Franschhoek
Franschhoek is a small town in the Western Cape Province and one of the oldest towns of the Republic of South Africa. It is about 75 kilometres from Cape Town and has a population of over 15,000 people. Since 2000 it has been incorporated into Stellenbosch Municipality. Franschhoek's original inhabitants were the San people, who lived in this place long before the Khoikhoi; the spread of the Khoikhoi herders into the Cape resulted in a conflict of interests with the San hunter-gatherer inhabitants of the area. A major source of conflict was competition for game, such as zebra and wildebeest. Although the Khoikhoi were herders, they relied on the spoils of the hunt for their daily food. In 1688 French Huguenot refugees began populating the valley establishing farms and businesses bringing with them their experience in agriculture; the name of the area soon changed to le Coin Français, to Franschhoek, with many of the settlers naming their new farms after the areas in France from which they came.
La Motte, Champagne, La Cotte, Cabrière, La Provence, Bourgogne, La Terra de Luc and La Dauphine were among some of the first established farms — most of which still retain their original Cape Dutch farm houses today. These farms have grown into renowned wineries. Many of the surnames in the area are of French origin, e.g. Du Toit, Marais, Du Plessis, Malan and Joubert; this heritage is shown today by the Huguenot Monument. The museum nearby chronicles the history of the first settlers, with each of the original Huguenot farms having its own fascinating story to tell; the Cape Dutch architecture in much of the village is unspoiled, as restrictions have been placed on the extent of renovations and new construction in order to preserve the spirit of the original settlers to the area. In 1904 a 28 km branch line was built between Paarl and Franschhoek to serve as an alternative to ox drawn carts for farmers wanting to get their produce to market. Steam locomotives operated along the route until diesel locomotives took over in the 1970s and in the 1990s, as the need for rail transport decreased, service along the railway line was discontinued.
The branch line was reinstated in 2012 by a private operator and now sees service as the Franschhoek Wine Tram, a tourism project utilizing newly constructed double-decker trams modeled after the Blackpool Corporation Tramways Double Deck Balcony Tramcar of circa 1923 to transport tourists between wine estates in the area. Once a sleepy country retreat, the village began experiencing a boom in the 1990s, property prices have increased; the ideal summer weather, snowy peaks in winter and proximity to Cape Town have turned Franschhoek into one of South Africa's most sought after residential addresses. The construction of the new English-medium private Bridge House School outside the village has attracted many urban dwellers to the village. Franschhoek is notable for having some of the top restaurants in the country within its borders; this fact, together with the strong wine culture, pristine natural and architectural beauty has made Franschhoek into what many describe as the "food and wine capital" of South Africa.
The city hosts one of the top 50 restaurants in the world, according to the "S. Pellegrino world's 50 best restaurants"-ranking and a famous Belgian Pâtisserie for Belgian pralines; the attributes of the village have turned Franschhoek into a popular tourist destination, with dozens of bed & breakfasts and small cottages available for accommodation. Franschhoek's weekend Bastille Festival has been celebrated every July since 1994, the year of the first South African general election with universal adult suffrage marking the end of the apartheid era. Boschendal Huguenots in South Africa Dutch Reformed Church, Franschhoek
Robert Andrews Millikan
Robert Andrews Millikan was an American experimental physicist honored with the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1923 for the measurement of the elementary electric charge and for his work on the photoelectric effect. Millikan graduated from Oberlin College in 1891 and obtained his doctorate at Columbia University in 1895. In 1896 he became an assistant at the University of Chicago, where he became a full professor in 1910. In 1909 Millikan began a series of experiments to determine the electric charge carried by a single electron, he began by measuring the course of charged water droplets in an electric field. The results suggested that the charge on the droplets is a multiple of the elementary electric charge, but the experiment was not accurate enough to be convincing, he obtained more precise results in 1910 with his famous oil-drop experiment in which he replaced water with oil. In 1914 Millikan took up with similar skill the experimental verification of the equation introduced by Albert Einstein in 1905 to describe the photoelectric effect.
He used this same research to obtain an accurate value of Planck’s constant. In 1921 Millikan left the University of Chicago to become director of the Norman Bridge Laboratory of Physics at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. There he undertook a major study of the radiation that the physicist Victor Hess had detected coming from outer space. Millikan proved that this radiation is indeed of extraterrestrial origin, he named it "cosmic rays." As chairman of the Executive Council of Caltech from 1921 until his retirement in 1945, Millikan helped to turn the school into one of the leading research institutions in the United States. He served on the board of trustees for Science Service, now known as Society for Science & the Public, from 1921 to 1953. Robert Andrews Millikan was born on March 1868, in Morrison, Illinois. Millikan went to high school in Iowa. Millikan received a bachelor's degree in the classics from Oberlin College in 1891 and his doctorate in physics from Columbia University in 1895 – he was the first to earn a Ph.
D. from that department. At the close of my sophomore year my Greek professor asked me to teach the course in elementary physics in the preparatory department during the next year. To my reply that I did not know any physics at all, his answer was, "Anyone who can do well in my Greek can teach physics." "All right," said I, "you will have to take the consequences, but I will try and see what I can do with it." I at once purchased an Avery's Elements of Physics, spent the greater part of my summer vacation of 1889 at home – trying to master the subject. I doubt if I have taught better in my life than in my first course in physics in 1889. I was so intensely interested in keeping my knowledge ahead of that of the class that they may have caught some of my own interest and enthusiasm. Millikan's enthusiasm for education continued throughout his career, he was the coauthor of a popular and influential series of introductory textbooks, which were ahead of their time in many ways. Compared to other books of the time, they treated the subject more in the way in which it was thought about by physicists.
They included many homework problems that asked conceptual questions, rather than requiring the student to plug numbers into a formula. Starting in 1908, while a professor at the University of Chicago, Millikan worked on an oil-drop experiment in which he measured the charge on a single electron. J. J. Thomson had discovered the charge-to-mass ratio of the electron. However, the actual charge and mass values were unknown. Therefore, if one of these two values were to be discovered, the other could be calculated. Millikan and his graduate student Harvey Fletcher used the oil-drop experiment to measure the charge of the electron. Professor Millikan took sole credit, in return for Harvey Fletcher claiming full authorship on a related result for his dissertation. Millikan went on to win the 1923 Nobel Prize for Physics, in part for this work, Fletcher kept the agreement a secret until his death. After a publication on his first results in 1910, contradictory observations by Felix Ehrenhaft started a controversy between the two physicists.
After improving his setup, Millikan published his seminal study in 1913. The elementary charge is one of the fundamental physical constants, accurate knowledge of its value is of great importance, his experiment measured the force on tiny charged droplets of oil suspended against gravity between two metal electrodes. Knowing the electric field, the charge on the droplet could be determined. Repeating the experiment for many droplets, Millikan showed that the results could be explained as integer multiples of a common value, the charge of a single electron; that this is somewhat lower than the modern value of 1.602 176 53 x 10−19 coulomb is due to Millikan's use of an inaccurate value for the viscosity of air. Although at the time of Millikan's oil-drop experiments it was becoming clear that there exist such things as subatomic particles, not everyone was convinced. Experimenting with cathode rays in 1897, J. J. Thomson had discovered negatively charged'corpuscles', as he called them, with a charge-to-mass ratio 1840 times that of a hydrogen ion.
Similar results had been found by Walter Kaufmann. Most of what was known about electricity and magnetism, could be explained on the basis that charge is a continuous variable.
Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg
The Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg referred to as MLU, is a public, research-oriented university in the cities of Halle and Wittenberg in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. MLU offers German and international courses leading to academic degrees such as BA, BSc, MA, MSc, doctoral degrees and Habilitation; the university was created in 1817 through the merger of the University of Wittenberg and the University of Halle. The university is named after the Protestant reformer Martin Luther, a professor in Wittenberg. Today, the university itself is located in Halle, while the Leucorea Foundation in Wittenberg serves as MLU's convention centre for seminars as well as for academic and political conferences. Both Halle and Wittenberg are about one hour from Berlin via the Berlin–Halle railway, which offers Intercity-Express trains; the University of Wittenberg was founded in 1502 by Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, as the Renaissance was becoming more and more popular. The foundation of the university was criticized when the Ninety-five Theses reached Albert of Brandenburg, the Archbishop of Mainz.
Ecclesiastically speaking, the Electorate of Saxony was subordinate to Albert. He criticized the elector for Luther's theses, viewing the founded university as a breeding ground for heretical ideas. Under the influence of Philipp Melanchthon, building on the works of Martin Luther, the university became a centre of the Protestant Reformation incorporating, at one point in time, Luther's house in Wittenberg, the Lutherhaus, as part of the campus. Notable alumni include George Müller, Georg Joachim Rheticus and – in fiction – William Shakespeare's Prince Hamlet and Horatio and Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus; the University of Halle was founded in 1694 by Frederick III, Elector of Brandenburg, who became Frederick I, King in Prussia, in 1701. In the late 17th century and early 18th century, Halle became a centre for Pietism within Prussia. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the universities were centers of the German Enlightenment. Christian Wolff was an important proponent of rationalism, he influenced many German scholars, such as Immanuel Kant.
Christian Thomasius was at the same time the first philosopher in Germany to hold his lectures not in Latin, but German. He contributed to a rational programme in philosophy but tried to establish a more common-sense point of view, aimed against the unquestioned superiority of aristocracy and theology; the institutionalisation of the local language as the language of instruction, the prioritisation of rationalism over religious orthodoxy, new modes of teaching, the ceding of control over their work to the professors themselves, were among various innovations which characterised the University of Halle, have led to its being referred to as the first "modern" university, whose liberalism was adopted by the University of Göttingen about a generation and subsequently by other German and most North American universities. The University of Wittenberg was closed in 1813 during the Napoleonic Wars; the town of Wittenberg was granted to Prussia in the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the university was merged with the Prussian University of Halle in 1817.
It took its present name on 10 November 1933. More than a dozen professors were expelled. Others were shifted to Halle-Wittenberg from universities regarded as "better" at the time, which led to the university being called an academic Vorkuta – after the largest center of the Gulag camps in European Russia). Following the continental European academic tradition, MLU has 9 faculties, regrouping academic staff and students according to their field of studies: Faculty of Theology Faculty of Law and Economics Faculty of Medicine Faculty of Philosophy I Faculty of Philosophy II Faculty of Philosophy III Faculty of Natural Sciences I Faculty of Natural Sciences II Faculty of Natural Sciences III The Botanical Garden of Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, founded in 1698. MLU's historical observatory, built in 1788 by Carl Gotthard Langhans. MLU is enclosed by a variety of research institutions, which have either institutional or personal links with the university or cooperate in their respective fields of studies: The German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina The Halle Institute for Economic Research The Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials The Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Central and Eastern Europe The Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry The Max Planck Research Unit for Enzymology of Protein Folding The Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology The Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics The Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research Even though MLU is an academic, research oriented institution, not an academy of music or conservatory, the university has an academic orchestra, founded in 1779, a rather prestigious choir, founded in 1950, which together constitute the so-called Collegium musicum.
Members are gifted students of all faculties, but academic staff and alumni. The university choir performs at the international Handel Festival in George Frideric Handel’s birthplace, Halle. MLU has many international partner universities, including: Argentina: National University of La Plata Australia: University of Queensland Austria: Johannes Kepler University Linz Canada: University of Ottawa Colombi
Allies of World War II
The Allies of World War II, called the United Nations from the 1 January 1942 declaration, were the countries that together opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War. The Allies promoted the alliance as a means to control German and Italian aggression. At the start of the war on 1 September 1939, the Allies consisted of France and the United Kingdom, as well as their dependent states, such as British India. Within days they were joined by the independent Dominions of the British Commonwealth: Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. After the start of the German invasion of North Europe until the Balkan Campaign, the Netherlands, Belgium and Yugoslavia joined the Allies. After first having cooperated with Germany in invading Poland whilst remaining neutral in the Allied-Axis conflict, the Soviet Union perforce joined the Allies in June 1941 after being invaded by Germany; the United States provided war materiel and money all along, joined in December 1941 after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
China had been in a prolonged war with Japan since the Marco Polo Bridge Incident of 1937, but joined the Allies in 1941. The alliance was formalised by the Declaration by United Nations, from 1 January 1942. However, the name United Nations was used to describe the Allies during the war; the leaders of the "Big Three"—the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the United States—controlled Allied strategy. The Big Three together with China were referred as a "trusteeship of the powerful" were recognized as the Allied "Big Four" in the Declaration by United Nations and as the "Four Policemen" of the United Nations. After the war ended, the Allied nations became the basis of the modern United Nations. Members The origins of the Allied powers stem from the Allies of World War I and cooperation of the victorious powers at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919. Germany resented signing Treaty of Versailles; the new Weimar Republic's legitimacy became shaken. However, the 1920s were peaceful. With the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression, political unrest in Europe soared including the rise in support of revanchist nationalists in Germany who blamed the severity of the economic crisis on the Treaty of Versailles.
By the early 1930s, the Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler became the dominant revanchist movement in Germany and Hitler and the Nazis gained power in 1933. The Nazi regime demanded the immediate cancellation of the Treaty of Versailles and made claims to German-populated Austria, German-populated territories of Czechoslovakia; the likelihood of war was high, the question was whether it could be avoided through strategies such as appeasement. In Asia, when Japan seized Manchuria in 1931, the League of Nations condemned it for aggression against China. Japan responded by leaving the League of Nations in March 1933. After four quiet years, the Sino-Japanese War erupted in 1937 with Japanese forces invading China; the League of Nations initiated sanctions on Japan. The United States, in particular, was sought to support China. In March 1939, Germany took over Czechoslovakia, violating the Munich Agreement signed six months before, demonstrating that the appeasement policy was a failure. Britain and France decided that Hitler had no intention to uphold diplomatic agreements and responded by preparing for war.
On 31 March 1939, Britain formed the Anglo-Polish military alliance in an effort to avert a German attack on the country. The French had a long-standing alliance with Poland since 1921; the Soviet Union sought an alliance with the western powers, but Hitler ended the risk of a war with Stalin by signing the Nazi–Soviet non-aggression pact in August 1939. The agreement secretly divided the independent nations of Eastern Europe between the two powers and assured adequate oil supplies for the German war machine. On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland. On 17 September 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east. A Polish government-in-exile was set up and it continued to be one of the Allies, a model followed by other occupied countries. After a quiet winter, Germany in April 1940 invaded and defeated Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands and France. Britain and its Empire stood alone against Mussolini. In June 1941, Hitler broke the non-aggression agreement with Stalin and Germany invaded the Soviet Union.
In December, Japan attacked the Britain. The main lines of World War II had formed. During December 1941, U. S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt devised the name "United Nations" for the Allies and proposed it to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, he referred to the Big Three and China as a "trusteeship of the powerful", later the "Four Policemen". The Declaration by United Nations on 1 January 1942 was the basis of the modern United Nations. At the Potsdam Conference of July–August 1945, Roosevelt's successor, Harry S. Truman, proposed that the foreign ministers of China, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the United States "should draft the peace treaties and boundary settlements of Europe", which led to the creation of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the "Big Five", soon thereafter the establishment of those states as the permanent members of the UNSC. Great Britain and other members of the British Commonwealth, most known as the Dominions, declared war on Germany separately from 3 September 1939 with the UK first, all within one week of each other.
British West Africa and the British colonies in E
Honolulu
Honolulu is the capital and largest city of the U. S. state of Hawaiʻi. It is an unincorporated part of and the county seat of the City and County of Honolulu along the southeast coast of the island of Oʻahu; the city is the main gateway to a major portal into the United States. The city is a major hub for international business, military defense, as well as famously being host to a diverse variety of east-west and Pacific culture and traditions. Honolulu is the most remote city of its size in the world and is the westernmost and southernmost major U. S. city. For statistical purposes, the United States Census Bureau recognizes the approximate area referred to as "City of Honolulu" as a census county division. Honolulu is a major financial center of the islands and of the Pacific Ocean; the population of the Honolulu census designated place was 359,870 as of the 2017 population estimate, while the Honolulu CCD was 390,738 and the population of the consolidated city and county was 953,207. Honolulu means "sheltered harbor" or "calm port".
The old name is Kou, a district encompassing the area from Nuʻuanu Avenue to Alakea Street and from Hotel Street to Queen Street, the heart of the present downtown district. The city has been the capital of the Hawaiian Islands since 1845 and gained historical recognition following the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan near the city on December 7, 1941; as of 2015, Honolulu was ranked high on world livability rankings, was ranked as the 2nd safest city in the U. S, it is the most populated Oceanian city outside Australasia and ranks second to Auckland as the most-populous city in Polynesia. Evidence of the first settlement of Honolulu by the original Polynesian migrants to the archipelago comes from oral histories and artifacts; these indicate. However, after Kamehameha I conquered Oʻahu in the Battle of Nuʻuanu at Nuʻuanu Pali, he moved his royal court from the Island of Hawaiʻi to Waikīkī in 1804, his court relocated in 1809 to. The capital was moved back to Kailua-Kona in 1812. In 1794, Captain William Brown of Great Britain was the first foreigner to sail into what is now Honolulu Harbor.
More foreign ships followed, making the port of Honolulu a focal point for merchant ships traveling between North America and Asia. In 1845, Kamehameha III moved the permanent capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom from Lahaina on Maui to Honolulu, he and the kings that followed him transformed Honolulu into a modern capital, erecting buildings such as St. Andrew's Cathedral, ʻIolani Palace, Aliʻiōlani Hale. At the same time, Honolulu became the center of commerce in the islands, with descendants of American missionaries establishing major businesses in downtown Honolulu. Despite the turbulent history of the late 19th century and early 20th century, such as the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893, Hawaiʻi's subsequent annexation by the United States in 1898, followed by a large fire in 1900, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Honolulu remained the capital, largest city, main airport and seaport of the Hawaiian Islands. An economic and tourism boom following statehood brought rapid economic growth to Honolulu and Hawaiʻi.
Modern air travel brings, as of 2007, 7.6 million visitors annually to the islands, with 62.3% entering at Honolulu International Airport. Today, Honolulu is a modern city with numerous high-rise buildings, Waikīkī is the center of the tourism industry in Hawaiʻi, with thousands of hotel rooms; the UK consulting firm Mercer, in a 2009 assessment "conducted to help governments and major companies place employees on international assignments", ranked Honolulu 29th worldwide in quality of living. According to the United States Census Bureau, the Urban Honolulu Census-designated place has a total area of 68.4 square miles. 60.5 square miles of it is land, 7.9 square miles of it is water. Honolulu is the most remote major city in the world; the closest location on the mainland to Honolulu is the Point Arena Lighthouse in California, at 2,045 nautical miles. However, islands off the Mexican coast, part of the Aleutian Islands of Alaska are closer to Honolulu than the mainland. Downtown Honolulu is the financial and governmental center of Hawaiʻi.
On the waterfront is Aloha Tower, which for many years was the tallest building in Hawaiʻi. The tallest building is the 438-foot tall First Hawaiian Center, located on King and Bishop Streets; the downtown campus of Hawaiʻi Pacific University is located there. The Arts District Honolulu in downtown/Chinatown is on the eastern edge of Chinatown, it is a 12-block area bounded by Bethel & Smith Streets and Nimitz Highway and Beretania Street – home to numerous arts and cultural institutions. It is located within the Chinatown Historic District, which includes the former Hotel Street Vice District; the Capitol District is the eastern part of Downtown Honolulu. It is the current and historic center of Hawaiʻi's state government, incorporating the Hawaiʻi State Capitol, ʻIolani Palace, Honolulu Hale, State Library, the statue of King Kamehameha I, along with numerous government buildings. Kakaʻako is a light-industrial district between Downtown and Waikīkī that has seen a large-scale redevelopmen
World War II
World War II known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries; the major participants threw their entire economic and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China, it included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, the only use of nuclear weapons in war. Japan, which aimed to dominate Asia and the Pacific, was at war with China by 1937, though neither side had declared war on the other. World War II is said to have begun on 1 September 1939, with the invasion of Poland by Germany and subsequent declarations of war on Germany by France and the United Kingdom.
From late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Finland and the Baltic states. Following the onset of campaigns in North Africa and East Africa, the fall of France in mid 1940, the war continued between the European Axis powers and the British Empire. War in the Balkans, the aerial Battle of Britain, the Blitz, the long Battle of the Atlantic followed. On 22 June 1941, the European Axis powers launched an invasion of the Soviet Union, opening the largest land theatre of war in history; this Eastern Front trapped most crucially the German Wehrmacht, into a war of attrition. In December 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on the United States as well as European colonies in the Pacific. Following an immediate U. S. declaration of war against Japan, supported by one from Great Britain, the European Axis powers declared war on the U.
S. in solidarity with their Japanese ally. Rapid Japanese conquests over much of the Western Pacific ensued, perceived by many in Asia as liberation from Western dominance and resulting in the support of several armies from defeated territories; the Axis advance in the Pacific halted in 1942. Key setbacks in 1943, which included a series of German defeats on the Eastern Front, the Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy, Allied victories in the Pacific, cost the Axis its initiative and forced it into strategic retreat on all fronts. In 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained its territorial losses and turned toward Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in Central China, South China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy and captured key Western Pacific islands; the war in Europe concluded with an invasion of Germany by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, culminating in the capture of Berlin by Soviet troops, the suicide of Adolf Hitler and the German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945.
Following the Potsdam Declaration by the Allies on 26 July 1945 and the refusal of Japan to surrender under its terms, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August respectively. With an invasion of the Japanese archipelago imminent, the possibility of additional atomic bombings, the Soviet entry into the war against Japan and its invasion of Manchuria, Japan announced its intention to surrender on 15 August 1945, cementing total victory in Asia for the Allies. Tribunals were set up by fiat by the Allies and war crimes trials were conducted in the wake of the war both against the Germans and the Japanese. World War II changed the political social structure of the globe; the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The Soviet Union and United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the nearly half-century long Cold War. In the wake of European devastation, the influence of its great powers waned, triggering the decolonisation of Africa and Asia.
Most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic expansion. Political integration in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities and create a common identity; the start of the war in Europe is held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred and the two wars merged in 1941; this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935; the British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the fo
Pretoria
Pretoria is a city in the northern part of Gauteng province in South Africa. It straddles the Apies River and has spread eastwards into the foothills of the Magaliesberg mountains, it is one of the country's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the administrative branch of government, of foreign embassies to South Africa. Pretoria has a reputation for being an academic city with three universities, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and the Human Sciences Research Council; the city hosts the National Research Foundation and the South African Bureau of Standards making the city a hub for research. Pretoria is the central part of the Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality, formed by the amalgamation of several former local authorities including Centurion and Soshanguve. There have been proposals to change the name of Pretoria itself to Tshwane, the proposed name change has caused some public controversy. Pretoria is named after the Voortrekker leader Andries Pretorius, within South Africa sometimes called the "Jacaranda City" due to the thousands of jacaranda trees planted in its streets and gardens.
Pretoria was founded in 1855 by Marthinus Pretorius, a leader of the Voortrekkers, who named it after his father Andries Pretorius and chose a spot on the banks of the "Apies rivier" to be the new capital of the South African Republic. The elder Pretorius had become a national hero of the Voortrekkers after his victory over Dingane and the Zulus in the Battle of Blood River; the elder Pretorius negotiated the Sand River Convention, in which the UK acknowledged the independence of the Transvaal. It became the capital of the South African Republic on 1 May 1860; the founding of Pretoria as the capital of the South African Republic can be seen as marking the end of the Boers' settlement movements of the Great Trek. During the First Boer War, the city was besieged by Republican forces in December 1880 and March 1881; the peace treaty which ended the war was signed in Pretoria on 3 August 1881 at the Pretoria Convention. The Second Boer War resulted in the end of the Transvaal Republic and start of British hegemony in South Africa.
The city surrendered to British forces under Frederick Roberts on 5 June 1900 and the conflict was ended in Pretoria with the signing of the Peace of Vereeniging on 31 May 1902 at Melrose House. The Pretoria Forts were built for the defence of the city just prior to the Second Boer War. Though some of these forts are today in ruins, a number of them have been preserved as national monuments; the Boer Republics of the ZAR and the Orange River Colony were united with the Cape Colony and Natal Colony in 1910 to become the Union of South Africa. Pretoria became the administrative capital of the whole of South Africa, with Cape Town the legislative capital and Bloemfontein served as the judicial capital. Between 1910 and 1994, the city was the capital of the province of Transvaal. On 14 October 1931, Pretoria achieved official city status; when South Africa became a republic in 1961, Pretoria remained its administrative capital. Pretoria is situated 55 km north-northeast of Johannesburg in the northeast of South Africa, in a transitional belt between the plateau of the Highveld to the south and the lower-lying Bushveld to the north.
It lies at an altitude of about 1,339 m above sea level, in a warm, fertile valley, surrounded by the hills of the Magaliesberg range. Pretoria has a humid subtropical climate with long hot rainy summers and short cool to cold, dry winters; the city experiences the typical winters of South Africa with cold, clear nights and mild to moderately warm days. Although the average lows during winter are mild, it can get cold due to the clear skies, with nighttime low temperatures in recent years in the range of 2 to −5 °C; the average annual temperature is 18.7 °C. This is rather high, considering the city's high altitude of about 1,339 metres, is due to its sheltered valley position, which acts as a heat trap and cuts it off from cool southerly and south-easterly air masses for much of the year. Rain is chiefly concentrated in the summer months, with drought conditions prevailing over the winter months, when frosts may be sharp. Snowfall is an rare event. During a nationwide heatwave in November 2011, Pretoria experienced temperatures that reached 39 °C, unusual for that time of the year.
Similar record-breaking extreme heat events occurred in January 2013, when Pretoria experienced temperatures exceeding 37 °C on several days. The year 2014 was one of the wettest on record for the city. A total of 914 mm fell up with 220 mm recorded in this month alone. In 2015 Pretoria saw its worst drought since 1982. January 2016 saw Pretoria reach a new record high of 44 °C on 7 January 2016. Depending on the extent of the area understood to constitute "Pretoria", the population ranges from 700,000 to 2.95 million. The main languages spoken in Pretoria are Sepedi, Setswana, Xitsonga and English; the city of Pretoria has the largest white population in Sub-Saharan Africa. Since its founding it has been a major Afrikaner population centre
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