Lissadell House
Lissadell House is a neo-classical Greek revivalist style country house, located in County Sligo, Ireland. The house was built between 1830 and 1835, inhabited from 1833 onwards, for Sir Robert Gore-Booth, 4th Baronet by London architect Francis Goodwin. In 1876, Sir Robert left the house and surrounding estate to his son, Sir Henry Gore-Booth, 5th Baronet. Described as "austere in the extreme" Lissadell house is a Greek Revival style detached nine-bay, two-storey over basement mansion, the last one in this style to be built in Ireland. Constructed of Ballysadare limestone with finely jointed ashlar walling. An entrance front is on the north with a three-bay pedimented central projection open to east and west to form porte-cochere. Prior to its sale in 2003 Lissadell was the only house in Ireland to retain its original Williams & Gibton furniture, made for the house and designed to harmonise with Goodwin's architectural vision. Lissadell's was the first country house in Ireland to have an independent gas supply piped into the property.
The house is on the south shore of Magherow peninsula in northern County Sligo over looking Drumcliff bay. It is in the townland of Lissadell South, the Barony of Carbury the túath of Cairbre Drom Cliabh; the house takes its name from the Irish placename, Lios an Doill Uí Dálaigh or O'Dalys Court of the Blind referring to the O Daly school of poetry that existed here in the 13th century. The estate was formed from land granted in the early 17th century to the Elizabethan soldier Sir Paul Gore for his services to the English crown during the Nine Years' War; the land was confiscated from ecclesiastical lands belonging to the monastery of Drumcliff and the Lords of Ó Conchobhair Sligigh and the Ó hAirt chiefs of the territory. The original seat of the estate was at Ardtermon Castle, a 17th-century fortified house several kilometres to the west; the present house replaced an earlier 13th century house closer to the shore, demolished. The estate was once 32,000 acres but now consists of less than 500 acres, the immediate demesne of the house.
The house was the childhood home of Irish revolutionary, Constance Gore-Booth, her sister the poet and suffragist, Eva Gore-Booth, their siblings, Mabel Gore-Booth, Mordaunt Gore-Booth and Josslyn Gore-Booth. It was the sometime holiday retreat of the world-renowned poet, William Butler Yeats, he made the house famous with the opening lines of his poem: "In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz"The light of evening, Lissadell,Great windows open to the south,Two girls in silk kimonos, bothBeautiful, one a gazelle. The estate was bought by the Cassidy-Walsh family in 2003 for an undisclosed sum, they initiated a program of restoration of grounds. In 2006 a 1.1 million euro state grant was made available by Fáilte Ireland towards the restoration of the gardens. This controversy occurred just prior to the famine and concerned the clearance of a settlement on the Lissadell estate as part of the "improvement" of the estate by consolidation of small holdings into larger more viable farms through "assisted emigration".
The issue was whether these people were left by choice. This controversy centred around the sacking of Gabrielle Gore-Booth by the Solicitor General amid allegations of mismanagement of the estate, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when the heir Michael was made a ward of court, it generated considerable public indignation when it was first told by English journalist Anne Robinson. Gabrielle's counter claim involved the illegal felling of estate timber. Calls for a public inquiry were followed by an investigation by RTÉ’s current affairs programme Seven Days, re-examining the claim in respect of the timber, dismissed as ‘absurd’. Judgment was delivered in April 1965 by Justice Davitt who summed up by saying "Neither Gabrielle or her mother or sister have any legal rights whatever to any say in the matter as to how Lissadell is to be managed, they have no legal right to be at Lissadell. They have been allowed to remain there because of the belief that if Sir Michael Gore-Booth were under no disability it would be his wish permanently to extend the hospitality of his home to his mother and sisters.
That belief may not be well founded. I do not consider it necessary to direct that felling of timber be discontinued”. In 2003, the house was put up for sale by the owner, Sir Josslyn Gore-Booth, for €3 million; the sale was controversial because, as well as being one of Ireland's finest houses, there are many historical associations with the house. It was the home of Constance Markievicz, associated with the poet W. B. Yeats and, because of its links to Markievicz and the 1916 Rising, it can be argued that the house is inextricably linked to the foundation of the state. Many, including Sir Josslyn himself, hoped that it would be purchased by the state stating "Suffice it to say I would welcome an interest on the part of the state". However, the Fianna Fáil government under Bertie Ahern waived any interest in the estate, citing a cost report commissioned by Environment Minister Martin Cullen which suggested that the overall cost to the State of purchasing Lissadell and refurbishing it as a major visitor attraction would cost in the region of €28 million, a figure, claimed to be inaccurate by many, including Sir Josslyn himself.
The state waived any interest in the auction of the contents of the house. A consortium was set up consisting of businessmen and politicians to buy the house in trust for the state.
Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus known after his ennoblement as Carl von Linné, was a Swedish botanist and zoologist who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming organisms. He is known as the "father of modern taxonomy". Many of his writings were in Latin, his name is rendered in Latin as Carolus Linnæus. Linnaeus was born in the countryside of Småland in southern Sweden, he received most of his higher education at Uppsala University and began giving lectures in botany there in 1730. He lived abroad between 1735 and 1738, where he studied and published the first edition of his Systema Naturae in the Netherlands, he returned to Sweden where he became professor of medicine and botany at Uppsala. In the 1740s, he was sent on several journeys through Sweden to find and classify plants and animals. In the 1750s and 1760s, he continued to collect and classify animals and minerals, while publishing several volumes, he was one of the most acclaimed scientists in Europe at the time of his death. Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau sent him the message: "Tell him I know no greater man on earth."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote: "With the exception of Shakespeare and Spinoza, I know no one among the no longer living who has influenced me more strongly." Swedish author August Strindberg wrote: "Linnaeus was in reality a poet who happened to become a naturalist." Linnaeus has been called Princeps botanicorum and "The Pliny of the North". He is considered as one of the founders of modern ecology. In botany and zoology, the abbreviation L. is used to indicate Linnaeus as the authority for a species' name. In older publications, the abbreviation "Linn." is found. Linnaeus's remains comprise the type specimen for the species Homo sapiens following the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, since the sole specimen that he is known to have examined was himself. Linnaeus was born in the village of Råshult in Småland, Sweden, on 23 May 1707, he was the first child of Christina Brodersonia. His siblings were Anna Maria Linnæa, Sofia Juliana Linnæa, Samuel Linnæus, Emerentia Linnæa, his father taught him Latin as a small child.
One of a long line of peasants and priests, Nils was an amateur botanist, a Lutheran minister, the curate of the small village of Stenbrohult in Småland. Christina was the daughter of the rector of Samuel Brodersonius. A year after Linnaeus's birth, his grandfather Samuel Brodersonius died, his father Nils became the rector of Stenbrohult; the family moved into the rectory from the curate's house. In his early years, Linnaeus seemed to have a liking for plants, flowers in particular. Whenever he was upset, he was given a flower, which calmed him. Nils spent much time in his garden and showed flowers to Linnaeus and told him their names. Soon Linnaeus was given his own patch of earth. Carl's father was the first in his ancestry to adopt a permanent surname. Before that, ancestors had used the patronymic naming system of Scandinavian countries: his father was named Ingemarsson after his father Ingemar Bengtsson; when Nils was admitted to the University of Lund, he had to take on a family name. He adopted the Latinate name Linnæus after a giant linden tree, lind in Swedish, that grew on the family homestead.
This name was spelled with the æ ligature. When Carl was born, he was named Carl Linnæus, with his father's family name; the son always spelled it with the æ ligature, both in handwritten documents and in publications. Carl's patronymic would have been Nilsson, as in Carl Nilsson Linnæus. Linnaeus's father began teaching him basic Latin and geography at an early age; when Linnaeus was seven, Nils decided to hire a tutor for him. The parents picked a son of a local yeoman. Linnaeus did not like him, writing in his autobiography that Telander "was better calculated to extinguish a child's talents than develop them". Two years after his tutoring had begun, he was sent to the Lower Grammar School at Växjö in 1717. Linnaeus studied going to the countryside to look for plants, he reached the last year of the Lower School when he was fifteen, taught by the headmaster, Daniel Lannerus, interested in botany. Lannerus gave him the run of his garden, he introduced him to Johan Rothman, the state doctor of Småland and a teacher at Katedralskolan in Växjö.
A botanist, Rothman broadened Linnaeus's interest in botany and helped him develop an interest in medicine. By the age of 17, Linnaeus had become well acquainted with the existing botanical literature, he remarks in his journal that he "read day and night, knowing like the back of my hand, Arvidh Månsson's Rydaholm Book of Herbs, Tillandz's Flora Åboensis, Palmberg's Serta Florea Suecana, Bromelii Chloros Gothica and Rudbeckii Hortus Upsaliensis...."Linnaeus entered the Växjö Katedralskola in 1724, where he studied Greek, Hebrew and mathematics, a curriculum designed for boys preparing for the priesthood. In the last year at the gymnasium, Linnaeus's father visited to ask the professors how his son's studies were progressing. Rothman believed otherwise; the doctor offered to have Linnaeus live with his family in Växjö and to teach him physiology and botany. Nils accepted this offer. Rothman showed Linnaeus that botany was a serious sub
Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and completely enclosed by land: on the north by Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa and on the east by the Levant. Although the sea is sometimes considered a part of the Atlantic Ocean, it is identified as a separate body of water. Geological evidence indicates that around 5.9 million years ago, the Mediterranean was cut off from the Atlantic and was or desiccated over a period of some 600,000 years, the Messinian salinity crisis, before being refilled by the Zanclean flood about 5.3 million years ago. It covers an approximate area of 2.5 million km2, representing 0.7 % of the global ocean surface, but its connection to the Atlantic via the Strait of Gibraltar-the narrow strait that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and separates Spain in Europe from Morocco in Africa- is only 14 km wide. In oceanography, it is sometimes called the Eurafrican Mediterranean Sea or the European Mediterranean Sea to distinguish it from mediterranean seas elsewhere.
The Mediterranean Sea has an average depth of 1,500 m and the deepest recorded point is 5,267 m in the Calypso Deep in the Ionian Sea. The sea is bordered on the north by Europe, the east by Asia, in the south by Africa, it is located between latitudes 30° and 46° N and longitudes 6° W and 36° E. Its west-east length, from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Gulf of Iskenderun, on the southwestern coast of Turkey, is 4,000 km; the sea's average north-south length, from Croatia's southern shore to Libya, is 800 km. The sea was an important route for merchants and travellers of ancient times that allowed for trade and cultural exchange between emergent peoples of the region; the history of the Mediterranean region is crucial to understanding the origins and development of many modern societies. The countries surrounding the Mediterranean in clockwise order are Spain, Monaco, Slovenia, Croatia and Herzegovina, Albania, Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco. In addition, the Gaza Strip and the British Overseas Territories of Gibraltar and Akrotiri and Dhekelia have coastlines on the sea.
The Ancient Greeks called the Mediterranean ἡ θάλασσα or sometimes ἡ μεγάλη θάλασσα, ἡ ἡμέτερα θάλασσα, or ἡ θάλασσα ἡ καθ'ἡμᾶς. The Romans called it Mare Mare Internum and, starting with the Roman Empire, Mare Nostrum; the term Mare Mediterrāneum appears later: Solinus used it in the 3rd century, but the earliest extant witness to it is in the 6th century, in Isidore of Seville. It means'in the middle of land, inland' in Latin, a compound of medius, -āneus; the Latin word is a calque of Greek μεσόγειος, from μέσος and γήινος, from γῆ. The original meaning may have been'the sea in the middle of the earth', rather than'the sea enclosed by land'; the Carthaginians called it the "Syrian Sea". In ancient Syrian texts, Phoenician epics and in the Hebrew Bible, it was known as the "Great Sea" or as "The Sea". Another name was the "Sea of the Philistines", from the people inhabiting a large portion of its shores near the Israelites. In Modern Hebrew, it is called HaYam HaTikhon'the Middle Sea'. In Modern Arabic, it is known as al-Baḥr al-Mutawassiṭ'the Middle Sea'.
In Islamic and older Arabic literature, it was Baḥr al-Rūm'the Sea of the Romans' or'the Roman Sea'. At first, that name referred to only the Eastern Mediterranean, but it was extended to the whole Mediterranean. Other Arabic names were Baḥr al-šām'the Sea of Syria' and Baḥr al-Maghrib'the Sea of the West'. In Turkish, it is the Akdeniz'the White Sea'; the origin of the name is not clear, as it is not known in earlier Greek, Byzantine or Islamic sources. It may be to contrast with the Black Sea. In Persian, the name was translated as Baḥr-i Safīd, used in Ottoman Turkish, it is the origin of the colloquial Greek phrase Άσπρη Θάλασσα. Johann Knobloch claims that in Classical Antiquity, cultures in the Levant used colours to refer to the cardinal points: black referred to the north, yellow or blue to east, red to south, white to west; this would explain both the Turkish Akdeniz and the Arab nomenclature described above. Several ancient civilizations were located around the Mediterranean shores and were influenced by their proximity to the sea.
It provided routes for trade and war, as well as food for numerous communities throughout the ages. Due to the shared climate and access to the sea, c
Caucasus
The Caucasus or Caucasia is an area situated between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea and occupied by Russia, Georgia and Armenia. It is home to the Caucasus Mountains, including the Greater Caucasus mountain range, considered a natural barrier between Eastern Europe and Western Asia. Europe's highest mountain, Mount Elbrus, at 5,642 metres is located in the west part of the Greater Caucasus mountain range. On the southern side, the Lesser Caucasus includes the Javakheti Plateau and grows into the Armenian highlands, part of, located in Turkey; the Caucasus region is separated into northern and southern parts – the North Caucasus and Transcaucasus, respectively. The Greater Caucasus mountain range in the north is within the Russian Federation, while the Lesser Caucasus mountain range in the south is occupied by several independent states, namely Georgia, Armenia and the recognised Artsakh Republic; the region is known for its linguistic diversity: aside from Indo-European and Turkic languages, the Kartvelian, Northwest Caucasian, Northeast Caucasian families are indigenous to the area.
The term Caucasus is not only used for the mountains themselves but includes Ciscaucasia and Transcaucasia. According to Alexander Mikaberidze, Transcaucasia is a "Russo-centric" term. Pliny the Elder's Natural History derives the name of the Caucasus from Scythian kroy-khasis. German linguist Paul Kretschmer notes that the Latvian word Kruvesis means "ice". In the Tale of Past Years, it is stated that Old East Slavic Кавкасийскыѣ горы came from Ancient Greek Καύκασος ), according to M. A. Yuyukin, is a compound word that can be interpreted as the "Seagull's Mountain" According to German philologists Otto Schrader and Alfons A. Nehring, the Ancient Greek word Καύκασος is connected to Gothic Hauhs as well as Lithuanian Kaũkas and Kaukarà. British linguist Adrian Room points out that Kau- means "mountain" in Pelasgian; the Transcaucasus region and Dagestan were the furthest points of Parthian and Sasanian expansions, with areas to the north of the Greater Caucasus range impregnable. The mythological Mount Qaf, the world's highest mountain that ancient Iranian lore shrouded in mystery, was said to be situated in this region.
In Middle Persian sources of the Sasanian era, the Caucasus range was referred to as Kaf Kof. The term resurfaced in Iranian tradition on in a variant form when Ferdowsi, in his Shahnameh, referred to the Caucasus mountains as Kōh-i Kāf. "Most of the modern names of the Caucasus originate from the Greek Kaukasos and the Middle Persian Kaf Kof"."The earliest etymon" of the name Caucasus comes from Kaz-kaz, the Hittite designation of the "inhabitants of the southern coast of the Black Sea". It was noted that in Nakh Ков гас means "gateway to steppe" The modern name for the region is similar in the many languages, is between Kavkaz and Kawkaz; the North Caucasus region is known as the Ciscaucasus, whereas the South Caucasus region is known as the Transcaucasus. The Ciscaucasus contains most of the Greater Caucasus mountain range, it consists of Southern Russia the North Caucasian Federal District's autonomous republics, the northernmost parts of Georgia and Azerbaijan. The Ciscaucasus lies between the Black Sea to its west, the Caspian Sea to its east, borders the Southern Federal District to its north.
The two Federal Districts are collectively referred to as "Southern Russia." The Transcaucasus borders the Greater Caucasus range and Southern Russia to its north, the Black Sea and Turkey to its west, the Caspian Sea to its east, Iran to its south. It contains surrounding lowlands. All of Armenia and Georgia are in the South Caucasus; the watershed along the Greater Caucasus range is perceived to be the dividing line between Europe and Southwest Asia. The highest peak in the Caucasus is Mount Elbrus located in western Ciscaucasus, is considered as the highest point in Europe; the Caucasus is one of the culturally diverse regions on Earth. The nation states that comprise the Caucasus today are the post-Soviet states Georgia, Azerbaijan and the Russian Federation; the Russian divisions include Dagestan, Ingushetia, North Ossetia–Alania, Kabardino–Balkaria, Karachay–Cherkessia, Krasnodar Krai and Stavropol Krai, in clockwise order. Three territories in the region claim independence but are recognized as such by only a handful entities: Artsakh and South Ossetia.
Abkhazia and South Ossetia are recognized by the world community as part of Georgia, Artsakh as part of Azerbaijan. The region has language families. There are more than 50 ethnic groups living in the region. No fewer than three language families are unique to the area. In addition, Indo-European languages, such as Armenian and Ossetian, Turkic languages, such as Azerbaijani, Kumyk language and Karachay–Balkar, are spoken in the area. Russian is used as a lingua franca most notably in the North Caucasus; the peoples of the northern and southern Caucasus tend to be either Sunni Muslims, Eastern Orthodox Christians and Armenian Christians. Twelver Shi'
Bristol
Bristol is a city and county in South West England with a population of 459,300. The wider district has the 10th-largest population in England; the urban area population of 724,000 is the 8th-largest in the UK. The city borders North Somerset and South Gloucestershire, with the cities of Bath and Gloucester to the south-east and north-east, respectively. South Wales lies across the Severn estuary. Iron Age hill forts and Roman villas were built near the confluence of the rivers Frome and Avon, around the beginning of the 11th century the settlement was known as Brycgstow. Bristol received a royal charter in 1155 and was divided between Gloucestershire and Somerset until 1373, when it became a county of itself. From the 13th to the 18th century, Bristol was among the top three English cities after London in tax receipts. Bristol was surpassed by the rapid rise of Birmingham and Liverpool in the Industrial Revolution. Bristol was a starting place for early voyages of exploration to the New World.
On a ship out of Bristol in 1497 John Cabot, a Venetian, became the first European since the Vikings to land on mainland North America. In 1499 William Weston, a Bristol merchant, was the first Englishman to lead an exploration to North America. At the height of the Bristol slave trade, from 1700 to 1807, more than 2,000 slave ships carried an estimated 500,000 people from Africa to slavery in the Americas; the Port of Bristol has since moved from Bristol Harbour in the city centre to the Severn Estuary at Avonmouth and Royal Portbury Dock. Bristol's modern economy is built on the creative media and aerospace industries, the city-centre docks have been redeveloped as centres of heritage and culture; the city has the largest circulating community currency in the UK—the Bristol pound, pegged to the Pound sterling. The city has two universities, the University of Bristol and the University of the West of England, a variety of artistic and sporting organisations and venues including the Royal West of England Academy, the Arnolfini, Spike Island, Ashton Gate and the Memorial Stadium.
It is connected to London and other major UK cities by road and rail, to the world by sea and air: road, by the M5 and M4. One of the UK's most popular tourist destinations, Bristol was selected in 2009 as one of the world's top ten cities by international travel publishers Dorling Kindersley in their Eyewitness series of travel guides; the Sunday Times named it as the best city in Britain in which to live in 2014 and 2017, Bristol won the EU's European Green Capital Award in 2015. The most ancient recorded name for Bristol is the archaic Welsh Caer Odor, consistent with modern understanding that early Bristol developed between the River Frome and Avon Gorge, it is most stated that the Saxon name Bricstow was a simple calque of the existing Celtic name, with Bric a literal translation of Odor, the common Saxon suffix Stow replacing Caer. Alternative etymologies are supported by numerous orthographic variations in medieval documents, with Samuel Seyer enumerating 47 alternative forms; the Old English form Brycgstow is used to derive the meaning place at the bridge.
Utilizing another form, Rev. Dr. Shaw derived the name from the Celtic words bras, or braos and tuile; the poet Thomas Chatterton popularised a derivation from Brictricstow linking the town to Brictric, a leading landholder in the area. It appears that the form Bricstow prevailed until 1204, the Bristolian'L' is what changed the name to Bristol. Archaeological finds, including flint tools believed to be between 300,000 and 126,000 years old made with the Levallois technique, indicate the presence of Neanderthals in the Shirehampton and St Annes areas of Bristol during the Middle Palaeolithic. Iron Age hill forts near the city are at Leigh Woods and Clifton Down, on the side of the Avon Gorge, on Kings Weston Hill near Henbury. A Roman settlement, existed at what is now Sea Mills. Isolated Roman villas and small forts and settlements were scattered throughout the area. Bristol was founded by 1000. By 1067 Brycgstow was a well-fortified burh, that year the townsmen beat off a raiding party from Ireland led by three of Harold Godwinson's sons.
Under Norman rule, the town had one of the strongest castles in southern England. Bristol was the place of exile for Diarmait Mac Murchada, the Irish king of Leinster, after being overthrown; the Bristol merchants subsequently played a prominent role in funding Richard Strongbow de Clare and the Norman invasion of Ireland. The port developed in the 11th century around the confluence of the Rivers Frome and Avon, adjacent to Bristol Bridge just outside the town walls. By the 12th century Bristol was an important port, handling much of England's trade with Ireland, including slaves. There was an important Jewish community in Bristol from the late 12th century through to the late 13th century when all Jews were expelled from England; the stone bridge built in 1247 was replaced by the current bridge during the 1760s. The town incorporated neighbouring suburbs and became a county in 1373, the first town in England to be given this status. During this period, Bristol became manufacturing centre. By the 14th centur
Even-toed ungulate
The even-toed ungulates are ungulates - hoofed animals - which bear weight on two of the five toes: their third and fourth toes. The other three toes are either present, vestigial, or pointing posteriorly. By contrast, odd-toed ungulates bear weight on one of the five toes: the third toe. Another difference between the two is that even-toed ungulates digest plant cellulose in one or more stomach chambers rather than in their intestine as the odd-toed ungulates do; the aquatic cetaceans evolved from even-toed ungulates, so modern taxonomic classification sometimes combines the Artiodactyla and Cetacea into the Cetartiodactyla. The 220 land-based even-toed ungulate species include pigs, hippopotamuses, llamas, mouse deer, giraffes, sheep and cattle. Many of these are of great dietary and cultural importance to humans; the oldest fossils of even-toed ungulates date back to the early Eocene. Since these findings simultaneously appeared in Europe and North America, it is difficult to determine the origin of artiodactyls.
The fossils are classified as belonging to the family Dichobunidae. These were small animals, some as small as a hare, with a slim build, lanky legs, a long tail, their hind legs were much longer than their front legs. The early to middle Eocene saw the emergence of the ancestors of most of today's mammals. Two widespread, but now extinct, families of even-toed ungulates were Enteledontidae and Anthracotheriidae. Entelodonts existed from the middle Eocene to the early Miocene in North America, they had a stocky body with short legs and a massive head, characterized by two humps on the lower jaw bone. Anthracotheres had a large, porcine build, with an elongated muzzle; this group appeared in the middle Eocene up until the Pliocene, spread throughout Eurasia and North America. Anthracothereres are thought to be the ancestors of hippos, probably led a similar aquatic lifestyle. Hippopotamuses appeared in the late Miocene and occupied Africa and Asia – they never got to the Americas; the camels were, during large parts of the Cenozoic, limited to North America.
Among the North American camels were groups like the short-legged Merycoidodontidae. They first developed a great diversity of species in North America. Only in the late Miocene or early Pliocene did they migrate from North America into Eurasia; the North American varieties became extinct around 10,000 years ago. Suina have been around since the Eocene. In the late Eocene or the Oligocene, two families stayed in Africa. South America was settled by even-toed ungulates only in the Pliocene, after the land bridge at the Isthmus of Panama formed some three million years ago. With only the peccaries and various species of capreoline deer, South America has comparatively fewer artiodactyl families than other continents, except Australia, which has no native species; the classification of artiodactyls was hotly debated because the ocean-dwelling cetaceans evolved from the land-dwelling even-toed ungulates. Some semiaquatic even-toed ungulates are more related to the ocean-dwelling cetaceans than to the other even-toed ungulates.
This makes the Artiodactyla as traditionally defined a paraphyletic taxon, since it includes animals descended from a common ancestor, but does not include all of its descendants. Phylogenetic classification only recognizes monophyletic taxa. To address this problem, the traditional order Artiodactyla and infraorder Cetacea are sometimes subsumed into the more inclusive Cetartiodactyla taxon. An alternative approach is to include both land-dwelling even-toed ungulates and ocean-dwelling cetaceans in a revised Artiodactyla taxon. Order Artiodactyla/Clade CetartiodactylaSuborder Tylopoda Family †Anoplotheriidae? Family †Cainotheriidae Family †Merycoidodontidae Family †Agriochoeridae Family Camelidae: camels and lamoids or llamas Family †Oromerycidae Family †Xiphodontidae Clade Artiofabula Suborder Suina Family Suidae: pigs Family Tayassuidae: peccaries Family †Sanitheriidae Clade Cetruminantia Clade CetancodontamorphaGenus †Andrewsarchus? Family †Entelodontidae Suborder Whippomorpha Family †Raoellidae Superfamily Dichobunoidea – paraphyletic to Cetacea and Raoellidae Family †Dichobunidae Family †Helohyidae Family †Choeropotamidae Family †Cebochoeridae Family †Mixtotheriidae Infraorder Ancodonta Family †Anthracotheriidae – paraphyletic to Hippopotamidae Family Hippopotamidae: hippos Infraorder Cetacea: whales Parvorder †Archaeoceti Family †Pakicetidae Family †Ambulocetidae Family †Remingtonocetidae Family †Basilosauridae Parvorder Mysticeti: baleen whales Superfamily Balaenoidea: right whales Family Balaenidae: greater right whales Family Cetotheriidae: pygmy right whale Superfamily Balaenopteroidea: large baleen whales Family Balaenopteridae: slender-back rorquals and humpback whale Family Eschrichtiidae: gray whale Parvorder Odontoceti: toothed whales Superfamily Delphinoidea: oceanic dolphins and others Family Delphinidae: oceanic t
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was established by the Acts of Union 1800, which merged the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland. The United Kingdom, having financed the European coalition that defeated France during the Napoleonic Wars, developed a large Royal Navy that enabled the British Empire to become the foremost world power for the next century; the Crimean War with Russia and the Boer wars were small operations in a peaceful century. Rapid industrialisation that began in the decades prior to the state's formation continued up until the mid-19th century; the Great Irish Famine, exacerbated by government inaction in the mid-19th century, led to demographic collapse in much of Ireland and increased calls for Irish land reform. The 19th century was an era of rapid economic modernisation and growth of industry and finance, in which Britain dominated the world economy. Outward migration was heavy to the United States; the empire was expanded into much of South Asia. The Colonial Office and India Office ruled through a small number of administrators who managed the units of the empire locally, while democratic institutions began to develop.
British India, by far the most important overseas possession, saw a short-lived revolt in 1857. In overseas policy, the central policy was free trade, which enabled British and Irish financiers and merchants to operate in many otherwise independent countries, as in South America. London formed no permanent military alliances until the early 20th century, when it began to cooperate with Japan and Russia, moved closer to the United States. Growing desire for Irish self-governance led to the Irish War of Independence, which resulted in most of Ireland seceding from the Union and forming the Irish Free State in 1922. Northern Ireland remained part of the Union, the state was renamed to the current "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" in 1927; the modern-day United Kingdom is the same country as the one from this period—a direct continuation of what remained after the secession—not an new successor state. A brief period of limited independence for Ireland came to an end following the Irish Rebellion of 1798, which occurred during the British war with revolutionary France.
The British government's fear of an independent Ireland siding against them with the French resulted in the decision to unite the two countries. This was brought about by legislation in the parliaments of both kingdoms and came into effect on 1 January 1801; the Irish had been led to believe by the British that their loss of legislative independence would be compensated with Catholic emancipation, that is, by the removal of civil disabilities placed upon Roman Catholics in both Great Britain and Ireland. However, King George III was bitterly opposed to any such Emancipation and succeeded in defeating his government's attempts to introduce it. During the War of the Second Coalition, Britain occupied most of the French and Dutch overseas possessions, the Netherlands having become a satellite state of France in 1796, but tropical diseases claimed the lives of over 40,000 troops; when the Treaty of Amiens ended the war, Britain agreed to return most of the territories it had seized. The peace settlement was in effect only a ceasefire, Napoleon continued to provoke the British by attempting a trade embargo on the country and by occupying the city of Hanover, capital of the Electorate, a German-speaking duchy, in a personal union with the United Kingdom.
In May 1803, war was declared again. Napoleon's plans to invade Great Britain failed, chiefly due to the inferiority of his navy, in 1805 a Royal Navy fleet led by Nelson decisively defeated the French and Spanish at Trafalgar, the last significant naval action of the Napoleonic Wars. In 1806, Napoleon issued the series of Berlin Decrees, which brought into effect the Continental System; this policy aimed to eliminate the threat from the British by closing French-controlled territory to foreign trade. The British Army remained a minimal threat to France. Although the Royal Navy disrupted France's extra-continental trade—both by seizing and threatening French shipping and by seizing French colonial possessions—it could do nothing about France's trade with the major continental economies and posed little threat to French territory in Europe. France's population and agricultural capacity far outstripped that of the British Isles, but it was smaller in terms of industry, mercantile marine and naval strength.
Napoleon expected that cutting Britain off from the European mainland would end its economic hegemony. On the contrary Britain possessed the greatest industrial capacity in the world, its mastery of the seas allowed it to build up considerable economic strength through trade to its possessions and the United States; the Spanish uprising in 1808 at last permitted Britain to gain a foothold on the Continent. The Duke of Wellington pushed the French out of Spain, in early 1814, as Napoleon was being driven back in the east by the Prussians and Russians, Wellington invaded southern France. After Napoleon's surrender and exile to the island of Elba, peace appeared to have returned. Napoleon reappeared in 1815; the Allies united and the armies of Wellington and Blücher defeated Napoleon once and for all at Waterloo. To defeat France, Britain put heavy pressure on the Americans
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