1.
Japan
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Japan is a sovereign island nation in Eastern Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asia Mainland and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea, the kanji that make up Japans name mean sun origin. 日 can be read as ni and means sun while 本 can be read as hon, or pon, Japan is often referred to by the famous epithet Land of the Rising Sun in reference to its Japanese name. Japan is an archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands. The four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku, the country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions. Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one, the population of 127 million is the worlds tenth largest. Japanese people make up 98. 5% of Japans total population, approximately 9.1 million people live in the city of Tokyo, the capital of Japan. Archaeological research indicates that Japan was inhabited as early as the Upper Paleolithic period, the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other regions, mainly China, followed by periods of isolation, from the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shoguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a period of isolation in the early 17th century. The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan is a member of the UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the country has the worlds third-largest economy by nominal GDP and the worlds fourth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It is also the worlds fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer, although Japan has officially renounced its right to declare war, it maintains a modern military with the worlds eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a country with a very high standard of living. Its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and the third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, in ancient China, Japan was called Wo 倭. It was mentioned in the third century Chinese historical text Records of the Three Kingdoms in the section for the Wei kingdom, Wa became disliked because it has the connotation of the character 矮, meaning dwarf. The 倭 kanji has been replaced with the homophone Wa, meaning harmony, the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, which is pronounced Nippon or Nihon and literally means the origin of the sun. The earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, at the start of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan introduced their country as Nihon
2.
Valencia
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Its urban area extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of around 1. 5–1.6 million people. Valencia is Spains third largest metropolitan area, with a population ranging from 1.7 to 2.5 million, the Port of Valencia is the 5th busiest container port in Europe and the busiest container port on the Mediterranean Sea. The city is ranked at Gamma in the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, Valencia was founded as a Roman colony by the consul Decimus Junius Brutus Callaicus in 138 BC, and called Valentia Edetanorum. In 1238 the Christian king James I of Aragon reconquered the city and divided the land among the nobles who helped him conquer it and he also created a new law for the city, the Furs of Valencia, which were extended to the rest of the Kingdom of Valencia. In the 18th century Philip V of Spain abolished the privileges as punishment to the kingdom of Valencia for aligning with the Habsburg side in the War of the Spanish Succession, Valencia was the capital of Spain when Joseph Bonaparte moved the Court there in the summer of 1812. It also served as capital between 1936 and 1937, during the Second Spanish Republic, the city is situated on the banks of the Turia, on the east coast of the Iberian Peninsula, fronting the Gulf of Valencia on the Mediterranean Sea. Valencia is integrated into an area on the Costa del Azahar. Valencias main festival is the Falles, the traditional Spanish dish, paella, originated in Valencia. The original Latin name of the city was Valentia, meaning strength, or valour, the Roman historian Livy explains that the founding of Valentia in the 2nd century BC was due to the settling of the Roman soldiers who fought against an Iberian rebel, Viriatus. It is not clear if the term Balansiyya was reserved for the entire Taifa of Valencia or also designated the city, by gradual sound changes, Valentia /waˈlentia/ has become Valencia or in Castilian and València in Valencian. In Valencian, the grave accent <è> /ɛ/ contrasts with the acute accent <é> /e/—but the word València is an exception to this rule and it is spelled according to Catalan etymology, though its pronunciation is closer to Vulgar Latin. Valencia stands on the banks of the Turia River, located on the eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula, at its founding by the Romans, it stood on a river island in the Turia,6.4 km from the sea. The Albufera, a lagoon and estuary about 11 km south of the city, is one of the largest lakes in Spain. The City Council bought the lake from the Crown of Spain for 1,072,980 pesetas in 1911, in 1986, because of its cultural, historical, and ecological value, the Generalitat Valenciana declared it a natural park. Valencia has a Mediterranean climate with short, very mild winters and long, hot and its average annual temperature is 18.4 °C.23.0 °C during the day and 13.8 °C at night. In the coldest month – January, the temperature typically during the day ranges from 14 to 21 °C. In the warmest month – August, the temperature during the day typically ranges from 28–34 °C. Generally, similar temperatures to those experienced in the part of Europe in summer last about 8 months
3.
New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange
4.
United States dollar
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The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States and its insular territories per the United States Constitution. It is divided into 100 smaller cent units, the circulating paper money consists of Federal Reserve Notes that are denominated in United States dollars. The U. S. dollar was originally commodity money of silver as enacted by the Coinage Act of 1792 which determined the dollar to be 371 4/16 grain pure or 416 grain standard silver, the currency most used in international transactions, it is the worlds primary reserve currency. Several countries use it as their currency, and in many others it is the de facto currency. Besides the United States, it is used as the sole currency in two British Overseas Territories in the Caribbean, the British Virgin Islands and Turks and Caicos Islands. A few countries use the Federal Reserve Notes for paper money, while the country mints its own coins, or also accepts U. S. coins that can be used as payment in U. S. dollars. After Nixon shock of 1971, USD became fiat currency, Article I, Section 8 of the U. S. Constitution provides that the Congress has the power To coin money, laws implementing this power are currently codified at 31 U. S. C. Section 5112 prescribes the forms in which the United States dollars should be issued and these coins are both designated in Section 5112 as legal tender in payment of debts. The Sacagawea dollar is one example of the copper alloy dollar, the pure silver dollar is known as the American Silver Eagle. Section 5112 also provides for the minting and issuance of other coins and these other coins are more fully described in Coins of the United States dollar. The Constitution provides that a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and that provision of the Constitution is made specific by Section 331 of Title 31 of the United States Code. The sums of money reported in the Statements are currently being expressed in U. S. dollars, the U. S. dollar may therefore be described as the unit of account of the United States. The word dollar is one of the words in the first paragraph of Section 9 of Article I of the Constitution, there, dollars is a reference to the Spanish milled dollar, a coin that had a monetary value of 8 Spanish units of currency, or reales. In 1792 the U. S. Congress passed a Coinage Act, Section 20 of the act provided, That the money of account of the United States shall be expressed in dollars, or units. And that all accounts in the offices and all proceedings in the courts of the United States shall be kept and had in conformity to this regulation. In other words, this act designated the United States dollar as the unit of currency of the United States, unlike the Spanish milled dollar the U. S. dollar is based upon a decimal system of values. Both one-dollar coins and notes are produced today, although the form is significantly more common
5.
Association of Tennis Professionals
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The Association of Tennis Professionals was formed in September 1972 by Donald Dell, Bob Briner, Jack Kramer, and Cliff Drysdale to protect the interests of male professional tennis players. Since 1990, the association has organized the worldwide tour for men. In 1990 the organization was called the ATP Tour, which was renamed in 2001 as just ATP, in 2009 the name was changed again and is now known as the ATP World Tour. It is an evolution of the tour competitions previously known as Grand Prix tennis tournaments, the ATPs global headquarters are in London, United Kingdom. ATP Americas is based in Ponte Vedra Beach, United States, ATP Europe is headquartered in Monaco, and ATP International, the counterpart organization in the womens professional game is the Womens Tennis Association. Started in 1972 by Jack Kramer, Donald Dell, and Cliff Drysdale, it was first managed by Jack Kramer, as Executive Director, Jack Kramer created the professional players rankings system, which started the following year and continues to this day. From 1974 to 1989, the circuit was administered by a sub-committee called the Mens International Professional Tennis Council. It was made up of representatives of the International Tennis Federation, the ATP, the ATP requested and got the MIPTC to introduce a drug testing rule, making tennis the first professional sport to institute a drug-testing program. In response the ATP threatened a boycott, stating that if Pilić was not allowed to compete none should, three ATP players, Ilie Năstase, Roger Taylor and Ray Keldie defied the boycott and were fined by the ATPs disciplinary committee. But the tour was run by the tournament directors and the ITF. This re-organisation also ended a lawsuit with Volvo and Donald Dell, on 19 January 1989 the ATP published the Tour calendar for the inaugural 1990 season. By 1991, the men had their first television package to broadcast 19 tournaments to the world, coming on-line with their first website in 1995, was quickly followed by a multi-year agreement with Mercedes-Benz. Lawsuits in 2008, around virtually the same issues, resulted in a restructured tour, the ATP World Tour comprises ATP World Tour Masters 1000, ATP World Tour 500 series, ATP World Tour 250 series and ATP Challenger Tour. The ATP tour also oversees the ATP Champions Tour for seniors, Grand Slams do not fall under the auspices of the ATP. In these events, however, ranking points are awarded, players and doubles teams with the most ranking points play in the season-ending ATP World Tour Finals, which, from 2000-2008, was run jointly with the International Tennis Federation. The week-long introductory level Futures tournaments are ITF events and they count towards ATP Entry Ranking, the four-week ITF Satellite tournaments were discontinued in 2007. Grand Slam tournaments are overseen by the ITF and they count towards the players ATP rankings, the Masters 1000 tournaments are Indian Wells, Miami, Monte Carlo, Rome, Madrid, Toronto/Montreal, Cincinnati, Shanghai and Paris. The end-of-year event, the World Tour Finals, moved from Shanghai to London, Hamburg has been displaced by the new clay court event at Madrid, which is a new combined mens and womens tournament
6.
Grand Slam (tennis)
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The Grand Slam tournaments, also called majors, are the four most important annual tennis events. They offer the most ranking points, prize money, public and media attention, the greatest strength and size of field, and greater number of best of sets for men. The Grand Slam itinerary consists of the Australian Open in mid January, the French Open in May and June, Wimbledon in June and July, each tournament is played over a period of two weeks. The Australian and United States tournaments are played on courts, the French on clay. Wimbledon is the oldest, founded in 1877, followed by the US in 1881, the French in 1891, however, of these four, only Wimbledon was a major before 1924/25, the time when all four became designated Grand Slam tournaments. In doubles, one team may accomplish a Grand Slam playing together or one player may achieve it with different partners, the term Grand Slam without qualification refers to winning the four majors in a single calendar year. Winning the gold medal at the Summer Olympic Games in addition to the four majors in a one year is known as a Golden Grand Slam or more commonly the Golden Slam. Also, winning the Year-End Championship in the period is known as a Super Slam. Together, all four Majors in all three disciplines are called a set of Grand Slam titles. No male or female player has won all events in one calendar year. The term slam for winning all of the tricks in the whist family card games is attested early in the 17th century. Grand slam for all of the tricks, in contrast to small slam or little slam for all but one and this use was inherited by contract bridge, a modern development of whist defined in 1925 that became very popular in Britain and America by 1930. Grand slam has been used in golf since 1930, when Bobby Jones won the four major championships, before that time only three events, Wimbledon, the World Hard Court Championships and the World Covered Court Championships were considered the premier international tennis events by the ILTF. Tony Wilding of New Zealand won all three of those majors in one year –1913. It has been possible to complete a Grand Slam in most years, phil Dent has pointed out that skipping Grand Slam tournaments—especially the Australian Open—was not unusual then, before counting Grand Slam titles became the norm. Nevertheless, except for the 1969 and 1971 tournaments, many of the best players missed this championship until 1982, because of the remoteness, the inconvenient dates, the tournament was won by Arthur Ashe. The first definitive Grand Slam, of the current four majors, was accomplished when Don Budge won all four mens singles Majors in 1938, to date,17 players have completed a Grand Slam, though only six in the most prestigious singles titles. The four Junior disciplines, boys and girls singles and doubles, Players are only eligible from age 13 to 18, with 18-year-olds likely to hold a physical advantage
7.
Davis Cup
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The Davis Cup is the premier international team event in mens tennis. It is run by the International Tennis Federation and is contested annually between teams from competing countries in a knock-out format and it is described by the organisers as the World Cup of Tennis, and the winners are referred to as the World Champion team. The competition began in 1900 as a challenge between Great Britain and the United States, by 2016,135 nations entered teams into the competition. The most successful countries over the history of the tournament are the United States, the present champions are Argentina who beat Croatia to win the title for the first time in 2016. The womens equivalent of the Davis Cup is the Fed Cup, Australia, the Czech Republic, and the United States are the only countries to have held both Davis Cup and Fed Cup titles in the same year. The Hopman Cup, a competition for mixed teams, carries less prestige. The tournament was conceived in 1899 by four members of the Harvard University tennis team who wished to challenge the British to a tennis competition and they in turn commissioned a classically styled design from William B. Durgins of Concord, New Hampshire, crafted by the Englishman Rowland Rhodes, Davis went on to become a prominent politician in the United States in the 1920s, serving as US Secretary of War from 1925 to 1929 and as Governor-General of the Philippines from 1929 to 1932. The first match, between the United States and Britain, was held at the Longwood Cricket Club in Boston, the American team, of which Dwight Davis was a part, surprised the British by winning the first three matches. The following year the two countries did not compete, but the US won the match in 1902 and Britain won the four matches. By 1905 the tournament expanded to include Belgium, Austria, France, and Australasia, the tournament was initially titled the International Lawn Tennis Challenge although it soon became known as the Davis Cup, after Dwight Davis trophy. The Davis Cup competition was played as a challenge cup. All teams competed against one another for the right to face the previous champion in the final round. Beginning in 1923, the teams were split into two zones, the America Zone and the Europe Zone. The winners of the two met in the Inter-Zonal Zone to decide which national team would challenge the defending champion for the cup. In 1955 a third zone, the Eastern Zone, was added, because there were three zones, the winner of one of the three zones received a bye in the first round of the INZ challenger rounds. In 1966, the Europe Zone was split into two zones, Europe Zone A and Europe Zone B, so the winners of the four competed in the INZ challenger rounds. From 1950 to 1967, Australia dominated the competition, winning the Cup 15 times in 18 years
8.
Australian Open
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The Australian Open is a major tennis tournament held annually over the last fortnight of January in Melbourne, Australia. First held in 1905, the tournament is chronologically the first of the four Grand Slam tennis events of the year – the other three being the French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open. It features mens and womens singles, mens, womens and mixed doubles and juniors championships, as well as wheelchair, legends, the Australian Open typically has high attendances, rivalling and occasionally exceeding the US Open. The tournament holds the record for the highest attendance at a Grand Slam event, the Australian Open is managed by Tennis Australia, formerly the Lawn Tennis Association of Australia, and was first played at the Warehousemans Cricket Ground in Melbourne in November 1905. This facility is now known as the Albert Reserve Tennis Centre, the tournament was first known as the Australasian Championships and then became the Australian Championships in 1927 and the Australian Open in 1969. Since 1905, the Australian Open has been staged in five Australian and two New Zealand cities, Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth, Christchurch and Hastings. Though started in 1905, the tournament was not designated as being a championship until 1924. The tournament committee changed the structure of the tournament to include seeding at that time, in 1972, it was decided to stage the tournament in Melbourne each year because it attracted the biggest patronage of any Australian city. The tournament was played at the Kooyong Lawn Tennis Club from 1972 until the move to the new Melbourne Park complex in 1988, the new facilities at Melbourne Park were envisaged to meet the demands of a tournament that had outgrown Kooyongs capacity. The move to Melbourne Park was an success, with a 90 percent increase in attendance in 1988 on the previous year at Kooyong. Because of Australias geographic remoteness, very few foreign players entered this tournament in the early 20th century, in the 1920s, the trip by ship from Europe to Australia took about 45 days. The first tennis players who came by boats were the US Davis Cup players in November 1946, even inside the country, many players could not travel easily. When the tournament was held in Perth, no one from Victoria or New South Wales crossed by train, in Christchurch in 1906, of a small field of 10 players, only two Australians attended and the tournament was won by a New Zealander. The first tournaments of the Australasian Championships suffered from the competition of the other Australasian tournaments, before 1905, all Australian states and New Zealand had their own championships, the first organised in 1880 in Melbourne and called the Championship of the Colony of Victoria. In those years, the best two players – Australian Norman Brookes and New Zealander Anthony Wilding – almost did not play this tournament, Brookes came once and won in 1911, and Wilding entered and won the competition twice. Their meetings in the Victorian Championships helped to determine the best Australasian players, even when the Australasian Championships were held in Hastings, New Zealand, in 1912, Wilding, though three times Wimbledon champion, did not come back to his home country. It was a problem for all players of the era. Brookes went to Europe only three times, where he reached the Wimbledon Challenge Round once and then won Wimbledon twice
Japan
Malek Jaziri
Bradley Klahn
Pablo Carreño Busta
Filippo Volandri
John Millman
Casper Ruud
Chung Hyeon
Leonardo Mayer
Alexander Rumyantsev
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