The GCVTC released its final report in 1996 and initiated the Western Regional Air Partnership (WRAP), a partnership of state, tribal and federal agencies to help coordinate implementation of the Commission&#39;s recommendations.</p><br>
<p>In 1999, the Regional Haze Rule established a goal of restoring visibility in national parks and wilderness areas (Class 1 areas), such as the Grand Canyon, to natural background levels by 2064. Subsequent revisions to the rule provide specific requirements for making reasonable progress toward that goal.</p><br>
<p>In the early 1990s, studies indicated that emissions of SO2, a sulfate precursor, from the Navajo Generating Station affected visibility in the canyon mainly in the winter, and which if controlled would improve wintertime visibility by 2 to 7%.</p><br>
<p>As a result, scrubbers were added to the plant&#39;s three units in 1997 through 1999, reducing SO2 emissions by more than 90%. The plant also installed low-NOx SOFA burners in 2009 -2011, reducing emissions of NOx, a nitrate precursor, by 40%.</p><br>
<p>Emissions from the Mohave Generating Station to the west were similarly found to affect visibility in the canyon. The plant was required to have installed SO2 scrubbers, but was instead shut down in 2005, completely eliminating its emissions.</p><br>
<p>Prescribed fires are typically conducted in the spring and fall in the forests adjacent to the canyon to reduce the potential for severe forest fires and resulting smoke conditions. Although prescribed fires also affect air quality, the controlled conditions allow the use of management techniques to minimize their impact.</p><br>
<h2>Biology and ecology</h2><br>
<h3>Plants</h3><br>
<p>There are approximately 1,737 known species of vascular plants, 167 species of fungi, 64 species of moss and 195 species of lichen found in Grand Canyon National Park. This variety is largely due to the 8,000 foot elevation change from the Colorado River up to the highest point on the North Rim. Grand Canyon boasts a dozen endemic plants (known only within the Parks boundaries) while only ten percent of the Parks flora is exotic. Sixty-three plants found here have been given special status by the USA Fish and Wildlife Service.</p><br>
<p>The Mojave Desert influences the western sections of the canyon, Sonoran Desert vegetation covers the eastern sections, and ponderosa and pinyon pine forests grow on both rims.</p><br>
<p>Natural seeps and springs percolating out of the canyon walls are home to 11% of all the plant species found in the Grand Canyon. The canyon itself can act as a connection between the east and the west by providing corridors of appropriate habitat along its length. The canyon can also be a genetic barrier to some species, like the tassel-eared squirrel.</p><br>
<p>The aspect, or direction a slope faces, also plays a major role in adding diversity to the Grand Canyon. North-facing slopes receive about one-third the normal amount of sunlight, so plants growing there are similar to plants found at higher elevations, or in more northern latitudes. The south-facing slopes receive the full amount of sunlight and are covered in vegetation typical of the Sonoran Desert.</p><br>
<h3>Animals</h3><br>
<p>Of the 90 mammal species found along the Colorado River corridor, 18 are rodents and 22 are bats.</p><br>
<h3>Life zones and communities</h3><br>
<p>The Park contains several major ecosystems. Its great biological diversity can be attributed to the presence of five of the seven life zones and three of the four desert types in North America. The five life zones represented are the Lower Sonoran, Upper Sonoran, Transition, Canadian, and Hudsonian. This is equivalent to traveling from Mexico to Canada. Differences in elevation and the resulting variations in climate are the major factors that form the various life zones and communities in and around the canyon. Grand Canyon National Park contains 129 vegetation communities, and the composition and distribution of plant species is influenced by climate, geomorphology and geology.</p><br>
<h4>Lower Sonoran</h4><br>
<p>The Lower Sonoran life zone spans from the Colorado River up to 3,500 ft. Along the Colorado River and its perennial tributaries, a riparian community exists.</p><br>
<p>The three most common amphibians in these riparian communities are the canyon tree frog, red-spotted toad, and Woodhouse&#39;s Rocky Mountain toad. Leopard frogs are very rare in the Colorado River corridor, they have undergone major declines and have not been seen in the Canyon in several years.</p><br>
<p>Only 48 bird species regularly nest along the river, while others use the river as a migration corridor or as overwintering habitat. The bald eagle is one species that uses the river corridor as winter habitat.</p><br>
<p>River otters may have disappeared from the park in the late 20th century, and muskrats are extremely rare. Beavers cut willows, cottonwoods, and shrubs for food, and can significantly affect the riparian vegetation. Other rodents, such as antelope squirrels and pocket mice, are mostly omnivorous, using many different vegetation types. Grand Canyon bats typically roost in desert uplands, but forage on the abundance of insects along the river and its tributaries. In addition to bats, coyotes, ringtails, and spotted skunks are the most numerous riparian predators and prey on invertebrates, rodents, and reptiles.</p><br>
<p>Raccoons, weasels, bobcats, gray foxes, and mountain lions are also present, but are much more rare. Mule deer and desert bighorn sheep are the ungulates that frequent the river corridor. Since the removal of 500 feral burros in the early 1980s, bighorn sheep numbers have rebounded. Mule deer are generally not permanent residents along the river, but travel down from the rim when food and water resources there become scarce.</p><br>
<p>The insect species commonly found in the river corridor and tributaries are midges, caddis flies, mayflies, stoneflies, black flies, mites, beetles, butterflies, moths, and fire ants. Numerous species of spiders and several species of scorpions including the bark scorpion and the giant desert hairy scorpion inhabit the riparian zone.</p><br>
<p>Eleven aquatic and 26 terrestrial species of mollusks have been identified in and around Grand Canyon National Park. Of the aquatic species, two are bivalves (clams) and nine are gastropods (snails). Twenty-six species of terrestrial gastropods have been identified, primarily land snails and slugs.</p><br>
<p>There are approximately 41 reptile species in Grand Canyon National Park. Ten are considered common along the river corridor and include lizards and snakes. Lizard density tends to be highest along the stretch of land between the water&#39;s edge and the beginning of the upland desert community. The two largest lizards in the canyon are gila monsters and chuckwallas. Many snake species, which are not directly dependent on surface water, may be found both within the inner gorge and the Colorado River corridor. Six rattlesnake species have been recorded in the park.</p><br>
<p>Above the river corridor a desert scrub community, composed of North American desert flora, thrives. Typical warm desert species such as creosote bush, white bursage, brittlebush, catclaw acacia, ocotillo, mariola, western honey mesquite, four-wing saltbush, big sagebrush, blackbrush and rubber rabbitbrush grow in this community. The mammalian fauna in the woodland scrub community consists of 50 species, mostly rodents and bats. Three of the five Park woodrat species live in the desert scrub community.</p><br>
<p>Except for the western (desert) banded gecko, which seems to be distributed only near water along the Colorado River, all of the reptiles found near the river also appear in the uplands, but in lower densities. The desert gopher tortoise, a threatened species, inhabits the desert scrublands in the western end of the park.</p><br>
<p>Some of the common insects found at elevations above 2,000 ft are orange paper wasps, honey bees, black flies, tarantula hawks, stink bugs, beetles, black ants, and monarch and swallowtail butterflies. Solifugids, wood spiders, garden spiders, black widow spiders and tarantulas can be found in the desert scrub and higher elevations.</p><br>
<h4>Upper Sonoran and Transition</h4><br>
<p>The Upper Sonoran Life Zone includes most of the inner canyon and South Rim at elevations from 3500 to 7000 ft. This zone is generally dominated by blackbrush, sagebrush, and pinyon-juniper woodlands. Elevations of 3500 to 4000 ft are in the Mojave Desert Scrub community of the Upper Sonoran. This community is dominated by the four-winged saltbush and creosote bush; other important plants include Utah agave, narrowleaf mesquite, ratany, catclaw acacia, and various cacti species.</p><br>
<p>Approximately 30 bird species breed primarily in the desert uplands and cliffs of the inner canyon. Virtually all bird species present breed in other suitable habitats throughout the Sonoran and Mohave deserts. The abundance of bats, swifts, and riparian birds provides ample food for peregrines, and suitable eyrie sites are plentiful along the steep canyon walls. Also, several critically endangered California condors that were re-introduced to the Colorado Plateau on the Arizona Strip, have made the eastern part of the Park their home.</p><br>
<p>The conifer forests provide habitat for 52 mammal species. Porcupines, shrews, red squirrels, tassel eared Kaibab and Aberts squirrels, black bear, mule deer, and elk are found at the parks higher elevations on the Kaibab Plateau.</p><br>
<p>Above the desert scrub and up to 6,200 ft is a pinyon pine forest and one seed juniper woodland. Within this woodland one can find big sagebrush, snakeweed, Mormon tea, Utah agave, banana and narrowleaf Yucca, winterfat, Indian ricegrass, dropseed, and needlegrass. There are a variety of snakes and lizards here, but one species of reptile, the mountain short-horned lizard, is a particularly abundant inhabitant of the piñon-juniper and ponderosa pine forests.</p><br>
<p>Ponderosa pine forests grow at elevations between 6,500 and, on both North and South rims in the Transition life zone. The South Rim includes species such as gray fox, mule deer, bighorn sheep, rock squirrels, pinyon pine and Utah juniper. Additional species such as Gambel oak, New Mexico locust, mountain mahogany, elderberry, creeping mahonia, and fescue have been identified in these forests. The Utah tiger salamander and the Great Basin spadefoot toad are two amphibians that are common in the rim forests. Of the approximately 90 bird species that breed in the coniferous forests, 51 are summer residents and at least 15 of these are known to be neotropical migrants.</p><br>
<h4>Canadian and Hudsonian</h4><br>
<p>Elevations of 8,200 to 9,000 ft are in the Canadian Life Zone, which includes the North Rim and the Kaibab Plateau. Spruce-fir forests characterized by Engelmann spruce, blue spruce, Douglas fir, white fir, aspen, and mountain ash, along with several species of perennial grasses, groundsels, yarrow, cinquefoil, lupines, sedges, and asters, grow in this sub-alpine climate. Mountain lions, Kaibab squirrels, and northern goshawks are found here.</p><br>
<p>Montane meadows and subalpine grassland communities of the Hudsonian life zone are rare and located only on the North Rim. Both are typified by many grass species. Some of these grasses include blue and black grama, big galleta, Indian ricegrass and three-awns. The wettest areas support sedges and forbs.</p><br>
<h2>Grand Canyon tourism</h2><br>
<p>Grand Canyon National Park is one of the world&#39;s premier natural attractions, attracting about five million visitors per year. Overall, 83% were from the United States: California (12.2%), Arizona (8.9%), Texas (4.8%), Florida (3.4%) and New York (3.2%) represented the top domestic visitors. Seventeen percent of visitors were from outside the United States; the most prominently represented nations were the United Kingdom (3.8%), Canada (3.5%), Japan (2.1%), Germany (1.9%) and The Netherlands (1.2%).</p><br>
<p>The South Rim is open all year round weather permitting. The North Rim is generally open mid-May to mid-October.</p><br>
<h3>Activities</h3><br>
<p>Aside from casual sightseeing from the South Rim (averaging 7,000 feet above sea level), skydiving, rafting, hiking, running, and helicopter tours are popular. The Grand Canyon Ultra Marathon is a 78 mi race over 24 hours. The floor of the valley is accessible by foot, muleback, or by boat or raft from upriver. Hiking down to the river and back up to the rim in one day is discouraged by park officials because of the distance, steep and rocky trails, change in elevation, and danger of heat exhaustion from the much higher temperatures at the bottom. Rescues are required annually of unsuccessful rim-to-river-to-rim travelers. Nevertheless, hundreds of fit and experienced hikers complete the trip every year.</p><br>
<p>Camping on the North and South rims is generally restricted to established campgrounds and reservations are highly recommended, especially at the busier South Rim. There is at large camping available along many parts of the North Rim managed by Kaibab National Forest. North Rim campsites are only open seasonally due to road closures from weather and winter snowpack. All overnight camping below the rim requires a backcountry permit from the Backcountry Office (BCO). Each year Grand Canyon National Park receives approximately 30,000 requests for backcountry permits. The park issues 13,000 permits, and close to 40,000 people camp overnight. The earliest a permit application is accepted is the first of the month, four months before the proposed start month.</p><br>
<p>Tourists wishing for a more vertical perspective can go skydiving, board helicopters and small airplanes in Boulder, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Grand Canyon National Park Airport (seven miles from the South Rim) for canyon flyovers. Scenic flights are no longer allowed to fly within 1500 feet of the rim within the national park because of a late 1990s crash. The last aerial video footage from below the rim was filmed in 1984. However, some helicopter flights land on the Havasupai and Hualapai Indian Reservations within Grand Canyon (outside of the park boundaries).</p><br>
<p>In 2007, the Hualapai Tribe opened the glass-bottomed Grand Canyon Skywalk on their property, Grand Canyon West. The Skywalk is about 250 mi by road from Grand Canyon Village at the South Rim.</p><br>
<p>The skywalk has attracted "thousands of visitors a year, most from Las Vegas".</p><br>
<p>In 2016, skydiving at the Grand Canyon become possible with the first Grand Canyon Skydiving operation opening up at the Grand Canyon National Park Airport, on the South Rim.</p><br>
<p>In 2014, a developer announced plans to build a multimedia complex on the canyon&#39;s rim called the Grand Canyon Escalade. On 420 acres there would be shops, an IMAX theater, hotels and an RV park. A gondola would enable easy visits to the canyon floor where a "riverwalk" of "connected walkways, an eatery, a tramway station, a seating area and a wastewater package plant" would be situated. Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly has indicated agreement; the tribe would have to invest $65 million for road, water and communication facilities for the $1 billion complex. One of the developers is Navajo and has cited an 8 to 18 percent share of the gross revenue for the tribe as an incentive.</p><br>
<h3>Viewing the canyon</h3><br>
<p>Lipan Point is a promontory located on the South Rim. This point is located to the east of the Grand Canyon Village along the Desert View Drive. There is a parking lot for visitors who care to drive along with the canyon&#39;s bus service that routinely stops at the point. The trailhead to the Tanner Trail is located just before the parking lot. The view from Lipan Point shows a wide array of rock strata and the Unkar Creek area in the inner canyon.</p><br>
<h2>Grand Canyon fatalities</h2><br>
<p>About 770 deaths have occurred between the mid 1800s and 2015. Of the fatalities that occurred from 1869 to 2001, some were as follows: 53 resulted from falls; 65 were attributable to environmental causes, including heat stroke, cardiac arrest, dehydration, and hypothermia; 7 were caught in flash floods; 79 were drowned in the Colorado River; 242 perished in airplane and helicopter crashes (128 of them in the 1956 disaster mentioned below); 25 died in freak errors and accidents, including lightning strikes and rock falls; and 23 were the victims of homicides.</p><br>
<h3>1956 air disaster</h3><br>
<p>In 1956, the Grand Canyon was the site of the deadliest commercial aviation disaster in history at the time.</p><br>
<p>On the morning of June 30, 1956, a TWA Lockheed Super Constellation and a United Airlines Douglas DC-7 departed Los Angeles International Airport within three minutes of one another on eastbound transcontinental flights. Approximately 90 minutes later, the two propeller-driven airliners collided above the canyon while both were flying in unmonitored airspace.</p><br>
<p>The wreckage of both planes fell into the eastern portion of the canyon, on Temple and Chuar Buttes, near the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers. The disaster killed all 128 passengers and crew members aboard both planes.</p><br>
<p>This accident led to the institution of high-altitude airways and direct radar observation of aircraft (known as positive control) by en route ground controllers.</p><br>
<p>Tindari , anciently Tyndaris or Tyndarion  is a small town, former bishopric, frazione  in the comune of Patti and Latin Catholic titular see, in the Metropolitan City of Messina in northeastern Sicily, between Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto and Cefalù.</p><br>
<p>Tindari has a famous sanctuary and is also famous for the poem "Vento a Tindari", written by Salvatore Quasimodo.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Tyndaris was situated on a bold and lofty hill standing out as a promontory into the spacious bay of the Tyrrhenian Sea bounded by the Punta di Milazzo on the east, and the Capo Calavà on the west, and according to the Itineraries was 36 miles from Messana (modern Messina). It was a Greek city, and one of the latest of all the cities in Sicily that could claim a purely Greek origin, having been founded by the elder Dionysius in 396 or 395 BC. The original settlers were the remains of the Messenian exiles, who had been driven from Naupactus, Zacynthus, and the Peloponnese by the Spartans after the close of the Peloponnesian War. These had at first been established by Dionysius at Messana, when he repeopled that city; but the Spartans having taken umbrage at this, he transferred them to the site of Tyndaris, which had previously been included in the territory of Abacaenum. The colonists themselves gave to their new city the name of Tyndaris, from their native divinities, the "Tyndaridae" or Dioscuri, and readily admitting fresh citizens from other quarters, soon raised their whole population to the number of 5000 citizens. The new city thus rose at once to be a place of considerable importance.</p><br>
<p>It is next mentioned in 344 BC, when it was one of the first cities that declared in favor of Timoleon after his landing in Sicily. At a later period we find it mentioned as espousing the cause of Hieron, and supporting him during his war against the Mamertines, 269 BC. On that occasion he rested his position upon Tyndaris on the left, and on Tauromenium (modern Taormina) on the right. Indeed, the strong position of Tyndaris made it an important strategic post on the Tyrrhenian sea, as Tauromenium was on the Sicilian sea, and hence we find it frequently mentioned in accounts of subsequent wars. In the First Punic War it was at first dependent upon Carthage; and though the citizens, alarmed at the progress of the Roman armies, were at one time on the point of turning to Rome, they were restrained by the Carthaginians, who carried off all the chief citizens as hostages. In 257 BC, the Battle of Tyndaris took place off the coast of Tyndaris, between the city and the Liparaean islands, in which a Roman fleet under Gaius Atilius Regulus obtained some advantage over the Carthaginian fleet, but without any decisive result. The Roman fleet is described on that occasion as touching at the promontory of Tyndaris, but the city had not yet fallen into their hands, and it was not until after the fall of Panormus (modern Palermo) in 254 BC that Tyndaris expelled the Carthaginian garrison and joined the Roman alliance.</p><br>
<p>We hear little of Tyndaris under Roman government, but it appears to have been a flourishing and considerable city. Cicero calls it nobilissima civitas and we learn from him that the inhabitants had displayed their zeal and fidelity towards the Romans upon many occasions. Among others they supplied naval forces for the armament of Scipio Africanus the Younger, a service for which he repaid them by restoring to them a statue of Mercury which had been carried off by the Carthaginians and which continued as an object of great veneration in the city, until it was stolen by the rapacious Verres. Tyndaris was also one of seventeen cities selected by the Roman senate, apparently as an honorary distinction, to contribute to certain offerings to the temple of Venus at Eryx. In other respects it had no peculiar privileges, and was in the condition of an ordinary municipal town, with its own magistrates, local senate, etc., but was certainly in the time of Cicero one of the most considerable places in the island. It, however, suffered severely from the exactions of Verres and the inhabitants, to revenge themselves on their oppressor, publicly demolished his statue as soon as he had quit the island.</p><br>
<p>Tyndaris again bore a considerable part in the war between Sextus Pompeius and Octavian (36 BC). It was one of the points occupied and fortified by the former, when preparing for the defence of the Sicilian straits, but was taken by Agrippa after his naval victory at Mylae, and became one of his chief posts, from which he carried on offensive warfare against Pompey. Subsequently to this we hear nothing more of Tyndaris in history; but there is no doubt of its having continued to subsist throughout the period of the Roman Empire. Strabo speaks of it as one of the places on the north coast of Sicily which, in his time, still deserved the name of cities; and Pliny gives it the title of a Colonia. It is probable that it received a colony under Augustus, as we find it bearing in an inscription the titles of Colonia Augusta Tyndaritanorum. Pliny indeed mentions a great calamity which the city had sustained, when (he tells us) half of it was swallowed up by the sea, probably from an earthquake having caused the fall of part of the hill on which it stands, but we have no clue to the date of this event; The Itineraries attest the existence of Tyndaris, apparently still as a considerable place, in the fourth century.</p><br>
<h2>Ecclesiastical History</h2><br>
<p>Established in 498 as Diocese of Tindari (Italian) / Tyndaris (Latin) / Tyndaritan(us) (Latin adjective). In the early 7th century Sicily had no Metropolitan see, so although politically part of the Byzantine empire, all its bishoprics were in the sway of the papal (Western) Patriarchate of Rome as (exempt) suffragan dioceses of Rome. During the conflict on Iconoclasm, Byzantine emperor Leo III the Isaurian transferred all Sicily to his capital&#39;s Patriarchate of Constantinople (circa 732); in the 8th or 9th century, the newly created Metropolitan Archdiocese of Syracuse was given all Sicilian bishoprics as suffragans, including Tindari, where no bishops were recorded since 649.</p><br>
<p>Although the Notitia Episcopatuum under emperor Leo VI (early 10th century) still lists Tindari among the suffragans of Syracuse, that probably was just canonical theory, as in 836 Tindari was conquered for Islam by Arabs and nothing is heard from the diocese.</p><br>
<p>Formally suppressed in 880 without direct successor, but lost (some) territory in 1082 to establish the short-lived Diocese of Troina (suppressed in 1098 to establish the Diocese of Messina). When Sicilia was again conquered and Christianize by the Normans in the 11th century, the bishopric wasn&#39;t restored, its territory rather assigned to the new Diocese of Patti.</p><br>
<h3>Titular see</h3><br>
<p>The diocese was nominally restored in 1968 as Latin Titular bishopric of Tindari (Curiate Italian) / Tyndaris (Latin) / Tyndaritan(us) (Latin adjective)</p><br>
<h2>Remains</h2><br>
<p>By the 19th century, the site of Tyndaris was wholly deserted, but the name was retained by a church, which crowned the most elevated point of the hill on which the city formerly stood, and was still called the Madonna di Tindaro. It is c. 180 m above the sea-level, and forms a conspicuous landmark to sailors. Considerable ruins of the ancient city, are also visible. It occupied the whole plateau or summit of the hill, and the remains of the ancient walls may be traced, at intervals, all round the brow of the cliffs, except in one part, facing the sea, where the cliff is now quite precipitous. It is not improbable that it is here that a part of the cliff fell in, in the manner recorded by Pliny Two gates of the city are also still distinctly to be traced.</p><br>
<p>The chief monuments, of which the ruins are still extant within the circuit of the walls, are:</p><br>
<p>the theatre, of which the remains are in imperfect condition, but sufficient to show that it was not of large size, and apparently of Roman construction, or at least, like that of Tauromenium, rebuilt in Roman times upon the Greek foundations</p><br>
<p>a large edifice with two handsome stone arches, commonly called a Gymnasium, but the real purpose of which is very difficult to determine</p><br>
<p>several other edifices of Roman times, but of wholly uncertain character, a mosaic pavement and some Roman tombs.</p><br>
<p>Numerous inscriptions, fragments of sculpture, and architectural decorations, as well as coins, vases etc. have also been discovered on the site.</p><br>
<h2>Legend</h2><br>
<p>Local legend tells that the lagoon was created after a pilgrim who came to see the Madonna refused to pray to the Madonna because she was black. The woman accidentally dropped her baby into the ocean and the Madonna made the land rise to save the baby. The sands of Marinello have taken shape of the profile of the Madonna.</p><br>
<h2>Cultural references</h2><br>
<p>An episode of Inspector Montalbano was called "Excursion to Tindari". It ends with four of the main characters overlooking the bay.</p><br>
<p>The Atlas Mountains  are a mountain range in the Maghreb. It stretches around 2,500 km through Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. The ranges highest peak is Toubkal, with an elevation of 4,167 m in southwestern Morocco. It separates the Mediterranean and Atlantic coastlines from the Sahara Desert. The Atlas mountains are primarily inhabited by Berber populations. The terms for mountain&#39; in some Berber languages are adrar and adras, which are believed to be cognates of the toponym Atlas.</p><br>
<p>The mountains are home to a number of plant and animal species unique in Africa, often more like those of Europe; many of them are endangered and some have already gone extinct. Examples include the Barbary macaque, the Atlas bear (Africas only native bear; now extinct), the Barbary leopard, the Barbary stag, Barbary sheep, the Barbary lion (extinct in the wild), the Atlas Mountain badger, the North African elephant (extinct), the North African aurochs (extinct), Cuviers gazelle, the Northern bald ibis, dippers, the Atlas mountain viper, the Atlas cedar, the European black pine, and the Algerian oak.</p><br>
<h2>Geology</h2><br>
<p>The basement rock of most of Africa was formed during the Precambrian period, and is much older than the Atlas Mountains lying on the continent. The Atlas was formed during three subsequent phases of Earth&#39;s geology.</p><br>
<p>The first tectonic deformation phase involves only the Anti-Atlas, which was formed in the Paleozoic Era (~300 million years ago) as the result of continental collisions. North America, Europe and Africa were connected millions of years ago.</p><br>
<p>The Anti-Atlas Mountains are believed to have originally been formed as part of Alleghenian orogeny. These mountains were formed when Africa and America collided, and were once a chain rivaling today&#39;s Himalayas. Today, the remains of this chain can be seen in the Fall Line region in the Eastern United States. Some remnants can also be found in the later formed Appalachians in North America.</p><br>
<p>A second phase took place during the Mesozoic Era (before ~66 My). It consisted of a widespread extension of the Earth&#39;s crust that rifted and separated the continents mentioned above. This extension was responsible for the formation of many thick intracontinental sedimentary basins including the present Atlas. Most of the rocks forming the surface of the present High Atlas were deposited under the ocean at that time.</p><br>
<p>Finally, in the Paleogene and Neogene Periods (~66 million to ~1.8 million years ago), the mountain chains that today constitute the Atlas were uplifted, as the land masses of Europe and Africa collided at the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula. Such convergent tectonic boundaries occur where two plates slide towards each other forming a subduction zone (if one plate moves underneath the other), and/or a continental collision (when the two plates contain continental crust). In the case of the Africa-Europe collision, it is clear that tectonic convergence is partially responsible for the formation of the High Atlas, as well as for the closure of the Strait of Gibraltar and the formation of the Alps and the Pyrenees. However, there is a lack of evidence for the nature of the subduction in the Atlas region, or for the thickening of the Earths crust generally associated with continental collisions. In fact, one of the most striking features of the Atlas to geologists is the relative small amount of crustal thickening and tectonic shortening despite the important altitude of the mountain range. Recent studies suggest that deep processes rooted in the Earths mantle may have contributed to the uplift of the High and Middle Atlas.</p><br>
<h3>Natural resources</h3><br>
<p>The Atlas are rich in natural resources. There are deposits of iron ore, lead ore, copper, silver, mercury, rock salt, phosphate, marble, anthracite coal and natural gas among other resources.</p><br>
<h2>Subranges of the Atlas Mountains</h2><br>
<p>The range can be divided into four general regions:</p><br>
<p>Middle Atlas, High Atlas and Anti-Atlas (Morocco).</p><br>
<p>Tell Atlas (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia).</p><br>
<p>Aurès Mountains (Algeria, Tunisia).</p><br>
<p>Saharan Atlas (Algeria).</p><br>
<h3>Middle Atlas range</h3><br>
<p>The Middle Atlas is a portion of the Atlas mountain range lying completely in Morocco. The Middle Atlas is the westernmost of three Atlas Mountains chains that define a large, plateaued basin extending eastward. South of the Middle Atlas and separated by the Moulouya and Oum Er-Rbia rivers, the High Atlas stretches for 700 km with a succession of peaks among which ten reach above 4,000 m. North of the Middle Atlas and separated by the Sebou River, the Rif mountains are an extension of the Baetic Cordillera (Baetic mountains, which include the Sierra Nevada) in the south of Spain.</p><br>
<h3>High Atlas</h3><br>
<p>The High Atlas in central Morocco rises in the west at the Atlantic coast and stretches in an eastern direction to the Moroccan-Algerian border. At the Atlantic and to the southwest, the range drops abruptly and makes an impressive transition to the coast and the Anti-Atlas range. To the north, in the direction of Marrakesh, the range descends less abruptly.</p><br>
<p>On the heights of Ouarzazate the massif is cut through by the Draa Valley which opens southward. It is mainly inhabited by Berber people, who live in small villages and cultivate the high plains of the Ourika Valley.</p><br>
<p>Near Barrage Cavagnac, there is a hydroelectric dam that has created the artificial lake Lalla Takerkoust. The lake serves also as a source for fish for the local fishermen.</p><br>
<p>The largest villages and towns of the area are Ouarzazate, Tahanaoute, Amizmiz, Imlil, Tin Mal and Ijoukak.</p><br>
<h3>Anti-Atlas ranges</h3><br>
<p>The Anti-Atlas extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the southwest of Morocco toward the northeast to the heights of Ouarzazate and further east to the city of Tafilalt (altogether a distance of approximately 500 km). In the south it borders the Sahara. The easternmost point of the anti-Atlas is the Jbel Saghro range and its northern boundary is flanked by sections of the High Atlas range. It includes the Djebel Siroua, a massif of volcanic origin with the highest summit of the range at 3,304 m. The Jebel Bani is a much lower range running along the southern side of the Anti Atlas.</p><br>
<h3>Saharan Atlas range</h3><br>
<p>The Saharan Atlas of Algeria is the eastern portion of the Atlas mountain range. Though not as high as the Grand Atlas, they are far more imposing than the Tell Atlas range that runs to the north of them and closer to the coast. The highest peak in the range is the 2,236 m high Djebel Aissa. They mark the northern edge of the Sahara Desert. The mountains see some rainfall and are better suited to agriculture than the plateau region to the north. Today most of the population of the region are Berbers (Imazighen).</p><br>
<h3>Tell Atlas range</h3><br>
<p>The Tell Atlas is a mountain chain over 1,500 km in length, belonging to the Atlas mountain ranges and stretching from Morocco, through Algeria to Tunisia. It parallels the Mediterranean coast. Together with the Saharan Atlas to the south it forms the northernmost of two more or less parallel ranges which gradually approach one another towards the east, merging in Eastern Algeria. At the western ends at the Middle Atlas range in Morocco. The area immediately to the south of this range is the high plateau of the Hautes Plaines, with lakes in the wet season and salt flats in the dry.</p><br>
<h3>Aurès mountain range</h3><br>
<p>The Aurès Mountains of Algeria and Tunisia are the farthest eastern portion of the Atlas mountain range. The Aurès natural region is named after the range.</p><br>
<p>Fort Montgomery is a fortification built in 1776 by the Continental Army on West Bank of the Hudson River during the American Revolution. It is part of the Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area. Fort Montgomery was one of the first major investments by the Americans in strategic construction projects. Declared a National Historic Landmark, it is owned and operated by the state of New York as the Fort Montgomery State Historic Site.</p><br>
<h2>Background</h2><br>
<p>The strategic importance of the ability to control navigation along the Hudson River was obvious to both the Americans and the British from the outbreak of open hostilities. The Hudson was the major means for transportation of supplies and troops throughout a large portion of the northeast. The fort was constructed at a site noted as early as the seventeenth century for its strategic advantage in controlling navigation along the river.</p><br>
<p>A month after the first open armed conflict in Lexington, the Continental Congress resolved on May 25, 1775 to build fortifications in the Hudson highlands for the purpose of protecting and maintaining control of the Hudson River. It noted that "…a post be also taken in the Highlands on each side of Hudson’s River and batteries erected in such a manner as will most effectually prevent any vessels passing that may be sent to harass the inhabitants on the borders of said river…"</p><br>
<h2>Fort Constitution</h2><br>
<p>James Clinton and Christopher Tappan, both lifetime residents of the area, were sent to scout appropriate locations. The initial site chosen was further to the north, on Martlaers Island, across from West Point. Plans for the fort called for four bastions. Construction of the fortifications began in the summer of 1775. By November it had 70 cannons. However, difficulties in construction and management of the original plan of fortifications, together with escalating costs, led to abandonment of that project. The site on the north side of Popolopen Creek across from Anthonys Nose was proposed, and in January 1776, the materials and resources from Fort Constitution were redirected to the construction at the new site. Construction began on the new Fort Montgomery in March 1776.</p><br>
<h2>Fort Montgomery in the American Revolution</h2><br>
<p>Fort Montgomery was located at the confluence of Popolopen Creek with the Hudson River near Bear Mountain in Orange County, New York. The fortifications included a river battery of six 32-pound cannons, a cable chain supported by a boom across the Hudson River (see Hudson River Chain), and landward redoubts connected by ramparts, all situated on a cliff promontory rising 100 feet (30 m) above the river. The fort was commanded by General George Clinton, also the newly appointed governor of the state. Fort Montgomery and its companion fortification Fort Clinton, on the southern bank of the Popolopen, held a combined garrison of roughly 700 American soldiers. These men were from the 5th NY Regiment, Lamb&#39;s Artillery, Orange County Militia, and Ulster County Militia.</p><br>
<p>The strategic importance of the opposite bank of Popolopen Creek was quickly realized, as it was an elevated cliff terrace with a full view of the Fort Montgomery site and could not be left undefended. The Army built the smaller fortification named Fort Clinton at that site. These two forts and their associated cannon batteries effectively controlled this stretch of the Hudson River. The Army also conceived a major engineering project to effectively blockade any naval traffic headed north on the river. In 1776 a chain and boom were built across the river to provide a physical barrier to ships, in addition to the combined firepower of the fortifications, which could be massed against ships.</p><br>
<p>In July 1776, the New York convention appointed a committee, including John Jay, Robert Livingston, George Clinton and Robert Yates, to "devise and carry into execution" measures for "obstructing the channel of Hudson&#39;s river, or annoying the navigation of the said River." Worried about lack of arms, the committee worked to buy more cannons.</p><br>
<h2>Battle of Fort Montgomery</h2><br>
<p>On October 6, 1777, a combined force of roughly 2,100 Loyalists, Hessians, and British regulars led by Lieutenant General Sir Henry Clinton attacked forts Montgomery and Clinton from the landward side (where the defenses were only partially completed). They had support from cannon fire from British ships on the Hudson River that had passed through the chevaux de frise on the lower river. The land columns attacking from west of the fort consisted of the New York Volunteers, the Loyal American Regiment, Emmerich&#39;s Chasseurs, the 57th and the 52nd Regiments of Foot. By the end of the day, both forts had fallen to the British, who burned the forts and tore down the stonework buildings.</p><br>
<p>The battle was strategically barren for the British, however. Their campaign against the forts caused delays in reinforcing General John Burgoyne at Saratoga. Americans gained the upper hand at the Battle of Bemis Heights and forced the surrender of Burgoyne ten days later at the Battle of Saratoga, when the reinforcements were still far to the south.</p><br>
<h2>Historic Site</h2><br>
<p>The site was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1972. A system of trails and interpretive signs guides visitors through the ruins of the fort.</p><br>
<p>Designed by the architect Salvatore Cuciti, the 5,700 ft&sup2; Visitor Center opened in October 2006. The timber frame building is oriented to provide visitors with a "gun sight" view down the Hudson. Operated as a state museum, it contains artifacts from the site, mannequins representing military units and a detailed model of the fort.</p><br>
<p>Pohnpei "upon  a stone altar "  is an island of the Senyavin Islands which are part of the larger Caroline Islands group. It belongs to Pohnpei State, one of the four states in the Federated States of Micronesia . Major population centers on Pohnpei include Palikir, the FSM&#39;s capital, and Kolonia, the capital of Pohnpei State. Pohnpei Island is the largest , with a highest point , most populous , and most developed single island in the FSM. The islanders of Pohnpei have a reputation as being the most welcoming of outsiders among residents of the island group.</p><br>
<p>Pohnpei also contains a wealth of biodiversity. It is also one of the wettest places on Earth with annual recorded rainfall exceeding 300 in each year in certain mountainous locations. It is home to the ka tree (Terminalia carolinensis) found only in Pohnpei and Kosrae.</p><br>
<h2>Geography</h2><br>
<p>The highest point of the island is Mount Nanlaud at 772 or 782 metres. Pohnpei is home to several dozen bird species including four endemic species, the Pohnpei lorikeet, the Pohnpei fantail, the Pohnpei flycatcher and the long-billed white-eye. A fifth endemic, the Pohnpei starling, is thought to have recently gone extinct.</p><br>
<p>The only land reptiles are a few species of lizard. Originally, only three mammals existed: rats, bats and dogs. Pigs were introduced, some are now feral, as are the deer brought during German times. The lagoons are rich in fish, mollusks, turtles and other marine fauna.</p><br>
<h3>Climate</h3><br>
<p>Pohnpei belongs to the Tropical rainforest climate zone (Köppen: Af). It is one of the wettest places on earth with annual recorded rainfall exceeding 300 in each year in certain mountainous locations.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>The natives of Pohnpei, especially the older generations, often refer to events in their past as having occurred, e.g., in "German times" or "before the Spaniards," which identifies the historical periods as follows:</p><br>
<h3>Pre-colonial history</h3><br>
<p>The earliest settlers were probably Lapita culture people from the Southeast Solomon Islands or the Vanuatu archipelago. Pre-colonial history is divided into three eras: Mwehin Kawa or Mwehin Aramas (Period of Building, or Period of Peopling, before c. 1100); Mwehin Sau Deleur (Period of the Lord of Deleur, c. 1100 to c. 1628); and Mwehin Nahnmwarki (Period of the Nahnmwarki, c. 1628 to c. 1885). Pohnpeian legend recounts that the Saudeleur rulers, the first to bring government to Pohnpei, were of foreign origin. The Saudeleur centralized form of absolute rule is characterized in Pohnpeian legend as becoming increasingly oppressive over several generations. Arbitrary and onerous demands, as well as a reputation for offending Pohnpeian deities, sowed resentment among Pohnpeians. The Saudeleur Dynasty ended with the invasion of Isokelekel, another semi-mythical foreigner, who replaced the Saudeleur rule with the more decentralized nahnmwarki system in existence today.</p><br>
<p>Pohnpeian historic society was highly structured into five tribes, various clans and sub-clans; each tribe headed by two principal chiefs. The tribes were organized on a feudal basis. In theory, "all land belonged to the chiefs, who received regular tribute and whose rule was absolute." Punishments administered by chiefs included death and banishment. Tribal wars included looting, destruction of houses and canoes and killing of prisoners. Pre-Spanish population estimates are deemed unreliable.</p><br>
<h3>Earliest European contacts</h3><br>
<p>Pohnpei&#39;s first European visitor was Álvaro de Saavedra on 14 September 1529 shortly before his death, when trying to find the way back to New Spain. He charted it as San Bartolomé and called this one and the surrounding islands as Los Pintados (literally, "the painted ones" in Spanish) because the natives were frequently tattooed. It was later visited by the Portuguese navigator Pedro Fernandes de Queirós, commanding the Spanish ship San Jeronimo. on 23 December 1595; his description is brief, he made no attempt to land. Another visitor, for whom good documentation exists, was the Australian John Henry Rowe, his barque John Bull did not arrive until 10 September 1825, he did not land either as his vessel was chased off by native canoes. The first lengthy description of the island and its inhabitants is presented by the Russian explorer Fyodor Litke, whose ship Senyavin gave the island group of Pohnpei, Ant and Pakin its name. From 14 to 19 January 1828, his boats attempted to land but could not due to the hostility shown by the islanders, but natives then came aboard his ship, "some trading occurred, a short vocabulary was compiled, and a map made." F.H. von Kittlitz, a member of the Litke expedition made a further descriptive account, including the offshore ruins of Nan Madol, and the two reports together provided the first real knowledge of Pohnpei. It is not clear who the next visitors were; however, when Capt. J.H. Eagleston of the barque Peru sighted the island on 3 January 1832 it was already on his charts as "Ascension Island;" Riesenberg writes that it is uncertain who first called it Ascension Island, but the name became established until the Spanish period.</p><br>
<h3>Miscreants and missionaries</h3><br>
<p>From this time onward whaling and trading vessels came in increasing numbers. Very soon a "large colony of beachcombers, escaped convicts, and ship&#39;s deserters became established ashore," identified as "chiefly bad characters," according to the log of the Swedish frigate Eugenie. In his company were "several Mangarevans and Tahitians," some of whom remained on Pohnpei and left descendants. Ten years later Maigret returned to the Hawaiian kingdom as Bishop of Honolulu. A group of Protestant missionaries from New England established themselves permanently on Pohnpei in 1852. Their letters and journals contain a wealth of information about the island and are preserved at Harvard University.</p><br>
<p>A drastic population decline occurred after 1854, due to a smallpox epidemic.</p><br>
<p>During the American Civil War, to counteract the United States blockade of their ports, Confederate States Navy ships hunted Yankee merchant shipping. On April 1, 1865, the CSS Shenandoah surprised four United States whalers at Ascension Island (Pohnpei) and destroyed them all. The local king, Nananierikie, was delighted to receive much of the spoils from this action.</p><br>
<h3>Spanish rule</h3><br>
<p>By 1886 the Spaniards claimed the Caroline Islands which were part of the Manila-based Spanish East Indies and began to exert political authority. They founded the city Santiago de la Ascensión in what today is Kolonia (from Spanish colonia or colony). The Spanish built several government buildings, a fort, a church and a school. Spanish Capuchin friars were also sent from Manila to Pohnpei to preach the Catholic faith. After the 1898 Spanish–American War, the German Empire purchased the Caroline island group from Spain in 1899 together with the Marianas (except Guam) and 4 years later the Marshall Islands for 17 million goldmark. "By Spanish times had become considerably bloodier," with a report of one battle alone listing 300 Spanish casualties.</p><br>
<h3>German rule and land reform</h3><br>
<p>During the German administration a fundamental change in land ownership was implemented on Pohnpei and throughout the Carolines. Beginning in 1907 the feudal system, where all land is held in fief, was gradually replaced with the issuance of individual deeds to land. The chief&#39;s economic advantages were thus reduced, and only force of tradition granted a first harvest tribute to chiefs. With land holding, taxes came due and new owners, in lieu of payment, were obliged to work 15 days per year on public projects, such as wharf construction, road building, etc. One such work for taxes engagement sparked the Sokehs Rebellion. It began as an insubordination event during road construction on Sokehs Island, then escalated into the murder of 9 persons, the subsequent apprehension and trial of 36 Sokehs rebels, the execution of 15 insurgents, and banishment for others to Babelthuap in the German Palau Islands.</p><br>
<p>The German census of 1911–12 shows 3,190 Pohnpeians, 585 Central Carolinians and 279 Melanesians. Many of the outer islands were resettled (mainly on Sokehs Island) in consequence of destructive typhoons in their home islands. A special census conducted in late 1947 shows a total population of 5,628, of which 4,451 were Pohnpeians, and 1,177 were natives of other Pacific islands. By 1963 the population had grown to nearly 10,000.</p><br>
<h3>Japanese rule</h3><br>
<p>With the Treaty of Versailles, Japan as mandatory power assumed control of all German colonial possessions north of the equator, having occupied Pohnpei along with the rest of the Carolines, the Marshalls, the Marianas (except for American-owned Guam) and Kiautschou Bay during World War I. In subsequent years and during World War II the Japanese garrison strength was composed of about 2,000 men of the IJN under Captain Jun Naito and 5,984 IJA men under Lieutenant General Masao Watanabe. However, Pohnpei was bypassed by the US Navy during the island-hopping amphibious campaigns of 1943–1945.</p><br>
<p>The island was shelled on several occasions, including by the battleships USS Massachusetts, USS Alabama, and, as well as air attacks launched from USS Cowpens. After the war, Japanese nationals were repatriated to Japan by the US Navy.</p><br>
<h3>United States administration, under United Nations oversight</h3><br>
<p>The Federated States of Micronesia achieved independence in 1986 after being administered by the United States under UN auspices since 1947 as part of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands.</p><br>
<h2>Demographics</h2><br>
<p>The population of the state in 2010 was approximately 34,000. While the majority of the population consider themselves ethnic Pohnpeians, Pohnpei is more ethnically diverse than any other island in the FSM. This is largely due to more than a century of foreign colonial occupation, bringing in Spanish, German, Japanese, Chamorro, Filipino, US, Australian, other western Europeans, and it being home to the capital of the national government, which employs hundreds of people from the other three FSM States (Yap, Chuuk, Kosrae) having distinct ethnic and cultural origins. The indigenous makeup also includes the multiple regional ethnicities of the outer islands within Pohnpei State, resulting in a mix of Australasian Pacific Islanders and hence making Pohnpei Island the FSM&#39;s melting pot.</p><br>
<h3>Languages</h3><br>
<p>The Pohnpeian language (formerly called "Ponapean") and its dialects are the indigenous languages of Pohnpei. The Federated States of Micronesia government also uses English as an official language.</p><br>
<h2>Administrative divisions</h2><br>
<p>The municipalities on the island of Pohnpei are:</p><br>
<p>Kitti, southwest. Includes Ant Atoll</p><br>
<p>Kolonia, north</p><br>
<p>Madolenihmw, east</p><br>
<p>Nett (main island, north/center, formerly including state capital Kolonia on the north coast)</p><br>
<p>Sokehs, northwest. Also includes Pakin Atoll and Palikir, the national capital</p><br>
<p>U, northeast</p><br>
<h2>Transportation</h2><br>
<p>Pohnpei International Airport (IATA code PNI) is located near Kolonia, on a small island named Deketik off the northern coast of the main island.</p><br>
<h2>Sport</h2><br>
<p>The FSM is part of the international Olympic movement and sent teams to the last two summer games in Beijing and Sydney with athletes participating in track and field, swimming and weightlifting. The most notable Pohnpeian athlete is marathoner Elias Rodriguez who ran for the FSM at the Sydney Olympics. Rodriguez finished last in the marathon but was cheered on by tens of thousands of spectators and watched by millions of television viewers as he entered the Olympic stadium for a final lap immediately prior to the closing ceremony which was delayed to allow his finish.</p><br>
<h2>Pohnpei in fiction</h2><br>
<p>Pohnpei (as Ponape) plays a role in several stories in Cthulhu Mythos by H. P. Lovecraft and others. Its role in "Out of the Aeons", by Lovecraft and Hazel Heald, was inspired by the ruins of Nan Madol (see above), which had already been used as the setting for a lost race story by Abraham Merritt, The Moon Pool, in which the islands are called Nan-Matal.</p><br>
<p>The island of Pohnpei was used in the Call of Duty Black Ops 3 map Zetsubou No Shima.</p><br>
<p>Pohnpei is a central location in South Sea Adventure (1952), the second of Willard Price&#39;s Young Adult Adventure Series books featuring Hal and Roger Hunt.</p><br>
<p>Pohnpei, or "Ponape" as it is spelled, is stated as the home island of "Mike" on the popular blog Dunce Upon A Time, authored by BC Woods.</p><br>
<h2>Notable residents</h2><br>
<p>Debra Daniel – Olympic swimmer</p><br>
<p>Iris Falcam – Librarian and former First Lady of Micronesia</p><br>
<p>Leo Falcam – Former President of Micronesia</p><br>
<p>Kerson Hadley – Olympic swimmer</p><br>
<p>Emelihter Kihleng – Poet</p><br>
<p>Bailey Olter – Former President of Micronesia</p><br>
<p>Eiken Elam Saimon – Multiple-Murderer</p><br>
<p>Mihter Wendolin – Olympic sprinter</p><br>
<p>Elias Rodriguez – Olympic marathoner</p><br>
<p>The Bay of Bengal  is the largest bay in the world, with waters flowing straight out of the Himalayas through Bengal region. Roughly triangular, it is bordered by India to the West, Northwest and East, Myanmar to the East, Sri Lanka to the Southwest, Bangladesh to the North and, Indonesia to the Southeast. Countries dependent on the Bay of Bengal straddle both South Asia and Southeast Asia.</p><br>
<p>The Bay of Bengal occupies an area of 2,172,000 km&sup2;. A number of large rivers – the Ganges and three major rivers of Bangladesh the Padma, the Jamuna and Meghna, other rivers such as the Irrawaddy River, Godavari, Mahanadi, Brahmani River, Baitarani, Krishna and Kaveri flow into the Bay of Bengal. Among the important ports are Chennai, Kolkata, Paradip Port, Port Blair, Tuticorin, Visakhapatnam, Krishnapatnam Port, Chittagong, Colombo, Yangon. Among the smaller ports are the Dhamra Port, Kakinada Port, Gopalpur Port and Mongla.</p><br>
<h2>Extent</h2><br>
<p>The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Bay of Bengal as follows:</p><br>
<h2>Etymology</h2><br>
<p>The bay gets its name from the historical Bengal region (The Indian state of West Bengal and modern-day Bangladesh). In ancient scriptures, this water body may have been referred to as Mahodadhi (Sanskrit: महोदधि, lit. great water receptacle) while it appears as Sinus Gangeticus or Gangeticus Sinus, meaning "Gulf of the Ganges", in ancient maps.</p><br>
<p>The other Sanskrit names for Bay of Bengal are Vangopasagara (Sanskrit: वङ्गोपसागर, lit. Bengal&#39;s Bay), also simply called as Vangasagara (Sanskrit: वङ्गसागर, lit. Bengal Sea) and Purvapayodhi (Sanskrit: पूर्वपयोधि, lit. Eastern Ocean). Even today in Bengali, it is known as "Bongoposagor".</p><br>
<h2>Rivers</h2><br>
<p>Many major Rivers of India flow west to east before draining into the Bay of Bengal. The Ganga is the northernmost of these. Its main channel enters and flows through Bangladesh, where it is known as the Padma River, before joining the Meghna River. However, the Brahmaputra River flows from east to west in Assam before turning south and entering Bangladesh where it is called the Jamuna River. This joins the Padma where upon the Padma joins the Meghna River that finally drains into Bay of Bengal. The Sundarbans mangrove of forest of Bangladesh is a forest at the delta of the Padma, Jamuna and Meghna rivers lies partly in West Bengal and mostly in Bangladesh. The Brahmaputra at 2,948 km is the 28th longest River in the world. It originates in Tibet. The Hooghly River, another channel of the Ganga that flows through Calcutta drains into Bay of Bengal.</p><br>
<p>The Padma–Meghna-Jamuna rivers deposit nearly 1000 million tons of sediment per year. The sediment from these three rivers form the Bengal Delta and the submarine fan, a vast structure that extends from Bangladesh to south of the Equator, is up to 16.5 km thick, and contains at least 1,130 trillion tonnes of sediment, which has accumulated over the last 17 million years at an average rate of 665 million tons per annum. The Bay of Bengal used to be deeper than the Mariana Trench, the present deepest ocean point. The fan has buried organic carbon at a rate of nearly 1.1 trillion mol/yr (13.2 million t/yr) since the early Miocene period. The three rivers currently contribute nearly 8% of the total organic carbon (TOC) deposited in the world&#39;s oceans. Due to high TOC accumulation in the deep sea bed of the Bay of Bengal, the area is rich in oil and natural gas and gas hydrate reserves. Bangladesh can reclaim land substantially and economically gain from the sea area by constructing sea dikes, bunds, causeways and by trapping the sediment from its rivers.</p><br>
<p>Further southwest of Bangladesh, the Mahanadi, Godavari, Krishna and Kaveri Rivers also flow from west to east in South Asia and drain into the Bay of Bengal. Many small rivers also drain directly into the Bay of Bengal; the shortest of them is the Cooum River at 64 km.</p><br>
<p>The Irrawaddy (or Ayeyarwady) River in Myanmar flows into the Andaman Sea of the Bay of Bengal and once had thick mangrove forests of its own.</p><br>
<h2>Seaports</h2><br>
<p>Indian ports on the bay include Kolkata Port, Haldia Port, Chennai, Visakhapatnam, Kakinada, Pondicherry, Dhamra, Gopalpur and Bangladeshi ports on the Bay are Chittagong, Mongla, Payra Port.</p><br>
<h2>Islands</h2><br>
<p>The islands in the bay are numerous, including the Andaman Islands, Nicobar and Mergui groups of India. The Cheduba group of islands, in the north-east, off the Burmese coast, are remarkable for a chain of mud volcanoes, which are occasionally active. Great Andaman is the main archipelago or island group of the Andaman Islands, whereas Ritchie&#39;s Archipelago consists of smaller islands. Only 37, or 6.5%, of the 572 islands and islets of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands are inhabited.</p><br>
<h2>Beaches</h2><br>
<h2>Oceanography</h2><br>
<h3>Plate tectonics</h3><br>
<p>The lithosphere of the earth is broken up into what are called tectonic plates. Underneath the Bay of Bengal, which is part of the great Indo-Australian Plate and is slowly moving north east. This plate meets the Burma Microplate at the Sunda Trench. The Nicobar Islands, and the Andaman Islands are part of the Burma Microplate. The India Plate subducts beneath the Burma Plate at the Sunda Trench or Java Trench. Here, the pressure of the two plates on each other increase pressure and temperature resulting in the formation of volcanoes such as the volcanoes in Myanmar, and a volcanic arc called the Sunda Arc. The Sumatra-Andaman earthquake and Asian tsunami was a result of the pressure at this zone causing a submarine earthquake which then resulted in a destructive tsunami.</p><br>
<h3>Marine geology</h3><br>
<p>A zone 50 m wide extending from the island of Ceylon and the Coromandel coast to the head of the bay, and thence southwards through a strip embracing the Andaman and Nicobar islands, is bounded by the 100 fathom line of sea bottom; some 50 m. beyond this lies the 500-fathom limit. Opposite the mouth of the Ganges, however, the intervals between these depths are very much extended by deltaic influence.</p><br>
<p>Swatch of No Ground is a 14 km-wide deep sea canyon of the Bay of Bengal. The deepest recorded area of this valley is about 1340 m. The submarine canyon is part of the Bengal Fan, the largest submarine fan in the world.</p><br>
<h3>Marine biology, flora and fauna</h3><br>
<p>The Bay of Bengal is full of biological diversity, diverging amongst coral reefs, estuaries, fish spawning and nursery areas, and mangroves. The Bay of Bengal is one of the World&#39;s 64 largest marine ecosystems.</p><br>
<p>Kerilia jerdonii is a sea snake of the Bay of Bengal. Glory of Bengal cone (Conus bengalensis) is just one of the seashells which can be photographed along beaches of the Bay of Bengal. An endangered species, the olive ridley sea turtle can survive because of the nesting grounds made available at the Gahirmatha Marine Wildlife Sanctuary, Gahirmatha Beach, Odisha, India. Marlin, barracuda, skipjack tuna, (Katsuwonus pelamis), yellowfin tuna, Indo-Pacific humpbacked dolphin (Sousa chinensis), and Bryde&#39;s whale (Balaenoptera edeni) are a few of the marine animals. Bay of Bengal hogfish (Bodianus neilli) is a type of wrass which live in turbid lagoon reefs or shallow coastal reefs. Schools of dolphins can be seen, whether they are the bottle nose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus), pantropical spotted dolphin (Stenella attenuata) or the spinner dolphin (Stenella longirostris). Tuna and dolphins usually reside in the same waters. In shallower and warmer coastal waters the Irrawaddy dolphins (Orcaella brevirostris) can be found.</p><br>
<p>The Great Nicobar Biosphere Reserve provides sanctuary to many animals some of which include the saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus), giant leatherback sea turtle (Dermochelys coriacea), and Malayan box turtle (Cuora amboinensis kamaroma) to name a few.</p><br>
<p>Another endangered species royal Bengal tiger is supported by Sundarbans a large estuarine delta that holds a mangrove area in the Ganges River Delta.</p><br>
<h3>Chemical oceanography</h3><br>
<p>Coastal regions bordering the Bay of Bengal are rich in minerals. Sri Lanka, Serendib, or Ratna – Dweepa which means Gem Island. Amethyst, beryl, ruby, sapphire, topaz, and garnet are just some of the gems of Sri Lanka. Garnet and other precious gems are also found in abundance in the Indian states of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh.</p><br>
<h3>Physical oceanography – climate</h3><br>
<p>From January to October, the current is northward flowing, and the clockwise circulation pattern is called the "East Indian Current". The Bay of Bengal monsoon moves in a northwest direction striking the Nicobar Islands, and the Andaman Islands first end of May, then the north eastern coast of India by end of June.</p><br>
<p>The remainder of the year, the counterclockwise current is southwestward flowing, and the circulation pattern is called the East Indian Winter Jet. September and December see very active weather, season varsha (or monsoon), in the Bay of Bengal producing severe cyclones which affect eastern India. Several efforts have been initiated to cope with storm surge.</p><br>
<h2>Tropical storms and cyclones</h2><br>
<p>A tropical storm with rotating winds blowing at speeds of 74 miles (119 kilometres) per hour is called a cyclone when they originate over the Bay of Bengal; and called a hurricane in the Atlantic. Between 100,000 and 500,000 residents of Bangladesh were killed because of the 1970 Bhola cyclone.</p><br>
<p>2017, Severe Cyclonic Storm Mora</p><br>
<p>2017, Cyclone Maarutha</p><br>
<p>2016, Very Severe Cyclonic Storm Vardah</p><br>
<p>2016, Cyclone Nada</p><br>
<p>2016, Cyclone Kyant</p><br>
<p>2016, Cyclone Roanu</p><br>
<p>2015, Cyclone Komen</p><br>
<p>2014, Very Severe Cyclonic Storm Hudhud</p><br>
<p>2013, Very Severe Cyclonic Storm Phailin</p><br>
<p>2013, Cyclone Viyaru</p><br>
<p>2012, Cyclone Nilam</p><br>
<p>2011, Very Severe Cyclonic Storm Thane</p><br>
<p>2010, Very Severe Cyclonic Storm Giri</p><br>
<p>2009, Very Severe Cyclonic Storm Aila</p><br>
<p>2008, Very Severe Cyclonic Storm Nargis</p><br>
<p>2007, Very Severe Cyclonic Storm Sidr</p><br>
<p>2006, Very Severe Cyclonic Storm Mala</p><br>
<p>1999, Odisha Super Cyclonic Storm 05B</p><br>
<p>1996, Konaseema Cyclone</p><br>
<p>1991, Super Cyclonic Storm 02B</p><br>
<p>1989, November Typhoon Gay</p><br>
<p>1985, May Tropical Storm One (1B)</p><br>
<p>1982, April Cyclone One (1B)</p><br>
<p>1982, May Tropical Storm Two (2B)</p><br>
<p>1982, October Tropical Storm Three (3B)</p><br>
<p>1981, December Cyclone Three (3B)</p><br>
<p>1980, October Tropical Storm One (1B)</p><br>
<p>1980, December Unknown Storm Four (4B)</p><br>
<p>1980, December Tropical Storm Five (5B)</p><br>
<p>1977, Andhra Pradesh Cyclone (6B)</p><br>
<p>1971, Cyclone Odisha</p><br>
<p>1970, November Bhola cyclone</p><br>
<p>The Calcutta cyclone of 1864: caused a storm surge of 40 feet. Barometer 28.025 inches of mercury. 50,000 direct deaths and 30,000 from disease.</p><br>
<p>The Backergunge cyclone of 1876: 10 to 30 or 40 feet storm surge. 100,000 direct deaths and 100,000 indirect from disease.</p><br>
<p>The False Point cyclone of 1885: 22 feet of storm surge. Barometer 27.135 inches of mercury.</p><br>
<h2>Historic sites</h2><br>
<p>The ancient Buddhist heritage sites of Pavurallakonda, Thotlakonda and Bavikonda lie along the coast of Bay of Bengal at Visakhapatnam in India.</p><br>
<p>The remains of the Sri Vaisakheswara Swamy temple lie under the Bay of Bengal. Spokespeople from Andhra University Centre for Marine Archaeology say the temple may be opposite the Coastal Battery.</p><br>
<p>The Jagannath Temple at Puri is the one of the four sacred places in Hindu pilgrimage along with Puri beach on the banks of Bay of Bengal. Mahodadhi was named after Lord Jagannath.</p><br>
<p>Seven Pagodas of Mahabalipuram is the name for Mahabalipuram. Mahabalipuram&#39;s Shore Temple, a World Heritage Site was constructed in the 8th century AD and myth has it that six other temples were built here.</p><br>
<p>One site that has been preserved is Vivekanandar Illam. It was constructed in 1842 by the American "Ice King" Frederic Tudor to store and market ice year round. In 1897, Swami Vivekananda&#39;s famous lectures were recorded here at Castle Kernan. The site is an exhibition devoted to Swami Vivekananda and his legacy.</p><br>
<p>Arikamedu is an archaeological site in Southern India, in Kakkayanthope, Ariyankuppam Commune, Puducherry. It is 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) from the capital, Pondicherry of the Indian territory of Puducherry</p><br>
<p>Konark is the home of the Sun Temple or Black Pagoda. This Brahman sanctuary was built of black granite mid-1200 AD and has been declared a World Heritage Site.</p><br>
<p>Ramanathaswamy Temple is at Dhanushkodi, where the Bay of Bengal and the Laccadive sea come together.</p><br>
<h2>Religious importance</h2><br>
<p>The Bay of Bengal in the stretch of Swargadwar, the gateway to heaven in Sanskrit, in the Indian town of Puri is considered holy by Hindus.</p><br>
<p>The Samudra arati is a daily tradition started by the present Shankaracharya of Puri 9 years ago to honour the sacred sea. The daily practise includes prayer and fire offering to the sea at Swargadwar in Puri by disciples of the Govardhana matha of the Shankaracharya. On Paush Purnima of every year the Shankaracharya himself comes out to offer prayers to the sea.</p><br>
<h2>Economy</h2><br>
<p>One of the first trading ventures along the Bay of Bengal was The Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies more commonly referred to as the British East India Company. Gopalpur-on-Sea was one of their main trading centers. Other trading companies along the Bay of Bengal shorelines were the English East India Company and the French East India Company.</p><br>
<p>BIMSTEC Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) supports free trade internationally around the Bay of Bengal between Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Thailand.</p><br>
<p>The Sethusamudram Shipping Canal Project is a new venture proposed which would create a channel for a shipping route to link the Gulf of Mannar with the Bay of Bengal. This would connect India from east to west without the necessity of going around Sri Lanka.</p><br>
<p>Thoni and catamaran fishing boats of fishing villages thrive along the Bay of Bengal shorelines. Fishermen can catch between 26 and 44 species of marine fish. In one year, the average catch is two million tons of fish from the Bay of Bengal alone. Approximately 31% of the world’s coastal fishermen live and work on the bay.</p><br>
<h2>Strategic importance</h2><br>
<p>The Bay of Bengal is centrally located in South and Southeast Asia. It lies at the center of two huge economic blocks, the SAARC and ASEAN. It influences China&#39;s southern landlocked region in the north and major sea ports of India and Bangladesh. China, India, and Bangladesh have forged naval cooperation agreements with Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia to increase cooperation in checking terrorism in the high seas.</p><br>
<p>Its outlying islands (the Andaman and Nicobar islands) and, most importantly, major ports such as Kolkata, Chennai, Visakhapatnam, Tuticorin, Chittagong, and Mongla, along its coast with the Bay of Bengal added to its importance.</p><br>
<p>China has recently made efforts to project influence into the region through tie-ups with Myanmar and Bangladesh. The United States has held major exercises with Bangladesh, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and recently India The largest ever wargame in Bay of Bengal, known as Malabar 2007, was held in 2007 and naval warships from US, Bangladesh, Thailand, Singapore, Japan and Australia took part. India was a participant.</p><br>
<p>Large deposits of natural gas in the areas within Bangladesh&#39;s sea zone incited a serious urgency by India and Myanmar into a territorial dispute. Disputes over rights of some oil and gas blocks have caused brief diplomatic spats between Myanmar and India with Bangladesh.</p><br>
<p>The disputed maritime boundary between Bangladesh and Myanmar resulted in military tensions in 2008 and 2009. Bangladesh is pursuing a settlement with Myanmar and India to the boundary dispute through the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea.</p><br>
<h2>Environmental hazards</h2><br>
<h3>Pollution</h3><br>
<p>The Asian brown cloud, a layer of air pollution that covers much of South Asia and the Indian Ocean every year between January and March, and possibly also during earlier and later months, hangs over the Bay of Bengal. It is considered to be a combination of vehicle exhaust, smoke from cooking fires, and industrial discharges.</p><br>
<h2>Transboundary issues affecting the marine ecosystem</h2><br>
<p>A transboundary issue is defined as an environmental problem in which either the cause of the problem and/or its impact is separated by a national boundary; or the problem contributes to a global environmental problem and finding regional solutions is considered to be a global environmental benefit. The eight Bay of Bengal countries have (2012) identified three major transboundary problems (or areas of concern) affecting the health of the Bay, that they can work on together. With the support of the Bay Of Bengal Large Marine Ecosystem Project (BOBLME), the eight countries are now (2012) developing responses to these issues and their causes, for future implementation as the Strategic Action Programme.</p><br>
<h3>Overexploitation of fisheries</h3><br>
<p>The main causes of the issues are: open access to fishing grounds; Government emphasis on increasing fish catches; inappropriate government subsidies provided to fishers; increasing fishing effort, especially from trawlers and purse seiners; high consumer demand for fish, including for seed and fishmeal for aquaculture; ineffective fisheries management; and illegal and destructive fishing.</p><br>
<h3>Degradation of critical habitats</h3><br>
<p>The Bay of Bengal is an area of high biodiversity, with many endangered and vulnerable species.</p><br>
<p>The major transboundary issues relating to habitats are: the loss and degradation of mangrove habitats; degradation of coral reefs; and the loss of, and damage to, seagrasses. The transboundary nature of these major issues are: that all three critical habitats occur in all BOBLME countries. Coastal development for several varying uses of the land and sea are common in all BOBLME countries. Trade in products from all the habitats is transboundary in nature. Climate change impacts are shared by all BOBLME countries.</p><br>
<p>The main causes of the issues are: food security needs of the coastal poor; lack of coastal development plans; increasing trade in products from coastal habitats; coastal development and industrialization; ineffective marine protected areas and lack of enforcement; upstream development that affects water-flow; intensive upstream agricultural practices; and increasing tourism.</p><br>
<h3>Pollution and water quality</h3><br>
<p>The major transboundary issues relating to pollution and water quality are: sewage-borne pathogens and organic load; solid waste/marine litter; increasing nutrient inputs; oil pollution; persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and persistent toxic substances (PTSs); sedimentation; and heavy metals.</p><br>
<p>The transboundary nature of these issues are: discharge of untreated/partially treated sewage being a common problem. Sewage and organic discharges from the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna River are likely to be transboundary. Plastics and derelict fishing gear can be transported long distances across national boundaries. High nutrient discharges from rivers could intensify largescale hypoxia. Atmospheric transport of nutrients is inherently transboundary. Differences between countries with regard to regulation and enforcement of shipping discharges may drive discharges across boundaries. Tar balls are transported long distances. POPs/PTSs and mercury, including organo-mercury, undergo long-range transport. Sedimentation and most heavy metal contamination tend to be localized and lack a strong transboundary dimension.</p><br>
<p>The main causes of the issues are: increasing coastal population density and urbanization; higher consumption, resulting in more waste generated per person; insufficient funds allocated to waste management; migration of industry into BOBLME countries; and proliferation of small industries.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Northern Circars occupied the western coast of the Bay of Bengal and is now considered to be India&#39;s Madras state. Chola dynasty (9th century to 12th century) when ruled by Rajaraja Chola I occupied the western coastline of the Bay of Bengal circa AD 1014, The Bay of Bengal was also called the Chola Lake. The Kakatiya dynasty reached the western coastline of the Bay of Bengal between the Godavari and the Krishna rivers. Kushanas about the middle of the 1st century AD invaded northern India perhaps extending as far as the Bay of Bengal. Chandragupta Maurya extended the Maurya Dynasty across northern India to the Bay of Bengal. Hajipur was a stronghold for Portuguese Pirates. In the 16th century the Portuguese built trading posts in the north of the Bay of Bengal at Chittagong (Porto Grande) and Satgaon (Porto Pequeno). Before the arrival of British to India it was also known as "Kalinga Sagar".</p><br>
<h3>British penal colony</h3><br>
<p>Cellular Jail or "Black Waters" built in 1896 on Ross Island, a part of the Andaman Island Chain. As early as 1858 this island was used as a British penal colony for political prisoners facing life imprisonment.</p><br>
<h2>Marine archaeology</h2><br>
<p>Maritime archaeology or marine archaeology is the study of material remains of ancient peoples. A specialized branch, Archaeology of shipwrecks studies the salvaged artifacts of ancient ships. Stone anchors, amphorae shards, elephant tusks, hippopotamus teeth, ceramic pottery, a rare wood mast and lead ingots are examples which may survive the test of time for archaeologists to study and place the salvaged findings into a time line of history. coral reefs, tsunamis, cyclones, mangrove swamps, battles and a criss cross of sea routes in a high trading area combined with pirating have all contributed to shipwrecks in the Bay of Bengal.</p><br>
<h3>Famous ships and shipwrecks</h3><br>
<p>1778 to 1783 The Naval operations in the American Revolutionary War or American War of Independence ranged as far as the Bay of Bengal.</p><br>
<p>c. 1816 Mornington ship burned in the Bay of Bengal.</p><br>
<p>1850 American clipper brig Eagle is supposed to have sunk in the Bay of Bengal.</p><br>
<p>American Baptist missionary Adoniram Judson, Jr. died 12 April 1850 and was buried at sea in the Bay of Bengal.</p><br>
<p>1855 The Bark "Incredible" struck on a sunken rock in the Bay of Bengal.</p><br>
<p>1865, a gale dismasted the Euterpe while traversing the Bay of Bengal typhoon.</p><br>
<p>1875 Veleda 76 m (250 ft) long and 15 m (50 ft) wide is a part of a current salvage operation.</p><br>
<p>1942 Japanese cruiser Yura of the Second Expeditionary Fleet, Malay Force, attacked merchant ships in the Bay of Bengal.</p><br>
<p>1971 December 3 – It was claimed that the Indian Navy destroyer, INS Rajput, sunk the Pakistan Navy submarine PNS Ghazi off Visakhapatnam, in the Bay of Bengal.</p><br>
<p>Zealand , at 7,031 km, is the largest  and most populated island in Denmark with a population of 2,287,740 .</p><br>
<p>It is the 13th-largest island in Europe by area and the 4th most populous. It is connected to Funen by the Great Belt Fixed Link, to Lolland, Falster (and Germany from 2028) by the Storstrøm Bridge and the Farø Bridges. Zealand is also linked to Amager by several bridges. Zealand is linked indirectly, through intervening islands by a series of bridges and tunnels, to southern Sweden.</p><br>
<p>Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, is located partly on the eastern shore of Zealand and partly on the island of Amager. Other cities on Zealand include Roskilde, Hillerød, Næstved and Helsingør. Despite their identical names, the island is not connected historically to the Pacific nation of New Zealand, which is named after the Dutch province of Zeeland.</p><br>
<h2>Etymology</h2><br>
<p>The exact origin of the Danish name "Sjælland" is controversial. "Sjæl" in Danish today means "soul", but based on older records one can exclude this interpretation. Even a derivation derived from "siô / sæ" (meaning "sea") corresponding closely to the English name is today largely rejected - but it may be that the English name predated Danish research on its origin, compared with the current understanding; So the Danes themselves assumed that the name means "Zealand". The prevailing view today is: The Old Danish form "Siâland" comes from a composition of the word *selha- with the ending *wundia-. The latter means "indicates, resembles". The word *selha- can have two different meanings: it can mean on the one hand "seal" (in modern Danish "sæl") and on the other hand mean "deep bay, fjord". Since the main settlement on Zealand was previously Roskilde, which is only accessible by sea through the narrow Roskilde Fjord (branched from the Ise Fjord), it is usually assumed that the sailors named the island after this.</p><br>
<h2>Mythological origins</h2><br>
<p>In Norse mythology as told in the story of Gylfaginning, the island was created by the goddess Gefjun after she tricked Gylfi, the king of Sweden. She removed a piece of land and transported it to Denmark, which became Zealand. The vacant area was filled with water and became Mälaren. However, since modern maps show a similarity between Zealand and the Swedish lake Vänern, it is sometimes identified as the hole left by Gefjun.</p><br>
<h2>Geography</h2><br>
<p>Zealand is the most populous Danish island. It is irregularly shaped, and is north of the islands of Lolland, Falster, and Møn. The small island of Amager lies immediately east.</p><br>
<p>Copenhagen is mostly on Zealand but extends across northern Amager. A number of bridges and the Copenhagen Metro connect Zealand to Amager, which is connected to Scania in Sweden by the Øresund Bridge via the artificial island of Peberholm. Zealand is joined in the west to Funen, by the Great Belt Fixed Link, and Funen is connected by bridges to the country&#39;s mainland, Jutland.</p><br>
<p>On June 5, 2007, the regional subsidiary of national broadcaster DR reported that Kobanke in the southeast near the town Rønnede in Faxe Municipality, with a height of 122.9 m, was the highest natural point on Zealand. Gyldenløveshøj, south of the city Roskilde, has a height of 126 m, but that is due to a man-made hill from the 17th century and its highest natural point is only 121.3 m.</p><br>
<p>Zealand gives its name to the Selandian era of the Paleocene.</p><br>
<h2>Cities and towns</h2><br>
<p>Urban areas with 10,000+ inhabitants:</p><br>
<p>The Amazon rainforest , also known in English as Amazonia or the Amazon Jungle, is a moist broadleaf forest in the Amazon biome that covers most of the Amazon basin of South America. This basin encompasses 7,000,000 km&sup2, of which 5,500,000 km&sup2; are covered by the rainforest. This region includes territory belonging to nine nations. The majority of the forest is contained within Brazil, with 60% of the rainforest, followed by Peru with 13%, Colombia with 10%, and with minor amounts in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana. States or departments in four nations contain "Amazonas" in their names. The Amazon represents over half of the planet&#39;s remaining rainforests, and comprises the largest and most biodiverse tract of tropical rainforest in the world, with an estimated 390 billion individual trees divided into 16,000 species.</p><br>
<h2>Etymology</h2><br>
<p>The name Amazon is said to arise from a war Francisco de Orellana fought with the Tapuyas and other tribes. The women of the tribe fought alongside the men, as was their custom. Orellana derived the name Amazonas from the Amazons of Greek mythology, described by Herodotus and Diodorus.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<h3>Natural</h3><br>
<p>The rainforest likely formed during the Eocene era. It appeared following a global reduction of tropical temperatures when the Atlantic Ocean had widened sufficiently to provide a warm, moist climate to the Amazon basin. The rainforest has been in existence for at least 55 million years, and most of the region remained free of savanna-type biomes at least until the current ice age, when the climate was drier and savanna more widespread.</p><br>
<p>Following the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, the extinction of the dinosaurs and the wetter climate may have allowed the tropical rainforest to spread out across the continent. From 66–34 Mya, the rainforest extended as far south as 45°. Climate fluctuations during the last 34 million years have allowed savanna regions to expand into the tropics. During the Oligocene, for example, the rainforest spanned a relatively narrow band. It expanded again during the Middle Miocene, then retracted to a mostly inland formation at the last glacial maximum. However, the rainforest still managed to thrive during these glacial periods, allowing for the survival and evolution of a broad diversity of species.</p><br>
<p>During the mid-Eocene, it is believed that the drainage basin of the Amazon was split along the middle of the continent by the Purus Arch. Water on the eastern side flowed toward the Atlantic, while to the west water flowed toward the Pacific across the Amazonas Basin. As the Andes Mountains rose, however, a large basin was created that enclosed a lake; now known as the Solimões Basin. Within the last 5–10 million years, this accumulating water broke through the Purus Arch, joining the easterly flow toward the Atlantic.</p><br>
<p>There is evidence that there have been significant changes in Amazon rainforest vegetation over the last 21,000 years through the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and subsequent deglaciation. Analyses of sediment deposits from Amazon basin paleolakes and from the Amazon Fan indicate that rainfall in the basin during the LGM was lower than for the present, and this was almost certainly associated with reduced moist tropical vegetation cover in the basin. There is debate, however, over how extensive this reduction was. Some scientists argue that the rainforest was reduced to small, isolated refugia separated by open forest and grassland; other scientists argue that the rainforest remained largely intact but extended less far to the north, south, and east than is seen today. This debate has proved difficult to resolve because the practical limitations of working in the rainforest mean that data sampling is biased away from the center of the Amazon basin, and both explanations are reasonably well supported by the available data.</p><br>
<h4>Sahara Desert dust windblown to the Amazon</h4><br>
<p>More than 56% of the dust fertilizing the Amazon rainforest comes from the Bodélé depression in Northern Chad in the Sahara desert. The dust contains phosphorus, important for plant growth. The yearly Sahara dust replaces the equivalent amount of phosphorus washed away yearly in Amazon soil from rains and floods. Up to 50 million tonnes of Sahara dust per year are blown across the Atlantic Ocean.</p><br>
<p>NASAs CALIPSO satellite has measured the amount of dust transported by wind from the Sahara to the Amazon: an average 182 million tons of dust are windblown out of the Sahara each year, at 15 degrees west longitude, across 1,600 mi over the Atlantic Ocean (some dust falls into the Atlantic), then at 35 degrees West longitude at the eastern coast of South America, 27.7 million tons (15%) of dust fall over the Amazon basin, 132 million tons of dust remain in the air, 43 million tons of dust are windblown and falls on the Caribbean Sea, past 75 degrees west longitude.</p><br>
<p>CALIPSO uses a laser range finder to scan the Earth&#39;s atmosphere for the vertical distribution of dust and other aerosols. CALIPSO regularly tracks the Sahara-Amazon dust plume. CALIPSO has measured variations in the dust amounts transported— an 86 percent drop between the highest amount of dust transported in 2007 and the lowest in 2011.</p><br>
<p>A possibility causing the variation is the Sahel, a strip of semi-arid land on the southern border of the Sahara. When rain amounts in the Sahel are higher, the volume of dust is lower. The higher rainfall could make more vegetation grow in the Sahel, leaving less sand exposed to winds to blow away.</p><br>
<h3>Human activity</h3><br>
<p>Based on archaeological evidence from an excavation at Caverna da Pedra Pintada, human inhabitants first settled in the Amazon region at least 11,200 years ago. Subsequent development led to late-prehistoric settlements along the periphery of the forest by AD 1250, which induced alterations in the forest cover.</p><br>
<p>For a long time, it was thought that the Amazon rainforest was only ever sparsely populated, as it was impossible to sustain a large population through agriculture given the poor soil. Archeologist Betty Meggers was a prominent proponent of this idea, as described in her book Amazonia: Man and Culture in a Counterfeit Paradise. She claimed that a population density of 0.2 PD/km2 is the maximum that can be sustained in the rainforest through hunting, with agriculture needed to host a larger population. However, recent anthropological findings have suggested that the region was actually densely populated. Some 5 million people may have lived in the Amazon region in AD 1500, divided between dense coastal settlements, such as that at Marajó, and inland dwellers. By 1900 the population had fallen to 1 million and by the early 1980s it was less than 200,000.</p><br>
<p>The first European to travel the length of the Amazon River was Francisco de Orellana in 1542. The BBC&#39;s Unnatural Histories presents evidence that Orellana, rather than exaggerating his claims as previously thought, was correct in his observations that a complex civilization was flourishing along the Amazon in the 1540s. It is believed that the civilization was later devastated by the spread of diseases from Europe, such as smallpox.</p><br>
<p>Since the 1970s, numerous geoglyphs have been discovered on deforested land dating between AD 1–1250, furthering claims about Pre-Columbian civilizations. Ondemar Dias is accredited with first discovering the geoglyphs in 1977 and Alceu Ranzi with furthering their discovery after flying over Acre. The BBC&#39;s Unnatural Histories presented evidence that the Amazon rainforest, rather than being a pristine wilderness, has been shaped by man for at least 11,000 years through practices such as forest gardening and terra preta. Terra preta is found over large areas in the Amazon forest; and is now widely accepted as a product of indigenous soil management. The development of this fertile soil allowed agriculture and silviculture in the previously hostile environment; meaning that large portions of the Amazon rainforest are probably the result of centuries of human management, rather than naturally occurring as has previously been supposed. In the region of the Xingu tribe, remains of some of these large settlements in the middle of the Amazon forest were found in 2003 by Michael Heckenberger and colleagues of the University of Florida. Among those were evidence of roads, bridges and large plazas.</p><br>
<h2>Biodiversity</h2><br>
<p>Wet tropical forests are the most species-rich biome, and tropical forests in the Americas are consistently more species rich than the wet forests in Africa and Asia. As the largest tract of tropical rainforest in the Americas, the Amazonian rainforests have unparalleled biodiversity. One in ten known species in the world lives in the Amazon rainforest. This constitutes the largest collection of living plants and animal species in the world.</p><br>
<p>The region is home to about 2.5 million insect species, tens of thousands of plants, and some 2,000 birds and mammals. To date, at least 40,000 plant species, 2,200 fishes, 1,294 birds, 427 mammals, 428 amphibians, and 378 reptiles have been scientifically classified in the region. One in five of all bird species are found in the Amazon rainforest, and one in five of the fish species live in Amazonian rivers and streams. Scientists have described between 96,660 and 128,843 invertebrate species in Brazil alone.</p><br>
<p>The biodiversity of plant species is the highest on Earth with one 2001 study finding a quarter square kilometer (62 acres) of Ecuadorian rainforest supports more than 1,100 tree species.</p><br>
<p>A study in 1999 found one square kilometer (247 acres) of Amazon rainforest can contain about 90,790 tonnes of living plants. The average plant biomass is estimated at 356 ± 47 tonnes per hectare. To date, an estimated 438,000 species of plants of economic and social interest have been registered in the region with many more remaining to be discovered or catalogued. The total number of tree species in the region is estimated at 16,000.</p><br>
<p>The green leaf area of plants and trees in the rainforest varies by about 25% as a result of seasonal changes. Leaves expand during the dry season when sunlight is at a maximum, then undergo abscission in the cloudy wet season. These changes provide a balance of carbon between photosynthesis and respiration.</p><br>
<p>The rainforest contains several species that can pose a hazard. Among the largest predatory creatures are the black caiman, jaguar, cougar, and anaconda. In the river, electric eels can produce an electric shock that can stun or kill, while piranha are known to bite and injure humans. Various species of poison dart frogs secrete lipophilic alkaloid toxins through their flesh. There are also numerous parasites and disease vectors. Vampire bats dwell in the rainforest and can spread the rabies virus. Malaria, yellow fever and Dengue fever can also be contracted in the Amazon region.</p><br>
<h2>Deforestation</h2><br>
<p>Deforestation is the conversion of forested areas to non-forested areas. The main sources of deforestation in the Amazon are human settlement and development of the land. Prior to the early 1960s, access to the forest&#39;s interior was highly restricted, and the forest remained basically intact. Farms established during the 1960s were based on crop cultivation and the slash and burn method. However, the colonists were unable to manage their fields and the crops because of the loss of soil fertility and weed invasion. The soils in the Amazon are productive for just a short period of time, so farmers are constantly moving to new areas and clearing more land. These farming practices led to deforestation and caused extensive environmental damage. Deforestation is considerable, and areas cleared of forest are visible to the naked eye from outer space.</p><br>
<p>In the 1970s construction began on the Trans-Amazonian highway. This highway represented a major threat to the Amazon rainforest. Fortunately for the rainforest, the highway has not been completed, hereby reducing the environmental damage.</p><br>
<p>Between 1991 and 2000, the total area of forest lost in the Amazon rose from 415000 to 587000 square kilometers, with most of the lost forest becoming pasture for cattle. Seventy percent of formerly forested land in the Amazon, and 91% of land deforested since 1970, is used for livestock pasture. Currently, Brazil is the second-largest global producer of soybeans after the United States. New research however, conducted by Leydimere Oliveira et al., has shown that the more rainforest is logged in the Amazon, the less precipitation reaches the area and so the lower the yield per hectare becomes. So despite the popular perception, there has been no economical advantage for Brazil from logging rainforest zones and converting these to pastoral fields.</p><br>
<p>The needs of soy farmers have been used to justify many of the controversial transportation projects that are currently developing in the Amazon. The first two highways successfully opened up the rainforest and led to increased settlement and deforestation. The mean annual deforestation rate from 2000 to 2005 (22,392 km&sup2; per year) was 18% higher than in the previous five years (19,018 km&sup2; per year). Although deforestation has declined significantly in the Brazilian Amazon between 2004 and 2014, there has been an increase to the present day.</p><br>
<h2>Conservation and climate change</h2><br>
<p>Environmentalists are concerned about loss of biodiversity that will result from destruction of the forest, and also about the release of the carbon contained within the vegetation, which could accelerate global warming. Amazonian evergreen forests account for about 10% of the world&#39;s terrestrial primary productivity and 10% of the carbon stores in ecosystems—of the order of 1.1 × 10 metric tonnes of carbon. Amazonian forests are estimated to have accumulated 0.62 ± 0.37 tons of carbon per hectare per year between 1975 and 1996.</p><br>
<p>One computer model of future climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions shows that the Amazon rainforest could become unsustainable under conditions of severely reduced rainfall and increased temperatures, leading to an almost complete loss of rainforest cover in the basin by 2100. However, simulations of Amazon basin climate change across many different models are not consistent in their estimation of any rainfall response, ranging from weak increases to strong decreases. The result indicates that the rainforest could be threatened though the 21st century by climate change in addition to deforestation.</p><br>
<p>In 1989, environmentalist C.M. Peters and two colleagues stated there is economic as well as biological incentive to protecting the rainforest. One hectare in the Peruvian Amazon has been calculated to have a value of $6820 if intact forest is sustainably harvested for fruits, latex, and timber; $1000 if clear-cut for commercial timber (not sustainably harvested); or $148 if used as cattle pasture.</p><br>
<p>As indigenous territories continue to be destroyed by deforestation and ecocide, such as in the Peruvian Amazon indigenous peoples&#39; rainforest communities continue to disappear, while others, like the Urarina continue to struggle to fight for their cultural survival and the fate of their forested territories. Meanwhile, the relationship between non-human primates in the subsistence and symbolism of indigenous lowland South American peoples has gained increased attention, as have ethno-biology and community-based conservation efforts.</p><br>
<p>From 2002 to 2006, the conserved land in the Amazon rainforest has almost tripled and deforestation rates have dropped up to 60%. About 1,000,000 km&sup2; have been put onto some sort of conservation, which adds up to a current amount of 1,730,000 km&sup2;.</p><br>
<p>A 2009 study found that a 4 °C rise in global temperatures by 2100 would kill 85% of the Amazon rainforest while a temperature rise of 3 °C would kill some 75% of the Amazon.</p><br>
<h3>Remote sensing</h3><br>
<p>The use of remotely sensed data is dramatically improving conservationists&#39; knowledge of the Amazon basin. Given the objectivity and lowered costs of satellite-based land cover analysis, it appears likely that remote sensing technology will be an integral part of assessing the extent and damage of deforestation in the basin. Furthermore, remote sensing is the best and perhaps only possible way to study the Amazon on a large-scale.</p><br>
<p>The use of remote sensing for the conservation of the Amazon is also being used by the indigenous tribes of the basin to protect their tribal lands from commercial interests. Using handheld GPS devices and programs like Google Earth, members of the Trio Tribe, who live in the rainforests of southern Suriname, map out their ancestral lands to help strengthen their territorial claims. Currently, most tribes in the Amazon do not have clearly defined boundaries, making it easier for commercial ventures to target their territories.</p><br>
<p>To accurately map the Amazon&#39;s biomass and subsequent carbon related emissions, the classification of tree growth stages within different parts of the forest is crucial. In 2006 Tatiana Kuplich organized the trees of the Amazon into four categories: (1) mature forest, (2) regenerating forest, (3) regenerating forest, and (4) regenerating forest. The researcher used a combination of Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and Thematic Mapper (TM) to accurately place the different portions of the Amazon into one of the four classifications.</p><br>
<h3></h3><br>
<p>In 2005, parts of the Amazon basin experienced the worst drought in one hundred years, and there were indications that 2006 could have been a second successive year of drought. A July 23, 2006 article in the UK newspaper The Independent reported Woods Hole Research Center results showing that the forest in its present form could survive only three years of drought. Scientists at the Brazilian National Institute of Amazonian Research argue in the article that this drought response, coupled with the effects of deforestation on regional climate, are pushing the rainforest towards a "tipping point" where it would irreversibly start to die. It concludes that the forest is on the brink of being turned into savanna or desert, with catastrophic consequences for the world&#39;s climate.</p><br>
<p>According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, the combination of climate change and deforestation increases the drying effect of dead trees that fuels forest fires.</p><br>
<p>In 2010 the Amazon rainforest experienced another severe drought, in some ways more extreme than the 2005 drought. The affected region was approximate 1,160,000 square miles of rainforest, compared to 734,000 square miles in 2005. The 2010 drought had three epicenters where vegetation died off, whereas in 2005 the drought was focused on the southwestern part. The findings were published in the journal Science. In a typical year the Amazon absorbs 1.5 gigatons of carbon dioxide; during 2005 instead 5 gigatons were released and in 2010 8 gigatons were released. Additional severe droughts occurred in 2010, 2015, and 2016.</p><br>
