1.
Los Angeles County, California
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Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles, is the most populous county in both the United States and the state of California, the countrys most populous state. Its population is larger than that of 42 individual U. S. states and it has 88 incorporated cities and many unincorporated areas and at 4,083 square miles, it is larger than the combined areas of the U. S. states of Delaware and Rhode Island. The county is home to more than one-quarter of California residents and is one of the most ethnically diverse counties in the U. S and its county seat, the City of Los Angeles, is also its most populous city at about four million. Los Angeles County is one of the counties of California. The county originally included parts of what are now Kern, San Bernardino, Riverside, as the population increased, sections were split off to organize San Bernardino County in 1853, Kern County in 1866, and Orange County in 1889. According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the county has an area of 4,751 square miles, Los Angeles County borders 70 miles of coast on the Pacific Ocean and encompasses mountain ranges, valleys, forests, islands, lakes, rivers, and desert. The western extent of the Mojave Desert begins in the Antelope Valley, most of the population of Los Angeles County is located in the south and southwest, with major population centers in the Los Angeles Basin, San Fernando Valley and San Gabriel Valley. Other population centers are found in the Santa Clarita Valley, Pomona Valley, Crescenta Valley, the county is divided west-to-east by the San Gabriel Mountains, which are part of the Transverse Ranges of southern California, and are contained mostly within the Angeles National Forest. Los Angeles County includes San Clemente Island and Santa Catalina Island, non-Hispanic whites numbered 2,728,321, or 28% of the population. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race numbered 4,687,889, 36% of Los Angeles Countys population was of Mexican ancestry,3. 7% Salvadoran, and 2. 2% Guatemalan heritage. The largest Asian groups of the 1,346,865 Asians in Los Angeles County are 4. 0% Chinese,3. 3% Filipino,2. 2% Korean,1. 0% Japanese,0. 9% Vietnamese,0. 8% Indian, and 0. 3% Cambodian. The racial makeup of the county is 48. 7% White,11. 0% African American,0. 8% Native American,10. 0% Asian,0. 3% Pacific Islander,23. 5% from other races, and 4. 9% from two or more races. 44. 6% of the population are Hispanic or Latino of any race, the largest European-American ancestry groups are German, Irish, English and Italian. 45. 9% of the population reported speaking only English at home,37. 9% spoke Spanish,2. 22% Tagalog,2. 0% Chinese,1. 9% Korean,1. 87% Armenian,0. 5% Arabic, and 0. 2% Hindi. At the census of 2000, there were 9,519,338 people,3,133,774 households, the population density was 2,344 people per square mile. There were 3,270,909 housing units at a density of 806 per square mile. 25% of all households were made up of individuals and 7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older, the average household size was 2.98 and the average family size was 3.61. In the county, the population was out with 28% under the age of 18, 10% from 18 to 24, 33% from 25 to 44, 19% from 45 to 64
2.
Jean-Michel Cousteau
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Jean-Michel Cousteau is a French oceanographic explorer, environmentalist, educator, and film producer. The first son of ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau, he is the father of Fabien Cousteau, Cousteau is the son of Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Simone Melchior. Cousteau first dived with an aqua-lung in 1945 when he was 7 years old, Cousteau and his father disagreed on the management and policies of the Society. After Cousteau opened a resort on a Fiji Island utilizing the family name, in June 1996, a court signed an injunction requiring him to add, with equal prominence in placement, his first name to the hotel. Jean-Michel then founded the Ocean Futures Society in 1999, a conservation and education organization. Cousteau is also Chairman of Green Cross France, Cousteau advocates for a world free of nuclear weapons, and is a member of the Advisory Council of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Cousteau is working on a documentary highlighting the epic and disastrous 2010 Gulf Oil Spill in which 11 workers were killed during an explosion of deepwater rig 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana. In 2012, he published the book My Father, The Captain and he has produced over 70 films. He appears in the 2003 IMAX documentary film Coral Reef Adventure and he did a similar feature for the DVD of the Disney/Pixar movie Finding Nemo. Jean-Michel Cousteau made a new documentary series Ocean Adventures released in 2006, cousteaus Ocean Futures Society, KQED and PBS are continuing production on the Ocean Adventures series for 2007 and 2008. In October 2006, Jean-Michel Cousteau, and a team that includes his son Fabien and daughter Céline
3.
Fabien Cousteau
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Fabien Cousteau is an aquanaut, ocean conservationist, and documentary filmmaker. As the first grandson of Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Fabien spent his early years aboard his grandfather’s ships Calypso and Alcyone, then in 2003-2006, he produced the documentary, “Mind of a Demon, ” that aired on CBS. With the help of a crew, Fabien created a 14-foot,1, 200-pound. For the next four years, Fabien was part of a series for PBS called, “Ocean Adventures” with his father, Jean-Michel Cousteau. Inspired by his grandfather’s 1978 PBS series, “Ocean Adventures”, in early 2009 Fabien began working with local communities and children worldwide to help restore local water ecosystems. Fabien Cousteau is the grandson of famed oceanographic explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Fabien Cousteau was born and raised in France, although he has lived in the United States for the majority of his life. He has a sister, Céline Cousteau, Cousteaus first scuba dive came at age four when Jacques-Yves Cousteau strapped a custom made scuba tank to his back and sent Fabien Cousteau off into the Mediterranean Sea. His interest in sharks began at an age, about 6 or 7. The film perplexed him – It went against everything I had ever learned about sharks, great white sharks dont go around chopping up boats, he explained – and started him on a mission to clear up the gross misconceptions we have about sharks. At age seven, Cousteau accompanied his grandfather and father on the first of many sea trips aboard the Calypso and Alcyone and he official joined the crew at age twelve, his first job was to remove barnacles from Jacques-Yves Cousteaus boats. Fabien Cousteau attended Norfolk Academy in Virginia and graduated from Boston University with a degree in environmental economics. After school, Cousteau worked as a marketer for Seventh Generation, I decided to start up in a different career, in which my name would not help me, just to see if I could survive, he explained. After three years, he returned to the business, working for his father at Deep Ocean Odyssey. Cousteau said he did well in business, but it really left me kind of empty. He then spent time as a diving and underwater product tester while looking for a company to appoint him explorer-in-residence, in 2002, Cousteau went out on his own, launching his first expedition without family help, a dive where filmed his interactions with bull sharks in the Bahamas. He spent three months filming sharks for what would become his first National Geographic Explorer special, Attacks of the Mystery Shark, in filming, he was shocked at how few encounters we had. We would go past a school of 50 or 60 sharks during feeding, the Globe and Mail described the special, If you get through the corny setup. This special offers some good television, a second shark documentary followed shortly thereafter
4.
Jacques Cousteau
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Jacques-Yves Cousteau AC was a French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and researcher who studied the sea and all forms of life in water. He co-developed the Aqua-lung, pioneered marine conservation and was a member of the Académie française, Cousteau also directed films, most notably the documentary adaptation of the book, The Silent World, which won a Palme dor at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival. He remained the only person to win a Palme dOr for a documentary film, Cousteau was born on 11 June 1910, in Saint-André-de-Cubzac, Gironde, France to Daniel and Élisabeth Cousteau. Cousteau completed his studies at the Collège Stanislas in Paris. In 1930, he entered the École Navale and graduated as a gunnery officer, after an automobile accident cut short his career in naval aviation, Cousteau indulged his interest in the sea. The accident caused him to both his arms and could have even killed him. This caused Cousteau to have to change his plans in becoming a naval pilot, Cousteau also belonged to the information service of the French Navy, and was sent on missions to Shanghai and Japan and in the USSR. On 12 July 1937 he married Simone Melchior, with whom he had two sons, Jean-Michel and Philippe and his sons took part in the adventures of the Calypso. In 1991, one year after his wife Simones death from cancer and they already had a daughter Diane Cousteau and a son Pierre-Yves Cousteau, born during Cousteaus marriage to his first wife. The years of World War II were decisive for the history of diving, after the armistice of 1940, the family of Simone and Jacques-Yves Cousteau took refuge in Megève, where he became a friend of the Ichac family who also lived there. Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Marcel Ichac shared the desire to reveal to the general public unknown and inaccessible places — for Cousteau the underwater world. In 1943, they made the film Épaves, in which used two of the very first Aqua-Lung prototypes. These prototypes were made in Boulogne-Billancourt by the Air Liquide company, following instructions from Cousteau, at that time, he kept his distance from his brother Pierre-Antoine Cousteau, a pen anti-semite who wrote the collaborationist newspaper Je suis partout and who received the death sentence in 1946. However, this was commuted to a life sentence. During the 1940s, Cousteau is credited with improving the design which gave birth to the open-circuit scuba technology used today. In 1943 Cousteau tried out the first prototype aqua-lung which finally made extended underwater exploration possible, a little later it became the GERS, then the COMISMER, and finally more recently the CEPHISMER. In 1947, Chief Petty Officer Maurice Fargues became the first diver to die using an aqualung while attempting a new record with the GERS near Toulon. The small team also undertook the exploration of the Roman wreck of Mahdia and it was the first underwater archaeology operation using autonomous diving, opening the way for scientific underwater archaeology
5.
France
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France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres and had a population of almost 67 million people as of January 2017. It is a unitary republic with the capital in Paris. Other major urban centres include Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, during the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years War strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a colonial empire was established. The 16th century was dominated by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. France became Europes dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV, in the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War, the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Algeria and nearly all the colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal controversy and typically retained close economic. France has long been a centre of art, science. It hosts Europes fourth-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, France is a developed country with the worlds sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, France remains a great power in the world, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a member state of the European Union and the Eurozone. It is also a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or country of the Franks
6.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
7.
RV Calypso
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It was severely damaged in 1996, and was supposed to undergo a complete refurbishment in 2009-2011. The ship is named after the Greek mythological figure Calypso, Calypso was originally a minesweeper built by the Ballard Marine Railway Company of Seattle, Washington, USA for the United States Navy for loan to the British Royal Navy under lend-lease. A wooden-hulled vessel, she is built of Oregon pine and she was a BYMS Mark 1 Class Motor Minesweeper, laid down on 12 August 1941 with yard designation BYMS-26 and launched on 21 March 1942. She was commissioned into the Royal Navy in February 1943 as HMS J-826 and assigned to service in the Mediterranean Sea, based in Malta. Following the end of World War II, she was decommissioned in July 1946, on 1 August 1947 she was formally handed back to the US Navy and then struck from the US Naval Register, remaining in lay-up. In May 1949 she was purchased by Joseph Gasan of Malta and she was converted to a ferry and renamed Calypso G after the nymph Calypso, whose island of Ogygia was mythically associated with Gozo, entering service in March 1950. After only four months on the route, Gasan received an attractive offer, the British millionaire and former MP, Thomas Loel Guinness bought Calypso in July 1950 and leased her to Cousteau for a symbolic one franc a year. He had two conditions, that Cousteau never ask him for money and that he never reveal his identity, Cousteau restructured and transformed the ship into an expedition vessel and support base for diving, filming and oceanographic research. One of the more unusual expeditions involving the vessel was a survey of Abu Dhabi waters conducted by Cousteau on behalf of British Petroleum in 1954, Calypso carried advanced equipment, including one- and two-man mini submarines developed by Cousteau, diving saucers, and underwater scooters. The ship was fitted with a see-through nose and an observation chamber 3 metres below the waterline, and was modified to house scientific equipment. The Calypso underwater camera is named after this ship, on 8 January 1996, a barge accidentally rammed Calypso and sank her in the port of Singapore. On 16 January, she was raised by a 230-foot crane, patched, the next year, Jacques-Yves Cousteau died on 25 June 1997. Calypso was later towed to Marseille, France, where she lay neglected for two years, thereafter she was towed to the basin of the Maritime Museum of La Rochelle in 1998, where she was intended to be an exhibit. A long series of legal and other delays kept any restoration work from beginning, Francine Cousteau, the widow of Jacques Cousteau, managed to organize the ships restoration. A dispute arose between Francine Cousteau and Loel Guinness, grandson of the original owner, when this dispute was discovered by the sponsoring Mayor of La Rochelle, it added to the air of uncertainty and hesitancy over funding the restoration. When the mayor subsequently died, the city of La Rochelle withdrew as a source of funding for the restoration, in 2002, Alexandra, Cousteaus granddaughter from his first marriage, stepped in to help organize restoration. In July 2003, Patrick Schnepp, director of the La Rochelle maritime museum, expressed his frustration at the inability to restore the ship to fit condition, everything thats not broken is rotten, and everything thats not rotten is broken. On 30 November 2004 it was erroneously reported Calypso had been sold by Loel Guinness, Carnival stated they intended to give the vessel a 1.3 million dollar restoration, and then likely moor her in the Bahamas as a museum ship
8.
United Nations International School
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The United Nations International School is a private international school in New York City, established in 1947 by families who worked for or were associated with the United Nations. The school was founded to provide an education, while preserving its students diverse cultural heritages. Today, UNIS has over 1550 students in two locations, serving the United Nations, international and New York communities, the campus in Jamaica Estates, Queens is a K-8 school and the Manhattan campus, overlooking the East River, is K-12. UNIS was one of the schools of the International Baccalaureate and was among those awarding the first diplomas. The main language of instruction is English and all students study French or Spanish, arabic, Chinese, German, Italian, Japanese and Russian are also taught beginning in the seventh grade at the Manhattan campus. Additional mother tongues may be studied after school, jane Camblin has served as the schools Executive Director since 2013. Prior to her arrival at UNIS, Camblin served as head of the French-American International School in San Francisco for nineteen years, before her term at FAIS, she was an administrator and consultant in public and private schools in England, France, Australia and the United States. She is a recipient of a Sarah D. Barder Outstanding Educator Fellowship Award from Johns Hopkins University, the current Chairman of the Board of Trustees is Vijay Nambiar, the Secretary-General’s Special Adviser on Myanmar. Mr. Nambiar has also served as Chef de Cabinet to the Secretary-General at the rank of Under-Secretary-General from 2007-2012, in the formative years, UNIS offers a school-designed curriculum, from Kindergarten to Grade 10. Junior and senior students enroll in the International Baccalaureate Diploma or IB Courses, within the framework of IB requirements, students have the possibility to choose from over 200 course combinations. Students are taught in small classes, with averages of 17 children in kindergarten,17 in grade 1,17 in grade 2,19 in grades 3-4. Emphasis is placed on preparation for the IB exams during High School, children whose parents transfer from abroad to work for the United Nations, Missions to the UN, and Consulates enjoy priority in terms of admission, but admission is not necessarily automatic. All children are required to be interviewed and assessed in person at UNIS, the AEFE categorizes this school as a French international school. Nearly all UNIS graduates matriculate at colleges in the semester following graduation. A typical year will see 75% to 85% of graduates enrolling at colleges in the United States with remaining graduates attending 20 different universities in thirteen countries outside the U. S. Each year, juniors and seniors from UNIS host a conference focusing on a major social theme for peers from schools across the world. Now celebrating its 40th anniversary, UNIS-UN is hosted at the United Nations each spring at the General Assembly Hall, dorothy Bush, daughter of George H. W. K. Thoth, performance artist Asa Akira, world-renowned adult actress Marius Vassiliou, scientist. Vasili Tsereteli, russian artist, executive director of the Moscow Museum of Modern Art
9.
New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange
