Charles Bridge is a historic bridge that crosses the Vltava river in Prague, Czech Republic. Its construction started in 1357 under the auspices of King Charles IV, finished in the beginning of the 15th century; the bridge replaced the old Judith Bridge built 1158–1172, badly damaged by a flood in 1342. This new bridge was called Stone Bridge or Prague Bridge but has been "Charles Bridge" since 1870; as the only means of crossing the river Vltava until 1841, Charles Bridge was the most important connection between Prague Castle and the city's Old Town and adjacent areas. This "solid-land" connection made Prague important as a trade route between Eastern and Western Europe; the bridge is 516 metres long and nearly 10 metres wide, following the example of the Stone Bridge in Regensburg, it was built as a bow bridge with 16 arches shielded by ice guards. It is protected by three bridge towers, two on the Lesser Quarter side and one on the Old Town side, the Old Town Bridge Tower; the bridge is decorated by a continuous alley of 30 statues and statuaries, most of them baroque-style erected around 1700 but now all replaced by replicas.

Repairs are scheduled to start in late 2019, should take around 20 years. Throughout its history, Charles Bridge has suffered several disasters and witnessed many historic events. Czech legend has it that construction began on Charles Bridge at 5:31am on 9 July 1357 with the first stone being laid by Charles IV himself; this exact time was important to the Holy Roman Emperor because he was a strong believer in numerology and felt that this specific time, which formed a palindrome, was a numerical bridge, would imbue Charles Bridge with additional strength. The bridge was completed 45 years in 1402. A flood in 1432 damaged three pillars. In 1496 the third arch broke down. A year after the Battle of White Mountain, when the 27 leaders of the anti-Habsburg revolt were executed on 21 June 1621, the Old Town Bridge Tower served as a deterrent display of the severed heads of the victims to stop Czechs from further resistance. During the end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648, the Swedes occupied the west bank of the Vltava, as they tried to advance into the Old Town the heaviest fighting took place right on the bridge.

During the fighting, they damaged one side of the Old Town bridge tower and the remnants of all gothic decorations had to be removed from it afterward. During the late 17th century and early 18th century the bridge gained its typical appearance when an alley of baroque statues was installed on the pillars. During a great flood in 1784, five pillars were damaged and, although the arches did not break down, the traffic on the bridge had to be restricted for some time; the original stairway to Kampa Island was replaced by a new one in 1844. The next year, another great flood threatened the bridge. In 1848, during the revolutionary days, the bridge escaped unharmed from the cannonade, but some of the statues were damaged. In 1866, pseudo-gothic gas lights were erected on the balustrade. In the 1870s, the first regular public-transport line went over the bridge replaced by a horse tram; the bridge towers underwent a thorough reconstruction between 1874 and 1883. On 2–5 September 1890, another disastrous flood struck Prague and damaged Charles Bridge.

Thousands of rafts and other floating materials that escaped from places upstream formed a huge barrier leaning against the bridge. Three arches were torn down by the great pressure and two pillars collapsed from being undermined by the water, while others were damaged. With the fifth pillar, two statues – St. Ignatius of Loyola and St. Xavier, both by Ferdinand Brokoff – fell into the river; the former statue was replaced by a statuary of Saints Methodius by Karel Dvořák. Repair works cost 665,000 crowns. In the beginning of the 20th century, Charles Bridge saw a steep rise of heavy traffic; the last day of the horse line on the bridge was 15 May 1905, when it was replaced with an electric tram and in 1908, with buses. At the end of World War II, a barricade was built in the Old Town bridge tower gateway. A capital repair of the bridge took place between 1965 and 1978, based on a collaboration among various scientific and cultural institutes; the stability of the pillars was reassured, all broken stone blocks were replaced, the asphalt top was removed.

All vehicular traffic has been excluded from Charles Bridge since making it accessible by pedestrians only. The repair cost 50 million crowns. During the 1990s, some people started criticizing the previous reconstruction of the bridge and proposing further work; as of the beginning of the new millennium, most of the experts appeared to agree that the previous reconstruction had not been flawless but disputed the need for further interference with the bridge. However, after the disastrous floods of 2002, support for an overall bridge reconstruction grew, it was decided that repair and stabilization of the two pillars on the Malá Strana side of the bridge would be done. These are the only river pillars. The

Anthony Robin Dermer Pagden is an author and professor of political science and history at the University of California, Los Angeles. Anthony Pagden is the son of Joan Mary Pagden. Mr Pagden was educated at the Grange School in Santiago de Westminster School in London, he attended the University of Barcelona from 1964 to 1967. From 1967 to 1969 he worked as an assistant editor at the Trianon Press, as a free-lance translator, he spent some time in Cyprus in 1967 and 1968. Admitted in 1969 to Oriel College, Oxford to read Persian and Arabic, he changed the following year to history and Spanish. B. A. 1972 awarded the De Osma Studentship. A. 1979. Phil. 1980. He has been senior research scholar of Worcester College, junior research fellow of Merton College, senior research fellow of the Warburg Institute, from 1980 until 1997 was lecturer, university reader in intellectual history at Cambridge University and a fellow of Girton College from 1980 to 1983 and of King's College from 1985 to 1997. In 1997 he succeeded J. G. A. Pocock as the Harry C.

Black Professor in History at the Johns Hopkins University. He was professorial lecturer in international relations - global theory and history, at the School of Advanced International Studies, Washington D. C, he has held visiting positions at the Institute for Advanced Study, the European University Institute, Italy, the University of Santiago de Compostela, the Center for Kulturforskning, University of Aarhus, Harvard University, at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia as the Banco de Bilbao y Vizcaya Visiting Professor of Philosophy, at the Institute for the Humanities, University of Michigan and at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales. He is distinguished professor in the Departments of Political Science and History at the University of California Los Angeles, he is married to the author and classical scholar Giulia Sissa, has two children, Felix Alexander Xavier Pagden-Ratcliffe and Sebastian George Aurelian Pagden-Ratcliffe by a previous marriage. Luis Buñuel, "Simon del deserto" 1969 Hernán Cortés: Letters from Mexico 1972 Mexican Pictorial Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library 1975 The Maya: Diego de Landa's "Account of the affairs of Yucatan" 1975 The Spiritual Conquest of the Mayas 1975 The Fall of Natural Man: the American Indian and the origins of comparative anthropology 1983 translated into Spanish and Italian The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe 1987 Spanish Imperialism and the Political Imagination 1990 Translated into Spanish Francisco de Vitoria: political writings, ed. and translated with Jeremy Lawrance, 1991 European Encounters with the New World: From Renaissance to Romanticism 1993 Translated into German The Uncertainties of Empire: Essays in Iberian and Spanish-American Intellectual History 1994 Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain and France, c.1500-c.1800 1995 Translated into Spanish and Italian Facing Each Other:The World’s Perception of Europe and Europe’s Perception of the World 2000 Peoples and Empires: A Short History of European Migration and Conquest, from Greece to the Present 2001 Translated into Spanish, Greek and Japanese The Idea of Europe from Antiquity to the European Union 2002 Translated into Turkish Worlds at War: The 2,500 year Struggle between East and West 2008 Translated into Portuguese, Italian, Greek and Korean The Enlightenment - and why it still matters 2013 Translated into Spanish and Chinese The Burdens of Empire 1539 to the Present 2015 Anthony Pagden at UCLA Department of Political Science Anthony Pagden at Random House

Major-General Sir Edmund Leach was a British army officer. Edmund Leach was born at Robeston Wathen, Wales, on 28 November 1836, educated at Sandhurst, he started as an Ensign in the 50th Foot, rose to become a Major-General. He was Colonel of the Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment from 1904-21, he was appointed KCB in the 1907 Birthday Honours. He married Frances Elizabeth Ince at St. Saviour's, Chelsea on 29 April 1869 and had two sons: Brigadier-General Sir Henry Edmund Burleigh Leach CB CMG CVO William Leach He lived at Corston House, died at Bath and is buried in Brompton Cemetery, London, on the east side of the main entrance path from the north gate