1.
Napier of Magdala Battery
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Napier of Magdala Battery is a former coastal artillery battery on the south-western cliffs of the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar, overlooking the Bay of Gibraltar. It also overlooks Rosia Bay from the north, as does Parsons Lodge Battery from the south and it contains one of two surviving Armstrong 100-ton guns. Earlier, in 1879, they had mounted another such gun in Gibraltar at Victoria Battery. These two batteries, together with two in Malta, were a response to the Italians having, in 1873, built the battleship Duilio, which was to receive four Armstrong Guns of the same design. The British authorised the construction of Victoria and Napier of Magdala batteries in December 1878, they completed Victoria in 1879 and Napier of Magadala in 1883, at a total cost of £35,707. The gun that is now at Napier of Magdala Battery originally armed Victoria Battery, the gun at Napier Battery received the nickname, The Rockbuster. During World War II, the British Army stationed a battery of four 3.7 quick-firing anti-aircraft guns at the site. These never fired a shot in anger, though in 1945 they almost fired upon an Iberia Airlines Junkers Ju 88 that had wandered into Gibraltars airspace while on a flight from Málaga to Tetouan. The Rockbuster was last fired in 2002 to mark the 2002 Calpe Conference between Gibraltar and Malta, in 2010 Gibraltar and Malta jointly issued a four-stamp set of stamps featuring the two countries 100-ton guns. Two stamps show the gun at Napier of Magdala Battery, one of each pair is a view from 1882, and the other is a view from 2010. The stamps from Gibraltar bear a denomination of 75 pence, while those from Malta bear a denomination of 0.75 euros, history of Gallianos Bank, The Smallest Bank in the World. Gibraltar. govs site on the Napier of Magdala Battery
2.
Naval artillery
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Naval artillery is artillery mounted on a warship, originally used only for naval warfare, later also for naval gunfire support against targets on land, and for anti-aircraft use. The idea of artillery dates back to the classical era. Julius Caesar indicates the use of ship-borne catapults against Britons ashore in his Commentarii de Bello Gallico, the dromons of the Byzantine Empire carried catapults and fire-throwers. From the late Middle Ages onwards, warships began to carry cannon of various calibres, the Battle of Arnemuiden, fought between England and France in 1338 at the start of the Hundred Years War, was the first recorded European naval battle using artillery. The English ship Christopher was armed with three cannons and one hand gun, by the 15th century most Mediterranean powers were utilising heavy cannon mounted on the bow or stern of a vessel and designed to bombard fortresses on shore. By mid-century some vessels also carried smaller broadside cannons for bombarding other vessels immediately prior to an attempted boarding and these small guns were anti-personnel weapons and were fired at point blank range to accompany engagement with muskets or bows. From the 1470s both the Portuguese and Venetian navies were experimenting with cannons as anti-ship weapons, in 1489 John of Portugal further contributed to the development of naval artillery by establishing the first standardized teams of trained naval gunners. The 16th century was an era of transition in naval warfare, since ancient times, war at sea had been fought much like that on land, with melee weapons and bows and arrows, but on floating wooden platforms rather than battlefields. Though the introduction of guns was a significant change, it slowly changed the dynamics of ship-to-ship combat. As guns became heavier and able to more powerful gunpowder charges, they needed to be placed lower in the ship. Although some 16th-century galleys mounted broadside cannon, they did so at the expense of rowing positions which sacrificed speed, most early cannon were still placed in the forecastle and aftercastle of a ship where they might be conveniently pointed in any direction. Early naval artillery was a weapon to deter boarders, because cannon powerful enough to damage ships were heavy enough to destabilize any ship mounting them in an elevated castle. Being a crown industry, cost considerations did not curb the pursuit of the best quality, best innovations, the crown paid wage premiums and bonuses to lure the best European artisans and gunners to advance the industry in Portugal. This made broadsides, coordinated volleys from all the guns on one side of a ship, possible for the first time in history, at least in theory. Ships, such as Mary Rose, carried a mixture of cannon of different types and sizes, many designed for land use, and using incompatible ammunition at different ranges and rates of fire. The Mary Rose, like other ships of the time, was built during a period of development of heavy artillery. The heavy armament was a mix of older-type wrought iron and cast bronze guns, the bronze guns were cast in one piece and rested on four-wheel carriages which were essentially the same as those used until the 19th century. The breech-loaders were cheaper to produce and both easier and faster to reload, but could take less powerful charges than cast bronze guns, the majority of the guns were small iron guns with short range that could be aimed and fired by a single person
3.
Armstrong Whitworth
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Sir W G Armstrong Whitworth & Co Ltd was a major British manufacturing company of the early years of the 20th century. With headquarters in Elswick, Newcastle upon Tyne, Armstrong Whitworth engaged in the construction of armaments, ships, locomotives, automobiles and aircraft. In 1882, it merged with the firm of Charles Mitchell to form Armstrong Mitchell & Company. Armstrong Mitchell merged again with the firm of Joseph Whitworth in 1897. The company expanded into the manufacture of cars and trucks in 1902, and created a department in 1913. In 1927, it merged with Vickers Limited to form Vickers-Armstrongs. the Wilson-Pilcher was an advanced car, originally with a 2. 4-litre engine, that had been made in London from 1901 until 1904 when production moved to Newcastle. When Armstrong-Whitworth took over production two models were made, a 2. 7-litre flat four and a 4. 1-litre flat six, the engines had the flywheel at the front of the engine, and the crankshaft had intermediate bearings between each pair of cylinders. Drive was to the wheels via a preselector gearbox and helical bevel axle. The cars were listed at £735 for the four and £900 for the six and they were still theoretically available until 1907. The first Armstrong-Whitworth car was the 28/36 of 1906 with a water-cooled, drive was via a four-speed gearbox and shaft to the rear wheels. A larger car was listed for 1908 with a choice of either 5-litre 30 or 7. 6-litre 40 models sharing a 127 mm bore, the 40 was listed at £798 in bare chassis form for supplying to coachbuilders. These large cars were joined in 1909 by the 4. 3-litre 18/22 and in 1910 by the 3. 7-litre 25, which seems to have shared the same chassis as the 30 and 40. In 1911, a new car appeared in the shape of the 2. 4-litre 12/14, called the 15.9 in 1911. This model had an 88-inch wheelbase compared with the 120 inches of the 40 range and this was joined by four larger cars ranging from the 2. 7-litre 15/20 to the 3. 7-litre 25.5. The first six-cylinder model, the 30/50 with 5. 1-litre 90 mm bore by 135 mm stroke engine came in 1912 with the option of electric lighting and this grew to 5.7 litres in 1913. At the outbreak of war, as well as the 30/50, the range consisted of the 3-litre 17/25, the cars were usually if not always bodied by external coach builders and had a reputation for reliability and solid workmanship. The company maintained a London sales outlet at New Bond Street, when Armstrong Whitworth and Vickers merged, Armstrong Whitworths automotive interests were purchased by J. D. Siddeley as Armstrong Siddeley. An Armstrong Whitworth car is displayed in the Discovery Museum, Newcastle upon Tyne, in the bibliography heading links are given to the museums information sheet as available through Wiki Commons
4.
Gun barrel
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A gun barrel is a part of firearms and artillery pieces. The hollow interior of the barrel is called the bore, a gun barrel must be able to hold in the expanding gas produced by the propellants to ensure that optimum muzzle velocity is attained by the projectile as it is being pushed out by the expanding gas. Modern small arms barrels are made of known and tested to withstand the pressures involved. Artillery pieces are made by various techniques providing reliably sufficient strength, early firearms were muzzle-loading, with powder, and then shot loaded from the muzzle, capable of only a low rate of fire. During the 19th century effective mechanical locks were invented that sealed a breech-loading weapon against the escape of propellant gases, the early Chinese, the inventors of gunpowder, used bamboo, a naturally tubular stalk, as the first barrels in gunpowder projectile weapons. Early European guns were made of iron, usually with several strengthening bands of the metal wrapped around circular wrought iron rings. The Chinese were the first to master cast-iron cannon barrels, early cannon barrels were very thick for their caliber. Bore evacuator Bore snake Cannon Muzzle Polygonal rifling Rifling Slug barrel Smoothbore
5.
Shell (projectile)
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A shell is a payload-carrying projectile that, as opposed to shot, contains an explosive or other filling, though modern usage sometimes includes large solid projectiles properly termed shot. Solid shot may contain a pyrotechnic compound if a tracer or spotting charge is used, originally, it was called a bombshell, but shell has come to be unambiguous in a military context. Words cognate with grenade are still used for an artillery or mortar projectile in some European languages, shells are usually large-calibre projectiles fired by artillery, combat vehicles, and warships. Shells usually have the shape of a cylinder topped by a nose for good aerodynamic performance, possibly with a tapering base. Solid cannonballs did not need a fuse, but hollow munitions filled with something such as gunpowder to fragment the ball, needed a fuse, percussion fuses with a spherical projectile presented a challenge because there was no way of ensuring that the impact mechanism hit the target. Therefore, shells needed a fuse that was ignited before or during firing. The earliest record of shells being used in combat was by the Republic of Venice at Jadra in 1376, shells with fuses were used at the 1421 siege of St Boniface in Corsica. These were two hollowed hemispheres of stone or bronze held together by an iron hoop, as described in their book, these hollow, gunpowder-packed shells were made of cast iron. At least since the 16th Century grenades made of ceramics or glass were in use in Central Europe, a hoard of several hundred ceramic greandes were discovered during building works in front of a bastion of the Bavarian City of Ingolstadt, Germany dated to the 17th Century. Lots of the grenades obtained their orignal blackpowder loads and igniters, most probably the grenades were intentionally dumped the moat of the bastion before the year 1723. Early powder burning fuses had to be loaded fuse down to be ignited by firing or a portfire put down the barrel to light the fuse, other shells were wrapped in bitumen cloth, which would ignite during the firing and in turn ignite a powder fuse. Nevertheless, shells came into use in the 16th Century. By the 18th Century, it was known that the fuse towards the muzzle could be lit by the flash through the windage between the shell and the barrel, the use of exploding shells from field artillery became relatively commonplace from early in the 19th century. Until the mid 19th century, shells remained as simple exploding spheres that used gunpowder and they were usually made of cast iron, but bronze, lead, brass and even glass shell casings were experimented with. The word bomb encompassed them at the time, as heard in the lyrics of The Star-Spangled Banner, typically, the thickness of the metal body was about a sixth of their diameter and they were about two thirds the weight of solid shot of the same calibre. To ensure that shells were loaded with their fuses towards the muzzle, in 1819, a committee of British artillery officers recognised that they were essential stores and in 1830 Britain standardised sabot thickness as a half inch. The sabot was also intended to reduce jamming during loading, despite the use of exploding shell, the use of smoothbore cannons, firing spherical projectiles of shot, remained the dominant artillery method until the 1850s. By the late 18th century, artillery could use canister shot to defend itself from infantry or cavalry attack and this involved loading a tin or canvas container filled with small iron or lead balls instead of the usual cannonball
6.
Caliber
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In guns, particularly firearms, caliber or calibre is the approximate internal diameter of the barrel, or the diameter of the projectile it fires, in hundredths or sometimes thousandths of an inch. For example, a 45 caliber firearm has a diameter of.45 of an inch. Barrel diameters can also be expressed using metric dimensions, as in 9mm pistol, when the barrel diameter is given in inches, the abbreviation cal can be used. Good performance requires a bullet to closely match the diameter of a barrel to ensure a good seal. While modern cartridges and cartridge firearms are referred to by the cartridge name. Firearm calibers outside the range of 17 to 50 exist, but are rarely encountered. Larger calibers, such as.577.585.600.700, the.950 JDJ is the only known cartridge beyond 79 caliber used in a rifle. Referring to artillery, caliber is used to describe the length as multiples of the bore diameter. A 5-inch 50 calibre gun has a diameter of 5 in. The main guns of the USS Missouri are 1650 caliber, makers of early cartridge arms had to invent methods of naming the cartridges, since no established convention existed then. One of the early established cartridge arms was the Spencer repeating rifle, later various derivatives were created using the same basic cartridge, but with smaller-diameter bullets, these were named by the cartridge diameter at the base and mouth. The original No.56 became the. 56-56, and the smaller versions. 56-52. 56-50, the. 56-52, the most common of the new calibers, used a 50-cal bullet. Optionally, the weight in grains was designated, e. g. 45-70-405. Variations on these methods persist today, with new cartridges such as the.204 Ruger, metric diameters for small arms refer to cartridge dimensions and are expressed with an × between the bore diameter and the length of the cartridge case, for example,7. 62×51 NATO. This indicates that the diameter is 7. 62mm, loaded in a case 51mm long. Similarly, the 6. 5×55 Swedish cartridge has a diameter of 6.5 mm. An exception to rule is the proprietary cartridge used by U. S. maker Lazzeroni. The following table lists commonly used calibers where both metric and imperial are used as equivalents
7.
Recoil
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Recoil is the backward movement of a gun when it is discharged. To apply this counter-recoiling force, modern mounted guns may employ recoil buffering comprising springs and hydraulic recoil mechanisms, early cannons used systems of ropes along with rolling or sliding friction to provide forces to slow the recoiling cannon to a stop. Recoil buffering allows the maximum counter-recoil force to be lowered so that strength limitations of the gun mount are not exceeded, however, the same pressures acting on the base of the projectile are acting on the rear face of the gun chamber, accelerating the gun rearward during firing. This results in the required counter-recoiling force being proportionally lower, modern cannons also employ muzzle brakes very effectively to redirect some of the propellant gasses rearward after projectile exit. This provides a force to the barrel, allowing the buffering system. The same physics affecting recoil in mounted guns and cannons applies to hand-held guns, hands, arms and shoulders have considerable strength and elasticity for this purpose, up to certain practical limits. For this reason, establishing recoil safety standards for small arms remains challenging, a change in momentum of a mass requires a force, according to Newtons first law, known as the law of inertia, inertia simply being another term for mass. That force, applied to a mass, creates an acceleration, according to Newtons second law, the law of momentum -- changing the velocity of the mass changes its momentum. It is important to understand at this point that velocity is not simply speed, velocity is the speed of a mass in a particular direction. In a very technical sense, speed is a scalar, a magnitude, in summation, the total momentum of the system equals zero, surprisingly just as it did before the trigger was pulled. There are two conservation laws at work when a gun is fired, conservation of momentum and conservation of energy, recoil is explained by the law of conservation of momentum, and so it is easier to discuss it separately from energy. The nature of the process is determined by the force of the expanding gases in the barrel upon the gun. It is also determined by the force applied to the gun. The recoil force only acts during the time that the ejecta are still in the barrel of the gun, except for the case of zero-recoil, the counter-recoil force is smaller than the recoil force but lasts for a longer time. Since the recoil force and the force are not matched. In the zero-recoil case, the two forces are matched and the gun will not move when fired. In most cases, a gun is very close to a free-recoil condition, an example of near zero-recoil would be a gun securely clamped to a massive or well-anchored table, or supported from behind by a massive wall. For example, placing the butt of a large caliber gun directly against a wall, the recoil of a firearm, whether large or small, is a result of the law of conservation of momentum
8.
Gun laying
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Gun laying is the process of aiming an artillery piece, such as a gun, howitzer or mortar on land, or at sea, against surface or air targets. It may be laying for direct fire, where the gun is aimed similarly to a rifle, or indirect fire, the term includes automated aiming using, for example, radar-derived target data and computer-controlled guns. Gun laying means moving the axis of the bore of the barrel in two planes, horizontal and vertical. A gun is traversed – rotated in a horizontal plane – to align it with the target, Gun laying is a set of actions to align the axis of a gun barrel so that it points in the required direction. This alignment is in the horizontal and vertical planes, Gun laying may be for direct fire, where the layer sees the target, or indirect fire, where the target may not be visible from the gun. Gun laying has sometimes called training the gun. Laying in the vertical plane uses data derived from trials or empirical experience, for any given gun and projectile types, it reflects the distance to the target and the size of the propellant charge. It also incorporates any differences in height between gun and target, with indirect fire, it may allow for other variables as well. With indirect fire the horizontal angle is relative to something, typically the guns aiming point, depending on the gun mount, there is usually a choice of two trajectories. The dividing angle between the trajectories is about 45 degrees, it varies due to gun dependent factors. Below 45 degrees the trajectory is called low angle, above is high angle, the differences are that low angle fire has a shorter time of flight, a lower vertex and flatter angle of descent. All guns have carriages or mountings that support the barrel assembly, early guns could only be traversed by moving their entire carriage or mounting, and this lasted with heavy artillery into World War II. Mountings could be fitted into traversing turrets on ships, coast defences or tanks, from circa 1900 field artillery carriages provided traverse without moving the wheels and trail. The carriage, or mounting, also enabled the barrel to be set at the elevation angle. With some gun mounts it is possible to depress the gun, some guns require a near-horizontal elevation for loading. An essential capability for any elevation mechanism is to prevent the weight of the barrel forcing its heavier end downward and this is greatly helped by having trunnions at the centre of gravity, although a counterbalance mechanism can be used. It also means the elevation gear has to be enough to resist considerable downward pressure. However, mortars, where the forces were transferred directly into the ground
9.
Muzzle-loading rifle
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A muzzle-loading rifle is a muzzle-loaded small arm or artillery piece that has a rifled barrel rather than a smoothbore. The term rifled muzzle loader typically is used to describe a type of artillery piece, a shoulder arm is typically just called a rifle, as almost all small arms were rifled by the time breechloading became prevalent. Muzzle and breechloading artillery served together for decades, making a clear distinction more important. A muzzle loading weapon is loaded through the muzzle, or front of the barrel and this is the opposite of a breech-loading weapon or rifled breechloader, which is loaded from the breech-end of the barrel. The rifling grooves cut on the inside of the cause the projectile to spin rapidly in flight, giving it greater stability and hence range. Hand held rifles were well-developed by the 1740s, a popularly recognizable form of the muzzleloader is the Kentucky Rifle, which was actually developed in Pennsylvania. The American Longrifle evolved from the German Jäger rifle, there are also muzzle-loading pistols and shotguns. The Minié ball of the middle 19th century increased the rate of fire of rifles to match that of smoothbores and these have gradually given way to firearms that use alternative methods of inserting a projectile into the chamber. The La Hitte rifled guns were used from 1859 during the Franco-Austrian War in Italy and these guns were a considerable improvement over the previous smooth-bore guns which had been in use. They were able to shoot at 3,000 meters either regular shells and they appear to have been the first case of usage of rifled cannons on a battlefield. Until the middle of the 19th century Royal Navy warships had been armed with progressively larger smoothbore muzzle-loading cannon and these had by then approached their limit in terms of armour penetration, range and destructive power. These weapons, however, were prone to failure, frequently explosively. The type of gun finally adopted was a weapon which fired projectiles with external studs which engaged with the rifling. Furthermore, the muzzle velocity obtainable in these guns was no more than half of that obtained in interrupted screw breeched guns of the following century, rifled muzzle loader are artillery pieces of muzzle-loading rifle format, invented in the mid-19th century. In contrast to smooth bore cannon which preceded it, the rifling of the gun barrel allowed greater accuracy. Typical guns weighed 30 tonnes with 10 diameter muzzles, and were installed in forts and this new gun and the rifled breech loader generated a huge arms race in the late 19th century, with rapid advances in fortifications and ironclad warships. This distinction did not survive with the larger calibres, which were all called RMLs. Many artillery pieces were converted from older smooth bore weapons once technical problems in strengthening the original cast iron body had been overcome
10.
William Armstrong, 1st Baron Armstrong
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William George Armstrong, 1st Baron Armstrong CB FRS was an English industrialist who founded the Armstrong Whitworth manufacturing concern on Tyneside. He was also an eminent scientist, inventor and philanthropist, in collaboration with the architect Richard Norman Shaw, he built Cragside in Northumberland, the first house in the world to be lit by hydroelectricity. He is regarded as the inventor of modern artillery, Armstrong was knighted in 1859 after giving his gun patents to the government. Armstrong was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, at 9 Pleasant Row, Shieldfield, although the house in which he was born no longer exists, an inscribed granite tablet marks the spot on which it once stood. At that time the area, next to the Pandon Dene, was rural and his father, also called William, was a corn merchant on the Newcastle quayside, who rose through the ranks of Newcastle society to become mayor of the town in 1850. An elder sister, Anne, born in 1802, was named after his mother, Armstrong was educated at private schools in Newcastle and Whickham, near Gateshead, until he was sixteen, when he was sent to Bishop Auckland Grammar School. While there, he visited the nearby engineering works of William Ramshaw. During his visits he met his wife, Ramshaw’s daughter Margaret. Armstrong’s father was set on him following a career in the law, and so he was articled to Armorer Donkin and he spent five years in London studying law and returned to Newcastle in 1833. In 1835 he became a partner in Donkin’s business and the firm became Donkin, Stable, Armstrong married Margaret Ramshaw in 1835, and they built a house in Jesmond Dene, on the eastern edge of Newcastle. Armstrong worked for years as a solicitor, but during his spare time he showed great interest in engineering. Armstrong was a keen angler, and while fishing on the River Dee at Dentdale in the Pennines, he saw a waterwheel in action. It struck Armstrong that much of the power was being wasted. When he returned to Newcastle, he designed an engine powered by water. Unfortunately, little interest was shown in the engine, Armstrong subsequently developed a piston engine instead of a rotary one and decided that it might be suitable for driving a hydraulic crane. In 1846 his work as an amateur scientist was recognized when he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, in 1845 a scheme was set in motion to provide piped water from distant reservoirs to the households of Newcastle. He claimed that his hydraulic crane could unload ships faster and more cheaply than conventional cranes, the Corporation agreed to his suggestion, and the experiment proved so successful that three more hydraulic cranes were installed on the Quayside. The success of his hydraulic crane led Armstrong to consider setting up a business to manufacture cranes and he therefore resigned from his legal practice
11.
Malta
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Malta, officially known as the Republic of Malta, is a Southern European island country consisting of an archipelago in the Mediterranean Sea. It lies 80 km south of Italy,284 km east of Tunisia, the country covers just over 316 km2, with a population of just under 450,000, making it one of the worlds smallest and most densely populated countries. The capital of Malta is Valletta, which at 0.8 km2, is the smallest national capital in the European Union, Malta has one national language, which is Maltese, and English as an official language. John, French and British, have ruled the islands, King George VI of the United Kingdom awarded the George Cross to Malta in 1942 for the countrys bravery in the Second World War. The George Cross continues to appear on Maltas national flag, the country became a republic in 1974, and although no longer a Commonwealth realm, remains a member state of the Commonwealth of Nations. Malta was admitted to the United Nations in 1964 and to the European Union in 2004, in 2008, Catholicism is the official religion in Malta. The origin of the term Malta is uncertain, and the modern-day variation derives from the Maltese language, the most common etymology is that the word Malta derives from the Greek word μέλι, meli, honey. The ancient Greeks called the island Μελίτη meaning honey-sweet, possibly due to Maltas unique production of honey, an endemic species of bee lives on the island. The Romans went on to call the island Melita, which can be considered either as a latinisation of the Greek Μελίτη or the adaptation of the Doric Greek pronunciation of the same word Μελίτα. Another conjecture suggests that the word Malta comes from the Phoenician word Maleth a haven or port in reference to Maltas many bays, few other etymological mentions appear in classical literature, with the term Malta appearing in its present form in the Antonine Itinerary. The extinction of the hippos and dwarf elephants has been linked to the earliest arrival of humans on Malta. Prehistoric farming settlements dating to the Early Neolithic period were discovered in areas and also in caves. The Sicani were the tribe known to have inhabited the island at this time and are generally regarded as being closely related to the Iberians. Pottery from the Għar Dalam phase is similar to found in Agrigento. A culture of megalithis temple builders then either supplanted or arose from this early period, the temples have distinctive architecture, typically a complex trefoil design, and were used from 4000 to 2500 BCE. Animal bones and a knife found behind an altar stone suggest that temple rituals included animal sacrifice. Tentative information suggests that the sacrifices were made to the goddess of fertility, the culture apparently disappeared from the Maltese Islands around 2500 BC. Archaeologists speculate that the builders fell victim to famine or disease
12.
Gibraltar
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Gibraltar is a British Overseas Territory located on the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula. It has an area of 6.7 km2 and shares its border with Spain. The Rock of Gibraltar is the landmark of the region. At its foot is a populated city area, home to over 30,000 Gibraltarians. An Anglo-Dutch force captured Gibraltar from Spain in 1704 during the War of the Spanish Succession on behalf of the Habsburg claim to the Spanish throne, the territory was subsequently ceded to Great Britain in perpetuity under the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. Today Gibraltars economy is based largely on tourism, online gambling, financial services, the sovereignty of Gibraltar is a major point of contention in Anglo-Spanish relations as Spain asserts a claim to the territory. Gibraltarians overwhelmingly rejected proposals for Spanish sovereignty in a 1967 referendum, under the Gibraltar constitution of 2006, Gibraltar governs its own affairs, though some powers, such as defence and foreign relations, remain the responsibility of the British government. The name Gibraltar is the Spanish derivation of the Arabic name Jabal Ṭāriq, earlier, it was known as Mons Calpe, a name of Phoenician origin and one of the Pillars of Hercules. The pronunciation of the name in modern Spanish is, evidence of Neanderthal habitation in Gibraltar between 28,000 and 24,000 BP has been discovered at Gorhams Cave, making Gibraltar possibly the last known holdout of the Neanderthals. Within recorded history, the first inhabitants were the Phoenicians, around 950 BC, subsequently, Gibraltar became known as one of the Pillars of Hercules, after the Greek legend of the creation of the Strait of Gibraltar by Heracles. The Carthaginians and Romans also established semi-permanent settlements, after the collapse of the Roman Empire, Gibraltar came briefly under the control of the Vandals. The area later formed part of the Visigothic Kingdom of Hispania from 414 AD until the Islamic conquest of Iberia in 711 AD, in 1160, the Almohad Sultan Abd al-Mumin ordered that a permanent settlement, including a castle, be built. It received the name of Medinat al-Fath, on completion of the works in the town, the Sultan crossed the Strait to look at the works and stayed in Gibraltar for two months. The Tower of Homage of the Moorish Castle remains standing today, from 1274 onwards, the town was fought over and captured by the Nasrids of Granada, the Marinids of Morocco and the kings of Castile. In 1462, Gibraltar was finally captured by Juan Alonso de Guzmán, after the conquest, King Henry IV of Castile assumed the additional title of King of Gibraltar, establishing it as part of the comarca of the Campo Llano de Gibraltar. In 1501, Gibraltar passed back to the Spanish Crown, the occupation of the town by Alliance forces caused the exodus of the population to the surrounding area of the Campo de Gibraltar. As the Alliances campaign faltered, the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht was negotiated and ceded control of Gibraltar to Britain to secure Britains withdrawal from the war. Unsuccessful attempts by Spanish monarchs to regain Gibraltar were made with the siege of 1727 and again with the Great Siege of Gibraltar, during the American War of Independence
13.
RML 12.5 inch 38 ton gun
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The RML12.5 inch guns were large rifled muzzle-loading guns designed for British battleships and were also employed for coast defence. The gun originated from a desire for a longer 12-inch gun than the existing RML12 inch 35 ton gun and this was approved in January 1875. The gun was rifled on the Woolwich pattern of a number of broad shallow rounded grooves. Mark II had a powder chamber and attained higher muzzle velocity. This gun was the development of large British rifled muzzle-loading guns before it switched to breechloaders beginning in 1880. It was succeeded in its class on new battleships by the BL 12-inch Mk II gun, guns were mounted on HMS Dreadnought commissioned in 1879, HMS Agamemnon commissioned in 1883, and HMS Ajax commissioned in 1885, the last British warships completed with muzzle-loading guns. When the gun was first introduced projectiles had several rows of studs which engaged with the rifling to impart spin. Sometime after 1878, attached gas-checks were fitted to the bases of the shells, reducing wear on the guns and improving their range. Subsequently automatic gas-checks were developed which could rotate shells, allowing the deployment of a new range of studless ammunition, by this time the gun no longer fired studded ammunition without gas-checks. Instead there were two sets of ammunition available, namely, older studded ammunition with attached gas-checks Mk II, case ammunition neither was studded nor required gas-checks. Also by this time, attached gas-checks Mk I as shown in image 2 had been superseded by attached gas-checks Mk II, War Office, UK,1877 Text Book of Gunnery,1887. LONDON, PRINTED FOR HIS MAJESTYS STATIONERY OFFICE, BY HARRISON AND SONS, MARTINS LANE Sectretary of State for War. 12. 5-inch 38-ton Gun, Marks I and II,12. 5-inch 38-ton gun, marks I and II, casemate, dwarf, and small port mountings. 1885 at State Library of Victoria Handbook for the 12. 5-inch 38-ton R. M. L
14.
Rifled muzzle loader
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A rifled muzzle loader is a type of large artillery piece invented in the mid-19th century. In contrast to smooth bore cannon which preceded it, the rifling of the gun barrel allowed greater accuracy. Typical guns weighed 30 tonnes with 10-inch-diameter muzzles, and were installed in forts and this new gun and the rifled breech loader generated a huge arms race in the late 19th century, with rapid advances in fortifications and ironclad warships. The largest rifled muzzle-loader carried on a warship was the 17. 7-inch, 100-ton Elswick of the 1870s, four of which were installed in each of the Italian battleships Duilio and Dandalo. The Royal Navy at the time was restricted to the produced by Woolwich Arsenal. Introduction of the Armstrong rifled breechloaders into the Royal Navy in 1860 was not very successful, the action of Kagosima on 14 August 1863 led to 28 accidents in 365 rounds fired. Following this experience, the Royal Navy reverted to the muzzle-loader until the early 1880s, other navies, notably France, continued to develop and deploy RBLs, but they were hardly superior in rate of fire or muzzle energy to their British counterparts. During this period rapid burning black powder was used as the propellant, so the guns had a stubby, the RBLs of the time were notably weaker in the breech region, and more prone to failure. A catastrophic accident on board HMS Thunderer in January 1879, in which a 38-ton 12-inch muzzle-loader hung fire and was subsequently double-loaded, motivated the Admiralty to re-consider the RBL, a new 12-inch gun was developed for HMS Edinburgh in 1879, but burst during trials. Following modifications the new weapon proved reliable, dr Oscar Parkes- British Battleships, Seeley, Service & Co
15.
Carbon steel
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The term carbon steel may also be used in reference to steel which is not stainless steel, in this use carbon steel may include alloy steels. As the carbon percentage content rises, steel has the ability to become harder and stronger through heat treating, however, regardless of the heat treatment, a higher carbon content reduces weldability. In carbon steels, the carbon content lowers the melting point. Mild steel, also known as steel and Low carbon steel. It is now the most common form of steel because its price is relatively low while it provides material properties that are acceptable for many applications, mild steel contains approximately 0. 05–0. 25% carbon making it malleable and ductile. Mild steel has a low tensile strength, but it is cheap and easy to form. It is often used large quantities of steel are needed. The density of steel is approximately 7.85 g/cm3. Low-carbon steels suffer from yield-point runout where the material has two yield points, the first yield point is higher than the second and the yield drops dramatically after the upper yield point. If a low-carbon steel is only stressed to some point between the upper and lower yield point then the surface develop Lüder bands, low-carbon steels contain less carbon than other steels and are easier to cold-form, making them easier to handle. Carbon steels which can successfully undergo heat-treatment have a content in the range of 0. 30–1. 70% by weight. Trace impurities of other elements can have a significant effect on the quality of the resulting steel. Trace amounts of sulfur in particular make the steel red-short, that is, brittle, low-alloy carbon steel, such as A36 grade, contains about 0. 05% sulfur and melts around 1, 426–1,538 °C. Manganese is often added to improve the hardenability of low-carbon steels and these additions turn the material into a low-alloy steel by some definitions, but AISIs definition of carbon steel allows up to 1. 65% manganese by weight. Carbon steel is broken down into four classes based on content,0.05 to 0. 25% carbon content. Balances ductility and strength and has good resistance, used for large parts, forging. Very strong, used for springs, swords, and high-strength wires, steels that can be tempered to great hardness. Used for special purposes like knives, axles or punches, most steels with more than 2. 5% carbon content are made using powder metallurgy
16.
Royal Navy
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The Royal Navy is the United Kingdoms naval warfare force. Although warships were used by the English kings from the medieval period. The modern Royal Navy traces its origins to the early 16th century, from the middle decades of the 17th century and through the 18th century, the Royal Navy vied with the Dutch Navy and later with the French Navy for maritime supremacy. From the mid 18th century it was the worlds most powerful navy until surpassed by the United States Navy during the Second World War. The Royal Navy played a key part in establishing the British Empire as the world power during the 19th. Due to this historical prominence, it is common, even among non-Britons, following World War I, the Royal Navy was significantly reduced in size, although at the onset of the Second World War it was still the worlds largest. By the end of the war, however, the United States Navy had emerged as the worlds largest, during the Cold War, the Royal Navy transformed into a primarily anti-submarine force, hunting for Soviet submarines, mostly active in the GIUK gap. The Royal Navy is part of Her Majestys Naval Service, which includes the Royal Marines. The professional head of the Naval Service is the First Sea Lord, the Defence Council delegates management of the Naval Service to the Admiralty Board, chaired by the Secretary of State for Defence. The strength of the fleet of the Kingdom of England was an important element in the power in the 10th century. English naval power declined as a result of the Norman conquest. Medieval fleets, in England as elsewhere, were almost entirely composed of merchant ships enlisted into service in time of war. Englands naval organisation was haphazard and the mobilisation of fleets when war broke out was slow, early in the war French plans for an invasion of England failed when Edward III of England destroyed the French fleet in the Battle of Sluys in 1340. Major fighting was confined to French soil and Englands naval capabilities sufficed to transport armies and supplies safely to their continental destinations. Such raids halted finally only with the occupation of northern France by Henry V. Henry VII deserves a large share of credit in the establishment of a standing navy and he embarked on a program of building ships larger than heretofore. He also invested in dockyards, and commissioned the oldest surviving dry dock in 1495 at Portsmouth, a standing Navy Royal, with its own secretariat, dockyards and a permanent core of purpose-built warships, emerged during the reign of Henry VIII. Under Elizabeth I England became involved in a war with Spain, the new regimes introduction of Navigation Acts, providing that all merchant shipping to and from England or her colonies should be carried out by English ships, led to war with the Dutch Republic. In the early stages of this First Anglo-Dutch War, the superiority of the large, heavily armed English ships was offset by superior Dutch tactical organisation and the fighting was inconclusive
17.
Armament of the Iowa-class battleship
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The armament of the Iowa-class battleships underwent a massive development since the first Iowa-class ship was laid down in June 1940. Owing to the development of the weaponry aboard these battleships they remain the most heavily armed gunships the United States has ever put to sea. Each of the four battleships carried an array of 20 mm and 40 mm anti-aircraft guns for defense against enemy aircraft. Each battleship also received four Harpoon missile magazines, Phalanx anti-aircraft/anti-missile Gatling gun systems, the guns were 66 feet long. About 43 feet protruded from the gun house. Each gun rested within a turret, but only the top of the turret protruded above the main deck. The turret extended either four decks or five decks down, the lower spaces contained the equipment required to rotate the turret and to elevate the guns attached to each turret. At the bottom of the turret were rooms which were used for handling the projectiles, the turrets were three-gun, not triple, because each barrel could be elevated and fired independently. The ship could fire any combination of its guns, including a broadside of all nine, the guns could be elevated from −5° to +45°, moving at up to 12° per second. The turrets could be rotated about 300° at a rate of four degrees per second and can even be fired back beyond the beam. The guns were never fired horizontally forward, to distinguish between the rounds fired from different battleships the Iowa class used dye bags which allowed artillery observers to determine which rounds had been fired by which ship. Iowa, New Jersey, Missouri, and Wisconsin were assigned the orange, blue, red and green. Within each turret, a red stripe on the wall, inches from the railing, marked the boundary of the barrels recoil. When brought into service during World War II the guns had a life of roughly 290 rounds. After World War II the Navy switched to smokeless powder diphenylamine, a cooler-burning propellant and these measures were further augmented by the addition of polyurethane jackets, which were placed over the powder bags to reduce gaseous erosion during the firing of the guns. These measures greatly prolonged barrel life, and ultimately resulted in a shift from measuring barrel life in equivalent service rounds to measuring barrel life in fatigue equivalent rounds, after the guns were fired, each rifle barrel had to be cleaned. To clean the rifles, a brush was lifted by two sailors and inserted into the gun barrel, where it was pulled through the rifle with the same equipment used to load the shells. The early main battery fire control consisted of the Fire Control Tower, as modernized in the 1980s, each turret carried a DR-810 radar that measured the muzzle velocity of each gun, which made it easier to predict the velocity of succeeding shots. Together with the Mark 160 FCS and better propellant consistency, the created the most accurate battleship-caliber guns ever made
18.
Wrought iron
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Wrought iron is an iron alloy with a very low carbon content in contrast to cast iron. It is a mass of iron with fibrous slag inclusions which gives it a grain resembling wood. Wrought iron is tough, malleable, ductile, corrosion-resistant and easily welded, before the development of effective methods of steelmaking and the availability of large quantities of steel, wrought iron was the most common form of malleable iron. A wrought product is one that has been worked by forging, extruding, rolling, hammering, etcetera, to change its form. Wrought iron is a worked iron product that is seldom produced today as other cheaper. Historically, a modest amount of iron was refined into steel. The demand for wrought iron reached its peak in the 1860s with the adaptation of ironclad warships, however, as properties such as brittleness of mild steel improved, it became less costly and more widely available than wrought iron, whose usage then declined. Wrought iron is no longer produced on a commercial scale, many products described as wrought iron, such as guard rails, garden furniture and gates, are actually made of mild steel. They retain that description because they are made to resemble objects which in the past were wrought by hand by a blacksmith, the word wrought is an archaic past participle of the verb to work, and so wrought iron literally means worked iron. Wrought iron is a term for the commodity, but is also used more specifically for finished iron goods. It was used in that sense in British Customs records. Cast iron, unlike wrought iron, is brittle and cannot be worked either hot or cold, Cast iron can break if struck with a hammer. In the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, wrought iron went by a variety of terms according to its form, origin. While the bloomery process produced wrought iron directly from ore, cast iron or pig iron were the materials used in the finery forge. Pig iron and cast iron have higher content than wrought iron. Cast and especially pig iron have excess slag which must be at least partially removed to produce quality wrought iron, at foundries it was common to blend scrap wrought iron with cast iron to improve the physical properties of castings. Fusion eventually became accepted as relatively more important than composition below a given low carbon concentration. Another difference is that steel can be hardened by heat treating, historically, wrought iron was known as commercially pure iron, however, it no longer qualifies because current standards for commercially pure iron require a carbon content of less than 0.008 wt%
19.
Gas-checks in British RML heavy guns
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Gas-checks were attachments to ammunition that revolutionised the performance of RML heavy guns. The first generation of RML heavy guns began entering service in about 1865 and they all had Woolwich rifling and relied on studs on the projectiles for rotation. Gas-checks were first introduced in 1878 or soon after and they significantly reduced wear on the guns while also increasing their range and accuracy. Before long, studless ammunition was being manufactured for these guns, gas-checks also facilitated a switch to the second generation of RML guns which used polygroove rifling and only supported studless ammunition. The first RML heavy guns were introduced into British service in about 1865, by 1878,11 models of Woolwich rifled guns had been introduced, ranging from 7 inches to 12.5 inches. Unfortunately, Woolwich rifling had a defect, namely, that hot powder gas escaping around the ammunition caused excessive barrel erosion. Extensive research was performed in the early 1870s to find a solution, both gas-checks were made of copper with a little added zinc. They were, in effect, shallow cups of about the diameter as the ammunition that were attached to the base of the ammunition. When the gun was fired, the gas pressure forced the sides of the cup into the rifling grooves. It was immediately found that also increased the range of guns. It was also realised that gas-checks were capable of rotating the ammunition and this facilitated the use of polygroove rifling, which used a lot of shallow grooves, in place of the Woolwich system which used only a few deeper grooves. Polygroove rifling was less detrimental to the strength of the guns, also, studless ammunition was stronger and flew more accurately than studded ammunition. Shell strength was particularly important for armour-piercing ammunition, Attached gas-checks were used with the existing studded ammunition of Woolwich rifled guns. Their basic design was the same across all sizes of guns, the gas-check was attached to the base of the projectile by a screw-in plug which required a minor modification to each projectile. A few projectiles were unsuitable for modification, and were scrapped, Fig 1 shows the base of a 9-inch studded Palliser shell with attached gas-check Mk I. The gas-check consists of a disc with a circular collar of the same diameter as the projectile around its edge. The Mk I gas-check performed well for the faster burning R. L. G, powder with which it was initially tested, but was found to seal the grooves too slowly with slower burning powders such as P and P2, resulting in scoring of the bottoms of grooves. As a result, the Mk I gas-check was superseded by the Mk II gas-check by 1881, Fig 2 shows a 9-inch studded common shell with a Mk II gas-check
20.
Palliser shot and shell
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Palliser shot was invented by Sir William Palliser and hence its name. It was an early British armour-piercing artillery projectile, intended to pierce the armour protection of warships being developed in the half of the 19th century. Major Pallisers shot, approved 21 October 1867, was an improvement over the ordinary elongated shot of the time and it was adopted for the larger types of rifled muzzle-loading guns rifled on the Woolwich principle. Palliser shot in many calibers stayed in service in the role until phased out of service in 1909 for naval and fortress use. Palliser shot was made of cast iron, the head being chilled in casting to harden it, using molds with a metal. At times there were defects that led to cracking in the projectiles, bronze studs were installed into the outside of the projectile so as to engage the rifling grooves in the gun barrel. The hole at the base was threaded to accept a gas check. This prevented propellant gases from blowing around the projectile, providing obturation as the band had yet to be perfected. Later designs did away with the studs on the projectile body, at the Battle of Angamos the Chilean ironclad warships fired twenty 250-pound Palliser gunshots against the Peruvian monitor Huáscar, with devastating results. It was the first time that such piercing shells were used in actual combat, britain also deployed Palliser shells in the 1870s–1880s. In the shell the cavity was slightly larger than in the shot and was filled with gunpowder instead of being empty, the shell was correspondingly slightly longer than the shot to compensate for the lighter cavity. The powder filling was ignited by the shock of impact and hence did not require a fuze, Treatise on Ammunition 2nd Edition,1877. War Office, UK Treatise on Ammunition 4th Edition,1887
21.
Explosive material
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An explosive charge is a measured quantity of explosive material, which may be composed of a single ingredient or a combination of two or more. Materials that detonate are said to be high explosives and materials that deflagrate are said to be low explosives, Explosives may also be categorized by their sensitivity. Sensitive materials that can be initiated by a small amount of heat or pressure are primary explosives. A wide variety of chemicals can explode, a number are manufactured specifically for the purpose of being used as explosives. The remainder are too dangerous, sensitive, toxic, expensive, unstable, in contrast, some materials are merely combustible or flammable if they burn without exploding. The distinction, however, is not razor-sharp, though early thermal weapons, such as Greek fire, have existed since ancient times, the first widely used explosive in warfare and mining was black powder, invented in 9th century China. This material was sensitive to water, and it produced copious amounts of dark smoke, the first useful explosive stronger than black powder was nitroglycerin, developed in 1847. Since nitroglycerin is a liquid and highly unstable, it was replaced by nitrocellulose, TNT in 1863, smokeless powder, dynamite in 1867, World War I saw the adoption of TNT trinitrotoluene in artillery shells. World War II saw a use of new explosives. In turn, these have largely replaced by more powerful explosives such as C-4. However, C-4 and PETN react with metal and catch fire easily, yet unlike TNT, C-4 and PETN are waterproof, the largest commercial application of explosives is mining. In Materials Science and Engineering, explosives are used in cladding, a thin plate of some material is placed atop a thick layer of a different material, both layers typically of metal. Atop the thin layer is placed an explosive, at one end of the layer of explosive, the explosion is initiated. The two metallic layers are forced together at high speed and with great force, the explosion spreads from the initiation site throughout the explosive. Ideally, this produces a metallurgical bond between the two layers and it is possible that some fraction of the surface material from either layer eventually gets ejected when the end of material is reached. Hence, the mass of the now welded bilayer, may be less than the sum of the masses of the two initial layers, there are applications where a shock wave, and electrostatics, can result in high velocity projectiles. Thus, explosives are substances that contain an amount of energy stored in chemical bonds. Consequently, most commercial explosives are compounds containing -NO2, -ONO2 and -NHNO2 groups that
22.
Shrapnel shell
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They relied almost entirely on the shells velocity for their lethality. The munition has been obsolete since the end of World War I for anti-personnel use, the functioning and principles behind Shrapnel shells are fundamentally different from high-explosive shell fragmentation. In 1784, Lieutenant Shrapnel of the Royal Artillery began developing an anti-personnel weapon, when fired, the container burst open during passage through the bore or at the muzzle, giving the effect of an oversized shotgun shell. At ranges of up to 300 m canister shot was still highly lethal, though at this range the shots’ density was much lower and his shell was a hollow cast-iron sphere filled with a mixture of balls and powder, with a crude time fuze. If the fuze was set correctly then the shell would break open, either in front or above the intended target, the shrapnel balls would carry on with the remaining velocity of the shell. The explosive charge in the shell was to be just enough to break the casing rather than scatter the shot in all directions, as such his invention increased the effective range of canister shot from 300 to about 1100 m. He called his device spherical case shot, but in time it came to be called after him, Various solutions were tried, with limited if any success. However, in 1852 Colonel Boxer proposed using a diaphragm to separate the bullets from the bursting charge, as a buffer to prevent lead shot deforming, a resin was used as a packing material between the shot. A useful side effect of using the resin was that the combustion also gave a visual reference upon the shell bursting and it took until 1803 for the British artillery to adopt the shrapnel shell, albeit with great enthusiasm when it did. Henry Shrapnel was promoted to major in the same year, the first recorded use of shrapnel by the British was in 1804 against the Dutch at Fort Nieuw-Amsterdam in Surinam. The Duke of Wellingtons armies used it from 1808 in the Peninsular War and at the Battle of Waterloo, the design was improved by Captain E. M. Boxer of the Royal Arsenal around 1852 and crossed over when cylindrical shells for rifled guns were introduced. The powder charge both shattered the cast iron wall and liberated the bullets. The broken shell wall continued mainly forward but had little destructive effect, in the 1870s William Armstrong provided a design with the bursting charge in the head and the shell wall made of steel and hence much thinner than previous cast-iron shrapnel shell walls. Britain adopted this solution for several smaller calibres but by World War I few if any such shells remained, the final shrapnel shell design, adopted in the 1880s, bore little similarity to Henry Shrapnels original design other than its spherical bullets and time fuze. It used a much thinner forged steel shell case with a fuze in the nose. The use of steel allowed the wall to be made much thinner. It also withstood the force of the charge without shattering, so that the bullets were fired forward out of the shell case with increased velocity. This is the design came to be adopted by all countries and was in standard use when World War I began in 1914
23.
Italian unification
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The process began in 1815 with the Congress of Vienna and was completed in 1871 when Rome became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy. The memory of the Risorgimento is central to both Italian politics and Italian historiography, for short period is one of the most contested. Italian nationalism was based among intellectuals and political activists, often operating from exile, after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Roman province of Italy remained united under the Ostrogothic Kingdom and later disputed between the Kingdom of the Lombards and the Byzantine Empire. Following conquest by the Frankish Empire, the title of King of Italy merged with the office of Holy Roman Emperor. However, the emperor was a foreigner who had little concern for the governance of Italy as a state, as a result. This situation persisted through the Renaissance but began to deteriorate with the rise of modern nation-states in the modern period. Italy, including the Papal States, then became the site of proxy wars between the powers, notably the Holy Roman Empire, Spain and France. Harbingers of national unity appeared in the treaty of the Italic League, in 1454, leading Renaissance Italian writers Dante Alighieri, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini expressed opposition to foreign domination. Petrarch stated that the ancient valour in Italian hearts is not yet dead in Italia Mia, Niccolò Machiavelli later quoted four verses from Italia Mia in The Prince, which looked forward to a political leader who would unite Italy to free her from the barbarians. I am an Italian, he explained, the French Republic spread republican principles, and the institutions of republican governments promoted citizenship over the rule of the Bourbons and Habsburgs and other dynasties. The reaction against any outside control challenged Napoleons choice of rulers, as Napoleons reign began to fail, the rulers he had installed tried to keep their thrones further feeding nationalistic sentiments. After Napoleon fell, the Congress of Vienna restored the pre-Napoleonic patchwork of independent governments, vincenzo Gioberti, a Piedmontese priest, had suggested a confederation of Italian states under leadership of the Pope in his 1842 book, Of the Moral and Civil Primacy of the Italians. Pope Pius IX at first appeared interested but he turned reactionary, Giuseppe Mazzini and Carlo Cattaneo wanted the unification of Italy under a federal republic. That proved too extreme for most nationalists, the middle position was proposed by Cesare Balbo as a confederation of separate Italian states led by Piedmont. One of the most influential revolutionary groups was the Carbonari, a political discussion group formed in Southern Italy early in the 19th century. After 1815, Freemasonry in Italy was repressed and discredited due to its French connections, a void was left that the Carbonari filled with a movement that closely resembled Freemasonry but with a commitment to Italian nationalism and no association with Napoleon and his government. The response came from middle class professionals and business men and some intellectuals, the Carbonari disowned Napoleon but nevertheless were inspired by the principles of the French Revolution regarding liberty, equality and fraternity. They developed their own rituals, and were strongly anticlerical, the Carbonari movement spread across Italy
24.
Regia Marina
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The Royal Navy was the navy of the Kingdom of Italy from 1861 to 1946. In 1946, with the birth of the Italian Republic, the Royal Navy changed its name to Military Navy, the Regia Marina was established on 17 March 1861 following the proclamation of the formation of the Kingdom of Italy. These problems were compounded by the continuation of separate officer schools at Genoa and Naples and these innovations quickly made older warships obsolete. The new navys baptism of fire came on 20 July 1866 at the Battle of Lissa during the Third Italian War of Independence, the battle was fought against the Austrian Empire and occurred near the island of Vis in the Adriatic sea. The Italian fleet, commanded by Admiral Persano, mustered 12 ironclad and 17 wooden-hulled ships, though only one, in 1896 the corvette Magenta completed a circumnavigation of the world. The following year the Regia Marina conducted experiments with Guglielmo Marconi in the use of radio communications,1909 saw the first use of aircraft with the fleet. An Italian naval officer, Vittorio Cuniberti, was the first in 1903 to envision in an article the all-big gun battleship design. In 1911 and 1912, the Regia Marina was involved in the Italo-Turkish War against forces of the Ottoman Empire, in the Red Sea the Italian forces were vastly superior to those of the Ottomans who only possessed a squadron of gunboats there. These were destroyed while attempting to withdraw into the Mediterranean at the Battle of Kunfuda Bay, during the war, the Regia Marina spent its major efforts in the Adriatic Sea, fighting the Austro-Hungarian Navy. Considered a relatively minor part of the warfare of World War I. For most of the war the Italian and Austro-Hungarian navies each kept a relatively passive watch over their adversaries, the Italian fleet lost the pre-dreadnought battleship Benedetto Brin at Brindisi and the dreadnought Leonardo da Vinci at Taranto due to a magazine explosion. The battleship SMS Tegetthoff was handed over to Italy as a war prize in 1919, during the interwar years the Italian government set about modernizing the Regia Marina in a way that could enable it to reach dominance over the Mediterranean Sea. Italian naval construction was limited by the Washington Naval Conference, the 1922 treaty required a parity in naval forces between the Italian and French navies, with equality in total displacement in battleships and carriers. The treaty influenced the development of the Italian fleet over the years between the two world wars, much of these new naval units were responses to French naval constructions, as the Marine nationale was seen until the mid 1930s as the most likely enemy in a hypothetical conflict. In theory this would allow them to engage or break off at their own choosing, New guns were developed with longer ranges than their British counterparts of similar caliber. Speed was emphasized in their new construction, subsequently, newer Italian cruisers such as the Giovanni dalle Bande Nere were built with a newly designed and relatively thin armour. The armor of these vessels was 24 mm, as compared to 102 mm on their contemporaries and this would have a decisive role in a number of naval battles, including the Battle of Cape Spada. The modernization work on the four Great War era battleships turned into a significant reconstruction project, the ships guns were upgraded in main armament, going from 13 guns of 305mm diameter, to 10 guns of 320mm diameter
25.
Battleship
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A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of large caliber guns. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries the battleship was the most powerful type of warship, the word battleship was coined around 1794 and is a contraction of the phrase line-of-battle ship, the dominant wooden warship during the Age of Sail. The term came into use in the late 1880s to describe a type of ironclad warship. In 1906, the commissioning of HMS Dreadnought heralded a revolution in battleship design, subsequent battleship designs, influenced by HMS Dreadnought, were referred to as dreadnoughts. Battleships were a symbol of naval dominance and national might, the launch of Dreadnought in 1906 commenced a new naval arms race. Jutland was the largest naval battle and the only full-scale clash of battleships in the war, the Naval Treaties of the 1920s and 1930s limited the number of battleships, though technical innovation in battleship design continued. The value of the battleship has been questioned, even during their heyday, there were few of the decisive fleet battles that battleship proponents expected, and used to justify the vast resources spent on building battlefleets. Battleships were retained by the United States Navy into the Cold War for fire support purposes before being stricken from the U. S. Naval Vessel Register in the 2000s. A ship of the line was a large, unarmored wooden sailing ship which mounted a battery of up to 120 smoothbore guns, from 1794, the alternative term line of battle ship was contracted to battle ship or battleship. The sheer number of guns fired broadside meant a sail battleship could wreck any wooden enemy, holing her hull, knocking down masts, wrecking her rigging, and killing her crew. However, the range of the guns was as little as a few hundred yards. The first major change to the ship of the concept was the introduction of steam power as an auxiliary propulsion system. Steam power was introduced to the navy in the first half of the 19th century, initially for small craft. The French Navy introduced steam to the line of battle with the 90-gun Napoléon in 1850—the first true steam battleship, Napoléon was armed as a conventional ship-of-the-line, but her steam engines could give her a speed of 12 knots, regardless of the wind condition. This was a decisive advantage in a naval engagement. The introduction of steam accelerated the growth in size of battleships, the adoption of steam power was only one of a number of technological advances which revolutionized warship design in the 19th century. The ship of the line was overtaken by the ironclad, powered by steam, protected by metal armor, and armed with guns firing high-explosive shells. In the Crimean War, six ships and two frigates of the Russian Black Sea Fleet destroyed seven Turkish frigates and three corvettes with explosive shells at the Battle of Sinop in 1853
26.
Caio Duilio-class ironclad
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The Caio Duilio class was a pair of ironclad turret ships built for the Royal Italian Navy in the 1870s and 1880s. They were fitted with the largest guns available,17.72 in rifled muzzle-loading guns and they spent the majority of their time in service with the Active and Reserve Squadrons of the main Italian fleet. There, they were occupied with conducting training exercises. In 1895–98, Enrico Dandolo was heavily reconstructed, but the excessive cost of the modernization prevented Caio Duilio from being similarly rebuilt, both ships were reassigned as training ships in the early to mid-1900s. Caio Duilio was stricken from the register in 1909 and converted into a floating oil tank. She was sent to the yard in 1920. Caio Duilios ultimate fate is unknown, starting in the early 1870s, following the Italian fleets defeat at the Battle of Lissa, the Italians began a large naval expansion program, initially aimed at countering the Austro-Hungarian Navy. The program began with the Caio Duilio class, which was designed by the naval architect Benedetto Brin, Brin had originally wanted to build three ships, but their great cost forced him to settle for two. At the time, Italys industrial capacity was insufficient to build the out of domestic material. Everything from the used to build the hulls to the ships machinery. The ships of the Caio Duilio class were 103.5 meters long between perpendiculars and 109.16 m long overall, Caio Duilio had a beam of 19.74 m, while Enrico Dandolo had a slightly narrower beam of 19.65 m. The ships had a draft of 8.31 to 8.36 m. Caio Duilio displaced 10,962 metric tons normally and up to 12,071 t at full load, Enrico Dandolo was slightly heavier, at 11,025 t and 12,037 t, respectively. They were the first ironclads in any navy to dispense with sails, the ships had a crew of 420 officers and men, which later increased to 515. Both ships carried a number of boats, but Caio Duilio was built with a compartment in her stern to house a small torpedo boat. The ships propulsion system consisted of two compound steam engines each driving a single screw propeller, with steam supplied by eight coal-fired. The boilers were in two groups, one forward and one aft, and each group was trunked into a large funnel. Caio Duilios engines produced a top speed of 15.04 knots at 7,711 indicated horsepower, specific figures for Enrico Dandolos original engines have not survived
27.
HMS Inflexible (1876)
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HMS Inflexible was a Victorian ironclad battleship carrying her main armament in centrally placed turrets. The ship was constructed in the 1870s for the Royal Navy to oppose the growing threat from the Italian Regia Marina in the Mediterranean. The Italian Navy had started constructing a pair of battleships, Duilio and Dandolo and these were superior to the armament of any ship in the British Mediterranean Squadron, and Inflexible was designed as a counter to them. Inflexible mounted larger guns than those of any previous British warship and had the thickest armour ever to be fitted to a Royal Navy ship. The ship was the first major warship to depend in part for the protection of her buoyancy on an armoured deck below the water-line rather than armoured sides along the waterline. The original concept was based upon a design similar to that for HMS Dreadnought. The ship was constructed from three components, several outline studies being produced by Nathaniel Barnaby. A heavily armoured citadel 75 feet wide and 110 feet long was located amidships and this citadel contained the main guns, the boilers and the engines. The ends were unarmoured, but with a 3-inch-thick armoured deck 6–8 ft below the waterline to damage to the underwater section to keep them buoyant. Coal bunkers were located over the deck and surrounded by 4-foot-wide compartments filled with cork. The ship had capacity for 400 tons of coal below the deck for use during combat. The structure above the deck also contained a large number of watertight compartments to further preserve buoyancy. There was also light superstructure to provide accommodation, and freeboard in rough weather. Barnaby wanted a ship both broader than existing designs to mimimise rolling and as short as possible to reduce its size as a target. Making a ship broader compared to its length was known to reduce its speed, so the technique of water tank tests on models. This was ten feet wider than Duillo and twenty-one feet shorter, once the outline design was agreed, the detailed architectural design was done by William White and she was laid down at Portsmouth Dockyard on 24 February 1874. Inflexible was launched 27 April 1876, later that year the MP Edward Reed, formerly Director of Naval Construction, visited the Italian ships and subsequently questioned their stability if the unarmoured ends were flooded. As Inflexible was of similar design, he raised concerns about it too
28.
Italy
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Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a unitary parliamentary republic in Europe. Located in the heart of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, San Marino, Italy covers an area of 301,338 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate and Mediterranean climate. Due to its shape, it is referred to in Italy as lo Stivale. With 61 million inhabitants, it is the fourth most populous EU member state, the Italic tribe known as the Latins formed the Roman Kingdom, which eventually became a republic that conquered and assimilated other nearby civilisations. The legacy of the Roman Empire is widespread and can be observed in the distribution of civilian law, republican governments, Christianity. The Renaissance began in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe, bringing a renewed interest in humanism, science, exploration, Italian culture flourished at this time, producing famous scholars, artists and polymaths such as Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Michelangelo and Machiavelli. The weakened sovereigns soon fell victim to conquest by European powers such as France, Spain and Austria. Despite being one of the victors in World War I, Italy entered a period of economic crisis and social turmoil. The subsequent participation in World War II on the Axis side ended in defeat, economic destruction. Today, Italy has the third largest economy in the Eurozone and it has a very high level of human development and is ranked sixth in the world for life expectancy. The country plays a prominent role in regional and global economic, military, cultural and diplomatic affairs, as a reflection of its cultural wealth, Italy is home to 51 World Heritage Sites, the most in the world, and is the fifth most visited country. The assumptions on the etymology of the name Italia are very numerous, according to one of the more common explanations, the term Italia, from Latin, Italia, was borrowed through Greek from the Oscan Víteliú, meaning land of young cattle. The bull was a symbol of the southern Italic tribes and was often depicted goring the Roman wolf as a defiant symbol of free Italy during the Social War. Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus states this account together with the legend that Italy was named after Italus, mentioned also by Aristotle and Thucydides. The name Italia originally applied only to a part of what is now Southern Italy – according to Antiochus of Syracuse, but by his time Oenotria and Italy had become synonymous, and the name also applied to most of Lucania as well. The Greeks gradually came to apply the name Italia to a larger region, excavations throughout Italy revealed a Neanderthal presence dating back to the Palaeolithic period, some 200,000 years ago, modern Humans arrived about 40,000 years ago. Other ancient Italian peoples of undetermined language families but of possible origins include the Rhaetian people and Cammuni. Also the Phoenicians established colonies on the coasts of Sardinia and Sicily, the Roman legacy has deeply influenced the Western civilisation, shaping most of the modern world
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Italian ironclad Caio Duilio
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Caio Duilio was the lead ship of the Caio Duilio class of ironclad turret ships built for the Italian Regia Marina. Named for the Roman admiral Gaius Duilius, the ship was laid down in January 1873, was launched in May 1876, and was completed in January 1880. She was armed with a battery of four 17. 7-inch guns, then the largest gun afloat. She spent her first two decades in service with the Active and Reserve Squadrons, primarily tasked with training maneuvers and exercises. She was withdrawn from front-line duty in 1902 and thereafter employed as a ship, though this role only lasted until 1909 when she was converted into a floating oil tank. The ships ultimate fate is unknown, Caio Duilio was 109.16 meters long overall and had a beam of 19.74 m and an average draft of 8.31 m. She displaced 10,962 metric tons normally and up to 12,071 t at full load and her propulsion system consisted of two vertical compound steam engines each driving a single screw propeller, with steam supplied by eight coal-fired, rectangular boilers. Her engines produced a top speed of 15.04 knots at 7,711 indicated horsepower and she could steam for 3,760 nautical miles at a speed of 10 knots. She had a crew of 420 officers and men, which increased to 515. Caio Duilio was armed with a battery of four 17.7 in 20-caliber guns. These were the largest naval guns in use at the time, as was customary for capital ships of the period, she carried three 14 in torpedo tubes. Caio Duilio was protected by armor that was 21.5 in thick at its strongest section. Both ends of the belt were connected by transverse bulkheads that were 15.75 in thick and she had an armored deck that was 1.1 to 2 in thick. Her gun turrets were armored with 17 in of steel plate, the ships bow and stern were not armored, but they were extensively subdivided into a cellular raft that was intended to reduce the risk of flooding. Construction on Caio Duilio proceeded much faster than on her sister, she was launched on 8 May 1876 and completed on 6 January 1880, on 8 March, shortly after Caio Duilio entered service, one of her 17.7 in guns exploded. The inexperienced gun crew had accidentally double-loaded the gun, the Western Squadron attacked the defending Eastern Squadron, simulating a Franco-Italian conflict, with operations conducted off Sardinia. The maneuvers consisted of close-order drills and an attack on. Later that year, the ship was present during a naval review held for the German Kaiser Wilhelm II during a visit to Italy, in 1890, Caio Duilio received a secondary battery of three 4.7 in 40-caliber guns to defend the ship against torpedo boats
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Italian ironclad Enrico Dandolo
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Enrico Dandolo was the second of two Caio Duilio-class ironclad turret ships built for the Italian Regia Marina in the 1870s. They were fitted with the largest guns available,17.72 in rifled, muzzle-loading guns, Enrico Dandolo was built in La Spezia, with her keel laid in January 1873 and her hull launched in July 1878. Construction was finally completed in April 1882 when the ship, named for the 42nd Doge of Venice, was commissioned into the Italian fleet, Enrico Dandolo spent much of her career in the Active Squadron of the Italian fleet, primarily occupied with training exercises. She was heavily modernized in 1895–98, receiving a new battery of fast-firing 10 in guns in place of the old 17.72 in guns, the ship served in the Reserve Squadron after 1905, and then became a gunnery training ship. During the Italo-Turkish War of 1911–12, Enrico Dandolo was among the few ships of the Italian fleet to see no action and she was employed as a harbor defense ship, first in Tobruk, Libya in 1913 and then in Brindisi and Venice during World War I. The ship was broken up for scrap in 1920. Enrico Dandolo was 109.16 meters long overall and had a beam of 19.65 m and she displaced 11,025 metric tons normally and up to 12,037 t at full load. Her propulsion system consisted of two compound steam engines each driving a single screw propeller, with steam supplied by eight coal-fired. Her engines produced a top speed of 15.6 knots at 8,045 indicated horsepower and she could steam for 2,875 nautical miles at a speed of 13 knots. She had a crew of 420 officers and men, which increased to 515. Enrico Dandolo was armed with a battery of four 17.72 in 20-caliber guns. As was customary for ships of the period, she carried three 14 in torpedo tubes. Enrico Dandolo was protected by armor that was 21.5 in thick at its strongest section. Both ends of the belt were connected by transverse bulkheads that were 15.75 in thick and she had an armored deck that was 1.1 to 2 in thick. Her gun turrets were armored with 17 in of steel plate, the ships bow and stern were not armored, but they were extensively subdivided into a cellular raft that was intended to reduce the risk of flooding. Enrico Dandolo, named after Enrico Dandolo, the 42nd Doge of Venice, was laid down at La Spezia on 6 January 1873 and was launched on 10 July 1878, fitting-out work was completed on 11 April 1882. During the annual fleet maneuvers held in 1885, Enrico Dandolo served as the flagship of the 1st Division of the Western Squadron and she was joined by her sister Caio Duilio, the protected cruiser Giovanni Bausan, and a sloop. The Western Squadron attacked the defending Eastern Squadron, simulating a Franco-Italian conflict, the first half of the maneuvers tested the ability to attack and defend the Strait of Messina, and concluded in time for a fleet review by King Umberto I on the 21st
31.
Suez Canal
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The Suez Canal is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez. It was constructed by the Suez Canal Company between 1859 and 1869, after 10 years of construction, it was officially opened on November 17,1869. It extends from the terminus of Port Said to the southern terminus of Port Tewfik at the city of Suez. Its length is 193.30 km, including its northern and southern access channels, in 2012,17,225 vessels traversed the canal. The original canal was a waterway with passing locations in the Ballah Bypass. It contains no locks system, with seawater flowing freely through it, in general, the canal north of the Bitter Lakes flows north in winter and south in summer. South of the lakes, the current changes with the tide at Suez, the canal is owned and maintained by the Suez Canal Authority of Egypt. Under the Convention of Constantinople, it may be used in time of war as in time of peace, by every vessel of commerce or of war, without distinction of flag. In August 2014, construction was launched to expand and widen the Ballah Bypass for 35 km to speed the canals transit time, the expansion was planned to double the capacity of the Suez Canal from 49 to 97 ships a day. At a cost of $8.4 billion, this project was funded with interest-bearing investment certificates issued exclusively to Egyptian entities, the New Suez Canal, as the expansion was dubbed, was opened with great fanfare in a ceremony on 6 August 2015. On 24 February 2016, the Suez Canal Authority officially opened the new side channel and this side channel, located at the northern side of the east extension of the Suez Canal, serves the East Terminal for berthing and unberthing vessels from the terminal anytime of day and night. Ancient west–east canals were built to travel from the Nile River to the Red Sea. One smaller canal is believed to have been constructed under the auspices of Senusret II or Ramesses II. Another canal, probably incorporating a portion of the first, was constructed under the reign of Necho II, the legendary Sesostris may have started work on an ancient canal joining the Nile with the Red Sea. In his Meteorology, Aristotle wrote, One of their kings tried to make a canal to it, so he first, and Darius afterwards, stopped making the canal, lest the sea should mix with the river water and spoil it. Strabo wrote that Sesostris started to build a canal, and Pliny the Elder wrote,165. Later the Persian king Darius had the idea, and yet again Ptolemy II. This proved to be the canal made by the Persian king Darius I
32.
Francesco Crispi
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Francesco Crispi was an Italian patriot and statesman. Crispi served as Italys Prime Minister for six years, from 1887 until 1891 and again from 1893 until 1896, Crispi was internationally famous and often mentioned along with world statesmen such as Bismarck, Gladstone and Salisbury. Originally an enlightened Italian patriot and democrat liberal he went on to become a bellicose authoritarian prime minister and ally, due to his authoritarian policies and style, Crispi is often regarded as a strongman and seen as a precursor of the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. Crispi’s paternal family originally from the small agricultural community of Palazzo Adriano. It had been founded in later fifteenth century by Orthodox Albanians and his grandfather was an Arbëreshë Orthodox priest, the parish priests were married men, and Arbëreshë was the family language down to the lifetime of the young Crispi. Crispi himself was born in Ribera, Sicily, to Tommaso Crispi, belonging to a family of Arbëreshë descent, he spoke Italian as his third or fourth language. His uncle Giuseppe wrote the first monograph on the Albanian language, at the age of 5 years old he was sent to a family in Villafranca, where he could receive an education. In 1829, at 11 years old, he attended a seminary in Palermo, the rector of the institute was Giuseppe Crispi, his uncle. Crispi attended the seminary until 1834 or 1835, when his father, after becoming mayor of Ribera, encountered difficulties in health. In the same period Crispi became a friend of the poet and doctor Vincenzo Navarro. In 1835 he studied law and literature at the University of Palermo receiving a law degree in 1837, in the year he fell in love with Rosina DAngelo. Despite his fathers ban, Crispi married Rosina in 1837, when she was already pregnant, in May Crispi became father of his first daughter, Giuseppa, who was named after his grandmother. Anyway it was a marriage, in fact Rosina died on 29 July 1839, the day after giving birth to her second son, Tommaso. Between 1838 and 1839, Crispi founded his own newspaper, LOreteo and this experience brought him into contact with a number of political figures including the Neapolitan liberal activist and poet, Carlo Poerio. In 1845 Crispi took up a judgeship in Naples, where he distinguished himself for his liberal, the revolution started on 12 January 1848, and therefore was the very first of the numerous revolutions to occur that year. Three revolutions had previously occurred on the island of Sicily starting from 1800 against Bourbon rule, the uprising was substantially organized from, and centered in, Palermo. The popular nature of the revolt is evident in the fact that posters, the timing was deliberately planned, by Crispi and the other revolutionaries, to coincide with the birthday of Ferdinand II. Vincenzo Fardella was elected president of Sicilian Parliament, the idea was also put forward for a confederation of all the states of Italy
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Italian irredentism
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As a result, Piedmont-Sardinia was pressured to concede Nice and Savoy to France in exchange for France accepting and sending troops to help the unification of Italy. The claims were extended later to the city of Fiume, Corsica, the island of Malta, the County of Nice, to avoid confusion and in line with convention, this article uses modern English place names throughout. However, most places have names in Italian. See List of Italian place names in Dalmatia, similar nationalistic ideas were common in Europe in the late 19th century. The term irredentism was successfully coined from the Italian word in many countries in the world, indeed, Pasquale Paoli, the hero of Corsica, was called the precursor of Italian irredentism by Niccolò Tommaseo because he was the first to promote Italian language and socio-culture in his island. During the 19th century the Italian irredentism fully developed the characteristic of defending the Italian language from other peoples languages, the liberation of Italia irredenta was perhaps the strongest motive for Italys entry into World War I, and the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 satisfied many irredentist claims. In the first case there were the Risorgimento claims on Trento, for example, while in the second there were the fascist claims on the Ionian Islands, Savoy, the irredentists sought to annex all those areas to the newly unified Italy. The areas targeted were Corsica, Dalmatia, Gorizia, the Ionian islands, Istria, Malta, County of Nice, Ticino, small parts of Grisons and of Valais, Trentino, Trieste and Fiume. The Italian nation-building process can be compared to similar movements in Germany, Hungary, Serbia, simultaneously, however, in many parts of 19th-century Europe, liberalism and nationalism were ideologies which were coming to the forefront of political culture. In Eastern Europe, where the Habsburg Empire had long asserted control over a variety of ethnic and cultural groups, the notion of a single united Italy was related to the aspirations of the majority populations. Irredentism grew in importance in Italy in the next years, benedetto Cairoli, then Prime Minister of Italy, treated the agitation with tolerance. It was, however, mainly superficial, as most Italians did not wish a dangerous policy against Austria, one consequence of irredentist ideas outside of Italy was an assassination plot organized against the Emperor Francis Joseph in Trieste in 1882, which was detected and foiled. Guglielmo Oberdan, a Triestine and thus Austrian citizen, was executed, when the irredentist movement became troublesome to Italy through the activity of Republicans and Socialists, it was subject to effective police control by Agostino Depretis. Irredentism faced a setback when the French occupation of Tunisia in 1881 started a crisis in French–Italian relations, the government entered into relations with Austria and Germany, which took shape with the formation of the Triple Alliance in 1882. According to the pact, Italy was to leave the Triple Alliance, furthermore, Italy was to declare war on Germany and Austria-Hungary within a month. The declaration of war was published on 23 May 1915. In exchange, Italy was to obtain various territorial gains at the end of the war, the outcome of the First World War and the consequent settlement of the Treaty of Saint-Germain met some Italian claims, including many of the aims of the Italia irredenta party. Italy gained Trieste, Gorizia, Istria and the city of Zara, dAnnunzio briefly annexed to this Regency of Carnaro even the Dalmatian islands of Krk and Rab, where there was a numerous Italian community
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Cambridge Battery
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Cambridge Battery is a Victorian-era battery in Sliema, Malta. It is commonly referred to as Fort Cambridge, although it was never classified as a fort while in use and it originally contained an Armstrong 100-ton gun. Cambridge Battery was built by the British between 1878 and 1886 above the shore west of the mouth of Grand Harbour, between Sliema Point Battery and Fort Tigné, construction started on 28 August 1878, and the gate was built in 1880. The battery was completed on 27 November 1886, and construction had cost some £18,819, the battery was paired with Rinella Battery near Kalkara, east of Grand Harbour. The gun at Cambridge was eventually scrapped, and today only two 100-ton guns survive, at Rinella and Napier of Magdala. By arming both Gibraltar and Malta, the British were seeking to ensure the route to India through the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal. The battery could also be supported from gun fire from the nearby Fort Manoel, the gun was mounted en barbette on a wrought-iron sliding carriage and gun fired over the top of the parapet of the emplacement. This enabled the gun-crew to handle and fire the gun without exposing themselves to enemy fire, the battery was designed to engage enemy warships at ranges up to 7,000 yards. The low profile of the battery and the deeply buried machinery rooms, the battery has no secondary armament, its fortifications - simply ditches, caponiers, a counter-scarp gallery and firing points - were intended mostly for small arms fire and grenades. Originally the inner faces of the emplacement were revetted with masonry, the revetting was retained around the loading casemates. Cambridges 100-ton gun arrived on 16 September 1882, and was mounted, the work to make the machines serviceable was so great that until 1885 there were no firing tests. The first ammunition load comprised all the available, included 50 AP and 50 HE. Shrapnel, once fired, was not replaced, being considered less effective, between 1887 and 1888 activity stopped due the need to rework hydraulic systems, but nevertheless these guns were considered quite reliable. Because a single shell cost as much as the wage of 2600 soldiers. In 1889, Garden Battery was built close by to cover the area between Cambridge Battery and Fort Tigné. The 100-ton gun was in service for 20 years, and was last fired in 1903 or 1904, before being withdrawn from active service by 1906. The gun remained at Cambridge Battery for many years, in 1956, it was cut up and sold for scrap, as part of a programme to scrap all unnecessary ordnance in Maltas fortifications. Eventually, the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza Hotel came to part the site of the battery
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Fort Rinella
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Rinella Battery is a Victorian battery in Kalkara, Malta. It is commonly referred to as Fort Rinella, although it was never classified as a fort while in use and it contains one of two surviving Armstrong 100-ton guns. The British built the battery between 1878 and 1886 above the shore east of the mouth of Grand Harbour, between Fort Ricasoli and Fort St. Rocco. The battery is one of a pair, however, the gun on the paired Cambridge Battery near Tigné Point, west of Grand Harbour, no longer exists. The British installed a pair of 100-ton guns to defend Gibraltar, mounting one each in Victoria Battery and Napier of Magdala Battery. Only two 100-ton guns survive, one at Rinella Battery, and one at Napier of Magdala Battery. By arming both Gibraltar and Malta, the British were seeking to ensure the route to India through the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal. The gun was mounted en barbette on a sliding carriage. This enabled the gun-crew to handle and fire the gun without exposing themselves to enemy fire, the fort was designed to engage enemy warships at ranges up to 7,000 yards. The low profile of the fort and the deeply buried machinery rooms, the fort has no secondary armament, its fortifications - simply ditches, caponiers, a counter-scarp gallery and firing points - were intended mostly for small arms fire and grenades. The gun was intended to operate at a rate of fire of a single shell every six minutes, the gun was then flushed with water to cool it, clean any debris and deposit from the barrel, and douse any remaining embers from the previous cartridge. The ramming mechanism then inserted and tamped a silk cartridge containing the propellant charge, the loaded gun was then traversed and elevated using the hydraulic system, and fired by an electrical firing mechanism. The gun then slewed to the casemate to repeat the loading process. Originally the inner faces of the emplacement were revetted with masonry, the revetting was retained around the loading casemates. The 100-ton gun arrived in Malta from Woolwich on 10 September 1882, there it sat at the dockyards for some months before it was ferried to Rinella Bay. One hundred men from the Royal Artillery manhandled it to the fort in a process took some three months. The gun was finally in position and ready for use in January 1884, because a single shell cost as much as the daily wage of 2600 soldiers, practice firing of the gun was limited to one shot every 3 months. It was fired for the last time on 5 May 1905, the gun was in active service for only 20 years, without ever firing a shot in anger
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World War I
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World War I, also known as the First World War, the Great War, or the War to End All Wars, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history and it was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and paved the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved. The war drew in all the worlds great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances, the Allies versus the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. These alliances were reorganised and expanded as more nations entered the war, Italy, Japan, the trigger for the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. This set off a crisis when Austria-Hungary delivered an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia. Within weeks, the powers were at war and the conflict soon spread around the world. On 25 July Russia began mobilisation and on 28 July, the Austro-Hungarians declared war on Serbia, Germany presented an ultimatum to Russia to demobilise, and when this was refused, declared war on Russia on 1 August. Germany then invaded neutral Belgium and Luxembourg before moving towards France, after the German march on Paris was halted, what became known as the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, with a trench line that changed little until 1917. On the Eastern Front, the Russian army was successful against the Austro-Hungarians, in November 1914, the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, opening fronts in the Caucasus, Mesopotamia and the Sinai. In 1915, Italy joined the Allies and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers, Romania joined the Allies in 1916, after a stunning German offensive along the Western Front in the spring of 1918, the Allies rallied and drove back the Germans in a series of successful offensives. By the end of the war or soon after, the German Empire, Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, national borders were redrawn, with several independent nations restored or created, and Germanys colonies were parceled out among the victors. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Big Four imposed their terms in a series of treaties, the League of Nations was formed with the aim of preventing any repetition of such a conflict. This effort failed, and economic depression, renewed nationalism, weakened successor states, and feelings of humiliation eventually contributed to World War II. From the time of its start until the approach of World War II, at the time, it was also sometimes called the war to end war or the war to end all wars due to its then-unparalleled scale and devastation. In Canada, Macleans magazine in October 1914 wrote, Some wars name themselves, during the interwar period, the war was most often called the World War and the Great War in English-speaking countries. Will become the first world war in the sense of the word. These began in 1815, with the Holy Alliance between Prussia, Russia, and Austria, when Germany was united in 1871, Prussia became part of the new German nation. Soon after, in October 1873, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck negotiated the League of the Three Emperors between the monarchs of Austria-Hungary, Russia and Germany
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SMS Goeben
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SMS Goeben was the second of two Moltke-class battlecruisers of the Imperial German Navy, launched in 1911 and named after the German Franco-Prussian War veteran General August Karl von Goeben. Along with her ship, Goeben was similar to the previous German battlecruiser design, Von der Tann. Goeben and Moltke were significantly larger and better armored than the comparable British Indefatigable class, several months after her commissioning in 1912, Goeben, with the light cruiser Breslau, formed the German Mediterranean Division and patrolled there during the Balkan Wars. After the outbreak of World War I on 28 July 1914, Goeben and Breslau bombarded French positions in North Africa and then evaded British naval forces in the Mediterranean and reached Constantinople. The two ships were transferred to the Ottoman Empire on 16 August 1914, and Goeben became the flagship of the Ottoman Navy as Yavuz Sultan Selim, by bombarding Russian facilities in the Black Sea, she brought Turkey into World War I on the German side. The ship operated primarily against Russian forces in the Black Sea during the war and she made a sortie into the Aegean in January 1918 that resulted in the Battle of Imbros, where Yavuz sank a pair of British monitors but was herself badly damaged by mines. In 1936 she was officially renamed TCG Yavuz, she carried the remains of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk from Istanbul to İzmit in 1938, Yavuz remained the flagship of the Turkish Navy until she was decommissioned in 1950. She was scrapped in 1973, after the West German government declined an invitation to buy her back from Turkey and she was the last surviving ship built by the Imperial German Navy, and the longest-serving dreadnought-type ship in any navy. Goeben was 186.6 meters long,29.4 m wide, the ship displaced 22,979 t normally, and 25,400 t fully loaded. Goeben was powered by four-shaft Parsons steam turbines in two sets and 24 coal-fired Schulz-Thornycroft water-tube boilers, which provided a rated 51,289 shp, at 14 knots, the ship had a range of 4,120 nautical miles. The ship was armed with a battery of ten 28 cm SK L/50 guns in five twin gun turrets. She was also equipped with four 50 cm submerged torpedo tubes, the Imperial German Navy ordered Goeben, the third German battlecruiser, on 8 April 1909 under the provisional name H from the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg, under construction number 201. Her keel was laid on 19 August, the hull was completed, fitting-out work followed, and she was commissioned into the German Navy on 2 July 1912. The two ships left Kiel on 4 November and arrived on 15 November 1912, beginning in April 1913, Goeben visited many Mediterranean ports including Venice, Pola, and Naples, before sailing into Albanian waters. Following this trip, Goeben returned to Pola and remained there from 21 August to 16 October for maintenance, on 29 June 1913, the Second Balkan War broke out and the Mediterranean Division was retained in the area. On 23 October 1913, Konteradmiral Souchon assumed command of the squadron, Goeben and Breslau continued their activities in the Mediterranean, and visited some 80 ports before the outbreak of World War I. After the assassination, Admiral Souchon assessed that war was imminent between the Central Powers and the Triple Entente, and ordered his ships to make for Pola for repairs, engineers came from Germany to work on the ship. Goeben had 4,460 boiler tubes replaced, among other repairs, upon completion, the ships departed for Messina
38.
Rosia Bay
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Rosia Bay is the only natural harbour in Gibraltar, the British Overseas Territory at the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula. Formerly referred to as Rosia Harbour, it is located on the southwest side of Gibraltar, Rosia Bay was the site of the Royal Navy Victualling Yard complex which was constructed in the early 19th century, allowing vessels to anchor and obtain provisions, including food and water. Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson obtained supplies for his Mediterranean Fleet at Rosia Bay and it was to that same anchorage that his vessel HMS Victory was towed after Nelsons death in the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar. The area is also the location of gun batteries, including Parsons Lodge Battery at the end of the bay. Rosia Bay is located along the southwestern coast of Gibraltar, the British Overseas Territory at the end of the Iberian Peninsula. It represents Gibraltars only natural harbour, and was known as Rosia Harbour. The bay was named after Rosia, a town in northern Italy. Until 2006, Rosia Bay was the site of the 19th century Victualling Yard complex, which included the Victualling Yard, Rosia Water Tanks, and Rosia Mole. While the Victualling Yard and the Rosia Mole remain intact, the entrance to the Victualling Yard complex is the portion that has been listed with the Gibraltar Heritage Trust. The four Rosia Cottages were constructed at Rosia Bay in the 19th century as residences for victualling personnel, in time, the cottages came to be privately owned. Taxpayers also paid the costs and, for three of the four cottage owners, the cost of relocation. The early history of the Victualling Yard complex is traced back to the late 18th century. At that time, the dockyard was located at the New Mole, now referred to as the South Mole and these facilities however, suffered great damage during the Great Siege of Gibraltar due to its proximity to the Spanish land artillery to the north. In addition to access to the bay, the site had the advantage of the protection afforded by Parsons Lodge Battery and it had the further advantage of being out of range of enemy gunfire from the North Front. Construction of the Rosia Water Tanks began in 1799 and was completed in 1804 by contractor John Maria Boschetti, the entire Victualling Yard complex at Rosia Bay was completed by 1812. It formed part of the Royal Navy base and contained stores of food, water, the Rosia Mole was the berthing place for the Royal Navy vessels seeking provisions and water from the Victualling Yard complex, it also held coal for the garrison. Over the years, the British built gun batteries that overlooked Rosia Bay to protect the harbour from attacking vessels, Parsons Lodge Battery, at the south end of the bay, is the largest of those defences and dates to the 18th century. The battery has a dominant position on a promontory in front of the corner of the Victualling Yard
39.
Victoria Battery (100 ton gun)
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Victoria Battery was an artillery battery in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. It was notable for being one of the two batteries in Gibraltar to mount a 100-ton gun, construction of the battery began in December 1878 on the right flank of an earlier battery, also called Victoria Battery. It was constructed at the time as Napier of Magdala Battery. The two batteries cost the British Government £35,707 to build and it was not until March 1883 that the guns arrived at Gibraltar, aboard the SS Stanley, and it took from 12 July to 1 September to move the gun to the battery. The gun was mounted on its barbette on 12 September 1883. The batterys design was similar to that of the 100 ton gun batteries on the British-ruled island of Malta, the batterys elaborate substructure concealed a series of passageways and magazines capable of holding 87 shells and 107 cartridge canisters. The huge shells could be transported on rail tracks to the twin hoists. The gun was reloaded using pneumatic machinery which moved the gun, plunged the barrel, loaded the cartridge and shell through the muzzle and this was powered by a donkey engine fed by a pump-chamber and boiler room, which were also concealed within the glacis. Compared to the original Maltese positions, Victoria Battery was much less strongly defended from a ground assault and it lacked a defended ditch or defensible barracks to keep out attackers, instead relying on a barbed wire fence which encircled the battery. The first firings of the new 100 ton guns in Gibraltar took place in 1884, the crew at Napier managed to fire a shot every 2.5 minutes, but this ended up cracking the barrel. The wrecked gun was not repairable so the British moved the gun from Victoria to Napier, the 100-ton guns were the heaviest built and the last gun was considered obsolete sixteen years after the guns first operations. In 1900, a proposal was made to reuse the battery to mount four 9-inch rifled muzzle loader HAF guns to supplement the 10-inch RML HAF guns already installed at Spy Glass and they would have had a longer range as they lay closer to the coast. However, the proposal was not acted upon, the Gibraltar Fire Station was built on the batterys right flank in 1937. Parts of the underground works still survive
40.
International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
41.
The New York Times
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The New York Times is an American daily newspaper, founded and continuously published in New York City since September 18,1851, by The New York Times Company. The New York Times has won 119 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper, the papers print version in 2013 had the second-largest circulation, behind The Wall Street Journal, and the largest circulation among the metropolitan newspapers in the US. The New York Times is ranked 18th in the world by circulation, following industry trends, its weekday circulation had fallen in 2009 to fewer than one million. Nicknamed The Gray Lady, The New York Times has long been regarded within the industry as a newspaper of record. The New York Times international version, formerly the International Herald Tribune, is now called the New York Times International Edition, the papers motto, All the News Thats Fit to Print, appears in the upper left-hand corner of the front page. On Sunday, The New York Times is supplemented by the Sunday Review, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times Magazine and T, some other early investors of the company were Edwin B. Morgan and Edward B. We do not believe that everything in Society is either right or exactly wrong, —what is good we desire to preserve and improve, —what is evil, to exterminate. In 1852, the started a western division, The Times of California that arrived whenever a mail boat got to California. However, when local California newspapers came into prominence, the effort failed, the newspaper shortened its name to The New-York Times in 1857. It dropped the hyphen in the city name in the 1890s, One of the earliest public controversies it was involved with was the Mortara Affair, the subject of twenty editorials it published alone. At Newspaper Row, across from City Hall, Henry Raymond, owner and editor of The New York Times, averted the rioters with Gatling guns, in 1869, Raymond died, and George Jones took over as publisher. Tweed offered The New York Times five million dollars to not publish the story, in the 1880s, The New York Times transitioned gradually from editorially supporting Republican Party candidates to becoming more politically independent and analytical. In 1884, the paper supported Democrat Grover Cleveland in his first presidential campaign, while this move cost The New York Times readership among its more progressive and Republican readers, the paper eventually regained most of its lost ground within a few years. However, the newspaper was financially crippled by the Panic of 1893, the paper slowly acquired a reputation for even-handedness and accurate modern reporting, especially by the 1890s under the guidance of Ochs. Under Ochs guidance, continuing and expanding upon the Henry Raymond tradition, The New York Times achieved international scope, circulation, in 1910, the first air delivery of The New York Times to Philadelphia began. The New York Times first trans-Atlantic delivery by air to London occurred in 1919 by dirigible, airplane Edition was sent by plane to Chicago so it could be in the hands of Republican convention delegates by evening. In the 1940s, the extended its breadth and reach. The crossword began appearing regularly in 1942, and the section in 1946
42.
YouTube
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YouTube is an American video-sharing website headquartered in San Bruno, California. The service was created by three former PayPal employees—Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim—in February 2005, Google bought the site in November 2006 for US$1.65 billion, YouTube now operates as one of Googles subsidiaries. Unregistered users can watch videos on the site, while registered users are permitted to upload an unlimited number of videos. Videos deemed potentially offensive are available only to registered users affirming themselves to be at least 18 years old, YouTube earns advertising revenue from Google AdSense, a program which targets ads according to site content and audience. YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, Hurley had studied design at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and Chen and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Karim could not easily find video clips of either event online, Hurley and Chen said that the original idea for YouTube was a video version of an online dating service, and had been influenced by the website Hot or Not. YouTube began as a venture capital-funded technology startup, primarily from an $11.5 million investment by Sequoia Capital between November 2005 and April 2006, YouTubes early headquarters were situated above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, California. The domain name www. youtube. com was activated on February 14,2005, the first YouTube video, titled Me at the zoo, shows co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo. The video was uploaded on April 23,2005, and can still be viewed on the site, YouTube offered the public a beta test of the site in May 2005. The first video to reach one million views was a Nike advertisement featuring Ronaldinho in November 2005. Following a $3.5 million investment from Sequoia Capital in November, the site grew rapidly, and in July 2006 the company announced that more than 65,000 new videos were being uploaded every day, and that the site was receiving 100 million video views per day. The site has 800 million unique users a month and it is estimated that in 2007 YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000. The choice of the name www. youtube. com led to problems for a similarly named website, the sites owner, Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment, filed a lawsuit against YouTube in November 2006 after being regularly overloaded by people looking for YouTube. Universal Tube has since changed the name of its website to www. utubeonline. com, in October 2006, Google Inc. announced that it had acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in Google stock, and the deal was finalized on November 13,2006. In March 2010, YouTube began free streaming of certain content, according to YouTube, this was the first worldwide free online broadcast of a major sporting event. On March 31,2010, the YouTube website launched a new design, with the aim of simplifying the interface, Google product manager Shiva Rajaraman commented, We really felt like we needed to step back and remove the clutter. In May 2010, YouTube videos were watched more than two times per day. This increased to three billion in May 2011, and four billion in January 2012, in February 2017, one billion hours of YouTube was watched every day
43.
British Empire
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The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It originated with the possessions and trading posts established by England between the late 16th and early 18th centuries. At its height, it was the largest empire in history and, for over a century, was the foremost global power. By 1913, the British Empire held sway over 412 million people, 23% of the population at the time. As a result, its political, legal, linguistic and cultural legacy is widespread, during the Age of Discovery in the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal and Spain pioneered European exploration of the globe, and in the process established large overseas empires. Envious of the great wealth these empires generated, England, France, the independence of the Thirteen Colonies in North America in 1783 after the American War of Independence caused Britain to lose some of its oldest and most populous colonies. British attention soon turned towards Asia, Africa, and the Pacific, after the defeat of France in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, Britain emerged as the principal naval and imperial power of the 19th century. In the early 19th century, the Industrial Revolution began to transform Britain, the British Empire expanded to include India, large parts of Africa and many other territories throughout the world. In Britain, political attitudes favoured free trade and laissez-faire policies, during the 19th Century, Britains population increased at a dramatic rate, accompanied by rapid urbanisation, which caused significant social and economic stresses. To seek new markets and sources of raw materials, the Conservative Party under Benjamin Disraeli launched a period of imperialist expansion in Egypt, South Africa, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand became self-governing dominions. By the start of the 20th century, Germany and the United States had begun to challenge Britains economic lead, subsequent military and economic tensions between Britain and Germany were major causes of the First World War, during which Britain relied heavily upon its empire. The conflict placed enormous strain on the military, financial and manpower resources of Britain, although the British Empire achieved its largest territorial extent immediately after World War I, Britain was no longer the worlds pre-eminent industrial or military power. In the Second World War, Britains colonies in Southeast Asia were occupied by Imperial Japan, despite the final victory of Britain and its allies, the damage to British prestige helped to accelerate the decline of the empire. India, Britains most valuable and populous possession, achieved independence as part of a larger movement in which Britain granted independence to most territories of the empire. The transfer of Hong Kong to China in 1997 marked for many the end of the British Empire, fourteen overseas territories remain under British sovereignty. After independence, many former British colonies joined the Commonwealth of Nations, the United Kingdom is now one of 16 Commonwealth nations, a grouping known informally as the Commonwealth realms, that share a monarch, Queen Elizabeth II. The foundations of the British Empire were laid when England and Scotland were separate kingdoms. In 1496, King Henry VII of England, following the successes of Spain and Portugal in overseas exploration, Cabot led another voyage to the Americas the following year but nothing was ever heard of his ships again
44.
Victorian era
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The Victorian era was the period of Queen Victorias reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities. Some scholars date the beginning of the period in terms of sensibilities, the era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardian period. The later half of the Victorian age roughly coincided with the first part of the Belle Époque era of continental Europe, culturally there was a transition away from the rationalism of the Georgian period and toward romanticism and mysticism with regard to religion, social values, and arts. The end of the saw the Boer War. Domestically, the agenda was increasingly liberal with a number of shifts in the direction of political reform, industrial reform. Two especially important figures in period of British history are the prime ministers Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone. Disraeli, favoured by the queen, was a gregarious Conservative and his rival Gladstone, a Liberal distrusted by the Queen, served more terms and oversaw much of the overall legislative development of the era. The population of England and Wales almost doubled from 16.8 million in 1851 to 30.5 million in 1901, Scotlands population also rose rapidly, from 2.8 million in 1851 to 4.4 million in 1901. However, Irelands population decreased sharply, from 8.2 million in 1841 to less than 4.5 million in 1901, mostly due to the Great Famine. Between 1837 and 1901 about 15 million emigrants departed the UK permanently, in search of a life in the United States, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia. During the early part of the era, politics in the House of Commons involved battles between the two parties, the Whigs/Liberals and the Conservatives. These parties were led by such prominent statesmen as Lord Melbourne, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Derby, Lord Palmerston, Gladstone, Disraeli, Victoria became queen in 1837 at age 18. Her long reign until 1901 was mainly a time of peace, Britain reached the zenith of its economic, political, diplomatic and cultural power. The era saw the expansion of the second British Empire, Historians have characterised the mid-Victorian era as Britains Golden Years. There was prosperity, as the income per person grew by half. There was peace abroad, and social peace at home, opposition to the new order melted away, says Porter. The Chartist movement peaked as a movement among the working class in 1848, its leaders moved to other pursuits, such as trade unions
45.
Side arm
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A side arm or sidearm is a weapon, usually a handgun but sometimes a dagger, knife or other mêlée weapon, which is worn on the body in a holster or sheath to permit immediate access and use. A sidearm is typically required equipment for officers and is usually carried by law enforcement personnel. Usually, uniformed personnel of these services wear their weapons openly, a sidearm may be carried alone, or as a back-up to a primary weapon such as a rifle or carbine. In the protocol of courtesy, the surrender of a commanders sidearm is the act in the general surrender of a unit. Similarly, many commanders on a level have been anecdotally cited as having used the threat of their side arms to motivate troops. An important purpose of the arm is to be used if the primary weapon is not available. Many Special Forces soldiers armed with a rifle or carbine like the M16 or M4 may also have a semi-automatic pistol as a side arm. The term may refer to swords and other mêlée weapons
