1.
Order of the British Empire
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There is also the related British Empire Medal, whose recipients are affiliated with, but not members of, the order. Recommendations for appointments to the Order of the British Empire were at first made on the nomination of the United Kingdom, the self-governing Dominions of the Empire, nominations continue today from Commonwealth countries that participate in recommending British honours. Most members are citizens of the United Kingdom or the Commonwealth realms that use the Imperial system of honours and awards. Honorary knighthoods are appointed to citizens of nations where the Queen is not head of state, occasionally, honorary appointees are, incorrectly, referred to as Sir or Dame – Bill Gates or Bob Geldof, for example. In particular, King George V wished to create an Order to honour many thousands of those who had served in a variety of non-combatant roles during the First World War, when first established, the Order had only one division. However, in 1918, soon after its foundation, it was divided into Military. The Orders motto is For God and the Empire, at the foundation of the Order, the Medal of the Order of the British Empire was instituted, to serve as a lower award granting recipients affiliation but not membership. In 1922, this was renamed the British Empire Medal, in addition, the BEM is awarded by the Cook Islands and by some other Commonwealth nations. The British monarch is Sovereign of the Order, and appoints all members of the Order. The next most senior member is the Grand Master, of whom there have been three, Prince Edward, the Prince of Wales, Queen Mary, and the current Grand Master, the Duke of Edinburgh. The Order is limited to 300 Knights and Dames Grand Cross,845 Knights and Dames Commander, and 8,960 Commanders. There are no limits applied to the number of members of the fourth and fifth classes. Foreign recipients, as members, do not contribute to the numbers restricted to the Order as full members do. Though men can be knighted separately from an order of chivalry, women cannot, and so the rank of Knight/Dame Commander of the Order is the lowest rank of damehood, and second-lowest of knighthood. Because of this, Dame Commander is awarded in circumstances in which a man would be created a Knight Bachelor, for example, by convention, female judges of the High Court of Justice are created Dames Commander after appointment, while male judges become Knights Bachelor. The Order has six officials, the Prelate, the Dean, the Secretary, the Registrar, the King of Arms, the Bishop of London, a senior bishop in the Church of England, serves as the Orders Prelate. The Dean of St Pauls is ex officio the Dean of the Order, the Orders King of Arms is not a member of the College of Arms, as are many other heraldic officers. From time to time, individuals are appointed to a higher grade within the Order, thereby ceasing usage of the junior post-nominal letters
2.
Belfast
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Belfast is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, the second largest on the island of Ireland, and the heart of the tenth largest Primary Urban Area in the United Kingdom. On the River Lagan, it had a population of 286,000 at the 2011 census and 333,871 after the 2015 council reform, Belfast was granted city status in 1888. Belfast played a key role in the Industrial Revolution, and was an industrial centre until the latter half of the 20th century. It has sustained a major aerospace and missiles industry since the mid 1930s, industrialisation and the inward migration it brought made Belfast Irelands biggest city at the beginning of the 20th century. Today, Belfast remains a centre for industry, as well as the arts, higher education, business, and law, additionally, Belfast city centre has undergone considerable expansion and regeneration in recent years, notably around Victoria Square. Belfast is served by two airports, George Best Belfast City Airport in the city, and Belfast International Airport 15 miles west of the city. Although the county borough of Belfast was created when it was granted city status by Queen Victoria in 1888, the site of Belfast has been occupied since the Bronze Age. The Giants Ring, a 5, 000-year-old henge, is located near the city, Belfast remained a small settlement of little importance during the Middle Ages. The ONeill clan had a presence in the area, in the 14th century, Cloinne Aodha Buidhe, descendants of Aodh Buidhe ONeill built Grey Castle at Castlereagh, now in the east of the city. Conn ONeill of the Clannaboy ONeills owned vast lands in the area and was the last inhabitant of Grey Castle, evidence of this period of Belfasts growth can still be seen in the oldest areas of the city, known as the Entries. Belfast blossomed as a commercial and industrial centre in the 18th and 19th centuries, industries thrived, including linen, rope-making, tobacco, heavy engineering and shipbuilding, and at the end of the 19th century, Belfast briefly overtook Dublin as the largest city in Ireland. The Harland and Wolff shipyards became one of the largest shipbuilders in the world, in 1886 the city suffered intense riots over the issue of home rule, which had divided the city. In 1920–22, Belfast became the capital of the new entity of Northern Ireland as the island of Ireland was partitioned, the accompanying conflict cost up to 500 lives in Belfast, the bloodiest sectarian strife in the city until the Troubles of the late 1960s onwards. Belfast was heavily bombed during World War II, in one raid, in 1941, German bombers killed around one thousand people and left tens of thousands homeless. Apart from London, this was the greatest loss of life in a raid during the Blitz. Belfast has been the capital of Northern Ireland since its establishment in 1921 following the Government of Ireland Act 1920 and it had been the scene of various episodes of sectarian conflict between its Catholic and Protestant populations. These opposing groups in conflict are now often termed republican and loyalist respectively. The most recent example of conflict was known as the Troubles – a civil conflict that raged from around 1969 to 1998
3.
Classics
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Classics or Classical Studies is the study of classical antiquity. It encompasses the study of the Graeco-Roman world, particularly of its languages, and literature but also it encompasses the study of Graeco-Roman philosophy, history, and archaeology. Traditionally in the West, the study of the Greek and Roman classics was considered one of the cornerstones of the humanities and it has been traditionally a cornerstone of a typical elite education. The word Classics is derived from the Latin adjective classicus, meaning belonging to the highest class of citizens, the word was originally used to describe the members of the highest class in ancient Rome. By the 2nd century AD the word was used in literary criticism to describe writers of the highest quality, for example, Aulus Gellius, in his Attic Nights, contrasts classicus and proletarius writers. By the 6th century AD, the word had acquired a meaning, referring to pupils at a school. Thus the two meanings of the word, referring both to literature considered to be of the highest quality, and to the standard texts used as part of a curriculum. In the Middle Ages, classics and education were tightly intertwined, according to Jan Ziolkowski, while Latin was hugely influential, however, Greek was barely studied, and Greek literature survived almost solely in Latin translation. The works of even major Greek authors such as Hesiod, whose names continued to be known by educated Europeans, were unavailable in the Middle Ages. Along with the unavailability of Greek authors, there were differences between the classical canon known today and the works valued in the Middle Ages. Catullus, for instance, was almost entirely unknown in the medieval period, the Renaissance led to the increasing study of both ancient literature and ancient history, as well as a revival of classical styles of Latin. From the 14th century, first in Italy and then increasingly across Europe, Renaissance Humanism, Humanism saw a reform in education in Europe, introducing a wider range of Latin authors as well as bringing back the study of Greek language and literature to Western Europe. This reintroduction was initiated by Petrarch and Boccaccio who commissioned a Calabrian scholar to translate the Homeric poems, the late 17th and 18th centuries are the period in Western European literary history which is most associated with the classical tradition, as writers consciously adapted classical models. Classical models were so prized that the plays of William Shakespeare were rewritten along neoclassical lines. From the beginning of the 18th century, the study of Greek became increasingly important relative to that of Latin, in this period Johann Winckelmanns claims for the superiority of the Greek visual arts influenced a shift in aesthetic judgements, while in the literary sphere, G. E. Lessing returned Homer to the centre of artistic achievement, in the United Kingdom, the study of Greek in schools began in the late 18th century. The poet Walter Savage Landor claimed to have one of the first English schoolboys to write in Greek during his time at Rugby School. The 19th century saw the influence of the world, and the value of a classical education, decline, especially in the US
4.
Trinity College, Dublin
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Trinity College is the sole constituent college of the University of Dublin, a research university in Ireland. It is one of the seven ancient universities of Britain and Ireland, originally it was established outside the city walls of Dublin in the buildings of the dissolved Augustinian Priory of All Hallows. Trinity College was set up in part to consolidate the rule of the Tudor monarchy in Ireland, although Catholics and Dissenters had been permitted to enter as early as 1793, certain restrictions on their membership of the college remained until 1873. From 1871 to 1970, the Catholic Church in Ireland forbade its adherents from attending Trinity College without permission, women were first admitted to the college as full members in January 1904. Trinity College is now surrounded by Dublin and is located on College Green, the college proper occupies 190,000 m2, with many of its buildings ranged around large quadrangles and two playing fields. Academically, it is divided into three faculties comprising 25 schools, offering degree and diploma courses at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The Library of Trinity College is a deposit library for Ireland. The first University of Dublin was created by the Pope in 1311, following this, and some debate about a new university at St. The first Provost of the College was the Archbishop of Dublin, Adam Loftus, two years after foundation, a few Fellows and students began to work in the new College, which then lay around one small square. During the eighteenth century Trinity College was seen as the university of the Protestant Ascendancy, Parliament, meeting on the other side of College Green, made generous grants for building. The first building of this period was the Old Library building, begun in 1712, followed by the Printing House, during the second half of the century Parliament Square slowly emerged. The great building drive was completed in the nineteenth century by Botany Bay. In December 1845 Denis Caulfield Heron was the subject of a hearing at Trinity College, Heron had previously been examined and, on merit, declared a scholar of the college but had not been allowed to take up his place due to his Catholic religion. Heron appealed to the Courts which issued a writ of mandamus requiring the case to be adjudicated by the Archbishop of Dublin, the decision of Richard Whately and John George de la Poer Beresford was that Heron would remain excluded from Scholarship. This decision confirmed that the position remained that persons who were not Anglicans could not be elected to Scholarship, Fellowship or be made a Professor. However within less than three decades of this all disabilities imposed on Catholics were repealed as in 1873, all tests were abolished. Prior to 1956 it was the responsibility of the local Bishop, the nineteenth century was also marked by important developments in the professional schools. The Law School was reorganised after the middle of the century, the Engineering School was established in 1842 and was one of the first of its kind in Ireland and Britain
5.
Atheism
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Atheism is, in the broadest sense, the absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is the rejection of belief that any deities exist, in an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which, in its most general form, is the belief that at least one deity exists, the etymological root for the word atheism originated before the 5th century BCE from the ancient Greek ἄθεος, meaning without god. The term denoted a social category created by orthodox religionists into which those who did not share their religious beliefs were placed, the actual term atheism emerged first in the 16th century. With the spread of freethought, skeptical inquiry, and subsequent increase in criticism of religion, application of the term narrowed in scope, the first individuals to identify themselves using the word atheist lived in the 18th century during the Age of Enlightenment. The French Revolution, noted for its unprecedented atheism, witnessed the first major movement in history to advocate for the supremacy of human reason. Arguments for atheism range from the philosophical to social and historical approaches, although some atheists have adopted secular philosophies, there is no one ideology or set of behaviors to which all atheists adhere. Since conceptions of atheism vary, accurate estimations of current numbers of atheists are difficult, an older survey by the British Broadcasting Corporation in 2004 recorded atheists as comprising 8% of the worlds population. Other older estimates have indicated that atheists comprise 2% of the worlds population, according to these polls, Europe and East Asia are the regions with the highest rates of atheism. In 2015, 61% of people in China reported that they were atheists, the figures for a 2010 Eurobarometer survey in the European Union reported that 20% of the EU population claimed not to believe in any sort of spirit, God or life force. Atheism has been regarded as compatible with agnosticism, and has also been contrasted with it, a variety of categories have been used to distinguish the different forms of atheism. Some of the ambiguity and controversy involved in defining atheism arises from difficulty in reaching a consensus for the definitions of words like deity, the plurality of wildly different conceptions of God and deities leads to differing ideas regarding atheisms applicability. The ancient Romans accused Christians of being atheists for not worshiping the pagan deities, gradually, this view fell into disfavor as theism came to be understood as encompassing belief in any divinity. Definitions of atheism also vary in the degree of consideration a person must put to the idea of gods to be considered an atheist, Atheism has sometimes been defined to include the simple absence of belief that any deities exist. This broad definition would include newborns and other people who have not been exposed to theistic ideas, as far back as 1772, Baron dHolbach said that All children are born Atheists, they have no idea of God. Similarly, George H. Smith suggested that, The man who is unacquainted with theism is an atheist because he does not believe in a god. This category would include the child with the conceptual capacity to grasp the issues involved. The fact that this child does not believe in god qualifies him as an atheist, ernest Nagel contradicts Smiths definition of atheism as merely absence of theism, acknowledging only explicit atheism as true atheism
6.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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Several critics have described Rilkes work as inherently mystical. These deeply existential themes tend to him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist writers. While Rilke is most known for his contributions to German literature, over 400 poems were written in French. In the later 20th century, his work found new audiences through its use by New Age theologians and self-help authors, in the United States, Rilke remains among the more popular, best-selling poets. He was born René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke in Prague and his childhood and youth in Prague were not especially happy. His father, Josef Rilke, became an official after an unsuccessful military career. His mother, Sophie Entz, came from a well-to-do Prague family, the Entz-Kinzelbergers, who lived in a house on the Herrengasse 8, where René also spent many of his early years. The relationship between Phia and her son was colored by her mourning for an earlier child, a daughter who had died only one week old. During Rilkes early years Phia acted as if she sought to recover the lost girl through the boy by dressing him in girls clothing and his parents marriage failed in 1884. His parents pressured the poetically and artistically talented youth into entering a military academy, which he attended from 1886 until 1891, from 1892 to 1895 he was tutored for the university entrance exam, which he passed in 1895. Until 1896 he studied literature, art history, and philosophy in Prague, in 1897 in Munich, Rainer Maria Rilke met and fell in love with the widely travelled, intellectual woman of letters Lou Andreas-Salomé. Rilke changed his first name from René to Rainer at Lous urging because she thought that name to be masculine, forceful. His relationship with married woman, with whom he undertook two extensive trips to Russia, lasted until 1900. But even after their separation, Lou continued to be Rilkes most important confidante until the end of his life, having trained from 1912 to 1913 as a psychoanalyst with Sigmund Freud, she shared her knowledge of psychoanalysis with Rilke. In 1898, Rilke undertook a journey lasting several weeks to Italy, in 1899, he travelled with Lou and her husband, Friedrich Andreas, to Moscow where he met the novelist Leo Tolstoy. Author Anna A. Tavis cites the cultures of Bohemia and Russia as the key influences on Rilkes poetry, in 1900, Rilke stayed at the artists colony at Worpswede. It was here that he got to know the sculptor Clara Westhoff and their daughter Ruth was born in December 1901. In the summer of 1902, Rilke left home and travelled to Paris to write a monograph on the sculptor Auguste Rodin, before long his wife left their daughter with her parents and joined Rilke there
7.
Queen's University Belfast
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Queens University Belfast is a public research university in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The university was chartered in 1845, and opened in 1849 as Queens College, Belfast, but has roots going back to 1810, the university forms the focal point of the Queens Quarter area of the city, one of Belfasts four cultural districts. It offers academic degrees at various levels and across a broad subject range, since 1 March 2014, Patrick Johnston has been the university’s 12th President and Vice-Chancellor. The university is associated with two Nobel laureates and one Turing Award laureate, Queens College, Belfast, opened in 1849. Its main building, the Lanyon Building, was designed by the English architect, at its opening, it had 23 professors and 343 students. Some early students at Queens University Belfast took University of London examinations, the university was one of only eight United Kingdom universities to hold a parliamentary seat in the House of Commons at Westminster until such representation was abolished in 1950. The university was represented in the Parliament of Northern Ireland from 1920–1968. On 20 June 2006, the university announced a £259 million investment programme focusing on facilities, recruitment, the building has been named in honour of Sir Allen McClay, a major benefactor of Queens University and of the Library. In June 2010, the university announced the launch of a £7. 5m Ansin international research hub with Seagate Technologies. In addition to the campus not far from the centre of Belfast. Although offering a range of courses, these colleges primarily provide training for those wishing to enter the teaching profession. The university has formal agreements with colleges in Northern Ireland. The current chancellor is the businessman Thomas Moran, academics at Queens are organised into fifteen schools across three faculties. The three faculties are the Faculty of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences, the Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences, each of the 20 schools operates as a primary management unit of the university and the schools are the focus for education and research for their respective subject areas. On Feb 18th 2016 BBC Northern Ireland reported that this Institute was to be closed, Institute of Cognition and Culture - Founded in 2004, this is one of the world’s first centres for research in the cognitive science of culture. It has brought together a range of cutting-edge cognitive scientists via a series of visiting fellowships, Institute of Irish Studies - The Institute of Irish Studies celebrated its 50th birthday in March 2015. Institute of Professional Legal Studies - The Institute of Professional Legal Studies was established in 1977 at Queens University Belfast and it provides an internationally recognised and unique one-year postgraduate course for trainee barristers and trainee solicitors who study together. In all five colleges teach any programmes with a emphasis on behalf of the university
8.
British Council
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The British Council is a British organisation specialising in international cultural and educational opportunities. The British Council is a charity registered in England and Wales and it is also a public corporation and an executive nondepartmental public body, sponsored by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Its headquarters are off Trafalgar Square, London and its Chair is Christopher Rodrigues, its CEO is Sir Ciarán Devane and chief operating officer Adrian Greer. 1934, British Foreign Office officials created the British Committee for Relations with Other Countries to support English education abroad, promote British culture, the name quickly became British Council for Relations with Other Countries. 1936, The organisation’s name was shortened to the British Council. 1938, The British Council opens its first four offices in Bucarest, Cairo, Lisbon, the offices in Portugal are currently the oldest in continuous operation in the world. 1942, The British Council undertook a promotion of British culture overseas, the music section of the project was a recording of significant recent compositions by British composers, E. J. 1944, In August, after the liberation of Paris, Austin Gill was sent by the council to reestablish the Paris office,2007, The Russian Foreign Ministry ordered the British Council to close its offices outside Moscow. This caused the British Council to cease carrying out all English-language examinations in Russia from January 2008, in early 2009, a Russian arbitration court ruled that the majority of the tax claims, valued at $6.6 million, were unjustified. All the attackers were killed in counter-attacks by forces guarding the compound, the British Council office was relocated to the British Embassy compound, as the British Council compound was destroyed in the suicide attack. 2013, The British Council in Tripoli, Libya was targeted by a car bomb on the morning of 23 April, diplomatic sources were reported as saying that the bombers were foiled as they were preparing to park a rigged vehicle in front of the compound gate. A jihadist group calling itself the Mujahedeen Brigade was suspected possibly linked to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the British Council is organised into 7 Regions. The British Council has offices in, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Jamaica, Mexico, Peru, Trinidad, Venezuela, Uruguay and the United States of America. The British Council has offices in, Australia, Brunei, Burma, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam and New Zealand. The British Council has offices in, Egypt, Algeria, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Israel, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. The British Council has offices in, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, the British Council is a charity governed by Royal Charter. It is also a corporation and an executive nondepartmental public body, sponsored by the Foreign. Its headquarters are off Trafalgar Square, London and its Chair is Christopher Rodrigues, its CEO is Sir Ciarán Devane and chief operating officer Adrian Greer
9.
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
10.
Seamus Heaney
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Seamus Justin Heaney, MRIA was an Irish poet, playwright, translator and lecturer. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature, born near Castledawson, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, the family moved to nearby Bellaghy when he was a boy. Heaney became a lecturer at St. Josephs College in Belfast in the early 1960s, after attending Queens University and he lived in Sandymount, Dublin, Republic of Ireland, from 1976 until his death. He also lived part-time in the United States from 1981 to 2006, Heaney was recognised as one of the principal contributors to poetry during his lifetime. Heaney was a professor at Harvard from 1981 to 1997, from 1989 to 1994, he was also the Professor of Poetry at Oxford. In 1996, was made a Commandeur de lOrdre des Arts et Lettres, in 2011, he was awarded the Griffin Poetry Prize and in 2012, a Lifetime Recognition Award from the Griffin Trust. His literary papers are held by the National Library of Ireland, American poet Robert Lowell described him as the most important Irish poet since Yeats, and many others, including the academic John Sutherland, have said that he was the greatest poet of our age. Robert Pinsky has stated that with his gift of eye. Upon his death in 2013, The Independent described him as probably the best-known poet in the world, one of his best known works is Death of a Naturalist, published in 1966. His body is buried at the Cemetery of St. Marys Church, Bellaghy, County Londonderry, the headstone bears the epitaph WALK ON AIR AGAINST YOUR BETTER JUDGEMENT, from one of his poems. Heaney was born on 13 April 1939, at the farmhouse called Mossbawn. In 1953, his family moved to Bellaghy, a few miles away and his father, Patrick Heaney, was the eighth child of ten born to James and Sarah Heaney. Patrick was a farmer, but his commitment was to cattle dealing. Heaneys mother, Margaret Kathleen McCann, who bore nine children and her uncles and relations were employed in the local linen mill, and her aunt had worked as a maid for the mill owners family. Heaney initially attended Anahorish Primary School, when he was years old, he won a scholarship to St. Columbs College. Heaneys brother, Christopher, was killed in an accident at the age of four while Heaney was studying at St. Columbs. The poems Mid-Term Break and The Blackbird of Glanmore are related to his brothers death, in 1957, Heaney travelled to Belfast to study English Language and Literature at Queens University Belfast. During his time in Belfast, he found a copy of Ted Hughess Lupercal, suddenly, the matter of contemporary poetry was the material of my own life, he said
11.
Gerrards Cross
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Gerrards Cross is a town and civil parish in the South Bucks district of Buckinghamshire, England. It is in the south of the county, separated from the London Borough of Hillingdon at Harefield by Denham, London is centred 19 miles east. Geographically large and suburban, Gerrards Cross is south of Chalfont St Peter and north of Fulmer, the town name is new compared with the great bulk of English towns. It is named after the Gerrard family who in the early 17th century owned a manor here, at that time homes which were not farms were smallholdings clustered in a hamlet in the south of an elongated parish of Chalfont St Peter. The large and distinctive parish church is dedicated to St. James, in 1969 the singer Lulu married Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees in the church. The actress Margaret Rutherford is buried with her husband Stringer Davis in the St James Church graveyard, the town has its own library, various restaurants and its own cinema, the Everyman Gerrards Cross. Independent schools include Maltmans Green School, St Marys, Gayhurst, on the south side of the town is the Gerrards Cross Memorial Building, on the site of the former vicarage. The building was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and unveiled in 1922 to commemorate the losses during the First World War. It is the example of a Lutyens war memorial designed with a functional purpose. Just outside Gerrards Cross, on the A40 to Beaconsfield, is Wapseys Wood landfill site, one of the largest landfill sites in the UK and it accepts up to 900,000 tonnes of non hazardous waste each year from south Buckinghamshire, London and other areas. The landfill gas produced from the waste yields over 10 megawatts of electricity which is fed into the power grid, the town has a railway station on the Chiltern Main Line which opened on 2 April 1906. This provides services to London and Birmingham with a time of about 25 minutes to London Marylebone. A new arch over the section of deep railway cutting to allow Tesco to build a supermarket collapsed on 30 June 2005 at 19,30, nobody was injured but the line was closed for over six weeks. Compensation by Tesco to Chiltern was reported as £8. 5m, construction of a correctly constructed arch began in January 2009. This train now terminates at West Ruislip, in 2011 National Rail was lobbied to phase the service out. The town is 14 miles from Londons Heathrow Airport, stanley Kubrick filmed some of the exteriors in his feature 1962 film Lolita, notably Charlotte Hazes house, in Gerrards Cross. Jethro Tulls song Journeyman on their 1978 album Heavy Horses includes the line Too late to stop for tea at Gerrards Cross, indie band the Hit Parade released their 3rd single The Sun Shines In Gerrards Cross in 1986. Joan G. Robinson, author and illustrator, lived in Gerrards Cross and her most well-known book is When Marnie Was There, which was adapted into an animated film by Studio Ghibli
12.
Royal Belfast Academical Institution
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The Royal Belfast Academical Institution, is a grammar school in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Locally referred to as Inst, the school boys from ages 11 to 18. It is one of the eight Northern Irish schools represented on the Headmasters, the school occupies an 18-acre site in the centre of the city on which its first buildings was erected. The first demands for the school which would become Inst came from a group of Belfast merchants and they insisted that the existing Belfast Academy under William Bruce did not offer a complete, uniform, and extensive system of education. They hoped that a new school would give access to the ‘higher branches of learning as well as to those which would fit youths for a practical commercial career. The foundation stone of Inst. was laid, in pouring rain, on 3 July 1810 by George Augustus Chichester, Donegall owned much of the land in the Belfast area and granted the school a lease for the grounds at an annual rent of £22–5s–1d. The eminent English architect John Soane, who designed the new Bank of England in 1788, the roof of the main building was completed during the winter of 1811. The Institution was formally opened at 1, 00pm on 1 February 1814, William Drennan announced that the aim was to ‘diffuse useful knowledge, particularly among the middling orders of society, as a necessity, not a luxury of life. He also referred to the noble and rural setting of the school – in front a fair and flourishing town. Until the middle of the 19th century, the RBAI was both a school and a university, a function which the Belfast Academy never had. There are numerous clubs and societies, a School Orchestra, Choir and Band, a contingent of the Combined Cadet Force, Scouts and Explorer Scouts, the school offers a wide selection of sports, with rugby union being the most dominant. Inst have won the Ulster Schools Cup outright 32 times along with 4 shared titles, Rugby football and hockey are played in the winter, athletics, cricket and lawn tennis occupy the summer months, Badminton, fencing, rowing, squash and swimming take place throughout the year. Teams representing the School take part not only in matches and activities within the Province, the school hockey teams have achieved many successes. The 1st XI consistently feature in the finals of all three competitions they enter, in 2016 four Instonians played Olympic hockey, three for Ireland and one for Great Britain. In recent times other school sports have also more frequently making headlines. Inst is one of four schools in Northern Ireland to participate in competitive rowing. In 2005 the first ever Inst crew travelled to the Henley Royal Regatta in England and it regularly participates in various regattas throughout Ireland and abroad. In swimming the school teams regularly go to competitions within Ireland, in 2005,3 of the team qualified for the Irish International Schools Squad
