Dr. Dad's Blog Spot

2011-06-14T04:19:00.001-07:00

We're going to Beijing!

The photos are: 1) Tian'anmen (Gate of Heavenly Peace); 2) the Beijing Botanical Garden; 3) a panorama of Beijing's Central Business District; 4) Beijing's Financial Street; 5) the Temple of Heaven; 6) Wangfujing Street; 7) Wudaokou (a popular student hangout) at night; 8) a corner tower of the Forbidden City; 9) Beihai Park; 10) Shichahai, located in the Xicheng District; 11) the Pagoda of Tianning Temple; 12) some classical gardens in Beijing; and 13) the National Center for the Performing Arts (The Egg).

Beijing, also known as Peking, is a metropolis in Northern China, and the capital of the People's Republic of China. Governed as a municipality under direct administration of the central government, Beijing borders Hebei Province to the north, west, south, and for a small section in the east, and Tianjin Municipality to the southeast Beijing is one of the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China.

Beijing is divided into 14 urban and suburban districts and two rural counties. Beijing is a major transportation hub, with dozens of railways, roads and motorways passing through the city. It is also the destination of many international flights arriving in China. Beijing is recognized as the political, educational, and cultural center of the People's Republic of China, while Hong Kong and Shanghai predominate in economic fields. The city hosted the 2008 Olympic Games.

Few cities in the world besides Beijing have served as the political and cultural centre of an area as immense as China for so long. The Encyclopædia Britannica describes it as "one of the world's great cities," and declares that the city has been an integral part of China’s history for centuries; there is scarcely a major building of any age in Beijing that does not have at least some national historical significance. Beijing is renowned for its opulent palaces, temples, and huge stone walls and gates. Its art treasures and universities have long made the city a centre of culture and art in China.

The earliest remnants of human habitation in the Beijing municipality are found in the caves of Dragon Bone Hill near the village of Zhoukoudian in Fangshan District, where the Peking Man lived. Homo erectus fossils from the caves date to 230,000 to 250,000 years ago. Paleolithic homo sapiens also lived there about 27,000 years ago. There were cities in the vicinities of Beijing by the 1st millennium BC, and the capital of the State of Yan, one of the powers of the Warring States Period (473-221 BC), was established in present-day Beijing.

After the fall of the Yan, the subsequent Qin, Han, and Jin dynasties set up local prefectures in the area. During the fall of the Han, it was the seat of the warlord Gongsun Zan. In Tang Dynasty it became the headquarters for Fanyang jiedushi, the virtual military governor of current northern Hebei area. The An Shi Rebellion was also launched from here in AD 755.

In 936, the Later Jin Dynasty (936-947) of northern China ceded a large part of its northern frontier, including modern Beijing, to the Khitan Liao Dynasty. In 938, the Liao Dynasty set up a secondary capital in what is now Beijing, and called it Nanjing (the "Southern Capital"). In 1125, the Jurchen Jin Dynasty conquered Liao, and in 1153 moved its capital to Liao's Nanjing, calling it Zhongdu, the "central capital." Zhongdu was situated in what is now the area centered around Tianningsi, slightly to the southwest of central Beijing. Some of the oldest existing relics in Beijing, such as the Tianning Temple, date to the Liao.

Mongol forces burned Zhongdu to the ground in 1215 in what is now known as the Battle of Beijing. Later in 1264, in preparation for the conquest of all of China to establish the Yuan Dynasty, Kublai Khan decided to rebuild it slightly north to the center of the Jin capital, and in 1272, he made this city his capital as Dadu, or Daidu to the Mongols, otherwise spelled as Cambaluc or Cambuluc in Marco Polo's accounts. Construction of Dadu finished in 1293. The decision of Kublai Khan greatly enhanced the status of a city that had been situated on the northern fringe of China proper. The center of Dadu was situated slightly north of modern central Beijing. It centered on what is now the northern stretch of the 2nd Ring Road, and stretched northwards to between the 3rd and 4th Ring Roads. There are remnants of the Yuan-era wall still standing, and they are known as the Tucheng.

In 1368, Zhu Yuanzhang, soon after declaring himself the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty, sent an army toward Dadu, still held by the Yuan. The last Yuan emperor fled north to Shangdu, and Zhu razed the Yuan palaces in Dadu to the ground. The city was renamed Beiping in the same year, and Shuntian prefecture was established in the area around the city. In 1403, the new (and third) Ming emperor - the Yongle Emperor - renamed this city 'Beijing', and designated Beijing the co-capital alongside the (then) current capital of Nanjing. Beijing was the subject of a major construction project for a new Imperial residence, the Forbidden City that lasted nearly 15 years (1406 to 1420). When the palace was finished, the Yongle Emperor ceremoniously took up residence. From 1421 onwards, Beijing, also known as Jingshi, was the "official" capital of the Ming Dynasty while Nanjing was demoted to the status of "secondary" capital. This system of dual capitals (with Beijing being vastly more important) continued for the duration of the Ming Dynasty. Thirteen of the sixteen Ming Emperors are buried in elaborate tombs near Beijing.

By the 15th century, Beijing had essentially taken its current shape, and the Ming-era city wall served as the Beijing city wall until modern times, when it was pulled down and the 2nd Ring Road was built in its place. It is believed that Beijing was the largest city in the world from 1425 to 1650 and from 1710 to 1825. Other notable buildings constructed during the Ming period include the Temple of Heaven (built by 1420). Tiananmen, now a state symbol of the People's Republic of China and featured on its emblem, was first built in 1420, and rebuilt several times later. Tiananmen Square was built in 1651 and enlarged in 1958. Jesuits finished building the first Beijing-area Roman Catholic church in 1652 at the Xuanwu Gate, where Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) had lived; the modern Nantang (Southern Cathedral) has been built over the original cathedral.

The end of the Ming came in 1644 when, for 40 days, Li Zicheng's peasant army captured Beijing and overthrew the Ming government. When the powerful Manchu army arrived at the outskirts of the city, Li and his followers abandoned the city and as a result the Manchu forces, under Prince Dorgon, captured Beijing without a fight.

Prince Dorgon established the Qing Dynasty as a direct successor to the Ming, and Beijing remained China's capital. The Qing Emperors made some modifications to the Imperial residence, but in large part, the Ming buildings and the general layout remained unchanged. Beijing at this time was also known as Jingshi, which corresponded to the Manchu Gemun Hecen with the same meaning. The classic Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber is set in Beijing during the early years of Qing rule (the end of the 17th century).

The Xinhai Revolution of 1911, aimed at replacing Qing rule with a republic, originally intended to establish its capital at Nanjing. After high-ranking Qing official Yuan Shikai forced the abdication of the Qing emperor in Beijing and ensured the success of the revolution, the revolutionaries in Nanjing accepted that Yuan should be the president of the new Republic of China and the capital remains at Beijing. Yuan gradually consolidated power and became by 1915 the new emperor of China, but died less than a year into his reign. China then fell under the control of regional warlords, and the most powerful factions fought frequent wars (the Zhili-Anhui War, the First Zhili-Fengtian War, and the Second Zhili-Fengtian War) to take control of the capital at Beijing. Following the success of the Kuomintang (KMT)'s Northern Expedition, which pacified the warlords of the north, Nanjing was officially made the capital of the Republic of China in 1928, and Beijing was renamed Beiping (Peip'ing) on 28 June that year, in English meaning "northern peace" or "north pacified".[5] During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Beiping fell to Japan on 29 July 1937, and was made the seat of the Provisional Government of the Republic of China, a puppet state that ruled the ethnic Chinese portions of Japanese-occupied northern China; the government was later merged into the larger Wang Jingwei Government based in Nanjing.

On 31 January 1949, during the Chinese Civil War, Communist forces entered Beijing without opposition. On 1 October of the same year, the Communist Party of China, under the leadership of Mao Zedong, announced in Tiananmen the creation of the People's Republic of China and renamed the city back to Beijing. Just a few days earlier, the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference had decided that Beijing would be the capital of the new government.

At the time of the founding of the People's Republic, Beijing Municipality consisted of just its urban area and immediate suburbs. The urban area was divided into many small districts inside what is now the 2nd Ring Road. The Beijing city wall was torn down to make way for the construction of the 2nd Ring Road, which was finished by 1981 in accord with the 1982 city plan. That road was the first of a series of new ring roads intended for motor vehicles rather than for bicycles.

Following the economic reforms of Deng Xiaoping, the urban area of Beijing has expanded greatly. Formerly within the confines of the 2nd Ring Road and the 3rd Ring Road, the urban area of Beijing is now pushing at the limits of the recently constructed 5th Ring Road and 6th Ring Road, with many areas that were formerly farmland now developed residential or commercial districts. According to a 2005 newspaper report, the size of the newly developed Beijing land was one and a half times larger than the land of old Beijing within the 2nd Ring Road. Wangfujing and Xidan have developed into flourishing shopping districts, while Zhongguancun has become a major centre of electronics in China. In recent years, the expansion of Beijing has also brought to the forefront some problems of urbanization, such as heavy traffic, poor air quality, the loss of historic neighbourhoods, and significant influx of migrants from various regions of the country, especially rural areas.

On 13 July 2001, the International Olympic Committee selected Beijing as the host for the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Three styles of architecture predominate in urban Beijing. First, the traditional architecture of imperial China, perhaps best exemplified by the massive Tian'anmen (Gate of Heavenly Peace), which remains the People's Republic of China's trademark edifice, the Forbidden City, the Imperial Ancestral Temple and the Temple of Heaven. Next there is what is sometimes referred to as the "Sino-Sov" style, built between the 1950s and the 1970s, with structures tending to be boxy and sometimes poorly constructed. Finally, there are much more modern architectural forms — most noticeably in the area of the Beijing CBD and Beijing Financial Street.

Beijing of the early 21st century has witnessed tremendous growth of new building constructions, showing various modern styles from international designers. A mixture of both old and new styles of architecture can be seen at the 798 Art Zone, which mixes 1950s design with a blend of the new.

People native to urban Beijing speak the Beijing dialect, which belongs to the Mandarin subdivision of spoken Chinese. This speech is the basis for putonghua, the standard spoken language used in mainland China and Taiwan, and one of the four official languages of Singapore. Rural areas of Beijing Municipality have their own dialects akin to those of Hebei province, which surrounds Beijing Municipality.

Beijing opera, or Peking opera, is well-known throughout the nation. Commonly lauded as one of the highest achievements of Chinese culture, Beijing opera is performed through a combination of song, spoken dialogue, and codified action sequences, such as gestures, movement, fighting and acrobatics. Much of Beijing opera is carried out in an archaic stage dialect quite different from Modern Standard Chinese and from modern Beijing dialect.

Siheyuans line hutongs, or alleys, which connect the interior of Beijing's old city. They are usually straight and run east to west so that doorways can face north and south for Feng Shui reasons. They vary in width — some are very narrow, enough for only a few pedestrians to pass through at a time.

Once ubiquitous in Beijing, siheyuans and hutongs are now rapidly disappearing, as entire city blocks of hutongs are leveled and replaced with high-rise buildings. Residents of the hutongs are entitled to live in the new buildings, in apartments of at least the same size as their former residences. Many complain, however, that the traditional sense of community and street life of the hutongs cannot be replaced. Residents, however, have limited control over their own property, as the government usually owns it. Some particularly historic or picturesque neighbourhoods of hutongs are being preserved and restored by the government, especially for the 2008 Olympics.

Beijing cuisine is the local style of cooking in Beijing. Peking Duck is perhaps the most well-known dish. The Manhan Quanxi is a rare traditional banquet originally intended for the ethnic-Manchu emperors of the Qing Dynasty; it remains very prestigious and expensive. The Fuling Jiabing is a traditional Beijing snack food, a pancake (bing) resembling a flat disk with filling, made from fu ling (Poria cocos (Schw.) Wolf, or "tuckahoe"), an ingredient common in traditional Chinese medicine. Teahouses are also common in Beijing. Chinese tea comes in many varieties and some rather expensive types of Chinese tea are said to cure an ailing body extraordinarily well.

The cloisonné (or Jingtailan, literally "Blue of Jingtai") metalworking technique and tradition is a specialty of Beijing's cultural art, and is one of the most revered traditional crafts in China. Cloisonné making requires elaborate and complicated processes which includes: base-hammering, copper-strip inlay, soldering, enamel-filling, enamel-firing, surface polishing and gilding. Beijing's lacquerware is also well known for its sophisticated and intrinsic patterns and images carved into its surface, and the various decoration techniques of lacquer includes "carved lacquer" and "engraved gold".

Younger residents of Beijing have become more attracted to the nightlife, which has flourished in recent decade, breaking prior cultural traditions that practically restricted it to the upper class.

At the heart of Beijing's historical centre lies the Forbidden City, the enormous palace compound that was the home of the emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties; the Forbidden City hosts the Palace Museum, which contains imperial collections of Chinese art. Surrounding the Forbidden City are several former imperial gardens, parks and scenic areas, notably the Beihai, Shichahai, Zhongnanhai, Jingshan and Zhongshan. These places, like the Beihai Park are described to be masterpieces of Chinese gardening art, and are popular tourist destinations with tremendous historical importance; Zhongnanhai during the modern era has also been the political heart of various Chinese governments and regimes and is now the headquarters of the Communist Party of China. From Tiananmen Square, which is located right across the Forbidden City, there are several notable sites, such as the Tiananmen, Qianmen, the Great Hall of the People, National Museum of China, Monument to the People's Heroes, and Mausoleum of Mao Zedong. The Summer Palace and the Old Summer Palace both lie at the western part of the urban city of Beijing; the Summer Palace, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, displays a comprehensive collection of imperial gardens and palaces that functioned as the summer retreat for the Qing Dynasty emperors.

Among the best known religious sites in the city is the Temple of Heaven (Tiantan), located in southeastern Beijing, also a UNESCO World Heritage Site, where emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties made visits for annual ceremonies of prayer to Heaven for good harvest; located in the opposite direction of the Temple of Heaven at the northern part of the city are the Temple of Earth (Ditan), and the Temple of the Sun (Ritan) and Temple of the Moon (Yuetan), both respectively located in the eastern and western parts of the urban area. Other well-known temple sites located in Beijing include the Dongyue Temple, Tanzhe Temple, Miaoying Temple, White Cloud Temple, Yonghe Temple, Fayuan Temple, Wanshou Temple and the Big Bell Temple. The city also has its own Confucius Temple, and a Guozijian. The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception was built in 1605, and is the oldest Catholic church in Beijing. The Niujie Mosque is also the oldest mosque in Beijing, with a history over a thousand years old.

Beijing contains several well-preserved pagodas and stone pagodas, such as the towering Pagoda of Tianning Temple, which was built during the Liao Dynasty from 1100–1120, and the Pagoda of Cishou Temple, which was built in 1576 during the Ming Dynasty. Several historically important stone bridges are also located in Beijing, including the 12th century Lugou Bridge, the 17th century Baliqiao bridge and the 18th century Jade Belt Bridge. The Beijing Ancient Observatory displays pretelescopic spheres dating back to the Ming and Qing dynasties. The Fragrant Hills (Xiangshan) is a popular scenic public park that consists of natural landscape areas as well as traditional and cultural relics. The Beijing Botanical Garden exhibits over 6,000 species of plants, including a variety of trees, bushes and flowers, and an extensive peony garden. The Taoranting Park, Chaoyang Park, Haidian Park and Zizhu Yuan are all popular recreational parks that consist of a variety of natural landscapes. The Beijing Zoo is a center of zoological research that also contains rare animals from various continents, including the giant panda of China.

Beijing is also known for its siheyuan (courtyard houses) and hutong (alleys), although they are increasingly disappearing due to the growth of city constructions and are giving way to high-rises. The city has several well-preserved neighborhoods of siheyuan, including some of the more grand courtyard houses, such as the Prince Gong Mansion. There are over one hundred museums in Beijing, and aside from the Palace Museum in the Forbidden City and the National Museum of China, other major museums include the National Art Museum of China, the Capital Museum, the Beijing Art Museum, the Military Museum of the Chinese People's Revolution, the Geological Museum of China, the Beijing Museum of Natural History and the Paleozoological Museum of China.

Located at the outskirts of urban Beijing but within its municipality are the Thirteen Tombs of the Ming Dynasty, the lavish and elaborate burial sites of thirteen Ming emperors, which have been designated as part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Imperial Tombs of the Ming and Qing Dynasties". The archaeological Peking Man site at Zhoukoudian is another World Heritage Site within the Beijing municipality, and it contains a wealth of discoveries, including one of the first specimens of Homo erectus, and an assemblage of bones of the gigantic hyena Pachycrocuta brevirostris. There are several sections of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Great Wall of China located in the municipality, most notably Badaling, Jinshanling, Simatai and Mutianyu.

2011-06-13T04:40:00.000-07:00

Let's go to Basseterre in the West Indies.

The photos are: 1) a panoramic View of the City of Basseterre from Zante, looking North; 2) a view of the Independence House in Independence Square; 3) the St. George's Anglican Church in Basseterre; 4) the police station; 5) a Basseterre street scene; 6) a fountain in a Basseterre park; 7) the Brimstone Hill Fortress; 8) Mt. Liamuiga (a dormant volcano); 9) the Black Rocks; 10) Carib Breweries; 11) the Wingfield Plantation; 12) the Sunset Cafe at Timothy's Beach.

Basseterre is the capital of the Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis in the West Indies. Geographically, the Basseterre port is located on the south western coast of Saint Kitts Island, and it is one of the chief commercial depots of the Leeward Islands. The city lies within the parish of Saint George Basseterre and the southern part of the parish of Saint Peter Basseterre. Basseterre is one of the oldest towns in the Eastern Caribbean.

Basseterre was founded in 1627 by the French, under Sieur Pierre Belain d'Esnambuc. It served as capital of the French colony of Saint-Christophe, which consisted of the northern and southern extremities of the island of St. Kitts (the centre was yielded to Britain). When Phillipe de Longviliers de Poincy was made the French governor of St. Kitts in 1639, the town turned into a large, successful port, commanding Eastern Caribbean trade and colonisation. De Poincy then quickly made Basseterre capital of the entire French West Indies colony, which included the islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique, and remained so until his death in 1660. The city was made capital of the entire island of St. Kitts in 1727, following French expulsion from the island and full British control.

The city of Basseterre has one of the most tragic histories of any Caribbean capital, destroyed many times by colonial wars, fire, earthquakes, floods, riots and hurricanes. Despite all of this, a considerable number of well-restored buildings still exist in downtown Basseterre.

The city of Basseterre skirts a 2-mile (3.2 km) bay on the southwestern shore of St. Kitts, Basseterre Bay. The city lies within the large Basseterre Valley, almost completely surrounded by lush green hills and mountains. It is primarily low-lying, which is one explanation for the name which the French gave unto it, as Basseterre translates to "low land" in English. However, the name Basseterre is also due to the fact that the island is on the lee of winds of the island, and is thus a safe anchorage. The name Capesterre, given to the region to the North, was dubbed so as it was facing the wind. Basseterre is surrounded by the Olivees Mountains to the north and the Conaree-Morne peaks to the east. The city is drained by the College River and the Westbourne River, which are locally known as "ghauts" and are dry most of the year. They even form streets in downtown Basseterre. This engineering folly has proven quite disastrous though, as College River has been the scene of many disastrous floods in Basseterre history. Port Zante, located in the centre of the bay, lies on 15 acres of land reclaimed from the sea in 1995.

Basseterre is a very small town which is laid out in a grid pattern. It has four main streets running west to east, and they are listed here in sequence from south to north: Bay Road, Liverpool Row, Central Street and Cayon Street. The main street running north to south is Fort Street/Bank Street, which is home to the bulk of the island's main shops and banks. The city has 2 centres, at The Circus, which is geared towards tourism purposes, and the Independence Square, which contains the cathedral, courthouse and most of the older buildings.

Basseterre is the main commercial and industrial centre of St. Kitts. It is also the country's main port of entry, for both sea and air travel, as well as the road and rail transport hub. It houses the administration buildings for the federal government (those for the island of Nevis are in Charlestown). It also houses the headquarters of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank, as well as the headquarters for many other regional financial institutions.

Despite its small size, Basseterre played host to Carifesta VII (the Caribbean Festival of Arts) in 2000, outbidding rivals many times its size. The city was able to outbid the United States of America, to host matches for the 2007 World Cricket Cup. The Warner Park Sporting Complex was the site of the allocated first round matches of the tournament. This made St. Kitts and Nevis the smallest country in the world ever to host a World Cup event.

Basseterre and its environs are home to many small, American-owned medical schools such as Windsor University, and also two prestigious medical institutions founded by Robert Ross: the Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine and the International University of Nursing. The city has four secondary schools, two of which are government owned, and two are private schools.

Landmarks include: Independence Square (formerly Pall Mall Square), The Circus,
St. George's Anglican Church, Basseterre Co-Cathedral of Immaculate Conception,
The Cenotaph, St. Kitts Heritage Society, the National Museum, Amina Craft Market, Public Market, St. Kitts Sugar Factory Museum, Warner Park Sporting Complex, Pelican Shopping Mall, Queen Victoria Statue Roundabout, Basseterre National Park, Fort Thomas, and Springfield Cemetery and Chapel.

There are a large number of Christian churches in the city for its size. Most are Protestant, due to British colonization, but the cathedral in Basseterre is Roman Catholic. The Anglican, also called the "Church of England" has the largest number of members, followed by the Methodist. Other Protestant denominations include Moravian, Church of God, Baptist, Seventh-day Adventist, Jehovah's Witness, Rivers of Living Water and Pentecostal. Afro-Christian syncretic sects are also widespread.

The Deep Water Harbour in Basseterre is capable of both hosting and berthing of cruise ships or the handling of cargo. It is located to the extreme East of Basseterre Bay.

Port Zante, in the centre of the Bay, is for use of docking cruise ships only. The Port can accommodate the largest cruise ships in the world. It also has a marina facility.

The bay is also home to the bustling ferry operation which takes place between Basseterre and Charlestown. There are numerous trips daily served by as much as 6 ferries. Ferry service between Basseterre and Oranjestad, Statia as well as to St. Maarten also exists, but the trips are irregular.

2011-06-10T04:53:00.000-07:00

Let's find out about Banjul, The Gambia.

The photos are: 1) the Banjul King Fahad Mosque; 2) Arch 22 at the entrance to Banjul; 3) Banjul International Airport; 4) the Albert Market; and 5) a street in Banjul.

Banjul (formerly Bathurst), officially the City of Banjul, is the capital of The Gambia, and is in the division of the same name. The population of the city proper is only 34,828, with the Greater Banjul Area, which includes the City of Banjul and the Kanifing Municipal Council, at a population of 357,238 (2003 census). Banjul is on St Mary's Island (Banjul Island), where the Gambia River enters the Atlantic Ocean. The island is connected to the mainland — by passenger and vehicle ferries to the north and by bridges to the south.

Banjul takes its name from the Mandé people who gathered specific fibres on the island, which were used in the manufacture of ropes. Bang julo is the mandinka (Mande) word for fibre. The mispronounciation led to the word Banjul.

In 1651 Banjul was leased by the Duke of Courland from the king of Kombo, as part of Courland colonization.

In 1816, the British founded Banjul as a trading post and base for suppressing the slave trade. The British renamed the Banjul Island to St. Mary and first named Bathurst after Henry Bathurst, the secretary of the British Colonial Office, but was changed to Banjul in 1973.

On 22 July 1994 Banjul was the scene of a bloodless military coup d'état in which President Dawda Jawara was overthrown and replaced by the country's current President Yahya Jammeh. To commemorate this event, Arch 22 was built as an entrance portal to the capital. The gate is 35 metres tall and the centre of an open square. It houses a textile museum.

Attractions in the city include the Gambian National Museum, the Albert Market, Banjul State House, Banjul Court House, African Heritage Museum, two cathedrals and several major mosques.

It is the destination of the Plymouth-Banjul Challenge, a charity road rally.

Banjul is the country's economic and administrative centre and includes the Central Bank of The Gambia. Peanut processing is the country's principal industry, but beeswax, palm wood, palm oil, and skins and hides are also shipped from Banjul's port.

Ferries sail from Banjul to Barra. The city is served by the Banjul International Airport. Banjul is on the Trans–West African Coastal Highway connecting it to Dakar and Bissau, and will eventually provide a paved highway link to 11 other nations of ECOWAS.

Banjul International Airport was one of the primary Transoceanic Abort Landing (TAL) sites for the Space Shuttle. It was selected in September 1987, replacing a TAL site at Dakar, Senegal, due to runway deficiencies and geographic hazards there. Banjul was closed as a TAL site in November 2002.

2011-06-08T04:42:00.000-07:00

Let's go and check out Banqui in the Central African Republic.

The photos are: 1) the Bangui Shopping District; 2) a French boulangerie in Bangui; 3) the Ubangi (Oubangui) River at the outskirts of Bangui; and 4) some trucks in Banqui.

Just not a lot of photos and not much on the city itself:

Bangui is the capital of and the largest city in the Central African Republic. The majority of the population of the Central African Republic lives in the western parts of the country, near Bangui. Though located within Ombella-M'Poko prefecture, it is an independent commune, and thus politically independent of the surrounding prefecture.

The city was founded in 1889 in what was then the French colony Haut-Oubangui ('Upper Ubangi'), later renamed Oubangui-Chari and made part of French Equatorial Africa. Named for local rapids, the city grew around the French military post on the Ubangi river. Bangui served as an administration center in the colonial era and continues to be the administrative center of the CAR.

Widespread violence in Bangui followed the March 1981 elections, which took place following a French operation to depose Jean-Bedel Bokassa in 1979 and replace him with David Dacko. Opponents of unpopular Dacko laid siege to Bangui and compelled his flight to exile. Andre Kolingba then formed the Comité Militaire pour le Redressement National.

In October 1985, a conference of public health officials including representatives of the Centers for Disease Control and World Health Organisation met in Bangui and defined AIDS in Africa as, "prolonged fevers for a month or more, weight loss of over 10% and prolonged diarrhoea". About half the AIDS cases in Africa based on the Bangui definition are HIV positive.

A French Jaguar aircraft crashed in Bangui in March 1986, killing 35 and leading to a resurgence in anti-French sentiment. Andre Kolingba, however, continued to allow the French to maintain military bases in the Central African Republic.

Some 200 Central African Republic soldiers mutinied in Bangui in May 1996, demanding back pay and the resignation of President Ange-Félix Patassé. French troops stationed in the country quelled the mutiny. The renegades, however, heavily looted Bangui and killed more than 50 people.

After President Patassé announced a national unity government in early 1997, mutinous troops refused to relinquish a military base in Bangui. New fighting erupted in June.

Rebel leader François Bozizé took power by seizing Bangui in March 2003, ousting Patasse. The situation in the town is now improving, but regular instability is being noticed.

Mercer Human Resources Consulting named Bangui as the 214th worst city out of 215 in their 2009 quality of living survey. Baghdad was the only city to be ranked lower than Bangui.

Bangui lies on the northern banks of the Ubangi River just below a series of rapids that limit major commercial shipping farther upriver, on the southern border. The navigable Ubangi River turns sharply south below Bangui and connects to the Congo River just south of the equator near Brazzaville as its chief northern tributary. The river marks the border between the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The Congolese town of Zongo sits opposite the river from Bangui.

The city centre lies near the river and features a large triumphal arch dedicated to Bokassa, the Presidential Palace and the central market. Lying 5 km further north, the heart of the residential area has the largest market and most nightlife. North of the city lie rolling hills.

Bangui serves as an administrative, trade, and commercial center. It received its first bank branch in 1946 when the Bank of West Africa (BAO) established a branch there. Bangui manufactures include textiles, food products, beer, shoes, and soap. The main exports are cotton, timber, coffee, and sisal. Because of the ongoing strife, unemployment hovered near 23% in the city as of 2001.

Bangui hosts a river port and is served by Bangui M'Poko International Airport; the former handles the overwhelming majority of the country's international trade. River ferries sail to Brazzaville and Zongo. Roads connect the city to Cameroon, Chad, and Sudan.

There are three types of restaurants in Bangui.

First, those with French orientation, although they may have African ambiance and/or some African food. These include "Relais des Chasses", "L'Equateur", "Tropicana", and "L'Escale".

Second, there are restaurants focusing on foreign cuisine, such as the Lebanese "Ali Baba" and "Beyrouth", and a Chinese restaurant simply known as "Chinese Restaurant".

Third, there are numerous African restaurants very popular especially among locals, which include the celebrated "Madame M'boka".

A number of bars and street food stalls also complement Bangui's culinary scene.

Archaeological studies in and around the city have yielded at least 26 ancient Iron Age sites that contain many metallurgical tools and objects, illuminating the pre-European history of the city and surrounding area. These archaeological sites were added to the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List on 11 April 2006 in the Cultural category.

Bangui is home to the University of Bangui, founded in 1970.[10] A public institution, the University of Bangui monopolizes non-agricultural college education in the Central African Republic.

2011-06-03T07:19:00.000-07:00

Time to visit Bangkok. The photos are: 1) The Rajprasong, Chidlom and Sukhumvit skylines of Bangkok at night; 2) The Bhumibol Bridge; 3) the Wat Phra Kaew (Temple of the Emerald Buddha, Grand Palace); 4) the Bangkok Adminstrative Building (with the full name of Bangkok in front); 5) the Democracy Monument at Rattanakosin Island; 6) the Chao Phraya River (River of Angels); 7) Yaowarat Road near the banks of the Chao Phraya River (Bangkok's Chinatown); 8) Lumphini Park; 9) the Central Bang Na area; 10) the Sukhumvit area; 11) Ratchadamri Road; 12) Vimanmek Palace; 13) the Main Auditorium of Chulalongkorn University; 14) the Dome Building of Thammasat University; and 15) Sathorn's Robot Building (currently houses Singaporean-based United Overseas Bank's Bangkok headquarters).

Bangkok is the capital, largest urban area and primary city of Thailand. Known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon, meaning "city of angels" for short, it was originally a small trading post on the west bank of the lower Chao Phraya River during the Ayutthaya Kingdom. It became the capital in 1768 after the destruction of Ayutthaya by Burmese invaders. However, the current Rattanakosin Kingdom did not begin until 1782, when the capital was moved to the east bank of the river by Rama I following the death of King Taksin. The city is more formally called "Phra Nakhon", referring to the original boundaries of the 18th century, while the name Krungthep Mahanakorn includes the urban areas which have since grown. Foreigners generally call the city by its original name of Bangkok.

The town of Bangkok began as a small trading center and port community[6] on the west bank of the Chao Phraya River before the establishment of the Ayutthaya Kingdom, the precursor of modern Thailand, which existed from 1350 to 1767. The etymology of the town's name is unclear. Bang is the Central Thai name for a town situated on the bank of a river. It is believed that "Bangkok" derived from either Bangkok, (kok being the Thai name for the Java plum, one of several trees bearing olive-like fruits); or Bang Koh, koh meaning "island," a reference to the area's landscape which was carved by rivers and canals.

After the fall of Ayutthaya to the Burmese Kingdom in 1767, the newly declared King Taksin established a new capital in the area of the then Bangkok, which became known as Thonburi. When Taksin's reign ended in 1782, King Buddha Yodfa Chulaloke reconstructed the capital on the east bank of the river and gave the city a ceremonial name which became shortened to its current official name, Krung Thep Maha Nakhon. The new city, however, also inherited the name Bangkok, which continued to be used by foreigners to refer to the entire city and became its official English name, while in Thai the name still refers only to the old district on the west bank of the river. The city has since vastly modernized and undergone numerous changes, including the introduction of transportation and utility infrastructure in the reigns of King Mongkut and King Chulalongkorn, and quickly developed into the economic center of Thailand.

The full ceremonial name of the city given by King Buddha Yodfa Chulaloke, and later edited by King Mongkut, is: Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Yuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Phiman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit. It translates to "The city of angels, the great city, the eternal jewel city, the impregnable city of God Indra, the grand capital of the world endowed with nine precious gems, the happy city, abounding in an enormous Royal Palace that resembles the heavenly abode where reigns the reincarnated god, a city given by Indra and built by Vishnukarma". Local school children are taught the full name, although few can explain its meaning because many of the words are archaic, and unknown to all but a few. Most Thais who do recall the full name do so as a result of its use in a popular song, Krung Thep Maha Nakhon (1989) by Asanee-Wasan Chotikul and will often recount it by recalling the song at the same time, much as English speakers might sing the alphabet song while reciting the English alphabet.

Bangkok has 50 districts or khet, which mark the administrative subdivisions under the authority of the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration. These are further subdivided into 169 khwaeng, roughly equivalent to sub-districts tambon in the other provinces. However, these district areas might not accurately represent functional divisions of Bangkok's neighborhoods. Throughout the years, Bangkok has grown from a city scattered along the river to a metro area that spans as many as six provinces. The city's main business districts and residential areas are continuously expanding. The influx of foreigners from Western countries as well as immigrants from neighboring Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia and many other Asian countries along with the growth of the Thai population has stemmed hundreds of housing projects around the metro area, developing communities along the outskirts. Within years, these communities are engulfed by the greater Bangkok and become another part of this urban jungle.

As the city expanded on the outskirts, the inner city has nowhere to grow but up. The city has a registered 1,000 skyscrapers and ranks 17th as the world's tallest city. This does not include hundreds of new buildings predicted as part of the construction boom in 2007 and the coming years. Areas such as Silom-Sathon and Asok have for decades been Thailand's business center. From 1985 to 1996, Thailand experienced the world's highest growth rates and underwent an economic transformation, Bangkok went through dramatic changes.[citation needed] The Ratchadaphisek area was turned into a business district which continued through the Asok area up north for five kilometers (3 mi). The Sukhumvit area, stretching 15–20 km (9–12 mi), gradually turned into a mixed commercial and residential area. Wireless Road and Chitlom are where some of Bangkok's most expensive land plots exist. Part of the British Embassy on the corner of Wireless and Rama I Roads, nine rai or approximately 14,400 m2 (155,000 sq ft) in area, was sold for USD 92 million or THB 3.24 billion.

The most important business districts of Bangkok include Silom, Bangrak, Pinklao, Sathon, Phra Ram 2, Phetchaburi, Phra Nakhon, Pathumwan, Chatuchak (new central business district), and Phra Ram 3 (new financial center).

Bangkok's Phra Nakhon district alongside Dusit is where most governmental agencies and ministries have their offices. Most of the well-known tourist attractions are also in this particular area due its cultural & historical heritage. This part of Bangkok is perhaps the most popular for tourists as most notable attractions such as the Grand Palace, Wat Pho, the Democracy Monument, the Giant Swing, Sanam Luang and other venues are located here. Thon Buri also has its fair share of historic monuments mainly located near the river, such as Wat Arun. The Victory Monument in Bangkok is one of the city's biggest bus destinations. Although not officially a bus depot, its location in the center of city transits as many as 20 bus lines as well as a BTS Skytrain station. Starting from Victory Monument, Phahonyothin road early sois are occupied by ministries, government agencies, commercial buildings as well as upper-middle class residential areas. Further to the north, after the Lat Phrao/Phahonyothin intersection, the Northern Corridor is an expanding business district, where the famous Elephant Building can be found.

Bangkok's north and eastern areas are primarily residential areas for middle class residents of Bangkok. Whereas the inner city often has small apartments and low rises for poor immigrants, Lat Phrao and Si Nakharin offer residential compounds and townhouses. The two areas cover as much as 100 km2 (40 sq mi) to 150 km2 (60 sq mi) each, and have turned into what is now part of Bangkok as more suburban housing developments sprawl further out to the east and north. The west of Bangkok in Thon Buri is another growing area, approaching the degree of development experienced by the north and east. Suvarnabhumi Airport in the east is seen as a jump start for the eastern expansion of Bangkok as Don Mueang was for the north.

Ratchaprasong is at the forefront of Bangkok's shopping scene. The newly renovated Central World Plaza intends to serve as a square to Bangkokians. Just up the street is Siam Square, similar to Shinjuku in Tokyo and Oxford Street and Piccadilly Circus in London. The Sukhumvit area also serves as a shopping district for foreigners. The popular Chatuchak Weekend Market in the north of the city is where many people head for cheap, used and high quality products.

Bangkok's poorest districts are spread throughout the city. However, the most concentrated area is just north of the Port of Bangkok at the turn of the Chao Phraya River. For an area of 10 square kilometres (4 sq mi), the Khlong Toei district houses one of the poorest areas in the country with half-built houses and midrises for immigrants and workers from the northeast Isan provinces.

Bangkok has large sections of greenery either preserved by the Department of National Forestry or designated as green zones. The city however, continues to lack a green belt development as economic activity continues to pour into the capital, resulting in massive housing projects along the suburbs.

Bangkok is known for its large green sections within the city centre, including the large forest park between Yannawa and Samut Prakan. This part of the city covers an area of over 50 km2 (19 sq mi). and is intended to buffer the CBD from the large industries of the west and south of Metropolitan Bangkok. Other areas include Bung Makkasan, an urban city buffer for residences, sections of many major roads which have unbuilt swamps and green fields. Some of these areas are intentionally undeveloped for protecting against urbanization, while others are land lost during the Asian Financial Crisis.

Lumphini Park is regionally famous. Renowned as Bangkok's Central Park, it was built in the early 1920s by Rama VI with this intent. It has since been used to hold grand pageants, ceremonies of the Thai constitution, and was a camp for Japanese soldiers during World War II. On Sundays, the western gates are open for runners to run on to Silom Road. The park is normally closed at night due to the incidences of vandalism, robberies and murders reported. Chatuchak Park and Rama IX Park are two of Bangkok's largest parks. The two, built in the past 50 years cater to Bangkok's suburban population, include botanic gardens, sports clubs and complexes, English/French/Japanese gardens and parks as well as large ponds and lakes. Other famous parks include Queen Sirikit Park near Lat Yao, Benchasiri Park on Sukhumvit Rd, Saranrom Park across the Grand Palace, Sanam Luang, Suan Romaneenat, and Dusit Park.

The majority of the country's universities, both public and private, are located in and/or around the capital. Chulalongkorn University, Kasetsart University, Mahidol University and Thammasat University are at the forefront of tertiary education. They are public universities and have been a foundation for young thinkers for nearly a century. Over the past few decades the general trend of pursuing a university degree has prompted the founding of new universities to meet the needs of the Thai students. Bangkok became not only a place where immigrants and provincial Thais go for job opportunities, but also for a chance to receive a university degree. Ramkhamhaeng University emerged in 1971 as the only open university. It has the highest enrolment of students compared with any other Thai university. Ramkhamhaeng was one of the Thai government's ways to deal with the rise in a demand for tertiary education. The demand for higher education has led to the founding of many other universities and colleges in the metropolitan area. Vocational/technical colleges are also on the rise. One of such is SAE Institute Bangkok (started in 2002). In recent years a large number of private institutions, primarily with Western ties and exchange programs, were established in the capital. The rise in the number of schools offering English teaching has raised the bar for many state-run institutions to compete with the standards set by private education.

Assumption University, Chulalongkorn University, Kasetsart University, Mahidol University, Silpakorn University, Srinakharinwirot University, and Thammasat University rank among the nation's top universities. Bangkok also plays host to the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), built as an international co-operative institute between Asia-Pacific nations. There are also many Buddhist universities branching into the realm of religious studies in which Bangkok has taken a leading role.

Amidst all this, however, the tertiary education scene in Bangkok is still over-populated with non-Bangkokians. Officials currently stress the need for a revamping of the Thai educational system. Education has long been a prime factor in the centralization of Bangkok and will play a vital role in the government's efforts to decentralize the country.

Festivals and events:
Bangkok Songkran Festival 13–15 April The traditional Thai New Year is an occasion for merriment all over the city, but most notably at Sanam Luang, near the Grand Palace, where the revered Phra Phuttha Sihing image is displayed and bathed by devotees. In the Wisutkasat area, a Miss Songkran beauty contest is held and accompanied by merit-making and entertainment. Khao San Road, Bang Lamphu area is also one of the high-spots in the city where locals and tourists play water by the water-throwing activities.

Royal Ploughing Ceremony May

An ancient Brahman ritual, conducted at Sanam Luang, in which farmers believe, is able to forecast the abundance of the next rice crop. The event is a result of a series of ceremonies that are conducted by Phraya Raek Na, portrayed by a high-ranking official from the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives who wears colourful traditional costumes. This ceremony was re-introduced in 1960 by King Bhumibol Adulyadej and is considered the official commencement of the rice-growing season.

The Queen’s Birthday Celebration 12 August

To display their loyalty and to honour Queen Sirikit on the occasion of her royal birthday, the Thai people decorate their houses and public buildings. Around Bangkok, Ratchadamnoen Avenue, the area around the Grand Palace and other well-known locations are bedecked with coloured lights and magnificent adornments.

Trooping of the Colours December

The King and Queen preside over this impressive annual event, held in the Royal Plaza near the equestrian statue of King Chulalongkorn. Dressed in colourful uniforms, amid much pomp and ceremony, members of the elite Royal Guards swear allegiance to the King and march past members of the Royal Family.

The King’s Birthday Celebrations 5 December

King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the world’s longest reigning monarch is well beloved and deeply respected by all Thais old and young. The occasion of his royal birthday provides his loyal subjects the opportunity to express their reverence for him. All over the country, buildings and homes are elaborated and the area around the Grand Palace is spectacularly illuminated.

2011-06-02T04:36:00.000-07:00

Off to Bandar Seri Begawan.

The photos are: 1) the Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin Mosque; 2) a night view of the Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin Mosque; 3) the Ceremonial Ship beside the Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin Mosque; 4) Street scenery, Jalan Sultan; 5) the Malay Technology Museum at Kota Batu; 6) a street in Gadong, the main shopping district of Bandar Seri Begawan; 7) the Brunei Museum; 8) a Memorial opposite Kampong Ayer; 9) the Tomb of the late Sultan Sharif Ali, also known as Sultan Berkat, the third Sultan of Brunei; 10) the Royal Regalia Building; 11) an exhibit in the front of the Royal Regalia Building; 12) Brunei Darussalam's sculpture at Persiaran Damuan; 13) the Sungei Brunei (Brunei river); 14) boats docked on the Kampong Ayer; 15) a larger view of the Kampong Ayer; and 16) water taxis awaiting passengers near Jalan MacArthur.

Bandar Seri Begawan, with an estimated population 140,000 (as of 2010), is the capital and largest city of the Sultanate of Brunei. The urban area has a population of 276,000 people.

Habitation on the banks of the Brunei River can be traced back to the 7th century where there had been settlements similar to those in Kampong Ayer, located on areas close to the present site of the Brunei Museum. Seri Begawan was named after the Sultan's late father Sir Omar Ali Saifuddien on 5 October 1970, its original name being Bandar Brunei. Begawan is a name given to Bruneian monarchs who have abdicated, originally coming from the Sanskrit word for "god": bhagavān. Seri also comes from the honorific Sanskrit word Sri. Bandar, comes from Persian via Indian languages and means "port" or "haven" (bandar means "town" in Malay).
On 1 August 2007, The Sultan of Brunei gave consent for the extension of Bandar Seri Begawan from 12.87 square kilometres to 100.36 square kilometres.

The capital is connected to Bus of Bandar Seri Begawan the western part of the country by road. To get to the eastern part of Brunei (Temburong) it is necessary to travel through Sarawak which is in Malaysia, via the town of Limbang which is accessed by the Kuala Lurah Bus terminal. To get to Bandar Seri Begawan from the west, access is via Miri town in Sarawak via the Sungai Tujuh Bus terminal and then along the coastal highway. The main bus station in the city is located in Jalan Cator underneath a multi-story car park. There are six bus routes servicing Bandar Seri Begawan area; the Central Line, Circle Line, Eastern Line, Southern Line, Western Line and Northern Line. The buses operate from 6.30 am till 6.00pm except for Bus No. 1 and 20 which have extended to the night. All bus routes begin and terminate their journey at the main bus terminal. Buses heading to other towns in Brunei such as Tutong, Seria and Kuala Belait also depart from the main bus terminal and Taxicab.

Brunei International Airport serves the whole country. It is 11 km from the town centre and can be reached in 10 minutes via the Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah Highway. Airlines flying into the airport include Royal Brunei Airlines, Singapore Airlines, Malaysian Airlines, Air Asia, Cebu Pacific and Thai Airways International.

A water taxi service known as 'penambang' is used for transportation between downtown Bandar Seri Begawan and Kampong Ayer. Water taxis are the most common means of negotiating the waterways of Kampung Ayer. They can be hailed from the numerous "docking parts" along the banks of the Brunei River. Fares are negotiable. Regular water taxi and boat services depart for Temburong between 7:45 am and 4 pm daily, and also serve the Malaysian towns of Limbang, Lawas, Sundar and Labuan. A speedboat is used for passengers traveling to Penamdang Ferry Service and from Bangar and Limbang.

Mosques:
The Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin Mosque - Built in 1958, features a golden dome and an interior of Italian marble walls, carpeting and an elevator. It also has tunnels, which are used by the Sultan on journeys through the town.
Jame'asr Hassanil Bolkiah Mosque - This mosque is the largest and is one of the most magnificent looking mosques in Brunei. It was built to commemorate the 25th anniversary His majesty the Sultan reign. It is locally known as the Kiarong mosque.

Historical Sites:
The Royal Ceremonial Hall or Lapau - Located in Jalan Kianggeh the Lapau (Royal Ceremonial Hall) is used for royal traditional ceremonies. It was here that His Majesty the Sultan, Hassanal Bolkiah was crowned on 1 August 1968. The interior of the Lapau and Sultan's throne are decorated in exquisite gold. Within the precincts of the Lapau is the Dewan Majlis where the legislative assembly used to sit. Official permission is required by visitors to enter this building. With the completion of the new legislative council building in Jalan Mabohai, The Lapau will soon become a symbol of the Sultanate's constitutional history.

Late sultan Bolkiah's tomb in Kota Batu
Late sultan Sharif Ali's tomb in Kota Batu

The Royal Mausoleum (Makam Di-Raja)- Located away from on the banks of Sungei Brunei behind the department store Soon Lee Megamart at Mile One, Jalan Tutong, the Royal Mausoleum and the graveyard have been used by succeeding generations of Sultans. Inside the Mausoleum itself are the remains of the last four Sultans, Haji Sir Muda Omar Ali Saifuddin (1950–1967), who died in 1986, Ahmad Tajuddin Ibnu Sultan Muhammad Jamalul Alam (1924–1950), Muhammad Jamalul Alam Ibnu Sultan Hashim (1906–1924), and Hashim Jalilul Alam Putera Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin II (1885–1906). Other members of the royal families from those times are also buried there.

Museums:
Located on an archaeological site at Kota Batu, Brunei museum is the largest in the country.Brunei Museum (Muzium Brunei) - Located on an archeological site at Kota Batu about 5 km from Bandar Seri Begawan, this museum is the largest in the country. It was first established in 1965 and occupied its present site since 1970. Officially opened in 1972, the museum focuses on Islamic history, natural history, Brunei artifacts and customs, ceramics and the oil industry of Brunei. The museum is reachable by public transport.

The Malay Technology Museum (Muzium Teknologi Melayu) - Malay Technology Museum is located next to the Brunei Museum at Kota Batu. The building was donated by the Royal Dutch/Shell Group of companies, in conjunction with the Sultanate's independence in 1984. The museum was officially opened by His Majesty the Sultan on 29 February 1988.

The Royal Regalia Building - Located at Jalan Sultan, this museum is devoted to His Majesty the Sultan, Hassanal Bolkiah. The main gallery displays the coronation and Silver Jubilee Chariots, gold and silver ceremonial armory and traditional jewellery encrusted coronation crowns. A collection of documents that chronicles His Majesty's life up to the coronation together with the constitutional history gallery is also housed in the same building.

The Brunei History Center - Located at Jalan Sultan next to the Royal Regalia building is the Brunei history center. The center was opened in 1982 with a brief to research the history of Brunei. Much of that work has been establishing the genealogy and history of the Sultans and Royal Family. The public display has a wealth of information on these subjects including replicas and brass rubbings of tombs. A flow chart giving the entire lineage of the Brunei Sultans can be found at the entrance.

Brunei Stamp Gallery - The recently opened Brunei Stamp Gallery is located inside the post office building in Jalan Sultan.

Bubongan Duabelas - The name which translates to the House of Twelve Roofs is located in Jalan Residency. It was built in 1906 and was formerly the official residence of British residents and high commissioners in Brunei. It is one of the oldest surviving building in Bandar Seri Begawan. It now serves as a gallery that exhibits the long standing relationship between the Sultanate and the United Kingdom
The Arts and Handicrafts Center - Located at Jalan Residency it was opened in 1980. Brunei's fine arts and crafts date back to centuries and are part of the nation's proud heritage. The Arts and Handicrafts Center conducts courses in silverware, brassware, woodcarving, songkok-making, weaving and basketry.

Kampong Ayer:
The city incorporates nearby Kampong Ayer, 'water village' , which has houses on stilts and stretches about 8 km along the Brunei river (Sungei Brunei). It is a well preserved national heritage site, the largest of its kind in the world with approximately 30,000 residents. The Kampong is over 1,000 years old. The name Venice of the East was coined by Antonio Pigafetta in honor of the water village he encountered at Kota Batu (just east of city's central business district). Pigafetta was on Magellan's voyages in 1521.

Self contained, the water village is equipped with schools, police stations, clinics, a waterborne fire brigade and mosques. Kampong Ayer existed since the 10th century A.D, is actually a cluster of villages, each with their own village leader (head of the villages), or Ketua Kampong. The villages are connected by a complex web of walkways and bridges. Kampong Ayer's historical importance lies in the fact that the Sultanate's civilization started here with fishing as one of the main livelihoods of the villages. There was a concentration of skilled craftsmen producing handicrafts from brass, silver and wood, hence granting the water village a status of commercial and social importance.

The skills of these craftsmen can be viewed at The Kampong Ayer Cultural & Tourism Gallery. The construction of the gallery was started in August 2007 and it was completed in June 2009 with an enclosed area of 565 sq meters. Some unique treasures of the Kampong Ayer over its illustrious history are exhibited in 5 mini-galleries within the building.

Education:
All levels of education are available in Bandar Seri Begawan from kindergarten to the tertiary level. The Universiti Brunei Darussalam, established on 28 October 1985, only a year after the Sultanate regained full independence, is located four and a half kilometres from the city center. It is the oldest and also the largest university in Brunei in terms of student enrollment and curriculum offered. The Sultanate's second university, Universiti Islam Sultan Sharif Ali, is also located in Bandar Seri Begawan's suburb of Gadong. It was established on 1 January 2007 as an Islamic university.

Higher Educational Institutes in Bandar Seri Begawan include Maktab Sains Paduka Seri Begawan Sultan (College of Science, Paduka Seri Begawan Sultan), Institute Teknologi of Brunei, Maktab Jururawat Pengiran Anak Puteri Rashidah Sa'adatul Bolkiah (the only nursing college in Brunei), Maktab Teknik Sultan Saiful Rijal (College of Technical Sultan Saiful Rijal), and Pusat Tingkatan Enam Meragang (Meragang Sixth Form Centre).

Schools in the capital include Chung Hwa Middle School, St. George's School, St. Andrew's School, International School Brunei (ISB), Jerudong International School, Kolej Universiti Perguruan Ugama Seri Begawan, and Institut Tahfiz Al Quran Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah (ITQSHHB).

2011-06-01T04:31:00.000-07:00

Today we are going to see what is in Bamako, Mali.

The photos are: 1) a view of Bamako on the Niger River; 2) a panorama of Bamako; 3)the Pont des Martyrs (the Martyrs Bridge); 4) the Avenue Al Qoods in central Bamako; 5) a traffic view of Bamako (looking north from the old bridge); 6) a second view of the Pont des Martyrs; 7) the Bamako Grand Mosque; 8) the Place de la liberté; 9) the Sotramas in Bamako; 10)the Pyramide du souvenir; 11) the Place des explorateurs; 12) the Place Abdoul Karim Camara; 13) the Monument de la paix; 14) the Al Quoods Monument; 15) the Bamako Cathedral; 16) the BCEAO Tower; 17) the Independence Monument; 18) the Hamdallaye obelisk; and 19) Craft sellers set up their wares at the "zone artisanal" in Bamako city centre.

Bamako, is the capital and largest city of Mali, and currently estimated to be the fastest growing city in Africa (sixth fastest in the world). It is located on the Niger River, near the rapids that divide the Upper and Middle Niger Valleys, in the southwestern part of the country. Bamako is the nation's administrative center as well as a cercle, with a river port located in nearby Koulikoro, and a major regional trade and conference center. Bamako is the seventh largest West African urban center after Lagos, Abidjan, Kano, Ibadan, Dakar and Accra. Manufactures include textiles, processed meat, and metal goods. There is commercial fishing on the Niger River.

The area of the city has been continuously inhabited since the Palaeolithic era for more than 150,000 years. The fertile lands of the Niger River Valley provided the people with an abundant food supply and early kingdoms in the area grew wealthy as they established trade routes linking across west Africa the Sahara and leading to northern Africa and Europe. The early inhabitants traded gold, ivory, kola nuts and salt. By the 11th century the Empire of Ghana became the first kingdom to dominate the area. Bamako had become a major market town, and a centre for Islamic scholars, with the establishment of two universities and numerous mosques in medieval times.

The Mali Empire grew during the early Middle Ages and replaced Ghana as the dominant kingdom in west Africa, dominating Senegal, Gambia, Guinea and Mauritania. In 14th century the Mali Empire became increasingly wealthy because of the trade of cotton and salt. This was eventually succeeded by the Songhai Empire and in the 16th century Berber invaders from Morocco destroyed what remained of the kingdoms in Mali and trans-Saharan trade was taken over by sailors.

By the late 19th century, the French dominated much of western Africa, and in 1883, present-day Mali became part of the colony of French Sudan, and was its capital in 1908. Cotton and rice farming was encouraged through large irrigation projects and a new railroad connected Mali to Dakar on the Atlantic coast.[8] Mali was annexed then into French West Africa, a federation which lasted from 1895 to 1959.

Mali gained independence from France in April 1960, and the Republic of Mali was later established. At this time Bamako had a population of around 160,000. During the 1960s the country became socialist and Bamako was subject to Soviet investment and influence. However, the economy declined as state enterprises collapsed and unrest was widespread. Eventually Moussa Traoré led a successful coup and ruled Mali 23 years. However his rule was characterised by severe droughts and poor government management and problems of food shortages.

In the late 1980s the people of Bamako and Mali campaigned for a free market economy and multiparty democracy. In 1990, the National Congress for Democratic Initiative (Congrès National d'Initiative démocratique, CNID) was set up by the lawyer Mountaga Tall, and the Alliance for Democracy in Mali (Alliance pour la démocratie au Mali, ADEMA) by Abdramane Baba and historian Alpha Oumar Konaré. These with the Association des élèves et étudiants du Mali (AEEM) and the Association Malienne des Droits de l'Homme (AMDH) aimed to oust Moussa Traoré. Under the old constitution, all labor unions had to belong to one confederation, the National Union of Malian Workers (UNTM). When the leadership of the UNTM broke from the government in 1990, the opposition grew. Groups were driven by paycuts and layoffs in the government sector, and the Malian government acceding to pressure from international donors to privatise large swathes of the economy that had remained in public hands even after the overthrow of the socialist government in 1968. Students, even children, played an increasing role in the protest marches in Bamako, and homes and businesses of those associated with the regime were ransacked by crowds.

On 22 March 1991 a large-scale protest march in central Bamako was violently suppressed, with estimates of those killed reaching 300. Four days later a military coup deposed Traoré. The Comité de Transition pour le Salut du Peuple was set up, headed by General Amadou Toumani Touré. Alpha Oumar Konari officially became president on April 26, 1992.

Communes and neighborhoods:
Commune I has a population of 256,216 people and covers an area of 34.26 km². It is bounded to the north by the rural commune of Djalakorodji (Kati Cercle), west by the Commune II, north-east by the rural commune of Sangarebougou (Kati Cercle), on the east by the rural commune of Gabakourou and south by the Niger River. Nine neighborhoods comprise this commune: Banconi, Boulkassombougou, Djelibougou, Doumanzana Fadjiguila, Sotuba Korofina North and South Korofina Sikoroni.

Commune II has a population of 160,680 people and covers an area of 23 km². It is bounded to the east by the backwater of Korofina at the west foot of the Point G hill, and to the south by Niger River. The municipality has eleven neighborhoods: Niaréla (the oldest), Bagadadji, Medina-Coura, Bozola, Missira, Hippodrome, Quinzambougou, Bakaribougou, TSF, Industrial Area and Bougouba. The area is the most important in the industry sector in Bamako.

Commune III has a population of 119,287 people and covers an area of 23 km². It is bounded on the north by the Kati, east by the Boulevard du Peuple, which separates it from the Commune II, south by the portion of the Niger River, between the Pont des Martyrs and the Motel de Bamako, and west by the Farako River and Avenue Cheick Zayed El Mahyan Ben Sultan with the neighborhood of ACI-2000. Commune III is the administrative and commercial center of Bamako. It accommodates in particular the two largest markets in the capital, the Grand Market and Didida. Twenty neighborhoods make up this commune and the villages pf Koulouninko and Sirakorodounfing were attached to the Commune III.

Commune IV has a population of 200,000 people (2001) and covers an area of 36.768 km². It is bounded to the east by Commune III, north, west by Kati Cercle and south by the left bank of the Niger River. Commune IV consists of eight neighborhoods: Taliko, Lassa, Sibiribougou, Djikoroni Para, Sébénikoro, Hamdallaye, Lafiabougou and Kalabambougou.

Commune V has a population of 249,727 people and covers an area of 41 km². It is bounded to the north by the Niger River, south by the airport and the town of Coro-Kalanban, and to the east by the Commune VI and Niger. It consists of eight neighborhoods: Badalabougou, Sema I, Quartier Mali, Torokorobougou, Baco-Djicoroni, Sabalibougou, Daoudabougou and Kalaban-Coura.

Commune VI has a population of 600,000 people and covers an area of 88.82 km². This is the largest of the communes that make up Bamako. It consists of ten neighborhoods: Banankabougou, Djanékéla, Faladié, Magnambougou, Missabougou, Niamakoro, Sénou, Sogoniko, Sokorodji and Yrimadio.

Bamako contains the following neighborhoods (quartiers): ACI-2000, Badalabugu, Bajalan I, Bajalan II, Bako Jikoroni, Bagadaji, Bamako Kura, Bankoni, Bolibana, Bozola, Bugudani, Bulkasumbugu, Dar Salam, N'tomikorobougou, Dawdabugu, Dravela, Fajigila, Falaje, Garantigibugu, Jalakoroji, Janekela, Janjigila, Jelibugu, Jikoroni Para, Jumanzana, Hamdallaye, Hippodrome, Kalaban Koro, Kalaban Kura, Korofina, Kuluba, Kulubleni, Lafiabugu, Madina Kura, Magnambugu (Magnambugu Faso Kanu), Misabugu, Misira, Niarela, Ntomikorobugu, Point G, Quartier du Fleuve, Quartier Mali, Quinzanbugu, Sabalibugu I, Sabalibugu II, Safo, Same, Sangarebugu, Saranbugu, Sebeninkoro, Sikoroni, Sirakoro, Senu, Sibiribugu, Sokoniko, Sokoroji, Sotuba, Titibugu, Torokorobugu, TSF-Sans Fil, Wolofobugu, Yirimanjo, Zone Industrielle

Industry:
The traditional commercial centre of Bamako was located to the north of the river, and contained within a triangle bounded by Avenue du Fleuve, Rue Baba Diarra and Boulevard du Peuple. This area contains the Marché Rose and Street Market.

The downtown area is highly congested, polluted, and expensive, and urbanization is sprawling at a rapid pace within a radius of 30 km. The largest urbanized area now lies on the southern bank of the Niger River. A modern Central Business District is rapidly developing immediately west of the downtown area in the ACI-2000 district, taking advantage of a well-designed geometric layout, legacy of the old airport runways and taxiways. A large administrative area is being developed at the junction between ACI-2000 and the King Fadh Bridge, containing most of the state departments (ministries) and administrative services in a central location. Bamako is also the headquarters of many large companies and administrative institutions. Air Mali (formerly Compagnie Aérienne du Mali) has its head office in Bamako. Bamako received much investment by Saudi Arabia for decades which saw a number of important structures being built. In recent years, China has become an important investor in Bamako, developing its infrastructure and facilities.

Music:
A music boom in Bamako took off in the 1990s, when the vocalist Salif Keita and the singer-guitarist Ali Farka Touré achieved international fame. It attracted a number of tourists, record producers and aspiring musicians to the city to try to follow in their footsteps. It is common to see musicians in the streets with djembes and percussion bands playing traditional Bamana rhythms.

The range of ethnicities involved in Bamako's music scene are diverse, including singers and instrumentalists from Mali's myriad ethnic groups; the Tuaregs of the Sahara, the Sonrai of Timbuktu, the Malinkes from the border region south of Bamako, the Dogon cliff dwellers, the Wassalous near the Ivory Coast, the Fulas of central Mali etc. Bars and nightclubs have grown rapidly including Mr. Keita's Mofu and Oumou Sangare's Hotel Wassulu which featured Malian and other west African artists. Notable western artists such as Robert Plant, Ry Cooder, Bonnie Raitt, John Lee Hooker and the French Basque star Manu Chao have all visited Bamako to jam and record with notable local musicians.

Landmarks:
The National Library of Mali was first created by the Institut Français d'Afrique Noire, an arm of the French colonial government, in 1944. Following Mali's 1960 independence, this library became the Government Library; it would later be renamed again as the National Library of Mali. In 1968 the library was transferred from its initial home in Koulouba to Ouolofobougou, a section of Bamako. The library holds more than 60,000 works, including books, periodicals, audio documents, videos, and software. These materials are available free to the public, though a small subscription fee is required for borrowing privileges. The library also hosts some of the exhibits for African Photography Encounters, a biannual Bamako photography festival.

The Bamako Grand Mosque is located in the city centre of Bamako, situated north of the Niger River near the central Market (Grand Marche) and the colonial era Bamako Cathedral. It is one of the tallest structures in Bamako. Built on the site of a pre-colonial mud-brick mosque, the current mosque was built through funding from the Saudi Arabian government at the end of the 1970s. With its tall cement minarets built around a square central structure, the building is stylistically closer to Saudi religious structures than West African. The mosque is visible from much of the city and occasionally is opened to tourists.

The BCEAO Tower at 20 storeys is the tallest building in the West African nations. It sits of the north ("left") bank of the River Niger in the city centre of Bamako. The BCEAO Tower is the Malian headquarters of the Central Bank of West African States, which provides development banking and government financial and currency services in several Francophone West African nations. Classified as Neo-Sudanic architecture, it is modeled on the Sudano-Sahelian architecture of the famous mosques of Djenne and Timbuktu. The building is located in the busy Commune III neighbourhood, where "Avenue Moussa Tavele" meets the waterside boulevard between the two main Bamako bridges : King Fahd Bridge a block west and Martyrs Bridge three blocks east. Just to the east of the BCEAO complex, a park and formal garden marks where the diagonally running "Boulevard du Peuple" reaches the river. By contrast, small market gardens and launching points or river canoes lie along the river front. With the Hotel de l'Amitié and the Bamako Grand Mosque, the BCEAO Tower is one of three landmarks visible across most of the city. Also of note is the Bamako Cathedral.

The National Museum of Mali is an archeological and anthropological museum, presenting permanent and temporary exhibits on the prehistory of Mali, as well as the musical instruments, dress, and ritual objects associated with Mali's various ethnic groups. The National Museum began under French rule as the Sudanese Museum, part of the Institut Français d'Afrique Noire (IFAN) under Théodore Monod. It was opened on February 14, 1953, under the direction of Ukrainian archeologist Y. Shumowskyi. Archaeologist Y. Shumovskyi had worked in the museum for nine years, gathering half (nearly 3000) of today's finds.

With the independence of the Republic of Mali in 1960, the Sudanese Museum became the National Museum of Mali, with the new objectives of promoting national unity and celebrating Malian traditional culture. However, lack of financial means and absence of qualified personnel caused some deterioration in the museum's collections. On March 30, 1956, the National Museum moved into a new cemented structure, created by architect Jean-Loup Pivin from traditional Mayan designs. Since the 1996 election of former archaeologist Alpha Oumar Konaré to Mali's presidency, the museum's funding has increased considerably, becoming among the best in West Africa. The museum often hosts part of the biannual African Photography Encounters, photography festival held in Bamako since 1994.

Also of note is the Muso Kunda Museum, the Bamako Regional Museum, Bamako Zoo, the Bamako Botanical Gardens, the National Conference Center Tower (NCC), the Souvenir Pyramid, the Independence Monument, Al Quoods Monument, the triangular Monument de la paix, the Hamdallaye obelisk, the Modibo Keita Memorial and many other monuments, the Palais de la Culture Amadou Hampaté Ba and the Point G hill, containing caves with rock paintings.

In 1988, Bamako was the location of a WHO conference known as the Bamako Initiative that helped reshape health policy of Sub-Saharan Africa. The yearly held Budapest-Bamako rally has the endpoint in Bamako, with the Dakar Rally often passing through Bamako.

2011-05-26T05:09:00.000-07:00

Off to Baku, Azerbaijan.

The photos are: 1) the Azerbaijan Carpet Museum; 2) the Nizami Museum of Azerbaijan Literature; 3) Baku Boulevard; 4) The sculpture of Bahram Gur on Azneft Square; 5) the National Assembly of Azerbaijan; 6) The ancient site of Fire Temple at Surakhany and its surroundings; 7) a view of the Azerbaijan State Philharmonic Hall; 8) Baku Port; 9) the Government House of Baku; 10) The 13th century Bibi-Heybat Mosque; 11) the International Mugam Center of Azerbaijan in Baku Boulevard; 12) the Azerbaijan State Philharmonic Hall at night; 13) the Heydar Aliyev Palace; 14) the Baku TV Tower; 15) the Maiden Tower; and 16) the State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater.

Baku, sometimes spelled as Baki or Bakou, is the capital, largest city, and largest port of Azerbaijan and the Caucasus region. It is located on the southern shore of the Absheron Peninsula, that projects into the Caspian Sea. The city consists of two principal parts: the downtown and the old Inner City (21.5 ha). Baku's urban population at the beginning of 2009 was estimated at just over two million people.

Baku is divided into eleven administrative districts (raions) and 48 townships. Among these are the townships on islands in the Baku Bay and the town of Oil Rocks built on stilts in the Caspian Sea, 60 km (37 mi) away from Baku. The Inner City of Baku along with the Shirvanshah's Palace and Maiden Tower were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000. According to the Lonely Planet's ranking Baku is also amongst the world's top ten destinations for urban nightlife.

The city also serves as the main economic hub of Azerbaijan. Many sizeable Azerbaijani institutions have their headquarters there, including SOCAR, one of the world's top 100 companies. The Baku International Sea Trade Port, sheltered by the islands of the Baku Archipelago to the east and the Absheron Peninsula to the north, is capable of handling two million tons of general and dry bulk cargoes per year.

The first written evidence for Baku dates to the 1st century AD Much of its history since that time has been linked to various Achaemenid Empire.

The city became important after an earthquake destroyed Shamakhy in the 12th century, when the ruling Shirvanshah, Ahsitan I, chose Baku as the new capital. In 1501, Safavid Shah Ismail I laid siege to Baku. At this time the city was however enclosed within the lines of strong walls, which were washed by the sea on one side and protected by a wide trench on land. In 1540 Baku was again captured by the Safavid troops. In 1604 the Baku fortress was destroyed by Safavid shah Abbas I.

On 26 June 1723, after a lasting siege using cannons, Baku surrendered to the Russians. According to Peter the Great's decree the soldiers of two regiments (2,382 people) were left in the Baku garrison under the command of Prince Baryatyanski, the commandant of the city. In 1795, Baku was invaded by Agha Muhammad Khan Qajar to defend against tsarist Russia's ambitions to subjugate the South Caucasus. In the spring of 1796, by Catherine II's order, General Zubov's troops began a major campaign in Transcaucasia. Baku surrendered after the first demand of Zubov who had sent 6,000 troops to capture the city. On 13 June 1796 the Russian flotilla entered Baku Bay and a garrison of Russian troops was placed in the city. General Pavel Tsitsianov was appointed Baku's commandant. Later, however, Czar Paul I ordered him to cease the campaign and withdraw Russian forces. In March 1797 the tsarist troops left Baku but a new tsar, Alexander I, began to show a special interest in capturing Baku. In 1803, Tsitsianov reached an agreement with the Baku khan to compromise, but the agreement was soon annulled. On 8 February 1806, upon the surrendering of Baku, Huseyngulu khan of Baku stabbed and killed Tsitsianov at the gates of the city.

In 1813, Russia signed the Treaty of Gulistan with Persia, which provided for the cession of Baku and most of the Caucasus from Iran and their annexation by Russia.

Professor A.B. Wiliams Jackson of Columbia University in his work "From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam" (1911) writes: "Baku is a city founded upon oil, for to its inexhaustible founts of naphtha it owes its very existence, its maintenance, its prosperity...At present Baku produces one-fifth of the oil that is used in the world, and the immense output in crude petroleum from this single city far surpasses that in any other district where oil is found.^ Verily, the words of the Scriptures find illustration here : "the rock poured me out rivers of oil."

Oil is in the air one breathes, in one's nostrils, in one's eyes, in the water of the morning bath (though not in the drinking- water, for that is brought in bottles from distant mineral springs), in one's starched linen — everywhere. This is the impression one carries away from Baku, and it is certainly true in the environs."

The first oil well was mechanically drilled in the Bibi-Heybat suburb of Baku in 1846, though a number of hand-dug wells predate it. Large-scale oil exploration started in 1872, when Russian imperial authorities auctioned the parcels of oil-rich land around Baku to private investors. Within a short period of time Swiss, British, French, Belgian, German, Swedish and American investors appeared in Baku, among them were the firms of the Nobel brothers together with the family von Börtzell-Szuch (Carl Knut Börtzell, who also owned the Livadia Palace) and the Rothschild family. An industrial oil belt, better known as Black City, was established near Baku. By the beginning of the 20th century almost half of world production was being extracted in Baku.

In 1917, after the October revolution and amidst the turmoil of World War I and the breakup of the Russian Empire, Baku came under the control of the Baku Commune, which was led by veteran Bolshevik Stepan Shaumyan. Seeking to capitalize on the existing inter-ethnic conflicts, by spring 1918, Bolsheviks inspired and condoned civil warfare in and around Baku. During the infamous March Days, Bolsheviks and Dashnaks seeking to establish control over the Baku streets, faced with armed Muslim groups. Muslims suffered a crushing defeat by the united forces of the Baku Soviet and then felt the whole unbridled ferocity of Dashnak teams. Some 12 000 Azeri became the victims of the massacre carried out by radical Armenians and Bolshevik troops.

On 28 May 1918, the Azerbaijani faction of the Transcaucasian Sejm proclaimed the independent Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR) in Ganja. Shortly after, Azerbaijani forces, with support of the Ottoman Army of Islam led by Nuru Pasha, started their advance into Baku, eventually capturing the city from the loose coalition of Bolsheviks, Esers, Dashnaks, Mensheviks and British forces under the command of General Lionel Dunsterville on 15 September 1918. Thousands of Armenians in the city were massacred in revenge for the earlier March Days. Baku became the capital of the ADR. On 28 April 1920, the 11th Red Army invaded Baku and reinstalled the Bolsheviks, making Baku the capital of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic.

The city has many amenities that offer a wide range of cultural activities, drawing both from a rich local dramatic portfolio and an international repertoire. It also boasts many museums, most notably featuring historical artifacts and art. Many of the city's cultural sites were celebrated in 2009 when Baku was designated an Islamic Culture Capital. Baku also chosen to host Eurovision Dance Contest 2010.

Among Baku's prestigious cultural venues are Azerbaijan State Philharmonic Hall, Azerbaijan State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre. The main movie theatre is Azerbaijan Cinema. Festivals include the Baku International Film Festival, Baku International Jazz Festival, Novruz Festival, Gül Bayramı (Flower Festival) and the National Theater Festival. International and local exhibitions are provided in Baku Expo Center.

Baku has wildly varying architecture, ranging from the Old City core to modern buildings and the spacious layout of Baku port. Many of the city's most impressive buildings were built during the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic period, when architectural elements of the European styles were combined in eclectic style.Baku thus has an original and unique appearance, earning it a reputation as the 'Paris of the East'.

Late modern and postmodern architecture began to appear in the early 2000s. With economic development, old buildings such as Atlant House were razed to make way for new ones. Buildings with all-glass shells have appeared around the city, the most prominent examples being the SOCAR Tower and Flame Towers. These projects also brought attention of international media as notable programs as Discovery Channel's Extreme Engineering featured changes in the city.

Most of the walls and towers, strengthened after the Russian conquest in 1806, survived. This section is picturesque, with its maze of narrow alleys and ancient buildings: the cobbled streets past the Palace of the Shirvanshahs, two caravansaries, the baths and the Juma Mosque (which used to house the Azerbaijan National Carpet and Arts Museum, but is now a mosque again). The old town core also has dozens of small mosques, often without any particular sign to distinguish them as such.

In 2003, UNESCO placed the Inner City on the List of World Heritage in Danger, citing damage from a November 2000 earthquake, poor conservation as well as "dubious" restoration efforts.

Baku has large sections of greenery either preserved by the National Government or designated as green zones. The city, however, continues to lack a green belt development as economic activity pours into the capital, resulting in massive housing projects along the suburbs.

Baku Boulevard is a pedestrian promenade that runs parallel to Baku's seafront. The boulevard contains an amusement park, yacht club, musical fountain, statues and monuments. The park is popular with dog-walkers and joggers, and is convenient for tourists. It is adjacent to the newly built International Center of Mugham and the musical fountain.

Other prominent parks and gardens include Heydar Aliyev Park, Samad Vurgun Park, Narimanov Park, Alley of Honor and the Fountains Square. The Martyrs' Lane, formerly the Kirov Park, is dedicated to the memory of those who lost their lives during the Nagorno-Karabakh War and also to the 137 people killed on Black January.

Baku boasts a vibrant nightlife. Many clubs that are open until dawn can be found throughout the city. Clubs with an eastern flavor provide special treats of cuisine of Azerbaijan along with local music. Western-style clubs target younger, more energetic crowds. Most of the public houses and bars are located near Fountains Square and are usually open until the early hours of the morning.

Baku is home to restaurants catering to every cuisine and occasion. Restaurants range from being luxurious and expensive to ordinary and affordable.

In the Lonely Planet "1000 Ultimate Experiences", Baku was placed at the 8th spot among the top 10 party cities in the world.

The music scene in Baku can be traced back to ancient times and villages of Baku, generally revered as the fountainhead of meykhana and mugham in the Azerbaijan.

In recent years, the success of Azerbaijani performers such as AySel, Safura, Elnur Hüseynov and Arash in Eurovision has significantly boosted the profile of the Baku music scene, prompting international attention. Following the victory of Azerbaijan's representative Eldar & Nigar at the Eurovision Song Contest 2011, Baku will host the Eurovision Song Contest 2012.

2005 was a landmark in the development of jazz in the city. It has been home to legendary jazz musicians like Vagif Mustafazadeh, Aziza Mustafa Zadeh, Rafig Babayev and Rain Sultanov. Among Baku's prominent annual fairs and festivals is Baku International Jazz Festival, which includes the world's most identifiable jazz names.
Baku also has a thriving International Center of Mugham, which is located in Baku Boulevard and Buta Palace, one of the principal performing arts centers and music venues in the city.

The majority of Azerbaijan's media companies (including television, newspaper and radio, such as ANS, Azad Azerbaijan TV, Ictimai TV or Lider TV) are headquartered in Baku. The films The World Is Not Enough and The Diamond Arm are set in the city, while Amphibian Man includes several scenes filmed in Old City.

Out of the city's radio stations ANS ChM, Ictimai Radio, Radio Antenn, Burc FM, and Lider FM Jazz are some of the more influential competitors with large national audiences. ANS ChM was one of the first private and independent FM radio broadcasting service in the Caucasus and Central Asia regions when it was established in May 1994.

2011-05-25T05:17:00.000-07:00

Today we are going to visit Baghdad.

The photos are: 1) the Baghdad skyline with the Sheraton Ishtar; 2) Haifa Street, as seen from the Medical City Hospital across the Tigris River; 3) Qasr-Al-Khalifa or Abbasid Palace in Samarra; 4) the National Museum of Iraq; 5) a panoramic view of the ancient city of Babylon; 6) Baghdad International Airport; 7) Albunneya mosque in Al-Alawi district Baghdad; 8) Baghdad Tower; 9) Suq al-Ghazel (the Yarn Bazaar) Minaret; and 10) the Monument to the Unknown Soldier.

Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. With an estimated population between 7 and 7.5 million, it is the largest city in Iraq, the second largest city in the Arab World (after Cairo, Egypt), and the second largest city in Western Asia (after Tehran, Iran).

Located along the Tigris River, the city was founded in the 8th century and became the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate. Within a short time of its inception, Baghdad evolved into a significant cultural, commercial, and intellectual center for the Islamic World. This in addition to housing several key academic institutions (e.g. House of Wisdom) garnered the city a worldwide reputation as the "Center of Learning". Throughout the High Middle Ages, Baghdad was considered to be the largest city in the world with an estimated population of 1,200,000 people.[3] The city was largely destroyed at the hands of the Mongol Empire in 1258, resulting in a decline that would linger through many centuries due to frequent plagues and multiple successive empires. With the recognition of Iraq as an independent state (formerly the British Mandate of Mesopotamia) in 1938, Baghdad gradually regained some of its former prominence as a significant center of Arabic culture.

In contemporary times the city has often faced severe infrastructural damage, most recently due to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the subsequent state of war that lasted until 2010. The city is a frequent subject to insurgency activities and terrorist attacks.

In 762, Baghdad was established as a city by Abu Ja'far Abdallah ibn Muhammad al-Mansur. On 30 July 762 the caliph Al Mansur commissioned the construction of the city and it was built under the supervision of the Barmakids. Mansur believed that Baghdad was the perfect city to be the capital of the Islamic empire under the Abbasids. Mansur loved the site so much he is quoted saying, "This is indeed the city that I am to found, where I am to live, and where my descendants will reign afterward".

The city's growth was helped by its location, which gave it control over strategic and trading routes, along the Tigris. A reason why Baghdad provided an excellent location was the abundance of water and the dry climate. Water exists on both north and south ends of the city gates, allowing all households to have a plentiful supply, which was very uncommon during this time.

Baghdad eclipsed Ctesiphon, the capital of the Persian Empire, which was located some 30 km (19 mi) to the southeast. Today, all that remains of Ctesiphon is the shrine town of Salman Pak, just to the south of Greater Baghdad. Ctesiphon itself had replaced and absorbed Seleucia, the first capital of the Seleucid Empire. Seleucia had earlier replaced the city of Babylon.

In its early years the city was known as a deliberate reminder of an expression in the Qur'an, when it refers to Paradise. Four years before Baghdad's foundation, in 758, Mansur assembled engineers, surveyors, and art constructionists from around the world to come together and draw up plans for the city. Over 100,000 construction workers came to survey the plans; many were distributed salaries to start the building of the city. July was chosen as the starting time because two astronomers, Naubakht Ahvaz and Mashallah, believed that the city should be built under the sign of the lion, Leo. Leo is associated with fire and symbolises productivity, pride, and expansion.

The bricks used to make the city were 18 inches (460 mm) on all four sides. Abu Hanifa was the counter of the bricks and he developed a canal, which brought water to the work site for the use of both human consumption and the manufacturing of the bricks. Marble was also used to make buildings throughout the city, and marble steps led down to the river's edge.

The basic framework of the city consists of two large semicircles about 19 km (12 miles) in diameter. The city was designed as a circle about 2 km in diameter, leading it to be known as the "Round City". The original design shows as single ring of residential and commercial structures along the inside of the city walls, but the final construction added another ring inside the first. Within the city there were many parks, gardens, villas, and promenades. In the center of the city lay the mosque, as well as headquarters for guards. The purpose or use of the remaining space in the center is unknown. The circular design of the city was a direct reflection of the traditional Persian Sasanian urban design. The Sasanian city of Gur in Fars, built 500 years before Baghdad, is nearly identical in its general circular design, radiating avenues, and the government buildings and temples at the centre of the city. This style of urban planning contrasted with Ancient Greek and Roman urban planning, in which cities are designed as squares or rectangles with streets intersecting each other at right angles.

The four surrounding walls of Baghdad were named Kufa, Basra, Khurasan, and Damascus; named because their gates pointed in the directions of these destinations. The distance between these gates was a little less than 1.5 miles (2.4 km). Each gate had double doors that were made of iron; the doors were so heavy it took several men to open and close them. The wall itself was about 44 m thick at the base and about 12 m thick at the top. Also, the wall was 30 m high, which included merlons, a solid part of an embattled parapet usually pierced by embrasures. This wall was surrounded by another wall with a thickness of 50 m. The second wall had towers and rounded merlons, which surrounded the towers. This outer wall was protected by solid glacis, whichut of bricks and quicklime. Beyond the outer wall was a water filled moat.

In the middle of Baghdad, in the central square was the Golden Gate Palace. The Palace was the residence of the caliph and his family. In the central part of the building was a green dome that was 39 m high. Surrounding the palace was an esplanade, a waterside building, in which only the caliph could come riding on horseback. In addition, the palace was near other mansions and officer's residences. Near the Gate of Syria a building served as the home for the guards. It was made of brick and marble. The palace governor lived in the latter part of the building and the commander of the guards in the front. In 813, after the death of caliph Al-Mansur the palace was no longer used as the home for the caliph and his family. The roundness points to the fact that it was based on Arab. The two designers who were hired by al-Mansur to plan the city's design were Naubakht, a Zoroastrian who also determined that the date of the foundation of the city would be astrologically auspicious, and Mashallah, a Jew from Khorasan, Iran.

The Abbasid Caliphate was based on their being the descendants of the uncle of Muhammad and being part of the Quraysh tribe. They used Shi'a resentment, Khorasanian movement, and appeals to the ambitions and traditions of the newly conquered Persian aristocracy to overthrow the Umayyads. The Abbasids sought to combine the hegemony of the Arabic tribes with the imperial, court, ceremonial, and administrative structures of the Persians. The Abbasids considered themselves the inheritors of two traditions: the Arabian-Islamic (bearers of the mantle of Muhammad) and the Persian (successors to the Sassanid monarchs). These two things are evident from the construction, which is modeled after Persian structures and the need of Mansur to place the capital in a place that was representative of Arab-Islamic identity by building the House of Wisdom, where ancient texts were translated from their original language, such as Greek, to Arabic. Mansur is credited with the "Translation Movement" for this. Further, Baghdad is also near the ancient Sassanid imperial seat of Ctesiphon on the Tigris River.

Within a generation of its founding, Baghdad became a hub of learning and commerce. The House of Wisdom was an establishment dedicated to the translation of Greek, Middle Persian and Syriac works. Scholars headed to Baghdad from all over the Abbasid empire, facilitating the introduction of Greek and Indian science into the Arabic and Islamic world at that time. Baghdad was likely the largest city in the world from shortly after its foundation until the 930s, when it was tied by Córdoba. Several estimates suggest that the city contained over a million inhabitants at its peak. Many of the One Thousand and One Nights tales are set in Baghdad during this period.

By the 10th century, the city's population was between 1.2 million and 2 million. Baghdad's early meteoric growth eventually slowed due to troubles within the Caliphate, including relocations of the capital to Samarra (during 808–819 and 836–892), the loss of the western and easternmost provinces, and periods of political domination by the Iranian Buwayhids (945–1055) and Seljuk Turks (1055–1135).

The Seljuks were a clan of the Oghuz Turks from the Siberian steppes that converted to the Sunni branch of Islam. In 1040, they destroyed the Ghaznavids, taking over their land and in 1055, Tughril Beg, the leader of the Seljuks, took over Baghdad. The Seljuks expelled the Buyids dynasty of Shiites that ruled for some time and took over power and control of Baghdad. They ruled as Sultans in the name of the Abbasid caliphs (they saw themselves as being part of the Abbasid regime) Tughril Beg saw himself as the protector of the Abbasid Caliphs.

In 1058, Baghdad was captured by the Fatimids under the Turkish general Abu'l-Ḥārith Arslān al-Basasiri, an adherent of the Ismailis along with the 'Uqaylid Quraysh. Not long before the arrival of the Saljuqs in Baghdad, al-Basasiri petitioned to the Fatimid Imam-Caliph al-Mustansir to support him in conquering Baghdad on the Ismaili Imam's behalf. It has recently come to light that the famed Fatimid da'i al-Mu'ayyad al-Shirazi had a direct role in supporting al-Basasiri and helped the general to succeed in taking Mawṣil, Wāsit and Kufa. Soonafter, By December 1058, a Shi'i adhān (call to prayer) was implemented in Baghdad and a khutba (sermon) was delivered in the name of the Fatimid Imam-Caliph. Despite his Shi'i inclinations, Al-Basasiri received support from Sunnis and Shi'is alike, for whom opposition to the Saljuq power was a common factor.

On February 10, 1258, Baghdad was captured by the Mongols led by Hulegu, a grandson of Chingiz Khan (Genghis Khan) during the sack of Baghdad. Many quarters were ruined by fire, siege, or looting. The Mongols massacred most of the city's inhabitants, including the caliph Al-Musta'sim, and destroyed large sections of the city. The canals and dykes forming the city's irrigation system were also destroyed. The sack of Baghdad put an end to the Abbasid Caliphate, a blow from which the Islamic civilization never fully recovered.

At this point Baghdad was ruled by the Il-Khanids, the Mongol emperors of Iran. In 1401, Baghdad was again sacked, by Timur ("Tamerlane"). When his forces took Baghdad, he spared almost no one, and ordered that each of his soldiers bring back two severed human heads. It became a provincial capital controlled by the Jalayirid (1400–1411), Kara Koyunlu (1411–1469), Ak Koyunlu (1469–1508), and the Iranian Safavid (1508–1534) dynasties.

In 1534, Baghdad was captured by the Ottoman Turks. Under the Ottomans, Baghdad fell into a period of decline, partially as a result of the enmity between its rulers and Safavid Turks, which did not accept the Sunni control of the city. Between 1623 and 1638, it returned briefly to Iranian rule before falling back into Ottoman hands.

Baghdad has suffered severely from visitations of the plague and cholera, and sometimes two-thirds of its population has been wiped out.

For a time, Baghdad had been the largest city in the Middle East. The city saw relative revival in the latter part of the 18th century under a Mamluk government. Direct Ottoman rule was reimposed by Ali Ridha Pasha in 1831. From 1851-1852 and from 1861–1867, Baghdad was governed, under the Ottoman Empire by Mehmed Namık Pasha. The Nuttall Encyclopedia reports the 1907 population of Baghdad as 185,000. Aside from ethnically Arab Iraqis, the city was also home to a substantial ancient Jewish community, which comprised over a quarter of the city's population (this proportion would grow in later years)

Baghdad and southern Iraq remained under Ottoman rule until 1917, when captured by the British during World War I. From 1920, Baghdad became the capital of the British Mandate of Mesopotamia and, after 1932, Baghdad was the capital of the Kingdom of Iraq. Iraq was given formal independence in 1932 and increased autonomy in 1946. The city's population grew from an estimated 145,000 in 1900 to 580,000 in 1950 of which 140,000 (nearly a quarter) were Jewish. In the 1920s, Baghdad was 40 percent Jewish. Jews made up the largest single community in the city and controlled up to 95 per cent of business. Baghdad was also home to many prominent Jewish figures, such as Sassoon Eskell.

On 1 April 1941 members of the "Golden Square" and Rashid Ali staged a coup in Baghdad. Rashid Ali installed a pro-German and pro-Italian government to replace the pro-British government of Regent Abdul Ilah. On 31 May, after the resulting Anglo-Iraqi War and after Rashid Ali and his government had fled, the Mayor of Baghdad surrendered to British and Commonwealth forces. After the collapse, a pogrom (Farhud) took place against the Jewish population of Bagdhad, where around 175 Jews had been killed, one thousand injured, and 900 Jewish homes were destroyed.

On 14 July 1958, members of the Iraqi Army under Abdul Karim Kassem staged a coup to topple the Kingdom of Iraq. King Faisal II, former Prime Minister Nuri al-Said, former Regent Prince Abdul Ilah, members of the royal family, and others were brutally killed during the coup. Many of the victim's bodies were then dragged through the streets of Baghdad.

During the 1970s, Baghdad experienced a period of prosperity and growth because of a sharp increase in the price of petroleum, Iraq's main export. New infrastructure including modern sewerage, water, and highway facilities were built during this period. However, the Iran–Iraq War of the 1980s was a difficult time for the city, as money was diverted by Saddam Hussein to the army and thousands of residents were killed. Iran launched a number of missile attacks against Baghdad.

In 1991 and 2003, the Gulf War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq caused significant damage to Baghdad's transportation, power, and sanitary infrastructure as the US-led coalition forces launched massive aerial assaults in the city in the two wars.

2011-05-24T05:12:00.000-07:00

Let's go to Avarua in the Cook Islands. Not a lot on Avarua so I will put something in about the Cook Islands as well.

The photos are: 1) a beach on Rarotonga; 2) a float parade during the annual Maeva Nui celebrations; 3) the mountains of the East Coast; 4) an Avarua Market; 5) the beach at Paradise Inn; 6) the Parliament Building of the Cook Islands; and 7) Ara Maire Nui, the main street in Avarua.

Avarua is a town and district in the north of Rarotonga Island, the national capital of Cook Islands. It is equivalent to Te-au-o-tonga, one of three vaka (traditional tribal areas of Rarotonga) and had its own local government headed by a mayoress until its legal abolishment in February 2008.

The downtown area is located at sea level, below the towering peaks of Rarotonga (altitude 208 m). The town has several supermarkets, two banks, several restaurants and other shops specializing in the sale of black pearls and other handicrafts. The town's open air market is on Saturday, where you can find everything from brightly coloured pare'u (wrap around dresses), to flower garlands, fresh fish and tropical fruits. The town is served by Rarotonga International Airport. The population of Avarua District is 5,445 (census of 2006), who mainly make their living from tourism, trade, fishing and agriculture. The one main road in Avarua is Ara Maire Nui, usually referred to as Marine Drive or Main Street, which turns into the island-circling ring road Ara Tapu at both ends of town.

The Cook Islands are in the South Pacific Ocean, north-east of New Zealand, between French Polynesia and American Samoa. There are 15 major islands, spread over 2.2 million km² of ocean, divided into two distinct groups: the Southern Cook Islands, and the Northern Cook Islands of coral atolls. The islands were formed by volcanic activity; the northern group is older and consists of six atolls (sunken volcanoes topped by coral growth). The climate is moderate to tropical.

The Cook Islands were first settled in the 6th century CE by Polynesian people who migrated from nearby Tahiti, to the southeast. Spanish ships visited the islands in the 16th century; the first written record of contact with the Islands came with the sighting of Pukapuka by Spanish sailor Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira in 1595 who called it San Bernardo (Saint Bernard). Portuguese-Spaniard Pedro Fernández de Quirós, made the first recorded European landing in the islands when he set foot on Rakahanga in 1606, calling it Gente Hermosa (Beautiful People).

British navigator Captain James Cook arrived in 1773 and 1777 and named the islands the Hervey Islands; the name "Cook Islands", in honour of Cook, appeared on a Russian naval chart published in the 1820s.

In 1813, John Williams, a missionary on the Endeavour (not the same ship as that of Cook), made the first official sighting of the island of Rarotonga. The first recorded landing on Rarotonga by Europeans was in 1814 by the Cumberland; trouble broke out between the sailors and the Islanders and many were killed on both sides. The islands saw no more Europeans until missionaries arrived from England in 1821. Christianity quickly took hold in the culture and many islanders continue to be Christian believers today.

The Cook Islands became a British protectorate in 1888, due largely to community fears that France might occupy the territory as it had Tahiti. In 1901, the New Zealand Government decided to annex the country despite opposition from the country's traditional chiefs. As many of the islands were independent and ruled by local chiefs, the Cook Islands had no federal statutory law to decide the constitutional constraints regarding whether to agree to the country's annexation by the New Zealand Government. Nonetheless, the country remained a New Zealand protectorate until 1965, when the New Zealand Government decided to offer self governing status to its former colony. In that year, Albert Henry of the Cook Islands Party was elected as the first Prime Minister. Sir Albert Henry led the country until he was accused of vote-rigging. He was succeeded in 1978 by Tom Davis of the Democratic Party.

Today, the Cook Islands are essentially independent ("self-governing in free association with New Zealand") but New Zealand is tasked with overseeing the country's defence.

On 11 June 1980, the United States signed a treaty with the Cook Islands specifying the maritime border between the Cook Islands and American Samoa and also relinquishing its claim to the islands of Penrhyn, Pukapuka, Manihiki, and Rakahanga. In 1990 the Cook Islands signed a treaty with France which delimited the boundary between the Cook Islands and French Polynesia.

Woodcarving is a common art form in the Cook Islands. Sculpture in stone is much rarer although there are some excellent carvings in basalt by Mike Tavioni. The proximity of islands in the southern group helped produce a homogeneous style of carving but which had special developments in each island. Rarotonga is known for its fisherman's gods and staff-gods, Atiu for its wooden seats, Mitiaro, Ma'uke and Atiu for mace and slab gods and Mangaia for its ceremonial adzes. Most of the original wood carvings were either spirited away by early European collectors or were burned in large numbers by missionary zealots. Today, carving is no longer the major art form with the same spiritual and cultural emphasis given to it by the Maori in New Zealand. However, there are continual efforts to interest young people in their heritage and some good work is being turned out under the guidance of older carvers. Atiu, in particular, has a strong tradition of crafts both in carving and local fibre arts such as tapa. Mangaia is the source of many fine adzes carved in a distinctive, idiosyncratic style with the so-called double-k design. Mangaia also produces food pounders carved from the heavy calcite found in its extensive limestone caves.

The outer islands produce traditional weaving of mats, basketware and hats. Particularly fine examples of rito hats are worn by women to church. They are made from the uncurled immature fibre of the coconut palm and are of very high quality. The Polynesian equivalent of Panama hats, they are highly valued and are keenly sought by Polynesian visitors from Tahiti. Often, they are decorated with hatbands made of minuscule pupu shells which are painted and stitched on by hand. Although pupu are found on other islands the collection and use of them in decorative work has become a speciality of Mangaia. The weaving of rito is a speciality of the northern island of Penrhyn.

A major art form in the Cook Islands is tivaevae. This is, in essence, the art of handmade Island scenery patchwork quilts. Introduced by the wives of missionaries in the 19th century, the craft grew into a communal activity and is probably one of the main reasons for its popularity.

The Cook Islands has produced internationally recognised contemporary artists, especially in the main island of Rarotonga. Artists include painter (and photographer) Mahiriki Tangaroa, sculptors Eruera (Ted) Nia (originally a film maker) and master carver Mike Tavioni, painter (and Polynesian tattoo enthusiast) Upoko’ina Ian George, Aitutakian-born painter Tim Manavaroa Buchanan, Loretta Reynolds, Judith Kunzlé, Joan Rolls Gragg, Kay George (who is also known for her fabric designs), Apii Rongo, and multi-media, installation and community-project artist Ani O'Neil, all of whom currently live on the main island of Rarotonga. Atiuan-based Andrea Eimke is an artist who works in the medium of tapa and other textiles, and also co-authored the book 'Tivaivai - The Social Fabric of the Cook Islands' with British academic Susanne Kuechler. Many of these artists have studied at university art schools in New Zealand and continue to enjoy close links with the New Zealand art scene.

On Rarotonga, the main commercial galleries are Beachcomber Contemporary Art (Taputapuatea, Avarua) run by Ben Bergman, and The Art Gallery ('Arorangi). The Cook Islands National Museum also exhibits art.

2011-05-23T05:01:00.000-07:00

We are going to one of the world's most famous cities - Athens.

The photos are: 1) a panoramic view of the Parthenon; 2) a panoramic view of Kolonaki Square; 3) the Temple of Hephaestus; 4) the Zappeion in the National Gardens of Athens; 5) Omonoia Square; 6) Plaka, the old historical neighborhood of Athens; 7) the Hellenic Parliament; 8) the Acropolis Museum; 9) the Acropolis; 10) the Temple of Zeus; 11) the Philopappos Monument; and 11) a statue of Athena at the Academy of Athens.

Athens is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica periphery and it is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years.

The Greek capital has a population of 745,514 (in 2001) within its administrative limits and a land area of 39 km2 (15 sq mi). The urban area of Athens extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3,130,841 (in 2001 and a land area of 412 km2 (159 sq mi). According to Eurostat, the Athens Larger Urban Zone (LUZ) is the 7th most populous LUZ in the European Union (the 4th most populous capital city of the EU) with a population of 4,013,368 (in 2004).

A cosmopolitan metropolis, modern Athens is central to economic, financial, industrial, political and cultural life in Greece and it is rated as an alpha- world city. In 2008, Athens was ranked the world's 32nd richest city by purchasing power and the 25th most expensive in a UBS study.

Classical Athens was a powerful city-state. A centre for the arts, learning and philosophy, home of Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum, it is widely referred to as the cradle of Western civilization and the birthplace of democracy, largely due to the impact of its cultural and political achievements during the 5th and 4th centuries BC on the rest of the then known European continent.

The heritage of the classical era is still evident in the city, represented by a number of ancient monuments and works of art, the most famous of all being the Parthenon, widely considered a key landmark of early Western civilization. The city also retains a vast variety of Roman and Byzantine monuments, as well as a smaller number of remaining Ottoman monuments projecting the city's long history across the centuries. Athens is home to two UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the Acropolis of Athens and the medieval Daphni Monastery. Landmarks of the modern era, dating back to the establishment of Athens as the capital of the independent Greek state in 1833, include the Hellenic Parliament (19th century) and the Athens Trilogy consisting of the National Library of Greece, the Athens University and the Academy of Athens. Athens was the host city of the first modern-day Olympic Games in 1896, and 108 years later it welcomed home the 2004 Summer Olympics. Athens is home to the National Archeological Museum, featuring the world's largest collection of ancient Greek antiquities, as well as the new Acropolis Museum.

The oldest known human presence in Athens is the Cave of Schist which has been dated to between the 11th and 7th millennium BC.[14] Athens has been continuously inhabited for at least 7000 years. By 1400 BC the settlement had become an important centre of the Mycenaean civilization and the Acropolis was the site of a major Mycenaean fortress whose remains can be recognised from sections of the characteristic Cyclopean walls. Unlike other Mycenaean centers, such as Mycenae and Pylos, it is not known whether Athens suffered destruction in about 1200 BC, an event often attributed to a Dorian invasion, and the Athenians always maintained that they were "pure" Ionians with no Dorian element. However, Athens, like many other Bronze Age settlements, went into economic decline for around 150 years following this.

Iron Age burials, in the Kerameikos and other locations, are often richly provided for and demonstrate that from 900 BC onwards Athens was one of the leading centres of trade and prosperity in the region; as were Lefkandi in Euboea and Knossos in Crete. This position may well have resulted from its central location in the Greek world, its secure stronghold on the Acropolis and its access to the sea, which gave it a natural advantage over inland rivals such as Thebes and Sparta.

Classical Athens became the leading city of Ancient Greece in the 5th century BC, with its cultural achievements laying the foundations of Western civilization. It was eventually overcome by its rival city-state of Sparta. By the end of Late Antiquity the city experienced decline followed by recovery in the second half of the Middle Byzantine Period (9th–10th centuries AD), and was relatively prosperous during the Crusades, benefiting from Italian trade. In 1453 it was conquered by the Ottoman Empire and entered a long period of decline.

Following the Greek War of Independence, Athens was chosen as the capital of the newly independent Greek state in 1834, largely due to historical and sentimental reasons. At the time it was a town of modest size built around the foot of the Acropolis. The first King of Greece, Otto of Bavaria, commissioned the architects Stamatios Kleanthis and Gustav Schaubert to design a modern city plan fit for the capital of a state.

The first modern city plan consisted of a triangle defined by the Acropolis, the ancient cemetery of Kerameikos and the new palace of the Bavarian king (now housing the Greek Parliament), so as to highlight the continuity between modern and ancient Athens. Neoclassicism, the international style of this epoch, was the architectural style through which Bavarian, French and Greek architects such as Hansen, Klenze, Boulanger or Kaftantzoglou designed the first important public buildings of the new capital. In 1896 Athens hosted the first modern Olympic Games. During the 1920s a number of Greek refugees, expelled from Asia Minor after the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922), swelled Athens' population; nevertheless it was most particularly following World War II, and from the 1950s and 1960s, that the population of the city exploded, and Athens experienced a gradual expansion in all directions. In the 1980s it became evident that smog from factories and an ever increasing fleet of automobiles, as well as a lack of adequate free space due to congestion, had evolved into the city's most important challenge. A series of anti-pollution measures taken by the city's authorities in the 1990s, combined with a substantial improvement of the city's infrastructure (including the Attiki Odos motorway, the expansion of the Athens Metro, and the new Athens International Airport), considerably alleviated pollution and transformed Athens into a much more functional city.

The city of Athens contains a variety of different architectural styles, ranging from Greco-Roman, Neo-Classical, to modern. They are often to be found in the same areas, as Athens is not marked by a uniformity of architectural style. Many of the most prominent buildings of the city are either Greco-Roman or neo-classical in styling. Some of the neo-classical structures to be found are public buildings erected during the mid-19th century, under the guidance of Theophil Freiherr von Hansen and Ernst Ziller, and include the Athens Academy, Athens City Hall, Greek Parliament, Old Parliament (1875–1932) (Now the National Historical Museum), University of Athens, and Zappeion Hall.

Beginning in the 1930s, the International style and other architectural movements such as Bauhaus and Art Deco began to exert an influence on almost all Greek architects, and many buildings both public and private were constructed in accordance with these styles. Localities with a great number of such buildings include Kolonaki, and some areas of the centre of the city; neighbourhoods developed in this period include Kypseli.

In the 1950s and 1960s during the vast extension and development of Athens, modern architecture played a very important role. The centre of Athens was largely rebuilt, leading to the demolition of a number of neoclassical buildings. The architects of this era employed materials such as glass, marble and aluminium, while some blended modern and classical elements. After World War II, internationally known architects to have designed and built in the city included Walter Gropius, with his design for the US Embassy, and, amongst others, Eero Saarinen, in his postwar design for the east terminal of the Ellinikon Airport.

The city is one of the world's main centres of archaeological research. Apart from national institutions, such as Athens University, the Archaeological Society, several archaeological Museums (including the National Archaeological Museum, the Cycladic Museum, the Epigraphic Museum, the Byzantine Museum, as well as museums at the ancient Agora, Acropolis, and Kerameikos), the city is also home to the Demokritos laboratory for Archaeometry as well as several regional and national archaeological authorities that form part of the Greek Department of Culture. Additionally, Athens hosts 17 Foreign Archaeological Institutes which promote and facilitate research by scholars from their respective home countries. As a result, Athens has more than a dozen archaeological libraries and three specialized archaeological laboratories, and is the venue of several hundred specialized lectures, conferences and seminars, as well as dozens of archaeological exhibitions, per year. At any given time, Athens is the (temporary) home to hundreds of international scholars and researchers in all disciplines of archaeology.

The most important museums of Athens include: The National Archaeological Museum, the largest archaeological museum in the country, and one of the most important internationally, as it contains a vast collection of antiquities; its artifacts cover a period of more than 5,000 years, from late Neolithic Age to Roman Greece; The Benaki Museum with its several branches for each of its collections including ancient, Byzantine, ottoman-era and Chinese art and beyond; The Byzantine and Christian Museum, one of the most important museums of Byzantine art; The Numismatic Museum, housing a great collection of ancient and modern coins; The Museum of Cycladic Art, home to an extensive collection of Cycladic art, including the famous figurines made of white marble; and finally the New Acropolis Museum, opened in 2009, and replacing the old museum on the Acropolis. The new museum has proved considerably popular; almost one million people visited during the summer period June–October 2009 alone. A number of smaller and privately owned museums focused on Greek culture and arts are also to be found.

1896 brought forth the revival of the modern Olympic Games, by Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin. Thanks to his efforts, Athens was awarded the first modern Olympic Games. In 1896, the city had an approximate population of 123,000 and the event helped boost the city's international profile. Of the venues used for these Olympics, the Kallimarmaro Stadium, and Zappeion were most crucial. The Kallimarmaro is a replica of the ancient Athenian stadiums, and the only major stadium (in its capacity of 60,000) to be made entirely of white marble from Mount Penteli, the same material used for construction of the Parthenon.

The 1906 Summer Olympics, or the 1906 Intercalated games, were held very successfully in Athens. The intercalated competitions were intermediate games to the internationally organized olympics, and were meant to be organized in Greece. This idea later lost support from the IOC and these games were not made permanent.

Athens was awarded the 2004 Summer Olympics on 5 September 1997 in Lausanne, Switzerland, after having lost a previous bid to host the 1996 Summer Olympics, to Atlanta, United States. It was to be the second time Athens would have the honour of hosting the games, following the inaugural event of 1896. After an unsuccessful bid in 1990, the 1997 bid was radically improved, including an appeal to Greece's Olympic history. In the last round of voting, Athens defeated Rome with 66 votes to 41. Prior to this round, the cities of Buenos Aires, Stockholm and Cape Town had already been eliminated from competition, having received fewer votes.

2011-05-20T05:15:00.000-07:00

Okay. Let's head to Asunción.

The photos are: 1) the Asunción skyline; 2) Asunción at night; 3) the Palacio de López (the Lopez Presidential Palace); 4) the Paraguay River and Asunción skyline; 5) an Asunción street with the new buses; 6) the Citibank Tower; 7) the National Pantheon of the Heroes; 8) the Casa de la Independencia (House of the Independence); 9) the Municipal Theater "Ignacio A. Pane"; and 10) the Manzana de la Rivera (a museum-library-theater-cafe complex).

Asunción is the capital and largest city of Paraguay. The Spanish word asunción means assumption in English. It refers to the Assumption of Mary; the full name means The Very Noble and Loyal City of Our Lady Saint Mary of the Assumption.

The "Ciudad de Asunción" is an autonomous capital district not part of any department. The metropolitan area, called Gran Asunción, includes the cities of San Lorenzo, Fernando de la Mora, Lambaré, Luque, Mariano Roque Alonso, Ñemby, San Antonio, Limpio, Capiatá and Villa Elisa, which are part of the Central Department. The Asunción metropolitan area has more than 2 million inhabitants. It is the home of the national government, principal port, and the chief industrial and cultural centre of the country. Local manufacturing production includes footwear, textiles, and tobacco products.

Asunción is one of the oldest cities in South America and the longest continually inhabited area in the River Plate Basin; for this reason that it is known as "Mother of Cities". It was from here that the colonial expeditions departed to found other cities, including the second foundation of Buenos Aires and of other important cities such as Villarrica, Corrientes, Santa Fe and Santa Cruz de la Sierra.

The site of the city may have been first visited by Spanish conqueror Juan de Ayolas, on his way north, up the Paraguay River, looking for a passage to the mines of Alto Perú (present-day Bolivia). Later, Juan de Salazar y Espinosa and Gonzalo de Mendoza, relative of Pedro de Mendoza, were sent in search of Ayolas, but were unable to find him. On his way up and then down the river, de Salazar stopped briefly at a bay in the left bank to resupply his ships. He found the natives friendly, and decided to found a fort there, in August, 1537. As customary, he named it according to the religious feast of that day: for August 15, Nuestra Señora de la Asunción (Our Lady of the Assumption), honoring the feast day of the Assumption. This fort became a city with the establishment of the Cabildo (civilian administration) on 16 September 1541.

In 1541, natives destroyed Buenos Aires, and the Spaniards fled to Asunción. Thus, the city became the center of a large Spanish colonial province comprising part of Brazil, present-day Paraguay and northeastern Argentina: the Giant Province of the Indies. In 1603 Asunción was the seat of the First Synod of Asunción, which set guidelines for the evangelization of the natives in their lingua franca, Guaraní.

In 1731, an uprising under José de Antequera y Castro was one of the first rebellions pene against Spanish colonial rule. The uprising failed, but it was the first sign of the independent spirit that was growing among the criollos, mestizos and natives of Paraguay. The event influenced the independence of Paraguay, which then materialised in 1811. The secret reunions between the independence leaders to plan an ambush against the Spanish Governor in Paraguay Bernardo de Velasco were held at the home of Juana María de Lara, in downtown Asunción. On the night of May 14 and May 15 the rebels succeeded and were able to force governor Velasco to surrender. Today, Lara's home is known as Casa de la Independencia (House of the Independence) and serves as a museum and historical building.

After Paraguay became independent, there was significant change in Asunción. Under the presidency of Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia roads were built throughout the city and the streets were named. However, it was during the presidency of Carlos Antonio López that Asunción (and Paraguay) progressed, as the new president implemented new economic policies. More than 400 schools, metallurgic factories and the first railroad service in South America were built during the López presidency. After López died, his son Francisco Solano López became the new president and led the country through the disastrous War of the Triple Alliance that lasted for five years. After the War of the Triple Alliance (1865–70), Asunción was occupied by Brazilian troops until 1876.

Many historians have claimed that this war provoked a steady downfall of the city and country, since it massacred two thirds of the country's population. Progress slowed down greatly afterwards, and the economy remained stagnated.

After the War of the Triple Alliance, Asunción began a slow recovery attempt. Towards the end of the 19th Century and during the early years of the 20th Century, a flow of immigrants from Europe and the Ottoman Empire came to the city. This led to a change in the appearance of the city as many new buildings were built and Asunción went through an era more prosperous than any since the war.

The city has a large number of both public and private schools. The best-known public schools are the Colegio Nacional de la Capital (which is one of the oldest schools in the city, founded in 1877), Colegio Nacional Presidente Franco and Colegio Nacional Asunción Escalada. The best-known private schools are Colegio Inmaculado Corazón de María, Salesianito, Colegio Cristo Rey, Colegio Internacional, Colegio San José, Colegio Santa Teresa de Jesús, American School of Asunción, Colegio Dante Alighieri, Colegio Santa Clara, Colegio Goethe and Colegio de la Asunción.

The main universities in the city are the Universidad Católica Nuestra Señora de la Asunción (private Catholic university) and the Universidad Nacional de Asunción (state-run). The Católica has a small campus in the downtown area next to the Cathedral and a larger campus in the Santa Ana neighborhood, outwards toward the adjoining city of Lambaré, while the Universidad Nacional has its main campus in the city of San Lorenzo, some 5 km eastward from Asunción. There are also a number of smaller privately run universities such as Uninorte, Universidad Americana and Universidad Autónoma de Asunción, among others.

The city is home to the Godoi Museum and the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (which contains old paintings from the 19th century), the Church of La Encarnación and the Metropolitan Cathedral, and the National Pantheon of the Heroes, a smaller version of Les Invalides in Paris, where many of the nation's heroes are entombed. Other landmarks include the Palacio de los López, the old Senate building (a modern building opened to house Congress in 2003), the Cathedral Metropolitana and the Casa de la Independencia (one of the few examples of colonial architecture remaining in the city).

Calle Palma is the main street downtown where several historical buildings, plazas, shops, restaurants and cafes are located. The "Manzana de la Rivera", located in front of the Presidential Palace, is a series of old traditional homes that have been restored and serve as a museum showcasing the architectural evolution of the city. The old railway station maintains the old trains that now are used in tourist trips to the cities of Luque and Areguá.

The nightlife revolves around two areas: one in the downtown part of the city and the other in the neighbourhoods of Manora and Las Carmelitas, a night full of stripclubs and bars. As it has been happening in many other parts of the world, cinemas have migrated into the main shopping malls.

Municipal Theater "Ignacio A. Pane"Asunción also hosts several symphony orchestras, and ballet, opera and theater companies. The most well known orchestras are the City of Asunción's Symphony Orchestra (OSCA), the National Symphony Orchestra and the Northern University Symphony Orchestra. Among professional ballet companies, most renowned are the Asunción Classic and Modern Municipal Ballet, the National Ballet and the Northern University Ballet. The main opera company is the Northern University Opera Company. A long-standing theater company is Arlequín Theater Foundation's. Traditional venues include the Municipal Theater, the Paraguayan-Japanese Center, the Central Bank's Great Lyric Theater, the Juan de Salazar Cultural Center, the Americas Theater, the Tom Jobim Theater, the Arlequín Theater and the Manzana de la Rivera.

Asunción also has luxurious malls that contain shops selling well-known brands. The biggest shopping malls are Shopping del Sol, which includes a Macy's-style department store; Mariscal López Shopping, Shopping Villa Morra in the central part of the city, and the Mall Excelsior downtown.

2011-05-19T05:19:00.000-07:00

Off to Astana, Kazakhstan.

The photos are: 1) the Khan Shatyry Entertainment Center; 2) the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation; 3) the Astana Parliament Buildings; 4) the Ak Orda Presidential Palace; 5) the Nur-Astana Mosque; 6) night frost in Astana in January, 2006; 7) the Kazakhstan Central Concert Hall; 8) Saryarqa Street; and 9) the Bayterek (a monument and observation tower).

Astana is the capital and second largest city (after Almaty) of Kazakhstan, with an officially estimated population of 708,794 as of 1 August 2010. It is located in the north-central portion of Kazakhstan, within Akmola Province, though administrated separately from the province as a federal city area.

Russian and Soviet eras:
A unit of Siberian cossacks from Omsk founded a huge fortress on the upper Ishim in 1824, which later became the town of "Akmolinsk". During the early 20th century, the town became a major railway junction, causing a major economic boom that lasted until the Russian Civil War.

Kazakhstan hosted in the Stalinist era a series of Gulag-like labour camps, in total 11 camps that housed up to hundreds of thousands of internees and their families. Outside Astana, there once stood the ALZHIR camp, a Russian acronym for the Akmolinskii Camp for Wives of Traitors of the Motherland, one of the most notorious in the Gulag archipelago, which was reserved for the spouses of those considered "enemies of the people" by the government under Joseph Stalin.

In 1961, it was renamed "Tselinograd" ("Virgin Lands City") and made capital of the Soviet Virgin Lands Territory (Tselinny Krai). The city was at the centre of the Virgin Lands Campaign led by Nikita Krushchev in the 1950s, in order to turn the state into a second grain producer for the Soviet Union. The high portion of Russian immigrants in this area, which later led to ethnic tension, can be traced to the influx of agricultural workers at this time. Additionally, many Russian-Germans were resettled here after being deported under Joseph Stalin at the beginning of World War II, when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union.

Independent Kazakhstan:
After Kazakhstan gained its independence in 1991, the city and the region were renamed "Aqmola", literally meaning "White Shrine".

In 1995, the city was designated as the future capital of the newly-independent country, and the capital was officially moved from Almaty on December 10, 1997. The new name, Astana, was bestowed in 1998.

Government officials cited several problems with keeping the capital in Almaty, such as the city's risk of seismic activity, insufficient room for expansion, and proximity to international borders. Additionally, parts of northern Kazakhstan are populated primarily by ethnic Russians, which raised fears of possible irredentist activity. Moving the capital to this area may have been an attempt to anchor it more closely with the rest of the country.

To some Kazakhs, the move remains controversial. Critics cite the city's isolated location in the center of the Kazakh steppe and the forbidding climate in winter. Financially, some resent the massive expenditure of public funds to build the new government complexes, as well as the continuing cost of airfare and hotel expenses for the many government workers who still live in Almaty.

Cityscape:
Astana can be divided largely into a few different areas. North of the railway line, which crosses Astana in an east-west direction, are industrial and poorer residential areas. Between the railway line and the river Ishim is the city center, where at present intense building activity is occurring. To the west and east are more elevated residential areas with parks and the new area of government administration to the south of the Ishim. Here many large building projects are underway; for example, the construction of a diplomat quarter, and a variety of different government buildings. By 2030, these quarters are to be completed. The original plans for the new Astana were drawn up by the late Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa. Astana's current chief planner, Vladimir Laptev, wants to build a Berlin in a Eurasian style. He has stated that a purely administrative capital such as Canberra is not one of his goals.

The old buildings that remained from the Soviet era are now being removed and replaced with totally new structures resulting in significant construction work throughout the city. President Nazarbayev has paid particular attention to Astana's architecture; most of the recently completed structures had been accredited to internationally acclaimed architects and designers such as Kisho Kurokawa or Norman Foster.

Bayterek is the most famous landmark in Astana. The legend behind this tower as a symbol is that it represents a poplar tree, where the magic bird Samuruk laid its egg. In the sphere on the top of Bayterek there is an imprint of president Nursultan Nazarbayev's hand. In front of the Bayterek Tower in summer 2010, the largest open-air art exhibition ever in Kazakhstan took place: About 2.2 million people saw the international exhibition of United Buddy Bears.

The Palace of Peace and Reconciliation has been conceived and designed by architect Sir Norman Foster and engineers Buro Happold and inaugurated in September 2006. It contains accommodations for different religions: Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism and other faiths. It also houses a 1,500- seat opera house, a national museum of culture, a new “university of civilization”, a library and a research center for Kazakhstan’s ethnic and geographical groups. This diversity is unified within the pure form of a pyramid, 62 meters high with a 62 x 62-meter base. The building is conceived as a global center for religious understanding, the renunciation of violence and the promotion of faith and human equality. The Pyramid of Peace expresses the spirit of Kazakhstan, where cultures, traditions and representatives of various nationalities coexist in peace, harmony and accord. Bathed in the golden and pale blue glow of the glass (colors taken from the Kazakhstan flag), 200 delegates from the world’s main religions and faiths will meet every three years in a circular chamber — based on the United Nations Security Council meeting room in New York. ; Height: 77 m (252.62 ft), total area: 25,500 sq.m.; Accommodates: Opera Hall for 1,500 seats, The Museum of National History, The Research Center of World Religions, Library of Spiritual Religious Literature, Exhibition and conference rooms.

The Kazakhstan Concert Hall has been conceived and designed by Italian architect Manfredi Nicoletti as a result of an International Competition and inaugurated by president Nursultan Nazarbayev in December 2009. The building shape is reminiscent of the petals of a flower. These "petals" create an imposing envelope which encloses and protects all the functions from the extreme climatic conditions of Astana. It houses one of world’s biggest Concert Halls for classical music with a total of 3,500 seats in vineyard conformation, two small music, cinema and conference halls with 400 and 200 seats each, restaurants, bars and a lobby of about 3000sqm. The main music hall has been designed to adapt to all kind of performances such as classical, pop and traditional music concerts, theatre, ballet, conferences and cinema, by means of a special false ceiling design and a system of acoustic curtains. The building is approximately 200m long and rises up to 40m high for a total of 55.000sqm. The structure of the external wall (the “petals”) are reinforced concrete. The external cladding is done with blue back-painted transparent glass panels inspired by the colour of the Kazakhstan flag.

Ak Orda (Kazakh, "the white horde") is the official workplace of the President of Kazakhstan. Ak Orda Presidential Palace was built in 2004 of monolithic concrete as a five-story building. The lining was performed using 20–40 cm thick Italian marble. The height of the building is 80 meters and the total area is 36,720 square meters. Ak Orda includes a yurt-like hall designed of marble and granite, a marble hall for summits and official visits by foreign-country representatives, and a golden hall for negotiations and private discussions between the head of the state and the leaders of other countries.

In December 2006, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev unveiled plans to build Khan Shatyry, a "giant, transparent tent", over an area of the city. The project was completed in July 2010. The tent is 150 meters high, and like the pyramid was designed by the British team of Norman Foster and Buro Happold.

Astana is home to FC Astana, a football (soccer) team in the Kazakhstan Premier League, which won the national championship in 2000, 2001 and 2006. The city is also home to the Astana Tigers basketball team who successfully took the 2004/2005 season title, as well as Barys Astana of the Kontinental Hockey League. In addition, Astana is a professional cycling team. They participated in the 2007 Tour de France wearing uniforms in Kazakhstani national colors, but were excluded during the race after the failed test of Alexander Vinokourov for illegal doping practises, and was banned from the 2008 race. Astana returned to the Tour de France in 2009 and won the overall Team Classification, with Alberto Contador and Lance Armstrong finishing first and third respectively. In 2010 Contador again won the Tour de France with the Astana team, but announced in August 2010 that he would be leaving the Astana team to join the Sunguard-SaxoBank team in 2011.

2011-04-28T04:54:00.001-07:00

Time to visit Asmara, Eritrea. I have to admit that I have never heard of this capital city or of Eritrea (bordered by Sudan and Ethiopia). Let's see what's there.

The photos are: 1) a daytime panoramic view of Asmara; 2) a nighttime panorama view; 3) the Asmara Palace Hotel; 4) St. Joseph's Cathedral; 5) a main street of Asmara; and 6) a festival being held by the Tigrinya people.

Asmara is the capital city and largest settlement in Eritrea, home to a population of around 579,000 people. At an elevation of 2,325 metres (7,628 ft), Asmara is on the edge of an escarpment that is both the northwestern edge of the Great Rift Valley and of the Eritrean highlands.

Although it would be easy to think of Asmara, the Eritrean capital, solely as an Italian built colonial city, its origins actually reach back some 700 years. The Tigringa and Tigre people live around there. Originally, it is said, there were four clans living in the Asmara area on the Kebessa Plateau: the Gheza Gurtom, the Gheza Shelele, the Gheza Serenser and Gheza Asmae. Encouraged by their women, the men united the four clans and defeated the bandits who preyed on the area. After the victory, a new name was given to the place, Arbaete Asmara which literally means, in the Tigrinya language, "the four are united." Eventually Arbaete was dropped and it has been called Asmara, though there is still a zone called Arbaete Asmara. It is now called the Italianized version of the word Asmara. The westernized version of the name is used by a majority of non-Eritreans, while the multilingual inhabitants of Eritrea and neighboring peoples remain loyal to the original pronunciation, Asmera. Another legend tells that in this region the Queen of Sheba gave birth to the son of Solomon, Menelik I.

The missionary Remedius Prutky passed through Asmara in 1751, and described in his memoirs that a church built there by Jesuit priests 130 years before was still intact.

Asmara, which was part of the independent kingdom of Medri Bahri, would briefly come under the occupation of the British backed and supported Yohannes IV of Ethiopia. He gave his trusted Ras Alula the title of governor of Medri Bahri.

Asmara acquired importance when it was occupied by Italy in 1889 and was made the capital city of Eritrea in preference to Massawa by Governor Martini in 1897. In the early 20th century, a railway line was built to the coast, passing through the town of Ghinda, under the direction of Carlo Cavanna. In both 1913 and 1915 the city suffered only slight damage in large earthquakes. In the late 1930s the Italians changed the face of the town, with a new structure and new buildings: Asmara was called Piccola Roma (Little Rome).

While Eritrea was under Italiian colonial rule, architecturally conservative early-20th-century Europeans used Asmara "to experiment with radical new designs." Nowadays the major part of buildings are of Italian origin, and shops still have Italian names (e.g., Bar Vittoria, Pasticceria moderna, Casa del formaggio, and Ferramenta).

Asmara was populated by a numerous Italian community and consequently the city acquired an Italian architectural look. The city of Asmara had a population of 98,000, of which 53,000 were Italian according to the Italian census of 1939. This fact made Asmara the main "Italian town" of the Italian empire in Africa. In all Eritrea the Italians were 75,000 in that year.

Many industrial investments were made by Italy in Asmara, but the beginning of World War II stopped the blossoming industrialization of the area.

Italy was defeated in 1941, and the British administered the city from 1941 to 1952. In 1952, the United Nations resolved to federate the former colony under Ethiopian rule. In 1961, emperor Haile Selassie I ended the "federal" arrangement and declared the territory to be the 14th province of the Ethiopian Empire.

The city was home to the US Army's Kagnew Station installation from 1943 until 1977.

In Asmara, the main language is Tigrinya. English, Arabic and Italian are also widely spoken and understood.

The city is home naib to the Eritrean National Museum and is known for its early 20th century buildings, including the Art Deco Cinema Impero, Cubist Africa Pension, eclectic Orthodox Cathedral and former Opera House, the futurist Fiat Tagliero Building, neo-Romanesque Roman Catholic Cathedral, and the neoclassical Governor's Palace. The city is adorned by Italian colonial villas and mansions, one prominent example being the World Bank Building. Most of central Asmara was built between 1935 and 1941, so effectively the Italians managed to build almost an entire city, in just six short years.[7] At this time, the dictator Benito Mussolini had great plans for a second Roman Empire in Africa. War cut this short, but his injection of funds created the Asmara of today, which supposedly was to be a symbol that Fascism worked and is an ideal system of government.

The city shows off most early 20th century architectural styles. Some buildings are neo-Romanesque, such as the Roman Catholic Cathedral, some villas are built in a late Victorian style. Art Deco influences are found throughout the city; essentially Asmara was then what Dubai is now. Architects were restricted by nothing more than the bounds of their imaginations and were given the funds to create masterpieces which we can see today. Essences of Cubism can be found on the Africa Pension Building, and on a small collection of buildings. The Fiat Tagliero Building shows almost the height of futurism, just as it was coming into big fashion in Italy. In recent times, some buildings have been functionally built which sometimes can spoil the atmosphere of some cities, but they fit into Asmara as it is such a modern city.

Asmara is also home to the University of Asmara and a 19th century fort, Forte Baldissera. It is served by Asmara International Airport, and is connected to the port of Massawa by the Eritrean Railway.

Asmara is also the see of the archbishop of the Eritrean Orthodox Church, which became autocephalous in 1993. The archbishop was elevated in 1998 to the rank of Patriarchate of Eritrea, on a par with the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.

Asmara was known to be an exceptionally modern city, not only because of its architecture, but Asmara also had more traffic lights than Rome did when the city was being built. The city incorporates many features of a planned city. Indeed, Asmara was an early example of an ideal modern city created by architects, an idea which was introduced into many cities across the world, such as Brasilia, but which was not altogether popular. Features include designated city zoning and planning, wide treed boulevards, political areas and districts and space and scope for development. Asmara was not built for the Eritreans however; the Italians built it primarily for themselves. One unfortunate aspect of the city's planning was separate areas designated for Italians and Eritreans, each disproportionately sized.

The city has been regarded as "New Rome" or "Italy's African City" due to its quintessential Italian touch, not only for the architecture, but also for the wide streets, piazzas and coffee bars. While the boulevards are lined with palms and indigenous shiba'kha trees, there are numerable pizzerias and coffee bars, serving cappucinos and lattes, as well as ice cream parlours. The people in Asmara dress in a unique, yet African style. Asmara is also highly praised for its peaceful, crime-free environment. It is one of the cleanest cities of Africa.

The city hosts the We Are the Future center, a child care center giving children a chance to live their childhoods and develop a sense of hope. The center is managed under the direction of the mayor’s office, and the international NGO Glocal Forum serves as the fundraiser and program planner and coordinator for the WAF child center in each city. Each WAF city is linked to several peer cities and public and private partners to create a unique international coalition. Launched in 2004, the program is the result of a strategic partnership between the Glocal Forum, the Quincy Jones Listen Up Foundation and Mr. Hani Masri, with the support of the World Bank, UN agencies and major companies.

Asmara has been proposed as a possible new addition to the UNESCO World Heritage Sites, under the direction of the Cultural Assets Rehabilitation Project, for its outstanding examples of 20th century architecture and town planning. Many of these historic buildings are not currently being taken care of and there is a serious risk that this heritage could be lost.

The Historic Center of Asmara was placed on the World Monuments Fund's 2006 Watch List of 100 Most Endangered Sites. The listing was designed to bring more attention to the city to save the center from decay and redevelopment and to promote restoration.

Today in history:

1192 – Assassination of Conrad of Montferrat (Conrad I), King of Jerusalem, in Tyre, two days after his title to the throne is confirmed by election. The killing is carried out by Hashshashin.
1253 – Nichiren, a Japanese Buddhist monk, propounds Nam Myoho Renge Kyo for the very first time and declares it to be the essence of Buddhism, in effect founding Nichiren Buddhism.
1503 – The Battle of Cerignola is fought. It is noted as the first battle in history won by small arms fire using gunpowder.
1611 – Establishment of the Pontifical and Royal University of Santo Tomas, The Catholic University of the Philippines, the largest Catholic university in the world.
1788 – Maryland becomes the seventh state to ratify the Constitution of the United States.
1789 – Mutiny on the Bounty: Lieutenant William Bligh and 18 sailors are set adrift and the rebel crew returns to Tahiti briefly and then sets sail for Pitcairn Island.
1792 – France invades the Austrian Netherlands (present day Belgium), beginning the French Revolutionary War.
1796 – The Armistice of Cherasco is signed by Napoleon Bonaparte and Vittorio Amedeo III, the King of Sardinia, expanding French territory along the Mediterranean coast.
1869 – Chinese and Irish laborers for the Central Pacific Railroad working on the First Transcontinental Railroad lay 10 miles of track in one day, a feat which has never been matched.
1887 – A week after being arrested by the Prussian Secret Police, Alsatian police inspector Guillaume Schnaebelé is released on order of German Emperor William I, defusing a possible war.
1920 – Azerbaijan is added to the Soviet Union.
1930 – The first night game in organized baseball history takes place in Independence, Kansas.
1932 – A vaccine for yellow fever is announced for use on humans.
1944 – World War II: Nine German S-boots attacked US and UK units during Exercise Tiger, the rehearsal for the Normandy landings, killing 946.
1945 – Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci are executed by a firing squad consisting of members of the Italian resistance movement.
1947 – Thor Heyerdahl and five crew mates set out from Peru on the Kon-Tiki to prove that Peruvian natives could have settled Polynesia.
1949 – Former First Lady of the Philippines Aurora Quezon, 61, is assassinated while en route to dedicate a hospital in memory of her late husband; her daughter and 10 others are also killed.
1950 – Bhumibol Adulyadej marries Queen Sirikit after their quiet engagement in Lausanne, Switzerland on July 19, 1949.
1952 – Dwight D. Eisenhower resigns as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO.
1952 – Occupied Japan: The United States occupation of Japan ends as the Treaty of San Francisco, ratified September 8, 1951, comes into force.
1952 – The Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty (Treaty of Taipei) is signed in Taipei, Taiwan between Japan and the Republic of China to officially end the Second Sino-Japanese War.
1965 – United States occupation of the Dominican Republic: American troops land in the Dominican Republic to "forestall establishment of a Communist dictatorship" and to evacuate U.S. Army troops.
1969 – Charles de Gaulle resigns as President of France.
1970 – Vietnam War: U.S. President Richard M. Nixon formally authorizes American combat troops to fight communist sanctuaries in Cambodia.
1975 – General Cao Van Vien, chief of the South Vietnamese military, departs for the US as the North Vietnamese Army closed in on victory.
1977 – The Red Army Faction trial ends, with Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe found guilty of four counts of murder and more than 30 counts of attempted murder.
1977 – The Budapest Treaty on the International Recognition of the Deposit of Microorganisms for the Purposes of Patent Procedure is signed.
1978 – President of Afghanistan, Mohammed Daoud Khan, is overthrown and assassinated in a coup led by pro-communist rebels.
1986 – The United States Navy aircraft carrier USS Enterprise becomes the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to transit the Suez Canal, navigating from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea to relieve the USS Coral Sea.
1987 – American engineer Ben Linder is killed in an ambush by U.S.-funded Contras in northern Nicaragua.
1988 – Near Maui, Hawaii, flight attendant Clarabelle "C.B." Lansing is blown out of Aloha Airlines Flight 243, a Boeing 737, and falls to her death when part of the plane's fuselage rips open in mid-flight.
1994 – Former Central Intelligence Agency counter-intelligence officer and analyst Aldrich Ames pleads guilty to giving U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union and later Russia.
1996 – Whitewater controversy: President Bill Clinton gives a 4½ hour videotaped testimony for the defense.
1996 – In Tasmania, Australia, Martin Bryant goes on a shooting spree, killing 35 people and seriously injuring 21 more.
2001 – Millionaire Dennis Tito becomes the world's first space tourist.
2008 – A train collision in Shandong, China, kills 72 people and injures 416 more.

2011-04-27T07:31:00.000-07:00

We are going to visit Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.

The photos are: 1) Türkmenbaşy Palace (the presidential headquarters and home of the president of Turkmenistan); 2) the Turkmen Parliament Building; 3) the Ashgabat National Museum of History; 4) the Independence and Peace Monument; 5) the Exhibition Center; 6) The Ertugrul Gazi Mosque in Ashgabat named after Ertuğrul, the founder of the Ottoman Empire; 7) Ak Bugdaý (White Wheat) Museum; and 8) residential apartment buildings in Ashgabat.

Ashgabat is the capital and largest city of Turkmenistan, a country in Central Asia. It has a population of 695,300 (2001 census estimate), 2009 estimates around 1 million people in Ashgabat, and is situated between the Kara Kum desert and the Kopet Dag mountain range. Ashgabat has a primarily Turkmen population, with ethnic minorities of Russians, Armenians, and Azeris. It is 250 km from the second largest city in Iran, Mashhad.

Ashgabat is Aşgabat in Turkmen, Ашхабад (Ashkhabad) in Russian, and عشق‌آباد (UniPers: Ešq-âbâd) in Persian. From 1919 until 1927, the city was renamed Poltoratsk after a local revolutionary. Before 1991, the city was usually spelled Ashkhabad in English, a transliteration of the Russian form, which was itself from the original Persian form. It has also been variously spelled Ashkhabat and Ashgabad. Ashgabad was formerly a village next to Nisa, the capital of the Iranian Parthians. Etymologically, Ashgabad is a Persian compound consisting of Ashg, the corrupted form of the name of founder of Parthian dynasty Arsaces I of Parthia Persian اشک (from Parthian Arshak) + Persian آباد (ābād meaning "inhabited place" or "city", where the English word "abode" is etymologically "ābād"), and hence the name translates "the town built by Arsaces" or the town of Arsaces.

Ashgabat is a relatively young city, growing out of a village of the same name established by Russians in 1881. It is not far from the site of Nisa, the ancient capital of the Parthian Empire, and it grew on the ruins of the Silk Road city of Konjikala, which was first mentioned as a wine-producing village in 2nd century BCE and was leveled by an earthquake in 1st century BCE (a precursor of the 1948 Ashgabat earthquake). Konjikala was rebuilt because of its advantageous location on the Silk Road and it flourished until its destruction by Mongols in the 13th century CE. After that it survived as a small village until the Russians took over in the 19th century.

In 1869, Russian soldiers built a fortress on a hill near the village, and this added security soon attracted merchants and craftsmen to the area. Ashgabat remained a part of Persia until 1881, when it was ceded to Tsarist Russia under the terms of Akhal Treaty. Russia chose to develop Ashgabat as a regional center due to its proximity to the border of British-influenced Persia. It was regarded as a pleasant town with European style buildings, shops and hotels. In 1908, the first Bahá'í House of Worship was built in Ashgabat. It was badly damaged in the 1948 earthquake and finally demolished in 1963. The community of the Bahá'í Faith in Turkmenistan was largely based in Ashgabat.

Soviet rule was established in Ashgabat in December 1917. However in July 1918 a coalition of Mensheviks, Social Revolutionaries and Tsarist former officers of the Imperial Russian Army revolted against the Bolshevik rule emanating from Tashkent and established the Ashkhabad Executive Committee. After receiving some support (but even more promises) from General Malleson, the British withdrew in April 1919, and the Tashkent Soviet resumed control of the city and in July 1919, when the city was renamed Poltoratsk after a local revolutionary. The name Ashgabat was restored in 1927 after the establishment of Turkmen SSR as a Soviet republic, though it was usually known by the Russian form Ashkhabad (Russian: Ашхабад). From this period onward, the city experienced rapid growth and industrialisation, although this was severely disrupted by a major earthquake on October 6, 1948. An estimated 7.3 on the Richter scale, the earthquake killed 110-176,000 (2/3 of the population of the city), although the official number announced by Soviet news was only 40,000.

Museums include the Turkmen Fine Arts Museum and Turkmen Carpet Museum, noted for their impressive collection of woven carpets as well as a Turkmen history museum and the Ashgabat National Museum of History, which displays artifacts dating back to the Parthian and Persian civilizations. The Academy of Sciences of Turkmenistan is an important institute of higher learning. Large mosques include the Azadi Mosque (which resembles the Blue Mosque in Istanbul), the Khezrety Omar Mosque, and the futuristic Iranian Mosque. Ashgabat was also home to the Arch of Neutrality, a 250-foot-tall tripod crowned by a golden statue of late president Saparmurat Niyazov (also known as Turkmenbashi, or leader of all Turkmen). The 50-foot-high statue, which rotated in order to always face the sun during daylight hours, was removed on August 26, 2010 after Niyazov’s successor, current President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, made it clear earlier in the year that the statue was going to be taken out of Ashgabat’s parliament square. Notable universities include the Turkmen Polytechnic Institute.

2011-04-26T04:48:00.000-07:00

It's off to Apia, the capital and largest city of Samoa.

The pictures are: 1) Apia Harbour at dawn, during the independence celebrations of 2003; 2) the Samoan government buildings in Apia; 3) a Samoan police brass band marching on the main street; 4) the Apia courthouse; 5) the Apia clocktower; 6) the Apia cathedral (the Immaculate Conception of Mary Cathedral); and 7) the Bahá'í House of Worship, Tiapapata, 8 km from Apia.

Apia is the capital and the largest city of Samoa. The city is located on the central north coast of Upolu, Samoa's second largest island. Apia is the only 'city' in Samoa and falls within the political district of Tuamasaga. The geographic boundaries of Apia Urban Area is mainly from Letogo village to the new industrialized region of Apia known as Vaitele.

Apia was originally a small village (1800 population is 304[clarification needed]),[3] from which the country's capital took its name. Apia village still exists within the larger modern capital of Apia which has grown into a sprawling urban area with many villages. Like every other settlement in the country, Apia village has its own matai chiefly leaders and fa'alupega (geneaology & customary greetings) according to fa'a Samoa.

The modern capital Apia was founded in the 1850s and has been the official capital of Samoa since 1959. The harbor was also the site of an infamous 15 March 1889 naval standoff in which 7 ships from Germany, the US, and Britain refused to leave harbor while a typhoon was clearly approaching, lest the first moved would lose face. All the ships were sunk, except the British cruiser Calliope, which barely managed to leave port at 1 mile per hour and ride out the storm. Nearly 200 American and German lives were lost, as well as 6 ships sunk or beyond repair.

During the country's struggle for political independence in the early 1900s, organised under the national Mau movement, the streets of Apia became the center of non-violent protests and marches where many Samoans were arrested. In what became known as 'Black Saturday', a peaceful Mau gathering in the town resulted in the killing of paramount chief Tupua Tamasese Lealofi III by New Zealand constabulary on 28 December 1929.

Apia is situated on a natural harbour at the mouth of the Vaisigano River. It is on a narrow coastal plain with Mount Vaea (elevation 472 m), the burial place of writer Robert Louis Stevenson, directly to its south. Two main ridges run south on either side of the Vaisigano River, with roads on each. The more western of these is Cross Island Road, one of the few roads cutting north to south across the middle of the island to the south coast of Upolu.

Apia features a tropical rainforest climate with consistent temperatures throughout the year. Apia's driest months are July and August when on average about 80 mm of rain falls. Its wettest months are December through March when average monthly precipitation easily exceeds 300 mm. Apia average temperature for the year is 26 degrees Celsius.

Apia is part of the Tuamasaga political district and of election district Vaimauga West and Faleata East. There is no city administration for Apia. Apia consists of some 45 individual, independent villages. Apia proper is just a small village between the mouths of the Vaisigano (east) and Mulivai (west) rivers, and is framed by Vaisigano and Mulivai villages, together constituting "Downtown Apia".

The Planning Urban Management Authority (PUMA) Act 2004 (amended in 2005) was passed by parliament to better plan for the urban growth of Samoa's built-up areas, with particular reference to the future urban management of Apia. The city's historical haphazard growth from village to colonial trading post to the major financial and business centre of the country has resulted in major infrastructural problems in the city. Problems of flooding are commonplace in the wet season, given the low flood-prone valley that the city is built on. In the inner-city village of Sogi, there are major shoreline pollution and effluent issues given that the village is situated on swamplands. The disparate village administrations of Apia has resulted in a lack of a unified and codified legislative approach to sewerage disposal. The relatively high growth in vehicle ownership has resulted in traffic congestion in the inner city streets and the need for major projects in road-widening and traffic management. The PUMA legislation sets up the Planning Urban Management Authority to better manage the unique planning issues facing Apia's urban growth.

An area of reclaimed land jutting into the harbour is the site of the multistorey government offices and the Central Bank of Samoa. A clock tower erected as a war memorial acts as a central point for the city. The new market (maketi fou) is inland a bit at Fugalei, where it is more protected from the effects of cyclones. Apia still has some of the early, wooden, colonial buildings which remain scattered around the town, most notably the courthouse, with a museum on the upper floor. Recent infrastructural development and economic growth has seen several multi-story buildings being built in the city. The ACB/NBS building (2001) houses the Accident Compensation Board, the National Bank of Samoa, and some government departments. The mall below it is home to shops and eateries. The Samoatel building (2004) which is the site for Samoa's international telecommunications hub was built inland at Maluafou, again to protect it from the effects of seasonal cyclones. The newest addition to Apia's skyline is the DBS building (2007) which houses the Development Bank of Samoa.

Writer Robert Louis Stevenson spent the last four years of his life here, and is buried on Mt. Vaea, overlooking both the city and the home he built, Vailima, which is now a museum in his honour.

Apia Harbour is by far the largest and busiest harbour in Samoa. International shipping with containers, LPG gas, and fuels all dock here. Ferries to Tokelau and American Samoa depart from here.

Apia is served by a good road network, which is generally kept reasonably well maintained. Most of the main roads are sealed; the unsealed roads have lower use. Vehicles drive on the left-hand side of the road since 7 September 2009.[9] Speed limits are 25 mph (40 km/h) near the centre of town and 35 mph (56 km/h) in the rest of the country with a 15 mph (24 km/h) limit in special circumstances. The country has no trains or trams, but is served with an extensive bus service. People commonly walk around the town, or even for some distances outside it. There are few bicycles and motorcycles, but increasing numbers of privately owned cars which cause traffic congestion in the inner city. Taxis are a common form of transport. The small airstrip in Fagali'i, which was used for internal flights and some international flights to Pago Pago in American Samoa has now been closed. The main international airport, Faleolo International Airport, is a 40-minute drive west of the city.

2011-04-25T09:56:00.000-07:00

Made it back to the blog! Let's go to Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar.

The photos are: 1) a monument to the soldiers who died for France; 2) staircases leading to Independence Square; 3) a view of the crowding in the housing areas; 4) Independence Avenue; 5) the Air Madagascar Headquarters; 6) an Antananorivo street; and 7) Lake Anosy in Central Antananorivo.

Antananarivo, formerly Tananarive, is the capital and largest city in Madagascar. It is also known by its French colonial shorthand form Tana. The larger urban area surrounding the city, known as Antananarivo-Renivohitra ("Antananarivo-Mother Hill" or "Antananarivo-Capital"), is the capital of Analamanga Region.

Antananarivo is situated in the center of the island length-wise, and 145 km (90 miles) away from the eastern coast. The city occupies a commanding position, being built on the summit and slopes of a long and narrow rocky ridge, which extends north and south for about 4 km (2 mi) and rises at its highest point to about 200 m (660 ft) above the extensive rice plain to the west, although the town is at about 1,275 m (4,183 ft) above sea level. It is Madagascar's largest city and is its administrative, communications, and economic center. The city is located 215 km (134 mi) west-southwest of Toamasina, the principal seaport of the island, with which it is connected by railway, and for about 100 km (62 mi) along the coastal lagoons.

Unlike most capital cities in southern Africa, Antananarivo was already a major city before the colonial era. The city was founded circa 1625 by King Andrianjaka and takes its name (the City of the Thousand) from the number of soldiers assigned to guard it. For many years it was the principal village of the Hova chiefs and gained importance as those chiefs made themselves sovereigns of the greater part of Madagascar, eventually becoming a town of some 80,000 inhabitants.

In 1793 Antananarivo was made the capital of the Merina kings. The conquests of King Radama I made it the capital of almost all of Madagascar. The royal residence of the monarchs was set up at the Rova of Antananarivo. Until 1869 all buildings within the city proper were of wood or rushes and followed traditional Malagasy architectural norms, but even then it possessed several timber palaces of considerable size, the largest being 120 ft (37 m) high. These crown the summit of the central portion of the ridge; and the largest palace, with its lofty roof and towers, is the most conspicuous object from every point of view.

Since the introduction of stone and brick by James Cameron and other London Missionary Society missionaries in the early 19th century, the entire city has been rebuilt and now contains numerous European-style structures, including the royal palaces, the houses formerly belonging to the prime minister and nobles, the French residency, the Anglican and Roman Catholic cathedrals, and several stone churches. The Museum of Ethnology and Paleontology is located in the city.

The city was captured by the French in 1895 and incorporated into their Madagascar protectorate. After the French conquest of Madagascar when the city had a population of some 100,000, it was extensively remodeled as the population grew to 175,000 by 1950. Roads were constructed throughout the city, broad flights of steps connecting places too steep for the formation of carriage roads, and the central space, called Andohalo, was enhanced with walks, terraces, flower-beds and trees. Water, previously obtained from springs at the foot of the hill, was brought from the Ikopa River which skirts the capital to the south and west.

After independence in 1960 the pace of growth increased rapidly. The city's population reached 1.4 million by the end of the 20th century. Industries include food products, cigarettes, and textiles.

The city is guarded by two forts built on hills to the east. Including an Anglican and a Roman Catholic cathedral (this is the see city of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Antananarivo), there are more than 5,000 church buildings in the city and its suburbs. Antananarivo hosts a campus of the University of Madagascar and the Collège Rural d'Ambatobe. Ivato Airport serves the city with several regional routes and flights to and from Paris, Johannesburg and Nairobi among other cities.

Michele Ratsivalaka succeeded Andry Rajoelina as mayor, who replaced Marc Ravalomanana as president during the 2009 Malagasy political crisis.

2011-04-01T04:36:00.000-07:00

Haven't been here in a very, very, very long time. Nevertheless, let's go to Ankara, Turkey.

The photos shown are: 1) The Column of Julianus (in honor of the Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate); 2) the Dikmen Valley in Central Ankara; 3) the Ankara Citadel Walls; 4) Anitkabir (the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the leader of the Turkish War of Independence); 5) the Atakule Tower; 6) the Grand National Assembly of Turkey; 7) the Ethnography Museum and an equestrian statue of Ataturk; and 8) Kizalay Square.

The region's history can be traced back to the Bronze Age Hatti civilization, which was succeeded in the 2nd millennium BC by the Hittites, in the 10th century BC by the Phrygians, and later by the Lydians, Persians, Greeks, Galatians, Romans, Byzantines, and Turks (the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm, the Ottoman Empire and Turkey.)

Ancient history:
The oldest settlements in and around the city centre of Ankara belong to the Hatti civilization which existed during the Bronze Age. The city grew significantly in size and importance under the Phrygians starting around 1000 BC, and experienced a large expansion following the mass migration from Gordion, (the capital of Phrygia), after an earthquake which severely damaged that city around that time. In Phrygian tradition, King Midas was venerated as the founder of Ancyra, but Pausanias mentions that the city was actually far older, which accords with present archaeological knowledge.

Phrygian rule was succeeded first by Lydian and later by Persian rule, though the strongly Phrygian character of the peasantry remained, as evidenced by the gravestones of the much later Roman period. Persian sovereignty lasted until the Persians' defeat at the hands of Alexander the Great who conquered the city in 333 BC. Alexander came from Gordion to Ankara and stayed in the city for a short period. After his death at Babylon in 323 BC and the subsequent division of his empire amongst his generals, Ankara and its environs fell into the share of Antigonus.

Another important expansion took place under the Greeks of Pontos who came there around 300 BC and developed the city as a trading centre for the commerce of goods between the Black Sea ports and Crimea to the north; Assyria, Cyprus, and Lebanon to the south; and Georgia, Armenia and Persia to the east. By that time the city also took its name Áγκυρα (Ànkyra, meaning Anchor in Greek) which in slightly modified form provides the modern name of Ankara.

Celtic history:
In 278 BC, the city, along with the rest of central Anatolia, was occupied by the Celtic race of Galatians, who were the first to make Ankara one of their main tribal centres, the headquarters of the Tectosages tribe. Other centres were Pessinos, today's Balhisar, for the Trocmi tribe, and Tavium, to the east of Ankara, for the Tolstibogii tribe. The city was then known as Ancyra. The Celtic element was probably relatively small in numbers; a warrior aristocracy which ruled over Phrygian-speaking peasants. However, the Celtic language continued to be spoken in Galatia for many centuries. At the end of the 4th century, St. Jerome, a native of Galatia, observed that the language spoken around Ankara was very similar to that being spoken in the northwest of the Roman world near Trier.

Roman history:
The city was subsequently conquered by Augustus in 25 BC and passed under the control of the Roman Empire. Now the capital city of the Roman province of Galatia, Ancyra continued to be a center of great commercial importance. Ankara is also famous for the Monumentum Ancyranum (Temple of Augustus and Rome) which contains the official record of the Acts of Augustus, known as the Res Gestae Divi Augusti, an inscription cut in marble on the walls of this temple. The ruins of Ancyra still furnish today valuable bas-reliefs, inscriptions and other architectural fragments.

Augustus decided to make Ancyra one of three main administrative centres in central Anatolia. The town was then populated by Phrygians and Celts—the Galatians who spoke a language somewhat closely related to Welsh and Gaelic. Ancyra was the center of a tribe known as the Tectosages, and Augustus upgraded it into a major provincial capital for his empire. Two other Galatian tribal centres, Tavium near Yozgat, and Pessinus (Balhisar) to the west, near Sivrihisar, continued to be reasonably important settlements in the Roman period, but it was Ancyra that grew into a grand metropolis.

An estimated 200,000 people lived in Ancyra in good times during the Roman Empire, a far greater number than was to be the case from after the fall of the Roman Empire until the early 20th century. A small river, the Ankara Çayı, ran through the centre of the Roman town. It has now been covered over and diverted, but it formed the northern boundary of the old town during the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman periods. Çankaya, the rim of the majestic hill to the south of the present city center, stood well outside the Roman city, but may have been a summer resort. In the 19th century, the remains of at least one Roman villa or large house were still standing not far from where the Çankaya Presidential Residence stands today. To the west, the Roman city extended until the area of the Gençlik Park and Railway Station, while on the southern side of the hill, it may have extended downwards as far as the site presently occupied by Hacettepe University. It was thus a sizeable city by any standards and much larger than the Roman towns of Gaul or Britannia.

Ancyra's importance rested on the fact was that it was the junction point where the roads in northern Anatolia running north-south and east-west intersected. The great imperial road running east passed through Ankara and a succession of emperors and their armies came this way. They were not the only ones to use the Roman highway network, which was equally convenient for invaders. In the second half of the 3rd century, Ancyra was invaded in rapid succession by the Goths coming from the west (who rode far into the heart of Cappadocia, taking slaves and pillaging) and later by the Arabs. For about a decade, the town was one of the western outposts of one of the most brilliant queens of the ancient world, the Arab empress Zenobia from Palmyra in the Syrian desert, who took advantage of a period of weakness and disorder in the Roman Empire to set up a short-lived state of her own.

The town was reincorporated into the Roman Empire under the Emperor Aurelian in 272. The tetrarchy, a system of multiple (up to four) emperors introduced by Diocletian (284-305), seems to have engaged in a substantial programme of rebuilding and of road construction from Ankara westwards to Germe and Dorylaeum (now Eskişehir).

In its heyday, Roman Ankara was a large market and trading center but it also functioned as a major administrative capital, where a high official ruled from the city's Praetorium, a large administrative palace or office. During the 3rd century, life in Ancyra, as in other Anatolian towns, seems to have become somewhat militarised in response to the invasions and instability of the town. In this period, like other cities of central Anatolia, Ankara was also undergoing Christianisation.

Early martyrs, about whom little is known, included Proklos and Hilarios who were natives of the otherwise unknown village of Kallippi, near Ancyra, and suffered repression under the emperor Trajan (98-117). In the 280s AD we hear of Philumenos, a Christian corn merchant from southern Anatolia, being captured and martyred in Ankara, and Eustathius.

As in other Roman towns, the reign of Diocletian marked the culmination of the persecution of the Christians. In 303, Ancyra was one of the towns where the co-Emperors Diocletian and his deputy Galerius launched their anti-Christian persecution. In Ancyra, their first target was the 38-year-old Bishop of the town, whose name was Clement. Clement's life describes how he was taken to Rome, then sent back, and forced to undergo many interrogations and hardship before he, and his brother, and various companions were put to death. The remains of the church of St. Clement can be found today in a building just off Işıklar Caddesi in the Ulus district. Quite possibly this marks the site where Clement was originally buried. Four years later, a doctor of the town named Plato and his brother Antiochus also became celebrated martyrs under Galerius. Theodotus of Ancyra is also venerated as a saint.

However, the persecution proved unsuccessful and in 314 Ancyra was the center of an important council of the early church; which considered ecclesiastical policy for the reconstruction of the Christian church after the persecutions, and in particular the treatment of 'lapsi'—Christians who had given in and conformed to paganism during these persecutions.

Three councils were held in the former capital of Galatia in Asia Minor, during the 4th century. The first, an orthodox plenary synod, was held in 314, and its 25 disciplinary canons constitute one of the most important documents in the early history of the administration of the Sacrament of Penance. Nine of them deal with conditions for the reconciliation of the lapsi; the others, with marriage, alienations of church property, etc.

Though paganism was probably tottering in Ancyra in Clement's day, it may still have been the majority religion. Twenty years later, Christianity and monotheism had taken its place. Ancyra quickly turned into a Christian city, with a life dominated by monks and priests and theological disputes. The town council or senate gave way to the bishop as the main local figurehead. During the middle of the 4th century, Ancyra was involved in the complex theological disputes over the nature of Christ, and a form of Arianism seems to have originated there.

The synod of 358 was a Semi-Arian conciliabulum, presided over by Basil of Ancyra. It condemned the grosser Arian blasphemies, but set forth an equally heretical doctrine in the proposition that the Son was in all things similar to the Father, but not identical in substance. In 362-363, the Emperor Julian the Apostate passed through Ancyra on his way to an ill-fated campaign against the Persians, and according to Christian sources, engaged in a persecution of various holy men. The stone base for a statue, with an inscription describing Julian as "Lord of the whole world from the British Ocean to the barbarian nations", can still be seen, built into the eastern side of the inner circuit of the walls of Ankara Castle. The Column of Julian which was erected in honor of the emperor's visit to the city in 362 still stands today. In 375, Arian bishops met at Ancyra and deposed several bishops, among them St. Gregory of Nyssa. The modern Ankara, also known in some Western texts as Angora, remains a Roman Catholic titular see in the former Roman province of Galatia in Asia Minor, suffragan of Laodicea. Its episcopal list is given in Gams, "Series episc. Eccl. cath."; also that of another Ancyra in Phrygia Pacatiana.

In the late 4th century AD, Ancyra became something of an imperial holiday resort. After Constantinople became the East Roman capital, emperors in the 4th and 5th centuries would retire from the humid summer weather on the Bosporus to the drier mountain atmosphere of Ancyra. Theodosius II (408-450) kept his court in Ancyra in the summers. Laws issued in Ancyra testify to the time they spent there. The city's military as well as logistical significance lasted well into the long Byzantine rule. Although Ancyra temporarily fell into the hands of several Arab Muslim armies numerous times after the 7th century, it remained an important crossroads polis within the Byzantine Empire until the late 11th century. It was also the capital of the powerful Opsician Theme, and after ca. 750 of the Bucellarian Theme.

Turkish history:
In 1071, the Turkish Seljuk Sultan Alparslan conquered much of eastern and central Anatolia after his victory at the Battle of Manzikert (Malazgirt). He then annexed Ankara, an important location for military transportation and natural resources, to his territory in 1073. After the Battle of Kösedağ in 1243 in which the Mongols defeated the Seljuks, most of Anatolia became part of the dominion of the Mongols. Taking advantage of Seljuk decline, a semi religious cast of craftsmen and trade people named Ahiler chose Ankara as their independent city state in 1290. Orhan I, the second Bey of the Ottoman Empire, captured the city in 1356. Timur defeated the Ottomans at the Battle of Ankara in 1402 and took the city, but in 1403 Ankara was again under Ottoman control.

Following the Ottoman defeat at World War I, the Ottoman capital Istanbul and much of Anatolia were occupied by the Allies, who planned to share these lands between Armenia, France, Greece, Italy and the United Kingdom, leaving for the Turks the core piece of land in central Anatolia. In response, the leader of the Turkish nationalist movement, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, established the headquarters of his resistance movement in Ankara in 1920 (see the Treaty of Sèvres and the Turkish War of Independence.) After the War of Independence was won and the Treaty of Sèvres was superseded by the Treaty of Lausanne, the Turkish nationalists replaced the Ottoman Empire with the Republic of Turkey on 29 October 1923. A few days earlier, Ankara had officially replaced Istanbul (formerly Constantinople) as the new Turkish capital city, on 13 October 1923.

After Ankara became the capital of the newly founded Republic of Turkey, new development divided the city into an old section, called Ulus, and a new section, called Yenişehir. Ancient buildings reflecting Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman history and narrow winding streets mark the old section. The new section, now centered on Kızılay, has the trappings of a more modern city: wide streets, hotels, theaters, shopping malls, and high-rises. Government offices and foreign embassies are also located in the new section. Ankara has experienced a phenomenal growth since it was made Turkey's capital. It was "a small town of no importance"[10] when it was made the capital of Turkey. In 1924, the year after the government had moved there, Ankara had about 35,000 residents. By 1927 there were 44,553 residents and by 1950 the population had grown to 286,781.

2009-11-06T07:17:00.000-08:00

Off to Andorra la Vella. The photos are: 1)an aerial view of Andorra la Vella; 2) Valira river in Andorra la Vella; 3) central streets of Andorra la Vella; 4) the Town Hall; and 5) The exterior of the Church of Santa Coloma (Santa Coloma is a town in the parish of Andorran la Vella.

Andorra la Vella is the capital of the Co-principality of Andorra, and is located high in the east Pyrenees between France and Spain. It is also the name of the parish that surrounds the capital. The principal industry is tourism, although the country also earns foreign income from being a tax-haven. Furniture and brandies are local products.

The site of Andorra la Vella (literally, "Andorra the Old") has been settled since prior to the Christian era — notably by the Andosin tribe from the late Neolithic. The state is one of the Marca Hispanica created and protected by Charlemagne in the eighth century as a buffer from the Moorish settlers in the Iberian Peninsula [4].

The settlement has been the principal city of Andorra since 1278 when the French and the Episcopal co-princes agreed to joint suzerainty. Andorra La Vella's old town — the Barri Antic — includes streets and buildings dating from this time. Its most notable building is the Casa de la Vall — constructed in the early sixteenth century — which has been the state's parliamentary house since 1707. Andorra la Vella was, during this period, the capital of a largely isolated and feudal state, which retained its independence due to this principle of co-sovereignty.[5]

Well into the twentieth century, the area around Andorra La Vella remained largely forgotten; indeed the state was not part of the Treaty of Versailles, simply because it was not noticed. After political turmoil in the 1930s and an attempted coup by King Boris I, an informal democracy developed.

In 1993, the country's first constitution formalised this parliamentary democracy with executive, legislative, and judicial branches located in Andorra la Vella.

During this period, Andorra also developed as a tax haven, resulting in the construction of modern banking offices in Andorra La Vella. The city also developed its skiing facilities, to the extent that Andorra la Vella was Andorra's applicant city for the XXI Olympic Winter Games, the 2010 Winter Olympics. However, Andorra la Vella was not selected by the IOC as a candidate city, following the evaluation report of an IOC commission. It also hosted both the 1991 and 2005 Games of the Small States of Europe.

Surprisingly for a capital city, it is three hours' drive from the nearest airports at Toulouse, Girona, Perpignan and Barcelona. This is a result of its small population size and highly mountainous terrain. It also has no train station, although there is a bus service linking the city to the French train station at L'Hospitalet-près-l'Andorre, which has mainline services to Paris and also to the airport of El Prat of Barcelona.

The city's old town is characterized by old stone streets and houses. The central Església de Sant Esteve (Saint Stephen) church is part of the area that guidebooks often label as a picturesque part of the city.[7] This was built in a Romanesque style in the eleventh century. As mentioned earlier, the old town also includes the country's historic parliament building. Probably the oldest building in the city is another church, dating from the ninth century, of Santa Coloma.[8]

The city is the country's cultural centre, with the Government Exhibition Hall acting as a main theatre and museum. The piazza outside the parliament building is also the location of a number of events, and the town hosts a music festival every winter.

Today is Marooned Without a Compass Day, National Nachos Day, Saxophone Day, and Basketball Day.

Other things on this day in history:

355 – Roman Emperor Constantius II promotes his cousin Julian to the rank of Caesar, entrusting him with the government of the Prefecture of the Gauls.
1528 – Shipwrecked Spanish conquistador Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca becomes the first known European to set foot in Texas.
1789 – Pope Pius VI appoints Father John Carroll as the first Catholic bishop in the United States.
1844 – The first constitution of the Dominican Republic is adopted.
1856 – Scenes of Clerical Life, the first work of fiction by the author later known as George Eliot, is submitted for publication.
1861 – American Civil War: Jefferson Davis is elected president of the Confederate States of America.
1865 – American Civil War: CSS Shenandoah is the last Confederate combat unit to surrender after circumnavigating the globe on a cruise on which it sank or captured 37 vessels.
1869 – In New Brunswick, New Jersey, Rutgers College defeats Princeton University (then known as the College of New Jersey), 6-4, in the first official intercollegiate American football game.
1913 – Mohandas Gandhi is arrested while leading a march of Indian miners in South Africa.
1917 – World War I: Third Battle of Ypres ends: After three months of fierce fighting, Canadian forces take Passchendaele in Belgium.
1918 – The Second Polish Republic is proclaimed in Poland.
1925 – Secret agent Sidney Reilly is executed by the OGPU, the secret police of the Soviet Union.
1928 – Sweden begins a tradition of eating Gustavus Adolphus pastries to commemorate the king.
1934 – Memphis, Tennessee becomes the first major city to join the Tennessee Valley Authority.
1935 – Edwin Armstrong presents his paper "A Method of Reducing Disturbances in Radio Signaling by a System of Frequency Modulation" to the New York section of the Institute of Radio Engineers.
1935 – First flight of the Hawker Hurricane.
1939 – World War II: Sonderaktion Krakau takes place.
1941 – World War II: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin addresses the Soviet Union for only the second time during his three-decade rule. He states that even though 350,000 troops were killed in German attacks so far, the Germans had lost 4.5 million soldiers and that Soviet victory was near.
1942 – World War II: Carlson's patrol during the Guadalcanal Campaign begins.
1943 – World War II: the Soviet Red Army recaptures Kiev. Before withdrawing, the Germans destroy most of the city's ancient buildings.
1944 – Plutonium is first produced at the Hanford Atomic Facility and subsequently used in the Fat Man atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.
1947 – Meet The Press makes its television debut (the show went to a weekly schedule on September 12, 1948).
1962 – Apartheid: The United Nations General Assembly passes a resolution condemning South Africa's racist apartheid policies and calls for all UN member states to cease military and economic relations with the nation.
1963 – Vietnam War: Following the November 1 coup and execution of President Ngo Dinh Diem, coup leader General Duong Van Minh takes over leadership of South Vietnam.
1965 – Cuba and the United States formally agree to begin an airlift for Cubans who want to go to the United States. By 1971, 250,000 Cubans made use of this program.
1971 – The United States Atomic Energy Commission tests the largest U.S. underground hydrogen bomb, code-named Cannikin, on Amchitka Island in the Aleutians.
1975 – Green March begins: 300,000 unarmed Moroccans converge on the southern city of Tarfaya and wait for a signal from King Hassan II of Morocco to cross into Western Sahara.
1977 – The Kelly Barnes Dam, located above Toccoa Falls Bible College near Toccoa, Georgia, fails, killing 39.
1985 – In Colombia, leftist guerrillas of the April 19 Movement seize control of the Palace of Justice in Bogotá, eventually killing 115 people, 11 of them Supreme Court justices.
1985 – The Iran-Contra Affair: The American press reveals that U.S. President Ronald Reagan had authorized the shipment of arms to Iran.
1986 – Sumburgh disaster – A British International Helicopters Boeing 234LR Chinook crashes 2.5 miles east of Sumburgh Airport killing 45 people. It is the deadliest civilian helicopter crash on record.
1999 – Australians vote to keep the Head of the Commonwealth as their head of state in the Australian republic referendum.
2002 – 12 people are killed in a fire on board a train bound for Vienna from Paris.
2004 – An express train collides with a stationary carriage near the village of Ufton Nervet, England, killing 7 and injuring 150.
2005 – The Evansville Tornado of November 2005 kills 25 in Northwestern Kentucky and Southwestern Indiana.
2005 – The military junta of Myanmar begins moving its government ministries from Yangon to Pyinmana.

2009-11-05T05:41:00.000-08:00

Okay. Made it back here after a long break. Might be another long one after today but still want to add to this from time to time. Here's hoping everyone has a great Thursday, November 5th.

The subject for today is Amman, Jordan. The photos are: 1) the Raghadan Flagpole (the third tallest free-standing flagpole in the world); 2) Temple of Hercules, Roman Coernthic Columns at Citadel Hill; 3) the Roman Amphitheater in downtown Amman; 4) Third Circle - Zahran Street; 5) The Rainbow Cinema in Jabal Amman, located on Rainbow Street; 6) the Jordan Gate Towers; 7) The old defunct Amman station of the Hejaz Railway; 8) The King Abdullah I Mosque; and 9) an aerial view of The Abdali New Downtown.

Amman, sometimes spelled Ammann, is the capital city of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, a city of 2,525,000 inhabitants (2008 estimate), and the administrative capital and commercial center of Jordan. It is also the largest city in Jordan. It is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world[2]. It is the capital city of Amman Governorate.

During its long history, Amman has been inhabited by several civilizations. The first civilization on record is during the Neolithic period, around 8500 BC, when archaeological discoveries in 'Ain Ghazal, located in eastern Amman, showed evidence of not only a settled life but also the growth of artistic work, which suggests that a well-developed civilization inhabited the city at that time. In the 13th century BC Amman was called Rabbath Ammon or Rabat Amon by the Ammonites Rabbat ʿAmmon, Tiberian Hebrew Rabbaṯ ʿAmmôn). It was later conquered by the Assyrians, followed by the Persians, and then the Greeks. Ptolemy II Philadelphus, the Hellenic ruler of Egypt, renamed it Philadelphia. The city became part of the Nabataean kingdom until 106 AD when Philadelphia came under Roman control and joined the Decapolis.

In 326 AD, Christianity became the religion of the empire and Philadelphia became the seat of a bishopric during the beginning of the Byzantine era. One of the churches of this period can be seen on the city's Citadel.

Philadelphia was renamed Amman during the Ghassanian era, and flourished under the Caliphates (with nearby capital) of the Umayyads (in Damascus) and the Abbasids (in Baghdad). It was then destroyed by several earthquakes and natural disasters and remained a small village and a pile of ruins until the Circassians settlement in 1887. The tide changed when the Ottoman Sultan decided to build the Hejaz railway, linking Damascus and Medina, facilitating both the annual hajj pilgrimage and permanent trade, putting Amman, a major station, back on the commercial map.

In 1921, Abdullah I chose Amman as seat of government for his newly-created state, the Emirate of Transjordan, and later as the capital of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. As there was no palatial building, he started his reign from the station, with his office in a train car. Amman remained a small city until 1948, when the population expanded considerably due to an influx of Palestinian refugees from what is now Israel. Amman has experienced exceptionally rapid development since 1952 under the leadership of two Hashemite Kings, Hussein of Jordan and Abdullah II of Jordan.

In 1970, Amman was the site of major clashes between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Jordanian army. Everything around the Royal Palace sustained heavy damage from shelling. Most of Amman suffered great damage from PLO rockets and the Jordanian army's shells.

The city's population continues to expand at a dizzying pace (fueled by refugees escaping the wartime events in the Occupied Territories and Iraq). The city received refugees from these countries on a number of occasions. The first wave of Palestinian refugees arrived from Israel in 1948. A second wave after the Six-Day War in 1967. A third wave of Palestinian and Jordanian and Southeast Asians, working as domestic workers, refugees arrived in Amman from Kuwait after the Gulf War of 1991. The first wave of Iraqi refugees settled in the city after the first Gulf War, with a second wave also arriving after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. During the last 10 years the number of new buildings within the city has increased dramatically with new districts of the city being founded at a very rapid pace (particularly so in West Amman), straining the very scarce water supplies of Jordan as a whole, and exposing Amman to the hazards of rapid expansion in the absence of careful municipal planning.

On November 9, 2005, coordinated explosions rocked three hotels in Amman, resulting in the death of 60 people and the injury of 115 others. Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the act, which was carried out despite the fact that the birthplace of since-killed Al Qaeda terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, is the town of Zarqa, less than 30 km (19 mi) from Amman. The sheer brutality of the attacks, which targeted, amongst other things, a wedding party being held at one of the hotels, caused widespread revulsion across the widest range of Jordanians. Large protests and vigils followed in the wake of the attacks.

Today is Gunpowder Day (aka Guy Fawkes Day) and also National Men Make Dinner Day.
Other things on this day in history:

1499 – Publication of the Catholicon in Treguier (Brittany). This Breton-French-Latin dictionary is written in 1464 by Jehan Lagadeuc. It is the first Breton dictionary as well as the first French dictionary.
1530 – St. Felix's Flood destroys the city of Reimerswaal in the Netherlands
1605 – Gunpowder Plot: A conspiracy led by Robert Catesby to blow up the English Houses of Parliament is thwarted when Sir Thomas Knyvet, a justice of the peace, finds Guy Fawkes in a cellar below the House of Lords.
1688 – Glorious Revolution begins: William of Orange lands at Brixham.
1743 – Coordinated scientific observations of the transit of Mercury are organized by Joseph-Nicolas Delisle.
1757 – Seven Years' War: Frederick the Great defeats the allied armies of France and the Holy Roman Empire in the Battle of Rossbach.
1768 – Treaty of Fort Stanwix, the purpose of which is to adjust the boundary line between Indian lands and white settlements set forth in the Proclamation of 1763 in the Thirteen Colonies.
1780 – French-American forces under Colonel LaBalme are defeated by Miami Chief Little Turtle.
1831 – Nat Turner, American slave leader, is tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in Virginia.
1838 – The Federal Republic of Central America begins to disintegrate when Nicaragua separates from the federation.
1854 – The Battle of Inkerman is fought during the Crimean War.
1862 – American Civil War: Abraham Lincoln removes George B. McClellan as commander of the Union Army for the second and final time.
1862 – Indian Wars: In Minnesota, 303 Dakota warriors are found guilty of rape and murder of whites and are sentenced to hang. 38 are ultimately executed; the others are reprieved.
1872 – Women's suffrage: In defiance of the law, suffragist Susan B. Anthony votes for the first time, and is later fined $100.
1895 – George B. Selden is granted the first U.S. patent for an automobile.
1911 – After declaring war on the Ottoman Empire on September 29, 1911, Italy annexes Tripoli and Cyrenaica.
1913 – King Otto of Bavaria is deposed by his cousin, Prince Regent Ludwig, who assumes the title Ludwig III.
1916 – The Kingdom of Poland is proclaimed by the Act of November 5th of the emperors of Germany and Austria-Hungary.
1916 – The Everett Massacre takes place in Everett, Washington as political differences lead to a shoot-out between the Industrial Workers of the World organizers and local police.
1917 – October Revolution: In Tallinn, Estonia, Communist leader Jaan Anwelt leads revolutionaries in overthrowing the Provisional Government (As Estonia and Russia are still using the Julian Calendar, subsequent period references show an October 23 date).
1917 – St. Tikhon of Moscow is elected the Patriarch of Moscow and of the Russian Orthodox Church.
1937 – World War II: Adolf Hitler holds a secret meeting and states his plans for acquiring "living space" for the German people.
1940 – Franklin D. Roosevelt is elected to a third term as President of the United States.
1942 – The Second Battle of El Alamein is won by the British in El Alamein, Egypt.
1945 – Colombia joins the United Nations.
1967 – The Hither Green rail crash in the United Kingdom kills 49 people. The survivors include Bee Gee Robin Gibb.
1968 – United States presidential election, 1968: Republican Richard Nixon wins the American presidency, in what turned out to be a decades-long realignment election.
1970 – Vietnam War: The United States Military Assistance Command in Vietnam reports the lowest weekly American soldier death toll in five years (24).
1983 – Byford Dolphin diving bell accident kills five and leaves one severely injured.
1986 – USS Rentz (FFG-46), USS Reeves (DLG-24) and USS Oldendorf (DD-972) visit Qingdao (Tsing Tao) China — the first US Naval visit to China since 1949.
1987 – Govan Mbeki is released from custody after serving 24 years in prison. He had been sentenced to life for terrorism and treason.
1990 – Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the far-right Kach movement, is shot dead after a speech at a New York City hotel.
1995 – André Dallaire attempts to assassinate Prime Minister Jean Chrétien of Canada. He is thwarted when the Prime Minister's wife locks the door.
1996 – President of Pakistan Farooq Ahmed Khan Leghari dismisses the government of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and dissolves the National Assembly of Pakistan.
1996 – United States President Bill Clinton defeats Republican challenger Robert J. Dole and Reform party candidate H. Ross Perot to become the first democratic president since Franklin Roosevelt to win a second term in office.
2000 – Emperor Haile Selassie I is given an Imperial funeral by the Ethiopian Orthodox church
2006 – Saddam Hussein, former president of Iraq, and his co-defendants Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and Awad Hamed al-Bandar are sentenced to death in the al-Dujail trial for the role in the massacre of the 148 Shi'as in 1982.
2007 – China's first lunar satellite, Chang'e 1 goes into orbit around the Moon.

2009-08-24T22:57:00.000-07:00

C.C. asked me to guest blog the Tuesday Crossword. I hope I do it justice. But before I get started, congrats to T Frank and Jean. I saw where you were in Rhode Island which is where I currently reside.

Okay, here goes.

Theme: THE WIZARD OF OZ

21A: Helpless: OVER A BARREL

26A: Something wonderful, in old slang: THE BEES KNEES. Never heard of this. Here is the definition. It is also a restaurant.

43A: '80's animated character assisted by the seven Color Kids: RAINBOW BRITE

I don't think we're in Kansas anymore Toto. All we're missing is the "Somewhere." Maybe a clue that involves the movie Somewhere in Time. Only because I like stories/films about time travel. In case anybody is curious, the title of the song has been both - "Over the Rainbow" and "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." Depends on where you look.

I remember that stupid character in 43A. My daughter needed everything that went with her 20 years ago. Cost big bucks.

1A: Punch line's lead-in: SETUP

6A: Where many a T-shirt is tie-dyed: CAMP. I bet there were a lot of tie-dyed shirts here 40 years ago.

10A: Mil. truant: AWOL

14A: Bernardo's girl, in "West Side Story": ANITA. Never read the book or saw the movie. Rita Morena played her in the movie.

15A: “Rubáiyát” poet Khayyám: OMAR. Could also have been clued Epps or Sharif.

16A: Type of lily: SEGO

17A: Generous sort: GIVER

18A: Put the kibosh on: VETO

19A: Like most hoopsters: TALL. Now this is a tall hoopster - for C.C.

20A: Fuss: ADO

24A: Landed: ALIT

25A: London insurance market: LLOYDS

31A: "How much wood ___ a woodchuck chuck ...": WOULD

32A: Weapons: ARMS

33A: Curly and Larry's cohort: MOE. I never liked them. There is supposed to be a movie in 2010.

36A: Concerning, in memos: IN RE. (in regard)

37A: Rum-soaked cakes: BABAS. They look good.

39A: Cass or Michele, in the '60's: MAMA. Sigh!!! The Mamas and The Papas.

40A: Prefix with thermal: GEO

41A: First Bond movie: DR. NO. I still think Sean Connery was the best Bond.

42A: Protection: AEGIS. In the Iliad, it was the shield or buckler of Athena or Zeus and was fashioned by Hephaestus.

46A: Bring in from abroad: IMPORT

49A: Overconfident morality tale critter: HARE

50A: Character who, in a movie released nationally 70 years ago today, sang the ballad formed by the first words of 21-, 26-, and 43-Across: DOROTHY GALE. Auntie Em! Auntie Em!

53A: Past: AGO

56A: Take a gander: LOOK

57A: Exploitative type: USER

58A: Felt the effects of overexertion: ACHED

60A: Morlocks' "The Time Machine Prey": ELOI. I love time travel. Did I already say that? I think the Back to the Future films handled it the best.

61A: Physical lead-in: META

62A: Not save: SPEND. The government is sure doing a lot of that lately.

63A: Hotel repository: SAFE. Interesting how it comes on the heels of "Spend."

64A: Important times: ERAS

65A: Domesticates: TAMES

Now for the down clues.

1D: Drawn-out story: SAGA

2D: Oklahoma city on the Chisholm Trail: ENID. This is usually a crossword staple.

3D: VCR successor: TIVO

4D: Sporty truck, briefly: UTE. For sports "ute" ility vehicle.

5D: Released with conditions: PAROLED

6D: Violates the Tenth Commandment: COVETS. Another great movie starring Charlton Heston, president of the NRA (see 30D).

7D: OAS part: AMER. OAS = Organization of American States.

8D: Espionage name: MATA. Goes hand in hand with James Bond and Dr. No ( 41A).

9D: Predicaments: PROBLEMS

10D: Houston team: ASTROS. Speaking of another Texas team - what's up with that jumbo tron in the new Cowboy's stadium?

11D: Exhausted: WEARY

12D: Leered at: OGLED

13D: Reclines lazily: LOLLS

22D: Compete: VIE

23D: Brewpub brews: ALES. Might need one after getting through with this guest blog. I don't care how early in the morning it is.

24D: Competent: ABLE. I hope everyone thinks I was able to do this okay.

26D: Piece of kindling: TWIG

27D: Sharpen: HONE

28D: Mark's successor: EURO. Wasn't thinking Deutschmark here at first.

29D: "Shish" dish: KABOB. Sheesh!!! Still, there is nothing like them for a cookout on the barbie.

30D: Second amendment advocacy gp.: NRA

33D: Biblical gift bearers: MAGI

34D: Leave out: OMIT

35D: Alleviate: EASE

37D: "Fox News Sunday" panelist: BRIT HUME

38D: Michigan's ___ Arbor: ANN

39D: No more than: MERE

41D: Dressmaker's seam: DART. For some reason, I wanted darn and finally remembered dart.

42D: Side by side: ABREAST. This one probably got Dennis and the DF's (as we used to call them) going for a bit.

43D: First-year player: ROOKIE. Not that I keep up on it, but I wonder who's rookie card is worth the most these days.

44D: Tara family: O'HARAS. Tara is the fictional plantation in this movie.

45D: ___-Mart: WAL

46D: Doesn't do a thing: IDLES

47D: Gelt: MOOLA. With the government "spending" instead of "saving", how can we have any of this?

48D: Smoking gun, e.g.: PROOF

51D: River through France and Belgium: YSER. Another staple for crosswords. During the Battle of the Yser in the First World War the river was deliberately flooded from Nieuwpoort up to Diksmuide in order to provide an obstacle to the advancing German Army.

52D: "I ___ Kick Out of You": GET A

53D: Polite interruption: AHEM

54D: Trait source: GENE

55D: Bookie's concern: ODDS

59D: Numbers pro, briefly: CPA

Well, that's it for today's puzzle. I hope everyone appreciates my comments. Thank you, C.C. for letting me do this. I haven't been to the site in a long, long time because of the "work police" but was on vacation this week. Starting next week, it will probably go back to infrequent visits. It was nice to know (from yesterday's comments) that I was missed.

Take care.

Dr. Dad

2009-08-24T05:40:00.000-07:00

Well, I have not been here in a long time. March was the last time. A lot has been going on and I just never get back to this. Might try this week though as I am on vacation this week.

Lets visit Amsterdam, the capital of The Netherlands.

The photos are: 1) The Rijksmuseum; 2) The Royal Palace; 3) a boat on the Prinsengracht (Prince's Canal); 4) the Zuidas district (main business district); 5) dancing people on the canals of Amsterdam during Koninginnedag (Queen's Day); 6) the Amsterdam Arena; 7) the Vondelpark; and 8) the Anne Frank House.

Amsterdam is the capital and largest city of the Netherlands, located in the province of North Holland in the west of the country. The city, which had a population of 1.36 million (with suburbs) on 1 January 2008, comprises the northern part of the Randstad, the 6th-largest metropolitan area in Europe, with a population of around 6.7 million.
Its name is derived from Amstel dam, indicative of the city's origin: a dam in the river Amstel, where the Dam Square is today. Settled as a small fishing village in the late 12th century, Amsterdam became one of the most important ports in the world during the Dutch Golden Age, a result of its innovative developments in trade. During that time, the city was the leading center for finance and diamonds. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the city expanded and many new neighbourhoods and suburbs were formed.
The city is the financial and cultural capital of the Netherlands. Many large Dutch institutions have their headquarters there, and 7 of the world's top 500 companies, including Philips and ING, are based in the city. The Amsterdam Stock Exchange, the oldest stock exchange in the world is located in the city centre. Amsterdam's main attractions, including its historic canals, the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh Museum, Hermitage Amsterdam. Anne Frank House, its red-light district, and its many cannabis coffee shops, draw 4.2 million tourists annually.

The earliest recorded use of the name "Amsterdam" is from a certificate dated 27 October 1275, when the inhabitants, who had built a bridge with a dam across the Amstel, were exempted from paying a bridge toll by Count Floris V. The certificate describes the inhabitants as homines manentes apud Amestelledamme (people living near Amestelledamme). By 1327, the name had developed into Aemsterdam. A local legend has the city being founded by two fishermen, who landed on the shores of the Amstel in a small boat with their dog. Amsterdam's founding is relatively recent compared with much older Dutch cities such as Nijmegen, Rotterdam, and Utrecht. In October 2008, historical geographer Chris de Bont suggested that the land around Amsterdam was being reclaimed as early as the late 10th century. This does not necessarily mean that there was already a settlement then. The reclamation of land may not have been for farming—it may have been for peat, used as fuel.

Amsterdam was granted city rights in either 1300 or 1306. From the 14th century on, Amsterdam flourished, largely because of trade with the Hanseatic League. In 1345, an alleged Eucharistic miracle in the Kalverstraat rendered the city an important place of pilgrimage until the adoption of the Protestant faith. The Stille Omgang—a silent procession in civil attire—is today a remnant of the rich pilgrimage history.
In the 16th century, the Dutch rebelled against Philip II of Spain and his successors. The main reasons for the uprising were the imposition of new taxes, the tenth penny, and the religious persecution of Protestantism by the Spanish Inquisition. The revolt escalated into the Eighty Years' War, which ultimately led to Dutch independence. Strongly pushed by Dutch Revolt leader William the Silent, the Dutch Republic became known for its relative religious tolerance. Jews from the Iberian Peninsula, Huguenots from France, prosperous merchants and printers from Flanders, and economic and religious refugees from the Spanish-controlled parts of the Low Countries found safety in Amsterdam. The influx of Flemish printers and the city's intellectual tolerance made Amsterdam a centre for the European free press.

The 17th century is considered Amsterdam's Golden Age, during which it became the wealthiest city in the world. Ships sailed from Amsterdam to the Baltic Sea, North America, and Africa, as well as present-day Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, and Brazil, forming the basis of a worldwide trading network. Amsterdam's merchants had the largest share in both the VOC (Dutch East India Company) and the WIC (Dutch West India Company). These companies acquired overseas possessions that later became Dutch colonies. Amsterdam was Europe's most important point for the shipment of goods and was the leading Financial Centre of the world. In 1602, the Amsterdam office of the VOC became the world's first stock exchange by trading in its own shares.
Amsterdam lost over 10% of its population to plague in 1623–5, and again in 1635–6, and once more in 1655, and one more time in 1664. Nevertheless, the population of Amsterdam rose in the 17th century (largely through immigration) from 50,000 to 200,000.
Amsterdam's prosperity declined during the 18th and early-19th centuries. The wars of the Dutch Republic with England and France took their toll on Amsterdam. During the Napoleonic Wars, Amsterdam's significance reached its lowest point, with Holland being absorbed into the French Empire. However, the later establishment of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815 marked a turning point. New developments, by people such as city planner Samuel Sarphati, drew their inspiration from Paris.

The end of the 19th century is sometimes called Amsterdam's second Golden Age. New museums, a train station, and the Concertgebouw were built, while during this time, the Industrial Revolution reached the city. The Amsterdam-Rhine Canal was dug to give Amsterdam a direct connection to the Rhine, and the North Sea Canal was dug to give the port a shorter connection to the North Sea. Both projects dramatically improved commerce with the rest of Europe and the world. In 1906, Joseph Conrad gave a brief description of Amsterdam as seen from the seaside, in The Mirror of the Sea. Shortly before World War I, the city began expanding, and new suburbs were built. Even though the Netherlands remained neutral in this war, Amsterdam suffered a food shortage, and heating fuel became scarce. The shortages sparked riots in which several people were killed. These riots are known as the Aardappeloproer (Potato rebellion). People started looting stores and warehouses in order to get supplies, mainly food.
Germany invaded the Netherlands on 10 May 1940 and took control of the country. The Germans installed a Nazi civilian government in Amsterdam that cooperated with the persecution of Jews. Some Amsterdam citizens sheltered Jews, thereby exposing themselves and their families to the high risk of being imprisoned or sent to concentration camps. More than 100,000 Dutch Jews were deported to concentration camps. Perhaps the most-famous deportee was the young Jewish girl Anne Frank, who died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.[24] Only 5,000 Dutch Jews survived the war.[citation needed] At the end of World War II, communication with the rest of the country broke down, and food and fuel became scarce. Many citizens traveled to the countryside to forage. Dogs, cats, raw sugar beets, and Tulip bulbs—cooked to a pulp—were consumed to stay alive. Most of the trees in Amsterdam were cut down for fuel, and all the wood was taken from the apartments of deported Jews. After the war, approximately 120,000 Dutch were prosecuted for their collaboration with the Nazis.

Many new suburbs, such as Osdorp, Slotervaart, Slotermeer, and Geuzenveld, were built in the years after World War II. These suburbs contained many public parks and wide, open spaces, and the new buildings provided improved housing conditions with larger and brighter rooms, gardens, and balconies. Because of the war and other incidents of the 20th century, almost the entire city centre had fallen into disrepair. As society was changing, politicians and other influential figures made plans to redesign large parts of it. There was an increasing demand for office buildings and new roads as the automobile became available to most common people. A metro started operating in 1977 between the new suburb of Bijlmer and the centre of Amsterdam. Further plans were to build a new highway above the metro to connect the Central Station and city centre with other parts of the city.
The incorporated large-scale demolitions began in Amsterdam's formerly Jewish neighbourhood. Smaller streets, such as the Jodenbreestraat, were widened and saw almost all of their houses demolished. During the destruction's peak, the Nieuwmarktrellen (Nieuwmarkt riots) broke out, where people expressed their fury about the demolition caused by the restructuring of the city. As a result, the demolition was stopped, and the highway was never built, with only the metro being finished. Only a few streets remained widened. The destroyed buildings were replaced by new ones corresponding to the historical street plan of the neighbourhood. The new city hall was built on the almost completely demolished Waterlooplein. Meanwhile, large private organisations, such as Stadsherstel Amsterdam, were founded with the aim of restoring the entire city centre. Although the success of this struggle is visible today, efforts for further restoration are still ongoing. The entire city centre has reattained its former splendor and, as a whole, is now a protected area. Many of its buildings have become monuments, and plans exist to make the Grachtengordel (Herengracht, Keizersgracht, and Prinsengracht) a Unesco World Heritage site.

This day (September 24, 2009) in history:

622 – Prophet Muhammad completes his hegira from Mecca to Medina.
1180 – Manuel I Komnenos, last Emperor of the Komnenian restoration dies. The Byzantine Empire slips into terminal decline.
1664 – The Dutch Republic surrenders New Amsterdam to England.
1780 – Benedict Arnold flees to British Army lines after his plot to surrender West Point is exposed by the arrest of British Major John André.
1789 – The office of the Attorney General of the United States of America, and the United States Post Office Department, are established.
1841 – The Sultan of Brunei cedes Sarawak to Britain.
1852 – The first airship powered by (a steam) engine, created by Henri Giffard, travels 17 miles (27 km) from Paris to Trappes.
1869 – "Black Friday": Gold prices plummet after Ulysses S. Grant orders the Treasury to sell large quantities of gold after Jay Gould and James Fisk plot to control the market.
1877 – Battle of Shiroyama, decisive victory of the Imperial Japanese Army over the Satsuma Rebellion
1890 – The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints officially renounces polygamy.
1903 – Edmund Barton steps down as Prime Minister of Australia and is succeeded by Alfred Deakin.
1906 – U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt proclaims Devils Tower in Wyoming as the nation's first National Monument.
1928 – Major riot during a wharf strike in Port Adelaide involving up 4,000 waterside workers
1935 – Earl Bascom and Weldon Bascom produce the first rodeo ever held outdoors under electric lights at Columbia, Mississippi
1946 – Cathay Pacific Airways is founded in Hong Kong
1947 – Majestic 12 is allegedly established by secret executive order of President Harry Truman
1948 – The Honda Motor Company is founded.
1950 – Forest fires black out the sun over portions of Canada and New England. A Blue moon (in the astronomical sense) is seen as far away as Europe.
1957 – Camp Nou, the largest stadium in Europe, is opened in Barcelona.
1957 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower sends 101st Airborne Division troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce desegregation.
1962 – United States court of appeals orders the University of Mississippi to admit James Meredith.
1968 – 60 Minutes debuts on CBS
1973 – Guinea-Bissau declares its independence from Portugal.
1990 – Periodic Great White Spot observed on Saturn
1994 – National League for Democracy is formed by Aung San Suu Kyi and various others to help fight against dictatorship in Myanmar.
1996 – U.S. President Bill Clinton signs the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty at the United Nations.
2005 – Hurricane Rita makes landfall in the United States, devastating Beaumont, Texas and portions of southwestern Louisiana.

2009-03-27T07:50:00.000-07:00

Man! I haven't been here in a long time. Just have not had the time. Oh well - time to try and get back in the swing of things.

Let's keep going on the "Trip Around The World." Next on the list is Alofi. A bit of the history of the island nation of Niue is also given.

The photos are: 1) a street in Alofi; 2) the Coral Chasm in Niue; 3) the coastline of Niue; 4) Niuean dancers at the Pasifika Festival; 5) snorkeling in the waters off Niue; 6) diving in the waters off Niue; and 7) one of the caves of Niue (according to some european cave experts, Niue possesses the most spectacular and extensive cave system in the entire South Pacific).

Alofi is the capital city of the Pacific Ocean nation of Niue. It has a population of 614 (census of 2001). It consists of the two villages Alofi North (pop. 256) and Alofi South, where the government headquarters are located (pop. 358).
It is located at the centre of Alofi Bay on the west coast of the island, close to the only break in the coral reef that surrounds Niue. The bay stretches for 30% of the island's length (about seven kilometres) from Halagigie Point in the south to Makapu Point in the north.
In January 2004, Niue was hit by the fierce tropical storm Cyclone Heta which killed two people and did extensive damage to the entire island. Many of Alofi's buildings were destroyed, including the hospital. Government buildings were shifted to a less exposed site 3 km inland from the west coast, named Fonuakula, after the storm. This site is still within the village boundaries of Alofi South.

Niue is an island nation located in the South Pacific Ocean. It is commonly known as the "Rock of Polynesia". Natives of the island call it "the Rock".
Though self governing, Niue is in free association with New Zealand, and thus lacks full sovereignty. Queen Elizabeth II is also Niue's head of state. Most diplomatic relations are conducted by New Zealand on Niue's behalf.
Niue is 2,400 kilometres northeast of New Zealand in a triangle between Tonga, Samoa, and the Cook Islands. The people are predominantly Polynesian.

Niue was settled by Polynesian sailors from Samoa around AD 900. Further settlers (or invaders) arrived from Tonga in the 16th century.
Until the beginning of the 18th century, there appears to have been no national government or national leader in Niue. Before then, chiefs and heads of families exercised authority over segments of the population. Around 1700 the concept and practice of kingship appears to have been introduced through contact with Samoa or Tonga. From then on, a succession of patu-iki (kings) ruled the island, the first of whom was Puni-mata. Tui-toga, who reigned from 1875 to 1887, was the first Christian king of Niue.
The first European to sight Niue was Captain James Cook in 1774. Cook made three attempts to land on the island but was refused permission to do so by the Polynesian inhabitants. He named the island "Savage Island" because, legend has it, the natives that "greeted" him were painted in what appeared (to Cook and his crew) to be blood. However, the substance on their teeth was that of betel nut and not blood.
For the next couple of centuries the island remained known as Savage Island, until its original name Niu ē, which translates to "behold the coconut", regained use. Its official name is still Niuē fekai (wild Niuē).
The next notable European visitors were from the London Missionary Society and arrived in 1846 on the "Messenger of Peace". After many years of trying to land a European missionary on Niue, a Niuean named Nukai Peniamina was taken away and trained as a Pastor at the Malua Theological College in Samoa. Peniamina returned as a missionary with the help of Toimata Fakafitifonua. He was finally allowed to land in Uluvehi Mutalau after a number of attempts in other villages had failed. The Chiefs of Mutalau village allowed Peniamina to land and assigned over 60 warriors to protect him day and night at the fort in Fupiu. Christianity was first taught to the Mutalau people before it was spread to all the villages on Niue; originally, other major villages opposed the introduction of Christianity and had sought to kill Peniamina. The people from the village of Hakupu, although the last village to receive Christianity, came and asked for a "word of god"; hence their village was renamed "Ha Kupu Atua" meaning "any word of god", or "Hakupu" for short.
In 1887, King Fata-a-iki, who reigned from 1887 to 1896, offered to cede sovereignty over his country to the British Empire, fearing the consequences of annexation by a less benevolent colonial power. The offer was not accepted until 1900.

Niue was a British protectorate for a time, but the UK's involvement ended in 1901 when New Zealand annexed the island. Independence in the form of self-government was granted by the New Zealand parliament with the 1974 constitution. Robert Rex, CMG OBE (who was ethnically part European, part native) was appointed the country's first Premier, a position he continued to hold through re-election until his death 18 years later. Rex became the first Niuean to receive knighthood in 1984.

Today's Jumble (3/27/09):

PRUPE = UPPER; RUFOL = FLOUR; PLENOY = OPENLY; REVOND = VENDOR

CIRCLED LETTERS = EROROPEVD

What the skin doctor did when he examined the patient.

"PORED OVER (HIM)"

Today is National "Joe" Day. Everyone who hates their name can be called Joe today. It is also Fly a Kite Day, Celebrate Exchange Day, Education & Sharing Day, Quirky Country Music Song Titles Day, and Viagra Day (FDA approved Viagra on this day in 1998 - what a rise that created).

Other things on this day in history:

196 BC - Ptolemy V ascendsascends to the throne of Egypt.
1306 - Robert The Bruce is crowned King of Scotland at Scone.
1309 - Pope Clement V excommunicates Venice and all its population.
1329 - Pope John XXII issues his In Agro Dominico condemning some writings of Meister Eckhart as heretical.
1513 (not 1512 as often cited) - Explorer Juan Ponce de León sights North America (specifically Florida) for the first time, mistaking it for another island.
1613 - The first English child born in Canada at Cuper's Cove, Newfoundland to Nicholas Guy.
1625 - Charles I becomes King of England, Scotland and Ireland as well as claiming the title King of France.
1642 - The sixth Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Joseph takes office.
1782 - Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
1794 - The United States Government establishes a permanent navy and authorizes the building of six frigates.
1794 - Denmark and Sweden form a neutrality compact.
1814 - War of 1812: In central Alabama, U.S. forces under General Andrew Jackson defeat the Creek at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend.
1836 - Texas Revolution: Goliad massacre - Antonio López de Santa Anna orders the Mexican army to kill about 400 Texans at Goliad, Texas.
1836 - Kirtland Temple in Ohio is dedicated in an 8 hour long service led by Joseph Smith, Jr. and Sidney Rigdon.
1846 - Mexican-American War: Siege of Fort Texas.
1851 - First reported sighting of the Yosemite Valley by Europeans.
1854 - Crimean War: The United Kingdom declares war on Russia.
1868 - The Lake Ontario Shore Railroad Company is organized in Oswego, New York.
1871 - The first international rugby football match, England v. Scotland, is played in Edinburgh at Raeburn Place.
1881 - Rioting takes place in Basingstoke in protest against the daily vociferous promotion of rigid Temperance by the Salvation Army.
1890 - A tornado strikes Louisville, Kentucky, killing 76 and injuring 200.
1906 - The Alpine Club of Canada is founded in Winnipeg, Manitoba
1910 - A fire during a barn-dance in Ököritófülpös, Hungary, kills 312.
1918 - Moldova and Bessarabia join Romania.
1938 - The Battle of Taierzhuang takes place.
1941 - World War II: Yugoslavian Air Force officers topple the pro-axis government in a bloodless coup.
1943 - World War II: Battle of the Komandorski Islands - In the Aleutian Islands the battle begins when United States Navy forces intercept Japanese attempting to reinforce a garrison at Kiska.
1945 - World War II: Operation Starvation, the aerial mining of Japan's ports and waterways begins.
1948 - The Second Congress of the Workers Party of North Korea is convened.
1958 - Nikita Khrushchev becomes Premier of the Soviet Union.
1963 - Beeching axe: Dr. Richard Beeching issues a report calling for huge cuts to the United Kingdom's rail network.
1964 - The Good Friday Earthquake, the most powerful earthquake in U.S. history at a magnitude of 9.2 strikes South Central Alaska, killing 125 people and inflicting massive damage to the city of Anchorage.
1969 - Mariner 7 is launched.
1970 - Concorde makes its first supersonic flight.
1975 - Construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System begins.
1976 - The first 4.6 miles of the Washington Metro subway system opens.
1977 - Tenerife disaster: Two Boeing 747 airliners collide on a foggy runway on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, killing 583 (all 248 on KLM and 335 on Pan Am). 61 survived on the Pan Am flight.
1980 - The Norwegian oil platform Alexander Kielland collapses in the North Sea, killing 123 of its crew of 212.
1986 - A car bomb explodes at Russell Street Police HQ in Melbourne, killing 1 police officer and injuring 21 people.
1990 - The United States begins broadcasting TV Martí to Cuba in an effort to bridge the information blackout imposed by the Castro regime.
1993 - Jiang Zemin is appointed President of the People's Republic of China.
1993 - Italian former minister and Christian Democracy leader Giulio Andreotti is accused of mafia allegiance by the tribunal of Palermo.
1994 - One of the biggest tornado outbreaks in recent memory hits the Southeastern United States. One tornado slams into a church in Piedmont, Alabama during Palm Sunday services killing 20 and injuring 90.
1994 - The Eurofighter takes its first flight in Manching, Germany.
1998 - The Food and Drug Administration approves Viagra for use as a treatment for male impotence, the first pill to be approved for this condition in the United States.
1999 - An F-117 Nighthawk is shot down during the Kosovo War.
2000 - A Phillps Petroleum plant explosion in Pasadena, Texas kills 1 and injures 71.
2002 - Passover Massacre: A Palestinian suicide bomber kills 29 people partaking of the Passover meal in Netanya, Israel.
2004 - HMS Scylla (F71), a decommissioned Leander class frigate, is sunk as an artificial reef off Cornwall, the first of its kind in Europe.
2006 - The United Nations Commission on Human Rights holds its final meeting.

2009-02-24T01:55:00.000-08:00

Hello! My name is Dr. Dad. I found C.C.'s Star Tribune Crossword Corner by accident a while ago when solving the Trib puzzle published in the Providence Journal (RI). I have had a great time on her site and she graciously asked me to guest blog and, therefore - today I am guest blogging for the Star Tribune Crossword Corner. She does an excellent job with analyzing crosswords and has numerous visitors. I hope I do her justice with Barry Silk's themeless puzzle of February 21st. Please post your comments under the March 1st post for "Barry's Themeless."

There seems to be a hint of a "theme" in this puzzle - 12D: Action Hero. Many times the heroes of action films can be seen wearing Jump Suits (35D) and Life Jackets (1A) with numerous Sweat Stains (57A). They need a lot of Horse Sense (14D), especially when Standing Guard (13D). Not my best effort at figuring out themes, but ---

Enough of that. Off to the puzzle (70 words).

Across:

11A: Bills: CASH. My cash is dwindling in this troubled economy.

15A: It's 42 miles NNW of Bar Harbor: ORONO, MAINE. I was surprised that the answer contained the state as well. The University of Maine is located here and Orono is a frequent answer in Xwords.

16A: Pi opening?: OCTO. Nice trick. I looked for other Greek letters. Ugly looking but they taste delicious. I first ate them when I visited China.

17A: Warning sign: DO NOT ENTER.

18A: Sky light: STAR.

19A: _____' acte: ENTR. French for "between the acts." It can refer to an intermission but more often refers to a piece of music performed between acts of a theatrical production. It is also a 1924 film.

20A: Short change?: CTS. Goes hand in hand with my "11A cash" that is also getting short.

21A: Morning prayers: MATINS. The early morning or night prayer service in the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran and Eastern Orthodox liturgies.

23A: Liberally "strong" in Hawaiian: MAHI. Mahi Mahi is "strong strong" for dolphin fish. This Mahi Mahi with Ginger Soy Sauce looks delicious.

25A: 1963 system based on a 1944 Robert Moon proposal: ZIP CODE. I wonder if Mr. Moon prepared for the nine-digit system or only the five-digit one.

26A: Like jambalaya: CREOLE. Creole is not the same as Cajun.

29A: Billboard listings: HIT SONGS.

30A: Energize: REV UP. Plenty of revving up a couple of Sundays ago at this place.

31A: Soprano Fleming: RENEE. Not familiar with this person. My favorite is Ian.

32A: Old TV knob: HUE. Does anyone still own a TV with knobs?

33A: Latin 101 verb: AMAS

34A: Dermatology issues: SORES. What about acne?

35A: Psychologist Piaget: JEAN. Well known (but not to me) for his work studying children and their cognitive development.

36A: Adverb ending: IAL

37A: Runs through: STABS

38A: Doesn't knock?: PURRS. Most of the engines at Daytona were "purring."

39A: Some tennis players: GRUNTERS. At 101 decibels, Wimbledon's defending champion Maria Sharapova is judged the loudest grunter so far.

41A: No longer très chic: DEMODE. Très chic is from French "very smart". Démodé is French, past participle of démoder, to outmode.

42A: Christmas village display figures: SKATERS. I still think she was one of the best.

43A: One for the books?: PERP. Help! I don't understand this one. All I know is perpendicular for Xwords. And the perp helped me to get this answer.

44A: Not on time for: LATE TO

45A: Military rank: MAJ. Major.

46A: Where T. Rex Sue was found: SDAK. South Dakota. You can see her at the Field Museum.

50A: Sacred bird of old Egypt: IBIS

51A: Not enough: INADEQUATE. Like my cash and short change and if you have enough you can give it to:

54A: Bandit one hopefully gives money to?: SLOT. And then your CPA can be concerned with:

55A: DEDUCTIBLE(s)

56A: Knockouts, so to speak: TENS. Kind of in keeping with the short change and bills. Not enough to go around.

Down:

1D: Valuable deposit: LODE. Wish I'd find one to help my short change, cash, and tens.

2D: Word with hand or horse: IRON. Fits well with "Horse Sense" in this puzzle.

3D: Newspaper option: FONT.

4D: Titanic: ENORMOUS. And SHE was. Loved the movie.

5D: Scribble: JOT

6D: "Cocoon" Oscar Winner: AMECHE. I am glad that Heath Ledger got the posthumous award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.

7D: "C'mon . . . please?": CAN'T I?

8D: Hobbyists' buys: KITS

9D: Storm hdg: ENE. Much better than "opposite of "WSW."

10D: Home wreckers: TERMITES. I thought of "Exes" but then again, I have had termites and they truly are home wreckers.

11D: BJ's competitor: COSTCO. Another competitor is Sam's Club (used to be PACE).

22D: Sanctuary section: APSE. A crossword staple, along with NAVE.

24D: Matterhorn, e.g.: ALP. Here is another famous Alp - the Eiger (Clint Eastwood fans might remember "The Eiger Sanction.").

25D: Popular issues: ZINES. (pronounced 'zene') - An abbreviation of the word fanzine, or magazine. It is most commonly a small circulation, non-commercial publication of original or appropriated texts and images.

26D: Alternative to newspaper classifieds: CRAIG'S LIST. This is indeed becoming popular as the alternative.

27D: Noteworthy: REMARKABLE. Describes nicely the tribute Barry Silk gave C.C. and her site with his "Star Tribune Crossword Puzzle" from last week. Thanks, Barry.

28D: Critique: EVALUATION

29D: Tea flavorings: HERBS

31D: Comedy club sounds: ROARS

34D" Subject of the 2007 Mitchell Report: STEROIDS. 'Nuff' said on this subject.

37D: Proof instruction: STET. Another Xword staple.

38D: By way of: PER. This helped me get "perp" for 43A which I still don't understand.

40D: Powerful experiments: NTESTS. The chemist in me kept thinking laboratory. Here is one of the most powerful N Tests. I am glad we stopped these and hope no one else wants to start.

41D: Bring down: DEJECT

43D: "The Taming of the Shrew" setting: PADUA. Here is the the map.

45D: Good way to have it: MADE. Don't we all wish that?

47D: "The Aba ___ Honeymoon": DABA. I was glad it was 'daba' because all I could think of was Fred Flintstone and 'Yabba Dabba Doo!"

48D: Mythical Hun King: ATLI. This has become a staple in recent Xwords.

49D: Insightful: KEEN

52D: Just out: NEW. As am I on this crossword blogging. I hope I've done okay.

53D: Dairy units: Abbr.: QTS.

Thank you, C.C. for asking me to do this. It was fun and I hope you and all visitors like my "Critique = Evaluation (28D)".

2009-02-22T05:42:00.000-08:00

Well, it has been a long time since I had the opportunity to create a new post. Things changed at work and I can no longer do it from there so I am relegated to doing it from home. I just haven't found the time to do so and apologize to any who have been coming here to visit. I probably lost a few visitors - maybe they will return, maybe not. To those who have kept checking and found to their frustration that I wasn't updating the blog, I appreciate that you took the time to check.

Anyway, I still want to continue the "Trip Around The World" and will do so today by visiting Algiers, the capital of Algeria. I will also list the "Day in History" again but do so knowing I have missed quite a few days.

Off to Algiers. The photos are: 1) an aerial view of Algiers; 2) the Algiers waterfront; 3) the Ketchaoua mosque; 4) the "Centre Commercial Al Qods" in Algiers, the largest shopping mall of Africa; 5) the Ministry of Finances of Algeria; 6) the Monument of the Martyrs (Maquam E’chahid); 7) the El Jedid mosque at the Place des Martyrs; 8) the Notre Dame d'Afrique; and 9) the Towers in Algiers.

Algiers is the capital and largest city of Algeria, and the second largest city in the Maghreb (after Casablanca). According to the 2005 census, the population of the city proper was 1,519,570; for the urban area was 2,135,630; for the metropolitan area 3,518,083.
Nicknamed El-Bahdja or Alger la Blanche ("Algiers the White") for the glistening white of its buildings as seen rising up from the sea, Algiers is situated on the west side of a bay of the Mediterranean Sea. The city name is derived from the Arabic word al-jazā’ir, which translates as the islands, referring to the four islands which lay off the city's coast until becoming part of the mainland in 1525. Al-jazā’ir is itself a truncated form of the city's older name jazā’ir banī mazghannā, "the islands of (the tribe) Bani Mazghanna", used by early medieval geographers such as al-Idrisi and Yaqut al-Hamawi. Algiers is the only Algerian city with an English name different from its French name. The city is consistently ranked one of the least liveable capitals in the world.

The present-day city was founded in 944 by Buluggin ibn Ziri, the founder of the Berber Zirid-Senhaja dynasty, which was overthrown by Roger II of Sicily in 1148, although the Zirids had already lost control of Algiers before the final fall of the dynasty. The city was occupied by the Almohades in 1159, and in the 13th century came under the dominion of the Abd-el-Wadid sultans of Tlemcen. Nominally part of the sultanate of Tlemcen, Algiers had a large measure of independence under amirs of its own due to Oran being the chief seaport and center of power of the Abd-el-Wahid.

As early as 1302 the islet of Penon in front of Algiers harbour had been occupied by Spaniards. Thereafter, a considerable amount of trade began to flow between Algiers and Spain. However, Algiers continued to be of comparatively little importance until after the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, many of whom sought asylum in the city. In 1510, following their occupation of Oran and other towns on the coast of Africa, the Spaniards fortified the islet of Penon and imposed a levy intended to supress corsair activity.[3] In 1516, the amir of Algiers, Selim b. Teumi, invited the corsair brothers Aruj and Khair ad-Din Barbarossa to expel the Spaniards. Aruj came to Algiers, ordered the assassination of Selim, and seized the town. Khair ad-Din, succeeding Arouj after the latter was killed in battle against the Spaniards at Tlemcen, was the founder of the pashaluk, which subsequently became the beylik, of Algeria after formally inviting the Sultan to accept sovereignty over the territory and to annex Algiers to the Ottoman Empire.

The bombardment of Algiers by Lord Exmouth, August 1816, painted by Thomas Luny
Algiers from this time became the chief seat of the Barbary pirates. In October 1541, the King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V sought to capture the city, but a storm destroyed a great number of his ships, and his army of some 30,000, chiefly made up of Spaniards, was defeated by the Algerians under their Pasha, Hassan. Formally part of the Ottoman Empire but essentially free from Ottoman control, starting in the 17th century Algiers turned to piracy and ransoming. Due to its location on the periphery of both the Ottoman and European economic spheres, and depending for its existence on a Mediterranean that was increasingly controlled by European shipping, backed by European navies, piracy became the primary economic activity. Repeated attempts were made by various nations to subdue the pirates that disturbed shipping in the western Mediterranean and engaged in slave raids as far north as Iceland. The United States fought two wars (the First and Second Barbary Wars) over Algiers' attacks on shipping.

The city under Ottoman control was enclosed by a 3,100 meter wall on all sides, including along the seafront. In this wall, five gates allowed access to the city, with five roads from each gate dividing the city and meeting in front of the Ketchaoua Mosque. In 1556, a citadel was constructed at the highest point in the wall. A major road running north to south divided the city in two: The upper city (al-Gabal, or 'the mountain') which consisted of about fifty small quarters of Andalusian, Jewish, Moorish and Kabyle communities, and the lower city (al-Wata, or 'the plains') which was the administrative, military and commercial centre of the city, mostly inhabited by Turkish dignitaries and other upper-class families.
In 1817, the city was bombarded by a British squadron under Lord Exmouth (a descendant of Thomas Pellew, taken in an Algerian slave raid in 1715), assisted by Dutch men-of-war, destroying the corsair fleet harboured in Algiers.

The history of Algiers from 1815 to 1962 is bound to the larger history of Algeria and its relationship to France. On July 4, 1830, under the pretext of an affront to the French consul — whom the dey had hit with a fly-whisk when the consul said the French government was not prepared to pay its large outstanding debts to two Algerian Jewish merchants — a French army under General de Bourmont attacked the city, which capitulated the following day. Algiers became a French colony.
During the 1930s, the architect Le Corbusier drew up plans for a complete redesign of the colonial city. Le Corbusier was highly critical of the urban style of Algiers, describing the European district as "nothing but crumbling walls and devastated nature, the whole a sullied blot". He also criticised the difference in living standards he perceived between the European and African residents of the city, describing a situation in which "the 'civilised' live like rats in holes" whereas "the 'barbarians' live in solitude, in well-being". However, these plans were ultimately ignored by the French colonial administration.
In 1962, after a bloody independence struggle in which up to 1.5 million Algerians died at the hands of the French Army and the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale, Algeria finally gained its independence, with Algiers as its capital. Since then, despite losing its entire European or pied-noir population, the city has expanded massively. It now has about 3 million inhabitants, or 10 percent of Algeria's population — and its suburbs now cover most of the surrounding Metidja plain.
Algiers was the host city for both the 1978 and 2007 All-Africa Games. The city was also designated the Arab Capital of Culture for 2007.
The modern part of the city is built on the level ground by the seashore; the old part, the ancient city of the deys, climbs the steep hill behind the modern town and is crowned by the casbah or citadel, 400 feet (122 m) above the sea. The casbah and the two quays form a triangle.

Recently Algiers has sought to once again become an important African and Mediterranean capital, envisioning having a comparable level of infrastructure development to what it had in 1962 relative to other countries. Algiers is opening itself up to the world by hosting a variety of international conferences and events. This new openness has attracted the investment of a number of multinational companies in recent years, such as: Carrefour, Yves Rocher, and even Quick. However, many large infrastructure projects are struggling to be completed: the Algiers subway, the tramway, urban renewal projects, the creation of new urban centers on the periphery.

The current infrastructure has not been able to keep up with Algiers' rapid growth.
Algiers is currently ranked lowest out of 132 capitals in the Economist Intelligence Unit's quality of life survey. The survey takes into consideration 40 different criteria divided into 5 categories: stability, health services, culture and environment, education, and the availability of basic services. Algiers was ranked lower than such cities as Karachi (Pakistan), Tripoli (Libya), Abidjan (Côte-d'Ivoire), and even Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. In 2005 the same survey ranked Algiers 125th out of 129 cities.

Today's Jumble (2/22/09):

INFEED = DEFINE; BENAMO = BEMOAN; NOCHOP = PONCHO; GANDEA = AGENDA; ARQUEV = QUAVER; DAVULE = VALUED

CIRCLED LETTERS = EIBMNONCGDARUD

What the greenhouse workers enjoyed.

"(A) BUDDING ROMANCE"

Today is George Washington's Birthday. It is also Girl Scout Thinking Day and Recreational Sports and Fitness Day. The Academy Awards are tonight. I really hope Heath Ledger wins (he should).

Other things on this day in history:

1495 - King Charles VIII of France enters Naples to claim the city's throne.
1632 - Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems is published.
1744 - War of the Austrian Succession: The Battle of Toulon begins.
1797 - Last Invasion of Britain: 1797 The Last Invasion of Britain by the French, begins near Fishguard, Wales.
1819 - By the Adams-Onís Treaty, Spain sells Florida to the United States for five million U.S. dollars.
1847 - Mexican-American War: The Battle of Buena Vista - 5,000 American troops drive off 15,000 Mexicans.
1856 - The Republican Party opens its first national meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
1862 - Jefferson Davis is officially inaugurated for a six-year term as the President of the Confederate States of America in Richmond, Virginia. He was previously inaugurated as a provisional president on February 18, 1861.
1879 - In Utica, New York, Frank Woolworth opens the first of many of 5 and 10-cent Woolworth stores.
1882 - The Serbian kingdom is refounded.
1889 - President Grover Cleveland signs a bill admitting North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Washington as U.S. states.
1904 - The United Kingdom sells a meteorological station on the South Orkney Islands to Argentina, the islands are subsequently claimed by the United Kingdom in 1908.
1915 - World War I: Germany institutes unrestricted submarine warfare.
1924 - Calvin Coolidge becomes the first President of the United States to deliver a radio broadcast from the White House.
1942 - World War II: President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders General Douglas MacArthur out of the Philippines as American defenses collapses.
1943 - Members of White Rose are executed in Nazi Germany.
1944 - American aircraft bombard the Dutch towns of Nijmegen, Arnhem, Enschede and Deventer by mistake, resulting in 800 dead in Nijmegen alone.
1948 - Communist coup in Czechoslovakia.
1958 - Egypt and Syria join to form the United Arab Republic.
1959 - Lee Petty wins the first Daytona 500.
1973 - Cold War: Following United States President Richard Nixon's visit to the People's Republic of China, the two countries agree to establish liaison offices.
1974 - Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) summit conference starts in Lahore, Pakistan. Thirty-seven countries are attending. Twenty-two heads of state and government participate. It also recognized Bangladesh.
1974 - Samuel Byck tries and fails to assassinate U.S. President Richard Nixon.
1979 - Independence of Saint Lucia from the United Kingdom.
1980 - Miracle on Ice: In Lake Placid, New York, the United States hockey team defeats the Soviet Union hockey team 4-3, in what is considered to be one of the greatest upsets in sports history.
1983 The notorious Broadway flop Moose Murders opened and closed on the same night at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre.
1986 - Start of the People Power Revolution in the Philippines.
1994 - Aldrich Ames and his wife are charged by the United States Department of Justice with spying for the Soviet Union.
1997 - In Roslin, Scotland, scientists announce that an adult sheep named Dolly had been successfully cloned.
2002 - Angolan political and rebel leader Jonas Savimbi is killed in a military ambush.
2005 - The band Blink-182, due to an "indefinite hiatus", split up.
2006 - At least six men stage Britain's biggest robbery ever, stealing £53m (about $92.5 million or 78€ million) from a Securitas depot in Tonbridge, Kent.
2009 - National day of mourning in Australia for the victims of the 2009 Victorian bushfires.

2009-02-02T03:33:00.000-08:00

Off to visit Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The photos are: 1) the Addis Ababa skyline; 2) Addis Ababa University; 3) Meskel Square; 4) the Hager Fikir Theater; 5) St. George's Cathedral; 6) the Dembel Mall on Bole Road; and 7) the bustling center of Addis Ababa.

Addis Ababa is the capital city of Ethiopia and the African Union and its predecessor, the OAU. It is also the largest city in Ethiopia. With a population of 2,738,248 according to the 2007 population census, Addis Ababa is competing with Kabul to be the world's largest city in a landlocked country. As a chartered city (ras gez astedader), Addis Ababa has the status of both a city and a state. It is often called the capital of Africa or the "African Capital" due to its historical, diplomatic and political significance for the continent.[2] The city is populated by people from different regions of Ethiopia. The country has as many as 80 nationalities speaking 80 languages and religious communities including Christian, Muslim, and Jewish. Addis Ababa is a grassland biome. From its lowest point, around Bole International Airport, at 2,326 metres (7,630 ft) above sea level in the southern periphery, the city rises to over 3,000 metres (9,800 ft) in the Entoto Mountains to the north.
The site was chosen by Empress Taytu Betul and the city was founded in 1886 by her husband, Emperor Menelik II, and now has a population of around 2.7 million.
The city lies at the foot of Mount Entoto, and is home to Addis Ababa University.

Addis Ababa was founded by the Ethiopian emperor Menelik II. The name of the city was taken from parts of the city called hora Finfinnee ("hot springs") in Oromo. Another Oromo name of the city is Sheger. Menelik, as initially a King of the Shewa province, had found Mount Entoto a useful base for military operations in the south of his realm, and in 1879 visited the reputed ruins of a medieval town, and an unfinished rock church that showed proof of an Ethiopian presence in the area prior to the campaigns of Ahmad Gragn. His interest in the area grew when his wife Taytu began work on a church on Entoto, and Menelik endowed a second church in the area. However the immediate area did not encourage the founding of a town due to the lack of firewood and water, so settlement actually began in the valley south of the mountain in 1886. Initially, Taytu built a house for herself near the "Filwoha" hot mineral springs, where she and members of the Showan Royal Court liked to take mineral baths. Other nobility and their staffs and households settled the vicinity, and Menelik expanded his wife's house to become the Imperial Palace which remains the seat of government in Addis Ababa today. The name changed to Addis Ababa and became Ethiopia's capital when Menelik II became Emperor of Ethiopia. The town grew by leaps and bounds. One of Emperor Menelik's contributions that is still visible today is the planting of numerous eucalyptus trees along the city streets.
On 5 May 1936, Italian troops occupied Addis Ababa during the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, making it the capital of Italian East Africa from 1936 to 1941 after killing about a million Ethiopians with mustard gas. After the Italian army in Ethiopia was defeated by the British army and the Ethiopian patriot forces during the East African Campaign, Emperor Haile Selassie returned to Addis Ababa on 5 May 1941—five years to the very day after he had departed—and immediately began the work of re-establishing his capital.
Emperor Haile Selassie helped form the Organization of African Unity in 1963, and invited the new organization to keep its headquarters in the city. The OAU was dissolved in 2002 and replaced by the African Union (AU), also headquartered in Addis Ababa. The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa also has its headquarters in Addis Ababa. Addis Ababa was also the site of the Council of the Oriental Orthodox Churches in 1965.

Ethiopia has often been called the origin of human kind due to various humanoid fossil discoveries like the Australopithecine Lucy. North eastern Africa, and the Afar region in particular was the central focus of these claims until recent DNA evidence suggested origins in south central Ethiopian regions like present-day Addis Ababa (Finfine). After analyzing the DNA of almost 1,000 people around the world, geneticists and other scientists claimed humans spread from what is now Addis Ababa 100,000 years ago. The research indicated that genetic diversity declines steadily the farther one's ancestors traveled from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, which is roughly the site of the exit turnstile for the "out-of-Africa" migration.

Today's Jumble (02/02/09):

TIDEY = DEITY; RECSS = CRESS; LOMOGY = GLOOMY; RUNUTE = UNTRUE

CIRCLED LETTERS = EIYESSOOMUNR

What the comedian's funny routine generated.

"SERIOUS MONEY"

Today is Groundhog Day. Puxatawney Phil is the star for today. Will he see his shadow or won't he?

It is also February's Bonza Bottler Day. This happens every month when the month and the day are the same number.

Other things on this day in history:

962 - Translatio imperii: Pope John XII crowns Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor, the first Holy Roman Emperor in nearly 40 years.
1032 - Conrad II, Holy Roman Emperor becomes King of Burgundy.
1509 - The Battle of Diu takes place near Diu, India, between Portugal and Turkey.
1536 - Spaniard Pedro de Mendoza founds Buenos Aires, Argentina.
1542 - Portuguese under Christovão da Gama capture a Moslem-occupied hillfort in northern Ethiopia in the Battle of Baçente.
1653 - New Amsterdam (later renamed The City of New York) is incorporated.
1709 - Alexander Selkirk is rescued from shipwreck on a desert island, inspiring the book Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe.
1787 - Arthur St. Clair is elected the 9th President of the President of the Continental Congress under the Articles of Confederation.
1790 - The U.S. Supreme Court convenes for the first time.
1812 - Russia establishes a fur trading colony at Fort Ross, California.
1848 - Mexican-American War: The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is signed.
1848 - California Gold Rush: The first ship with Chinese emigrants arrives in San Francisco, California.
1876 - The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs of Major League Baseball is formed.
1878 - Greece declares war on Turkey.
1880 - The first electric streetlight is installed in Wabash, Indiana.
1882 - The Knights of Columbus are formed in New Haven, Connecticut.
1887 - In Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania the first Groundhog Day is observed.
1899 - The Australian Premiers' Conference held in Melbourne decides to locate Australia's capital (Canberra) between Sydney and Melbourne.
1901 - Queen Victoria's funeral takes place.
1913 - Grand Central Station was opened in New York City.
1920 - The Tartu Peace Treaty is signed between Estonia and Russia.
1920 - France occupies Memel.
1922 - Ulysses by James Joyce is published.
1925 - Serum run to Nome: Dog sleds reach Nome, Alaska with diphtheria serum, inspiring the Iditarod race.
1925 - The Charlevoix-Kamouraska earthquake strikes northeastern North America.
1933 - Adolf Hitler dissolves the German Parliament.
1935 - Leonarde Keeler tests the first polygraph machine.
1940 - Frank Sinatra debuts with the Tommy Dorsey orchestra.
1943 - World War II: The last German forces surrender to the Soviets after the Battle of Stalingrad.
1946 - The Proclamation of Hungarian Republic is made.
1957 - Iskander Mirza of Pakistan lays the foundation-stone of the Guddu Barrage.
1966 - Pakistan suggests a six-point agenda with Kashmir after the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965.
1967 - The American Basketball Association is formed.
1971 - Idi Amin replaces President Milton Obote as leader of Uganda.
1972 - The British embassy in Dublin is destroyed in protest over Bloody Sunday.
1974 - The F-16 Fighting Falcon flies for the first time.
1976 - The Groundhog Day gale hits the north-eastern United States and south-eastern Canada.
1980 - Reports surface that FBI were targeting Congressmen in the Abscam operation.
1980 - Revolutionary Communist Party of Turkey is founded.
1982 - Hama Massacre: Syria attacks the town of Hama.
1989 - Soviet war in Afghanistan: The last Soviet Union armored column leaves Kabul.
1989 - Satellite television service Sky Television plc launched.
1990 - Apartheid: F.W. de Klerk allows the African National Congress to legally function and promises to release Nelson Mandela.
1998 - A Cebu Pacific Flight 387 DC-9-32 crashes into a mountain near Cagayan de Oro, Philippines, killing 104.
2002 - Willem-Alexander, Prince of Orange marries Máxima Zorreguieta.