Louisiana (New Spain)
Louisiana was the name of an administrative district of the Viceroyalty of New Spain from 1763 to 1801 that consisted of territory west of the Mississippi River basin, plus New Orleans. Spain acquired the territory from France, which had named it La Louisiane in honor of King Louis XIV in 1682, it is sometimes known as Spanish Louisiana. The district was retroceded to France, under the terms of the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso and the Treaty of Aranjuez. In 1802, King Charles IV of Spain published a royal bill on 14 October, effecting the transfer and outlining the conditions. However, Spain agreed to continue administering the colony until French officials arrived and formalized the transfer; the ceremony was conducted at the Cabildo in New Orleans on 30 November 1803, just three weeks before the formalities of cession from France to the United States pursuant to the Louisiana Purchase. Spain was a benign absentee landlord administering it from Havana and contracting out governing to people from many nationalities as long as they swore allegiance to Spain.
During the American War of Independence, the Spanish funneled their supplies to the American revolutionists through New Orleans and the vast Louisiana territory beyond. In keeping with being absentee landlords, Spanish efforts to turn Louisiana into a Spanish colony were fruitless. For instance, while Spanish was the only language of government, the majority of the populace continued to speak French. Official business conducted at the Cabildo lapsed into French, requiring a translator on hand; when Alejandro O'Reilly re-established Spanish rule in 1769, he issued a decree on December 7, 1769, which banned the trade of Native American slaves. Although there was no movement toward abolition of the African slave trade, Spanish rule introduced a new law called coartación, which allowed slaves to buy their freedom, that of others. A group of maroons led by Jean Saint Malo resisted re-enslavement from their base in the swamps east of New Orleans between 1780 and 1784. On May 4, 1795, 57 slaves and 3 local white men were put on trial in Point Coupee.
At the end of the trial 23 slaves were hanged, 31 slaves received a sentence of flogging and hard labor, the three white men were deported, with two being sentenced to six years forced labor in Havana. Spanish colonial officials divided Luisiana into Upper Louisiana and Lower Louisiana at 36° 35' North, at about the latitude of New Madrid; this was a higher latitude than during the French administration, for whom Lower Louisiana was the area south of about 31° North or the area south of where the Arkansas River joined the Mississippi River at about 33° 46' North latitude. In 1764, French fur trading interests founded St. Louis in what was known as the Illinois Country; the Spanish referred to St. Louis as "the city of Illinois" and governed the region from St. Louis as the "District of Illinois". To establish Spanish colonies in Louisiana, the Spanish military leader Bernardo de Gálvez, governor of Louisiana at the time, recruited groups of Spanish-speaking Canary Islanders to emigrate to North America.
In 1778, several ships embarked for Louisiana with hundreds of settlers. The ships made stops in Venezuela, where half the settlers disembarked. In the end, between 2,100 and 2,736 Canarians settled near New Orleans, they settled in what is today St. Bernard Parish. However, many settlers were relocated for various reasons. Barataria suffered hurricanes in 1779 and in 1780. In 1782, a splinter group of the Canarian settlers in Saint Bernard emigrated to Valenzuela. In 1779, another ship with 500 people from Málaga; these colonists, led by Lt. Col. Francisco Bouligny, settled in New Iberia, where they intermarried with Cajun settlers. In 1782, during the American Revolutionary War and the Anglo-Spanish War, Bernardo de Gálvez recruited men from the Canarian settlements of Louisiana and Galveston to join his forces, they participated in three major military campaigns: the Baton Rouge, the Mobile, the Pensacola, which expelled the British from the Gulf Coast. In 1790 settlers of mixed Canarian and Mexican origin from Galveston settled in Galveztown, Louisiana, to escape the annual flash floods and prolonged droughts of this area.
Beginning in the 1790s, following the slave rebellion in Saint-Domingue that began in 1791, waves of refugees came to Louisiana. Over the next decade, thousands of migrants from the island landed there, including ethnic Europeans, free people of color, African slaves, some of the latter brought in by the white elites, they increased the French-speaking population in New Orleans and Louisiana, as well as the number of Africans, the slaves reinforced African culture in the city. The French established settlements in French Louisiana beginning in the 17th century; the French began exploring the region from French Canada. 1762 – As negotiations began to end the Seven Years' War, Louis XV of France secretly proposed to his cousin Charles III of Spain that France give Louisiana to Spain in the Treaty of Fontainebleau. 1763 – The Treaty of Paris ended the war, with a provision in which France ceded all territory east of the Mississippi to Britain. Spain ceded land east of the Mississippi to Britain.
1763 – George III of the United Kingdom, in the Royal P
Great Britain
Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of 209,331 km2, it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island, the ninth-largest island in the world. In 2011, Great Britain had a population of about 61 million people, making it the world's third-most populous island after Java in Indonesia and Honshu in Japan; the island of Ireland is situated to the west of Great Britain, together these islands, along with over 1,000 smaller surrounding islands, form the British Isles archipelago. The island is dominated by a maritime climate with quite narrow temperature differences between seasons. Politically, Great Britain is part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, constitutes most of its territory. Most of England and Wales are on the island; the term "Great Britain" is used to include the whole of England and Wales including their component adjoining islands. A single Kingdom of Great Britain resulted from the union of the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland by the 1707 Acts of Union.
In 1801, Great Britain united with the neighbouring Kingdom of Ireland, forming the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, renamed the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" after the Irish Free State seceded in 1922. The archipelago has been referred to by a single name for over 2000 years: the term'British Isles' derives from terms used by classical geographers to describe this island group. By 50 BC Greek geographers were using equivalents of Prettanikē as a collective name for the British Isles. However, with the Roman conquest of Britain the Latin term Britannia was used for the island of Great Britain, Roman-occupied Britain south of Caledonia; the earliest known name for Great Britain is Albion or insula Albionum, from either the Latin albus meaning "white" or the "island of the Albiones". The oldest mention of terms related to Great Britain was by Aristotle, or by Pseudo-Aristotle, in his text On the Universe, Vol. III. To quote his works, "There are two large islands in it, called the British Isles and Ierne".
Pliny the Elder in his Natural History records of Great Britain: "Its former name was Albion. Old French Bretaigne and Middle English Bretayne, Breteyne; the French form replaced the Old English Breoton, Bryten, Breten. Britannia was used by the Romans from the 1st century BC for the British Isles taken together, it is derived from the travel writings of the Pytheas around 320 BC, which described various islands in the North Atlantic as far north as Thule. Marcian of Heraclea, in his Periplus maris exteri, described the island group as αἱ Πρεττανικαὶ νῆσοι; the peoples of these islands of Prettanike were called the Priteni or Pretani. Priteni is the source of the Welsh language term Prydain, which has the same source as the Goidelic term Cruithne used to refer to the early Brythonic-speaking inhabitants of Ireland; the latter were called Picts or Caledonians by the Romans. Greek historians Diodorus of Sicily and Strabo preserved variants of Prettanike from the work of Greek explorer Pytheas of Massalia, who travelled from his home in Hellenistic southern Gaul to Britain in the 4th century BC.
The term used by Pytheas may derive from a Celtic word meaning "the painted ones" or "the tattooed folk" in reference to body decorations. The Greco-Egyptian scientist Ptolemy referred to the larger island as great Britain and to Ireland as little Britain in his work Almagest. In his work, Geography, he gave the islands the names Alwion and Mona, suggesting these may have been the names of the individual islands not known to him at the time of writing Almagest; the name Albion appears to have fallen out of use sometime after the Roman conquest of Britain, after which Britain became the more commonplace name for the island. After the Anglo-Saxon period, Britain was used as a historical term only. Geoffrey of Monmouth in his pseudohistorical Historia Regum Britanniae refers to the island as Britannia major, to distinguish it from Britannia minor, the continental region which approximates to modern Brittany, settled in the fifth and sixth centuries by migrants from Britain; the term Great Britain was first used in 1474, in the instrument drawing up the proposal for a marriage between Cecily the daughter of Edward IV of England, James the son of James III of Scotland, which described it as "this Nobill Isle, callit Gret Britanee".
It was used again in 1604, when King James VI and I styled himself "King of Great Brittaine and Ireland". Great Britain refers geographically to the island of Great Britain, it is often used to refer politically to the whole of England and Wales, including their smaller off shore islands. While it is sometimes used to refer to the whole of the United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland, this is not correct. Britain can refer to either all island
Seven Years' War
The Seven Years' War was a global conflict fought between 1756 and 1763. It involved every European great power of the time and spanned five continents, affecting Europe, the Americas, West Africa and the Philippines; the conflict split Europe into two coalitions, led by the Kingdom of Great Britain on one side and the Kingdom of France, the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Spain, the Swedish Empire on the other. Meanwhile, in India, some regional polities within the fragmented Mughal Empire, with the support of the French, tried to crush a British attempt to conquer Bengal; the war's extent has led some historians to describe it as World War Zero, similar in scale to other world wars. Although Anglo-French skirmishes over their American colonies had begun with what became the French and Indian War in 1754, the large-scale conflict that drew in most of the European powers was centered on Austria's desire to recover Silesia from the Prussians. Seeing the opportunity to curtail Britain's and Prussia's ever-growing might and Austria put aside their ancient rivalry to form a grand coalition of their own, bringing most of the other European powers to their side.
Faced with this sudden turn of events, Britain aligned itself with Prussia, in a series of political manoeuvres known as the Diplomatic Revolution. However, French efforts ended in failure when the Anglo-Prussian coalition prevailed, Britain's rise as among the world's predominant powers destroyed France's supremacy in Europe, thus altering the European balance of power. Conflict between Great Britain and France broke out in 1754–1756 when the British attacked disputed French positions in North America. Hostilities were heightened when a British unit led by a 22 year old Lt. Colonel George Washington ambushed a small French force at the Battle of Jumonville Glen on 28 May 1754; the conflict exploded across the colonial boundaries and extended to the seizure of hundreds of French merchant ships at sea. Meanwhile, rising power Prussia was struggling with Austria for dominance within and outside the Holy Roman Empire in central Europe. In 1756, the major powers "switched partners". Realising that war was imminent, Prussia pre-emptively struck Saxony and overran it.
The result caused uproar across Europe. Because of Austria's alliance with France to recapture Silesia, lost in the War of the Austrian Succession, Prussia formed an alliance with Britain. Reluctantly, by following the imperial diet, which declared war on Prussia on 17 January 1757, most of the states of the empire joined Austria's cause; the Anglo-Prussian alliance was joined by smaller German states. Sweden, seeking to regain Pomerania joined the coalition, seeing its chance when all the major powers of Europe opposed Prussia. Spain, bound by the Pacte de Famille, intervened on behalf of France and together they launched an utterly unsuccessful invasion of Portugal in 1762; the Russian Empire was aligned with Austria, fearing Prussia's ambition on the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, but switched sides upon the succession of Tsar Peter III in 1762. Many middle and small powers in Europe, as in the previous wars, tried to steer clear away from the escalating conflict though they had interests in the conflict or with the belligerents.
Denmark–Norway, for instance, was close to being dragged into the war on France's side when Peter III became Russian emperor and switched sides. The Dutch Republic, a long-time British ally, kept its neutrality intact, fearing the odds against Britain and Prussia fighting the great powers of Europe, tried to prevent Britain's domination in India. Naples-Sicily, Savoy, although sided with the Franco-Spanish alliance, declined to join the coalition under fear of British naval power; the taxation needed for war caused the Russian people considerable hardship, being added to the taxation of salt and alcohol begun by Empress Elizabeth in 1759 to complete her addition to the Winter Palace. Like Sweden, Russia concluded a separate peace with Prussia; the war ended with the Treaty of Paris between France and Great Britain and the Treaty of Hubertusburg between Saxony and Prussia, in 1763. The war was successful for Great Britain, which gained the bulk of New France in North America, Spanish Florida, some individual Caribbean islands in the West Indies, the colony of Senegal on the West African coast, superiority over the French trading outposts on the Indian subcontinent.
The Native American tribes were excluded from the settlement. In Europe, the war began disastrously for Prussia, but with a combination of good luck and successful strategy, King Frederick the Great managed to retrieve the Prussian position and retain the status quo ante bellum. Prussia emerged as a new European great power. Although Austria failed to retrieve the territory of Silesia from Prussia, its military prowess was noted by the other powers; the involvement of Portugal and Sweden did not return them to their former status as great powers. France was deprived of many of it
Andrew Ellicott
Andrew Ellicott was a U. S. surveyor who helped map many of the territories west of the Appalachians, surveyed the boundaries of the District of Columbia and completed Pierre Charles L'Enfant's work on the plan for Washington, D. C. and served as a teacher in survey methods for Meriwether Lewis. Andrew Ellicott was born in Buckingham Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania as the first of nine children of Joseph Ellicott and his wife Judith; the Quaker family lived in modest conditions. Young Andrew was educated at the local Quaker school, where Robert Patterson, who became a professor and vice provost at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, was his teacher for some time. Andrew showed some mathematical talent, too. In 1770, his father, together with his uncles Andrew and John, purchased land on the falls of the Patapsco River and west of Baltimore and the Chesapeake Bay. There they set up a new milling business, founding the town of Ellicott's Mills in 1772. Three years Andrew married Sarah Brown of Newtown, with whom he would have ten children, one of which died as a child.
When the Revolutionary War broke out in 1775, Andrew enlisted as a commissioned officer in the Elk Ridge Battalion of the newly organized Maryland state militia despite his Quaker upbringing. During the course of the war, he rose to the rank of major, a title he would keep as an honorific throughout his life. After the war, Ellicott returned home to Ellicott's Mills until he was appointed, in 1784, a member of the survey group tasked with extending the survey of the Mason-Dixon line for the borders between Pennsylvania / Delaware with Maryland, abandoned in 1767 and been stalled during the war. In this survey, he worked alongside David Rittenhouse and Bishop James Madison, making first connections with the scientific society of Philadelphia. Following the death of their second son, the Ellicotts moved to Baltimore in 1785, where Andrew taught mathematics at the Baltimore Academy and was elected to the General Assembly of Maryland in 1786; the same year, he was called upon for a survey to define the western border of Pennsylvania with the Ohio Country.
This "Ellicott Line" became the principal meridian for the surveys of the future Northwest Territory of the United States. His work in Pennsylvania intensified his ties with Rittenhouse and other members of the American Philosophical Society and led to encounters with Benjamin Franklin and Simeon De Witt; when he was subsequently appointed to lead other surveys in Pennsylvania, the family moved again in 1789 to Philadelphia. By recommendation of Franklin, Ellicott got a position with the newly established government under the Constitution and was tasked by first President George Washington to survey the lands between Lake Erie and Pennsylvania to determine the border between Western New York and U. S. federal territory, resulting in the Erie Triangle. This survey, during which he made the first topographical study of the Niagara River including the Niagara Falls, gained Ellicott a reputation for superb accuracy in surveys. From 1791 to 1792, at the request of Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Ellicott worked under the direction of the three commissioners that President George Washington had appointed, surveying the boundaries of the federal Territory of Columbia, which would become the District of Columbia in 1801, containing the Federal City then becoming known as "Washington City".
He was assisted in this survey first by the free African-American astronomer Benjamin Banneker and by Ellicott's brothers, Joseph Ellicott and Benjamin Ellicott. Ellicott's team put into place forty boundary stones 1 mile apart from each other that marked the borders of the Territory of Columbia of 100 square miles. Most of these stones remain in their original positions; as engravings on many of the stones still show, Ellicott's team placed those that marked the southwestern /southeastern border with Virginia in 1791, those that marked the northwestern / northeastern border with Maryland in 1792. On January 1, 1793, Ellicott submitted to the three commissioners "a report of his first map of the four lines of experiment, showing a half mile on each side, including the district of territory, with a survey of the different waters within the territory"; the Library of Congress has attributed to 1793 Ellicott's earliest map of the Territory of Columbia that the Library holds within its collections.
During 1791–1792, Ellicott surveyed the future city of Washington, located within a small area at the center of the Territory of Columbia along the northern bank of the Potomac River at the confluence with its Eastern Branch. Ellicott served under the Commissioners' supervision in this effort, he first worked with Pierre Charles L'Enfant, who had prepared the initial plans for the future capital city during the early months of 1791 and had presented one of these early plans to President Washington in August of that year. During a contentious period in February 1792, Ellicott informed the Commissioners that L'Enfant had not been able to have the city plan engraved and printed as a map on paper and had refused to provide him with an original plan that L'Enfant was holding. Ellicott, with the aid of his brother, Benjamin Ellicott revised the plan, despite L'Enfant's protests. Ellicott stated in his let
Natchez, Mississippi
Natchez is the county seat and only city of Adams County, United States. Natchez has a total population of 15,792. Located on the Mississippi River across from Vidalia in Concordia Parish, Natchez was a prominent city in the antebellum years, a center of cotton planters and Mississippi River trade. Natchez is some 90 miles southwest of Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, located near the center of the state, it is 85 miles north of Baton Rouge, located on the lower Mississippi River. Natchez is the 25th-largest city in the state; the city was named for the Natchez tribe of Native Americans, who with their ancestors, inhabited much of the area from the 8th century AD through the French colonial period. Established by French colonists in 1716, Natchez is one of the oldest and most important European settlements in the lower Mississippi River Valley. After the French lost the French and Indian War, they ceded Natchez and near territory to Spain in the Treaty of Paris of 1763.. After the United States acquired this area from the British after the American Revolutionary War, the city served as the capital of the American Mississippi Territory and of the state of Mississippi.
It predates Jackson by more than a century. The strategic location of Natchez, on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River, ensured that it would be a pivotal center of trade and the interchange of ethnic Native American and African cultures in the region. In U. S. history, Natchez is recognized for its role in the development of the Old Southwest during the first half of the nineteenth century. It was the southern terminus of the historic Natchez Trace, with the northern terminus being Nashville, Tennessee. After unloading their cargoes in Natchez or New Orleans, many pilots and crew of flatboats and keelboats traveled by the Trace overland to their homes in the Ohio River Valley; the Natchez Trace played an important role during the War of 1812. Today the modern Natchez Trace Parkway, which commemorates this route, still has its southern terminus in Natchez. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the city attracted wealthy Southern planters as residents, who built mansions to fit their ambitions.
Their plantations were vast tracts of land in the surrounding lowlands along the river fronts of Mississippi and Louisiana, where they grew large commodity crops of cotton and sugarcane using slave labor. Natchez became the principal port from which these crops were exported, both upriver to Northern cities and downriver to New Orleans, where much of the cargo was exported to Europe. Many of the mansions built by planters before 1860 survive and form a major part of the city's architecture and identity. Agriculture remained the primary economic base for the region until well into the twentieth century. During the American Civil War Natchez was surrendered by Confederate forces without a fight in September, 1862. Following the Union victory at the Battle of Vicksburg in July, 1863, many refugees, including former slaves, freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, began moving into Natchez and the surrounding countryside; the Union Army officers claimed to be unable to provide for the refugees. The Army planned to address the situation with a mixture of paid labor for freed slaves on government leased plantations, the enlistment of able bodied males who were willing to fight in the Union Army and the establishment of refugee camps where former slaves could be provided with education.
However, as the war continued, the plan was never implemented and the leased plantations were poorly managed and raided by Confederate troops who controlled the surrounding territory. Hundreds of people living in Natchez, including many former slaves and refugees, died of hunger, disease or were killed in the fighting during this period. After the American Civil War, the city's economy revived due to Natchez having been spared the destruction visited upon many other parts of the South; the vitality of the city and region was captured most in the 80 years or so following the war by the photographers Henry C. Norman and his son Earl; the output of the Norman Studio between 1870 and 1950 documents this period in Natchez's development vividly. During the twentieth century, the city's economy experienced a downturn, first due to the replacement of steamboat traffic on the Mississippi River by railroads in the early 1900s, some of which bypassed the river cities and drew away their commerce. In the 20th century, many local industries closed in a restructuring that reduced the number of jobs in the area.
Despite its status as a popular destination for heritage tourism because of well-preserved antebellum architecture, Natchez has had a general decline in population since 1960. It remains the principal city of the MS -- LA Micropolitan Statistical Area. Natchez is located at 31°33'16" latitude, 91°23'15" longitude. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 13.9 square miles, of which 13.2 square
Flint River (Georgia)
The Flint River is a 344-mile-long river in the U. S. state of Georgia. The river drains 8,460 square miles of western Georgia, flowing south from the upper Piedmont region south of Atlanta to the wetlands of the Gulf Coastal Plain in the southwestern corner of the state. Along with the Apalachicola and the Chattahoochee rivers, it forms part of the ACF basin. In its upper course through the red hills of the Piedmont, it is considered scenic, flowing unimpeded for over 200 miles, it was called the Thronateeska River. The Flint River rises in west central Georgia in the city of East Point in southern Fulton County on the southern outskirts of the Atlanta metropolitan area as ground seepage; the exact start can be traced to the field located between Plant Street, Willingham Drive, Elm Street, Vesta Avenue. It travels under the runways of the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Flowing south through rural western Georgia, the river passes through Sprewell Bluff State Park 10 miles west of Thomaston.
Farther south, it comes within 5 miles of Andersonville, the site of the Andersonville prison during the Civil War. In southwestern Georgia, the river flows through the largest city on the river. At Bainbridge it joins Lake Seminole, formed at its confluence with the Chattahoochee River upstream from the Jim Woodruff Dam near the Florida state line. From this confluence, the Apalachicola River flows south from the reservoir through Florida to the Gulf of Mexico; the Flint River is fed by Kinchafoonee Creek just north of Albany, by Ichawaynochaway Creek in southwestern Mitchell County 15 miles northeast of Bainbridge. In addition to Lake Seminole, the Flint River is impounded 15 miles upstream from Albany to form the Lake Blackshear reservoir; the Flint River is one of only 40 rivers in the nation to flow more than 200 miles unimpeded by dams or other manmade systems, is valued for that. In the 1970s, a plan by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers to build a dam at Sprewell Bluff in Upson County was defeated by the Jimmy Carter, Governor of Georgia, other supporters.
Carter's hometown of Plains is located near the Flint River. The river is considered to have three distinct sections as it flows southward through western Georgia. In its upper reaches in the red hills of the Piedmont, it flows through a incised channel etched into crystalline rocks. South of its fall line near Culloden, the channel transforms to a broad, forested swampy flood plain. South of Lake Blackshear, it transforms again, flowing through a channel in limestone rock above the Upper Floridan Aquifer below southwestern Georgia and northwestern Florida; the river has been prone to floods throughout its history. In 1994, during flooding from Tropical Storm Alberto, the river crested at 43 feet in Albany, resulting in the emergency evacuation of over 23,000 residents, it caused one of the worst natural disasters in the state's history. Interstate 75 was closed in Macon, Albany State University was seriously flooded, as the river became a few miles or several kilometers wide in some places; the water lifted caskets from cemeteries and left them, along with drowned cattle and other livestock, stuck in trees and other places.
Montezuma, Georgia was inundated after the Flint River topped the 29-foot levee protecting the town from floodwater. The official depth of the river at the height of the flood was estimated at 34 feet; the nearby gauge was underwater. Cleanup and restoration of Albany took months to complete. In 1998 another serious flood occurred in Albany, but it was not as damaging as the one of 1994. Bainbridge flooded in 1998. Other significant floods occurred in 1841 and 1925. In January 2002, a winter storm blew through Atlanta the day after New Year's Day; the airport's drainage system overflowed. Although the antifreeze entered the drinking water of some residents, no one became ill; the airport changed its drainage system to prevent the problem in the future. No problems were reported after an unusually heavy 4 inches of rain fell at the airport at the beginning of March 2009. In May 2009, the National Fish Habitat Action Plan named the Lower Flint River one of its "10 Waters to Watch" for 2009 for its habitat restoration work.
In October 2009, AmericanRivers.org declared the Flint to be one of the most endangered rivers in the country due to new plans to put a dam on it. The Flint is one of four rivers in the southeast with significant remaining populations of Hymenocallis coronaria, the Shoals spider-lily. Four separate stands of the plant have been studied and documented in the river, ranging from Yellow Jacket Shoals to Hightower Shoals. In Gone With the Wind, author Margaret Mitchell describes the Flint River as bordering the fictional plantation Tara. American country music singer Luke Bryan, a native of Georgia, references the river in his songs "That's My Kind of Night". List of Georgia rivers Georgia Wildlife Federation: Flint River Sherpa Guides: Flint River Basin Jimmy Carter: Land Between the Rivers De Soto Trail historical marker
Weapon
A weapon, arm or armament is any device that can be used with intent to inflict damage or harm. Weapons are used to increase the efficacy and efficiency of activities such as hunting, law enforcement, self-defense, warfare. In broader context, weapons may be construed to include anything used to gain a tactical, material or mental advantage over an adversary or enemy target. While ordinary objects such as sticks, cars, or pencils can be used as weapons, many are expressly designed for the purpose – ranging from simple implements such as clubs and axes, to complicated modern intercontinental ballistic missiles, biological weapons and cyberweapons. Something, re-purposed, converted, or enhanced to become a weapon of war is termed weaponized, such as a weaponized virus or weaponized laser; the use of objects as weapons has been observed among chimpanzees, leading to speculation that early hominids used weapons as early as five million years ago. However, this can not be confirmed using physical evidence because wooden clubs and unshaped stones would have left an ambiguous record.
The earliest unambiguous weapons to be found are the Schöningen spears, eight wooden throwing spears dating back more than 300,000 years. At the site of Nataruk in Turkana, numerous human skeletons dating to 10,000 years ago may present evidence of traumatic injuries to the head, ribs and hands, including obsidian projectiles embedded in the bones that might have been caused from arrows and clubs during conflict between two hunter-gatherer groups, but the evidence interpretation of warfare at Nataruk has been challenged. The earliest ancient weapons were evolutionary improvements of late neolithic implements, but significant improvements in materials and crafting techniques led to a series of revolutions in military technology; the development of metal tools began with copper during the Copper Age and was followed by the Bronze Age, leading to the creation of the Bronze Age sword and similar weapons. During the Bronze Age, the first defensive structures and fortifications appeared as well, indicating an increased need for security.
Weapons designed to breach fortifications followed soon after, such as the battering ram, in use by 2500 BC. The development of iron-working around 1300 BC in Greece had an important impact on the development of ancient weapons, it was not the introduction of early Iron Age swords, however, as they were not superior to their bronze predecessors, but rather the domestication of the horse and widespread use of spoked wheels by c. 2000 BC. This led to the creation of the light, horse-drawn chariot, whose improved mobility proved important during this era. Spoke-wheeled chariot usage peaked around 1300 BC and declined, ceasing to be militarily relevant by the 4th century BC. Cavalry developed; the horse increased the speed of attacks. In addition to land based weaponry, such as the trireme, were in use by the 7th century BC. European warfare during the Post-classical history was dominated by elite groups of knights supported by massed infantry, they were involved in mobile combat and sieges which involved various siege tactics.
Knights on horseback developed tactics for charging with lances providing an impact on the enemy formations and drawing more practical weapons once they entered into the melee. By contrast, infantry, in the age before structured formations, relied on cheap, sturdy weapons such as spears and billhooks in close combat and bows from a distance; as armies became more professional, their equipment was standardized and infantry transitioned to pikes. Pikes are seven to eight feet in length, used in conjunction with smaller side-arms. In Eastern and Middle Eastern warfare, similar tactics were developed independent of European influences; the introduction of gunpowder from the Asia at the end of this period revolutionized warfare. Formations of musketeers, protected by pikemen came to dominate open battles, the cannon replaced the trebuchet as the dominant siege weapon; the European Renaissance marked the beginning of the implementation of firearms in western warfare. Guns and rockets were introduced to the battlefield.
Firearms are qualitatively different from earlier weapons because they release energy from combustible propellants such as gunpowder, rather than from a counter-weight or spring. This energy is released rapidly and can be replicated without much effort by the user; therefore early firearms such as the arquebus were much more powerful than human-powered weapons. Firearms became important and effective during the 16th century to 19th century, with progressive improvements in ignition mechanisms followed by revolutionary changes in ammunition handling and propellant. During the U. S. Civil War new applications of firearms including the machine gun and ironclad warship emerged that would still be recognizable and useful military weapons today in limited conflicts. In the 19th century warship propulsion changed from sail power to fossil fuel-powered steam engines. Since the mid-18th century North American French-Indian war through the beginning of the 20th century, human-powered weapons were reduced from the primary weaponry of the battlefield yielding to gunpowder-based weaponry.
Sometimes referred to as the "Age of Rifles", this period was characterized by the development of firearms for infantry and cannons for support, as well as the beginnings of mechanized weapons such as the machine gun. Of particular note, Howitzers were able to destroy masonry fortresses and other fortifications, this single invention caused a Revolution in
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