1.
Colorado
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Colorado is a state in the United States encompassing most of the Southern Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains. Colorado is part of the Western United States, the Southwestern United States, Colorado is the 8th most extensive and the 21st most populous of the 50 United States. The United States Census Bureau estimates that the population of Colorado was 5,540,545 on July 1,2016, the state was named for the Colorado River, which Spanish travelers named the Río Colorado for the ruddy silt the river carried from the mountains. The Territory of Colorado was organized on February 28,1861, Colorado is nicknamed the Centennial State because it became a state in the same year as the centennial of the United States Declaration of Independence. Colorado is noted for its landscape of mountains, forests, high plains, mesas, canyons, plateaus, rivers. Denver is the capital and the most populous city of Colorado, residents of the state are properly known as Coloradans, although the term Coloradoan has been used archaically and lives on in the title of Fort Collins newspaper, the Coloradoan. Colorado, Wyoming and Utah are the states which have boundaries defined solely by lines of latitude and longitude. The summit of Mount Elbert at 14,440 feet elevation in Lake County is the highest point in Colorado, Colorado is the only U. S. state that lies entirely above 1,000 meters elevation. The point where the Arikaree River flows out of Yuma County, Colorado and this point, which holds the distinction of being the highest low elevation point of any state, is higher than the high elevation points of 18 states and the District of Columbia. A little less than one half of the area of Colorado is flat, East of the Rocky Mountains are the Colorado Eastern Plains of the High Plains, the section of the Great Plains within Nebraska at elevations ranging from roughly 3,350 to 7,500 feet. The Colorado plains were mostly prairies, but they have many patches of forests, buttes. Eastern Colorado is presently covered in farmland and rangeland, along with small farming villages. Precipitation is fair, averaging from 15 to 25 inches annually, corn, wheat, hay, soybeans, and oats are all typical crops, and most of the villages and towns in this region boast both a water tower and a grain elevator. Irrigation water is available from the South Platte, the Arkansas River, and a few other streams, however, heavy use of ground water from wells for irrigation has caused underground water reserves to decline. As well as agriculture, eastern Colorado hosts considerable livestock, such as cattle ranches. Roughly 70% of Colorados population resides along the edge of the Rocky Mountains in the Front Range Urban Corridor between Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Pueblo, Colorado. This region is protected from prevailing storms that blow in from the Pacific Ocean region by the high Rockies in the middle of Colorado. The Front Range includes Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins, Loveland, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Greeley and other townships, on the other side of the Rockies, the significant population centers in Western Colorado are the cities of Grand Junction, Durango, and Montrose
2.
Yukon
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Yukon is the smallest and westernmost of Canadas three federal territories. The territory has the smallest population of any province or territory in Canada, Whitehorse is the territorial capital and Yukons only city. The territory was split from the Northwest Territories in 1898 and was named the Yukon Territory, though officially bilingual, the Yukon Government also recognizes First Nations languages. At 5,959 m, Yukons Mount Logan, in Kluane National Park and Reserve, is the highest mountain in Canada, most of Yukon has a subarctic climate, characterized by long cold winters and brief warm summers. The Arctic Ocean coast has a tundra climate, notable rivers include the Yukon River, after which the territory was named, as well as the Pelly, Stewart, Peel, White and Tatshenshini rivers. Long before the arrival of Europeans, central and southern Yukon was populated by First Nations people, sites of archeological significance in Yukon hold some of the earliest evidence of the presence of human occupation in North America. The sites safeguard the history of the first people and the earliest First Nations of the Yukon, the volcanic eruption of Mount Churchill in approximately 800 AD in what is now the U. S. Coastal and inland First Nations had extensive trading networks, European incursions into the area only began early in the 19th century with the fur trade, followed by missionaries. By the 1870s and 1880s gold miners began to arrive and this drove a population increase that justified the establishment of a police force, just in time for the start of the Klondike Gold Rush in 1897. The increased population coming with the gold led to the separation of the Yukon district from the Northwest Territories. Its northern coast is on the Beaufort Sea and its ragged eastern boundary mostly follows the divide between the Yukon Basin and the Mackenzie River drainage basin to the east in the Mackenzie mountains. Most of the territory is in the watershed of its namesake, the southern Yukon is dotted with a large number of large, long and narrow glacier-fed alpine lakes, most of which flow into the Yukon River system. The larger lakes include Teslin Lake, Atlin Lake, Tagish Lake, Marsh Lake, Lake Laberge, Kusawa Lake, bennett Lake on the Klondike Gold Rush trail is a lake flowing into Nares Lake, with the greater part of its area within Yukon. Canadas highest point, Mount Logan, is in the territorys southwest, Mount Logan and a large part of the Yukons southwest are in Kluane National Park and Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Other national parks include Ivvavik National Park and Vuntut National Park in the north, other watersheds include the Mackenzie River, the Peel Watershed and the Alsek–Tatshenshini, and a number of rivers flowing directly into the Beaufort Sea. The two main Yukon rivers flowing into the Mackenzie in the Northwest Territories are the Liard River in the southeast, notable widespread tree species within Yukon are the black spruce and white spruce. Many trees are stunted because of the growing season and severe climate. The capital, Whitehorse, is also the largest city, with about three-quarters of the population, the second largest is Dawson City, which was the capital until 1952
3.
Mineral
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A mineral is a naturally occurring chemical compound, usually of crystalline form and abiogenic in origin. A mineral has one specific chemical composition, whereas a rock can be an aggregate of different minerals or mineraloids, the study of minerals is called mineralogy. There are over 5,300 known mineral species, over 5,070 of these have been approved by the International Mineralogical Association, the silicate minerals compose over 90% of the Earths crust. The diversity and abundance of species is controlled by the Earths chemistry. Silicon and oxygen constitute approximately 75% of the Earths crust, which translates directly into the predominance of silicate minerals, minerals are distinguished by various chemical and physical properties. Differences in chemical composition and crystal structure distinguish the various species, changes in the temperature, pressure, or bulk composition of a rock mass cause changes in its minerals. Minerals can be described by their various properties, which are related to their chemical structure. Common distinguishing characteristics include crystal structure and habit, hardness, lustre, diaphaneity, colour, streak, tenacity, cleavage, fracture, parting, more specific tests for describing minerals include magnetism, taste or smell, radioactivity and reaction to acid. Minerals are classified by key chemical constituents, the two dominant systems are the Dana classification and the Strunz classification, the silicate class of minerals is subdivided into six subclasses by the degree of polymerization in the chemical structure. All silicate minerals have a unit of a 4− silica tetrahedron—that is, a silicon cation coordinated by four oxygen anions. These tetrahedra can be polymerized to give the subclasses, orthosilicates, disilicates, cyclosilicates, inosilicates, phyllosilicates, other important mineral groups include the native elements, sulfides, oxides, halides, carbonates, sulfates, and phosphates. The first criterion means that a mineral has to form by a natural process, stability at room temperature, in the simplest sense, is synonymous to the mineral being solid. More specifically, a compound has to be stable or metastable at 25 °C, modern advances have included extensive study of liquid crystals, which also extensively involve mineralogy. Minerals are chemical compounds, and as such they can be described by fixed or a variable formula, many mineral groups and species are composed of a solid solution, pure substances are not usually found because of contamination or chemical substitution. Finally, the requirement of an ordered atomic arrangement is usually synonymous with crystallinity, however, crystals are also periodic, an ordered atomic arrangement gives rise to a variety of macroscopic physical properties, such as crystal form, hardness, and cleavage. There have been recent proposals to amend the definition to consider biogenic or amorphous substances as minerals. The formal definition of an approved by the IMA in 1995, A mineral is an element or chemical compound that is normally crystalline. However, if geological processes were involved in the genesis of the compound, Mineral classification schemes and their definitions are evolving to match recent advances in mineral science
4.
Fossil
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Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals, plants, and other organisms from the remote past. The totality of fossils, both discovered and undiscovered, and their placement in fossiliferous rock formations and sedimentary layers is known as the fossil record. The study of fossils across geological time, how they were formed, such a preserved specimen is called a fossil if it is older than some minimum age, most often the arbitrary date of 10,000 years. The observation that fossils were associated with certain rock strata led early geologists to recognize a geological timescale in the 19th century. The development of dating techniques in the early 20th century allowed geologists to determine the numerical or absolute age of the various strata. Like extant organisms, fossils vary in size from microscopic, even single bacterial cells one micrometer in diameter, to gigantic, such as dinosaurs, Fossils may also consist of the marks left behind by the organism while it was alive, such as animal tracks or feces. These types of fossil are called trace fossils, as opposed to body fossils, finally, past life leaves some markers that cannot be seen but can be detected in the form of biochemical signals, these are known as chemofossils or biosignatures. The process of fossilization varies according to type and external conditions. Permineralization is a process of fossilization that occurs when an organism is buried, the empty spaces within an organism become filled with mineral-rich groundwater. Minerals precipitate from the groundwater, occupying the empty spaces and this process can occur in very small spaces, such as within the cell wall of a plant cell. Small scale permineralization can produce very detailed fossils, for permineralization to occur, the organism must become covered by sediment soon after death or soon after the initial decay process. The degree to which the remains are decayed when covered determines the later details of the fossil, some fossils consist only of skeletal remains or teeth, other fossils contain traces of skin, feathers or even soft tissues. This is a form of diagenesis, in some cases the original remains of the organism completely dissolve or are otherwise destroyed. The remaining organism-shaped hole in the rock is called an external mold, if this hole is later filled with other minerals, it is a cast. An endocast or internal mold is formed when sediments or minerals fill the cavity of an organism. This is a form of cast and mold formation. If the chemistry is right, the organism can act as a nucleus for the precipitation of minerals such as siderite, if this happens rapidly before significant decay to the organic tissue, very fine three-dimensional morphological detail can be preserved. Nodules from the Carboniferous Mazon Creek fossil beds of Illinois, USA, are among the best documented examples of such mineralization, replacement occurs when the shell, bone or other tissue is replaced with another mineral
5.
Paddy Hannan
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Patrick paddy Hannan was a gold prospector whose lucrative discovery on 14 June 1893 near Kalgoorlie in Western Australia set off a major gold rush in the area. The resulting goldfield in Kalgoorlie has been mined ever since, and is renowned as the richest mile in the world, the open cut mine is a vast, astonishing sight known as the Super Pit. Hannan and his Irish partners, Thomas Flanagan from Ennis, County Clare and Daniel Shea from County Cork, are remembered and celebrated in Australia. Paddy Hannan was the son of John Hannan and Bridget Lynch and his baptismal record shows that his godparents (sponsorswere Margaret Lynch and John OBrien. Many of the people in his family emigrated to Australia from 1852 onwards, two of Hannans nieces would welcome Hannan into their house for the last years of his life. Hannan emigrated to Australia when he was 22, arriving in Melbourne on 23 December 1862 aboard the Henry Fernie from Liverpool and he is recorded in the passenger list as Pat Hannan, a labourer. In 1893 in Western Australia, Hannan and his partners were the first to find gold near Mount Charlotte, Hannan, Flanagan and Shea were following a large number of prospectors who set out for a rumoured new prospect at Mount Youle. One version of the story of the find has it that on the night of 14 June 1893, not wanting to cause a rush, he concealed the find. During the night the trio moved one of their horses into the scrub, the following morning Hannan informed the main party they were going to stay behind to find their lost horse. After the main group moved off east, the three men started to pick up the gold and peg out their lease. By law, those finding payable gold were required to report the fact to the office within seven days, so Hannan set off for Coolgardie to register their find. Simply because they were better at specking than he was – it needs good eyesight, … The most likely reason … was that he was the undisputed leader of the party. Hannan registered the claim in Flanagans name as well as his own and it was estimated that about 400 men were prospecting in the area within three days, and over 1,000 within a week. In 1904, at the age of sixty-four, Hannan was granted a pension of £150 by the Government of Western Australia. Having searched for throughout his adult life, he did not cease his prospecting activities until after 1910. At that time he went to live with two of his nieces in Fallon Street, Brunswick, Victoria and he died there in 1925 and was buried in Melbourne Central Cemetery, in the Catholic section, near the North Gate. In 1993 his grave was restored by the citizens of Kalgoorlie, led by Tess Thomson, as a part of the celebration of the 100-year anniversary of the find by Hannan, Flanagan. The city boasts several commemorative plaques to the three Irishmen, Hannan, Flanagan and Shea, a popular Irish pub at the Burswood Entertainment Complex was also named after Hannan
6.
Kalgoorlie
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The town was founded in 1893 during the Coolgardie gold rush, and is located close to the so-called Golden Mile. It is also the destination of the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme. At June 2015, Kalgoorlie, had an urban population of 32,797. The name Kalgoorlie is derived from the Wangai word Karlkurla, meaning place of the silky pears, in January 1893, prospectors Patrick Hannan, Tom Flanagan, and Dan OShea were travelling to Mount Youle when one of their horses cast a shoe. During the halt in their journey, the men noticed signs of gold in the area and decided to stay and investigate. On 17 June 1893, Hannan filed a Reward Claim, leading to hundreds of men swarming to the area in search of gold and Kalgoorlie, the population of the town was 2,018 in 1898. The concentrated area of gold mines surrounding the original Hannans find is often referred to as the Golden Mile. In 1901 the population of Kalgoorlie was 4,793 which increased to 6,790 by 1903, the standardisation of the railway connecting Perth in 1968 completed the Sydney–Perth railway, making rail travel from Perth to Sydney possible, the Indian Pacific rail service commenced soon after. During the 1890s, the Goldfields area boomed as a whole, with a population exceeding 200,000. The area gained a reputation for being a wild west with bandits. Places, famous or infamous, that Kalgoorlie is noted for include its water pipeline and its main street is Hannan Street, named after the towns founder. One of the infamous brothels also serves as a museum and is a national attraction. Kalgoorlie and the district was serviced by an extensive collection of suburban railways and tramways. On 20 April 2010, Kalgoorlie was shaken by a an earthquake that reached 5.0 on the richter scale, the epicentre was 30 km north east of the town. The quake caused damage to a number of hotels and historic buildings along Burt Street in Boulder. The entire Burt St. precinct was evacuated until 23 April, work in the Superpit and many other mines around Kalgoorlie was stopped. Two people suffered injuries as a result of the quake. Several police officers were injured during the riot and at least ten people were charged, Kalgoorlie–Boulder is a regional centre and has a Chamber of Commerce and a Chamber of Minerals and Energy
