1.
Alexander Pushkin
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Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was a Russian poet, playwright, and novelist of the Romantic era who is considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. Pushkin was born into Russian nobility in Moscow and his matrilineal great-grandfather was Abram Petrovich Gannibal, who was kidnapped from Eritrea and raised in the household of Peter the Great. Pushkin published his first poem at the age of fifteen, and was recognized by the literary establishment by the time of his graduation from the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. While under the surveillance of the Tsars political police and unable to publish, Pushkin wrote his most famous play. His novel in verse, Eugene Onegin, was serialized between 1825 and 1832, Pushkins father, Sergei Lvovich Pushkin, was descended from a distinguished family of the Russian nobility that traced its ancestry back to the 12th century. Pushkins mother, Nadezhda Ossipovna Gannibal, was descended through her grandmother from German and Scandinavian nobility. She was the daughter of Ossip Abramovich Gannibal and his wife, Abram wrote in a letter to Empress Elizabeth, Peter the Greats daughter, that Gannibal was from the town of Lagon. Largely on the basis of a biography by Gannibals son-in-law Rotkirkh. Vladimir Nabokov, when researching Eugene Onegin, cast serious doubt on this origin theory, after education in France as a military engineer, Gannibal became governor of Reval and eventually Général en Chef in charge of the building of sea forts and canals in Russia. Born in Moscow, Pushkin published his first poem at the age of fifteen, after school, Pushkin plunged into the vibrant and raucous intellectual youth culture of the capital, Saint Petersburg. In 1820 he published his first long poem, Ruslan and Ludmila, amidst much controversy about its subject, Pushkin gradually became committed to social reform and emerged as a spokesman for literary radicals. This angered the government, and led to his transfer from the capital in May 1820 and he went to the Caucasus and to Crimea, then to Kamianka and Chișinău, where he became a Freemason. Here he joined the Filiki Eteria, an organization whose purpose was to overthrow Ottoman rule in Greece. He was inspired by the Greek Revolution and when the war against the Ottoman Turks broke out he kept a recording the events of the great national uprising. He stayed in Chișinău until 1823 and wrote two Romantic poems which brought him acclaim, The Captive of the Caucasus and The Fountain of Bakhchisaray. In 1823 Pushkin moved to Odessa, where he clashed with the government. In Mikhaylovskoye, Pushkin wrote nostalgic love poems which he dedicated to Elizaveta Vorontsova, then Pushkin continued work on his verse-novel Eugene Onegin. In Mikhaylovskoye, in 1825, Pushkin wrote the poem To*** and it is generally believed that he dedicated this poem to Anna Kern, but there are other opinions
2.
The Bronze Horseman (poem)
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The Bronze Horseman, A Petersburg Tale is a narrative poem written by Alexander Pushkin in 1833 about the equestrian statue of Peter the Great in Saint Petersburg and the great flood of 1824. While the poem was written in 1833, it was not published, in its entirety, widely considered to be Pushkins most successful narrative poem, The Bronze Horseman has had a lasting impact on Russian literature. It is considered one of the most influential works in Russian Literature, the poem is divided into three sections, a shorter introduction and two longer parts. The introduction opens with a history of the establishment of the city of Saint Petersburg in 1703. In the first two stanzas, Peter the Great stands at the edge of the River Neva and conceives the idea for a city which will threaten the Swedes and open a window to Europe. The poem describes the area as almost uninhabited, Peter can only see one boat, the rest of the introduction is in the first person and reads as an ode to the city of Petersburg. The poet-narrator describes how he loves Petersburg, including the stern, muscular appearance, its landmarks such as the Admiralty. He encourages the city to retain its beauty and strength and stand firm against the waves of the Neva, Part I opens with an image of the Neva growing rough in a storm, the river is tossing and turning like a sick man in his troubled bed. Against this backdrop, a poor man in the city, Evgenii, is contemplating his love for a young woman, Parasha. Evgenii falls asleep, and the narrative then turns back to the Neva, with a description of how the river floods and destroys much of the city. The frightened and desperate Evgenii is left sitting alone on top of two lions on Peters Square, surrounded by water and with the Bronze Horseman statue looking down on him. In Part II, Evgenii finds a ferryman and commands him to row to where Parashas home used to be, however, he discovers that her home has been destroyed, and falls into a crazed delirium and breaks into laughter. For a year, he roams the street as a madman, but the autumn, he is reminded of the night of the storm. In a fit of rage, he curses the statue of Peter, which brings the statue to life, the narrator does not describe Evgeniis death directly, but the poem closes with the discovery of his corpse in a ruined hut floating on the water. Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin was born in Moscow on May 26,1799 and he had African ancestry as his maternal great grandfather, from Abyssinia, was the adopted grandson and personal secretary to Peter the Great. Pushkin was raised by his tutors, house maids, and nanny, Arina Rodionovna, in his teenage years, he lived in Lycèe of Tsarkoe Selo outside of St. Petersburg, which was later renamed Pushkin in his honor. There he associated with a group of radicals, including the figures in the Decembrist uprising. After several relocations, Pushkin’s exile was ended in 1826 by Tsar Nicholas I, after his initial meeting with Pushkin, Tsar Nicholas told the deputy minister of education that he had just spoke with “the cleverest man in Russia
3.
The Bronze Horseman (novel)
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The Bronze Horseman is a romance novel written by Paullina Simons and the first book in the Bronze Horseman Trilogy. The book begins on 22 June 1941, the day Russia enters the Second World War after Operation Barbarossa, Tatiana Metanova, nearly seventeen, meets the handsome and mysterious Red Army officer Alexander Belov. The relationship between Tatiana and Alexander develops against the backdrop of the Siege of Leningrad and in the face of many difficulties. Tatiana Metanova wakes up on 22 June 1941, the day before her 17th birthday, to her older sister Dasha coming home and that same morning, Vyacheslav Molotov announces Germany has invaded the Soviet Union. Tatianas parents send her twin brother Pasha to a boys camp so that the army wont draft him, Tatiana, who is young and naive, is excited by the war. While her family focuses on sending Pasha safely away, Tatiana is entrusted with buying food, unable to find much to buy, she buys a scoop of ice-cream, causing her to miss her bus. While waiting for the bus, she notices a red army officer watching her. After an embarrassed introduction, Alexander and Tatiana become attracted to one another, Alexanders irritating friend Dimitri insists on helping them carry the boxes home. When they arrive at Tatianas apartment, they discover he is the man Dasha has fallen in love with, Tatiana is disappointed but doesnt want to come between him and her sister. However, Alexander visits her the day, meeting her outside of the Kirov factory where she works. After a few weeks of walking her home, Alexander and Tatianas attraction is undeniable, still, Tatiana begs Alexander to stay with Dasha and not break her sisters heart. Alexander and Tatianas bond grows deeper as Alexander tells her he is an American who emigrated with his parents, now dead, in 1930. After a few weeks, Alexander, who is annoyed at Tatianas unwillingness to fight for him, breaks up with Dasha and stops visiting the Metanovs, the Metanovs are heartbroken over Pasha, as they cannot get through to the camp and hear reports it has been under fire. Tatiana overhears her parents saying that they would have preferred to lose Tania and decides to volunteer at the front in order to find Pasha, when she arrives at the Luga front, the boys camp is empty. Tatiana takes refuge in a building that is bombed and is seriously injured, Dasha asks Alexander to find her, and he takes Tatiana back to Leningrad, sharing their first kiss on the way. In Leningrad, it clear that Alexander cannot stay away. A drunk Alexander visits Tatiana in her room one night. Alexander tells Tatiana about his parents and how he came to live under a false name - and that Dimitri is aware of his true identity
4.
Copper
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Copper is a chemical element with symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of copper has a reddish-orange color. Copper is one of the few metals that occur in nature in directly usable metallic form as opposed to needing extraction from an ore and this led to very early human use, from c.8000 BC. Copper used in buildings, usually for roofing, oxidizes to form a green verdigris, Copper is sometimes used in decorative art, both in its elemental metal form and in compounds as pigments. Copper compounds are used as agents, fungicides, and wood preservatives. Copper is essential to all living organisms as a trace dietary mineral because it is a key constituent of the enzyme complex cytochrome c oxidase. In molluscs and crustaceans, copper is a constituent of the blood pigment hemocyanin, replaced by the hemoglobin in fish. In humans, copper is found mainly in the liver, muscle, the adult body contains between 1.4 and 2.1 mg of copper per kilogram of body weight. The filled d-shells in these elements contribute little to interatomic interactions, unlike metals with incomplete d-shells, metallic bonds in copper are lacking a covalent character and are relatively weak. This observation explains the low hardness and high ductility of single crystals of copper, at the macroscopic scale, introduction of extended defects to the crystal lattice, such as grain boundaries, hinders flow of the material under applied stress, thereby increasing its hardness. For this reason, copper is supplied in a fine-grained polycrystalline form. The softness of copper partly explains its high conductivity and high thermal conductivity. The maximum permissible current density of copper in open air is approximately 3. 1×106 A/m2 of cross-sectional area, Copper is one of a few metallic elements with a natural color other than gray or silver. Pure copper is orange-red and acquires a reddish tarnish when exposed to air, as with other metals, if copper is put in contact with another metal, galvanic corrosion will occur. A green layer of verdigris can often be seen on old structures, such as the roofing of many older buildings. Copper tarnishes when exposed to sulfur compounds, with which it reacts to form various copper sulfides. There are 29 isotopes of copper, 63Cu and 65Cu are stable, with 63Cu comprising approximately 69% of naturally occurring copper, both have a spin of 3⁄2
5.
Equestrian statue
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An equestrian statue is a statue of a rider mounted on a horse, from the Latin eques, meaning knight, deriving from equus, meaning horse. A statue of a horse is strictly an equine statue. A full-sized equestrian statue is a difficult and expensive object for any culture to produce, Equestrian statuary in the West goes back at least as far as Archaic Greece. Found on the Athenian acropolis, the sixth century BC statue known as the Rampin Rider depicts a kouros mounted on horseback, a number of ancient Egyptian, Assyrian and Persian reliefs show mounted figures, usually rulers, though no free standing statues are known. The Chinese Terracotta Army has no mounted riders, though cavalrymen stand beside their mounts, the Regisole was a bronze classical or Late Antique equestrian monument of a ruler, highly influential during the Italian Renaissance but destroyed in 1796 in the wake of the French Revolution. It was originally erected at Ravenna, but removed to Pavia in the Middle Ages, a fragment of an equestrian portrait sculpture of Augustus has also survived. Equestrian statues were not very frequent in the Middle ages, nevertheless, there are some examples, like the Bamberg Horseman, located in Bamberg Cathedral. Another example is the Magdeburg Reiter, in the city of Magdeburg, there are a few roughly half-size statues of Saint George and the Dragon, including the famous ones in Prague and Stockholm. The Scaliger Tombs in Verona include Gothic statues at less than lifesize, a well-known small bronze in Paris may be a contemporary portrait of Charlemagne, although its date and subject are uncertain. Leonardo da Vinci had planned an equestrian monument to the Milanese ruler. The The Wax Horse and Rider is a model for an equestrian statue of Charles dAmboise. Titians equestrian portrait of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor of 1548 applied the form again to a ruler, taccas studio would produce such models for the rulers in France and Spain. His last public commission was the equestrian bronze of Philip IV, begun in 1634. The near life-size equestrian statue of Charles I of England by Hubert Le Sueur of 1633 at Charing Cross in London is the earliest large English example, which was followed by many. The Bronze Horseman is an equestrian statue, on a huge base, of Peter the Great of 1782 by Étienne Maurice Falconet in Saint Petersburg. Mills was the first American sculptor to overcome the challenge of casting a rider on a rearing horse, the resulting sculpture was so popular he repeated it, for Washington, D. C. New Orleans, Louisiana and Nashville, Tennessee, cyrus Edwin Dallin made a specialty of equestrian sculptures of American Indians, his Appeal to the Great Spirit stands before the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The Robert Gould Shaw Monument in Boston, Massachusetts is a famous relief including an equestrian portrait, as the 20th century progressed, the popularity of the equestrian monument declined sharply, as monarchies fell, and the military use of horses virtually vanished
6.
Peter the Great
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Peter the Great, Peter I or Peter Alexeyevich ruled the Tsardom of Russia and later the Russian Empire from 7 May 1682 until his death, jointly ruling before 1696 with his elder half-brother, Ivan V. Through a number of successful wars he expanded the Tsardom into a larger empire that became a major European power. He led a revolution that replaced some of the traditionalist and medieval social and political systems with ones that were modern, scientific, westernized. Peters reforms made an impact on Russia and many institutions of Russian government trace their origins to his reign. From an early age, Peters education was put in the hands of tutors, most notably Nikita Zotov, Patrick Gordon. On 29 January 1676, Tsar Alexis died, leaving the sovereignty to Peters elder half-brother and this position changed when Feodor died in 1682. As Feodor did not leave any children, a dispute arose between the Miloslavsky family and Naryshkin family over who should inherit the throne, Peters other half-brother, Ivan V, was next in line for the throne, but he was chronically ill and of infirm mind. Consequently, the Boyar Duma chose the 10-year-old Peter to become Tsar with his mother as regent and this arrangement was brought before the people of Moscow, as ancient tradition demanded, and was ratified. Sophia Alekseyevna, one of Alexis daughters from his first marriage, in the subsequent conflict some of Peters relatives and friends were murdered, including Matveev, and Peter witnessed some of these acts of political violence. The Streltsy made it possible for Sophia, the Miloslavskys and their allies, to insist that Peter and Ivan be proclaimed joint Tsars, Sophia acted as regent during the minority of the sovereigns and exercised all power. For seven years, she ruled as an autocrat, a large hole was cut in the back of the dual-seated throne used by Ivan and Peter. Sophia would sit behind the throne and listen as Peter conversed with nobles, while feeding him information and giving him responses to questions and this throne can be seen in the Kremlin Armoury in Moscow. Peter was not particularly concerned that others ruled in his name and he engaged in such pastimes as shipbuilding and sailing, as well as mock battles with his toy army. Peters mother sought to force him to adopt a conventional approach. The marriage was a failure, and ten years later Peter forced his wife to become a nun, by the summer of 1689, Peter planned to take power from his half-sister Sophia, whose position had been weakened by two unsuccessful Crimean campaigns. When she learned of his designs, Sophia conspired with the leaders of the Streltsy, Sophia was eventually overthrown, with Peter I and Ivan V continuing to act as co-tsars. Peter forced Sophia to enter a convent, where she gave up her name, still, Peter could not acquire actual control over Russian affairs. Power was instead exercised by his mother, Natalya Naryshkina and it was only when Nataliya died in 1694 that Peter became an independent sovereign
7.
Senate Square (Saint Petersburg)
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Senate Square, formerly known as Decembrists Square in 1925-2008, and Peters Square, before 1925, is a city square in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is situated on the bank of the Bolshaya Neva. In 1925 it was renamed Decembrists Square to commemorate the Decembrist Revolt, the square is bounded by the Admiralty building to the east. On the west is the Senate and Synod Building, the Bronze Horseman monument adorns the square. On July 29,2008, the square was renamed back to Senate Square, media related to Senate Square, Saint Petersburg at Wikimedia Commons
8.
Saint Petersburg
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Saint Petersburg is Russias second-largest city after Moscow, with five million inhabitants in 2012, and an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea. It is politically incorporated as a federal subject, situated on the Neva River, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea, it was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on May 271703. In 1914, the name was changed from Saint Petersburg to Petrograd, in 1924 to Leningrad, between 1713 and 1728 and 1732–1918, Saint Petersburg was the capital of imperial Russia. In 1918, the government bodies moved to Moscow. Saint Petersburg is one of the cities of Russia, as well as its cultural capital. The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Saint Petersburg is home to The Hermitage, one of the largest art museums in the world. A large number of consulates, international corporations, banks. Swedish colonists built Nyenskans, a fortress, at the mouth of the Neva River in 1611, in a then called Ingermanland. A small town called Nyen grew up around it, Peter the Great was interested in seafaring and maritime affairs, and he intended to have Russia gain a seaport in order to be able to trade with other maritime nations. He needed a better seaport than Arkhangelsk, which was on the White Sea to the north, on May 1703121703, during the Great Northern War, Peter the Great captured Nyenskans, and soon replaced the fortress. On May 271703, closer to the estuary 5 km inland from the gulf), on Zayachy Island, he laid down the Peter and Paul Fortress, which became the first brick and stone building of the new city. The city was built by conscripted peasants from all over Russia, tens of thousands of serfs died building the city. Later, the city became the centre of the Saint Petersburg Governorate, Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712,9 years before the Treaty of Nystad of 1721 ended the war, he referred to Saint Petersburg as the capital as early as 1704. During its first few years, the city developed around Trinity Square on the bank of the Neva, near the Peter. However, Saint Petersburg soon started to be built out according to a plan, by 1716 the Swiss Italian Domenico Trezzini had elaborated a project whereby the city centre would be located on Vasilyevsky Island and shaped by a rectangular grid of canals. The project was not completed, but is evident in the layout of the streets, in 1716, Peter the Great appointed French Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond as the chief architect of Saint Petersburg. In 1724 the Academy of Sciences, University and Academic Gymnasium were established in Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great, in 1725, Peter died at the age of fifty-two. His endeavours to modernize Russia had met opposition from the Russian nobility—resulting in several attempts on his life
9.
Russia
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Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
10.
Catherine the Great
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Catherine II of Russia, also known as Catherine the Great, was a Russian monarch. She was the female leader of Russia, reigning from 1762 until her death in 1796 at the age of 67. She came to following a coup détat when her husband. Russia was revitalised under her reign, growing larger and stronger than ever, in both her accession to power and in rule of her empire, Catherine often relied on her noble favourites, most notably Grigory Orlov and Grigory Potemkin. In the west, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, ruled by Catherines former lover, king Stanisław August Poniatowski, was eventually partitioned, in the east, Russia started to colonise Alaska, establishing Russian America. Catherine reformed the administration of Russian guberniyas, and many new cities, an admirer of Peter the Great, Catherine continued to modernise Russia along Western European lines. However, military conscription and the continued to depend on serfdom. This was one of the reasons behind several rebellions, including the large-scale Pugachevs Rebellion of cossacks. The period of Catherine the Greats rule, the Catherinian Era, is considered the Golden Age of the Russian Empire. The Manifesto on Freedom of the Nobility, issued during the reign of Peter III and confirmed by Catherine. Construction of many mansions of the nobility, in the classical style endorsed by the Empress and she enthusiastically supported the ideals of The Enlightenment, thus earning the status of an enlightened despot. Catherine was born in Stettin, Pomerania, Kingdom of Prussia as Princess Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg, she was nicknamed Figchen. Her father, Christian August, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, belonged to the ruling German family of Anhalt, two of her first cousins became Kings of Sweden, Gustav III and Charles XIII. In accordance with the then prevailing in the ruling dynasties of Germany, she received her education chiefly from a French governess. She once wrote to her correspondent Baron Grimm, I see nothing of interest in it, although Catherine was born a princess, her family had very little money. Catherines rise to power was supported by her mothers relatives who were both wealthy nobles and royal relations. Catherine first met Peter III at the age of 10, based on her writings, she found Peter detestable upon meeting him. She disliked his pale complexion and his fondness for alcohol at such a young age, Peter also still played with toy soldiers
11.
Russian literature
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The roots of Russian literature can be traced to the Middle Ages, when epics and chronicles in Old Russian were composed. By the Age of Enlightenment, literature had grown in importance, romanticism permitted a flowering of poetic talent, Vasily Zhukovsky and later his protégé Alexander Pushkin came to the fore. The first great Russian novelist was Nikolai Gogol, then came Ivan Turgenev, who mastered both short stories and novels. Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky soon became internationally renowned, in the second half of the century Anton Chekhov excelled in short stories and became a leading dramatist. The beginning of the 20th century ranks as the Silver Age of Russian poetry, after the Revolution of 1917, Russian literature split into Soviet and white émigré parts. While the Soviet Union assured universal literacy and a highly developed book printing industry, in the 1930s Socialist realism became the predominant trend in Russia. Its leading figure was Maxim Gorky, who laid the foundations of this style, Nikolay Ostrovskys novel How the Steel Was Tempered has been among the most successful works of Russian literature. Alexander Fadeyev achieved success in Russia, some writers dared to oppose Soviet ideology, like Nobel Prize-winning novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who wrote about life in the gulag camps. The Khrushchev Thaw brought some fresh wind to literature and poetry became a cultural phenomenon. This thaw did not last long, in the 1970s, some of the most prominent authors were banned from publishing, the end of the 20th century was a difficult period for Russian literature, with few distinct voices. Among the most discussed authors of this period were Victor Pelevin, who gained popularity with stories and novels, novelist and playwright Vladimir Sorokin. In the 21st century, a new generation of Russian authors appeared, differing greatly from the postmodernist Russian prose of the late 20th century, which lead critics to speak about new realism. Leading new realists include Ilja Stogoff, Zakhar Prilepin, Alexander Karasyov, Arkadi Babchenko, Vladimir Lorchenkov, Alexander Snegiryov, Russian authors have significantly contributed to numerous literary genres. Russia has five Nobel Prize in literature laureates, as of 2011, Russia was the fourth largest book producer in the world in terms of published titles. A popular folk saying claims Russians are the worlds most reading nation, Old Russian literature consists of several masterpieces written in the Old Russian language. The main type of Old Russian historical literature were chronicles, most of them anonymous, anonymous works also include The Tale of Igors Campaign and Praying of Daniel the Immured. Hagiographies formed a genre of the Old Russian literature. Life of Alexander Nevsky offers a well-known example, other Russian literary monuments include Zadonschina, Physiologist, Synopsis and A Journey Beyond the Three Seas
12.
Pedestal
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A pedestal or plinth is the support of a statue or a vase. In the imperial China, a tortoise called bixi was traditionally used as the pedestal for important stele. An elevated pedestal or plinth which bears a statue and which is raised from the substructure supporting it is called an acropodium. The term is from the Greek akros or topmost and pous or foot, Pedestal crater Pedestal desk Pedestal table, a table with a single central leg This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh, ed. Pedestal
13.
Tonne
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The SI symbol for the tonne is t, adopted at the same time as the unit itself in 1879. Its use is also official, for the metric ton, within the United States, having been adopted by the US National Institute of Standards and it is a symbol, not an abbreviation, and should not be followed by a period. Informal and non-approved symbols or abbreviations include T, mT, MT, in French and all English-speaking countries that are predominantly metric, tonne is the correct spelling. Before metrication in the UK the unit used for most purposes was the Imperial ton of 2,240 pounds avoirdupois, equivalent to 1,016 kg, differing by just 1. 6% from the tonne. Ton and tonne are both derived from a Germanic word in use in the North Sea area since the Middle Ages to designate a large cask. A full tun, standing about a high, could easily weigh a tonne. An English tun of wine weighs roughly a tonne,954 kg if full of water, in the United States, the unit was originally referred to using the French words millier or tonneau, but these terms are now obsolete. The Imperial and US customary units comparable to the tonne are both spelled ton in English, though they differ in mass, one tonne is equivalent to, Metric/SI,1 megagram. Equal to 1000000 grams or 1000 kilograms, megagram, Mg, is the official SI unit. Mg is distinct from mg, milligram, pounds, Exactly 1000/0. 453 592 37 lb, or approximately 2204.622622 lb. US/Short tons, Exactly 1/0. 907 184 74 short tons, or approximately 1.102311311 ST. One short ton is exactly 0.90718474 t, imperial/Long tons, Exactly 1/1. 016 046 9088 long tons, or approximately 0.9842065276 LT. One long ton is exactly 1.0160469088 t, for multiples of the tonne, it is more usual to speak of thousands or millions of tonnes. Kilotonne, megatonne, and gigatonne are more used for the energy of nuclear explosions and other events. When used in context, there is little need to distinguish between metric and other tons, and the unit is spelt either as ton or tonne with the relevant prefix attached. *The equivalent units columns use the short scale large-number naming system used in most English-language countries. †Values in the equivalent short and long tons columns are rounded to five significant figures, ǂThough non-standard, the symbol kt is also sometimes used for knot, a unit of speed for sea-going vessels, and should not be confused with kilotonne. A metric ton unit can mean 10 kilograms within metal trading and it traditionally referred to a metric ton of ore containing 1% of metal. In the case of uranium, the acronym MTU is sometimes considered to be metric ton of uranium, in the petroleum industry the tonne of oil equivalent is a unit of energy, the amount of energy released by burning one tonne of crude oil, approximately 42 GJ
14.
Monument to Peter I (St. Michael's Castle)
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The Monument to Peter I is a bronze equestrian monument of Peter the Great in front of the St. Michaels Castle in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Rastrelli worked for eight years with a model of the monument before it was approved by the emperor in 1724. In the meantime, Catherine the Great had ordered another monument in memory of her predecessor Peter the Great - the Bronze Horseman, the most famous statue of Peter the Great in St Petersburg. Catherine, who, having gained her position through a coup, had no legal claim to the throne, was anxious to appear as Peters rightful heir. Only in 1800, during the reign of emperor Paul I, was the Monument to Peter I finally erected, the Russian victories at Poltava and near Hangö, Finland helped Russia become the dominant power in the north of the continent. Peter the Great led his troops to both victories, during World War II, the equestrian statue of Peter I was removed from its pedestal and sheltered from the 900-day German siege of the city. In 1945, the statue was restored and returned to its pedestal, Leningrad, Monumentalnaya i dekorativnaya skulptura 18-19 vekov, ed. E. N. Petrov, 4th ed. Leningrad, Stroyizdat,1976
15.
Vasily Surikov
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Vasily Ivanovich Surikov was a Russian Realist history painter. Many of his works have become familiar to the public through their use as illustrations. He was born to an old Don Cossack family that had settled in Siberia and his father was a Collegiate Registrar, a civil service rank that often served as postmasters. In 1854, as a result of his father being reassigned, the moved to the village of Sukhobuzimskoye. In 1859, his father died of tuberculosis so the family returned to Krasnoyarsk and were forced to rent the second floor of their house to make ends meet and he began drawing while attending the district school and was encouraged by the local art teacher. His first formal work dates from 1862, but his family could not afford to continue his education and he became a clerk in a government office. This brought him contact with Pavel Zamyatin, the Governor of Yenisei, who was able to find him a patron, Pyotr Kuznetsov. After a year there, he was allowed to audit classes at the Academy, from 1869 to 1875, he studied with Pavel Chistyakov, Bogdan Willewalde and Pyotr Shamshin, winning several medals. His great attention to composition earned him a nickname, The Composer, in 1875, he graduated with the title of Artist, first degree. In 1877, he received a commission to paint murals at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, unable to afford a house, he lived in rented apartments and hotels and visited Krasnoyarsk whenever possible. In 1878, he married Elisabeth Charais, a French woman who was descended from the Decembrist, Pyotr Svistunov, after that, he chose to remain in Moscow and began the series of historical paintings that would establish his reputation, starting with The Morning of the Streltsy Execution. In 1881, he had his first exhibition with the Peredvizhniki, in 1883, Menshikov in Berezov was bought by Pavel Tretyakov for a sum that allowed him to take a European tour. In 1887, he added portraits to his repertoire, beginning one of his mother. In 1888, his wife died and he returned to Krasnoyarsk with his daughters and this was followed by a visit to his ancestral home in Siberia. There, on the Ob River, he made sketches for one of his most familiar works and this brought him a full membership in the Imperial Academy. In 1897, he visited Switzerland and painted Suvorov Crossing the Alps, in 1907, he left the Peredvizhniki and joined the Union of Russian Artists. Three years later, he visited Spain, together with his son-in-law and that same year, he and the architect, Leonid Chernishyov, opened an art school. Four years later, he made a stay in Krasnoyarsk
16.
House of Romanov
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The Romanovs achieved prominence as boyars of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, later the Tsardom of Russia. In 1613, following years of interregnum, the zemsky sobor offered the Russian crown to Mikhail Romanov and he acceded to the throne as Michael I, becoming the first Tsar of Russia from the House of Romanov. His grandson Peter I established the Russian Empire and transformed the country into a continental power through a series of wars, the direct male line of the Romanovs came to an end when Elizabeth of Russia died in 1762. After an era of crisis, the House of Holstein-Gottorp, a cadet branch of the House of Oldenburg which reigned in Denmark, ascended the throne in 1762 with Peter III. All rulers from the middle of the 18th century to the revolution of 1917 were descended from that branch, though officially known as the House of Romanov, these descendants of the Romanov and Oldenburg dynasties are sometimes referred to as Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov. In early 1917 the Romanov dynasty had 65 members,18 of whom were killed by the Bolsheviks, the remaining 47 members went into exile abroad. In 1924, Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich, the senior, surviving male-line descendant of Alexander II of Russia by primogeniture, since 1991, the succession to the former Russian throne has been in dispute, largely due to disagreements over the validity of dynasts marriages. Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna of Russia claims to hold the title of empress in pretense with her child, George Mikhailovich. There is also a rival non-Romanov claim put forth by Prince Karl Emich of the House of Leiningen supported by the Monarchist Party, according to the Almanach de Gotha, the name of Russias ruling dynasty from the time of Peter III was Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov. However, the name Romanov and House of Romanov were often used in references to the Russian imperial family. The coat of arms of the Romanov boyars was included in legislation on the imperial dynasty, after the February Revolution all members of the imperial family were given the surname Romanov by special decree of the Provisional Government of Russia. Their earliest common ancestor is one Andrei Kobyla, attested around 1347 as a boyar in the service of Semyon I of Moscow, later generations assigned to Kobyla an illustrious pedigree. An 18th-century genealogy claimed that he was the son of the Prussian prince Glanda Kambila, indeed, one of the leaders of the Old Prussian rebellion of 1260–1274 against the Teutonic order was named Glande. His actual origin may have been less spectacular, not only is Kobyla Russian for mare, some of his relatives also had as nicknames the terms for horses and other domestic animals, thus suggesting descent from one of the royal equerries. One of Kobylas sons, Feodor, a member of the boyar Duma of Dmitri Donskoi, was nicknamed Koshka and his descendants took the surname Koshkin, then changed it to Zakharin, which family later split into two branches, Zakharin-Yakovlev and Zakharin-Yuriev. During the reign of Ivan the Terrible, the family became known as Yakovlev. The family fortunes soared when Romans daughter, Anastasia Zakharyina, married Ivan IV, since her husband had assumed the title of tsar, which literally means Caesar, on 16 January 1547, she was crowned the very first tsaritsa of Russia. Her mysterious death in 1560 changed Ivans character for the worse, suspecting the boyars of having poisoned his beloved, Tsar Ivan started a reign of terror against them
17.
Latin
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Latin is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. The Latin alphabet is derived from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets, Latin was originally spoken in Latium, in the Italian Peninsula. Through the power of the Roman Republic, it became the dominant language, Vulgar Latin developed into the Romance languages, such as Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Romanian. Latin, Italian and French have contributed many words to the English language, Latin and Ancient Greek roots are used in theology, biology, and medicine. By the late Roman Republic, Old Latin had been standardised into Classical Latin, Vulgar Latin was the colloquial form spoken during the same time and attested in inscriptions and the works of comic playwrights like Plautus and Terence. Late Latin is the language from the 3rd century. Later, Early Modern Latin and Modern Latin evolved, Latin was used as the language of international communication, scholarship, and science until well into the 18th century, when it began to be supplanted by vernaculars. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the language of the Holy See and the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. Today, many students, scholars and members of the Catholic clergy speak Latin fluently and it is taught in primary, secondary and postsecondary educational institutions around the world. The language has been passed down through various forms, some inscriptions have been published in an internationally agreed, monumental, multivolume series, the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Authors and publishers vary, but the format is about the same, volumes detailing inscriptions with a critical apparatus stating the provenance, the reading and interpretation of these inscriptions is the subject matter of the field of epigraphy. The works of several hundred ancient authors who wrote in Latin have survived in whole or in part and they are in part the subject matter of the field of classics. The Cat in the Hat, and a book of fairy tales, additional resources include phrasebooks and resources for rendering everyday phrases and concepts into Latin, such as Meissners Latin Phrasebook. The Latin influence in English has been significant at all stages of its insular development. From the 16th to the 18th centuries, English writers cobbled together huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek words, dubbed inkhorn terms, as if they had spilled from a pot of ink. Many of these words were used once by the author and then forgotten, many of the most common polysyllabic English words are of Latin origin through the medium of Old French. Romance words make respectively 59%, 20% and 14% of English, German and those figures can rise dramatically when only non-compound and non-derived words are included. Accordingly, Romance words make roughly 35% of the vocabulary of Dutch, Roman engineering had the same effect on scientific terminology as a whole
18.
Denis Diderot
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Denis Diderot was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer. He was a prominent figure during the Enlightenment and is best known for serving as co-founder, chief editor, Denis Diderot was born in Langres, Champagne, and began his formal education at a Jesuit collège in Langres. His parents were Didier Diderot a cutler, maître coutelier, three of five siblings survived to adulthood, Denise Diderot and their youngest brother Pierre-Didier Diderot, and finally their sister Angélique Diderot. According to Arthur McCandless Wilson, Denis Diderot greatly admired his sister Denise, in 1732 Denis Diderot earned the Master of Arts degree in philosophy. Then he entered the Collège dHarcourt of the University of Paris and he abandoned the idea of entering the clergy and decided instead to study at the Paris Law Faculty. His study of law was short-lived however and in 1734 Diderot decided to become a writer, because of his refusal to enter one of the learned professions, he was disowned by his father, and for the next ten years he lived a bohemian existence. In 1742 he befriended Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in 1743 he further alienated his father by marrying Antoinette Champion, a devout Roman Catholic. The match was considered due to Champions low social standing, poor education, fatherless status. She was about three years older than Diderot, the marriage in October 1743 produced one surviving child, a girl. Her name was Angélique, after both Diderots dead mother and sister, the death of his sister, a nun, from overwork in the convent may have affected Diderots opinion of religion. Babuti, Madeleine de Puisieux, Sophie Volland and Mme de Maux and his letters to Sophie Volland are known for their candor and are regarded to be among the literary treasures of the eighteenth century. Though his work was broad as well as rigorous, it did not bring Diderot riches, when the time came for him to provide a dowry for his daughter, he saw no alternative than to sell his library. When Empress Catherine II of Russia heard of his financial troubles she commissioned an agent in Paris to buy the library and she then requested that the philosopher retain the books in Paris until she required them, and act as her librarian with a yearly salary. Between October 1773 and March 1774, the sick Diderot spent a few months at the court in Saint Petersburg. Diderot died of thrombosis in Paris on 31 July 1784. His heirs sent his vast library to Catherine II, who had it deposited at the National Library of Russia and this idea seems to have been shelved. In 1745, he published a translation of Shaftesburys Inquiry Concerning Virtue and Merit, in 1746, Diderot wrote his first original work, the Philosophical Thoughts. In this book, Diderot argued for a reconciliation of reason with feeling so as to establish harmony, according to Diderot, without feeling there would be a detrimental effect on virtue and no possibility of creating sublime work
19.
Molding (process)
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Molding or moulding is the process of manufacturing by shaping liquid or pliable raw material using a rigid frame called a mold or matrix. This itself may have made using a pattern or model of the final object. A mold or mould is a block that is filled with a liquid or pliable material such as plastic, glass, metal. The liquid hardens or sets inside the mold, adopting its shape, a mold is the counterpart to a cast. The very common bi-valve molding process uses two molds, one for half of the object. Piece-molding uses a number of different molds, each creating a section of a complicated object and this is generally only used for larger and more valuable objects. The manufacturer who makes the molds is called the moldmaker, a release agent is typically used to make removal of the hardened/set substance from the mold easier. Typical uses for molded plastics include molded furniture, molded household goods, molded cases, and structural materials
20.
Tsar
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Tsar /zɑːr/ or /tsɑːr/, also spelled tzar, csar, or czar, is a title used to designate certain Slavic monarchs or supreme rulers. As a system of government in the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, it is known as Tsarist autocracy, occasionally, the word could be used to designate other secular supreme rulers. Simeon II, the last Tsar of Bulgaria, is the last person to have borne the title Tsar, the title Tsar is derived from the Latin title for the Roman emperors, Caesar. In the history of the Greek language, basileus had originally meant something like potentate and it gradually approached the meaning of king in the Hellenistic Period, and it came to designate emperor after the inception in the Roman Empire. Thus, tsar was not only used as an equivalent of Latin imperator but was used to refer to Biblical rulers. From this ambiguity, the development has moved in different directions in the different Slavic languages, thus, the Bulgarian language and Russian language no longer use tsar as an equivalent of the term emperor/imperator as it exists in the West European tradition. Currently, the term refers to native sovereigns, ancient and Biblical rulers, as well as monarchs in fairy tales. The title of king is sometimes perceived as alien and is by some Russian-speakers reserved for European royalty, foreign monarchs of imperial status, both inside and outside of Europe, ancient as well as modern, are generally called imperator, rather than tsar. Biblical rulers in Serbian are called цар and in Croatian kralj, in the Polish language however tsar is always used as imperator, never as king. The term tsar is very used to refer to the Russian rulers after Peter the Great. In 705 Emperor Justinian II named Tervel of Bulgaria Caesar, the first foreigner to receive this title, the sainted Boris I is sometimes retrospectively referred to as tsar, because at his time Bulgaria was converted to Christianity. However, the tsar was actually adopted and used for the first time by his son Simeon I. Since in Byzantine political theory there was place for two emperors, Eastern and Western, the Bulgarian ruler was crowned basileus as a spiritual son of the Byzantian basileus. In Latin sources the Emperor of Bulgaria is sometimes designated Emperor of Zagora, various additional epithets and descriptions apart, the official style read Emperor and autocrat of all Bulgarians and Greeks. During the five-century period of Ottoman rule in Bulgaria, the sultan was referred to as tsar. This may be related to the fact that he had claimed the legacy of the Byzantine Empire or to the fact that the sultan was called Basileus in medieval Greek, after Bulgarias liberation from the Ottomans in 1878, its new monarchs were at first autonomous prince. With the declaration of independence, Ferdinand I of Bulgaria adopted the traditional title tsar in 1908. However, these titles were not generally perceived as equivalents of emperor any longer, in the Bulgarian as in the Greek vernacular, the meaning of the title had shifted
21.
Marie-Anne Collot
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Marie-Anne Collot was a French sculptor. She was the student and daughter-in-law of Etienne Falconet and is most well known as a portraitist, close to the philosophic and artistic circles of Diderot and Catherine the Great. Marie-Anne Collot was born in Paris and started to work as a model at the age of 15 in the workshop of Jean-Baptiste II Lemoyne and he had a determining influence on her career as a portraitist. She then entered Etienne Falconets workshop, who was a friend of Diderot. She became Falconets pupil and faithful friend and her younger brother became an apprentice at the publishers André Le Breton, who was one of the four publishers of Diderot and DAlemberts Encyclopédie. Many other works are now lost, from then on everyone recognised her talent, sincerity and lively spirit. In October 1766 Marie-Anne Collot accompanied Falconet to St. Petersburg and she sculpted the portraits of members of the Russian Court. They marvelled at the talent of young woman sculptor, they could remember none other. In December of the year she presented her work to the Imperial Academy of Arts. She received a pension, which to her represented a fortune. Collot sculpted a bust representing Falconet at Catherine the Greats request and this is now in the Museum of Fine Art in Nancy, France. She also requested a bust of Diderot in 1772, when Falconet saw its quality it is said that he destroyed the one he had made himself of Diderot. The bust is in the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, then followed busts of Henry IV of France, Sully, Voltaire, and possibly one of DAlembert. She also made a superb bust of their daughter Mary and it was said that there started to be a shortage of marble in St. Petersburg. Falconet left it to his protégée, so gifted for sculpting portraits and he studied how to make it and submitted a project which satisfied everybody. In 1777 Marie-Anne Collot married the painter Pierre-Etienne Falconet in St. Petersburg and he was the son of Etienne Falconet. A daughter was born of the union a year later, the marriage was however unhappy and short-lived. Madame Falconet returned to France in 1778 with her baby, in 1782 Collot went to Holland at the invitation of her friend, Princess Galitzine
22.
Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne
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Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne was a French sculptor and among the greatest French portraitists. He was the pupil of his father, Jean-Louis Lemoyne, and he is commonly referred to as Jean-Baptiste II Lemoyne or the younger to distinguish him from his uncle of the same name, the sculptor Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne the Elder. He received the prix de Rome awarded by the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, lemoynes more important works have for the most part been destroyed or have disappeared. The equestrian statue of Louis XV for the school. The bas-relief panels only have been preserved, in his portrait busts we have a remarkable series of important portraits, of which those of women are perhaps the best. Of Pompadour he also executed a statue in the costume of a nymph, very delicate, Lemoyne was perhaps most successful in his training of pupils, among them Étienne Maurice Falconet Pigalle, Caffiéri, and Augustin Pajou. This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh, ed. Lemoyne. Media related to Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne the Younger at Wikimedia Commons Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne in American public collections, on the French Sculpture Census website
23.
Death mask
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A death mask is an image, typically in wax or plaster cast made of a persons face following death, often by taking a cast or impression directly from the corpse. Death masks may be mementos of the dead, or be used for creation of portraits, in other cultures a death mask may be a funeral mask, an image placed on the face of the deceased before burial rites, and normally buried with them. The best known of these are the used by ancient Egyptians as part of the mummification process, such as Tutankhamuns mask. In some European countries, it was common for death masks to be used as part of the effigy of the deceased, displayed at state funerals, mourning portraits were also painted, showing the subject lying in repose. During the 18th and 19th centuries masks were used to permanently record the features of unknown corpses for purposes of identification. This function was replaced by post-mortem photography. In the cases of people whose faces were damaged by their death, an example of this occurred in the case of Thomas DArcy McGee, the Canadian statesman whose face was shattered by the bullet which assassinated him in 1868. When taken from a subject, such a cast is called a life mask. Proponents of phrenology used both death masks and life masks for pseudoscientific purposes, masks of deceased persons are part of traditions in many countries. A special element of the rite was a mask, put on the face of the deceased. This mask was believed to strengthen the spirit of the mummy, the best known mask is Tutankhamuns mask. Made of gold and gems, the conveys the highly stylized features of the ancient ruler. Such masks were not, however, made from casts of the features, rather, in 1876 the archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann discovered in Mycenae six graves, which he was confident belonged to kings and ancient Greek heroes—Agamemnon, Cassandra, Evrimdon and their associates. To his surprise, the skulls were covered with gold masks and it is now thought most unlikely that the masks actually belonged to Agamemnon and other heroes of the Homeric epics, in fact they are several centuries older. The lifelike character of Roman portrait sculptures has been attributed to the earlier Roman use of wax to preserve the features of deceased family members, the wax masks were subsequently reproduced in more durable stone. The use of masks in the cult is also attested in Etruria. Excavations of tombs in the area of the ancient city of Clusium have yielded a number of sheet bronze masks dating from the Etruscan Late Orientalising period. In the 19th century it was thought that they were related to the Mycenaean examples, the most credited hypothesis holds that they were originally fixed to cinerary urns, to give them a human appearance
24.
Voorburg
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Voorburg is a Dutch town and former municipality in the western part of the province of South Holland, the Netherlands. Together with Leidschendam and Stompwijk, it makes up the municipality Leidschendam-Voorburg and it has a population of approximately 39,000 people. It is considered to be the oldest city in The Netherlands, in 2002, the cities of Leidschendam and Voorburg were merged under the new municipality named Leidschendam-Voorburg. Situated adjacent to the city of The Hague, it is regarded as one of its suburbs. It was positioned along the Fossa Corbulonis, a canal connecting the Rhine and this waterway is now known as the Rijn-Schie canal and is still a dominant landmark of the present day borough. His son, the astronomer and mathematician Christiaan Huygens, spent several years in his fathers country house in Voorburg. The house, located next to the railway station, now functions as a museum. Philosopher Baruch Spinoza also lived in Voorburg from 1663 to 1670, in Voorburg, Spinoza continued work on the Ethics and corresponded with scientists, philosophers, and theologians throughout Europe. Until 2009 Voorburg hosted the major branch of the statistics institute, the CBS. The latter two are now part of the Randstad Rail network, Voorburg used to be an Intercity station, because there was an eternal agreement with the railways that every passing train should stop there. It lost that status, as the new station is elevated. Voorburg Cricket Club Sportpark Westvliet cricket ground was approved by the ICC as the Netherlands latest ODI venue and it joins the VRA ground in Amstelveen and the Hazelaarweg ground in Rotterdam in gaining ODI status. Bangladesh played one Twenty20 International match each against Scotland and Netherlands there in July 2012. org, Fossa Corbulonis
25.
Forum Hadriani
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Forum Hadriani, in the modern town of Voorburg, was the northern-most Roman city on the European continent and the second oldest city of the Netherlands. It was located in the Roman province Germania Inferior and is mentioned on the Tabula Peutingeriana, the site Forum Hadriani formed the nucleus of the civitas of the Cananefates, who lived west of the Batavians. It was situated along the Fossa Corbulonis or Corbulo-canal and this waterway was established about 47 CE by the Roman general Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo, forming an important shortcut between the rivers Rhine and Meuse. After the Batavian Rebellion, in which participated, the Cananefates became loyal allies of the Romans. In 121 emperor Hadrian made a voyage along the northwestern border of the empire. He gave the town his own name, Forum Hadriani, an alternate name, maybe the only official name, was Municipium Aelium Cananefatium. The shortened version of this name, MAC, has been engraved in a couple of Roman milestones found in the neighbourhood. About 270 CE, after several plagues and attacks by Saxon pirates, in 1771 a bronze right hand was excavated during garden work on the Arentsburg estate. This hand was used by Étienne Maurice Falconet as model for the statue of Peter the Great. The first scientific excavations at the site of Forum Hadriani were carried out by Caspar Reuvens, Reuvens held the worlds first professorship of archaeology. Reuvens died before he could publish his findings, more excavations were done between 1908 and 1915 by Jan Hendrik Holwerda, who published the results of Reuvens together with his own discoveries in a comprehensive monograph in 1923. List of Latin place names in Continental Europe Photos Livius. org, Forum Hadriani
26.
Neva River
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The Neva is a river in northwestern Russia flowing from Lake Ladoga through the western part of Leningrad Oblast to the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland. Despite its modest length of 74 kilometres, it is the fourth largest river in Europe in terms of average discharge, the Neva is the only river flowing from Lake Ladoga. It flows through the city of Saint Petersburg, three towns of Shlisselburg, Kirovsk and Otradnoye, and dozens of settlements. The river is navigable throughout and is part of the Volga–Baltic Waterway and White Sea – Baltic Canal. There are at least three versions of the origin of the name Neva, from the ancient Finnish name of Lake Ladoga, from the Finnish, neva meaning swamp, or from the Swedish, ny – new river. Modern names for the distributaries of the delta were settled only by the end of the 18th century. In the Paleozoic, 300–400 million years ago, the territory of the modern delta of the Neva River was covered by a sea. Modern relief was formed as a result of glacier activity and its retreat formed the Littorina Sea, the water level of which was some 7 to 9 metres higher than the present level of the Baltic Sea. Then, the Tosna River was flowing in the bed of the Neva. In the north of the Karelian Isthmus, the Littorina Sea united by a strait with Lake Ladoga. The Mga River then flowed to the east, into Lake Ladoga, near the source of the Neva River. Near the modern Lake Ladoga, land rose faster, and a reservoir was formed. Its water level began to rise, eventually flooded the valley of Mga, the Ivanovo rapids of the modern Neva were created in the breakthrough area. So about 2000 BC the Neva was created with its tributaries Tosna, according to some newer data, it happened at 1410–1250 BC making the Neva a rather young river. The valley of Neva is formed by glacial and post-glacial sediments, the delta of Neva was formed at that time, which is actually pseudodelta, as it was formed not by accumulation of river material but by plunging into the past sediments. The Neva flows out of Lake Ladoga near Shlisselburg, flows through the Neva Lowland and it has a length of 74 kilometres, and the shortest distance from the source to the mouth is 45 kilometres. The river banks are low and steep, on average about 3 to 6 metres and 2 to 3 metres at the mouth. There are three turns, the Ivanovskye rapids, at Nevsky Forest Park of the Ust-Slavyanka region and near the Smolny Institute
27.
Serpent (symbolism)
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The serpent, or snake, is one of the oldest and most widespread mythological symbols. The word is derived from Latin serpens, an animal or snake. Snakes have been associated with some of the oldest rituals known to humankind and represent dual expression of good, in some cultures, snakes were fertility symbols. For example, the Hopi people of North America performed an annual snake dance to celebrate the union of Snake Youth and Snake Girl, during the dance, live snakes were handled and at the end of the dance the snakes were released into the fields to guarantee good crops. The snake dance is a prayer to the spirits of the clouds, the thunder and the lightning, in other cultures, snakes symbolized the umbilical cord, joining all humans to Mother Earth. The Great Goddess often had snakes as her familiars—sometimes twining around her staff, as in ancient Crete—and they were worshiped as guardians of her mysteries of birth. Historically, serpents and snakes represent fertility or a life force. As snakes shed their skin through sloughing, they are symbols of rebirth, transformation, immortality, the ouroboros is a symbol of eternity and continual renewal of life. In some Abrahamic traditions, the serpent represents sexual desire, according to some interpretations of the Midrash, the serpent represents sexual passion. In Hinduism, Kundalini is a serpent, the residual power of pure desire. Serpents are represented as potent guardians of temples and other sacred spaces, thus, they are natural guardians of treasures or sacred sites which cannot easily be moved out of harms way. At Angkor in Cambodia, numerous stone sculptures present hooded multi-headed nāgas as guardians of temples or other premises, the Gadsden flag of the American Revolution depicts a rattlesnake coiled up and poised to strike. Below the image of the snake is the legend, Dont tread on me, the snake symbolized the dangerousness of colonists willing to fight for their rights and homeland. The motif is repeated in the First Navy Jack of the US Navy, Serpents are connected with poison and medicine. The snakes venom is associated with the chemicals of plants and fungi that have the power to either heal, because of its herbal knowledge and entheogenic association the snake was often considered one of the wisest animals, being divine. Its divine aspect combined with its habitat in the earth between the roots of plants made it an animal with chthonic properties connected to the afterlife and immortality. Asclepius, the god of medicine and healing, carried a staff with one serpent wrapped around it, Moses also had a replica of a serpent on a pole, the Nehushtan, mentioned in Numbers 21,8. Serpents are connected with vengefulness and vindictiveness and this connection depends in part on the experience that venomous snakes often deliver deadly defensive bites without giving prior notice or warning to their unwitting victims
28.
Yury Felten
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Yury Matveyevich Felten was a court architect to Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia. Yury Felten was born Georg Veldten, into a family of German immigrants to Russia and his father worked for the Russian Academy of Sciences. Young Yury Felten studied on a Russian State scholarship at the Gymnasium of the Academy of Sciences, in 1744, after the death of his father, Felten moved to Germany. From 1744 to 1749 he studied at Tübingen University, but his financial and personal situation prompted him to back to St. Petersburg. Felten wrote a letter to Empress Elizabeth, and she extended her hospitality, from 1752 to 1762 Felten worked as assistant to the celebrated architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli during the construction of the Winter Palace and other buildings in and around St. Petersburg. In the 1760s and 1770s he designed a complex ensemble enclosing the south side of Palace Square, Yury Felten enjoyed the trust and respect of Empress Catherine the Great. She commissioned much work from him in Tsarskoye Selo, such as the Zubov wing of the Catherine Palace, as well as his contributions at the Winter Palace and elsewhere. He also designed two Lutheran churches in central St. Petersburg, the Chesme Palace and the Church of Saint John at Chesme Palace, Felten was also a well-reputed inventor and engineer. He built a machine that moved the enormous granite rock that became the pedestal of the Bronze Horseman. To this day the pedestal is the largest stone ever moved by man, from 1764 Felten taught architecture at the Imperial Academy of Arts. In 1789, he was appointed the Director of the Academy, arguably his best-known work is not a building but the cast-iron railing on the Neva side of the Summer Garden in St. Petersburg. Veldtens Biography Drawings by Yury Felten on the website of the Museum of Architecture Technical University of Berlin From A Hundred of Great Architects by D. K. Samin
29.
Rapakivi granite
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Rapakivi granite is a hornblende-biotite granite containing large rounded crystals of orthoclase each with a rim of oligoclase. The name has come to be used most frequently as a term where it implies plagioclase rims around orthoclase in plutonic rocks. Rapakivi is Finnish for crumbly rock, because the different heat expansion coefficients of the component minerals make exposed rapakivi crumbly, Rapakivi was first described by Finnish petrologist Jakob Sederholm in 1891. Since then, southern Finlands rapakivi granite intrusions have been the locality of this variety of granite. Most of these examples are found within Proterozoic metamorphic belts, although both Archaean and Phanerozoic examples are known, best known occurrence range is from Ukraine, through Finland and Scandinavia, southern Greenland to the Labrador peninsula and on through the North American continent to California. Rapakivi granites have formation ages from Archean to recent and are attributed to anorogenic tectonic settings. They have formed in shallow sills of up to 10 km thickness, Rapakivi granites are often found associated with intrusions of anorthosite, norite, charnockite and mangerite. It has been suggested that the entire suite results from the crystallization of a single parental magma. Rapakivi is enriched in K, Rb, Pb, Nb, Ta, Zr, Hf, Zn, Ga, Sn, Th, U, F and rare earth elements, siO2 content is 70. 5%, which makes rapakivi an acidic granite. Rapakivi is high in fluoride, ranging 0. 04–1. 53%, consequently, groundwater in rapakivi zones is high in fluoride, making the water naturally fluoridated. Some water companies actually have to remove fluoride from the water, the uranium content of rapakivi is fairly high, up to 24 ppm. Thus, in zones, the hazard from radon, a decay product of uranium, is elevated. Some indoor spaces surpass the 400 Bq/m3 safety limit, a more recent definition by Haapala & Rämö states, Rapakivi granites are type-A granites, where at least in larger associated batholites have granites with rapakivi structures. Rapakivi is the used in Ålands mediaeval stone churches. In 1770 a rapakivi granite monolith boulder, the Thunder Stone, was used as the pedestal for the Bronze Horseman statue in Saint Petersburg, weighing 1,250 tonnes, this boulder is claimed to be the largest stone ever moved by humans. Modern building uses of rapakivi granites are in polished slabs used for covering buildings, floors, as a building material, rapakivi granite is also known as Baltic Brown
30.
Boulder
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In geology, a boulder is a rock fragment with size greater than 25.6 centimetres in diameter. Smaller pieces are called cobbles and pebbles, while a boulder may be small enough to move or roll manually, others are extremely massive. In common usage, a boulder is too large for a person to move, smaller boulders are usually just called rocks or stones. The word boulder is short for boulder stone, from Middle English bulderston or Swedish bullersten, in places covered by ice sheets during Ice Ages, such as Scandinavia, northern North America, and Siberia, glacial erratics are common. Erratics are boulders picked up by ice sheets during their advance and they are called erratic because they typically are of a different rock type than the bedrock on which they are deposited. One of them is used as the pedestal of the Bronze Horseman in Saint Petersburg, boulder sized clasts are found in some sedimentary rocks, such as coarse conglomerate and boulder clay. The climbing of large boulders is called bouldering, road debris Monolith Media related to Boulders at Wikimedia Commons
31.
Lakhta, Saint Petersburg
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Lakhta is a historical area in Lakhta-Olgino Municipal Okrug of St. Petersburg, Russia, situated west of Lake Lakhta. It was formerly owned by Peter the Great, Count Grigory Orlov, the Lakhta railway station of the Primorsky Railway connects Lakhta to Central Saint Petersburg. The historical area of Olgino lies south-west of Lakhta, in the early 18th century, Peter the Great had a residence in the area called Blizhniye Dubki. According to tradition, in November 1724 Peter was in a ship in the Gulf of Finland near Lakhta to inspect some ironworks and he saw a group of soldiers drowning not far from shore, and, wading out into near-waist deep water, came to their rescue. This icy water rescue is said to have exacerbated Peters bladder problems, the event was commemorated in the 19th century by a chapel, and the so-called Peters pine was shown to tourists down to the 20th century. This, plus the interval of time between actions and Peters death seems to preclude any direct link. However, the story may still, in part, contain some grain of truth, in 1768, an enormous granite boulder in the nearby forest called the Thunder Stone was chosen by Catherine the Great to be the pedestal for an equestrian statue of Peter the Great. The Thunder Stone is the largest rock ever moved by man, the statue is now known as The Bronze Horseman, and is one of the landmarks of Saint Petersburg. Lakhta has also been a centre of Russian sporting firsts and it was host to Russias first tennis event, and in 1913 a large building was constructed for the lawn tennis club. It also played host to the first soccer cups in Russia, Lakhta was granted urban-type settlement status and renamed Lakhtinsky in 1938. In 1963, it was annexed by Leningrad and became a part of the city, in 2011 Gazprom announced it would build business centre in Lakhta called Lakhta Center. Lakhta Center is planned to include the first supertall skyscraper in the city, a scientific and educational complex, sports and leisure facilities, and an outdoor amphitheater. The 463-metre main tower of Lakhta Center, upon its completion in 2018, is expected to be the tallest building in Russia. The complex is under construction and slated to finish in 2018
32.
Gulf of Finland
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The Gulf of Finland is the easternmost arm of the Baltic Sea. It extends between Finland and Estonia all the way to Saint Petersburg in Russia, where the river Neva drains into it, other major cities around the gulf include Helsinki and Tallinn. The eastern parts of the Gulf of Finland belong to Russia, as the seaway to Saint Petersburg, the Gulf of Finland has been and continues to be of considerable strategic importance to Russia. Some of the problems affecting the Baltic Sea are at their most pronounced in the shallow gulf. The area of the gulf is 30,000 km2, the length is 400 km and the width varies from 70 km near the entrance to 130 km on the meridian of Moshchny Island, in the Neva Bay, it decreases to 12 km. The gulf is shallow with the depth decreasing from the entrance to the gulf to the continent. The sharpest change occurs near Narva-Jõesuu, which is why this place is called Narva wall, the average depth is 38 m with the maximum of 100 m. The depth of the Neva Bay is less than 6 metres, therefore, a channel was dug at the bottom for safe navigation. Because of the influx of fresh water from rivers, especially from the Neva River. The average water temperature is close to 0 °C in winter, in summer, it is 15–17 °C at the surface, the gulf is usually frozen from late November to late April, the freezing starts in the east and gradually proceeds to the west. Complete freezing is usually reached by late January, and it not occur in mild winters. There are frequent strong winds causing waves, surges of water. The northern coast of the gulf is high and winding, with abundant small bays and skerries only a few large bays, the coast is mostly sloping, there are abundant sandy dunes, with occasional pine trees. The southern shores are smooth and shallow, but along the entire coast runs the Baltic Klint with the height up to 55 m, in the east, the gulf ends with Neva Bay and on the west merges with the Baltic Sea. The gulf contains numerous banks, skerries and islands, starting from 1700, nineteen artificial islands with fortresses were built in the gulf by Russia. Their purpose was defense from attacks from water and their construction was urged by the Great Northern War of 1700–1721 and those include Fort Alexander, Krasnaya Gorka, Ino, Totleben, Kronshlot and others. The largest rivers flowing into the gulf are Neva, Narva, keila, Pirita, Jägala, Kunda, Luga, Sista and Kovashi flow into the gulf from the south. From the north flow Sestra River, Porvoo, Vantaa and several small rivers
33.
Thunder
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Thunder is the sound caused by lightning. Depending on the distance and nature of the lightning, thunder can range from a sharp, loud crack to a long, the sudden increase in pressure and temperature from lightning produces rapid expansion of the air surrounding and within a bolt of lightning. In turn, this expansion of air creates a shock wave, similar to a sonic boom. The cause of thunder has been the subject of centuries of speculation, the first recorded theory is attributed to the Greek philosopher Aristotle in the fourth century BC, and an early speculation was that it was caused by the collision of clouds. Subsequently, numerous theories were proposed. By the mid-19th century, the theory was that lightning produced a vacuum. In the 20th century a consensus evolved that thunder must begin with a wave in the air due to the sudden thermal expansion of the plasma in the lightning channel. The average is about 20,400 K and this heating causes a rapid outward expansion, impacting the surrounding cooler air at a speed faster than sound would otherwise travel. The resultant outward-moving pulse is a wave, similar in principle to the shock wave formed by an explosion. Experimental studies of simulated lightning have produced results consistent with this model. Other causes have also proposed, relying on electrodynamic effects of the massive current acting on the plasma in the bolt of lightning. The shockwave in thunder is sufficient to cause injury, such as internal contusion, inversion thunder results when lightning strikes between cloud and ground occur during a temperature inversion. In such an inversion, the air near the ground is cooler than the higher air, the sound energy is prevented from dispersing vertically as it would in a non-inversion and is thus concentrated in the near-ground layer. Inversions often occur when warm moist air passes above a cold front, the d in Modern English thunder is epenthetic, and is now found as well in Modern Dutch donder. In Latin the term was tonare to thunder, the name of the Germanic god Thor comes from the Old Norse word for thunder. The shared Proto-Indo-European root is *tón-r̥ or *tar-, also found Gaulish Taranis, a flash of lightning, followed after some time by a rumble of thunder, illustrates the fact that sound travels significantly slower than light. Using this difference, one can estimate how far away the bolt of lightning is by timing the interval between seeing the flash and hearing thunder, the speed of sound in dry air is approximately 343 m/s or 1,127 ft/s or 768 mph at 20 °C. This translates to approximately 5 seconds per mile, the speed of light is high enough that it can be taken as infinite in this calculation because of the relatively small distance involved
34.
Greeks
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The Greeks or Hellenes are an ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus, southern Albania, Turkey, Sicily, Egypt and, to a lesser extent, other countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world, many of these regions coincided to a large extent with the borders of the Byzantine Empire of the late 11th century and the Eastern Mediterranean areas of ancient Greek colonization. The cultural centers of the Greeks have included Athens, Thessalonica, Alexandria, Smyrna, most ethnic Greeks live nowadays within the borders of the modern Greek state and Cyprus. The Greek genocide and population exchange between Greece and Turkey nearly ended the three millennia-old Greek presence in Asia Minor, other longstanding Greek populations can be found from southern Italy to the Caucasus and southern Russia and Ukraine and in the Greek diaspora communities in a number of other countries. Today, most Greeks are officially registered as members of the Greek Orthodox Church, the Greeks speak the Greek language, which forms its own unique branch within the Indo-European family of languages, the Hellenic. They are part of a group of ethnicities, described by Anthony D. Smith as an archetypal diaspora people. Both migrations occur at incisive periods, the Mycenaean at the transition to the Late Bronze Age, the Mycenaeans quickly penetrated the Aegean Sea and, by the 15th century BC, had reached Rhodes, Crete, Cyprus and the shores of Asia Minor. Around 1200 BC, the Dorians, another Greek-speaking people, followed from Epirus, the Dorian invasion was followed by a poorly attested period of migrations, appropriately called the Greek Dark Ages, but by 800 BC the landscape of Archaic and Classical Greece was discernible. The Greeks of classical antiquity idealized their Mycenaean ancestors and the Mycenaean period as an era of heroes, closeness of the gods. The Homeric Epics were especially and generally accepted as part of the Greek past, as part of the Mycenaean heritage that survived, the names of the gods and goddesses of Mycenaean Greece became major figures of the Olympian Pantheon of later antiquity. The ethnogenesis of the Greek nation is linked to the development of Pan-Hellenism in the 8th century BC, the works of Homer and Hesiod were written in the 8th century BC, becoming the basis of the national religion, ethos, history and mythology. The Oracle of Apollo at Delphi was established in this period, the classical period of Greek civilization covers a time spanning from the early 5th century BC to the death of Alexander the Great, in 323 BC. It is so named because it set the standards by which Greek civilization would be judged in later eras, the Peloponnesian War, the large scale civil war between the two most powerful Greek city-states Athens and Sparta and their allies, left both greatly weakened. Many Greeks settled in Hellenistic cities like Alexandria, Antioch and Seleucia, two thousand years later, there are still communities in Pakistan and Afghanistan, like the Kalash, who claim to be descended from Greek settlers. The Hellenistic civilization was the period of Greek civilization, the beginnings of which are usually placed at Alexanders death. This Hellenistic age, so called because it saw the partial Hellenization of many non-Greek cultures and this age saw the Greeks move towards larger cities and a reduction in the importance of the city-state. These larger cities were parts of the still larger Kingdoms of the Diadochi, Greeks, however, remained aware of their past, chiefly through the study of the works of Homer and the classical authors. An important factor in maintaining Greek identity was contact with barbarian peoples and this led to a strong desire among Greeks to organize the transmission of the Hellenic paideia to the next generation
35.
Cephalonia
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Cephalonia or Kefalonia, formerly also known as Kefallinia or Kephallenia, is the largest of the Ionian Islands in western Greece. It is also a regional unit of the Ionian Islands region. It was also a former Latin Catholic diocese Kefalonia–Zakynthos and short-lived titular see as just Kefalonia, the capital of Cephalonia is Argostoli. The main island of the unit is Cephalonia and has a size of 773 km2. The town of Argostoli has one-third of the islands inhabitants, Lixouri is the second major settlement, and the two towns together account for almost two-thirds of the prefectures population. The other major islands are, Petalas Island, Asteris Island, Cephalonia lies in the heart of an earthquake zone, and dozens of minor, unrecorded tremors occur each year. In 1953, a earthquake destroyed almost all of the settlements on the island. Important natural features include Melissani Lake, the Drogarati caves, the island has a rich biodiversity, with a substantial number of endemic and rare species. Some areas have been declared a site in the European Union’s Natura 2000 network, the top of Mount Ainos is covered with fir trees and is a natural park. Forestry is rare on the island, however its output is one of the highest in the Ionian islands. Forest fires were common during the 1990s and the early 2000s, Cephalonia is well known for its endangered loggerhead turtle population which nest on many beaches along the south coast of the island. Caves on these parts of the coast offer ideal locations for the seals to give birth to their pups, the European pine marten is known to live on the island. Over 200 species of birds have been spotted on the island, Cephalonia is a distinct regional unit of the Ionian Islands region, and the only municipality of the regional unit. The seat of administration is Argostoli, the main town. Amid the 2011 Kallikratis government reform, the unit of Kefallinia was created from part of the former Kefalonia. During the same reform, the current municipality of Cephalonia was created from the eight former municipalities, the Cephalonia regional unit also includes a number of uninhabited islands of the Echinades group. They are administered by the municipality of Pylaros and he was rewarded with the island of Same, which thereafter came to be known as Cephallenia. Cephalonia has also suggested as the Homeric Ithaca, the home of Odysseus
36.
Imperial Russian Army
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The Imperial Russian Army was the land armed force of the Russian Empire, active from around 1721 to the Russian Revolution of 1917. In the early 1850s, the Russian army consisted of more than 900,000 regular soldiers, the last living veteran of the Russian Imperial Army was the Ukrainian supercentenarian Mikhail Krichevsky, who died in 2008. Russian tsars before Peter maintained professional hereditary musketeer corps, known as streltsy and these were originally raised by Tsar Ivan IV, originally an effective force, they had become highly unreliable and undisciplined. In times of war the forces were augmented by peasants. There were different kinds of regiments, such as regulars, dragoons, in 1631, the Russians created two regular regiments in Moscow. During the Russo-Polish War of 1632–1634, six regular regiments, one reiter regiment. Initially, they recruited children of the boyars and streltsy, volunteers, Cossacks. After the war with Poland, all of the regiments were disbanded, during another Russo-Polish War, they were created again and became a principal force of the Russian army. Often, regular and dragoon regiments were manned with datochniye lyudi for lifelong military service, reiters were manned with small or landless gentry and boyars children and were paid with money for their service. More than a half of the officers were representatives from the gentry. In times of peace, some of the regiments were usually disbanded, in 1681, there were 33 regular regiments and 25 dragoon and reiter regiments. In the late 17th century, regiments of the new type represented more than a half of the Russian Army, Conscription in Russia was introduced by Peter I of Russia in December 1699, though reports say Peters father also used it. Conscription of peasants and townspeople was based on system, per settlement. Initially it was based on the number of households, later it was based on the population numbers, the term of service in the 18th century was for life. In 1793 it was reduced to 25 years, in 1834, it was reduced to 20 years plus five years in the reserve, and in 1855 to 12 years plus three years in the reserve. The history of the Russian army in this era was linked to the name of Russian General Alexander Suvorov, considered one of a few great generals in history who never lost a battle. From 1777 to 1783 Suvorov served in the Crimea and in the Caucasus, becoming a lieutenant-general in 1780, from 1787 to 1791 he again fought the Turks during the Russo-Turkish War of 1787–1792 and won many victories. Suvorovs leadership also played a key role in a Russian victory over the Poles during the Kościuszko Uprising, furthermore, many lower-level officers were poorly trained and had difficulty getting their men to perform the sometimes complex manoeuvres required in a battle
37.
Vienna
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Vienna is the capital and largest city of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austrias primary city, with a population of about 1.8 million, and its cultural, economic and it is the 7th-largest city by population within city limits in the European Union. Today, it has the second largest number of German speakers after Berlin, Vienna is host to many major international organizations, including the United Nations and OPEC. The city is located in the part of Austria and is close to the borders of the Czech Republic, Slovakia. These regions work together in a European Centrope border region, along with nearby Bratislava, Vienna forms a metropolitan region with 3 million inhabitants. In 2001, the city centre was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, apart from being regarded as the City of Music because of its musical legacy, Vienna is also said to be The City of Dreams because it was home to the worlds first psycho-analyst – Sigmund Freud. The citys roots lie in early Celtic and Roman settlements that transformed into a Medieval and Baroque city and it is well known for having played an essential role as a leading European music centre, from the great age of Viennese Classicism through the early part of the 20th century. The historic centre of Vienna is rich in architectural ensembles, including Baroque castles and gardens, Vienna is known for its high quality of life. In a 2005 study of 127 world cities, the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked the city first for the worlds most liveable cities, between 2011 and 2015, Vienna was ranked second, behind Melbourne, Australia. Monocles 2015 Quality of Life Survey ranked Vienna second on a list of the top 25 cities in the world to make a base within, the UN-Habitat has classified Vienna as being the most prosperous city in the world in 2012/2013. Vienna regularly hosts urban planning conferences and is used as a case study by urban planners. Between 2005 and 2010, Vienna was the worlds number-one destination for international congresses and it attracts over 3.7 million tourists a year. The English name Vienna is borrowed from the homonymous Italian version of the name or the French Vienne. The etymology of the name is still subject to scholarly dispute. Some claim that the name comes from Vedunia, meaning forest stream, which produced the Old High German Uuenia. A variant of this Celtic name could be preserved in the Czech and Slovak names of the city, the name of the city in Hungarian, Serbo-Croatian and Ottoman Turkish has a different, probably Slavonic origin, and originally referred to an Avar fort in the area. Slovene-speakers call the city Dunaj, which in other Central European Slavic languages means the Danube River, evidence has been found of continuous habitation since 500 BC, when the site of Vienna on the Danube River was settled by the Celts. In 15 BC, the Romans fortified the city they called Vindobona to guard the empire against Germanic tribes to the north
38.
Sled
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Most commonly sleds are used on snow or ice, however in certain cases they may be used on any surfaces, especially on ones with relatively low friction, such as sand or wet grass. They may be used to transport passengers, cargo, or both, shades of meaning differentiating the three terms often reflect regional variations depending on historical uses and prevailing climate. In Britain sledge is the term, and more common than sled. Toboggan is sometimes used synonymously with sledge but more often to refer to a type of sledge without runners. Sleigh refers to a moderate to large-sized, usually open-topped vehicle to carry passengers or goods, in Scandinavia particularly a sleigh may also be drawn by reindeer, as for Father Christmas. In American usage sled remains the term but often implies a smaller device. Sledge implies a heavier sled used for moving freight or massive objects, in Australia, where there is limited snow, sleigh and sledge are given equal preference in local parlance. The people of Ancient Egypt are thought to have used sledges extensively in the construction of their public works, sleds and sledges were found in the Oseberg Viking ship excavation. The sledge was also prized, because – unlike wheeled vehicles – it was exempt from tolls. Until the late 19th century, a closed winter sled, or vozok and it was a means of transport preferred by royals, bishops, and boyars of Muscovy. Several royal vozoks of historical importance have been preserved in the Kremlin Armoury, man-hauled sledges were the traditional means of transport on British exploring expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic regions in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Dog sleds were used by most others, such as Roald Amundsen, today some people use kites to tow exploration sleds in such climes. The word sled comes from Middle English sledde, which itself has the origins in Old Dutch word slee, the same word shares common ancestry with both sleigh and sledge. North Americas Horse Drawn Sleigh Rides
39.
Bronze
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These additions produce a range of alloys that may be harder than copper alone, or have other useful properties, such as stiffness, ductility, or machinability. The archeological period where bronze was the hardest metal in use is known as the Bronze Age. In the ancient Near East this began with the rise of Sumer in the 4th millennium BC, with India and China starting to use bronze around the same time, everywhere it gradually spread across regions. The Bronze Age was followed by the Iron Age starting from about 1300 BC and reaching most of Eurasia by about 500 BC, the discovery of bronze enabled people to create metal objects which were harder and more durable than previously possible. Bronze tools, weapons, armor, and building such as decorative tiles were harder and more durable than their stone. It was only later that tin was used, becoming the major ingredient of bronze in the late 3rd millennium BC. Tin bronze was superior to arsenic bronze in that the process could be more easily controlled. Also, unlike arsenic, metallic tin and fumes from tin refining are not toxic, the earliest tin-alloy bronze dates to 4500 BCE in a Vinča culture site in Pločnik. Other early examples date to the late 4th millennium BC in Africa, Susa and some ancient sites in China, Luristan, ores of copper and the far rarer tin are not often found together, so serious bronze work has always involved trade. Tin sources and trade in ancient times had a influence on the development of cultures. In Europe, a source of tin was the British deposits of ore in Cornwall. In many parts of the world, large hoards of bronze artefacts are found, suggesting that bronze also represented a store of value, in Europe, large hoards of bronze tools, typically socketed axes, are found, which mostly show no signs of wear. With Chinese ritual bronzes, which are documented in the inscriptions they carry and from other sources and these were made in enormous quantities for elite burials, and also used by the living for ritual offerings. Pure iron is soft, and the process of beating and folding sponge iron to wrought iron removes from the metal carbon. Careful control of the alloying and tempering eventually allowed for wrought iron with properties comparable to modern steel, Bronze was still used during the Iron Age, and has continued in use for many purposes to the modern day. Among other advantages, it does not rust, the weaker wrought iron was found to be sufficiently strong for many uses. Archaeologists suspect that a disruption of the tin trade precipitated the transition. The population migrations around 1200–1100 BC reduced the shipping of tin around the Mediterranean, limiting supplies, there are many different bronze alloys, but typically modern bronze is 88% copper and 12% tin
40.
Ball bearing
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A ball bearing is a type of rolling-element bearing that uses balls to maintain the separation between the bearing races. The purpose of a bearing is to reduce rotational friction. It achieves this by using at least two races to contain the balls and transmit the loads through the balls, in most applications, one race is stationary and the other is attached to the rotating assembly. As one of the bearing races rotates it causes the balls to rotate as well, because the balls are rolling they have a much lower coefficient of friction than if two flat surfaces were sliding against each other. Ball bearings tend to have lower capacity for their size than other kinds of rolling-element bearings due to the smaller contact area between the balls and races. However, they can tolerate some misalignment of the inner and outer races and his was the first modern ball-bearing design, with the ball running along a groove in the axle assembly. There are several designs of ball bearing, each offering various trade-offs. They can be made many different materials, including, stainless steel, chrome steel. A hybrid ball bearing is a bearing with ceramic balls and races of metal, an angular contact ball bearing uses axially asymmetric races. An axial load passes in a line through the bearing. So the angle of contact on the race is the same as that on the outer race. Angular contact bearings better support combined loads and the angle of the bearing should be matched to the relative proportions of each. The larger the angle, the higher the axial load supported. In high speed applications, such as turbines, jet engines, and dentistry equipment, ceramics such as silicon nitride are now regularly used in such applications due to their low density. These materials significantly reduce centrifugal force and function well in high temperature environments and they also tend to wear in a similar way to bearing steel—rather than cracking or shattering like glass or porcelain. Most bicycles use angular-contact bearings in the headsets because the forces on these bearings are in both the radial and axial direction, an axial ball bearing uses side-by-side races. An axial load is transmitted directly through the bearing, while a radial load is supported and tends to separate the races. In a deep-groove radial bearing, the dimensions are close to the dimensions of the balls that run in it
41.
Stonemasonry
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The craft of stonemasonry has existed since humanity could use and make tools - creating buildings, structures, and sculpture using stone from the earth. These materials have been used to construct many of the long-lasting, ancient monuments, artifacts, cathedrals, quarrymen split veins, or sheets of rock, and extract the resulting blocks of stone from the ground. Sawyers cut these rough blocks into cuboids, to required size with diamond-tipped saws, the resulting block if ordered for a specific component is known as sawn six sides. Banker masons are workshop-based, and specialize in working the stones into the shapes required by a design, this set out on templets. They can produce anything from stones with simple chamfers to tracery windows, detailed mouldings and the more classical architectural building masonry. When working a stone from a block, the mason ensures that the stone is bedded in the right way. Occasionally though some stones need to be orientated correctly for the application, the basic tools, methods and skills of the banker mason have existed as a trade for thousands of years. Carvers cross the line from craft to art, and use their ability to carve stone into foliage, figures. Fixer masons specialize in the fixing of stones onto buildings, using lifting tackle, sometimes modern cements, mastics and epoxy resins are used, usually on specialist applications such as stone cladding. Metal fixings, from simple dowels and cramps to specialised single application fixings, are also used, the precise tolerances necessary make this a highly skilled job. Memorial masons or monumental masons carve gravestones and inscriptions, the modern stonemason undergoes comprehensive training, both in the classroom and in the working environment. Hands-on skill is complemented by intimate knowledge of each type, its application and best uses. The mason may be skilled and competent to carry out one or all of the branches of stonemasonry. In some areas the trend is towards specialization, in other areas towards adaptability, stonemasons use all types of natural stone, igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary, while some also use artificial stone as well. Igneous stones, Granite is one of the hardest stones, with great persistence, simple mouldings can and have been carved into granite, for example in many Cornish churches and the city of Aberdeen. Generally, however, it is used for purposes that require its strength and durability, such as kerbstones, countertops, flooring, igneous stone ranges from very soft rocks such as pumice and scoria to somewhat harder rocks such as tuff and hard rocks such as granite and basalt. Metamorphic, Marble is a fine stone easily workable, that comes in various colours and it has traditionally been used for carving statues, and for facing many Byzantine and Renaissance Italian buildings. Their work was preceded by older sculptors from Mesopotamia and Egypt, the famous Acropolis of Athens is said to be constructed using the Pentelicon marble
42.
Granite
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Granite is a common type of felsic intrusive igneous rock that is granular and phaneritic in texture. Granites can be white, pink, or gray in color. The word granite comes from the Latin granum, a grain, in reference to the structure of such a holocrystalline rock. By definition, granite is a rock with at least 20% quartz. The term granitic means granite-like and is applied to granite and a group of igneous rocks with similar textures and slight variations in composition. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a texture is known as a granite porphyry. Granitoid is a general, descriptive field term for lighter-colored, coarse-grained igneous rocks, petrographic examination is required for identification of specific types of granitoids. The extrusive igneous rock equivalent of granite is rhyolite, Granite is nearly always massive, hard and tough, and therefore it has gained widespread use throughout human history, and more recently as a construction stone. The average density of granite is between 2.65 and 2.75 g/cm3, its compressive strength usually lies above 200 MPa, and its viscosity near STP is 3–6 •1019 Pa·s. The melting temperature of dry granite at ambient pressure is 1215–1260 °C, it is reduced in the presence of water. Granite has poor primary permeability, but strong secondary permeability, true granite according to modern petrologic convention contains both plagioclase and alkali feldspars. When a granitoid is devoid or nearly devoid of plagioclase, the rock is referred to as alkali feldspar granite, when a granitoid contains less than 10% orthoclase, it is called tonalite, pyroxene and amphibole are common in tonalite. A granite containing both muscovite and biotite micas is called a binary or two-mica granite, two-mica granites are typically high in potassium and low in plagioclase, and are usually S-type granites or A-type granites. A worldwide average of the composition of granite, by weight percent, based on 2485 analyses. Much of it was intruded during the Precambrian age, it is the most abundant basement rock that underlies the relatively thin veneer of the continents. Outcrops of granite tend to form tors and rounded massifs, granites sometimes occur in circular depressions surrounded by a range of hills, formed by the metamorphic aureole or hornfels. Granite often occurs as small, less than 100 km² stock masses
43.
Capstan (nautical)
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A capstan is a vertical-axled rotating machine developed for use on sailing ships to apply force to ropes, cables, and hawsers. The principle is similar to that of the windlass, which has a horizontal axle, both device and word are considered Spanish inventions. In its earliest form, the capstan consisted of a timber mounted vertically through a structure which was free to rotate. Levers, known as bars, were inserted through holes at the top of the timber, a rope wrapped several turns around the drum was thus hauled upon. A rudimentary ratchet was provided to hold the tension, the ropes were always wound in a clockwise direction. Capstans evolved to consist of a drum or barrel mounted on an iron axle. Two barrels on a common axle were used frequently to allow men on two decks to apply force to the bars, later capstans were made entirely of iron, with gearing in the head providing a mechanical advantage when the bars were pushed counterclockwise. One form of capstan was connected by a shaft and gears to an anchor windlass on the deck below, on riverine vessels, the capstan was sometimes cranked by steam power. Modern capstans are powered electrically, hydraulically, pneumatically, or via an internal combustion engine, typically, a gearbox is used which trades reduced speed, relative to the prime mover, for increased torque. In yachting terminology, a winch functions on the principle as a capstan. However, in applications, the term winch generally implies a machine which stores the rope on a drum. Hydraulically powered capstans were used in railway goods yards for shunting. One example was Broad Street goods station in London, the yard was on a deck above some warehouses, and the deck was not strong enough to carry a locomotive, so ropes and capstans were used instead
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Medal
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A medal may be awarded to a person or organization as a form of recognition for sporting, military, scientific, academic, or various other achievements. Military awards and decorations are more precise terms for types of state decoration. Medals may also be created for sale to commemorate particular individuals or events, an artist who creates medals or medallions is called a medallist or medalist. There are also devotional medals which may be worn for religious reasons, Medals have long been popular collectible items either as a variety of exonumia or of militaria. Medallions may also be called table medals because they are too large to be worn and can only be displayed on a wall, table top, desk, the word medallion has the same ultimate derivation, but this time through the Italian medaglione, meaning large medal. The main or front surface of a medal is termed the obverse, the reverse, or back surface of the medal, is not always used and may be left blank or may contain a secondary design. It is not uncommon to only an artistic rendering on the obverse, while all details. The rim is only occasionally employed to display an inscription such as a motto, privy mark, engraver symbol, assayer’s marking. Medals that are intended to be hung from a ribbon also include a suspension piece at the crest with which to loop a suspension ring through. It is through the ring that a ribbon is run or folded so the medal may hang pendent, Medals pinned to the breast use only a small cut of ribbon that is attached to a top bar where the brooch pin is affixed. Top bars may be hidden under the ribbon so they are not visible, be a device from which the ribbon attaches. Some top bars are elaborate and contain a whole design unto themselves, Medals that are made with inexpensive material might be gilded, silver-plated, chased, or finished in a variety of other ways to improve their appearance. Medals have also made of rock, gemstone, ivory, glass, porcelain, terra cotta, coal, wood, paper, enamel, lacquerware. Honorary awards, as a button, which it is custom to give the kings kinsmen. Roman emperors used both military awards of medals, and political gifts of medallions that were very large coins, usually in gold or silver. Both these and actual golden coins were often set as pieces of jewellery, the bracteate is a type of thin gold medal, usually plain on the reverse, found in Northern Europe from the so-called Dark Ages or Migration Period. They often have suspension loops and were intended to be worn on a chain as jewellery. They imitate, at a distance, Roman imperial coins and medallions, the surviving example is mounted for wearing as jewellery
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Commemorative coins of the Soviet Union
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Commemorative coins were released in the USSR between 1965 and 1991. Most of them were made of alloy, but there were also silver coins, gold coins, palladium coins. All of the coins were minted either by the Moscow Mint or by the Leningrad Mint, certain parts of the mintage of almost each coin were minted using the proof coinage technology. 2009 Standard Catalog of World Coins, 1901–2000
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