1.
Prime meridian (Greenwich)
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A prime meridian, based at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, in London, was established by Sir George Airy in 1851. By 1884, over two-thirds of all ships and tonnage used it as the meridian on their charts. In October of that year, at the behest of U. S. President Chester A. Arthur,41 delegates from 25 nations met in Washington, United States, for the International Meridian Conference. This conference selected the meridian passing through Greenwich as the prime meridian due to its popularity. However, France abstained from the vote, and French maps continued to use the Paris meridian for several decades, the prime meridian passes through the Airy transit circle of the Greenwich observatory. The actual reason for the discrepancy is that the strip is indeed at astronomical longitude zero degrees, zero minutes. Before the establishment of a meridian, most maritime countries established their own prime meridian. In 1721, Great Britain established its own meridian passing through a transit circle at the newly established Royal Observatory at Greenwich. The meridian was moved around 10 metres or so east on three occasions as transit circles with newer and better instruments were built, on each occasion next door to the existing one and this was to allow uninterrupted observation during each new construction. The final meridian was established as a line from the north pole to the south pole passing through the Airy transit circle. This became Great Britains meridian in 1851, for all practical purposes of the period, the changes as the meridian was moved went unnoticed. Transit instruments are installed to be perpendicular to the local level, in 1884, the International Meridian Conference took place to establish an internationally recognised single meridian. The meridian chosen was that which passed through the Airy transit circle at Greenwich, at around the time of this conference, scientists were making measurements to determine the deflection of the vertical on a large scale. The downward extended plumb lines dont even all intersect the axis of the Earth. To make computations feasible, scientists defined ellipsoids of revolution, a given ellipsoid would be a compromise for measurements in a given area. When the Airy transit circle was built, a basin was used to align the telescope to the perpendicular. While the local vertical defined at the Airy transit circle still points to the celestial meridian. As a result of this, the ITRF zero meridian, defined by a passing through the Earths rotation axis, is 102 metres to the east of the prime meridian
2.
Meridian (geography)
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A meridian is the half of an imaginary great circle on the Earths surface, terminated by the North Pole and the South Pole, connecting points of equal longitude. The position of a point along the meridian is given by its latitude indicating how many degrees north or south of the Equator the point is, each meridian is perpendicular to all circles of latitude. Each is also the length, being half of a great circle on the Earths surface. Most maps show the lines of longitude, the position of the prime meridian has changed a few times throughout history, mainly due to the transit observatory being built next door to the previous one. Such changes had no significant practical effect, historically, the average error in the determination of longitude was much larger than the change in position. The adoption of WGS84 as the system has moved the geodetic prime meridian 102.478 metres east of its last astronomic position. The position of the current geodetic prime meridian is not identified at all by any kind of sign or marking in Greenwich, but can be located using a GPS receiver. The term meridian comes from the Latin meridies, meaning midday, the same Latin stem gives rise to the terms a. m. and p. m. used to disambiguate hours of the day when utilizing the 12-hour clock. Therefore, a compass needle will be parallel to the magnetic meridian, the angle between the magnetic and the true meridian is the magnetic declination, which is relevant for navigating with a compass. Searchable PDF prepared by the author, C. A. White, resources page of the U. S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management Meridian
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.
180th meridian
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The 180th meridian or antimeridian is the meridian 180° east or west of the Prime Meridian, with which it forms a great circle dividing the earth into the Western and Eastern Hemispheres. It is common to both east longitude and west longitude and it is used as the basis for the International Date Line because it for the most part passes through the open waters of the Pacific Ocean. However, the passes through Russia and Fiji as well as Antarctica. The only place where roads cross this meridian, and where there are very close to it, is in Fiji. Many geographic software libraries or data formats project the world to a rectangle and this often makes it non-trivial to do simple tasks over the 180th meridian. Some examples, The GeoJSON specification strongly suggests splitting geometries so that neither of their parts cross the antimeridian, in OpenStreetMap, areas are split at the 180th meridian. 179th meridian east 179th meridian west Prime meridian
5.
Degree (angle)
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A degree, usually denoted by °, is a measurement of a plane angle, defined so that a full rotation is 360 degrees. It is not an SI unit, as the SI unit of measure is the radian. Because a full rotation equals 2π radians, one degree is equivalent to π/180 radians, the original motivation for choosing the degree as a unit of rotations and angles is unknown. One theory states that it is related to the fact that 360 is approximately the number of days in a year. Ancient astronomers noticed that the sun, which follows through the path over the course of the year. Some ancient calendars, such as the Persian calendar, used 360 days for a year, the use of a calendar with 360 days may be related to the use of sexagesimal numbers. The earliest trigonometry, used by the Babylonian astronomers and their Greek successors, was based on chords of a circle, a chord of length equal to the radius made a natural base quantity. One sixtieth of this, using their standard sexagesimal divisions, was a degree, Aristarchus of Samos and Hipparchus seem to have been among the first Greek scientists to exploit Babylonian astronomical knowledge and techniques systematically. Timocharis, Aristarchus, Aristillus, Archimedes, and Hipparchus were the first Greeks known to divide the circle in 360 degrees of 60 arc minutes, eratosthenes used a simpler sexagesimal system dividing a circle into 60 parts. Furthermore, it is divisible by every number from 1 to 10 except 7 and this property has many useful applications, such as dividing the world into 24 time zones, each of which is nominally 15° of longitude, to correlate with the established 24-hour day convention. Finally, it may be the case more than one of these factors has come into play. For many practical purposes, a degree is a small enough angle that whole degrees provide sufficient precision. When this is not the case, as in astronomy or for geographic coordinates, degree measurements may be written using decimal degrees, with the symbol behind the decimals. Alternatively, the sexagesimal unit subdivisions can be used. One degree is divided into 60 minutes, and one minute into 60 seconds, use of degrees-minutes-seconds is also called DMS notation. These subdivisions, also called the arcminute and arcsecond, are represented by a single and double prime. For example,40. 1875° = 40° 11′ 15″, or, using quotation mark characters, additional precision can be provided using decimals for the arcseconds component. The older system of thirds, fourths, etc. which continues the sexagesimal unit subdivision, was used by al-Kashi and other ancient astronomers, but is rarely used today
6.
Great circle
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A great circle, also known as an orthodrome or Riemannian circle, of a sphere is the intersection of the sphere and a plane that passes through the center point of the sphere. This partial case of a circle of a sphere is opposed to a circle, the intersection of the sphere. Any diameter of any great circle coincides with a diameter of the sphere, and therefore all great circles have the same circumference as each other, a great circle is the largest circle that can be drawn on any given sphere. Every circle in Euclidean 3-space is a circle of exactly one sphere. For most pairs of points on the surface of a sphere, there is a great circle through the two points. The exception is a pair of points, for which there are infinitely many great circles. The minor arc of a circle between two points is the shortest surface-path between them. In this sense, the arc is analogous to “straight lines” in Euclidean geometry. The length of the arc of a great circle is taken as the distance between two points on a surface of a sphere in Riemannian geometry. The great circles are the geodesics of the sphere, in higher dimensions, the great circles on the n-sphere are the intersection of the n-sphere with 2-planes that pass through the origin in the Euclidean space Rn+1. To prove that the arc of a great circle is the shortest path connecting two points on the surface of a sphere, one can apply calculus of variations to it. Consider the class of all paths from a point p to another point q. Introduce spherical coordinates so that p coincides with the north pole. Any curve on the sphere that does not intersect either pole, except possibly at the endpoints, can be parametrized by θ = θ, ϕ = ϕ, a ≤ t ≤ b provided we allow φ to take on arbitrary real values. The infinitesimal arc length in these coordinates is d s = r θ ′2 + ϕ ′2 sin 2 θ d t. So the length of a curve γ from p to q is a functional of the curve given by S = r ∫ a b θ ′2 + ϕ ′2 sin 2 θ d t. Note that S is at least the length of the meridian from p to q, S ≥ r ∫ a b | θ ′ | d t ≥ r | θ − θ |. Since the starting point and ending point are fixed, S is minimized if and only if φ =0, so the curve must lie on a meridian of the sphere φ = φ0 = constant
7.
Earth
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Earth, otherwise known as the World, or the Globe, is the third planet from the Sun and the only object in the Universe known to harbor life. It is the densest planet in the Solar System and the largest of the four terrestrial planets, according to radiometric dating and other sources of evidence, Earth formed about 4.54 billion years ago. Earths gravity interacts with objects in space, especially the Sun. During one orbit around the Sun, Earth rotates about its axis over 365 times, thus, Earths axis of rotation is tilted, producing seasonal variations on the planets surface. The gravitational interaction between the Earth and Moon causes ocean tides, stabilizes the Earths orientation on its axis, Earths lithosphere is divided into several rigid tectonic plates that migrate across the surface over periods of many millions of years. About 71% of Earths surface is covered with water, mostly by its oceans, the remaining 29% is land consisting of continents and islands that together have many lakes, rivers and other sources of water that contribute to the hydrosphere. The majority of Earths polar regions are covered in ice, including the Antarctic ice sheet, Earths interior remains active with a solid iron inner core, a liquid outer core that generates the Earths magnetic field, and a convecting mantle that drives plate tectonics. Within the first billion years of Earths history, life appeared in the oceans and began to affect the Earths atmosphere and surface, some geological evidence indicates that life may have arisen as much as 4.1 billion years ago. Since then, the combination of Earths distance from the Sun, physical properties, in the history of the Earth, biodiversity has gone through long periods of expansion, occasionally punctuated by mass extinction events. Over 99% of all species that lived on Earth are extinct. Estimates of the number of species on Earth today vary widely, over 7.4 billion humans live on Earth and depend on its biosphere and minerals for their survival. Humans have developed diverse societies and cultures, politically, the world has about 200 sovereign states, the modern English word Earth developed from a wide variety of Middle English forms, which derived from an Old English noun most often spelled eorðe. It has cognates in every Germanic language, and their proto-Germanic root has been reconstructed as *erþō, originally, earth was written in lowercase, and from early Middle English, its definite sense as the globe was expressed as the earth. By early Modern English, many nouns were capitalized, and the became the Earth. More recently, the name is simply given as Earth. House styles now vary, Oxford spelling recognizes the lowercase form as the most common, another convention capitalizes Earth when appearing as a name but writes it in lowercase when preceded by the. It almost always appears in lowercase in colloquial expressions such as what on earth are you doing, the oldest material found in the Solar System is dated to 4. 5672±0.0006 billion years ago. By 4. 54±0.04 Gya the primordial Earth had formed, the formation and evolution of Solar System bodies occurred along with the Sun
8.
Eastern Hemisphere
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The Eastern Hemisphere is a geographical term for the half of the earth that is east of the prime meridian and west of the antimeridian. It is also used to refer to Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia, in contrast with the Western Hemisphere and this hemisphere may also be called the Oriental Hemisphere. In addition, it may be used in a cultural or geopolitical sense as a synonym for the Old World, the line demarcating the Eastern and Western Hemispheres is an arbitrary convention, unlike the Equator which divides the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. The prime meridian at 0° longitude and the antimeridian, at 180° longitude are the accepted boundaries. Prior to the adoption of standard time, numerous prime meridians were decreed by various countries where time was defined by local noon. The center of the Eastern Hemisphere is located in the Indian Ocean at the intersection of the equator, the land mass of the Eastern Hemisphere is larger than that of the Western Hemisphere and has a wide variety of habitats. 82% of humans live in the Eastern Hemisphere, compared to 18% in Western Hemisphere, media related to Eastern Hemisphere at Wikimedia Commons
9.
Gerardus Mercator
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Gerardus Mercator was a 16th-century German-Netherlandish cartographer, geographer and cosmographer. Mercator was one of the founders of the Netherlandish school of cartography and is considered as the most notable representative of the school in its golden age. He chose the word as a commemoration of a King Atlas of Mauretania whom he considered to be the first great geographer and this King Atlas was a son of the Titan Atlas but the two myths very quickly coalesced. A large part of Mercators income came from the sales of his terrestrial and celestial globes, for sixty years they were considered to be the finest in the world, and they were sold in such great numbers that there are many surviving examples. This was a substantial enterprise involving making the spheres, printing the gores, building substantial stands and he was also renowned for his scientific instruments, particularly his astrolabes and astronomical rings used to study the geometry of astronomy and astrology. Mercator wrote on geography, philosophy, chronology and theology, all of the wall maps were engraved with copious text on the region concerned. As an example the famous map of 1569 is inscribed with over 5000 words in fifteen legends. His table of chronology ran to some 400 pages fixing the dates of earthly dynasties, major political and military events, volcanic eruptions and he also wrote on the gospels and the old testament. Mercator was a devout Christian born into a Catholic family at a time when Martin Luthers Protestantism was gaining ground and he never declared himself as a Lutheran but he was clearly sympathetic and he was accused of heresy. He spent six months in prison but he emerged unscathed and this period of persecution is probably the major factor in his move from Catholic Leuven to a more tolerant Duisburg where he lived for the last thirty years of his life. Gerardus Mercator was born Geert De Kremer, the child of Hubert De Kremer. Their home town was Gangelt in the Duchy of Jülich but, at the time of the birth, Hubert was a poor artisan, a shoemaker by trade, but Gisbert, a priest, was a man of some importance in the community. Their stay in Rupelmonde was brief and within six months returned to Gangelt. Six years later, in 1518, the Kremers moved back to Rupelmonde, possibly motivated by the conditions in Gangelt—famine, plague. Today, many Belgians and Germans still claim Mercator as their own, despite the lack of any evidence pertaining to the birthplace and background of his father, Hubert. Most modern scholars adopt a position, hesitating to assign a nationality to Mercator. After Huberts death in 1526, Gisbert became Mercators guardian, hoping that Mercator might follow him into the priesthood, he sent the 15 year old Geert to the famous school of the Brethren of the Common Life at s-Hertogenbosch in the Duchy of Brabant. Mercator would follow similar precepts later in life—with problematic outcomes, the Brethren were renowned for their scriptorum and here Mercator may have encountered the italic script which he employed in his later work
10.
Santa Maria Island
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Santa Maria, Portuguese for Saint Mary, is an island located in the eastern group of the Azores archipelago and the southernmost island in the Azores. The island is known for its white sand beaches, distinctive chimneys. The first records of a group of islands in the Atlantic came from the voyages of Portuguese sailors during the reigns of King Denis and his successor King Afonso IV. These were unsubstantiated accounts and unofficial, until 1427 when navigator Diogo de Silves found the island of Santa Maria during his journey to Madeira. According to legend Cabrals crew disembarked on a beach in the northwestern Ponte dos Canestrantes. The Infante received these gifts in 1432, and immediately ordered that herds be sent to the island, the master or Donatário for the Azores was the Infante Henry the Navigator, who was granted carte blanche to enforce the Kings dominion. Isabella, was nominated the first captain of the island of Santa Maria and São Miguel, by 1460, the chronicler Diogo Gomes de Sintra identified the island as Ilha de Gonçalo Velho, with the choicest lands in the hands of their commander. This area would attain the title of Vila do Porto for the nestled anchorage that developed there, by the end of the 16th century, Santa Maria was divided into three parishes, Nossa Senhora da Assunção, Santa Bárbara and Santo Espírito. Similar to other islands of the archipelago, Santa Maria was a victim of repeated attacks by privateers, joão Soares was eventually captured by the Spaniards, who took him in irons as a prisoner to Castile. Several of his crew were captured, and complex negotiations were undertaken to liberate the same, thankful for their liberation, a mass was celebrated by him and his party in the old chapel before he returned to Spain. During this period, the island came to depend on the Governor General of the Azores, after the Portuguese Restoration War, the news was greeted with celebrations and excesses by the Captain-Major Brás de Sousa. During the Portuguese Civil War the citizens supported the rights of Maria II to the throne of Portugal, the Captain-major even attempted to raise arms from Terceira, insofar as sending a carrack to collect the weapons. In the interim, the São Miguel administration changed sides in the conflict, by the following year, several Marienses joined the expeditionary force disembarking on the continent along Arnosa de Pampelido beach during one of the crucial battles of the Civil War. On 8 February 1989, an American chartered Boeing 707 of Independent Air Flight 1851 crashed at Pico Alto, there was confusion between tower and pilots as to the appropriate altitude during their approach. The island of Santa Maria is oblong and measures 97, due to the impermeability of the soils, this regions is arid with fewer leafy plants or grasses. To the north and south the principal points of colonization occurred, and 65% of the current population resides in this region, which includes the parishes of Vila do Porto, São Pedro and Almagreira. Airport lands represent the largest use of the space, as the Santa Maria airport is located along the western coast taking advantage of the plain, river valleys along the north and south divide many of the communities. The eastern one-third of the island is composed of eroded hills and mountains, covered by areas of vegetation, pasture lands
11.
Atlantic
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The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the worlds oceans with a total area of about 106,460,000 square kilometres. It covers approximately 20 percent of the Earths surface and about 29 percent of its surface area. It separates the Old World from the New World, the Atlantic Ocean occupies an elongated, S-shaped basin extending longitudinally between Eurasia and Africa to the east, and the Americas to the west. The Equatorial Counter Current subdivides it into the North Atlantic Ocean, in contrast, the term Atlantic originally referred specifically to the Atlas Mountains in Morocco and the sea off the Strait of Gibraltar and the North African coast. The Greek word thalassa has been reused by scientists for the huge Panthalassa ocean that surrounded the supercontinent Pangaea hundreds of years ago. The term Aethiopian Ocean, derived from Ancient Ethiopia, was applied to the Southern Atlantic as late as the mid-19th century, many Irish or British people refer to the United States and Canada as across the pond, and vice versa. The Black Atlantic refers to the role of ocean in shaping black peoples history. Irish migration to the US is meant when the term The Green Atlantic is used, the term Red Atlantic has been used in reference to the Marxian concept of an Atlantic working class, as well as to the Atlantic experience of indigenous Americans. Correspondingly, the extent and number of oceans and seas varies, the Atlantic Ocean is bounded on the west by North and South America. It connects to the Arctic Ocean through the Denmark Strait, Greenland Sea, Norwegian Sea, to the east, the boundaries of the ocean proper are Europe, the Strait of Gibraltar and Africa. In the southeast, the Atlantic merges into the Indian Ocean, the 20° East meridian, running south from Cape Agulhas to Antarctica defines its border. In the 1953 definition it extends south to Antarctica, while in later maps it is bounded at the 60° parallel by the Southern Ocean, the Atlantic has irregular coasts indented by numerous bays, gulfs, and seas. Including these marginal seas the coast line of the Atlantic measures 111,866 km compared to 135,663 km for the Pacific. Including its marginal seas, the Atlantic covers an area of 106,460,000 km2 or 23. 5% of the ocean and has a volume of 310,410,900 km3 or 23. 3%. Excluding its marginal seas, the Atlantic covers 81,760,000 km2 and has a volume of 305,811,900 km3, the North Atlantic covers 41,490,000 km2 and the South Atlantic 40,270,000 km2. The average depth is 3,646 m and the maximum depth, the bathymetry of the Atlantic is dominated by a submarine mountain range called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. It runs from 87°N or 300 km south of the North Pole to the subantarctic Bouvet Island at 42°S, the MAR divides the Atlantic longitudinally into two halves, in each of which a series of basins are delimited by secondary, transverse ridges. The MAR reaches above 2000 m along most of its length, the MAR is a barrier for bottom water, but at these two transform faults deep water currents can pass from one side to the other
12.
Equator
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The Equator usually refers to an imaginary line on the Earths surface equidistant from the North Pole and South Pole, dividing the Earth into the Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere. The Equator is about 40,075 kilometres long, some 78. 7% lies across water and 21. 3% over land, other planets and astronomical bodies have equators similarly defined. Generally, an equator is the intersection of the surface of a sphere with the plane that is perpendicular to the spheres axis of rotation. The latitude of the Earths equator is by definition 0° of arc, the equator is the only line of latitude which is also a great circle — that is, one whose plane passes through the center of the globe. The plane of Earths equator when projected outwards to the celestial sphere defines the celestial equator, in the cycle of Earths seasons, the plane of the equator passes through the Sun twice per year, at the March and September equinoxes. To an observer on the Earth, the Sun appears to travel North or South over the equator at these times, light rays from the center of the Sun are perpendicular to the surface of the Earth at the point of solar noon on the Equator. Locations on the Equator experience the quickest sunrises and sunsets because the sun moves nearly perpendicular to the horizon for most of the year. The Earth bulges slightly at the Equator, the diameter of the Earth is 12,750 kilometres. Because the Earth spins to the east, spacecraft must also launch to the east to take advantage of this Earth-boost of speed, seasons result from the yearly revolution of the Earth around the Sun and the tilt of the Earths axis relative to the plane of revolution. During the year the northern and southern hemispheres are inclined toward or away from the sun according to Earths position in its orbit, the hemisphere inclined toward the sun receives more sunlight and is in summer, while the other hemisphere receives less sun and is in winter. At the equinoxes, the Earths axis is not tilted toward the sun, instead it is perpendicular to the sun meaning that the day is about 12 hours long, as is the night, across the whole of the Earth. Near the Equator there is distinction between summer, winter, autumn, or spring. The temperatures are usually high year-round—with the exception of high mountains in South America, the temperature at the Equator can plummet during rainstorms. In many tropical regions people identify two seasons, the wet season and the dry season, but many places close to the Equator are on the oceans or rainy throughout the year, the seasons can vary depending on elevation and proximity to an ocean. The Equator lies mostly on the three largest oceans, the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Indian Ocean. The highest point on the Equator is at the elevation of 4,690 metres, at 0°0′0″N 77°59′31″W and this is slightly above the snow line, and is the only place on the Equator where snow lies on the ground. At the Equator the snow line is around 1,000 metres lower than on Mount Everest, the Equator traverses the land of 11 countries, it also passes through two island nations, though without making a landfall in either. Starting at the Prime Meridian and heading eastwards, the Equator passes through, Despite its name, however, its island of Annobón is 155 km south of the Equator, and the rest of the country lies to the north
13.
IERS Reference Meridian
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The IERS Reference Meridian, also called the International Reference Meridian, is the prime meridian maintained by the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service. It passes about 5.3 arcseconds east of George Biddell Airys 1851 transit circle or 102.478 metres at the latitude of the Royal Observatory, the International Hydrographic Organization adopted an early version of the IRM in 1983 for all nautical charts. The IRM was adopted for air navigation by the International Civil Aviation Organization on 3 March 1989, examples include the North American Datum 1983, the European Terrestrial Reference Frame 1989, and the Geocentric Datum of Australia 1994. Versions fixed to a tectonic plate differ from the version by at most a few centimetres. However, the IRM is not fixed to any point on Earth, instead, all points on the European portion of the Eurasian plate, including the Royal Observatory, are slowly moving northeast about 2.5 cm per year relative to it. Thus this IRM is the average of the reference meridians of the hundreds of ground stations contributing to the IERS network. The network includes GPS stations, Satellite Laser Ranging stations, Lunar Laser Ranging stations, all stations coordinates are adjusted annually to remove net rotation relative to the major tectonic plates. The 180th meridian is opposite the IERS Reference Meridian and forms a circle with it dividing the earth into Western Hemisphere. Universal Time is notionally based on the WGS84 meridian, because of changes in the rate of Earths rotation, standard international time UTC can differ from the mean observed solar time at noon on the prime meridian by up to 0.9 second. Leap seconds are inserted periodically to keep UTC close to Earths angular position relative to the Sun, see mean solar time
14.
History of longitude
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The history of longitude is a record of the effort, by astronomers, cartographers and navigators over several centuries, to discover a means of determining longitude. The measurement of longitude is important to both cartography and navigation, in particular to provide safe ocean navigation, knowledge of both latitude and longitude was required. Finding an accurate and reliable method of determining longitude took centuries of study, eratosthenes in the 3rd century BC first proposed a system of latitude and longitude for a map of the world. By the 2nd century BC Hipparchus was the first to use such a system to uniquely specify places on the earth and he also proposed a system of determining longitude by comparing the local time of a place with an absolute time. This is the first recognition that longitude can be determined by knowledge of time. In the 11th century Al-Biruni believed the earth rotated on its axis and this forms our modern notion of how time and longitude are related. Determining latitude was relatively easy in that it could be found from the altitude of the sun at noon with the aid of a table giving the suns declination for the day, for longitude, early ocean navigators had to rely on dead reckoning. This was inaccurate on long voyages out of sight of land, determining longitude at sea was also much harder than on land. Whatever could be discovered from solving the problem at sea would improve the determination of longitude on land. In order to avoid problems with not knowing ones position accurately, navigators have and they would sail to the latitude of their destination, turn toward their destination and follow a line of constant latitude. This was known as running down a westing and this prevented a ship from taking the most direct route or a route with the most favourable winds and currents, extending the voyage by days or even weeks. This increased the likelihood of short rations, which could lead to health or even death for members of the crew due to scurvy or starvation. Errors in navigation have also resulted in shipwrecks. for such person or persons as shall discover the Longitude, the prizes were to be awarded for the discovery and demonstration of a practical method for determining the longitude of a ship at sea. Prizes were offered in graduated amounts for solutions of increasing accuracy and these prizes, worth the equivalent of millions of pounds in todays currency, motivated many to search for a solution. Britain was not alone in the desire to solve the problem, frances King Louis XIV founded the Académie Royale des Sciences in 1666. It was charged with, among a range of scientific activities, advancement of the science of navigation. From 1715, the Académie offered one of the two Prix Rouillés specifically for navigation, spains Philip II offered a prize for the discovery of a solution to the problem of the longitude in 1567, Philip III increased the prize in 1598. Holland added to the effort with a prize offered in 1636, navigators and scientists in most European countries were aware of the problem and were involved in finding a solution
15.
Maximus Planudes
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Maximus Planudes was a Byzantine Greek monk, scholar, anthologist, translator, grammarian and theologian at Constantinople. Through his translations from Latin into Greek and from Greek into Latin he brought the Greek East and he is now best known as a compiler of the Greek Anthology. Maximus Planudes lived during the reigns of the Byzantine emperors Michael VIII and he was born at Nicomedia in Bithynia in 1260, but the greater part of his life was spent in Constantinople, where as a monk he devoted himself to study and teaching. On entering the monastery he changed his original name Manuel to Maximus, Planudes possessed a knowledge of Latin remarkable at a time when Rome and Italy were regarded with some hostility by the Greeks of the Byzantine Empire. A more important result was that Planudes, especially by his translations, paved the way for the revival of the study of Greek language, traditionally, a translation of Julius Caesars De Bello Gallico has been attributed to Planudes, but this is much repeated mistake. These translations were not only useful to Greek speakers but were widely used in western Europe as textbooks for the study of Greek. It is, however, for his edition of the Greek Anthology that he is best known. J. W. Mackail in his book Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology, has this to add of him, Among his works were translations into Greek of Augustines City of God, the restored Greek Empire of the Palaeologi was then fast dropping to pieces. This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh, ed. Planudes. Editions include, Fabricius, Bibliotheca graeca, ed. Harles,682, theological writings in Migne, Patrologia Graeca, cxlvii, correspondence, ed. M Treu, with a valuable commentary K. Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur J. E. Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship, vol
16.
Greeks
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The Greeks or Hellenes are an ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus, southern Albania, Turkey, Sicily, Egypt and, to a lesser extent, other countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world, many of these regions coincided to a large extent with the borders of the Byzantine Empire of the late 11th century and the Eastern Mediterranean areas of ancient Greek colonization. The cultural centers of the Greeks have included Athens, Thessalonica, Alexandria, Smyrna, most ethnic Greeks live nowadays within the borders of the modern Greek state and Cyprus. The Greek genocide and population exchange between Greece and Turkey nearly ended the three millennia-old Greek presence in Asia Minor, other longstanding Greek populations can be found from southern Italy to the Caucasus and southern Russia and Ukraine and in the Greek diaspora communities in a number of other countries. Today, most Greeks are officially registered as members of the Greek Orthodox Church, the Greeks speak the Greek language, which forms its own unique branch within the Indo-European family of languages, the Hellenic. They are part of a group of ethnicities, described by Anthony D. Smith as an archetypal diaspora people. Both migrations occur at incisive periods, the Mycenaean at the transition to the Late Bronze Age, the Mycenaeans quickly penetrated the Aegean Sea and, by the 15th century BC, had reached Rhodes, Crete, Cyprus and the shores of Asia Minor. Around 1200 BC, the Dorians, another Greek-speaking people, followed from Epirus, the Dorian invasion was followed by a poorly attested period of migrations, appropriately called the Greek Dark Ages, but by 800 BC the landscape of Archaic and Classical Greece was discernible. The Greeks of classical antiquity idealized their Mycenaean ancestors and the Mycenaean period as an era of heroes, closeness of the gods. The Homeric Epics were especially and generally accepted as part of the Greek past, as part of the Mycenaean heritage that survived, the names of the gods and goddesses of Mycenaean Greece became major figures of the Olympian Pantheon of later antiquity. The ethnogenesis of the Greek nation is linked to the development of Pan-Hellenism in the 8th century BC, the works of Homer and Hesiod were written in the 8th century BC, becoming the basis of the national religion, ethos, history and mythology. The Oracle of Apollo at Delphi was established in this period, the classical period of Greek civilization covers a time spanning from the early 5th century BC to the death of Alexander the Great, in 323 BC. It is so named because it set the standards by which Greek civilization would be judged in later eras, the Peloponnesian War, the large scale civil war between the two most powerful Greek city-states Athens and Sparta and their allies, left both greatly weakened. Many Greeks settled in Hellenistic cities like Alexandria, Antioch and Seleucia, two thousand years later, there are still communities in Pakistan and Afghanistan, like the Kalash, who claim to be descended from Greek settlers. The Hellenistic civilization was the period of Greek civilization, the beginnings of which are usually placed at Alexanders death. This Hellenistic age, so called because it saw the partial Hellenization of many non-Greek cultures and this age saw the Greeks move towards larger cities and a reduction in the importance of the city-state. These larger cities were parts of the still larger Kingdoms of the Diadochi, Greeks, however, remained aware of their past, chiefly through the study of the works of Homer and the classical authors. An important factor in maintaining Greek identity was contact with barbarian peoples and this led to a strong desire among Greeks to organize the transmission of the Hellenic paideia to the next generation
17.
Eratosthenes
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Eratosthenes of Cyrene was a Greek mathematician, geographer, poet, astronomer, and music theorist. He was a man of learning, becoming the librarian at the Library of Alexandria. He invented the discipline of geography, including the terminology used today and he is best known for being the first person to calculate the circumference of the Earth, which he did by applying a measuring system using stadia, a standard unit of measure during that time period. He was also the first to calculate the tilt of the Earths axis, additionally, he may have accurately calculated the distance from the Earth to the Sun and invented the leap day. He created the first map of the world, incorporating parallels, Eratosthenes was the founder of scientific chronology, he endeavored to revise the dates of the chief literary and political events from the conquest of Troy. In number theory, he introduced the sieve of Eratosthenes, an efficient method of identifying prime numbers and he was a figure of influence in many fields. According to an entry in the Suda, his critics scorned him, nonetheless, his devotees nicknamed him Pentathlos after the Olympians who were well rounded competitors, for he had proven himself to be knowledgeable in every area of learning. Eratosthenes yearned to understand the complexities of the entire world, the son of Aglaos, Eratosthenes was born in 276 BC in Cyrene. Alexander the Great conquered Cyrene in 332 BC, and following his death in 323 BC, its rule was given to one of his generals, Ptolemy I Soter, the founder of the Ptolemaic Kingdom. Under Ptolemaic rule the economy prospered, based largely on the export of horses and silphium, Cyrene became a place of cultivation, where knowledge blossomed. Eratosthenes went to Athens to further his studies, there he was taught Stoicism by its founder, Zeno of Citium, in philosophical lectures on living a virtuous life. He then studied under Ariston of Chios, who led a more cynical school of philosophy and he also studied under the head of the Platonic Academy, who was Arcesilaus of Pitane. His interest in Plato led him to write his very first work at a level, Platonikos. Eratosthenes was a man of many perspectives and investigated the art of poetry under Callimachus and he was a talented and imaginative poet. He wrote poems, one in hexameters called Hermes, illustrating the life history. He wrote Chronographies, a text that scientifically depicted dates of importance and this work was highly esteemed for its accuracy. George Syncellus was later able to preserve from Chronographies a list of 38 kings of the Egyptian Thebes, Eratosthenes also wrote Olympic Victors, a chronology of the winners of the Olympic Games. It is not known when he wrote his works, but they highlighted his abilities and these works and his great poetic abilities led the pharaoh Ptolemy III Euergetes to seek to place him as a librarian at the Library of Alexandria in the year 245 BC
18.
Alexandria
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Alexandria is the second largest city and a major economic centre in Egypt, extending about 32 km along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north central part of the country. Its low elevation on the Nile delta makes it vulnerable to rising sea levels. Alexandria is Egypts largest seaport, serving approximately 80% of Egypts imports and exports and it is an important industrial center because of its natural gas and oil pipelines from Suez. Alexandria is also an important tourist destination, Alexandria was founded around a small Ancient Egyptian town c.331 BC by Alexander the Great. Alexandria was the second most powerful city of the ancient world after Rome, Alexandria is believed to have been founded by Alexander the Great in April 331 BC as Ἀλεξάνδρεια. Alexanders chief architect for the project was Dinocrates, Alexandria was intended to supersede Naucratis as a Hellenistic center in Egypt, and to be the link between Greece and the rich Nile valley. The city and its museum attracted many of the greatest scholars, including Greeks, Jews, the city was later plundered and lost its significance. Just east of Alexandria, there was in ancient times marshland, as early as the 7th century BC, there existed important port cities of Canopus and Heracleion. The latter was rediscovered under water. An Egyptian city, Rhakotis, already existed on the shore also and it continued to exist as the Egyptian quarter of the city. A few months after the foundation, Alexander left Egypt and never returned to his city, after Alexanders departure, his viceroy, Cleomenes, continued the expansion. Although Cleomenes was mainly in charge of overseeing Alexandrias continuous development, the Heptastadion, inheriting the trade of ruined Tyre and becoming the center of the new commerce between Europe and the Arabian and Indian East, the city grew in less than a generation to be larger than Carthage. In a century, Alexandria had become the largest city in the world and and it became Egypts main Greek city, with Greek people from diverse backgrounds. Alexandria was not only a center of Hellenism, but was home to the largest urban Jewish community in the world. The Septuagint, a Greek version of the Tanakh, was produced there, in AD115, large parts of Alexandria were destroyed during the Kitos War, which gave Hadrian and his architect, Decriannus, an opportunity to rebuild it. On 21 July 365, Alexandria was devastated by a tsunami, the Islamic prophet, Muhammads first interaction with the people of Egypt occurred in 628, during the Expedition of Zaid ibn Haritha. He sent Hatib bin Abi Baltaeh with a letter to the king of Egypt and Alexandria called Muqawqis In the letter Muhammad said, I invite you to accept Islam, Allah the sublime, shall reward you doubly. But if you refuse to do so, you bear the burden of the transgression of all the Copts
19.
Hipparchus
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Hipparchus of Nicaea was a Greek astronomer, geographer, and mathematician. He is considered the founder of trigonometry but is most famous for his discovery of precession of the equinoxes. Hipparchus was born in Nicaea, Bithynia, and probably died on the island of Rhodes and he is known to have been a working astronomer at least from 162 to 127 BC. Hipparchus is considered the greatest ancient astronomical observer and, by some and he was the first whose quantitative and accurate models for the motion of the Sun and Moon survive. For this he made use of the observations and perhaps the mathematical techniques accumulated over centuries by the Babylonians. He developed trigonometry and constructed trigonometric tables, and he solved problems of spherical trigonometry. With his solar and lunar theories and his trigonometry, he may have been the first to develop a method to predict solar eclipses. Relatively little of Hipparchuss direct work survives into modern times, although he wrote at least fourteen books, only his commentary on the popular astronomical poem by Aratus was preserved by later copyists. There is a tradition that Hipparchus was born in Nicaea, in the ancient district of Bithynia. His birth date was calculated by Delambre based on clues in his work, Hipparchus must have lived some time after 127 BC because he analyzed and published his observations from that year. Hipparchus obtained information from Alexandria as well as Babylon, but it is not known when or if he visited these places and he is believed to have died on the island of Rhodes, where he seems to have spent most of his later life. It is not known what Hipparchuss economic means were nor how he supported his scientific activities and his appearance is likewise unknown, there are no contemporary portraits. In the 2nd and 3rd centuries coins were made in his honour in Bithynia that bear his name and show him with a globe, this supports the tradition that he was born there. As an astronomer of antiquity his influence, supported by ideas from Aristotle, held sway for nearly 2000 years, Hipparchuss only preserved work is Τῶν Ἀράτου καὶ Εὐδόξου φαινομένων ἐξήγησις. This is a critical commentary in the form of two books on a popular poem by Aratus based on the work by Eudoxus. Hipparchus also made a list of his works, which apparently mentioned about fourteen books. His famous star catalog was incorporated into the one by Ptolemy, the first trigonometric table was apparently compiled by Hipparchus, who is now consequently known as the father of trigonometry. There are a variety of mis-steps in the more ambitious 2005 paper, According to one book review, both of these claims have been rejected by other scholars
20.
Rhodes
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Rhodes is the largest of the Dodecanese islands in terms of land area and also the island groups historical capital. Administratively the island forms a municipality within the Rhodes regional unit. The principal town of the island and seat of the municipality is Rhodes, the city of Rhodes had 50,636 inhabitants in 2011. It is located northeast of Crete, southeast of Athens and just off the Anatolian coast of Turkey, Rhodes nickname is The island of the Knights, named after the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, who once conquered the land. Historically, Rhodes was famous worldwide for the Colossus of Rhodes, the Medieval Old Town of the City of Rhodes has been declared a World Heritage Site. Today, it is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Europe, the island has been known as Ρόδος in Greek throughout its history. In addition, the island has been called Rodi in Italian, Rodos in Turkish, and Rodi or Rodes in Ladino. The island of Rhodes is shaped like a spearhead,79.7 km long and 38 km wide, with an area of approximately 1,400 square kilometres. The city of Rhodes is located at the tip of the island, as well as the site of the ancient. The main air gateway is located 14 km to the southwest of the city in Paradisi, the road network radiates from the city along the east and west coasts. There are mineral-rich spring water used to give medicinal baths and the spa resorts offer various health treatments, Rhodes is situated 363 km east-south-east from the Greek mainland, and 18 km from the southern shore of Turkey. The interior of the island is mountainous, sparsely inhabited and covered with forests of pine, while the shores are rocky, the island has arable strips of land where citrus fruit, wine grapes, vegetables, olives and other crops are grown. The Rhodian population of deer was found to be genetically distinct in 2005. In Petaloudes Valley, large numbers of tiger moths gather during the summer months, mount Attavyros, at 1,216 metres, is the islands highest point of elevation. Earthquakes include the 226 BC earthquake that destroyed the Colossus of Rhodes, one on 3 May 1481 which destroyed much of the city of Rhodes, and one on 26 June 1926. On 15 July 2008, Rhodes was struck by a 6.3 magnitude earthquake causing minor damage to a few old buildings, Rhodes has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. The island was inhabited in the Neolithic period, although remains of this culture. In the 16th century BC, the Minoans came to Rhodes, later Greek mythology recalled a Rhodian race called the Telchines and associated the island of Rhodes with Danaus, it was sometimes nicknamed Telchinis
21.
Geographer
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A geographer is a scholar whose area of study is geography, the study of Earths natural environment and human society. Although geographers are historically known as people who make maps, map making is actually the field of study of cartography, geographers do not study only the details of the natural environment or human society, but they also study the reciprocal relationship between these two. For example, they study how the natural environment contributes to the human society, in particular, physical geographers study the natural environment while human geographers study human society. There is a painting by Johannes Vermeer titled The Geographer. These paintings are thought to represent the growing influence and rise in prominence of scientific enquiry in Europe at the time of their painting. Human geography, including Urban geography, cultural geography, economic geography, political geography, historical geography, marketing geography, health geography, and social geography
22.
Strabo
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Strabo was a Greek geographer, philosopher, and historian who lived in Asia Minor during the transitional period of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus, Strabos life was characterized by extensive travels. He journeyed to Egypt and Kush, as far west as coastal Tuscany and as far south as Ethiopia in addition to his travels in Asia Minor and the time he spent in Rome. Travel throughout the Mediterranean and Near East, especially for scholarly purposes, was popular during this era and was facilitated by the relative peace enjoyed throughout the reign of Augustus. He moved to Rome in 44 BC, and stayed there, studying and writing, in 29 BC, on his way to Corinth, he visited the island of Gyaros in the Aegean Sea. Around 25 BC, he sailed up the Nile until reaching Philae and it is not known precisely when Strabos Geography was written, though comments within the work itself place the finished version within the reign of Emperor Tiberius. Some place its first drafts around 7 BC, others around 17 or 18 AD, the latest passage to which a date can be assigned is his reference to the death in AD23 of Juba II, king of Maurousia, who is said to have died just recently. He probably worked on the Geography for many years and revised it steadily, on the presumption that recently means within a year, Strabo stopped writing that year or the next, when he died. The first of Strabos major works, Historical Sketches, written while he was in Rome, is completely lost. Strabo studied under several prominent teachers of various specialties throughout his life at different stops along his Mediterranean travels. His first chapter of education took place in Nysa under the master of rhetoric Aristodemus, Strabo was an admirer of Homers poetry, perhaps a consequence of his time spent in Nysa with Aristodemus. At around the age of 21, Strabo moved to Rome, where he studied philosophy with the Peripatetic Xenarchus, despite Xenarchuss Aristotelian leanings, Strabo later gives evidence to have formed his own Stoic inclinations. In Rome, he learned grammar under the rich and famous scholar Tyrannion of Amisus. Although Tyrannion was also a Peripatetic, he was more relevantly a respected authority on geography, the final noteworthy mentor to Strabo was Athenodorus Cananites, a philosopher who had spent his life since 44 BC in Rome forging relationships with the Roman elite. Athenodorus endowed to Strabo three important items, his philosophy, his knowledge, and his contacts, moreover, from his own first-hand experience, Athenodorus provided Strabo with information about regions of the empire which he would not otherwise have known. Strabo is most notable for his work Geographica, which presented a history of people. Although the Geographica was rarely utilized in its antiquity, a multitude of copies survived throughout the Byzantine Empire. It first appeared in Western Europe in Rome as a Latin translation issued around 1469, the first Greek edition was published in 1516 in Venice
23.
Ptolemy
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Claudius Ptolemy was a Greek writer, known as a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology. He lived in the city of Alexandria in the Roman province of Egypt, wrote in Koine Greek, beyond that, few reliable details of his life are known. His birthplace has been given as Ptolemais Hermiou in the Thebaid in a statement by the 14th-century astronomer Theodore Meliteniotes. This is a very late attestation, however, and there is no reason to suppose that he ever lived elsewhere than Alexandria. Ptolemy wrote several treatises, three of which were of importance to later Byzantine, Islamic and European science. The first is the astronomical treatise now known as the Almagest, although it was entitled the Mathematical Treatise. The second is the Geography, which is a discussion of the geographic knowledge of the Greco-Roman world. The third is the treatise in which he attempted to adapt horoscopic astrology to the Aristotelian natural philosophy of his day. This is sometimes known as the Apotelesmatika but more known as the Tetrabiblos from the Greek meaning Four Books or by the Latin Quadripartitum. The name Claudius is a Roman nomen, the fact that Ptolemy bore it indicates he lived under the Roman rule of Egypt with the privileges and political rights of Roman citizenship. It would have suited custom if the first of Ptolemys family to become a citizen took the nomen from a Roman called Claudius who was responsible for granting citizenship, if, as was common, this was the emperor, citizenship would have been granted between AD41 and 68. The astronomer would also have had a praenomen, which remains unknown and it occurs once in Greek mythology, and is of Homeric form. All the kings after him, until Egypt became a Roman province in 30 BC, were also Ptolemies, abu Mashar recorded a belief that a different member of this royal line composed the book on astrology and attributed it to Ptolemy. The correct answer is not known”, Ptolemy wrote in Greek and can be shown to have utilized Babylonian astronomical data. He was a Roman citizen, but most scholars conclude that Ptolemy was ethnically Greek and he was often known in later Arabic sources as the Upper Egyptian, suggesting he may have had origins in southern Egypt. Later Arabic astronomers, geographers and physicists referred to him by his name in Arabic, Ptolemys Almagest is the only surviving comprehensive ancient treatise on astronomy. Ptolemy presented his models in convenient tables, which could be used to compute the future or past position of the planets. The Almagest also contains a catalogue, which is a version of a catalogue created by Hipparchus
24.
Geography (Ptolemy)
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Its translation into Arabic in the 9th century and Latin in 1406 was highly influential on the geographical knowledge and cartographic traditions of the medieval Caliphate and Renaissance Europe. Versions of Ptolemys work in antiquity were probably proper atlases with attached maps, no Greek manuscript of the Geography survives from earlier than the 13th century. In Europe, maps were sometimes made using the coordinates provided by the text. Later scribes and publishers could then copy these new maps, as Athanasius did for the emperor Andronicus II Palaeologus, the three earliest surviving texts with maps are those from Constantinople based on Planudess work. The first Latin translation of texts was made in 1406 or 1407 by Jacobus Angelus in Florence, Italy. It is not thought that his edition had maps, although Manuel Chrysoloras had given Palla Strozzi a Greek copy of Planudess maps in Florence in 1397, the Geography consists of three sections, divided among 8 books. Book I is a treatise on cartography, describing the methods used to assemble, from Book II through the beginning of Book VII, a gazetteer provides longitude and latitude values for the world known to the ancient Romans. The rest of Book VII provides details on three projections to be used for the construction of a map of the world, varying in complexity and fidelity, Book VIII constitutes an atlas of regional maps. The maps include a recapitulation of some of the values given earlier in the work, Maps based on scientific principles had been made in Europe since the time of Eratosthenes in the 3rd century BC. Ptolemy improved the treatment of map projections and he provided instructions on how to create his maps in the first section of the work. The gazetteer section of Ptolemys work provided latitude and longitude coördinates for all the places and his Prime Meridian ran through the Fortunate Isles, the westernmost land recorded, at around the position of El Hierro in the Canary Islands. The maps spanned 180 degrees of longitude from the Fortunate Isles in the Atlantic to China, Ptolemy was aware that Europe knew only about a quarter of the globe. Ptolemys work included a large and less detailed world map and then separate. As early as the 1420s, these maps were complemented by extra-Ptolemaic regional maps depicting. The original treatise by Marinus of Tyre that formed the basis of Ptolemys Geography has been completely lost, a world map based on Ptolemy was displayed in Augustodunum in late Roman times. Pappus, writing at Alexandria in the 4th century, produced a commentary on Ptolemys Geography, for instance, Grant Parker argues that it would be highly implausible for them to have constructed the Bay of Bengal as precisely as they did without the accounts of sailors. Muslim cartographers were using copies of Ptolemys Almagest and Geography by the 9th century, a 1037 copy of these are the earliest extant maps from Islamic lands. Nallino suggests that the work was not based on Ptolemy but on a world map
25.
Atlantic Ocean
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The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the worlds oceans with a total area of about 106,460,000 square kilometres. It covers approximately 20 percent of the Earths surface and about 29 percent of its surface area. It separates the Old World from the New World, the Atlantic Ocean occupies an elongated, S-shaped basin extending longitudinally between Eurasia and Africa to the east, and the Americas to the west. The Equatorial Counter Current subdivides it into the North Atlantic Ocean, in contrast, the term Atlantic originally referred specifically to the Atlas Mountains in Morocco and the sea off the Strait of Gibraltar and the North African coast. The Greek word thalassa has been reused by scientists for the huge Panthalassa ocean that surrounded the supercontinent Pangaea hundreds of years ago. The term Aethiopian Ocean, derived from Ancient Ethiopia, was applied to the Southern Atlantic as late as the mid-19th century, many Irish or British people refer to the United States and Canada as across the pond, and vice versa. The Black Atlantic refers to the role of ocean in shaping black peoples history. Irish migration to the US is meant when the term The Green Atlantic is used, the term Red Atlantic has been used in reference to the Marxian concept of an Atlantic working class, as well as to the Atlantic experience of indigenous Americans. Correspondingly, the extent and number of oceans and seas varies, the Atlantic Ocean is bounded on the west by North and South America. It connects to the Arctic Ocean through the Denmark Strait, Greenland Sea, Norwegian Sea, to the east, the boundaries of the ocean proper are Europe, the Strait of Gibraltar and Africa. In the southeast, the Atlantic merges into the Indian Ocean, the 20° East meridian, running south from Cape Agulhas to Antarctica defines its border. In the 1953 definition it extends south to Antarctica, while in later maps it is bounded at the 60° parallel by the Southern Ocean, the Atlantic has irregular coasts indented by numerous bays, gulfs, and seas. Including these marginal seas the coast line of the Atlantic measures 111,866 km compared to 135,663 km for the Pacific. Including its marginal seas, the Atlantic covers an area of 106,460,000 km2 or 23. 5% of the ocean and has a volume of 310,410,900 km3 or 23. 3%. Excluding its marginal seas, the Atlantic covers 81,760,000 km2 and has a volume of 305,811,900 km3, the North Atlantic covers 41,490,000 km2 and the South Atlantic 40,270,000 km2. The average depth is 3,646 m and the maximum depth, the bathymetry of the Atlantic is dominated by a submarine mountain range called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. It runs from 87°N or 300 km south of the North Pole to the subantarctic Bouvet Island at 42°S, the MAR divides the Atlantic longitudinally into two halves, in each of which a series of basins are delimited by secondary, transverse ridges. The MAR reaches above 2000 m along most of its length, the MAR is a barrier for bottom water, but at these two transform faults deep water currents can pass from one side to the other
26.
Canary Islands
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The Canary Islands, also known as the Canaries, are an archipelago and autonomous community of Spain located on the Atlantic Ocean,100 kilometres west of Morocco. The Canaries are among the outermost regions of the European Union proper and it is also one of the eight regions with special consideration of historical nationality recognized as such by the Spanish Government. The main islands are Tenerife, Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, La Palma, La Gomera, the archipelago also includes a number of islands and islets, La Graciosa, Alegranza, Isla de Lobos, Montaña Clara, Roque del Oeste and Roque del Este. In ancient times, the chain was often referred to as the Fortunate Isles. The Canary Islands is the most southerly region of Spain and the largest and most populated archipelago of the Macaronesia region, the islands have a subtropical climate, with long hot summers and moderately warm winters. The precipitation levels and the level of maritime moderation varies depending on location and elevation, green areas as well as desert exist on the archipelago. Due to their location above the inversion layer, the high mountains of these islands are ideal for astronomical observation. For this reason, two professional observatories, Teide Observatory on the island of Tenerife and Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on the island of La Palma, have built on the islands. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria has been the largest city in the Canaries since 1768, between the 1833 territorial division of Spain and 1927 Santa Cruz de Tenerife was the sole capital of the Canary Islands. In 1927 a decree ordered that the capital of the Canary Islands be shared, the third largest city of the Canary Islands is San Cristóbal de La Laguna on Tenerife. This city is home to the Consejo Consultivo de Canarias. During the time of the Spanish Empire, the Canaries were the main stopover for Spanish galleons on their way to the Americas, who came south to catch the prevailing northeasterly trade winds. The name Islas Canarias is likely derived from the Latin name Canariae Insulae, meaning Islands of the Dogs, according to the historian Pliny the Elder, the Mauretanian king Juba II named the island Canaria because it contained vast multitudes of dogs of very large size. Another speculation is that the dogs were actually a species of monk seal, critically endangered. The dense population of seals may have been the characteristic that most struck the few ancient Romans who established contact with these islands by sea. Alternatively, it is said that the inhabitants of the island, Guanches, used to worship dogs, mummified them. The ancient Greeks also knew about a people, living far to the west, who are the dog-headed ones, who worshipped dogs on an island. Some hypothesize that the Canary Islands dog-worship and the ancient Egyptian cult of the god, Anubis are closely connected
27.
Cape Verde
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Located 570 kilometres off the coast of West Africa, the islands cover a combined area of slightly over 4,000 square kilometres. The Cape Verde archipelago was uninhabited until the 15th century, when Portuguese explorers discovered and colonized the islands, ideally located for the Atlantic slave trade, the islands grew prosperous throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, attracting merchants, privateers, and pirates. The end of slavery in the 19th century led to economic decline, Cape Verde gradually recovered as an important commercial center and stopover for shipping routes. Incorporated as a department of Portugal in 1951, the islands continued to agitate for independence. Since the early 1990s, Cape Verde has been a representative democracy. Lacking natural resources, its economy is mostly service-oriented, with a growing focus on tourism. Its population of around 512,000 is mostly of mixed European and sub-Saharan African heritage, a sizeable diaspora community exists across the world, slightly outnumbering inhabitants on the islands. Historically, the name Cape Verde has been used in English for the archipelago and, since independence in 1975, for the country. In 2013, the Cape Verdean government determined that the Portuguese designation Cabo Verde would henceforth be used for official purposes, such as at the United Nations, Cape Verde is a member of the African Union. The name of the stems from the nearby Cap-Vert, on the Senegalese coast. In 1444 Portuguese explorers had named that landmark as Cabo Verde, on 24 October 2013, the countrys delegation announced at the United Nations that the official name should no longer be translated into other languages. Instead of Cape Verde, the designation Republic of Cabo Verde is to be used, before the arrival of Europeans, the Cape Verde Islands were uninhabited. The islands of the Cape Verde archipelago were discovered by Genoese and Portuguese navigators around 1456, according to Portuguese official records, the first discoveries were made by Genoa-born António de Noli, who was afterwards appointed governor of Cape Verde by Portuguese King Afonso V. Other navigators mentioned as contributing to discoveries in the Cape Verde archipelago are Diogo Gomes, Diogo Dias, Diogo Afonso, in 1462, Portuguese settlers arrived at Santiago and founded a settlement they called Ribeira Grande. Ribeira Grande was the first permanent European settlement in the tropics, in the 16th century, the archipelago prospered from the Atlantic slave trade. Pirates occasionally attacked the Portuguese settlements, sir Francis Drake, an English corsair privateering under a letter of marque granted by the English crown, twice sacked the capital Ribeira Grande in 1585 when it was a part of the Iberian Union. After a French attack in 1712, the town declined in relative to nearby Praia. Decline in the trade in the 19th century resulted in an economic crisis
28.
Africa
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Africa is the worlds second-largest and second-most-populous continent. At about 30.3 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earths total surface area and 20.4 % of its land area. With 1.2 billion people as of 2016, it accounts for about 16% of the human population. The continent includes Madagascar and various archipelagos and it contains 54 fully recognized sovereign states, nine territories and two de facto independent states with limited or no recognition. Africas population is the youngest amongst all the continents, the age in 2012 was 19.7. Algeria is Africas largest country by area, and Nigeria by population, afarensis, Homo erectus, H. habilis and H. ergaster – with the earliest Homo sapiens found in Ethiopia being dated to circa 200,000 years ago. Africa straddles the equator and encompasses numerous climate areas, it is the continent to stretch from the northern temperate to southern temperate zones. Africa hosts a diversity of ethnicities, cultures and languages. In the late 19th century European countries colonized most of Africa, Africa also varies greatly with regard to environments, economics, historical ties and government systems. However, most present states in Africa originate from a process of decolonization in the 20th century, afri was a Latin name used to refer to the inhabitants of Africa, which in its widest sense referred to all lands south of the Mediterranean. This name seems to have referred to a native Libyan tribe. The name is connected with Hebrew or Phoenician ʿafar dust. The same word may be found in the name of the Banu Ifran from Algeria and Tripolitania, under Roman rule, Carthage became the capital of the province of Africa Proconsularis, which also included the coastal part of modern Libya. The Latin suffix -ica can sometimes be used to denote a land, the later Muslim kingdom of Ifriqiya, modern-day Tunisia, also preserved a form of the name. According to the Romans, Africa lay to the west of Egypt, while Asia was used to refer to Anatolia, as Europeans came to understand the real extent of the continent, the idea of Africa expanded with their knowledge. 25,4, whose descendants, he claimed, had invaded Libya, isidore of Seville in Etymologiae XIV.5.2. Suggests Africa comes from the Latin aprica, meaning sunny, massey, in 1881, stated that Africa is derived from the Egyptian af-rui-ka, meaning to turn toward the opening of the Ka. The Ka is the double of every person and the opening of the Ka refers to a womb or birthplace
29.
Winchester
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Winchester is a city and the county town of Hampshire, England. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a government district. It is situated 61 miles south-west of London and 13.6 miles from Southampton, at the time of the 2011 Census, Winchester had a population of 45,184. The wider City of Winchester district which includes such as Alresford. Winchester developed from the Roman town of Venta Belgarum, which in turn developed from an Iron Age oppidum. Winchesters major landmark is Winchester Cathedral, one of the largest cathedrals in Europe, with the distinction of having the longest nave and overall length of all Gothic cathedrals in Europe. The city is home to the University of Winchester and Winchester College, the area around Winchester has been inhabited since prehistoric times, with three Iron Age hillforts, Orams Arbour, St. Catherines Hill, and Worthy Down all in the nearby vicinity. In the Late Iron Age, an urban settlement type developed, known as an oppidum. It was overrun by the confederation of Gaulish tribes known as the Belgae sometime during the first century BCE and it seems to have been known as Wentā or Venta, from the Brittonic for town or meeting place. After the Roman conquest of Britain, the settlement served as the capital of the Belgae and was distinguished as Venta Belgarum, Venta of the Belgae. Although in the years of the Roman province it was of subsidiary importance to Silchester and Chichester. At the beginning of the century, Winchester was given protective stone walls. At around this time the city covered an area of 144 acres, there was a limited suburban area outside the walls. Like many other Roman towns however, Winchester began to decline in the fourth century. Ford identifies the community as the Cair Guinntguic listed by Nennius among the 28 cities of Britain in his History of the Britains, amid the Saxon invasions of Britain, cemeteries dating to the 6th and 7th centuries suggest a revival of settlement. The city became known as Wintan-ceastre in Old English, in 648, King Cenwalh of Wessex erected the Church of SS Peter and Paul, later known as the Old Minster. This became a cathedral in the 660s when the West Saxon bishopric was transferred from Dorchester-on-Thames, the citys first mint appears to date from this period. In the early tenth century there were two new establishments, the convent of Nunnaminster, founded by Alfreds widow Ealhswith
30.
Lunar eclipse
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A lunar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes directly behind the Earth into its umbra. This can occur only when the sun, Earth, and moon are aligned exactly, or very closely so, hence, a lunar eclipse can occur only the night of a full moon. The type and length of an eclipse depend upon the Moons location relative to its orbital nodes, a total lunar eclipse has the direct sunlight completely blocked by the earths shadow. The only light seen is refracted through the earths shadow and this light looks red for the same reason that the sunset looks red, due to rayleigh scattering of the more blue light. Because of its color, a total lunar eclipse is sometimes called a blood moon. Unlike a solar eclipse, which can be viewed only from a relatively small area of the world. A lunar eclipse lasts for a few hours, whereas a total eclipse lasts for only a few minutes at any given place. Also unlike solar eclipses, lunar eclipses are safe to view without any eye protection or special precautions, for the date of the next eclipse see the section Recent and forthcoming lunar eclipses. The shadow of the Earth can be divided into two parts, the umbra and penumbra. Within the umbra, there is no solar radiation. However, as a result of the Suns large angular size, solar illumination is only partially blocked in the portion of the Earths shadow. A penumbral eclipse occurs when the moon passes through the Earths penumbra, the penumbra causes a subtle darkening of the moons surface. A special type of eclipse is a total penumbral eclipse. Total penumbral eclipses are rare, and when these occur, that portion of the moon which is closest to the umbra can appear darker than the rest of the moon. A partial lunar eclipse occurs when only a portion of the moon enters the umbra, when the moon travels completely into the Earths umbra, one observes a total lunar eclipse. The moons speed through the shadow is about one kilometer per second, nevertheless, the total time between the moons first and last contact with the shadow is much longer and could last up to four hours. The relative distance of the moon from the Earth at the time of an eclipse can affect the eclipses duration, in particular, when the moon is near its apogee, the farthest point from the Earth in its orbit, its orbital speed is the slowest. The diameter of the umbra does not decrease appreciably within the changes in the distance of the moon
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Bologna
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Bologna is the largest city of the Emilia-Romagna Region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy, located in the heart of an area of about one million. The first settlements back to at least 1000 BC. The city has been a centre, first under the Etruscans. Home to the oldest university in the world, University of Bologna, founded in 1088, Bologna is also an important transportation crossroad for the roads and trains of Northern Italy, where many important mechanical, electronic and nutritional industries have their headquarters. According to the most recent data gathered by the European Regional Economic Growth Index of 2009, Bologna is the first Italian city, Bologna is home to numerous prestigious cultural, economic and political institutions as well as one of the most impressive trade fair districts in Europe. In 2000 it was declared European capital of culture and in 2006, the city of Bologna was selected to participate in the Universal Exposition of Shanghai 2010 together with 45 other cities from around the world. Bologna is also one of the wealthiest cities in Italy, often ranking as one of the top cities in terms of quality of life in the country, after a long decline, Bologna was reborn in the 5th century under Bishop Petronius. According to legend, St. Petronius built the church of S. Stefano. After the fall of Rome, Bologna was a stronghold of the Exarchate of Ravenna in the Po plain. In 728, the city was captured by the Lombard king Liutprand, the Germanic conquerors formed a district called addizione longobarda near the complex of S. Stefano. Charlemagne stayed in this district in 786, traditionally said to be founded in 1088, the University of Bologna is widely considered to be the first university. The university originated as a centre of study of medieval Roman law under major glossators. It numbered Dante, Boccaccio and Petrarca among its students, the medical school is especially famous. In the 12th century, the families engaged in continual internecine fighting. Troops of Pope Julius II besieged Bologna and sacked the artistic treasures of his palace, in 1530, in front of Saint Petronio Church, Charles V was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Clement VII. Then a plague at the end of the 16th century reduced the population from 72,000 to 59,000, the population later recovered to a stable 60, 000–65,000. However, there was also great progress during this era, in 1564, the Piazza del Nettuno and the Palazzo dei Banchi were built, along with the Archiginnasio, the centre of the University
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Christopher Columbus
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Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer, navigator, colonizer, and citizen of the Republic of Genoa. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean and those voyages and his efforts to establish permanent settlements on the island of Hispaniola initiated the European colonization of the New World. Western imperialism and economic competition were emerging among European kingdoms through the establishment of routes and colonies. During his first voyage in 1492, he reached the New World instead of arriving at Japan as he had intended, landing on an island in the Bahamas archipelago that he named San Salvador. Over the course of three voyages, he visited the Greater and Lesser Antilles, as well as the Caribbean coast of Venezuela and Central America. These voyages had, therefore, an impact in the historical development of the modern Western world. He spearheaded the transatlantic trade and has been accused by several historians of initiating the genocide of the Hispaniola natives. Columbus himself saw his accomplishments primarily in the light of spreading the Christian religion, Columbus never admitted that he had reached a continent previously unknown to Europeans, rather than the East Indies for which he had set course. He called the inhabitants of the lands that he visited indios, the name Christopher Columbus is the Anglicisation of the Latin Christophorus Columbus. His name in Italian is Cristoforo Colombo and, in Spanish and he was born before 31 October 1451 in the territory of the Republic of Genoa, though the exact location remains disputed. His father was Domenico Colombo, a wool weaver who worked both in Genoa and Savona and who also owned a cheese stand at which young Christopher worked as a helper. Bartolomeo, Giovanni Pellegrino, and Giacomo were his brothers, Bartolomeo worked in a cartography workshop in Lisbon for at least part of his adulthood. He also had a sister named Bianchinetta, Columbus never wrote in his native language, which is presumed to have been a Genoese variety of Ligurian. In one of his writings, he says he went to sea at the age of 10, in 1470, the Columbus family moved to Savona, where Domenico took over a tavern. In the same year, Christopher was on a Genoese ship hired in the service of René of Anjou to support his attempt to conquer the Kingdom of Naples. Some modern historians have argued that he was not from Genoa but, instead and these competing hypotheses have generally been discounted by mainstream scholars. In 1473, Columbus began his apprenticeship as business agent for the important Centurione, Di Negro, later, he allegedly made a trip to Chios, an Aegean island then ruled by Genoa. In May 1476, he took part in a convoy sent by Genoa to carry valuable cargo to northern Europe
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Treaty of Tordesillas
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This line of demarcation was about halfway between the Cape Verde islands and the islands entered by Christopher Columbus on his first voyage, named in the treaty as Cipangu and Antilia. The lands to the east would belong to Portugal and the lands to the west to Castile, the treaty was signed by Spain,2 July 1494 and by Portugal,5 September 1494. Originals of both treaties are kept at the Archivo General de Indias in Spain and at the Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo in Portugal. This treaty would be observed fairly well by Spain and Portugal, despite considerable ignorance as to the geography of the New World, however and those countries generally ignored the treaty, particularly those that became Protestant after the Protestant Reformation. The Treaty of Tordesillas was intended to solve the dispute that had been created following the return of Christopher Columbus and his crew, on his way back to Spain he first reached Lisbon, in Portugal. There he asked for another meeting with King John II to show him the newly discovered lands, also, the Portuguese King stated that he was already making arrangements for a fleet to depart shortly and take possession of the new lands. After reading the letter the Catholic Monarchs knew they did not have any power in the Atlantic to match the Portuguese. The bull did not mention Portugal or its lands, so Portugal could not claim newly discovered lands even if they were east of the line. The Portuguese King John II was not pleased with that arrangement, feeling that it gave him far too little land—it prevented him from possessing India, by 1493 Portuguese explorers had reached the southern tip of Africa, the Cape of Good Hope. The Portuguese were unlikely to go to war over the islands encountered by Columbus, the treaty effectively countered the bulls of Alexander VI but was subsequently sanctioned by Pope Julius II by means of the bull Ea quae pro bono pacis of 24 January 1506. Even though the treaty was negotiated without consulting the Pope, a few sources call the line the Papal Line of Demarcation. Very little of the divided area had actually been seen by Europeans. Castile gained lands including most of the Americas, which in 1494 had little proven wealth, the easternmost part of current Brazil was granted to Portugal when in 1500 Pedro Álvares Cabral landed there while he was en route to India. Some historians contend that the Portuguese already knew of the South American bulge that makes up most of Brazil before this time, the line was not strictly enforced—the Spanish did not resist the Portuguese expansion of Brazil across the meridian. However, the Catholic Monarchs attempted to stop the Portuguese advance in Asia, by claiming the meridian line ran around the world, Portugal pushed back, seeking another papal pronouncement that limited the line of demarcation to the Atlantic. This was given by Pope Leo X, who was friendly toward Portugal and its discoveries, for a period between 1580 and 1640, the treaty was rendered meaningless, as the Spanish King was also King of Portugal. It was superseded by the 1750 Treaty of Madrid which granted Portugal control of the lands it occupied in South America, however, the latter treaty was immediately repudiated by the Catholic Monarch. The First Treaty of San Ildefonso settled the problem, with Spain acquiring territories east of the Uruguay River, the Treaty of Tordesillas only specified the line of demarcation in leagues from the Cape Verde Islands
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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
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Portugal
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Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country on the Iberian Peninsula in Southwestern Europe. It is the westernmost country of mainland Europe, to the west and south it is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean and to the east and north by Spain. The Portugal–Spain border is 1,214 kilometres long and considered the longest uninterrupted border within the European Union, the republic also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira, both autonomous regions with their own regional governments. The territory of modern Portugal has been settled, invaded. The Pre-Celts, Celts, Carthaginians and the Romans were followed by the invasions of the Visigothic, in 711 the Iberian Peninsula was invaded by the Moors, making Portugal part of Muslim Al Andalus. Portugal was born as result of the Christian Reconquista, and in 1139, Afonso Henriques was proclaimed King of Portugal, in the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal established the first global empire, becoming one of the worlds major economic, political and military powers. Portugal monopolized the trade during this time, and the Portuguese Empire expanded with military campaigns led in Asia. After the 1910 revolution deposed the monarchy, the democratic but unstable Portuguese First Republic was established, democracy was restored after the Portuguese Colonial War and the Carnation Revolution in 1974. Shortly after, independence was granted to almost all its overseas territories, Portugal has left a profound cultural and architectural influence across the globe and a legacy of over 250 million Portuguese speakers today. Portugal is a country with a high-income advanced economy and a high living standard. It is the 5th most peaceful country in the world, maintaining a unitary semi-presidential republican form of government and it has the 18th highest Social Progress in the world, putting it ahead of other Western European countries like France, Spain and Italy. Portugal is a pioneer when it comes to drug decriminalization, as the nation decriminalized the possession of all drugs for use in 2001. The early history of Portugal is shared with the rest of the Iberian Peninsula located in South Western Europe, the name of Portugal derives from the joined Romano-Celtic name Portus Cale. Other influences include some 5th-century vestiges of Alan settlements, which were found in Alenquer, Coimbra, the region of present-day Portugal was inhabited by Neanderthals and then by Homo sapiens, who roamed the border-less region of the northern Iberian peninsula. These were subsistence societies that, although they did not establish prosperous settlements, neolithic Portugal experimented with domestication of herding animals, the raising of some cereal crops and fluvial or marine fishing. Chief among these tribes were the Calaicians or Gallaeci of Northern Portugal, the Lusitanians of central Portugal, the Celtici of Alentejo, a few small, semi-permanent, commercial coastal settlements were also founded in the Algarve region by Phoenicians-Carthaginians. Romans first invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 219 BC, during the last days of Julius Caesar, almost the entire peninsula had been annexed to the Roman Republic. The Carthaginians, Romes adversary in the Punic Wars, were expelled from their coastal colonies and it suffered a severe setback in 150 BC, when a rebellion began in the north
36.
Diogo Ribeiro
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Diogo Ribeiro, also known as Diego Ribero, was a Portuguese cartographer and explorer who worked most of his life in Spain. He worked on the maps of the Padrón Real from 1518-1532. He also made instruments, including astrolabes and quadrants. Born as Diogo Ribeiro, he was the son of Afonso Ribeiro, however, there is no known record of the date and place of his birth. He is believed to have become a seaman at an early age, reportedly, Ribeiro sailed with Pedro Afonso de Aguiar who served as captain in the Armadas of the explorers Vasco da Gama, Lopo Soares, and Afonso de Albuquerque. Ferdinand Magellan took part in the development of the used in the first circumnavigation of the Earth. On January 10,1523, he was named Royal Cosmographer and master in the art of creating maps, astrolabes and he eventually succeeded Sebastian Cabot as the head cartographer. Cabot published his first map in 1544, in 1527, Ribeiro finished the Padrón Real, the official Spanish map used as template for the maps present in all Spanish ships. It is considered the first scientific world map, in 1531, he invented a bronze water pump that was able to pump water out ten times faster than the previous models. Ribeiros most important work is the 1527 Padrón Real, there are 6 copies attributed to Ribeiro, including at the Weimar Grand Ducal Library and at the Vatican Library, in Vatican City. The layout of the map is strongly influenced by the information obtained during the Magellan-Elcano trip around the world, diogos map delineates very precisely the coasts of Central and South America. It shows the whole east coast of the Americas but of the west coast only the area from Guatemala to Ecuador, however, neither Australia nor Antarctica appear, and the Indian subcontinent appears too small. The map shows, for the first time, the extension of the Pacific Ocean. It also shows, for the first time, the North American coast as a continuous one and it also shows the demarcation of the Treaty of Tordesillas. The absence of any large continent south of Asia is evidence that there had been no discovery of Australia at that date. com, map Cartography List of explorers List of cartographers List of conquistadors
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Azores
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Its main industries are agriculture, dairy farming, livestock, fishing, and tourism, which is becoming the major service activity in the region. In addition, the government of the Azores employs a large percentage of the population directly or indirectly in the service, the main settlement of the Azores is Ponta Delgada. There are nine major Azorean islands and a cluster, in three main groups. These are Flores and Corvo, to the west, Graciosa, Terceira, São Jorge, Pico, and Faial in the centre, and São Miguel, Santa Maria, and they extend for more than 600 km and lie in a northwest-southeast direction. All the islands have volcanic origins, although some, such as Santa Maria, have had no recorded activity since the islands were settled, mount Pico, on the island of Pico, is the highest point in Portugal, at 2,351 m. The Azores are actually some of the tallest mountains on the planet, measured from their base at the bottom of the ocean to their peaks, which thrust high above the surface of the Atlantic. The climate of the Azores is very mild for such a location, being influenced by its distance to continents. Due to the influence, temperatures remain mild year-round. Daytime temperatures normally fluctuate between 16 °C and 25 °C depending on season, temperatures above 30 °C or below 3 °C are unknown in the major population centres. It is also generally wet and cloudy, the culture, dialect, cuisine, and traditions of the Azorean islands vary considerably, because these once-uninhabited and remote islands were settled sporadically over a span of two centuries. However, these kinds of structures have always used in the Azores to store cereals. Detailed examination and dating to authenticate the validity of these speculations is lacking and it is unclear whether these structures are natural or man-made and whether they predate the 15th-century Portuguese colonization of the Azores. Solid confirmation of a human presence in the archipelago has not yet been published. The islands were known in the century and parts of them appear in the Atlas Catalan. In 1427, a captain sailing for Henry the Navigator, possibly Gonçalo Velho, rediscovered the Azores, but this is not certain. In Thomas Ashes 1813 work, A History of the Azores, the author identified a Fleming, Joshua Vander Berg of Bruges and he stated that the Portuguese explored the area and claimed it for Portugal. Other stories note the discovery of the first islands by sailors in the service of Henry the Navigator, although there are few documents to support the claims. Although it is said that the archipelago received its name from the goshawk
38.
Christopher Saxton
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Christopher Saxton was an English cartographer who produced the first county maps of England and Wales. Saxton was probably born in Sowood, Ossett in the parish of Dewsbury and his family subsequently moved to the hamlet of Dunningley near Tingley in the parish of Woodkirk where the Saxton name is recorded in 1567. It is most likely that John Rudd, the vicar of Dewsbury and Thornhill, Saxton married and had three children. Robert, born in 1585 was his fathers assistant in 1601, robert was commissioned to survey Sandal Magna in 1607. Christopher Saxton died in either 1610 or 1611, map making became increasingly common in the reign of Elizabeth I made possible by advances in surveying technology and printing from engraved copper plates. Accurate mapping of the country became increasingly important. Lord Burghley was instrumental in ensuring that an official, Thomas Seckford of Woodbridge, Suffolk. In 1574 Saxton began the survey of England, in consideration of the expenses involved, Queen Elizabeth granted him a lease on lands at Grigstone Manor in Suffolk. The Welsh survey began in 1577, surveying the country was a significant undertaking but the first plates were engraved by 1574 and in 1578 the survey was complete. As the task was finished in a short timespan is possible that Saxton used some of John Rudds earlier work, individual county sheets were issued before the completed survey was issued as an atlas in 1579. The proofs were presented to Lord Burghley who compiled them into an atlas of his own, the maps were produced in the Atlas of the Counties of England and Wales published in 1579, the first atlas of any country. It contained 35 maps, each bearing the arms of Elizabeth I and Thomas Seckford, the maps show hills and mountains but do not provide precise information as to their location or altitude. A variety of show buildings and settlements. All the maps are dated except for Northumberland, five counties, Cornwall, Essex, Hertfordshire, The Suffolk and Norfolk maps show the division into hundreds. The atlas was a success, prompting other cartographers including John Speed, John Norton. The engravers were of Dutch or Flemish origin, there is no evidence on the maps that Saxton engraved them himself, but according to one account, he engraved those of the Welsh counties and Herefordshire. Saxton obtained a license to sell the maps for a term of ten years, John Dee, warden of the Manchesters collegiate church employed Saxton to survey Manchesters parish boundaries in 1596 but no copy has survived. Chethams Library in Manchester has a copy of the atlas, as does the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, notes Bibliography Christopher Saxton, William Ravenhill, Christopher Saxtons 16th Century Maps, Chatsworth Library ISBN 1-85310-354-3 ISBN 1-85310-724-7
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Magnetic deviation
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Magnetic deviation is the error induced in a compass by local magnetic fields, which must be allowed for, along with magnetic declination, if accurate bearings are to be calculated. Compasses are used to determine the direction of true North, however, the compass reading must be corrected for two effects. The first is magnetic declination or variation, the difference between magnetic North and true North. The Earths magnetic field is modified by local magnetic anomalies and these include variations of the magnetization in the Earths crust caused by geomagnetic reversals as well as nearby mountains and iron ore deposits. Generally, these are indicated on maps as part of the declination, because the Earths field changes over time, the maps must be kept up to date for accurate navigation. Short term errors in compass readings are also caused by fields generated in the Earths magnetosphere, in navigation manuals, magnetic deviation often refers specifically to compass error caused by magnetized iron within a ship or aircraft. This iron has a mixture of permanent magnetization and an induced magnetization that is induced by the Earths magnetic field, because the latter depends on the orientation of the craft relative to the Earths field, it can be difficult to analyze and correct for it. The deviation errors caused by magnetism in the structure are minimised by precisely positioning small magnets. To compensate for the magnetization, two magnetically soft iron spheres are placed on side arms. Magnetic compass adjustment and correction is one of the subjects in the curriculum for a shipmasters certificate of competency. The sources of magnetic deviation vary from compass to compass or vehicle to vehicle, however, they are independent of location, and thus the compass can be calibrated to accommodate them. Non-magnetic methods of taking bearings, such as with gyrocompass, astronomical observations, thus, a comparison of bearings taken with such methods with the bearing given by a compass can be used to compute local magnetic deviation. The latter could be moved around the ship, and it was observed that the bearing could vary from one part of the ship to another. The explorer Joao de Castro was the first to report such an inconsistency, in 1538, and attributed it to the ships gun. Many other objects were found to be sources of deviation in ships, including iron particles in brass bowls, iron nails in a wooden compass box or binnacle. The two steering compasses themselves could interfere with each other if they were set too close together, the source of deviation could not always be identified. To reduce this source of error, which was due to induced magnetization in the ship and this involved measuring the magnetic deviation as the ship was oriented in several compass directions. These measurements could then be used to correct compass readings and this procedure became standard practice in the 19th century as iron became an increasing component of ships
40.
Abraham Ortelius
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Abraham Ortelius was a Flemish/Netherlandish cartographer and geographer, conventionally recognized as the creator of the first modern atlas, the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum. Ortelius was born in the city of Antwerp, which was then in the Habsburg Netherlands, the Orthellius family were originally from Augsburg, a Free imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1535, the family had fallen under suspicion of Protestantism, following the death of Ortelius father, his uncle Jacobus van Meteren returned from religious exile in England to take care of Ortelius. Abraham remained close to his cousin Emanuel van Meteren who would move to London. In 1575 he was appointed geographer to the king of Spain, Philip II, on the recommendation of Arias Montanus, beginning as a map-engraver, in 1547 he entered the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke as an illuminator of maps. He supplemented his income trading in books, prints, and maps, in 1560, however, when travelling with Mercator to Trier, Lorraine, and Poitiers, he seems to have been attracted, largely by Mercator’s influence, towards the career of a scientific geographer. This map subsequently appeared in reduced form in the Terrarum, in 1578 he laid the basis of a critical treatment of ancient geography by his Synonymia geographica. In 1596 he received a presentation from Antwerp city, similar to that afterwards bestowed on Rubens and his death on 28 June 1598, and his burial in the church of St. Michaels Abbey, Antwerp, were marked by public mourning. Quietis cultor sine lite, uxore, prole, reads the inscription on his tombstone, on 20 May 1570, Gilles Coppens de Diest at Antwerp issued Ortelius’ Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the first modern atlas. Most of the maps were admittedly reproductions, and many discrepancies of delineation or nomenclature occur, in 1573 Ortelius published seventeen supplementary maps under the title Additamentum Theatri Orbis Terrarum. Four more Additamenta were to follow, the last one appearing in 1597 and he also had a keen interest and formed a fine collection of coins, medals and antiques, and this resulted in the book Deorum dearumque capita. He also published Itinerarium per nonnuilas Galliae Belgicae partes, a record of a journey in Belgium, in 1589 he published Maris Pacifici, the first dedicated map of the Pacific to be printed. Among his last works were an edition of Caesar, and the Aurei saeculi imago, sive Germanorum veterum vita, mores and he also aided Welser in his edition of the Peutinger Table in 1598. Contrary to popular belief, Abraham Ortelius, who had no children, never lived at the Mercator-Orteliushuis, originals of Ortelius maps are popular collectors items and often sell for tens of thousands of dollars. Facsimiles of his maps are available from many retailers. A map he made of North and South America is also included in the worlds largest commercially available jigsaw puzzle which is of four world maps and this puzzle is made by Ravensburger, measures 6 feet ×9 feet, and has over 18,000 pieces. Ortelius was the first to underline the geometrical similarity between the coasts of America and Europe-Africa, and to continental drift as an explanation. Kious described Ortelius thoughts in this way, Abraham Ortelius in his work Thesaurus Geographicus, suggested that the Americas were torn away from Europe and Africa
41.
Fuertaventura
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Fuerteventura is one of the Canary Islands, in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa, politically part of Spain. At 1,660 square kilometres, it is the second largest of the Canary Islands and it was declared a biosphere reserve by UNESCO in May 2009. Its capital is Puerto del Rosario, first settlers are believed to have hailed from North Africa. The word Mahorero or Maho is still used today to describe the people of Fuerteventura and is derived from the ancient word mahos and they lived in caves and semi-subterranean dwellings, some of which have been excavated, revealing remnants of early tools and pottery. In antiquity, the island was known o. a. as Planaria, in the 11th century BC, Phoenician settlers landed in Fuerteventura and Lanzarote. Several Spanish and Portuguese expeditions to the islands were organized around 1340, followed by Moors, at the end of the Iberian conquest, the island was divided into two Guanches kingdoms, one adhering to King Guize and the other to King Ayoze. The territories of these kingdoms were called Maxorata and Jandía respectively and they were separated by a wall, which traversed the La Pared isthmus. The ancient name for the island, Erbania, is derived from to this walls name, the islands conquest began in earnest in 1402, commanded by Jean de Béthencourt and Gadifer de la Salle. They arrived with only 63 sailors out of the original 283, after arriving and settling in Lanzarote, the invaders made some first excursions to the neighboring islands. In 1404, Bethencourt and Gadifer founded Betancuria, on the West coast, after numerous difficulties, Gadifer took charge of the invasion, while Bethencourt returned to Spain to seek the recognition and support of the Castilian king. In 1405, de Béthencourt completed his conquest of the island and it is generally accepted that the island took its name from fuerte and ventura, as mentioned by mallorcan navigator Angelino Dulcert in 1339. In 1424 Pope Martin V, through the Betancuria Brief, edicted the establishment of the Bishopric of Fuerteventura, the Bishopric of Fuerteventura was based in the Parish of Santa María de Betancuria, bestowing upon the latter the status of Grant Cathedral. After the reabsorbtion of the Diocese of San Marcial del Rubicón by the papacy of Pope of Martin V, the first census recorded a population of some 1,200 inhabitants. In 1476 the territory became the Señorío Territorial de Fuerteventura, subjected to the Catholic Monarchs, in later years, the island was invaded by the Spanish, French and the English. Over time, the island endured numerous pirate raids, a Berber lead expedition invaded in 1593, sweeping as far inland as the capital. Various castles were built along the coastline, to protect against these type of attacks, the population was moved inland as a second protective measure. Because of the raids, a first Captain General was dispatched to Fuerteventura, accompanied by a number of Sergeant Majors, at that time Betancuria became the religious capital of the island. Two major pirate attacks took place in 1740, within a month of each other, two separate bands of English privateers attempted to loot the town of Tuineje
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Cardinal Richelieu
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Cardinal Armand Jean du Plessis, Duke of Richelieu and Fronsac, commonly referred to as Cardinal Richelieu, was a French clergyman, nobleman, and statesman. He was consecrated as a bishop in 1607 and was appointed Foreign Secretary in 1616, Richelieu soon rose in both the Catholic Church and the French government, becoming a cardinal in 1622, and King Louis XIIIs chief minister in 1624. He remained in office until his death in 1642, he was succeeded by Cardinal Mazarin, Cardinal de Richelieu was often known by the title of the kings Chief Minister or First Minister. He sought to consolidate power and crush domestic factions. By restraining the power of the nobility, he transformed France into a strong and his chief foreign policy objective was to check the power of the Austro-Spanish Habsburg dynasty, and to ensure French dominance in the Thirty Years War that engulfed Europe. Although he was a cardinal, he did not hesitate to make alliances with Protestant rulers in attempting to achieve his goals. While a powerful figure, events like the Day of the Dupes show that in fact he very much depended on the kings confidence to keep this power. As alumnus of the University of Paris and headmaster of the Collège de Sorbonne, Richelieu was also famous for his patronage of the arts, most notably, he founded the Académie Française, the learned society responsible for matters pertaining to the French language. Richelieu is also known by the sobriquet lÉminence rouge, from the red shade of a cardinals clerical dress and this in part allowed the colony to eventually develop into the heartland of Francophone culture in North America. He is also a character in The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas. Born in Paris, Armand du Plessis was the fourth of five children, at the age of nine, young Richelieu was sent to the College of Navarre in Paris to study philosophy. Thereafter, he began to train for a military career and his private life seems to have been typical of a young officer of the era, in 1605, aged twenty, he was treated by Théodore de Mayerne for gonorrhea. King Henry III had rewarded Richelieus father for his participation in the Wars of Religion by granting his family the bishopric of Luçon. The family appropriated most of the revenues of the bishopric for private use, they were, however, challenged by clergymen, to protect the important source of revenue, Richelieus mother proposed to make her second son, Alphonse, the bishop of Luçon. Alphonse, who had no desire to become a bishop, became instead a Carthusian monk, thus, it became necessary that the younger Richelieu join the clergy. He had strong interests, and threw himself into studying for his new post. In 1606 King Henry IV nominated Richelieu to become Bishop of Luçon, as Richelieu had not yet reached the canonical minimum age, it was necessary that he journey to Rome for a special dispensation from the Pope. This secured, Richelieu was consecrated bishop in April 1607, soon after he returned to his diocese in 1608, Richelieu was heralded as a reformer
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El Hierro
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El Hierro, nicknamed Isla del Meridiano, is the smallest and farthest south and west of the Canary Islands, in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa, with a population of 10,162. At 268.71 square kilometres, it is the smallest of the seven islands of the Canaries. The name El Hierro, although spelled like the Spanish word for iron, is not related to that word, the H in the name of the metal is derived from the F of Latin ferrum. The confusion with the name of the metal had effects on the naming of the island. As early as the 16th century, maps and texts called the island after the word for iron in other languages, Portuguese Ferro, French lîle de Fer, nevertheless, the origin of the name ero or erro or yerro is not definitely known. It is thought to be derived from one of words in the Guanche language of the pre-Hispanic inhabitants. Juan de Abreu Galindo gives the name of the island as Esero. It is believed that the Bimbaches had to construct cisterns to save fresh rainwater, the Gran diccionario guanche gives the meaning of the Guanche word hero in Spanish as fuente. The ancient natives of the island, called Bimbaches, were subjected to Spanish rule by Jean de Béthencourt – more by the process of negotiation than by military action, Béthencourt had as his ally and negotiator Augeron, brother of the islands native monarch. Augeron had been captured years before by the Europeans and now served as mediator between the Europeans and the Guanches. In return for control over the island, Béthencourt promised to respect the liberty of the natives, many Frenchmen and Galicians subsequently settled on the island. There was a revolt of the natives against the treatment of the governor Lázaro Vizcaíno. There is evidence of at least three major landslides that have affected El Hierro in the last few hundred thousand years, the most recent of these was the El Golfo landslide that occurred about 15 thousand years ago, involving collapse of the northern flank of the island. The landslide formed the El Golfo valley and created an avalanche with a volume of 150–180 km3. Turbidite deposits related to this landslide have been recognized in drill cores from the Agadir Basin to the north of the Canary Islands. Detailed analysis of these suggests that the slope failure did not occur as a single event. Local tsunami are likely to have triggered by these landslides. The Instituto Vulcanológico de Canarias and National Geographic Institute’s seismic monitoring station located in Valverde detected increased seismic activity beginning on 17 July 2011, the seismic monitoring network was increased in density on July 21 to allow better detection and location of the seismic events
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