1.
Snowdon, Montreal
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Snowdon is a neighbourhood located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is part of the Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough, the area is centred on the intersection of the Décarie Expressway and Queen Mary Road. Snowdon is bordered by Macdonald Street in the west, Victoria Avenue in the east, Côte-Saint-Luc Road to the south and Vezina Street, furthermore, the northwest end borders Côte Saint-Luc and the southeast end borders Westmount. The neighbourhood is served by the Snowdon Metro station, notable buildings in the neighbourhood include the former Snowdon Theatre. The district was named for James Snowdon, who owned a farm where the now stands
2.
Canada
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Canada is a country in the northern half of North America. Canadas border with the United States is the worlds longest binational land border, the majority of the country has a cold or severely cold winter climate, but southerly areas are warm in summer. Canada is sparsely populated, the majority of its territory being dominated by forest and tundra. It is highly urbanized with 82 per cent of the 35.15 million people concentrated in large and medium-sized cities, One third of the population lives in the three largest cities, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Its capital is Ottawa, and other urban areas include Calgary, Edmonton, Quebec City, Winnipeg. Various aboriginal peoples had inhabited what is now Canada for thousands of years prior to European colonization. Pursuant to the British North America Act, on July 1,1867, the colonies of Canada, New Brunswick and this began an accretion of provinces and territories to the mostly self-governing Dominion to the present ten provinces and three territories forming modern Canada. With the Constitution Act 1982, Canada took over authority, removing the last remaining ties of legal dependence on the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Canada is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy, with Queen Elizabeth II being the head of state. The country is officially bilingual at the federal level and it is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many other countries. Its advanced economy is the eleventh largest in the world, relying chiefly upon its abundant natural resources, Canadas long and complex relationship with the United States has had a significant impact on its economy and culture. Canada is a country and has the tenth highest nominal per capita income globally as well as the ninth highest ranking in the Human Development Index. It ranks among the highest in international measurements of government transparency, civil liberties, quality of life, economic freedom, Canada is an influential nation in the world, primarily due to its inclusive values, years of prosperity and stability, stable economy, and efficient military. While a variety of theories have been postulated for the origins of Canada. In 1535, indigenous inhabitants of the present-day Quebec City region used the word to direct French explorer Jacques Cartier to the village of Stadacona, from the 16th to the early 18th century Canada referred to the part of New France that lay along the St. Lawrence River. In 1791, the area became two British colonies called Upper Canada and Lower Canada collectively named The Canadas, until their union as the British Province of Canada in 1841. Upon Confederation in 1867, Canada was adopted as the name for the new country at the London Conference. The transition away from the use of Dominion was formally reflected in 1982 with the passage of the Canada Act, later that year, the name of national holiday was changed from Dominion Day to Canada Day
3.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
4.
Judaism
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Judaism encompasses the religion, philosophy, culture and way of life of the Jewish people. Judaism is an ancient monotheistic Abrahamic religion, with the Torah as its text, and supplemental oral tradition represented by later texts such as the Midrash. Judaism is considered by religious Jews to be the expression of the relationship that God established with the Children of Israel. With between 14.5 and 17.4 million adherents worldwide, Judaism is the tenth-largest religion in the world, Judaism includes a wide corpus of texts, practices, theological positions, and forms of organization. Modern branches of Judaism such as Humanistic Judaism may be nontheistic, today, the largest Jewish religious movements are Orthodox Judaism, Conservative Judaism and Reform Judaism. Major sources of difference between groups are their approaches to Jewish law, the authority of the Rabbinic tradition. Orthodox Judaism maintains that the Torah and Jewish law are divine in origin, eternal and unalterable, Conservative and Reform Judaism are more liberal, with Conservative Judaism generally promoting a more traditional interpretation of Judaisms requirements than Reform Judaism. A typical Reform position is that Jewish law should be viewed as a set of guidelines rather than as a set of restrictions and obligations whose observance is required of all Jews. Historically, special courts enforced Jewish law, today, these still exist. Authority on theological and legal matters is not vested in any one person or organization, the history of Judaism spans more than 3,000 years. Judaism has its roots as a religion in the Middle East during the Bronze Age. Judaism is considered one of the oldest monotheistic religions, the Hebrews and Israelites were already referred to as Jews in later books of the Tanakh such as the Book of Esther, with the term Jews replacing the title Children of Israel. Judaisms texts, traditions and values strongly influenced later Abrahamic religions, including Christianity, Islam, many aspects of Judaism have also directly or indirectly influenced secular Western ethics and civil law. Jews are a group and include those born Jewish and converts to Judaism. In 2015, the world Jewish population was estimated at about 14.3 million, Judaism thus begins with ethical monotheism, the belief that God is one and is concerned with the actions of humankind. According to the Tanakh, God promised Abraham to make of his offspring a great nation, many generations later, he commanded the nation of Israel to love and worship only one God, that is, the Jewish nation is to reciprocate Gods concern for the world. He also commanded the Jewish people to one another, that is. These commandments are but two of a corpus of commandments and laws that constitute this covenant, which is the substance of Judaism
5.
Spanish and Portuguese Jews
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Over half of Spains Jewish origin population had converted to Catholicism as a result of the religious anti-Jewish persecution and pogroms which occurred in 1391. Between 40,000 and 80,000 did not convert, many of Spains Jews who left Spain as Jews also initially moved to Portugal, where they were subsequently forcibly converted to the Catholic Church. It is the collective of these communities, and their descendants, which are known as Western Sephardim, the main Western Sephardic Jewish communities developed in Western Europe, Italy, and the non-Iberian regions of the Americas. The term Western Sephardim is frequently used in research literature to refer to Spanish and Portuguese Jews. Similar considerations may have played a role for ethnic Sephardic Jews in the French regions of Bayonne and Bordeaux, as the term Sephardim necessarily connotes a link with Spain, the distinguishing feature of Portuguese Jews or Jews of the Portuguese Nation was the added link with Portugal. Thus, as a subset of the Sephardim, Portuguese and Spanish, finally, almost all organised communities in this group traditionally employed Portuguese rather than Spanish as their official or working language. In Italy, the term Spanish Jews is frequently used, but it includes descendants of Jews expelled as Jews from the Kingdom of Naples, as well as Spanish and Portuguese Jews proper. In Venice, Spanish and Portuguese Jews were often described as Ponentine, occasionally Italian Jews distinguish between the Portuguese Jews of Pisa and Livorno and the Spanish Jews of Venice, Modena and elsewhere. The scholar Joseph Dan distinguishes medieval Sephardim from Renaissance Sephardim, in reference to the times of each groupings formative contacts with Spanish language. The term Sephardi means Spanish or Hispanic, and is derived from Sepharad, the location of the biblical Sepharad is disputed, but Sepharad was identified by later Jews as Hispania, that is, the Iberian Peninsula. Sepharad still means Spain in modern Hebrew, during their period as New Christians, many conversos continued to practise their Jewish faith in secrecy as best they could. Those New Christian conversos of Jeiwsh origin who maintained crypto-Jewish practices in secret were termed marranos by Old Christian Spaniards, for Spanish and Portuguese Jews, their historical period as conversos has shaped their identity, culture, and practices. For centuries, the Sephardic Jewish communities under Ottoman rule provided spiritual leadership to the dispersed Sephardim through their contributions to the Responsa literature, the common feature shared by Western Sephardim to Sephardic Bnei Anusim and Neo-Western Sephardim is that all three are descended from conversos. The Oporto communitys return to Judaism was led by the returnee to Judaism Captain Artur Carlos de Barros Basto, as mentioned, these communities of modern-day returnees to Judaism are among the first in the emergence of the nascent Neo-Western Sephardim. Neo-Western Sephardim are the returnees to Judaism throughout Iberia and Ibero-America emerging from among the population of Sephardic Bnei Anusim. Even more recent examples of such Neo-Western Sephardim communities include the Belmonte Jews in Portugal, and the Xuetes of Spain. In the last five to ten years, organized groups of Benei Anusim have been established in Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, some members of these communities have formally reverted to Judaism. Spanish and Portuguese Jews were originally descended from New Christian conversos whose descendants later left the Iberian peninsula, the main wave of conversions, often forced, followed the massacre of 1391 in Spain
6.
Architect
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An architect is someone who plans, designs, and reviews the construction of buildings. Etymologically, architect derives from the Latin architectus, which derives from the Greek, practical, technical, and academic requirements for becoming an architect vary by jurisdiction. The terms architect and architecture are used in the disciplines of landscape architecture, naval architecture. In most jurisdictions, the professional and commercial uses of the terms architect, throughout ancient and medieval history, most architectural design and construction was carried out by artisans—such as stone masons and carpenters, rising to the role of master builder. Until modern times, there was no distinction between architect and engineer. In Europe, the architect and engineer were primarily geographical variations that referred to the same person. It is suggested that various developments in technology and mathematics allowed the development of the gentleman architect. Paper was not used in Europe for drawing until the 15th century, pencils were used more often for drawing by 1600. The availability of both allowed pre-construction drawings to be made by professionals, until the 18th-century, buildings continued to be designed and set out by craftsmen with the exception of high-status projects. In most developed countries, only qualified people with appropriate license, certification, or registration with a relevant body, such licensure usually requires an accredited university degree, successful completion of exams, and a training period. To practice architecture implies the ability to independently of supervision. In many places, independent, non-licensed individuals may perform design services outside the professional restrictions, such design houses, in the architectural profession, technical and environmental knowledge, design and construction management, and an understanding of business are as important as design. However, design is the force throughout the project and beyond. An architect accepts a commission from a client, the commission might involve preparing feasibility reports, building audits, the design of a building or of several buildings, structures, and the spaces among them. The architect participates in developing the requirements the client wants in the building, throughout the project, the architect co-ordinates a design team. Structural, mechanical, and electrical engineers and other specialists, are hired by the client or the architect, the architect hired by a client is responsible for creating a design concept that meets the requirements of that client and provides a facility suitable to the required use. In that, the architect must meet with and question the client to ascertain all the requirements, often the full brief is not entirely clear at the beginning, entailing a degree of risk in the design undertaking. The architect may make proposals to the client which may rework the terms of the brief
7.
Shanghai
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Shanghai is the most populous city proper in the world, with a population of more than 24 million as of 2014. As one of the four direct-controlled municipalities of the Peoples Republic of China, it is a financial centre and transport hub. Located in the Yangtze River Delta in East China, Shanghai sits on the edge of the mouth of the Yangtze in the middle portion of the eastern Chinese coast. The municipality borders the provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang to the north, south and west, as a major administrative, shipping and trading city, Shanghai grew in importance in the 19th century due to trade and recognition of its favourable port location and economic potential. The city was one of five treaty ports forced open to foreign trade following the British victory over China in the First Opium War, the subsequent 1842 Treaty of Nanking and 1844 Treaty of Whampoa allowed the establishment of the Shanghai International Settlement and the French Concession. The city then flourished as a center of commerce between China and other parts of the world, and became the financial hub of the Asia-Pacific region in the 1930s. However, with the Communist Party takeover of the mainland in 1949, trade was limited to other socialist countries, and the citys global influence declined. In the 1990s, the reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping resulted in an intense re-development of the city, aiding the return of finance. The two Chinese characters in the name are 上 and 海, together meaning Upon-the-Sea. The earliest occurrence of this dates from the 11th-century Song Dynasty, at which time there was already a river confluence. There are disputes as to exactly how the name should be understood, Shanghai is officially abbreviated 沪 in Chinese, a contraction of 沪渎, a 4th- or 5th-century Jin name for the mouth of Suzhou Creek when it was the main conduit into the ocean. This character appears on all motor vehicle license plates issued in the municipality today, another alternative name for Shanghai is Shēn or Shēnchéng, from Lord Chunshen, a third-century BC nobleman and prime minister of the state of Chu, whose fief included modern Shanghai. Sports teams and newspapers in Shanghai often use Shen in their names, such as Shanghai Shenhua F. C. Huating was another early name for Shanghai. In AD751, during the dynasty, Huating County was established at modern-day Songjiang. Today, Huating appears as the name of a hotel in the city. The city also has various nicknames in English, including Pearl of the Orient, during the Spring and Autumn period, the Shanghai area belonged to the Kingdom of Wu, which was conquered by the Kingdom of Yue, which in turn was conquered by the Kingdom of Chu. During the Warring States period, Shanghai was part of the fief of Lord Chunshen of Chu and he ordered the excavation of the Huangpu River. Its former or poetic name, the Chunshen River, gave Shanghai its nickname of Shen, two important events helped promote Shanghais development in the Ming dynasty
