1.
Barcelona
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Founded as a Roman city, in the Middle Ages Barcelona became the capital of the County of Barcelona. Barcelona has a cultural heritage and is today an important cultural centre. Particularly renowned are the works of Antoni Gaudí and Lluís Domènech i Montaner. The headquarters of the Union for the Mediterranean is located in Barcelona, the city is known for hosting the 1992 Summer Olympics as well as world-class conferences and expositions and also many international sport tournaments. It is a cultural and economic centre in southwestern Europe, 24th in the world. In 2008 it was the fourth most economically powerful city by GDP in the European Union, in 2012 Barcelona had a GDP of $170 billion, it is leading Spain in both employment rate and GDP per capita change. In 2009 the city was ranked Europes third and one of the worlds most successful as a city brand, since 2011 Barcelona has been a leading smart city in Europe. During the Middle Ages, the city was known as Barchinona, Barçalona, Barchelonaa. Internationally, Barcelonas name is abbreviated to Barça. However, this refers only to FC Barcelona, the football club. The common abbreviated form used by locals is Barna, another common abbreviation is BCN, which is also the IATA airport code of the Barcelona-El Prat Airport. The city is referred to as the Ciutat Comtal in Catalan. The origin of the earliest settlement at the site of present-day Barcelona is unclear, the ruins of an early settlement have been excavated in the El Raval neighbourhood, including different tombs and dwellings dating to earlier than 5000 BC. The founding of Barcelona is the subject of two different legends, the first attributes the founding of the city to the mythological Hercules. In about 15 BC, the Romans redrew the town as a castrum centred on the Mons Taber, under the Romans, it was a colony with the surname of Faventia, or, in full, Colonia Faventia Julia Augusta Pia Barcino or Colonia Julia Augusta Faventia Paterna Barcino. It enjoyed immunity from imperial burdens, the city minted its own coins, some from the era of Galba survive. Some remaining fragments of the Roman walls have incorporated into the cathedral. The cathedral, also known as the Basilica La Seu, is said to have founded in 343
2.
Spain
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By population, Spain is the sixth largest in Europe and the fifth in the European Union. Spains capital and largest city is Madrid, other urban areas include Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Bilbao. Modern humans first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 35,000 years ago, in the Middle Ages, the area was conquered by Germanic tribes and later by the Moors. Spain is a democracy organised in the form of a government under a constitutional monarchy. It is a power and a major developed country with the worlds fourteenth largest economy by nominal GDP. Jesús Luis Cunchillos argues that the root of the span is the Phoenician word spy. Therefore, i-spn-ya would mean the land where metals are forged, two 15th-century Spanish Jewish scholars, Don Isaac Abravanel and Solomon ibn Verga, gave an explanation now considered folkloric. Both men wrote in two different published works that the first Jews to reach Spain were brought by ship by Phiros who was confederate with the king of Babylon when he laid siege to Jerusalem. This man was a Grecian by birth, but who had given a kingdom in Spain. He became related by marriage to Espan, the nephew of king Heracles, Heracles later renounced his throne in preference for his native Greece, leaving his kingdom to his nephew, Espan, from whom the country of España took its name. Based upon their testimonies, this eponym would have already been in use in Spain by c.350 BCE, Iberia enters written records as a land populated largely by the Iberians, Basques and Celts. Early on its coastal areas were settled by Phoenicians who founded Western Europe´s most ancient cities Cadiz, Phoenician influence expanded as much of the Peninsula was eventually incorporated into the Carthaginian Empire, becoming a major theater of the Punic Wars against the expanding Roman Empire. After an arduous conquest, the peninsula came fully under Roman Rule, during the early Middle Ages it came under Germanic rule but later, much of it was conquered by Moorish invaders from North Africa. In a process took centuries, the small Christian kingdoms in the north gradually regained control of the peninsula. The last Moorish kingdom fell in the same year Columbus reached the Americas, a global empire began which saw Spain become the strongest kingdom in Europe, the leading world power for a century and a half, and the largest overseas empire for three centuries. Continued wars and other problems led to a diminished status. The Napoleonic invasions of Spain led to chaos, triggering independence movements that tore apart most of the empire, eventually democracy was peacefully restored in the form of a parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Spain joined the European Union, experiencing a renaissance and steady economic growth
3.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
4.
World Heritage Site
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A World Heritage Site is a landmark which has been officially recognized by the United Nations, specifically by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Sites are selected on the basis of having cultural, historical, scientific or some form of significance. UNESCO regards these sites as being important to the interests of humanity. The programme catalogues, names, and conserves sites of outstanding cultural or natural importance to the common culture, under certain conditions, listed sites can obtain funds from the World Heritage Fund. The program was founded with the Convention Concerning the Protection of the Worlds Cultural and Natural Heritage, since then,192 state parties have ratified the convention, making it one of the most adhered to international instruments. As of July 2016,1052 sites are listed,814 cultural,203 natural, in 1959, the governments of Egypt and Sudan requested UNESCO to assist their countries to protect and rescue the endangered monuments and sites. In 1960, the Director-General of UNESCO launched an appeal to the Member States for an International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia, the campaign, which ended in 1980, was considered a success. The project cost $80 million, about $40 million of which was collected from 50 countries, the projects success led to other safeguarding campaigns, saving Venice and its lagoon in Italy, the ruins of Mohenjo-daro in Pakistan, and the Borobodur Temple Compounds in Indonesia. UNESCO then initiated, with the International Council on Monuments and Sites, the United States initiated the idea of cultural conservation with nature conservation. The International Union for Conservation of Nature developed similar proposals in 1968, the Convention came into force on 17 December 1975. As of June 2016, it has been ratified by 192 states, including 188 UN member states plus the Cook Islands, the Holy See, Niue, a country must first list its significant cultural and natural sites, the result is called the Tentative List. A country may not nominate sites that have not been first included on the Tentative List, next, it can place sites selected from that list into a Nomination File. The Nomination File is evaluated by the International Council on Monuments and Sites and these bodies then make their recommendations to the World Heritage Committee. There are ten selection criteria – a site must meet at least one of them to be included on the list, up to 2004, there were six criteria for cultural heritage and four criteria for natural heritage. In 2005, this was modified so there is now only one set of ten criteria. Nominated sites must be of outstanding value and meet at least one of the ten criteria. Thus, the Geneva Convention treaty promulgates, Article 53, PROTECTION OF CULTURAL OBJECTS AND OF PLACES OF WORSHIP. There are 1,052 World Heritage Sites located in 165 States Party, of these,814 are cultural,203 are natural and 35 are mixed properties
5.
Catalan language
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Catalan is a Romance language derived from Vulgar Latin and named after the medieval Principality of Catalonia, in northeastern modern Spain and adjoining parts of France. It is the national and only language of Andorra, and a co-official language of the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands. It also has status in the commune of Alghero, situated on the northwestern coast of the island of Sardinia. All these territories are often called Catalan Countries. 4% with Catalan and 47. 5% only Spanish, in order to integrate newcomers, the Generalitat de Catalunya spends part of its annual budget on the promotion of the use of Catalan in Catalonia and in other territories. Catalan evolved from Vulgar Latin in the Middle Ages around the eastern Pyrenees, during the Low Middle Ages it saw a golden age as the literary and dominant language of the Crown of Aragon, and was widely used all over the Mediterranean. The union of Aragon with the territories of Spain in 1479 marked the start of the decline of the language. In 1659 Spain ceded Northern Catalonia to France, and Catalan was banned in both states in the early 18th century, 19th-century Spain saw a Catalan literary revival, which culminated in the 1913 orthographic standardization, and the official status of the language during the Second Spanish Republic. However, the Francoist dictatorship banned the use of Catalan in schools and in the public administration, there is no parallel in Europe for such a large, bilingual, non-state speech community. Catalan dialects are relatively uniform, and are mutually intelligible and they are divided into two blocks, Eastern and Western, differing mostly in pronunciation. The terms Catalan and Valencian are two varieties of the same language, there are two institutions regulating the two standard varieties, the Institute of Catalan Studies in Catalonia and the Valencian Academy of the Language in the Valencian Community. Catalan shares many traits with its neighboring Romance languages, thus, the similarities are naturally most notable with eastern Occitan. Nouns have two genders, and two numbers, pronouns additionally can have a neuter gender, and some are also inflected for case and politeness, and can be combined in very complex ways. Verbs are split in several paradigms and are inflected for person, number, tense, aspect, mood, in terms of pronunciation, Catalan has many words ending in a wide variety of consonants and some consonant clusters, in contrast with many other Romance languages. The word Catalan derives from the territory of Catalonia, itself of disputed etymology, in English, the term referring to a person first appears in the mid 14th century as Catelaner, followed in the 15th century as Catellain. It is attested a language name since at least 1652, Catalan can be pronounced as /ˈkætəlæn/, /kætəˈlæn/ or /ˈkætələn/. The endonym is pronounced /kə. təˈɫa/ in the Eastern Catalan dialects, in the Valencian Community, the term valencià is frequently used instead. The names Catalan and Valencian are two names for the same language, see also status of Valencian below. By the 9th century, Catalan had evolved from Vulgar Latin on both sides of the end of the Pyrenees, as well as the territories of the Roman province of Hispania Tarraconensis to the south
6.
Spanish language
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Spanish —also called Castilian —is a Romance language that originated in the Castile region of Spain, with hundreds of millions of native speakers around the world. It is usually considered the worlds second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese and it is one of the few languages to use inverted question and exclamation marks. Spanish is a part of the Ibero-Romance group of languages, which evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in Iberia after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. Beginning in the early 16th century, Spanish was taken to the colonies of the Spanish Empire, most notably to the Americas, as well as territories in Africa, Oceania, around 75% of modern Spanish is derived from Latin. Greek has also contributed substantially to Spanish vocabulary, especially through Latin, Spanish vocabulary has been in contact from an early date with Arabic, having developed during the Al-Andalus era in the Iberian Peninsula. With around 8% of its vocabulary being Arabic in origin, this language is the second most important influence after Latin and it has also been influenced by Basque as well as by neighboring Ibero-Romance languages. It also adopted words from languages such as Gothic language from the Visigoths in which many Spanish names and surnames have a Visigothic origin. Spanish is one of the six languages of the United Nations. It is the language in the world by the number of people who speak it as a mother tongue, after Mandarin Chinese. It is estimated more than 437 million people speak Spanish as a native language. Spanish is the official or national language in Spain, Equatorial Guinea, speakers in the Americas total some 418 million. In the European Union, Spanish is the tongue of 8% of the population. Spanish is the most popular second language learned in the United States, in 2011 it was estimated by the American Community Survey that of the 55 million Hispanic United States residents who are five years of age and over,38 million speak Spanish at home. The Spanish Constitution of 1978 uses the term castellano to define the language of the whole Spanish State in contrast to las demás lenguas españolas. Article III reads as follows, El castellano es la lengua española oficial del Estado, las demás lenguas españolas serán también oficiales en las respectivas Comunidades Autónomas. Castilian is the official Spanish language of the State, the other Spanish languages as well shall be official in their respective Autonomous Communities. The Spanish Royal Academy, on the hand, currently uses the term español in its publications. Two etymologies for español have been suggested, the Spanish Royal Academy Dictionary derives the term from the Provençal word espaignol, and that in turn from the Medieval Latin word Hispaniolus, from—or pertaining to—Hispania
7.
Collserola
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The Serra de Collserola, or simply Collserola, is a mountain range between the rivers Besòs and Llobregat. It is part of the Catalan Coastal Range and these mountains separate Barcelona from the Vallès plain and their tallest peak is the Tibidabo, at 512 m. Other main summits are, Turó del Puig, Puig dOlorda, Turó de Valldaura, Turó de la Magarola, Puig dOssa, the valleys of the Llobregat and Besós Rivers, the plain of Barcelona, and the Vallès basin, mark the geographical boundaries of the Collserola massif. To preserve the area, in 1987 the Parc de Collserola and it is the largest metropolitan park in the world -8 times larger than the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, and 22 times larger than Central Park in New York. On the Vilana hill, of 445 m, stands the Torre de Collserola and it is 288.4 m and was built by the British architect Sir Norman Foster. The Collserola Park is used extensively by the inhabitants of Barcelona and it is popular for walking, cycling and birdwatching. There are numerous restaurants where families go during the weekends, a path that follows the ridge of the Serra, known as the Carretera de les Aigües, has been extensively improved for cyclists. The Barcelona city plan intends to include it in a track that completely circles the city
8.
Modernisme
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Modernisme, also known as Catalan modernism, is the historiographic denomination given to an art and literature movement. Modernisme was also a literary movement, although it was part of a general trend that emerged in Europe around the turn of the 20th century, in Catalonia the style acquired its own unique personality. Notable painters include Santiago Rusiñol, Ramon Casas, Isidre Nonell, Hermen Anglada Camarasa, Joaquim Mir, Eliseu Meifrèn, Lluïsa Vidal, notable sculptors are Josep Llimona, Eusebi Arnau and Miquel Blai. Such ideas can be seen in some of Rusiñols plays against the Spanish army, Modernistes largely rejected bourgeois values, which they thought to be the opposite of art. It is a search for a style for Catalonia drawing on Medieval. The textile factory which is now home to the Catalan national technical museum MNACTEC is an outstanding example, early 20th century architecture in Valencia was strongly influenced by Modernisme. The Central Market in Valencia, one of the largest in Europe, covers more than 8,000 square metres, over two floors, with a predominantly eclectic pre-Modernist style. Its unusual roof comprises original domes and sloping sections at different heights, while the interior seems to be lined in a range of such as iron, wood, ceramics. The beauty of the building stands out especially on account of the light enters through the roof at various points. The North Station is the railway station in Valencia, Spain located in the city centre next to the Plaza de Toros de Valencia. It was declared Good of Cultural Heritage in 1987, the Mercado de Colón is an old market located in the center of the city of Valencia, Spain. Its building was designed by architect Francisco Mora Berenguer between 1914 and 1916 and this is a clear example of Modernist architecture of the early century. It was declared a national monument and it impresses with its extraordinary facade and lavish decor. Antoni Gaudí is the architect of this movement. Other influential architects were Lluís Domènech i Montaner and Josep Puig i Cadafalch, in literature, Modernisme stood out the most in narrative. Those writers often, though not always, show influences from Russian literature of the 19th Century, in poetry, Modernisme closely follows Symbolist and Parnassian poetry, with poets frequently crossing the line between both tendencies or alternating between them. Another important strain of Modernista poetry is Joan Maragalls Paraula viva school, although poetry was very popular with the Modernistes and there were lots of poets involved in the movement, Maragall is the only Modernista poet who is still widely read today. Modernista theatre was important, as it smashed the insubstantial regional plays that were popular in 19th century Catalonia
9.
UNESCO
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The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations based in Paris. It is the heir of the League of Nations International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, UNESCO has 195 member states and nine associate members. Most of its offices are cluster offices covering three or more countries, national and regional offices also exist. UNESCO pursues its objectives through five major programs, education, natural sciences, social/human sciences, culture and it is also a member of the United Nations Development Group. UNESCO and its mandate for international cooperation can be traced back to a League of Nations resolution on 21 September 1921, on 18 December 1925, the International Bureau of Education began work as a non-governmental organization in the service of international educational development. However, the work of predecessor organizations was largely interrupted by the onset of World War II. On 30 October 1943, the necessity for an organization was expressed in the Moscow Declaration, agreed upon by China, the United Kingdom, the United States. This was followed by the Dumbarton Oaks Conference proposals of 9 October 1944, a prominent figure in the initiative for UNESCO was Rab Butler, the Minister of Education for the United Kingdom. At the ECO/CONF, the Constitution of UNESCO was introduced and signed by 37 countries, the Preparatory Commission operated between 16 November 1945, and 4 November 1946—the date when UNESCOs Constitution came into force with the deposit of the twentieth ratification by a member state. The first General Conference took place between 19 November to 10 December 1946, and elected Dr. Julian Huxley to Director-General and this change in governance distinguished UNESCO from its predecessor, the CICI, in how member states would work together in the organizations fields of competence. In 1956, the Republic of South Africa withdrew from UNESCO claiming that some of the organizations publications amounted to interference in the racial problems. South Africa rejoined the organization in 1994 under the leadership of Nelson Mandela, UNESCOs early work in the field of education included the pilot project on fundamental education in the Marbial Valley, Haiti, started in 1947. This project was followed by missions to other countries, including, for example. In 1948, UNESCO recommended that Member States should make free primary education compulsory, in 1990, the World Conference on Education for All, in Jomtien, Thailand, launched a global movement to provide basic education for all children, youths and adults. Ten years later, the 2000 World Education Forum held in Dakar, Senegal, UNESCOs early activities in culture included, for example, the Nubia Campaign, launched in 1960. The purpose of the campaign was to move the Great Temple of Abu Simbel to keep it from being swamped by the Nile after construction of the Aswan Dam, during the 20-year campaign,22 monuments and architectural complexes were relocated. This was the first and largest in a series of campaigns including Mohenjo-daro, Fes, Kathmandu, Borobudur, the organizations work on heritage led to the adoption, in 1972, of the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. The World Heritage Committee was established in 1976 and the first sites inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1978, since then important legal instruments on cultural heritage and diversity have been adopted by UNESCO member states in 2003 and 2005
10.
Natural history
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Natural history is the research and study of organisms including animals, fungi and plants in their environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. It encompasses scientific research but is not limited to it, with articles nowadays more often published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the sciences, natural history is the systematic study of any category of natural objects or organisms. That is a broad designation in a world filled with many narrowly focused disciplines. For example, geobiology has a strong multi-disciplinary nature combining scientists, a person who studies natural history is known as a naturalist or natural historian. The English term natural history is a translation of the Latin historia naturalis and its meaning has narrowed progressively with time, while the meaning of the related term nature has widened. In antiquity, it covered essentially anything connected with nature or which used materials drawn from nature. For example, Pliny the Elders encyclopedia of this title, published circa 77 to 79 AD, covers astronomy, geography, man and his technology, medicine and superstition as well as animals and plants. Medieval European academics considered knowledge to have two divisions, the humanities and divinity, with science studied largely through texts rather than observation or experiment. In modern terms, natural philosophy roughly corresponded to modern physics and chemistry, natural history had been encouraged by practical motives, such as Linnaeus aspiration to improve the economic condition of Sweden. Similarly, the Industrial Revolution prompted the development of geology to help find useful mineral deposits, the astronomer, William Herschel was also a natural historian. Instead of working with plants or minerals he worked with the stars and he spent his time building telescopes to see the stars and the rest of the time watching the stars. In the beginning, he believed there to be a known as a nebulae. Herschel can be considered a natural historian because he observed the natural world, in the process he made charts of all the stars and kept records of all that he saw. S. Wilcove and T. Eisner, The close observation of organisms—their origins, their evolution, their behavior and it encompasses changes in internal states insofar as they pertain to what organisms do. Some definitions go further, focusing on observation of organisms in their environment. Bartholomew, A student of history, or a naturalist, studies the world by observing plants. A common thread in many definitions of natural history is the inclusion of a component, as seen in a recent definition by H. W. Greene
11.
Symbolism (arts)
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Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style originates with the 1857 publication of Charles Baudelaires Les Fleurs du mal, the works of Edgar Allan Poe, which Baudelaire admired greatly and translated into French, were a significant influence and the source of many stock tropes and images. The aesthetic was developed by Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine during the 1860s and 1870s, in the 1880s, the aesthetic was articulated by a series of manifestos and attracted a generation of writers. The name symbolist itself was first applied by the critic Jean Moréas, distinct from, but related to, the style of literature, symbolism in art is related to the gothic component of Romanticism and Impressionism. In ancient Greece, the symbolon was a shard of pottery which was inscribed, Symbolism was a reaction in favour of spirituality, the imagination, and dreams. Some writers, such as Joris-Karl Huysmans, began as naturalists before becoming symbolists, for Huysmans, the Symbolist poets have a more complex relationship with Parnassianism, a French literary style that immediately preceded it. The Symbolists continued to admire Théophile Gautiers motto of art for arts sake, many Symbolist poets, including Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine, published early works in Le Parnasse contemporain, the poetry anthologies that gave Parnassianism its name. One of Symbolisms most colourful promoters in Paris was art and literary critic Joséphin Péladan, a number of Symbolists were associated with the Salon. Symbolists believed that art should represent absolute truths that could only be described indirectly, thus, they wrote in a very metaphorical and suggestive manner, endowing particular images or objects with symbolic meaning. Jean Moréas published the Symbolist Manifesto in Le Figaro on 18 September 1886, the Symbolist Manifesto names Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Paul Verlaine as the three leading poets of the movement. In a nutshell, as Mallarmé writes in a letter to his friend Cazalis, to not the thing. Symbolist poems were attempts to evoke, rather than primarily to describe, – both poets seek to identify one sense experience with another. The earlier Romanticism of poetry used symbols, but these symbols were unique, the symbolists were more extreme, investing all things, even vowels and perfumes, with potential symbolic value. The physical universe, then, is a kind of language that invites a privileged spectator to decipher it, Symbolist symbols are not allegories, intended to represent, they are instead intended to evoke particular states of mind. The nominal subject of Mallarmés Le cygne is of a trapped in a frozen lake. Significantly, in French, cygne is a homophone of signe, un cygne d’autrefois se souvient que c’est lui Magnifique mais qui sans espoir se délivre. They were also portrayed as at odds with society, having tragic lives and these traits were not hindrances but consequences of their literary gifts. Schopenhauers aesthetics represented shared concerns with the symbolist programme, they tended to consider Art as a contemplative refuge from the world of strife and will
12.
Catalan nationalism
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Catalan nationalism is the nationalist ideology which asserts that Catalans are a nation and promotes the cultural unity of Catalans. Intellectually, Catalan nationalism can be said to have commenced as a philosophy in the unsuccessful attempts to establish a federal state in Spain in the context of the First Republic. These demands were summarized in the so-called Bases de Manresa in 1892 and it met very little support at first. Being a broad movement, it can be found in several manifestations in the current political scene, the scope of their national objectives diverges as well. While some restrict them to Catalonia-proper alone, others seek the acknowledgment of the personality of the so-called Catalan Countries. Such claims, which can be seen as a form of Pan-nationalism, can be read in official documents of CiU, ERC, other nationalist parties have existed with additional affiliations such as PSC - Reagrupament whose leader Josep Pallach i Carolà died in 1977. The two main Catalan nationalist parties have shown their commitment to the idea of the Catalan Countries in different ways, for CiU, this issue is not among the main items in their agenda. Nevertheless, the CiU has enjoyed a long collaboration with the Valencian party BNV and with the Majorcan parties UM. During the first centuries of the Reconquista, the Franks drove the Muslims south of the Pyrenees, between 878 and 988 CE, the area became a hotbed of Frankish-Muslim conflict. By 1070, Ramon Berenguer I, Count of Barcelona, had subordinated other Catalan Counts and his action brought peace to a turbulent feudal system and sowed the seeds of Catalan identity. According to several scholars, the term Catalan and Catalonia emerged near the end of the 11th century, Two factors fostered this identity, stable institutions and cultural prosperity. While the temporary lack of foreign invasions contributed to Catalonias stability, rather, it provided a zone for sociopolitical development. By 1150, the king approved a series of pacts, called the Usatges, in addition, the Aragonese gentry established the Corts, a representative body of nobles, bishops, and abbots that counterbalanced the Kings authority. By the end of the 13th century, the monarch needed the consent of the Corts to approve laws or collect revenue, soon after, the Corts elected a standing body called the Diputació del General or the Generalitat, which included the rising upper bourgeoisie. The first Catalan constitutions were promulgated by the Corts of Barcelona in 1283, in the 13th century, King James I of Aragon conquered the Valencia and the Balearic Islands. Catalonias economic success formed a merchant class, which wielded the Corts as its political weapon. It also produced a middle class, or menestralia, that was composed of artisans, shopkeepers. Over the 13th and 14th centuries, these merchants accrued so much wealth, by the 15th century the Aragonese monarch was not considered legitimate until he had sworn to respect the basic law of the land in the presence of the Corts
13.
Catalan Countries
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Catalan Countries refers to those territories where the Catalan language, or a variant of it, is spoken. It does not correspond to any present or past political or administrative unit, parts of Valencia and Catalonia are not Catalan-speaking. The Catalan Countries have been at the centre of cultural and political projects since the late 19th century. Modern linguistic and cultural projects include the Institut Ramon Llull and the Fundació Ramon Llull, politically, it generally involves a pan-nationalist project to unite the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearics, often in the context of Catalan independence. The political project does not enjoy support, particularly outside Catalonia. The term Catalan Countries is itself controversial, and even pro-Catalan Valencian nationalists avoid using it, in Valencia, a poll found that a majority of the population considered Valencian to be a different language to Catalan. Països Catalans has different meanings depending on the context and these can be roughly classified in two groups, linguistic or political, the political definition of the concept being the widest, since it also encompasses the linguistic side of it. As a linguistic term, Països Catalans is used in a fashion to the English Anglosphere, the French Francophonie. However, it is not universally accepted, even as a linguistic concept, as a political term, it refers to a number of political projects as advocated by supporters of Catalan independence. These movements advocate for political collaboration amongst these territories and this often stands for their union and political independence. It is also part of the minority languages of Italy along with Sardinian. In 2009, the Catalan language was declarated llengua pròpia of Aragon, there are several endeavors and collaborations amongst some of the diverse government and cultural institutions involved. One such case is the Ramon Llull Institute, founded in 2002 by the government of the Balearic Islands and the government of Catalonia. Its main objective is to promote the Catalan language and culture abroad in all its variants, as well as the works of writers, artists, scientists and researchers of the regions which are part of it. In 2009, the General Council of the Pyrénées-Orientales, the city council of Alghero, another relevant example is the Joan Lluís Vives Institute, a collaborative network consisting of universities in the Catalan linguistic domain. The political projects that centre on the Catalan Countries have been described as a hypothetical, the 2016 electoral programme of Valencian parties Compromís and Podemos spoke of a federation between the Valencian Community, the Balearic Islands and Catalonia. They are to campaign for an amendment to article 145 of the Spanish constitution, the territories concerned may also include Roussillon and La Franja. Some non-Catalans see the concept of the Països Catalans as regional exceptionalism, counterpoised to a centralizing Spanish, the Catalan author and journalist Valentí Puig described the term as inconvenient, saying it has generated more reactions against it than adhesions
14.
Catholicism
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The use of terms catholicism and catholicity is closely related to the use of term Catholic Church. The earliest evidence of the use of term is the Letter to the Smyrnaeans that Ignatius of Antioch wrote in about 108 to Christians in Smyrna. In 380, Emperor Theodosius I limited use of the term Catholic Christian exclusively to those who followed the faith as Pope Damasus I of Rome. Numerous other early writers including Cyril of Jerusalem, Augustine of Hippo further developed the use of the term catholic in relation to Christianity. In Christian theology, and specially in ecclesiology, terms Catholicism, when used with small c, terms catholicism and catholicity generally designate theological doctrine of the catholicity of the Church without denominational connotations. A common belief in Catholicism is institutional continuity with the early Christian church founded by Jesus Christ, many churches or communions of churches identify singularly or collectively as the authentic church. The Bishop of Rome was also considered to have the right to convene ecumenical councils, when the Imperial capital moved to Constantinople, Romes influence was sometimes challenged. The first great rupture in the Church followed this Council and they are often called Ancient Oriental Churches. The next major break was after the Council of Chalcedon and this Council repudiated Eutychian Monophysitism which stated that the divine nature completely subsumed the human nature in Christ. This Council declared that Christ, though one person, exhibited two natures without confusion, without change, without division, without separation and thus is both fully God and fully human, the next great rift within Christianity was in the 11th century. This division between the Western Church and the Eastern Church is called the East–West Schism, several eastern churches reunited, constituting some of the Eastern Catholic Churches. Liturgical and canonical practices vary between all these particular Churches constituting the Roman and Eastern Catholic Churches, in all these cases the beliefs and practices of Catholicism would be identical with the beliefs and practices of the Church in question. However, in Roman Catholicism, the term catholic is understood as to cover those who recognize and are in standing with the Magisterium. The sense given to the word by those who use it to distinguish their position from a Calvinistic or Puritan form of Protestantism. It is then meaningful to attempt to draw up a list of common characteristic beliefs, the Roman Catholic Church includes the 23 rites who recognize the Magisterium. Belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the belief that Christ is made manifest in the elements of Holy Communion, possession of the threefold ordained ministry of Bishops, Priests and Deacons. Belief that the Church is the vessel and deposit of the fullness of the teachings of Jesus and this teaching is preserved in both written scripture and in unwritten tradition, neither being independent of the other. A belief in the necessity and efficacy of sacraments, liturgical and personal use of the Sign of the Cross The use of sacred images, candles, vestments and music, and often incense and water, in worship
15.
Chapel
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The term chapel usually refers to a place of prayer and worship that is attached to a larger, often nonreligious institution or that is considered an extension of a primary religious institution. Chapel has also referred to independent or nonconformist places of worship in Great Britain—outside of the established church, the earliest Christian places of worship are now often referred to as chapels, as they were not dedicated buildings but rather a dedicated chamber within a building. Most larger churches had one or more secondary altars, which if they occupied a distinct space, in Russian Orthodox tradition, the chapels were built underneath city gates, where most people could visit them. The most famous example is the Iberian Chapel, although chapels frequently refer to Christian places of worship, they are also commonly found in Jewish synagogues and do not necessarily connote a specific denomination. In England—where the Church of England is established by law—non-denominational or inter-faith chapels in such institutions may nonetheless be consecrated by the local Anglican bishop, non-denominational chapels are commonly encountered as part of a non-religious institution such as a hospital, airport, university or prison. Many military installations have chapels for the use of military personnel, the earliest Christian places of worship were not dedicated buildings but rather a dedicated chamber within a building, such as a room in an individuals home. Here one or two people could pray without being part of a communion/congregation, people who like to use chapels may find it peaceful and relaxing to be away from the stress of life, without other people moving around them. The word, chapel, like the word, chaplain, is ultimately derived from Latin. The other half he wore over his shoulders as a small cape, the beggar, the stories claim, was Christ in disguise, and Martin experienced a conversion of heart, becoming first a monk, then abbot, then bishop. This cape came into the possession of the Frankish kings, the tent which kept the cape was called the capella and the priests who said daily Mass in the tent were known as the capellani. From these words, via Old French, we get the names chapel, the word also appears in the Irish language in the Middle Ages, as Welsh people came with the Norman and Old English invaders to the island of Ireland. While the traditional Irish word for church was eaglais, a new word, séipéal, in British history, chapel or meeting house, was formerly the standard designation for church buildings belonging to independent or Nonconformist religious societies and their members. As a result, chapel is used as an adjective in the UK to describe the members of such churches. A proprietary chapel is one that belonged to a private person. In the 19th century they were common, often being built to cope with urbanisation, frequently they were set up by evangelical philanthropists with a vision of spreading Christianity in cities whose needs could no longer be met by the parishes. Some functioned more privately, with a wealthy person building a chapel so they could invite their favorite preachers and they are anomalies in the English ecclesiastical law, having no parish area, but being able to have an Anglican clergyman licensed there. Historically many Anglican Churches were Proprietary Chapels, over the years they have often been converted into normal Parishes. While the usage of the chapel is not exclusively limited to Christian terminology
16.
Mythological
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Mythology refers variously to the collected myths of a group of people or to the study of such myths. Myths are the people tell to explain nature, history. Myth is a feature of every culture, mythologizing continues, as shown in contemporary mythopoeia such as urban legends and the expansive fictional mythoi created by fantasy novels and comics. A cultures collective mythology helps convey belonging, shared and religious experiences, behavioral models, the study of myth began in ancient history. Rival classes of the Greek myths by Euhemerus, Plato and Sallustius were developed by the Neoplatonists, the nineteenth-century comparative mythology reinterpreted myth as a primitive and failed counterpart of science, a disease of language, or a misinterpretation of magical ritual. Recent approaches often view myths as manifestations of psychological, cultural, or societal truths, the term mythology predates the word myth by centuries. It first appeared in the fifteenth-century, borrowed from the Middle French term mythologie, the word mythology, comes from Middle French mythologie, from Late Latin mythologia, from Greek μυθολογία mythología from μῦθος mythos and -λογία -logia. The word mythología appears in Plato, but was used as a term for fiction or story-telling of any kind, combining mỹthos. From Lydgate until the seventeenth or eighteenth-century, mythology was similarly used to mean a moral, fable, from its earliest use in reference to a collection of traditional stories or beliefs, mythology implied the falsehood of the stories being described. It came to be applied by analogy with similar bodies of traditional stories among other cultures around the world. The Greek loanword mythos and Latinate mythus both appeared in English before the first example of myth in 1830, in present use, mythology usually refers to the collected myths of a group of people, but may also mean the study of such myths. For example, Greek mythology, Roman mythology and Hittite mythology all describe the body of myths retold among those cultures, dundes defined myth as a sacred narrative that explains how the world and humanity evolved into their present form. Lincoln defined myth as ideology in narrative form, scholars in other fields use the term myth in varied ways. In a broad sense, the word can refer to any traditional story, due to this pejorative sense, some scholars opted for the term mythos. Its use was similarly pejorative and now commonly refers to its Aristotelian sense as a plot point or to a collective mythology. The term is distinguished from didactic literature such as fables. Main characters in myths are usually gods, demigods or supernatural humans, however, many exceptions or combinations exist, as in the Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid. Myths are often endorsed by rulers and priests and are linked to religion or spirituality
17.
Delphi
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Delphi is famous as the ancient sanctuary that grew rich as the seat of the oracle that was consulted on important decisions throughout the ancient classical world. Moreover, it was considered as the navel of the world by the Greeks as represented by the Omphalos and it occupies an impressive site on the south-western slope of Mount Parnassus overlooking the coastal plain to the south and the valley of Phocis. It is now an archaeological site and the modern town is nearby. The site of Delphi is located in upper central Greece, on multiple plateaux/terraces along the slope of Mount Parnassus, and includes the Sanctuary of Apollo and this semicircular spur is known as Phaedriades, and overlooks the Pleistos Valley. In myths dating to the period of Ancient Greece, the site of Delphi was believed to be determined by Zeus when he sought to find the centre of his Grandmother Earth. He sent two eagles flying from the eastern and western extremities, and the path of the eagles crossed over Delphi where the omphalos, Apollo was said to have slain Python, a drako a serpent or a dragon who lived there and protected the navel of the Earth. Python is claimed by some to be the name of the site in recognition of Python which Apollo defeated. The Homeric Hymn to Delphic Apollo recalled that the ancient name of this site had been Krisa, others relate that it was named Pytho and that Pythia, the priestess serving as the oracle, was chosen from their ranks by a group of priestesses who officiated at the temple. At the settlement site in Delphi, which was a settlement of the late 9th century. Pottery and bronze work as well as tripod dedications continue in a steady stream, the victors at Delphi were presented with a laurel crown which was ceremonially cut from a tree by a boy who re-enacted the slaying of the Python. Delphi was set apart from the other sites because it hosted the mousikos agon. These Pythian Games rank second among the four stephanitic games chronologically and these games, though, were different from the games at Olympia in that they were not of such vast importance to the city of Delphi as the games at Olympia were to the area surrounding Olympia. Delphi would have been a renowned city whether or not it hosted these games, it had other attractions that led to it being labeled the omphalos of the earth, in other words, in the inner hestia of the Temple of Apollo, an eternal flame burned. The name Delphoi comes from the root as δελφύς delphys, womb. Apollo is connected with the site by his epithet Δελφίνιος Delphinios, the epithet is connected with dolphins in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, recounting the legend of how Apollo first came to Delphi in the shape of a dolphin, carrying Cretan priests on his back. The Homeric name of the oracle is Pytho, another legend held that Apollo walked to Delphi from the north and stopped at Tempe, a city in Thessaly, to pick laurel which he considered to be a sacred plant. In commemoration of this legend, the winners at the Pythian Games received a wreath of laurel picked in the Temple, Delphi became the site of a major temple to Phoebus Apollo, as well as the Pythian Games and the famous prehistoric oracle. Even in Roman times, hundreds of votive statues remained, described by Pliny the Younger, additionally, according to Plutarchs essay on the meaning of the E at Delphi—the only literary source for the inscription—there was also inscribed at the temple a large letter E
18.
Iconography
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The word iconography comes from the Greek εἰκών and γράφειν. A secondary meaning is the production of images, called icons, in the Byzantine and Orthodox Christian tradition. In art history, an iconography may also mean a depiction of a subject in terms of the content of the image, such as the number of figures used, their placing. Sometimes distinctions have been made between iconology and iconography, although the definitions, and so the distinction made, varies, when referring to movies, genres are immediately recognizable through their iconography, motifs that become associated with a specific genre through repetition. Gian Pietro Bellori, a 17th-century biographer of artists of his own time, describes and analyses, not always correctly, many works. Lessings study of the classical figure Amor with a torch was an early attempt to use a study of a type of image to explain the culture it originated in. These early contributions paved the way for encyclopedias, manuals, mâles lArt religieux du XIIIe siècle en France translated into English as The Gothic Image, Religious Art in France of the Thirteenth Century has remained continuously in print. In the United States, to which Panofsky immigrated in 1931, students such as Frederick Hartt, the period from 1940 can be seen as one where iconography was especially prominent in art history. These are now being digitised and made online, usually on a restricted basis. For example, the Iconclass code 71H7131 is for the subject of Bathsheba with Davids letter, whereas 71 is the whole Old Testament and 71H the story of David. A number of collections of different types have been classified using Iconclass, notably types of old master print, the collections of the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. These are available, usually on-line or on DVD, the system can also be used outside pure art history, for example on sites like Flickr. Central to the iconography and hagiography of Indian religions are mudra or gestures with specific meanings, the symbolic use of colour to denote the Classical Elements or Mahabhuta and letters and bija syllables from sacred alphabetic scripts are other features. Under the influence of art developed esoteric meanings, accessible only to initiates. The art of Indian Religions esp, for example, Narasimha an incarnation of Vishnu though considered a wrathful deity but in few contexts is depicted in pacified mood. Conversely, in Hindu art, narrative scenes have become more common in recent centuries, especially in miniature paintings of the lives of Krishna. Eventually the Church would succeed in weeding most of these out, after the period of Byzantine iconoclasm iconographical innovation was regarded as unhealthy, if not heretical, in the Eastern Church, though it still continued at a glacial pace. More than in the West, traditional depictions were often considered to have authentic or miraculous origins, the Eastern church also never accepted the use of monumental high relief or free-standing sculpture, which it found too reminiscent of paganism
19.
Religion
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Religions have sacred histories and narratives, which may be preserved in sacred scriptures, and symbols and holy places, that aim mostly to give a meaning to life. Religions may contain symbolic stories, which are said by followers to be true, that have the side purpose of explaining the origin of life. Traditionally, faith, in addition to reason, has considered a source of religious beliefs. There are an estimated 10,000 distinct religions worldwide, about 84% of the worlds population is affiliated with one of the five largest religions, namely Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism or forms of folk religion. With the onset of the modernisation of and the revolution in the western world. The religiously unaffiliated demographic include those who do not identify with any religion, atheists. While the religiously unaffiliated have grown globally, many of the religiously unaffiliated still have various religious beliefs, about 16% of the worlds population is religiously unaffiliated. The study of religion encompasses a variety of academic disciplines, including theology, comparative religion. Theories of religion offer various explanations for the origins and workings of religion, Religion is derived from the Latin religiō, the ultimate origins of which are obscure. One possible interpretation traced to Cicero, connects lego read, i. e. re with lego in the sense of choose, go over again or consider carefully. The medieval usage alternates with order in designating bonded communities like those of monastic orders, we hear of the religion of the Golden Fleece, of a knight of the religion of Avys. In the ancient and medieval world, the etymological Latin root religio was understood as a virtue of worship, never as doctrine, practice. In the Quran, the Arabic word din is often translated as religion in modern translations and it was in the 19th century that the terms Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and Confucianism first emerged. Max Müller characterized many other cultures around the world, including Egypt, Persia, what is called ancient religion today, they would have only called law. Some languages have words that can be translated as religion, but they may use them in a different way. For example, the Sanskrit word dharma, sometimes translated as religion, throughout classical South Asia, the study of law consisted of concepts such as penance through piety and ceremonial as well as practical traditions. Medieval Japan at first had a union between imperial law and universal or Buddha law, but these later became independent sources of power. There is no equivalent of religion in Hebrew, and Judaism does not distinguish clearly between religious, national, racial, or ethnic identities
20.
Mythology
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Mythology refers variously to the collected myths of a group of people or to the study of such myths. Myths are the people tell to explain nature, history. Myth is a feature of every culture, mythologizing continues, as shown in contemporary mythopoeia such as urban legends and the expansive fictional mythoi created by fantasy novels and comics. A cultures collective mythology helps convey belonging, shared and religious experiences, behavioral models, the study of myth began in ancient history. Rival classes of the Greek myths by Euhemerus, Plato and Sallustius were developed by the Neoplatonists, the nineteenth-century comparative mythology reinterpreted myth as a primitive and failed counterpart of science, a disease of language, or a misinterpretation of magical ritual. Recent approaches often view myths as manifestations of psychological, cultural, or societal truths, the term mythology predates the word myth by centuries. It first appeared in the fifteenth-century, borrowed from the Middle French term mythologie, the word mythology, comes from Middle French mythologie, from Late Latin mythologia, from Greek μυθολογία mythología from μῦθος mythos and -λογία -logia. The word mythología appears in Plato, but was used as a term for fiction or story-telling of any kind, combining mỹthos. From Lydgate until the seventeenth or eighteenth-century, mythology was similarly used to mean a moral, fable, from its earliest use in reference to a collection of traditional stories or beliefs, mythology implied the falsehood of the stories being described. It came to be applied by analogy with similar bodies of traditional stories among other cultures around the world. The Greek loanword mythos and Latinate mythus both appeared in English before the first example of myth in 1830, in present use, mythology usually refers to the collected myths of a group of people, but may also mean the study of such myths. For example, Greek mythology, Roman mythology and Hittite mythology all describe the body of myths retold among those cultures, dundes defined myth as a sacred narrative that explains how the world and humanity evolved into their present form. Lincoln defined myth as ideology in narrative form, scholars in other fields use the term myth in varied ways. In a broad sense, the word can refer to any traditional story, due to this pejorative sense, some scholars opted for the term mythos. Its use was similarly pejorative and now commonly refers to its Aristotelian sense as a plot point or to a collective mythology. The term is distinguished from didactic literature such as fables. Main characters in myths are usually gods, demigods or supernatural humans, however, many exceptions or combinations exist, as in the Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid. Myths are often endorsed by rulers and priests and are linked to religion or spirituality
21.
History
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History is the study of the past as it is described in written documents. Events occurring before written record are considered prehistory and it is an umbrella term that relates to past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of information about these events. Scholars who write about history are called historians and their works continue to be read today, and the gap between the culture-focused Herodotus and the military-focused Thucydides remains a point of contention or approach in modern historical writing. In Asia, a chronicle, the Spring and Autumn Annals was known to be compiled from as early as 722 BC although only 2nd-century BC texts survived. Ancient influences have helped spawn variant interpretations of the nature of history which have evolved over the centuries, the modern study of history is wide-ranging, and includes the study of specific regions and the study of certain topical or thematical elements of historical investigation. Often history is taught as part of primary and secondary education, the word history comes ultimately from Ancient Greek ἱστορία, meaning inquiry, knowledge from inquiry, or judge. It was in that sense that Aristotle used the word in his Περὶ Τὰ Ζῷα Ἱστορίαι, the ancestor word ἵστωρ is attested early on in Homeric Hymns, Heraclitus, the Athenian ephebes oath, and in Boiotic inscriptions. History was borrowed from Latin into Old English as stær, and it was from Anglo-Norman that history was borrowed into Middle English, and this time the loan stuck. In Middle English, the meaning of history was story in general, the restriction to the meaning the branch of knowledge that deals with past events, the formal record or study of past events, esp. human affairs arose in the mid-fifteenth century. With the Renaissance, older senses of the word were revived, and it was in the Greek sense that Francis Bacon used the term in the sixteenth century. For him, historia was the knowledge of objects determined by space and time, in an expression of the linguistic synthetic vs. analytic/isolating dichotomy, English like Chinese now designates separate words for human history and storytelling in general. In modern German, French, and most Germanic and Romance languages, which are synthetic and highly inflected. The adjective historical is attested from 1661, and historic from 1669, Historian in the sense of a researcher of history is attested from 1531. Historians write in the context of their own time, and with due regard to the current dominant ideas of how to interpret the past, in the words of Benedetto Croce, All history is contemporary history. History is facilitated by the formation of a discourse of past through the production of narrative. The modern discipline of history is dedicated to the production of this discourse. All events that are remembered and preserved in some authentic form constitute the historical record, the task of historical discourse is to identify the sources which can most usefully contribute to the production of accurate accounts of past. Therefore, the constitution of the archive is a result of circumscribing a more general archive by invalidating the usage of certain texts and documents
22.
Philosophy
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Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. The term was coined by Pythagoras. Philosophical methods include questioning, critical discussion, rational argument and systematic presentation, classic philosophical questions include, Is it possible to know anything and to prove it. However, philosophers might also pose more practical and concrete questions such as, is it better to be just or unjust. Historically, philosophy encompassed any body of knowledge, from the time of Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle to the 19th century, natural philosophy encompassed astronomy, medicine and physics. For example, Newtons 1687 Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy later became classified as a book of physics, in the 19th century, the growth of modern research universities led academic philosophy and other disciplines to professionalize and specialize. In the modern era, some investigations that were part of philosophy became separate academic disciplines, including psychology, sociology. Other investigations closely related to art, science, politics, or other pursuits remained part of philosophy, for example, is beauty objective or subjective. Are there many scientific methods or just one, is political utopia a hopeful dream or hopeless fantasy. Major sub-fields of academic philosophy include metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, political philosophy, logic, philosophy of science, since the 20th century, professional philosophers contribute to society primarily as professors, researchers and writers. Traditionally, the term referred to any body of knowledge. In this sense, philosophy is related to religion, mathematics, natural science, education. This division is not obsolete but has changed, Natural philosophy has split into the various natural sciences, especially astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology and cosmology. Moral philosophy has birthed the social sciences, but still includes value theory, metaphysical philosophy has birthed formal sciences such as logic, mathematics and philosophy of science, but still includes epistemology, cosmology and others. Many philosophical debates that began in ancient times are still debated today, colin McGinn and others claim that no philosophical progress has occurred during that interval. Chalmers and others, by contrast, see progress in philosophy similar to that in science, in one general sense, philosophy is associated with wisdom, intellectual culture and a search for knowledge. In that sense, all cultures and literate societies ask philosophical questions such as how are we to live, a broad and impartial conception of philosophy then, finds a reasoned inquiry into such matters as reality, morality and life in all world civilizations. Socrates was an influential philosopher, who insisted that he possessed no wisdom but was a pursuer of wisdom
23.
Freemasonry
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The degrees of freemasonry retain the three grades of medieval craft guilds, those of Apprentice, Journeyman or fellow, and Master Mason. These are the degrees offered by Craft Freemasonry, members of these organisations are known as Freemasons or Masons. There are additional degrees, which vary with locality and jurisdiction, the basic, local organisational unit of Freemasonry is the Lodge. The Lodges are usually supervised and governed at the level by a Grand Lodge or Grand Orient. There is no international, worldwide Grand Lodge that supervises all of Freemasonry, each Grand Lodge is independent, modern Freemasonry broadly consists of two main recognition groups. Continental Freemasonry is now the term for the liberal jurisdictions who have removed some, or all. The Masonic Lodge is the organisational unit of Freemasonry. The Lodge meets regularly to conduct the formal business of any small organisation. In addition to business, the meeting may perform a ceremony to confer a Masonic degree or receive a lecture, at the conclusion of the meeting, the Lodge might adjourn for a formal dinner, or festive board, sometimes involving toasting and song. The bulk of Masonic ritual consists of degree ceremonies, candidates for Freemasonry are progressively initiated into Freemasonry, first in the degree of Entered Apprentice. Some time later, in a ceremony, they will be passed to the degree of Fellowcraft. In all of ceremonies, the candidate is entrusted with passwords, signs. Another ceremony is the installation of the Master and officers of the Lodge. In some jurisdictions Installed Master is valued as a separate rank, in other jurisdictions, the grade is not recognised, and no inner ceremony conveys new secrets during the installation of a new Master of the Lodge. Most Lodges have some sort of calendar, allowing Masons. Often coupled with events is the obligation placed on every Mason to contribute to charity. This occurs at both Lodge and Grand Lodge level, Masonic charities contribute to many fields from education to disaster relief. These private local Lodges form the backbone of Freemasonry, and a Freemason will necessarily have been initiated into one of these, there also exist specialist Lodges where Masons meet to celebrate anything from sport to Masonic research
24.
Historiography
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Historiography is the study of the methods of historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians have studied that topic using particular sources, techniques, beginning in the nineteenth century, with the ascent of academic history, there developed a body of historiographic literature. The extent to which historians are influenced by their own groups, in 2007, of 5,723 faculty in the departments of history at British universities,1,644 identified themselves with social history and 1,425 identified themselves with political history. In the early period, the term historiography meant the writing of history. In that sense certain official historians were given the title Historiographer Royal in Sweden, England, the Scottish post is still in existence. Understanding the past appears to be a human need. What constitutes history is a philosophical question, the earliest chronologies date back to Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt, though no historical writers in these early civilizations were known by name. For the purposes of article, history is taken to mean written history recorded in a narrative format for the purpose of informing future generations about events. Before writing, there was only oral history or oral tradition, in China, the earliest history was recorded in oracle bone script which was deciphered and may date back to around late 2nd millennium BCE. The Zuo Zhuan, attributed to Zuo Qiuming in the 5th century BCE, is the earliest written of narrative history in the world, the Classic of History is one of the Five Classics of Chinese classic texts and one of the earliest narratives of China. It is traditionally attributed to Confucius, zhan Guo Ce was a renowned ancient Chinese historical compilation of sporadic materials on the Warring States period compiled between the 3rd and 1st centuries BCE. Sima Qian was the first in China to lay the groundwork for professional historical writing and his written work was the Shiji, a monumental lifelong achievement in literature. His work influenced every subsequent author of history in China, including the prestigious Ban family of the Eastern Han Dynasty era, traditional Chinese historiography describes history in terms of dynastic cycles. In this view, each new dynasty is founded by a morally righteous founder, over time, the dynasty becomes morally corrupt and dissolute. Eventually, the dynasty becomes so weak as to allow its replacement by a new dynasty, the tradition of Korean historiography was established with the Samguk Sagi, a history of Korea from its allegedly earliest times. It was compiled by Goryeo court historian Kim Busik after its commission by King Injong of Goryeo. It was completed in 1145 and relied not only on earlier Chinese histories for source material, the latter work is now lost. The earliest works of history produced in Japan were the Rikkokushi, the first of these works were the Nihon Shoki, compiled by Prince Toneri in 720
25.
Puzzle
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A puzzle is a game, problem, or toy that tests a persons ingenuity or knowledge. In a puzzle, one is required to put together in a logical way. There are different types of puzzles for different ages, such as puzzles, word-search puzzles, number puzzles. Puzzles are often devised as a form of entertainment but they can arise from serious mathematical or logistical problems. In such cases, their solution may be a significant contribution to mathematical research, solutions of puzzles often require the recognition of patterns and the creation of a particular kind of order. Sometimes not because of how complicated and diagonal the pattern can get, people with a high level of inductive reasoning aptitude may be better at solving such puzzles than others. But puzzles based upon inquiry and discovery may be solved easily by those with good deduction skills. Some notable creators of puzzles are Sam Loyd, Henry Dudeney, Boris Kordemsky and, more recently, David J. Bodycombe, Will Shortz, Lloyd King, the 1989 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary dates the word puzzle to the end of the 16th century. Its first documented use was in a book titled The Voyage of Robert Dudley. to the West Indies, 1594–95, narrated by Capt. Wyatt, by himself, the word later came to be used as a noun. The word puzzle comes from pusle, meaning bewilder, confound, the use of the word to mean a toy contrived to test ones ingenuity is relatively recent. He then used the pieces as an aid to the teaching of geography. After becoming popular among the public, this kind of teaching aid remained the primary use of jigsaw puzzles until about 1820, by the early 20th century, magazines and newspapers had found that they could increase their readership by publishing puzzle contests. The largest puzzle is made by German game company Ravensburger, the smallest puzzle ever made was created at LaserZentrum Hannover. It is only five square millimetres, the size of a dust grain, there are organizations and events that cater to puzzle enthusiasts, such as the World Puzzle Championship, the National Puzzlers League, and Ravenchase. There are also puzzlehunts, such as the Maze of Games, Puzzles can be divided into categories. For example, a maze is a type of tour puzzle, some other categories are construction puzzles, stick puzzles, tiling puzzles, transport puzzles, disentanglement puzzles, lock puzzles, folding puzzles, combination puzzles, and mechanical puzzles. A chess problem is a puzzle that uses chess pieces on a chess board, examples are the knights tour and the eight queens puzzle. Peg solitaire A puzzle box is a puzzle that can be used to hide something — jewelry, rubiks Cube and other combination puzzles can be stimulating toys for children or recreational activities for adults
26.
Garden city movement
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The garden city movement is a method of urban planning that was initiated in 1898 by Sir Ebenezer Howard in the United Kingdom. Garden cities were intended to be planned, self-contained communities surrounded by greenbelts, containing areas of residences, industry. Inspired by the utopian novel Looking Backward and Henry Georges work Progress and Poverty, Howard published his book To-morrow, the garden city would be self-sufficient and when it reached full population, another garden city would be developed nearby. Howard envisaged a cluster of several cities as satellites of a central city of 58,000 people, linked by road. Howard’s To-morrow, A Peaceful Path to Real Reform sold enough copies to result in a second edition and this success provided him the support necessary to pursue the chance to bring his vision into reality. Howard believed that all agreed the overcrowding and deterioration of cities was one of the troubling issues of their time. He quotes a number of respected thinkers and their disdain of cities, Howard’s garden city concept combined the town and country in order to provide the working class an alternative to working on farms or ‘crowded, unhealthy cities’. To build a city, Howard needed money to buy land. He decided to get funding from gentlemen of responsible position and undoubted probity and he founded the Garden City Association, which created First Garden City, Ltd. in 1899 to create the garden city of Letchworth. However, these donors would collect interest on their investment if the city generated profits through rents or, as Fishman calls the process. Howard tried to include working class cooperative organisations, which included over two members, but could not win their financial support. In 1904, Raymond Unwin, an architect and town planner, along with his partner Barry Parker, won the competition run by First Garden City Ltd. to plan Letchworth. However, the architects ignored Howard’s symmetric design, instead replacing it with a more ‘organic’ design, Letchworth slowly attracted more residents because it was able to attract manufacturers through low taxes, low rents and more space. Despite Howard’s best efforts, the prices in this garden city could not remain affordable for blue-collar workers to live in. The populations comprised mostly skilled middle class workers, after a decade, the First Garden City became profitable and started paying dividends to its investors. Although many viewed Letchworth as a success, it did not immediately inspire government investment into the line of garden cities. Likely in frustration, Howard bought land at Welwyn to house the garden city in 1919. The purchase was at auction, with money Howard desperately and successfully borrowed from friends, the Welwyn Garden City Corporation was formed to oversee the construction
27.
Gaudi House Museum
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Gaudí House-Museum, located within the Park Güell in Barcelona was the residence of Antoni Gaudí for almost 20 years, from 1906 till the end of 1925. On 28 September 1963 it was opened as a home museum and nowadays houses a collection of furniture. He commissioned the project, which envisaged the construction of sixty houses with garden and all the services necessary, in 1914 the works were stopped and the project was not completed. Only two of the houses envisaged were finally built, doctor Trias i Domènech’s House and what is nowadays Gaudí House-Museum which had to serve as a lure for potential land-buyers. These houses were added to the old house, that existed in the place. The model property, designed by architect Francesc Berenguer i Mestres, built by contractor Josep Casanovas i Pardo and it was on sale but it attracted no purchasers. In 1906, Gaudí bought the house and lived there with his father and his father died that very same year, and his niece in 1912. Since then, Gaudí lived there alone until the end of 1925, when, in his will, the architect donated the house to the Foundation Board of La Sagrada Família, which sold it to the Chiappo Arietti couple. In 1960 the Friends of Gaudí association started a campaign so as to purchase the house to the Chiappo Arietti’s descendants in order to convert it into a museum, three years later, it opened as Gaudí House-Museum. Josep Maria Garrut had been its chairman since the museum opened to the public until his death in 2008, in 1992 the house was donated to the Construction Board of La Sagrada Família Foundation. The ground and first floors are dedicated to the collection opened to the public, the basement is not open to the public and the second floor houses the Enric Casanelles Library, which can be accessed with prior permission. As for the collection, some rooms, such as the bedroom, the collection also includes furniture, sculptures, paintings, drawings and other objects of Gaudí coworkers that are exhibited in several rooms of the museum. BASSEGODA, Joan i GARRUT, Josep M. Guia de Gaudí, Barcelona, Ediciones literarias y científicas, p. 19-29 BASSEGODA, el gran Gaudí, Sabadell, Editorial AUSA. ISBN 84-86329-44-2, p. 387-390 i 501-503 GARRUT, Josep M, «La Casa-Museu Gaudí amb pròleg i dues parts» Antoni Gaudí, Fundació Caixa de Pensions. ISBN 84-505-0683-2 GARRUT, Josep M. Casa-Museu Gaudí, Barcelona, ISBN 84-931058-1-3, ISBN 84-931058-2-1 i ISBN 84-931058-3-X GUEILBURT, Luís. Gaudí i el Registre de la Propietat, Barcelona, Institut Gaudí de la Construcció
28.
Mosaic
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A mosaic is a piece of art or image made from the assemblage of small pieces of colored glass, stone, or other materials. It is often used in art or as interior decoration. Most mosaics are made of small, flat, roughly square, pieces of stone or glass of different colors, some, especially floor mosaics, are made of small rounded pieces of stone, and called pebble mosaics. Others are made of other materials, mosaics have a long history, starting in Mesopotamia in the 3rd millennium BC. Pebble mosaics were made in Tiryns in Mycenean Greece, mosaics with patterns and pictures became widespread in classical times, Early Christian basilicas from the 4th century onwards were decorated with wall and ceiling mosaics. Mosaic fell out of fashion in the Renaissance, though artists like Raphael continued to practise the old technique, Roman and Byzantine influence led Jews to decorate 5th and 6th century synagogues in the Middle East with floor mosaics. Mosaic was widely used on buildings and palaces in early Islamic art, including Islams first great religious building, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Mosaic went out of fashion in the Islamic world after the 8th century, modern mosaics are made by professional artists, street artists, and as a popular craft. Many materials other than stone and ceramic tesserae may be employed, including shells, glass. The earliest known examples of made of different materials were found at a temple building in Abra, Mesopotamia. They consist of pieces of colored stones, shells and ivory, excavations at Susa and Chogha Zanbil show evidence of the first glazed tiles, dating from around 1500 BC. However, mosaic patterns were not used until the times of Sassanid Empire, mythological subjects, or scenes of hunting or other pursuits of the wealthy, were popular as the centrepieces of a larger geometric design, with strongly emphasized borders. Pliny the Elder mentions the artist Sosus of Pergamon by name, describing his mosaics of the left on a floor after a feast. Both of these themes were widely copied, most recorded names of Roman mosaic workers are Greek, suggesting they dominated high quality work across the empire, no doubt most ordinary craftsmen were slaves. Splendid mosaic floors are found in Roman villas across North Africa, in such as Carthage. The tiny tesserae allowed very fine detail, and an approach to the illusionism of painting, often small panels called emblemata were inserted into walls or as the highlights of larger floor-mosaics in coarser work. The normal technique was opus tessellatum, using larger tesserae, which was laid on site, there was a distinct native Italian style using black on a white background, which was no doubt cheaper than fully coloured work. In Rome, Nero and his architects used mosaics to cover surfaces of walls and ceilings in the Domus Aurea, built 64 AD
29.
Barcelona City History Museum
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The museums headquarters are located on Plaça del Rei, in the Barcelona Gothic Quarter. It is responsible for a number of sites around the city, most of them archaeological sites displaying remains of the ancient Roman city. Some others date to medieval times, including the Jewish quarter, the rest are contemporary, among them old industrial buildings and sites related to Antoni Gaudí and the Spanish Civil War. The museum was inaugurated on 14 April 1943, its principal promoter, since the 1888 Barcelona Universal Exposition there are recorded some attempts and projects in order to create a museum about the History of Barcelona. While rebuilding Casa Padellàs on its new location, some remains of the ancient city of Barcino were found, immediately, an archaeological research was undertaken in the surrounding area, emerging a whole quarter of the Roman city. The Barcelona City History Museum was finally inaugurated after Spanish Civil War, in 1943, gradually, the museum incorporated new sites like the Temple of Augustus or the Roman funeral way in Vila de Madrid square. The archaeological Plaça del Rei area also grew with new findings like the Early Christian baptistery, at the end of francoism, when democracy was recovered in Spain, the role of the museum was reconsidered. The permanent, static, exhibition about the history of Barcelona in Casa Padellàs rooms was closed, thus, since 1996, Casa Padellas rooms serve for temporary exhibitions that allow more dynamic overviews and crossed discussions about key subjects of Barcelona’s history. Simultaneously, the area was completely remodelled and its museography updated, incorporating recent knowledge about the city in Roman. The Barcelona City History Museum has several heritage sites spread all around the city, most of them are archaeological sites displaying remains of the ancient Roman city, called Barcino. Others refer to times and the rest cover the contemporary city, including old industrial buildings and sites related to Gaudí. In the Gothic Quarter, Ciutat Vella district, entrance through Padellàs House courtyard, one of the best examples of Catalán gothic courtyards in private houses. Visit to the remains of a quarter of the ancient Roman city of Barcino in the archaeological underground. The archaeological area under Plaça del Rei covers over 4000 m2 There is an exhibition about life in Roman houses. There are also found the remains of the early Christian and visigothic Episcopal architectural complex, salo del Tinell often houses temporary exhibitions. MUHBA Temple of Augustus In the Gothic Quarter, Ciutat Vella district, four large columns stand of the Roman temple of Barcino, dedicated to Emperor Augustus. MUHBA Roman funeral way in Vila de Madrid square, within the Gothic Quarter and this was a burial área grown along one of the roads leading to the Roman city. There is also an exhibition about Roman funeral traditions, where are displayed objects found in the graves, MUHBA Maritime gate of the Roman walls In the Gothic Quarter Ciutat Vella district
30.
Sea serpent
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A sea serpent or sea dragon is a type of unclassified marine animal either wholly or partly serpentine. Sightings of sea serpents have been reported for hundreds of years, cryptozoologist Bruce Champagne identified more than 1,200 purported sea serpent sightings. It is currently believed that the sightings can be best explained as known animals such as lungfish, oarfish, whales, or sharks. Some cryptozoologists have suggested that sea serpents are relict plesiosaurs, mosasaurs or other Mesozoic marine reptiles, in Norse mythology, Jörmungandr, or Midgarðsormr was a sea serpent so long that it encircled the entire world, Midgard. Some stories report of sailors mistaking its back for a chain of islands, Sea serpents also appear frequently in later Scandinavian folklore, particularly in that of Norway. In 1028 AD, Saint Olaf is said to have killed a sea serpent in Valldal, Norway, marks on the mountain are associated with the legend. In Swedish ecclesiastic and writer Olaus Magnuss Carta marina, many monsters of varied form, including an immense sea serpent. On bright summer nights this serpent leaves the caves to eat calves, lambs and pigs, or it fares out to the sea and feeds on sea nettles, crabs and it has ell-long hair hanging from its neck, sharp black scales and flaming red eyes. It attacks vessels, grabs and swallows people, as it lifts itself up like a column from the water, Sea serpents were known to seafaring cultures in the Mediterranean and Near East, appearing in both mythology and in apparent eye-witness accounts. In the Aeneid, a pair of sea serpents killed Laocoön, the Bible refers to Leviathan and Rahab, from the Hebrew Tanakh, great creatures of the sea are also mentioned in Book of Genesis 1,21. The Book of Amos 9,3 speaks of a serpent to bite the people who try to hide in the sea from God, strabo makes reference to an eye witness account of a dead sea creature sighted by Poseidonius on the coast of the northern Levant. He reports the following, As for the plains, the first, beginning at the sea, is called Macras, the creature was seen by Poseidonius, a Philosopher, sometime between 130 and 51 BC. Hans Egede, the saint of Greenland, gives an 18th-century description of a sea serpent. On July 6,1734 his ship sailed past the coast of Greenland when suddenly those on board saw a most terrible creature, the monster lifted its head so high that it seemed to be higher than the crows nest on the mainmast. The head was small and the short and wrinkled. The unknown creature was using giant fins which propelled it through the water, later the sailors saw its tail as well. The monster was longer than our whole ship, wrote Egede, reported sea serpent sightings on the coast of New England have been documented from 1638 onwards. Sworn statements made before a local Justice of the Peace and first published in 1818 were never recanted, after the Linnaean Societys misidentification was discovered, it was frequently cited by debunkers as evidence that the creature did not exist
31.
Catalonia
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Catalonia is an autonomous community of Spain, located on the northeastern extremity of the Iberian Peninsula. It is designated as a nationality by its Statute of Autonomy, Catalonia consists of four provinces, Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. The capital and largest city is Barcelona, the second-most populated municipality in Spain, Catalonia comprises most of the territory of the former Principality of Catalonia. It is bordered by France and Andorra to the north, the Mediterranean Sea to the east, the official languages are Catalan, Spanish, and the Aranese dialect of Occitan. The eastern counties of these marches were united under the rule of the Frankish vassal the Count of Barcelona, in the later Middle Ages Catalan literature flourished. Between 1469 and 1516, the King of Aragon and the Queen of Castile married and ruled their kingdoms together, retaining all their distinct institutions, Courts, and constitutions. During the Franco-Spanish War, Catalonia revolted against a large and burdensome presence of the Royal army in its territory, within a brief period France took full control of Catalonia, at a high economic cost for Catalonia, until it was largely reconquered by the Spanish army. In the nineteenth century, Catalonia was severely affected by the Napoleonic, in the second half of the century Catalonia experienced industrialisation. As wealth from the industrial expansion grew, Catalonia saw a cultural renaissance coupled with incipient nationalism while several workers movements appeared. In 1914, the four Catalan provinces formed a Commonwealth, and with the return of democracy during the Second Spanish Republic, after the Spanish Civil War, the Francoist dictatorship enacted repressive measures, abolishing Catalan institutions and banning the official use of the Catalan language again. Since the Spanish transition to democracy, Catalonia has regained some political and cultural autonomy and is now one of the most economically dynamic communities of Spain, the origin of the name Catalunya is subject to diverse interpretations because of a lack of evidence. During the Middle Ages, Byzantine chroniclers claimed that Catalania derives from the medley of Goths with Alans. Other less plausible theories suggest, Catalunya derives from the land of castles, having evolved from the term castlà or castlan. This theory therefore suggests that the names Catalunya and Castile have a common root, the source is of Celtic origin, meaning chiefs of battle. Although the area is not known to have been occupied by Celts, the Lacetani, an Iberian tribe that lived in the area and whose name, due to the Roman influence, could have evolved by metathesis to Katelans and then Catalans. In English, Catalonia is pronounced /kætəˈloʊniə/, the native name, Catalunya, is pronounced in Central Catalan, the most widely spoken variety whose pronunciation is considered standard. The Spanish name is Cataluña, and the Aranese name is Catalonha, the first known human settlements in what is now Catalonia were at the beginning of the Middle Palaeolithic. From the next era, the Epipaleolithic or Mesolithic, important remains survive
32.
Josep Maria Jujol
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Josep Maria Jujol i Gibert was a Catalan architect. Jujols wide field of activity ranged from designs and painting. He worked with Antoni Gaudí on many of his most famous works, among Jujols projects are Casa Batlló, Casa Milà, Park Güell, and Our Lady of Montserrat, and among his design styles are Modernisme and Art Nouveau. Josep Maria Jujol was born in Tarragona where he lived until age 9 and he was the son of Andreu Jujol, a school director, and of Teresa Gibert i Vives. He was born on the top floor of the school, Sant Joan. He began to draw at an age, and always had an admiration for nature. According to his biography, he would roam the hills of Tarragona and they lived at the school for nine years before his father was transferred in 1888 to Carrer Zurbano in Gràcia, which is now integrated into the City of Barcelona. Jujols father was transferred again in 1893 to the City of Barcelona. There Jujol began to walk the medieval district, developed an admiration for gothic architecture, the family moved to the Gran Via in the Eixample District of Barcelona, where he experienced modern and modernist buildings. In 1901, he was accepted in the Architectural program in Barcelona, while attending school, he first worked with Antoni Maria Gallissa i Soqué, whom he admired as a person and an architect. His first project was a commission for Don Antoni to decorate the street called Carrer Fenen for the Mercè Festival, Jujol had to create the metal frames and stained glass windows. He continued to work for Don Antoni until 1903 and he then began to work in the studio of Josep Font i Gumà. Where he collaborated with him on the Trinity altar in the Basilica de Santa Maria del Mar, in his spare time he completed plans for an amusement park that was to emulate the solar system. In 1906 he received his certificate as an architect and was able to work on his own, one of his first projects was to decorate Don Antonis entrance stairway with his trademark sgraffito. Jujol became acquainted with Antoni Gaudí through their mutual friend, Dr. Santaló, Gaudí soon worked in partnership with Jujol. Their first project together was Casa Batlló and it is speculated in Jujols biography that he had a great influence on Gaudís use of colour and shapes. However, this is not for certain, in any case, Gaudí had great respect for Jujols views and entrusted him as a collaborator on his projects for many years. Jujol died at Barcelona in 1949, decorated the 1st floor, created the Sacras and added ceramic on the buildings façade
33.
Vault (architecture)
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Vault is an architectural term for an arched form used to provide a space with a ceiling or roof. The parts of a vault exert lateral thrust that requires a counter resistance, when vaults are built underground, the ground gives all the resistance required. However, when the vault is built above ground, various replacements are employed to supply the needed resistance, an example is the thicker walls used in the case of barrel or continuous vaults. Buttresses are used to supply resistance when intersecting vaults are employed, the simplest kind of vault is the barrel vault, which is generally semicircular in shape. The barrel vault is an arch, the length being greater than its diameter. As in building an arch, a support is needed while rings of voussoirs are constructed. Until the topmost voussoir, the keystone, is positioned, the vault is not self-supporting, with a barrel vault, the centering can then be shifted on to support the next rings. Amongst the earliest known examples of any form of vaulting is to be found in the village of Khirokitia on Cyprus. Dating from ca.6000 BCE, the circular buildings supported beehive shaped corbel domed vaults of unfired mud-bricks, similar Beehive tombs, called tholoi, exist in Crete and Northern Iraq. Their construction differs from that at Khirokitia in that most appear partially buried, the inclusion of domes, however, represents a wider sense of the word vault. The distinction between the two is that a vault is essentially an arch which is extruded into the third dimension, whereas a dome is an arch revolved around its vertical axis. Pitched-brick vaults are named for their construction, the bricks are installed vertically and are leaning at an angle, examples have been found in archaeological excavations in Mesopotamia dating to the 2nd and 3rd millennium BC which were set in gypsum mortar. A barrel vault is the simplest form of a vault and resembles a barrel or tunnel cut lengthwise in half, the effect is that of a structure composed of continuous semicircular or pointed sections. The earliest known examples of barrel vaults were built by the Sumerians, possibly under the ziggurat at Nippur in Babylonia, which was built of fired bricks cemented with clay mortar. The earliest barrel vaults in ancient Egypt are thought to be those in the built by the 19th dynasty Pharaoh Ramesses II. The vault being over 800 feet long,10 feet in span, the enormous Eyvan-e Khosro at Ctesiphon was built over 1,500 years ago during the Persian Sasanian period as a throne room. The arch is about 37 metres high,26 metres across and 50 metres long, built entirely without centering, the rings relieved the centering from the weight imposed, and the two layers of bricks carried the concrete till it had set. As the walls carrying these vaults were built in concrete with occasional bond courses of brick
34.
Catenary
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In physics and geometry, a catenary is the curve that an idealized hanging chain or cable assumes under its own weight when supported only at its ends. The curve has a U-like shape, superficially similar in appearance to a parabola, the curve appears in the design of certain types of arches and as a cross section of the catenoid—the shape assumed by a soap film bounded by two parallel circular rings. The catenary is also called the alysoid, chainette, or, particularly in the materials sciences, mathematically, the catenary curve is the graph of the hyperbolic cosine function. The surface of revolution of the curve, the catenoid, is a minimal surface. The mathematical properties of the curve were first studied by Robert Hooke in the 1670s. Catenaries and related curves are used in architecture and engineering, in the design of bridges and arches, in the offshore oil and gas industry, catenary refers to a steel catenary riser, a pipeline suspended between a production platform and the seabed that adopts an approximate catenary shape. The word catenary is derived from the Latin word catēna, which means chain and it appears to be a very scientifical work. I have not yet had time to engage in it, but I find that the conclusions of his demonstrations are and it is often said that Galileo thought the curve of a hanging chain was parabolic. That the curve followed by a chain is not a parabola was proven by Joachim Jungius, some much older arches approximate catenaries, an example of which is the Arch of Taq-i Kisra in Ctesiphon. David Gregory wrote a treatise on the catenary in 1697 in which he provided an incorrect derivation of the differential equation. Euler proved in 1744 that the catenary is the curve which, nicolas Fuss gave equations describing the equilibrium of a chain under any force in 1796. Catenary arches are used in the construction of kilns. To create the desired curve, the shape of a chain of the desired dimensions is transferred to a form which is then used as a guide for the placement of bricks or other building material. The Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri, United States is sometimes said to be an catenary and it is close to a more general curve called a flattened catenary, with equation y = A cosh, which is a catenary if AB =1. While a catenary is the shape for a freestanding arch of constant thickness. According to the U. S. National Historic Landmark nomination for the arch and its shape corresponds to the shape that a weighted chain, having lighter links in the middle, would form. In free-hanging chains, the force exerted is uniform with respect to length of the chain, the same is true of a simple suspension bridge or catenary bridge, where the roadway follows the cable. A stressed ribbon bridge is a sophisticated structure with the same catenary shape
35.
Parrot
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Parrots, also known as psittacines /ˈsɪtəsaɪnz/, are birds of the roughly 393 species in 92 genera that make up the order Psittaciformes, found in most tropical and subtropical regions. The order is subdivided into three superfamilies, the Psittacoidea, the Cacatuoidea, and the Strigopoidea, Parrots have a generally pantropical distribution with several species inhabiting temperate regions in the Southern Hemisphere, as well. The greatest diversity of parrots is in South America and Australasia, characteristic features of parrots include a strong, curved bill, an upright stance, strong legs, and clawed zygodactyl feet. Many parrots are vividly coloured, and some are multi-coloured, most parrots exhibit little or no sexual dimorphism in the visual spectrum. They form the most variably sized bird order in terms of length, the most important components of most parrots diets are seeds, nuts, fruit, buds, and other plant material. A few species sometimes eat animals and carrion, while the lories and lorikeets are specialised for feeding on floral nectar, almost all parrots nest in tree hollows, and lay white eggs from which hatch altricial young. Parrots, along with ravens, crows, jays, and magpies, are among the most intelligent birds, some parrots are intelligent and talk at the level of a four-to-five year old human. Measures taken to conserve the habitats of some high-profile charismatic species have protected many of the less charismatic species living in the same ecosystems. Psittaciform diversity in South America and Australasia suggests that the order may have evolved in Gondwana, molecular studies suggest that parrots evolved approximately 59 million years ago in Gondwana. The three major clades of Neotropical parrots originated about 50 Mya, likewise, the earliest parrots do not have the specialised crushing bills of modern species. If so, they probably had not evolved their morphological autapomorphies yet, the combined evidence supported the hypothesis of Psittaciformes being near passerines, i. e. the mostly land-living birds that emerged in close proximity to the K-Pg extinction. Europe is the origin of the first undeniable parrot fossils, which date from about 50 Mya, the climate there and then was tropical, consistent with the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum. Initially, a neoavian named Mopsitta tanta, uncovered in Denmarks Early Eocene Fur Formation and dated to 54 Mya, was assigned to the Psittaciformes, fossils assignable to Psittaciformes date from slightly later in the Eocene, starting around 50 Mya. Several fairly complete skeletons of birds have been found in England. The fossil record—mainly from Europe—consists of bones clearly recognisable as belonging to parrots of modern type, at this point, however, is found the first unambiguous parrot fossil, an upper jaw that is indistinguishable from that of modern cockatoos. The Psittaciformes comprise three lineages, Strigopoidea, Psittacoidea and Cacatuoidea. Colourful feathers with high levels of psittacofulvin resist the feather-degrading bacterium Bacillus licheniformis better than white ones, lorikeets were previously regarded as a third family, Loriidae, but are now considered a tribe within the subfamily Lorinae, family Cacatuoidea. The two other tribes in the subfamily are the closely related fig parrots and budgerigar, the order Psittaciformes consists of roughly 393 species belonging to 92 genera
36.
Short-toed snake eagle
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The genus name Circaetus is from the Ancient Greek kirkos, a type of hawk, and aetos, eagle. The specific gallicus means of Gaul and those present on the northern edge of the Mediterranean and other parts of Europe migrate mainly to sub-Saharan Africa north of the equator, leaving in September/October and returning in April/May. In the Middle and Far East the populations are resident, in Europe, it is most numerous in Spain where it is fairly common but elsewhere it is rare in many parts of its range. A bird on the Isles of Scilly, Britain, in October 1999 was the first confirmed record for that country, the short-toed snake eagle is found in open cultivated plains, arid stony deciduous scrub areas and foothills and semi-desert areas. It requires trees for nesting and open habitats, such as cultivations, adults are 62–67 cm long with a 170–185 cm wingspan and weigh 1. 2–2.3 kg. They can be recognised in the field by their white underside. The chin, throat and upper breast are a pale, earthy brown, the tail has 3 or 4 bars. Additional indications are a rounded head, brightly yellow eyes. The short-toed snake eagle is a flyer and spends more time on the wing than do most members of its genus. It favours soaring over hill slopes and hilltops on updraughts, when quartering open country it frequently hovers like a kestrel. When it soars it does so on flattish wings and its prey is mostly reptiles, mainly snakes, but also some lizards. Sometimes they become entangled with larger snakes and battle on the ground, occasionally, they prey on small mammals up to the size of a rabbit, and rarely birds and large insects. This eagle is very silent. On occasions, it emits a variety of whistling notes. When breeding, it only one egg. It can live up to 17 years, the short-toed snake eagle has suffered a steep decline in numbers and range in Europe and is now rare and still decreasing in several countries due to changes in agriculture and land use. In the middle and far eastern part of its range, this species is not yet threatened, in his description of the species, Buffon says that he kept one of these eagles in captivity and observed its behavior. The captive bird ate mice and frogs, and he states that the Jean-de-blanc was well known by French farmers for raiding poultry, short-toed-Eagle. net Ageing and sexing by Javier Blasco-Zumeta & Gerd-Michael Heinze BirdLife species factsheet for Circaetus gallicus Circaetus gallicus
37.
Hummingbird hawk-moth
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The hummingbird hawk-moth is a species of moth. The hummingbird hawk-moth is distributed throughout the northern Old World from Portugal to Japan and it is a strong flier, dispersing widely and can be found virtually anywhere in the hemisphere in the summer. However it rarely survives the winter in northern latitudes and they have been spotted in Newfoundland, Canada and Malaysia as well as southeast Texas. Two or more broods are produced each year, the adult may be encountered at any time of the year, especially in the south of the range, where there may be three or four broods. It overwinters as an adult in a crevice among rocks, trees, on very warm days it may emerge to feed in mid-winter. The glossy pale green eggs are spherical with a 1-millimetre diameter and they are said to look like the flower buds of the host plant Galium, and that is where the female lays them. They hatch 6 to 8 days after laying, up to 200 eggs may be laid by one female, each on a separate plant. Newly hatched larvae are yellow, and in the second instar assume their green coloration. The larva is green with two grey stripes bordered in cream along the sides and the horn at the end typical of sphingids. The horn is purplish red, changing to blue with a tip in the last instar. They feed fully exposed on the top of the host plant, although dependent on warmth and sun, the larval stage can be as rapid as 20 days. The pupae are pale brownish with a prominent, keeled proboscis and they are enclosed in loose silken cocoons among the host plant debris or on the ground among leaf litter. The forewings are brown, with wavy lines across them. The abdomen is broad, with a fan-tail of setae at the end. In the southern parts of its range, the hummingbird hawk-moth is highly active even when temperatures are high and this is among the highest recorded for hawk-moths, and near the limit for insect muscle activity. Its long proboscis and its behaviour, accompanied by an audible humming noise. It should not be confused with the moths called hummingbird moths in North America, genus Hemaris, members of the family and with similar appearance. The resemblance to hummingbirds is an example of convergent evolution and it flies during the day, especially in bright sunshine, but also at dusk, dawn, and even in the rain, which is unusual for even diurnal hawkmoths
38.
Retaining wall
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Retaining walls are structures designed to restrain soil to a slope that it would not naturally keep to. A retaining wall is a designed and constructed to resist the lateral pressure of soil. A basement wall is one kind of retaining wall. But the term refers to a cantilever retaining wall, which is a freestanding structure without lateral support at its top. These are cantilevered from a footing and rise above the grade on one side to retain a level grade on the opposite side. The walls must resist the pressures generated by loose soils or, in some cases. Every retaining wall supports a “wedge” of soil, the wedge is defined as the soil which extends beyond the failure plane of the soil type present at the wall site, and can be calculated once the soil friction angle is known. As the setback of the wall increases, the size of the wedge is reduced. This reduction lowers the pressure on the retaining wall, the most important consideration in proper design and installation of retaining walls is to recognize and counteract the tendency of the retained material to move downslope due to gravity. Lateral earth pressures are zero at the top of the wall, earth pressures will push the wall forward or overturn it if not properly addressed. Also, any groundwater behind the wall that is not dissipated by a system causes hydrostatic pressure on the wall. The total pressure or thrust may be assumed to act at one-third from the lowest depth for lengthwise stretches of uniform height. Unless the wall is designed to retain water, It is important to have proper drainage behind the wall in order to limit the pressure to the design value. Drainage materials will reduce or eliminate the pressure and improve the stability of the material behind the wall. Drystone retaining walls are normally self-draining.5 against lateral sliding and overturning, gravity walls depend on their mass to resist pressure from behind and may have a batter setback to improve stability by leaning back toward the retained soil. For short landscaping walls, they are made from mortarless stone or segmental concrete units. Dry-stacked gravity walls are somewhat flexible and do not require a rigid footing, earlier in the 20th century, taller retaining walls were often gravity walls made from large masses of concrete or stone. Cantilevered retaining walls are made from a stem of steel-reinforced
39.
Landmark
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A landmark is a recognizable natural or artificial feature used for navigation, a feature that stands out from its near environment and is often visible from long distances. In modern use, the term can also be applied to structures or features. In old English the word landmearc was used to describe a set up to mark the boundaries of a kingdom, estate. 1560, this understanding of landmark was replaced by a general one. A landmark became an object in a landscape. A landmark literally meant a geographic feature used by explorers and others to find their way back or through an area. For example, the Table Mountain near Cape Town, South Africa is used as the landmark to sailors to navigate around southern tip of Africa during the Age of Exploration. Artificial structures are sometimes built to assist sailors in naval navigation. The Lighthouse of Alexandria and Colossus of Rhodes are ancient structures built to lead ships to the port, in modern usage, a landmark includes anything that is easily recognizable, such as a monument, building, or other structure. In American English it is the term used to designate places that might be of interest to tourists due to notable physical features or historical significance. Landmarks in the British English sense are often used for casual navigation and this is done in American English as well. In urban studies as well as in geography, a landmark is furthermore defined as a point of reference that helps orienting in a familiar or unfamiliar environment. Landmarks are often used in verbal route instructions and as such an object of study by linguists as well as in fields of study. Landmarks are usually classified as either natural landmarks or man-made landmarks, a variant is a seamark or daymark, a structure usually built intentionally to aid sailors navigating featureless coasts. Natural landmarks can be characteristic features, such as mountains or plateaus, examples of natural landmarks are Table Mountain in South Africa, Mount Ararat in Turkey, Uluru in Australia, Mount Fuji in Japan and Grand Canyon in the United States. Trees might also serve as landmarks, such as jubilee oaks or conifers. Some landmark trees may be nicknamed, examples being Queens Oak, church spires and mosques minarets are often very tall and visible from many miles around, thus often serve as built landmarks. Also town hall towers and belfries often have a landmark character, cultural heritage management National landmark National symbol Media related to Landmarks at Wikimedia Commons
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La Barceloneta, Barcelona
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La Barceloneta is a neighborhood in the Ciutat Vella district of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. The neighborhood was constructed during the 18th century for the residents of the Ribera neighborhood who had been displaced by the construction of the Ciutadella of Barcelona. The neighborhood is roughly triangular, bordered by the Mediterranean Sea, the Moll dEspanya of Port Vell, and this neighborhood even has its own flag. The neighborhood is serviced by its own stop on the Barcelona Metro and this is a good starting point for whatever itinerary there may be to adventure through La Barceloneta. The yellow line, L4, which is the line that stops at La Barceloneta, is the most popular for pickpocketing. The neighborhood can also be discovered by taking Las Gorondrinas, which leave from the front port of the Columbus monument and this way the marine strip can be discovered, but the real charm of this neighborhood is by getting lost in the side streets or alleyways. Torre Sant Sebastià is the terminus of the Port Vell Aerial Tramway, opened in 1931, La Barceloneta is known for its sandy beach and its many restaurants and nightclubs along the boardwalk. Over the past several years the quality of the sand on the beach has become a source of continued controversy, in February 2008, the World Health Organisation began an inquiry designed to ascertain whether the sand meets WHO beach health and safety guidelines. With its modernity, La Barceloneta continues to inhabit the scent of salt, for many, this is considered a luxury. La Barceloneta also attracts many cruise ships to dock, in the center of the neighborhood, there is a small museum, called Casa de la Barceloneta, which is housed in a preserved building dating back to 1761. Admission to the museum serves as an insight into the evolution of the neighborhood, the house has a stone façade with letters and number engraved that are inscriptions of the plots used in construction. La Barceloneta was practically an uninhabited zone until the mid 18th century, fishermen were the first to frequent this part of Barcelona even though the sea conditions were very precarious. In 1754, construction of the first houses began, and the neighborhood began to become filled with residents who took part in activities of the port, the neighborhood of La Barceloneta was designed by an engineer named Juan Martín Cermeño. The famous markets located in La Barceloneta were designed by the famous Catalan architect Antoni Rovira i Trias in 1873. He had a plan for the future of Barcelona architecture which won the 1859 municipal contest by city councils decree. In the present day, in the building of Palau de Mar on the Passeig de Joan de Borbó and this museum contains a permanent exhibit about the history of Catalonia up until its industrialization, the era of dictatorship, or the present day democracy. Additionally, the terrace of their cafeteria has an excellent view of the neighborhood and this neighborhood is far from lacking ancient history with its churches, like the Sant Miquel del Port located in the Barceloneta plaza. This church is located near the campus of Pompeu Fabra University
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