1.
Denmark
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The term Danish Realm refers to the relationship between Denmark proper, the Faroe Islands and Greenland—three countries constituting the Kingdom of Denmark. The legal nature of the Kingdom of Denmark is fundamentally one of a sovereign state. The Faroe Islands and Greenland have been part of the Crown of Denmark since 1397 when the Kalmar Union was ratified, legal matters in The Danish Realm are subject to the Danish Constitution. Beginning in 1953, state law issues within The Danish Realm has been governed by The Unity of the Realm, a less formal name for The Unity of the Realm is the Commonwealth of the Realm. In 1978, The Unity of The Realm was for the first time referred to as rigsfællesskabet. The name caught on and since the 1990s, both The Unity of The Realm and The Danish Realm itself has increasingly been referred to as simply rigsfællesskabet in daily parlance. The Danish Constitution stipulates that the foreign and security interests for all parts of the Danish Realm are the responsibility of the Danish government, the Faroes received home rule in 1948 and Greenland did so in 1979. In 2005, the Faroes received a self-government arrangement, and in 2009 Greenland received self rule, the Danish Realms unique state of internal affairs is acted out in the principle of The Unity of the Realm. This principle is derived from Article 1 of the Danish Constitution which specifies that constitutional law applies equally to all areas of the Danish Realm, the Constitutional Act specifies that sovereignty is to continue to be exclusively with the authorities of the Realm. The language of Denmark is Danish, and the Danish state authorities are based in Denmark, the Kingdom of Denmarks parliament, with its 179 members, is located in the capital, Copenhagen. Two of the members are elected in each of Greenland and the Faroe Islands. The Government ministries are located in Copenhagen, as is the highest court, in principle, the Danish Realm constitutes a unified sovereign state, with equal status between its constituent parts. Devolution differs from federalism in that the powers of the subnational authority ultimately reside in central government. The Self-Government Arrangements devolves political competence and responsibility from the Danish political authorities to the Faroese, the Faroese and Greenlandic authorities administer the tasks taken over from the state, enact legislation in these specific fields and have the economic responsibility for solving these tasks. The Danish government provides a grant to the Faroese and the Greenlandic authorities to cover the costs of these devolved areas. The 1948 Home Rule Act of the Faroe Islands sets out the terms of Faroese home rule, the Act states. the Faroe Islands shall constitute a self-governing community within the State of Denmark. It establishes the government of the Faroe Islands and the Faroese parliament. The Faroe Islands were previously administered as a Danish county, the Home Rule Act abolished the post of Amtmand and these powers were expanded in a 2005 Act, which named the Faroese home government as an equal partner with the Danish government
2.
Muhammad al-Idrisi
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Muhammed al-Idrisi was born in Ceuta, then belonging to the Almoravids. Al-Idrisi was born into the large Hammudid family of North Africa and Al-Andalus, Al-Idrisi was born in the city of Ceuta, where his great-grandfather had been forced to settle after the fall of Hammudid Málaga to the Zirids of Granada. He spent much of his life travelling through North Africa and Al-Andalus. He visited Anatolia when he was barely 16 and his travels took him to many parts of Europe including Portugal, the Pyrenees, the French Atlantic coast, Hungary, and Jórvík. Because of conflict and instability in Al-Andalus al-Idrisi joined contemporaries such as Abu al-Salt in Sicily, for Roger it was inscribed on a massive disc of solid silver, two metres in diameter. On the geographical work of al-Idrisi, S. P. Scott wrote in 1904, not only is its historical information most interesting and valuable, but its descriptions of many parts of the earth are still authoritative. For three centuries geographers copied his maps without alteration, the mechanical genius of the author was not inferior to his erudition. Al-Idrisi inspired Islamic geographers such as Ibn Battuta, Ibn Khaldun and his map also inspired Christopher Columbus and Vasco Da Gama. Al-Idrisi in his famous Tabula Rogeriana mentioned Irlandah-al-Kabirah, according to him, from the extremity of Iceland to that of Great Ireland, the sailing time was one day. Although historians note that both al-Idrisi and the Norse tend to understate distances, the location this reference is thought to have possibly pointed to. Al-Idrisi mentioned that Chinese junks carried leather, swords, iron and he mentions the glassware of the city of Hangzhou and labels Quanzhous silk as the best. As well as the maps, al-Idrisi produced a compendium of information with the title Kitab nuzhat al-mushtaq fikhtiraq al-afaq. The title has been translated as The book of pleasant journeys into faraway lands or The pleasure of him who longs to cross the horizons and it has been preserved in nine manuscripts, seven of which contain maps. The translated title of this work attracted favourable comment from the team selecting lists of names for features expected to be discovered by the New Horizons probe reconnoitring the Pluto system, the Al-Idrisi Montes is a geographical feature in that system named after him. This was one of the first Arabic books ever printed, the first translation from the original Arabic was into Latin. The Maronites Gabriel Sionita and Joannes Hesronita translated a version of the text which was published in Paris in 1619 with the rather misleading title of Geographia nubiensis. Not until the middle of the 19th century was a translation of the Arabic text published. This was a translation into French by Pierre Amédée Jaubert, more recently sections of the text have been translated for particular regions
3.
Hanseatic League
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The Hanseatic League was a commercial and defensive confederation of merchant guilds and their market towns. Growing from a few North German towns in the late 1100s and it stretched from the Baltic to the North Sea and inland during the Late Middle Ages and early modern period. Hanse, later spelled as Hansa, was the Middle Low German word for a convoy, the League was created to protect the guilds economic interests and diplomatic privileges in their affiliated cities and countries, as well as along the trade routes the merchants visited. The Hanseatic cities had their own system and furnished their own armies for mutual protection. The hegemony of Lübeck peaked during the 15th century, Lübeck became a base for merchants from Saxony and Westphalia trading eastward and northward. This area was a source of timber, wax, amber, resins, the towns raised their own armies, with each guild required to provide levies when needed. The Hanseatic cities came to the aid of one another, and commercial ships often had to be used to carry soldiers, Visby functioned as the leading centre in the Baltic before the Hansa. Sailing east, Visby merchants established a trading post at Novgorod called Gutagard in 1080, Merchants from northern Germany also stayed in the early period of the Gotlander settlement. Later they established their own trading station in Novgorod, known as Peterhof, in 1229, German merchants at Novgorod were granted certain privileges that made their position more secure. Hansa societies worked to remove restrictions to trade for their members, before the official foundation of the League in 1356, the word Hanse did not occur in the Baltic language. The earliest remaining documentary mention, although without a name, of a specific German commercial federation is from London 1157. That year, the merchants of the Hansa in Cologne convinced Henry II, King of England, to them from all tolls in London. The allied cities gained control over most of the trade, especially the Scania Market. In 1266, Henry III of England granted the Lübeck and Hamburg Hansa a charter for operations in England, much of the drive for this co-operation came from the fragmented nature of existing territorial government, which failed to provide security for trade. Over the next 50 years the Hansa itself emerged with formal agreements for confederation and co-operation covering the west and east trade routes. The principal city and linchpin remained Lübeck, with the first general Diet of the Hansa held there in 1356, other such alliances formed throughout the Holy Roman Empire. Yet the League never became a closely managed formal organisation, over the period, a network of alliances grew to include a flexible roster of 70 to 170 cities. The league succeeded in establishing additional Kontors in Bruges, Bergen and these trading posts became significant enclaves
4.
Levee
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A levee, dike, dyke, embankment, floodbank or stopbank is an elongated naturally occurring ridge or artificially constructed fill or wall, which regulates water levels. It is usually earthen and often parallel to the course of a river in its floodplain or along low-lying coastlines, the word levee, from the French word levée, is used in American English. It originated in New Orleans a few years after the founding in 1718 and was later adopted by English speakers. The name derives from the trait of the ridges being raised higher than both the channel and the surrounding floodplains. The modern word dike or dyke most likely derives from the Dutch word dijk, the 126 kilometres long Westfriese Omringdijk was completed by 1250, and was formed by connecting existing older dikes. The Roman chronicler Tacitus even mentions that the rebellious Batavi pierced dikes to flood their land, the word dijk originally indicated both the trench and the bank. It is closely related to the English verb to dig, in Anglo-Saxon, the word dic already existed and was pronounced as dick in northern England and as ditch in the south. Similar to Dutch, the English origins of the lie in digging a trench. This practice has meant that the name may be given to either the excavation or the bank, thus Offas Dyke is a combined structure and Car Dyke is a trench though it once had raised banks as well. In the midlands and north of England, and in the United States, a dike is what a ditch is in the south, a property boundary marker or small drainage channel. Where it carries a stream, it may be called a dike as in Rippingale Running Dike. The Weir Dike is a dike in Bourne North Fen, near Twenty and alongside the River Glen. In the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads, a dyke may be a ditch or a narrow artificial channel off a river or broad for access or mooring, some longer dykes being named. In parts of Britain, particularly Scotland, a dyke may be a field wall, Levees can be mainly found along the sea, where dunes are not strong enough, along rivers for protection against high-floods, along lakes or along polders. Furthermore, levees have been built for the purpose of empoldering, the latter can be a controlled inundation by the military or a measure to prevent inundation of a larger area surrounded by levees. Levees have also built as field boundaries and as military defences. More on this type of levee can be found in the article on dry-stone walls, Levees can be permanent earthworks or emergency constructions built hastily in a flood emergency. When such a bank is added on top of an existing levee it is known as a cradge
5.
World War I
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World War I, also known as the First World War, the Great War, or the War to End All Wars, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history and it was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and paved the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved. The war drew in all the worlds great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances, the Allies versus the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. These alliances were reorganised and expanded as more nations entered the war, Italy, Japan, the trigger for the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. This set off a crisis when Austria-Hungary delivered an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia. Within weeks, the powers were at war and the conflict soon spread around the world. On 25 July Russia began mobilisation and on 28 July, the Austro-Hungarians declared war on Serbia, Germany presented an ultimatum to Russia to demobilise, and when this was refused, declared war on Russia on 1 August. Germany then invaded neutral Belgium and Luxembourg before moving towards France, after the German march on Paris was halted, what became known as the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, with a trench line that changed little until 1917. On the Eastern Front, the Russian army was successful against the Austro-Hungarians, in November 1914, the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, opening fronts in the Caucasus, Mesopotamia and the Sinai. In 1915, Italy joined the Allies and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers, Romania joined the Allies in 1916, after a stunning German offensive along the Western Front in the spring of 1918, the Allies rallied and drove back the Germans in a series of successful offensives. By the end of the war or soon after, the German Empire, Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, national borders were redrawn, with several independent nations restored or created, and Germanys colonies were parceled out among the victors. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Big Four imposed their terms in a series of treaties, the League of Nations was formed with the aim of preventing any repetition of such a conflict. This effort failed, and economic depression, renewed nationalism, weakened successor states, and feelings of humiliation eventually contributed to World War II. From the time of its start until the approach of World War II, at the time, it was also sometimes called the war to end war or the war to end all wars due to its then-unparalleled scale and devastation. In Canada, Macleans magazine in October 1914 wrote, Some wars name themselves, during the interwar period, the war was most often called the World War and the Great War in English-speaking countries. Will become the first world war in the sense of the word. These began in 1815, with the Holy Alliance between Prussia, Russia, and Austria, when Germany was united in 1871, Prussia became part of the new German nation. Soon after, in October 1873, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck negotiated the League of the Three Emperors between the monarchs of Austria-Hungary, Russia and Germany
6.
Zeppelin
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A Zeppelin was a type of rigid airship named after the German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin who pioneered rigid airship development at the beginning of the 20th century. Zeppelins notions were first formulated in 1874 and developed in detail in 1893 and they were patented in Germany in 1895 and in the United States in 1899. After the outstanding success of the Zeppelin design, the word came to be commonly used to refer to all rigid airships. Zeppelins were first flown commercially in 1910 by Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-AG, the worlds first airline in revenue service, by mid-1914, DELAG had carried over 10,000 fare-paying passengers on over 1,500 flights. During World War I the German military made use of Zeppelins as bombers and scouts. The defeat of Germany in 1918 temporarily slowed down the airship business, an exception was made allowing the construction of one airship for the US Navy, which saved the company from extinction. In 1926 the restrictions on airship construction were lifted and with the aid of donations from the public and this revived the companys fortunes, and during the 1930s the airships Graf Zeppelin and the larger LZ129 Hindenburg operated regular transatlantic flights from Germany to North America and Brazil. The Hindenburg disaster in 1937, along political and economic issues. The principal feature of Zeppelins design was a rigid metal framework made up from transverse rings. The advantage of design was that the aircraft could be much larger than non-rigid airships. The framework of most Zeppelins was made of duralumin, early Zeppelins used rubberised cotton for the gasbags, but most later craft used goldbeaters skin, made from the intestines of cattle. The first Zeppelins had long cylindrical hulls with tapered ends and complex multi-plane fins and they were propelled by several engines, mounted in gondolas or engine cars, which were attached to the outside of the structural framework. Some of these could provide reverse thrust for manoeuvring while mooring, early models had a comparatively small externally mounted gondola for passengers and crew which was attached to the bottom of the frame. This space was never heated so passengers during trips across the North Atlantic or Siberia were forced to bundle themselves in blankets, the flight ceiling was so low that no pressurization of the cabins was necessary, though the Hindenburg did maintain a pressurized air-locked smoking room. Access to the Zeppelin was achieved in a number of ways, the Graf Zeppelins gondola was accessed while the vessel was on the ground, via gangways. This describes a large rigidly framed outer envelope containing several separate gasbags and he had previously encountered Union Army balloons in 1863 when he visited the United States as a military observer during the American Civil War. Count Zeppelin began to pursue his project after his early retirement from the military in 1890 at the age of 52. Convinced of the importance of aviation, he started working on various designs in 1891
7.
Imperial German Navy
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The Imperial German Navy was the navy created at the time of the formation of the German Empire. It existed between 1871 and 1919, growing out of the small Prussian Navy, which primarily had the mission of coastal defence, Kaiser Wilhelm II greatly expanded the navy, and enlarged its mission. The key leader was Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, who expanded the size and quality of the navy. The result was an arms race with Britain as the German navy grew to become one of the greatest maritime forces in the world. The German surface navy proved ineffective during World War I, its only major engagement, however, the submarine fleet was greatly expanded and posed a major threat to the British supply system. The Imperial Navys main ships were turned over to the Allies, all ships of the Imperial Navy were designated SMS, for Seiner Majestät Schiff. The Imperial Navy achieved some important operational feats, the Navy also emerged from the fleet action of the Battle of Jutland having destroyed more ships than it lost, although the strategic value of both of these encounters was minimal. The Imperial Navy was the first to operate successfully on a large scale in wartime, with 375 submarines commissioned by the end of the First World War. The unification of Germany under Prussian leadership was the point for the creation of the Imperial Navy in 1871. The newly created emperor, Wilhelm I, as King of Prussia, had previously been head of state of the strongest state forming part of the new empire, supreme command was vested in the emperor, but its first appointed chief was General der Infanterie Albrecht von Stosch. Kiel on the Baltic Sea and Wilhelmshaven on the North Sea served as the Navys principal naval bases, the former Navy Ministry became the Imperial Admiralty on 1 February 1872, while Stosch became formally an admiral in 1875. Initially the main task of the new Imperial Navy was coastal protection, with France, the Imperial Navys tasks were then to prevent any invasion force from landing and to protect coastal towns from possible bombardment. In March 1872 a German Imperial Naval Academy was created at Kiel for training officers, followed in May by the creation of a Machine Engineer Corps, in July 1879 a separate Torpedo Engineer Corps was created dealing with torpedoes and mines. In May 1872 a ten-year building programme was instituted to modernise the fleet, the building plan had to be approved by the Reichstag, which controlled the allocation of funds, although one-quarter of the money came from French war reparations. In 1883 Stosch was replaced by general, Count Leo von Caprivi. At this point the navy had seven armoured frigates and four armoured corvettes,400 officers and 5,000 ratings, in October 1887 the first torpedo division was created at Wilhelmshaven and the second torpedo division based at Kiel. In 1887 Caprivi requested the construction of ten armoured frigates, greater importance was placed at this time on development of the army, which was expected to be more important in any war. This shortened the journey for commercial ships, but specifically united the two areas principally of concern to the German navy, at a cost of 150 million marks, later, the protection of German maritime trade routes became important
8.
HMS Furious (47)
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HMS Furious was a modified Courageous-class battlecruiser built for the Royal Navy during the First World War. Furious was modified and became a carrier while under construction. Her forward turret was removed and a deck was added in its place. Later in the war, the ship had her rear turret removed and a flight deck installed aft of the superstructure. Furious was briefly laid up after the war before she was reconstructed with a flight deck in the early 1920s. After her conversion, Furious was used extensively for trials of naval aircraft, during the early months of the Second World War the carrier spent her time hunting for German raiders in the North Atlantic and escorting convoys. This changed dramatically during the Norwegian Campaign in early 1940 when her aircraft provided air support to British troops ashore in addition to attacking German shipping, the first of what would be a large number of aircraft ferry missions was made by the carrier during the campaign. After the withdrawal of British troops in May, Furious made several anti-shipping strikes in Norway with little result before beginning a routine of ferrying aircraft for the Royal Air Force. At first Furious made several trips to West Africa, but she began to ferry aircraft to Gibraltar in 1941, an unsuccessful attack on German-occupied ports on the Arctic Ocean interrupted the ferry missions in mid-1941. Furious was given a refit in the United States and spent a few months training after her return in April 1942. She made several more trips in mid-1942 before her aircraft attacked airfields in Vichy French Algeria as part of the opening stages of Operation Torch in November 1942. The ship remained in the Mediterranean until February 1943 when she was transferred to the Home Fleet, Furious spent most of 1943 training, but made a number of attacks on the German battleship Tirpitz and other targets in Norway during the first half of 1944. By September 1944, the ship was showing her age and she was placed in reserve, Furious was decommissioned in April 1945, but was not sold for scrap until 1948. He justified their existence by claiming he needed fast, shallow-draught ships for his Baltic Project, Furious had an overall length of 786 feet 9 inches, a beam of 88 feet, and a draught of 24 feet 11 inches at deep load. She displaced 19,513 long tons normally and 22,890 long tons at deep load and she had a metacentric height of 5.33 feet at deep load. Furious and her half-sisters were the first large warships in the Royal Navy to have geared steam turbines. To save design time the installation used in the light cruiser Champion, the four Brown-Curtis turbines were powered by eighteen Yarrow small-tube boilers that were designed to produce a total of 90,000 shaft horsepower. The ships speed was an estimated 31.5 knots, Furious was designed to normally carry 750 long tons of fuel oil, but could carry a maximum of 3,160 long tons
9.
Airship hangar
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Airship hangars are specialized buildings that are used for sheltering airships during construction, maintenance and storage. Rigid airships always needed to be based in airship hangars because weathering was a serious risk, the first real airship hangar was built as Hangar “Y” at Chalais Meudon near Paris in 1879 where the engineers Charles Renard and Arthur Constantin Krebs constructed their first airship “La France”. Hangar “Y” is one of the few remaining airship hangars in Europe, the construction of the first operational rigid airship LZ1 by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin started in 1899 in a floating hangar on Lake Constance at Manzell today part of Friedrichshafen. The floating hangar turned into the direction of the wind on its own, for the same reason later rotating hangars were built at Biesdorf and at the Nordholz Airbase, to the south of Cuxhaven in Germany. Already before the First World War there were transportable tent constructions as hangars for smaller airships and they were quite common in the US at fairgrounds or exhibitions. The American Melvin Vaniman constructed big tent hangars in France particularly for the French army, with the construction of Zeppelin LZ1 the era of big rigid airships started in Germany and for this very big airship hangars were necessary. This required the big construction sheds in Barrow-in-Furness, Inchinnan, Barlow and Cardington, today, only the two imposing Hangars of the former Royal Airship Works, in Cardington, Bedfordshire remain, where the R101 was built. The No.1 Cardington hangar is original, but extended, in 1924, the Imperial Airship Communications scheme planned to extend mail and passenger service to British India, so an 859-foot hangar was constructed at Karachi in 1929. This was the destination of the R101. In France few big hangars had been built, because with the “Spies” there was one attempt to build a rigid airship. Nevertheless, at the end of the First World War an airship station for rigid airships was built in Cuers-Pierrefeu by adding the parts of smaller hangars to two big ones, at Paris-Orly Airport two concrete hangars were built between 1923 and 1926. Planned by the famous engineer Eugene Freyssinet, the 300 metre-long buildings were an important innovation according construction, none of the big French hangars exist anymore, while a few smaller ones still are there. In the USA big hangars started in 1921 with Hangar No 1 at Lakehurst Naval Airship Station, additional hangars, which housed the USS Akron and USS Macon, exist in Akron, Ohio and Sunnyvale, California. The ships were constructed in Akron, the Akron was based in Lakehurst while the Macon was based at Moffett Field. During World War II, seventeen large hangars were built to house US Navy blimps, today, seven of these wooden hangars still exist, Moffett Field, Tustin, California, Tillamook, Oregon, and Lakehurst, New Jersey. After the Second World War worldwide only one big airship shed had been built, with a length of 360m, a width of 210m and a height of 107m it is one of the largest unsupported structures in the world. After the bankruptcy of Cargolifter AG it was converted into the leisure center “Tropical Islands”, for the needs of the rather small blimps quite a number of mostly simple hangars exist around the world today. Action Stations, Volume 6, Military airfields of the Cotswolds, Friedrichshafen 1985 Kim Braun, Die Luftschiffhäfen Niedersachsens in Der Traum vom Fliegen
10.
Denmark in World War II
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During most of World War II, Denmark was first a protectorate, then an occupied territory under Germany. On 9 April 1940, Germany invaded Denmark in Operation Weserübung, on 29 August 1943 Germany placed Denmark under direct military occupation, which lasted until the Allied victory on 5 May 1945. Contrary to the situation in countries under German occupation, most Danish institutions continued to function relatively normally until 1945. Just over 3,000 Danes died as a result of the occupation. Overall this represents a low mortality rate when compared to other occupied countries. An effective resistance movement developed by the end of the war, the occupation of Denmark was initially not an important objective for the German government. The decision to occupy its northern neighbor was taken to facilitate a planned invasion of the strategically more important Norway. However, as late as February 1940 no firm decision to occupy Denmark had been made, the issue was finally settled when Adolf Hitler personally crossed out the words die Nordspitze Jütlands and replaced them with Dä, a German abbreviation for Denmark. In a much more vague and longer-term way, some Nazis hoped to incorporate Denmark into a greater Nordic Union at some stage, officially Germany claimed to be protecting Denmark from a British invasion. At 4,15 on the morning of 9 April 1940, in a coordinated operation, German ships began disembarking troops at the docks in Copenhagen. Although outnumbered and poorly equipped, soldiers in parts of the country offered resistance, most notably the Royal Guard in Copenhagen. At the same time as the crossing, German planes dropped the notorious OPROP. Leaflets over Copenhagen calling for Danes to accept the German occupation peacefully, colonel Lunding from the Danish armys intelligence office later confirmed that Danish intelligence knew the attack would be coming on either 8 or 9 April and had warned the government accordingly. The Danish ambassador to Germany, Herluf Zahle, issued a warning which was also ignored. As a result of the turn of events, the Danish government did not have enough time to officially declare war on Germany. Denmark was in a position in any event, however. Its territory and population were too small to hold out against Germany for any sustained period, unlike Norway, Denmark had no mountain ranges from which a drawn-out resistance could be mounted. The flat territory of Jutland was an area for the German army to operate in
Media related to Tønder at Wikimedia Commons
