1.
Golden Horn
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The Golden Horn, also known by its modern Turkish name as Haliç, is a major urban waterway and the primary inlet of the Bosphorus in Istanbul, Turkey. Its Greek and English names mean the same, while its Turkish name, Haliç, simply means estuary, throughout its storied past, the Golden Horn has witnessed many tumultuous historical incidents, and its dramatic vistas have been the subject of countless works of art. The Golden Horn is the estuary of the Alibeyköy and Kağıthane Rivers and it is 7.5 kilometers long, and 750 meters across at its widest. Its maximum depth, where it flows into the Bosphorus, is about 35 meters, at present, the Golden Horn is spanned by five bridges. Moving from upstream to downstream, these are as follows, The first crossing is the Haliç Bridge, completed in 1974, which connects the neighborhoods of Sütlüce and Defterdar. Originally dating back to 1912, the structure is no longer used for vehicular or pedestrian traffic. The third is the Atatürk Bridge, aka Unkapanı Bridge, completed in 1940, the fourth is the Golden Horn Metro Bridge — a pedestrianized railway crossing, completed in 2014, that extends subway line M2 of the Istanbul Metro across the Golden Horn. The fifth bridge is the fifth and most current incarnation of Galata Bridge, completed in 1994, the Byzantine Empire had its naval headquarters there, and walls were built along the shoreline to protect the city of Constantinople from naval attacks. At the entrance to the Horn on the side, a large chain was pulled across from Constantinople to the old Tower of Galata to prevent unwanted ships from entering. Known among the Byzantines as the Megàlos Pyrgos, this tower was destroyed by the Latin Crusaders during the Fourth Crusade in 1204. In 1348, the Genoese built a new tower nearby which they called Christea Turris, there were three notable times when the chain across the Horn was either broken or circumvented. In the 10th century the Kievan Rus dragged their longships out of the Bosphorus, around Galata, and relaunched them in the Horn, in 1204, during the Fourth Crusade, Venetian ships were able to break the chain with a ram. After the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, Mehmed II resettled ethnic Greeks along the Horn in the Phanar, Balat continued to be inhabited by Jews, as during the Byzantine age, though many Jews decided to leave following the takeover of the city. This area was repopulated when Bayezid II invited the Jews who were expelled from Spain to resettle in Balat, in 1502, Leonardo da Vinci produced a drawing of a single-span 240-metre bridge over the Golden Horn as part of a civil engineering project for Sultan Bayezid II. Leonardos drawings and notes regarding this bridge are displayed at the Museo della Scienza e della Tecnologia in Milan. Until the 1980s, the Horn was polluted with waste from the factories, warehouses. It has since been cleaned, and the fish, wildlife. Nowadays, the Golden Horn is settled on both sides, and there are parks along each shore, the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce is also located along the shore, as are several Muslim, Jewish and Christian cemeteries
2.
Galata Tower
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One of the citys most striking landmarks, it is a high, cone-capped cylinder that dominates the skyline and offers a panoramic vista of Istanbuls historic peninsula and its environs. The nine-story tower is 66.90 m, and was the citys tallest structure when it was built, the elevation at ground level is 35 m above sea-level. The tower has an diameter of 16.45 m at the base, an inside diameter of 8.95 m. There is a restaurant and café on its upper floors which command a magnificent view of Istanbul, also located on the upper floors is a night club which hosts a Turkish show. There are two operating elevators that carry visitors from the level to the upper levels. The Romanesque style tower was built as Christea Turris in 1348 during an expansion of the Genoese colony in Constantinople, Galata Tower was the tallest building in Istanbul at 219.5 ft when it was built in 1348. That tower was on a different site and was destroyed in 1203. The upper section of the tower with the cap was slightly modified in several restorations during the Ottoman period when it was used as an observation tower for spotting fires. Evliyâ Çelebi also tells of Hezarfens brother, Lagari Hasan Çelebi, starting from 1717, the Ottomans began to use the tower for spotting fires in the city. In 1794, during the reign of Sultan Selim III, the roof of the tower was made of lead and wood, another fire damaged the building in 1831, upon which a new restoration work took place. In 1875, during a storm, the roof on the top of the building was destroyed. The tower remained without this conical roof for the rest of the Ottoman period, many years later, during the restoration works between 1965 and 1967, the conical roof was reconstructed. During this final restoration in the 1960s, the interior of the tower was replaced by a concrete structure. From the top of the tower, the first French panorama painter, Pierre Prévost, drew his Panorama de Constantinople in 1818, which was later exhibited in Paris in 1825. The panorama image shown below is composed of ten photos taken from the Galata Tower by the firm of Sébah & Joaillier. Old Galata Tower Genoese colonies List of towers Romanesque architecture List of Romanesque buildings
3.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
4.
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
5.
Concrete
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Concrete is a composite material composed of coarse aggregate bonded together with a fluid cement that hardens over time. Most concretes used are lime-based concretes such as Portland cement concrete or concretes made with other hydraulic cements, when aggregate is mixed together with dry Portland cement and water, the mixture forms a fluid slurry that is easily poured and molded into shape. The cement reacts chemically with the water and other ingredients to form a matrix that binds the materials together into a durable stone-like material that has many uses. Often, additives are included in the mixture to improve the properties of the wet mix or the finished material. Most concrete is poured with reinforcing materials embedded to provide tensile strength, famous concrete structures include the Hoover Dam, the Panama Canal, and the Roman Pantheon. The earliest large-scale users of technology were the ancient Romans. The Colosseum in Rome was built largely of concrete, and the dome of the Pantheon is the worlds largest unreinforced concrete dome. Today, large concrete structures are made with reinforced concrete. After the Roman Empire collapsed, use of concrete became rare until the technology was redeveloped in the mid-18th century, today, concrete is the most widely used man-made material. The word concrete comes from the Latin word concretus, the passive participle of concrescere, from con-. Perhaps the earliest known occurrence of cement was twelve years ago. A deposit of cement was formed after an occurrence of oil shale located adjacent to a bed of limestone burned due to natural causes and these ancient deposits were investigated in the 1960s and 1970s. On a human timescale, small usages of concrete go back for thousands of years and they discovered the advantages of hydraulic lime, with some self-cementing properties, by 700 BC. They built kilns to supply mortar for the construction of houses, concrete floors. The cisterns were kept secret and were one of the reasons the Nabataea were able to thrive in the desert, some of these structures survive to this day. In the Ancient Egyptian and later Roman eras, it was re-discovered that adding volcanic ash to the mix allowed it to set underwater, similarly, the Romans knew that adding horse hair made concrete less liable to crack while it hardened, and adding blood made it more frost-resistant. Crystallization of strätlingite and the introduction of pyroclastic clays creates further fracture resistance, german archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann found concrete floors, which were made of lime and pebbles, in the royal palace of Tiryns, Greece, which dates roughly to 1400–1200 BC. Lime mortars were used in Greece, Crete, and Cyprus in 800 BC, the Assyrian Jerwan Aqueduct made use of waterproof concrete
6.
Turkish language
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Outside of Turkey, significant smaller groups of speakers exist in Germany, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Northern Cyprus, Greece, the Caucasus, and other parts of Europe and Central Asia. Cyprus has requested that the European Union add Turkish as an official EU language, in 1928, as one of Atatürks Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman Turkish alphabet was replaced with a Latin alphabet. The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination, the basic word order of Turkish is subject–object–verb. Turkish has no classes or grammatical gender. Turkish has a strong T–V distinction and usage of honorifics, Turkish uses second-person pronouns that distinguish varying levels of politeness, social distance, age, courtesy or familiarity toward the addressee. The plural second-person pronoun and verb forms are used referring to a person out of respect. Turkic languages belong to the Altaic language group, the Turkic family comprises some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Siberia. Turkish is a member of the Oghuz group of languages, a subgroup of the Turkic language family, there is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz Turkic languages, including Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish. The earliest known Old Turkic inscriptions are the three monumental Orkhon inscriptions found in modern Mongolia, erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khagan, these date back to the second Turk Kaghanate. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, following the adoption of Islam c. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Divan poetry, was influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a reform to replace loanwords of Arabic. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the terms of Arabic or Persian origin. The past few decades have seen the work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance, however, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changes—such as bölem to replace fırka, political party—also failed to meet with popular approval, some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings, for example betik is now used to mean script in computer science
7.
Turkey
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Turkey, officially the Republic of Turkey, is a transcontinental country in Eurasia, mainly in Anatolia in Western Asia, with a smaller portion on the Balkan peninsula in Southeast Europe. Turkey is a democratic, secular, unitary, parliamentary republic with a cultural heritage. The country is encircled by seas on three sides, the Aegean Sea is to the west, the Black Sea to the north, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. The Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara, and the Dardanelles, Ankara is the capital while Istanbul is the countrys largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. Approximately 70-80% of the countrys citizens identify themselves as ethnic Turks, other ethnic groups include legally recognised and unrecognised minorities. Kurds are the largest ethnic minority group, making up approximately 20% of the population, the area of Turkey has been inhabited since the Paleolithic by various ancient Anatolian civilisations, as well as Assyrians, Greeks, Thracians, Phrygians, Urartians and Armenians. After Alexander the Greats conquest, the area was Hellenized, a process continued under the Roman Empire. The Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm ruled Anatolia until the Mongol invasion in 1243, the empire reached the peak of its power in the 16th century, especially during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. During the war, the Ottoman government committed genocides against its Armenian, Assyrian, following the war, the conglomeration of territories and peoples that formerly comprised the Ottoman Empire was partitioned into several new states. Turkey is a member of the UN, an early member of NATO. Turkeys growing economy and diplomatic initiatives have led to its recognition as a regional power while her location has given it geopolitical, the name of Turkey is based on the ethnonym Türk. The first recorded use of the term Türk or Türük as an autonym is contained in the Old Turkic inscriptions of the Göktürks of Central Asia, the English name Turkey first appeared in the late 14th century and is derived from Medieval Latin Turchia. Similarly, the medieval Khazar Empire, a Turkic state on the shores of the Black. The medieval Arabs referred to the Mamluk Sultanate as al-Dawla al-Turkiyya, the Ottoman Empire was sometimes referred to as Turkey or the Turkish Empire among its European contemporaries. The Anatolian peninsula, comprising most of modern Turkey, is one of the oldest permanently settled regions in the world, various ancient Anatolian populations have lived in Anatolia, from at least the Neolithic period until the Hellenistic period. Many of these peoples spoke the Anatolian languages, a branch of the larger Indo-European language family, in fact, given the antiquity of the Indo-European Hittite and Luwian languages, some scholars have proposed Anatolia as the hypothetical centre from which the Indo-European languages radiated. The European part of Turkey, called Eastern Thrace, has also been inhabited since at least forty years ago. It is the largest and best-preserved Neolithic site found to date, the settlement of Troy started in the Neolithic Age and continued into the Iron Age
8.
Turkish literature
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The Ottoman and Azeri forms of Turkish, which forms the basis of much of the written corpus, are highly influenced by Persian and Arabic literature, and used the Ottoman Turkish alphabet. The history of the broader Turkic literature spans a period of nearly 1,300 years, the oldest extant records of written Turkic are the Orhon inscriptions, found in the Orhon River valley in central Mongolia and dating to the 7th century. For the next 900 years, until shortly before the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1922, with the founding of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, the two traditions came together for the first time. Throughout most of its history, Turkish literature has been sharply divided into two different traditions, neither of which exercised much influence upon the other until the 19th century. The first of two traditions is Turkish folk literature, and the second is Turkish written literature. For most of the history of Turkish literature, the salient difference between the folk and the written traditions has been the variety of language employed. The folk tradition, by and large, was oral and remained free of the influence of Persian and Arabic literature, when the Ottoman Empire arose early in the 14th century, in northwestern Anatolia, it continued this tradition. Out of this confluence of choices, the Ottoman Turkish language—which was always distinct from standard Turkish—was effectively born. This style of writing under Persian and Arabic influence came to be known as Divan literature, Turkish folk literature is an oral tradition deeply rooted, in its form, in Central Asian nomadic traditions. However, in its themes, Turkish folk literature reflects the problems peculiar to a people who have abandoned the nomadic lifestyle. Another example is the mysterious figure of Nasreddin, a trickster who often plays jokes, of a sort. The religion henceforth came to exercise an influence on Turkish society and literature, particularly the heavily mystically oriented Sufi. The word aşık is in fact the term used for members of the Bektashi order. There are three basic genres in the tradition, epic, folk poetry, and folklore, the Book of Dede Korkut endured in the oral tradition of the Oghuz Turks after settling in Anatolia. Alpamysh is an epic, still preserved in the literature of various Turkic peoples of Central Asia in addition to its important place in the Anatolian tradition. The Book of Dede Korkut was the element of the Azerbaijani–Turkish epic tradition in the Caucasus. Concurrent to the Book of Dede Korkut was the so-called Epic of Köroğlu, complicating matters somewhat is the fact that Köroğlu is also the name of a poet of the aşık/ozan tradition. The epic tradition in modern Turkish literature may be seen in the Epic of Shaykh Bedreddin, many of the works of the 20th-century novelist Yaşar Kemal, such as the 1955 novel Memed, My Hawk, can be considered modern prose epics continuing this long tradition
9.
Justinian I
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Justinian I, traditionally known as Justinian the Great and also Saint Justinian the Great in the Eastern Orthodox Church, was a Byzantine emperor from 527 to 565. During his reign, Justinian sought to revive the empires greatness, because of his restoration activities, Justinian has sometimes been called the last Roman in modern historiography. This ambition was expressed by the recovery of the territories of the defunct western Roman Empire. His general, Belisarius, swiftly conquered the Vandal kingdom in North Africa, the prefect Liberius reclaimed the south of the Iberian peninsula, establishing the province of Spania. These campaigns re-established Roman control over the western Mediterranean, increasing the Empires annual revenue by over a million solidi, during his reign Justinian also subdued the Tzani, a people on the east coast of the Black Sea that had never been under Roman rule before. A still more resonant aspect of his legacy was the rewriting of Roman law, the Corpus Juris Civilis. His reign also marked a blossoming of Byzantine culture, and his building program yielded such masterpieces as the church of Hagia Sophia, a devastating outbreak of bubonic plague in the early 540s marked the end of an age of splendour. Justinian was born in Tauresium around 482, a native speaker of Latin, he came from a peasant family believed to have been of Illyro-Roman or Thraco-Roman origins. The cognomen Iustinianus, which he later, is indicative of adoption by his uncle Justin. During his reign, he founded Justiniana Prima not far from his birthplace and his mother was Vigilantia, the sister of Justin. Justin, who was in the guard before he became emperor, adopted Justinian, brought him to Constantinople. As a result, Justinian was well educated in jurisprudence, theology, Justinian served for some time with the Excubitors but the details of his early career are unknown. Chronicler John Malalas, who lived during the reign of Justinian, tells of his appearance that he was short, fair skinned, curly haired, round faced, another contemporary chronicler, Procopius, compares Justinians appearance to that of tyrannical Emperor Domitian, although this is probably slander. When Emperor Anastasius died in 518, Justin was proclaimed the new emperor, during Justins reign, Justinian was the emperors close confidant. As Justin became senile near the end of his reign, Justinian became the de facto ruler, Justinian was appointed consul in 521 and later commander of the army of the east. Upon Justins death on 1 August 527, Justinian became the sole sovereign, as a ruler, Justinian showed great energy. He was known as the emperor who never sleeps on account of his work habits, nevertheless, he seems to have been amiable and easy to approach. Around 525, he married his mistress, Theodora, in Constantinople and she was by profession a courtesan and some twenty years his junior
10.
Constantinople
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Constantinople was the capital city of the Roman/Byzantine Empire, and also of the brief Latin, and the later Ottoman empires. It was reinaugurated in 324 AD from ancient Byzantium as the new capital of the Roman Empire by Emperor Constantine the Great, after whom it was named, Constantinople was famed for its massive and complex defences. The first wall of the city was erected by Constantine I, Constantinople never truly recovered from the devastation of the Fourth Crusade and the decades of misrule by the Latins. The origins of the name of Byzantion, more known by the later Latin Byzantium, are not entirely clear. The founding myth of the city has it told that the settlement was named after the leader of the Megarian colonists, Byzas. The later Byzantines of Constantinople themselves would maintain that the city was named in honour of two men, Byzas and Antes, though this was likely just a play on the word Byzantion. During this time, the city was also called Second Rome, Eastern Rome, and Roma Constantinopolitana. As the city became the remaining capital of the Roman Empire after the fall of the West, and its wealth, population, and influence grew. In the language of other peoples, Constantinople was referred to just as reverently, the medieval Vikings, who had contacts with the empire through their expansion in eastern Europe used the Old Norse name Miklagarðr, and later Miklagard and Miklagarth. In Arabic, the city was sometimes called Rūmiyyat al-kubra and in Persian as Takht-e Rum, in East and South Slavic languages, including in medieval Russia, Constantinople was referred to as Tsargrad or Carigrad, City of the Caesar, from the Slavonic words tsar and grad. This was presumably a calque on a Greek phrase such as Βασιλέως Πόλις, the modern Turkish name for the city, İstanbul, derives from the Greek phrase eis tin polin, meaning into the city or to the city. In 1928, the Turkish alphabet was changed from Arabic script to Latin script, in time the city came to be known as Istanbul and its variations in most world languages. In Greece today, the city is still called Konstantinoúpolis/Konstantinoúpoli or simply just the City, apart from this, little is known about this initial settlement, except that it was abandoned by the time the Megarian colonists settled the site anew. A farsighted treaty with the emergent power of Rome in c.150 BC which stipulated tribute in exchange for independent status allowed it to enter Roman rule unscathed. The site lay astride the land route from Europe to Asia and the seaway from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, and had in the Golden Horn an excellent and spacious harbour. He would later rebuild Byzantium towards the end of his reign, in which it would be briefly renamed Augusta Antonina, fortifying it with a new city wall in his name, Constantine had altogether more colourful plans. Rome was too far from the frontiers, and hence from the armies and the imperial courts, yet it had been the capital of the state for over a thousand years, and it might have seemed unthinkable to suggest that the capital be moved to a different location. Constantinople was built over 6 years, and consecrated on 11 May 330, Constantine divided the expanded city, like Rome, into 14 regions, and ornamented it with public works worthy of an imperial metropolis
11.
Walls of Constantinople
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With numerous additions and modifications during their history, they were the last great fortification system of antiquity, and one of the most complex and elaborate systems ever built. Initially built by Constantine the Great, the walls surrounded the new city on all sides, as the city grew, the famous double line of the Theodosian Walls was built in the 5th century. Ultimately the city fell from sheer weight of numbers of the Ottoman forces on 29 May 1453 after a six-week siege. The walls were largely maintained intact during most of the Ottoman period, until sections began to be dismantled in the 19th century, despite the subsequent lack of maintenance, many parts of the walls survived and are still standing today. A large-scale restoration program has been under way since the 1980s, according to tradition, the city was founded as Byzantium by Greek colonists from Megara, led by the eponymous Byzas, around 658 BC. At the time the city consisted of a region around an acropolis. This wall was protected by 27 towers, and had at least two gates, one which survived to become known as the Arch of Urbicius. On the seaward side, the wall was much lower and this wall is known to have been repaired, utilising tomb stones, under the leadership of a certain Leo in 340 BC, against an attack by Philip II of Macedon. Byzantium was relatively unimportant during the early Roman period, contemporaries described it as wealthy, well peopled and well fortified, but this affluence came to an end due to its support for Pescennius Niger in his war against Septimius Severus. Severus punished the city harshly, the walls were demolished. The Patria also mention the existence of another wall during the siege of Byzantium by Constantine the Great during the conflict with Licinius. Like Severus before him, Constantine began to punish the city for siding with his defeated rival, during 324–336 the city was thoroughly rebuilt and inaugurated on 11 May 330 under the name of Second Rome. The name that prevailed in common usage however was Constantinople. The city of Constantine was protected by a new wall about 2.8 km west of the Severan wall, constantines fortification consisted of a single wall, reinforced with towers at regular distances, which began to be constructed in 324 and was completed under his son Constantius II. Only the approximate course of the wall is known, it began at the Church of St. Aemilianus, already by the early 5th century however, Constantinople had expanded outside the Constantinian Wall, in the extramural area known as the Exokionion or Exakionion. The wall survived during much of the Byzantine period, even though it was replaced by the Theodosian Walls as the primary defence. Only traces of the wall appear to have survived in later ages, the recent construction of Yenikapı Transfer Center has unearthed a section of the foundation of the wall of Constantine. The names of a number of gates of the Constantinian Wall survive, the gate stood somewhere on the southern slopes of the Seventh Hill
12.
Fall of Constantinople
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The Fall of Constantinople was the capture of the capital of the Byzantine Empire by an invading army of the Ottoman Empire on 29 May 1453. The Ottomans were commanded by the then 21-year-old Mehmed the Conqueror, the sultan of the Ottoman Empire. The conquest of Constantinople followed a 53-day siege that had begun on 6 April 1453, the capture of Constantinople marked the end of the Roman Empire, an imperial state that had lasted for nearly 1,500 years. The Ottoman conquest of Constantinople also dealt a blow to Christendom. After the conquest, Sultan Mehmed II transferred the capital of the Ottoman Empire from Edirne to Constantinople. The conquest of the city of Constantinople and the end of the Byzantine Empire was a key event in the Late Middle Ages, which also marks, for some historians, Constantinople had been an imperial capital since its consecration in 330 under Roman Emperor, Constantine the Great. In the following centuries, the city had been besieged many times but was captured only once. The crusaders established an unstable Latin state in and around Constantinople while the remaining empire splintered into a number of Byzantine successor states, notably Nicaea, Epirus and they fought as allies against the Latin establishments, but also fought among themselves for the Byzantine throne. The Nicaeans eventually reconquered Constantinople from the Latins in 1261, thereafter there was little peace for the much-weakened empire as it fended off successive attacks by the Latins, the Serbians, the Bulgarians, and, most importantly, the Ottoman Turks. The Black Plague between 1346 and 1349 killed almost half of the inhabitants of Constantinople, the Empire of Trebizond, an independent successor state that formed in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade, also survived on the coast of the Black Sea. This optimism was reinforced by friendly assurances made by Mehmed to envoys sent to his new court, but Mehmeds actions spoke far louder than his mild words. Since the mutual excommunications of 1054, the Pope in Rome was committed to establishing authority over the eastern church, nominal union had been negotiated in 1274, at the Second Council of Lyon, and indeed, some Palaiologoi emperors had since been received into the Latin church. Emperor John VIII Palaiologos had also recently negotiated union with Pope Eugene IV, finally, the attempted Union failed, greatly annoying Pope Nicholas V and the hierarchy of the Roman church. Although some troops did arrive from the city states in the north of Italy. Some Western individuals, however, came to defend the city on their own account. One of these was a soldier from Genoa, Giovanni Giustiniani. A specialist in defending walled cities, he was given the overall command of the defense of the land walls by the emperor. In Venice, meanwhile, deliberations were taking place concerning the kind of assistance the Republic would lend to Constantinople
13.
Ottoman Empire
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After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe, and with the conquest of the Balkans the Ottoman Beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror, at the beginning of the 17th century the empire contained 32 provinces and numerous vassal states. Some of these were later absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, while others were granted various types of autonomy during the course of centuries. With Constantinople as its capital and control of lands around the Mediterranean basin, while the empire was once thought to have entered a period of decline following the death of Suleiman the Magnificent, this view is no longer supported by the majority of academic historians. The empire continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy, society, however, during a long period of peace from 1740 to 1768, the Ottoman military system fell behind that of their European rivals, the Habsburg and Russian Empires. While the Empire was able to hold its own during the conflict, it was struggling with internal dissent. Starting before World War I, but growing increasingly common and violent during it, major atrocities were committed by the Ottoman government against the Armenians, Assyrians and Pontic Greeks. The word Ottoman is an anglicisation of the name of Osman I. Osmans name in turn was the Turkish form of the Arabic name ʿUthmān, in Ottoman Turkish, the empire was referred to as Devlet-i ʿAlīye-yi ʿOsmānīye, or alternatively ʿOsmānlı Devleti. In Modern Turkish, it is known as Osmanlı İmparatorluğu or Osmanlı Devleti, the Turkish word for Ottoman originally referred to the tribal followers of Osman in the fourteenth century, and subsequently came to be used to refer to the empires military-administrative elite. In contrast, the term Turk was used to refer to the Anatolian peasant and tribal population, the term Rūmī was also used to refer to Turkish-speakers by the other Muslim peoples of the empire and beyond. In Western Europe, the two names Ottoman Empire and Turkey were often used interchangeably, with Turkey being increasingly favored both in formal and informal situations and this dichotomy was officially ended in 1920–23, when the newly established Ankara-based Turkish government chose Turkey as the sole official name. Most scholarly historians avoid the terms Turkey, Turks, and Turkish when referring to the Ottomans, as the power of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum declined in the 13th century, Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent Turkish principalities known as the Anatolian Beyliks. One of these beyliks, in the region of Bithynia on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire, was led by the Turkish tribal leader Osman, osmans early followers consisted both of Turkish tribal groups and Byzantine renegades, many but not all converts to Islam. Osman extended the control of his principality by conquering Byzantine towns along the Sakarya River and it is not well understood how the early Ottomans came to dominate their neighbours, due to the scarcity of the sources which survive from this period. One school of thought which was popular during the twentieth century argued that the Ottomans achieved success by rallying religious warriors to fight for them in the name of Islam, in the century after the death of Osman I, Ottoman rule began to extend over Anatolia and the Balkans. Osmans son, Orhan, captured the northwestern Anatolian city of Bursa in 1326 and this conquest meant the loss of Byzantine control over northwestern Anatolia. The important city of Thessaloniki was captured from the Venetians in 1387, the Ottoman victory at Kosovo in 1389 effectively marked the end of Serbian power in the region, paving the way for Ottoman expansion into Europe
14.
Leonardo da Vinci
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He has been variously called the father of palaeontology, ichnology, and architecture, and is widely considered one of the greatest painters of all time. Sometimes credited with the inventions of the parachute, helicopter and tank, many historians and scholars regard Leonardo as the prime exemplar of the Universal Genius or Renaissance Man, an individual of unquenchable curiosity and feverishly inventive imagination. Much of his working life was spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan. He later worked in Rome, Bologna and Venice, and he spent his last years in France at the home awarded to him by Francis I of France, Leonardo was, and is, renowned primarily as a painter. Among his works, the Mona Lisa is the most famous and most parodied portrait, Leonardos drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also regarded as a cultural icon, being reproduced on items as varied as the euro coin, textbooks, and T-shirts. Perhaps fifteen of his paintings have survived, Leonardo is revered for his technological ingenuity. He conceptualised flying machines, a type of armoured fighting vehicle, concentrated power, an adding machine. Some of his inventions, however, such as an automated bobbin winder. A number of Leonardos most practical inventions are nowadays displayed as working models at the Museum of Vinci. He made substantial discoveries in anatomy, civil engineering, geology, optics, and hydrodynamics, today, Leonardo is widely considered one of the most diversely talented individuals ever to have lived. Leonardo was born on 15 April 1452 at the hour of the night in the Tuscan hill town of Vinci. He was the son of the wealthy Messer Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci, a Florentine legal notary, and Caterina. Leonardo had no surname in the modern sense – da Vinci simply meaning of Vinci, his birth name was Lionardo di ser Piero da Vinci, meaning Leonardo. The inclusion of the title ser indicated that Leonardos father was a gentleman, little is known about Leonardos early life. He spent his first five years in the hamlet of Anchiano in the home of his mother and his father had married a sixteen-year-old girl named Albiera Amadori, who loved Leonardo but died young in 1465 without children. When Leonardo was sixteen, his father married again to twenty-year-old Francesca Lanfredini, pieros legitimate heirs were born from his third wife Margherita di Guglielmo and his fourth and final wife, Lucrezia Cortigiani. Leonardo received an education in Latin, geometry and mathematics. In later life, Leonardo recorded only two childhood incidents, one, which he regarded as an omen, was when a kite dropped from the sky and hovered over his cradle, its tail feathers brushing his face
15.
Bayezid II
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Bayezid II or Sultân Bayezid-î Velî was the eldest son and successor of Mehmed II, ruling as Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1481 to 1512. During his reign, Bayezid II consolidated the Ottoman Empire and thwarted a Safavid rebellion soon before abdicating his throne to his son and he is most notable for evacuating Jews from Spain after the proclamation of the Alhambra Decree and resettling them throughout the Ottoman Empire. Bayezid II was the son of Mehmed II and Emine Gülbahar Hatun, Bayezid II married Gülbahar Hatun, who was the mother of Bayezid IIs successor, Selim I and nephew of Sitti Mükrime Hatun. Bayezid IIs overriding concern was the quarrel with his brother Cem, having been defeated by his brothers armies, Cem sought protection from the Knights of St. John in Rhodes. Eventually, the Knights handed Cem over to Pope Innocent VIII, the Pope thought of using Cem as a tool to drive the Turks out of Europe, but as the papal crusade failed to come to fruition, Cem was left to languish and die in a Neapolitan prison. Bayezid II paid both the Knights Hospitaller and the pope to keep his brother prisoner, Bayezid II ascended the Ottoman throne in 1481. Like his father, Bayezid II was a patron of western and eastern culture, unlike many other Sultans, he worked hard to ensure a smooth running of domestic politics, which earned him the epithet of the Just. The last of these ended in 1501 with Bayezid II in control of the whole Peloponnese. Ottoman authority in Anatolia was indeed seriously threatened during this period and at one point Bayezid IIs grand vizier, in July 1492, the new state of Spain expelled its Jewish and Muslim populations as part of the Spanish Inquisition. Bayezid II sent out the Ottoman Navy under the command of Admiral Kemal Reis to Spain in 1492 in order to evacuate them safely to Ottoman lands and he sent out proclamations throughout the empire that the refugees were to be welcomed. He granted the refugees the permission to settle in the Ottoman Empire and he ridiculed the conduct of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile in expelling a class of people so useful to their subjects. You venture to call Ferdinand a wise ruler, he said to his courtiers, he who has impoverished his own country and enriched mine. Bayezid addressed a firman to all the governors of his European provinces, ordering them not only to refrain from repelling the Spanish refugees and he threatened with death all those who treated the Jews harshly or refused them admission into the empire. Moses Capsali, who helped to arouse the sultans friendship for the Jews, was most energetic in his assistance to the exiles. He made a tour of the communities and was instrumental in imposing a tax upon the rich, the Muslims and Jews of al-Andalus contributed much to the rising power of the Ottoman Empire by introducing new ideas, methods and craftsmanship. The first printing press in Constantinople was established by the Sephardic Jews in 1493, on September 14,1509, Constantinople was devastated by an earthquake. During Bayezid IIs final years, a battle developed between his sons Selim I and Ahmet. Ahmet unexpectedly captured Karaman, an Ottoman city, and began marching to Constantinople to exploit his triumph, fearing for his safety, Selim staged a revolt in Thrace but was defeated by Bayezid and forced to flee back to the Crimean Peninsula
16.
Oslo
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Oslo is the capital and the most populous city in Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality, founded in the year 1040, and established as a kaupstad or trading place in 1048 by Harald Hardrada, the city was elevated to a bishopric in 1070 and a capital under Haakon V of Norway around 1300. Personal unions with Denmark from 1397 to 1523 and again from 1536 to 1814, after being destroyed by a fire in 1624, the city was moved closer to Akershus Fortress during the reign of Christian IV of Denmark and renamed Christiania in his honour. It was established as a municipality on 1 January 1838, following a spelling reform, it was known as Kristiania from 1877 to 1925, at which time its original Norwegian name was restored. Oslo is the economic and governmental centre of Norway, the city is also a hub of Norwegian trade, banking, industry and shipping. It is an important centre for industries and maritime trade in Europe. The city is home to companies within the maritime sector, some of which are among the worlds largest shipping companies, shipbrokers. Oslo is a city of the Council of Europe and the European Commission intercultural cities programme. Oslo is considered a city and ranked Beta World City in studies carried out by the Globalization and World Cities Study Group. It was ranked one in terms of quality of life among European large cities in the European Cities of the Future 2012 report by fDi magazine. A survey conducted by ECA International in 2011 placed Oslo as the second most expensive city in the world for living expenses after Tokyo. In 2013 Oslo tied with the Australian city of Melbourne as the fourth most expensive city in the world, as of January 1,2016, the municipality of Oslo has a population of 658,390, while the population of the citys urban area was 942,084. The metropolitan area had an population of 1.71 million. The population was during the early 2000 increasing at record rates and this growth stems for the most part from international immigration and related high birth rates, but also from intra-national migration. The immigrant population in the city is growing faster than the Norwegian population. As of January 1,2016, the municipality of Oslo has a population of 658,390, the urban area extends beyond the boundaries of the municipality into the surrounding county of Akershus, the total population of this agglomeration is 942,084. To the north and east, wide forested hills rise above the city giving the location the shape of a giant amphitheatre. The urban municipality of Oslo and county of Oslo are two parts of the entity, making Oslo the only city in Norway where two administrative levels are integrated
17.
Norway
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The Antarctic Peter I Island and the sub-Antarctic Bouvet Island are dependent territories and thus not considered part of the Kingdom. Norway also lays claim to a section of Antarctica known as Queen Maud Land, until 1814, the kingdom included the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Iceland. It also included Isle of Man until 1266, Shetland and Orkney until 1468, Norway has a total area of 385,252 square kilometres and a population of 5,258,317. The country shares a long border with Sweden. Norway is bordered by Finland and Russia to the north-east, Norway has an extensive coastline, facing the North Atlantic Ocean and the Barents Sea. King Harald V of the Dano-German House of Glücksburg is the current King of Norway, erna Solberg became Prime Minister in 2013, replacing Jens Stoltenberg. A constitutional monarchy, Norway divides state power between the Parliament, the Cabinet and the Supreme Court, as determined by the 1814 Constitution, the kingdom is established as a merger of several petty kingdoms. By the traditional count from the year 872, the kingdom has existed continuously for 1,144 years, Norway has both administrative and political subdivisions on two levels, counties and municipalities. The Sámi people have an amount of self-determination and influence over traditional territories through the Sámi Parliament. Norway maintains close ties with the European Union and the United States, the country maintains a combination of market economy and a Nordic welfare model with universal health care and a comprehensive social security system. Norway has extensive reserves of petroleum, natural gas, minerals, lumber, seafood, the petroleum industry accounts for around a quarter of the countrys gross domestic product. On a per-capita basis, Norway is the worlds largest producer of oil, the country has the fourth-highest per capita income in the world on the World Bank and IMF lists. On the CIAs GDP per capita list which includes territories and some regions, from 2001 to 2006, and then again from 2009 to 2017, Norway had the highest Human Development Index ranking in the world. It also has the highest inequality-adjusted ranking, Norway ranks first on the World Happiness Report, the OECD Better Life Index, the Index of Public Integrity and the Democracy Index. Norway has two names, Noreg in Nynorsk and Norge in Bokmål. The name Norway comes from the Old English word Norðrveg mentioned in 880, meaning way or way leading to the north. In contrasting with suðrvegar southern way for Germany, and austrvegr eastern way for the Baltic, the Anglo-Saxon of Britain also referred to the kingdom of Norway in 880 as Norðmanna land. This was the area of Harald Fairhair, the first king of Norway, and because of him
18.
Civil engineering
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Civil engineering is traditionally broken into a number of sub-disciplines. It is the second-oldest engineering discipline after military engineering, and it is defined to distinguish non-military engineering from military engineering, Civil engineering takes place in the public sector from municipal through to national governments, and in the private sector from individual homeowners through to international companies. Engineering has been an aspect of life since the beginnings of human existence, during this time, transportation became increasingly important leading to the development of the wheel and sailing. The construction of pyramids in Egypt were some of the first instances of large structure constructions, the Romans developed civil structures throughout their empire, including especially aqueducts, insulae, harbors, bridges, dams and roads. In the 18th century, the civil engineering was coined to incorporate all things civilian as opposed to military engineering. The first self-proclaimed civil engineer was John Smeaton, who constructed the Eddystone Lighthouse, in 1771 Smeaton and some of his colleagues formed the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers, a group of leaders of the profession who met informally over dinner. Though there was evidence of some meetings, it was little more than a social society. In 1818 the Institution of Civil Engineers was founded in London, the institution received a Royal Charter in 1828, formally recognising civil engineering as a profession. The first private college to teach engineering in the United States was Norwich University. The first degree in engineering in the United States was awarded by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1835. The first such degree to be awarded to a woman was granted by Cornell University to Nora Stanton Blatch in 1905, throughout ancient and medieval history most architectural design and construction was carried out by artisans, such as stonemasons and carpenters, rising to the role of master builder. Knowledge was retained in guilds and seldom supplanted by advances, structures, roads and infrastructure that existed were repetitive, and increases in scale were incremental. Brahmagupta, an Indian mathematician, used arithmetic in the 7th century AD, based on Hindu-Arabic numerals, Civil engineers typically possess an academic degree in civil engineering. The length of study is three to five years, and the degree is designated as a bachelor of engineering. The curriculum generally includes classes in physics, mathematics, project management, design, after taking basic courses in most sub-disciplines of civil engineering, they move onto specialize in one or more sub-disciplines at advanced levels. In most countries, a degree in engineering represents the first step towards professional certification. After completing a degree program, the engineer must satisfy a range of requirements before being certified. Once certified, the engineer is designated as a engineer, a chartered engineer
19.
Public art
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Public art is art in any media that has been planned and executed with the intention of being staged in the physical public domain, usually outside and accessible to all. Public art may include any art which is exhibited in a public space including publicly accessible buildings, rather, the relationship between the content and audience, what the art is saying and to whom, is just as important if not more important than its physical location. Cher Krause Knight states, arts publicness rests in the quality, such cultural interventions have often been realised in response to creatively engaging a communitys sense of place or well-being in society. Such commissions can still result in physical, permanent artworks and sculptures and these also often involve increasingly integrated and applied arts type applications. However, they are beginning to include other, much more process-driven. As such, these do not always rely on the production of a physical or permanent artwork at all and this expanded scope of public art can embrace many diverse practices and artforms. These might be implemented as stand-alone, or as collaborative hybrids involving a multi-disciplinary approach, the range of its potential is of course endless, ever-changing, and subject to continual debate and differences of opinion among artists, funders, curators, and commissioning clients. Public art is not confined to objects, dance, procession, street theatre. In a similar example, sculptor Gar Waterman created a giant arch measuring 35x37x3 feet which straddled a city street in New Haven, in Cape Town, South Africa, Africa Centre presents the Infecting the City Public Art Festival. Programs like President Roosevelts New Deal facilitated the development of art during the Great Depression but was wrought with propaganda goals. New Deal art support programs intended to develop national pride in American culture while avoiding addressing the faltering economy that said culture was built upon, although problematic, New Deal programs such as FAP altered the relationship between the artist and society by making art accessible to all people. The New Deal program Art-in-Architecture developed percent for art programs, a structure for funding public art still utilized today and this program gave one half of one percent of total construction costs of all government buildings to purchase contemporary American art for that structure. A-i-A helped solidify the principle that art in the US should be truly owned by the public. They also established the legitimacy of the desire for public art. While problematic at times, early public art programs set the foundation for current public art development, Public art became much more about the public. The will to create a deepest and more pertinent connection between the production of the artwork and the site where it is made visible prompts different orientations, in 1969 Wolf Vostells Stationary traffic was made in Cologne. Between the 1970s and the 1980s, gentrification and ecological issues surface in public art practices both as a motive and as a critical focus brought in by artists. In recent years, programs of green urban regeneration aiming at converting abandoned lots into green areas regularly include public art programs, the 1980s also witness the institutionalisation of sculpture parks as curated programs
20.
The Wall Street Journal
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The Wall Street Journal is an American business-focused, English-language international daily newspaper based in New York City. The Journal, along with its Asian and European editions, is published six days a week by Dow Jones & Company, the newspaper is published in the broadsheet format and online. The Wall Street Journal is the largest newspaper in the United States by circulation, according to the Alliance for Audited Media, the Journal had a circulation of about 2.4 million copies as of March 2013, compared with USA Todays 1.7 million. The newspaper has won 39 Pulitzer Prizes through 2015 and derives its name from Wall Street in the heart of the Financial District of Lower Manhattan. The Journal has been printed continuously since its inception on July 8,1889, by Charles Dow, Edward Jones, the Journal also publishes the luxury news and lifestyle magazine WSJ. They were later aggregated in a daily summary called the Customers Afternoon Letter. In 1896, The Dow Jones Industrial Average was officially launched and it was the first of several indices of stock and bond prices on the New York Stock Exchange. In 1899, the Journals Review & Outlook column, which still today, appeared for the first time. Journalist Clarence Barron purchased control of the company for US$130,000 in 1902, circulation was then around 7,000, Barron and his predecessors were credited with creating an atmosphere of fearless, independent financial reporting—a novelty in the early days of business journalism. In 1921, Barrons, Americas premier financial weekly, was founded, Barron died in 1928, a year before Black Tuesday, the stock market crash that greatly affected the Great Depression in the United States. Barrons descendants, the Bancroft family, would continue to control the company until 2007, the Journal took its modern shape and prominence in the 1940s, a time of industrial expansion for the United States and its financial institutions in New York. Bernard Kilgore was named managing editor of the paper in 1941, under Kilgore, in 1947, that the paper won its first Pulitzer Prize, for William Henry Grimess editorials. In 1970, Dow Jones bought the Ottaway newspaper chain, which at the time comprised nine dailies, later, the name was changed to Dow Jones Local Media Group. In 2007 News Corp. acquired Dow Jones, a luxury lifestyle magazine, was launched in 2008. A complement to the print newspaper, The Wall Street Journal Online, was launched in 1996, in 2003, Dow Jones began to integrate reporting of the Journals print and online subscribers together in Audit Bureau of Circulations statements. In 2007, it was believed to be the largest paid-subscription news site on the Web. Since then, online subscribership has fallen, due in part to rising subscription costs, in May 2008, an annual subscription to the online edition of The Wall Street Journal cost $119 for those who do not have subscriptions to the print edition. By June 2013, the monthly cost for a subscription to the edition was $22.99, or $275.88 annually
21.
Italy
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Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a unitary parliamentary republic in Europe. Located in the heart of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, San Marino, Italy covers an area of 301,338 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate and Mediterranean climate. Due to its shape, it is referred to in Italy as lo Stivale. With 61 million inhabitants, it is the fourth most populous EU member state, the Italic tribe known as the Latins formed the Roman Kingdom, which eventually became a republic that conquered and assimilated other nearby civilisations. The legacy of the Roman Empire is widespread and can be observed in the distribution of civilian law, republican governments, Christianity. The Renaissance began in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe, bringing a renewed interest in humanism, science, exploration, Italian culture flourished at this time, producing famous scholars, artists and polymaths such as Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Michelangelo and Machiavelli. The weakened sovereigns soon fell victim to conquest by European powers such as France, Spain and Austria. Despite being one of the victors in World War I, Italy entered a period of economic crisis and social turmoil. The subsequent participation in World War II on the Axis side ended in defeat, economic destruction. Today, Italy has the third largest economy in the Eurozone and it has a very high level of human development and is ranked sixth in the world for life expectancy. The country plays a prominent role in regional and global economic, military, cultural and diplomatic affairs, as a reflection of its cultural wealth, Italy is home to 51 World Heritage Sites, the most in the world, and is the fifth most visited country. The assumptions on the etymology of the name Italia are very numerous, according to one of the more common explanations, the term Italia, from Latin, Italia, was borrowed through Greek from the Oscan Víteliú, meaning land of young cattle. The bull was a symbol of the southern Italic tribes and was often depicted goring the Roman wolf as a defiant symbol of free Italy during the Social War. Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus states this account together with the legend that Italy was named after Italus, mentioned also by Aristotle and Thucydides. The name Italia originally applied only to a part of what is now Southern Italy – according to Antiochus of Syracuse, but by his time Oenotria and Italy had become synonymous, and the name also applied to most of Lucania as well. The Greeks gradually came to apply the name Italia to a larger region, excavations throughout Italy revealed a Neanderthal presence dating back to the Palaeolithic period, some 200,000 years ago, modern Humans arrived about 40,000 years ago. Other ancient Italian peoples of undetermined language families but of possible origins include the Rhaetian people and Cammuni. Also the Phoenicians established colonies on the coasts of Sardinia and Sicily, the Roman legacy has deeply influenced the Western civilisation, shaping most of the modern world
22.
Michelangelo
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Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art. Considered to be the greatest living artist during his lifetime, he has since described as one of the greatest artists of all time. A number of Michelangelos works of painting, sculpture, and architecture rank among the most famous in existence and he sculpted two of his best-known works, the Pietà and David, before the age of thirty. As an architect, Michelangelo pioneered the Mannerist style at the Laurentian Library, at the age of 74, he succeeded Antonio da Sangallo the Younger as the architect of St. Peters Basilica. Michelangelo transformed the plan so that the end was finished to his design, as was the dome, with some modification. Michelangelo was unique as the first Western artist whose biography was published while he was alive, in his lifetime he was often called Il Divino. One of the qualities most admired by his contemporaries was his terribilità, the attempts by subsequent artists to imitate Michelangelos impassioned and highly personal style resulted in Mannerism, the next major movement in Western art after the High Renaissance. Michelangelo was born on 6 March 1475 in Caprese near Arezzo, at the time of Michelangelos birth, his father was the Judicial administrator of the small town of Caprese and local administrator of Chiusi. Michelangelos mother was Francesca di Neri del Miniato di Siena, the Buonarrotis claimed to descend from the Countess Mathilde of Canossa, this claim remains unproven, but Michelangelo himself believed it. Several months after Michelangelos birth, the returned to Florence. There Michelangelo gained his love for marble, as Giorgio Vasari quotes him, If there is good in me. Along with the milk of my nurse I received the knack of handling chisel and hammer, as a young boy, Michelangelo was sent to Florence to study grammar under the Humanist Francesco da Urbino. The young artist, however, showed no interest in his schooling, preferring to copy paintings from churches, the city of Florence was at that time the greatest centre of the arts and learning in Italy. Art was sponsored by the Signoria, by the merchant guilds and by patrons such as the Medici. The Renaissance, a renewal of Classical scholarship and the arts, had its first flowering in Florence, the sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti had laboured for fifty years to create the bronze doors of the Baptistry, which Michelangelo was to describe as The Gates of Paradise. The exterior niches of the Church of Orsanmichele contained a gallery of works by the most acclaimed sculptors of Florence – Donatello, Ghiberti, Andrea del Verrocchio, and Nanni di Banco. The interiors of the churches were covered with frescos, begun by Giotto. During Michelangelos childhood, a team of painters had been called from Florence to the Vatican, among them was Domenico Ghirlandaio, a master in fresco painting, perspective, figure drawing, and portraiture who had the largest workshop in Florence at that period
23.
Mahmud II
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Mahmud II was the 30th Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1808 until his death in 1839. He was born in the Topkapı Palace, Constantinople, the son of Sultan Abdul Hamid I. His mother was Nakşidil Valide Sultan, in 1808, Mahmud IIs predecessor, and half-brother, Mustafa IV ordered his execution along with his cousin, the deposed Sultan Selim III, in order to defuse the rebellion. Selim III was killed, but Mahmud was safely hidden by his mother and was placed on the throne after the rebels deposed Mustafa IV. The leader of rebellion, Alemdar Mustafa Pasha, later became Mahmud IIs vizier. Western Historians give Mahmud a bad reputation for simply being the Sultan during a time of deterioration of the Ottoman Empire, there are many stories surrounding the circumstances of his attempted murder. When the assassins approached the Harem chambers where Mahmud was staying, she was able to keep away for a while by throwing ashes into their faces. This allowed Mahmud to escape through a window and climb onto the roof of the Harem and he apparently ran to the roof of the Third Court where other pages saw him and helped him come down with pieces of clothes that were quickly tied together as a ladder. By this time one of the leaders of the rebellion, Alemdar Mustafa Pasha arrived with his armed men, a plain stone staircase at the Altınyol of the Harem is called Staircase of Cevri Kalfa, since the events apparently happened around there and are associated with her. The vizier took the initiative in resuming reforms that had been terminated by the coup of 1807 that had brought Mustafa IV to power. However he was killed during a rebellion in 1808 and Mahmud II temporarily abandoned the reforms, Mahmud IIs later reformation efforts were more successful. During the early years of Mahmud IIs reign, his governor of Egypt Mehmet Ali Paşa successfully reconquered the cities of Medina. Abdullah bin Saud and his two followers were beheaded for their crimes against holy cities and mosques. His reign also marked the first breakaway from the Ottoman Empire and this event, together with the occupation of the Ottoman province of Algeria by France in 1830, marked the beginning of the gradual break-up of the Ottoman Empire. Non-Turkish ethnic groups living in the territories, especially in Europe. One of Mahmud IIs most notable acts during his reign was the abolition of the Janissary corps in June 1826 and he accomplished this by using his recently reformed wing of the military intended to replace the Janissaries. When the Janissaries mounted a demonstration against Mahmud IIs proposed reforms and this permitted the establishment of a European-style conscript army, recruited largely from Turkish speakers of Rumelia and Asia Minor. Mahmud was also responsible for the subjugation of the Iraqi Mamluks by Ali Ridha Pasha in 1831 and he ordered the execution of the renowned Ali Pasha of Tepelena
24.
Pasha
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Pasha or Paşa, in older works sometimes anglicized as bashaw, was a higher rank in the Ottoman Empire political and military system, typically granted to governors, generals, dignitaries and others. As an honorary title, Pasha, in one of its various ranks, is similar to a British peerage or knighthood, popular view connects it with Turkish baş, or the similar-sounding compound baş-ağa. Etymologist Sevan Nişanyan rejects both these explanations and instead derives it from Turkish beşe, which is cognate with Persian baççe, old Turkish had no fixed distinction between /b/ and /p/, and the word was spelled başa still in the 15th century. According to Josef W. Meri and Jere L. Bacharach, the same view is held by Nicholas Ostler, who mentions that the word was formed as a shortening of the Persian word Padishah. As first used in western Europe, the title appeared in writing with the initial b, the English forms bashaw, bassaw, bucha etc. general in the 16th and 17th century, derive through the medieval Latin and Italian word bassa. Due to the Ottoman presence in the Arab World, the title became used frequently in Arabic, within the Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman Sultan had the right to bestow the title of Pasha. It was through this custom that the title came to be used in Egypt, moreover, Muhammad Ali harboured ambitions of supplanting the Osman Dynasty in Constantinople, and sought to style his Egyptian realm as a successor sultanate to the Ottoman Empire. As such, he bore the title of Pasha, in addition to the title of Wāli. It was also part of the style of the Alpina Kursuncu Pasha. Pashas ranked above Beys and Aghas, but below Khedives and Viziers, if a Pasha governed a provincial territory, it could be called a pashaluk after his military title, besides the administrative term for the type of jurisdiction, e. g. eyalet, vilayet/walayah. Both Beylerbeys and valis/wālis were entitled to the style of Pasha, the word pashalik designated any province or other jurisdiction of a Pasha, such as the Pasha or Bashaw of Tripoli. Ottoman and Egyptian authorities conferred the title upon both Muslims and Christians without distinction and they also frequently gave it to foreigners in the service of the Ottoman Empire, or of the Egyptian Khedivate, e. g. Hobart Pasha. As an honorific, the title Pasha was a title and could be hereditary or non-hereditary. The title did not bestow rank or title to the wife nor was any religious leader elevated to the title, in contrast to western nobility titles, where the title normally is added before the given name, Ottoman titles followed the given name. In contacts with emissaries and representatives, holders of the title Pasha were often referred to as Your Excellency. The sons of a Pasha were styled Pashazada or Pasha-zade, which means just that, in modern Egyptian and Levantine Arabic, it is used as an honorific closer to Sir than Lord, especially by older people. Among Egyptians born since the Revolution of 1952 and the abolition of aristocratic titles, although it is no longer an official title, high-ranking officers of the Turkish Armed Forces are often referred to as pashas by the Turkish public and media. In the French Navy, pasha is the nickname of the Commanding Officer, yusuf Karamanli, Pasha of Tripoli Ottoman Empire Ottoman titles This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh, ed. article name needed
25.
Pontoon bridge
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A pontoon bridge, also known as a floating bridge, uses floats or shallow-draft boats to support a continuous deck for pedestrian and vehicle travel. The buoyancy of the limits the maximum load they can carry. Most pontoon bridges are temporary, used in wartime and civil emergencies, permanent floating bridges are useful for sheltered water-crossings where it is not considered economically feasible to suspend a bridge from anchored piers. Such bridges can require a section that is elevated, or can be raised or removed, a pontoon bridge is a collection of specialized, shallow draft boats or floats, connected together to cross a river or canal, with a track or deck attached on top. The water buoyancy supports the boats, limiting the load to the total. The supporting boats or floats can be open or closed, temporary or permanent in installation, the decking may be temporary or permanent, and constructed out of wood, modular metal, or asphalt or concrete over a metal frame. The spelling ponton in English dates from at least 1870, the use continued in references found in U. S. patents during the 1890s. It continued to be spelled in that fashion through World War II, U. S. combat engineers commonly pronounced the word ponton rather than pontoon and U. S. military manuals spelled it using a single o. The original word was derived from Old French ponton, from Latin ponto, when designing a pontoon bridge, the civil engineer must take into consideration the Archimedes principle looking at the maximum amount of load that it is intended to support. Each pontoon can support an equal to the mass of the water that it displaces. If the maximum load of a section is exceeded, one or more pontoons become submerged. The roadway across the pontoons must also be able to support the load, survey to determine the best location. The connection to shore often causes problems, requiring the design of approaches that are not too steep, keep the bank from crumbling, Floating bridges were typically constructed using wood. Such a wooden floating bridge could be built in a series of sections, Pontoons were formed using boats, several barrels lashed together, rafts of timbers, or some combination of these. Each bridge section consisted of one or more pontoons, which were maneuvered into position and then anchored, using underwater and these pontoons were then linked together using wooden stringers called balks. The balks were then covered by a series of cross planks called chesses to form a surface. Some bridges have been designed and survived much longer, in Hobart a long pontoon bridge built in 1943 was only replaced after 21 years. The fourth Galata Bridge that spans the Golden Horn in Istanbul, Turkey was built in 1912, precautions are needed to protect a pontoon bridge from becoming damaged
26.
State organisation of the Ottoman Empire
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Wealth and rank could be inherited but were just as often earned. Positions were perceived as such as viziers and aghas. Military service was a key to advancement in the hierarchy, outside this system were various types of vassal and tributary states. The empire was divided into vilayets, with a governor assigned to each vilayet, the idea of vilayet originated from the Seljuk vassal state in central Anatolia. Over the years the Empire became an amalgamation of pre-existing polities, the central government was composed of the Sultan and his own staff in what was known as House of Osman. The House of Osman was advised by the Divan, composed of the Grand Vizier, the ruling class was called the askeri, including the noblemen, court officials, military officers and the religious class called the ulema. The Divan become very powerful and after Murat IV, sultans began not to join the sessions, the Ottoman dynasty or House of Osman was unprecedented and unequaled in the Islamic world for its size and duration. The Ottoman sultan, pâdişâh or lord of kings, served as the sole regent and was considered to be the embodiment of its government. On eleven occasions, the sultan was deposed because he was perceived by his enemies as a threat to the state. After the dissolution of the empire, the new republic abolished the Sultanate and Caliphate, fifty years later, in 1974, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey granted descendants of the former dynasty the right to acquire Turkish citizenship. The current head of the House of Osman is Dündar Aliosman, the Harem was one of the most important powers of the Ottoman court. It was ruled by the Valide Sultan, mother of the reigning sultan, on occasion, the Valide Sultan would become involved in state politics and through her influence could diminish the power and position of the sultan. For a period of time beginning in the 16th century and extending into the 17th, the harem had its own internal organization and order of formulating policies. Beneath the Valide Sultan in the hierarchy was the Haseki Sultan, chief consort of the sultan and this position used around 16th and 17th century. The sultan also had four other consorts, who were each called Kadın. Next in rank below the sultans wives were his eight favourite concubines, and then the other concubines whom the sultan favoured, next in rank were the concubines of other court officials. Pupils and novices were younger women who were waiting to be married off to someone or who had not yet graduated out of the Harem School. The Palace schools comprised not a track, but two
27.
Abdulmejid I
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Abdülmecid I, also known as Abdulmejid and similar spellings, was the 31st Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and succeeded his father Mahmud II on 2 July 1839. His reign was notable for the rise of nationalist movements within the empires territories and he tried to forge alliances with the major powers of Western Europe, namely the United Kingdom and France, who fought alongside the Ottoman Empire in the Crimean War against Russia. In the following Congress of Paris on 30 March 1856, the Ottoman Empire was officially included among the European family of nations. Abdulmejids biggest achievement was the announcement and application of the Tanzimat reforms which were prepared by his father, for this achievement, one of the Imperial anthems of the Ottoman Empire, the March of Abdulmejid, was named after him. Abdulmejid was born at the Beşiktaş Sahil Palace or at the Topkapı Palace and his mother was his fathers first wife in 1839, Valide Sultan Bezmiâlem, originally named Suzi, either a Circassian or Georgian slave. Abdulmejid received a European education and spoke fluent French, the first sultan to do so, like Abdulaziz who succeeded him, he was interested in literature and classical music. Like his father Mahmud II, he was an advocate of reforms and was enough to have the support of progressive viziers such as Mustafa Reşit Pasha, Mehmet Emin Ali Paşa. Throughout his reign he had to struggle against conservatives who opposed his reforms, Abdulmejid was also the first sultan to directly listen to the publics complaints on special reception days, which were usually held every Friday without any middlemen. Abdulmejid toured the territories to see in person how the Tanzimat reforms were being applied. He travelled to İzmit, Mudanya, Bursa, Gallipoli, Çanakkale, Lemnos, Lesbos and Chios in 1844, when Abdulmejid succeeded to the throne, the affairs of the Ottoman Empire were in a critical state. At the time his father died, the news reached Istanbul that the army had been defeated at Nizip by the army of the rebel Egyptian viceroy. The terms were finalised at the Convention of London, in compliance with his fathers express instructions, Abdulmejid immediately carried out the reforms to which Mahmud II had devoted himself. In November 1839 an edict known as the Hatt-ı Şerif of Gülhane, also known as Tanzimat Fermanı was proclaimed, the edict was supplemented at the close of the Crimean War by a similar statute issued in February 1856, named the Hatt-ı Hümayun. The scheme met with opposition from the Muslim governing classes and the ulema, or religious authorities. More than one conspiracy was formed against the life on account of it. European fashions were also adopted by the Court, samuel Morse received his first ever patent for the telegraph in 1847, at the old Beylerbeyi Palace in Istanbul, which was issued by Sultan Abulmejid who personally tested the new invention. When Kossuth and others sought refuge in Turkey after the failure of the Hungarian uprising in 1849, the sultan was called on by Austria and Russia to surrender them and he also would not allow the conspirators against his own life to be put to death. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica says of him, He bore the character of being a kind and honourable man, if somewhat weak, against this, however, must be set down his excessive extravagance, especially towards the end of his life
28.
Baedeker
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Verlag Karl Baedeker, founded by Karl Baedeker on July 1,1827, is a German publisher and pioneer in the business of worldwide travel guides. 1827−1859, Karl Baedeker had three sons, Ernst, Karl and Fritz and after his death each, in turn, dictated by events, 1859−1861, Following the death of Karl Baedeker, his eldest son Ernst Baedeker became the head of the firm. After his training as a bookseller in Braunschweig, Leipzig and Stuttgart, on New Years Day,1859, he had joined his fathers publishing firm as a partner and just ten months later he was running it on his own. Ernst Baedeker died unexpectedly on 23 July 1861 of sunstroke in Egypt and his brother, Karl. 1861−1877, Karl Baedeker II continued the started by his brother Ernst. In addition to the revision of existing guides, he published 14 new guides, four in German, seven in English. In 1877 Karl, afflicted with a mental condition, moved to a sanatorium near Esslingen am Neckar where he remained for the rest of his life. 1869−1925, Under Fritz Baedeker the company grew rapidly, in 1870, the Baedeker bookselling business was sold. In 1872, he moved the headquarters from Koblenz to Leipzig. The new company was named Wagner and Debes with offices adjacent to the new Baedeker address. He added, By and large, it was the technical skill of the staff at Wagner & Debes that kept the Baedeker guides well ahead of their rivals in this particular aspect of publishing. Michael Wild, the Baedeker chronicler, refers to the Baedeker maps as a feast for the eye, the expansion was fast and furious. Plans to publish guides on China and Japan had to be abandoned when war broke out in 1914, at home, the list of guides on German regions and cities continued to grow. His was the age of Baedeker travel guides. Fritz also had the fortune to have three of his four sons − Hans, Ernst and Dietrich − beside him in the firm. Karl Baedeker III, the son, entered academia and rose to become a professor of physics at the University of Jena. It was his son Karl Friedrich who revived Verlag Karl Baedeker after the Second World War, during his reign, which lasted over 50 years, Fritz produced 73 new Baedekers, as they came to be known universally. The Baedeker travel guides became so popular that baedekering became an English-language term for the purpose of traveling in a country to write a guide or travelogue about it
29.
Toll bridge
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A toll bridge is a bridge over which traffic may pass upon payment of a toll, or fee. The practice of collecting tolls on bridges harks back to the days of ferry crossings where people paid a fee to be ferried across stretches of water, as boats became impractical to carry large loads, ferry operators looked for new sources of revenue. Having built a bridge, they hoped to recoup their investment by charging tolls for people, animals, vehicles, and goods to cross it. The original London Bridge across the river Thames opened as a toll bridge, using interest on its capital assets, the trust now owns and runs all seven central London bridges at no cost to taxpayers or users. In the United States, private ownership of toll bridges peaked in the mid-19th century, in some instances, a quasi-governmental authority was formed, and toll revenue bonds were issued to raise funds for construction and/or operation of the facility. Peters and Kramer observed that. little research has been done to quantify the impact of collection on society as a whole. And therefore they published an analysis of the Total Societal Cost associated with toll collection as a means of taxation. TSC is the sum of administrative, compliance, fuel and pollution costs, in 2000 they estimated it to be $56,914,732, or 37. 3% of revenue collected. Nakamura and Kockelman show that tolls are by nature regressive, shifting the burden of taxation disproportionately to the poor and middle classes. Electronic toll collection, branded under names such as EZ-Pass, SunPass, IPass, FasTrak, Treo, GoodToGo, electronic tolling proposals that represented the shadow price of electronic toll collection may have misled decision makers. Consumers have additionally endured an increased administrative burden associated with paying toll bills, additionally, visitors to a region may incur e-toll tag fees imposed by their rental car company. The Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980 identified and attempted to address a problem associated with the government collection of information. Approvals were to be secured by government agencies before promulgating a paper form, website, however, the act did not anticipate and thus address the consumer burden associated with funding infrastructure via electronic toll collection instead of through more traditional forms of taxation. In some instances, tolls have been removed after retirement of the toll revenue bonds issued to raise funds for construction and/or operation of the facility, sometimes citizens revolt against toll plazas, as was the case in Jacksonville, Florida. Tolls were in place on four bridges crossing the St. Johns River and these tolls paid for the respective bridges as well as many other highway projects. As Jacksonville continued to grow, the tolls created bottlenecks on the roadway, in 1988, Jacksonville voters chose to eliminate all the toll booths and replace the revenue with a ½ cent sales tax increase. In 1989, the booths were removed,36 years after the first toll booth went up. In Scotland, the Scottish Parliament purchased the Skye Bridge from its owners in late 2004, in 2004, the German government cancelled a contract with the Toll Collect syndicate after much negative publicity
30.
Lira
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Lira is the name of several currency units. It is the current currency of Turkey and also the name of the currencies of Lebanon. It is the currency of Italy, Malta, San Marino and the Vatican City, all of which were replaced in 2002 with the euro, and of Israel. The term originates from the value of a Troy pound of high purity silver, the libra was the basis of the monetary system of the Roman Empire. When Europe resumed a monetary system, during the Carolingian Empire, the Roman system was adopted, particularly this system was kept during the Middle Ages and Modern Age in England, France, and Italy. In each of countries the libra was translated into local language, pound in England, livre in France. The Venetian lira was one of the currencies in use in Italy, during the 19th century, Egypt and the Ottoman Empire adopted the lira as their national currency, equivalent to 100 piasters or kuruş. When the Ottoman Empire collapsed in years 1918-1922, many among the successor states kept the lira as their national currency. In some countries, such as Cyprus, which have belonged to both empires, the Ottoman Empire and the British Empire, the lira and pound are used as equivalents. For Turkish lira, the Turkish lira sign is used, otherwise L, sometimes in a double-crossed script form or less often single-crossed, is usually used as the symbol. The Turkish lira was introduced in 1844 during the Ottoman reign, the Turkish Lira is now the currency of Turkey and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. The Lebanese pound is called lira in Arabic, which is the language of Lebanon. The Syrian pound is called lira in Arabic, which is the language of Syria. The Jordanian dinar is widely called a lira, the Bulgarian and Romanian languages refer to the English pound as lira in opposition to Croatian which refers to the Italian currency as lira. Cipolla, Le avventure della lira, Bologna, Il Mulino,1975, stefano Poddi, La lunga storia della lira, stralcio, Fondazioni, n.2 marzo-aprile,2008. Stefano Poddi, La lunga storia della lira, articolo completo, Difesa e Lavoro, overview of Italian lira from the BBC
31.
New Mosque (Istanbul)
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It is situated on the Golden Horn, at the southern end of the Galata Bridge, and is one of the famous architectural landmarks of Istanbul. The construction of the began in 1597. It was ordered by Sultana Safiye, who was the wife of Sultan Murad III and she ordered the mosque in her capacity as Valide Sultan, two years after Mehmed IIIs ascension to the Ottoman throne in 1595, hence the original formal name Valide Sultan Mosque. The original architect was Davut Ağa, an apprentice to the great Mimar Sinan, however, Davut Ağa died in 1599 and was replaced by Dalgıç Ahmed Çavuş. The construction took more than half a century and was completed by another Valide Sultan, Sultana Turhan Hatice, the project was hampered by political disconnect, and its location and monetary implications created dissent in the court. The Eminönü neighborhood was the citys foremost commercial center, and home to a predominantly Jewish population, however, the vast monetary outlay drew sharp criticism. In particular, the Janissaries resented the political power of the Valide Sultan. Sultana Safiye was forced to abandon the project upon Mehmed IIIs death in 1603, the new Sultan, Ahmed I, had no interest in pursuing the project after Sultana Safiye was relegated to the harem and the construction was abandoned. Later that year, the imperial architect Mustafa Ağa suggested that Sultana Turhan Hatice, mother of Sultan Mehmed IV, Sultana Turhan Hatice also ordered the construction of the nearby Spice Bazaar, which forms a part of the külliye of the New Mosque. Thus, in the last months of 1660, the construction of the mosque was resumed, the mosque was finally completed in 1663, and inaugurated in 1665. It was renamed the New Valide Sultan Mosque, in time, this name was informally shortened as the New Mosque among the public. The exterior of the mosque itself boasts 66 domes and semi domes in a pyramidal arrangement, the main dome measures 36 metres in height, and is supported by four flanking semi-domes. The dome plan of the New Mosque is based on the earlier Şehzade Mosque designed by Mimar Sinan, as with other imperial mosques in Istanbul, the mosque itself is preceded by a monumental courtyard on its west side. The courtyard of the New Mosque is 39 metres on a side, an elegant şadırvan stands in the center, but is only ornamental. The actual ritual purifications are performed with water taps on the wall of the mosque. The façade of the mosque under the porch is decorated with İznik tiles, stone blocks supplied from the island of Rhodes were used in the construction of the mosque. The interior of the mosque is shaped and measures 41 metres on each side. The central area is defined by four large piers which are the support for the dome
32.
Fausto Zonaro
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Fausto Zonaro was an Italian painter, best known for his Realist style paintings of life and history of the Ottoman Empire. Fausto Zonaro was born in Masi, a municipality in the Province of Padua and he was the eldest child of the mason Maurizio and his wife Elisabetta Bertoncin. Maurizio intended that his son should also be a mason, yet at a young age, with his parents’ consent, he enrolled first in the Technical Institute in Lendinara, then in the Cignaroli Academy in Verona under Napoleone Nani. Fausto opened an art school and studio in Venice. He felt no direction in his life at that time. He actively displayed works in exhibition and gained respect of critics and he painted mainly genre works in oil and watercolor. In 1883 at Milan, he exhibited, Le rivelatrici napoletane, Da SantElmo, and Al Pincio, in Rome, the canvases Passa la vacca, La sofferente, Le cucitrici napoletane, and Il saponaro. In 1884, at Turin, Tempesta, Primo nato, Primo tuono, and the Zoccolaro of Naples, and in 1887 at Venice, In attesa, Al Redentoretto, and Lavoratrice di perle. La casa Camerini of Padua once possessed a banditore, and two canvases, I pigiatori and In medio stat virtus and they were partly inspired by Edmondo de Amicis’ orientalist travel book Constantinopoli. In 1892, Zonaro and Pante married, and lived in the Istanbul neighborhood of Pera, in Istanbul, over time he gained patronage in aristocratic circles. Munir Pasha, the Minister of Protocol, who invited him to visit Yıldız Palace and he was employed in teaching painting to the Pashas wife, and in this way Zonaro and Pante got to know the important artistic figures of Istanbul of that time. The Sultan later commissioned from Zonaro a series of paintings depicting events in the life of the 15th-century Ottoman sultan, the man Zonaro speaks of indicates to the oppressed grandson of the Muslim prophet Mohammed, Hussein ibn Ali. Zonaro remained in Istanbul until 1909, when he returned to Italy following the Young Turk Revolution that overthrew his patron Abdulhamid II, there would be no Ottoman court painter after him. He settled in Sanremo where he continued to paint small works depicting the Italian Riviera, in 1920 he separated from his wife and began living with his daughter. He is buried in the Foce Cemetery in Sanremo, on his gravestone, underneath an Ottoman tughra, it states that Zonaro was the court painter of the Ottoman Empire. Zonaro painted portraits, landscapes and historical paintings. It is claimed that “Zonaro was one of those who made a contribution to the development of western style art in Turkey. ”He was a prolific artist who created hundreds of works. An exhibition of his work in Florence in 1977 received wide acclaim in the art world, today, most of Zonaro’s works remain in Istanbul, and many of them are on display in the city’s leading museums
33.
Abdul Hamid II
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Abdul Hamid II was the 34th Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and the last Sultan to exert effective autocratic control over the fracturing state. Abdul Hamids 1909 removal from the throne was hailed by most Ottoman citizens, the most far-reaching of these reforms were in education, professional schools were established. The University of Istanbul, although shut down by Abdul Hamid himself in 1881, was reopened in 1900, and a network of secondary, primary, Railway and telegraph systems were developed by primarily German firms. Between 1871 and 1908, the Sublime Porte thus reached a new degree of organizational elaboration and articulation. Abroad, Abdul Hamid was nicknamed the Red Sultan or Abdul the Damned due to the massacres committed against minorities during his rule and use of a police to silence dissent. These led to an attempt in 1905, contributing to the sultans worsening paranoia until his eventual removal from the throne. Abdul Hamid II was born at the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul and he was the son of Sultan Abdülmecid and Tirimüjgan Kadınefendi, originally named Virjin. After the death of his mother, he became the adoptive son of his fathers wife. He was a carpenter and personally crafted some high quality furniture. Abdul Hamid II was also interested in opera and personally wrote the first-ever Turkish translations of many opera classics and he ascended to the throne following the deposition of his brother Murad on 31 August 1876. At his accession, some commentators were impressed by the fact that he rode practically unattended to the Eyüp Sultan Mosque where he was given the Sword of Osman. Most people expected Abdul Hamid II to have ideas. In any event, like many other reforms of the Ottoman Empire change proved to be nearly impossible. Russia continued to mobilize for war, however, everything changed when the British fleet approached the capital from the Sea of Marmara. Early in 1877 the Ottoman Empire went to war with the Russian Empire, Abdul Hamids biggest fear, near dissolution, was realised with the Russian declaration of war on 24 April 1877. In that conflict, the Ottoman Empire fought without help from European allies, Russian chancellor Prince Gorchakov had effectively purchased Austrian neutrality with the Reichstadt Agreement. The Russian victory was quickly realised, the conflict ended in February 1878. After the war with Russia, Abdulhamid suspended the constitution in February 1878, for the next three decades, the Ottoman Empire was ruled by Abdulhamid from Yıldız Palace
34.
Napoleon III
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Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte was the only President of the French Second Republic and, as Napoleon III, the Emperor of the Second French Empire. He was the nephew and heir of Napoleon I and he was the first President of France to be elected by a direct popular vote. He remains the longest-serving French head of state since the French Revolution, during the first years of the Empire, Napoleons government imposed censorship and harsh repressive measures against his opponents. Some six thousand were imprisoned or sent to penal colonies until 1859, thousands more went into voluntary exile abroad, including Victor Hugo. From 1862 onwards, he relaxed government censorship, and his came to be known as the Liberal Empire. Many of his opponents returned to France and became members of the National Assembly, Napoleon III is best known today for his grand reconstruction of Paris, carried out by his prefect of the Seine, Baron Haussmann. He launched similar public works projects in Marseille, Lyon, Napoleon III modernized the French banking system, greatly expanded and consolidated the French railway system, and made the French merchant marine the second largest in the world. He promoted the building of the Suez Canal and established modern agriculture, Napoleon III negotiated the 1860 Cobden–Chevalier free trade agreement with Britain and similar agreements with Frances other European trading partners. Social reforms included giving French workers the right to strike and the right to organize, womens education greatly expanded, as did the list of required subjects in public schools. In foreign policy, Napoleon III aimed to reassert French influence in Europe and he was a supporter of popular sovereignty and of nationalism. In Europe, he allied with Britain and defeated Russia in the Crimean War and his regime assisted Italian unification and, in doing so, annexed Savoy and the County of Nice to France, at the same time, his forces defended the Papal States against annexation by Italy. Napoleon doubled the area of the French overseas empire in Asia, the Pacific, on the other hand, his armys intervention in Mexico which aimed to create a Second Mexican Empire under French protection ended in failure. Beginning in 1866, Napoleon had to face the power of Prussia. In July 1870, Napoleon entered the Franco-Prussian War without allies, the French army was rapidly defeated and Napoleon III was captured at the Battle of Sedan. The French Third Republic was proclaimed in Paris, and Napoleon went into exile in England, charles-Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, later known as Louis Napoleon and then Napoleon III, was born in Paris on the night of 20–21 April 1808. His presumed father was Louis Bonaparte, the brother of Napoleon Bonaparte. His mother was Hortense de Beauharnais, the daughter by the first marriage of Napoleons wife Joséphine de Beauharnais, as empress, Joséphine proposed the marriage as a way to produce an heir for the Emperor, who agreed, as Joséphine was by then infertile. Louis married Hortense when he was twenty-four and she was nineteen and they had a difficult relationship, and only lived together for brief periods
35.
Franco-Prussian War
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The conflict was caused by Prussian ambitions to extend German unification and French fears of the shift in the European balance of power that would result if the Prussians succeeded. On 16 July 1870, the French parliament voted to declare war on the German Kingdom of Prussia, the German coalition mobilised its troops much more quickly than the French and rapidly invaded northeastern France. The German forces were superior in numbers, had training and leadership and made more effective use of modern technology, particularly railroads. The German states proclaimed their union as the German Empire under the Prussian king Wilhelm I, the Treaty of Frankfurt of 10 May 1871 gave Germany most of Alsace and some parts of Lorraine, which became the Imperial territory of Alsace-Lorraine. French determination to regain Alsace-Lorraine and fear of another Franco-German war, along with British apprehension about the balance of power, the causes of the Franco-Prussian War are deeply rooted in the events surrounding the unification of Germany. In the aftermath of the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, Prussia had annexed numerous territories and this new power destabilized the European balance of power established by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 after the Napoleonic Wars. France was strongly opposed to any further alliance of German states, in Prussia, some officials considered a war against France both inevitable and necessary to arouse German nationalism in those states that would allow the unification of a great German empire. Bismarck also knew that France should be the aggressor in the conflict to bring the southern German states to side with Prussia, many Germans also viewed the French as the traditional destabilizer of Europe, and sought to weaken France to prevent further breaches of the peace. The immediate cause of the war resided in the candidacy of Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, France feared encirclement by an alliance between Prussia and Spain. The Hohenzollern princes candidacy was withdrawn under French diplomatic pressure, releasing the Ems Dispatch to the public, Bismarck made it sound as if the king had treated the French envoy in a demeaning fashion, which inflamed public opinion in France. They also argue that he wanted a war to resolve growing domestic political problems, other historians, notably French historian Pierre Milza, dispute this. According to Milza, the Emperor had no need for a war to increase his popularity, the Ems telegram had exactly the effect on French public opinion that Bismarck had intended. This text produced the effect of a red flag on the Gallic bull, gramont, the French foreign minister, declared that he felt he had just received a slap. Napoleons new prime minister, Emile Ollivier, declared that France had done all that it could humanly and honorably do to prevent the war, a crowd of 15–20,000 people, carrying flags and patriotic banners, marched through the streets of Paris, demanding war. On 19 July 1870 a declaration of war was sent to the Prussian government, the southern German states immediately sided with Prussia. The French Army consisted in peacetime of approximately 400,000 soldiers, some of them were veterans of previous French campaigns in the Crimean War, Algeria, the Franco-Austrian War in Italy, and in the Mexican campaign. Under Marshal Adolphe Niel, urgent reforms were made, universal conscription and a shorter period of service gave increased numbers of reservists, who would swell the army to a planned strength of 800,000 on mobilisation. Those who for any reason were not conscripted were to be enrolled in the Garde Mobile, however, the Franco-Prussian War broke out before these reforms could be completely implemented
36.
Germany
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Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a federal parliamentary republic in central-western Europe. It includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres, with about 82 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state of the European Union. After the United States, it is the second most popular destination in the world. Germanys capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while its largest conurbation is the Ruhr, other major cities include Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Leipzig. Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity, a region named Germania was documented before 100 AD. During the Migration Period the Germanic tribes expanded southward, beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation, in 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic, the establishment of the national socialist dictatorship in 1933 led to World War II and the Holocaust. After a period of Allied occupation, two German states were founded, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, in 1990, the country was reunified. In the 21st century, Germany is a power and has the worlds fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP. As a global leader in industrial and technological sectors, it is both the worlds third-largest exporter and importer of goods. Germany is a country with a very high standard of living sustained by a skilled. It upholds a social security and universal health system, environmental protection. Germany was a member of the European Economic Community in 1957. It is part of the Schengen Area, and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999, Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G8, the G20, and the OECD. The national military expenditure is the 9th highest in the world, the English word Germany derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz popular, derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- people, the discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The oldest complete hunting weapons found anywhere in the world were discovered in a mine in Schöningen where three 380, 000-year-old wooden javelins were unearthed
37.
Thyssen AG
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Thyssen was a major German steel producer founded by August Thyssen. After over 100 years of existence, the merged with Friedrich Krupp AG Hoesch-Krupp to form ThyssenKrupp in 1999. On 29 September 1891 August Thyssen and his brother Joseph came to be in possession of all shares of Gewerkschaft Deutscher Kaiser, on 17 December 1891 the steelworks of the same company opened in Hamborn, Duisburg. Subsequently, the plant was modernized and expanded by August Thyssen, becoming an integrated company producing iron and steel and manufacturing ships. After the First World War came the occupation of the Ruhr, in 1934, August Thyssen-Hütte AG was founded as part of the new group. The Nazi rearmament policy and subsequent war made the plants essential to the war economy, after the end of World War II, the Allies ordered the company to be liquidated and in 1953 a new company, also named August Thyssen-Hütte AG, was formed in Duisburg. The other mills of the company in Duisburg became legally independent entities, however, the mining division was not reconglomerated, thus Thyssen became largely a steel company. In 1954/55, the focused on acquisitions to restore the vertical integration by acquiring mining concerns. Further companies were acquired, Niederrheinischen Hütte AG in 1956, Deutschen Edelstahlwerke AG in 1957, Phoenix-Rheinrohr AG, the product range included steel sections and flat steel in all grades, including high-alloy steel. By the mid 1960s, August Thyssen-Hütte AG was Europes largest crude steel producer, in the 1960s, the company also formed cooperative alliances with companies such as Mannesmann AG. By 1972, it employed 92,200 people and generated sales of 9.8 billion DM. In 1973, the company acquired Rheinstahl AG, which was mainly a manufacturing company and this takeover reduced the companys dominance in the steel industry and converted it to a conglomerate. In 1977, the company became Thyssen AG, with Rheinstahl AG already having been renamed Thyssen Industrie AG in 1976, in 1983, Thyssen Stahl AG was spun off. During the 1980s, talks on a merger between Thyssen Stahl AG and Krupp Stahl AG took place, an alliance did not take place at that time, but there began cooperation on certain business areas. In 1997, the steel production divisions of both groups were merged to form Thyssen Krupp Stahl AG. On 17 March 1999, a new group formed by the merger of Thyssen and Krupp was registered, history - Group - ThyssenKrupp AG. Die Feuer verlöschen nie - August Thyssen-Hütte 1890-1926
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Overhead line
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An overhead line or overhead wire is used to transmit electrical energy to trams, trolleybuses, or trains. Overhead line is designed on the principle of one or more overhead wires situated over rail tracks, the feeder stations are usually fed from a high-voltage electrical grid. Electric trains that collect their current from overhead lines use a device such as a pantograph and it presses against the underside of the lowest overhead wire, the contact wire. Current collectors are electrically conductive and allow current to flow through to the train or tram, non-electric locomotives may pass along these tracks without affecting the overhead line, although there may be difficulties with overhead clearance. Alternative electrical power transmission schemes for trains include third rail, ground-level power supply, batteries and this article does not cover regenerative braking, where the traction motors act as generators to retard movement and return power to the overhead. To achieve good high-speed current collection, it is necessary to keep the wire geometry within defined limits. This is usually achieved by supporting the wire from a second wire known as the messenger wire or catenary. This wire approximates the path of a wire strung between two points, a catenary curve, thus the use of catenary to describe this wire or sometimes the whole system. This wire is attached to the wire at regular intervals by vertical wires known as droppers or drop wires. It is supported regularly at structures, by a pulley, link, the whole system is then subjected to a mechanical tension. As the contact wire makes contact with the pantograph, the insert on top of the pantograph is worn down. The straight wire between supports will cause the wire to cross over the whole surface of the pantograph as the train travels around the curve, causing uniform wear. On straight track, the wire is zigzagged slightly to the left. The movement of the wire across the head of the pantograph is called the sweep. The zigzagging of the line is not required for trolley poles. Depot areas tend to have only a wire and are known as simple equipment or trolley wire. When overhead line systems were first conceived, good current collection was only at low speeds. Compound equipment - uses a second wire, known as the auxiliary
tram line and a sidewalk in each direction
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