1.
Merseburg
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Merseburg is a town in the south of the German state of Saxony-Anhalt on the river Saale, approx. It is the capital of the Saalekreis district and it had a diocese founded by Archbishop Adalbert of Magdeburg. The University of Merseburg is located within the town, czech, Merseburk, Meziboř French, Mersebourg German, Merseburg Latin, Merseburga Polish, Międzybórz Sorbian, Mjezybor Venenien was annexed into Merseburg on 1 January 1949. The parish Kötzschen followed on 1 July 1950, since 30 May 1994, Meuschau is part of Merseburg. Beuna was annexed on 1 January 2009, geusa is a part of Merseburg since 1 January 2010. Merseburg was first mentioned in 850, king Henry the Fowler built a royal palace at Merseburg, in the 933 Battle of Riade, he gained his great victory over the Hungarians in the vicinity. Thietmar of Merseburg, appointed in 973, became the first bishop of the newly created bishopric of Prague in Bohemia, Prague had been part of the archbishopric of Mainz for a hundred years before that. Fifteen diets were held here during the Middle Ages, during which time its fairs enjoyed the importance which was transferred to those of Leipzig. Merseburg was the site of an assassination attempt on Polish ruler Bolesław I Chrobry in 1002. The town suffered severely during the German Peasants War and also during the Thirty Years War, from 1657 to 1738 Merseburg was the residence of the Dukes of Saxe-Merseburg, after which it fell to the Electorate of Saxony. In 1815 following the Napoleonic Wars, the became part of the Prussian Province of Saxony. Merseburg is where the Merseburg Incantations were rediscovered in 1841, written down in Old High German, they are hitherto the only preserved German documents with a heathen theme. One of them is a charm to release warriors caught during battle, enterprises, too, blazed a trail in the course of the transformational process. Ultimately, a chemical park emerged at nearby Leuna which is one of the most modern sites of its kind in Europe with high ecological standards, Merseburg was badly damaged in World War II. In 23 air raids 6,200 dwellings were completely or partly destroyed, the historic town centre was almost completely destroyed. Briefly part of Saxony-Anhalt after the war, it was administered within the Bezirk Halle in East Germany. It became part of Saxony-Anhalt again after reunification of Germany, like many towns in the former East Germany, Merseburg has had a general decline in population since German Reunification despite annexing and merging with a number of smaller nearby villages. The cathedral-and-palace ensemble also features a palace garden, other attractions include the Merseburg House of Trades with a cultural stage and the German Museum of Chemistry, Merseburg
2.
East Germany
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East Germany, formally the German Democratic Republic, was an Eastern Bloc state during the Cold War period. The Soviet zone surrounded West Berlin, but did not include it, as a result, the German Democratic Republic was established in the Soviet Zone, while the Federal Republic was established in the three western zones. East Germany, which lies culturally in Central Germany, was a state of the Soviet Union. Soviet occupation authorities began transferring administrative responsibility to German communist leaders in 1948, Soviet forces, however, remained in the country throughout the Cold War. Until 1989, the GDR was governed by the Socialist Unity Party, though other parties participated in its alliance organisation. The economy was centrally planned, and increasingly state-owned, prices of basic goods and services were set by central government planners, rather than rising and falling through supply and demand. Although the GDR had to pay war reparations to the USSR. Nonetheless it did not match the growth of West Germany. Emigration to the West was a significant problem—as many of the emigrants were well-educated young people, the government fortified its western borders and, in 1961, built the Berlin Wall. Many people attempting to flee were killed by guards or booby traps. In 1989, numerous social and political forces in the GDR and abroad led to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the following year open elections were held, and international negotiations led to the signing of the Final Settlement treaty on the status and borders of Germany. The GDR was dissolved and Germany was unified on 3 October 1990, internally, the GDR also bordered the Soviet sector of Allied-occupied Berlin known as East Berlin which was also administered as the states de facto capital. It also bordered the three sectors occupied by the United States, United Kingdom and France known collectively as West Berlin. The three sectors occupied by the Western nations were sealed off from the rest of the GDR by the Berlin Wall from its construction in 1961 until it was brought down in 1989, the official name was Deutsche Demokratische Republik, usually abbreviated to DDR. West Germans, the media and statesmen purposely avoided the official name and its abbreviation, instead using terms like Ostzone, Sowjetische Besatzungszone. The centre of power in East Berlin was referred to as Pankow. Over time, however, the abbreviation DDR was also used colloquially by West Germans. However, this use was not always consistent, for example, before World War II, Ostdeutschland was used to describe all the territories east of the Elbe, as reflected in the works of sociologist Max Weber and political theorist Carl Schmitt
3.
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
4.
Palo Alto, California
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Palo Alto is a charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area of the United States. The city shares its borders with East Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Stanford, Portola Valley and it is named after a coast redwood tree called El Palo Alto. Palo Alto was established by Leland Stanford Sr. when he founded Stanford University, following the death of his son and it has also served as an incubator to several other high-technology companies such as Google, Facebook, Logitech, Intuit, Pinterest, and PayPal. As of the 2010 census, the total resident population is 64,403. Palo Alto is one of the most expensive cities in the United States, the recorded history of Palo Alto dates back to 1769, when Gaspar de Portolá noted an Ohlone settlement. This remains an area of known Indian mounds, a plaque at Middlefield Road and Embarcadero Road commemorates the area. The city got its name from a tall coast redwood tree, named El Palo Alto, a plaque there recounts the story of the Portolà expedition, a 63-man, 200-horse expedition from San Diego to Monterey from November 7–11,1769. The group overshot Monterey in the fog and when they reached modern-day Pacifica, they ascended Sweeney Ridge, thinking the bay was too wide to cross, the group retraced their journey to Monterey, never becoming aware of the Golden Gate entrance to the Bay. Located south of the San Francisquito Creek, west of todays I-280, in 1835, Rafael Soto and family settled near the San Francisquito Creek near Newell and Middlefield, selling goods to travelers. Rafael Soto died in 1839, but his wife, Maria Antonia Mesa, was granted Rancho Rinconada del Arroyo de San Francisquito in 1841, in 1839, their daughter María Luisa Soto married John Coppinger, who was the grantee of Rancho Cañada de Raymundo. Rancho Cañada de Raymundo was West of San Francisquito Creek, and began at Alambique Creek, the border of Rancho Corte de Madera. Bear Gulch Creek flowed on his land in Portola Valley, the rancho also abutted Buelnas grant near Skyline Boulevard and Matadero Creek. Upon Coppingers death, Maria inherited it and later married a visiting boat captain, Greer owned a home on the site that is now Town & Country Village on Embarcadero and El Camino Real. Greer Avenue and Court are named for him, to the west of Rafael Soto, near El Camino and following the Creek, was Rancho San Francisquito granted in 1839 to Antonio Buelna and wife Maria Concepcion. To the south of the Sotos, the brothers Secundino and Teodoro Robles in 1849 bought Rancho Rincon de San Francisquito from José Peña, where the Joness house was, then east down Arastradero Rd. to the north property line of Alta Mesa Memorial Park and Terman Park. The property then went along the bay to the Embarcadero, a boundary in the day, then up to the Stanford University gates, up Galvez. The grant was bounded on the south by Mariano Castros Rancho Pastoria de las Borregas grant across San Antonio Road, thats the Robles Rancho, about 80% of Palo Alto and Stanford University. It was whittled down by 1863 through courts to 6,981 acres, stories say their grand hacienda was built on the former meager adobe of José Peña near Ferne off San Antonio Road, midway between Middlefield and Alma Street
5.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
6.
Stanford University
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Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California, adjacent to Palo Alto and between San Jose and San Francisco. Its 8, 180-acre campus is one of the largest in the United States, Stanford also has land and facilities elsewhere. The university was founded in 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford in memory of their only child, Stanford was a former Governor of California and U. S. Senator, he made his fortune as a railroad tycoon. The school admitted its first students 125 years ago on October 1,1891, Stanford University struggled financially after Leland Stanfords death in 1893 and again after much of the campus was damaged by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Following World War II, Provost Frederick Terman supported faculty and graduates entrepreneurialism to build self-sufficient local industry in what would later be known as Silicon Valley. The university is one of the top fundraising institutions in the country. There are three schools that have both undergraduate and graduate students and another four professional schools. Students compete in 36 varsity sports, and the university is one of two institutions in the Division I FBS Pac-12 Conference. Stanford faculty and alumni have founded a number of companies that produce more than $2.7 trillion in annual revenue. It is the alma mater of 30 living billionaires,17 astronauts and it is also one of the leading producers of members of the United States Congress. Sixty Nobel laureates and seven Fields Medalists have been affiliated with Stanford as students, alumni, Stanford University was founded in 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford, dedicated to Leland Stanford Jr, their only child. The institution opened in 1891 on Stanfords previous Palo Alto farm, despite being impacted by earthquakes in both 1906 and 1989, the campus was rebuilt each time. In 1919, The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace was started by Herbert Hoover to preserve artifacts related to World War I, the Stanford Medical Center, completed in 1959, is a teaching hospital with over 800 beds. The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, which was established in 1962, in 2008, 60% of this land remained undeveloped. Besides the central campus described below, the university also operates at more remote locations, some elsewhere on the main campus. Stanfords main campus includes a place within unincorporated Santa Clara County. The campus also includes land in unincorporated San Mateo County, as well as in the city limits of Menlo Park, Woodside. The academic central campus is adjacent to Palo Alto, bounded by El Camino Real, Stanford Avenue, Junipero Serra Boulevard, the United States Postal Service has assigned it two ZIP codes,94305 for campus mail and 94309 for P. O. box mail
7.
YouTube
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YouTube is an American video-sharing website headquartered in San Bruno, California. The service was created by three former PayPal employees—Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim—in February 2005, Google bought the site in November 2006 for US$1.65 billion, YouTube now operates as one of Googles subsidiaries. Unregistered users can watch videos on the site, while registered users are permitted to upload an unlimited number of videos. Videos deemed potentially offensive are available only to registered users affirming themselves to be at least 18 years old, YouTube earns advertising revenue from Google AdSense, a program which targets ads according to site content and audience. YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, Hurley had studied design at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and Chen and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Karim could not easily find video clips of either event online, Hurley and Chen said that the original idea for YouTube was a video version of an online dating service, and had been influenced by the website Hot or Not. YouTube began as a venture capital-funded technology startup, primarily from an $11.5 million investment by Sequoia Capital between November 2005 and April 2006, YouTubes early headquarters were situated above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, California. The domain name www. youtube. com was activated on February 14,2005, the first YouTube video, titled Me at the zoo, shows co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo. The video was uploaded on April 23,2005, and can still be viewed on the site, YouTube offered the public a beta test of the site in May 2005. The first video to reach one million views was a Nike advertisement featuring Ronaldinho in November 2005. Following a $3.5 million investment from Sequoia Capital in November, the site grew rapidly, and in July 2006 the company announced that more than 65,000 new videos were being uploaded every day, and that the site was receiving 100 million video views per day. The site has 800 million unique users a month and it is estimated that in 2007 YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000. The choice of the name www. youtube. com led to problems for a similarly named website, the sites owner, Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment, filed a lawsuit against YouTube in November 2006 after being regularly overloaded by people looking for YouTube. Universal Tube has since changed the name of its website to www. utubeonline. com, in October 2006, Google Inc. announced that it had acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in Google stock, and the deal was finalized on November 13,2006. In March 2010, YouTube began free streaming of certain content, according to YouTube, this was the first worldwide free online broadcast of a major sporting event. On March 31,2010, the YouTube website launched a new design, with the aim of simplifying the interface, Google product manager Shiva Rajaraman commented, We really felt like we needed to step back and remove the clutter. In May 2010, YouTube videos were watched more than two times per day. This increased to three billion in May 2011, and four billion in January 2012, in February 2017, one billion hours of YouTube was watched every day
8.
Wildlife
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Wildlife traditionally refers to undomesticated animal species, but has come to include all plants, fungi, and other organisms that grow or live wild in an area without being introduced by humans. Wildlife can be found in all ecosystems, humans have historically tended to separate civilization from wildlife in a number of ways including the legal, social, and moral sense. Some animals, however, have adapted to suburban environments and this includes such animals as domesticated cats, dogs, mice, and gerbils. The global wildlife population has decreased by 52 percent between 1970 and 2014, according to a report by the World Wildlife Fund, anthropologists believe that the Stone Age people and hunter-gatherers relied on wildlife, both plants and animals, for their food. In fact, some species may have been hunted to extinction by human hunters. Today, hunting, fishing, and gathering wildlife is still a significant food source in parts of the world. In other areas, hunting and non-commercial fishing are seen as a sport or recreation. Meat sourced from wildlife that is not traditionally regarded as game is known as bush meat, in November 2008, almost 900 plucked and oven-ready owls and other protected wildlife species were confiscated by the Department of Wildlife and National Parks in Malaysia, according to TRAFFIC. The animals were believed to be bound for China, to be sold in wild meat restaurants, most are listed in CITES which prohibits or restricts such trade.60. Many Amazon species, including peccaries, agoutis, turtles, turtle eggs, anacondas, armadillos, others in these informal markets, such as monkeys and parrots, are destined for the pet trade, often smuggled into the United States. Still other Amazon species are popular ingredients in traditional medicines sold in local markets, the medicinal value of animal parts is based largely on superstition. Many animal species have spiritual significance in different cultures around the world, for example, eagles, hawks and their feathers have great cultural and spiritual value to Native Americans as religious objects. In Hinduism the cow is regarded sacred, muslims conduct sacrifices on Eid-ul-Adha to commemorate the sacrificial spirit of Ibrahim in love of God. Camels, sheep, goats, and cows may be offered as sacrifice during the three days of Eid, many nations have established their tourism sector around their natural wildlife. South Africa has, for example, many opportunities for tourists to see the wildlife in its national parks. In South India the Periar Wildlife Sanctuary, Bandipur National Park and Mudamalai Wildlife Sanctuary are situated around, India is home to many national parks and wildlife sanctuaries showing the diversity of its wildlife, much of its unique fauna, and excels in the range. This subsection focuses on forms of wildlife destruction. Exploitation of wild populations has been a characteristic of man since our exodus from Africa 130,000 –70,000 years ago
9.
Steve Chen
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Steven Shih Steve Chen is an American Internet entrepreneur. He is best known as one of the co-founders and the chief technology officer of the popular website YouTube. After having co-founded the company AVOS Systems, Inc. and built the video-sharing app MixBit, Chen was born in Taipei, Taiwan. When he was fifteen, he and his family immigrated to the United States and settled in Prospect Heights and he went to River Trails Middle School in Mount Prospect for his middle school education and John Hersey High School in Arlington Heights for his freshman year of high school. For his final three years of school, he attended the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora. At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he studied computer science, Chen was an employee at the industry financial company PayPal, where he first met Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim. Chen was also an employee at Facebook, although he left after several months to start YouTube. In 2005, Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim and Chen founded YouTube, in June 2006, Chen was named by Business 2.0 as one of The 50 people who matter now in business. On October 16,2006, Chen and Hurley sold YouTube to Google, Chen received 625,366 shares of Google and an additional 68,721 in a trust as part of the sale. The Google shares that he received were reported to be worth over $326 million about 1 year later and he and Hurley started AVOS Systems which acquired Delicious from Yahoo. Inc. Chen was listed as one of the 15 Asian Scientists To Watch by Asian Scientist Magazine on 15 May 2011, Chen married Park Ji-hyun, who is now Jamie Chen, a Google Korea product marketing manager, in 2009. They live in San Francisco with their two children, one son was born in July 2010. The Chens are major supporters of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco where Jamie was appointed a trustee in July 2012, Steve Chens YouTube profile Steve Chen, the local boy that created YouTube – Taipei Times, October 8,2006
