1.
Brazil
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Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. As the worlds fifth-largest country by area and population, it is the largest country to have Portuguese as an official language. Its Amazon River basin includes a vast tropical forest, home to wildlife, a variety of ecological systems. This unique environmental heritage makes Brazil one of 17 megadiverse countries, Brazil was inhabited by numerous tribal nations prior to the landing in 1500 of explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral, who claimed the area for the Portuguese Empire. Brazil remained a Portuguese colony until 1808, when the capital of the empire was transferred from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro, in 1815, the colony was elevated to the rank of kingdom upon the formation of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves. Independence was achieved in 1822 with the creation of the Empire of Brazil, a state governed under a constitutional monarchy. The ratification of the first constitution in 1824 led to the formation of a bicameral legislature, the country became a presidential republic in 1889 following a military coup détat. An authoritarian military junta came to power in 1964 and ruled until 1985, Brazils current constitution, formulated in 1988, defines it as a democratic federal republic. The federation is composed of the union of the Federal District, the 26 states, Brazils economy is the worlds ninth-largest by nominal GDP and seventh-largest by GDP as of 2015. A member of the BRICS group, Brazil until 2010 had one of the worlds fastest growing economies, with its economic reforms giving the country new international recognition. Brazils national development bank plays an important role for the economic growth. Brazil is a member of the United Nations, the G20, BRICS, Unasul, Mercosul, Organization of American States, Organization of Ibero-American States, CPLP. Brazil is a power in Latin America and a middle power in international affairs. One of the worlds major breadbaskets, Brazil has been the largest producer of coffee for the last 150 years and it is likely that the word Brazil comes from the Portuguese word for brazilwood, a tree that once grew plentifully along the Brazilian coast. In Portuguese, brazilwood is called pau-brasil, with the word brasil commonly given the etymology red like an ember, formed from Latin brasa and the suffix -il. As brazilwood produces a red dye, it was highly valued by the European cloth industry and was the earliest commercially exploited product from Brazil. The popular appellation eclipsed and eventually supplanted the official Portuguese name, early sailors sometimes also called it the Land of Parrots. In the Guarani language, a language of Paraguay, Brazil is called Pindorama
2.
Art museum
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An art museum or art gallery is a building or space for the exhibition of art, usually visual art. Museums can be public or private, but what distinguishes a museum is the ownership of a collection, the term is used for both public galleries, which are non-profit or publicly owned museums that display selected collections of art. On the other hand, private galleries refers to the commercial enterprises for the sale of art, however, both types of gallery may host traveling exhibits or temporary exhibitions including art borrowed from elsewhere. In broad terms, in North American usage, the word gallery alone often implies a private gallery, the term contemporary art gallery refers usually to a privately owned for-profit commercial gallery. These galleries are found clustered together in large urban centers. Smaller cities are home to at least one gallery, but they may also be found in towns or villages. Contemporary art galleries are open to the general public without charge, however. They usually profit by taking a portion of art sales, from 25% to 50% is typical, there are also many non-profit or collective galleries. Some galleries in cities like Tokyo charge the artists a flat rate per day, curators often create group shows that say something about a certain theme, trend in art, or group of associated artists. Galleries sometimes choose to represent artists exclusively, giving them the opportunity to show regularly, a gallerys definition can also include the artist cooperative or artist-run space, which often operates as a space with a more democratic mission and selection process. A vanity gallery is an art gallery that charges fees from artists in order to show their work, the shows are not legitimately curated and will frequently or usually include as many artists as possible. Most art professionals are able to identify them on an artists resume, University art museums and galleries constitute collections of art that are developed, owned, and maintained by all kinds of schools, community colleges, colleges, and universities. This phenomenon exists in both the West and East, making it a global practice, although largely overlooked, there are over 700 university art museums in America alone. This number, in comparison to other kinds of art museums, throughout history, large and expensive works of art have generally been commissioned by religious institutions and monarchs and been displayed in temples, churches, and palaces. Although these collections of art were private, they were made available for viewing for a portion of the public. In classical times, religious institutions began to function as a form of art gallery. Wealthy Roman collectors of engraved gems and other precious objects often donated their collections to temples and it is unclear how easy it was in practice for the public to view these items. At the Palace of Versailles, entrance was restricted to wearing the proper apparel – the appropriate accessories could be hired from shops outside
3.
Asphalt
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Asphalt, also known as bitumen is a sticky, black and highly viscous liquid or semi-solid form of petroleum. It may be found in deposits or may be a refined product. Until the 20th century, the term asphaltum was also used, the word is derived from the Ancient Greek ἄσφαλτος ásphaltos. The primary use of asphalt/bitumen is in construction, where it is used as the glue or binder mixed with aggregate particles to create asphalt concrete. Its other main uses are for bituminous waterproofing products, including production of roofing felt, the terms asphalt and bitumen are often used interchangeably to mean both natural and manufactured forms of the substance. In American English, asphalt is the carefully refined residue from the process of selected crude oils. Outside the United States, the product is often called bitumen, geologists often prefer the term bitumen. Common usage often refers to forms of asphalt/bitumen as tar. Naturally occurring asphalt/bitumen is sometimes specified by the crude bitumen. Its viscosity is similar to that of cold molasses while the material obtained from the distillation of crude oil boiling at 525 °C is sometimes referred to as refined bitumen. The Canadian province of Alberta has most of the reserves of natural bitumen, covering 142,000 square kilometres. Additionally, most natural bitumens contain organosulfur compounds, resulting in a sulfur content of up to 4%. Nickel and vanadium are found in the <10 ppm level, as is typical of some petroleum, the substance is soluble in carbon disulfide. It is commonly modelled as a colloid, with asphaltenes as the dispersed phase, and it is almost impossible to separate and identify all the different molecules of asphalt, because the number of molecules with different chemical structure is extremely large. Asphalt/bitumen can sometimes be confused with tar, which is a visually similar black. During the early and mid-20th century when town gas was produced, coal tar was a readily available byproduct, the addition of tar to macadam roads led to the word tarmac, which is now used in common parlance to refer to road-making materials. However, since the 1970s, when natural gas succeeded town gas, other examples of this confusion include the La Brea Tar Pits and the Canadian oil sands, both of which actually contain natural bitumen rather than tar. Pitch is another term used at times to refer to asphalt/bitumen
4.
Francisco Prestes Maia
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Francisco Prestes Maia was a Brazilian architect, civil engineer, urban planner, and professor, who served three terms as mayor of the city of São Paulo. Francisco Prestes Maia was born to Manuel Azevedo Maia and Carolina Prestes on March 19,1896 in Amparo, São Paulo, in 1917, Prestes Maia completed his engineering and architecture degree at the POLI, Polytechnic School of São Paulo. In 1918, he set up an estate office and also began working for the São Paulo state government. From 1924 to 1927, Prestes Maia taught architectural drawing courses part-time at his alma mater and he was promoted to full professor in 1927 and taught for another ten years. In 1937, he left the university in order to be able to continue working for the city, from 1926 to 1930, he served as the city’s Secretary of Transportation and Public Works. In 1930, Prestes Maia published his “Study for a Plan of Avenues for the City of São Paulo”, the Plano de Avenidas was given an award at the Fourth Pan-American Congress of Architects at Rio de Janeiro in July 1930. He met Maria de Lourdes Costa Cabral e Abreu in 1930 in Rio de Janeiro, the couple where not able to live together until the death of Prestes Maia’s mother in 1935, since Maria had been divorced and Carolina Prestes did not approve of their relationship. The two were not able to marry until late in his life, given that divorce was still illegal in Brazil. In 1938 Prestes Maia was named mayor of São Paulo for the first time by Ademar de Barros and he would be appointed again by Lucas Nogueira Garcez in 1942, immediately following his first term. After completing his term, he left office on November 10,1945 — roughly the same time that the same time that the Estado Novo was ending. Prestes Maia had two bids for political office following the overthrow of Getúlio Vargas. In 1961, Prestes Maia was finally elected by popular vote, francisco Prestes Maia died in São Paulo on 26 April 1965. Prestes Maia and his Plano de Avenidas had a impact on the geography of São Paulo. On August 27,1997 the city of São Paulo passed a law creating the Prestes Maia Urbanism Award to be awarded four years with the idea of proposing initiatives in urban planning and engineering. The Prestes Maia Award has only been given twice, in 1998, francisco Prestes Maia has many streets named for him throughout his home state of São Paulo. The largest of these is Avenida Prestes Maia, an expressway in downtown São Paulo that is part of the North-South Corredor. One particularly noteworthy building that is referred to as Prestes Maia is a 22-story abandoned factory in downtown São Paulo. The two tower blocks at 911 Avenida Prestes Maia are still registered to the former owner
5.
Chicago
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Chicago, officially the City of Chicago, is the third-most populous city in the United States. With over 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the state of Illinois, and it is the county seat of Cook County. In 2012, Chicago was listed as a global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Chicago has the third-largest gross metropolitan product in the United States—about $640 billion according to 2015 estimates, the city has one of the worlds largest and most diversified economies with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce. In 2016, Chicago hosted over 54 million domestic and international visitors, landmarks in the city include Millennium Park, Navy Pier, the Magnificent Mile, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Campus, the Willis Tower, Museum of Science and Industry, and Lincoln Park Zoo. Chicagos culture includes the arts, novels, film, theater, especially improvisational comedy. Chicago also has sports teams in each of the major professional leagues. The city has many nicknames, the best-known being the Windy City, the name Chicago is derived from a French rendering of the Native American word shikaakwa, known to botanists as Allium tricoccum, from the Miami-Illinois language. The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as Checagou was by Robert de LaSalle around 1679 in a memoir, henri Joutel, in his journal of 1688, noted that the wild garlic, called chicagoua, grew abundantly in the area. In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by a Native American tribe known as the Potawatomi, the first known non-indigenous permanent settler in Chicago was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African and French descent and arrived in the 1780s and he is commonly known as the Founder of Chicago. In 1803, the United States Army built Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed in 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi tribes had ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the Treaty of Chicago in 1833, on August 12,1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 4,000 people, on June 15,1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as U. S. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4,1837, as the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicagos first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois, the canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River. A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad, manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade listed the first ever standardized exchange traded forward contracts and these issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage
6.
Juscelino Kubitschek
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Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira, known also by his initials JK, was a prominent Brazilian politician who served as the 21st President of Brazil from 1956 to 1961. His term was marked by prosperity and political stability, being most known for the construction of a new capital. A leader who favored long-term planning and who set high goals for Brazils future and he stands among the politicians whose legacy is held most favorably, and was highly respected by the people. Kubitschek was born into a family in Diamantina, Minas Gerais. His father, João César de Oliveira, who died when Juscelino was two old, was a traveling salesman. He was raised by his mother, a schoolteacher named Júlia Kubitschek, an excellent student, Kubitschek was trained as a medical doctor and elected to the Chamber of Deputies of Brazil from his home state in 1934. With the imposition of Getúlio Vargas dictatorship in 1937, Kubitschek returned to practicing medicine, however, he was soon appointed mayor of Belo Horizonte in 1940. There, he realized the project of a lake to supply water to the city and also an architectural complex. He was again elected to the National Congress of Brazil in 1945, in 1955, he ran for president with the slogan fifty years of progress in five and won. He was sworn in on January 31,1956, as President of what was known as the Republic of the United States of Brazil. Kubitscheks presidency was marked by a time of political optimism and he launched the Plan of National Development, also known as the Plano de metas, famous by the motto, Fifty years of progress in five. The plan had 31 goals distributed in six groups, energy, transports, food, base industries, education and the main goal. This plan sought to stimulate the diversification and expansion of the Brazilian economy and his government was marked by a time of political stability and maintenance of the democratic regime. Kubitschek used his political ability to reconcile Brazilian society. He managed to rebuild the government structure, as he transferred the capital from Rio de Janeiro to its new location in Brasilia and he avoided any direct clash with his political adversaries, like the UDN, the main opposition party of the Kubitschek administration. He also gave political amnesty to the men who took part in the Revolta de Jacareacanga and Aragarças military revolts. Although his main project was to develop the industry, it was with the Goals plan, launched in 1956. He exempted from all the machines and industrial equipments imports
7.
Favela
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A favela, Portuguese for slum, is a low-income historically informal urban area in Brazil. The first favela, presently known as Providência in the center of Rio de Janeiro, appeared in the late 19th century, some of the first settlements were called bairros africanos. Over the years, many former enslaved Africans moved in, even before the first favela came into being, poor citizens were pushed away from the city and forced to live in the far suburbs. However, most modern favelas appeared in the 1970s due to rural exodus, unable to find places to live, many people found themselves in favelas. The term favela was coined in the late 1800s, at the time, soldiers were brought from the conflict against the settlers of Canudos, in the Eastern province of Bahia, to Rio de Janeiro and left with no place to live. When they served the army in Bahia, those soldiers had been familiar with Canudoss Favela Hill – a name referring to favela, a skin-irritating tree in the spurge family indigenous to Bahia. When they settled in the Providência hill in Rio de Janeiro, they nicknamed the place Favela hill from their common reference, the favelas were formed prior to the dense occupation of cities and the domination of real estate interests. Following the end of slavery and increased urbanization into Latin America cities and these poor and new migrants sought work in the city but with little to no money, they could not afford urban housing. In the 1920s the favelas grew to such an extent that they were perceived as a problem for the whole society, at the same time the term favela underwent a first institutionalization by becoming a local category for the settlements of the urban poor on hills. The housing crisis of the 1940s forced the poor to erect hundreds of shantytowns in the suburbs. Urbanization in the 1950s provoked mass migration from the countryside to the cities throughout Brazil by those hoping to take advantage of the economic opportunities urban life provided and those who moved to Rio de Janeiro, however, chose an inopportune time. The change of Brazils capital from Rio to Brasília in 1960 marked a slow but steady decline for the former, as industry, unable to find work, and therefore unable to afford housing within the city limits, these new migrants remained in the favelas. Despite their proximity to urban Rio de Janeiro, the city did not extend sanitation, electricity and they soon became associated with extreme poverty and were considered a headache to many citizens and politicians within Rio. In the 1970s, Brazils military dictatorship pioneered a favela eradication policy, during Carlos Lacerdas administration, many were moved to public housing projects such as Cidade de Deus, later popularized in a wildly popular feature film of the same name. Poor public planning and insufficient investment by the government led to the disintegration of these projects into new favelas, by the 1980s, worries about eviction and eradication were beginning to give way to violence associated with the burgeoning drug trade. Changing routes of production and consumption meant that Rio de Janeiro found itself as a point for cocaine destined for Europe. Although drugs brought in money, they accompanied the rise of the small arms trade. Most of the current favelas really expanded in the 1970s, as a boom in the more affluent districts of Rio de Janeiro initiated a rural exodus of workers from poorer states in Brazil
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