France
France the French Republic, is a country whose territory consists of metropolitan France in Western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The metropolitan area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean, it is bordered by Belgium and Germany to the northeast and Italy to the east, Andorra and Spain to the south. The overseas territories include French Guiana in South America and several islands in the Atlantic and Indian oceans; the country's 18 integral regions span a combined area of 643,801 square kilometres and a total population of 67.3 million. France, a sovereign state, is a unitary semi-presidential republic with its capital in Paris, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. Other major urban areas include Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Nice. During the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by a Celtic people. Rome annexed the area in 51 BC, holding it until the arrival of Germanic Franks in 476, who formed the Kingdom of Francia.
The Treaty of Verdun of 843 partitioned Francia into Middle Francia and West Francia. West Francia which became the Kingdom of France in 987 emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages following its victory in the Hundred Years' War. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a global colonial empire was established, which by the 20th century would become the second largest in the world; the 16th century was dominated by religious civil wars between Protestants. France became Europe's dominant cultural and military power in the 17th century under Louis XIV. In the late 18th century, the French Revolution overthrew the absolute monarchy, established one of modern history's earliest republics, saw the drafting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which expresses the nation's ideals to this day. In the 19th century, Napoleon established the First French Empire, his subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a tumultuous succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870.
France was a major participant in World War I, from which it emerged victorious, was one of the Allies in World War II, but came under occupation by the Axis powers in 1940. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and dissolved in the course of the Algerian War; the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, remains today. Algeria and nearly all the other colonies became independent in the 1960s and retained close economic and military connections with France. France has long been a global centre of art and philosophy, it hosts the world's fourth-largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites and is the leading tourist destination, receiving around 83 million foreign visitors annually. France is a developed country with the world's sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP, tenth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of aggregate household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, human development.
France is considered a great power in global affairs, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a leading member state of the European Union and the Eurozone, a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, La Francophonie. Applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name "France" comes from the Latin "Francia", or "country of the Franks". Modern France is still named today "Francia" in Italian and Spanish, "Frankreich" in German and "Frankrijk" in Dutch, all of which have more or less the same historical meaning. There are various theories as to the origin of the name Frank. Following the precedents of Edward Gibbon and Jacob Grimm, the name of the Franks has been linked with the word frank in English, it has been suggested that the meaning of "free" was adopted because, after the conquest of Gaul, only Franks were free of taxation.
Another theory is that it is derived from the Proto-Germanic word frankon, which translates as javelin or lance as the throwing axe of the Franks was known as a francisca. However, it has been determined that these weapons were named because of their use by the Franks, not the other way around; the oldest traces of human life in what is now France date from 1.8 million years ago. Over the ensuing millennia, Humans were confronted by a harsh and variable climate, marked by several glacial eras. Early hominids led a nomadic hunter-gatherer life. France has a large number of decorated caves from the upper Palaeolithic era, including one of the most famous and best preserved, Lascaux. At the end of the last glacial period, the climate became milder. After strong demographic and agricultural development between the 4th and 3rd millennia, metallurgy appeared at the end of the 3rd millennium working gold and bronze, iron. France has numerous megalithic sites from the Neolithic period, including the exceptiona
Air France
Air France, stylized as AIRFRANCE, is the French flag carrier headquartered in Tremblay-en-France. It is a subsidiary of the Air France–KLM Group and a founding member of the SkyTeam global airline alliance; as of 2013 Air France serves 36 destinations in France and operates worldwide scheduled passenger and cargo services to 168 destinations in 78 countries and carried 46,803,000 passengers in 2015. The airline's global hub is at Charles de Gaulle Airport with Orly Airport as the primary domestic hub. Air France's corporate headquarters in Montparnasse, are located on the grounds of Charles de Gaulle Airport, north of Paris. Air France was formed on 7 October 1933 from a merger of Air Orient, Air Union, Compagnie Générale Aéropostale, Compagnie Internationale de Navigation Aérienne, Société Générale de Transport Aérien. During the Cold War, from 1950 until 1990, it was one of the three main Allied scheduled airlines operating in Germany at West Berlin's Tempelhof and Tegel airports. In 1990, it acquired the operations of French domestic carrier Air Inter and international rival UTA – Union de Transports Aériens.
It served as France's primary national flag carrier for seven decades prior to its 2003 merger with KLM. Between April 2001 and March 2002, the airline carried 43.3 million passengers and had a total revenue of €12.53bn. In November 2004, Air France ranked as the largest European airline with 25.5% total market share, was the largest airline in the world in terms of operating revenue. On 25 July 2000, a Concorde that Air France owned crashed on a hotel in Gonesse. Air France operates a mixed fleet of Airbus and Boeing widebody jets on long-haul routes, uses Airbus A320 family aircraft on short-haul routes. Air France introduced the A380 on 20 November 2009 with service to New York City's JFK Airport from Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport; the carrier's regional airline subsidiary, HOP!, operates the majority of its regional domestic and European scheduled services with a fleet of regional jet aircraft. Air France was formed on 7 October 1933, from a merger of Air Orient, Air Union, Compagnie Générale Aéropostale, Compagnie Internationale de Navigation Aérienne and Société Générale des Transports Aériens.
Of these airlines, SGTA was the first commercial airline company in France, having been founded as Lignes Aériennes Farman in 1919. The constituent members of Air France had built extensive networks across Europe, to French colonies in North Africa and farther afield. During World War II, Air France moved its operations to Casablanca. In 1936, Air France added French-built twin engine Potez 62 aircraft to its fleet featuring a two compartment cabin that could accommodate 14 to 16 passengers. A high wing monoplane, it had a wooden fuselage with composite coating while the wings were fabric covered with a metal leading edge. Equipped with Hispano-Suiza V-engines, they were used on routes in Europe, South America and the Far East. Although cruising at only 175 miles per hour, the Potez 62 was a robust and reliable workhorse for Air France and remained in service until the Second World War with one used by the Free French Air Force. On 26 June 1945 all of France's air transport companies were nationalised.
On 29 December 1945, a decree of the French Government granted Air France the management of the entire French air transport network. Air France appointed its first flight attendants in 1946; the same year the airline opened its first air terminal at Les Invalides in central Paris. It was linked to Paris Le Bourget Airport, Air France's first operations and engineering base, by coach. At that time the network covered 160,000 km, claimed to be the longest in the world. Société Nationale Air France was set up on 1 January 1946. European schedules were operated by a fleet of Douglas DC-3 aircraft. On 1 July 1946, Air France started direct flights between Paris and New York via refuelling stops at Shannon and Gander. Douglas DC-4 piston-engine airliners covered the route in just under 20 hours. In September 1947 Air France's network stretched east from New York, Fort de France and Buenos Aires to Shanghai. By 1948 Air France operated one of the largest fleets in the world. Between 1947 and 1965 the airline operated Lockheed Constellations on passenger and cargo services worldwide.
In 1946 and 1948 the French government authorised the creation of two private airlines: Transports Aériens Internationaux – Transports Aériens Intercontinentaux – and SATI. In 1949 the latter became part of Union Aéromaritime de Transport, a private French international airline. Compagnie Nationale Air France was created by act of parliament on 16 June 1948; the government held 70%. In subsequent years the French state's direct and indirect shareholdings reached 100%. In mid-2002 the state held 54%. On 4 August 1948 Max Hymans was appointed the president. During his 13-year tenure he would implement modernisation practices centred on the introduction of jet aircraft. In 1949 the company became a co-founder of Société Internationale de Télécommunications Aéronautiques, an airline telecommunications services company. In 1952 Air France moved its operations and engineering base to the new Paris Orly Airport South terminal. By the network covered 250,000 km. Air France entered the jet age in 1953 with the original, short-lived de Havilland Comet series 1, the world's first jetliner.
During the mid-1950s it operated the Vickers Viscount turboprop, with twelve entering services between May 1953 and August 1954 on the European routes. On 26 September1953z the government instructed Air France to share long-distance
Mayotte
Mayotte is an overseas department and region of France named the Department of Mayotte. It consists of a main island, Grande-Terre, a smaller island, Petite-Terre, several islets around these two. Mayotte is part of the Comoros archipelago, located in the northern Mozambique Channel in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Southeast Africa, between northwestern Madagascar and northeastern Mozambique; the department status of Mayotte is recent and the region remains, by a significant margin, the poorest in France. Mayotte is much more prosperous than the other countries of the Mozambique Channel, making it a major destination for illegal immigration. Mayotte's area is 374 square kilometres and, with its 270,372 people according to January 2019 official estimates, is densely populated at 723 per km2; the biggest city and prefecture is Mamoudzou on Grande-Terre. However, the Dzaoudzi–Pamandzi International Airport is located on the neighbouring island of Petite-Terre; the territory is known as Maore, the native name of its main island by advocates of its inclusion in the Union of the Comoros.
Although, as a department, Mayotte is now an integral part of France, the majority of the inhabitants do not speak French as a first language, but a majority of the people 14 years and older report in the census that they can speak French. The language of the majority is Shimaore, a Sabaki language related to the varieties in the neighbouring Comoros islands; the second most spoken native language is Kibushi, a Malagasy language, of which there are two varieties, Kibushi Kisakalava, most related to the Sakalava dialect of Malagasy, Kibushi Kiantalaotra. Both have been influenced by Shimaore; the vast majority of the population is Muslim. The island was populated from neighbouring East Africa with arrival of Arabs, who brought Islam. A sultanate was established in 1500. In the 19th century, Mayotte was conquered by Andriantsoly, former king of Iboina on Madagascar, by the neighbouring islands Mohéli and Anjouan before being purchased by France in 1841; the people of Mayotte voted to remain politically a part of France in the 1974 referendum on the independence of the Comoros.
Mayotte became an overseas department on 31 March 2011 and became an outermost region of the European Union on 1 January 2014, following a 2009 referendum with an overwhelming result in favour of the department status. The term Mayotte may refer to all of the department's islands, of which the largest is known as Maore and includes Maore's surrounding islands, most notably Pamanzi, or only to the largest island; the main island, Grande-Terre, geologically the oldest of the Comoro Islands, is 39 kilometres long and 22 kilometres wide, its highest point is Mount Benara, at 660 metres above sea level. Because of the volcanic rock, the soil is rich in some areas. A coral reef encircling much of the island ensures a habitat for fish. Dzaoudzi was the capital of Mayotte until 1977, when the capital relocated at Mamoudzou on the main island of Grande-Terre, it is situated on Petite-Terre, which at 10 square kilometres is the largest of several islets adjacent to Maore. The area of the lagoon behind the reef is 1,500 square kilometres,reaching a maximum depth of about 80m.
It is described as "the largest barrier-reef-lagoon complex within the southwestern Indian Ocean". Main article: Geology of Mayotte Mayotte is a volcanic island rising steeply from the bed of the ocean to a height of 660 metres on Mont Bénara. Two volcanic centres are reported, a southern one (Pic Chongui, 594 metres, with a breached crater to the NW, a northern centre with a breached crater to the south-east. Mont Bénara is on the curving ridge between these two peaks at the contact point of the two structures. Volcanic activity started about 7.7 million years ago in the south, ceasing about 2.7 million years ago. In the north, activity started about 4.7 million years ago and lasted until about 1.4 million years ago. Both centres had several phases of activity; the November 11 2018 seismic event occurred about 15 miles off the coast of Mayotte. It was recorded by seismograms in many place including Kenya, New Zealand and Hawaii located 11,000 miles away; the seismic waves lasted for over 20 minutes but despite this, no one felt it.
The exact nature of the forces behind this swarm remain unclear at this time. The French government geological agency, the BRGM are maintaining a website on the events at this link; the leading theory is about magma emplacement into the seabed and a partial collase of the magma chamber's roof, but, still under debate. A set of seabed seismic recorders was put into the ocean in February 2019, for retrieval in about September that year, which should give better earthquake locations and directional "solutions". Mayotte is surrounded by a typical tropical coral reef, it consists in a large outer barrier reef, enclosing one of the world's largest and deepest lagoons, followed by a fringing reef, interrupted by many mangroves. All Mayotte waters are ruled by a National marine Park, many places are natural reserves. In 1500, the Maore or Mawuti (contraction of the Arabic جزيرة الموت Jazīrat al-Mawt – meaning isl
Chiconi
Chiconi is a commune in the French overseas department of Mayotte, in the Indian Ocean
M'Tsangamouji
M'Tsangamouji is a commune in the French overseas department of Mayotte, in the Indian Ocean
Dzaoudzi
Dzaoudzi is a commune in the French overseas department of Mayotte, in the Indian Ocean. The commune of Dzaoudzi, made up of the twin towns of Dzaoudzi and Labattoir, is located on the small island of Petite-Terre, it was the capital of Mayotte, but the capital was relocated in 1977 to Mamoudzou, on the island of Grande-Terre, the main island of Mayotte. The Foreign Legion Detachment in Mayotte has been based in Dzaoudzi since 1973; the town of Dzaoudzi is located on a rocky outcropping, once a separate islet. It is now linked to Pamanzi Island and the rest of Dzaoudzi Commune by the Boulevard des Crabes, a road constructed atop an artificial dike. Dzaoudzi features a tropical dry climate under the Köppen climate classification; the wet season spans from December through April while the dry season covers the remaining seven months. Dzaoudzi is cooler during the peak of its dry season with average temperatures hovering around 23 °C during its cooler period. Average temperatures are 27 °C during its warmest period.
The town sees 1,000 millimetres of precipitation annually. The commune is home to 17,831, the majority of. Demographic evolution of Dzaoudzi: 1978: 3,200 1985: 5,865 1991: 8,257 1997: 10,792 2007: 15,339 2012: 14,311 2017: 17,831 A system of ferry barges operated by the Société des Transports Maritimes link Dzaoudzi to the island of Grande-Terre; the international airport for Mayotte is located on Pamanzi Island in the neighboring commune of Pamandzi. Insee
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering 70,560,000 km2. It is bounded by Asia on the north, on the west by Africa, on the east by Australia, on the south by the Southern Ocean or, depending on definition, by Antarctica; the Indian Ocean is named after India. Called the Sindhu Mahasagara or the great sea of the Sindhu by the Ancient Indians, this ocean has been variously called Hindu Ocean, Indic Ocean, etc. in various languages. The Indian Ocean was known earlier as the Eastern Ocean; the term was still in use during the mid-18th century. The borders of the Indian Ocean, as delineated by the International Hydrographic Organization in 1953 included the Southern Ocean but not the marginal seas along the northern rim, but in 2000 the IHO delimited the Southern Ocean separately, which removed waters south of 60°S from the Indian Ocean, but included the northern marginal seas. Meridionally, the Indian Ocean is delimited from the Atlantic Ocean by the 20° east meridian, running south from Cape Agulhas, from the Pacific Ocean by the meridian of 146°49'E, running south from the southernmost point of Tasmania.
The northernmost extent of the Indian Ocean is 30° north in the Persian Gulf. The Indian Ocean covers 70,560,000 km2, including the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf but excluding the Southern Ocean, or 19.5% of the world's oceans. The ocean's continental shelves are narrow. An exception is found off Australia's western coast; the average depth of the ocean is 3,890 m. Its deepest point is Sunda Trench at a depth of 7,450 m. North of 50° south latitude, 86% of the main basin is covered by pelagic sediments, of which more than half is globigerina ooze; the remaining 14% is layered with terrigenous sediments. Glacial outwash dominates the extreme southern latitudes; the major choke points include Bab el Mandeb, Strait of Hormuz, the Lombok Strait, the Strait of Malacca and the Palk Strait. Seas include the Gulf of Aden, Andaman Sea, Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal, Great Australian Bight, Laccadive Sea, Gulf of Mannar, Mozambique Channel, Gulf of Oman, Persian Gulf, Red Sea and other tributary water bodies.
The Indian Ocean is artificially connected to the Mediterranean Sea through the Suez Canal, accessible via the Red Sea. All of the Indian Ocean is in the Eastern Hemisphere and the centre of the Eastern Hemisphere, the 90th meridian east, passes through the Ninety East Ridge. Marginal seas, gulfs and straits of the Indian Ocean include: Several features make the Indian Ocean unique, it constitutes the core of the large-scale Tropical Warm Pool which, when interacting with the atmosphere, affects the climate both regionally and globally. Asia prevents the ventilation of the Indian Ocean thermocline; that continent drives the Indian Ocean monsoon, the strongest on Earth, which causes large-scale seasonal variations in ocean currents, including the reversal of the Somali Current and Indian Monsoon Current. Because of the Indian Ocean Walker circulation there is no continuous equatorial easterlies. Upwelling occurs near the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula in the Northern Hemisphere and north of the trade winds in the Southern Hemisphere.
The Indonesian Throughflow is a unique Equatorial connection to the Pacific. The climate north of the equator is affected by a monsoon climate. Strong north-east winds blow from October until April. In the Arabian Sea the violent Monsoon brings rain to the Indian subcontinent. In the southern hemisphere, the winds are milder, but summer storms near Mauritius can be severe; when the monsoon winds change, cyclones sometimes strike the shores of the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. The Indian Ocean is the warmest ocean in the world. Long-term ocean temperature records show a rapid, continuous warming in the Indian Ocean, at about 0.7–1.2 °C during 1901–2012. Indian Ocean warming is the largest among the tropical oceans, about 3 times faster than the warming observed in the Pacific. Research indicates that human induced greenhouse warming, changes in the frequency and magnitude of El Niño events are a trigger to this strong warming in the Indian Ocean. South of the Equator the Indian Ocean is gaining heat from June to October, during the austral winter, while it is losing heat from November to March, during the austral summer.
Among the few large rivers flowing into the Indian Ocean are the Zambezi and Jubba in Africa. The ocean's currents are controlled by the monsoon. Two large gyres, one in the northern hemisphere flowing clockwise and one south of the equator moving anticlockwise, constitute the dominant flow pattern. During the winter monsoon, circulation is reversed north of 30°S and winds are weakened during winter and the transitional periods between the monsoons. Deep water circulation is controlled by inflows from the Atlantic Ocean, the Red Sea, Antarctic currents. North of 20 ° south latitude the minimum surface temperature is 22 °C. Southward of 40° south latitude, temperatures
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