1.
German Empire
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The German Empire was the historical German nation state that existed from the unification of Germany in 1871 to the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1918, when Germany became a federal republic. The German Empire consisted of 26 constituent territories, with most being ruled by royal families and this included four kingdoms, six grand duchies, five duchies, seven principalities, three free Hanseatic cities, and one imperial territory. Although Prussia became one of kingdoms in the new realm, it contained most of its population and territory. Its influence also helped define modern German culture, after 1850, the states of Germany had rapidly become industrialized, with particular strengths in coal, iron, chemicals, and railways. In 1871, it had a population of 41 million people, and by 1913, a heavily rural collection of states in 1815, now united Germany became predominantly urban. During its 47 years of existence, the German Empire operated as an industrial, technological, Germany became a great power, boasting a rapidly growing rail network, the worlds strongest army, and a fast-growing industrial base. In less than a decade, its navy became second only to Britains Royal Navy, after the removal of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck by Wilhelm II, the Empire embarked on a bellicose new course that ultimately led to World War I. When the great crisis of 1914 arrived, the German Empire had two allies, Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Italy, however, left the once the First World War started in August 1914. In the First World War, German plans to capture Paris quickly in autumn 1914 failed, the Allied naval blockade caused severe shortages of food. Germany was repeatedly forced to send troops to bolster Austria and Turkey on other fronts, however, Germany had great success on the Eastern Front, it occupied large Eastern territories following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. German declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare in early 1917 was designed to strangle the British, it failed, but the declaration—along with the Zimmermann Telegram—did bring the United States into the war. Meanwhile, German civilians and soldiers had become war-weary and radicalised by the Russian Revolution and this failed, and by October the armies were in retreat, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire had collapsed, Bulgaria had surrendered and the German people had lost faith in their political system. The Empire collapsed in the November 1918 Revolution as the Emperor and all the ruling monarchs abdicated, and a republic took over. The German Confederation had been created by an act of the Congress of Vienna on 8 June 1815 as a result of the Napoleonic Wars, German nationalism rapidly shifted from its liberal and democratic character in 1848, called Pan-Germanism, to Prussian prime minister Otto von Bismarcks pragmatic Realpolitik. He envisioned a conservative, Prussian-dominated Germany, the war resulted in the Confederation being partially replaced by a North German Confederation in 1867, comprising the 22 states north of the Main. The new constitution and the title Emperor came into effect on 1 January 1871, during the Siege of Paris on 18 January 1871, William accepted to be proclaimed Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. The second German Constitution was adopted by the Reichstag on 14 April 1871 and proclaimed by the Emperor on 16 April, the political system remained the same. The empire had a parliament called the Reichstag, which was elected by universal male suffrage, however, the original constituencies drawn in 1871 were never redrawn to reflect the growth of urban areas
2.
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
3.
Finland
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Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a sovereign state in Northern Europe. A peninsula with the Gulf of Finland to the south and the Gulf of Bothnia to the west, the country has borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north. Estonia is south of the country across the Gulf of Finland, Finland is a Nordic country situated in the geographical region of Fennoscandia, which also includes Scandinavia. Finlands population is 5.5 million, and the majority of the population is concentrated in the southern region,88. 7% of the population is Finnish people who speak Finnish, a Uralic language unrelated to the Scandinavian languages, the second major group are the Finland-Swedes. In terms of area, it is the eighth largest country in Europe, Finland is a parliamentary republic with a central government based in the capital Helsinki, local governments in 311 municipalities, and an autonomous region, the Åland Islands. Over 1.4 million people live in the Greater Helsinki metropolitan area, from the late 12th century, Finland was an integral part of Sweden, a legacy reflected in the prevalence of the Swedish language and its official status. In the spirit of the notion of Adolf Ivar Arwidsson, we are not Swedes, we do not want to become Russians, let us therefore be Finns, nevertheless, in 1809, Finland was incorporated into the Russian Empire as the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland. In 1906, Finland became the nation in the world to give the right to vote to all adult citizens. Following the 1917 Russian Revolution, Finland declared itself independent, in 1918, the fledgling state was divided by civil war, with the Bolshevik-leaning Reds supported by the equally new Soviet Russia, fighting the Whites, supported by the German Empire. After a brief attempt to establish a kingdom, the became a republic. During World War II, the Soviet Union sought repeatedly to occupy Finland, with Finland losing parts of Karelia, Salla and Kuusamo, Petsamo and some islands, Finland joined the United Nations in 1955 and established an official policy of neutrality. The Finno-Soviet Treaty of 1948 gave the Soviet Union some leverage in Finnish domestic politics during the Cold War era, Finland was a relative latecomer to industrialization, remaining a largely agrarian country until the 1950s. It rapidly developed an advanced economy while building an extensive Nordic-style welfare state, resulting in widespread prosperity, however, Finnish GDP growth has been negative in 2012–2014, with a preceding nadir of −8% in 2009. Finland is a top performer in numerous metrics of national performance, including education, economic competitiveness, civil liberties, quality of life, a large majority of Finns are members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, though freedom of religion is guaranteed under the Finnish Constitution. The first known appearance of the name Finland is thought to be on three rune-stones. Two were found in the Swedish province of Uppland and have the inscription finlonti, the third was found in Gotland, in the Baltic Sea. It has the inscription finlandi and dates from the 13th century, the name can be assumed to be related to the tribe name Finns, which is mentioned first known time AD98. The name Suomi has uncertain origins, but a candidate for a source is the Proto-Baltic word *źemē, in addition to the close relatives of Finnish, this name is also used in the Baltic languages Latvian and Lithuanian
4.
Museum ship
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A museum ship, also called a memorial ship, is a ship that has been preserved and converted into a museum open to the public for educational or memorial purposes. Some are also used for training and recruitment purposes, mostly for the number of museum ships that are still operational. Many, if not most, museum ships are also associated with a maritime museum, only a few survive, sometimes because of historical significance, but more often due to luck and circumstance. The restoration and maintenance of museum ships presents problems for historians who are asked for advice, for instance, the rigging of sailing ships has almost never survived, and so the rigging plan must be reconstructed from various sources. Studying the ships also allows historians to analyze how life on and operation of the ships took place, numerous scientific papers have been written on ship restoration and maintenance, and international conferences are held discussing the latest developments. Another consideration is the distinction between a museum ship, and a ship replica. As repairs accumulate over time, less and less of the ship is of the materials. Visitors without historical background are often unable to distinguish between a historical museum ship and a ship replica, which may serve solely as a tourist attraction. Typically the visitor enters via gangplank, wanders around on the deck, then goes below, usually using the original stairways, giving a sense of how the crew got around. The interior features restored but inactivated equipment, enhanced with mementos including old photographs, explanatory displays, pages from the logs, menus. Some add recorded sound effects, audio tours or video displays to enhance the experience, in some cases, the ships radio room has been brought back into use, with volunteers operating amateur radio equipment. Often, the callsign assigned is a variation on the identification of the ship. For example, the submarine USS Cobia, which had the call NBQV, is now on the air as NB9QV. The World War II submarine USS Pampanito, berthed at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, had the wartime call NJVT and is now on the air as NJ6VT, in other cases, such as the USS Missouri, a distinctive call is used. This radio work not only helps restore part of the vessel, a number of the larger museum ships have begun to offer hosting for weddings, meetings, other events, and sleepovers, and on a few ships still seaworthy, cruises. In the United States, this includes the USS Constitutions annual turnaround, a place on the deck is by invitation or lottery only, and highly prized. Many consider the appeal of an interesting old vessel on the city waterfront strong enough that any port city should showcase one or more museum ships. This may even include building a ship at great expense
5.
Mast (sailing)
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The mast of a sailing vessel is a tall spar, or arrangement of spars, erected more or less vertically on the centre-line of a ship or boat. Its purposes include carrying sail, spars, and derricks, and giving necessary height to a light, look-out position, signal yard, control position. Large ships have several masts, with the size and configuration depending on the style of ship, nearly all sailing masts are guyed. Until the mid-19th century all vessels masts were made of wood formed from a single or several pieces of timber which typically consisted of the trunk of a conifer tree. From the 16th century, vessels were built of a size requiring masts taller and thicker than could be made from single tree trunks. On these larger vessels, to achieve the height, the masts were built from up to four sections, known in order of rising height above the decks as the lower, top, topgallant. Giving the lower sections sufficient thickness necessitated building them up separate pieces of wood. Such a section was known as a made mast, as opposed to sections formed from pieces of timber. Jigger-mast, typically, where it is the shortest, the aftmost mast on vessels with more than three masts. On a two-masted vessel with the main-mast forward and a smaller second mast, such as a ketch, or particularly a yawl. Although two-masted schooners may be provided with masts of identical size, the aftmost is still referred to as the main-mast, schooners have been built with up to seven masts in all, with several six-masted examples. On square-rigged vessels, each mast carries several horizontal yards from which the sails are rigged. A two-masted merchant vessel with a sizable foresail rigged on a slightly inclined foremast is depicted in an Etruscan tomb painting from 475–450 BC. While most of the ancient evidence is iconographic, the existence of foremasts can also be deduced archaeologically from slots in foremast-feets located too close to the prow for a mainsail. Artemon, along with mainsail and topsail, developed into the rig of seagoing vessels in imperial times. The imperial grain freighters travelling the routes between Alexandria and Rome also included three-masted vessels, a mosaic in Ostia depicts a freighter with a three-masted rig entering Romes harbour. Special craft could carry many more masts, Theophrastus records how the Romans imported Corsican timber by way of a raft propelled by as many as fifty masts. Throughout antiquity, both foresail and mizzen remained secondary in terms of size, although large enough to require full running rigging
6.
Steam engine
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A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. Steam engines are combustion engines, where the working fluid is separate from the combustion products. Non-combustion heat sources such as power, nuclear power or geothermal energy may be used. The ideal thermodynamic cycle used to analyze this process is called the Rankine cycle, in the cycle, water is heated and transforms into steam within a boiler operating at a high pressure. When expanded through pistons or turbines, mechanical work is done, the reduced-pressure steam is then exhausted to the atmosphere, or condensed and pumped back into the boiler. Specialized devices such as hammers and steam pile drivers are dependent on the steam pressure supplied from a separate boiler. The use of boiling water to mechanical motion goes back over 2000 years. The Spanish inventor Jerónimo de Ayanz y Beaumont obtained the first patent for an engine in 1606. In 1698 Thomas Savery patented a steam pump that used steam in direct contact with the water being pumped, Saverys steam pump used condensing steam to create a vacuum and draw water into a chamber, and then applied pressurized steam to further pump the water. Thomas Newcomens atmospheric engine was the first commercial steam engine using a piston. In 1781 James Watt patented an engine that produced continuous rotary motion. Watts ten-horsepower engines enabled a range of manufacturing machinery to be powered. The engines could be sited anywhere that water and coal or wood fuel could be obtained, by 1883, engines that could provide 10,000 hp had become feasible. The stationary steam engine was a key component of the Industrial Revolution, the aeolipile described by Hero of Alexandria in the 1st century AD is considered to be the first recorded steam engine. Torque was produced by steam jets exiting the turbine, in the Spanish Empire, the great inventor Jerónimo de Ayanz y Beaumont obtained a patent for the first steam engine in history in 1603. Thomas Savery, in 1698, patented the first practical, atmospheric pressure and it had no piston or moving parts, only taps. It was an engine, a kind of thermic syphon, in which steam was admitted to an empty container. The vacuum thus created was used to water from the sump at the bottom of the mine
7.
Barque
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A barque, barc, or bark is a type of sailing vessel with three or more masts having the fore- and mainmasts rigged square and only the mizzen rigged fore-and-aft. The word barque entered English via French, which in came from the Latin barca by way of Occitan. The Latin barca may stem from Celtic barc or Greek baris, the Oxford English Dictionary considers the latter improbable. The word barc appears to have come from Celtic languages, the form adopted by English, perhaps from Irish, was bark, while that adopted by Latin as barca very early, which gave rise to the French barge and barque. In Latin, Spanish and Italian the term refers to a small boat. French influence in England led to the use in English of both words, although their meanings now are not the same, well before the 19th century a barge had become interpreted as a small vessel of coastal or inland waters. Somewhat later, a became a sailing vessel of a distinctive rig as detailed below. In Britain, by the century, the spelling had taken on the French form of barque. Francis Bacon used this form of the word as early as 1592, throughout the period of sail, the word was used also as a shortening of the barca-longa of the Mediterranean Sea. The usual convention is that spelling barque refers to a ship and bark to tree hide, barcarole in music shares the same etymology, being originally a folk song sung by Venetian gondolier and derived from barca - boat in Italian. In the 18th century, the British Royal Navy used the bark for a nondescript vessel that did not fit any of its usual categories. She happened to be a sailing vessel with a plain bluff bow. Our Northern Mariners, who are trained in the coal-trade, apply this distinction to a broad-sterned ship, hon. the Earl of Sussex, Lord Deputy of Ireland. By the end of the 18th century, the term came to refer to any vessel with a particular type of sail-plan. This comprises three masts, fore-and-aft sails on the aftermost mast and square sails on all other masts, barques were the workhorse of the Golden Age of Sail in the mid-19th century as they attained passages that nearly matched full rigged ships but could operate with smaller crews. Conversely, the ship rig tended to be retained for training vessels where the larger the crew, another advantage is that a barque can outperform a schooner or barkentine, and is both easier to handle and better at going to windward than a full-rigged ship. Usually the main mast was the tallest, that of Moshulu extends to 58 m off the deck, the four-masted barque can be handled with a surprisingly small crew—at minimum, ten—and while the usual crew was around thirty, almost half of them could be apprentices. Today many sailing ships are barques
8.
River Clyde
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The River Clyde is a river, that flows into the Firth of Clyde in Scotland. It is the eighth-longest river in the United Kingdom, and the second-longest in Scotland, flowing through the major city of Glasgow, it was an important river for shipbuilding and trade in the British Empire. In the early medieval Cumbric language it was known as Clud or Clut, the Clyde is formed by the confluence of two streams, the Daer Water and the Potrail Water. The Southern Upland Way crosses both streams before they meet at Watermeetings to form the River Clyde proper. At this point the Clyde is only 10 kilometres from Tweeds Well, the source of the River Tweed, and 13 kilometres from the Devils Beef Tub, the source of the River Annan. From there it meanders northeastward before turning to the west, its flood plain used for major roads in the area. On the banks of the Clyde, the industrialists David Dale and Robert Owen, built their mills, the mills harness the power of the Falls of Clyde, the most spectacular of which is Cora Linn. A hydroelectric power station generates electricity here, although the mills are now a museum. Between the towns of Motherwell and Hamilton the course of the river has altered to create an artificial loch within Strathclyde Park. Part of the course can still be seen, and lies between the island and the east shore of the loch. The river then flows through Blantyre and Bothwell, where the ruined Bothwell Castle stands on a defensible promontory, past Uddingston and into the southeast of Glasgow the river begins to widen, meandering a course through Rutherglen and Dalmarnock. From there, it flows past the shipbuilding heartlands, through Govan, Partick, Whiteinch, Scotstoun and Clydebank, all of which housed major shipyards, of which only two remain. The river flows out west of Glasgow, past Renfrew, opposite, on the south shore, the river continues past the last Lower Clyde shipyard at Port Glasgow to Greenock where it reaches the Tail of the Bank as the river merges into the Firth of Clyde. At the mouth of the River Clyde there has been a significant issue of oxygen depletion in the water column, the valley of the Clyde was the focus for the G-BASE project from the British Geological Survey in the summer of 2010. The success of the Clyde at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution was driven by the location of Glasgow, tobacco and cotton trade began the drive in the early 18th century. However, the shallow Clyde was not navigable for the largest ocean-going ships, in 1768 John Golborne advised the narrowing of the river and the increasing of the scour by the construction of rubble jetties and the dredging of sandbanks and shoals. A particular problem was the division of the river into two channels by the Dumbuck shoal near Dumbarton. After James Watts report on this in 1769, a jetty was constructed at Longhaugh Point to block off the southern channel and this being insufficient, a training wall called the Lang Dyke was built in 1773 on the Dumbuck shoal to stop water flowing over into the southern channel
9.
Scotland
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Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and covers the northern third of the island of Great Britain. It shares a border with England to the south, and is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east. In addition to the mainland, the country is made up of more than 790 islands, including the Northern Isles, the Kingdom of Scotland emerged as an independent sovereign state in the Early Middle Ages and continued to exist until 1707. By inheritance in 1603, James VI, King of Scots, became King of England and King of Ireland, Scotland subsequently entered into a political union with the Kingdom of England on 1 May 1707 to create the new Kingdom of Great Britain. The union also created a new Parliament of Great Britain, which succeeded both the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of England. Within Scotland, the monarchy of the United Kingdom has continued to use a variety of styles, titles, the legal system within Scotland has also remained separate from those of England and Wales and Northern Ireland, Scotland constitutes a distinct jurisdiction in both public and private law. Glasgow, Scotlands largest city, was one of the worlds leading industrial cities. Other major urban areas are Aberdeen and Dundee, Scottish waters consist of a large sector of the North Atlantic and the North Sea, containing the largest oil reserves in the European Union. This has given Aberdeen, the third-largest city in Scotland, the title of Europes oil capital, following a referendum in 1997, a Scottish Parliament was re-established, in the form of a devolved unicameral legislature comprising 129 members, having authority over many areas of domestic policy. Scotland is represented in the UK Parliament by 59 MPs and in the European Parliament by 6 MEPs, Scotland is also a member nation of the British–Irish Council, and the British–Irish Parliamentary Assembly. Scotland comes from Scoti, the Latin name for the Gaels, the Late Latin word Scotia was initially used to refer to Ireland. By the 11th century at the latest, Scotia was being used to refer to Scotland north of the River Forth, alongside Albania or Albany, the use of the words Scots and Scotland to encompass all of what is now Scotland became common in the Late Middle Ages. Repeated glaciations, which covered the land mass of modern Scotland. It is believed the first post-glacial groups of hunter-gatherers arrived in Scotland around 12,800 years ago, the groups of settlers began building the first known permanent houses on Scottish soil around 9,500 years ago, and the first villages around 6,000 years ago. The well-preserved village of Skara Brae on the mainland of Orkney dates from this period and it contains the remains of an early Bronze Age ruler laid out on white quartz pebbles and birch bark. It was also discovered for the first time that early Bronze Age people placed flowers in their graves, in the winter of 1850, a severe storm hit Scotland, causing widespread damage and over 200 deaths. In the Bay of Skaill, the storm stripped the earth from a large irregular knoll, when the storm cleared, local villagers found the outline of a village, consisting of a number of small houses without roofs. William Watt of Skaill, the laird, began an amateur excavation of the site, but after uncovering four houses
German Empire
United States
Finland
