Drogheda is one of the oldest towns in Ireland. It is located on the Dublin–Belfast corridor on the east coast of Ireland in County Louth but with the south fringes of the town in County Meath, 49 km or 30 miles north of Dublin. Drogheda has a population of 41,000 inhabitants, making it the eleventh largest settlement by population in all of Ireland, it is the last bridging point on the River Boyne. The UNESCO World Heritage Site of Newgrange is located 8 km west of the city. Drogheda was founded as two separately administered towns in two different territories: Drogheda-in-Meath and Drogheda-in-Oriel; the division came from the twelfth-century boundary between two Irish kingdoms, colonised by different Norman interests, just as the River Boyne continues to divide the town between the dioceses of Armagh and Meath. In 1412 these two towns were united, Drogheda became a'County Corporate', styled as'the County of the Town of Drogheda'. Drogheda continued as a County Borough until the setting up of County Councils through the enactment of the Local Government Act 1898, which saw all of Drogheda, including a large area south of the Boyne, become part of an extended County Louth.

With the passing of the County of Louth and Borough of Drogheda Provisional Order, 1976, County Louth again grew larger at the expense of County Meath. The boundary was further altered in 1994 by the Local Government Regulations 1994; the 2007–2013 Meath County Development Plan recognises the Meath environs of Drogheda as a primary growth centre on a par with Navan. The city was selected to host Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann in 2018; the town is situated in an area which contains a number of archaeological monuments dating from the Neolithic period onwards, of which the large passage tombs of Newgrange and Dowth are the best known. The density of archaeological sites of the prehistoric and early Christian periods uncovered in the course of ongoing developments, have shown that the hinterland of Drogheda has been a settled landscape for millennia. Despite local tradition linking Millmount to Amergin Glúingel, in his 1978 study of the history and archaeology of the town John Bradley stated that "neither the documentary nor the archaeological evidence indicates that there was any settlement at the town prior to the coming of the Normans".

The results of a number of large-scale excavations carried out within the area of the medieval town appear to confirm this statement. One of the earliest structures in the town is the motte-and-bailey castle, now known as Millmount Fort, which overlooks the town from a bluff on the south bank of the Boyne and, erected by the Norman Lord of Meath, Hugh de Lacy sometime before 1186; the wall on the east side of Rosemary Lane, a back-lane which runs from St. Laurence Street towards the Augustinian Church is the oldest stone structure in Drogheda, it was completed in 1234 as the west wall of the first castle guarding access to the northern crossing point of the Boyne. The earliest known town charter is that granted to Drogheda-in-Meath by Walter de Lacy in 1194. In the 1600s, the name of the town was spelled "Tredagh" in keeping with the common pronunciation, as documented by Gerard Boate in his work Irelands' Natural History. In c. 1655 it was spelled "Droghedagh" on a map by William Farriland.

Drogheda was an important walled town in the English Pale in the medieval period. It hosted meetings of the Irish Parliament at that time. According to R. J. Mitchell in John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, in a spill-over from the War of the Roses the Earl of Desmond and his two youngest sons were executed there on Valentine's Day 1468 on orders of the Earl of Worcester, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, it came to light, that Elizabeth Woodville, the queen consort, was implicated in the orders given. The parliament was moved to the town in 1494 and passed Poynings' Law, the most significant legislation in Irish history, a year later; this subordinated the Irish Parliament's legislative powers to the King and his English Council. The town was besieged twice during the Irish Confederate Wars. On the second occasion an assault was made on the town from the south, the tall walls breached, the town was taken by Oliver Cromwell on 11 September 1649, as part of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland and it was the site of a massacre of the Royalist defenders.

In his own words after the siege of Drogheda, "When they submitted, their officers were knocked on the head, every tenth man of the soldiers killed and the rest shipped to Barbados."The Earldom of Drogheda was created in the Peerage of Ireland in 1661. The Battle of the Boyne, 1690, occurred some 6 km west of the town, on the banks of the River Boyne, at Oldbridge. In 1790, Drogheda Harbour Commissioners were established, they remained in place until 1997 when the Drogheda Port Company a commercial enterprise replaced them. In 1825, the Drogheda Steam Packet Company was formed in the town, providing shipping services to Liverpool. In 1837, the population of Drogheda area was 17,365 people. Drogheda's coat of arms features St. Laurence's Gate with three lions, a ship emerging from either side of the barbican; the town's motto Deus praesidium, mercatura decus translates as "God our strength, merchandise our glory". The star and crescent emblem in the crest

The Ministry of National Education, Higher Education and Research, or "Ministry of National Education", as the title has changed no small number of times in the course of the Fifth Republic is the Government of France cabinet member charged with running France's public educational system and with the supervision of agreements and authorisations for private teaching organisations. The Ministry's headquarters is located in the 18th century Hôtel de Rochechouart on the rue de Grenelle in the 7th arrondissement of Paris. Given that National Education is France's largest employer, employs more than half of the French state civil servants, the position is traditionally a strategic one; the current minister is Jean-Michel Blanquer. A governmental position overseeing public education was first created in France in 1802. Following the various regime changes in France in the first decades of the 19th century, the position changed official status and name a number of times before the position of Minister of Public Instruction was created in 1828.

For much of its history, the position was combined with that of Minister of Public Worship, who dealt with issues related to the Roman Catholic Church, except in instances where the Minister of Public Instruction was a Protestant. The position has occasionally been combined with Minister of Sports and Minister of Youth Affairs. In 1932, the office's title was changed to Minister of National Education, although it was changed back in 1940–1941, was renamed Minister of Education during the Presidency of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. In 1975, it created the Comité d'études sur les formations d'ingénieurs which studies the training and job placement of engineers in France. List of Education Ministers of France Education in France France Ministry of National Education – Official website

Silver telluride is a chemical compound, a telluride of silver known as disilver telluride or silver telluride. It forms a monoclinic crystal. In a wider sense, silver telluride can be used to denote AgTe or Ag5Te3. Silver telluride occurs as the mineral hessite, whereas silver telluride is known as empressite. Silver telluride is a semiconductor which can be doped both p-type. Stoichiometric Ag2Te has n-type conductivity. On heating silver is lost from the material. Non-stoichiometric silver telluride has shown extraordinary magnetoresistance. Aliev, F. F.. "Phase Transition of Ag_Enriched Ag2Te". Inorganic Materials. 38: 995. Doi:10.1023/A:1020512918319. Chuprakov, I. S.. H.. "Large positive magnetoresistance in thin films of silver telluride". Applied Physics Letters. 72: 2165. Bibcode:1998ApPhL..72.2165C. doi:10.1063/1.121309. Dalven, Richard. "Fundamental Optical Absorption in β-Silver Telluride". Physical Review Letters. 16: 311. Bibcode:1966PhRvL..16..311D. Doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.16.311. Hessite Empressite Sylvanite Silver selenide Silver sulfide