Mont Blanc
Mont Blanc or Monte Bianco, both meaning White Mountain, is the highest mountain in the Alps and the highest in Europe west of Russia after the Caucasus peaks. It rises 4,808 m above sea level and is ranked 11th in the world in topographic prominence, the mountain lies in a range called the Graian Alps, between the regions of Aosta Valley and Savoie and Haute-Savoie, France. The location of the summit is on the line between the valleys of Ferret and Veny in Italy and the valleys of Montjoie, and Arve in France. The Mont Blanc massif is popular for mountaineering, skiing, the three towns and their communes which surround Mont Blanc are Courmayeur in Aosta Valley and Saint-Gervais-les-Bains and Chamonix in Haute-Savoie, France. The latter town was the site of the first Winter Olympics, a cable car ascends and crosses the mountain range from Courmayeur to Chamonix, through the Col du Géant. The 11.6 km Mont Blanc Tunnel, constructed between 1957 and 1965, runs beneath the mountain and is a major transport route.
The first recorded ascent of Mont Blanc was on 8 August 1786 by Jacques Balmat and this climb, initiated by Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, who gave a reward for the successful ascent, traditionally marks the start of modern mountaineering. The first woman to reach the summit was Marie Paradis in 1808, nowadays the summit is ascended by an average of 20,000 mountaineer-tourists each year. It could be considered an easy, yet arduous, ascent for someone who is well-trained and acclimatized to the altitude, from lAiguille du Midi, Mont Blanc seems quite close, being 1,000 m higher. Some routes require knowledge of mountaineering, a guide. All routes are long and arduous, involving delicate passages and the hazard of rock-fall or avalanche, climbers may suffer altitude sickness, occasionally life threatening, particularly if they do not acclimatize to it. Since the French Revolution, the issue of the ownership of the summit has been debated, from 1416 to 1792, the entire mountain was within the Duchy of Savoy.
In 1723 the Duke of Savoy, Victor Amadeus II, acquired the Kingdom of Sardinia, the resulting state of Sardinia was to become preeminent in the Italian unification. In September 1792, the French revolutionary Army of the Alps under Anne-Pierre de Montesquiou-Fézensac seized Savoy without much resistance, in a treaty of 15 May 1796, Victor Amadeus III of Sardinia was forced to cede Savoy and Nice to France. This act further states that the border should be visible from the town of Chamonix, neither the peak of the Mont Blanc is visible from Courmayeur nor the peak of the Mont Blanc de Courmayeur is visible from Chamonix because part of the mountains lower down obscure them. After the Napoleonic Wars, the Congress of Vienna restored the King of Sardinia in Savoy and Piedmont, his traditional territories, forty-five years later, after the Second Italian War of Independence, it was replaced by a new legal act. This act was signed in Turin on 24 March 1860 by Napoleon III and Victor Emmanuel II of Savoy, a demarcation agreement, signed on 7 March 1861, defined the new border.
With the formation of Italy, for the first time Mont Blanc was located on the border of France, the 1860 act and attached maps are still legally valid for both the French and Italian governments
Alps
The mountains were formed over tens of millions of years as the African and Eurasian tectonic plates collided. Extreme shortening caused by the event resulted in marine sedimentary rocks rising by thrusting and folding into high mountain peaks such as Mont Blanc, Mont Blanc spans the French–Italian border, and at 4,810 m is the highest mountain in the Alps. The Alpine region area contains about a hundred peaks higher than 4000 metres, the altitude and size of the range affects the climate in Europe, in the mountains precipitation levels vary greatly and climatic conditions consist of distinct zones. Wildlife such as live in the higher peaks to elevations of 3,400 m. Evidence of human habitation in the Alps goes back to the Palaeolithic era, a mummified man, determined to be 5,000 years old, was discovered on a glacier at the Austrian–Italian border in 1991. By the 6th century BC, the Celtic La Tène culture was well established, Hannibal famously crossed the Alps with a herd of elephants, and the Romans had settlements in the region.
In 1800 Napoleon crossed one of the passes with an army of 40,000. The 18th and 19th centuries saw an influx of naturalists, writers, in World War II, Adolf Hitler kept a base of operation in the Bavarian Alps throughout the war. The Alpine region has a cultural identity. The Winter Olympic Games have been hosted in the Swiss, French, at present, the region is home to 14 million people and has 120 million annual visitors. The English word Alps derives from the Latin Alpes, maurus Servius Honoratus, an ancient commentator of Virgil, says in his commentary that all high mountains are called Alpes by Celts. The term may be common to Italo-Celtic, because the Celtic languages have terms for high mountains derived from alp and this may be consistent with the theory that in Greek Alpes is a name of non-Indo-European origin. According to the Old English Dictionary, the Latin Alpes might possibly derive from a pre-Indo-European word *alb hill, Albania, a name not native to the region known as the country of Albania, has been used as a name for a number of mountainous areas across Europe.
In Roman times, Albania was a name for the eastern Caucasus, in modern languages the term alp, albe or alpe refers to a grazing pastures in the alpine regions below the glaciers, not the peaks. An alp refers to a mountain pasture where cows are taken to be grazed during the summer months and where hay barns can be found. The Alps are a crescent shaped geographic feature of central Europe that ranges in a 800 km arc from east to west and is 200 km in width, the mean height of the mountain peaks is 2.5 km. The range stretches from the Mediterranean Sea north above the Po basin, extending through France from Grenoble, the range continues onward toward Vienna and east to the Adriatic Sea and Slovenia. To the south it dips into northern Italy and to the north extends to the border of Bavaria in Germany
Barometer
A barometer is a scientific instrument used in meteorology to measure atmospheric pressure. Pressure tendency can forecast short term changes in the weather, numerous measurements of air pressure are used within surface weather analysis to help find surface troughs, high pressure systems and frontal boundaries. Barometers and pressure altimeters are essentially the same instrument, but used for different purposes, the main exception to this is ships at sea, which can use a barometer because their elevation does not change. Due to the presence of weather systems, aircraft altimeters may need to be adjusted as they fly between regions of varying normalized atmospheric pressure. On July 27,1630, Giovanni Battista Baliani wrote a letter to Galileo Galilei explaining an experiment he had made in which a siphon, led over a hill about twenty-one meters high, failed to work. This was a restatement of the theory of horror vacui, which dates to Aristotle, galileos ideas reached Rome in December 1638 in his Discorsi.
Raffaele Magiotti and Gasparo Berti were excited by these ideas, Magiotti devised such an experiment, and sometime between 1639 and 1641, Berti carried it out. The bottom end of the tube was opened, and water that had been inside of it poured out into the basin. What was most important about this experiment was that the water had left a space above it in the tube which had no intermediate contact with air to fill it up. This seemed to suggest the possibility of a vacuum existing in the space above the water, Torricelli, a friend and student of Galileo, interpreted the results of the experiments in a novel way. He proposed that the weight of the atmosphere, not a force of the vacuum. It was traditionally thought that the air did not have weight, that is. Even Galileo had accepted the weightlessness of air as a simple truth, Torricelli questioned that assumption, and instead proposed that air had weight and that it was the latter which held up the column of water. He thought that the level the water stayed at was reflective of the force of the airs weight pushing on it.
In other words, he viewed the barometer as a balance, an instrument for measurement and he needed to use a liquid that was heavier than water, and from his previous association and suggestions by Galileo, he deduced by using mercury, a shorter tube could be used. With mercury, which is about 14 times heavier than water, Pascal further devised an experiment to test the Aristotelian proposition that it was vapors from the liquid that filled the space in a barometer. His experiment compared water with wine, and since the latter was considered more spiritous, Pascal performed the experiment publicly, inviting the Aristotelians to predict the outcome beforehand. The Aristotelians predicted the wine would stand lower, Pascal went even further to test the mechanical theory
Great St Bernard Pass
Great St. Bernard Pass is the third highest road pass in Switzerland. It connects Martigny in the canton of Valais in Switzerland with Aosta in the region Aosta Valley in Italy and it is the lowest pass lying on the ridge between the two highest summits of the Alps, Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa. The pass itself is located in Switzerland in the canton of Valais and it is located on the main watershed that separates the basin of the Rhône from that of the Po. Great St. Bernard is the most ancient pass through the Western Alps, with evidence of use as far back as the Bronze Age and surviving traces of a Roman road. Having been bypassed by easier and more routes, particularly the Great St Bernard Tunnel which opened in 1964. Straddling the highest point of the road, the Great St Bernard Hospice was founded in 1049, the hospice became famous for its use of St. Bernard dogs in rescue operations. The pass runs northeast-southwest through the Valais Alps at an elevation of 2,469 m. The road running through the pass, highway E27 in both Italy and Switzerland, joins Martigny on the upper Rhône in the canton of Valais, from Martigny Route 9 descends to Lausanne and from Aosta Route A5 descends to Torino.
The Great St Bernard Tunnel plunges through the mountains at a 1,915 m level, since the opening in 1964. Here the river enters the La Buthier in the end of the Valpelline. The route here in the valley of the Val dAoste becomes part of the motorway connecting the Mont Blanc Tunnel to the west. A reduction of utility began after the construction of the Simplon Tunnel, the much smaller historic road winding over the pass itself, which lies a few hundred metres from the Swiss border with Italy, is only passable June to September. The pass at narrowest point runs between the peaks of Grande Chenalette at 2,889 m and Mont Mort at 2,867 m, slightly to the west in Pointe de Drône at 2,949 m, the highest peak. Between it and the pass is Petite Chenalette at 2,885 m, the Tour de France has visited the pass five times. It was climbed four times as a 1st category climb, and one time, in 2009, the snow in the pass in winter may be as much as 10 metres deep. The temperature may drop as low as -30 °C, the lake in the pass is frozen for 265 days per year. A summary of data for the year 1981-2010 is given below.
The pass is well above the tree line, All the wood required for construction and firewood must be hauled in from some distance
Mont Cenis
Mont Cenis is a massif and pass in Savoie, which forms the limit between the Cottian and Graian Alps. The pass connects Val-Cenis in France in the northwest with Susa in Italy in the southeast, in the Middle Ages, pilgrims passing through Moncenisio and Susa Valley came to Turin along a road called Via Francigena, with final destination Rome. It was one of the most used Alpine pass in from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century. The pass was part of the border between the two countries from the annexion of Savoy to the third French Empire in 1861 until 1947 Treaty of Paris, the treaty allowed Savoy to retrieve its historical and political boundaries. A road over the pass was built between 1803 and 1810 by Napoleon, the Mont Cenis Pass Railway was opened alongside the road in 1868, but was dismantled in 1871, on the opening of the Fréjus Rail Tunnel. It was the first ever railway based on the Fell mountain railway system and was worked by English engine-drivers, the Fréjus Rail Tunnel acquired the alternative, and geographically incorrect, name of Mont Cenis Tunnel because the traffic which formerly used the Mont Cenis Pass was transferred to it.
This tunnel is really 27.4 km 17 miles west of the pass, from Chambéry the line runs up the Isère valley, but soon bears through that of the Arc or the Maurienne past Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne to Modane. The tunnel is 13 km in length, and leads to Bardonecchia, some way below which, thence the valley of the Dora Riparia is followed to Turin. The carriage road mounts the Arc valley for 25.7 km /16 mi from Modane to Lanslebourg, whence it is 12.9 km /8 mi to the hospice, the descent lies through the Cenis valley to Susa where the road joins the railway. To the southwest of the Mont Cenis is the Little Mont Cenis which leads from the plateau of the main pass to the Etache valley on the French slope. This pass was crossed in 1689 by the Vaudois, and is believed by some authors to have been Hannibals Pass, the term Mont Cenis could derive from mont des cendres. According to tradition, following a forest fire, a quantity of ashes accumulated on the ground. The path of ashes was found during the work of the route.
Being a pass in the Alps, the Mont Cenis was used in several incidents in history. One example is the descent of Constantine I to Italy, to fight against Maxentius and it was the principal route for crossing the Alps between France and Italy until the 19th century. It was used as the passage by which Charlemagne crossed with his army to invade Lombardy in 773. When the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont ceded Savoy to France, in 1860, the Mont Cenis became a frontier pass and it was therefore highly fortified as a protection against an invasion of the Val di Susa route towards Turin. In 1874-1880 the Italian Regio Esercito built three forts, Fort Cassa, Fort Varisello and Fort Roncia, supported by several batteries and fortifications
Meteorology
Meteorology is a branch of the atmospheric sciences which includes atmospheric chemistry and atmospheric physics, with a major focus on weather forecasting. The study of meteorology dates back millennia, though significant progress in meteorology did not occur until the 18th century, the 19th century saw modest progress in the field after weather observation networks were formed across broad regions. Prior attempts at prediction of weather depended on historical data, Meteorological phenomena are observable weather events that are explained by the science of meteorology. Different spatial scales are used to describe and predict weather on local, Meteorology, atmospheric physics, and atmospheric chemistry are sub-disciplines of the atmospheric sciences. Meteorology and hydrology compose the interdisciplinary field of hydrometeorology, the interactions between Earths atmosphere and its oceans are part of a coupled ocean-atmosphere system. Meteorology has application in diverse fields such as the military, energy production, agriculture.
The word meteorology is from Greek μετέωρος metéōros lofty, high and -λογία -logia -logy, varāhamihiras classical work Brihatsamhita, written about 500 AD, provides clear evidence that a deep knowledge of atmospheric processes existed even in those times. In 350 BC, Aristotle wrote Meteorology, Aristotle is considered the founder of meteorology. One of the most impressive achievements described in the Meteorology is the description of what is now known as the hydrologic cycle and they are all called swooping bolts because they swoop down upon the Earth. Lightning is sometimes smoky, and is called smoldering lightning, sometimes it darts quickly along, at other times, it travels in crooked lines, and is called forked lightning. When it swoops down upon some object it is called swooping lightning, the Greek scientist Theophrastus compiled a book on weather forecasting, called the Book of Signs. The work of Theophrastus remained a dominant influence in the study of weather, in 25 AD, Pomponius Mela, a geographer for the Roman Empire, formalized the climatic zone system.
According to Toufic Fahd, around the 9th century, Al-Dinawari wrote the Kitab al-Nabat, ptolemy wrote on the atmospheric refraction of light in the context of astronomical observations. St. Roger Bacon was the first to calculate the size of the rainbow. He stated that a rainbow summit can not appear higher than 42 degrees above the horizon, in the late 13th century and early 14th century, Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī and Theodoric of Freiberg were the first to give the correct explanations for the primary rainbow phenomenon. Theoderic went further and explained the secondary rainbow, in 1716, Edmund Halley suggested that aurorae are caused by magnetic effluvia moving along the Earths magnetic field lines. In 1441, King Sejongs son, Prince Munjong, invented the first standardized rain gauge and these were sent throughout the Joseon Dynasty of Korea as an official tool to assess land taxes based upon a farmers potential harvest. In 1450, Leone Battista Alberti developed a swinging-plate anemometer, and was known as the first anemometer, in 1607, Galileo Galilei constructed a thermoscope
Albrecht von Haller
Albrecht von Haller was a Swiss anatomist, physiologist and poet. A pupil of Herman Boerhaave, he is referred to as the father of modern physiology. Haller was born into an old Swiss family at Bern, prevented by long-continued ill-health from taking part in boyish sports, he had more opportunity for the development of his precocious mind. Hallers attention had been directed to the profession of medicine while he was residing in the house of a physician at Biel after his fathers death in 1721. While still a sickly and excessively shy youth, he went in his year to the University of Tübingen. Dissatisfied with his progress, he in 1725 exchanged Tübingen for Leiden, where Boerhaave was in the zenith of his fame, in 1757, he conducted a famous series of experiments to distinguish between nerve impulses and muscular contractions. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1743, a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1747. The quantity of work achieved by Haller in the seventeen years during which he occupied his Göttingen professorship was immense, like his mentor Boerhaave, Haller was a Christian and a collection of his religious thoughts can be read in a compilation of letters to his daughter.
Haller grew many plants from the Alps himself, the plant genus Halleria, an attractive shrub from Southern Africa, was named in his honour by Carl Linnaeus. About 1773 the state of his health meant he withdrew from public business, who had been three times married, left eight children. The eldest, Gottlieb Emanuel, attained to some distinction as a botanist, another son, Albrecht was a botanist. Inde ad ductum phaenomenorum, in sano obviorum, transeas ad experimenta in corpore aegroro, but no one, not a single physician, attended to or followed up this invaluable hint. Then in relation to the form of the phenomena in a person from those exposed to it. Gaum, Ulm 1755 Digital edition of the University and State Library Düsseldorf Historia stirpium indigenarum Helvetiae inchoata, vol. 1&2 Digital edition of the University and State Library Düsseldorf. Ode sur les Alpes,1773 Materia medica oder Geschichte der Arzneyen des Pflanzenreichs, Digital edition of the University and State Library Düsseldorf.
Histoire des Plantes suisses ou Matiere médicale et de lUsage économique des Plantes par M. Alb. de Haller, berne 1791 Digital edition of the University and State Library Düsseldorf. Hegel mentions Hallers description of eternity, called by Kant terrifying, according to Hegel, Haller realizes that a conception of eternity as infinite progress is futile and empty. In a way, Hegel uses Hallers description of eternity as a foreshadowing of his own conception of the true infinite, Hegel claims that Haller is aware that, only by giving up this empty, infinite progression can the genuine infinite itself become present to him
Zermatt
Zermatt is a municipality in the district of Visp in the German-speaking section of the canton of Valais in Switzerland. It has a population of about 5,800 inhabitants, the town lies at the upper end of Mattertal at an elevation of 1,620 m, at the foot of Switzerlands highest peaks. It lies about 10 km from the over 10,800 ft high Theodul Pass bordering Italy, Zermatt is famed as a mountaineering and ski resort of the Swiss Alps. The year round population is 5,759, though there may be several times as many tourists in Zermatt at any one time. Much of the economy is based on tourism, with about half of the jobs in town in hotels or restaurants. Just over one-third of the permanent population was born in the town, the name of Zermatt, as well as that of the Matterhorn itself, derives from the alpine meadows, or matten, in the valley. The name appeared first as Zur Matte and became Zermatt and it does not appear until 1495 on a map or 1546 in a text, but may have been employed long before. Praborno or Prato Borno are the names of Zermatt, they appear in the ancient maps as early as the thirteenth century.
The Romand-speaking people from the Aosta Valley and from the Romand-speaking part of canton Wallis used this name until about 1860 in the form of Praborne, the reason of this change from Praborno to Zermatt is attributed to the gradual replacement of the Romance-speaking people by German-speaking colony. The town of Zermatt lies at the end of the Matter Valley. Zermatt is almost completely surrounded by the mountains of the Pennine Alps among which Monte Rosa. It is followed by the Dom, Lyskamm and the Matterhorn, most of the Alpine four-thousanders are located around Zermatt or in the neighbouring valleys. The town of Zermatt, while dense, is geographically small, there are three main streets which run along the banks of the river Matter Vispa, and numerous cross-streets, especially around the station and the church which forms the centre of Zermatt. In general anything is at most a thirty-minute walk away, there are several suburbs within Zermatt. Winkelmatten, which was once a hamlet, lies on a hill on the southern side.
Steinmatten is located on the bank of the main river. Many hamlets are located in the valleys above Zermatt, however they are not usually inhabited all year round, zum See lies south of Zermatt on the west bank of the Gorner gorge, near Furi where a cable car station is located. On the side of Zmutt valley lies the hamlet of Zmutt, findeln is located in the eastern valley above the Findelbach river
Topography
Topography is the study of the shape and features of the surface of the Earth and other observable astronomical objects including planets and asteroids. The topography of an area could refer to the shapes and features themselves. This field of geoscience and planetary science is concerned with detail in general, including not only relief but natural and artificial features. This meaning is common in the United States, where topographic maps with elevation contours have made topography synonymous with relief. The older sense of topography as the study of place still has currency in Europe, topography in a narrow sense involves the recording of relief or terrain, the three-dimensional quality of the surface, and the identification of specific landforms. This is known as geomorphometry, in modern usage, this involves generation of elevation data in digital form. It is often considered to include the representation of the landform on a map by a variety of techniques, including contour lines, hypsometric tints.
The term topography originated in ancient Greece and continued in ancient Rome, the word comes from the Greek τόπος and -γραφία. In classical literature this refers to writing about a place or places, in Britain and in Europe in general, the word topography is still sometimes used in its original sense. Detailed military surveys in Britain were called Ordnance Surveys, and this term was used into the 20th century as generic for topographic surveys, the earliest scientific surveys in France were called the Cassini maps after the family who produced them over four generations. The term topographic surveys appears to be American in origin, the earliest detailed surveys in the United States were made by the “Topographical Bureau of the Army, ” formed during the War of 1812, which became the Corps of Topographical Engineers in 1838. In the 20th century, the term started to be used to describe surface description in other fields where mapping in a broader sense is used. An objective of topography is to determine the position of any feature or more generally any point in terms of both a horizontal coordinate system such as latitude and altitude, identifying features, and recognizing typical landform patterns are part of the field.
There are a variety of approaches to studying topography, which method to use depend on the scale and size of the area under study, its accessibility, and the quality of existing surveys. Work on one of the first topographic maps was begun in France by Giovanni Domenico Cassini, in areas where there has been an extensive direct survey and mapping program, the compiled data forms the basis of basic digital elevation datasets such as USGS DEM data. This data must often be cleaned to eliminate discrepancies between surveys, but it forms a valuable set of information for large-scale analysis. The original American topographic surveys involved not only recording of relief, remote sensing is a general term for geodata collection at a distance from the subject area. Besides their role in photogrammetry and satellite imagery can be used to identify and delineate terrain features, certainly they have become more and more a part of geovisualization, whether maps or GIS systems
Charles Bonnet
Charles Bonnet, Genevan naturalist and philosophical writer, was born at Geneva, of a French family driven into the region by the religious persecution in the 16th century. The last twenty five years of his life he spent quietly in the country, at Genthod, near Geneva and his wife was a lady of the family of De la Rive. They had no children, but Madame Bonnets nephew, the celebrated Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, was brought up as their son and he made law his profession, but his favourite pursuit was the study of natural science. The account of the ant-lion in Noël-Antoine Pluches Spectacle de la nature and he procured RAF de Réaumurs work on insects, and with the help of live specimens succeeded in adding many observations to those of Réaumur and Pluche. During that year he had been in correspondence with his uncle Abraham Trembley who had discovered the hydra. This little creature became the hit of all the salons across Europe once philosophers and natural scientists saw its amazing regenerative capabilities.
In 1743, he was admitted a fellow of the Royal Society, in 1753, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and on 15 December 1769 a foreign member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. But Bonnets eyesight, which threatened to fail altogether, caused him to turn to philosophy, in 1754 his Essai de psychologie was published anonymously in London. This was followed by the Essai analytique sur les facultés de lâme, in 1760 he described a condition now called Charles Bonnet Syndrome, in which vivid, complex visual hallucinations occur in psychologically normal people. Bonnets philosophical system may be outlined as follows, man is a compound of two distinct substances and body, the one immaterial and the other material. All knowledge originates in sensations, sensations follow vibrations in the nerves appropriate to each, and lastly, the nerves are made to vibrate by external physical stimulus. A nerve once set in motion by a particular object tends to reproduce that motion, the sensation accompanying this increased flexibility in the nerve is, according to Bonnet, the condition of memory.
That which puts the mind into activity is pleasure or pain, the divine Being originally created a multitude of germs in a graduated scale, each with an inherent power of self-development. Thus not man only but all forms of existence are immortal. Nor is mans mind alone immortal, his will pass into the higher stage, indeed, the body he now possesses. It is impossible, however, to absolute perfection, because the distance is infinite. In this final proposition, Bonnet violates his own principle of continuity and it is difficult to understand whether the constant advance to perfection is performed by each individual, or only by each race of beings as a whole. In Philosophical Palingesis, or Ideas on the Past and Future States of Living Beings, Bonnets complete works appeared at Neuchâtel in 1779–1783, partly revised by himself
Geneva
Geneva is the second most populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Situated where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the capital of the Republic, the municipality has a population of 198,072, and the canton has 484,736 residents. In 2014, the compact agglomération du Grand Genève had 946,000 inhabitants in 212 communities in both Switzerland and France, within Swiss territory, the commuter area named Métropole lémanique contains a population of 1.25 million. This area is essentially spread east from Geneva towards the Riviera area and north-east towards Yverdon-les-Bains, Geneva is the city that hosts the highest number of international organizations in the world. It is the place where the Geneva Conventions were signed, Geneva was ranked as the worlds ninth most important financial centre for competitiveness by the Global Financial Centres Index, ahead of Frankfurt, and third in Europe behind London and Zürich. A2009 survey by Mercer found that Geneva has the third-highest quality of life of any city in the world, the city has been referred to as the worlds most compact metropolis and the Peace Capital.
In 2009 and 2011, Geneva was ranked as, the city was mentioned in Latin texts, by Caesar, with the spelling Genava, probably from a Celtic toponym *genawa- from the stem *genu-, in the sense of a bending river or estuary. The medieval county of Geneva in Middle Latin was known as pagus major Genevensis or Comitatus Genevensis, the name takes various forms in modern languages, Geneva /dʒᵻˈniːvə/ in English, Genève, Genf, Italian and Romansh, Genevra. The city in origin shares its name, *genawa estuary, with the Italian port city of Genoa, Geneva was an Allobrogian border town, fortified against the Helvetii tribe, when the Romans took it in 121 BC. It became Christian under the Late Roman Empire, and acquired its first bishop in the 5th century, having been connected to the bishopric of Vienne in the 4th. In the Middle Ages, Geneva was ruled by a count under the Holy Roman Empire until the late 14th century, around this time the House of Savoy came to dominate the city. In the 15th century, a republican government emerged with the creation of the Grand Council.
In 1541, with Protestantism in the ascendancy, John Calvin, by the 18th century, Geneva had come under the influence of Catholic France, which cultivated the city as its own. France tended to be at odds with the ordinary townsfolk, in 1798, revolutionary France under the Directory annexed Geneva. At the end of the Napoleonic Wars, on 1 June 1814, in 1907, the separation of Church and State was adopted. Geneva flourished in the 19th and 20th centuries, becoming the seat of international organizations. Geneva is located at 46°12 North, 6°09 East, at the end of Lake Geneva. It is surrounded by two chains, the Alps and the Jura
Stratum
In geology and related fields, a stratum is a layer of sedimentary rock or soil with internally consistent characteristics that distinguish it from other layers. The stratum is the unit in a stratigraphic column and forms the basis of the study of stratigraphy. Each layer is one of a number of parallel layers that lie one upon another. They may extend over hundreds of thousands of kilometers of the Earths surface. Strata are typically seen as bands of different colored or differently structured material exposed in cliffs, road cuts, individual bands may vary in thickness from a few millimeters to a kilometer or more. Each band represents a mode of deposition, river silt, beach sand, coal swamp, sand dune, lava bed. Geologists study rock strata and categorize them by the material of beds, each distinct layer is typically assigned to the name of sheet, usually based on a town, mountain, or region where the formation is exposed and available for study. For example, the Burgess Shale is an exposure of dark, occasionally fossiliferous.
Slight distinctions in material in a formation may be described as members, formations are collected into groups while groups may be collected into supergroups. Archaeological horizon Geologic formation Geologic map Geologic unit Law of superposition Bed GeoWhen Database
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This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. 24 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 238.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the 
