Molde is a municipality in Møre og Romsdal county, Norway. It is located in the traditional district of Romsdal; the municipality is located on the Romsdal Peninsula, surrounding the Moldefjord. The administrative centre of the municipality is the city of Molde, the administrative centre of Møre og Romsdal county, the commercial hub of the Romsdal region, the seat of the Diocese of Møre. Other main population centres in the municipality include the villages of Hjelset, Nesjestranda, Nord-Heggdal, Eidsvåg, Boggestranda, Myklebostad and Eikesdalen. Molde has a maritime, temperate climate, with cool-to-warm summers, mild winters; the city is nicknamed The Town of Roses. It is an old settlement. Formal trading rights were introduced in 1614, the town was incorporated through a royal charter in 1742. Molde was established as a municipality on 1 January 1838 The town continued to grow throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, becoming a centre for Norwegian textile and garment industry, as well as the administrative centre for the region, a major tourist destination.

After World War II, Molde experienced accelerated growth, merging with Bolsøy Municipality and parts of Veøy Municipality on 1 January 1964, has become a centre for not only administrative and public services, but academic resources and industrial output. The 363-square-kilometre municipality is the 254th largest by area out of the 422 municipalities in Norway. Molde is the 38th most populous municipality in Norway with a population of 26,900; the municipality's population density is 75.7 inhabitants per square kilometre and its population has increased by 10.7% over the last decade. The city's current location dates from the late mediaeval period, but is preceded by the early mediaeval township on Veøya, an island to the south of present-day Molde; the settlement at Veøya dates from the Migration Period, but is first mentioned in the sagas by Snorri Sturluson as the location of the Battle of Sekken in 1162, where king Håkon the Broad-shouldered was killed fighting the aristocrat Erling Skakke, during the Norwegian civil wars.

However, settlement in the area can be traced much further back in time—evidence given by two rock slabs carved with petroglyphs found at Bjørset, west of the city centre. At the eve of the 15th century, the influence of Veøya waned, the island was deserted. However, commercial life in the region was not dead, originating from the two settlements at Reknes and Molde, a minor port called Molde Fjære emerged, based on trade with timber and herring to foreign merchants; the town gained formal trading rights in 1614 as a ladested under the supervision of the city of Trondheim. During the Swedish occupation of Middle Norway, 1658–1660, after Denmark-Norway's devastating defeat in the Northern Wars, the town became a hub of resistance to the Swedes. After the rebellion and liberation in 1660, Molde became the administrative centre of Romsdalen Amt and was incorporated as a kjøpstad through a royal charter in 1742. Molde continued to grow throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, becoming a centre for Norwegian textile and garment industry.

Tourism became a major industry, Molde saw notabilities such as the German emperor Wilhelm II of Germany and the Prince of Wales as regular summer visitors. Molde consisted of luxurious hotels surrounding an idyllic township with quaint, wooden houses, lush gardens and parks and pavilions, earning it the nickname the Town of Roses; this was interrupted when one third of the city was destroyed in a fire on 21 January 1916. However, Molde continued to grow in the economically difficult interbellum period. A second fire, or series of fires, struck from the German air-raids in April and May 1940, which destroyed about two thirds of the town. Molde was in effect the capital of Norway for a week after King Haakon, Crown Prince Olav, members of the government and parliament arrived at Molde on April 23, after a dramatic flight from Oslo, they were put up at Glomstua at the western outskirts of the town, experienced the bombing raids personally. The Norwegian gold reserve was conveyed to Molde, was hidden in a clothing factory.

However, German intelligence was well aware of this, on April 25 the Luftwaffe initiated a series of air-raids. For a week the air-raid siren on the chimney of the dairy building announced the repeated attacks. April 29 turned out to be the worst day in the history of Molde, as the city was transformed into a sea of flames by incendiary bombs; until the church had escaped undamaged, but in the final sortie a firebomb became stuck high up in the tower, the beautiful wooden church was obliterated by fire. After World War II, Molde experienced tremendous growth; as the modernisation of the Norwegian society accelerated in the post-reconstruction years, Molde became a centre for not only administrative and public services, but academic resources and industrial output. After the consolidation of the town itself and its adjacent communities in 1964, Molde became a modern city, encompassing most branches of employment, from farming and fisheries, to industrial production, higher education, commerce, health care, civil administration.

The town of Molde was established as an urban municipality on 1 January 1838. It was surrounded by the rural municipality of Bolsøy. On 1 July 1915, a part of Bolsøy was transferred to the city of Molde. On 1 January 1952, another part of Bolsøy was transferred to Mol

The root of the penis is triradiate in form, consisting of the diverging crura, one on either side, the median urethral bulb. Each crus is covered by the Ischiocavernosus muscle, while the bulb is surrounded by the Bulbospongiosus; the root of the penis lies in the perineum between the inferior fascia of the urogenital diaphragm and the fascia of Colles. In addition to being attached to the fasciæ and the pubic ramus, it is bound to the front of the pubic symphysis by the fundiform and suspensory ligaments; the fundiform ligament springs from the front of the sheath of the Rectus abdominis and the linea alba. The upper fibers of the suspensory ligament pass downward from the lower end of the linea alba, the lower fibers from the pubic symphysis; this article incorporates text in the public domain from page 1249 of the 20th edition of Gray's Anatomy

Gordie C. Hanna was a University of California-Davis agronomy professor who helped revolutionize the tomato-growing industry, he won the John Scott Award in 1976 for his development of a tomato variety capable of being machine-harvested. The variety came to be known as the "square tomato," being blockier, preventing it from rolling off conveyor belts. In the early 1940s, California’s tomato industry was threatened due to a lack of laborers to harvest the crops. In response, the UC Davis Agricultural Engineering department developed a mechanical tomato harvester; the machine crushed the tomatoes. The University of California-Davis's Vegetable Crops department, led by Hanna, came to the rescue by breeding a firmer-skinned tomato. However, he was tight-lipped about much of his early work. “When he first began trying to breed such a tomato in 1942, Hanna kept his idea to himself, unsure of what others at the university would think of it”. “Perhaps for good reason: when his concept started to circulate, it was met with little support, in terms of both its technical feasibility and its anticipated negative impact on California agricultural labor.”

Hanna's creation, variety VF145, became known as the square tomato, not because it was square, but because its blockier shape prevented it from rolling off conveyor belts. The development of the world’s first mechanical harvesting tomato wasn’t Hanna’s only contribution to tomato production. With the harvestable tomato in hand, in 1961 he teamed up with UC Davis agricultural engineer Coby Lorenzen to develop a harvester to reap the hardier variety of tomato. Engineering the equipment was no small challenge because tomato harvesting requires multiple functions, including cutting and lifting the vines separating the tomatoes from the vines. During the 1950s, the UC Davis team refined the experimental harvester and in 1959 convinced a California company, Blackwelder Manufacturing, to commercialize the design. Within three years of its introduction, the proportion of California's tomato acreage planted with mechanically harvestable tomatoes rose from 7 percent to 85 percent. While mechanical harvesting was controversial because it displaced human labor, it reduced harvesting costs by nearly one half and eliminated an economic constraint on the US processing tomato industry, resulting in large increases in tomato acreage and yield.

Those increases, in turn, provided additional employment in field work and processing that more than offset the displaced harvesting jobs. Hanna bred most of California’s disease-resistant asparagus and developed several internationally produced sweet potato varieties. Photo of Hanna in 1951, from the UC Davis Library special collections