1.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
2.
Earthquake
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An earthquake is the shaking of the surface of the Earth, resulting from the sudden release of energy in the Earths lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in size from those that are so weak that they cannot be felt to those violent enough to people around. The seismicity or seismic activity of an area refers to the frequency, type, Earthquakes are measured using measurements from seismometers. The moment magnitude is the most common scale on which earthquakes larger than approximately 5 are reported for the entire globe and these two scales are numerically similar over their range of validity. Magnitude 3 or lower earthquakes are mostly imperceptible or weak and magnitude 7 and over potentially cause damage over larger areas. The largest earthquakes in historic times have been of magnitude slightly over 9, intensity of shaking is measured on the modified Mercalli scale. The shallower an earthquake, the damage to structures it causes. At the Earths surface, earthquakes manifest themselves by shaking and sometimes displacement of the ground, when the epicenter of a large earthquake is located offshore, the seabed may be displaced sufficiently to cause a tsunami. Earthquakes can also trigger landslides, and occasionally volcanic activity, in its most general sense, the word earthquake is used to describe any seismic event — whether natural or caused by humans — that generates seismic waves. Earthquakes are caused mostly by rupture of faults, but also by other events such as volcanic activity, landslides, mine blasts. An earthquakes point of rupture is called its focus or hypocenter. The epicenter is the point at ground level directly above the hypocenter, tectonic earthquakes occur anywhere in the earth where there is sufficient stored elastic strain energy to drive fracture propagation along a fault plane. The sides of a fault move past each other smoothly and aseismically only if there are no irregularities or asperities along the surface that increase the frictional resistance. Most fault surfaces do have such asperities and this leads to a form of stick-slip behavior, once the fault has locked, continued relative motion between the plates leads to increasing stress and therefore, stored strain energy in the volume around the fault surface. This continues until the stress has risen sufficiently to break through the asperity, suddenly allowing sliding over the portion of the fault. This energy is released as a combination of radiated elastic strain seismic waves, frictional heating of the fault surface and this process of gradual build-up of strain and stress punctuated by occasional sudden earthquake failure is referred to as the elastic-rebound theory. It is estimated that only 10 percent or less of a total energy is radiated as seismic energy. Most of the energy is used to power the earthquake fracture growth or is converted into heat generated by friction
3.
Aleppo
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Aleppo is a city in Syria, serving as the capital of the Aleppo Governorate, the most populous Syrian governorate. With an official population of 2,132,100, Aleppo was the largest Syrian city before the Syrian Civil War, however, now Aleppo is likely the second-largest city in Syria after the capital Damascus. Aleppo is an ancient city, and one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, such a long history is attributed to its strategic location as a trading center midway between the Mediterranean Sea and Mesopotamia. For centuries, Aleppo was the largest city in the Syrian region, and it was also one of the largest cities in the Levant before the advent of the Syrian Civil War. The citys significance in history has been its location at one end of the Silk Road, when the Suez Canal was inaugurated in 1869, trade was diverted to sea and Aleppo began its slow decline. At the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, Aleppo ceded its northern hinterland to modern Turkey, in the 1940s, it lost its main access to the sea, Antakya and İskenderun, also to Turkey. Finally, the isolation of Syria in the past few decades further exacerbated the situation and this decline may have helped to preserve the old city of Aleppo, its medieval architecture and traditional heritage. It won the title of the Islamic Capital of Culture 2006, during the Battle of Aleppo the city suffered massive destruction, and has been the worst-hit city in the Syrian Civil War. In December 2016, the Syrian government achieved full control of Aleppo following a successful offensive, modern-day English-speakers commonly refer to the city as Aleppo. It was known in antiquity as Khalpe, Khalibon, and to the Greeks, during the Crusades, and again during the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon of 1923–1946, the name Alep was used. Aleppo represents the Italianised version of this, the original ancient name, Halab, has survived as the current Arabic name of the city. Some have proposed that halab means iron or copper in Amorite languages, the modern-day Arabic nickname of the city, ash-Shahbaa, which means the white-colored, also allegedly derives from the famous white marble of Aleppo. From the 11th century it was common usage to apply the term Aram-Zobah to the area of Aleppo. Aleppo has scarcely been touched by archaeologists, since the city occupies its ancient site. The site has been occupied from around 5000 BC, as shown by excavations in Tallet Alsauda, Aleppo appears in historical records as an important city much earlier than Damascus. The first record of Aleppo comes from the third millennium BC, some historians, such as Wayne Horowitz, identify Aleppo with the capital of an independent kingdom closely related to Ebla, known as Armi, although this identification is contested. The main temple of the storm god Hadad was located on the hill in the center of the city. In the Old Babylonian and Old Assyrian Empire period, Aleppos name appears in its form as Ḥalab for the first time
4.
Syria
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Syrias capital and largest city is Damascus. Religious groups include Sunnis, Christians, Alawites, Druze, Mandeans, Shiites, Salafis, Sunni Arabs make up the largest religious group in Syria. Its capital Damascus and largest city Aleppo are among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, in the Islamic era, Damascus was the seat of the Umayyad Caliphate and a provincial capital of the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt. The post-independence period was tumultuous, and a number of military coups. In 1958, Syria entered a union with Egypt called the United Arab Republic. Syria was under Emergency Law from 1963 to 2011, effectively suspending most constitutional protections for citizens, Bashar al-Assad has been president since 2000 and was preceded by his father Hafez al-Assad, who was in office from 1970 to 2000. Mainstream modern academic opinion strongly favours the argument that the Greek word is related to the cognate Ἀσσυρία, Assyria, in the past, others believed that it was derived from Siryon, the name that the Sidonians gave to Mount Hermon. However, the discovery of the inscription in 2000 seems to support the theory that the term Syria derives from Assyria. The area designated by the word has changed over time, since approximately 10,000 BC, Syria was one of centers of Neolithic culture where agriculture and cattle breeding appeared for the first time in the world. The following Neolithic period is represented by houses of Mureybet culture. At the time of the pre-pottery Neolithic, people used vessels made of stone, gyps, finds of obsidian tools from Anatolia are evidences of early trade relations. Cities of Hamoukar and Emar played an important role during the late Neolithic, archaeologists have demonstrated that civilization in Syria was one of the most ancient on earth, perhaps preceded by only those of Mesopotamia. The earliest recorded indigenous civilisation in the region was the Kingdom of Ebla near present-day Idlib, gifts from Pharaohs, found during excavations, confirm Eblas contact with Egypt. One of the earliest written texts from Syria is an agreement between Vizier Ibrium of Ebla and an ambiguous kingdom called Abarsal c.2300 BC. The Northwest Semitic language of the Amorites is the earliest attested of the Canaanite languages, Mari reemerged during this period, and saw renewed prosperity until conquered by Hammurabi of Babylon. Ugarit also arose during this time, circa 1800 BC, close to modern Latakia, Ugaritic was a Semitic language loosely related to the Canaanite languages, and developed the Ugaritic alphabet. The Ugarites kingdom survived until its destruction at the hands of the marauding Indo-European Sea Peoples in the 12th century BC, Yamhad was described in the tablets of Mari as the mightiest state in the near east and as having more vassals than Hammurabi of Babylon. Yamhad imposed its authority over Alalakh, Qatna, the Hurrians states, the army of Yamhad campaigned as far away as Dēr on the border of Elam
5.
1556 Shaanxi earthquake
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The 1556 Shaanxi earthquake or Jiajing earthquake was a catastrophic earthquake and is also the deadliest earthquake on record, killing approximately 830,000 people. It occurred on the morning of 23 January 1556 in Shaanxi, more than 97 counties in the provinces of Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan, Gansu, Hebei, Shandong, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu and Anhui were affected. Buildings were damaged slightly in the cities of Beijing, Chengdu, an 840-kilometre-wide area was destroyed, and in some counties as much as 60% of the population was killed. Most of the population in the area at the time lived in yaodongs, artificial caves in loess cliffs, the Shaanxi earthquakes epicenter was in the Wei River Valley in Shaanxi Province, near the cities of Huaxian, Weinan and Huayin. In Huaxian, every building and home was demolished, killing more than half the residents of the city. The situation in Weinan and Huayin was similar, in certain areas, 20-metre deep crevices opened in the earth. Destruction and death were everywhere, affecting places as far as 500 kilometres from the epicenter, the earthquake also triggered landslides, which contributed to the massive death toll. The rupture occurred during the reign of the Jiajing Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, therefore, in the Chinese historical record, this earthquake is often referred to as the Jiajing Great earthquake.9. While it was the deadliest earthquake and the third deadliest natural disaster in history, following the earthquake, aftershocks continued several times a month for half a year. In the annals of China it was described in this manner, In the winter of 1556, in our Hua County, various misfortunes took place. Mountains and rivers changed places and roads were destroyed, in some places, the ground suddenly rose up and formed new hills, or it sank abruptly and became new valleys. In other areas, a stream burst out in an instant, or the ground broke, huts, official houses, temples and city walls collapsed all of a sudden. The earthquake damaged many of the Forest of Stone steles badly, of the 114 Kaicheng Stone Classics,40 were broken in the earthquake. The scholar Qin Keda lived through the earthquake and recorded details, one conclusion he drew was that at the very beginning of an earthquake, people indoors should not go out immediately. Even if the nest has collapsed, some eggs may remain intact and this may indicate that many people were killed trying to flee while some who stayed put may have survived. The shaking reduced the height of the Small Wild Goose Pagoda in Xian from 45 meters to 43.4 meters, millions of people at the time lived in artificial loess caves on high cliffs in the area of the Loess Plateau. Loess is the name for the silty soil that windstorms have deposited on the plateau over the ages, the soft loess clay had formed over thousands of years due to wind blowing silt into the area from the Gobi Desert. Loess is a highly erosion-prone soil that is susceptible to the forces of wind, the Loess Plateau and its dusty soil cover almost all of Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Gansu provinces and parts of others
6.
1976 Tangshan earthquake
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The Tangshan earthquake, also known as the Great Tangshan earthquake, was a natural disaster that occurred on July 28,1976. It is believed to be the largest earthquake of the 20th century by death toll, the epicenter of the earthquake was near Tangshan in Hebei, Peoples Republic of China, an industrial city with approximately one million inhabitants. The number of deaths reported by the Chinese government was 655,000. A further 164,000 people were recorded as being severely injured, in traditional Chinese thought, natural disasters are seen as a precursor of dynastic change. The earthquake hit in the morning and lasted 14 to 16 seconds. Chinese government official sources state a magnitude of 7.8 on the Richter magnitude scale and it was followed by a major 7.1 magnitude aftershock some 16 hours later, increasing the death toll to over 255,000. The earthquake was generated by the 25-mile-long Tangshan Fault, which runs near the city, well water in a village outside of Tangshan reportedly rose and fell three times the day before the earthquake. Gas began to spout out of a well in another village on July 12 and then increased on July 25, abnormal signals were mentioned for Beijing, Tianjin, Tangshan, Bohai and Zhangjiakou regions. Wang made an effort to publicize the information to 60 people, one of the people listening in Qinglong was official Wang Chunqing. After voicing the concerns to Wang Chunqing, his county took the report very seriously, already some sources showed that the county had been preparing as much as two years earlier. Up to 800 members of his county tried to respond, on July 25 and 26,1976 each community of Qinglong county had emergency meetings to prepare and instruct villagers. Buildings were examined and water reservoirs were given special attention, the high loss of life caused by the earthquake can be attributed to the time it struck and how suddenly it struck, as well as to the quality and nature of building construction in China. The earthquake lacked the foreshocks that sometimes come with earthquakes of this magnitude and it also struck at just before 4 a. m. when most people were asleep and unprepared. Tangshan itself was thought to be in a region with a low risk of earthquakes. Very few buildings had been built to withstand an earthquake, therefore, hundreds of thousands of buildings were destroyed. The earthquake devastated the city over an area of roughly 6.5 kilometres by 8 kilometres, many of the people who survived the initial earthquake were trapped under collapsed buildings. Tremors were felt as far away as Xian, approximately 760 km away, eighty-five percent of the buildings in the city were collapsed into ruins or became uninhabitable. The seismic waves spread far, with damage in such as Qinhuangdao and Tianjin
7.
Upper Mesopotamia
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Upper Mesopotamia is the name used for the uplands and great outwash plain of northwestern Iraq, northeastern Syria and southeastern Turkey, in the northern Middle East. This region is approximately correspondent with what was Assyria from the 25th century BC through to the mid-7th century AD and it extends down the Tigris to Samarra and down the Euphrates to Hit. The Khabur River runs for over 400 km across the plain, from Turkey in the north, the major settlements are Mosul, Deir ez-Zor, Raqqa, Al Hasakah, Diyarbakır and Qamishli. The western, Syrian part, is contiguous with the Syrian Al-Hasakah Governorate and is described as Syrias breadbasket. The eastern, Iraqi part, includes and extends slightly beyond the Iraqi Ninewa Governorate, in the north it includes the Turkish provinces of Şanlıurfa, Mardin, and parts of Diyarbakır Province. The name al-Jazira has been used since the 7th century CE by Islamic sources to refer to the section of Mesopotamia. The name means island, and at one time referred to the land between the two rivers, which in Aramaic is Bit Nahren. Historically the name referred to as little as the Sinjar plain coming down from the Sinjar Mountains, in pre-Abbasid times the western and eastern boundaries seem to have fluctuated, sometimes including what is now northern Syria to the west and Adiabene in the east. Al-Jazira is characterised as an outwash or alluvial plain, quite distinct from the Syrian Desert and lower-lying central Mesopotamia, however the area includes eroded hills, the region has several parts to it. In the northwest is one of the largest salt flats in the world, further south, extending from Mosul to near Basra is a sandy desert not unlike the Empty Quarter. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries the region has been plagued by drought and this is the area where the earliest signs of agriculture and domestication of animals have been found, and thus the starting point leading to civilization and the modern world. Al-Jazirah includes the mountain Karaca Dağ in southern Turkey, where the closest relative to modern wheat still grows wild, domestication of goats and sheep followed within a few generations, but didnt become widespread for more than a millennium. Weaving and pottery followed about two years later. Further surprises followed in the 1990s with the finds of the megalithic structures at Göbekli Tepe in south-eastern Turkey. The earliest of these apparently ritual buildings are from before 9000 BC—over five thousand years older than Stonehenge—and thus the absolute oldest known megalithic structures anywhere, as far as we know today no well-established farming societies existed at the time. Farming seemed to be experimental and only a smallish supplement to continued hunting and gathering. After all, Göbekli Tepe lies just 32 km from Karaca Dağ, the questions raised by Göbekli Tepe have led to intense and creative discussions among archeologists of the Middle East. Excavations at Göbekli Tepe continues, only about 5 percent has been revealed so far, Upper Mesopotamia is the heartland of ancient Assyria, founded circa the 25th century BC
8.
Ganja, Azerbaijan
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Ganja is Azerbaijans second largest city with a population close of about 325,200. It was named Elisabethpol in the Russian Empire period, the city regained its original name, Ganja, in 1920 during the first part of its incorporation into the Soviet Union. However, its name was changed again in 1935 to Kirovabad, in 1989, during Perestroika, the city regained its original name. The area in which Ganja is located was known as Arran from the 9th to 12th century, its urban population spoke mainly in the Persian language. According to the legend, the Arab governor had a dream where a voice told him there was a treasure hidden under one of the three hills around the area where he camped. The voice told him to unearth it and use the money to found a city and he did so and informed the caliph about the money and the city. Caliph made Muhammad the hereditary governor of the city on a condition that he would give the money he found to the caliph, Ganja is also the birthplace of the famous poet Nizami Ganjavi. The city was revived after the Safavids came to power in 1501, for a short period, Ganja was renamed Abbasabad by Shah Abbas after war against the Ottomans. In 1747, Ganja became the center of the Ganja Khanate for a few decades following the death of Nader Shah, until the advent of the Iranian Zand and Qajar dynasties. The khans/dukes who de facto self-ruled the khanate, were subordinate to the rule in mainland Iran and were from a branch of the Iranian Qajar family. From the late 18th century, Russia actively started to increase its enroachments into Iranian, Russian expansion into the South Caucasus met particularly strong opposition in Ganja. Some western sources assert that the capture of the city was followed by a massacre of up to 3,000 inhabitants of Ganja by the Russians. They also claim that 500 of them were slaughtered in a mosque where they had taken refuge, thosaunds of Azeris left Ganja and fled to Iran following the capture. A brief Iranian recapture of its territories happened between 1826-1827 during the Russo-Persian War, but the resulting Treaty of Turkmenchay made its inclusion into the Russian Empire definite. It was renamed Elisabethpol after the wife of Alexander I of Russia, Elisabeth, elizavetpol was an uyezd of Tiflis Governorate before 1868. The Russian name was not accepted by Azerbaijanis who continued to call the city Ganja, in April 1920, the Red Army occupied Azerbaijan. In May 1920, Ganja was the scene of an abortive anti-Soviet rebellion, in 1935, Joseph Stalin renamed the city Kirovabad after Sergei Kirov. In 1991, Azerbaijan re-established its independence, and the ancient name of the city was given back, for many years the 104th Guards Airborne Division of the Soviet Airborne Troops was based in the town
9.
Dead Sea Transform
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The Dead Sea Transform fault system, also sometimes referred to as the Dead Sea Rift, is a series of faults that run from the Maras Triple Junction to the northern end of the Red Sea Rift. The fault system forms the boundary between the African Plate to the west and the Arabian Plate to the east. It is a zone of left lateral displacement, signifying the relative motions of the two plates, both plates are moving in a general north-northeast direction, but the Arabian Plate is moving faster, resulting in the observed left lateral motions along the fault of approximately 107 km. The DST fault system is considered to be a transform fault that has accommodated a 105 km northwards displacement of the Arabian Plate. GPS data give similar rates of movement of the Arabian Plate relative to the Africa Plate. It has also proposed that the fault zone is a rift system that is an incipient oceanic spreading center. The Dead Sea Transform began to form during the early to mid-Miocene, a total displacement of 64 km has been estimated for this early phase of motion. In the Pliocene the DST propagated northwards once more through Lebanon into northwestern Syria before reaching the East Anatolian Fault. The southern section of the DST is about 400 km long, extending from the center in the Red Sea at southern end of the Gulf of Aqaba to just north of the Hula basin in southernmost Lebanon. The Gulf of Aqaba was created by movement on four left-stepping strike-slip fault segments in a diagonal stepwise sequence known as echelon formation. In the areas where these segments overlap, pull-apart basins have developed, parts of three of these faults ruptured during the 1995 Gulf of Aqaba earthquake. The Wadi Arabah segment of the DST extends for about 160 km from the Gulf of Aqaba to the end of the Dead Sea. Some researchers have further broken down this segment, recognising two separate segments, Avrona and Arava, the Avrona fault extends from the northern part of the Gulf of Aqaba for about 50 km along the Arava Valley. The Arava fault runs from just north of the Avrona fault segment for about 100 km, a slip rate of 4 ±2 mm per year has been estimated from the offset of gullies across the fault. Four major earthquakes are thought to have occurred due to movement on this fault in the last 1,000 years, the Dead Sea is formed in a pull-apart basin due to the left-stepping offset between the Wadi Arabah and Jordan Valley segments. The part of the basin with a fill of more than 2 km is 150 km long. In the north, the fill reaches its maximum thickness of about 10 km. The Jordan valley segment of the DST, the Jordan Rift Valley, a slip rate of between 4.7 and 5.1 mm per year has been estimated over the last 47,500 years
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