Motorway 1 (Greece)
The Greek Motorway 1, code, A1, is a motorway in Greece. Partly under construction, it is the 2nd longest motorway in Greece, before the European routes numbers were changed, the northern part from Efzoni to EO2 was E5N while today, the entire road is part of European route E75. The part west of downtown Athens runs over the Cephisus river, from north of the boundary of Voiotia - Phthiotis, up to near Velestino, the tollway runs close to the coast of the Aegean Sea. It continues north of the Tempe Valley and up to the junction of the European route E90. It shares a 25 km common part with A2 / E90, and then, at the Axios Interchange, continues north to Evzonoi and its total length is approximately 550 km. The motorway used to be entirely a 2-lane highway and ended near Katerini until 1973, the section Athens - Lamia opened in August 1962 as a 14 m width road. The section Lamia - Larissa opened in October 1967 as a 14 m width road, the section Larissa - Katerini opened in September 1959 as a 13 m width road.
The section Katerini - Thessaloniki opened in September 1973 as a 14 m width road, the section Axios junction - Evzoni opened in July 1973. The section Axios junction - Polykastro opened as a 14 m width road, when it was extended to Thessaloniki and to the border with the Republic of Macedonia, the motorway had 4-lanes. It was extended during construction in the north in the 1980s, in 1995, Motorway 1 had motorway characteristics in the sections Athens - Thebes and Kleidi - Thessaloniki, while the section Thebes - Kleidi was an undivided 14 m road. In 1998, the motorway had 6-lanes up to north of Thebes, since then, the Larissa bypass has been constructed. As of 2015 it complies with all standards for most of its length, except for 25 km through the Tempe Valley. Construction is under way to upgrade this part to a modern motorway, among others, this part includes the longest road tunnel in the Balkans, which is about 6 km long, as well as 2 more tunnels. It was scheduled to be completed by late 2015 or early-mid 2016, the new circular road round Athens now means that traffic can continue to the Peloponnese, linking up with the motorway under construction to the port city of Patras and that of Kalamata.
The exits of the sections of the A1 motorway
Seismological Society of America
The Seismological Society of America is an international scientific society devoted to the advancement of seismology and the understanding of earthquakes for the benefit of society. Founded in 1906, the society has members throughout the world representing seismologists and other geophysicists, engineers, the society hosts an annual meeting every April. The meeting is open to anyone, SSA members receive a discount on their meeting registration. The Eastern Section of SSA hosts a meeting each fall. American Geological Institute Geological Society of America IRIS Consortium List of geoscience organizations Sources SSA official website
Frankokratia
The term derives from the fact that the Orthodox Greeks called the Western European Catholics Latins, most of whom were of French or Venetian origin. The Latin Empire, centered in Constantinople and encompassing Thrace and Bithynia and its territories were gradually reduced to little more than the capital, which was eventually captured by the Empire of Nicaea in 1261. Duchy of Philippopolis, fief of the Latin Empire in northern Thrace, lemnos formed a fief of the Latin Empire under the Venetian Navigajoso family from 1207 until conquered by the Byzantines in 1278. Its rulers bore the title of megadux of the Latin Empire, the Kingdom of Thessalonica, encompassing Macedonia and Thessaly. The brief existence of the Kingdom was almost continuously troubled by warfare with the Second Bulgarian Empire, eventually, it was conquered by the Despotate of Epirus. The County of Salona, centred at Salona, like Bodonitsa, was formed as a state of the Kingdom of Thessalonica. It came under Catalan and Navarrese rule in the 14th century and it was finally conquered by the Ottomans in 1410.
The Marquisate of Bodonitsa, like Salona, was created as a vassal state of the Kingdom of Thessalonica. In 1335, the Venetian Giorgi family took control, and ruled until the Ottoman conquest in 1414, the Principality of Achaea, encompassing the Morea or Peloponnese peninsula. It quickly emerged as the strongest Crusader state, and prospered even after the demise of the Latin Empire and its main rival was the Byzantine Despotate of the Morea, which eventually succeeded in conquering the Principality. It exercised suzerainty over the Lordship of Argos and Nauplia, the Duchy of Athens, with its two capitals Thebes and Athens, and encompassing Attica and parts of southern Thessaly. In 1311, the Duchy was conquered by the Catalan Company, and in 1388, it passed into the hands of the Florentine Acciaiuoli family, the Duchy of Naxos or of the Archipelago, founded by the Sanudo family, it encompassed most of the Cyclades. In 1383, it passed under the control of the Crispo family, the Duchy became an Ottoman vassal in 1537, and was finally annexed to the Ottoman Empire in 1579.
The Triarchy of Negroponte, encompassing the island of Negroponte, originally a vassal of Thessalonica and it was fragmented into three baronies run each by two barons. This fragmentation enabled Venice to gain influence acting as mediators, by 1390 Venice had established direct control of the entire island, which remained in Venetian hands until 1470, when it was captured by the Ottomans. The County palatine of Cephalonia and Zakynthos and it encompassed the Ionian Islands of Cephalonia, Ithaca, from ca. Created as a vassal to the Kingdom of Sicily, it was ruled by the Orsini family from 1195 to 1335, the county was split between Venice and the Ottomans in 1479. Rhodes became the headquarters of the monastic order of the Knights Hospitaller of Saint John in 1310
Ottoman Empire
After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe, and with the conquest of the Balkans the Ottoman Beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror, at the beginning of the 17th century the empire contained 32 provinces and numerous vassal states. Some of these were absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, while others were granted various types of autonomy during the course of centuries. With Constantinople as its capital and control of lands around the Mediterranean basin, while the empire was once thought to have entered a period of decline following the death of Suleiman the Magnificent, this view is no longer supported by the majority of academic historians. The empire continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy, however, during a long period of peace from 1740 to 1768, the Ottoman military system fell behind that of their European rivals, the Habsburg and Russian Empires. While the Empire was able to hold its own during the conflict, it was struggling with internal dissent.
Starting before World War I, but growing increasingly common and violent during it, major atrocities were committed by the Ottoman government against the Armenians and Pontic Greeks. The word Ottoman is an anglicisation of the name of Osman I. Osmans name in turn was the Turkish form of the Arabic name ʿUthmān, in Ottoman Turkish, the empire was referred to as Devlet-i ʿAlīye-yi ʿOsmānīye, or alternatively ʿOsmānlı Devleti. In Modern Turkish, it is known as Osmanlı İmparatorluğu or Osmanlı Devleti, the Turkish word for Ottoman originally referred to the tribal followers of Osman in the fourteenth century, and subsequently came to be used to refer to the empires military-administrative elite. In contrast, the term Turk was used to refer to the Anatolian peasant and tribal population, the term Rūmī was used to refer to Turkish-speakers by the other Muslim peoples of the empire and beyond. In Western Europe, the two names Ottoman Empire and Turkey were often used interchangeably, with Turkey being increasingly favored both in formal and informal situations and this dichotomy was officially ended in 1920–23, when the newly established Ankara-based Turkish government chose Turkey as the sole official name.
Most scholarly historians avoid the terms Turkey and Turkish when referring to the Ottomans, as the power of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum declined in the 13th century, Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent Turkish principalities known as the Anatolian Beyliks. One of these beyliks, in the region of Bithynia on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire, was led by the Turkish tribal leader Osman, osmans early followers consisted both of Turkish tribal groups and Byzantine renegades, many but not all converts to Islam. Osman extended the control of his principality by conquering Byzantine towns along the Sakarya River and it is not well understood how the early Ottomans came to dominate their neighbours, due to the scarcity of the sources which survive from this period. One school of thought which was popular during the twentieth century argued that the Ottomans achieved success by rallying religious warriors to fight for them in the name of Islam, in the century after the death of Osman I, Ottoman rule began to extend over Anatolia and the Balkans.
Osmans son, captured the northwestern Anatolian city of Bursa in 1326 and this conquest meant the loss of Byzantine control over northwestern Anatolia. The important city of Thessaloniki was captured from the Venetians in 1387, the Ottoman victory at Kosovo in 1389 effectively marked the end of Serbian power in the region, paving the way for Ottoman expansion into Europe
Provinces of Greece
The provinces of Greece were sub-divisions of some the countrys prefectures. From 1887, the provinces were abolished as actual administrative units, before the Second World War, there were 139 provinces, and after the war, with the addition of the Dodecanese Islands, their number grew to 147. According to the Article 7 of the Code of Prefectural Self-Government, Provincial administration consisted of two parts, a collective Provincial Council and an eparch. Members of the Provincial Council were the councillors of the respective province. The eparch or sub-prefect was the councillor who received the most votes in the prefectural elections
Mute swan
The mute swan is a species of swan and a member of the waterfowl family Anatidae. It is native to much of Eurasia, and the far north of Africa and it is an introduced species in North America and southern Africa. The name mute derives from it being less vocal than other swan species, measuring 125 to 170 cm in length, this large swan is wholly white in plumage with an orange beak bordered with black. It is recognisable by its pronounced knob atop the beak, which is larger in males, the mute swan was first formally described by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin as Anas olor in 1789, and was transferred by Johann Matthäus Bechstein to the new genus Cygnus in 1803. It is the species of the genus Cygnus. Both cygnus and olor mean swan in Latin, cygnus is a variant form of cycnus, a borrowing from Greek κύκνος kyknos, a word of the same meaning. Despite its Eurasian origin, its closest relatives are the black swan of Australia, the species is monotypic with no living subspecies. Mute swan subfossils,6,000 years old, have found in post-glacial peat beds of East Anglia.
They have been recorded from Ireland east to Portugal and Italy, the paleosubspecies Cygnus olor bergmanni, which differed only in size from the living bird, is known from fossils found in Azerbaijan. Fossils of swan ancestors more distantly allied to the mute swan have been found in four U. S. states, Arizona, the timeline runs from the Miocene to the late Pleistocene, or 10,000 BP. The latest find was in Anza Borrego Desert, a park in California. Adults of this large swan typically range from 140 to 160 cm long, although can range in extreme cases from 125 to 170 cm, males are larger than females and have a larger knob on their bill. On average, this is the second largest waterfowl species after the trumpeter swan, among standard measurements of the mute swan, the wing chord measures 53–62.3 cm, the tarsus is 10–11.8 cm and the bill is 6. 9–9 cm. The mute swan is one of the heaviest flying birds, young birds, called cygnets, are not the bright white of mature adults, and their bill is dull greyish-black, not orange, for the first year.
The down may range from white to grey to buff. The white cygnets have a leucistic gene, cygnets grow quickly, reaching a size close to their adult size in approximately three months after hatching. Cygnets typically retain their grey feathers until they are at least one year old, all mute swans are white at maturity, though the feathers are often stained orange-brown by iron and tannins in the water. The morph immutabilis has pinkish legs and dull white cygnets, as with white domestic geese, polish swans carry a copy of a gene responsible for leucism
Turkish people
Turkish people, or the Turks, known as Anatolian Turks, are a Turkic ethnic group and nation living mainly in Turkey and speaking Turkish, the most widely spoken Turkic language. They are the largest ethnic group in Turkey, as well as by far the largest ethnic group among the speakers of Turkic languages, ethnic Turkish minorities exist in the former lands of the Ottoman Empire. In addition, a Turkish diaspora has been established with modern migration, the ethnonym Turk may be first discerned in Herodotus reference to Targitas, first king of the Scythians, during the first century AD. Pomponius Mela refers to the Turcae in the north of the Sea of Azov. The first definite references to the Turks come mainly from Chinese sources in the sixth century, in these sources, Turk appears as Tujue, which referred to the Göktürks. Although Turk refers to Turkish people, it may sometimes refer to the wider language group of Turkic peoples. In the 19th century, the word Türk only referred to Anatolian villagers, the Ottoman ruling class identified themselves as Ottomans, not usually as Turks.
In the late 19th century, as the Ottoman upper classes adopted European ideas of nationalism the term Türk took on a more positive connotation. The Turkish-speakers of Anatolia were the most loyal supporters of Ottoman rule, Turkish Jews, Christians, or even Alevis may be considered non-Turks. On the other hand, Kurdish Arab followers of the Sunni branch of Islam who live in eastern Anatolia are sometimes considered Turks, article 66 of the Turkish Constitution defines a Turk as anyone who is bound to the Turkish state through the bond of citizenship. Anatolia was first inhabited by hunter-gatherers during the Paleolithic era, most of the Turkic peoples were followers of Tengriism, sharing the cult of the sky god Tengri, although there were adherents of Manichaeism, Nestorian Christianity and Buddhism. However, during the Muslim conquests, the Turks entered the Muslim world proper as servants, during the booty of Arab raids, the Turks began converting to Islam after Muslim conquest of Transoxiana through the efforts of missionaries and merchants.
Although initiated by the Arabs, the conversion of the Turks to Islam was filtered through Persian, under the Umayyads, most were domestic servants, whilst under the Abbasids, increasing numbers were trained as soldiers. By the ninth century, Turkish commanders were leading the caliphs’ Turkish troops into battle, as the Abbasid caliphate declined, Turkish officers assumed more military and political power taking over or establishing provincial dynasties with their own corps of Turkish troops. During the 11th century the Seljuk Turks who were admirers of the Persian civilization grew in number and were able to occupy the province of the Abbasid Empire. By 1055, the Seljuk Empire captured Baghdad and began to make their first incursions into the edges of Anatolia, when the Seljuk Turks won the Battle of Manzikert against the Byzantine Empire in 1071, it opened the gates of Anatolia to them. Although ethnically Turkish, the Seljuk Turks appreciated and became the purveyors of the Persian culture rather than the Turkish culture, in dire straits, the Byzantine Empire turned to the West for help setting in motion the pleas that led to the First Crusade.
Once the Crusaders took Iznik, the Seljuk Turks established the Sultanate of Rum from their new capital, Konya, by the 12th century the Europeans had begun to call the Anatolian region Turchia or Turkey, meaning the land of the Turks
Greco-Persian Wars
The Greco-Persian Wars were a series of conflicts between the Achaemenid Empire of Persia and Greek city-states that started in 499 BC and lasted until 449 BC. The collision between the political world of the Greeks and the enormous empire of the Persians began when Cyrus the Great conquered the Greek-inhabited region of Ionia in 547 BC. Struggling to rule the cities of Ionia, the Persians appointed tyrants to rule each of them. This would prove to be the source of trouble for the Greeks. This was the beginning of the Ionian Revolt, which would last until 493 BC, Aristagoras secured military support from Athens and Eretria, and in 498 BC these forces helped to capture and burn the Persian regional capital of Sardis. The Persian king Darius the Great vowed to have revenge on Athens, the revolt continued, with the two sides effectively stalemated throughout 497–495 BC. In 494 BC, the Persians regrouped, and attacked the epicentre of the revolt in Miletus, at the Battle of Lade, the Ionians suffered a decisive defeat, and the rebellion collapsed, with the final members being stamped out the following year.
In 490 BC a second force was sent to Greece, this time across the Aegean Sea, under the command of Datis and this expedition subjugated the Cyclades, before besieging and razing Eretria. However, while en route to attack Athens, the Persian force was defeated by the Athenians at the Battle of Marathon. Darius began to plan to completely conquer Greece, but died in 486 BC, in 480 BC, Xerxes personally led the second Persian invasion of Greece with one of the largest ancient armies ever assembled. Victory over the allied Greek states at the famous Battle of Thermopylae allowed the Persians to torch an evacuated Athens, while seeking to destroy the combined Greek fleet, the Persians suffered a severe defeat at the Battle of Salamis. The following year, the confederated Greeks went on the offensive, defeating the Persian army at the Battle of Plataea, the allied Greeks followed up their success by destroying the rest of the Persian fleet at the Battle of Mycale, before expelling Persian garrisons from Sestos and Byzantium.
The Delian League continued to campaign against Persia for the three decades, beginning with the expulsion of the remaining Persian garrisons from Europe. At the Battle of the Eurymedon in 466 BC, the League won a victory that finally secured freedom for the cities of Ionia. However, the Leagues involvement in an Egyptian revolt resulted in a disastrous defeat, a Greek fleet was sent to Cyprus in 451 BC, but achieved little, and when it withdrew the Greco-Persian Wars drew to a quiet end. Some historical sources suggest the end of hostilities was marked by a treaty between Athens and Persia, the Peace of Callias. Almost all the sources for the Greco-Persian Wars are Greek. By some distance, the source for the Greco-Persian Wars is the Greek historian Herodotus
Administrative regions of Greece
The administrative regions of Greece are the countrys thirteen first-level administrative entities, each comprising several second-level units, originally prefectures and, since 2011, regional units. The current regions were established in July 1986, by decision of then-Interior Minister Menios Koutsogiorgas as a second-level administrative entities, as part of a decentralization process inspired by then-Interior Minister Alekos Papadopoulos, they were accorded more powers in the 1997 Kapodistrias reform of local and regional government. They were transformed into separate entities by the 2010 Kallikratis Plan. In the 2011 changes, the general secretary was replaced with a popularly elected regional governor. Many powers of the prefectures, which were abolished or reformed into regional units, were transferred to the region level. The regional organs of the government were in turn replaced by seven decentralized administrations. Bordering the region of Central Macedonia there is one region, Mount Athos.
It is located on the easternmost of the three large peninsulas jutting into the Aegean from the Chalcidice Peninsula, ISO 3166-2, GR Administrative divisions of Greece
Byzantine Greece
The history of Byzantine Greece mainly coincides with the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire. The Greek peninsula became a Roman protectorate in 146 BC, Athens and other Greek cities revolted in 88 BC, and the peninsula was crushed by the Roman general Sulla. The Roman civil wars devastated the land even further, until Augustus organized the peninsula as the province of Achaea in 27 BC, Greece was a typical eastern province of the Roman Empire. Romans tended to be philhellenic and Greeks were generally loyal to Rome, life in Greece continued under the Roman Empire much the same as it had previously, and Greek continued to be the lingua franca in the Eastern and most important part of the Empire. Roman culture was influenced by classical Greek culture as Horace said. During that period, Greek intellectuals such as Galen or Apollodorus of Damascus were continuously being brought to Rome, within the city of Rome, Greek was spoken by Roman elites, particularly philosophers, and by lower, working classes such as sailors and merchants.
The emperor Nero visited Greece in 66, and performed at the Olympic Games, despite the rules against non-Greek participation. He was, of course, honored with a victory in every contest, hadrian was particularly fond of the Greeks, before he became emperor he served as eponymous archon of Athens. He built his namesake arch there, and had a Greek lover, at the same time Greece and much of the rest of the Roman east came under the influence of Christianity. The apostle Paul had preached in Corinth and Athens, and Greece soon became one of the most highly Christianized areas of the empire, during the second and third centuries, Greece was divided into provinces including Achaea, Epirus vetus and Thracia. During the reign of Diocletian in the late 3rd century, the western Balkans were organized as a Roman diocese, under Constantine I Greece was part of the dioceses of Macedonia and Thrace. The eastern and southern Aegean islands formed the province of Insulae in the Diocese of Asia, Greece faced invasions from the Heruli and Vandals during the reign of Theodosius I.
Stilicho, who acted as regent for Arcadius, evacuated Thessaly when the Visigoths invaded in the late 4th century, Arcadius Chamberlain Eutropius allowed Alaric to enter Greece, and he looted Corinth, and the Peloponnese. Stilicho eventually drove him out around 397 and Alaric was made magister militum in Illyricum. Eventually and the Goths migrated to Italy, sacked Rome in 410, and built the Visigothic Empire in Iberia and southern France, Greece remained part of the relatively unified eastern half of the empire. Contrary to outdated visions of late antiquity, the Greek peninsula was most likely one of the most prosperous regions of the Roman, older scenarios of poverty, barbarian destruction and civil decay have been revised in light of recent archaeological discoveries. In fact the polis, as an institution, appears to have remained prosperous until at least the sixth century, contemporary texts such as Hierocles Synecdemus affirm that in late Antiquity, Greece was highly urbanised and contained approximately 80 cities.
Following the loss of Alexandria and Antioch to the Arabs, Thessaloniki became the Byzantine Empires second largest city, called the co-regent, the Greek peninsula remained one of the strongest centers of Christianity in the late Roman and early Byzantine periods
Quercus pubescens
Quercus pubescens, the downy oak or pubescent oak, is an oak in the white oak section of the genus, Quercus sect. It is native to southern Europe and southwest Asia, from northern Spain east to the Crimea and it is found in France and parts of central Europe. Downy oaks typically grow in dry, lime-rich soils and it is a submediterranean species, growing from the coastline to deep in the continent. Its optimum is in the region, characterized by hot dry summers. In western and central Europe, downy oak is confined to areas with submediteranean microclimate or to coastlines of former lakes, Quercus pubescens is a medium-sized deciduous tree growing up to 20 m. Forest-grown trees grow tall, while open-growing trees develop a very broad and they are long-lived, to several hundred years, and eventually grow into very stout trees with trunks up to 2 m in diameter. Open-grown trees frequently develop several trunks, the bark is very rough, light grey and divided into small flakes. Large trees develop very thick whitish bark cracked into deep furrows, similar to the Pedunculate oak, the twigs are light purple or whitish, tomentose.
The buds are small and blunt, light brown, the leaves are leathery usually 4–10 cm long and 3–6 cm wide, usually widest beyond the middle. The leaves group at the ends of twigs, the upper leaf surface is dark green and rough, the lower light green. Both leaf surfaces are covered with minute pubescence which is sometimes lost in older leaves by late summer, the young expanding leaves are whitish or pinkish with very soft tomentum. The leaf shape is variable, divided into 3-7 pairs of deep or shallow lobes. The lobes are usually blunt, rarely sharp, the apex is usually wide and round. The base of the leaf is heart shaped, widely rounded or sometimes pointed, the petioles are 4–15 mm long and pubescent. The leaves are persistent late into the autumn, remaining green up to early winter and they eventually turn russet or brown and fall off. The Quercus pubescens acorns are brown to yellow, 8–20 mm long, usually thin. The acorn cups are light grey to almost white, with pointed, overlapping scales, the acorn stalks are thick and pubescent, up to 2 cm long.
The acorns usually occur in groups of 2-5 on the same stalk, three subspecies are accepted by Flora Europaea, Quercus pubescens subsp
Spoonbill
Spoonbills are a group of large, long-legged wading birds in the family Threskiornithidae, which includes the ibises. The genus name derives from Latin and means broad, referring to the distinctive shape of the bill. Six species are recognised, all placed in a single genus or three genera. They are most closely related to the Old World ibises, all spoonbills have large, spatulate bills and feed by wading through shallow water, sweeping the partly opened bill from side to side. The moment any small aquatic creature touches the inside of the insect, crustacean. Spoonbills generally prefer fresh water to salt but are found in both environments and they need to feed many hours each day. Spoonbills are monogamous, but, so far as is known, most species nest in trees or reed beds, often with ibises or herons. The female lays a clutch of three smooth, white eggs and both parents incubate, chicks hatch one at a time rather than all together. The newly hatched young are blind and cannot care for themselves immediately, chicks bills are short and straight, and only gain the characteristic spoonbill shape as they mature.
Their feeding continues for a few weeks longer after the leaves the nest. The primary cause of brood failure appears not to be predation but starvation, the six species of spoonbill are distributed over much of the world. However, as the six species were so similar morphologically, keeping them within the one made more sense. Spoonbill videos on the Internet Bird Collection
Almyros
