1.
Istanbul
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Istanbul, historically known as Constantinople and Byzantium, is the most populous city in Turkey and the countrys economic, cultural, and historic center. Istanbul is a city in Eurasia, straddling the Bosphorus strait between the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea. Its commercial and historical center lies on the European side and about a third of its population lives on the Asian side, the city is the administrative center of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, both hosting a population of around 14.7 million residents. Istanbul is one of the worlds most populous cities and ranks as the worlds 7th-largest city proper, founded under the name of Byzantion on the Sarayburnu promontory around 660 BCE, the city developed to become one of the most significant in history. After its reestablishment as Constantinople in 330 CE, it served as a capital for almost 16 centuries, during the Roman and Byzantine, the Latin. Overlooked for the new capital Ankara during the period, the city has since regained much of its prominence. The population of the city has increased tenfold since the 1950s, as migrants from across Anatolia have moved in, arts, music, film, and cultural festivals were established at the end of the 20th century and continue to be hosted by the city today. Infrastructure improvements have produced a complex transportation network, considered a global city, Istanbul has one of the fastest-growing metropolitan economies in the world. It hosts the headquarters of many Turkish companies and media outlets and accounts for more than a quarter of the gross domestic product. Hoping to capitalize on its revitalization and rapid expansion, Istanbul has bid for the Summer Olympics five times in twenty years, the first known name of the city is Byzantium, the name given to it at its foundation by Megarean colonists around 660 BCE. The name is thought to be derived from a personal name, ancient Greek tradition refers to a legendary king of that name as the leader of the Greek colonists. Modern scholars have hypothesized that the name of Byzas was of local Thracian or Illyrian origin. He also attempted to promote the name Nova Roma and its Greek version Νέα Ῥώμη Nea Romē, the use of Constantinople to refer to the city during the Ottoman period is now considered politically incorrect, even if not historically inaccurate, by Turks. By the 19th century, the city had acquired other names used by foreigners or Turks. Europeans used Constantinople to refer to the whole of the city, pera was used to describe the area between the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus, but Turks also used the name Beyoğlu. The name İstanbul is commonly held to derive from the Medieval Greek phrase εἰς τὴν Πόλιν and this reflected its status as the only major city in the vicinity. The importance of Constantinople in the Ottoman world was reflected by its Ottoman name Der Saadet meaning the gate to Prosperity in Ottoman. An alternative view is that the name evolved directly from the name Constantinople, with the first, a Turkish folk etymology traces the name to Islam bol plenty of Islam because the city was called Islambol or Islambul as the capital of the Islamic Ottoman Empire
2.
Paris
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Paris is the capital and most populous city of France. It has an area of 105 square kilometres and a population of 2,229,621 in 2013 within its administrative limits, the agglomeration has grown well beyond the citys administrative limits. By the 17th century, Paris was one of Europes major centres of finance, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts, and it retains that position still today. The aire urbaine de Paris, a measure of area, spans most of the Île-de-France region and has a population of 12,405,426. It is therefore the second largest metropolitan area in the European Union after London, the Metropole of Grand Paris was created in 2016, combining the commune and its nearest suburbs into a single area for economic and environmental co-operation. Grand Paris covers 814 square kilometres and has a population of 7 million persons, the Paris Region had a GDP of €624 billion in 2012, accounting for 30.0 percent of the GDP of France and ranking it as one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. The city is also a rail, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports, Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly. Opened in 1900, the subway system, the Paris Métro. It is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro, notably, Paris Gare du Nord is the busiest railway station in the world outside of Japan, with 262 millions passengers in 2015. In 2015, Paris received 22.2 million visitors, making it one of the top tourist destinations. The association football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris, the 80, 000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros, Paris hosted the 1900 and 1924 Summer Olympics and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The name Paris is derived from its inhabitants, the Celtic Parisii tribe. Thus, though written the same, the name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. In the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, since the late 19th century, Paris has also been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in English as Parisians and in French as Parisiens and they are also pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the areas major north-south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité, this place of land and water trade routes gradually became a town
3.
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
4.
William H. Seward
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William Henry Seward was United States Secretary of State from 1861 to 1869, and earlier served as Governor of New York and United States Senator. Seward was born in southeastern New York, where his father was a farmer and he was educated as a lawyer and moved to the Central New York town of Auburn. Seward was elected to the New York State Senate in 1830 as an Anti-Mason, four years later, he became the gubernatorial nominee of the Whig Party. Though he was not successful in that race, Seward was elected governor in 1838, during this period, he signed several laws that advanced the rights and opportunities for black residents, as well as guaranteeing fugitive slaves jury trials in the state. The legislation protected abolitionists, and he used his position to intervene in cases of freed black people who were enslaved in the South, after several years of practicing law in Auburn, he was elected by the state legislature to the U. S. Senate in 1849. Sewards strong stances and provocative words against slavery brought him hatred in the South and he was re-elected to the Senate in 1855, and soon joined the nascent Republican Party, becoming one of its leading figures. As the 1860 presidential election approached, he was regarded as the candidate for the Republican nomination. Although devastated by his loss, he campaigned for Lincoln, who was elected and appointed him Secretary of State, Seward did his best to stop the southern states from seceding, once that failed, he devoted himself wholeheartedly to the Union cause. His firm stance against foreign intervention in the Civil War helped deter Britain and France from entering the conflict and he was one of the targets of the 1865 assassination plot that killed Lincoln, and was seriously wounded by conspirator Lewis Powell. Seward remained loyally at his post through the presidency of Andrew Johnson, during which he negotiated the Alaska purchase in 1867 and his contemporary Carl Schurz described Seward as one of those spirits who sometimes will go ahead of public opinion instead of tamely following its footprints. Seward was born in on May 16,1801 in the community of Florida, New York. He was the son of Samuel Sweezy Seward and his wife Mary Seward. Samuel Seward was a landowner and slaveholder in New York State. Florida was located some 60 miles north of New York City, west of the Hudson River, Young Seward attended school there, and also in the nearby county seat of Goshen. He was a student who enjoyed his studies. In later years, one of the family slaves would relate that instead of running away from school to go home. At the age of 15, Henry—he was known by his name as a boy—was sent to Union College in Schenectady. Admitted to the class, Seward was an outstanding student and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa
5.
Charles Sumner
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Charles Sumner was an American politician and senator from Massachusetts. During Reconstruction, he fought to minimize the power of the ex-Confederates, in the speech, Sumner characterized the attackers cousin, South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler, a Democrat, as a pimp for slavery. The episode played a role in the coming of the Civil War. During the war Sumner was a leader of the Radical Republican faction that criticized President Abraham Lincoln for being too moderate on the South, Sumners expertise and energy made him a powerful chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Sumner, teaming with House leader Thaddeus Stevens, battled Andrew Johnsons reconstruction plans, although Sumner forcefully advocated the annexation of Alaska in the Senate, he was against the annexation of the Dominican Republic, then known by the name of its capital, Santo Domingo. After leading Senators to defeat President Ulysses S. Grants Santo Domingo Treaty in 1870, Sumner broke with Grant, and denounced him in such terms that reconciliation was impossible. In 1871, President Grant and his Secretary of State Hamilton Fish retaliated, through Grants supporters in the Senate, Sumner had become convinced that Grant was a corrupt despot and that the success of Reconstruction policies called for new national leadership. Sumner bitterly opposed Grants reelection by supporting the Liberal Republican candidate Horace Greeley in 1872, less than two years later, he died in office. Sumner was born on Irving Street in Boston on January 6,1811 and his father had been born in poverty and his mother shared a similar background and worked as a seamstress prior to her marriage. Sumners parents were described as formal and undemonstrative. In 1825 Charles P. Sumner became Sheriff of Suffolk County, the family attended Trinity Church, but after 1825, the family occupied a pew in Kings Chapel. Sumners father hated slavery and told Sumner that freeing the slaves would do us no good unless they were treated equally by society, Sumner was a close associate of William Ellery Channing, an influential Unitarian minister in Boston. Channing believed that human beings had a potential to improve themselves. Expanding on this argument, Sumner concluded that environment had an important, by creating a society where knowledge, virtue and religion took precedence, the most forlorn shall grow into forms of unimagined strength and beauty. Moral law, he believed, was as important for governments as it was for individuals, while Sumner often viewed contemporary society critically, his faith in reform was unshakable. When accused of utopianism, he replied The Utopias of one age have been the realities of the next, the increased income Charles P. Sumner enjoyed after becoming Sheriff enabled him to afford higher education for his children. Charles Sumner attended the Boston Latin School, where he counted Robert Charles Winthrop, James Freeman Clarke, Samuel Francis Smith, and Wendell Phillips, among his closest friends. He graduated in 1830 from Harvard College, where he lived in Hollis Hall, at Harvard, he was a member of the Porcellian Club
6.
Alaska
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Alaska is a U. S. state located in the northwest extremity of North America. To the north are the Chukchi and Beaufort seas–the southern parts of the Arctic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean lies to the south and southwest. Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area, the 3rd least populous, approximately half of Alaskas residents live within the Anchorage metropolitan area. Alaskas economy is dominated by the fishing, natural gas, military bases and tourism are also a significant part of the economy. The United States purchased Alaska from the Russian Empire on March 30,1867, the area went through several administrative changes before becoming organized as a territory on May 11,1912. It was admitted as the 49th state of the U. S. on January 3,1959, the name Alaska was introduced in the Russian colonial period when it was used to refer to the peninsula. It was derived from an Aleut, or Unangam idiom, which refers to the mainland of Alaska. Literally, it means object to which the action of the sea is directed, Alaska is the northernmost and westernmost state in the United States and has the most easterly longitude in the United States because the Aleutian Islands extend into the Eastern Hemisphere. Alaska is the only non-contiguous U. S. state on continental North America and it is technically part of the continental U. S. but is sometimes not included in colloquial use, Alaska is not part of the contiguous U. S. often called the Lower 48. The capital city, Juneau, is situated on the mainland of the North American continent but is not connected by road to the rest of the North American highway system. Alaskas territorial waters touch Russias territorial waters in the Bering Strait, as the Russian Big Diomede Island, Alaska has a longer coastline than all the other U. S. states combined. Alaska is the largest state in the United States by total area at 663,268 square miles, over twice the size of Texas, Alaska is larger than all but 18 sovereign countries. Counting territorial waters, Alaska is larger than the area of the next three largest states, Texas, California, and Montana. It is also larger than the area of the 22 smallest U. S. states. Also referred to as the Panhandle or Inside Passage, this is the region of Alaska closest to the rest of the United States, as such, this was where most of the initial non-indigenous settlement occurred in the years following the Alaska Purchase. The region is dominated by the Alexander Archipelago as well as the Tongass National Forest and it contains the state capital Juneau, the former capital Sitka, and Ketchikan, at one time Alaskas largest city. The Alaska Marine Highway provides a vital transportation link throughout the area. The Interior is the largest region of Alaska, much of it is uninhabited wilderness, Fairbanks is the only large city in the region
7.
Russian America
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Russian America was the name of the Russian colonial possessions in North America from 1733 to 1867. Settlements spanned parts of what are now the US states of California, Alaska, many of its possessions were abandoned in the 19th century. In 1867 Russia sold its last remaining possessions to the United States for $7.2 million, the earliest written accounts indicate that the first Europeans to reach Alaska came from Russia. In 1648 Semyon Dezhnev sailed from the mouth of the Kolyma River through the Arctic Ocean, one legend holds that some of his boats were carried off course and reached Alaska. However, no evidence of settlement survives, dezhnevs discovery was never forwarded to the central government, leaving open the question of whether or not Siberia was connected to North America. In 1725, Tsar Peter the Great called for another expedition, as a part of the 1733-1743 second Kamchatka expedition, the Sv. Petr under the Dane Vitus Bering and the Sv, Pavel under the Russian Alexei Chirikov set sail from the Kamchatkan port of Petropavlovsk in June 1741. They were soon separated, but each continued sailing east, on July 15, Chirikov sighted land, probably the west side of Prince of Wales Island in southeast Alaska. He sent a group of men ashore in a longboat, making them the first Europeans to land on the northwestern coast of North America, on roughly July 16, Bering and the crew of Sv. Petr sighted Mount Saint Elias on the Alaskan mainland, they turned westward toward Russia soon afterward, Pavel headed back to Russia in October with news of the land they had found. In November Berings ship was wrecked on Bering Island, there Bering fell ill and died, and high winds dashed the Sv. After the stranded crew wintered on the island, the built an boat from the wreckage. Berings crew reached the shore of Kamchatka in 1742, carrying word of the expedition, the high quality of the sea-otter pelts they brought sparked Russian settlement in Alaska. From 1743 small associations of fur traders began to sail from the shores of the Russian Pacific coast to the Aleutian islands, as the runs from Asiatic Russia to America became longer expeditions, the crews established hunting and trading posts. By the late 1790s some of these had become permanent settlements, approximately half of the fur traders were Russians from various European parts of the Russian Empire or from Siberia. The others were indigenous people from Siberia or Siberians with mixed indigenous, rather than hunting the marine life, the Russians forced the Aleuts to do the work for them. As word spread of the riches in furs to be had, competition among Russian companies increased, catherine the Great, who became Empress in 1763, proclaimed goodwill toward the Aleuts and urged her subjects to treat them fairly. On some islands and parts of the Alaska Peninsula, groups of traders had been capable of relatively peaceful coexistence with the local inhabitants, other groups could not manage the tensions and perpetrated exactions
8.
War
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War is a state of armed conflict between societies. It is generally characterized by extreme aggression, destruction, and mortality, an absence of war is usually called peace. Warfare refers to the activities and characteristics of types of war. Total war is warfare that is not restricted to legitimate military targets. While some scholars see war as a universal and ancestral aspect of human nature, as concerns a belligerents losses in proportion to its prewar population, the most destructive war in modern history may have been the Paraguayan War. In 2013 war resulted in 31,000 deaths, down from 72,000 deaths in 1990, in 2003, Richard Smalley identified war as the sixth biggest problem facing humanity for the next fifty years. Another byproduct of some wars is the prevalence of propaganda by some or all parties in the conflict, the word is related to the Old Saxon werran, Old High German werran, and the German verwirren, meaning “to confuse”, “to perplex”, and “to bring into confusion”. In German, the equivalent is Krieg, the Spanish, Portuguese, the scholarly study of war is sometimes called polemology, from the Greek polemos, meaning war, and -logy, meaning the study of. Studies of war by military theorists throughout military history have sought to identify the philosophy of war, asymmetric warfare is a conflict between two populations of drastically different levels of military capability or size. Biological warfare, or germ warfare, is the use of weaponized biological toxins or infectious agents such as bacteria, viruses, chemical warfare involves the use of weaponized chemicals in combat. Poison gas as a weapon was principally used during World War I. Civil war is a war between forces belonging to the nation or political entity. Conventional warfare is declared war between states in which nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons are not used or see limited deployment, cyberwarfare involves the actions by a nation-state or international organization to attack and attempt to damage another nations information systems. Information warfare is the application of force on a large scale against information assets and systems, against the computers. Nuclear warfare is warfare in which weapons are the primary, or a major. War of aggression is a war for conquest or gain rather than self-defense, the earliest recorded evidence of war belongs to the Mesolithic cemetery Site 117, which has been determined to be approximately 14,000 years old. About forty-five percent of the skeletons there displayed signs of violent death, since the rise of the state some 5,000 years ago, military activity has occurred over much of the globe. The advent of gunpowder and the acceleration of technological advances led to modern warfare
9.
Siberia
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Siberia is an extensive geographical region, and by the broadest definition is also known as North Asia. Siberia has historically been a part of Russia since the 17th century, the territory of Siberia extends eastwards from the Ural Mountains to the watershed between the Pacific and Arctic drainage basins. It stretches southwards from the Arctic Ocean to the hills of north-central Kazakhstan and to the borders of Mongolia. With an area of 13.1 million square kilometres, Siberia accounts for 77% of Russias land area and this is equivalent to an average population density of about 3 inhabitants per square kilometre, making Siberia one of the most sparsely populated regions on Earth. If it were a country by itself, it would still be the largest country in area, the origin of the name is unknown. Some sources say that Siberia originates from the Siberian Tatar word for sleeping land, another account sees the name as the ancient tribal ethnonym of the Sirtya, a folk, which spoke a language that later evolved into the Ugric languages. This ethnic group was assimilated to the Siberian Tatar people. The modern usage of the name was recorded in the Russian language after the Empires conquest of the Siberian Khanate, a further variant claims that the region was named after the Xibe people. The Polish historian Chycliczkowski has proposed that the name derives from the word for north. He said that the neighbouring Chinese, Arabs and Mongolians would not have known Russian and he suggests that the name is a combination of two words, su and bir. The region is of significance, as it contains bodies of prehistoric animals from the Pleistocene Epoch. Specimens of Goldfuss cave lion cubs, Yuka and another woolly mammoth from Oymyakon, a rhinoceros from the Kolyma River. The Siberian Traps were formed by one of the largest known volcanic events of the last 500 million years of Earths geological history. They continued for a million years and are considered a cause of the Great Dying about 250 million years ago. At least three species of human lived in Southern Siberia around 40,000 years ago, H. sapiens, H. neanderthalensis, the last was determined in 2010, by DNA evidence, to be a new species. Siberia was inhabited by different groups of such as the Enets, the Nenets, the Huns, the Scythians. The Khan of Sibir in the vicinity of modern Tobolsk was known as a prominent figure who endorsed Kubrat as Khagan of Old Great Bulgaria in 630, the Mongols conquered a large part of this area early in the 13th century. With the breakup of the Golden Horde, the autonomous Khanate of Sibir was established in the late 15th century, turkic-speaking Yakut migrated north from the Lake Baikal region under pressure from the Mongol tribes during the 13th to 15th century
10.
Amur River
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The Amur River or Heilong Jiang is the worlds tenth longest river, forming the border between the Russian Far East and Northeastern China. The largest fish species in the Amur is the kaluga, attaining a length as great as 5.6 metres, historically, it was common to refer to a river simply as water. The word for water is similar in a number of Asiatic languages, mul in Korean, muren in Mongolian, the name Amur may have evolved from a root word for water, coupled with a size modifier for Big Water. The Chinese name for the river, Heilong Jiang, means Black Dragon River in Chinese, and its Mongolian name, Khar mörön, means Black River. The river rises in the hills in the part of Northeast China at the confluence of its two major affluents, the Shilka River and the Ergune River, at an elevation of 303 metres. It flows east forming the border between China and Russia, and slowly makes an arc to the southeast for about 400 kilometres, receiving many tributaries. At Huma, it is joined by a tributary, the Huma River. Afterwards it continues to south until between the cities of Blagoveschensk and Heihe, it widens significantly as it is joined by the Zeya River. At the confluence with the Songhua the river turns northeast, now flowing towards Khabarovsk, now the river spreads out dramatically into a braided character, flowing north-northeast through a wide valley in eastern Russia, passing Amursk and Komsomolsk-on-Amur. The valley narrows after about 200 kilometres and the river flows north onto plains at the confluence with the Amgun River. Shortly after, the Amur turns sharply east and into an estuary at Nikolayevsk-on-Amur, in many historical references these two geopolitical entities are known as Outer Manchuria and Inner Manchuria, respectively. The Chinese province of Heilongjiang on the bank of the river is named after it. The name Black River was used by the Manchu and the Ta-tsing Empire who regarded this river as sacred, the Amur River is an important symbol of, and geopolitical factor in, Chinese–Russian relations. The Amur was especially important in the following the Sino–Soviet political split in the 1960s. For many centuries the Amur Valley was populated by the Tungusic and Mongol people, for many of them, fishing in the Amur and its tributaries was the main source of their livelihood. Until the 17th century, these people were not known to the Europeans, and little known to the Han Chinese, the term Yupi Dazi was used for the Nanais and related groups as well, owing to their traditional clothes made of fish skins. This Ming Dynasty Aigun was located on the bank to the later Aigun that was relocated during the Qing Dynasty. In any event, the Ming presence on the Amur was as short-lived as it was tenuous, soon after the end of the Yongle era, Russian Cossack expeditions led by Vassili Poyarkov and Yerofey Khabarov explored the Amur and its tributaries in 1643–44 and 1649–51, respectively
11.
Alexander II of Russia
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Alexander II was the Emperor of Russia from 2 March 1855 until his assassination in 1881. He was also the King of Poland and the Grand Duke of Finland, Alexanders most significant reform as emperor was emancipation of Russias serfs in 1861, for which he is known as Alexander the Liberator. In foreign policy, Alexander sold Alaska to the United States in 1867, despite his otherwise pacifist foreign policy, he fought a brief war with Turkey in 1877–78, pursued further expansion into Siberia and the Caucasus, and conquered Turkestan. Although disappointed by the results of the Congress of Berlin in 1878, among his greatest domestic challenges was an uprising in Poland in 1863, to which he responded by stripping that land of its separate constitution and incorporating it directly into Russia. Alexander was proposing additional parliamentary reforms to counter the rise of nascent revolutionary, born in Moscow, Alexander Nikolaevich was the eldest son of Nicholas I of Russia and of Charlotte of Prussia. Personal and official censorship was rife, criticism of the authorities was regarded as a serious offence, aleksandrs alleged lack of interest in military affairs resulted from his reaction to the effects of the unsavoury Crimean War of 1853-1856 on his own family and on the whole country. Unusually for the time, the young Alexander was taken on a tour of Russia. He also visited many prominent Western European countries in 1838 and 1839, as Tsesarevich, Alexander became the first Romanov heir to visit Siberia. Alexander II succeeded to the throne upon the death of his father in 1855, the first year of his reign was devoted to the prosecution of the Crimean War and, after the fall of Sevastopol, to negotiations for peace led by his trusted counsellor Prince Alexander Gorchakov. The country had exhausted and humiliated by the war. Bribe-taking, theft and corruption were everywhere, in 1867 he sold Alaska to the United States for $7.2 million after recognising the great difficulty of defending it against the United Kingdom or the former British colony of Canada. After Alexander became emperor in 1855, he maintained a generally liberal course, despite this, he was a target for numerous assassination attempts. On 13 March 1881, members of the Narodnaya Volya party killed him with a bomb and this step had been followed by one even more significant. The hint was taken, in all provinces where serfdom existed, the emancipation was not merely a humanitarian question capable of being solved instantaneously by imperial ukase. It contained very complicated problems, deeply affecting the economic, social and political future of the nation, the emperor gave his support to the latter project, and the Russian peasantry became one of the last groups of peasants in Europe to shake off serfdom. The architects of the manifesto were Alexanders brother Konstantin, Yakov Rostovtsev. On 3 March 1861, six years after his accession, the law was signed and published. The changes included universal military conscription, introduced for all classes on 1 January 1874
12.
Gold rush
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A gold rush is a new discovery of gold that brings an onrush of miners seeking their fortune. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Canada, South Africa, the wealth that resulted was distributed widely because of reduced migration costs and low barriers to entry. While gold mining itself was unprofitable for most diggers and mine owners, some people made fortunes. The resulting increase in the gold supply stimulated global trade. Historians have written extensively about the migration, trade, colonization, Gold rushes helped spur a huge immigration that often led to permanent settlement of new regions. Activities propelled by gold rushes define significant aspects of the culture of the Australian, at a time when the worlds money supply was based on gold, the newly mined gold provided economic stimulus far beyond the gold fields. Gold rushes extend back as far as gold mining, to the Roman Empire, whose gold mining was described by Diodorus Siculus and Pliny the Elder, within each mining rush there is typically a transition through progressively higher capital expenditures, larger organizations, and more specialized knowledge. They may also progress from high-unit value to lower unit value minerals, a rush typically begins with the discovery of placer gold made by an individual. At first the gold may be washed from the sand and gravel by individual miners with little training, using a pan or similar simple instrument. Winning the gold in this manner requires almost no capital investment, only a pan or equipment that may be built on the spot. The low investment, the value per unit weight of gold. After the sluice-box stage, placer mining may become increasingly large scale, requiring larger organisations, small claims owned and mined by individuals may need to be merged into larger tracts. Difficult-to-reach placer deposits may be mined by tunnels, water may be diverted by dams and canals to placer mine active river beds or to deliver water needed to wash dry placers. The more advanced techniques of ground sluicing, hydraulic mining and dredging may be used, typically the heyday of a placer gold rush would last only a few years. Hard rock mining, like mining, may evolve from low capital investment and simple technology to progressively higher capital. The surface outcrop of a gold-bearing vein may be oxidized, so that the gold occurs as native gold, the first miners may at first build a simple arrastra to crush their ore, later, they may build stamp mills to crush ore more quickly. As the miners dig down, they may find that the part of vein contains gold locked in sulfide or telluride minerals. If the ore is still rich, it may be worth shipping to a distant smelter
