1.
Aconitum
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These herbaceous perennial plants are chiefly native to the mountainous parts of the Northern Hemisphere, growing in the moisture-retentive but well-draining soils of mountain meadows. Most species are poisonous and must be dealt with carefully. The dark green leaves of Aconitum species lack stipules and they are palmate or deeply palmately lobed with five to seven segments. Each segment again is trilobed with coarse sharp teeth, the leaves have a spiral arrangement. The lower leaves have long petioles, the tall, erect stem is crowned by racemes of large blue, purple, white, yellow, or pink zygomorphic flowers with numerous stamens. They are distinguishable by having one of the five sepals, called the galea, in the form of a cylindrical helmet. Two to 10 petals are present, the two upper petals are large and are placed under the hood of the calyx and are supported on long stalks. They have a spur at their apex, containing the nectar. The other petals are small and scale-like or nonforming, the three to five carpels are partially fused at the base. The fruit is an aggregate of follicles, a follicle being a dry, Aconitum species have been recorded as food plant of the caterpillars of several moths. The yellow tiger moth Arctia flavia, and the purple-shaded gem Euchalcia variabilis are at home on A. vulparia, the purple-lined sallow Pyrrhia exprimens, and Blepharita amica were found eating from A. septentrionale. The dot moth Melanchra persicariae occurs both on A. septentrionale and A. intermedium, the golden plusia Polychrysia moneta is hosted by A. vulparia, A. napellus, A. septentrionale, and A. intermedium. Other moths associated with Aconitum species include the wormwood pug Eupithecia absinthiata, satyr pug E. satyrata, Aterpia charpentierana and it is also the primary food source for the Old World bumblebee Bombus consobrinus. The roots of A. ferox supply the Nepalese poison called bikh, bish and it contains large quantities of the alkaloid pseudaconitine, which is a deadly poison. A. palmatum yields another of the bikh poisons, the root of A. luridum, of the Himalaya, is said to be as poisonous as that of A. ferox or A. napellus. Several species of Aconitum have been used as arrow poisons, the Minaro in Ladakh use A. napellus on their arrows to hunt ibex, while the Ainu in Japan used a species of Aconitum to hunt bear. The Chinese also used Aconitum poisons both for hunting and for warfare, Aconitum poisons were used by the Aleuts of Alaskas Aleutian Islands for hunting whales. Usually, one man in an armed with a poison-tipped lance would hunt the whale, paralyzing it with the poison
2.
Order of Liberation
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The Order of Liberation is a French Order which was awarded to heroes of the Liberation of France during World War II. It is a high honour, second only after the Légion d’Honneur. Very few people, military units and communes were ever awarded it, a different order, the Médaille de la Résistance was created and awarded for lesser but still distinguished deeds by members of the Resistance. The Order of Liberation was established by General de Gaulle in order n°7, the object of the Order was to “reward people, of the military or civilian communities, who will have distinguished themselves in the task of liberating France and her Empire”. There were no restrictions as to age, sex, rank, origin or nationality, nor any regarding the nature of the deeds, the Order has a single rank, the title of Compagnon de la Libération. General de Gaulle, founder of the Order, was the only Grand Maître of the Order, the Order was usually bestowed by the traditional French military ceremony of prise darmes. The last awards to French citizens, units and communes were made on 23 January 1946, awards to foreign nationals were made until 1960. The medal of the Order is called the Croix de la Libération and it is a 31 mm wide by 33 mm high rectangular bronze shield bearing a 60 mm high vertical gladius on its obverse. On the blade of the gladius, a black enamelled Cross of Lorraine, on the reverse, in Latin, a relief inscription in bold letters on four rows, “PATRIAM SERVANDO VICTORIAM TULIT”. Green represents hope, black represents mourning, symbolizing the state of France in 1940, the ribbon at first had diagonal black stripes, but the Order was only awarded in that form during August–September 1942. Amongst the 1036 Companions of the Order,65 were killed before the end of the war, members of the French resistance, especially the more famous ones, often received the Order under their nom de guerre. The youngest, Mathurin Henrio, was 14 when he was dead by Nazi officers for refusing to answer questions on the whereabouts of Maquisards. On June 18,1996, at Mont Valérien, the 18 military units which had awarded the Cross of Liberation were given a green. Occupied by German troops and subjected to the harshest of repression, has given to the French, by individual and collective actions. By the blood of her children, showed to the whole World the French will for national liberation. Grenoble, awarded on May 4,1944 Heroic city at the vanguard of the French Resistance, draped in her pride, despite the arrest and the massacre of her best sons, put up a fierce fight to the Germans at every instant. Despising the interdictions given by the invaders and their accomplices, demonstrated on November 11,1943 her certainty of Victory and her will to take part in it. By her courage in the presence of the invader and by the energy with which she sustained the harshest of trials
3.
Charles de Gaulle
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Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman. He was the leader of Free France and the head of the Provisional Government of the French Republic, in 1958, he founded the Fifth Republic and was elected as the 18th President of France, a position he held until his resignation in 1969. He was the dominant figure of France during the Cold War era, born in Lille, he graduated from Saint-Cyr in 1912. He was an officer of the First World War, wounded several times. During the interwar period, he advocated mobile armoured divisions, during the German invasion of May 1940, he led an armoured division which counterattacked the invaders, he was then appointed Under-Secretary for War. Refusing to accept his governments armistice with Nazi Germany, de Gaulle exhorted the French population to resist occupation and he led a government in exile and the Free French Forces against the Axis. Despite frosty relations with Britain and especially the United States, he emerged as the leader of the French resistance. He became Head of the Provisional Government of the French Republic in June 1944, frustrated by the return of petty partisanship in the new Fourth Republic, he resigned in early 1946 but continued to be politically active as founder of the RPF party. He retired in the early 1950s and wrote his War Memoirs, when the Algerian War was ripping apart the unstable Fourth Republic, the National Assembly brought him back to power during the May 1958 crisis. De Gaulle founded the Fifth Republic with a presidency. He granted independence to Algeria and progressively to other French colonies and he restored cordial Franco-German relations to create a European counterweight between the Anglo-American and Soviet spheres of influence. However, he opposed any development of a supranational Europe, favouring a Europe of sovereign nations, De Gaulle openly criticised the US intervention in Vietnam and the exorbitant privilege of the US dollar. In his later years, his support for an independent Quebec, De Gaulle resigned in 1969 after losing a referendum in which he proposed more decentralization. He died a year later at his residence in Colombey-les-Deux-Églises, leaving his Presidential memoirs unfinished, many French political parties and figures claim the Gaullist legacy. De Gaulle was ranked as Le Plus Grand Français de tous les temps, De Gaulle was born in the industrial region of Lille in the Nord departement, the third of five children. He was raised in a devoutly Catholic and traditional family and his father, Henri de Gaulle, was a professor of history and literature at a Jesuit college who eventually founded his own school. Henri de Gaulle came from a line of parliamentary gentry from Normandy and Burgundy. De Gaulles mother, Jeanne, descended from a family of entrepreneurs from Lille
4.
Royal Navy
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The Royal Navy is the United Kingdoms naval warfare force. Although warships were used by the English kings from the medieval period. The modern Royal Navy traces its origins to the early 16th century, from the middle decades of the 17th century and through the 18th century, the Royal Navy vied with the Dutch Navy and later with the French Navy for maritime supremacy. From the mid 18th century it was the worlds most powerful navy until surpassed by the United States Navy during the Second World War. The Royal Navy played a key part in establishing the British Empire as the world power during the 19th. Due to this historical prominence, it is common, even among non-Britons, following World War I, the Royal Navy was significantly reduced in size, although at the onset of the Second World War it was still the worlds largest. By the end of the war, however, the United States Navy had emerged as the worlds largest, during the Cold War, the Royal Navy transformed into a primarily anti-submarine force, hunting for Soviet submarines, mostly active in the GIUK gap. The Royal Navy is part of Her Majestys Naval Service, which includes the Royal Marines. The professional head of the Naval Service is the First Sea Lord, the Defence Council delegates management of the Naval Service to the Admiralty Board, chaired by the Secretary of State for Defence. The strength of the fleet of the Kingdom of England was an important element in the power in the 10th century. English naval power declined as a result of the Norman conquest. Medieval fleets, in England as elsewhere, were almost entirely composed of merchant ships enlisted into service in time of war. Englands naval organisation was haphazard and the mobilisation of fleets when war broke out was slow, early in the war French plans for an invasion of England failed when Edward III of England destroyed the French fleet in the Battle of Sluys in 1340. Major fighting was confined to French soil and Englands naval capabilities sufficed to transport armies and supplies safely to their continental destinations. Such raids halted finally only with the occupation of northern France by Henry V. Henry VII deserves a large share of credit in the establishment of a standing navy and he embarked on a program of building ships larger than heretofore. He also invested in dockyards, and commissioned the oldest surviving dry dock in 1495 at Portsmouth, a standing Navy Royal, with its own secretariat, dockyards and a permanent core of purpose-built warships, emerged during the reign of Henry VIII. Under Elizabeth I England became involved in a war with Spain, the new regimes introduction of Navigation Acts, providing that all merchant shipping to and from England or her colonies should be carried out by English ships, led to war with the Dutch Republic. In the early stages of this First Anglo-Dutch War, the superiority of the large, heavily armed English ships was offset by superior Dutch tactical organisation and the fighting was inconclusive
5.
Flower-class corvette
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The Flower-class corvette was a British class of 267 corvettes used during World War II, specifically with the Allied navies as anti-submarine convoy escorts during the Battle of the Atlantic. Royal Navy ships of class were named after flowers, hence the name of the class. The majority served during World War II with the Royal Navy, several ships built largely in Canada were transferred from the RN to the United States Navy under the lend-lease programme, seeing service in both navies. Some corvettes transferred to the USN were manned by the US Coast Guard, the vessels serving with the US Navy were known as Temptress and Action-class patrol gunboats. After World War II many surplus Flower-class vessels saw worldwide use in other navies, HMCS Sackville is the only member of the class to be preserved as a museum ship. The term corvette was originally a French name for a sailing warship. In the 1830s the term was adopted by the RN for sailing warships of similar size. With the arrival of power, paddle- and later screw-driven corvettes were built for the same purpose, growing in power, size. In 1877 the RN abolished the corvette as a category, corvettes and frigates were then combined into a new category. The months leading up to World War II saw the RN return to the concept of a small escort warship being used in the shipping protection role, the modified Flowers were slightly larger and somewhat better armed. All Flower-class vessels, of original or modified design, that saw service with the USN are known as Action-class gunboats, and carried the hull classification symbol PG. In early 1939, with the risk of war with Nazi Germany increasing, one particular concern was the need to protect shipping off the east coast of Britain. What was needed was something larger and faster than trawlers, but still enough to be built in large numbers, preferably at small merchant shipyards. They were intended as convoy escort ships that could be produced quickly and cheaply in large numbers. The Flower class became a resource for North Atlantic convoy protection until larger vessels such as destroyer escorts. Flower-class vessels were slow for a warship, with speed of 16 kn. The original Flowers had the standard RN layout, consisting of a forecastle, a well deck, then the bridge or wheelhouse. The crew quarters were in the focsle while the galley was at the rear, the modified Flowers saw the forecastle extended aft past the bridge to the aft end of the funnel, a variation known as the long forecastle design
6.
Corvette
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A corvette is a small warship. It is traditionally the smallest class of vessel considered to be a proper warship, the warship class above the corvette is that of the frigate, while the class below was historically that of the sloop-of-war. The modern types of ship below a corvette are coastal patrol craft, in modern terms, a corvette is typically between 500 tons and 2,000 tons although recent designs may approach 3,000 tons, which might instead be considered a small frigate. The word corvette is first found in Middle French, a diminutive of the Dutch word corf, meaning a small ship, from the Latin corbis, the rank corvette captain, equivalent in many navies to lieutenant commander, derives from the name of this type of ship. During the Age of Sail, corvettes were one of many types of smaller than a frigate. They were very closely related to sloops-of-war, the role of the corvette consisted mostly of coastal patrol, fighting minor wars, supporting large fleets, or participating in show-the-flag missions. The English Navy began using small ships in the 1650s, the first reference to a corvette was with the French Navy in the 1670s, which may be where the term originated. The French Navys corvettes grew over the decades and by the 1780s they were ships of 20 guns or so, the British Navy did not adopt the term until the 1830s, long after the Napoleonic Wars, to describe a small sixth-rate vessel somewhat larger than a sloop. Most corvettes and sloops of the 17th century were around 40 to 60 ft in length and they carried four to eight smaller guns on a single deck. Over time, vessels of increasing size and capability were called corvettes, by 1800, they reached lengths of over 100 ft, ships during the steam era became much faster and more manoeuvrable than their sail ancestors. Corvettes during this era were used alongside gunboats during colonial missions. Battleships and other vessels were unnecessary when fighting the indigenous people of the Far East. The modern corvette appeared during World War II as an easily built patrol, first Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, later Prime Minister, had a hand in reviving the name corvette. During the arms buildup leading to World War II, the corvette was almost attached to the Tribal-class destroyer. The Tribals were so much larger than and sufficiently different from other British destroyers that some consideration was given to resurrecting the classification of corvette and this idea was dropped, and the term applied to small, mass-produced antisubmarine escorts such as the Flower class of World War II. The first modern corvettes were the Flower class and their chief duty was to protect convoys throughout the Battle of the Atlantic and on the routes from the UK to Murmansk carrying supplies to the Soviet Union. They were very seaworthy and maneuverable, but living conditions for ocean voyages were appalling, because of this, the corvette was superseded in the Royal Navy as the escort ship of choice by the frigate, which was larger, faster, better armed, and had two shafts. The Royal Australian Navy built 60 Bathurst-class corvettes, including 20 for the Royal Navy crewed by Australians and these were officially described as Australian mine sweepers, or as minesweeping sloops by the Royal Navy, and were named after Australian towns
7.
Marine steam engine
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A marine steam engine is a steam engine that is used to power a ship or boat. Reciprocating steam engines were replaced in marine applications during the 20th century by steam turbines. The first commercially successful engine was developed by Thomas Newcomen in 1712. The steam engine improvements brought forth by James Watt in the half of the 18th century greatly improved steam engine efficiency. In 1807, the American Robert Fulton built the worlds first commercially successful steamboat, simply known as the North River Steamboat, following Fultons success, steamboat technology developed rapidly on both sides of the Atlantic. The first successful transatlantic crossing by a steamship occurred in 1819 when Savannah sailed from Savannah, Georgia to Liverpool, the first steamship to make regular transatlantic crossings was the sidewheel steamer Great Western in 1838. As the 19th century progressed, marine engines and steamship technology developed alongside each other. A wide variety of reciprocating steam engines were developed over the course of the 19th century. The two main methods of classifying such engines are by connection mechanism and cylinder technology, most early marine engines had the same cylinder technology but a number of different methods of supplying power to the crankshaft were in use. Thus, early engines are classified mostly according to their connection mechanism. Some common connection mechanisms were side-lever, steeple, walking beam, however, steam engines can also be classified according to their cylinder technology. One can therefore sometimes find examples of engines which were classified under both methods, such as the walking beam. Over time, as most engines became direct-acting but cylinder technologies were growing more complex, Some of the more commonly encountered types of marine steam engine are listed in the following sections. Note that not all of these terms may have been used exclusively in relation to marine applications, the side-lever engine was the first type of steam engine to be widely adopted for marine use in Europe. The side-lever was an adaptation of the earliest form of steam engine and these levers extended, on the cylinder side, to each side of the bottom of the vertical engine cylinder. A piston rod, connected vertically to the piston, extended out of the top of the cylinder and this rod attached to a horizontal crosshead which, at each end, was connected to vertical rods. These rods connected down to the levers on each side of the cylinder and this formed the connection of the levers to the piston on the cylinder side of the engine. The other side of the levers were connected to each other with a horizontal crosstail and this crosstail in turn connected to and operated a single connecting rod, which turned the crankshaft
France
