The Olmec were one of the first civilizations to develop in the Americas. Chronologically, the history of the Olmecs can be divided into the Early Formative (1800-900 BCE), Middle Formative (900-400 BCE) and Late Formative (400 BCE-200AD). The Olmecs are known as the "mother culture" of Mesoamerica, meaning that the Olmec civilization was the first culture that spread and influenced Mesoamerica. The spread of Olmec culture eventually led to cultural features found throughout all Mesoamerican societies.
Rising from the sedentary agriculturalists of the Gulf Lowlands as early as 1600 BCE in the Early Formative period, the Olmecs held sway in the Olmec heartland, an area on the southern Gulf of Mexico coastal plain, in Veracruz and Tabasco. Prior to the site of La Venta, the first Olmec site of San Lorenzo dominated the modern day state of Veracruz (1200-900 BCE).
Roughly 200 kilometres (124 mi) long and 80 kilometres (50 mi) wide, with the Coatzalcoalcos River system running through the middle, the heartland is home to the major Olmec sites of La Venta, San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán, Laguna de los Cerros, and Tres Zapotes.
By no later than 1200 BCE, San Lorenzo had emerged as the most prominent Olmec center. While a layer of occupation at La Venta dates to 1200 BCE, La Venta did not reach its apogee until the decline of San Lorenzo, after 900 BCE. After 500 years of pre-eminence, La Venta was all but abandoned by the beginning of the fourth century BCE.
Located on an island in a coastal swamp overlooking a former river, the Río Palma, or Río Barí, La Venta probably controlled a region between the Mezcalapa and Coatzacoalcos rivers. The site itself is about 16 kilometres (9.9 miles) inland at an elevation of less than 10 meters above sea level with the island consisting of slightly more than 2 square miles (5.2 square kilometres) of dry land, resting on the largest alluvial plane in Mexico. The humid tropical climate of La Venta has an average annual temperature of 26 degrees Celsius and an average annual rainfall of 2,000 millimeters. La Venta is located at the nexus of four different ecosystems: marshes, mangrove swamps, tropical forest, and the Gulf of Mexico.
"There was a large resident population at the site, a number of specialists not dedicated to food production, and political, religious, economic, and/or military relations with other sites within its area of influence." Unfortunately, few, if any, of the residential structures surrounding the large centers of the city have survived. The main part of the site is a complex of clay constructions stretched out for 20 kilometres (12 miles) in a north-south direction, although the site is oriented 8° west of north. The urbanized zone may have covered an area as large of 2 km². This particular site layout is the way the city was from 600 – 400 BCE, which is when the final Olmec occupation occurred. This site is particularly fascinating because of its layout—not only does Complex A face within 8 degrees of true North, but the east and west sides of the site are almost identical, showing bilateral symmetry. This is perhaps related to religion (it’s fairly speculative, at this point) but it certainly shows a high level of sophistication and city-planning.
Unlike later Maya or Aztec cities, La Venta was built from earth and clay—there was little locally abundant stone for the construction. Large basalt stones were brought in from the Tuxtla Mountains, but these were used nearly exclusively for monuments including the colossal heads, the "altars" (actually thrones), and various stelae. For example, the basalt columns that surround Complex A were quarried from Punta Roca Partida, on the Gulf coast north of the San Andres Tuxtla volcano. "Little more than half of the ancient city survived modern disturbances enough to map accurately." Today, the entire southern end of the site is covered by a petroleum refinery and has been largely demolished, making excavations difficult or impossible. Many of the site's monuments are now on display in the archaeological museum and park in the city of Villahermosa, Tabasco.


The monastic community was founded in the 7th century by the abbot of Narbonne, Nimphridius, who adopted the Rule of Saint Benedict.  It was elevated to the rank of abbey in 779 and enriched quickly thanks to donations from lords from the neighbourhood and the county of Barcelona, acquiring lands, castles, priories and other assets. During the 12th century it ruled over a large territory encompassing the dioceses of Toulouse and Béziers and the county of Urgell. During the 13th to 15th centuries, it was reinforced and fortified due to the numerous wars, and there was a decline in religious life.
In the 16th century, Philippe de Lévis, the first commendatory abbot of the monastery, initiated the construction of a great bell tower, which was left unfinished after his death in 1537. A revival of its religious life took place in the 17th century, when the monastery joined the Congregation of Saint Maur in 1663. In the 18th century, it benefited from the architectural undertakings of its commendatory abbot, Bishop Armand Bazin de Bezons (1701–1778), enriching it with a ceremonial cour d'honneur and a cloister in classical style.
In 1789, with the beginning of the French Revolution, the abbey was confiscated by the state and sold in two lots. The smaller lot, comprising the medieval part of the abbey, belongs to the Council of the Department of Aude
In 2004, the Canons Regular of the Mother of God, a community of canons regular, moved into Lagrasse Abbey, occupying the larger lot comprising about three quarters of the building. The community, the majority of whom are priests, live in common under the Rule of St. Augustine, and dedicate their lives to the liturgy, which they celebrate in the pre-Vatican II form, and to evangelization. Common life, contemplative life, and apostolic life form the three facets of their charism.


Leninsky Avenue (Russian: Ле́нинский проспе́кт "Leninsky prospekt") is a major avenue in Moscow, Russia, that runs in the south-western direction between Kaluzhskaya Square in the central part of the city through Gagarin Square to the Moscow Ring Road. It is a part of the M3 highway which continues from Moscow to Kaluga and Bryansk to the border with Ukraine, and provides connections with Kyiv and Odessa. It is also a part of the European route E101 connecting Moscow and Kyiv.
It is the second-widest street in Moscow after Leningradsky Avenue. Its width varies between 108 and 120 metres.


Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, officially known as the Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King and locally nicknamed "Paddy's Wigwam", is the seat of the Archbishop of Liverpool and the mother church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Liverpool in Liverpool, England. The Grade II* Metropolitan Cathedral is one of Liverpool's many listed buildings.
The cathedral's architect, Frederick Gibberd, was the winner of a worldwide design competition. Construction began in 1962 and was completed in 1967. Earlier designs for a cathedral were proposed in 1933 and 1953, but none were completed.


Unlike Northern Celadon, Longquan ware does not seem to have been used by the imperial court under the Song, although Longquan kilns were used to make the "official" Guan ware, apparently when the Guan kilns could not cope with orders.  An important market seems to have been the literati or scholar-gentleman class. As well as wares for ordinary use, they were used on altars and sometimes in burials. Many shapes, especially in the early period, were based on ancient ritual bronze shapes, which were considered appropriate to religious functions, though these lacked the complex surface decoration of the bronze originals. These were also exported in great numbers and, at least in South-East Asian countries such as Japan and Korea, these associations could also be appreciated by local literati, and indeed clergy, as many of the best survivals are in temples.
Japan was a large-scale and enthusiastic importer, and the beach at Kamakura, the capital during the height of Longquan production, had some 50,000 Longquan sherds, thought to have been broken pieces dumped at the end of the voyage from China. Japan soon began to imitate Longquan wares, and has continued to do so, both in mass-produced and studio pottery versions.
There were also large quantities exported west to the Islamic world, and one of the most important collections today is the 1,300 pieces surviving from the collection of the Ottoman Emperors, most now in the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul.  Their worth was increased by a belief in the Middle East and Europe that the pieces would break or change colour if poison was placed on them.  Fragments have also been found along the East African coast, as far south as Kenya and Tanzania.
A very few pieces reached Europe by trade or diplomatic gifts from Islamic countries, and were sometimes given elaborate metalwork mounts, turning them into goblets.  Only three surviving Chinese ceramic pieces can be documented as reaching Europe before 1500. Of these, the earliest is the Fonthill Vase (now Dublin), which is qingbai porcelain, but the other two are Longquan celadon.  In 1487 Lorenzo de' Medici was presented with a Longquan dish by Qaitbay, the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt. The Katzenelnbogen bowl was bought by an aristocratic German pilgrim in the Holy Land in 1433/34, who on his return had it given a cover and mounts in gilded silver (now Kassel).  The Longquan Warham Bowl, traditionally given to New College, Oxford by William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury by 1532 (now loaned to the Ashmolean Museum), is perhaps a little later, from around 1500, and was given elaborate mounts in gold once in England.


Loschwitz Bridge (Loschwitzer Brücke) is a cantilever truss bridge over the river Elbe in Dresden the capital of  Saxony in Germany. It connects the city districts of Blasewitz and Loschwitz, two affluent residential areas, which around 1900 were amongst the most expensive in Europe. It is located close to Standseilbahn Dresden funicular railway and the world's oldest suspension railway Schwebebahn Dresden, as well as near the Dresden TV tower. The bridge is colloquially referred to as Blaues Wunder ("Blue Wonder"). This common name purportedly referred to the bridge's original blue colour and being seen as a technological miracle at the time; it is also understood to carry the cynical connotation referencing the German idiom ein blaues Wunder erleben meaning "to experience an unpleasant surprise" (literally:  "to experience a blue wonder"), reflecting the skeptical view of contemporary commentators.  There is also a bridge in Wolgast known as Blaues Wunder.
Construction took two years and was completed in 1893 at a cost of 2.25 million Goldmarks (equivalent to 14 million 2017 €) and named König-Albert-Brücke in honor of King Albert of Saxony. In the 19th century, a bridge of this length without supporting river piers was considered a technological masterpiece. Today the technology is less miraculous, but the bridge is a much-loved symbol of the city.
The original bridge toll ended during the hyperinflation of 1923. Towards the end of World War II, an SS unit attempted to destroy the bridge, but this was prevented when two people cut the detonator wires.  Preserved in its original construction, the advanced age of the structure in recent years has led to some traffic limits. Until the opening of the Waldschlösschenbrücke on 26 August 2013, it was the only Elbe crossing east of the city centre.
The surrounding area of 19.3 km² (7.5 sq mi) of the Elbe meadows was declared a cultural World Heritage Site by the UNESCO in 2004, but lost the title in 2009 following the construction of the Waldschlösschenbrücke, meant to relieve congestion on the Blue Wonder.


The telescope tracked Mars 1 in 1962–63, and Mars 2 and Mars 3 in 1971 (amidst the upgrade of the telescope to the Mark IA). In more recent years, it has also searched for several lost Mars spacecraft, including NASA's Mars Observer spacecraft in 1993, Mars Polar Lander in 2000,
and the Beagle 2 lander on Mars in 2003. However, it did not succeed in locating any of them.


The cove has formed as a result of bands of rock of alternating geological resistance running parallel to the coastline (a concordant coastline). On the seaward side the clays and sands have been eroded.
A narrow (less than 30 metres (98 ft)) band of Portland limestone rocks forms the shoreline. Behind this is a narrow (less than 50 metres (160 ft)) band of slightly less-resistant Purbeck limestone. Behind this are 300 to 500 metres (980 to 1,640 ft) of much less-resistant clays and greensands; Weald Clays, Gault and Upper Greensand.
Forming the back of the cove is a 250-metre-wide (820 ft) band of chalk, which is considerably more resistant than the clays and sands, but less resistant than the limestones. The entrance to the cove is a narrow gap in the limestone bands, formed by wave action and weathering. The wide part of the cove is where the weak clays and greensands have been eroded.
Stair Hole, less than 0.5 miles (0.8 km) to the west, is an infant cove which suggests what Lulworth Cove would have looked like a few hundred thousand years ago. The sea has made a gap in the Portland and Purbeck limestone here to the Wealden clays and begun eroding them.


Documents from 1227  mention a church at the site called San Salvatore in Porta Aurea; the latter is one of the gates of the walls of medieval Pisa.  The church underwent reconstruction in the 16th century. The façade was added in 1757 on designs of Ignazio Pellegrini. The gilded wooden ceiling from 1642 has been attributed to Del Norcia,  and the canvases therein to  Jacopo Vignali, Cecco Bravo, Lorenzo Lippi, and  Francesco Curradi. The church owes its name to a frescoed image of Madonna and Child attributed to  Taddeo di Bartolo, which was discovered in a biscuit box in 1640, and which is now found on main altar.


The Malabrigo Point Lighthouse was among the lighthouses constructed by the Spanish colonial authorities in the Philippines from 1846 to 1896 as part of the Plan General de Alumbrado de Maritimo de las Costas del Archipelago de Filipino (Masterplan for the
Lighting of the Maritime Coasts of the Philippine Archipelago), the goal of which was to install 55 lighthouses all over the archipelago, including its remotest corners.
At the time, Malabrigo Point was considered a dangerous area among seafarers because of its rocky coastline and strong currents especially during the monsoon season, hence, its name which comes from the Spanish words mal abrigo, meaning "bad shelter." In 1891, Spanish engineer Guillermo Brockman, who also designed the lighthouses at Capul Island and San Bernardino Island, created a design for a lighthouse in Punta Malabrigo which consisted of a Victorian architecture-inspired cylindrical brick tower with a metal staircase and double balcony, lighthouse keeper's quarters, and machine room. The company of Chinese contractor Jose Garcia constructed the lighthouse out of brick and lime cement and completed it in 1896, with the lighthouse being lit for the first time on October 1, 1896.
After the American annexation of the Philippines in 1898, the management of the Spanish-built lighthouses in the country fell into American hands. From 1900 to 1902 — the height of the Philippine–American War — the American gunboat USS Villalobos, a former Spanish gunboat captured after the American annexation of the Philippines, guarded the lighthouse. The gunboat regularly patrolled the area around the lighthouses at Cape Santiago, Malabrigo Point and Cabra Island from its base in Cavite, maintaining a communication link with the Marines guarding lighthouses and keeping a sharp lookout for smuggling and trafficking of supplies to Filipino revolutionaries.
During World War II, the top of the lighthouse was damaged by machine gun fire from advancing American forces who thought it was being used as a Japanese garrison. After the war, the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) and the Department of Public Works and Highways repaired the lighthouse.
In 1980, the lighthouse was automated following the replacement of its damaged lens with a light bulb donated by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). The bulb has since been replaced with a modern, solar-powered halogen light purchased through a loan grant by JICA and installed by the PCG in 1994.
In 2004, Olympic swimmer Akiko Thomson formed the nonprofit group Friends of Malabrigo, which signed an agreement with the PCG allowing them to develop and preserve the lighthouse into a sports and ecotourism site where youth swimming and sailing competitions as well as ecological and tourism-related activities will be held. However, these plans did not materialize. On November 27, 2006, the National Historical Commission of the Philippines installed two historical markers in Filipino and English, designating it a National Historical Landmark.
The municipality of Lobo, where the lighthouse is located, signed an agreement with the PCG to adopt the lighthouse in 2014 and began renovating and repainting the structure, and has since become the best preserved lighthouse in the country. In 2016, the PCG named its second Parola-class patrol vessel BRP Malabrigo after the lighthouse.


A group of 100 "leading citizens of Brooklyn" walked over the bridge on December 5, 1909, marking the unofficial completion of the bridge. The bridge was officially opened by outgoing Mayor George B. McClellan Jr. on December 31, 1909. Shortly after opening, a fire on the Brooklyn side of the Manhattan Bridge damaged the structure.
In 1910, the year after the bridge opened, Carrère and Hastings drew up preliminary plans for an elaborate Greek Revival grand entry to the bridge on the Manhattan side as part of the "City Beautiful" movement (see § Arch and colonnade), as well as a smaller approach on the Brooklyn side. These approaches would hide the bridge. The final plans were approved in 1912, and construction began the same year. A plot of 400 by 750 feet (120 by 230 m), bounded by the Bowery and Canal, Forsyth, and Bayard Streets was cleared for the arch and colonnade's construction. The arch and colonnade were completed in 1915, while a pair of pylons on the Brooklyn side were installed in November 1916.
An upper-deck roadway on the bridge was installed in 1922. The bridge was the subject of American artist Edward Hopper's 1928 painting Manhattan Bridge Loop.
Floodlights and barbed-wire fences were installed at the bases of the bridge's anchorages in 1951, during the Cold War. The installations were fortified to protect against "possible sabotage attempts under wartime conditions". The anchorages themselves were sealed. The pylons on the Brooklyn side were removed in 1963 to accommodate a widened roadway, and they were moved to the Brooklyn Museum.


It played an imported role as Orthodox spiritual center during the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1628 at the Kyiv church synod Manyava Skete was granted the status of "prot", the principal heading monastery over the monasteries in the Ruthenian, Belz and Podolian Voivodeships. Over 500 monasteries in Ukraine, Moldova and Romania were under its control.
The Orthodox monastery of Manyava was founded and developed in period between 1606 - 1785. The founding father of the monastery is Saint Job of Maniava, who was monk on the Greek Athos for some time before. In 1606, together with Ivan Vyshensky and religious writer Zakhariya Kopystensky of Kyiv Pechersk lavra he organized the first monk community here.
In 1618 there were 40 monks residing in the skete. In 1621 the monastery was granted stauropegic status and that meant its direct subordination to the Patriarch of Constantinople.
Right after its renovation in 1781, it was unexpectedly closed down by Austrian authorities on 1 July 1785. The monastery in Maniava was reestablished with the collapse of communism in Ukraine in the early 1990s, nearly 200 years later.
The clairvoyant hegumen Ioann / John (in the world: Vasyl Hrynyuk), known for his kind-heartedness, was the first head of Manyava Skete after it was reopened. Many Orthodox faithful from Ukraine, Russia and Poland sought his help. Having foreseen his death, he died in 2003 and is buried on the territory of the monastery and his grave is much venerated by the Orthodox pilgrims. Already after his death, he appeared in a dream to one of the monks waking him up with words "Stand up, you are burning" when the electrical wiring was on fire in the monastery. This happened to be true and saved the Skete from the fire.


The Headlands sometimes create their own clouds when moist, warm Pacific Ocean breezes are pushed into higher, colder air, causing condensation, fog, fog drip and perhaps rain. The hills also get more precipitation than at sea level, for the same reason. However, despite being relatively wet, strong gusty Pacific winds prevent dense forests from forming. The many gaps, ridges, and valleys in the hills increase the wind speed and periodically, during powerful winter storms, these winds can reach hurricane force. In summer, breezes can still be very gusty, when the oceanic air and fog cross the hills.
November through February in the Headlands are dominated by periodic rainstorms that blow in from the Pacific, often originating in the Gulf of Alaska, and give the area the majority of its rainfall for the year. These cloudy, gray, and rainy days often are interspersed with cool but extremely clear ones. As winter turns to spring, the April-to-June weather tends to be dominated by powerful winds, less rain, and clearer skies. Summer days alternate between clear and warm intervals, giving way to foggy and cool periods. September and October bring the highest average temperatures of the year and the longest stretches of clear skies.


Marina Square was built in 1985 on the then newly reclaimed Marina Centre, as the first major mixed-use complex in the area, along with Marina Mandarin, Mandarin Oriental and The Pan Pacific hotels. It was the largest shopping mall in Singapore with 59,000 square metres of retail space when it opened in 1986, to improve accessibility, more bus services were introduced to Marina Centre. During the late 1980s and 1990s, it featured anchor tenants Tokyu department store and Metro department store, as well as an open air food court, a Magic Land arcade and a twin Eng Wah Cinema which was closed in 1993.
The Tokyu store was replaced by American retailer Kmart, which was then replaced by MegaMart. NTUC Fairprice later took over the space occupied by MegaMart, and Giant hypermart later took over the same premises.
In September 1996, an entertainment complex, Marina Leisureplex, opened at the eastern end of the mall, comprising a six-screen Golden Village cineplex, a Superbowl arcade and bowling alley.
In early 2004, the mall started its first major upgrading works which were completed in mid-2006. The outdoor food court was converted into an air-conditioned one, and the mall layout reconfigured and remodeled. This also increased the retail space area to 65,000 sq m. A new retail concept was introduced, such as several furniture shops on the 3rd floor. More lifts and escalators were added to enhance accessibility as well.
The mall has completed its second renovation exercise, thus expanding its floor area to 100,000 sq m and a refreshed tenant mix. Phase 1 introduced a wing dedicated to food and beverage establishments, called the Dining Edition, including some F&B establishments new to Singapore. Renovation began in January 2012 and completed in September 2013. Phase 2 consisted of an extended retail zone and a new retail wing facing Marina Bay. It introduced tenants such as Emporium Shokuhin, a Japanese market and Pororo Park, a theme park dedicated to children. It was completed in November 2015.
Phase 3 of the renovation works consisted of the mall's east wing, which prompted the closure of the Marina Leisureplex (GV Marina Square) and John Little department store. Both tenants vacated the mall in 2014 and have been replaced by PSB Academy's mega city campus. PSB Academy has opened in phases at the end of 2016. In August 2016, a cluster of IT stores displaced by the closure of Funan Digitalife Mall opened, taking up the entirety of level 3 of the East Wing. They include exclusive stores of major computer and laptop brands such as HP, Dell, Acer, Asus and Lenovo, all provided by homegrown retailer Newstead, which closed down in 2019 when after the company had filed for bankruptcy. In September 2018, Emporium Shokuhin has been closed down, and a 18,000 square feet indoor playground, Kiztopia, took over the space and opened on 15 June 2019.


WikiWeb_Mary McAleese Boyne Valley Bridge_0

The Mary McAleese Boyne Valley Bridge is a cable-stayed bridge in County Meath, and County Louth, Ireland. It spans the Boyne River 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) west of Drogheda on the county boundary between County Meath and County Louth and is part of the M1 Northern Motorway. When it opened in June 2003, it was the longest cable-stayed bridge in Ireland until 19 October 2009, when the River Suir Bridge opened on the N25.
Due to environmental concerns, an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) was carried out for the bridge separately from the M1 EIS—the first such formal EIS carried out and published for a bridge in Ireland. The bridge was built from 2000 to 2003. It was designed Roughan & O'Donovan consulting engineers, who were awarded the ACEI Presidential Award in 2005 for the design.


The United States Army acquired the land in the late 1930s as part of a larger defense network that protected San Francisco Bay, including similar fortifications in San Francisco, Angel Island and the Marin Headlands. In 1943 the Army started construction of Battery Construction No. 244 on top of Milagra Ridge, which was called Milagra Ridge Military Reservation at the time. Two 6-inch (152 mm) T2/M1 guns mounted on shielded long-range barbette M4 carriages were moved from Fort Columbia to Battery 244 in 1948. The battery was decommissioned in 1950. Plans were drawn up to build a second gun emplacement armed with larger 16-inch guns, Battery Construction No. 130, but World War II ended before construction started on Battery 130.
In 1956 Nike missile site SF-51 was built here and converted to the Nike-Hercules system in 1958. Typical of Nike sites, SF-51 was divided into an administrative area (SF-51A), an integrated fire control area (SF-51C), and a launcher area (SF-51L); SF-51A and -51L lie within the area of Milagra Ridge, while SF-51C is in the neighboring Sweeney Ridge open space preserve. In 1961, Pacifica considered utilizing the empty Battery 244 casemate as their police station combined with an emergency civil defense headquarters for the County of San Mateo, but in 1969, a different location was chosen, partially due to limited access to the site. However, the City of Pacifica leased some of the underground area to the County for records storage in 1970. In January 1971, some students from Oceana High School broke into the bunker and set the records on fire, followed by another group of arsonists setting fires with highway flares in March 1972. Shortly afterward, officials stopped using the bunker.
The National Guard assumed management of the Nike missile site between 1963 through March 1974, when it was decommissioned and, in May 1974, the land was turned over to the City of Pacifica. Prior to the land transfer, several areas had already been turned over, including 73 acres (30 ha) in 1962 (eventually becoming residential parcels) and 36 acres (15 ha) in 1972, first to the Department of the Interior and then to the City of Pacifica in 1974. The buildings at SF-51A were demolished in 1983 and a condominium complex was built on that site.
In 1987 the National Park Service acquired the remaining 240 acres (97 ha) of Milagra Ridge and made it a part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Community based volunteer efforts have successfully improved the habitat of the Mission Blue and San Bruno elfin butterflies, the San Francisco garter snake and the California red-legged frog, all of which are endangered or threatened species. Residents of Pacifica's Manor district formed the Concerned Manor Residents, which brought a referendum in 1995 to successfully block a large proposed development on the lower slopes of Milagra Ridge; a smaller group of 23 homes was built as a compromise.
Today, it is a protected area and is open for hiking. A new trail, the Milagra Battery Trail, was completed in November 2016. It provides access to Milagra Ridge from a small parking lot at the end of Connemara Drive in Pacifica along a trail approximately 2,000 feet (610 m) long and 5–6 feet (1.5–1.8 m) wide. Milagra Battery Trail is located in 34 acres (14 ha) of land set aside as a conservation easement in a 2007 agreement between the National Park Service and O'Brien Homes and is part of the Bay Area Ridge Trail, along with the existing trail through Milagra Ridge to Sweeney Ridge. The conservation easement was added to the park's land, bringing it up to 275 acres (111 ha). In the late Spring, the area provides thousands of tiny wild coast strawberries interspersed with poison oak.
Milagra Ridge is home to a USGS seismometer that is very close to the city of San Francisco and provides nearly-real-time data to the public.


The mission was founded in 1776, by the Spanish Catholics of the Franciscan Order. Named for Saint John of Capistrano, a 14th-century theologian and "warrior priest" who resided in the Abruzzo region of Italy, San Juan Capistrano has the distinction of being home to the oldest building in California still in use, a chapel built in 1782. "Father Serra's Church", also known as "Serra's Chapel", is the only extant structure where it has been documented that Junipero Serra celebrated  Mass. The mission is one of the best known in Alta California, and one of the few to have actually been founded twice – the others being Mission San Gabriel Arcángel and Mission La Purísima Concepción. The site was originally consecrated on October 30, 1775, by Fermín Lasuén, but was quickly abandoned due to unrest among the indigenous population in San Diego.
The success of the settlement's population is evident in its historical records. Prior to the arrival of the missionaries, some 550 indigenous Acjachemen people lived in this area of their homeland. By 1790, the number of Indian reductions had grown to 700 Mission Indians, and just six years later nearly 1,000 "neophytes" (recent converts) lived in or around the Mission compound. Baptisms in that year alone numbered 1,649 out of the none total 4,639 people converted between 1776 and 1847.
More than 69 former inhabitants, mostly Juaneño Indians, have marked graves in the Mission's cemetery (campo santo). The remains of (later Monsignor) St. John O'Sullivan, who recognized the property's historic value and working tirelessly to conserve and rebuild its structures, are buried at the entrance to the cemetery on west side of the property, and a statue raised in his honor stands at the head of the crypt. The surviving chapel also serves as the final resting place of three priests who passed on while serving at the Mission: José Barona, Vicente Fustér, and Vicente Pascual Oliva are all entombed beneath the sanctuary floor.
The Criolla or "Mission grape," was first planted at San Juan Capistrano in 1779, and in 1783 the first wine produced in Alta California was from the Mission's winery.
The Mission entered a long period of gradual decline after Mexican government secularization in 1833. After 1850 U.S. statehood, numerous efforts were made over the latter 19th century to restore the Mission to its former state, but none achieved much success until the arrival of O'Sullivan in 1910. Restoration efforts continue, and the chapel called "Father Serra Church" is still used for religious services.
Over 500,000 visitors, including 80,000 school children, come to the Mission each year. And while the ruins of "The Great Stone Church" (which was all but leveled by an 1812 earthquake) are a renowned architectural wonder, the Mission is perhaps best known for the annual "Return of the Swallows" which is traditionally observed every March 19 (Saint Joseph's Day). Mission San Juan Capistrano has served as a favorite subject for many notable artists, and has been immortalized in literature and on film numerous times, perhaps more than any other mission.
In 1984, a modern church complex was constructed just north and west of the Mission compound and is now known as Mission Basilica San Juan Capistrano. Today, the mission compound serves as a museum, with the Serra Chapel within the compound serving as a chapel for the mission parish.


The building was initially planned as the Federal Legislative Palace during the regime of president Porfirio Díaz and "was intended as the unequaled monument to Porfirian glory."  The building would hold the congressional chambers of the deputies and senators, but the project was not finished due to the Mexican Revolutionary War. Twenty-five years later, the structure was converted into a monument to the Mexican Revolution by Mexican architect Carlos Obregón Santacilia. The monument is considered the tallest triumphal arch in the world, standing 67 metres (220 ft) in height. Porfirio Díaz appointed a French architect, Émile Bénard to design and construct the palace, a neoclassical design with "characteristic touches of the French renaissance," showing government officials' aim to demonstrate Mexico's rightful place as an advanced nation.  Díaz laid the first stone in 1910 during the centennial celebrations of Independence, when Díaz also inaugurated the Monument to Mexican Independence ("The Angel of Independence"). The internal structure was made of iron, and rather than using local Mexican materials in the stone façade, the design called for Italian marble and Norwegian granite.
Although the Díaz regime was ousted in May 1911, President Francisco I. Madero continued the project until his murder in 1913. After Madero's death, the project was cancelled and abandoned for more than twenty years. The structure remained unfinished until 1938, being completed during the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas.
The Mexican architect Carlos Obregón Santacilia proposed converting the abandoned structure into a monument to the heroes of the Mexican Revolution. After this was approved, the structure began its eclectic Art Deco and Mexican socialist realism conversion, building over the existing cupola structure of the Palacio Legislativo Federal (Federal Legislative Palace). Mexican sculptor Oliverio Martínez designed four stone sculpture groups for the monument, with Francisco Zúñiga as one of his assistants.
The structure also functions as a mausoleum for the heroes of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, Francisco I. Madero, Francisco "Pancho" Villa, Venustiano Carranza, Plutarco Elías Calles, and  Lázaro Cárdenas. Revolutionary general Emiliano Zapata is not buried in the monument, but rather in Cuautla, Morelos. The Zapata family has resisted the Mexican government's efforts to relocate Zapata's remains to the monument.


WikiWeb_Museum of the City of New York_0

The Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) is a history and art museum in Manhattan, New York City, New York. It was founded by Henry Collins Brown, in 1923 to preserve and present the history of New York City, and its people. It is located at 1220–1227 Fifth Avenue between East 103rd to 104th Streets, across from Central Park on Manhattan's Upper East Side, at the northern end of the Museum Mile section of Fifth Avenue.
The red brick with marble trim museum was built in 1929–30 and was designed by Joseph H. Freedlander in the neo-Georgian style, with statues of Alexander Hamilton and DeWitt Clinton by sculptor Adolph Alexander Weinman facing Central Park from niches in the facade.
The museum is a private non-profit organization which receives government support as a member of New York City's Cultural Institutions Group, commonly known as "CIG"s. Its other sources of income are endowments, admission fees, and contributions.
The museum is hosting the "New York At Its Core" permanent exhibition, the first-ever museum presentation of New York City's full history.


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The museum's collection of over 1.5 million items – which is particularly strong in objects dating from the 19th and early 20th centuries – include paintings, drawings, prints, including over 3000 by Currier and Ives, and photographs featuring New York City and its residents, as well as costumes, decorative objects and furniture, antique toys– the museum was the first in the United States to establish a curatorial department for toys – ship models, rare books and manuscripts, marine and military collections, police and fire collections, and a theater collection which documents the golden age of Broadway theater.  There are also dioramas about the city's history as well as its physical environment.
Among the rare items in the museum's collection is a chair that once belonged to Sarah Rapelje, daughter of Joris Jansen Rapelje of Nieuw Amsterdam, and said to be the first child born in New York State of European parentage. The chair was donated by her Brinckerhoff descendants.
The museum is known for its comprehensive collection of photographic images, which includes works by noted photographers Percy Byron, Jacob Riis and Berenice Abbott, as well as many Depression-era Federal Art Project photographs.  The collection also includes still photography by film director Stanley Kubrick.
MCNY was also the longtime home to recreations of two furnished rooms from the house of John D. Rockefeller, donated by the Rockefeller family. In 2008, the Museum disposed of the rooms, donating one to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the other to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Notable as well is a model of New Amsterdam based on the Castello Plan of 1660.


Nahargarh Fort stands on the edge of the Aravalli Hills, overlooking the city of Jaipur in the Indian state of Rajasthan. Along with Amer Fort and Jaigarh Fort, Nahargarh once formed a strong defence ring for the city. The fort was originally named Sudershangarh, but it became known as Nahargarh, which means 'abode of tigers'. The popular belief is that Nahar here stands for Nahar Singh Bhomia, whose spirit haunted the place and obstructed construction of the fort. Nahar's spirit was pacified by building a temple in his memory within the fort, which thus became known by his name.


The museum is entrusted with a collection that has the status of a designated collection, as determined by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council. However, the standard of collection management has been the subject of considerable concern and criticism in the waterways press because, essentially, the museum has insufficient money to fund the upkeep of the many historic boats in the collection. Unlike the National Railway Museum, which receives funding direct from HM Government, the NWM only receives public money through the Canal and River Trust, previously British Waterways. During the winter of 2008–2009, opening hours were cut at Gloucester and Ellesmere Port to just two days per week in an effort to manage a tough financial situation. Some boats were advertised in Museums Journal early in 2009 for disposal, there being insufficient money for their restoration. Visitors to the Ellesmere Port site can see boats, in the care of a National Museum, sunken into the water or kept afloat by automatic pumps. However, the initiative to create a Heritage Boatyard, with lottery and other funding, has spurred a revival in the museum's fortunes and work on addressing the areas of maintenance is now taking place. The Heritage Boatyard trains young people in skills that might otherwise be lost. Two boats, Ilkeston and Ferret, are sponsored by the London Canal Museum, which contributes annually to the cost of their maintenance.


In its day, the building cost 10 million Marks. It was erected on 6026 beech piles by the architects, Hermann Eggert and Gustav Halmhuber. "Ten million Marks, Your Majesty – and all paid for in cash", announced the City Director, Heinrich Tramm , when the New Town Hall was opened by Emperor Wilhelm II. The square in front of the City Hall was named Trammplatz in honour of Tramm. The New Town Hall replaced the Wangenheimpalais  as the city hall from then on.
During World War II, the building was heavily damaged during American bomb raids on the inner city of Hanover. The German state of Niedersachsen was proclaimed in 1946 in the 38 m (125 ft) high hall of the New Town Hall.
The dome of the New Town Hall, with its observation platform, is 97.73 m (320.6 ft) high. The dome's lift is unique in Europe, with its arched course (parabolic, following the shape of the dome). It is often incorrectly described as a sloping lift up the dome and compared with the lifts in the Eiffel Tower, which actually only travel diagonally, without changing their angle of inclination. The lift climbs the 50 m (160 ft) shaft at an angle of up to 17° to the gallery of the dome, where the Harz mountain range can be seen when visibility is good. In the process, the lift moves over 10 m (33 ft). During the trip, the two weight-bearing cables wind up on three double rolls in the wall of the shaft.
The lift was erected in 1913. The lift cage travelled in steam-bent oaken tracks. Because of the weather, the original lift was not usable in the colder half of the year. There is a spiral staircase, which leads from the lift exit to the observation level. In 2005, over 90,000 people visited the tower of the New Town Hall. A new lift was installed in winter of 2007–08. The last trip of the old lift took place with Lord Mayor Stephan Weil on November 4, 2007. On that weekend, 1200 guests took the last opportunity to ride in the old lift.
There are four city models of Hanover in the ground floor of the New Town Hall. They vividly portray the development of the city.


The New York Marriott Marquis is on the west side of Broadway, along Times Square between 45th Street (George Abbott Way) to the south and 46th Street to the north, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The New York City Department of City Planning gives the address as 1535 Broadway. The land lot is irregularly shaped and covers 74,287 square feet (6,901.5 m²), with a frontage of 207.94 feet (63.38 m) on Broadway and a depth of 433.94 feet (132.26 m). The Broadway frontage runs diagonally to the 45th and 46th Street frontages. The northern end of the hotel faces Duffy Square.
The sidewalk in front of Broadway was slightly widened when the hotel was built in the 1980s. The widened sidewalk was known as Broadway Plaza. As originally proposed, it would have been a pedestrian mall extending across the roadbed of Broadway eastward to Seventh Avenue. M. Paul Friedberg had designed a plaza with benches and barriers, but the plan was ultimately scrapped. In the 2010s, the sidewalk was further widened, and the adjoining roadbed was converted into a permanent pedestrian plaza with benches. The expanded plaza measures 95 feet (29 m) long and extends the curb line eastward to Seventh Avenue.
The surrounding area is part of Manhattan's Theater District and contains many Broadway theatres. On the same block are the Richard Rodgers Theatre, Music Box Theatre, and Imperial Theatre to the west. Other nearby buildings include the Paramount Hotel to the northwest; the Hotel Edison and Lunt-Fontanne Theatre to the north; TSX Broadway, the Palace and Embassy Theatres, and the I. Miller Building to the northeast; 1540 Broadway to the east; 1530 Broadway to the southeast; One Astor Plaza to the south; and the Booth, Gerald Schoenfeld, Bernard B. Jacobs, and John Golden Theatres to the southwest. Historically, the Marriott's site was occupied by five theaters: the original Helen Hayes, Morosco, Bijou, Astor, and Gaiety (later Victoria), all built in the early 20th century.


Marriott offered to pay $10.7 million for the hotel site in 2010, though this was unsuccessful. The guestrooms were renovated in 2011 and 2012. As part of the renovation, a restaurant called Crossroads was opened, and a lounge called the Broadway Lounge was also refurbished. By April 2012, the Kodak sign was no longer profitable and Kodak wished to sell its lease to the sign. Vornado Realty Trust signed a 20-year lease that August to redevelop the Marriott Marquis's retail space. The company planned to spend up to $140 million on upgrading the signage at the base and renovating the retail space. Vornado expected that the upgraded sign would be highly profitable.
In 2013, Host Hotels & Resorts acquired outright ownership of the land under the Marriott Marquis from the Empire State Development Corporation (ESD), the parent organization of the UDC, for $19.9 million due to a clause in the renegotiation of the lease from the ESD in 1998. City comptroller John Liu sharply criticized the price, saying the site had a market value of $193 million. An enlarged electronic sign at the base was completed in November 2014. In September 2018, Vornado acquired the remaining 46 percent ownership stake in the Marriott Marquis's retail space from Host Hotels & Resorts for $442 million, giving Vornado full control of the retail space and exterior sign. At the time, the retail tenants included Invicta, Levi's, Sephora, Swatch, and T-Mobile.
From the Marriott Marquis's opening, its workers had never been unionized. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, in which demand for the hotel decreased greatly, Marriott decided to outsource all of its more than 850 foodservice-worker positions. In December 2020, Marriott notified all of the foodservice workers that they would be fired by the following March. The move led to protests from the laid-off workers and an investigation from the Attorney General of New York, and its remaining workers voted to unionize in early 2021. That August, Omnibuild completed a 16-month renovation of the Marriott Marquis, costing $30 million. As part of the renovation, the bars, restaurants, meeting rooms, and ballrooms were upgraded, and a sky bridge measuring 240 feet (73 m) long was installed at the ninth story. In addition, a boiler plant that converted gas to steam was installed. The Union Square Hospitality Group was selected to run the Marriott Marquis's foodservice operation.


Of the original plans, architectural critic Ada Louise Huxtable wrote that the Portman Hotel "will be not only the city's tallest, but also its most dramatic, repeating and enlarging a successful Portman formula already in operation in Atlanta, Chicago, and San Francisco". Huxtable wrote that Times Square's redevelopment was contingent on whether the "large, tide-turning" Portman Hotel was able to succeed. Architectural Forum wrote that "any Portman in a storm (especially that of Times Square) will do just fine", while The New Yorker commented, "The hotel looked like fun". Conversely, Stanley Abercrombie of Architecture Plus said "the hotel threatens to effect, at street level, a weakening rather than a strengthening of Times Square vitality".
In 1980, after the redesigned hotel was revealed, Paul Goldberger wrote that he supported the hotel plans. Though Goldberger was slightly disturbed by the planned destruction of the theaters, "the life of an ongoing city is always one of tradeoffs". Abercrombie, writing for the Journal of the Institute of American Architects, said in 1982: "The new hotel may do wonderful things for the area, but it could have been even more beneficial if another site had been chosen for it." Michael Sorkin characterized the hotel as "hopelessly self-centered". When the hotel finally opened, Goldberger called the design outdated, with the mass "looming over Times Square like an upended bunker". Newsday said two years after the hotel's completion that the "exterior could hold its own against anything in Dallas", while the "interior resembles the set where Luke Skywalker battled Darth Vader." Herbert Muschamp said: "Throughout the hotel, design issues a protective order that makes the city outside a forbidding presence, mercifully kept at bay."
As for the service at the hotel itself, reviews were mixed. U.S. News & World Report, which did not rank the hotel among the top 100 in New York City, wrote: "For some previous visitors it's this Marriott's high-caliber service that wins them over [...] but for others it's the enviable location."


At some time in the early 1800s, a folly was built a few yards behind Newgrange. The folly, with two circular windows, was made of stones taken from Newgrange. In 1882, under the Ancient Monuments Protection Act, Newgrange and the nearby monuments of Knowth and Dowth were placed under the control of the state with the Board of Public Works being the responsible administrative authority. In 1890, under the leadership of Thomas Newenham Deane, the board began a project of conservation of the monument, which had been damaged through general deterioration over the previous three millennia as well as the increasing vandalism caused by visitors, some of whom had inscribed their names on the stones. In subsequent decades, a number of archaeologists performed excavations at the site, discovering more about its function and how it had been built; however, even at the time, it was still mistakenly believed by archaeologists to be built during the Bronze Age rather than during the earlier Neolithic period. In the 1950s, electric lighting was installed in the passageway to allow visitors to see more clearly, whilst an exhaustive archaeological excavation was undertaken from 1962 through to 1975, the excavation report of which was written by Michael J. O'Kelly and published in 1982 by Thames and Hudson as Newgrange: Archaeology, Art and Legend.
Following the O'Kelly excavation, further restoration and reconstruction took place at the site. Based on the positions of the cobblestones, and after conducting experiments, O'Kelly concluded that they had made up a retaining wall, but had fallen from the face of the mound. As part of the restoration, this wall was "rebuilt" and the cobblestones were fixed into a near-vertical steel-reinforced concrete wall surrounding the front of the mound. This work is controversial among the archaeological community. P. R. Giot described the monument as looking like a "cream cheese cake with dried currants distributed about." Neil Oliver described the reconstruction as "a bit brutal, a bit overdone, kind of like Stalin does the Stone Age". Critics of the new wall claim that the technology to fix a retaining wall at this angle did not exist when the mound was created.
Another theory is that some, or all, of the white quartz cobblestones had formed a plaza on the ground at the entrance. This theory was preferred at nearby Knowth, where the restorers laid the quartz stones out as an "apron" in front of the entrance to the great mound.
The inward-curving dark stone walls on each side of the entrance are not original, nor are they intended to suggest Newgrange's original appearance, but were designed solely to facilitate visitor access. A visitor guide book to the site, however, has a reconstruction drawing depicting Neolithic inhabitants using Newgrange that shows the modern entrance as if it were part of Newgrange's original appearance.
The culture that built Newgrange is sometimes confused with the much later Celtic culture, and designs on the stones are misdescribed as "Celtic". However, recent archaeogenetics suggests that the west European neolithic population was largely replaced by later arrivals.


The Nieuwe Waterweg gives the Port of Rotterdam its deep-water access to the North Sea. From Hook of Holland it stretches for approximately 20.5 kilometres (12.7 mi) where the waterway continues as the Nieuwe Maas. The very first Nieuwe Waterweg—a breach through the dunes at Hook of Holland—was only 4.3 kilometres (2.7 mi) long, but in around 1877 the channel was made much larger and wider and the current Nieuwe Waterweg was created. Currently the width of the channel is between 480 and 675 metres (1,575 and 2,215 ft) and it is dredged to a depth of 14.5–16 metres (48–52 ft) below Amsterdam Ordnance Datum.
It is this channel, together with the dredged channels in the North Sea, Maasgeul and Eurogeul, that allows ships like the MS Berge Stahl and MV Vale Rio de Janeiro (both with a draught of 23 meters) to enter Europoort.
The Dutch government agency Rijkswaterstaat is responsible for maintaining the channel.


Prior to the late 20th century hardly anything was known about the Nyatapola temple including the deity inside it. All western and local scholars who visited Bhaktapur mostly described the appearance of the temple and reported that the temple was commissioned by King Bhupatindra Malla, who ruled over Bhaktapur from 1696 to 1722. His reign was characterized by the remodelling of important temples and buildings in the kingdom or the construction of new ones. Contrary to all other temples and other important buildings from the Malla dynasty, stone or gilt cooper inscriptions affiliated to the Nyatapola temple were also not present.
The first clue about written evidence about the Nyatapola temple came in 1984 when a scholar at the National Archives of Nepal, while cataloguing Nepal Bhasa manuscripts discovered a palm leaf manuscript titled as "siddhāgni koṭyāhuti devala pratiṣṭhā". However, the name of the manuscript was likely written by a former scholar and not by its original writer. The manuscript written in Nepal Bhasa began with the following sentence:
Hail the god Ganesha. After performing a siddhāgni koṭyāhuti yagya, Maharaja Bhupatindra Malla inaugurated the Nyatapola temple.
The construction of the Nyatapola was completed in a short period of six months mainly because all the required materials were already preapred. Similarly, citizens from both the Kingdom of Bhaktapur and the Kingdom of Lalitpur either directly helped in the construction or donated raw materials for it. The "siddhāgni koṭyāhuti devala pratiṣṭhā" manuscript contains the name and the wages of every people that helped in the construction.
In Nepalese architecture, wood and bricks are the main materials for construction. For the Nyatapola, timber was collected from November 1701. Workers from all the settlements within the Kingdom of Bhaktapur were sent to nearby forest of Bhaktapur to chop down Sal trees. The workers were sent in groups based on their hometown and worked for at least a month and were paid based on the amount of days they worked. The first group which contained nineteen woodcutters from Thimi were paid an average of 112 dam per 28 days of work. The second group contained eight cutters from Banepa and twenty one from Thimi. A total of 29 mohar and 14 dam were paid to this group who on average worked for 30 days. The third group contained eight cutters form the town of Khampu were paid 7 mohar and 8 dam in total while twelve workers from Bhaktapur were paid 7 mohar and 40 dam. Another group containing seventeen workers form Panauti worked for 32 days on average and were paid 20 mohar and 20 dam in total. Sixteen workers from Nala worked for 30 days on average and were paid 17 mohar and 20 dam in total while thirteen workers from Sāngā were paid 15 mohar and 36 dam in total. Lastly, fourteen workers from Dhulikhel were paid 14 mohar and 12 dam in total. Among the woodcutters, most workers worked am average of 30 days; the workers form Bhaktapur worked the fewest in total. A cutter from Bhaktapur named Bvāsama worked for eight days, the least among the cutters and was paid 32 dams while a few cutters from Thimi, Sāngā, Dhulikhel, Panauti and Banepa worked for 39 days, the highest among the workers and were paid 1 mohar and 37 dam for it.
Apart from that Sal timber was donated by citizens form all the districts of the city of Bhaktapur and from other towns all over the kingdom. The "siddhāgni koṭyāhuti devala pratiṣṭhā" manuscript contains the dimensions of every single timber donated by the public. Apart from that, Sal timber was donated by soldiers and officials of the kingdom was well. Citizens from the all over Kingdom of Lalitpur including all the districts of the capital, Bungamati, Khokana and other cities within the kingdom donated Sal timber was well.
Most of the stones for the Nyatapola temple were donated by citizens and local heads of the twenty four historical districts of the city of Bhaktapur while some were donated by the people of Thimi, Banepa, Panauti and Nagadesh. Except for the one used to carved the deity, most of these stone arrived during the latter part of the construction. The manuscript reports that 1528 stones were used for the construction. While the dimensions of these stones were not given, it is written that it took 12–31 workers to transport the stones from the quarry to Bhaktapur. The stone in which the deity housed inside was carved was brought in April 1702 by 636 workers who were paid 53 mohar and 1 dam in total. The statue of the deity was entirely carved in three months by a group of thirty artisans. The group was led by Tulasi Lohakarmi who received a tola of gold as a reward during the inauguration along with his wage. Other sculptors who also received gold as a reward included Vishvanāth, Raksharāma, Daksharāma, Manoharasingha and Keshavarāya.
The statues of two wrestlers at the lowermost plinth were carved by a group of fourteen sculptors from Lalitpur, four of whom as been labelled as 'child' in the manuscript. The sculptors labelled as 'child' were Krishna Raj, who worked for 37 days, Raksmidhil, who worked 28 days, Chandrasingha, who worked for 27 days and Meru, who worked for 10 days. The statues of the wrestlers were carved in 40 days at most and 4 days at least.
The Nyatapola temple was made with 1,135,350 bricks plus additional 102,304 bricks were used to pave the plinths. Additionally, bricks were used to pave the road and courtyards in the local Tamārhi district as well. For the bricks, kilns were established in December 1701 at five spots around the city gates. However, most of the bricks were bought from dealers and the siddhāgni koṭyāhuti devala pratiṣṭhā manuscript contains the name of the seller and the cost of bricks purchased.
Where the Nyatapola temple exists today, there may have been a smaller five tiered temple. The temple has been referred as "ṅātapula" in the "siddhāgni koṭyāhuti devala pratiṣṭhā" manuscript. Although, no other historical records of the "ṅātapula" has been found and the manuscript itself only lists the temple once when it states that " the ṅātapula demolished in order to construct the Nyatapola". The Nyatapola is also unique in terms that it is perhaps the only Malla dynasty building for which the mathematics of the architectural elements and the design works has been found. Similarly, in order to make space for the construction of the temple, some of the houses in the local district were demolished. The manuscript has no mention of these events but a person named Dūkhi Bhāro, whose ancestral land was seized for the construction has mentioned this in his version of the Ramayana that he authored. The residence of Dūkhi Bhāro along with some other families were shifted in the eastern part of Bhaktapur. The area where the residents were shifted is still called "palikhela" meaning "land given in exchange" in Nepal Bhasa. Dūkhi Bhāro was saddened by the loss of his ancestral land and coped by authoring a Ramayana in Nepal Bhasa. He directed the play in various parts of Bhaktapur.
Starting from Thursday, 25 December 1701, around 40–69 workers were hired to first demolish the "ṅātapula" and then to dig the foundation for the Nyatapola temple. It took the workers six days to demolish the ṅātapula after which the required rituals for the new temple was completed. On 4 January 1702, Bhupatindra Malla inaugurated the foundation by carrying three bricks on his shoulder and laying them on the foundation thereby commencing the construction work. After the inauguration waves of people from Bhaktapur, Thimi, Sanga, Dhulikhel, Banepa, Panauti, Chaukot, Shreekhandapur and the Kingdom of Lalitpur started coming regularly to assist the construction. Since the raw materials were already prepared the construction picked up pace and after two months the five level plinth had been constructed. In April, the construction was temporarily halted for the Biskā jātrā, the main festival of Bhaktapur.


Nyhavn was constructed by King Christian V from 1670 to 1675, dug by Swedish prisoners of war from the Dano-Swedish War 1658–1660. It is a gateway from the sea to the old inner city at Kongens Nytorv (King's Square), where ships handled cargo and fishermens' catch. It was notorious for beer, sailors, and prostitution. Danish author Hans Christian Andersen lived at Nyhavn for some 18 years.
The first bridge across Nyhavn opened on 1874. It was a temporary wooden footbridge. It was replaced by the current bridge in 1912.
As ocean-going ships grew larger, Nyhavn was taken over by internal Danish small vessel freight traffic. After World War II land transport took over this role and small vessel traffic disappeared from the Port of Copenhagen, leaving Nyhavn largely deserted of ships.
In the mid-1960s, the Nyhavn Society (Danish: Nyhavnsforeningen) was founded with the aim of revitalising the area. In 1977, Nyhavn was inaugurated as a veteran ship and museum harbour by Copenhagen's Lord Mayor Egon Weidekamp. In 1980 Nyhavn quay was pedestrianised; it had been used as a parking area in the previous years which had coincided with a dwindling of harbour activities. Since then it has become a popular spot for tourists and locals alike, serving the function of a square according to architects Jan Gehl and Lars Gemzøe.


As a result of the use of water for electricity generation the Rehberg Ditch drew 200 to 300 litres of water per second continuously from the Oderteich. When the inflow of water is less than its outflow, the water level in the reservoir drops. If there are several months of drought in succession, the reservoir can become empty. This happens about every five to ten years, the last occasions being in 1991, 1999 and 2003.
The surcharge capacity of the Oderteich is very small. Its reservoir can only store 14% of its annual discharge. This results in unusually high fluctuations in the water level of the reservoir, which can even change from being largely empty to overflowing within a few hours. This explains why the Oderteich overflows several times a year.


Most of the cemetery objects were built in second half of the 19th century. They imitate various architectural styles including Ancient, the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Baroque. Great example of Ancient architecture are numerous columns located throughout the cemetery that are symbols of life and eternity. Columns imitating broken trees reflect the tragedy of fragile life and death. Tombstones are signed by bilingual inscriptions, most commonly German and Jewish.
Most common symbols of Jewish culture which can be seen on tombstones are:
hands - on the tombstones of descendants of Aaron
oriental tree - ancient symbol of messianic hope
broken rose - motif of death
helmet - army officer symbol
palms - symbols of national sacrifice of Jews


There is evidence that early hunters and, later, farming communities occupied the site. A protective hill fort was constructed by the local inhabitants around 400 BC during the Iron Age by creating enormous banks and ditches surrounding the hill. The hillfort is broadly oval shaped, measuring 400 m (1,300 ft) in length and 360 m (1,180 ft) in width. It consists of a double bank and intermediate ditch with an entrance on the eastern side.
Numerous other hillforts of the same period can be found locally, including Figsbury Ring to the east and Vespasian's Camp to the north. The archaeologist Sir R.C. Hoare described it as "a city of high note in the remotest periods by the several barrows near it, and its proximity to the two largest stone circles in England, namely, Stonehenge and Avebury."


Kansas City-based Populous (then HOK Sport), which designed many other major league ballparks of the late 20th and early 21st century, designed the ballpark. The design and construction management team consisted of the Dick Corporation and Barton Malow. An effort was made in the design of PNC Park to salute other "classic style" ballparks, such as Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, and Pittsburgh's Forbes Field; the design of the ballpark's archways, steel truss work, and light standards are results of this goal. PNC Park was the first two-deck ballpark to be built in the United States since Milwaukee County Stadium opened in 1953. The park features a 24 by 42 foot (7.3 by 12.8 m) Sony JumboTron, which is accompanied by the first-ever LED video boards in an outdoor MLB stadium. PNC Park is the first stadium to feature an out-of-town scoreboard with the score, inning, number of outs, and base runners for every other game being played around the league.  The out-of-town scoreboard was disabled for the 2022 season and replaced with advertising.
Ground was broken for PNC Park on April 7, 1999, after a ceremony to christen the newly renamed Roberto Clemente Bridge. As part of original plans to create an enjoyable experience for fans, the bridge is closed to vehicular traffic on game days to allow spectators to park in Pittsburgh's Golden Triangle and walk across the bridge to the stadium. PNC Park was built with Kasota limestone shipped from a Minnesota river valley, to contrast the brick bases of other modern stadiums. The American-made raw steel for the ballpark was fabricated in Brownsville, Pennsylvania by Wilhelm and Krus. The stadium was constructed over a 24-month span—at the time of construction, three months faster than any other modern major league ballpark—and the Pirates played their first game less than two years after groundbreaking. The quick construction was accomplished with the use of special computers, which relayed building plans to builders 24 hours per day. In addition, all 23 labor unions involved in the construction signed a pact that they would not strike during the building process. As a result of union involvement and attention to safety regulations, the construction manager, the Dick Corporation, received a merit award for its safety practices from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Statues of Pirates' Hall of Famers Honus Wagner, Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell and Bill Mazeroski are positioned at various points outside of PNC Park. Wagner and Clemente's statues were previously located outside of Three Rivers Stadium, and after the venue was imploded, the two statues were removed from their locations, refurbished, and relocated outside PNC Park. Wagner's statue was originally unveiled at Forbes Field in 1955. The base of Clemente's statue is shaped like a baseball diamond, with dirt from three of the fields Clemente played at—Santurce Field in Carolina, Puerto Rico, Forbes Field, and Three Rivers Stadium—at each base. On October 1, 2000, after the final game at Three Rivers Stadium, Stargell threw out the ceremonial last pitch. He was presented with a model of a statue that was to be erected in his honor outside of PNC Park. The statue was officially unveiled on April 7, 2001; however, Stargell did not attend due to health problems and died of a stroke two days later. A statue for Bill Mazeroski was added at the right field entrance, at the south end of Mazeroski Way, during the 2010 season. This was the 50th anniversary of the Pirates' 1960 World Series championship, which Mazeroski clinched with a Game 7 walk-off home run at Forbes Field. The statue itself was designed based on that event.


Covering a total area of 2.8 hectares (6.9 acres), the design of the monument is rooted in the rich Mughal architecture of the Subcontinent.Its petal shaped structure is derived from the traditional muqarnas of Mughal architecture. As the architect says: "We should learn from history but not remain in it." He used today's technology to modernize the historical form of the muqarnas. The resultant petal-shaped structure emphasizes the importance of unity and togetherness of the people of Pakistan. Rather than symbolizing the four provinces (as is mistakenly observed), it represents the four different cultures of the people of Pakistan. The four large petals represent each of the four cultures, the Punjabi, the Balochi, the Sindhi and the Pakhtun. The three smaller petals represent: the minorities, Azad Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan. All seven petals, though independent of each other, stand together in unison to form the nation of Pakistan. Standing together, they are protecting the star and the crescent of the flag of Pakistan.
The star of the flag in the monument is designed in shiny black granite with golden stars, which represent the people who sacrificed their life for Pakistan. The moon crescent is made from stainless steel with inspirational writings of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Allama Iqbal. The petals are built of granite (projecting in a suspended cantilever form, among the largest in Asia) and its inner walls are covered with artwork depicting various landmarks of the Pakistan, notable people of Pakistan's independence movement and musical and dance themes. The landmarks portrayed include Lahore Fort, Badshahi Mosque, Khyber Pass and Minar-e-Pakistan.
Other than the People's Monument, there is a museum which narrates the history and tells the story of the creation of Pakistan. These two structures are connected by a large piazza, known as the Freedom Plaza. Though the name of the architect–Arif Masoud–is inscribed in stone in the main Dedication Plaque located at the beginning of the main plaza–he has honored all construction workers by placing their hand impressions all along the long walls flanking this Freedom Plaza on both the sides. At the farthest end is a viewing platform which gives a bird's-eye view of Islamabad City. From air the monument looks like a star (center) and a crescent moon (formed by walls forming the petals), these represent the star and crescent on Pakistan's flag.


There is no accurate data on the circumstances of the construction of the castle. Archaeological research shows that the area was already inhabited in the Neolithic era, and that in the Bronze and Iron Ages there was a fortress on the site of today's castle. At the time of the conquest, a fortress built from piles stood at the top of today's castle hill.
St. Stephen attributed special importance to the castle, strengthened his walls, and King Ladislaus continued his work and built a stone wall.
Anonymus, Béla III of Hungary's clerk, author of the Gesta Hungarorum (The Deeds of the Hungarians) mentions that when the seven leaders and their tribes were crossing the Verecke Pass and the mountains below it, they became very tired and determined to rest at this place. As the countryside was at great cost (work), the settlement was called Munkács. According to another legend, the name of the castle and the city stems from the Slavic word for "suffering", because the construction of the castle and the application of the stones to it required much work and suffering.
In 1086 Munkács was attacked by the Pechenegs; they besieged the castle for five days, but were unable to capture it.
The rapid development of the city concluded during the reign of Béla III of Hungary. In 1190, for example, the Tatars scattered the villages of the county of Bereg and Ung.
In 1241, the 60,000 strong army of Batu Khan entered Hungary through the Verecke Pass. The city was demolished, but the castle was not occupied.
After the retreat of the Tatars, in 1242 Béla IV of Hungary gave instructions to build new castles, to reinforce existing ones. During the 13th century, Munkács Castle became one of the largest and best protected fortresses in Hungary.
Charles Robert appreciated his significance to the ever-stronger Poland and Russia, and therefore he took possession of Italian masters to reconstruct and strengthen. Louis I of Hungary (1342-1382) continued his construction.
In 1352 another Tatar army arrived under the castle, but his garrison not only resisted his attack, but broke out from behind the walls, wrecking the enemy, captivating and executing Atlamos Khan.
Tódor Korjatovics, Prince of Podolsky, played a significant role in the history of the castle, and he was associated with relatives in the royal court of Hungary. One of his sisters was King Sigismund's mother. In 1396, Sigismund donated the castle and the associated domination to him.
Together with his courtyard he moved to the Munkács region, and with his activities he greatly promoted the economic and cultural development of Transcarpathia. He set up his court in the castle of Munkács, extending it considerably. At his feet, a wide ditch was dug and filled with water; The other name of the castle is "Palánk".
After the deaths of Tatjana Korjatovics and his wife, Munkács often changed ownership. The strategically important fortress has played a prominent role in the region between 15th and 17th century.
From 1423, the castle was owned by György Brankovics. From 1439 László Palóczy, and in 1445 the governor of Hungary János Hunyadi became the owner of the castle. After his death, in 1456, his widow, Erzsébet Szilágyi became the mistress of the castle. Later it was owned by King Matthias and then by János Corvin.
The people of Munkács actively participated in the peasant rebellion of György Dózsa in 1514. The rebels seized the castles of Munkács, Huszt and Királyháza.
In 1514, Munkács Castle and its domination became the property of the Hungarian crown and became the owner of the king. The castle suffered severe damage during the peasant war. King Louis II (1516–1526) started to rebuild it. In 1527 the castle was still in King Louis II's widow Queen Mary's ownership, when János Szapolyai occupied it in 1528. After a year he exchanged it with other castles in Palatine István Báthori's property.
István Báthory built the ring-shaped bastion of the upper castle and a 14-metre-high (46 ft) observation tower. In 1537 King Ferdinand I besieged and then occupied the castle.


Pangong Tso is in disputed territory.  The Line of Actual Control (LAC) passes through the lake.  A section of the lake approximately 20 km east from the LAC is controlled by China but claimed by India.  The eastern end of the lake is in Tibet. After the mid-19th century, Pangong Tso was at the southern end of Johnson Line, an early attempt at demarcation between India and China in the Aksai Chin region.
The Khurnak Fort lies on the northern bank of the lake, about halfway of Pangong Tso. The Chinese has controlled the Khurnak Fort area since 1958. To the south is the smaller Spanggur Tso lake.
On 20 October 1962, Pangong Tso saw military action during the Sino-Indian War, successful for the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA). The area remains a sensitive border point along the LAC. Incursions from the Chinese side are common.
In August 2017, Indian and Chinese forces near Pangong Tso engaged in melee involving kicking, punching, rock throwing, and usage of makeshift weapons such as sticks and rods.
On 11 September 2019, PLA troops confronted Indian troops on the northern bank.
On 5–6 May 2020, a face-off between about 250 Indian and Chinese troops near the lake resulted in casualties on both sides.
On 29–30 August 2020, Indian troops occupied many heights on the south bank of Pangong Tso. The heights mentioned include Rezang La, Reqin La, Black Top, Hanan, Helmet, Gurung Hill, Gorkha Hill and Magar Hill. Some of these heights are in the grey zone of the LAC and overlook Chinese camps.
India chose to pull back from these positions as leverage for larger disengagement.
China is constructing a bridge across the lake.
Both the Chinese and Indian militaries have vessels stationed on the lake.


Though the pottery market in the square was not long-lived, a number of the buildings in the square were used by glass and china dealers throughout the 19th century. Early residents of  square were mostly from the Upper Middle classes, such as attorneys and physicians. Notable former residents include sculptor Sir Francis Chantrey, who had a studio here at No. 24 in 1802, and physician David Daniel Davis, who lived at No. 12 from 1803 to 1812. Through the 19th century there were a number of public houses in the square, including the Old Cock tavern at number 11 and Q in the corner inn at number 17. In recent years the buildings have been used as offices, though in 2008 numbers 7 and 9 were converted into a restaurant.


The canal originated when the canal belt was dug south from the Brouwersgracht starting in 1612.
In the 19th century six of the eleven Jordaan canals were filled in.
Only the Bloemgracht, Egelantiersgracht, Lauriergracht, Looiersgracht and Passeerdersgracht remained, connecting to the Prinsengracht, Keizersgracht, Herengracht, Singel, Lijnbaansgracht, Brouwersgracht, Leliegracht and Leidsegracht.
The former Hogeschool voor Economische Studies (School of Economic Studies; HES) / First Public Trade School on the corner of Passeerdersgracht, is located on a filled-in part of Lijnbaansgracht: the Raamplein.
In many places in the Jordaan there were so-called gangen, alleys or corridors between the houses.
These narrow alleys gave access to rear areas that held courtyards where the less fortunate lived in often dilapidated shelters, often built illegally.
For example, in the "Walenhoek" on the Passeerdersgracht there was the "Walengang" between numbers 15 and 17.
This corridor was demolished in 1850 for construction of the former Toevlugt voor Behoeftigen on Passeerdersgracht 9–19.
The building of the former Arbeidsbeurs on Passeerdersgracht 28-32, at the corner of Tweede Passeerdersdwarsstraat, was designed around 1915 by architects Joan van der Mey and Piet Kramer. Until the summer of 2012 this monumental building housed one of the two branches of the Amsterdam youth circus Circus Elleboog.
Elleboog then moved to a new location, Laan van Spartaan in Amsterdam-West.
Most of the canal houses on the Passeerdersgracht have been converted into residential houses.


The complex is northwest of the town of Sinaia, which is 48 kilometres (30 mi) from Brașov and 124 kilometres (77 mi) from Bucharest. In the southeastern Carpathian Mountains, the complex is composed of three monuments: Peleș Castle, Pelișor Castle, and the Foișor Hunting Lodge.


Originally personal property of the Royal Family, Peleș Castle was nationalized when King Michael was forced to abdicate and into exile by the Communist government in 1947. In 1997 the castle was returned to the Royal Family in a long judicial case that was finally concluded in 2007. King Michael subsequently said the castle should continue to house the Peleș National Museum, as well as being occasionally used for public royal ceremonies.
King Michael's heir Margareta, Custodian of the Romanian Crown occasionally uses the Castle for receptions, investitures and other public events. On 10 May (Monarchy Day) 2016, the Royal Family hosted a large Reception, Garden Party & Concert at Peleș Castle to mark the 150th anniversary of the Romanian Royal Dynasty, when Margareta's standard was flown on Peleș Castle - the first time since 1947 a Royal Standard had flown from the Castle.
In August 2016 the body of Queen Anne Lay in State in the Hall of Honour at Peleș Castle in a ceremony attended by the Presidents of Romania and Moldova, Prime Minister Dacian Cioloș and other national leaders. This was followed on 13 December 2017 by King Michael Lying in State in the same location in a similar, but larger, ceremony prior to his funeral in Bucharest and his burial in Curtea de Argeș.


From Standedge the Pennine Way follows the Yorkshire–Greater Manchester border north along a series of gritstone edges. It crosses the A640 road, then the A672, before crossing the M62 motorway by a long footbridge near Windy Hill. Past the motorway the trail follows Blackstone Edge to the A58 road, then passes a series of reservoirs. It crosses the Calderdale Way high above the village of Mankinholes, then climbs to the prominent monument on Stoodley Pike. From the monument it descends steeply to the valley of the River Calder, which it crosses about 1 mile (1.6 km) west of the town of Hebden Bridge, the largest settlement near the route.
The trail climbs out of the Calder valley through the scattered hamlet of Colden, crossing Colden Water by an ancient clapper bridge. It then passes the Walshaw Dean Reservoirs and climbs to the ruins of Top Withens, said to have been the inspiration for Wuthering Heights. The trail then descends to Ponden Hall, and crosses more moorland to the villages of Cowling and Lothersdale.
From Lothersdale the trail crosses Pinhaw Beacon to Thornton-in-Craven. There then follows gentler country, including a short section of the towpath of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal at East Marton, to reach the village of Gargrave in Airedale, on the busy A65.


WikiWeb_Piazza della Repubblica, Florence_6

Today piazza della Repubblica houses three caffès: Caffè Gilli, Paszkowski and Caffè Giubbe Rosse.


The Plaza de España, designed by Aníbal González, was a principal building built on the Maria Luisa Park's edge to showcase Spain's industry and technology exhibits. González combined a mix of 1920s Art Deco and Spanish Renaissance Revival, Spanish Baroque Revival and Neo-Mudéjar styles.  The Plaza de España complex is a huge half-circle; the buildings are accessible by four bridges over the moat, which represent the ancient kingdoms of Spain. In the centre is the Vicente Traver fountain.
Many tiled alcoves were built around the plaza, each representing a different province of Spain. The Plaza's tiled Alcoves of the Provinces are frequent backdrops for visitors' portrait photographs, taken in their own home province. Each alcove is flanked by a pair of covered bookshelves, now used by visitors in the manner of a "Little Free Library". Each bookshelf often contains works with information about their province. Visitors have also donated favorite novels and other books for others to read.
Today the buildings of the Plaza de España have been renovated and adapted for use as offices for government agencies. The central government departments, with sensitive adaptive redesign, are located within it. Toward the end of the park, the grandest mansions from the fair have been adapted as museums. The most distant museum contains the city's archaeology collections. The main exhibits are Roman mosaics and artefacts from nearby Italica.
The Plaza de España has been used as a filming location, including scenes for Lawrence of Arabia (1962). The building was used as a location in the Star Wars movie series Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002) — in which it featured in exterior shots of the City of Theed on the Planet Naboo. It also featured in the 2012 film The Dictator.
The plaza was used as a set for the video of Simply Red's song "Something Got Me Started".


Plymouth Church was founded in 1847 by 21 transplanted New Englanders, who were part of a circle centered around the wealthy evangelical merchants Arthur and Lewis Tappan. Among them were noted businessmen such as Henry C. Bowen, John Tasker Howard, David Hale, and Seth Hunt.  It was the third Congregationalist church to be organized in Brooklyn – then a separate city from New York. The site where the church building would be located was purchased from the First Presbyterian Church, which had been worshipping there since 1822, but which needed more space. It moved to a new site on Henry Street, a few blocks away.
Plymouth Church's first pastor was Henry Ward Beecher, who became a leading figure in the abolitionist movement. His sister was Harriet Beecher Stowe, noted today as the author of the anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) that "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War." The church itself became an important station on the Underground Railroad through which slaves from the South were secretly transported to Canada. Locally known as "the Grand Central Depot," slaves were hidden in the tunnel-like basement beneath the church sanctuary. The Rev. Charles B. Ray, an African-American living in Manhattan, and the founding editor of The Colored American newspaper, was quoted as saying, "I regularly drop off fugitives at Henry Ward Beecher's Plymouth Church in Brooklyn." Plymouth Church is one of the few active Underground Railroad congregations in New York still housed in its original location.
One of the main recurring events that garnered considerable public attention were Beecher's mock slave auctions. Imitating events like this in the South, Beecher would bring slaves into the sanctuary, auction them off to the highest bidder, and then set them free. The most famous case involved "Pinky", a 9-year-old slave girl who had escaped from Alabama. On February 5, 1860, in front of a crowd of 3000, Mr. Beecher started the  bidding and a collection plate was passed around the congregation. When the plate with $900 and a golden ring reached the pulpit, Beecher picked up the ring and placed it on the finger of Pinky. He exclaimed, "Remember, with this ring I do wed thee to freedom." Sixty-seven years later, Pinky returned to Plymouth, now a well-educated woman, named Mrs. Rose Ward Hunt, and returned the ring Beecher had given to her.
In October 1859, the church offered Abraham Lincoln $200 for coming to Brooklyn and giving a lecture to the congregation. Lincoln accepted the invitation, traveled to Brooklyn and participate in church service on Sunday, February 26. Today a plaque marks the pew where Lincoln attended the service. Because of high demand, Lincoln's address was moved to Cooper Union, where a 25 cents admission fee was charged. Lincoln gave his famous anti-slavery speech before a capacity crowd of 1,500 on February 27, 1860, more than eight months before he was elected President.
In 1867, a group from Plymouth Church undertook a five-and-a-half month voyage aboard the steamer Quaker City to Europe and the Holy Land. Joining them as a journalist was the young Mark Twain. His satiric account of this pioneering tour group, The Innocents Abroad, was Twain's best-selling work throughout his lifetime.
In 1875, a history of rumored extramarital affairs by Beecher and his condemnation from the pulpit of Victoria Woodhull's advocacy of free love among other factors culminated in the "Beecher-Tilton Scandal Case". The highly publicized two-and-a-half-year-long case resulted in the disfellowshiping of aggrieved husband and church member Theodore Tilton, legal and church exoneration of the pastor, and condemnation of him by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others including his younger half-sister Isabella Beecher Hooker.
Beecher died suddenly in 1887. He was succeeded by Lyman Abbott (1887-1899), a lawyer turned minister and religious journalist, Newell Dwight Hillis (1899-1924), who oversaw the completion of the Plymouth campus as it exists today, J. Stanley Durkee (1926-1940), a former President of Howard University, L. Wendell Fifield (1941-1955), a pastor of Seattle's Plymouth Congregational Church widely known for his active role in civic affairs throughout the Pacific Northwest, and Rev. Harry H. Kruener (1960-1984), Dean of the chapel at Denison University. In 1991, Rev. Sharon Blackburn, who had served as associate pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, located a few blocks from Plymouth Church, became the first female minister in the church's history, following the short tenures of Rev. Frank Goodwin (1985–88) and Rev. Richard Stanger (1988-1991).
In addition to Lincoln and Twain many other famous writers and activists spoke at Plymouth, including William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner, John Greenleaf Whittier, Clara Barton, Charles Dickens, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horace Greeley, and William Thackery. More recently, in February 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. preached a sermon on "The American Dream," echoed just months later in his famous "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. Senator Hillary Clinton spoke at Plymouth in 2001, and two noted minimalist composers, Philip Glass and Charlemagne Palestine, gave concerts using Plymouth's Aeolian-Skinner organ.
Plymouth Church merged with the Congregational Church of the Pilgrims in 1934, and the resulting combined congregation was named Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims. The Congregational Church of the Pilgrims left its Richard Upjohn-designed church building, which later was designated a New York City Landmark as  Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Catholic Church. The building's stained-glass windows, including windows by Louis Comfort Tiffany and Tiffany Studios, were moved to Plymouth Church's nearby Hillis Hall. The church also displays a 40-pound (18 kg) piece of Plymouth Rock, from the traditional landing site of the Mayflower Pilgrims.
In 1958, the congregation voted against becoming part of the newly formed United Church of Christ, which came about through a merger of the Congregational Christian Churches and the Evangelical and Reformed Church; it is now a member of the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches. The church reverted to its original name, "Plymouth Church", in September, 2011.
Today the congregation consists of about 425 members who form a covenant community.  That means each member is bound to God and to every other member of the community by a solemn vow. Plymouth adapted the Salem (Massachusetts) Covenant of 1629. The church has used the Kansas City Statement of Faith as its own since its adoption by the Congregational Christian Churches in 1913. As a congregational church, each member is empowered to participate in the decision-making of the congregation. The church is actively supporting various anti-human-trafficking groups, the Mission School of Hope in Eastern Cameroon, Habitat for Humanity,  the Hope Program, and Brooklyn anti-hunger initiatives.
On April 17, 2016, it was announced that the Rev. Dr. Brett Younger will be the 11th settled senior minister in Plymouth's 169-year history. He succeeds the Rev. Dr. David C. Fisher who retired in September 2013, after leading the Plymouth congregation for 9 years. Rev. Al Bunis, a longtime member of Plymouth who had become Rev. Dr. Fisher's assistant pastor, and Rev. Tom Lenhart had served as interim senior ministers during the transition.


In addition to ships of the Royal Navy, large commercial vessels, including ferries to France and Spain use the Sound from Millbay Docks. Fishing vessels use it from Sutton Harbour beside the old town of Plymouth, called the Barbican. There are marinas at Sutton Harbour, Mount Wise in the Hamoaze and at Turnchapel. Waterborne traffic in the Sound is controlled by the Queen's Harbour Master for Plymouth.


The port has two passenger berths that have a total length of 330 m, and can accommodate vessels up to 220 meters with a draft of 8.5 m. The port does not freeze; marine navigation is possible year round. Through it are  provided passenger service from Poti and Batumi in Georgia, and cargo service to the Turkish ports of Trabzon and Istanbul. The seaport is a  major railway station complex, which was built in 1955.
In 2013 the port was modernized as part of the renovations in the city for the 2014 Winter Olympics. New berths were constructed. Sochi seaport is now able to admit cruise ships up to 300 meters long almost all year round. Before reconstruction the seaport of Sochi could admit only cruise ships up to 200 meters long. After the reconstruction the port was able to admit simultaneously two cruise ships and a ferry. In addition, hydrotechnical facilities were capitally repaired and the front side promenade was tidied up.


A tunnel crossing the mouth of the Harbour between Gosport and Portsmouth was proposed in 1941, which would have allowed pedestrian traffic while doubling as a subterranean air raid shelter for residents on both sides. This proposal came during the Blitz, which saw Portsmouth and Gosport bombed heavily. The proposal, termed the "Kearney Tube" after the Australian engineer conducting the initial study, evolved into a proposal for rail link tunnel in 1942, but the project was never constructed.
In 1999, a study was undertaken by the Light Rail Transit Association in regard to a proposed tunnel crossing to alleviate traffic congestion in the area, particularly Gosport. Of three construction methods examined, an immersed tube was deemed to be the most effective, as it would not necessitate closing the harbour for over a year, but rather a series of shorter closures of around 24 hours for the addition of each segment of the tunnel. The tunnel would be approximately 1 km in length, though only around 670m of this would be underwater. The tunnel would have been part of a light rail network connecting Fareham, Gosport and Portsmouth. The South Hampshire Rapid Transit Order 2001 provided authorisation for the project, with construction intended for 2002, but financial problems delayed this. The Department for Transport ultimately declined to fund the initiative in 2005.


Edwin Lutyens who designed the new capital of British India, New Delhi, in the 1920s, had aligned the central vista, now Rajpath, with Purana Qila. During the Partition of India, in August 1947 the Purana Qila along with the neighbouring Humayun's Tomb, became the site for refuge camps for Muslims migrating to newly founded Pakistan. This included over 12,000 government employees who had opted for service in Pakistan, and between 150,000–200,000 Muslim refugees, who swarmed inside Purana Qila by September 1947, when Indian government took over the management of the two camps. The Purana Qila camp remained functional until early 1948, as the trains to Pakistan waited until October 1947 to start.


Raglan Castle (Welsh: Castell Rhaglan) is a late medieval castle located just north of the village of Raglan in the county of Monmouthshire in south east Wales. The modern castle dates from between the 15th and early 17th centuries, when the successive ruling families of the Herberts and the Somersets created a luxurious, fortified castle, complete with a large hexagonal keep, known as the Great Tower or the Yellow Tower of Gwent. Surrounded by parkland, water gardens and terraces, the castle was considered by contemporaries to be the equal of any other in England or Wales.
During the First English Civil War, Raglan was occupied by a Royalist garrison on behalf of Charles I but was taken by Parliamentarian forces in 1646 and its walls slighted, or deliberately put beyond military use. After the Stuart Restoration in 1660, the Somersets declined to restore it and it became first a source of local building materials, then a romantic ruin. It is now a tourist attraction.


The late Gothic portal to the council chamber (Ratssaal) was made from a single oak tree; the double-sided bow kell is richly profiled. A cast-iron Renaissance stove (year 1572 engraved) is the most representative piece of the hall's equipment. The small exposition includes the gold and silver treasure which is exhibited in the Stadtmuseum Rapperswil-Jona, the circular council table made by Conrad Lütbrand in 1618, paintings by the Rapperswil artists Felix Maria Diogg and Johann Michael Hunger, and the stained glass windows. In the entrance hall on the first floor, there is shown the golden banner given by Pope Julius II to the citizens of Rapperswil who supported his military campaign in the Lombardy against the French king in 1512. Further sights include the former supraporta of the Schloss Rapperswil, also as a fresco on the eastern wall. The Ratssaal houses the Bezirksgericht court on Wednesday, in the neighboring Richterstübli the local board of directors meet and it is also used as ceremonial hall for weddings.


The Rhode Island State House, the capitol of the state of Rhode Island, is located at 900 Smith Street just below the crest of Smith Hill, on the border of downtown in Providence. It is a neoclassical building designed by McKim, Mead & White which features the fourth largest structural-stone dome in the world,  topped by a gilded statue of "The Independent Man", representing freedom and independence. The building houses the Rhode Island General Assembly – the state House of Representatives is located in the west wing, and the Senate in the east – and the offices of the governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, and general treasurer of Rhode Island. Other state offices are located in separate buildings on a campus just north of the State House.
The structure was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1970.


The Rijksmuseum Twenthe in Enschede, the Netherlands, was founded in 1927 by textile industry Baron Jan Bernard Van Heek. He donated his own private collection and the museum building to the government, thus making it a national museum.
The museum is situated in the quarter of Roombeek, 10 minutes on foot north-east from the railway station. It has a small gift shop and a cafe, but only poor car parking facilities, so visitors are advised not to come by car.
Throughout the decades, the museum has become focused on 18th-century art as well as contemporary works, with the collection of Art & Project, a former art gallery owned by Geert van Beijeren and Adriaan van Ravesteijn, as well as a large collection of animal paintings by Wilhelm Kuhnert, Carl Rungius and Bruno Liljefors. The museum also owns a large collection of 17th century (Jacob van Ruisdael and Salomon van Ruysdael) and 18th century works, medieval books and religious objects,  and some paintings of late 19th century Impressionists. The collection of 20th-century art is also important (Karel Appel, Armando). One wing of the museum is used for temporary exhibitions of mostly modern art. It is the largest art museum in the east of the country.
In 1996, the museum became a private organisation in the form of a foundation.
In 2000, the fireworks disaster or vuurwerkramp did extensive damage to the building, but the collection of art was completely unharmed. The museum closed for nearly a year to do repairs.
From 2006 to 2008 the museum showed parts of the collection of the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, especially art from the 18th century.