Western (genre)
Western is a genre of various arts which tell stories set in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West centering on the life of a nomadic cowboy or gunfighter armed with a revolver and a rifle who rides a horse. Cowboys and gunslingers wear Stetson hats, neckerchief bandannas, spurs, cowboy boots and buckskins. Recurring characters include the aforementioned cowboys, Native Americans, lawmen, bounty hunters, gamblers and settlers; the ambience is punctuated with a Western music score, including American and Mexican folk music such as country, Native American music, New Mexico music, rancheras. Westerns stress the harshness of the wilderness and set the action in an arid, desolate landscape of deserts and mountains; the vast landscape plays an important role, presenting a "...mythic vision of the plains and deserts of the American West". Specific settings include ranches, small frontier towns, saloons and isolated military forts of the Wild West. Common plots include: The construction of a telegraph line on the wild frontier.
Ranchers protecting their family ranch from rustlers or large landowners or who build a ranch empire. Revenge stories, which hinge on the chase and pursuit by someone, wronged. Stories about cavalry fighting Native Americans. Outlaw gang plots. Stories about a lawman or bounty hunter tracking down his quarry. Many Westerns use a stock plot of depicting a crime showing the pursuit of the wrongdoer, ending in revenge and retribution, dispensed through a shootout or quick-draw duel; the Western was the most popular Hollywood genre from the early 20th century to the 1960s. Western films first became well-attended in the 1930s. John Ford's landmark Western adventure Stagecoach became one of the biggest hits in 1939 and it made John Wayne a mainstream screen star; the popularity of Westerns continued with the release of classics such as Red River. Westerns were popular throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Many of the most acclaimed Westerns were released during this time, including High Noon, The Searchers, Cat Ballou, The Wild Bunch and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Classic Westerns such as these have been the inspiration for various films about Western-type characters in contemporary settings, such as Junior Bonner, set in the 1970s, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, set in the 21st century. The Western genre sometimes portrays the conquest of the wilderness and the subordination of nature in the name of civilization or the confiscation of the territorial rights of the original, Native American, inhabitants of the frontier; the Western depicts a society organized around codes of honor and personal, direct or private justice–"frontier justice"–dispensed by gunfights. These honor codes are played out through depictions of feuds or individuals seeking personal revenge or retribution against someone who has wronged them; this Western depiction of personal justice contrasts with justice systems organized around rationalistic, abstract law that exist in cities, in which social order is maintained predominately through impersonal institutions such as courtrooms.
The popular perception of the Western is a story that centers on the life of a semi-nomadic wanderer a cowboy or a gunfighter. A showdown or duel at high noon featuring two or more gunfighters is a stereotypical scene in the popular conception of Westerns. In some ways, such protagonists may be considered the literary descendants of the knight errant which stood at the center of earlier extensive genres such as the Arthurian Romances. Like the cowboy or gunfighter of the Western, the knight errant of the earlier European tales and poetry was wandering from place to place on his horse, fighting villains of various kinds and bound to no fixed social structures but only to their own innate code of honor, and like knights errant, the heroes of Westerns rescue damsels in distress. The wandering protagonists of Westerns share many characteristics with the ronin in modern Japanese culture; the Western takes these elements and uses them to tell simple morality tales, although some notable examples are more morally ambiguous.
Westerns stress the harshness and isolation of the wilderness and set the action in an arid, desolate landscape. Western films have specific settings such as isolated ranches, Native American villages, or small frontier towns with a saloon. Oftentimes, these settings appear deserted and without much structure. Apart from the wilderness, it is the saloon that emphasizes that this is the Wild West: it is the place to go for music, gambling, drinking and shooting. In some Westerns, where civilization has arrived, the town has a church, a general store, a bank and a school; the American Film Institute defines Western films as those "set in the American West that the spirit, the struggle and the demise of the new frontier." The term Western, used to describe a narrative film genre, appears to have originated with a July 1912 article in Motion Picture World magazine. Most of the characteristics of Western films were part of 19th-century popular Western
Mexico
Mexico the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States. Covering 2,000,000 square kilometres, the nation is the fifth largest country in the Americas by total area and the 13th largest independent state in the world. With an estimated population of over 120 million people, the country is the eleventh most populous state and the most populous Spanish-speaking state in the world, while being the second most populous nation in Latin America after Brazil. Mexico is a federation comprising 31 states and Mexico City, a special federal entity, the capital city and its most populous city. Other metropolises in the state include Guadalajara, Puebla, Tijuana and León. Pre-Columbian Mexico dates to about 8000 BC and is identified as one of five cradles of civilization and was home to many advanced Mesoamerican civilizations such as the Olmec, Teotihuacan, Zapotec and Aztec before first contact with Europeans. In 1521, the Spanish Empire conquered and colonized the territory from its politically powerful base in Mexico-Tenochtitlan, administered as the viceroyalty of New Spain.
Three centuries the territory became a nation state following its recognition in 1821 after the Mexican War of Independence. The post-independence period was tumultuous, characterized by economic inequality and many contrasting political changes; the Mexican–American War led to a territorial cession of the extant northern territories to the United States. The Pastry War, the Franco-Mexican War, a civil war, two empires, the Porfiriato occurred in the 19th century; the Porfiriato was ended by the start of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, which culminated with the promulgation of the 1917 Constitution and the emergence of the country's current political system as a federal, democratic republic. Mexico has the 11th largest by purchasing power parity; the Mexican economy is linked to those of its 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement partners the United States. In 1994, Mexico became the first Latin American member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, it is classified as an upper-middle income country by the World Bank and a newly industrialized country by several analysts.
The country is considered both a regional power and a middle power, is identified as an emerging global power. Due to its rich culture and history, Mexico ranks first in the Americas and seventh in the world for number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Mexico is an ecologically megadiverse country, ranking fourth in the world for its biodiversity. Mexico receives a huge number of tourists every year: in 2018, it was the sixth most-visited country in the world, with 39 million international arrivals. Mexico is a member of the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the G8+5, the G20, the Uniting for Consensus group of the UN, the Pacific Alliance trade bloc. Mēxihco is the Nahuatl term for the heartland of the Aztec Empire, namely the Valley of Mexico and surrounding territories, with its people being known as the Mexica, it is believed to be a toponym for the valley which became the primary ethnonym for the Aztec Triple Alliance as a result, although it could have been the other way around.
In the colonial era, back when Mexico was called New Spain this territory became the Intendency of Mexico and after New Spain achieved independence from the Spanish Empire it came to be known as the State of Mexico with the new country being named after its capital: the City of Mexico, which itself was founded in 1524 on top of the ancient Mexica capital of Mexico-Tenochtitlan. Traditionally, the name Tenochtitlan was thought to come from Nahuatl tetl and nōchtli and is thought to mean "Among the prickly pears rocks". However, one attestation in the late 16th-century manuscript known as "the Bancroft dialogues" suggests the second vowel was short, so that the true etymology remains uncertain; the suffix -co is the Nahuatl locative, making the word a place name. Beyond that, the etymology is uncertain, it has been suggested that it is derived from Mextli or Mēxihtli, a secret name for the god of war and patron of the Mexica, Huitzilopochtli, in which case Mēxihco means "place where Huitzilopochtli lives".
Another hypothesis suggests that Mēxihco derives from a portmanteau of the Nahuatl words for "moon" and navel. This meaning might refer to Tenochtitlan's position in the middle of Lake Texcoco; the system of interconnected lakes, of which Texcoco formed the center, had the form of a rabbit, which the Mesoamericans pareidolically associated with the moon rabbit. Still another hypothesis suggests that the word is derived from Mēctli, the name of the goddess of maguey; the name of the city-state was transliterated to Spanish as México with the phonetic value of the letter x in Medieval Spanish, which represented the voiceless postalveolar fricative. This sound, as well as the voiced postalveolar fricative, represented by a j, evolved into a voiceless velar fricative during the 16th century; this led to the use of the variant Méjico in many publications in Spanish, most notably in Spain, whereas in Mexico and most other Spanish–speaking countries, México was the preferred spelling. In recent years, the Real Academia Española, which regulates the Spanish l
Sheriffs in the United States
In the United States, a sheriff is an official in a county or independent city responsible for keeping the peace and enforcing the law. Unlike most officials in law enforcement in the United States, sheriffs are elected, although many states have state laws requiring that a person possess certain law enforcement qualifications before being able to run for the office. Elected sheriffs are accountable directly to the constitution of their state, the United States Constitution and the citizens of their county; the responsibilities of sheriffs and their agencies vary by county. Many sheriffs have the role of a police chief, though some lead agencies with limited law enforcement duties. Sheriffs are often responsible for managing county jails and security at local government buildings; the law enforcement agency headed by a sheriff is most referred to as the "Sheriff's Office", while some are instead called the "Sheriff's Department." According to the National Sheriffs' Association, an American sheriff's advocacy group, there were 3,081 sheriff's offices as of 2015.
These range in size from small forces in sparsely populated rural areas to large, full-service law enforcement agencies, such as the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, the largest sheriff's office and the seventh largest law enforcement agency in the United States, with 16,400 members and 400 reserve deputies. A regular officer of a sheriff's office is known as a deputy sheriff, sheriff's deputy or informally as a deputy. In a small sheriff's office, the deputies are supervised directly by the sheriff. Large sheriffs offices have several ranks in a similar manner to a police department; the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has thousands of regular deputies, who are 8 ranks below the sheriff. The actual second-in-command of the sheriff holds the title of chief deputy or undersheriff. In some counties, the undersheriff is the warden of the county jail. Of the 50 U. S. states, 48 have sheriffs. The two exceptions are Alaska, which does not have counties, Connecticut, which has no county governments.
The federal district and the 5 populated territories do not have county governments. Sheriffs are elected to four-year terms in 42 states, two-year terms in Arkansas and New Hampshire, three-year terms in New Jersey, six-year terms in Massachusetts. Sheriffs are appointed instead of elected in Hawaii, Rhode Island and a small number of counties elsewhere. In many rural areas of the United States in the South and West, the sheriff has traditionally been viewed as one of a given county's most influential political office-holder; the role of a sheriff's offices varies from state to state and from county to county. Sheriffs and their deputies tend to be sworn peace officers with the power to make arrests and serve before a magistrate or judge, serve warrants for arrest or order for arrest, give a ticket/citation; some states extend this authority to the entire state. In a small sheriff's office, the sheriff is to carry out law enforcement duties just like a regular deputy or police officer. In medium-sized or large sheriff's office, this is rare.
Many sheriff's offices perform other functions such as traffic control, animal enforcement, accident investigations, homicide investigation, narcotics investigation, transportation of prisoners, school resource officers, courthouse security. Larger departments may perform other criminal investigations or engage in other specialized law enforcement activities; some larger sheriff's departments may have aviation, motorcycle unit, K9 units, tactical units, mounted details, or water patrols at their disposal. In some areas of the country, such as in California's San Bernardino, Orange, Sierra and Ventura counties, the sheriff's office has the responsibility of a coroner's office, is charged with recovering deceased persons within their county and conducting autopsies; the official in charge of such sheriff's departments is titled sheriff-coroner or sheriff/coroner, officers who perform this function for such departments are titled deputy sheriff-coroner or deputy coroner. Many sheriff's departments enlist the aid of local neighborhoods, using a community policing strategy, in working to prevent crime.
The National Neighborhood Watch Program, sponsored by the National Sheriffs' Association, allows civilians and law enforcement officers to cooperate in keeping communities safe. As the trends of sheriff's law enforcement duties becoming more extensive and complex continues, new career opportunities for people with specialized skills are opening up in sheriff's offices around the country. Among the specialties now in demand are underwater diving, boating, snow skiing, radar technology, computer technology, emergency medicine, foreign languages. Sheriff's offices may coexist with other county level law enforcement agencies such as county police, county park police, etc. Sheriffs in the United States fall into three broad categories: Restricted service – provide basic court related services such as keeping the county jail, transporting prisoners, providing courthouse security and other duties with regard to service of process and summonses that are issued by county and state courts; the sheriff often conducts public auction sales of real property in foreclosure in many jurisdictions, is also empowered to conduct seizures of chattel property to satisfy a judgment.
In other jurisdictions, these civil process duties are performed by other
Taos, New Mexico
Taos is a town in Taos County in the north-central region of New Mexico in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, incorporated in 1934. As of the 2010 census, its population was 5,716. Other nearby communities include Ranchos de Taos, Cañon, Taos Canyon, Ranchitos, El Prado, Arroyo Seco; the town is close to Taos Pueblo, the Native American village and tribe from which it takes its name. Taos is the county seat of Taos County; the English name Taos derives from the native Taos language meaning "place of red willows". Taos is the principal city of the Taos, NM Micropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all of Taos County; the Taos Pueblo, which borders the north boundary of the town of Taos, has been occupied for nearly a millennium. It is estimated that the pueblo was built between 1000 and 1450 A. D. with some expansion, the pueblo is considered to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in the United States. Located in a tributary valley off the Rio Grande, it is the most northern of the New Mexico pueblos.
The pueblo, at some places five stories high, is a combination of many individual homes with common walls. There are over 1,900 Taos Puebloans living within the greater pueblo-area community. Many of them have modern homes near their fields and live there in summer months, only staying at their homes within the main North or South pueblo buildings during cooler weather. About 150 people live within the main pueblo buildings year-round; the Taos Pueblo was added as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1992. Taos was established c. 1615 as Don Fernando de Taos, following the Spanish conquest of the Indian Pueblo villages. Relations of the Spanish settlers with Taos Pueblo were amicable, but resentment of meddling by missionaries, demands by encomenderos for tribute, led to a revolt in 1640. In 1680, Taos Pueblo joined the widespread Pueblo Revolt. After the Spanish Reconquest of 1692, Taos Pueblo continued armed resistance to the Spanish until 1696, when Governor Diego de Vargas defeated the Indians at Taos Canyon.
During the 1770s, Taos was raided by Comanches who lived on the plains of what is now eastern Colorado. Juan Bautista de Anza, governor of the Province of New Mexico, led a successful punitive expedition in 1779 against the Comanches. Between 1780 and 1800, Don Fernando de Taos was established. Between 1796 and 1797 the Don Fernando de Taos Land Grant gave land to 63 Spanish families in the Taos valley, it was built as a fortified plaza with adobe buildings and is now a central plaza surrounded by residential areas. Mountain men who trapped for beaver nearby made Taos their home in the early 1800s. Mexico ceded the region to the U. S. in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 after the Mexican–American War. After the U. S. takeover of New Mexico in 1847, Hispanics and American Indians in Taos staged a rebellion, known as the Taos Revolt, in which the newly appointed U. S. Governor, Charles Bent, was killed. New Mexico was a territory of the United States beginning 1850 and became a state in 1912.
For historical reasons, the American flag is displayed continuously at Taos Plaza. This derives from the time of the American Civil War, when Confederate sympathizers in the area attempted to remove the flag; the Union officer Kit Carson sought to discourage this activity by having guards surround the area and fly the flag 24 hours a day."The Padre of Isleta", Anton Docher first served as a priest in Taos before leaving for Isleta in 1891. Beginning in 1899, artists began to settle in Taos. In time, the Taos art colony developed. Many paintings were made of local scenes of Taos Pueblo and activities there, as the artists modelled Native Americans from the pueblo in their paintings; some of the artists' studios may be viewed by visitors to Taos. These include the Ernest L. Blumenschein House, the Eanger Irving Couse House and Studio—Joseph Henry Sharp Studios, the Nicolai Fechin house, all of which are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Influential 20th-century Taos artists include R. C. Gorman and Agnes Martin.
Taos is home to more than twenty sites on the National Register of Historic Places. About 3 miles north of Taos is Taos Pueblo; the Fiestas de Taos is an annual community celebration in the Taos Plaza honoring the Feast of the two patron saints of Taos, Santa Ana and Santiago. It is celebrated the 3rd weekend of July; the Fiestas are a celebratory tradition passed from generation to generation, a way of preserving the rich tri‐cultural way of life that has developed in Taos over the last four centuries. A commemorative Mass and procession from Our Lady of Guadalupe Church opens the event on Friday evening, with the crowning of the Fiestas Queen; the celebration continues with dance performances scheduled on the Plaza every hour. Two parades are staged, a children parade on Saturday and the larger Fiesta Parade on Sunday. Located just North of the Taos Plaza, this street was the location of Governor Charles Bent's home. Governor Bent was scalped and killed by Pueblo warriors during the Taos Revolt, on January 19, 1847.
During the Taos Revolt, Bent’s horses were set free from their stable. Many of the historic sites are homes and studios of artists, including the Mabel Dodge Luhan House, Eanger Irving Couse House and Studio—Joseph Henry Sharp Studios, the Nicolai Fechin House, the Leon Gaspard House, the Ernest Martin Hennings House. Doc Martin's restaurant in the historic Taos Inn was the office of Thomas "Doc" Martin while other parts of the inn served as his home an
Taos Society of Artists
The Taos Society of Artists was an organization of visual arts founded in Taos, New Mexico in 1915. The Society was a commercial cooperative, as opposed to a stylistic collective, its foundation contributed to the development of the tiny Taos art colony into an international art center. Joseph Henry Sharp, who decided to make painting of Native Americans his life work, visited Taos on a trip through New Mexico in 1893. While there he became enchanted with the people of the Taos Pueblo and the landscape, an interest he shared with Ernest Blumenschein when they were studying art in Paris. Having heard of the degree to which Sharp was interested in painting the western United States, the Indian pueblo of Taos in particular, Blumenschein came to Taos with fellow artist Bert Phillips in 1898. Planning only to visit Taos, they became enamored by the Taos valley and its people that they decided to stay; this was the beginning of the Taos art colony. Blumenschein described his first sights of Taos, "The month was September, the fertile valley a beautiful sight, inspiration for those who ply the brush for happiness.
The primitive people of this out-of-the-way region were harvesting their crops by sunlight and by moonlight. Brown people they were, both Mexicans and Indians, happy people with happy children, in a garden spot protected by mountains." More compelling were the people. Native Americans had lived for centuries in the pueblo just outside the village of Taos. There a peace-loving, democratic society has maintained, continues to maintain, its history, culture and way of life over centuries. Ernest Blumenschein returned to New York City for a time. Blumenschein discussed setting up an artist colony in Taos. Blumenschein wrote other artists in New York and Paris of Taos about the "beauty and artistic promise of northern New Mexico."On July 19, 1915 Joseph Henry Sharp, E. Irving Couse, Oscar E. Berninghaus, W. Herbert Dunton, Ernest Blumenschein and Bert Phillips formed the Taos Society of Artists; the six founding members were known as the "Taos Six". E. Irving Couse was the Society's first president.
Their work, defined the first several decades of the Taos art colony, was distinguished by: Native Americans in traditional clothing, area Hispanics and Anglo-Americans and landscapes. The group's first exhibition was held at the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe soon after their formation. By 1917 they were sending travelling exhibits of their work across the United States. Initial critical reaction of the works was that they were unrealistic and overdone: vivid colors, too evocative and strong vibrational quality; the artists questioned the critics veracity, since they had never been to the southwestern desert, nor the Taos Pueblo. Member artists had to have worked in Taos for three consecutive years, shown an interest and aptitude for painting Native Americans and have shown in reputable galleries or New York salons; the primary reason for the requirements was to ensure that the artists were well-intentioned and capable of capturing the character and spirit of the people. Members included Julius Rolshoven, E. Martin Hennings, Catharine C.
Critcher, Kenneth Adams, Walter Ufer, Victor Higgins. Some artists from Santa Fe, another developing arts center, were included as Associate members: Robert Henri, Albert L. Groll, Randall Davey, B. J. O. Nordfeldt, Gustave Baumann, Albert Groll, Birger Sandzén, John Sloan. Honorary memberships were extended to men who helped create a museum infrastructure in New Mexico: Edgar L. Hewett, the director of the Museum of New Mexico. During World War I, the Taos society artists served on United War Work Committees, designed posters and exhibited canvases at Red Cross bazars. Most notably they created "range-finder paintings", 50 by 100 foot landscapes of Belgium and France used as military teaching tools. Several of these paintings were exhibited in the 1918 Taos Society of Artists' annual exhibition held at the Museum of New Mexico The depression was the precipitating factor for the dissolution of the Taos Society of Artists. Taos was devastated by the depression and the artist's patrons were not spending money on art during that time.
Victor Higgins the most financially devastated by the Depression made two of his most important paintings during that time, Winter Funeral heralded by the New York press, Sleeping Nude praised by the Chicago Herald Examiner writer Inez Cunningham. Cunningham likened Higgins to a phoenix rising out of the ashes, "what heights of intellectual and emotional fire, he is one of those fortunate few who flower in maturity." The "Taos Six" applied academic technique to native themes to produce a uniquely American school of painting. Each artist's style was unique, though cross influence can be noted as can strong elements of their European Academic artistic training. Aside from the inspiration of their environment, one quality early Taos art colony paintings share is their vibrant palette of colors - not a common sight when paired with more traditional representational images and application of paint. Today, these artists are recognized for their contribution to artistic development and their scenes of Taos locales grace the walls of many museums.
Eanger Irving Couse House and Studio—Joseph Henry Sharp Studios Ernest L. Blumenschein House Los Cinco Pintores, contemporaneous artist collective in Santa Fe James, G.. New Mexico: The Land of the Delight Makers. Boston: The Page Company. Broder, Patricia Janis. Taos, a Painter's Dream. Boston: New York Graphic Society. Fenn, For
London
London is the capital and largest city of both England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south-east of England, at the head of its 50-mile estuary leading to the North Sea, London has been a major settlement for two millennia. Londinium was founded by the Romans; the City of London, London's ancient core − an area of just 1.12 square miles and colloquially known as the Square Mile − retains boundaries that follow its medieval limits. The City of Westminster is an Inner London borough holding city status. Greater London is governed by the Mayor of the London Assembly. London is considered to be one of the world's most important global cities and has been termed the world's most powerful, most desirable, most influential, most visited, most expensive, sustainable, most investment friendly, most popular for work, the most vegetarian friendly city in the world. London exerts a considerable impact upon the arts, education, fashion, healthcare, professional services and development, tourism and transportation.
London ranks 26 out of 300 major cities for economic performance. It is one of the largest financial centres and has either the fifth or sixth largest metropolitan area GDP, it is the most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the busiest city airport system as measured by passenger traffic. It is the leading investment destination, hosting more international retailers and ultra high-net-worth individuals than any other city. London's universities form the largest concentration of higher education institutes in Europe. In 2012, London became the first city to have hosted three modern Summer Olympic Games. London has a diverse range of people and cultures, more than 300 languages are spoken in the region, its estimated mid-2016 municipal population was 8,787,892, the most populous of any city in the European Union and accounting for 13.4% of the UK population. London's urban area is the second most populous in the EU, after Paris, with 9,787,426 inhabitants at the 2011 census.
The population within the London commuter belt is the most populous in the EU with 14,040,163 inhabitants in 2016. London was the world's most populous city from c. 1831 to 1925. London contains four World Heritage Sites: the Tower of London. Other landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Paul's Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square and The Shard. London has numerous museums, galleries and sporting events; these include the British Museum, National Gallery, Natural History Museum, Tate Modern, British Library and West End theatres. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world. "London" is an ancient name, attested in the first century AD in the Latinised form Londinium. Over the years, the name has attracted many mythicising explanations; the earliest attested appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, written around 1136. This had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had taken over the city and named it Kaerlud.
Modern scientific analyses of the name must account for the origins of the different forms found in early sources Latin, Old English, Welsh, with reference to the known developments over time of sounds in those different languages. It is agreed; this was adapted into Latin as Londinium and borrowed into Old English, the ancestor-language of English. The toponymy of the Common Brythonic form is much debated. A prominent explanation was Richard Coates's 1998 argument that the name derived from pre-Celtic Old European *lowonida, meaning "river too wide to ford". Coates suggested that this was a name given to the part of the River Thames which flows through London. However, most work has accepted a Celtic origin for the name, recent studies have favoured an explanation along the lines of a Celtic derivative of a proto-Indo-European root *lendh-, combined with the Celtic suffix *-injo- or *-onjo-. Peter Schrijver has suggested, on these grounds, that the name meant'place that floods'; until 1889, the name "London" applied to the City of London, but since it has referred to the County of London and Greater London.
"London" is sometimes written informally as "LDN". In 1993, the remains of a Bronze Age bridge were found on the south foreshore, upstream of Vauxhall Bridge; this bridge either reached a now lost island in it. Two of those timbers were radiocarbon dated to between 1750 BC and 1285 BC. In 2010 the foundations of a large timber structure, dated to between 4800 BC and 4500 BC, were found on the Thames's south foreshore, downstream of Vauxhall Bridge; the function of the mesolithic structure is not known. Both structures are on the south bank. Although there is evidence of scattered Brythonic settlements in the area, the first major settlement was founded by the Romans about four years after the invasion
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state in the Southwestern region of the United States of America. It is one of the Mountain States and shares the Four Corners region with Utah and Arizona. With a population around two million, New Mexico is the 36th state by population. With a total area of 121,592 sq mi, it is the fifth-largest and sixth-least densely populated of the 50 states. Due to their geographic locations and eastern New Mexico exhibit a colder, alpine climate, while western and southern New Mexico exhibit a warmer, arid climate; the economy of New Mexico is dependent on oil drilling, mineral extraction, dryland farming, cattle ranching, lumber milling, retail trade. As of 2016–2017, its total gross domestic product was $95 billion with a GDP per capita of $45,465. New Mexico's status as a tax haven yields low to moderate personal income taxes on residents and military personnel, gives tax credits and exemptions to favorable industries; because of this, its film industry contributed $1.23 billion to its overall economy.
Due to its large area and economic climate, New Mexico has a large U. S. military presence marked notably with the White Sands Missile Range. Various U. S. national security agencies base their research and testing arms in New Mexico such as the Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories. During the 1940s, Project Y of the Manhattan Project developed and built the country's first atomic bomb and nuclear test, Trinity. Inhabited by Native Americans for many thousands of years before European exploration, it was colonized by the Spanish in 1598 as part of the Imperial Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain. In 1563, it was named Nuevo México after the Aztec Valley of Mexico by Spanish settlers, more than 250 years before the establishment and naming of the present-day country of Mexico. After Mexican independence in 1824, New Mexico became a Mexican territory with considerable autonomy; this autonomy was threatened, however, by the centralizing tendencies of the Mexican government from the 1830s onward, with rising tensions leading to the Revolt of 1837.
At the same time, the region became more economically dependent on the United States. At the conclusion of the Mexican–American War in 1848, the United States annexed New Mexico as the U. S. New Mexico Territory, it was admitted to the Union as the 47th state on January 6, 1912. Its history has given New Mexico the highest percentage of Hispanic and Latino Americans, the second-highest percentage of Native Americans as a population proportion. New Mexico is home to part of the Navajo Nation, 19 federally recognized Pueblo communities of Puebloan peoples, three different federally recognized Apache tribes. In prehistoric times, the area was home to Ancestral Puebloans and the modern extant Comanche and Utes inhabited the state; the largest Hispanic and Latino groups represented include the Hispanos of New Mexico and Mexican Americans. The flag of New Mexico features the state's Spanish origins with the same scarlet and gold coloration as Spain's Cross of Burgundy, along with the ancient sun symbol of the Zia, a Puebloan tribe.
These indigenous, Mexican and American frontier roots are reflected in the eponymous New Mexican cuisine and the New Mexico music genre. New Mexico received its name long before the present-day nation of Mexico won independence from Spain and adopted that name in 1821. Though the name “Mexico” itself derives from Nahuatl, in that language it referred to the heartland of the Empire of the Mexicas in the Valley of Mexico far from the area of New Mexico, Spanish explorers used the term “Mexico” to name the region of New Mexico in 1563. In 1581, the Chamuscado and Rodríguez Expedition named the region north of the Rio Grande "San Felipe del Nuevo México"; the Spaniards had hoped to find wealthy indigenous Mexica cultures there similar to those of the Aztec Empire of the Valley of Mexico. The indigenous cultures of New Mexico, proved to be unrelated to the Mexicas, they were not wealthy, but the name persisted. Before statehood, the name "New Mexico" was applied to various configurations of the U.
S. territory, to a Mexican state, to a province of New Spain, all in the same general area, but of varying extensions. With a total area of 121,699 square miles, the state is the fifth-largest state of the US, larger than British Isles. New Mexico's eastern border lies along 103°W longitude with the state of Oklahoma, 2.2 miles west of 103°W longitude with Texas. On the southern border, Texas makes up the eastern two-thirds, while the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora make up the western third, with Chihuahua making up about 90% of that; the western border with Arizona runs along the 109° 03'W longitude. The southwestern corner of the state is known as the Bootheel; the 37°N parallel forms the northern boundary with Colorado. The states of New Mexico, Colorado and Utah come together at the Four Corners in New Mexico's northwestern corner. New Mexico has no natural water sources
