Alexanderplatz is a large public square and transport hub in the central Mitte district of Berlin. The square is named after the Russian Tsar Alexander I and is referred to as Alex, which denotes the larger neighbourhood stretching from Mollstraße in the northeast to Spandauer Straße and the Rotes Rathaus in the southwest. With more than 360,000 visitors daily, Alexanderplatz is, according to one study, the most visited area of Berlin, beating Friedrichstrasse and City West, it is a popular starting point for tourists, with many attractions including the Fernsehturm, the Nikolai Quarter and the Rotes Rathaus situated nearby. Alexanderplatz is still one of Berlin's major commercial areas, housing various shopping malls, department stores and other large retail locations. During the post-war reconstruction of the 1960s, Alexanderplatz was pedestrianized. Since trams were reintroduced to the area in 1998. Alexanderplatz station provides S-Bahn connections, access to the U2, U5 and U8 subway lines, regional train lines for DB Regio and ODEG services and, on weekends, the Harz-Berlin-Express.

Several tram and bus lines service the area. The following main roads connect to Alexanderplatz: Northwest: Karl-Liebknecht-Straße Northeast: Alexanderstraße Southeast: Grunerstraße / Alexanderstraße Southwest: DircksenstraßeSeveral arterial roads lead radially from Alexanderplatz to the outskirts of Berlin; these include: Memhardstraße / Rosa-Luxemburg-Straße - Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz - Schönhauser Allee Karl-Liebknecht-Straße - intersection Mollstraße/Prenzlauer Tor - Prenzlauer Allee Grunerstraße / Alexanderstraße - Otto-Braun-Straße - - Greifswalder Straße Karl-Marx-Allee - Strausberger Platz - Karl-Marx-Allee / Frankfurter Tor - Frankfurter Allee A hospital stood at the location of present-day Alexanderplatz since the 13th century. Named Heiliger Georg, the hospital gave its name to the nearby Georgentor of the Berlin city wall. Outside of the city walls, this area was undeveloped until around 1400, when the first settlers began building thatched cottages; as a gallows was located close by, the area earned the nickname the "Teufels Lustgarten".

The George Gate became the most important of Berlin's city gates during the 16th century, being the main entrance point for goods arriving along the roads to the north and north-east of the city, for example from Oderberg and Bernau, the big Hanseatic cities on the Baltic Sea. After the Thirty Years' War, the city wall was strengthened. From 1658 to 1683, a citywide fortress was constructed to plans by the Linz master builder, Johann Gregor Memhardt; the new fortress contained 13 bastions connected by ramparts and was preceded by a moat measuring up to 50 meters wide. Within the new fortress, many of the historic city wall gates were closed. For example, the southeastern Stralauer Gate was closed but the Georgian Gate remained open, making the Georgian Gate an more important entrance to the city. In 1681, the trade of cattle and pig fattening was banned within the city. Frederick William, the Great Elector, granted cheaper plots of land, waiving the basic interest rate, in the area in front of the Georgian Gate.

Settlements grew and a weekly cattle market was established on the square in front of the Gate. The area developed into a suburb - the Georgenvorstadt - which continued to flourish into the late 17th century. Unlike the southwestern suburbs which were and geometrically planned, the suburbs in the northeast proliferated without plan. Despite a building ban imposed in 1691, more than 600 houses existed in the area by 1700. At that time, the George Gate was a rectangular gatehouse with a tower. Next to the tower stood a remaining tower from the original medieval city walls; the upper floors of the gatehouse served as the city jail. A drawbridge spanned the moat and the gate was locked at nightfall by the garrison using heavy oak planks. A highway ran through the cattle market to the northeast towards Bernau. To the right stood the George chapel, an orphanage and a hospital, donated by the Elector Sophie Dorothea in 1672. Next to the chapel stood a dilapidated medieval plague house, demolished in 1716.

Behind it was a rifleman's field and an inn named the Stelzenkrug. By the end of the 17th century, 600 to 700 families lived in this area, they included butchers, cattle herders and dairy farmers. The George chapel received its own preacher. After his coronation in Königsberg on May 6, 1701, the Prussian King Frederick I entered Berlin through the George Gate; this led to the gate being renamed the King's Gate, the surrounding arena became known in official documents as Königs Thor Platz. The Georgenvorstadt suburb was renamed Königsvorstadt. In 1734, the Berlin Customs Wall, which consisted of a ring of palisade fences, was reinforced and grew to encompass the old city and its suburbs, including Königsvorstadt; this resulted in the King's Gate losing importance as an entry-point for goods into the city. The gate was demolished in 1746. By the end of the 18th century, the basic structure of the royal suburbs o

Jorge Morel is a classical guitarist and composer from Argentina. He is now working in New York City. Morel was born in Buenos Aires, his father taught him the rudiments of classical guitar from age seven. He went on to study advanced guitar at the internationally renowned academy of Pablo Escobar in Buenos Aires, after graduating, joined Escobar in radio and concert performances. Morel left Argentina to perform in Ecuador and Cuba, where he recorded his first solo LP and was featured in a weekly TV show. Vladimir Bobri President of the Classical Guitar Society in New York, lent his recognition and support to Morel after hearing him perform in Puerto Rico; this led to concert engagements in California and Hawaii and Morel's eventual debut at Carnegie Hall in 1961. At this time, he recorded his second LP for Decca Records and subsequently recorded three more albums. Morel appeared at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall in New York, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Wigmore Hall in London, National Concert Hall in Dublin, Suntory Hall in Tokyo.

Over the years he performed in many countries including Argentina, Canada, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Finland, Singapore and more. After moving to New York City, Morel performed nightly at the jazz venue The Village Gate, owned by Art D'Lugoff, who became his manager for a period of three years. During his performances at the Village Gate, he shared the bill with jazz legends such as Erroll Garner, Stan Kenton, Herbie Mann and others. Around this time, Morel established what was to become a lifelong friendship. Chet demonstrated his admiration for Morel in a tangible way when he helped to arrange for the recording of another album with RCA Victor. Morel was represented by Columbia Artists Management for a total of seven years throughout the 1970s and toured all of North America and Canada performing 70 concerts a year. Morel continued to solidify his reputation as a performing artist and composer with the premier of Suite del Sur, which he performed as soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the direction of Zubin Mehta.

He continued his study of composition for a number of years with teacher, author and arranger Rudy Schramm. Through his original compositions and arrangements, Jorge Morel has added to the repertoire for classical guitar while challenging traditional and stylistic limitations, his mastery of the technical combined with intimate knowledge of the physical and acoustical characteristics of the instrument have resulted in an innovative approach to the complex task of composing for the classical guitar. His ability to blend his love for Latin American rhythmic textures and sophisticated jazz harmonies permeates his work with a musical imagination, attested to by the many artists worldwide who have recorded his works. Names such as John Williams, Chet Atkins, the Assad Brothers, duo Evangelos & Liza and Angel Romero, Christopher Parkening, David Russell, David Starobin, Carlos Barbosa-Lima, Ricardo Iznaola, Eliot Fisk, Vladislav Blaha, Krzysztof Pelech, Hilary Field, the Hanser McClellan duo, have performed and recorded many of Morel's compositions and arrangements, including guitar concertos and string quartets, solos and guitar quartets as well as fine performance of his Suite del Sur with the Prague Quartet.

In addition to the many artists who have recorded his compositions, Morel created a library of solo recordings on both major and independent labels such as RCA, Guitar Masters and Luthier Music. Morel is recognized for his teaching and commitment to new musicians; some photos of LP covers Artist Profile: Jorge Morel Nov 21, 2006 mp3

The Paleo-Bell River is a hypothesized west-to-east flowing ancient river system in North America. The river may have drained an area larger than the current day Amazon River from the Eocene to the Pliocene with the direction of drainage caused by the uplift of the Rocky Mountains, it is named after Canadian geologist Robert Bell who first proposed the concept in 1895. In the late 1800s, Canadian geologist Robert Bell analyzed the flow of glacial ice during the Pleistocene working for the Geological Survey of Canada and from 1884 to 1885 explored the oceanography of Hudson Bay and Hudson Strait. During a meeting of the Royal Society of Canada in 1895, he proposed that before the Pleistocene glaciations a large river drained portions of North America through the Hudson Strait. A few years A. W. G. Wilson at McGill University supported Bell's claims, finding that the Canadian Shield beneath Hudson Bay eroded flat and uplifted and warped in the recent geological past. In the early 1970s N. J. McMillan, a geologist with Aquitaine Petroleum assessed the sediments in the Saglek Basin beneath the Hudson Strait.

The sediment was deposited between 55 and five million years ago, but totaled to 2.5 million cubic kilometers, more than erosion from the uplands of Labrador and Baffin Island could explain. During the 1980s, University of British Columbia researcher V. Eileen Williams found fossilized pollen grains in some dating back to the Mesozoic. Based on similar palynomorphs eroded out of sedimentary rocks and moved thousands of kilometers by the Orinoco River and Mississippi River, forming an additional piece of evidence in favor of the hypothesis. Alejandra Duk-Rodkin interpreted eastward-dipping erosional surfaces crossing the Mackenzie River as indications of the eastward flow of the river in the early 1990s. In a 2013 paper, James Sears from the University of Montana reanalyzed fossil pollen and identified an assemblages similar to those found in the Chinle Formation and Supai Group in the Grand Canyon, suggesting a connection to that region; the flow of water from the Grand Canyon region may have stopped around 16 million years ago due to eruptions of the Yellowstone hot spot.

Isostatic depression of the crust by ice sheets during the Pleistocene deprived the Saglek Basin of sediment as rivers drained directly into the newly formed Hudson Bay. Much of the river's flow was taken up by the Mackenzie River Basin, leaving the Saskatchewan River and Nelson River as the last remnants of the system