1.
United Kingdom
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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom or Britain, is a sovereign country in western Europe. Lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland, the United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland, with an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world and the 11th-largest in Europe. It is also the 21st-most populous country, with an estimated 65.1 million inhabitants, together, this makes it the fourth-most densely populated country in the European Union. The United Kingdom is a monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. The monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 6 February 1952, other major urban areas in the United Kingdom include the regions of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. The United Kingdom consists of four countries—England, Scotland, Wales, the last three have devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in their capitals, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, respectively. The relationships among the countries of the UK have changed over time, Wales was annexed by the Kingdom of England under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. A treaty between England and Scotland resulted in 1707 in a unified Kingdom of Great Britain, which merged in 1801 with the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, there are fourteen British Overseas Territories. These are the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, British influence can be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies. The United Kingdom is a country and has the worlds fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP. The UK is considered to have an economy and is categorised as very high in the Human Development Index. It was the worlds first industrialised country and the worlds foremost power during the 19th, the UK remains a great power with considerable economic, cultural, military, scientific and political influence internationally. It is a nuclear weapons state and its military expenditure ranks fourth or fifth in the world. The UK has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946 and it has been a leading member state of the EU and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. However, on 23 June 2016, a referendum on the UKs membership of the EU resulted in a decision to leave. The Acts of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have devolved self-government
2.
Academic library
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It is unknown how many academic libraries there are internationally. An academic and research portal maintained by UNESCO links to 3,785 libraries, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, there are an estimated 3,700 academic libraries in the United States. The support of teaching and learning material for class readings. In the past, the material for class readings, intended to supplement lectures as prescribed by the instructor, has been called reserves, in the period before electronic resources became available, the reserves were supplied as actual books or as photocopies of appropriate journal articles. Academic libraries must determine a focus for development since comprehensive collections are not feasible. Librarians do this by identifying the needs of the faculty and student body, as well as the mission, when there are particular areas of specialization in academic libraries, these are often referred to as niche collections. These collections are often the basis of a special department and may include original papers, artwork. There is a deal of variation among academic libraries based on their size, resources, collections. The Harvard University Library is considered to be the largest academic library in the world and has the third largest collection in the United States, another notable example is the University of the South Pacific which has academic libraries distributed throughout its twelve member countries. The first colleges in the United States were intended to train members of the clergy, the libraries associated with these institutions largely consisted of donated books on the subjects of theology and the classics. In 1766, Yale had approximately 4,000 volumes, second only to Harvard, access to these libraries was restricted to faculty members and a few students, the only staff was a part-time faculty member or the president of the college. The priority of the library was to protect the books, not to allow patrons to use them, in 1849, Yale was open 30 hours a week, the University of Virginia was open nine hours a week, Columbia University four, and Bowdoin College only three. Students instead created literary societies and assessed entrance fees in order to build a collection of usable volumes often in excess of what the university library held. Around the turn of the century, this began to change. The American Library Association was formed in 1876, with members including Melvil Dewey, Libraries re-prioritized in favor of improving access to materials, and found funding increasing as a result of increased demand for said materials. Academic libraries today vary in regard to the extent to which they accommodate those who are not affiliated with their parent universities, some offer reading and borrowing privileges to members of the public on payment of an annual fee, such fees can vary greatly. The privileges so obtained usually do not extend to such services as computer usage, other than to search the catalog, alumni and students of cooperating local universities may be given discounts or other consideration when arranging for borrowing privileges. On the other hand, access to the libraries of universities is absolutely restricted to students, faculty
3.
Durham, England
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Durham is a historic city and the county town of County Durham in North East England. The city lies on the River Wear, to the west of Sunderland, south of Newcastle upon Tyne, founded over the final resting place of St Cuthbert, its Norman cathedral became a centre of pilgrimage in medieval England. The cathedral and adjacent 11th-century castle were designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1986, the castle has been the home of Durham University since 1832. HM Prison Durham is also located close to the city centre, the name Durham comes from the Celtic element dun, signifying a hill fort, and the Old Norse holme, which translates to island. The Lord Bishop of Durham takes a Latin variation of the name in his official signature. The city has been known by a number of names throughout history, the original Nordic Dun Holm was changed to Duresme by the Normans and was known in Latin as Dunelm. The modern form Durham came into use later in the citys history, archeological evidence suggests a history of settlement in the area since roughly 2000 BC. Local legend states that the city was founded in A. D.995 by divine intervention, Aldhun, Bishop of Chester-le-Street and leader of the order, decreed a holy fast of three days, accompanied by prayers to the saint. During the fast, Saint Cuthbert appeared to a monk named Eadmer. After Eadmers revelation, Aldhun found that he was able to move the bier, the legend of the Dun Cow, which is first documented in The Rites of Durham, an anonymous account about the Durham Cathedral, published in 1593, builds on Symeons account. According to this legend, by later that day, the monks came across a milkmaid at Mount Joy. She stated that she was seeking her lost dun cow, which she had last seen at Dun Holm, the monks, realising that this was a sign from the saint, followed her. They settled at a wooded hill-island – a high wooded rock surrounded on three sides by the River Wear, there they erected a shelter for the relics, on the spot where the Durham Cathedral would later stand. Symeon states that a modest wooden building erected there shortly later was the first building in the city, Bishop Aldhun subsequently had a stone church built, which was dedicated in September 998. It no longer remains, having been supplanted by the Norman structure, during the medieval period the city gained spiritual prominence as the final resting place of Saint Cuthbert and Saint Bede the Venerable. The shrine of Saint Cuthbert, situated behind the High Altar of Durham Cathedral, was the most important religious site in England until the martyrdom of St Thomas Becket at Canterbury in 1170, Saint Cuthbert became famous for two reasons. Firstly, the healing powers he had displayed in life continued after his death, with many stories of those visiting the saints shrine being cured of all manner of diseases. This led to him being known as the worker of England
4.
England
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England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west, the Irish Sea lies northwest of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east, the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain in its centre and south, and includes over 100 smaller islands such as the Isles of Scilly, and the Isle of Wight. England became a state in the 10th century, and since the Age of Discovery. The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the worlds first industrialised nation, Englands terrain mostly comprises low hills and plains, especially in central and southern England. However, there are uplands in the north and in the southwest, the capital is London, which is the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland through another Act of Union to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain, the name England is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means land of the Angles. The Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages, the Angles came from the Angeln peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea. The earliest recorded use of the term, as Engla londe, is in the ninth century translation into Old English of Bedes Ecclesiastical History of the English People. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its spelling was first used in 1538. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, the etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars, it has been suggested that it derives from the shape of the Angeln peninsula, an angular shape. An alternative name for England is Albion, the name Albion originally referred to the entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the Aristotelian Corpus, specifically the 4th century BC De Mundo, in it are two very large islands called Britannia, these are Albion and Ierne. But modern scholarly consensus ascribes De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, the word Albion or insula Albionum has two possible origins. Albion is now applied to England in a poetic capacity. Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England, Lloegr, the earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximately 780,000 years ago. The oldest proto-human bones discovered in England date from 500,000 years ago, Modern humans are known to have inhabited the area during the Upper Paleolithic period, though permanent settlements were only established within the last 6,000 years
5.
Newspaper
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A newspaper is a serial publication containing news about current events, other informative articles about politics, sports, arts, and so on, and advertising. A newspaper is usually, but not exclusively, printed on relatively inexpensive, the journalism organizations that publish newspapers are themselves often metonymically called newspapers. As of 2017, most newspapers are now published online as well as in print, the online versions are called online newspapers or news websites. Newspapers are typically published daily or weekly, News magazines are also weekly, but they have a magazine format. General-interest newspapers typically publish news articles and feature articles on national and international news as well as local news, typically the paper is divided into sections for each of those major groupings. Papers also include articles which have no byline, these articles are written by staff writers, a wide variety of material has been published in newspapers. As of 2017, newspapers may also provide information about new movies, most newspapers are businesses, and they pay their expenses with a mixture of subscription revenue, newsstand sales, and advertising revenue. Some newspapers are government-run or at least government-funded, their reliance on advertising revenue, the editorial independence of a newspaper is thus always subject to the interests of someone, whether owners, advertisers, or a government. Some newspapers with high editorial independence, high quality. This is a way to avoid duplicating the expense of reporting from around the world, circa 2005, there were approximately 6,580 daily newspaper titles in the world selling 395 million print copies a day. Worldwide annual revenue approached $100 billion in 2005-7, then plunged during the financial crisis of 2008-9. Revenue in 2016 fell to only $53 billion, hurting every major publisher as their efforts to gain online income fell far short of the goal. Besides remodeling advertising, the internet has also challenged the business models of the era by crowdsourcing both publishing in general and, more specifically, journalism. In addition, the rise of news aggregators, which bundle linked articles from online newspapers. Increasing paywalling of online newspapers may be counteracting those effects, the oldest newspaper still published is the Gazzetta di Mantova, which was established in Mantua in 1664. While online newspapers have increased access to newspapers by people with Internet access, literacy is also a factor which prevents people who cannot read from being able to benefit from reading newspapers. Periodicity, They are published at intervals, typically daily or weekly. This ensures that newspapers can provide information on newly-emerging news stories or events, currency, Its information is as up to date as its publication schedule allows
6.
Magazine
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A magazine is a publication, usually a periodical publication, which is printed or electronically published. Magazines are generally published on a schedule and contain a variety of content. They are generally financed by advertising, by a price, by prepaid subscriptions. At its root, the magazine refers to a collection or storage location. In the case of written publication, it is a collection of written articles and this explains why magazine publications share the word root with gunpowder magazines, artillery magazines, firearms magazines, and, in French, retail stores such as department stores. By definition, a magazine paginates with each issue starting at three, with the standard sizing being 8 3/8 ×10 7/8 inches. However, in the sense a journal has continuous pagination throughout a volume. Some professional or trade publications are also peer-reviewed, an example being the Journal of Accountancy, academic or professional publications that are not peer-reviewed are generally professional magazines. That a publication calls itself a journal does not make it a journal in the technical sense, magazines can be distributed through the mail, through sales by newsstands, bookstores, or other vendors, or through free distribution at selected pick-up locations. The subscription business models for distribution fall into three main categories. In this model, the magazine is sold to readers for a price, either on a basis or by subscription. Paid circulation allows for defined readership statistics and this means that there is no cover price and issues are given away, for example in street dispensers, airline, or included with other products or publications. Because this model involves giving issues away to unspecific populations, the statistics only entail the number of issues distributed and this is the model used by many trade magazines distributed only to qualifying readers, often for free and determined by some form of survey. This allows a level of certainty that advertisements will be received by the advertisers target audience. This latter model was used before the rise of the World Wide Web and is still employed by some titles. For example, in the United Kingdom, a number of computer-industry magazines use this model, including Computer Weekly and Computing, for the global media industry, an example would be VideoAge International. The earliest example of magazines was Erbauliche Monaths Unterredungen, a literary and philosophy magazine, the Gentlemans Magazine, first published in 1731, in London was the first general-interest magazine. Edward Cave, who edited The Gentlemans Magazine under the pen name Sylvanus Urban, was the first to use the term magazine, founded by Herbert Ingram in 1842, The Illustrated London News was the first illustrated magazine
7.
Sound recording and reproduction
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Sound recording and reproduction is an electrical, mechanical, electronic, or digital inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of sound recording technology are analog recording and digital recording, prior to the development of analog recording, there were mechanical systems for reproducing instrumental music, such as wind-up music boxes and later, in the late 19th century, player pianos. Analog sound reproduction is the process, with a bigger loudspeaker diaphragm causing changes to atmospheric pressure to form acoustic sound waves. Digital recording and reproduction converts the sound signal picked up by the microphone to a digital form by the process of digitization. This lets the audio data be stored and transmitted by a variety of media. Whereas successive copies of an analog recording tend to degrade in quality, as noise is added. A digital audio signal must be reconverted to analog form during playback before it is amplified and connected to a loudspeaker to produce sound, long before sound was first recorded on cylinders or records, music was recorded—first by written music notation, then also by mechanical devices. Fowler, this. cylinder with raised pins on the surface remained the device to produce and reproduce music mechanically until the second half of the nineteenth century. The Banu Musa brothers also invented an automatic flute player, which appears to have been the first programmable machine, according to Fowler, the automata were a robot band that performed. more than fifty facial and body actions during each musical selection. In the 14th century, Flanders introduced a mechanical bell-ringer controlled by a rotating cylinder, similar designs appeared in barrel organs, musical clocks, barrel pianos, and musical boxes. A music box is a musical instrument that produces sounds by the use of a set of pins placed on a revolving cylinder or disc so as to pluck the tuned teeth of a steel comb. They were developed from musical snuff boxes of the 18th century, some of the more complex boxes also have a tiny drum and/or bells, in addition to the metal comb. The fairground organ, developed in 1892, used a system of accordion-folded punched cardboard books, the player piano, first demonstrated in 1876, used a punched paper scroll that could store an long piece of music. The most sophisticated of the rolls were hand-played, meaning that the roll represented the actual performance of an individual. This technology to record a live performance onto a piano roll was not developed until 1904, piano rolls were in continuous mass production from 1896 to 2008. A1908 U. S. Supreme Court copyright case noted that, in 1902 alone, the use of piano rolls began to decline in the 1920s although one type is still being made today. The first device that could record actual sounds as they passed through the air was the phonautograph, the earliest known recordings of the human voice are phonautograph recordings, called phonautograms, made in 1857. They consist of sheets of paper with sound-wave-modulated white lines created by a stylus that cut through a coating of soot as the paper was passed under it
8.
Map
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A map is a symbolic depiction emphasizing relationships between elements of some space, such as objects, regions, or themes. Many maps are static, fixed to paper or some other durable medium, although the earliest maps known are of the heavens, geographic maps of territory have a very long tradition and exist from ancient times. The word map comes from the medieval Latin Mappa mundi, wherein mappa meant napkin or cloth, thus, map became the shortened term referring to a two-dimensional representation of the surface of the world. Cartography or map-making is the study and practice of crafting representations of the Earth upon a flat surface, in addition to location information maps may also be used to portray contour lines indicating constant values of elevation, temperature, rainfall, etc. The orientation of a map is the relationship between the directions on the map and the compass directions in reality. The word orient is derived from Latin oriens, meaning East, in the Middle Ages many maps, including the T and O maps, were drawn with East at the top. Today, the most common – but far from universal – cartographic convention is that North is at the top of a map, several kinds of maps are often traditionally not oriented with North at the top, Maps from non-Western traditions are oriented a variety of ways. Old maps of Edo show the Japanese imperial palace as the top, labels on the map are oriented in such a way that you cannot read them properly unless you put the imperial palace above your head. Medieval European T and O maps such as the Hereford Mappa Mundi were centred on Jerusalem with East at the top, indeed, prior to the reintroduction of Ptolemys Geography to Europe around 1400, there was no single convention in the West. Portolan charts, for example, are oriented to the shores they describe, Maps of cities bordering a sea are often conventionally oriented with the sea at the top. Route and channel maps have traditionally been oriented to the road or waterway they describe, polar maps of the Arctic or Antarctic regions are conventionally centred on the pole, the direction North would be towards or away from the centre of the map, respectively. Typical maps of the Arctic have 0° meridian towards the bottom of the page, reversed maps, also known as Upside-Down maps or South-Up maps, reverse the North is up convention and have south at the top. Buckminster Fullers Dymaxion maps are based on a projection of the Earths sphere onto an icosahedron, the resulting triangular pieces may be arranged in any order or orientation. Modern digital GIS maps such as ArcMap typically project north at the top of the map, compass decimal degrees can be converted to math degrees by subtracting them from 450, if the answer is greater than 360, subtract 360. The scale statement may be taken as exact when the region mapped is small enough for the curvature of the Earth to be neglected, over larger regions where the curvature cannot be ignored we must use map projections from the curved surface of the Earth to the plane. Thus for map projections we must introduce the concept of point scale, which is a function of position, although the scale statement is nominal it is usually accurate enough for all but the most precise of measurements. Large scale maps, say 1,10,000, cover relatively small regions in detail and small scale maps, say 1,10,000,000, cover large regions such as nations, continents. The large/small terminology arose from the practice of writing scales as numerical fractions, there is no exact dividing line between large and small but 1/100,000 might well be considered as a medium scale
9.
Drawing
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Drawing is a form of visual art in which a person uses various drawing instruments to mark paper or another two-dimensional medium. A drawing instrument releases small amount of material onto a surface, the most common support for drawing is paper, although other materials, such as cardboard, plastic, leather, canvas, and board, may be used. Temporary drawings may be made on a blackboard or whiteboard or indeed almost anything, the medium has been a popular and fundamental means of public expression throughout human history. It is one of the simplest and most efficient means of communicating visual ideas, the wide availability of drawing instruments makes drawing one of the most common artistic activities. In addition to its artistic forms, drawing is frequently used in commercial illustration, animation, architecture, engineering. A quick, freehand drawing, usually not intended as a work, is sometimes called a sketch. An artist who practices or works in technical drawing may be called a drafter, Drawing is one of the major forms of expression within the visual arts. It is generally concerned with the marking of lines and areas of tone onto paper/other material, traditional drawings were monochrome, or at least had little colour, while modern colored-pencil drawings may approach or cross a boundary between drawing and painting. In Western terminology, drawing is distinct from painting, even though similar media often are employed in both tasks, dry media, normally associated with drawing, such as chalk, may be used in pastel paintings. Drawing may be done with a medium, applied with brushes or pens. Drawing is often exploratory, with emphasis on observation, problem-solving. Drawing is also used in preparation for a painting, further obfuscating their distinction. Drawings created for these purposes are called studies, there are several categories of drawing, including figure drawing, cartooning, doodling, free hand and shading. There are also many drawing methods, such as drawing, stippling, shading, the surrealist method of entopic graphomania. A quick, unrefined drawing may be called a sketch, in fields outside art, technical drawings or plans of buildings, machinery, circuitry and other things are often called drawings even when they have been transferred to another medium by printing. Drawing as a Form of Communication Drawing is one of the oldest forms of human expression and these drawings, known as pictograms, depicted objects and abstract concepts. The sketches and paintings produced in prehistoric times were eventually stylised and simplified, Drawing in the Arts Drawing is used to express ones creativity, and therefore has been prominent in the world of art. Throughout much of history, drawing was regarded as the foundation for artistic practise, initially, artists used and reused wooden tablets for the production of their drawings
10.
Manuscript
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A manuscript is any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to being mechanically printed or reproduced in some automated way. More recently, it is understood to be a written, typed, or word-processed copy of a work. Before the arrival of printing, all documents and books were manuscripts, manuscripts are not defined by their contents, which may combine writing with mathematical calculations, maps, explanatory figures or illustrations. Manuscripts may be in form, scrolls or in codex format. Illuminated manuscripts are enriched with pictures, border decorations, elaborately embossed initial letters or full-page illustrations. The traditional abbreviations are MS for manuscript and MSS for manuscripts, while the forms MS. ms or ms. for singular, and MSS. mss or mss. for plural are also accepted. The second s is not simply the plural, by an old convention, it doubles the last letter of the abbreviation to express the plural, just as pp. means pages. Before the invention of printing in China or by moveable type in a printing press in Europe. Historically, manuscripts were produced in form of scrolls or books, manuscripts were produced on vellum and other parchment, on papyrus, and on paper. In Russia birch bark documents as old as from the 11th century have survived, in India, the palm leaf manuscript, with a distinctive long rectangular shape, was used from ancient times until the 19th century. Paper spread from China via the Islamic world to Europe by the 14th century, when Greek or Latin works were published, numerous professional copies were made simultaneously by scribes in a scriptorium, each making a single copy from an original that was declaimed aloud. Manuscripts in Tocharian languages, written on leaves, survived in desert burials in the Tarim Basin of Central Asia. Volcanic ash preserved some of the Roman library of the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, ironically, the manuscripts that were being most carefully preserved in the libraries of antiquity are virtually all lost. Originally, all books were in manuscript form, in China, and later other parts of East Asia, woodblock printing was used for books from about the 7th century. The earliest dated example is the Diamond Sutra of 868, in the Islamic world and the West, all books were in manuscript until the introduction of movable type printing in about 1450. Manuscript copying of books continued for a least a century, as printing remained expensive, private or government documents remained hand-written until the invention of the typewriter in the late 19th century. In the Philippines, for example, as early as 900AD, specimen documents were not inscribed by stylus and this type of document was rare compared to the usual leaves and bamboo staves that were inscribed. However, neither the leaves nor paper were as durable as the document in the hot
11.
Bill Bryson
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William McGuire Bill Bryson OBE HonFRS is a best-selling Anglo-American author of books on travel, the English language, science, and other non-fiction topics. Born in the United States, he has been a resident of Britain for most of his adult life and he served as the chancellor of Durham University from 2005 to 2011. Bryson came to prominence in the United Kingdom with the publication of Notes from a Small Island, an exploration of Britain and he received widespread recognition again with the publication of A Short History of Nearly Everything, a book widely acclaimed for its accessible communication of science. Bryson was born in Des Moines, Iowa, the son of Agnes Mary, I come from Des Moines, Iowa. — Bill Bryson, The Lost Continent His mother was of Irish descent and he had an older brother, Michael, and a sister, Mary Jane Elizabeth. In 2006 Bryson published The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, Bryson attended Drake University for two years before dropping out in 1972, deciding instead to backpack around Europe for four months. He returned to Europe the following year with a high-school friend, Bryson wrote about some of his experiences from this trip in his book Neither Here Nor There, Travels in Europe. Bryson first visited Britain in 1973 during his tour of Europe and decided to stay after landing a job working in a psychiatric hospital—the now-defunct Holloway Sanatorium in Virginia Water and he met a nurse there named Cynthia Billen, whom he married. They moved to Brysons hometown of Des Moines, Iowa in 1975 so that Bryson could complete his degree at Drake University. In 1977 they settled in Britain and he left journalism in 1987, three years after the birth of his third child. Bryson started writing independently and in 1990 their fourth child, Samuel, was born and he has moved around the UK and lived in Virginia Water, Purewell, Burton, Kirkby Malham, and the Old Rectory in Wramplingham, Norfolk. He currently lives in rural Hampshire and maintains a small flat in South Kensington, London, from 1995-2003 he lived in Hanover, New Hampshire, USA. Although able to apply for British citizenship, Bryson said in 2010 that he had declined a citizenship test, declaring himself too cowardly to take it. However, in 2014, he said that he was preparing to take it and in the prologue to his 2015 book The Road to Little Dribbling, More Notes From a Small Island he describes doing so and his citizenship award was in Winchester and he now holds dual nationality. While living in the US in the 1990s Bryson wrote a column for a British newspaper for several years and these columns were selected and adapted to become his book Im a Stranger Here Myself, alternatively titled Notes from a Big Country in Britain, Canada, and Australia. During his time in the United States, Bryson decided to walk the Appalachian Trail with his friend Stephen Katz, in the 2015 film adaptation of A Walk in the Woods, Bryson is portrayed by Academy Award winner Robert Redford and Katz is portrayed by Nick Nolte. In 2003, in conjunction with World Book Day, British voters chose Brysons book Notes from a Small Island as that which best sums up British identity, in the same year, he was appointed a Commissioner for English Heritage. In November 2006, Bryson interviewed the then British prime minister, Tony Blair, on the state of science and education
12.
Middle Ages
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In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or Medieval Period lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance, the Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history, classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is subdivided into the Early, High. Population decline, counterurbanisation, invasion, and movement of peoples, the large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the seventh century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Byzantine Empire—came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with classical antiquity was not complete. The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire survived in the east and remained a major power, the empires law code, the Corpus Juris Civilis or Code of Justinian, was rediscovered in Northern Italy in 1070 and became widely admired later in the Middle Ages. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions, monasteries were founded as campaigns to Christianise pagan Europe continued. The Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, briefly established the Carolingian Empire during the later 8th, the Crusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralised nation states, reducing crime and violence, intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, and by the founding of universities. Controversy, heresy, and the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the conflict, civil strife. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages, the Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analysing European history, classical civilisation, or Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Period. Medieval writers divided history into periods such as the Six Ages or the Four Empires, when referring to their own times, they spoke of them as being modern. In the 1330s, the humanist and poet Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as antiqua, leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his History of the Florentine People. Bruni and later argued that Italy had recovered since Petrarchs time. The Middle Ages first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas or middle season, in early usage, there were many variants, including medium aevum, or middle age, first recorded in 1604, and media saecula, or middle ages, first recorded in 1625. The alternative term medieval derives from medium aevum, tripartite periodisation became standard after the German 17th-century historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods, Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. The most commonly given starting point for the Middle Ages is 476, for Europe as a whole,1500 is often considered to be the end of the Middle Ages, but there is no universally agreed upon end date. English historians often use the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period
