Kew Gardens is a botanic garden in southwest London that houses the "largest and most diverse botanical and mycological collections in the world". Founded in 1840, from the exotic garden at Kew Park in Middlesex, its living collections includes some of the 27,000 taxa curated by Royal Botanic Gardens, while the herbarium, one of the largest in the world, has over 8.5 million preserved plant and fungal specimens. The library contains more than 750,000 volumes, the illustrations collection contains more than 175,000 prints and drawings of plants, it is a World Heritage Site. Kew Gardens, together with the botanic gardens at Wakehurst in Sussex, are managed by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, an internationally important botanical research and education institution that employs over 1,100 staff and is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Environment and Rural Affairs; the Kew site, dated as formally starting in 1759, though it can be traced back to the exotic garden at Kew Park, formed by Henry, Lord Capell of Tewkesbury, consists of 132 hectares of gardens and botanical glasshouses, four Grade I listed buildings, 36 Grade II listed structures, all set in an internationally significant landscape.

It is listed Grade I on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. Kew Gardens has its own police force, Kew Constabulary, in operation since 1847. Kew consists of the gardens themselves and a small surrounding community. Royal residences in the area which would influence the layout and construction of the gardens began in 1299 when Edward I moved his court to a manor house in neighbouring Richmond; that manor house was abandoned. Around the start of the 16th century courtiers attending Richmond Palace settled in Kew and built large houses. Early royal residences at Kew included Mary Tudor's house, in existence by 1522 when a driveway was built to connect it to the palace at Richmond. Around 1600, the land that would become the gardens was known as Kew Field, a large field strip farmed by one of the new private estates; the exotic garden at Kew Park, formed by Henry, Lord Capell of Tewkesbury, was enlarged and extended by Augusta, Dowager Princess of Wales, the widow of Frederick, Prince of Wales.

The origins of Kew Gardens can be traced to the merging of the royal estates of Richmond and Kew in 1772. William Chambers built several garden structures, including the lofty Chinese pagoda built in 1761 which still remains. George III enriched the gardens, aided by Sir Joseph Banks; the old Kew Park, was demolished in 1802. The "Dutch House" adjoining was purchased by George III in 1781 as a nursery for the royal children, it is a plain brick structure now known as Kew Palace. The Epicure's Almanack reports an anecdote of the garden wall as of 1815: "In going up Dreary Lane that leads to Richmond you pass along the east boundary wall of Kew Gardens, extending more than a mile in length; this dead wall used to have a most tedious effect on the eye of a pedestrian. He returns annually to the spot to refit his ships, raises considerable supplies for his own victualling board from the gratuities of the charitable, who pass to and from Richmond."Some early plants came from the walled garden established by William Coys at Stubbers in North Ockendon.

The collections grew somewhat haphazardly until the appointment of the first collector, Francis Masson, in 1771. Capability Brown, who became England's most renowned landscape architect, applied for the position of master gardener at Kew, was rejected. In 1840 the gardens were adopted as a national botanical garden, in large part due to the efforts of the Royal Horticultural Society and its president William Cavendish. Under Kew's director, William Hooker, the gardens were increased to 30 hectares and the pleasure grounds, or arboretum, extended to 109 hectares, to its present size of 121 hectares; the first curator was John Smith. The Palm House was built by architect Decimus Burton and iron-maker Richard Turner between 1844 and 1848, was the first large-scale structural use of wrought iron, it is considered "the world's most important surviving Victorian glass and iron structure". The structure's panes of glass are all hand-blown; the Temperate House, twice as large as the Palm House, followed in the 19th century.

It is now the largest Victorian glasshouse in existence. Kew was the location of the successful effort in the 19th century to propagate rubber trees for cultivation outside South America. In February 1913, the Tea House was burned down by suffragettes Olive Wharry and Lilian Lenton during a series of arson attacks in London. Kew Gardens lost hundreds of trees in the Great Storm of 1987. From 1959 to 2007 Kew Gardens had the tallest flagpole in Britain. Made from a single Douglas-fir from Canada, it was given to mark both the centenary of the Canadian Province of British Columbia and the bicentenary of Kew Gardens; the flagpole was removed after damage by weather and woodpeckers made it a danger. In July 2003, the gardens were put on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites by UNESCO. A five-year, £41 million revamp of the Temperate House was completed in May 2018. Five trees survive from the establishment of the botanical gardens in 1762. Together they are known as the'Five Lions' and consist of: a ginkgo, a pagoda tree, or scholar tree (Styphnolobiu

The Perino Model 1908 was an early machine gun of Italian origin designed earlier in 1901 by Giuseppe Perino, an engineer. Perino's design was the first Italian-designed machine gun, in its original configuration weighed in at a heavy 27 kilograms, which made it unsuitable to field utilization and apt only for fortifications; the gun was nonetheless adopted by the Regio Esercito and saw some use alongside the Fiat-Revelli Modello 14 and the Maxim guns. It had a unique feed mechanism, with a hopper on the side of the gun filled with up to five twenty-round clips rather than being belt fed; this allowed the loader to keep the gun at maximum capacity, meaning the gun crew never had to stop to reload. McNab, Chris: Twentieth-century Small Arms, Grange Books, 2004. July 1996. Thedonovan.com: A picture of a World War I Alpino, with the assault version of the Perino Max Difilippo: Machine guns used by Italy during WW1 Italian Perino Machine Gun - Forgotten Weapons

Amada García Rodriguez was a Galician Communist activist. She lived in the Galician village of Mugardos, she was arrested while pregnant, after she gave birth she was shot along with seven other people at St Philip's Castle by Francoist military elements who took part in the coup against the Republican government. Amada García was a Communist Party young activist in Mugardos, in Galicia. Enrolled in politics, she took part in political meetings and in other activities ordinarily not carried out by women, this caused a shocking effect in the most reactionary groups in the village in the 1930s. In 1936, under Franco's leadership and military fascists took power in Galicia by means of a coup, they imposed a heavy repression in the Ferrol region. Several hundred people died and went missing here without trial, or with a sham trial done to punish leftist political activities. Amada was arrested. Thereby, the court-martial and subsequent execution was delayed until after the birth. While waiting for the child's birth, she was imprisoned in the Women's Prison in Ferrol.

Afterwards, she was taken to a military prison on the shores of Ferrol bay. There she was shot, two days after she gave birth, by a firing squad on January 27, 1938, along with seven other persons, at the castle wall; the others' names are Juan José Teixeiro Leira, José Maria Montero Martínez, Ángel Roldos Gelpi, Antonio Eitor Caniça, from Mugardos. The court-martial was filled with irregularities: false testimony signed without knowing by an illiterate witness, death threats and fines to the witness for the defense. Oral sources said that there was a solidarity movement among the prisoners in order to avoid the young activist's execution, the soldiers had to shoot twice, because they missed with the first volley, she still stood and the officer ordered angrily, to shoot the woman, who fell fatally wounded. Her daughter became a nun, her minor son, was given to his father, but was brought up by three Catholic aunts. Amada's sister shut herself up in the Eiris Monastery. A good friend of her mother, Maria José Leira, was condemned to death, but left Galicia after a commutation.

She was condemned for embroidering a communist flag, her husband, a school-teacher, had been executed a short time before. Nowadays, Amada's son, pays visits to the wall of the castle where his mother was executed, he continues to denounce his mother's execution. He works to spread awareness of his mother's story, the lack of political commitment to the victims of fascism in Galicia. BARRERA BEITIA, Enrique: Ferrol, 1931–1952. De la república a la posguerra. Edicións Embora, Galiza, 2005. VELASCO SOUTO, Carlos: Represión e alzamento militar en Galiza. A Nosa Terra, Galiza, 2006. Civil War and repression in Ferrol. In Galician Language