The War of the Reunions was a conflict involving France, the Holy Roman Empire and their allies. It can be seen as a continuation of the 1667-1668 War of Devolution and 1672-1678 Franco–Dutch War, which were driven by Louis XIV's determination to establish defensible boundaries along France's northern and eastern borders. Despite the peace established by the 1678 Treaty of Nijmegen, Louis retained a large army, an action unusual in the period. In 1681, his troops seized Strasbourg and in 1682 occupied the Principality of Orange a possession of France's main adversary, William of Orange; this was followed by the outbreak of war in 1683. The treaties ending the War of Devolution and the Franco–Dutch War, as well as the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, ceded a number of towns to France. By tradition, when a town changed hands, so did the surrounding rural areas, which provided it with food and other such supplies; the borders of these dependent regions were ill-defined. Thus and his court, from 1670, introduced several Chambers of Reunion to investigate whether France had been granted all the territory that it had been owed.

The Chambers of Reunion, loyal to the king, after a review of conflicting medieval documents, that a number of outlying areas should be awarded to France. They consisted of small towns and villages, for the most part, Louis's annexations went unopposed. Most territory seized came from the Spanish Netherlands and the western parts of the Holy Roman Empire Alsace. Two of these territories seized by Louis as part of the Reunions were Luxembourg. Strasbourg was intended to remain a neutral and independent city. However, that left large rural lands under Louis's control that were unprotected by major garrison towns, as Louis' advisors believed that as long as Strasbourg remained independent, Alsace would never be secure from attack. Indeed, the bridge over the Rhine at Strasbourg had been used by the Imperial forces. Three times during the recent Franco-Dutch War, Strasbourg had served as a gateway for Imperial invasions into Alsace. Thus, Strasbourg endangered Louis's newly annexed territories in Alsace, just as the great fortress of Luxembourg dominated the other regions Louis had annexed from the Spanish Netherlands.

In 1681 Strasbourg a so-called independent city in the Holy Roman Empire, was annexed after Louis surrounded the city with overwhelming force. Louis marched into the city on 30 September 1681. Louis ordered Marshal Louis-François Boufflers to surround and begin an artillery and mortar barrage of Luxembourg; the summer of 1683 was the peak of War of the Holy League, in which the eastern flank of the Holy Roman Empire underwent the greatest offensive by the Ottoman Empire. The war on the eastern front of the Holy Roman Empire broke the momentum of Louis' confrontation with the Empire over Luxembourg. Louis decided that it would be impolitic for him to attack another Christian kingdom while that kingdom was under attack from the infidel Turk. Accordingly, in March 1682, Louis ordered a halt to the bombardment of Luxembourg and withdrew his troops. On 12 September 1683, combined Imperial and Polish troops defeated the Turks before the walls of Vienna, ending the Turkish threat; as the Ottoman threat stalled before Vienna, the Habsburgs were able to turn their attentions to the west.

Luxembourg's resistance to the demands of the French Reunion claims, its refusal to fall to the French army caused war to break out. Spain declared war on France on 26 October 1683. A French army under the Duke of Humières surrounded the town of Courtrai on the night of 3–4 November 1683; the fortress at Courtrai fell on 6 November 1683. Humières advanced on Dixmude, which surrendered without a fight on 10 November 1683. A French army under Marshal François-Joseph, Créqui bombarded Luxembourg with 3,000 to 4,000 mortar shells between 22 and 26 December 1683 and withdrew from the city. However, the real siege of Luxembourg began the next spring when, assisted by his technical expert on siege warfare, Sébastien le Prestre de Vauban, Louis once again surrounded the large fortress at Luxembourg on 29 April 1684; the fortress was defended by 2,500 men and they fought on against the French army until 3 June 1684 when they surrendered. Spanish forces in the Netherlands, backed by the Holy Roman Empire, continued to fight the French, until a final treaty in the war was reached at Truce of Ratisbon on 15 August 1684.

France continued to hold all the territory taken during the war, including Strasbourg and Luxembourg. France's subsequent actions taken after the war were intended only to turn the truce into a real, permanent treaty. Despite its relative brevity, the War of the Reunions developed a reputation for being an bloody conflict. Louis XIV and his military advisers designed a campaign of violent reprisals in an effort to influence public opinion, with the aim of pressuring enemy officials to surrender. During one battle Louvois ordered the comte de Montal to burn 20 villages near Charleroi because the Spanish destroyed two barns on the outskirts of two French villages, he insisted that not a single house should remain standing in the 20 villages; the Republic of Genoa had a long relationship with Spain. Indeed, Genoese bankers and financial houses, the Centurioni, the Palavicini and the Vivaldi families, since the 16th century, been lending money to the Spanish gover

Richard Penn, Jr. served as the lieutenant governor of the Province of Pennsylvania from 1771 to 1773, was a member of the British Parliament. Penn, of Laleham in Middlesex, was the second son of Richard Penn, Sr. and the grandson of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania. He was educated at St John's College, Cambridge before joining the Inner Temple. In 1763 he and his brother John visited Pennsylvania, of which his family were still sole proprietors, he was qualified as a councilor on 12 January 1764. In 1771 he was appointed lieutenant governor, he soon became acting governor when his brother returned to England to attend to the colony's legal interests. He proved popular with the provincials, taking much care over their commercial interests, but less so with his uncle, the proprietor. After two years he was supplanted by the re-appointment of his brother as governor. On 21 May 1772, at Christ Church, Philadelphia, he married Mary "Polly" Masters, daughter of the late William Masters of Philadelphia.

The bride's mother gave them a splendid city house as a wedding present. Penn entertained members of the Continental Congress at his Philadelphia city house, a Virginia delegate, Colonel George Washington, being among his guests. Richard Penn was elected a trustee of the College and Academy of Philadelphia in 1772, serving as president of the board in 1773 and 1774. With the coming of the Revolution, he retired and returned to England in the summer of 1775, when the Continental Congress entrusted him with the Olive Branch Petition to the King. George III refused to accept the petition, but Penn gave evidence to the House of Lords on the colonies' attitudes toward independence. After the conclusion of the American Revolution, he was allowed compensation by the US government for the loss of his proprietary rights in Pennsylvania, visited Philadelphia again in 1808. James Boswell records that in 1789 the influential Earl of Lonsdale urged the government to appoint Penn as Britain's first Ambassador to the United States, although nothing came of the idea.

Penn entered Parliament in 1784 as member for Appleby, elected on the Lonsdale interest, subsequently represented two other Lonsdale-dominated boroughs and Lancaster. He was a reliable supporter of Pitt's government, but if spoke in the House of Commons, he resigned his seat in 1791, but returned to Parliament at the next general election, in 1796. Richard and Mary Penn had two sons, William Penn and Richard Penn, FRS, two daughters, who died without issue and Mary who married Samuel Paynter, he died at Richmond-on-Thames in 1811. Penn sold his Philadelphia city house to Robert Morris in 1785. From 1790 to 1800, while Philadelphia was the temporary capital of the United States, it served as the executive mansion for Presidents George Washington and John Adams until the national capital moved to Washington, DC in November 1800. Dictionary of National Biography The Penn Family Lewis Namier & John Brooke, The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1754-1790 Robert Beatson, A Chronological Register of Both Houses of Parliament Leigh Rayment's Peerage Pages This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Wilson, J. G..

"article name needed". Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: D. Appleton. Biography and portrait at the University of Pennsylvania Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Richard Penn

The Denis d’or was, in the broadest sense the first electric musical instrument in history. The Czech theologian Václav Prokop Diviš, who had his parish in the Moravian town Přímětice near Znojmo, was interested in both music and electricity, he studied the use of electricity first for medical and agrarian purposes, for the prevention of thunderstorms. He tried to apply it to music when he created his own musical instrument that he named "Denis d'or", with the French "Denis", whose Czech counterpart is "Diviš"—hence the name; the earliest written mention of the Denis d'or dates from 1753, but it is that it existed around 1748. Some sources date its existence as far back as the year 1730, but this claim is untenable and not supported by any available information on Diviš's biography and work. After Diviš's death in 1765 the unique instrument was sold and brought to Vienna, where it vanished without trace. Surviving descriptions of the Denis d'or are short and few, so that it is not possible to clarify whether it was an electrophone or not.

Diviš has been called the first person to foster the idea of an aesthetic connection between music and electricity. However, Jean-Baptiste Thillaie Delaborde built the clavecin électrique a few years an instrument, much better documented; the Denis d'or was reported to have 14 registers, most of which were twofold, its complex mechanism fitted in a symmetrical wooden cabinet equipped with a keyboard and a pedal. It was about 150 cm long, 90 cm wide, 120 cm high, it was a chordophone not unlike a clavichord—in other words, the strings were struck, not plucked. The suspension and the tautening of the 790 metal strings was described as more elaborate than a clavichord; the mechanism, worked out by Diviš was such that the Denis d’or could imitate the sounds of a variety of other instruments, including chordophones such as harpsichords, harps and wind instruments. This was owing to the responsiveness and combinability of the stops, which permitted the player to vary the sound in multiple ways, thereby generating far more than a hundred different tonal voices altogether.

The novelty instrument produced electric shocks as practical jokes on the player. When the German theologian Johann Ludwig Fricker visited Diviš in 1753 and saw the Denis d'or with his own eyes, he referred to it in a journal of the University of Tübingen as an "Electrisch-Musicalische Instrument"—the literal translation of, "electric musical instrument", it is disputed whether the Denis d'or sounds were produced by electricity or if it was an otherwise acoustical instrument like the clavichord. Diviš could charge the iron strings with electricity in order to enhance the sound quality; this would be a possible explanation for effects that the audience perceived as electric in nature and might have been achieved with Leyden jars or similar equipment used in early research on electricity. Prokop Diviš Memorial Denis D'Or Denis D'Or on 120 Years Of Electronic Music

Alison Sue Fanelli is an American physician assistant and former actress, best known for the role of Ellen Josephine Hickle on the television series The Adventures of Pete & Pete. Fanelli was born in New York, she attended Northport High School where her talents were on display for the Powdered Wigs Drama Department, as a percussionist for the Northport High School Drumline. She is a 2001 graduate of Goucher College, where she earned a bachelor's degree in pre-med, Dartmouth College, where she earned a master's degree in Health Care Improvement. While at Dartmouth, Fanelli was a project manager for a web-based project to develop a secure online database for the Institutional Review Board, IRBnet, she conducted additional training at Arcadia University. In 1989, Fanelli joined the cast of Nickelodeon show The Adventures of Pete & Pete, playing Ellen Josephine Hickle; the character was the best love interest of Big Pete. Fanelli completed work on the series in 1996. In 2011, she contributed as the voice of Splat for an episode of TOME: Terrain of Magical Expertise, a "video game based web cartoon", created by her brother, Chris Niosi.

After Dartmouth, Fanelli worked as a physician's assistant at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. As of 2018, she is a physician assistant working in urgent care. Alison Fanelli on IMDb

This is a list of the freemen of the City of Gloucester. 1653 - Robert Payne, member of Parliament. 1658 - Ralph Wallis, nonconformist pamphleteer, known as "the Cobler of Gloucester". 1762 - Benjamin Hyett. 1782 - John Phillpotts, land agent. 1789 - George Worrall Counsel and antiquarian. 1813 - Benoni Hill, publican. 1835 - George Viner Ellis, anatomist. Langley-Smith, W; the Freemen of the City of Gloucester and the Corporation: A short history. Anon. "The Freemen of Gloucester": An Account of the Chartered Freemen of the City of Gloucester. Ripley, Peter, & John Jurica A Calendar of the Registers of the Freemen of the City of Gloucester 1641-1838. Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society. ISBN 0900197323 http://www.gloucesterfreemenandwomen.co.uk/ https://www.visit-gloucestershire.co.uk/directory/listing/chartered-freemen-women-of-the-city-of-gloucester https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/4ed3ea9f-cc89-41ae-a5b4-c0660027dba0

The Pylons of Cádiz known as the Towers of Cádiz, are two 158m-tall pylons supporting a double-circuit 132 kV three-phase AC powerline over the bay of Cádiz, running from Puerto Real Substation to the substation of the former Cadiz Thermal Power Station, situated on the peninsula upon which the city of Cádiz stands. The suspension towers are situated in Cádiz near Fort Puntales and the Puntales Naval Station and at Matagorda quarter near the commercial wharves; the crossing consists of 16 pylons: two suspension pylons, both 158 metres tall, that carry the line over the Bay of Cádiz, two strainer portals built of concrete, at each strainer portal a group of 6 monopolar strainers, which are used to carry the conductors from the strainer portal to the first standard line tower to the switchyard of Cadiz Substation. The strainer portal at the southern end is situated close to Cadiz Substation, that of the northern end at Matagorda; the rest of the line consists of pylons with three crossbars carrying six conductors.

The powerline crossing does not use a ground conductor in the span section despite its great height. Each tower is a hollow mast resembling a truncated cone; the diameter of the frustum decreases from 20.7 metres at the base to six metres at the top. The towers, which rest on reinforced concrete plinths carry on their pinnacle a single crossbar with rhomboid profile, on which the insulators carrying the conductors are fixed. A helical staircase winds its way up the interior of the structure to the top; this unconventional design was designed by Italian engineer Alberto M. Toscano, it was chosen because Spanish steel mills were unable to produce massive steel carriers at the time, importing such carriers was impossible in Francoist Spain. The construction was carried out under the supervision and direction of Remo Scalla, a close friend of Toscano; the same team of Toscano, the designer, Scalla, the builder joined forces in building the Pylons of Messina which support the lines that span the Strait of Messina, between Calabria, on the mainland of Italy, the island of Sicily.

The Cádiz project started during the latter part of 1957 and concluded in 1960. Upon completion, the towers were acquired by the Spanish National Institute of Industry. Costa de la Luz List of towers The Shukhov Tower on the Oka River near Nizhniy Novgorod, has a similar design High Voltage Masts to Cadiz Island at Structurae http://www.skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?b45670 http://www.skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?b45671 Google Maps: Matagorda Pylon Google Maps: Puntales Pylon Panoramio: picture. A set on Flickr. Picture of the strainer