1.
Upper New York Bay
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Upper New York Bay, or Upper Bay, is the traditional heart of the Port of New York and New Jersey, and often called New York Harbor. It is enclosed by the New York City boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Staten Island and it is fed by the waters of the Hudson River, as well as the Gowanus Canal. It is connected to Lower New York Bay by the Narrows, to Newark Bay by the Kill Van Kull, and to Long Island Sound by the East River and it provides the main passage for the waters of the Hudson River as it empties through the Narrows. The channel of the Hudson as it passes through the harbor is called the Anchorage Channel and is approximately 50 feet deep in the midpoint of the harbor. A project to two water mains between Brooklyn and Staten Island which will eventually allowing for dredging of the channel to nearly 100 feet was begun in April 2012. Historically it has played an important role in the commerce of the New York metropolitan area. The Statue of Liberty National Monument recalls the immigrant experience during the late 19th, Liberty State Park opened in 1976. In recent years, it has become a site for recreation sailing and kayaking. NY Waterway operates routes across the bay and through The Narrows to locations near Sandy Hook, the Upper Bay supports a very diverse population of marine species, allowing for recreational fishing, most commonly for striped bass and bluefish
2.
North River (Hudson River)
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North River is an alternate name for the southernmost portion of the Hudson River in the vicinity of New York City and northeastern New Jersey in the United States. The colonial name for the entire Hudson was given to it by the Dutch in the seventeenth century. However it still retains currency as an alternate or additional name among local mariners and others as well as appearing on some nautical charts and maps. The term is used for infrastructure on and under the river, such as the North River piers, North River Tunnels, the names for the lower portion of the river appear to have remained interchangeable for centuries. In 1909, construction of two projects was under way, one was called the North River Tunnels, the other. The origin of the name North River is generally attributed to the Dutch, in describing the major rivers in the New Netherland colony, they called what is now the Hudson the North River, the Connecticut the Fresh River, and the Delaware the South River. Another theory is that the North River and East River were so named for the direction of travel they permitted once having entered the Upper New York Bay. In 1808 the Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin, issued his report of proposed locations for transportation and communication internal improvements of national importance and this peculiarity distinguishes the North River from all the other bays and rivers of the United States. The tide in no other ascends higher than the ridge or comes within thirty miles of the Blue Ridge or eastern chain of mountains. In the North River it breaks through the Blue Ridge at West Point, a few miles above Troy, and the head of the tide, the Hudson from the north and the Mohawk from the west unite their waters and form the North River. The Hudson in its course upwards approaches the waters of Lake Champlain, hagstrom Maps, formerly the leading mapmaker in the New York metropolitan area, has labeled all or part of the Hudson adjacent to Manhattan as North River on several of its maps. On a 2000 map of Northern Approaches to New York City, Piers along the Hudson shore of Manhattan were formerly used for shipping and berthing ocean-going ships. In shipping notices, they were designated as, for example, Pier 14, most of the piers that once existed in lower Manhattan fell into disuse or were destroyed in the last half of the 20th century, although a number have been adapted to new uses. As with the river, the name North River piers has largely supplanted by Hudson River piers, or just by a pier and number. The remaining piers are Pier A at the Battery and piers ranging from Pier 25 at North Moore Street to Pier 99 at 59th Street, many of these piers and the waterfront between them are part of the Hudson River Park which stretches from 59th Street to the Battery. Several piers are being rebuilt as part of the park project, Piers above Pier 40 have addresses approximately that of Manhattans numbered streets plus 40 – thus, for example North River Pier 86 is at West 46th Street. Pier A is a national and New York City landmark. The building on the dates to 1886, and was used by the citys Department of Docks, Harbor Police
3.
Spain
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By population, Spain is the sixth largest in Europe and the fifth in the European Union. Spains capital and largest city is Madrid, other urban areas include Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Bilbao. Modern humans first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 35,000 years ago, in the Middle Ages, the area was conquered by Germanic tribes and later by the Moors. Spain is a democracy organised in the form of a government under a constitutional monarchy. It is a power and a major developed country with the worlds fourteenth largest economy by nominal GDP. Jesús Luis Cunchillos argues that the root of the span is the Phoenician word spy. Therefore, i-spn-ya would mean the land where metals are forged, two 15th-century Spanish Jewish scholars, Don Isaac Abravanel and Solomon ibn Verga, gave an explanation now considered folkloric. Both men wrote in two different published works that the first Jews to reach Spain were brought by ship by Phiros who was confederate with the king of Babylon when he laid siege to Jerusalem. This man was a Grecian by birth, but who had given a kingdom in Spain. He became related by marriage to Espan, the nephew of king Heracles, Heracles later renounced his throne in preference for his native Greece, leaving his kingdom to his nephew, Espan, from whom the country of España took its name. Based upon their testimonies, this eponym would have already been in use in Spain by c.350 BCE, Iberia enters written records as a land populated largely by the Iberians, Basques and Celts. Early on its coastal areas were settled by Phoenicians who founded Western Europe´s most ancient cities Cadiz, Phoenician influence expanded as much of the Peninsula was eventually incorporated into the Carthaginian Empire, becoming a major theater of the Punic Wars against the expanding Roman Empire. After an arduous conquest, the peninsula came fully under Roman Rule, during the early Middle Ages it came under Germanic rule but later, much of it was conquered by Moorish invaders from North Africa. In a process took centuries, the small Christian kingdoms in the north gradually regained control of the peninsula. The last Moorish kingdom fell in the same year Columbus reached the Americas, a global empire began which saw Spain become the strongest kingdom in Europe, the leading world power for a century and a half, and the largest overseas empire for three centuries. Continued wars and other problems led to a diminished status. The Napoleonic invasions of Spain led to chaos, triggering independence movements that tore apart most of the empire, eventually democracy was peacefully restored in the form of a parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Spain joined the European Union, experiencing a renaissance and steady economic growth
4.
Baracoa
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Baracoa is a municipality and city in Guantánamo Province near the eastern tip of Cuba. It was visited by Admiral Christopher Columbus on November 27,1492, and then founded by the first governor of Cuba and it is the oldest Spanish settlement in Cuba and was its first capital. Baracoa is located on the spot where Christopher Columbus landed in Cuba on his first voyage and it is thought that the name stems from the indigenous Arauaca language word meaning the presence of the sea. Baracoa lies on the Bay of Honey and is surrounded by a mountain range. The original inhabitants of the island were Taíno and they were eradicated by European diseases throughout the island. A local hero is Hatuey, who fled from the Spanish in Hispaniola, according to the story Hatuey was betrayed by a member of his group and sentenced to burn at the stake. It is said that just before he died a Catholic priest tried to convert him so he would attain salvation, when he received an answer in the affirmative he told the priest that he would rather go to Hell. Christopher Columbus landed in Cuba in a place he named Porto Santo and it is generally assumed from his description that this was Baracoa, although there are also claims it was Gibara. But Columbus also described a table mountain, which is almost certainly nearby El Yunque. He wrote in his logbook the most beautiful place in the world. I heard the birds sing that they will never leave this place. According to tradition, Columbus put a cross called Cruz de la Parra in the sands of what would later become Baracoa harbor, in 1518 it received the title of city and the first Cuban bishop was appointed here. As a result, several remains of the Spanish occupation can still be here, such as the fortifications El Castillo, Matachín and La Punta. In the 16th and 17th centuries the isolated location made it a haven for illegal trade with the French, at the beginning of the 19th century many French fled here from the revolution of independence in Haiti, who started growing coffee and cocoa. From the middle of the 19th century many expeditions of independence fighters landed here which helped the independence from Spain in 1902. The road had already planned by the Batista government. The highest point of the road is at over 600 m, the main products in the region are banana, coconut and cacao. It is Cubas main chocolate manufacturing area, the remote location at the eastern end of the Cuban island has kept the influence of mass tourism quite low, despite the idyllic location. Baracoa can be reached by bus from Santiago de Cuba or by plane from Havana, to the east the Fuerte Matachín is still standing and contains houses and museums
5.
Cuba
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Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is a country comprising the island of Cuba as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located in the northern Caribbean where the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and it is south of both the U. S. state of Florida and the Bahamas, west of Haiti, and north of Jamaica. Havana is the largest city and capital, other cities include Santiago de Cuba. Cuba is the largest island in the Caribbean, with an area of 109,884 square kilometres, prior to Spanish colonization in the late 15th century, Cuba was inhabited by Amerindian tribes. It remained a colony of Spain until the Spanish–American War of 1898, as a fragile republic, Cuba attempted to strengthen its democratic system, but mounting political radicalization and social strife culminated in the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1952. Further unrest and instability led to Batistas ousting in January 1959 by the July 26 Movement, since 1965, the state has been governed by the Communist Party of Cuba. A point of contention during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, a nuclear war broke out during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Culturally, Cuba is considered part of Latin America, Cuba is a Marxist–Leninist one-party republic, where the role of the vanguard Communist Party is enshrined in the Constitution. Independent observers have accused the Cuban government of human rights abuses. It is one of the worlds last planned economies and its economy is dominated by the exports of sugar, tobacco, coffee, according to the Human Development Index, Cuba is described as a country with high human development and is ranked the eighth highest in North America. It also ranks highly in some metrics of national performance, including health care, the name Cuba comes from the Taíno language. The exact meaning of the name is unclear but it may be translated either as where fertile land is abundant, authors who believe that Christopher Columbus was Portuguese state that Cuba was named by Columbus for the town of Cuba in the district of Beja in Portugal. Before the arrival of the Spanish, Cuba was inhabited by three distinct tribes of indigenous peoples of the Americas, the Taíno, the Guanajatabey, and the Ciboney people. The ancestors of the Ciboney migrated from the mainland of South America, the Taíno arrived from Hispanola sometime in the 3rd century A. D. When Columbus arrived they were the dominant culture in Cuba, having a population of 150,000. The name Cuba comes from the native Taíno language and it is derived from either coabana meaning great place, or from cubao meaning where fertile land is abundant. The Taíno were farmers, while the Ciboney were farmers as well as fishers and hunter-gatherers, Columbus claimed the island for the new Kingdom of Spain and named it Isla Juana after Juan, Prince of Asturias. In 1511, the first Spanish settlement was founded by Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar at Baracoa, other towns soon followed, including San Cristobal de la Habana, founded in 1515, which later became the capital
