1.
France
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France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres and had a population of almost 67 million people as of January 2017. It is a unitary republic with the capital in Paris. Other major urban centres include Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, during the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years War strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a colonial empire was established. The 16th century was dominated by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. France became Europes dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV, in the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War, the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Algeria and nearly all the colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal controversy and typically retained close economic. France has long been a centre of art, science. It hosts Europes fourth-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, France is a developed country with the worlds sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, France remains a great power in the world, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a member state of the European Union and the Eurozone. It is also a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or country of the Franks
2.
Picardy
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Picardy is a historical territory and a former administrative region of France. Since 1 January 2016, it is now part of the new region of Hauts-de-France and it is located in the northern part of France. The historical province of Picardy stretched from north of Noyon to Calais, via the whole of the Somme department, the province of Artois separated Picardy from French Flanders. From the 5th century the area was part of the Frankish Empire, and in the period it encompassed the six countships of Boulogne, Montreuil, Ponthieu, Amiénois, Vermandois. According to the 843 Treaty of Verdun the region part of West Francia. The name Picardy was not used until the 12th or 13th century, during this time, the name applied to all lands where the Picard language was spoken, which included all the territories from Paris to the Netherlands. In the Latin Quarter of Paris, people identified a Picard Nation of students at Sorbonne University, during the Hundred Years War, Picardy was the centre of the Jacquerie peasant revolt in 1358. From 1419 onwards, the Picardy counties were gradually acquired by the Burgundian duke Philip the Good, in 1477, King Louis XI of France led an army and occupied key towns in Picardy. By the end of 1477, Louis would control all of Picardy, in the 16th century, the government of Picardy was created. This became a new region of France, separate from what was historically defined as Picardy. The new Picardy included the Somme département, the half of the Aisne département. In 1557, Picardy was invaded by Habsburg forces under the command of Emmanuel Philibert, after a seventeen-day siege, St. Quentin would be ransacked, while Noyon would be burned by the Habsburg army. In the 17th century, a disease similar to English sweat originated from the region. It was called Suette des picards or Picardy sweat, the sugar industry has continued to play a prominent role in the economy of the region. One of the most significant historical events to occur in Picardy was the series of battles fought along the Somme during World War I. From September 1914 to August 1918, four major battles, including the Battle of the Somme, were fought by British, French, and German forces in the fields of Northern Picardy. In 2009, the Regional Committee for local government reform proposed to reduce the number of French regions, Picardy would have disappeared, and each department would have joined a nearby region. The Oise would have incorporated in the Île-de-France, the Somme would have been incorporated in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais
3.
Saint-Valery-sur-Somme
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Saint-Valery-sur-Somme is a commune in the Somme department. The village is a popular tourist destination because of its character and ramparts, Gothic church. The commune is on the Hauts-de-France coast adjacent to the Baie de la Somme and it is 30 kilometres north west of Abbeville and to the west of the battlefields of the Somme. Most of the commune adjacent to the sea and the Somme river on the Quai du Romerel, Quai Courbet, Quai Jeanne dArc, Quai Blavet. The oldest part of the lies on the northern coast to the north west of the main settlement. To the south is the road, the CD940 between Abbeville and Cayeux-sur-Mer. The history of the dates back to before the era of the Roman invasion when it was a small settlement inhabited by Gauls. The Roman invasion encouraged the small hamlet to grow into a small village, in 611, the monk Gualaric, also known as Valery, arrived in the area. He installed himself as a hermit on the headland of the site of Leuconaus and his virtue and miracles quickly attracted disciples. These disciples formed a primitive abbey, the saint was then buried there in 622 and the Chapelle des marins was erected in 628 by Saint Blimont over his burial place. Clotaire II provided the foundations of the new abbey in 627, the relics of the saint attracted many pilgrims to the abbey which had become known as Saint-Valery. During the 8th and 9th century, the abbey and village were plundered and devastated on several occasions by the Vikings. The village grew during the 10th and 11th centuries and was significant as the site where William the Conqueror assembled his fleet before sailing over to England in 1066. During the many wars between the French and the English the village passed between French, English and Burgundian ownership, the English destroyed the abbey and cloister in order to strengthen the nearby St Valery castle. In 1431, Joan of Arc, captive of the English, was held prisoner in the prison where she was then conveyed to Rouen. The cell in which she stayed can still be found near part of the old village walls, the commune found peace and prosperity during the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. The abbey was rebuilt and still stands today, the activity of the port flourished, thanks to the export of the wines and the growth of the herring industry. It was near enough to Paris to be one of the suppliers of the chasse marée merchants
4.
English Channel
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The English Channel, also called simply the Channel, is the body of water that separates southern England from northern France, and links the southern part of the North Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. It is about 560 km long and varies in width from 240 km at its widest to 33.3 km in the Strait of Dover and it is the smallest of the shallow seas around the continental shelf of Europe, covering an area of some 75,000 km2. The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the English Channel as follows, a line joining Isle Vierge to Lands End. The southwestern limit of the North Sea, the IHO defines the southwestern limit of the North Sea as a line joining the Walde Lighthouse and Leathercoat Point. The Walde Lighthouse is 6 km east of Calais, and Leathercoat Point is at the end of St Margarets Bay. The Strait of Dover, at the Channels eastern end, is its narrowest point and it is relatively shallow, with an average depth of about 120 m at its widest part, reducing to a depth of about 45 m between Dover and Calais. Eastwards from there the adjoining North Sea reduces to about 26 m in the Broad Fourteens where it lies over the watershed of the land bridge between East Anglia and the Low Countries. It reaches a depth of 180 m in the submerged valley of Hurds Deep,48 km west-northwest of Guernsey. The eastern region along the French coast between Cherbourg and the mouth of the Seine river at Le Havre is frequently referred to as the Bay of the Seine. There are several islands in the Channel, the most notable being the Isle of Wight off the English coast. The coastline, particularly on the French shore, is indented, several small islands close to the coastline, including Chausey. The Cotentin Peninsula in France juts out into the Channel, whilst on the English side there is a parallel channel known as the Solent between the Isle of Wight and the mainland. The Celtic Sea is to the west of the Channel, the time difference of about six hours between high water at the eastern and western limits of the Channel is indicative of the tidal range being amplified further by resonance. It was never defined as a border and the names were more or less descriptive. It was not considered as the property of a nation, strangely, before the development of the modern nations, British scholars very often referred to it as Gaulish and the French one as British or English. The name English Channel has been used since the early 18th century. In modern Dutch, however, it is known as Het Kanaal, later, it has also been known as the British Channel or the British Sea having been called the Oceanus Britannicus by the 2nd-century geographer Ptolemy. The same name is used on an Italian map of about 1450, the Anglo-Saxon texts often call it Sūð-sǣ as opposed to Norð-sǣ
5.
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
6.
Abbeville
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Abbeville is a commune in the Somme department and in Hauts-de-France region in northern France. It is one of the chef-lieus of the arrondissement of Somme and it was the capital of Ponthieu. Its inhabitants are called the Abbevillois, Abbeville is located on the Somme River,20 km from its modern mouth in the English Channel. The majority of the town is located on the east bank of the Somme and it is located at the head of the Abbeville Canal, and is 45 km northwest of Amiens and approximately 200 kilometres from Paris. It is also 10 kilometres as the flies from the Bay of Somme. In the medieval period, it was the lowest crossing point on the Somme, just halfway between Rouen and Lille, it is the historical capital of the County of Ponthieu and maritime Picardy. This place is considered by some to be the origin of Abbeville, because it was the location of the first château of the Counts of Ponthieu and it is assumed that this place could have been the location of the farm of Abbatisvilla, dependent upon the Abbey of Saint-Riquier. The suburbs of La Bouvaque and Thuison are located to the north of the city, the municipal park of La Bouvaque, bordered by the Boulevard de la République, consists of the La Bouvaque pond and Collart meadows, former settling ponds of the Béghin-Say sugar factory. It was in Thuison that the Carthusian monastery of Saint-Honoré was founded in 1301 by William of Mâcon and this was a property of the Order of the Temple, sold to the latter by Gérard de Villars, the last master of the province of France. The sale was confirmed by Hugues de Pairaud, then visitor of France, the suburb of Saint Gilles Rouvroy is to the west, and the origin of the name comes from Rouvray indicates the presence of an oak wood or a remarkable oak. Mautort, beside Rouvroy, is a stronghold located between Cambron and Abbeville. It is at the origin of the name of de Mautort, surviving in the name of the Tillette de Mautort family or, for example. The name tort is attested in Old French with the sense of détour, Menchecourt, in the north-west, is known for its sugar factory and for its football club. Abbeville is served by trains on the line between Boulogne-sur-Mer and Amiens and between Calais and Paris, Abbeville was the southern terminus of the Réseau des Bains de Mer, the line to Dompierre-sur-Authie opened on 19 June 1892 and closed on 10 March 1947. Abbeville is located just near the A16 autoroute, and is about 1 hour 50 minutes by car from Paris, Abbeville has an oceanic climate due to its proximity to the ocean. The summers and winters are temperate and rainy, days of snow are fairly common, the highest temperature was 37.8 °C on 1 July 1952 and the record low is −0.8 °C, which occurred during a particularly cold spell on 17 January 1985. In 2012, the commune had 24,237 inhabitants, the evolution of the number of inhabitants is known through the population censuses carried out in the town since 1793. The population of the commune is relatively old, the rate of persons over 60 years of age is higher than the national rate and the departmental rate
7.
Drainage basin
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A drainage basin or catchment area is any area of land where precipitation collects and drains off into a common outlet, such as into a river, bay, or other body of water. Drainage basins connect into other drainage basins at elevations in a hierarchical pattern, with smaller sub-drainage basins. Other terms used to describe drainage basins are catchment, catchment basin, drainage area, river basin and water basin. In closed drainage basins the water converges to a point inside the basin, known as a sink, which may be a permanent lake. The drainage basin acts as a funnel by collecting all the water within the covered by the basin. Each drainage basin is separated topographically from adjacent basins by a perimeter, drainage basins are similar but not identical to hydrologic units, which are drainage areas delineated so as to nest into a multi-level hierarchical drainage system. Hydrologic units are defined to allow multiple inlets, outlets, or sinks, in a strict sense, all drainage basins are hydrologic units but not all hydrologic units are drainage basins. Drainage basins of the oceans and seas of the world. Grey areas are endorheic basins that do not drain to the oceans, the following is a list of the major ocean basins, About 48. 7% of the worlds land drains to the Atlantic Ocean. The two major mediterranean seas of the world also flow to the Atlantic, The Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico basin includes most of the U. S. The Mediterranean Sea basin includes much of North Africa, east-central Africa, Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe, Turkey, and the areas of Israel, Lebanon. Just over 13% of the land in the world drains to the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Oceans drainage basin also comprises about 13% of Earths land. It drains the eastern coast of Africa, the coasts of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, the Indian subcontinent, Burma, antarctica comprises approximately eight percent of the Earths land. The five largest river basins, from largest to smallest, are the basins of the Amazon, the Río de la Plata, the Congo, the Nile, and the Mississippi. The three rivers that drain the most water, from most to least, are the Amazon, Ganga, endorheic drainage basins are inland basins that do not drain to an ocean. Around 18% of all land drains to endorheic lakes or seas or sinks, the largest of these consists of much of the interior of Asia, which drains into the Caspian Sea, the Aral Sea, and numerous smaller lakes. Some of these, such as the Great Basin, are not single drainage basins but collections of separate, in endorheic bodies of standing water where evaporation is the primary means of water loss, the water is typically more saline than the oceans. An extreme example of this is the Dead Sea, drainage basins have been historically important for determining territorial boundaries, particularly in regions where trade by water has been important
8.
Celtic languages
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The Celtic languages are descended from Proto-Celtic, or Common Celtic, a branch of the greater Indo-European language family. Modern Celtic languages are spoken on the north-western edge of Europe, notably in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, Cornwall. There are also a number of Welsh speakers in the Patagonia area of Argentina. Some people speak Celtic languages in the other Celtic diaspora areas of the United States, Canada, Australia, in all these areas, the Celtic languages are now only spoken by minorities though there are continuing efforts at revitalisation. Welsh is the only Celtic language not classified as endangered by UNESCO, the spread to Cape Breton and Patagonia occurred in modern times. SIL Ethnologue lists six living Celtic languages, of four have retained a substantial number of native speakers. These are the Goidelic languages and the Brittonic languages, the other two, Cornish and Manx, died in modern times with their presumed last native speakers in 1777 and 1974 respectively. For both these languages, however, revitalisation movements have led to the adoption of these languages by adults and children, taken together, there were roughly one million native speakers of Celtic languages as of the 2000s. In 2010, there were more than 1.4 million speakers of Celtic languages, shelta, based largely on Irish with influence from an undocumented source. Some forms of Welsh-Romani or Kååle also combined Romany itself with Welsh language, beurla-reagaird, Highland travellers language Celtic divided into various branches, Lepontic, the oldest attested Celtic language. Anciently spoken in Switzerland and in Northern-Central Italy, from the Alps to Umbria, coins with Lepontic inscriptions have been found in Noricum and Gallia Narbonensis. Celtiberian, anciently spoken in the Iberian peninsula, in parts of modern Galicia, Asturias, La Rioja, Aragón, Cantabria, Old Castile, the relationship of Celtiberian with Gallaecian, in the northwest of the peninsula, is uncertain. Gallaecian, anciently spoken in the former Gallaecia, northwest of the peninsula, Gaulish languages, including Galatian and possibly Noric. These languages were spoken in a wide arc from Belgium to Turkey. Brittonic, including the living languages Breton, Cornish, and Welsh, before the arrival of Scotti on the Isle of Man in the 9th century, there may have been a Brittonic language in the Isle of Man. Goidelic, including the living languages Irish, Manx, and Scottish Gaelic, scholarly handling of the Celtic languages has been rather argumentative owing to scarceness of primary source data. Other scholars distinguish between P-Celtic and Q-Celtic, putting most of the Gaulish and Brittonic languages in the former group, the P-Celtic languages are sometimes seen as a central innovating area as opposed to the more conservative peripheral Q-Celtic languages. In the P/Q classification schema, the first language to split off from Proto-Celtic was Gaelic and it has characteristics that some scholars see as archaic, but others see as also being in the Brittonic languages
9.
Somme (department)
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Somme is a department of France, located in the north of the country and named after the Somme river. It is part of the Hauts-de-France region, the north central area of the Somme was the site of a series of battles during World War I. Particularly significant was the 1916 Battle of the Somme, the 1346 Battle of Crécy, a major English victory early in the Hundred Years War, also took place in this department. The Somme department is in the current region of Hauts-de-France and is surrounded by the departments of Pas-de-Calais, Nord, Aisne, Oise, in the northwest, it has a coast on the English Channel. The main rivers are the Somme and its tributaries as well as the Bresle, at the beginning of the First World War, during the Race to the Sea of September and November 1914, the Somme became the site of the Battle of Albert. The line settled around the town of Thiepval and remained there until July 1916, the Allies had originally intended the Somme to be the site of one of several simultaneous major offensives by Allied powers against the Central Powers in 1916. However, before these offensives could begin, the Germans attacked first, as this battle dragged on, the purpose of the Somme campaign shifted from striking a decisive blow against Germany to drawing German forces away from Verdun and relieving the Allied forces there. By its end the losses on the Somme had exceeded those at Verdun, while Verdun would bite deep in the national consciousness of France for generations, the Somme would have the same effect on generations of Britons. The battle is best remembered for its first day,1 July 1916, on which the British suffered 57,420 casualties, as terrible as the battle was for the British Empire troops who suffered there, it naturally affected the other nationalities as well. One German officer, General D. Swaha, famously described it as the grave of the German field army. By the end of the battle, the British had learned lessons in modern warfare while the Germans had suffered irreplaceable losses. British historian Sir James Edmonds stated, It is not too much to claim that the foundations of the victory on the Western Front were laid by the Somme offensive of 1916. The Somme experienced war twice more in the First and Second Battles of the Somme of 1918
10.
Saint-Quentin, Aisne
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Saint-Quentin is a commune in the Aisne department in Hauts-de-France in northern France. It has been identified as the Augusta Veromanduorum of antiquity and it is named after Saint Quentin, who is said to have been martyred here in the 3rd century. Saint-Quentin is a sub-prefecture of Aisne, although Saint-Quentin is by far the largest city in Aisne, the capital is the third-largest city, Laon. The mayor of Saint-Quentin is Xavier Bertrand, a member of the right-wing UMP Party, the city was founded by the Romans, in the Augustean period, to replace the oppidum of Vermand as the capital of Viromandui. It received the name of Augusta Viromanduorum, Augusta of the Viromandui, the site is that of a ford across the River Somme. During the late Roman period, it is possible that the capital was transferred back to Vermand. From the 9th century, Saint-Quentin was the capital of Vermandois County, from the 10th century, the counts of Vermandois were very powerful. The city grew rapidly, the bourgeois organized themselves and obtained, in the half of the 11th century. At the beginning of the 13th century, Saint-Quentin entered the royal domain, at that time, it was a thriving city, based on its wool textile industry. It was also a centre of commerce boosted by its position on the border of the kingdom of France and it also benefited from its location in the heart of a rich agricultural region. From the 14th century, Saint-Quentin suffered from this strategic position, in the 15th century, the city was disputed between the king of France and the dukes of Burgundy. Ravaged by the plague on several occasions, its population decreased, while its economy was in crisis, its fair was increasingly irrelevant, the declining textile industry turned to the production of flax canvas. Meanwhile, the city faced major expenses to maintain its fortifications, between the end of the 15th century and the mid-17th century, this strategic position was the cause of frequent misfortune. In 1557, a siege by the Spanish army ended with the looting of the city, given back to France in 1559, it underwent intense fortification work, the medieval wall was protected by many new advanced fortifications, redesigned several times. Two districts were razed to make way for them, in the mid-17th century, the city escaped the sieges, but suffered the horrors of wars ravaging the Picardy region, accompanied by the plague and famine. In the second half of the 17th century, the conquests of Louis XIV took St Quentin away from the border, at the end of the 16th century, its textile production specialized in fine flax canvas. This brought prosperity, particularly in the 18th century, when these textiles were exported across Europe, during the First French Empire, difficulties in the export market brought an economic decline. At the request of the municipality, Napoleon authorized the razing of the fortifications, in 1814-1815, Saint-Quentin was occupied by the Russian army, but without any damage
11.
Geology
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Geology is an earth science concerned with the solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Geology can also refer generally to the study of the features of any terrestrial planet. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth by providing the evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life. Geology also plays a role in engineering and is a major academic discipline. The majority of data comes from research on solid Earth materials. These typically fall into one of two categories, rock and unconsolidated material, the majority of research in geology is associated with the study of rock, as rock provides the primary record of the majority of the geologic history of the Earth. There are three types of rock, igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. The rock cycle is an important concept in geology which illustrates the relationships between three types of rock, and magma. When a rock crystallizes from melt, it is an igneous rock, the sedimentary rock can then be subsequently turned into a metamorphic rock due to heat and pressure and is then weathered, eroded, deposited, and lithified, ultimately becoming a sedimentary rock. Sedimentary rock may also be re-eroded and redeposited, and metamorphic rock may also undergo additional metamorphism, all three types of rocks may be re-melted, when this happens, a new magma is formed, from which an igneous rock may once again crystallize. Geologists also study unlithified material which typically comes from more recent deposits and these materials are superficial deposits which lie above the bedrock. Because of this, the study of material is often known as Quaternary geology. This includes the study of sediment and soils, including studies in geomorphology, sedimentology and this theory is supported by several types of observations, including seafloor spreading, and the global distribution of mountain terrain and seismicity. This coupling between rigid plates moving on the surface of the Earth and the mantle is called plate tectonics. The development of plate tectonics provided a basis for many observations of the solid Earth. Long linear regions of geologic features could be explained as plate boundaries, mid-ocean ridges, high regions on the seafloor where hydrothermal vents and volcanoes exist, were explained as divergent boundaries, where two plates move apart. Arcs of volcanoes and earthquakes were explained as convergent boundaries, where one plate subducts under another, transform boundaries, such as the San Andreas Fault system, resulted in widespread powerful earthquakes. Plate tectonics also provided a mechanism for Alfred Wegeners theory of continental drift and they also provided a driving force for crustal deformation, and a new setting for the observations of structural geology
12.
Syncline
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In structural geology, a syncline is a fold with younger layers closer to the center of the structure. A synclinorium is a syncline with superimposed smaller folds. Synclines are typically a downward fold, termed a synformal syncline, if the fold pattern is circular or elongate circular the structure is a basin. Folds typically form during crustal deformation as the result of compression that accompanies orogenic mountain building, sideling Hill roadcut along Interstate 68 in western Maryland, USA, where the Rockwell Formation and overlying Purslane Sandstone are exposed
13.
Solent
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The Solent is the strait that separates the Isle of Wight from the mainland of England. The Solent is a shipping lane for passenger, freight. It is an important recreational area for sports, particularly yachting, hosting the Cowes Week sailing event annually. Spithead, an area off Gilkicker Point near Gosport, is known as the place where the Royal Navy is traditionally reviewed by the monarch of the day, the area is of great ecological and landscape importance, particularly because of the coastal and estuarine habitats along its edge. Much of its coastline is designated as a Special Area of Conservation and it is bordered by and forms a part of the character of a number of nationally important protected landscapes including the New Forest National Park, and the Isle of Wight AONB. The word first appears in the Saxon record as Solentan, a pre-Celtic and supposedly Semitoidic root meaning free standing rock has also been suggested as a possible description of the cliffs marking western approach of the strait. This Semitic origin may be a relic of the Phoenician traders who sailed to Britain from the Mediterranean as part of the ancient tin trade, another suggestion is that the name may reflect the number of Northern Gannets along the coast. Originally a river valley, the Solent has gradually widened and deepened over many thousands of years, the River Frome was the source of the River Solent, with three other rivers — the Rivers Avon, Itchen and Test — being tributaries of it. Seismic sounding has shown that, when the sea level was lower, since the retreat of the most recent glaciation the South East of England, like the Netherlands, has been steadily slowly sinking through historic time due to forebulge sinking. A new theory – that the Solent was originally a lagoon – was reported in the Southern Daily Echo by Garry Momber from the Hampshire and Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology. The Isle of Wight was formerly contiguous with the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset — the Needles on Wight, inland behind the Chalk were less resistant sands, clays and gravels. This great estuary ran through a valley and is now referred to as the Solent River. When glaciers covering more northern latitudes melted at the end of the last ice age, firstly, a great amount of flood water ran into the Solent River and its tributaries, carving the estuary deeper. Over thousands of years, the land sank in the south to submerge many valleys creating todays characteristic rias, such as Southampton Water and Poole Harbour and this is thought to have happened about 7,500 years ago. The process of change is still continuing, with the soft cliffs on some parts of the Solent, such as Fort Victoria, constantly eroding, whilst other parts. The Solent is a shallow stretch of tidal water. It has an unusual double tide that is favourable and hazardous to maritime activities with its strong tidal movements and quickly changing sea states. Coupled with the above, the Solent is renowned for its volume of vessel usage
14.
Fluvial terrace
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Fluvial terraces are elongated terraces that flank the sides of floodplains and fluvial valleys all over the world. ”These terraces lie parallel to and above the river channel and its floodplain. Because of the manner in which form, fluvial terraces are underlain by fluvial sediments of highly variable thickness. Changes in elevation can be due to changes in the level of the fluvial system. For example, downcutting by a river can lead to increased velocity of a tributary, there are two basic types of fluvial terraces, fill terraces and strath terraces. Fill terraces sometimes are further subdivided into nested fill terraces and cut terraces, both fill and strath terraces are, at times, described as being either paired or unpaired terraces based upon the relative elevations of the surface of these terraces. Fill terraces, Fill terraces are the result of a valley being filled with alluvium. The stream or river will continue to deposit material until an equilibrium is reached and this equilibrium may last for a very short period, such as, after glaciation, or for a very long time if the conditions do not change. The fill terrace is created when the conditions change again and either a stream or river starts to incise into the material that it deposited in the valley, once this occurs benches composed completely of alluvium form on the sides of the valley. The upper most benches are the fill terraces, as it continues to cut down through the alluvium the fill terraces are left above the river channel. The fill terrace is only the very highest terrace resulting from the depositional episode, Cut terraces, Cut terraces, also called cut-in-fill terraces, are similar to the fill terraces mentioned above, but they are erosional in origin. Once the alluvium deposited in the valley has begun to erode and fill terraces form along the valley walls, as either a stream or river continues to incise into the material, multiple levels of terraces may form. The uppermost being the fill terraces and the lower terraces are cut terraces. Nested fill terraces, Nested fill terraces are the result of the filling with alluvium, the alluvium being incised. The terrace that results for the filling is a nested terrace because it has been “nested” into the original alluvium. These terraces are depositional in origin and may be able to be identified by a change in alluvium characteristics such as finer material for example. Strath terraces, Strath terraces are the result of either a stream or river downcutting through bedrock, as the flow continues to downcut, a period of valley widening may occur and expand the valley width. This may occur due to an equilibrium reached in the system resulting from, slowed or paused uplift, climate change. Once downcutting continues the flattened valley bottom composed of bedrock is left above either a stream or river channel and these bedrock terraces are the strath terraces and are erosional in nature
15.
Battle of the Somme
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The Battle of the Somme, also known as the Somme Offensive, was a battle of the First World War fought by the armies of the British and French empires against the German Empire. It took place between 1 July and 18 November 1916 on both sides of the reaches of the River Somme in France. The battle was intended to hasten a victory for the Allies and was the largest battle of the First World War on the Western Front, more than one million men were wounded or killed, making it one of the bloodiest battles in human history. The French and British had committed themselves to an offensive on the Somme during Allied discussions at Chantilly, Oise, in December 1915. Initial plans called for the French army to undertake the main part of the Somme offensive, the first day on the Somme was, in terms of casualties, also the worst day in the history of the British army, which suffered 57,470 casualties. These occurred mainly on the front between the Albert–Bapaume road and Gommecourt, where the attack was defeated and few British troops reached the German front line, the battle is notable for the importance of air power and the first use of the tank. At the end of the battle, British and French forces had penetrated 10 km into German-occupied territory, the Anglo-French armies failed to capture Péronne and halted 5 km from Bapaume, where the German armies maintained their positions over the winter. Debate continues over the necessity, significance and effect of the battle, David Frum opined that a century later, the Somme remains the most harrowing place-name in the history of the British Empire. Allied war strategy for 1916 was decided at the Chantilly Conference from 6–8 December 1915, in December 1915, General Sir Douglas Haig replaced Field Marshal Sir John French as Commander-in-Chief of the BEF. Haig favoured a British offensive in Flanders close to BEF supply routes, to drive the Germans from the Belgian coast, Haig was not formally subordinate to Marshal Joseph Joffre but the British played a lesser role on the Western Front and complied with French strategy. A week later the Germans began an offensive against the French at Verdun, by 31 May, the ambitious Franco-British plan for a decisive victory, had been reduced to a limited offensive to relieve pressure on the French at Verdun with a battle of attrition on the Somme. The Chief of the German General Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, intended to end the war by splitting the Anglo-French Entente in 1916, Falkenhayn chose to attack towards Verdun to take the Meuse heights and make Verdun untenable. The British would then have to begin a hasty relief offensive, Falkenhayn expected the relief offensive to fall south of Arras against the Sixth Army and be destroyed. If such Franco-British defeats were not enough, Germany would attack the remnants of armies and end the western alliance for good. Eloi, south of Ypres and reduced the German counter-offensive strategy north of the Somme, to one of passive, the Battle of Verdun began a week after Joffre and Haig agreed to mount an offensive on the Somme. The battle changed the nature of the offensive on the Somme, as French divisions were diverted to Verdun, German overestimation of the cost of Verdun to the French contributed to the concentration of German infantry and guns on the north bank of the Somme. The German offensive at Verdun was suspended in July, and troops, guns, the Brusilov Offensive, absorbed the extra forces that had been requested on 2 June by Fritz von Below, commanding the German Second Army, for a spoiling attack on the Somme. During the offensive the Russians inflicted c. 1,500,000 losses including c. 407,000 prisoners, three divisions were ordered from France to the Eastern Front on 9 June and the spoiling attack on the Somme was abandoned
16.
William the Conqueror
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William I, usually known as William the Conqueror and sometimes William the Bastard, was the first Norman King of England, reigning from 1066 until his death in 1087. A descendant of Rollo, he was Duke of Normandy from 1035 onward, after a long struggle to establish his power, by 1060 his hold on Normandy was secure, and he launched the Norman conquest of England six years later. The rest of his life was marked by struggles to consolidate his hold over England and his continental lands, William was the son of the unmarried Robert I, Duke of Normandy, by Roberts mistress Herleva. His illegitimate status and his youth caused some difficulties for him after he succeeded his father, during his childhood and adolescence, members of the Norman aristocracy battled each other, both for control of the child duke and for their own ends. In 1047 William was able to quash a rebellion and begin to establish his authority over the duchy and his marriage in the 1050s to Matilda of Flanders provided him with a powerful ally in the neighbouring county of Flanders. By the time of his marriage, William was able to arrange the appointments of his supporters as bishops and his consolidation of power allowed him to expand his horizons, and by 1062 William was able to secure control of the neighbouring county of Maine. In the 1050s and early 1060s William became a contender for the throne of England, then held by the childless Edward the Confessor, his first cousin once removed. There were other claimants, including the powerful English earl Harold Godwinson. William argued that Edward had previously promised the throne to him, William built a large fleet and invaded England in September 1066, decisively defeating and killing Harold at the Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066. After further military efforts William was crowned king on Christmas Day 1066 and he made arrangements for the governance of England in early 1067 before returning to Normandy. Several unsuccessful rebellions followed, but by 1075 Williams hold on England was mostly secure, Williams final years were marked by difficulties in his continental domains, troubles with his eldest son, and threatened invasions of England by the Danes. In 1086 William ordered the compilation of the Domesday Book, a listing all the landholders in England along with their holdings. William died in September 1087 while leading a campaign in northern France and his reign in England was marked by the construction of castles, the settling of a new Norman nobility on the land, and change in the composition of the English clergy. He did not try to integrate his various domains into one empire, Williams lands were divided after his death, Normandy went to his eldest son, Robert Curthose, and his second surviving son, William Rufus, received England. Norsemen first began raiding in what became Normandy in the late 8th century, permanent Scandinavian settlement occurred before 911, when Rollo, one of the Viking leaders, and King Charles the Simple of France reached an agreement surrendering the county of Rouen to Rollo. The lands around Rouen became the core of the duchy of Normandy. Normandy may have used as a base when Scandinavian attacks on England were renewed at the end of the 10th century. In an effort to improve matters, King Æthelred the Unready took Emma of Normandy, sister of Duke Richard II, as his second wife in 1002
17.
Edward III of England
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Edward III transformed the Kingdom of England into one of the most formidable military powers in Europe. Edward was crowned at age fourteen after his father was deposed by his mother, Isabella of France, at age seventeen he led a successful coup against Mortimer, the de facto ruler of the country, and began his personal reign. After a successful campaign in Scotland he declared himself heir to the French throne in 1337. This started what would become known as the Hundred Years War, following some initial setbacks the war went exceptionally well for England, victories at Crécy and Poitiers led to the highly favourable Treaty of Brétigny. Edwards later years, however, were marked by international failure and domestic strife, largely as a result of his inactivity, Edward III was a temperamental man but capable of unusual clemency. He was in ways a conventional king whose main interest was warfare. Admired in his own time and for centuries after, Edward was denounced as an adventurer by later Whig historians such as William Stubbs. This view has been challenged recently and modern historians credit him with some significant achievements, Edward was born at Windsor Castle on 13 November 1312, and was often referred to as Edward of Windsor in his early years. The reign of his father, Edward II, was a problematic period of English history. One source of contention was the inactivity, and repeated failure. Another controversial issue was the kings patronage of a small group of royal favourites. The birth of an heir in 1312 temporarily improved Edward IIs position in relation to the baronial opposition. To bolster further the independent prestige of the prince, the king had him created Earl of Chester at only twelve days of age. In 1325, Edward II was faced with a demand from his brother-in-law, Charles IV of France, Edward was reluctant to leave the country, as discontent was once again brewing domestically, particularly over his relationship with the favourite Hugh Despenser the Younger. Instead, he had his son Edward created Duke of Aquitaine in his place, the young Edward was accompanied by his mother Isabella, who was the sister of King Charles, and was meant to negotiate a peace treaty with the French. While in France, however, Isabella conspired with the exiled Roger Mortimer to have Edward deposed, to build up diplomatic and military support for the venture, Isabella had Prince Edward engaged to the twelve-year-old Philippa of Hainault. An invasion of England was launched and Edward IIs forces deserted him completely, the king was forced to relinquish the throne to his son on 25 January 1327. The new king was crowned as Edward III on 1 February 1327 and it was not long before the new reign also met with other problems caused by the central position at court of Roger Mortimer, who was now the de facto ruler of England
18.
Battle of Blanchetaque
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The Battle of Blanchetaque in 1346 was the second of the three battles which made up what became the Crecy campaign of King Edward III of England during the early stages of the Hundred Years War. This strategy suffered a setback when on 14 August the English captured an unguarded ford on the Seine at Poissy, behind him toiled the French army, which despite some close encounters was unable to successfully come up on the English army. On 23 August a force of French levies opposed the English passage at Boismont, but were ridden down by Edwards cavalry and massacred to a man, Edward immediately broke camp in the middle of the night and moved his whole force toward the river. On arrival at the river, it was discovered that the French had defended the more strongly than previously believed. Guarding the far side of the crossing were 3,500 soldiers under Godemar du Foy, another problem was the tide which, being just over ten miles from the coast, was heavy, high and not expected to drop to crossable levels for some hours. During this time both sides prepared for the action, as Edward was determined that he would have to cross at this point. English supplies were running out and the army was ragged, starving and beginning to suffer from a drop in morale, the French force was drawn up in three lines along the sloping bank, with the best soldiers,500 men-at-arms, positioned in the center. This advance was supported by large numbers of English longbow men who unleashed a hail of arrows on the French lines, causing casualties, the Genoese crossbowmen in French service were unable to respond in kind and the English reached the French side of the river. A vicious scrum ensued on the bank, the ferocity of the English attack creating a beachhead into which Edward fed more soldiers. The combination of foot soldiers and accurate archery forced the French force backwards until their lines broke and they fled to Abbeville. An hour and a half after the French lines had broken, King Philip was not slow to pursue his enemy and chased Edwards far smaller force towards the coast, capturing several slow wagons before hesitating and allowing the English to gain a march on him. Edward used this respite to prepare a position close to the town of Crecy, as it was, Blanchetaque provided the impetus and position needed with which to later defeat the French army and conduct the siege of Calais. Casualties in the action are not clear, but it is claimed that as many as 2,000 French soldiers were killed in the battle or the retreat which followed it. English losses are less known but were likely to have been substantially less than those of the French. Bernard Cornwells novel Harlequin provides a dramatised yet substantially accurate portrayal of this action, ken Folletts novel World Without End also describes this battle. The Hundred Years War, Vol 1, Trial by Battle
19.
Battle of Agincourt
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The Battle of Agincourt was a major English victory in the Hundred Years War. The battle took place on Friday,25 October 1415 in the County of Saint-Pol, Artois, Henry V led his troops into battle and participated in hand-to-hand fighting. The French king of the time, Charles VI, did not command the French army himself as he suffered from severe psychotic illnesses with moderate mental incapacitation, instead, the French were commanded by Constable Charles dAlbret and various prominent French noblemen of the Armagnac party. This battle is notable for the use of the English longbow in very large numbers, the battle is the centrepiece of the play Henry V by William Shakespeare. The Battle of Agincourt is well documented by at least seven contemporary accounts, the approximate location of the battle has never been in dispute and the place remains relatively unaltered even after 600 years. Two of the most frequently cited accounts come from Burgundian sources, one from Jean Le Fèvre de Saint-Remy, who was present at the battle, Henry V invaded France following the failure of negotiations with the French. He initially called a Great Council in the spring of 1414 to discuss going to war with France, Henry would marry Princess Catherine, the young daughter of Charles VI, and receive a dowry of 2 million crowns. The French responded with what they considered the terms of marriage with Princess Catherine, a dowry of 600,000 crowns. By 1415, negotiations had ground to a halt, with the English claiming that the French had mocked their claims and ridiculed Henry himself. In December 1414, the English parliament was persuaded to grant Henry a double subsidy, on 19 April 1415, Henry again asked the Great Council to sanction war with France, and this time they agreed. The siege took longer than expected, the town surrendered on 22 September, and the English army did not leave until 8 October. The campaign season was coming to an end, and the English army had suffered many casualties through disease and he also intended the manoeuvre as a deliberate provocation to battle aimed at the dauphin, who had failed to respond to Henrys personal challenge to combat at Harfleur. The French had raised an army during the siege which assembled around Rouen and this was not strictly a feudal army, but an army paid through a system similar to the English. The French hoped to raise 9,000 troops, but the army was not ready in time to relieve Harfleur, after Henry V marched to the north, the French moved to block them along the River Somme. They were successful for a time, forcing Henry to move south, away from Calais, the English finally crossed the Somme south of Péronne, at Béthencourt and Voyennes and resumed marching north. Without a river obstacle to defend, the French were hesitant to force a battle and they shadowed Henrys army while calling a semonce des nobles, calling on local nobles to join the army. By 24 October, both faced each other for battle, but the French declined, hoping for the arrival of more troops. The two armies spent the night of 24 October on open ground, the English had very little food, had marched 260 miles in two and a half weeks, were suffering from sickness such as dysentery, and faced much larger numbers of well equipped French men at arms
20.
Spring Offensive
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The Germans had realised that their only remaining chance of victory was to defeat the Allies before the overwhelming human and matériel resources of the United States could be fully deployed. They also had the advantage in numbers afforded by the nearly 50 divisions freed by the Russian surrender. There were four German offensives, codenamed Michael, Georgette, Gneisenau, once this was achieved, it was hoped that the French would seek armistice terms. The other offensives were subsidiary to Michael and were designed to divert Allied forces from the offensive on the Somme. No clear objective was established before the start of the offensives and once the operations were underway, the Allies concentrated their main forces in the essential areas, while leaving strategically worthless ground, devastated by years of combat, lightly defended. The Germans were unable to move supplies and reinforcements fast enough to maintain their advance, the fast-moving stormtroopers leading the attack could not carry enough food and ammunition to sustain themselves for long and all the German offensives petered out, in part through lack of supplies. By late April 1918, the danger of a German breakthrough had passed, the German Army had suffered heavy casualties and now occupied ground of dubious value which would prove impossible to hold with such depleted units. In August 1918, the Allies began a counter-offensive with the support of 1–2 million fresh American troops and using new artillery techniques, the German government and Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, nominally the Chief of the General Staff, were not party to the planning process. Eventually it was decided to launch Operation Michael near Saint-Quentin, at the hinge between the French and British armies, and strike north to Arras, the main reason for the choice was tactical expediency. The ground on this sector of the front would dry out much sooner after the winter and spring rains and it was also a line of least resistance as the British and French armies were weak in the sector. However, these remained only secondary and weaker operations, subordinate to Michael, the constant changing of operational targets once the offensive was underway gave the impression the German command had no coherent strategic goal. Any capture of an important strategic objective, such as the Channel ports, the success of Operation Michael led German infantry to advance too far from its supply bases and railheads. The stormtrooper units leading the advance carried supplies for only a few days, the advance was slowed by supply shortages, which gave Allied commanders more time to reinforce the threatened areas and to slow the advance still more. The stormtrooper tactic was to attack and disrupt enemy headquarters, artillery units, each major formation creamed off its best and fittest soldiers into storm units, several complete divisions were formed from these elite units. The Germans also failed to arm their forces with a mobile force, such as cavalry. This tactical error meant the infantry had to keep up a tempo of advance. Notwithstanding the effectiveness of the stormtroopers, the following German infantry often made attacks in large traditional waves, to enable the initial breakthrough, Lieutenant Colonel Georg Bruchmüller, a German artillery officer, developed the Feuerwalze, an effective and economical creeping barrage scheme. There were three phases, first, a bombardment on the enemys command and communications, then, destruction of their artillery
21.
First Battle of the Somme (1918)
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Operation Michael was a major German military offensive during the First World War that began the Spring Offensive on 21 March 1918. It was launched from the Hindenburg Line, in the vicinity of Saint-Quentin and its goal was to break through the Allied lines and advance in a north-westerly direction to seize the Channel ports, which supplied the British Expeditionary Force and to drive the BEF into the sea. Two days later General Ludendorff, the Chief of the German General Staff, changed his plan and pushed for a due west. This was designed to separate the French and British Armies and crush the British forces by pushing them into the sea, much of the ground fought over was the wilderness left by the Battle of the Somme in 1916. The action was officially named by the British Battles Nomenclature Committee as The First Battles of the Somme,1918. The failure of the offensive marked the beginning of the end of the First World War for Germany, the arrival in France of large reinforcements from the United States replaced Entente casualties but the German Army was unable to recover from its losses before these reinforcements took the field. Operation Michael failed to achieve its objectives and the German advance was reversed during the Second Battle of the Somme,1918 in the Allied Hundred Days Offensive. On 11 November 1917, the German High Command discussed what they hoped would be an offensive on the Western Front the following spring. A decision to attack was taken by General Erich Ludendorff on 21 January 1918, at the start of 1918, the German people were close to starvation and growing tired of the war. Germany had 192 divisions and three brigades on the Western Front by 21 March, out of 241 in the German Army, of these divisions,110 were in the front line,50 of which faced the shorter British front. Another 67 divisions were in reserve, with 31 facing the BEF, by May 1918,318,000 American soldiers were due in France, with another million planned to arrive before August. The Germans knew that the chance of victory was to defeat the Allies before the build-up of the American Expeditionary Force was complete. The German strategy for the 1918 Spring Offensive or Kaiserschlacht, involved four offensives, Michael, Georgette, Gneisenau, Michael took place on the Somme and then Georgette was conducted on the Lys and at Ypres, which was planned to confuse the enemy. Blücher took place against the French in the Champagne region, although British intelligence knew that a German offensive was being prepared, this far-reaching plan was much more ambitious than Allied commanders expected. Ludendorff aimed to advance across the Somme, then wheel north-west, to cut the British lines of communication behind the Artois front, trapping the BEF in Flanders. Allied forces would be away from the Channel ports, which were essential for British supply. The British would be surrounded and surrender, the line, taken over from the French, barely existed, needing much work to make it easily defensible to the positions further north, which slowed progress in the area of the Fifth Army. During the winter of 1917–1918, the new British line was established in an arc around St. Quentin, there were many isolated outposts, gaps in the line and large areas of disputed territory and waste land
22.
Aisne
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Aisne is a French department in the Hauts-de-France region of northern France. It is named after the river Aisne, the department of Aisne is surrounded by the French departments of Nord, Somme, Oise, Ardennes, and Seine-et-Marne and borders Belgium to the northeast. The Aisne River crosses the area from east to west, where it joins the Oise River, the Marne forms part of the southern boundary of the department with the department of Seine-et-Marne. The southern part of the department is the region known as la Brie poilleuse. According to the 2003 census, the area of the department was 123,392 hectares. The landscape is dominated by masses of rock which often have steep flanks and these rocks appear all over the region, but the most impressive examples are at Laon and the Chemin des Dames ridge. The principal cities in Aisne are, Laon, pop,15,000 Condren Chauny Hirson Villers-Cotterêts La Fère Vervins Guise See also, List of the communes of the Aisne department and Brie. The Scheldt, the Aisne, the Marne, the Ourcq, the Vesle, the Somme, the Oise, in the south of the department, there is the Surmelin, the Verdonnelle, and the Dhuys. The department is crossed by numerous canals. In 1873, the department of Aisne had 10 railway companies with a length of 382 km. There is an average of 500 to 750 mm precipitation annually, weather Data for Saint Quentin - Roupy Aisne is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790. It was created from parts of the provinces of Île-de-France, Picardy. Most of the old growth forests in the area were destroyed during battles in World War I, the French offensive against the Chemin des Dames in spring 1917 is sometimes referred to as the Second Battle of the Aisne. Agriculture dominates the economy, especially cereal crops, beet sugar is one of the most important industrial crops of the area. Silk, cotton, and wool weaving flourish in Saint-Quentin and other towns, saint-Gobain is known for its production of mirrors, which started in the 17th century. Guise is the centre of the northern area of Aisne. The department is a mixture of rural areas and working-class towns, the smaller cities of the northern department such as Guise, Hirson, Vervins and the railway city of Tergnier are sources of support for left-wing parties. The President of the General Council is the Socialist Yves Daudigny, Aisne is divided into five arrondissements and 21 cantons
23.
Ham, Somme
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Ham is a commune in the Somme department in Hauts-de-France in northern France. Ham is situated on the D930 and D937 crossroads, some 21 kilometres southwest of Saint-Quentin, in the far southeast of the department, the nearby villages of Estouilly and Saint-Sulpice joined the commune of Ham in 1965 and 1966 respectively. Mentioned for the first time in 932 as a possession of the seigneur Erard, the town was later conquered by the Counts of Vermandois in the 12th century. In the 14th century it was owned by a family from Ham itself, from April 7 to June 3,1917, Ham was home to the Lafayette Escadrille The first stone ramparts were put up in the 13th century by the local nobleman, Odon IV. All that remains are the tower and vestiges of the donjon. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, accused of plotting against the state, was imprisoned at the château of Ham from 1840 to 1846, when he escaped, disguised as a worker, carrying a plank on his shoulder
24.
Corbie
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Corbie is a commune of the Somme department in Hauts-de-France in northern France. The small town is situated 15 km up river from Amiens and it lies in the valley of the River Somme, at the confluence of the River Ancre. The town is bisected by the Canal de la Somme and this Satellite photograph shows it in its context. The town is to the left and the fenny Somme valley winds down to it from the right, the chalk of the Upper Cretaceous plateau shows pale in the fields. The River Ancre flows down from the north-east, the A29 is shown under construction snaking across the chalk in the southern part of the picture. The fainter, straight line just to its north is the road N29 and it passes through Villers-Bretonneux, the village just south of Corbie. The town of Corbie grew up round Corbie Abbey, founded in 657 or 660 by the queen regent Bathilde and its scriptorium came to be one of the centres of work of manuscript illumination when the art was still fairly new in western Europe. In this early, Merovingian, period the work of Corbie was innovative in that it showed pictures of people, for example and it was also the place of creation, in about 780, of the influential Caroline minuscule script. The contents of its library are known from catalogues of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, in 1638, Cardinal Richelieu ordered the transfer of the librarys books to the library at Saint-Germain-des-Prés, which was dispersed at the end of the eighteenth century. In 1234, Floris IV, Count of Holland died at a tournament held here, in 1475, the town was taken by Louis XI. The Spanish took it on 15 August 1636 but were ousted in November by Richelieu, in 1918, Corbie was on the margin of the battlefield of Villers-Bretonneux at which the First Battle of the Somme of the Spring Offensive came to a climax. Abbey of St. Peter Town Hall Church of la Neuville, at the north-west end of the town Adalard of Corbie, in 822, he founded Corvey Abbey on the territory of Höxter in Westphalia. Adela of France, Countess of Flanders, countess of Corbie, married Baldwin V, Count of Flanders, their son, Baldwin of Mons became Baldwin VI, Saint Colette, reformer of the Franciscan Order Eugène Lefebvre, aviation pioneer, born at Corbie 4 October 1878. He was the first pilot to be killed at the controls of his aeroplane,7 September 1909 Höxter, Germany Pickering, Great Britain Communes of the Somme department INSEE Nordenfalk, western European Illuminated Manuscripts 8th to 16th centuries
25.
Amiens
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Amiens is a city and commune in northern France,120 km north of Paris and 100 km south-west of Lille. It is the capital of the Somme department in Hauts-de-France, the city had a population of 136,105 according to the 2006 census. It has one of the biggest university hospitals in France with a capacity of 1,200 beds, Amiens Cathedral, the tallest of the large, classic, Gothic churches of the 13th century and the largest in France of its kind, is a World Heritage Site. The author Jules Verne lived in Amiens from 1871 until his death in 1905, during December, the town hosts the largest Christmas market in northern France. The first known settlement at this location was Samarobriva, the settlement of the Ambiani. The town was given the name Ambianum by the Romans, meaning settlement of the Ambiani people, the town has been much fought over, being attacked by barbarian tribes, and later by the Normans. In 1113 the city was recognized by King Louis VI of France, in 1597, Spanish soldiers held the city during the six-month Siege of Amiens, before Henry IV regained control. During the 18th and 19th century, the tradition of Amiens became famous for its velours. In 1789 the provinces of France were dismantled and the territory was organised into departments, much of Picardy became the newly created department of Somme, with Amiens as the departmental capital. During the industrial revolution the city walls were demolished, opening up space for large boulevards around the town centre, the Henriville neighbourhood in the south of the city was developed around this time. In 1848, the first railway arrived in Amiens, linking the city to Boulogne-sur-Mer, during the 1870 Battle of Amiens, when the Somme was invaded by Prussian forces, Amiens was occupied. The town was fought over during both the First and Second World Wars, suffering damage, and being occupied several times by both sides. The 1918 Battle of Amiens, was the phase of the Hundred Days Offensive. It was heavily bombed by the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, the city was rebuilt according to Pierre Dufaus plans, with a focus on widening the streets to ease traffic congestion. These newer structures were built of brick, concrete and white stone with slate roofs. The architect Auguste Perret designed the Gare dAmiens train station and nearby Tour Perret, Amiens, the regional prefecture of Picardy, is also the prefecture of the Somme, one of the three departments in the region. Located in the Paris Basin, across the country the city benefits from a geographical position. At the crossroads of major European routes of movement, the city is also at the heart of a major rail star
26.
Le Crotoy
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Le Crotoy is a commune in the Somme department in Hauts-de-France in northern France. During the Hundred Years War the town was alternately under English, edward III stayed in Crotoy and in 1340 built a very important fortress. Besieged by the English, Crotoy, the last French position in the Bay of the Somme, after the Battle of Verneuil, Jean II, Duke of Alençon was interned there for three years. Joan of Arc was imprisoned there before being taken to Rouen for trial, during these troubled times, Crotoy was the place of residence of a governor and a garrison. Jacques dHarcourt was the most famous governor, he defended Crotoy boldly and courageously against the Anglo-Burgundian armies, an eponymous street pays homage to him in the city center. During the wars of religion, Crotoy took the side of Henri de Navarre, by an edict of 1594, Henri IV relieved the Crotellois from taxes. He stayed in the town on April 18,1596, in 1674, under the terms of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, the castle of Crotoy was destroyed. Le Crotoy was also famous at the beginning of 20th century in the history of aviation, Le Crotoy is situated on the D143 and D71 crossroads, on the eastern side of the Baie de Somme, some 10 miles northwest of Abbeville. Today, the town is a seaside resort whose beach is undoubtedly one of its main assets. It also benefits from the proximity of Marquentera, an area of beauty, with lakes, marshes. The beach is highly unusual for northern French beaches in that it faces south, in terms of wildlife the bay supports a population of seals and shags. Bed & Breakfast accommodation is also available, Le Crotoy is one terminus of the narrow gauge Chemin de Fer de la Baie de Somme, which is now largely a tourist attraction. Running around the length of the bay, this railway connects Le Crotoy with Noyelles-sur-Mer, Saint-Valery-sur-Somme, and Cayeux-sur-Mer. Main line trains to Paris take about 2 hours and cost about 48Euro return for an adult and they run from the nearby station of Noyelles-sur-Mer, which is also a station on the Chemin de Fer de la Baie de Somme narrow gauge railway. The bay of the river Somme has interesting tides in that they are both fast and have a rise and fall. At low tide it is possible to walk across the sand, care needs to be taken as the tides come in very quickly. Fishing predominates, both for seafish and shellfish and from the coastal saltmarshes, samphire and sea-aster, hunting and shooting, for both game and wildfowl provides food for locals and visitors alike. Sheep-rearing, on salty pastures, produces a unique flavour, the sheep of the Somme bay have been credited ‘appellation dorigine contrôlée ’
27.
Selle
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The Selle is a river of Picardy, France. Rising at Catheux, just north of Crèvecœur-le-Grand, Oise, it flows past Conty, Saleux, Salouël, in many places along its course, the river widens to form or fill lakes, much appreciated by anglers and gravel extractors. Several water-powered mills can still be seen including a paper-mill at Prouzel, brown trout thrive in the clear waters of the river. In 57 BC, the Selle was the site of the battle between Julius Caesar and the Nervians, in World War I, during the Hundred Days Offensive of 1918, the German Army had taken up positions along the Selle near Le Cateau. General Rawlinsons Fourth Army spent two weeks preparing to assault these positions, the attack was launched on the night of 17 October when the river was crossed in foggy conditions and continued until the Germans were finally forced to retire on 20 October. The action is known as the Battle of the Selle
28.
Fen
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A fen is one of the main types of wetland, the others being grassy marshes, forested swamps, and peaty bogs. Along with bogs, fens are a kind of mire, Fens are minerotrophic peatlands, usually fed by mineral-rich surface water or groundwater. They are characterised by their chemistry, which is pH neutral or alkaline, with relatively high dissolved mineral levels. They are usually dominated by grasses and sedges, and typically have brown mosses in general including Scorpidium or Drepanocladus, Fens frequently have a high diversity of other plant species including carnivorous plants such as Pinguicula. They may also occur along lakes and rivers where seasonal changes in water level maintain wet soils with few woody plants. The distribution of species of fen plants is often closely connected to water regimes. Fens have a set of plant species, which sometimes provide the best indicators of environmental conditions. For example, fen indicator species in New York State include Carex flava, Cladium mariscoides, Potentilla fruticosa, Pogonia ophioglossoides and Parnassia glauca. Fens are distinguished from bogs, which are acidic, low in minerals, Fens have been damaged in the past by land drainage, and also by peat cutting. Some are now being restored with modern management methods. The principal challenges are to restore natural water regimes, to maintain the quality of water. Carr is the northern European equivalent of the swamp of the southeastern United States. It is a fen overgrown with small trees of species such as willow or alder. In general, fens may change in composition as peat accumulates, a list of species found in a fen can therefore cover a range of species from those remaining from the earlier stage in the successional development to the pioneers of the succeeding stage. Where streams of water run through bog, these are often lined by strips of fen. Temporary flooding by beavers can have effects on fens. Shakespeare used the term fen-sucked to describe the fog in King Lear, media related to Fens at Wikimedia Commons
29.
Groundwater
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Groundwater is the water present beneath Earths surface in soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. A unit of rock or a deposit is called an aquifer when it can yield a usable quantity of water. The depth at which pore spaces or fractures and voids in rock become completely saturated with water is called the water table. Groundwater is recharged from, and eventually flows to, the naturally, natural discharge often occurs at springs and seeps. Groundwater is also withdrawn for agricultural, municipal, and industrial use by constructing and operating extraction wells. The study of the distribution and movement of groundwater is hydrogeology, Groundwater is hypothesized to provide lubrication that can possibly influence the movement of faults. It is likely that much of Earths subsurface contains some water, Groundwater may not be confined only to Earth. The formation of some of the landforms observed on Mars may have influenced by groundwater. There is also evidence that water may also exist in the subsurface of Jupiters moon Europa. Groundwater is often cheaper, more convenient and less vulnerable to pollution than surface water, therefore, it is commonly used for public water supplies. For example, groundwater provides the largest source of water storage in the United States. Underground reservoirs contain far more water than the capacity of all surface reservoirs and lakes in the US, many municipal water supplies are derived solely from groundwater. Polluted groundwater is less visible, but more difficult to clean up, than pollution in rivers, Groundwater pollution most often results from improper disposal of wastes on land. An aquifer is a layer of substrate that contains and transmits groundwater. When water can flow directly between the surface and the zone of an aquifer, the aquifer is unconfined. The deeper parts of unconfined aquifers are more saturated since gravity causes water to flow downward. The upper level of this layer of an unconfined aquifer is called the water table or phreatic surface. Below the water table, where in general all pore spaces are saturated with water, is the phreatic zone, substrate with low porosity that permits limited transmission of groundwater is known as an aquitard
30.
Chalk
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Chalk is a soft, white, porous, sedimentary carbonate rock, a form of limestone composed of the mineral calcite. Calcite is a salt called calcium carbonate or CaCO3. It forms under reasonably deep marine conditions from the accumulation of minute calcite shells shed from micro-organisms called coccolithophores. Flint is very common as bands parallel to the bedding or as embedded in chalk. It is probably derived from sponge spicules or other organisms as water is expelled upwards during compaction. Flint is often deposited around larger fossils such as Echinoidea which may be silicified, Chalk as seen in Cretaceous deposits of Western Europe is unusual among sedimentary limestones in the thickness of the beds. Most cliffs of chalk have very few obvious bedding planes unlike most thick sequences of such as the Carboniferous Limestone or the Jurassic oolitic limestones. This presumably indicates very stable conditions over tens of millions of years, Chalk has greater resistance to weathering and slumping than the clays with which it is usually associated, thus forming tall steep cliffs where chalk ridges meet the sea. Chalk hills, known as chalk downland, usually form where bands of chalk reach the surface at an angle, because chalk is well jointed it can hold a large volume of ground water, providing a natural reservoir that releases water slowly through dry seasons. Chalk is mined from chalk deposits both above ground and underground, Chalk mining boomed during the Industrial Revolution, due to the need for chalk products such as quicklime and bricks. Abandoned chalk mines remain a popular tourist attraction due to their massive expanse, the Chalk Group is a European stratigraphic unit deposited during the late Cretaceous Period. It forms the famous White Cliffs of Dover in Kent, England, the Champagne region of France is mostly underlain by chalk deposits, which contain artificial caves used for wine storage. Some of the highest chalk cliffs in the occur at Jasmund National Park in Germany. Ninety million years ago what is now the chalk downland of Northern Europe was ooze accumulating at the bottom of a great sea. Chalk was one of the earliest rocks made up of particles to be studied under the electron microscope. Their shells were made of calcite extracted from the rich sea-water, as they died, a substantial layer gradually built up over millions of years and, through the weight of overlying sediments, eventually became consolidated into rock. Later earth movements related to the formation of the Alps raised these former sea-floor deposits above sea level, the chemical composition of chalk is calcium carbonate, with minor amounts of silt and clay. It is formed in the sea by plankton, which fall to the sea floor and are then consolidated and compressed during diagenesis into chalk rock
31.
Cretaceous
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The Cretaceous is a geologic period and system that spans 79 million years from the end of the Jurassic Period 145 million years ago to the beginning of the Paleogene Period 66 Mya. It is the last period of the Mesozoic Era, the Cretaceous Period is usually abbreviated K, for its German translation Kreide. The Cretaceous was a period with a warm climate, resulting in high eustatic sea levels that created numerous shallow inland seas. These oceans and seas were populated with now-extinct marine reptiles, ammonites and rudists, during this time, new groups of mammals and birds, as well as flowering plants, appeared. The Cretaceous ended with a mass extinction, the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, in which many groups, including non-avian dinosaurs, pterosaurs. The end of the Cretaceous is defined by the abrupt Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary, the name Cretaceous was derived from Latin creta, meaning chalk. The Cretaceous is divided into Early and Late Cretaceous epochs, or Lower and Upper Cretaceous series, in older literature the Cretaceous is sometimes divided into three series, Neocomian, Gallic and Senonian. A subdivision in eleven stages, all originating from European stratigraphy, is now used worldwide, in many parts of the world, alternative local subdivisions are still in use. As with other geologic periods, the rock beds of the Cretaceous are well identified. No great extinction or burst of diversity separates the Cretaceous from the Jurassic and this layer has been dated at 66.043 Ma. A140 Ma age for the Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary instead of the usually accepted 145 Ma was proposed in 2014 based on a study of Vaca Muerta Formation in Neuquén Basin. Víctor Ramos, one of the authors of the study proposing the 140 Ma boundary age sees the study as a first step toward formally changing the age in the International Union of Geological Sciences, due to the high sea level there was extensive space for such sedimentation. Because of the young age and great thickness of the system. Chalk is a type characteristic for the Cretaceous. It consists of coccoliths, microscopically small calcite skeletons of coccolithophores, the group is found in England, northern France, the low countries, northern Germany, Denmark and in the subsurface of the southern part of the North Sea. Chalk is not easily consolidated and the Chalk Group still consists of sediments in many places. The group also has other limestones and arenites, among the fossils it contains are sea urchins, belemnites, ammonites and sea reptiles such as Mosasaurus. In southern Europe, the Cretaceous is usually a marine system consisting of competent limestone beds or incompetent marls
32.
Water table
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The water table is the upper surface of the zone of saturation. The zone of saturation is where the pores and fractures of the ground are saturated with water, the water table is the surface where the water pressure head is equal to the atmospheric pressure. It may be visualized as the surface of the materials that are saturated with groundwater in a given vicinity. The groundwater may be from precipitation or from groundwater flowing into the aquifer, in areas with sufficient precipitation, water infiltrates through pore spaces in the soil, passing through the unsaturated zone. At increasing depths water fills in more of the spaces in the soils. Below the water table, in the zone, layers of permeable rock that yield groundwater are called aquifers. In less permeable soils, such as tight bedrock formations and historic lakebed deposits, the water table should not be confused with the water level in a deeper well. The elevation of the water in this well is dependent upon the pressure in the deeper aquifer and is referred to as the potentiometric surface. The water table may vary due to changes such as precipitation and evapotranspiration. Springs, rivers, lakes and oases occur when the table reaches the surface. Springs commonly form on hillsides, where the Earths slanting surface may intersect with the water table, Groundwater entering rivers and lakes accounts for the base-flow water levels in water bodies. Within an aquifer, the table is rarely horizontal, but reflects the surface relief due to the capillary effect in soils, sediments. In the aquifer, groundwater flows from points of pressure to points of lower pressure. The slope of the table is known as the hydraulic gradient, which depends on the rate at which water is added to and removed from the aquifer. This occurs when there is a layer of rock or sediment or relatively impermeable layer above the main water table/aquifer. If a perched aquifers flow intersects the Earths dry surface, at a wall for example. On low-lying oceanic islands with porous soil, freshwater tends to collect in lenticular pools on top of the denser seawater intruding from the sides of the islands, such an islands freshwater lens, and thus the water table, rises and falls with the tides. In some regions, for example, Great Britain or California, winter precipitation is higher than summer precipitation
33.
Aquifer
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An aquifer is an underground layer of water-bearing permeable rock, rock fractures or unconsolidated materials from which groundwater can be extracted using a water well. The study of flow in aquifers and the characterization of aquifers is called hydrogeology. Related terms include aquitard, which is a bed of low permeability along an aquifer, and aquiclude, if the impermeable area overlies the aquifer, pressure could cause it to become a confined aquifer. Aquifers may occur at various depths and those closer to the surface are not only more likely to be used for water supply and irrigation, but are also more likely to be topped up by the local rainfall. Many desert areas have limestone hills or mountains within them or close to them that can be exploited as groundwater resources, overexploitation can lead to the exceeding of the practical sustained yield, i. e. more water is taken out than can be replenished. The beach provides a model to help visualize an aquifer, if a hole is dug into the sand, very wet or saturated sand will be located at a shallow depth. This hole is a well, the wet sand represents an aquifer. In 2013 large freshwater aquifers were discovered under continental shelves off Australia, China, North America and they contain an estimated half a million cubic kilometers of “low salinity” water that could be economically processed into potable water. The reserves formed when ocean levels were lower and rainwater made its way into the ground in areas that were not submerged until the ice age ended 20,000 years ago. The volume is estimated to be 100x the amount of extracted from other aquifers since 1900. The above diagram indicates typical flow directions in a view of a simple confined or unconfined aquifer system. The system shows two aquifers with one aquitard between them, surrounded by the bedrock aquiclude, which is in contact with a gaining stream, the water table and unsaturated zone are also illustrated. An aquitard is a zone within the earth that restricts the flow of groundwater from one aquifer to another, an aquitard can sometimes, if completely impermeable, be called an aquiclude or aquifuge. Aquitards are composed of layers of clay or non-porous rock with low hydraulic conductivity. Groundwater can be found at every point in the Earths shallow subsurface to some degree. Saturated means the head of the water is greater than atmospheric pressure. The definition of the table is the surface where the pressure head is equal to atmospheric pressure. Unsaturated conditions occur above the table where the pressure head is negative
34.
Necessity and sufficiency
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In logic, necessity and sufficiency are implicational relationships between statements. The assertion that one statement is a necessary and sufficient condition of another means that the statement is true if. That is, the two statements must be simultaneously true or simultaneously false. In ordinary English, necessary and sufficient indicate relations between conditions or states of affairs, not statements, being a male sibling is a necessary and sufficient condition for being a brother. Freds being a male sibling is necessary and sufficient for the truth of the statement that Fred is a brother, in the conditional statement, if S then N, the expression represented by S is called the antecedent and the expression represented by N is called the consequent. This conditional statement may be written in many equivalent ways, for instance, in the above situation, we also say that N is a necessary condition for S. In common language this is saying that if the statement is a true statement. Phrased differently, the antecedent S can not be true without N being true, for example, in order for someone to be called Socrates, it is necessary for that someone to be Named. We also say that S is a sufficient condition for N, if the conditional statement is true, then if S is true, N must be true. In common terms, S guarantees N, continuing the example, knowing that someone is called Socrates is sufficient to know that that someone has a Name. A necessary and sufficient condition requires that both of the implications S ⇒ N and N ⇒ S hold, from the first of these we see that S is a sufficient condition for N, and from the second that S is a necessary condition for N. This is expressed as S is necessary and sufficient for N, S if and only if N, the assertion that Q is necessary for P is colloquially equivalent to P cannot be true unless Q is true or if Q is false, then P is false. By contraposition, this is the thing as whenever P is true. The logical relation between them is expressed as if P, then Q and denoted P ⇒ Q and it may also be expressed as any of P only if Q, Q, if P, Q whenever P, and Q when P. One often finds, in prose for instance, several necessary conditions that, taken together, constitute a sufficient condition. Example 2 For the whole numbers greater than two, being odd is necessary to being prime, since two is the whole number that is both even and prime. Example 3 Consider thunder, the caused by lightning. We say that thunder is necessary for lightning, since lightning never occurs without thunder, the thunder does not cause the lightning, but because lightning always comes with thunder, we say that thunder is necessary for lightning
35.
Canal de la Somme
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The Canal de la Somme is a canal in northern France. Until 2005, it joined the English Channel at Saint-Valery-sur-Somme to the Canal de Saint-Quentin at St. Simon, the Somme River was canalized beginning in 1770. The 54 km section from St. Simon to Bray was completed by 1772, the length and number of locks varies by who is describing the canal,126 km and 21 locks from Saint-Valery-sur-Somme to Péronne. 156.5 km and 25 locks from St. Simon to Saint-Valery-sur-Somme. Three segments made up of,14.2 km and 1 lock from Saint-Valery-sur-Somme to Abbeville,105.6 km and 18 locks from Abbeville to Péronne,16.4 km and 4 locks from Voyennes to St. Simon. Some of this difference of opinion is certainly caused by the fact that the canal is made of two segments, the Grande Somme and the Petite Somme and these two segments are separated by a 20 km section of the Canal du Nord with two locks. The Grande Somme is 120 km with 19 locks from English Channel at Saint-Valery-sur-Somme to Canal du Nord at Péronne, the Petite Somme from the Canal du Nord at Voyennes to the Canal de Saint-Quentin at St. Simon was closed to traffic in 2005. In the 1960s, more than 300,000 tonnes of goods were transported on the canal, today it is used largely by pleasure boats
36.
Silt
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Silt is granular material of a size between sand and clay, whose mineral origin is quartz and feldspar. Silt may occur as a soil or as sediment mixed in suspension with water in a body of such as a river. It may also exist as soil deposited at the bottom of a water body, Silt has a moderate specific area with a typically non-sticky, plastic feel. Silt usually has a floury feel when dry, and a slippery feel when wet, Silt can be visually observed with a hand lens. Silt is created by a variety of physical processes capable of splitting the generally sand-sized quartz crystals of primary rocks by exploiting deficiencies in their lattice and these involve chemical weathering of rock and regolith, and a number of physical weathering processes such as frost shattering and haloclasty. The main process is abrasion through transport, including fluvial comminution, aeolian attrition and it is in semi-arid environments that substantial quantities of silt are produced. Silt is sometimes known as rock flour or stone dust, especially produced by glacial action. Mineralogically, silt is composed mainly of quartz and feldspar, sedimentary rock composed mainly of silt is known as siltstone. Liquefaction created by an earthquake is silt suspended in water that is hydrodynamically forced up from below ground level. In the Udden–Wentworth scale, silt particles range between 0.0039 and 0.0625 mm, larger than clay but smaller than sand particles, ISO14688 grades silts between 0.002 mm and 0.063 mm. In actuality, silt is chemically distinct from clay, and unlike clay, grains of silt are approximately the size in all dimensions, furthermore. Clays are formed from thin plate-shaped particles held together by electrostatic forces, according to the U. S. Department of Agriculture Soil Texture Classification system, the sand-silt distinction is made at the 0.05 mm particle size. The USDA system has been adopted by the Food and Agriculture Organization, in the Unified Soil Classification System and the AASHTO Soil Classification system, the sand-silt distinction is made at the 0.075 mm particle size. Silts and clays are distinguished mechanically by their plasticity, Silt is easily transported in water or other liquid and is fine enough to be carried long distances by air in the form of dust. Thick deposits of silty material resulting from deposition by aeolian processes are called loess. Silt and clay contribute to turbidity in water, Silt is transported by streams or by water currents in the ocean. When silt appears as a pollutant in water the phenomenon is known as siltation, Silt, deposited by annual floods along the Nile River, created the rich, fertile soil that sustained the Ancient Egyptian civilization. In south east Bangladesh, in the Noakhali district, cross dams were built in the 1960s whereby silt gradually started forming new land called chars, the district of Noakhali has gained more than 28 square miles of land in the past 50 years
37.
Estuary
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An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a zone between river environments and maritime environments. They are subject both to marine influences—such as tides, waves, and the influx of saline water—and to riverine influences—such as flows of fresh water and sediment. The inflows of sea water and fresh water provide high levels of nutrients both in the water column and in sediment, making estuaries among the most productive natural habitats in the world. Most existing estuaries formed during the Holocene epoch with the flooding of river-eroded or glacially scoured valleys when the sea began to rise about 10. Estuaries are typically classified according to their geomorphological features or to water-circulation patterns, the banks of many estuaries are amongst the most heavily populated areas of the world, with about 60% of the worlds population living along estuaries and the coast. The word estuary is derived from the Latin word aestuarium meaning tidal inlet of the sea, there have been many definitions proposed to describe an estuary. However, this definition excludes a number of water bodies such as coastal lagoons. This broad definition also includes fjords, lagoons, river mouths, an estuary is a dynamic ecosystem having a connection to the open sea through which the sea water enters with the rhythm of the tides. The sea water entering the estuary is diluted by the water flowing from rivers. The pattern of dilution varies between different estuaries and depends on the volume of water, the tidal range. Drowned river valleys are known as coastal plain estuaries. In places where the sea level is rising relative to the land, sea water progressively penetrates into river valleys and this is the most common type of estuary in temperate climates. Well-studied estuaries include the Severn Estuary in the United Kingdom and the Ems Dollard along the Dutch-German border, the width-to-depth ratio of these estuaries is typically large, appearing wedge-shaped in the inner part and broadening and deepening seaward. Water depths rarely exceed 30 m, examples of this type of estuary in the U. S. are the Hudson River, Chesapeake Bay, and Delaware Bay along the Mid-Atlantic coast, and Galveston Bay and Tampa Bay along the Gulf Coast. They are relatively common in tropical and subtropical locations and these estuaries are semi-isolated from ocean waters by barrier beaches. Formation of barrier beaches partially encloses the estuary, with only narrow inlets allowing contact with the ocean waters, bar-built estuaries typically develop on gently sloping plains located along tectonically stable edges of continents and marginal sea coasts. They are extensive along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the U. S. in areas with active coastal deposition of sediments, barrier beaches form in shallow water and are generally parallel to the shoreline, resulting in long, narrow estuaries
38.
Canal de Saint-Quentin
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The remainder, connecting the Seine Basin with the Escaut was a lengthy process. The original designer, Devicq in 1727, died in 1742, little was accomplished until Napoléon demanded that work begin again in 1801. He officiated at the opening in April 1810, the canal was such a success that traffic levels required the need to build duplicate locks, deepen the channel, enlarge the tunnels, and increase water supplies. Improvements in the 20th century included electric barge traction on rails, installed during World War I, mechanizing locks, later, the locks were operated automatically, using radar. By 1878, up to 110 barges were crossing the summit daily, the Canal du Nord was built as a duplicate path and completed in 1965. The canal carried more freight than any other man-made waterway in France in 1964, the Canal in World War I formed part of the Hindenburg Line, a German defensive position built during the winter of 1916–1917. The Allied crossing of the St Quentin Canal in 1918 was a significant part of the Hundred Days Offensive that led to the Armistice, PK92 Chauny, the canal continues as Canal latéral à lOise towards Paris. Left Canal de lOise à lAisne Video showing the Souterrain de Riqueval and local area
39.
Battle of St Quentin Canal
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American forces were ordered to attack on 27 September, to finish clearing German forces from outposts in front of the line. However, due to a shortage of American officers, the attack was unsuccessful, as a consequence 200 Australian Officers were then assigned to the US troops to provide both experience and leadership. The British high command had realised that any success against the formidable defences of the Hindenburg Line could only be achieved with the use of tanks. The US divisions launched the attack, with the Australian 3rd. The 30th Infantry Division broke through the Hindenburg Line on 29 September 1918 at Bellicourt winning the praise of General Pershing, the 30th Division did especially well. It broke through the Hindenburg Line on its front and took Bellicourt and part of Nauroy by noon of the 29th. The British 46th Division crossed the St Quentin Canal, capturing 4,200 German prisoners, while the attack succeeded in widening the breach in the Beaurevoir Line, it was unable to seize the high ground further on. However, by 2 October, the attack had resulted in a 17 km breach in the Hindenburg Line, by any measure, and especially by World War I standards, it was a stunning and swift victory. Crows Nest, New South Wales, Allen & Unwin, military History Encyclopedia on the Web – Battle of Cambrai-St. Bean, Volume VI – The Australian Imperial Force in France during the Allied Offensive,1918
40.
Belgium
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Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a sovereign state in Western Europe bordered by France, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, and the North Sea. It is a small, densely populated country which covers an area of 30,528 square kilometres and has a population of about 11 million people. Additionally, there is a group of German-speakers who live in the East Cantons located around the High Fens area. Historically, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg were known as the Low Countries, the region was called Belgica in Latin, after the Roman province of Gallia Belgica. From the end of the Middle Ages until the 17th century, today, Belgium is a federal constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. It is divided into three regions and three communities, that exist next to each other and its two largest regions are the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders in the north and the French-speaking southern region of Wallonia. The Brussels-Capital Region is a bilingual enclave within the Flemish Region. A German-speaking Community exists in eastern Wallonia, Belgiums linguistic diversity and related political conflicts are reflected in its political history and complex system of governance, made up of six different governments. Upon its independence, declared in 1830, Belgium participated in the Industrial Revolution and, during the course of the 20th century, possessed a number of colonies in Africa. This continuing antagonism has led to several far-reaching reforms, resulting in a transition from a unitary to a federal arrangement during the period from 1970 to 1993. Belgium is also a member of the Eurozone, NATO, OECD and WTO. Its capital, Brussels, hosts several of the EUs official seats as well as the headquarters of major international organizations such as NATO. Belgium is also a part of the Schengen Area, Belgium is a developed country, with an advanced high-income economy and is categorized as very high in the Human Development Index. A gradual immigration by Germanic Frankish tribes during the 5th century brought the area under the rule of the Merovingian kings, a gradual shift of power during the 8th century led the kingdom of the Franks to evolve into the Carolingian Empire. Many of these fiefdoms were united in the Burgundian Netherlands of the 14th and 15th centuries, the Eighty Years War divided the Low Countries into the northern United Provinces and the Southern Netherlands. The latter were ruled successively by the Spanish and the Austrian Habsburgs and this was the theatre of most Franco-Spanish and Franco-Austrian wars during the 17th and 18th centuries. The reunification of the Low Countries as the United Kingdom of the Netherlands occurred at the dissolution of the First French Empire in 1815, although the franchise was initially restricted, universal suffrage for men was introduced after the general strike of 1893 and for women in 1949. The main political parties of the 19th century were the Catholic Party, French was originally the single official language adopted by the nobility and the bourgeoisie
41.
Oise (river)
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The Oise is a river of Belgium and France, flowing for 341 kilometres from its source in the Belgian province of Hainaut, south of Chimay. It crosses the border with France after about 20 kilometres and it flows into the Seine at Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, a north-western suburb of Paris. Its main tributary is the Aisne and it gave its name to the French departments of Oise and Val-dOise. The Seine-Nord Europe Canal will replace the old Canal de Saint-Quentin and the current Canal du Nord, the capacity of which is far below standard
42.
Canal du Nord
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The Canal du Nord is a 95-kilometre long canal in northern France. The canal connects the Canal latéral à lOise at Pont-lÉvêque to the Sensée Canal at Arleux, the French government, in partnership with coal-mining companies in the Nord and Pas-de-Calais departments, developed the canal to help French coal mining companies withstand foreign competition. Construction of the began in 1908 but halted in 1914. The war caused widespread destruction of the canal and the French government made no attempt to resume construction until 1959, construction recommenced in 1960 and the waterway opened to the public in 1965. Until the construction of the Canal du Nord, the Canal de Saint-Quentin was the only linking the Seine basin to the north of France. In 1860, the coal companies in the Pas-de-Calais region grouped themselves into a Comité des Houillères du Pas-de-Calais. The group expanded into the Comité des Houillères du Nord et du Pas-de-Calais in 1878, a special commission of the French Ministry of Public Works conducted their first study in 1878 to find a “suitable means of putting the coal mines in a position to withstand foreign competition. The concept of the canal was included in the Freycinet Plan, plans for the canal were presented to the Chamber of Deputies in 1882. On 23 December 1903, the French government authorized construction of the Canal du Nord, in 1908 construction began on the canal. Under the plan, coal-mining companies contributed one-third of the construction cost, three quarters of the excavations, eleven locks and all of the bridges were complete, with work well advanced on the tunnels, when World War I forced a halt in construction. The war resulted in destruction of the canal and the French government did not attempt to resume building prior to the Second World War. The Battle of the Canal du Nord was part of a general Allied offensive against German positions on the Western Front during the Hundred Days Offensive of World War I. The battle took place along a portion of the Canal du Nord. It began one day after the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, one day before an offensive in the Flanders region of Belgium, Bordeaux, Société de géographie commerciale de Bordeaux
