View allAll Photos Tagged EXPANDING
This blossom tree sits tucked under the cliff and is always quite late to bloom, a wise tree in this part of the world
365/2021 - Expanding Horizons ~ 241/365
Thank you to everyone who pauses long enough to look at my photo. All comments and Faves are very much appreciated
365/2021 - Expanding Horizons - Day 8 Jan 8
Years ago we actually got out and walked around it and under it, but you can not walk on it.
Bridge To Nowhere
Yuma, Arizona
This 800-foot-long suspension bridge spanned the Gila River when it was built in 1929, and was named McPhaul Bridge in honor of Henry Harrison McPhaul, "the only Yuma resident who ever became an Arizona Ranger." But it was considered to be too flimsy for modern traffic, and when a dam was built upstream in 1968 the river was diverted and the highway was rerouted over a much smaller bridge. This ultimately proved unwise, as a flood in 1993 destroyed the new bridge while the Bridge to Nowhere, with its broad span and high clearance, probably would have been just fine.
McPhaul Bridge crosses only desert sand and rocks these days, but the Arizona air has kept it remarkably intact. It would have been a fine location for a post-Apocalyptic Charlton Heston
In celebration of the 31st anniversary of the launching of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers aimed the renowned observatory at a brilliant "celebrity star," one of the brightest stars seen in our galaxy, surrounded by a glowing halo of gas and dust.
The price for the monster star's opulence is "living on the edge." The star, called AG Carinae, is waging a tug-of-war between gravity and radiation to avoid self-destruction.
The expanding shell of gas and dust that surrounds the star is about five light-years wide, which equals the distance from here to the nearest star beyond the Sun, Proxima Centauri.
The huge structure was created from one or more giant eruptions about 10,000 years ago. The star's outer layers were blown into space – like a boiling teapot popping off its lid. The expelled material amounts to roughly 10 times our Sun's mass.
These outbursts are the typical life of a rare breed of star called a luminous blue variable, a brief convulsive phase in the short life of an ultra-bright, glamorous star that lives fast and dies young. These stars are among the most massive and brightest stars known. They live for only a few million years, compared to the roughly 10-billion-year lifetime of our Sun. AG Carinae is a few million years old and resides 20,000 light-years away inside our Milky Way galaxy.
Luminous blue variables exhibit a dual personality: They appear to spend years in quiescent bliss and then they erupt in a petulant outburst. These behemoths are stars in the extreme, far different from normal stars like our Sun. In fact, AG Carinae is estimated to be up to 70 times more massive than our Sun and shines with the blinding brilliance of one million suns.
"I like studying these kinds of stars because I am fascinated by their instability. They are doing something weird," said Kerstin Weis, a luminous blue variable expert at Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany.
Major outbursts such as the one that produced the nebula occur once or twice during a luminous blue variable's lifetime. A luminous blue variable star only casts off material when it is in danger of self-destruction as a supernova. Because of their massive forms and super-hot temperatures, luminous blue variable stars like AG Carinae are in a constant battle to maintain stability.
It's an arm-wrestling contest between radiation pressure from within the star pushing outward and gravity pressing inward. This cosmic match results in the star expanding and contracting. The outward pressure occasionally wins the battle, and the star expands to such an immense size that it blows off its outer layers, like a volcano erupting. But this outburst only happens when the star is on the verge of coming apart. After the star ejects the material, it contracts to its normal size, settles back down, and becomes quiescent for a while.
Like many other luminous blue variables, AG Carinae remains unstable. It has experienced lesser outbursts that have not been as powerful as the one that created the present nebula.
Although AG Carinae is quiescent now, as a super-hot star it continues pouring out searing radiation and powerful stellar wind (streams of charged particles). This outflow continues shaping the ancient nebula, sculpting intricate structures as outflowing gas slams into the slower-moving outer nebula. The wind is traveling at up to 670,000 miles per hour (one million km/hr), about 10 times faster than the expanding nebula. Over time, the hot wind catches up with the cooler expelled material, plows into it, and pushes it farther away from the star. This "snowplow" effect has cleared a cavity around the star.
The red material is glowing hydrogen gas laced with nitrogen gas. The diffuse red material at upper left pinpoints where the wind has broken through a tenuous region of material and swept it into space.
The most prominent features, highlighted in blue, are filamentary structures shaped like tadpoles and lopsided bubbles. These structures are dust clumps illuminated by the star's reflected light. The tadpole-shaped features, most prominent at left and bottom, are denser dust clumps that have been sculpted by the stellar wind. Hubble's sharp vision reveals these delicate-looking structures in great detail.
The image was taken in visible and ultraviolet light. Ultraviolet light offers a slightly clearer view of the filamentary dust structures that extend all the way down toward the star. Hubble is ideally suited for ultraviolet-light observations because this wavelength range can only be viewed from space.
Massive stars, like AG Carinae, are important to astronomers because of their far-reaching effects on their environment. The largest program in Hubble's history – the Ultraviolet Legacy Library of Young Stars as Essential Standards – is studying the ultraviolet light of young stars and the way they shape their surroundings.
Luminous blue variable stars are rare: Less than 50 are known among the galaxies in our local group of neighboring galaxies. These stars spend tens of thousands of years in this phase, a blink of an eye in cosmic time. Many are expected to end their lives in titanic supernova blasts, which enrich the universe with heavier elements beyond iron.
Hubble Trivia:
- Launched on April 24, 1990, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has made more than 1.5 million observations of about 48,000 celestial objects.
In its 31-year lifetime, the telescope has racked up more than 181,000 orbits around our planet, totaling over 4.5 billion miles.
- Hubble observations have produced more than 169 terabytes of data, which are available for present and future generations of researchers.
- Astronomers using Hubble data have published more than 18,000 scientific papers, with more than 900 of those papers published in 2020.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C.
For more information: www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2021/hubble-captures-giant-s...
This shot has the 17/50 place in the advance Contest Flowers in Black and White 2015 see: link below:
I missed the white speederbike from 4483. But the model are the same as 7139 and 4482.
I like the 2009 Version.
Which do you like?
New series, occasionally I'll make these posts to expand the Bat Chronicles universe, just with character bios for characters that never appear in the comic. And the pic looks kinda weird, I tried something with lighting, didn't turn out how I wanted, I'll do something more normal for the next one.
From L to R:
Calendar-Man: Julian Day is a criminal of Gotham City, who themes all of their heists and schemes around the day that they're set. For example, on year on Christmas he rode into a mall on a large sleigh, wearing a stolen Santa costume, and making his goons grab everything they could find and throw it onto the sleigh, before attempting to ride back out of the mall into the snow with all of the gang's "gifts". He makes sure to at least plan a crime for every holiday, but occasionally he's still in Arkham, and has to wait until next year. The name "Calendar-Man" was thought of by the GCPD, and Julian hates that name. He finds it demeaning, and not at all threatening. Like most criminals, he wants people to fear him, and he feels he can't exactly do that if everyone sees him as "Calendar-Man". But, he tries his hardest to ignore it, and continues his crime spree on every day he deems appropriate.
Brainiac: Scientists on the planet "Krypton", home of Superman, created a highly advanced cybernetic android. The original purpose of this robot was simply to be created as a sort of mechanical butler. However, these scientists created something far more advanced than they could ever imagine, and they kept adding new things to the android, just to see what they could accomplish. They had the insane idea to create fake memories to put into the robot, including the idea that they are in fact an alien, and the last of their species. And they kept fleshing out this whole artificial intelligence idea, until they got to the point where this android had a 12th level intellect, and believed not only they were the last of their kind, but that the Kryptonians were the ones to kill the rest of their planet. A very idiotic choice on the scientist's part. The android ended up seeking revenge, and killing all of the scientists. They used their laboratory as well as other cybernetic parts to create a ship, which the android used to destroy all the rest of Krypton, along with it's life. And over time, the android began going by the name "Brainiac". Much later in life, Superman discovered Brainiac was an android, and revealed it to him. At first, Brainiac was confused, and angry at the Kryptonians for lying to him, and telling him all of those terrible things. But eventually Brainiac got over this, and realized how stupid those scientists were for accidentally destroying their home, and came to the conclusion that their stupidity came from them being organic. Brainiac went on to create an army of androids like him, to help him destroy all organic life in the universe, but is almost always stopped by his greatest enemy, Superman...
The Flash: Barry Allen was a forensic investigator, who was often made fun of for always being late to work. Long before this job, Barry's mother was murdered by some unknown criminal, who framed his father for the crime. As a result of this, he's often distracted by thinking about it when working on cases. Though one night while working on a case, he failed to realize the wooden container holding vials of chemicals hanging off the edge of his desk, which fell onto him after Barry was struck by lightning. Once he woke up, he later realized that the chemicals combined with the lightning bolt granted him unnatural levels of strength, agility, and most noticeably, speed. He later quit his job of being a forensic investigator, and instead dawned a red spandex suit, with a yellow lightning bolt emblem, and fought crime as the superhero known as "The Flash".
Talia Al Ghul: Many years ago, when Bruce Wayne was only just starting out as Batman, he went all around the world for training. One of the many people he came to was a man named Ra's Al Ghul, the leader of an elite assassin group known as "The League of Shadows". Talia was his daughter, and was romantically involved with Bruce for the time he was being trained by Ra's. Though by the end of Bruce's training, he couldn't go through with killing anyone, so left the League, leaving Talia behind with it. Bruce and Talia haven't seen each other since that point. Though without Bruce, Talia continued her training, and eventually became one of the most skilled assassins in the league, only surpassed by Ra's himself...
~Madam Web
365/2021 - Expanding Horizons - Day 81 Mar 22 - Took a beach ride and was great to see a couple pairs of eagles!
The Catherine Palace (Russian: Екатерининский дворец) was the Rococo summer residence of the Russian tsars, located in the town of Tsarskoye Selo (Pushkin), 25 km south-east of St. Petersburg, Russia.
The residence originated in 1717, when Catherine I of Russia engaged the German architect Johann-Friedrich Braunstein to construct a summer palace for her pleasure. In 1733, Empress Anna commissioned Mikhail Zemtsov and Andrei Kvasov to expand the Catherine Palace. Empress Elizabeth, however, found her mother's residence outdated and incommodious and in May 1752 asked her court architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli to demolish the old structure and replace it with a much grander edifice in a flamboyant Rococo style. Construction lasted for four years and on 30 July 1756 the architect presented the brand-new 325-meter-long palace to the Empress, her dazed courtiers and stupefied foreign ambassadors.[citation needed]
During Elizabeth's lifetime, the palace was famed for its obscenely lavish exterior.[citation needed] More than 100 kilograms of gold were used to gild the sophisticated stucco façade and numerous statues erected on the roof. It was even rumoured that the palace's roof was constructed entirely of gold. In front of the palace a great formal garden was laid out. It centres on the azure-and-white Hermitage Pavilion near the lake, designed by Zemtsov in 1744, overhauled by Rastrelli in 1749 and formerly crowned by a grand gilded sculpture representing The Rape of Persephone. The interior of the pavilion featured dining tables with dumbwaiter mechanisms. The grand entrance to the palace is flanked by two massive "circumferences", also in the Rococo style. A delicate iron-cast grille separates the complex from the town of Tsarskoe Selo.
Although the palace is popularly associated with Catherine the Great, she actually regarded its "whipped cream" architecture as old-fashioned. When she ascended the throne, a number of statues in the park were being covered with gold, in accordance with the last wish of Empress Elizabeth, yet the new monarch had all the works suspended upon being informed about the expense. In her memoirs she censured the reckless extravagance of her predecessor:
"The palace was then being built, but it was the work of Penelope: what was done today, was destroyed tomorrow. That house has been pulled down six times to the foundation, then built up again ere it was brought to its present state. The sum of a million six hundred thousand rubles was spent on the construction. Accounts exist to prove it; but besides this sum the Empress spent much money out of her own pocket on it, without ever counting".
In order to gratify her passion for antique and Neoclassical art, Catherine employed the Scottish architect Charles Cameron who not only refurbished the interior of one wing in the Neo-Palladian style then in vogue, but also constructed the personal apartments of the Empress, a rather modest Greek Revival structure known as the Agate Rooms and situated to the left from the grand palace. Noted for their elaborate jasper decor, the rooms were designed so as to be connected to the Hanging Gardens, the Cold Baths, and the Cameron Gallery (still housing a collection of bronze statuary) - three Neoclassical edifices constructed to Cameron's designs. According to Catherine's wishes, many remarkable structures were erected for her amusement in the Catherine Park. These include the Dutch Admiralty, Creaking Pagoda, Chesme Column, Rumyantsev Obelisk, and Marble Bridge.
Upon Catherine's death in 1796, the palace was abandoned in favour of the Pavlovsk Palace. Subsequent monarchs preferred to reside in the nearby Alexander Palace and, with only two exceptions, refrained from making new additions to the Catherine Palace, regarding it as a splendid monument to Elizabeth's wealth and Catherine II's glory. In 1817, Alexander I engaged Vasily Stasov to refurbish some interiors of his grandmother's residence in the Empire style. Twenty years later, the magnificent Stasov Staircase was constructed to replace the old circular staircase leading to the Palace Chapel. Unfortunately, most of Stasov's interiors - specifically those dating from the reign of Nicholas I - have not been restored after the destruction caused by the Germans during World War Two.[citation needed]
When the German forces retreated after the siege of Leningrad, they had the residence intentionally destroyed,[1] leaving only the hollow shell of the palace behind. Prior to World War II, the Russian archivists managed to document a fair amount of the contents, which proved of great importance in reconstructing the palace. Although the largest part of the reconstruction was completed in time for the Tercentenary of St Petersburg in 2003, much work is still required to restore the palace to its former glory. In order to attract funds, the administration of the palace has leased the Grand Hall to such high-profile events as Elton John's concert for the elite audience in 2001 and the 2005 exclusive party which featured the likes of Bill Clinton, Tina Turner, Whitney Houston, Naomi Campbell, and Sting.
In Twentieth Century Fox's 1997 animated feature, "Anastasia", the Catherine Palace is depicted inaccurately as the home of the last imperial family.Although Stasov's and Cameron's Neoclassical interiors are superb manifestations of the late 18th-century and early 19th-century taste, the palace is best known for Rastrelli's grand suit of formal rooms known as the Golden Enfilade. It starts at the spacious airy ballroom, the "Grand Hall" or the "Hall of Lights", with a spectacular painted ceiling, and comprises numerous distinctively decorated smaller rooms, including the reproduced Amber Room.
The Great Hall, or the Light Gallery as it was called in the 18th century, is a formal apartment in the Russian baroque style designed by Bartolomeo Rastrelli between 1752 and 1756. The Great Hall was intended for more important receptions such as balls, formal dinners, and masquerades. The hall was painted in two colors and covers an area of approximately 1,000 square meters. Occupying the entire width of the palace, the windows on the eastern side look out onto the park while the windows of the western side look out to the palace plaza. In the evening, 696 lamps are lit on 12-15 chandeliers located near the mirrors. The halls sculptural and gilded carvings and ornimantation were created according to sketches by Rastrelli and models by Johann Franz Dunker.
Beyond the Great Hall is the dining room for the courtiers in attendance (the Courtiers-in-Attendance Dining Room). The room was designed by Rastrelli in the mid-18th century. The small room is lit by four windows which look out into the formal courtyard. The architect placed false windows with mirrors and mirrored glass on the opposite wall, making the hall more spacious and bright. Decorated in the typical baroque interior style, the hall is filled with gilded wall-carvings, complex gilded pieces on the doors, and ornamental patterns of stylized flowers. The ceiling mural was painted by a well known student of the Russian School from the mid-18th century. It is based on the Greek myth of the sun god Helios and the goddess of the dawn, Eos.
Across from the Courtiers-in-Attendance Dining Room, on the other side of the Main Staircase, is the White Formal Dining Room. The hall was used for the empresses' formal dinners or "evening meals". The walls of the dining hall were decorated with the utmost extravagance with gilded carvings. The furnishings consist of gilded carvings on the consoles. The painted mural, The Triumph of Apollo is a copy of a painting completed in the 16th century by Italian artist, Guido Reni.
The Portrait Hall is a formal apartment that covers 100 square meters of space. The room's walls boast large formal portraits of Empress Catherine I, Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, as well as paintings of Natalya Alexeyevna, sister of Peter the Great, and Empress Catherine II. The inlaid floors of the hall contain precious woods. The Drawing Room of Alexander I was designed between 1752 and 1756 and belonged to the Emperor's private suite. The drawing room stood out from the rest of the formal rooms in the palace due to the fact that the walls were covered in Chinese silk. Other decor in the room was typical for the palace's formal rooms, a ceiling mural, gilded carvings. The elegant card-tables and inlaid wood commode display Japanese, Chinese, and Berlin porcelain.
The Green Dining Room, which replaced Rastrelli's "Hanging Garden" in 1773, is the first of the rooms in the northern wing of the Catherine Palace, designed by Cameron for the future Emperor Paul and his wife. The pistachio-coloured walls of the room are lined with stucco figures by Ivan Martos. During the great fire of 1820 the room was seriously damaged, thus sharing the fate of other Cameron's interiors. It was subsequently restored under Stasov's direction.
Other Cameron's interiors include the Waiters' Room, with the inlaid floor of rosewood, amaranth and mahogany and stylish Chippendale card-tables; the Blue Formal Dining-Room, with white-and-blue silk wallpapers and Carrara marble chimneys; the Chinese Blue Drawing Room, a curious combination of Adam style with the Chinoiserie; the Choir Anteroom, with walls lined in apricot-colored silk; and the columned boudoir of Alexander I, executed in the Pompeian style.
iss064-s-002 (Sept. 14, 2020) --- The expanded seven-member Expedition 64 crew with (from left) Flight Engineers Kate Rubins, Victor Glover and Soichi Noguchi, Commander Sergey Ryzhikov and Flight Engineers Michael Hopkins, Shannon Walker and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov. Rubins, Glover, Hopkins and Walker are all NASA astronauts. Noguchi is a JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut. Ryzhikov and Kud-Sverchkov are cosmonauts representing Roscosmos.
I've really enjoyed working on my lego ideas modular castle but I was wondering what would you get if you had a whole range of modular castles released at the same time.
This photo is of a barbican (left), which, because of its internal walls, arches, doors and portcullises can be expanded out to make castle sets in their own right.
My imagination is that this range would include other building like keeps, various kinds of walls and towers as well as civilian buildings and sets for besiegers.
Dublin (/ˈdʌblᵻn/, Irish: Baile Átha Cliath [blʲaːˈklʲiəh]) is the capital and largest city of Ireland.[8][9] Dublin is in the province of Leinsteron Ireland's east coast, at the mouth of the River Liffey. The city has an urban area population of 1,273,069.[10] The population of the Greater Dublin Area, as of 2011, was 1,801,040 persons.
Founded as a Viking settlement, the Kingdom of Dublin became Ireland's principal city following the Norman invasion. The city expanded rapidly from the 17th century and was briefly the second largest city in the British Empire before the Acts of Union in 1800. Following the partition of Ireland in 1922, Dublin became the capital of the Irish Free State, later renamed Ireland.
Dublin is administered by a City Council. The city is listed by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network (GaWC) as a global city, with a ranking of "Alpha-", placing it among the top thirty cities in the world.[11][12] It is a historical and contemporary centre for education, the arts, administration, economy and industry.
Toponymy
Although the area of Dublin Bay has been inhabited by humans since prehistoric times, the writings of Ptolemy (the Greco-Roman astronomer and cartographer) in about 140 AD provide possibly the earliest reference to a settlement there. He called the settlement Eblana polis (Greek: Ἔβλανα πόλις).[13]
Dublin celebrated its 'official' millennium in 1988 AD, meaning that the Irish government recognised 988 AD as the year in which the city was settled and that this first settlement would later become the city of Dublin.
The name Dublin comes from the Gaelic word Dublind, early Classical Irish Dubhlind/Duibhlind, dubh /d̪uβ/, alt. /d̪uw/, alt /d̪u:/ meaning "black, dark", and lind /lʲiɲ[d̪ʲ] "pool", referring to a dark tidal pool where the River Poddle entered the Liffey on the site of the Castle Gardens at the rear of Dublin Castle. In Modern Irish the name is Duibhlinn, and Irish rhymes from Dublin County show that in Dublin Leinster Irish it was pronounced Duílinn /d̪ˠi:lʲiɲ/. The original pronunciation is preserved in the names for the city in other languages such as Old English Difelin, Old Norse Dyflin, modern Icelandic Dyflinn and modern Manx Divlyn as well as Welsh Dulyn. Other localities in Ireland also bear the name Duibhlinn, variously anglicized as Devlin,[14] Divlin[15] and Difflin.[16]Historically, scribes using the Gaelic scriptwrote bh with a dot over the b, rendering Duḃlinn or Duiḃlinn. Those without knowledge of Irish omitted the dot, spelling the name as Dublin. Variations on the name are also found in traditionally Gaelic-speaking areas (the Gàidhealtachd, cognate with Irish Gaeltacht) of Scotland, such as An Linne Dhubh ("the black pool"), which is part of Loch Linnhe.
It is now thought that the Viking settlement was preceded by a Christian ecclesiastical settlement known as Duibhlinn, from which Dyflin took its name. Beginning in the 9th and 10th century, there were two settlements where the modern city stands. The Viking settlement of about 841 was known as Dyflin, from the Irish Duibhlinn, and a Gaelic settlement, Áth Cliath ("ford of hurdles") was further up river, at the present day Father Mathew Bridge (also known as Dublin Bridge), at the bottom of Church Street. Baile Átha Cliath, meaning "town of the hurdled ford", is the common name for the city in modern Irish. Áth Cliath is a place name referring to a fording point of the River Liffey near Father Mathew Bridge. Baile Átha Cliath was an early Christian monastery, believed to have been in the area of Aungier Street, currently occupied by Whitefriar Street Carmelite Church. There are other towns of the same name, such as Àth Cliath in East Ayrshire, Scotland, which is Anglicised as Hurlford.
The subsequent Scandinavian settlement centred on the River Poddle, a tributary of the Liffey in an area now known as Wood Quay. The Dubhlinn was a small lake used to moor ships; the Poddle connected the lake with the Liffey. This lake was covered during the early 18th century as the city grew. The Dubhlinn lay where the Castle Garden is now located, opposite the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin Castle. Táin Bó Cuailgne ("The Cattle Raid of Cooley") refers to Dublind rissa ratter Áth Cliath, meaning "Dublin, which is called Ath Cliath".
Middle Ages
Dublin was established as a Viking settlement in the 10th century and, despite a number of rebellions by the native Irish, it remained largely under Viking control until the Norman invasion of Ireland was launched from Wales in 1169.[17]The King of Leinster, Diarmait Mac Murchada, enlisted the help of Strongbow, the Earl of Pembroke, to conquer Dublin. Following Mac Murrough's death, Strongbow declared himself King of Leinster after gaining control of the city. In response to Strongbow's successful invasion, King Henry II of England reaffirmed his sovereignty by mounting a larger invasion in 1171 and pronounced himself Lord of Ireland.[18] Around this time, the county of the City of Dublin was established along with certain liberties adjacent to the city proper. This continued down to 1840 when the barony of Dublin City was separated from the barony of Dublin. Since 2001, both baronies have been redesignated the City of Dublin.
Dublin Castle, which became the centre of Norman power in Ireland, was founded in 1204 as a major defensive work on the orders of King John of England.[19] Following the appointment of the first Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1229, the city expanded and had a population of 8,000 by the end of the 13th century. Dublin prospered as a trade centre, despite an attempt by King Robert I of Scotland to capture the city in 1317.[18] It remained a relatively small walled medieval town during the 14th century and was under constant threat from the surrounding native clans. In 1348, the Black Death, a lethal plague which had ravaged Europe, took hold in Dublin and killed thousands over the following decade.[20][21]
Dublin was incorporated into the English Crownas the Pale, which was a narrow strip of English settlement along the eastern seaboard. The Tudor conquest of Ireland in the 16th century spelt a new era for Dublin, with the city enjoying a renewed prominence as the centre of administrative rule in Ireland. Determined to make Dublin a Protestant city, Queen Elizabeth I of England established Trinity College in 1592 as a solely Protestant university and ordered that the Catholic St. Patrick's and Christ Church cathedrals be converted to Protestant.[22]
The city had a population of 21,000 in 1640 before a plague in 1649–51 wiped out almost half of the city's inhabitants. However, the city prospered again soon after as a result of the wool and linen trade with England, reaching a population of over 50,000 in 1700.
Early Modern
As the city continued to prosper during the 18th century, Georgian Dublin became, for a short period, the second largest city of the British Empire and the fifth largest city in Europe, with the population exceeding 130,000. The vast majority of Dublin's most notable architecture dates from this period, such as the Four Courtsand the Custom House. Temple Bar and Grafton Street are two of the few remaining areas that were not affected by the wave of Georgian reconstruction and maintained their medieval character.
Dublin grew even more dramatically during the 18th century, with the construction of many famous districts and buildings, such as Merrion Square, Parliament House and the Royal Exchange.[22] The Wide Streets Commissionwas established in 1757 at the request of Dublin Corporation to govern architectural standards on the layout of streets, bridges and buildings. In 1759, the founding of the Guinness brewery resulted in a considerable economic gain for the city. For much of the time since its foundation, the brewery was Dublin's largest employer.
Late Modern
Dublin suffered a period of political and economic decline during the 19th century following the Act of Union of 1800, under which the seat of government was transferred to the Westminster Parliament in London. The city played no major role in the Industrial Revolution, but remained the centre of administration and a transport hub for most of the island. Ireland had no significant sources of coal, the fuel of the time, and Dublin was not a centre of ship manufacturing, the other main driver of industrial development in Britain and Ireland. Belfast developed faster than Dublin during this period on a mixture of international trade, factory-based linen cloth production and shipbuilding.
The Easter Rising of 1916, the Irish War of Independence, and the subsequent Irish Civil War resulted in a significant amount of physical destruction in central Dublin. The Government of the Irish Free State rebuilt the city centre and located the new parliament, the Oireachtas, in Leinster House. Since the beginning of Normanrule in the 12th century, the city has functioned as the capital in varying geopolitical entities: Lordship of Ireland (1171–1541), Kingdom of Ireland (1541–1800), island as part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1801–1922), and the Irish Republic (1919–1922). Following the partition of Ireland in 1922, it became the capital of the Irish Free State(1922–1937) and now is the capital of Ireland. One of the memorials to commemorate that time is the Garden of Remembrance.
Dublin was also victim to the Northern IrishTroubles. While during this 30 year conflict, violence mainly engulfed Northern Ireland. However, the Provisional IRA drew a lot of support from the Republic, specifically Dublin. This caused a Loyalist paramilitary group the Ulster Volunteer Force to bomb the city. The most notable of atrocities carried out by loyalists during this time was the Dublin and Monaghan bombings in which 34 people died, mainly in Dublin itself.
Since 1997, the landscape of Dublin has changed immensely. The city was at the forefront of Ireland's rapid economic expansion during the Celtic Tiger period, with enormous private sector and state development of housing, transport and business.
This is a shot during my dinner visit at the Hofbrauhaus, I thought it looked sorta like Mars and had to take the opportunity to snap a few.
365/2021 - Expanding Horizons ~ 141/365
A very busy day looking after the grandchildren meant only a few moments to grab a photo for the day from a vase of flowers on their dining table!
Thank you to everyone who pauses long enough to look at my photo. All comments and Faves are very much appreciated
Not a tsunami photo - it is of lava meeting the ocean and steaming newly formed lava land and black sand beach. The active lava flows have recently completely stopped happening.
Thank you to those who wrote to me concerned about my safety during the tsunami scare, I appreciated that ;)
Hawaii missed getting any serious tsunami from the Japan quake; we did have some damage from wave surge but nothing too serious.
All is back to normal now except all the lava has stopped flowing here on the Island of Hawaii. This stoppage comes after some major new eruptive fissures broke out last week. The cessation of flowing lava is a big concern for us here because it now can pop up anywhere along the east rift zone, including where my house sits... We are keeping a close watch out for new swarms of small earthquakes, which usually indicate where the next eruption event will take place.
Yesterday evening a new set of earthquake swarms started right where I have been filming the lava flowing along the south shores below Kilauea Volcano; in the Kalapana region. This is not a normal location for swarms.
Not only do I live on the #1 East Rift Zone of volcano activity, I also live in a tsunami evacuation zone but my house is inland a safe distance and is at the 65-foot elevation. But one of those earthquake swarms began last night on the coast near where I live. Here at my house at 11:00 PM last night, while I was watching the devastating Japan news reports, and while hearing the loud tsunami evacuation sirens blaring outside, my house began shaking from a local earthquake! One of 32 taking place a few miles from my house! Most were small but the one that shook the house was 4.6; a surreal moment.
Disturbing images and reports from the Japan area-- such incredible damage and loss of life-- largest earthquake ever for them.
Count your blessings
~~~ Leigh aka Sparks
(If you would like to see the kind of places I photograph out on the active molten lava fields you can do that by watching my latest 2-minute video news report on the flowing lava and its recent cessation, then go to this page Big Island Video News (March 10th) and my lava update begins at the 3-minute 10-second mark within the local 10-minute newscast.)
Expand the boundaries of your business
Description and conditions Project 365 - www.flickr.com/photos/danchee/sets/72157628234157885/
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An eastbound Bergen County Line local to Hoboken arrives at Wesmont Station rounding the curve at Curtis Wright. The train is lead by one of 13 ex-CNJ GP40Ps (one of six sets like this on the Hoboken Division).
The train passes through the industrial landscape of Wallington and Wood-Ridge. This area was at one point one of North Jersey's industrial strongholds with the massive Curtis Wright complex being one of the major manufacturing sites for the war effort during the second World War. Today much of these industrial properties have either been converted to warehouses or have been cleared to make way for retail and townhouses. The Farmland Dairy facility to the left of the scene was one of the more recent facilities to close its doors in December of 2013 resulting in the loss of over 300 North Jersey jobs. What the future holds in store for the vast property is uncertain but it wouldn't come as a surprise to learn of expanded retail and residential construction.
NJT 1160 @ Wesmont Station, Wood-Ridge, NJ
NJTR GP40PH-2 4112
iss047e061129 (4/16/2016) --- The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) was installed to the International Space Station on April 16, 2016 at 5:36 a.m. EDT. Following extraction from SpaceX's Dragon cargo craft using the Canadarm2 robotic arm, ground controllers installed the expandable module to the aft port of Tranquility. Astronauts will enter BEAM on an occasional basis to conduct tests to validate the module’s overall performance and the capability of expandable habitats.
NASA is investigating concepts for habitats that can keep astronauts healthy during space exploration. Expandable habitats are one such concept under consideration – they require less payload volume on the rocket than traditional rigid structures, and expand after being deployed in space to provide additional room for astronauts to live and work inside.
A male Willughby's Leafcutter Bee just about to emerge from one of our garden bee-hotels. I'd assumed that it was just another of the species that I'm seeing a lot of in the garden (M. ligniseca possibly) but took a look anyway and saw the flattened and expanded front tarsi.
As I understand it, the males of M. circumcincta and maritima also have expanded front tarsi, but I suspect that it isn't one of those. Need to see the whole bee really to be sure! Don't know if eye colour helps in the differentiation. Definitely greenish here.