Western Asia and the Near East were the first regions to enter the Bronze Age, which began with the rise of the Mesopotamian civilization of Sumer in the mid-4th millennium BC. Cultures in the ancient Near East (often called one of "the cradles of civilization") practiced intensive year-round agriculture, developed writing systems, invented the potter's wheel, created centralized governments (usually in form of hereditary monarchies), written law codes, city-states and nation-states and empires, embarked on advanced architectural projects, introduced social stratification, economic and civil administration, slavery, and practiced organized warfare, medicine and religion. Societies in the region laid the foundations for astronomy, mathematics and astrology.
 Dates are approximate, consult particular article for details


The source of the river Ebro is in the Cantabrian Mountains, in Fontibre, Cantabria, from the Latin Fontes Iberis, fount/source of the Ebro. Close by is a large artificial lake, Embalse del Ebro, created by its damming.
The upper Ebro rushes through rocky gorges in Burgos Province. Flowing roughly eastwards it passes las conchas de Haro and begins forming a wider river valley among limestone rocks when it reaches La Rioja and Navarre. Southern tributaries rise on the nearby watershed, the Sistema Ibérico, a mountain range among those of Spain's centre. North of the headwaters is the Cantabrian mountain range (south of Bilbao and Santander). Much of the total water volume of the Ebro comes from its northern tributaries, which drain about 2⁄3 of the southern slopes of the Pyrenees mountains, which run along the border with France.
All of Andorra's drainage basin is in the Ebro, through the Segre.


The natural topsoils across the plains are, outside of historically well-forested zones, thin. The subsoil being close to the surface is organically poor and quick-draining: calcareous, pebbly, stony layers. These are in places salt-rich, seeing some saltwater endorheic lagoons.
Karst geological processes shaped the landscape of layers of soluble carbonate rock of extensive limestone bedrock formed in an ancient seabed.


Downstream from Cantabria the climate in the Ebro basin – the valley being isolated from sea air masses by surrounding mountains – becomes Mediterrean/Atlantic influenced and continental. This implies summer/winter seasonal contrast and a rather dry climate. Summers of the Ebro Valley most often mirror those of a semiarid climate; some of them see more breaks of storms or showers, yet others are more arid bringing drought save where advanced irrigation is used.
The valley flood plains have rainfall between 300 and 600 mm (12–24 in), with maxima in fall and spring. It is often covered with chaparral vegetation. Summers are hot and winters are cold. The dry summer season has temperatures of more than 35 °C (95 °F), occasionally reaching over 40 °C (104 °F). In winter, the temperatures often drop below 0 °C (32 °F). In some areas the vegetation depends heavily on moisture produced by condensation fog. It is a continental Mediterranean climate with extreme temperatures. There are many ground frosts on clear nights, and sporadic snowfalls.


1784 (MDCCLXXXIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar and a leap year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar, the 1784th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 784th  year of the 2nd millennium, the 84th  year of the 18th century, and the  5th   year of the 1780s decade. As of the start of 1784, the Gregorian calendar was 11 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.


Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was previously the second vice president under John Adams and the first United States secretary of state under George Washington. The principal author of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson was a proponent of democracy, republicanism, and individual rights, motivating American colonists to break from the Kingdom of Great Britain and form a new nation. He produced formative documents and decisions at state, national, and international levels.
During the American Revolution, Jefferson represented Virginia in the Continental Congress that adopted the Declaration of Independence. As a Virginia legislator, he drafted a state law for religious freedom. He served as the second Governor of Virginia from 1779 to 1781, during the Revolutionary War. In 1785, Jefferson was appointed the United States Minister to France, and subsequently, the nation's first secretary of state under President George Washington from 1790 to 1793. Jefferson and James Madison organized the Democratic-Republican Party to oppose the Federalist Party during the formation of the First Party System. With Madison, he anonymously wrote the provocative Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions in 1798 and 1799, which sought to strengthen states' rights by nullifying the federal Alien and Sedition Acts.
Jefferson and Federalist John Adams became friends as well as political rivals, serving in the Continental Congress and drafting the Declaration of Independence together. In the 1796 presidential election between the two, Jefferson came in second, which according to electoral procedure at the time, made him vice president to Adams. Jefferson challenged Adams again in 1800 and won the presidency. After his term in office, Jefferson eventually reconciled with Adams and they shared a correspondence that lasted fourteen years.
As president, Jefferson pursued the nation's shipping and trade interests against Barbary pirates and aggressive British trade policies. Starting in 1803, he promoted a western expansionist policy with the Louisiana Purchase which doubled the nation's claimed land area. To make room for settlement, Jefferson began the process of Indian tribal removal from the newly acquired territory. As a result of peace negotiations with France, his administration reduced military forces. He was re-elected in 1804, but his second term was beset with difficulties at home, including the trial of former vice president Aaron Burr. In 1807, American foreign trade was diminished when Jefferson implemented the Embargo Act in response to British threats to U.S. shipping. The same year, Jefferson signed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves.
Jefferson, while primarily a plantation owner, lawyer, and politician, mastered many disciplines, ranging from surveying and mathematics to horticulture and mechanics. He was also an architect in the Palladian tradition. Jefferson's keen interest in religion and philosophy led to his presidency of the American Philosophical Society; he shunned organized religion but was influenced by Christianity, Epicureanism, and deism. Jefferson rejected fundamental Christianity, denying Christ's divinity. A philologist, Jefferson knew several languages. He was a prolific letter writer and corresponded with many prominent people, including Edward Carrington, John Taylor of Caroline and James Madison. Among his books is Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), considered perhaps the most important American book published before 1800. Jefferson championed the ideals, values, and teachings of the Enlightenment.
Over the course of his life, Jefferson owned more than 600 slaves. Since Jefferson's time, controversy has revolved around his relationship with Sally Hemings, a mixed-race enslaved woman and his late wife's half-sister. According to 1998 DNA testing of Jefferson's and Hemings' descendants, combined with documentary and statistical evidence and oral history, Jefferson fathered at least six children with Hemings, including four that survived to adulthood. Evidence suggests that Jefferson started the relationship with Hemings when they were in Paris, some time after she arrived there at the age of 14 or 15, when Jefferson was 44. By the time she returned to the United States at 16 or 17, she was pregnant.
After retiring from public office, Jefferson founded the University of Virginia. He and John Adams both died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of U.S. independence. Presidential scholars and historians generally praise Jefferson's public achievements, including his advocacy of religious freedom and tolerance in Virginia, his peaceful acquisition of the Louisiana Territory from France without war or controversy, and his ambitious and successful Lewis and Clark Expedition. Some modern historians are critical of Jefferson's personal involvement with slavery. Jefferson is consistently ranked in the top ten presidents of American history.


Jakarta has been home to multiple settlements. Below is the list of names used during its existence.
Sunda Kelapa (397–1527)
Jayakarta (1527–1619)
Batavia (1619–1942)
Djakarta (1942–1972)
Jakarta (1972–present)
Its name 'Jakarta' derives from the word Jayakarta (Devanagari: जयकर्त) which is ultimately derived from the Sanskrit जय jaya (victorious), and कृत krta (accomplished, acquired), thus Jayakarta translates as 'victorious deed', 'complete act' or 'complete victory'. It was named after Muslim troops of Fatahillah successfully defeated and drove out the Portuguese away from the city in 1527. Before it was called Jayakarta, the city was known as 'Sunda Kelapa'. Tomé Pires, a Portuguese apothecary during his journey to East Indies, wrote the city name on his magnum opus as Jacatra or Jacarta.
In the 17th century, the city was known as Koningin van het Oosten (Queen of the Orient), a name that was given for the urban beauty of downtown Batavia's canals, mansions and ordered city layout. After expanding to the south in the 19th century, this nickname came to be more associated with the suburbs (e.g. Menteng and the area around Merdeka Square), with their wide lanes, green spaces and villas. During the Japanese occupation, the city was renamed as Jakaruta Tokubetsu-shi (ジャカルタ特別市, Jakarta Special City).
The official name used is Daerah Khusus Ibukota Jakarta, which literally means Jakarta Special Capital Region.


Most landmarks, monuments and statues in Jakarta were begun in the 1960s during the Sukarno era, then completed in the Suharto era, while some date from the colonial period. Although many of the projects were completed after his presidency, Sukarno, who was an architect, is credited for planning Jakarta's monuments and landmarks, as he desired the city to be the beacon of a powerful new nation. Among the monumental projects were built, initiated, and planned during his administration are the National Monument, Istiqlal mosque, the Legislature Building, and the Gelora Bung Karno stadium. Sukarno also built many nationalistic monuments and statues in the capital city.
The most famous landmark, which became the symbol of the city, is the 132-metre-tall (433-foot) obelisk of the National Monument (Monumen Nasional or Monas) in the centre of Merdeka Square. On its southwest corner stands a Mahabharata-themed Arjuna Wijaya chariot statue and fountain. Further south through Jalan M.H. Thamrin, one of the main avenues, the Selamat Datang monument stands on the fountain in the centre of the Hotel Indonesia roundabout. Other landmarks include the Istiqlal Mosque, Jakarta Cathedral and the Immanuel Church. The former Batavia Stadhuis, Sunda Kelapa port in Jakarta Old Town is another landmark. The Gama Tower building in South Jakarta, at 310 metres, is the tallest building in Indonesia. The most recent landmark built is the Jakarta International Stadium.
Some of statues and monuments are nationalist, such as the West Irian Liberation Monument, the Tugu Tani, the Youth statue and the Dirgantara statue. Some statues commemorate Indonesian national heroes, such as the Diponegoro and Kartini statues in Merdeka Square. The Sudirman and Thamrin statues are located on the streets bearing their names. There is also a statue of Sukarno and Hatta at the Proclamation Monument at the entrance to Soekarno–Hatta International Airport.


Jakarta covers 699.5 square kilometres (270.1 sq mi), the smallest among any Indonesian provinces. However, its metropolitan area covers 6,392 square kilometres (2,468 sq mi), which extends into two of the bordering provinces of West Java and Banten. The Greater Jakarta area includes three bordering regencies (Bekasi Regency, Tangerang Regency and Bogor Regency) and five adjacent cities (Bogor, Depok, Bekasi, Tangerang and South Tangerang).
Jakarta is situated on the northwest coast of Java, at the mouth of the Ciliwung River on Jakarta Bay, an inlet of the Java Sea.  It is strategically located near the Sunda Strait. The northern part of Jakarta is plain land, some areas of which are below sea level, and subject to frequent flooding. The southern parts of the city are hilly. It is one of only two Asian capital cities located in the southern hemisphere (along with East Timor's Dili). Officially, the area of the Jakarta Special District is 662 km² (256 sq mi) of land area and 6,977 km² (2,694 sq mi) of sea area. The Thousand Islands, which are administratively a part of Jakarta, are located in Jakarta Bay, north of the city.
Jakarta lies in a low and flat alluvial plain, ranging from −2 to 50 metres (−7 to 164 ft) with an average elevation of 8 metres (26 ft) above sea level with historically extensive swampy areas. Some parts of the city have been constructed on reclaimed tidal flats that occur in around the area. Thirteen rivers flow through Jakarta. They are Ciliwung River, Kalibaru, Pesanggrahan, Cipinang, Angke River, Maja, Mookervart, Krukut, Buaran, West Tarum, Cakung, Petukangan, Sunter River and Grogol River. They flow from the Puncak highlands to the south of the city, then across the city northwards towards the Java Sea. The Ciliwung River divides the city into the western and eastern districts.
These rivers, combined with the wet season rains and insufficient drainage due to clogging, make Jakarta prone to flooding. This flooding is related to climate change.
Moreover, Jakarta is sinking about 5 to 10 centimetres (2.0 to 3.9 inches) each year, and up to 20 centimetres (7.9 inches) in the northern coastal areas. After a feasibility study, a ring dyke known as Giant Sea Wall Jakarta is under construction around Jakarta Bay to help cope with the threat from the sea. The dyke will be equipped with a pumping system and retention areas to defend against seawater and function as a toll road. The project is expected to be completed by 2025. In January 2014, the central government agreed to build two dams in Ciawi, Bogor and a 1.2-kilometre (0.75-mile) tunnel from Ciliwung River to Cisadane River to ease flooding in the city. Nowadays, a 1.2-kilometre (0.75-mile), with capacity 60 cubic metres (2,100 cubic feet) per second, underground water tunnel between Ciliwung River and the East Flood Canal is being worked on to ease the Ciliwung River overflows.
Environmental advocates point out that subsidence is driven by the extraction of groundwater, much of it illegal. This could be halted by stopping extraction (as the city of Tokyo has done), increasing efficiency, and finding other sources for water use. The rivers of Jakarta are highly polluted and currently unsuitable for drinking water.


Jakarta (/dʒəˈkɑːrtə/; [dʒaˈkarta] (listen)), officially the Special Capital Region of Jakarta (Indonesian: Daerah Khusus Ibukota Jakarta), is the capital and largest city of Indonesia. Lying on the northwest coast of Java, the world's most populous island, Jakarta is the largest city in Southeast Asia and serves as the diplomatic capital of ASEAN. The city is the centre of the economy, culture, and politics of Indonesia. It has a province level status which has a population of 10,562,088 as of 2020. Although Jakarta extends over only 664.01 square kilometres (256.38 sq mi), and thus has the smallest area of any Indonesian province, its metropolitan area covers 9,957.08 square kilometres (3,844.45 sq mi), which includes the satellite cities Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, South Tangerang, and Bekasi, and has an estimated population of 35 million as of 2021, making it the largest urban area in Indonesia and the second-largest in the world (after Tokyo). Jakarta ranks first among the Indonesian provinces in human development index. Jakarta's business opportunities, and its ability to offer a potentially higher standard of living than is available in other parts of the country, have attracted migrants from across the Indonesian archipelago, making it a melting pot of numerous cultures.
Jakarta is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Southeast Asia. Established in the fourth century as Sunda Kelapa, the city became an important trading port for the Sunda Kingdom. At one time, it was the de facto capital of the Dutch East Indies, when it was known as Batavia. Jakarta was officially a city within West Java until 1960, when its official status was changed to a province with special capital region distinction. As a province, its government consists of five administrative cities and one administrative regency. Jakarta is an alpha world city and is the seat of the ASEAN secretariat, Financial institutions such as the Bank of Indonesia, Indonesia Stock Exchange, and corporate headquarters of numerous Indonesian companies and multinational corporations are located in the city. In 2017, the city's GRP PPP was estimated at US$483.4 billion.
Jakarta's primary challenges include rapid urban growth, ecological breakdown, gridlocked traffic, congestion, and flooding. Jakarta is sinking up to 17 cm (6.7 inches) per year, which, coupled with the rising of sea levels, has made the city more prone to flooding. It is one of the fastest-sinking capitals in the world. Because of these challenges, in August 2019, President Joko Widodo announced that the capital of Indonesia would be moved from Jakarta to the planned city of Nusantara, in the province of East Kalimantan on the island of Borneo.


When relations between Prince Jayawikarta and the Dutch deteriorated, his soldiers attacked the Dutch fortress. His army and the British, however, were defeated by the Dutch, in part owing to the timely arrival of Jan Pieterszoon Coen. The Dutch burned the British fort and forced them to retreat on their ships. The victory consolidated Dutch power, and they renamed the city Batavia in 1619.
Commercial opportunities in the city attracted native and especially Chinese and Arab immigrants. This sudden population increase created burdens on the city. Tensions grew as the colonial government tried to restrict Chinese migration through deportations. Following a revolt, 5,000 Chinese were massacred by the Dutch and natives on 9 October 1740, and the following year, Chinese inhabitants were moved to Glodok outside the city walls. At the beginning of the 19th century, around 400 Arabs and Moors lived in Batavia, a number that changed little during the following decades. Among the commodities traded were fabrics, mainly imported cotton, batik and clothing worn by Arab communities.
The city began to expand further south as epidemics in 1835 and 1870 forced residents to move away from the port. The Koningsplein, now Merdeka Square was completed in 1818, the housing park of Menteng was started in 1913, and Kebayoran Baru was the last Dutch-built residential area. By 1930, Batavia had more than 500,000 inhabitants, including 37,067 Europeans.
On 5 March 1942, the Japanese wrested Batavia from Dutch control, and the city was named Jakarta (Jakarta Special City (ジャカルタ特別市, Jakaruta tokubetsu-shi), under the special status that was assigned to the city). After the war, the Dutch name Batavia was internationally recognised until full Indonesian independence on 27 December 1949. The city, now renamed Jakarta, was officially proclaimed the national capital of Indonesia.


Electrified dual track railroad exists from the border with Denmark at the Øresund Bridge to Malmö and onwards to Lund. The latter part is currently being upgraded to four tracks and expected to enter service in 2023. In Lund, the tracks split into two directions. The dual tracks going towards Gothenburg end at Helsingborg, while the other branch continues beyond the provincial border to neighbouring Småland, close to Killeberg. This latter dual track continues to mid-Sweden. There are also a few single track railroads connecting cities like Trelleborg, Ystad and Kristianstad. Just as five Scanian stations are served partly (Hässleholm and Osby) or entirely (Ballingslöv, Hästveda and Killeberg) by Småland local trains, the Scanian Pågatåg trains serve Markaryd in Småland.
There are basically three ticket systems: Skånetrafiken tickets can be purchased for all regional traffic including to Denmark, while the Danish Rejsekort system can only be used at stations served by Øresundståg and equipped with special card readers. Additionally, Swedish national SJ-tickets are available for longer trips to the north.
The E6 motorway is the main artery through the western part of Scania all the way from Trelleborg to the provincial border towards neighbouring Halland. It continues along the Swedish west coast to Gothenburg and most of the way to the Norwegian border. There are also several other motorways, especially around Malmö. Since 2000, the economic focus of the region has changed, with the opening of a road link across the Øresund Bridge to Denmark.
The car ferry service between Helsingborg and Helsingør
has 70 departures in each direction daily as of 2014.
There are three minor airports in Sturup, Ängelholm and Kristianstad. The nearby Copenhagen Airport, which is the largest international airport in the Nordic countries, also serves the province.


During the Danish era, the province had no coat of arms. In Sweden, however, every province had been represented by heraldic arms since 1560.  When Charles X Gustav of Sweden suddenly died in 1660 a coat of arms had to be created for the newly acquired province, as each province was to be represented by its arms at his royal funeral. After an initiative from Baron Gustaf Bonde, the Lord High Treasurer of Sweden, the coat of arms of the City of Malmö was used as a base for the new provincial arms. The Malmö coat of arms had been granted in 1437, during the Kalmar Union, by Eric of Pomerania and contains a Pomeranian griffin's head. To distinguish it from the city's coat of arms the tinctures were changed and the official blazon for the provincial arms is, in English: Or, a griffin's head erased gules, crowned azure and armed azure, when it should be armed.
The province was divided in two administrative counties 1719–1996. Coats of arms were created for these entities, also using the griffin motif. The new Skåne County, operative from 1 January 1997, got a coat of arms that is the same as the province's, but with reversed tinctures. When the county arms is shown with a Swedish royal crown, it represents the County Administrative Board, which is the regional presence of central government authority. In 1999 the two county councils (landsting) were amalgamated forming Region Skåne. It is the only one of its kind using a heraldic coat of arms. It is also the same as the province's and the county's, but with a golden griffin's head on a blue shield. The 33 municipalities within the county also have coats of arms.
The Scania Griffin has become a well-known symbol for the province and is also used by commercial enterprises. It is, for instance, included in the logotypes of the automotive manufacturer Scania AB and the airline Malmö Aviation.


The endonym used in Swedish and other North Germanic languages is Skåne (formerly spelled Skaane in Danish and Norwegian). The Latinized form Scania is an exonym in English. Sometimes the endonym Skåne is used in English text, such as in tourist information, even sometimes as Skane with the diacritic omitted. Scania (as also Dalarna) is one of the few Swedish provinces for which exonyms are widely used in many languages, such as French Scanie, Dutch and German Schonen, Polish Skania, Spanish Escania, Italian Scania, etc. For the province's modern administrative counterpart, Skåne län, the endonym Skåne is used in English.
In the Alfredian translation of Orosius's and Wulfstan's travel accounts, the Old English form Sconeg appears. Frankish sources mention a place called Sconaowe; Æthelweard, an Anglo-Saxon historian, wrote about Scani; and in Beowulf's fictional account, the names Scedenige and Scedeland appear as names for what is a Danish land.


The names Scania and Scandinavia are considered to have the same etymology. The southernmost tip of what is today Sweden was called Scania by the Romans and thought to be an island. The actual etymology of the word remains dubious and has long been a matter of debate among scholars. The name is possibly derived from the Germanic root *Skaðin-awjã, which appears in Old Norse as Skáney [ˈskɑːnˌœy]. According to some scholars, the Germanic stem can be reconstructed as *Skaðan- meaning "danger" or "damage"  (English scathing, German Schaden, Swedish skada). Skanör in Scania, with its long Falsterbo reef, has the same stem (skan) combined with -ör, which means "sandbanks".


The name Tbilisi derives from Old Georgian t′bilisi (Asomtavruli: ႧႡႨႪႨႱႨ, Mkhedruli: თბილისი), and further from tpili (Modern Georgian: თბილი, 'warm', itself from Old Georgian: ႲႴႨႪႨ ṭpili). The name T′bili or T′bilisi (literally, 'warm location') was therefore given to the city because of the area's numerous sulfuric hot springs.
Until 1936, the name of the city in English and most other languages followed the Persian pronunciation Tiflis, while the Georgian name was ტფილისი (Tpilisi).
On 17 August 1936, by order of the Soviet leadership, the official Russian names of various cities were changed to more closely match the local language. In addition, the Georgian-language form T′pilisi was modernized on the basis of a proposal by Georgian linguists; the ancient Georgian component ტფილი (tpili, 'warm') was replaced by the newer თბილი (t′bili). This form was the basis for a new official Russian name (Тбилиси Tbilisi).  Most other languages have subsequently adopted the new name form, but some languages such as Turkish, Persian, Greek, Spanish and German have retained a variation of Tiflis.
On 20 September 2006, the Georgian parliament held a ceremony celebrating the 70th anniversary of the renaming.
Some of the traditional names of Tbilisi in other languages of the region have different roots.  The Ossetian name Калак (Kalak) derives from the Georgian word ქალაქი (kalaki) meaning simply 'city'. Chechen and Ingush names for the city use a form similar to or the same as their names for the country of Georgia (Гуьржех Gürƶex) as does the historical Kabardian name (Курджы Kwrdžə), while Abkhaz Қарҭ (Ķarţ) is from the Mingrelian ქართი (Karti).


In 1801, the Russian Empire annexed the Georgian Kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti (of which Tbilisi was the capital), later cementing its rule with the Treaty of Gulistan of 1813, which ended Iranian control of Georgia. Within Tsarist Russia, Tbilisi (known then as Tiflis) was included within the Tiflis Uyezd county in 1801, and became the administrative center of the Tiflis Governorate (Gubernia) following the latter's establishment in 1846. Russian Imperial administrators implemented a new European-style city plan and commissioned new buildings in Western styles. Roads and railroads were built to connect Tbilisi to other important cities in the Russian Empire, such as Batumi and Poti. By the 1850s, Tbilisi once again emerged as a major trade and cultural center. The likes of Ilia Chavchavadze, Akaki Tsereteli, Mirza Fatali Akhundzade, Iakob Gogebashvili, Alexander Griboyedov and many other statesmen, poets and artists all found their home in Tbilisi. The city was visited on numerous occasions by and was the object of affection of Alexander Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy, Mikhail Lermontov, the Romanov family and others. The main new artery built under Russian administration was Golovin Avenue (present-day Rustaveli Avenue), on which the Viceroys of the Caucasus established their residence. For much of the early 19th century, Tbilisi's largest ethnic group was Armenian, at some point forming 74.3% of the population.


In 1121, after heavy fighting with the Seljuks, the troops of the King of Georgia David IV of Georgia besieged Tbilisi, which ended in 1122 and as a result David moved his residence from Kutaisi to Tbilisi, making it the capital of a unified Georgian State and thus inaugurating the Georgian Golden Age. From 12–13th centuries, Tbilisi became a regional power with a thriving economy and astonishing cultural output. By the end of the 12th century, the population of Tbilisi had reached 100,000. The city also became an important literary and cultural center not only for Georgia but for the Eastern Orthodox world of the time. During Queen Tamar's reign, Shota Rustaveli worked in Tbilisi while writing his legendary epic poem, The Knight in the Panther's Skin. This period is often referred to as "Georgia's Golden Age" or the Georgian Renaissance.


Year 1050 (ML) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.


The earliest certain record of the name dates to 972, recorded in Medieval Latin as  villa Suittes.
There are a number of uncertain records dated between 924 and 960, in the form Swites (Suuites) and Switz.
The name is recorded as Schwitz in the 13th century, and in the 17th to 18th century often as Schweitz.
The name's etymology is uncertain.  It was long presented as derived from the name of an eponymous founder in Swiss legend, one Suito or Switer, an explanation found in Swiss school textbooks until the first half of the 20th century.  There is currently no consensus on the name's derivation. Isaac Wake, diplomat of King James VI and I in Bern suggested in 1625 that the name originated in Sweden, among the Suecia, "who in the time of king Sigebert made a transmigration out of Suecia and planted themselves in this country". A Germanic etymology was suggested by Gatschet (1867), deriving the name from an Old High German verb suedan "to burn" (referring to slash-and-burn clearing of woodland for habitation). Brandstetter (1871) is critical of Gatschet's suggestion and prefers derivation from an Alemannic personal name in Svid- as it were presenting a scholarly defense of the Suito of the founding legend.
The etymology proposed for the Schweizerisches Idiotikon by Hubschmied (1929) derives the name from a Gallo-Roman *(alpes) suētas, from the Gaulish or Latin word for "pig", via a Romance *suēdes "(mountain, pasture) of pigs" yielding an Alemannic Swītes. Hubschmied distanced himself from this opinion in 1961, preferring an unspecified pre-Roman (or "Etruscan") source.
Sonderegger (1966) revisits Gatschet's suedan "slash-and-burn" proposal, but now claims derivation from a cognate Celtic root, *sveit-, Proto-Celtic *sveitos with a meaning of "clearing" or similar, giving Gaulish *Svētos (the long vowel as in Rēnos "Rhine"), Gallo-Romance *Svēdus, -is, and finally Swītes in Old High German by the 8th century.
The name Schwyz was extended to the area dominated by Schwyz (the Canton of Schwyz), and later to the entire Old Swiss Confederacy.  Other cantons tended to resent this in the 15th century, but after 1499 the term Schwyzer was widely self-adopted, out of spite so to speak, since it had been employed as a term of abuse by the Swabian side during the Swabian War. Eidgenossenschaft and Schwytzerland (the origin of the English name Switzerland) could be used interchangeably as country names in the 16th century.
The Swiss German pronunciation [ʃviːts] is the same for the name of the town and that of the country (the two are distinguished only by use of the definite article for the latter, [ʃviːts] "Schwyz", [tʃviːts] "Switzerland"). The spelling of y for [iː] originates from the ligature ij in 15th-century handwriting.


While a few Roman era coins have been found in Schwyz, the earliest evidence of a settlement comes from the 8th century.  The Alamanni cemetery at the parish church and the church itself are both from the first half of the 8th century.  This first church was followed by a second ottonian church around 1000, which may have been destroyed by the 1117 Verona earthquake.  In 1121 the third church building, a romanesque building, was consecrated.  This was followed in the 15th Century by the much larger fourth church which was destroyed, along with much of the village, by fire in 1642.  The fifth church, an early baroque church was replaced because of serious structural defects by the current late baroque church which was dedicated in 1774.
Because Schwyz was the capital of a canton, many of the government organizations administered both the town and the canton at the same time, and the history of the town is closely tied to the history of the canton.
According to the chronicle of Johann Stumpf from 1548, the old town originally consisted of a village square, the church and its cemetery, the town hall, the inn, the archive tower and a number of scattered wooden houses.  Around 1500, to distinguish it from the Canton of Schwyz, Schwyz town was often called Kilchgassen, which meant the village around the church but not the surrounding villages.  The fire of 1642, which destroyed 47 buildings in the center of the village, allowed the town to be totally rebuilt.  A new, larger town square with major roads radiating out was built in front of the new church and the new city hall.  The houses were rebuilt as urban townhouses and a ring of about 30 large patrician farm houses grew up surrounding the village center.


Egyptian pharaohs planted exotic trees and cared for them; they brought ebony wood from the Sudan, and pine and cedar from Syria. Hatshepsut's expedition to Punt returned bearing thirty-one live frankincense trees, the roots of which were carefully kept in baskets for the duration of the voyage; this was the first recorded attempt to transplant foreign trees. It is reported that Hatshepsut had these trees planted in the courts of her Deir el Bahri mortuary temple complex.
Marco Polo describes how Kublai Khan collected specimens of evergreen trees that he admired from around the Mongol Empire in the late 13th century, and had them brought by elephant to his winter capital at Khanbaliq (modern Beijing), where they were planted on a large artificial mound, "a hundred paces in height and over a mile in cicumference", known as the "Green Mound", with a palace or pavilion at the top.  The ground of the mound was also covered in pieces of green stone.
In an arboretum a wide variety of trees and shrubs are cultivated. Typically the individual trees are labelled for identification. The trees may also be organised in a way to aid their study or growth.
Many tree collections have been claimed as the first modern arboretum, with the term applied retrospectively as it probably did not come into use even orally until the later eighteenth century, or later. Probably the most important early proponent of the arboretum in the English-speaking transatlantic world was the prolific landscape gardener and writer, John Claudius Loudon (1783–1843) who undertook many gardening commissions and published the Gardener's Magazine, Encyclopaedia of Gardening and other major works. Loudon's Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum, 8 vols., (1838) is probably the most significant work on the subject in British history and included an account of all trees and shrubs that were hardy in the British climate, an international history of arboriculture, an assessment of the cultural, economic and industrial value of trees and four volumes of plates.
Loudon urged that a national arboretum be created and called for arboreta and other systematic collections to be established in public parks, private gardens, country estates, and other places. He regarded the Derby Arboretum (1840) as the most important landscape-gardening commission of the latter part of his career because it demonstrated the benefits of a public arboretum (for more details see below). Commenting on the Loddiges family's' famous Hackney Botanic Garden arboretum, begun in 1816, which was a commercial nursery that subsequently opened free to the public, for educational benefit, every Sunday, Loudon wrote: "The arboretum looks better this season than it has ever done since it was planted... The more lofty trees suffered from the late high winds, but not materially. We walked round the two outer spirals of this coil of trees and shrubs; viz. from Acer to Quercus. There is no garden scene about London so interesting". A plan of the Loddiges' arboretum was included in The Encyclopaedia of Gardening, 1834 edition. Leaves from Loddiges' arboretum and in some instances entire trees, were studiously drawn to illustrate Loudon's encyclopaedic book Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum which also incorporated drawings from other early botanic gardens and parklands throughout the United Kingdom.
One example of an early European tree collection is the Trsteno Arboretum, near Dubrovnik in Croatia. The date of its founding is unknown, but it was already in existence by 1492, when a 15 m (49 ft) span aqueduct to irrigate the arboretum was constructed; this aqueduct is still in use. The garden was created by the prominent local Gučetić/Gozze family. It suffered two major disasters in the 1990s but its two unique and ancient Oriental Planes remained standing.


Upper Canada's constitution was said to be "the very image and transcript" of the British constitution, and based on the principle of "mixed monarchy" – a balance of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy.
The Executive arm of government in the colony consisted of a lieutenant-governor, his executive council, and the Officers of the Crown (equivalent to the Officers of the Parliament of Canada): the Adjutant General of the Militia, the Attorney General, the Auditor General of Land Patents for Upper Canada, the Auditor General (only one appointment ever made), Crown Lands Office, Indian Office, Inspector General, Kings' Printer, Provincial Secretary and Registrar's Office, Receiver General of Upper Canada, Solicitor General, and Surveyor General.
The Executive Council of Upper Canada had a similar function to the Cabinet in England but was not responsible to the Legislative Assembly. They held a consultative position, however, and did not serve in administrative offices as cabinet ministers do. Members of the Executive Council were not necessarily members of the Legislative Assembly but were usually members of the Legislative Council.


The Legislative branch of the government consisted of the parliament comprising legislative council and legislative assembly. When the capital was first moved to Toronto (then called York)  from Newark (present-day Niagara-on-the-Lake) in 1796, the Parliament Buildings of Upper Canada were located at the corner of Parliament and Front Streets, in buildings that were burned by US forces in the War of 1812, rebuilt, then burned again by accident in 1824. The site was eventually abandoned for another, to the west.
The Legislative Council of Upper Canada was the upper house governing the province of Upper Canada. Although modelled after the British House of Lords, Upper Canada had no aristocracy. Members of the Legislative council, appointed for life, formed the core of the oligarchic group, the Family Compact, that came to dominate government and economy in the province.
The Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada functioned as the lower house in the Parliament of Upper Canada. Its legislative power was subject to veto by the appointed Lieutenant Governor, Executive Council, and Legislative Council.


The Family Compact is the epithet applied to an oligarchic group of men who exercised most of the political and judicial power in Upper Canada from the 1810s to the 1840s. It was noted for its conservatism and opposition to democracy. The uniting factors amongst the Compact were its loyalist tradition, hierarchical class structure and adherence to the established Anglican Church. Leaders such as John Beverley Robinson and John Strachan proclaimed it an ideal government, especially as contrasted with the rowdy democracy in the nearby United States. The Family Compact emerged from the War of 1812 and collapsed in the aftermath of the Rebellions of 1837.


The town is populated by both Eastern Orthodox Bulgarians and (Muslim) Turks as well as Pomaks (Muslim Bulgarians) and Muslim Roma. The Sts. Cosmas and Damian Church and the mosque coexist peacefully on either bank of the Vacha.


Krichim Peak on Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica is named after Krichim.


Krichim (Bulgarian: Кричим [ˈkrit͡ʃim]) is a town in Bulgaria, located in the southwestern part of Plovdiv Province close to Perushtitsa. It lies at the foot of the Rhodopes' northern slopes in the plains of Thrace, 20 km southwest of Plovdiv. The river Vacha, an important tributary of the Maritsa, runs through the town. Krichim is the only place in Krichim Municipality.
Inhabited since Early Byzantine times as evidenced by the remains of two ancient fortresses on both banks of the river in the beginning of its gorge, Krichim was contested by the Byzantine Empire and the Bulgarian Empire during most of the Middle Ages. It was conquered by Tsar Ivan Asen II in 1230 and a stone inscription from this period is preserved, saying 'On this stone sat Tsar Asen, when he conquered Krichim'.
During the early Bulgarian National Revival, the village was one of the few in the region to have a monastery school. Two monasteries, one of the Holy Theotokos and one of St Vrach, worked during the Ottoman rule and helped preserve the Bulgarian culture and language.


According to the latest Bulgarian census of 2011, the religious composition, among those who answered the optional question on religious identification, was the following:


Maastricht (/ˈmɑːstrɪxt/ MAH-strikht, US also /mɑːˈstrɪxt/ mah-STRIKHT, Dutch: [maːˈstrɪxt] (listen); Limburgish: Mestreech [məˈstʀeːç]; French: Maestricht (archaic); Spanish: Mastrique (archaic)) is a city and a municipality in the southeastern Netherlands. It is the capital and largest city of the province of Limburg. Maastricht is located on both sides of the Meuse (Dutch: Maas), at the point where the Jeker joins it. Mount Saint Peter (Sint-Pietersberg) is largely situated within the city's municipal borders. Maastricht is adjacent to the border with Belgium. It is part of the Meuse-Rhine Euroregion, a metropolis with a population of about 3.9 million, which includes the nearby German and Belgian cities of Aachen, Liège and Hasselt.
Maastricht developed from a Roman settlement (Trajectum ad Mosam) to a medieval religious centre. In the 16th century it became a garrison town and in the 19th century an early industrial centre. Today, the city is a thriving cultural and regional hub. It became well known through the Maastricht Treaty and as the birthplace of the euro. Maastricht has 1677 national heritage buildings (rijksmonumenten), the second highest number in the Netherlands, after Amsterdam. The city is visited by tourists for shopping and recreation, and has a large international student population.


Maastricht is mentioned in ancient documents as [Ad] Treiectinsem [urbem] ab. 575, Treiectensis in 634, Triecto, Triectu in 7th century, Triiect in 768–781, Traiecto in 945, Masetrieth in 1051.
The place name Maastricht is an Old Dutch compound Masa- (> Maas "the Meuse river") + Old Dutch *treiekt, itself borrowed from Gallo-Romance *TRA(I)ECTU cf. its Walloon name li trek, from Classical Latin trajectus ("ford, passage, place to cross a river") with the later addition of Maas "Meuse" to avoid the confusion with the -trecht of Utrecht having exactly the same original form and etymology. The Latin name first appears in medieval documents and it is not known whether *Trajectu(s) was Maastricht's name during Roman times. A resident of Maastricht is referred to as Maastrichtenaar whilst in the local dialect it is either Mestreechteneer or, colloquially, Sjeng (derived from the formerly popular French name Jean).


The 15th century was the century which spans the Julian dates from 1 January 1401 (MCDI) to 31 December 1500 (MD).
In Europe, the 15th century includes parts of the Late Middle Ages, the Early Renaissance, and the early modern period.
Many technological, social and cultural developments of the 15th century can in retrospect be seen as heralding the "European miracle" of the following centuries. The architectural perspective, and the modern fields which are known today as banking and accounting were founded in Italy.
The Hundred Years' War ended with a decisive French victory over the English in the Battle of Castillon. Financial troubles in England following the conflict resulted in the Wars of the Roses, a series of dynastic wars for the throne of England. The conflicts ended with the defeat of Richard III by Henry VII at the Battle of Bosworth Field, establishing the Tudor dynasty in the later part of the century.
Constantinople, known as the Capital of the World and the Capital of the Byzantine Empire (today's Turkey), fell to the emerging Muslim Ottoman Turks, marking the end of the tremendously influential Byzantine Empire and, for some historians, the end of the Middle Ages. This led to the migration of Greek scholars and texts to Italy, while Johannes Gutenberg's invention of a mechanical movable type began the printing press. These two events played key roles in the development of the Renaissance. The Roman Papacy was split in two parts in Europe for decades (the so-called Western Schism), until the Council of Constance. The division of the Catholic Church and the unrest associated with the Hussite movement would become factors in the rise of the Protestant Reformation in the following century.
Islamic Spain became dissolved through the Christian Reconquista, followed by the forced conversions and the Muslim rebellion, ending over seven centuries of Islamic rule and returning southern Spain to Christian rulers.
The search for the wealth and prosperity of India's Bengal Sultanate led to the colonization of the Americas by Christopher Columbus in 1492 and the Portuguese voyages by Vasco da Gama, which linked Europe with the Indian subcontinent, ushering the period of Iberian empires.
In Asia, the Timurid Empire collapsed, and the Afghan Pashtun Lodi dynasty was founded under the Delhi Sultanate. Under the rule of the Yongle Emperor, who built the Forbidden City and commanded Zheng He to explore the world overseas, the Ming Dynasty's territory reached its pinnacle.
In Africa, the spread of Islam led to the destruction of the Christian kingdoms of Nubia, by the end of the century, leaving only Alodia (which was to collapse in 1504). The formerly vast Mali Empire teetered on the brink of collapse, under pressure from the rising Songhai Empire.
In the Americas, both the Inca Empire and the Aztec Empire reached the peak of their influence, but the European colonization of the Americas changed the course of modern history.


The temples are grouped into three geographical divisions: western, eastern and southern.
The Khajuraho temples are made of sandstone, with a granite foundation that is almost concealed from view. The builders didn't use mortar: the stones were put together with mortise and tenon joints and they were held in place by gravity. This form of construction requires very precise joints. The columns and architraves were built with megaliths that weighed up to 20 tons. Some repair work in the 19th Century was done with brick and mortar; however, these have aged faster than original materials and darkened with time, thereby seeming out of place.
The Khajuraho and Kalinjar region is home to superior quality of sandstone, which can be carved precisely. The surviving sculpture reflect fine details such as strands of hair, manicured nails, and intricate jewelry.
While recording the television show Lost Worlds (History Channel) at Khajuraho, Alex Evans recreated a stone sculpture under four feet that took about 60 days to carve in an attempt to develop a rough idea of how much work must have been involved. Roger Hopkins and Mark Lehner also conducted experiments to quarry limestone which took 12 quarrymen 22 days to quarry about 400 tons of stone. They concluded that these temples would have required hundreds of highly trained sculptors.


The Khajuraho group of monuments was built during the rule of the Chandela dynasty. The building activity started almost immediately after the rise of their power, throughout their kingdom to be later known as Bundelkhand. Most temples were built during the reigns of the Hindu kings Yashovarman and Dhanga. Yashovarman's legacy is best exhibited by the Lakshmana Temple. Vishvanatha temple best highlights King Dhanga's reign. The largest and currently most famous surviving temple is Kandariya Mahadeva built in the reign of King Vidyadhara. The temple inscriptions suggest many of the currently surviving temples were complete between 970 and 1030 AD, with further temples completed during the following decades.
The Khajuraho temples were built about 35 miles from the medieval city of Mahoba, the capital of the Chandela dynasty, in the Kalinjar region. In ancient and medieval literature, their kingdom has been referred to as Jijhoti, Jejahoti, Chih-chi-to and Jejakabhukti.
The first documented mention of Khajuraho was made in 641 by Xuanzang, a Chinese pilgrim who described encountering several dozen inactive Buddhist monasteries and a dozen Hindu temples with a thousand worshipping brahmins. In 1022 CE, Khajuraho was mentioned by Abu Rihan-al-Biruni, the Persian historian who accompanied Mahmud of Ghazni in his raid of Kalinjar; he mentions Khajuraho as the capital of Jajahuti. The raid was unsuccessful, and a peace accord was reached when the Hindu king agreed to pay a ransom to Mahmud of Ghazni to end the attack and leave.
Khajuraho temples were in active use through the end of the 12th century. This changed in the 13th century; after the army of Delhi Sultanate, under the command of the Muslim Sultan Qutb-ud-din Aibak, attacked and seized the Chandela kingdom. About a century later, Ibn Battuta, the Moroccan traveller in his memoirs about his stay in India from 1335 to 1342 AD, mentioned visiting Khajuraho temples, calling them "Kajarra" as follows:
...near (Khajuraho) temples, which contain idols that have been mutilated by the Moslems, live a number of yogis whose matted locks have grown as long as their bodies. And on account of extreme asceticism they are all yellow in colour. Many Moslems attend these men in order to take lessons (yoga) from them.
— Ibn Battuta, about 1335 AD, Riḥlat Ibn Baṭūṭah, Translated by Arthur Cotterell
The central Indian region, where Khajuraho temples are, was controlled by various Muslim dynasties from the 13th century through the 18th century. In this period, some temples were desecrated, followed by a long period when they were left in neglect. In 1495 AD, for example, Sikandar Lodi's campaign of temple destruction included Khajuraho. The remoteness and isolation of Khajuraho protected the Hindu and Jain temples from continued destruction by Muslims. Over the centuries, vegetation and forests overgrew the temples.
In the 1830s, local Hindus guided a British surveyor, T.S. Burt, to the temples and they were thus rediscovered by the global audience. Alexander Cunningham later reported, few years after the rediscovery, that the temples were secretly in use by yogis and thousands of Hindus would arrive for pilgrimage during Shivaratri celebrated annually in February or March based on a lunar calendar. In 1852, F.C. Maisey prepared earliest drawings of the Khajuraho temples.


Městské informační centrum – Liberec Archived 2007-04-17 at the Wayback Machine at www.infolbc.cz
aRChauSSig – Peter Paul Brang at aussig.mysteria.cz
Dimitar Hadzhivasilev State High School of Commerce Archived 2012-07-01 at the Wayback Machine at www.dtg-svishtov.com
Embassy of Italy in Sofia at www.ambsofia.esteri.it
Plaiaşu, Ciprian (14 February 2013). "Cazinoul din Vatra Dornei, simbolul oraşului, îngropat de biserică". Adevarul News. Retrieved 11 April 2018.


Peter Paul Brang (1852–1925) was a Viennese architect who worked in what are today the Czech Republic and Slovenia, as well as in Bulgaria and Romania.
Some of his works include the City Baths in Liberec (1901–1902) and Ústí nad Labem (1905–1908) in the Czech Republic, the Celje Hall (Celjski dom, Deutsches Haus) in Celje, Slovenia (1905–1906), Dohodno Zdanie in Rousse (1897–1900), the Dimitar Hadzhivasilev State High School of Commerce in Svishtov (1895), the Italian (former Austrian) embassy (1883) and what is today the BNP Paribas headquarters on 2 Tsar Osvoboditel Boulevard in Sofia (1885), the Evanghelical Gymnasium Bistritz (Bistriţa) (1896–1908), the Vatra Dornei Casino (1898) and the Administrative Palace in Suceava, Romania (1903–1904).


1959: Sanbra prize at the São Paulo Biennale, V.
1961: Mainichi Prize in Tokyo
1980: Grand Austrian State Prize for Visual Arts
1981: Austrian Nature Protection Award
1982: Award-winning Author of the year
1985: Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
1988: Gold Medal of the City of Vienna
1988: Gold Medal of Styria
1997: Grand Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria


The Nazi era was a very difficult time for Hundertwasser and his mother Elsa, who were Jewish. They avoided persecution by posing as Christians, a credible ruse as Hundertwasser's father had been a Catholic. Hundertwasser was baptized as a Catholic in 1935. To remain inconspicuous, Hundertwasser also joined the Hitler Youth.
Hundertwasser developed artistic skills early on. After the war, he spent three months at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. At this time, he began to sign his art as Hundertwasser instead of Stowasser. He left to travel, using a small set of paints he carried at all times to sketch anything that caught his eye. In Florence, he met the young French painter René Brô for the first time and they became lifelong friends. Hundertwasser's first commercial painting success was in 1952–53 with an exhibition in Vienna.
His adopted surname is based on the translation of "sto" (the Slavic word for "(one) hundred") into German. The name Friedensreich has a double meaning as "Peace-realm" or "Peace-rich" (in the sense of "peaceful"). Therefore, his name Friedensreich Hundertwasser translates directly into English as "Peace-Realm Hundred-Water". The other names he chose for himself, Regentag and Dunkelbunt, translate to "Rainy day" and "Darkly multi-coloured".
In the early 1950s, he entered the field of architecture. Hundertwasser also worked in the field of applied art, creating flags, stamps, coins, and posters. His most famous flag is his koru flag (designed in 1983), as well as several postage stamps for the Austrian Post Office. He also designed stamps for Cape Verde and for the United Nations postal administration in Geneva on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In 1957 Hundertwasser acquired a farm on the edge of Normandy. Hundertwasser married Herta Leitner in 1958 but they divorced two years later. He married again in 1962 to the Japanese artist Yuko Ikewada but she divorced him in 1966. By this time, he had gained a popular reputation for his art.
In 1964 Hundertwasser bought "Hahnsäge", a former saw mill, in the sparsely populated Lower Austria's Waldviertel. There, far from the hustle and bustle and surrounded by nature, he set up a new home.
He spent some time in the 1960s in the Tooro Kingdom in Uganda, Central Africa, where he painted a number of works and named them after the kingdom.
In 1972 Hundertwasser incorporated a stock company, the "Grüner Janura AG", in Switzerland; in 2008 it was renamed as "Namida AG". Hundertwasser managed his intellectual property rights through this company.
In the 1970s, Hundertwasser acquired several properties in the Bay of Islands in New Zealand, which include a total area of approximately 372 ha of the entire "Kaurinui" valley. There he realized his dream of living and working closely connected to nature. Beside other projects he designed the "Bottle House" there. He could live largely self-sufficiently using solar panels, a water wheel and a biological water purification plant. His first grass roof experiments took place there.
In 1979 Hundertwasser bought the vast historical garden Giardino Eden ('Garden of Eden') in Venice, including the Palazzo Villa delle Rose, from Alexandra of Yugoslavia via his Swiss company.
In 1980, Hundertwasser visited Washington D.C. to support activist Ralph Nader's efforts to oppose nuclear proliferation. Mayor Marion Barry declared 18 November to be Hundertwasser Day as a result. Hundertwasser planted trees in Judiciary Square and advocated on behalf of a co-op apartment owner who was taken to court for installing a bay window.
In 1982, Hundertwasser's only child, his daughter Heidi Trimmel, was born.
Died on Saturday, February 19th 2000, in the Pacific, on board of Queen Elizabeth 2 from a heart attack. According to his wish he was buried in harmony with nature on his land in New Zealand, in the Garden of the Happy Dead under a Tulip Tree.


Sensing imminent death, Louis XIII decided to put his affairs in order in the spring of 1643, when Louis XIV was four years old. In defiance of custom, which would have made Queen Anne the sole Regent of France, the king decreed that a regency council would rule on his son's behalf. His lack of faith in Queen Anne's political abilities was his primary rationale. He did, however, make the concession of appointing her head of the council.
Louis XIII died on 14 May 1643, and on 18 May, Queen Anne had her husband's will annulled by the Parlement de Paris (a judicial body comprising mostly nobles and high clergymen). This action abolished the regency council and made Anne the sole Regent of France. Anne exiled some of her husband's ministers (Chavigny, Bouthilier), and she nominated Brienne as her minister of foreign affairs.
Anne kept the direction of religious policy strongly in her hand until 1661; her most important political decisions were to nominate Cardinal Mazarin as her chief minister and the continuation of her late husband's and Cardinal Richelieu's policy, despite their persecution of her, for the sake of her son. Anne wanted to give her son absolute authority and a victorious kingdom. Her rationales for choosing Mazarin were mainly his ability and his total dependence on her, at least until 1653 when she was no longer regent. Anne protected Mazarin by arresting and exiling her followers who conspired against him in 1643: the Duke of Beaufort and Marie de Rohan. She left the direction of the daily administration of policy to Cardinal Mazarin.
The best example of Anne's statesmanship and the partial change in her heart towards her native Spain is seen in her keeping of one of Richelieu's men, the Chancellor of France Pierre Séguier, in his post. Séguier was the person who had interrogated Anne in 1637, treating her like a "common criminal" as she described her treatment following the discovery that she was giving military secrets and information to Spain. Anne was virtually under house arrest for a number of years during her husband's rule. By keeping him in his post, Anne was giving a sign that the interests of France and her son Louis were the guiding spirit of all her political and legal actions. Though not necessarily opposed to Spain, she sought to end the war with a French victory, in order to establish a lasting peace between the Catholic nations.
The Queen also gave a partial Catholic orientation to French foreign policy. This was felt by the Netherlands, France's Protestant ally, which negotiated a separate peace with Spain in 1648.
In 1648, Anne and Mazarin successfully negotiated the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years' War. Its terms ensured Dutch independence from Spain, awarded some autonomy to the various German princes of the Holy Roman Empire, and granted Sweden seats on the Imperial Diet and territories to control the mouths of the Oder, Elbe, and Weser rivers. France, however, profited most from the settlement. Austria, ruled by the Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand III, ceded all Habsburg lands and claims in Alsace to France and acknowledged her de facto sovereignty over the Three Bishoprics of Metz, Verdun, and Toul. Moreover, eager to emancipate themselves from Habsburg domination, petty German states sought French protection. This anticipated the formation of the 1658 League of the Rhine, leading to the further diminution of Imperial power.


Bangkok covers an area of 1,568.7 square kilometres (605.7 sq mi), ranking 69th among the other 76 provinces of Thailand. Of this, about 700 square kilometres (270 sq mi) form the built-up urban area. It is ranked 73rd in the world in terms of land area. The city's urban sprawl reaches into parts of the six other provinces that it borders, namely, in clockwise order from northwest: Nonthaburi, Pathum Thani, Chachoengsao, Samut Prakan, Samut Sakhon, and Nakhon Pathom. With the exception of Chachoengsao, these provinces, together with Bangkok, form the greater Bangkok Metropolitan Region.


There are seven medical museums at Siriraj Hospital. They are the Siriraj Bimuksthan Museum, Ellis Pathological Museum, Congdons Anatomical Museum, Songkran Niyomsan Forensic Medicine Museum, Parasitological Museum, Touch Museum in Honor of Queen Mother Sirikit, and Sood Sangvichien Prehistoric Museum Laboratory. The permanent exhibits include sections on anatomy, pathology, congenital disorders, toxicology, techniques of Thai traditional medicine, and forensic pathology. In 2008, the temporary exhibit featured the role of Siriraj Hospital during the 2004 tsunami that devastated the Andaman coastline of Thailand and other countries. The latest museum is Siriraj Bimuksthan Museum, opened in early 2013. The museum is housed in the renovated vintage architecture of the old Bangkok Noi railway station, next to Siriraj's newly opened private subsidiary Siriraj Piyamaharajkarun Hospital. The museum exhibits history of medicine in Thailand from traditional medicine to modern, and includes history of the Bangkok Noi area where the museum and the hospital are situated.


The hospital was founded by King Chulalongkorn in 1888, two years after a worldwide cholera outbreak. It is named after the king's 18-month-old son, Prince Siriraj Kakudhabhand, who had died from dysentery a year before the opening of the hospital. The medical school was established two years later in 1890.
Prince Dipangkorn Rasmijoti was also born here.
Siriraj was the residence of the late King of Thailand, Bhumibol Adulyadej, from September 2009 to August 2013. He entered the hospital for treatment of a respiratory condition. In October 2014 King Bhumibol had gall bladder surgery at Siriraj. He died there on 13 October 2016.


With a capacity of more than 2,000 beds and visited by more than three million patients per year Siriraj is one of the largest and busiest medical centers in Southeast Asia. The medical school accepts about 250 medical students and more than 100 for postgraduate residency training each year.  Siriraj is the largest public hospital in Thailand. Thanks to its excellent reputation, its tertiary care unit is the referral center for all hospitals in Thailand.
The logo of the Siriraj Hospital is the Naga curled into a shape of "ศ" (pronounce as "Sor-Sala"), the first Thai alphabet of the hospital name with the Royal Diadem on top of the Naga.


Siriraj Hospital (Thai: โรงพยาบาลศิริราช; RTGS: Rong Phayaban Sirirat) is the oldest and largest hospital in Thailand. It is in Bangkok on the west bank of the Chao Phraya River, opposite Thammasat University's Tha Phrachan campus. It is the primary teaching hospital of the Faculty of Medicine Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University.


Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was born in Munich on 7 October 1900 into a conservative middle-class Roman Catholic family. His father was Joseph Gebhard Himmler (1865–1936), a teacher, and his mother was Anna Maria Himmler (née Heyder; 1866–1941), a devout Roman Catholic. Heinrich had two brothers: Gebhard Ludwig (1898–1982) and Ernst Hermann (1905–1945).
Himmler's first name, Heinrich, was that of his godfather, Prince Heinrich of Bavaria, a member of the royal family of Bavaria, who had been tutored by Gebhard Himmler. He attended a grammar school in Landshut, where his father was deputy principal. While he did well in his schoolwork, he struggled in athletics. He had poor health, suffering from lifelong stomach complaints and other ailments. In his youth he trained daily with weights and exercised to become stronger. Other boys at the school later remembered him as studious and awkward in social situations.
Himmler's diary, which he kept intermittently from the age of 10, shows that he took a keen interest in current events, dueling, and "the serious discussion of religion and sex". In 1915, he began training with the Landshut Cadet Corps. His father used his connections with the royal family to get Himmler accepted as an officer candidate, and he enlisted with the reserve battalion of the 11th Bavarian Regiment in December 1917. His brother, Gebhard, served on the western front and saw combat, receiving the Iron Cross and eventually being promoted to lieutenant. In November 1918, while Himmler was still in training, the war ended with Germany's defeat, denying him the opportunity to become an officer or see combat. After his discharge on 18 December, he returned to Landshut. After the war, Himmler completed his grammar-school education. From 1919 to 1922, he studied agronomy at the Munich Technische Hochschule (now Technical University Munich) following a brief apprenticeship on a farm and a subsequent illness.
Although many regulations that discriminated against non-Christians—including Jews and other minority groups—had been eliminated during the unification of Germany in 1871, antisemitism continued to exist and thrive in Germany and other parts of Europe. Himmler was antisemitic by the time he went to university, but not exceptionally so; students at his school would avoid their Jewish classmates. He remained a devout Catholic while a student and spent most of his leisure time with members of his fencing fraternity, the "League of Apollo", the president of which was Jewish. Himmler maintained a polite demeanor with him and with other Jewish members of the fraternity, in spite of his growing antisemitism. During his second year at university, Himmler redoubled his attempts to pursue a military career. Although he was not successful, he was able to extend his involvement in the paramilitary scene in Munich. It was at this time that he first met Ernst Röhm, an early member of the Nazi Party and co-founder of the Sturmabteilung ("Storm Battalion"; SA). Himmler admired Röhm because he was a decorated combat soldier, and at his suggestion Himmler joined his antisemitic nationalist group, the Bund Reichskriegsflagge (Imperial War Flag Society).
In 1922, Himmler became more interested in the "Jewish question", with his diary entries containing an increasing number of antisemitic remarks and recording a number of discussions about Jews with his classmates. His reading lists, as recorded in his diary, were dominated by antisemitic pamphlets, German myths, and occult tracts. After the murder of Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau on 24 June, Himmler's political views veered towards the radical right, and he took part in demonstrations against the Treaty of Versailles. Hyperinflation was raging, and his parents could no longer afford to educate all three sons. Disappointed by his failure to make a career in the military and his parents' inability to finance his doctoral studies, he was forced to take a low-paying office job after obtaining his agricultural diploma. He remained in this position until September 1923.


When Hitler and his army chiefs asked for a pretext for the invasion of Poland in 1939, Himmler, Heydrich, and Heinrich Müller masterminded and carried out a false flag project code-named Operation Himmler. German soldiers dressed in Polish uniforms undertook border skirmishes which deceptively suggested Polish aggression against Germany. The incidents were then used in Nazi propaganda to justify the invasion of Poland, the opening event of World War II. At the beginning of the war against Poland, Hitler authorised the killing of Polish civilians, including Jews and ethnic Poles. The Einsatzgruppen (SS task forces) had originally been formed by Heydrich to secure government papers and offices in areas taken over by Germany before World War II. Authorised by Hitler and under the direction of Himmler and Heydrich, the Einsatzgruppen units—now repurposed as death squads—followed the Heer (army) into Poland, and by the end of 1939 they had murdered some 65,000 intellectuals and other civilians. Militias and Heer units also took part in these killings. Under Himmler's orders via the RSHA, these squads were also tasked with rounding up Jews and others for placement in ghettos and concentration camps.
Germany subsequently invaded Denmark and Norway, the Netherlands, and France, and began bombing Great Britain in preparation for Operation Sea Lion, the planned invasion of the United Kingdom. On 21 June 1941, the day before invasion of the Soviet Union, Himmler commissioned the preparation of the Generalplan Ost (General Plan for the East); the plan was finalised in July 1942. It called for the Baltic States, Poland, Western Ukraine, and Byelorussia to be conquered and resettled by ten million German citizens. The current residents—some 31 million people—would be expelled further east, starved, or used for forced labour. The plan would have extended the borders of Germany to the east by one thousand kilometres (600 miles). Himmler expected that it would take twenty to thirty years to complete the plan, at a cost of 67 billion ℛℳ. Himmler stated openly: "It is a question of existence, thus it will be a racial struggle of pitiless severity, in the course of which 20 to 30 million Slavs and Jews will perish through military actions and crises of food supply."
Himmler declared that the war in the east was a pan-European crusade to defend the traditional values of old Europe from the "Godless Bolshevik hordes". Constantly struggling with the Wehrmacht for recruits, Himmler solved this problem through the creation of Waffen-SS units composed of Germanic folk groups taken from the Balkans and eastern Europe. Equally vital were recruits from among the Germanic considered peoples of northern and western Europe, in the Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, Denmark and Finland. Spain and Italy also provided men for Waffen-SS units. Among western countries, the number of volunteers varied from a high of 25,000 from the Netherlands to 300 each from Sweden and Switzerland. From the east, the highest number of men came from Lithuania (50,000) and the lowest from Bulgaria (600). After 1943 most men from the east were conscripts. The performance of the eastern Waffen-SS units was, as a whole, sub-standard.
In late 1941, Hitler named Heydrich as Deputy Reich Protector of the newly established Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Heydrich began to racially classify the Czechs, deporting many to concentration camps. Members of a swelling resistance were shot, earning Heydrich the nickname "the Butcher of Prague". This appointment strengthened the collaboration between Himmler and Heydrich, and Himmler was proud to have SS control over a state. Despite having direct access to Hitler, Heydrich's loyalty to Himmler remained firm.
With Hitler's approval, Himmler re-established the Einsatzgruppen in the lead-up to the planned invasion of the Soviet Union. In March 1941, Hitler addressed his army leaders, detailing his intention to smash the Soviet Empire and destroy the Bolshevik intelligentsia and leadership. His special directive, the "Guidelines in Special Spheres re Directive No. 21 (Operation Barbarossa)", read: "In the operations area of the army, the Reichsführer-SS has been given special tasks on the orders of the Führer, in order to prepare the political administration. These tasks arise from the forthcoming final struggle of two opposing political systems. Within the framework of these tasks, the Reichsführer-SS acts independently and on his own responsibility." Hitler thus intended to prevent internal friction like that occurring earlier in Poland in 1939, when several German Army generals had attempted to bring Einsatzgruppen leaders to trial for the murders they had committed.
Following the army into the Soviet Union, the Einsatzgruppen rounded up and killed Jews and others deemed undesirable by the Nazi state. Hitler was sent frequent reports. In addition, 2.8 million Soviet prisoners of war died of starvation, mistreatment or executions in just eight months of 1941–42. As many as 500,000 Soviet prisoners of war died or were executed in Nazi concentration camps over the course of the war; most of them were shot or gassed. By early 1941, following Himmler's orders, ten concentration camps had been constructed in which inmates were subjected to forced labour. Jews from all over Germany and the occupied territories were deported to the camps or confined to ghettos. As the Germans were pushed back from Moscow in December 1941, signalling that the expected quick defeat of the Soviet Union had failed to materialize, Hitler and other Nazi officials realised that mass deportations to the east would no longer be possible. As a result, instead of deportation, many Jews in Europe were destined for death.


On 4 October 1943, during a secret meeting with top SS officials in the city of Poznań (Posen), and on 6 October 1943, in a speech to the party elite—the Gau and Reich leaders—Himmler referred explicitly to the "extermination" (German: Ausrottung) of the Jewish people.
A translated excerpt from the speech of 4 October reads:
I also want to refer here very frankly to a very difficult matter. We can now very openly talk about this among ourselves, and yet we will never discuss this publicly. Just as we did not hesitate on 30 June 1934, to perform our duty as ordered and put comrades who had failed up against the wall and execute them, we also never spoke about it, nor will we ever speak about it. Let us thank God that we had within us enough self-evident fortitude never to discuss it among us, and we never talked about it. Every one of us was horrified, and yet every one clearly understood that we would do it next time, when the order is given and when it becomes necessary.
I am talking about the "Jewish evacuation": the extermination of the Jewish people. It is one of those things that is easily said. "The Jewish people is being exterminated", every Party member will tell you, "perfectly clear, it's part of our plans, we're eliminating the Jews, exterminating them, ha!, a small matter." And then they turn up, the upstanding 80 million Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. They say the others are all swines, but this particular one is a splendid Jew. But none has observed it, endured it. Most of you here know what it means when 100 corpses lie next to each other, when there are 500 or when there are 1,000. To have endured this and at the same time to have remained a decent person—with exceptions due to human weaknesses—has made us tough, and is a glorious chapter that has not and will not be spoken of. Because we know how difficult it would be for us if we still had Jews as secret saboteurs, agitators and rabble-rousers in every city, what with the bombings, with the burden and with the hardships of the war. If the Jews were still part of the German nation, we would most likely arrive now at the state we were at in 1916 and '17 ...
Because the Allies had indicated that they were going to pursue criminal charges for German war crimes, Hitler tried to gain the loyalty and silence of his subordinates by making them all parties to the ongoing genocide. Hitler therefore authorised Himmler's speeches to ensure that all party leaders were complicit in the crimes and could not later deny knowledge of the killings.


Himmler joined the Nazi Party in August 1923, receiving party number 14303. As a member of Röhm's paramilitary unit, Himmler was involved in the Beer Hall Putsch—an unsuccessful attempt by Hitler and the Nazi Party to seize power in Munich. This event would set Himmler on a life of politics. He was questioned by the police about his role in the putsch, but was not charged because of insufficient evidence. However, he lost his job, was unable to find employment as an agronomist, and had to move in with his parents in Munich. Frustrated by these failures, he became ever more irritable, aggressive, and opinionated, alienating both friends and family members.
In 1923–24, Himmler, while searching for a world view, came to abandon Catholicism and focused on the occult and in antisemitism. Germanic mythology, reinforced by occult ideas, became a religion for him. Himmler found the Nazi Party appealing because its political positions agreed with his own views. Initially, he was not swept up by Hitler's charisma or the cult of Führer worship. However, as he learned more about Hitler through his reading, he began to regard him as a useful face of the party, and he later admired and even worshipped him. To consolidate and advance his own position in the Nazi Party, Himmler took advantage of the disarray in the party following Hitler's arrest in the wake of the Beer Hall Putsch. From mid-1924 he worked under Gregor Strasser as a party secretary and propaganda assistant. Travelling all over Bavaria agitating for the party, he gave speeches and distributed literature. Placed in charge of the party office in Lower Bavaria by Strasser from late 1924, he was responsible for integrating the area's membership with the Nazi Party under Hitler when the party was re-founded in February 1925.
That same year, he joined the Schutzstaffel (SS) as an SS-Führer (SS-Leader); his SS number was 168. The SS, initially part of the much larger SA, was formed in 1923 for Hitler's personal protection and was re-formed in 1925 as an elite unit of the SA. Himmler's first leadership position in the SS was that of SS-Gauführer (district leader) in Lower Bavaria from 1926. Strasser appointed Himmler deputy propaganda chief in January 1927. As was typical in the Nazi Party, he had considerable freedom of action in his post, which increased over time. He began to collect statistics on the number of Jews, Freemasons, and enemies of the party, and following his strong need for control, he developed an elaborate bureaucracy. In September 1927, Himmler told Hitler of his vision to transform the SS into a loyal, powerful, racially pure elite unit. Convinced that Himmler was the man for the job, Hitler appointed him Deputy Reichsführer-SS, with the rank of SS-Oberführer.
Around this time, Himmler joined the Artaman League, a Völkisch youth group. There he met Rudolf Höss, who was later commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp, and Walther Darré, whose book The Peasantry as the Life Source of the Nordic Race caught Hitler's attention, leading to his later appointment as Reich Minister of Food and Agriculture. Darré was a firm believer in the superiority of the Nordic race, and his philosophy was a major influence on Himmler.


Caruso's success in the Metropolitan Opera drew the attention of Black Hand extortionists. They threatened to injure his throat with lye or harm him and his family if he did not pay them money. He initially paid their extortion fee of $2,000 expecting the matter to be settled, but his willingness to pay made them more brazen. They subsequently demanded an even larger sum of $15,000." He was aided by New York City police detective Joseph Petrosino who, impersonating Caruso, captured the extortionists. Two Italian men, Antonio Misiano and Antonio Cincotto, would be later specifically accused of the crime.


Chesterwood, French's summer home and studio – designed by his architect friend and frequent collaborator Henry Bacon – is now a historic site owned and operated by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
In 1940, French was selected as one of five artists to be honored in the 35-stamp "Famous Americans" series.
Chester French was an American indie band named for the artist.
"Daniel Chester French: American Sculptor" (2022) is a documentary film by Eduardo Montes-Bradley produced in association with Chesterwood and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.HD, 60 minutes.


Smilax bona-nox has many uses. The leaves of this plant were used for cigarette wrappers by the Native Americans. The roots can be used not only to make bread but also as medicines. The roots of this plant are known to help urinary tract infections and as an antioxidant.


Cornus suecica, the dwarf cornel or bunchberry, is a species of flowering plant in the dogwood family Cornaceae, native to cool temperate and subarctic regions of Europe and Asia, and also locally in extreme northeastern and northwestern North America.


Dwarf cornel is a rhizomatous herbaceous perennial growing to 20 cm (8 inches) tall, with few pairs of sessile cauline leaves in opposite pairs, 2–4 cm (3⁄4–1+1⁄2 inches) long and 1–3 cm (1⁄2–1+1⁄4 inches) broad, with 3-5 veins from the base. The flowers are small, dark purple, produced in a tight umbel that is surrounded by four conspicuous white petal-like bracts 1–1.5 cm (3⁄8–5⁄8 inch) long. The fruit is a red berry.


Cornus suecica is a plant of heaths, moorland and mountains, often growing beneath taller species such as heather (Calluna vulgaris). Its range is nearly circumboreal, but it is absent from the continental centres of Asia and North America. In North America, the species is found in Alaska (U.S.) and British Columbia (Canada), and also eastern Canada (Labrador, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Quebec), as well as Greenland, but not in the intervening region.
Where Cornus canadensis, a forest species, and Cornus suecica, a heath or bog species, grow near each other in their overlapping ranges in Alaska, Labrador, and Greenland, they can hybridize by cross-pollination, producing plants with intermediate characteristics.


Henricia leviuscula, commonly called the Pacific blood star, it is a species of sea star found along the Pacific coast of North America.


They mainly feed on sponges and small bacteria. The sea star moves these tiny particles, which are captured in mucus and swept to the mouth by ciliated tracts. It may also feed by applying the stomach to the surfaces of sponges and bryozoa.


They can usually be identified by their bright orange-red color, but there can also be many variations from tan to almost purple.  The disk can be a mottled gray color.  There can also be a saddle-like marking of lilac blotches between the rays, but the rays are not mottled. They commonly have 5 rays (occasionally 4–6). The rays are smooth and appear smooth due to the lack of pedicellariae and spines.  The species is relatively small; the diameter is usually over 8 cm and rarely gets larger than 12 cm.  As with all seastars the blood star has a madreporite which can be seen in the image below.


Its habitat is the intertidal zone under rocks and protected places from the low-tide line to about 400 m deep.  They often have a commensal scaleworm, Arctonoe vittata.


Scolopendra polymorpha, the common desert centipede, tiger centipede, banded desert centipede, or Sonoran Desert centipede, is indigenous to the Southwestern United States and northern Mexico, north to the Pacific coast. It inhabits dry grasslands, forest, and desert; in these habitats, the centipedes generally take up residence under rocks, though they have been observed creating burrows in suitable environments and inside rotting logs.
Their bodies generally reach 4–7 in (10–18 cm) in length. Coloration is variable, hence the species name polymorpha which means "many forms", and alternative common names like "multicolored centipede". The body segments have one dark lateral stripe, so they are also known as the tiger centipede or tiger-striped centipede. Generally, this species has a darker brown-, red-, or orange-colored head and lighter brown, tan, or orange body segments with yellow legs. However, some populations, such as those in Southern California, may be entirely light blue with indigo stripes, with turquoise legs. Its antennae have seven or more smooth segments.


The venom of Scolopendra polymorpha has been found to be medically relevant, as studies have shown an antimicrobial activity of the SPC13 peptide isolated from its venom. After purification by electroelution, this peptide exhibited antimicrobial activity against Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, two bacteria that are the leading causes of nosocomial infections. Additionally, SPC13 presented with bacteriostatic activity against Escherichia coli, which can cause food poisoning, pneumonia, and urinary tract infections.


O. ocellatus is a nocturnal predator, which often buries itself in the sand. It has been described as "vicious" and "the crab most likely to pinch a wader's toes". It feeds mostly on molluscs, particularly the Atlantic surf clam Spisula solidissima.


The carapace of O. ocellatus is slightly wider than long, at 8.9 centimetres (3.5 in) wide, and 7.5 cm (3.0 in) long. This distinguishes it from other crabs in the family Portunidae, which often have elongated lateral spines. The carapace is yellow-grey or light purplish, with "leopardlike clusters of purple dots", and 3–5 spines along the edge behind each eye. O. ovalipes is almost identical to O. floridanus, which lives in the Gulf of Mexico, but can be separated from the sympatric O. stephensoni by the purple spots, which O. stephensoni lacks.


The fruit body of X. campanella has a small umbrella-shaped cap, about .5–2 cm wide. The thin brown stalk is 1–5 cm long and 1–3 mm wide, yellow at the apex, reddish brown below, with brown or yellow hairs at the base. The gills are pale yellow to pale orange. The spore print is pale buff. When the species is young, their caps are bell-shaped. As they mature, the outer part of the cap expands and rises which leaves the center depressed, resembling a navel.


It is a perennial, sessile, concentrically zonate polypore that is 5–65 cm (2.0–25.6 in) in length that can be a number of dull tones ranging from brown to gray. It parasitizes both conifers and hardwoods, with a preference for the latter. Its pore surface is white but easily turns shades of brown upon damage. According to Michael Kuo, it has larger spores than G. applanatum, measuring 9–12 by 7–9 μm.


Ganoderma brownii is a species of polypore fungus in the Ganodermataceae family. It is a plant pathogen and occasional saprotroph similar in appearance to Ganoderma applanatum.  This species is restricted geographically to the Pacific Northwest,  primarily observed in California. In the San Francisco Bay Area, it is very common on Umbellularia californica.


The cap of Bulgaria inquinans generally has a diameter between 0.5 and 4 cm (0.19 in to  1.6 in). It has a flat top when young but later become more cupped. These mushrooms generally grow in medium sized clusters on dead trees, generally oak and hornbeam, but also ash trees. The texture of the mushroom is similar to leather or elastic, depending on dry weather (elastic like), or wet weather (leather). It grows across mainland Europe and in the British Isles. It also grows in parts of the United States.
The species is inedible.
Similar species include Ascocoryne sarcoides and Exidia glandulosa.


Bulgaria inquinans is a fungus in the family Phacidiaceae. It is commonly known by the name black bulgar and black jelly drops.
It grows on branches and bark of dead oak and hornbeam. It has also been growing on ash trees due to ash dieback disease. The species can be found from October to March. It can be commonly found on felled trees stored in timber yards. Research into the colouring materials found in the fungus by H.Lockett and R.Edwards at Bradford University gave name to three purple pigments as two bulgarhodins and bulgarein.


Xanthoria parietina occurs in hardwood forests in broad, low-elevation valleys, as well as scattered on Populus and other hardwoods in riparian areas in agricultural and populated areas. It is often associated with high level of nitrogen and favored by eutrophication, and can be often found near farmland and around livestock. The lichen is used as a food source and shelter for the snail Balea perversa.
The species is widespread, and has been reported from  Australia, Africa, Asia, North America and throughout much of Europe. In eastern North America and Europe, it is found more frequently near coastal locations. The increases in nitrate deposition as a result of industrial and agricultural developments in southern Ontario, Canada in the 20th century are thought to be responsible for the reappearance of this species in the local lichen flora.


The cap is 6–20 cm (2.4–7.9 in) wide, initially convex but becoming depressed to funnel-shaped in maturity. The cap margin is initially rolled inward, then becomes uplifted as the cap expands. The cap surface is sticky to slimy, and near the margin there are matted "hairs" beneath the slimy or sticky layer. The color of the cap surface is yellow-ochre, sometimes with concentric bands of lighter and darker shades; the color becomes paler near the margin. The gills are adnate (squarely attached to the stem) to decurrent (attached to and running down the length of the stem), narrow, and crowded closely together. Forked near the stem, the gills are initially whitish before becoming pale ochraceous-buff. There are many lamellulae—small gills that do not extend completely to the stem.
The stem is 3–6 cm (1.2–2.4 in) long and 2–3 cm (0.8–1.2 in) thick, nearly equal in width throughout or tapered downward, dry, hard, coarsely pitted, and whitish to cream yellowish. It is initially solid, then becomes hollow with age. The flesh is thick, hard, whitish, and slowly stains pale yellow after the mushroom has been cut open. It has no distinctive odor, while the taste is immediately acrid. The latex is sparse, white on exposure to air, and unchanging or very slowly changing color to yellow. It stains cut flesh yellow, and tastes acrid. According to mycologist David Arora, the oak-loving central and southern Californian population of this species has a more latent acrid taste. The spore print may range slightly in color: thin deposits are white, thick deposits are more yellow. The mushroom is considered inedible because of the intensely peppery taste.


Lactarius alnicola, commonly known as the golden milkcap, is a species of fungus in the family Russulaceae. The fruit bodies produced by the fungus are characterized by a sticky, vanilla-colored cap up to 20 cm (7.9 in) wide with a mixture of yellow tones arranged in faint concentric bands. The stem is up to 5 cm (2.0 in) long and has yellow-brown spots. When it is cut or injured, the mushroom oozes a white latex, which has an intensely peppery taste. The acrid taste of the fruit bodies renders them unpalatable. The fungus is found in the western United States and Mexico, where it grows in mycorrhizal associations with various coniferous trees species, such as spruce, pine and fir, and deciduous species such as oak and alder. It has also been collected in India. Two varieties have been named: var. pitkinensis, known from Colorado, and var. pungens, from Michigan.


Novice mushroom hunters may mistake L. alnicola for the edible species Cantharellus cibarius, a choice edible species  that has a vase-shaped fruit body with strongly decurrent gills. Other similar Lactarius species include  L. zonarius, L. payettensis, L. yazooensis, L. olympianus, and L. psammicola f. glaber. L. olympianus also associates with conifers, and has a pale yellow-ochre, frequently zonate cap, but may be distinguished by its stem, which is usually covered with spots. L. payettensis has a roughened, not smooth, cap margin. L. yazooensis has a zonate cap and extremely acrid flesh. Its gills change color from pale vinaceous  to light pinkish-brown in maturity. L. psammicola f. glaber has a pinkish-buff spore print. Mature fruit bodies of L. scrobiculatus var. montanus have been confused with L. alnicola. Its fruit bodies feature a smooth cap margin, acrid taste, white latex which slowly (over several minutes) turns yellow on exposure or stains the flesh yellow, and do not turn "clay color" when bruised.


Dryadula is a monotypic genus of the butterfly family Nymphalidae. Its single species, Dryadula phaetusa, known as the banded orange heliconian, banded orange, or orange tiger, is native from Brazil to central Mexico, and in summer can be found rarely as far north as central Florida. Its wingspan ranges from 86 to 89 mm, and it is colored a bright orange with thick black stripes in males and a duller orange with fuzzier black stripes in females.
It feeds primarily on the nectar of flowers and on bird droppings; its caterpillar feeds on passion vines including Passiflora tetrastylis.  It is generally found in lowland tropical fields and valleys.
This species is unpalatable to birds and belongs to the "orange" Batesian mimicry complex.


Tetanolita mynesalis, the smoky tetanolita, is a litter moth of the family Erebidae. The species was first described by Francis Walker in 1859. It is found in eastern North America.
The wingspan is 20–25 mm. Adults are on wing from May to November.
Larvae probably feed on dead leaves.


Agriphila straminella is a species of moth of the family Crambidae. It was described by Michael Denis and Ignaz Schiffermüller in 1775 and is found in Europe and east across the Palearctic.
The wingspan is 16–20 mm. The forewings are brown ; a whitish median streak, ending in branches along veins 2-5, often separated by dark fuscous scales ; dorsal 2/3 often wholly suffused with whitish-ochreous ; a terminal series of black dots ; cilia metallic. Hindwings are rather dark grey. The larva is pale pinkish-ochreous ; spots brown ; head and plate of 2 brown, darker-marked
The moth flies from June to September depending on the location.
The larvae feed on various grasses, such as sheep's fescue (Festuca ovina), smooth meadowgrass (Poa pratensis), and wheat (Triticum aestivum).


The primary diet of M. tener consists of other snakes, primarily earth snakes, and other small fossorial species. It is cannibalistic. It also occasionally eats small lizards, but the consumption of rodents by coral snakes is rare.


Sceloporus malachiticus, the emerald swift or green spiny lizard, is a species of small lizard in the Phrynosomatidae family, native to Central America.


Pantherophis obsoletus – also known as the western rat snake, black rat snake, pilot black snake, or simply black snake – is a non-venomous species of Colubridae found in central North America. No subspecies are currently recognized. Its color variations include the Texas ratsnake. Along with other snakes of the eastern United States, like the eastern indigo snake (Drymarchon couperi) or the eastern racer (Coluber constrictor), it is called 'black snake'.


This species is a constrictor, meaning it squeezes its prey to the point of cardiovascular collapse due to obstructive shock, coiling around small animals and tightening its grip until they can no longer circulate blood and die of profound hypotension, before eating them. Though they will often consume mice, voles, and rats, western rat snakes are far from specialists at this kind of prey and will readily consume any small vertebrate they can catch. Other prey opportunistically eaten by this species can include other snakes (including both those of their own and other species), frogs, lizards, chipmunks, squirrels, juvenile rabbits, juvenile opossums, songbirds, and bird eggs. One snake was observed to consume an entire clutch of Mallard eggs. Cavity-nesting bird species are seemingly especially prevalent in this snake's diet. The rat snake has been noted as perhaps the top predator at purple martin colonies as a single large snake will readily consume a number of eggs, hatchlings, and adults each summer. Several rat snake repelling methods have been offered to those putting up martin houses, but most are mixed in success.


Adults of Pantherophis obsoletus can become quite large, with a reported typical total length (including tail) of 106.5–183 cm (3 ft 6 in – 6 ft 0 in). They are the largest snake found in Canada. The record total length is 256.5 cm (8 ft 5 in), making it (officially) the longest snake in North America. Unofficially, indigo snakes (Drymarchon couperi) are known to exceed them, and one wild-caught pine snake (Pituophis melanoleucus), with a portion of its tail missing, measured 111 inches (2.8 m). The body mass of this rat snake can range up to 0.5 to 2.2 kg (1.1 to 4.9 lb) in adults, although most adults are on the smaller end of this scale, per herpetology research sites, with weights most commonly between 0.77 and 1 kg (1.7 and 2.2 lb).
Juveniles are strongly patterned with brown blotches on a gray background (like miniature fox snakes: P. gloydi, P. ramspotti, and P. vulpinus). Darkening occurs rapidly as they grow. Adults are glossy black above with white lips, chin, and throat. Sometimes traces of the "obsolete" juvenile pattern are still discernible in the skin between the scales, especially when stretched after a heavy meal.


Rat snakes are diurnally-active and live in a variety of habitats;   some overlap each other. They have adapted to a variety of habitats, including bayou, prairie, and rock outcrops, but they seem to have a particular preference for wooded areas, especially oak trees. Rat snakes are excellent climbers and spend a significant amount of their time in trees. The black rat snake is also a competent swimmer.
During winter it hibernates in shared dens, often with copperheads and timber rattlesnakes. This association gave rise to one of its common names, pilot black snake, and the superstition that this nonvenomous species led the venomous ones to the den.


Mating takes place in late May and early June. The male snake wraps its tail around the female with their vents nearly touching. The male then everts one of its sex organs, a hemipenis, into the female sex organ, cloaca. The mating lasts a few minutes to a few hours. After five weeks, the female lays about 12 to 20 eggs, which are 36–60 mm (1.4–2.4 in) long by 20–26.5 mm (0.79–1.04 in) wide. The eggs hatch about 65 to 70 days later in late August to early October. The hatchlings are 28–41 cm (11–16 in) in total length, and they look like miniature fox snakes.