Mission engineers receive and prepare science and research and food items for the final cargo load into the Cygnus resupply spacecraft onboard the Northrop Grumman Antares rocket, Saturday, Feb. 8, 2020 at the Horizontal Integration Facility (HIF) of NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Northrop Grumman’s 13th contracted cargo resupply mission with NASA to the International Space Station will deliver more than 7,500 pounds of science and research, crew supplies and vehicle hardware to the orbital laboratory and its crew. Photo Credit: (NASA/Aubrey Gemignani)

Soviet style growl - the sequel SP-LSH LOT Ilyushin Il-18V climbs away into the sun after taking off from runway 28L - seen from my favourite vantage point - the roof of Car Park 2 at London Heathrow.

 

The LOT Ilyushin Il-18s stayed in service long enough to receive the modern 1980s 'large logo' livery, as seen here on SP-LSH.

 

A number of East European airlines still flew Ilyushin 18s in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but they had mostly been replaced by Tupolev Tu134s and Tu154s on the regular scheduled flights into Heathrow.

 

The LOT Poland Il-18s were probably the most frequent visitors on secondary flights, with Balkan being less common. TAROM and Interflug were the least common visitors, with the exception of CSA which as far as I'm aware were never used into Heathrow or Gatwick at that time.

 

Ilyushin Il-18 - a classic rugged Soviet workhorse - sadly missed.

 

Taken with a Soviet made Zenith E camera and 300mm lens. Scanned from the original slide without digital restoration

 

You can see a random selection of my aviation memories here: www.flickriver.com/photos/heathrowjunkie/random/

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!

 

Some background

The Hütter Hü 324 was the final development stage of BMW's 'Schnellbomber II' project, which had been designed around two mighty BMW 109-028 turboprops.

 

These innovative engines had been developed since February 1941, but did not receive fullest attention due to the more promising jet engines. Anyway, it soon became clear that no jet engine with the potential to drive a bomber-sized aircraft - considering both performance and fuel consumption - would be available on short notice. Consequently, the BMW 028 received more attention from the RLM from 1943 on.

 

Biggest pressure came from the fact that several obsolete types like the He 111 or Do 217 had to be replaced, and the ill-fated and complicated He 177 was another candidate with little future potential, since four-engined variants had been rejected. Additionally, the promising and ambitious Ju 288 had been stillborn, and a wide gap for a tactical medium bomber opned in the Luftwaffe arsenal.

 

In may 1943, new requirements for a medium bomber were concretised. Main objective was to design a fast, twin-engined bomber, primarily intended for horizontal bombing, which would be able to carry a 3.000 kilograms (6.600 lbs) payload at 800 kilometres per hour in a 1.500km (900 ml) radius. The plane had to be fast and to operate at great heights, limiting the threat of interception.

 

Since many major design bureaus’ resources were bound, Ulrich W. Hütter, an Austro-German engineer and university professor got involved in the RLM project and BMW's design team which had been working on appropriate designs. In July 1943, Hütter moved to the Research Institute of the Graf Zeppelin works (FGZ) convened in Ruit near Stuttgart, and as head of the engineering department he was also involved in the development of manned missiles, underwater towing systems and the Hü 211 high altitude interceptor/reconnaissance plane.

 

Under Ulrich W. Hütter and his brother, Wolfgang Hütter, BMW's original and highly innovative (if not over-ambitious) Schnellbomber designs gave way to a more conservative layout: the so-called BMW-Hütter Hü 324.

 

The plane was conventional in layout, with high, unswept laminar profile wings and a high twin tail. The engines were carried in nacelles slung directly under the wings. The nose wheel retracted rearwards, while the main wheels retracted forwards into the engine nacelles, rotating 90°, and laying flat under the engines. The crew of four (pilot, co-pilot/bombardier, navigator/radar operator and gunner/radio operator) were accommodated in a compact, pressurised "glass house" cockpit section – a popular design and morale element in Luftwaffe bomber and reconnaissance aircraft of that era.

 

Construction of the first prototype started in February 1945, and while the aircraft cell made good progress towards the hardware stage, the development suffered a serious setback in March when BMW admitted that the 109-028 turboprop engine would not be ready in time. It took until August to arrive, and the prototype did not fly until 6 November 1945.

Initial flight test of the four A-0 pre-production samples of the Hü 324 went surprisingly well. Stability and vibration problems with the aircraft were noted, though. One major problem was that the front glas elements were prone to crack at high speeds, and it took a while to trace the troubole source back to the engines and sort these problems out. Among others, contraprops were fitted to counter the vibration problems, the engines' power output had to be reduced by more than 500 WPS and the tail fins had to be re-designed.

 

Another innovative feature of this bomber was the “Elbegast” ground-looking navigation radar system, which allowed identification of targets on the ground for night and all-weather bombing. It was placed in a shallow radome behind the front wheel. Performance-wise, the system was comparable to the USAAF’s H2X radar, and similarly compact. Overall, the Hü 324 showed much promise and a convincing performance, was easy to build and maintain, and it was immediately taken to service.

 

Despite the relatively high speed and agility for a plane of its size, the Hü 324 bore massive defensive armament: the original equipment of the A-1 variant comprised two remotely operated FDL 131Z turrets in dorsal (just behind the cockpit) and ventral (behind the bomb bay) position with 2× 13 mm MG 131 machine guns each, plus an additional, unmanned tail barbette with a single 20mm canon. All these guns were aimed by the gunner through a sighting station at the rear of the cockpit, effectively covering the rear hemisphere of the bomber.

 

After first operational experience, this defence was beefed up with another remotely-controlled barbette with 2× 13 mm MG 131 machine guns under the cockpit, firing forwards. The reason was similar to the introduction of the chin-mounted gun turret in the B-17G: the plane was rather vulnerable to frontal attacks. In a secondary use, the chin guns could be used for strafing ground targets. This update was at first called /R1, but was later incorporated into series production, under the designation A-2.

 

Effectively, almost 4.500kg ordnance could be carried in- and externally, normally limited to 3.000kg in the bomb bay in order to keep the wings clean and reduce drag, for a high cruising speed. While simple iron bombs and aerial mines were the Hü 324's main payload, provisions were made to carry guided weapons like against small/heavily fortified targets. Several Rüstsätze (accessory packs) were developed, and the aircraft in service received an "/Rx" suffix to their designation, e. g. the R2 Rüstsatz for Fritz X bomb guidance or the R3 set for rocket-propelled Hs 293 bombs.

 

Trials were even carried out with a semi-recessed Fieseler Fi 103 missile, better known as the V1 flying bomb, hung under the bomber's belly and in an enlarged bomb bay, under deletion of the ventral barbette.

 

The Hü 324 bomber proved to be an elusive target for the RAF day and night fighters, especially at height. After initial attacks at low level, where fast fighters like the Hawker Tempest or DH Mosquito night fighters were the biggest threat, tactics were quickly changed. Approaching at great height and speed, bombing was conducted from medium altitudes of 10,000 to 15,000 feet (3,000 to 4,600 m).

 

The Hü 324 proved to be very successful, striking against a variety of targets, including bridges and radar sites along the British coast line, as well as ships on the North Sea.

From medium altitude, the Hü 324 A-2 proved to be a highly accurate bomber – thanks to its "Elbegast" radar system which also allowed the planes to act as pathfinders for older types or fast bombers with less accurate equipment like the Ar 232, Ju 388 or Me 410. Loss rates were far lower than in the early, low-level days, with the Hü 324 stated by the RLM as having the lowest loss rate in the European Theatre of Operations at less than 0.8 %.

  

BMW-Hütter Ha 324A-2, general characteristics:

Crew: 4

Length: 18.58 m (60 ft 10 in)

Wingspan: 21.45 m (70 ft 4½ in )

Height: 4.82 m (15 ft 9½ in)

Wing area: 60.80 m² (654.5 ft.²)

Empty weight: 12,890 kg (28,417 lb)

Loaded weight: 18,400 kg (40,565 lb)

Max. take-off weight: 21,200 kg (46,738 lb)

 

Performance:

Maximum speed: 810 km/h (503 mph) at optimum height

Cruising speed: 750 km/h (460 mph) at 10,000 m (32,800 ft)

Range: 3.500 km (2.180 ml)

Service ceiling: 11.400 m (37.500 ft)

Rate of climb: 34.7 m/s (6,820 ft/min)

 

Powerplant:

Two BMW 109-028 ‘Mimir’ turboprop engines, limited to 5.500 WPS (4.044 WkW) each plus an additional residual thrust of 650kg (1.433 lb), driving four-bladed contraprops.

 

Armament:

6× 13mm MG 131 in three FDL 131Z turrets

1× 20mm MG 151/20 in unmanned/remote-controlled tail barbette

Up to 4.500 kg (9.800 lbs) in a large enclosed bomb-bay in the fuselage and/or four underwing hardpoints.

Typically, bomb load was limited to 3.000 kg (6.500 lbs) internally.

  

The kit and its assembly

This project/model belongs in the Luft '46 category, but it has no strict real world paradigm - even though Luftwaffe projects like the Ju 288, the BMW Schnellbomber designs or Arado's E560/2 and E560/7 had a clear influence. Actually, “my” Hü 324 design looks pretty much like a He 219 on steroids! Anyway, this project was rather inspired by a ‘click’ when two ideas/elements came together and started forming something new and convincing. This is classic kitbashing, and the major ingredients are:

 

● Fuselage, wings, landing gear and engine nacelles from a Trumpeter Ilyushin Il-28 bomber

● Nose section from an Italeri Ju 188 (donated from a friend, leftover from his Ju 488 project)

● Stabilisers from an Italeri B-25, replacing the Il-28’s swept tail

● Contraprops and fuselage barbettes from a vintage 1:100 scale Tu-20(-95) kit from VEB Plasticart (yes, vintage GDR stuff!)

 

Most interestingly, someone from the Netherlands had a similar idea for a kitbashing some years ago: www.airwar1946.nl/whif/L46-ju588.htm. I found this after I got my idea for the Hü 324 together, though - but its funny to see how some ideas manifest independently?

 

Building the thing went pretty straightforward, even though Trumpeter's Il-28 kit has a rather poor fit. Biggest problem turned out to be the integration of the Ju 188 cockpit section: it lacks 4-5mm in width! That does not sound dramatic, but it took a LOT of putty and internal stabilisation to graft the parts onto the Il-28's fuselage.

 

The cockpit was completely re-equipped with stuff from the scrap box, and the main landing gear received twin wheels.

 

The chin turret was mounted after the fuselage was complete, the frontal defence had been an issue I had been pondering about for a long while. Originally, some fixed guns (just as the Il-28 or Tu-16) had been considered. But when I found an old Matchbox B-17G turret in my scrap box, I was convinced that this piece could do literally the same job in my model, and it was quickly integrated. As a side effect, this arrangement justifies the bulged cockpit bottom well, and it just looks "more dangerous".

 

Another task was the lack of a well for the front wheel, after the Il-28 fuselage had been cut and lacked the original interior. This was also added after the new fuselage had been fitted together, and the new well walls were built with thin polystyrene plates. Not 100% exact and clean, but the arrangement fits the bill and takes the twin front wheel.

 

The bomb bay was left open, since the Trumpeter kit offers a complete interior. I also added four underwing hardpoints for external loads (one pair in- and outboard of the engine nacelles), taken from A-7 Corsair II kits, but left them empty. Visually-guided weapons like the 'Fritz X' bomb or Hs 293 missiles would IMHO hardly make sense during night sorties? I also did not want to overload the kit with more and more distracting details.

  

Painting

Even though it is a whif I wanted to incorporate some serious/authentic late WWII Luftwaffe looks. Since the Hü 324 would have been an all-weather bomber, I went for a night bomber livery which was actually used on a He 177 from 2./KG 100, based in France: Black (RLM 22, I simply used Humbrol 33) undersides, and upper surfaces in RLM 76 (Base is Humbrol 128, FS36320, plus some added areas with Testors 2086, the authentic tone which is a tad lighter, but very close) with mottles in RLM 75 (Grauviolett, Testors 2085, plus some splotches of Humbrol 27, Medium Sea Grey), and some weathering through black ink, some enhanced panel lines (with a mix of matte varnish and Panzergrau), as well as some dry painting all over the fuselage.

 

All interior surfaces were painted in RLM 66 (Schwarzgrau/Black Grey, Testors 2079), typical for German late WWII aircraft. Propeller spinners were painted RLM 70 (Schwarzgrün) on the front half, the rear half was painted half black and half white.

 

Pretty simple scheme, but it looks VERY cool, esp. on this sleek aircraft. I am very happy with this decision, and I think that this rather simple livery is less distracting from the fantasy plane itself, making the whif less obvious. In the end, the whole thing looks a bit grey-in-grey, but that spooky touch just adds to the menacing look of this beefy aircraft. I think it would not look as good if it had been kept in daytime RLM 74/75/76 or even RLM 82/83/76?

 

Markings and squadron code were puzzled together from an Authentic Decal aftermarket sheet for a late He 111 and individual letters from TL Modellbau. The "F3" code for the fictional Kampfgruppe (KG) 210 is a random choice, "EV" marks the individual plane, the red "E" and the control letter "V" at the end designate a plane from the eleventh squadron of KG 210. My idea is that the Hü 324 would replace these machines and literally taking their place in the frontline aviaton units. So I tried to keep in line with the German aircraft code, but after all, it's just a whif...

  

So, after some more surgical work than expected, the Hü 324 medium bomber is ready to soar!

 

Bryce Canyon is an American national park located in southwestern Utah. The major feature of the park is Bryce Canyon, which despite its name, is not a canyon, but a collection of giant natural amphitheaters along the eastern side of the Paunsaugunt Plateau. Bryce is distinctive due to geological structures called hoodoos, formed by frost weathering and stream erosion of the river and lake bed sedimentary rocks. The red, orange, and white colors of the rocks provide spectacular views for park visitors. Bryce Canyon National Park is much smaller and sits at a much higher elevation than nearby Zion National Park. The rim at Bryce varies from 8,000 to 9,000 feet (2,400 to 2,700 m).

 

The Bryce Canyon area was settled by Mormon pioneers in the 1850s and was named after Ebenezer Bryce, who homesteaded in the area in 1874.[3] The area around Bryce Canyon was originally designated as a national monument by President Warren G. Harding in 1923 and was redesignated as a national park by Congress in 1928. The park covers 35,835 acres (55.992 sq mi; 14,502 ha; 145.02 km2) and receives substantially fewer visitors than Zion National Park (nearly 4.3 million in 2016) or Grand Canyon National Park (nearly 6 million in 2016), largely due to Bryce's more remote location. In 2018, Bryce Canyon received 2,679,478 recreational visitors, which was an increase of 107,794 visitors from the prior year.

 

Bryce Canyon National Park lies within the Colorado Plateau geographic province of North America and straddles the southeastern edge of the Paunsaugunt Plateau west of the Paunsaugunt Faults (Paunsaugunt is Paiute for "home of the beaver"). Park visitors arrive from the plateau part of the park and look over the plateau's edge toward a valley containing the fault and the Paria River just beyond it (Paria is Paiute for "muddy or elk water"). The edge of the Kaiparowits Plateau bounds the opposite side of the valley.

 

Bryce Canyon was not formed from erosion initiated from a central stream, meaning it technically is not a canyon. Instead headward erosion has excavated large amphitheater-shaped features in the Cenozoic-aged rocks of the Paunsaugunt Plateau. This erosion resulted in delicate and colorful pinnacles called hoodoos that are up to 200 feet (60 m) high. A series of amphitheaters extends more than 20 miles (30 km) north-to-south within the park. The largest is Bryce Amphitheater, which is 12 miles (19 km) long, 3 miles (5 km) wide and 800 feet (240 m) deep. A nearby example of amphitheaters with hoodoos in the same formation but at a higher elevation is in Cedar Breaks National Monument, which is 25 miles (40 km) to the west on the Markagunt Plateau.

 

Rainbow Point, the highest part of the park at 9,105 feet (2,775 m), is at the end of the 18-mile (29 km) scenic drive. From there, Aquarius Plateau, Bryce Amphitheater, the Henry Mountains, the Vermilion Cliffs and the White Cliffs can be seen. Yellow Creek, where it exits the park in the north-east section, is the lowest part of the park at 6,620 feet (2,020 m).

 

Little is known about early human habitation in the Bryce Canyon area. Archaeological surveys of Bryce Canyon National Park and the Paunsaugunt Plateau show that people have been in the area for at least 10,000 years. Basketmaker Anasazi artifacts several thousand years old have been found south of the park. Other artifacts from the Pueblo-period Anasazi and the Fremont culture (up to the mid-12th century) have also been found.

 

The Paiute Native Americans moved into the surrounding valleys and plateaus in the area around the same time that the other cultures left. These Native Americans hunted and gathered for most of their food, but also supplemented their diet with some cultivated products. The Paiute in the area developed a mythology surrounding the hoodoos (pinnacles) in Bryce Canyon. They believed that hoodoos were the Legend People whom the trickster Coyote turned to stone. At least one older Paiute said his culture called the hoodoos Anka-ku-was-a-wits, which is Paiute for "red painted faces".

 

It was not until the late 18th and the early 19th century that the first European Americans explored the remote and hard-to-reach area. Mormon scouts visited the area in the 1850s to gauge its potential for agricultural development, use for grazing, and settlement.

 

The first major scientific expedition to the area was led by U.S. Army Major John Wesley Powell in 1872. Powell, along with a team of mapmakers and geologists, surveyed the Sevier and Virgin River area as part of a larger survey of the Colorado Plateaus. His mapmakers kept many of the Paiute place names.

 

Small groups of Mormon pioneers followed and attempted to settle east of Bryce Canyon along the Paria River. In 1873, the Kanarra Cattle Company started to use the area for cattle grazing.

 

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sent Scottish immigrant Ebenezer Bryce and his wife Mary to settle land in the Paria Valley because they thought his carpentry skills would be useful in the area. The Bryce family chose to live right below Bryce Amphitheater—the main collection of hoodoos in the park. Bryce grazed his cattle inside what are now park borders, and reputedly thought that the amphitheaters were a "helluva place to lose a cow." He also built a road to the plateau to retrieve firewood and timber, and a canal to irrigate his crops and water his animals. Other settlers soon started to call the unusual place "Bryce's canyon", which was later formalized into Bryce Canyon.

 

A combination of drought, overgrazing and flooding eventually drove the remaining Paiutes from the area and prompted the settlers to attempt construction of a water diversion channel from the Sevier River drainage. When that effort failed, most of the settlers, including the Bryce family, left the area. Bryce moved his family to Arizona in 1880. The remaining settlers dug a 10-mile (16 km) ditch from the Sevier's east fork into Tropic Valley.

 

These scenic areas were first described for the public in magazine articles published by Union Pacific and Santa Fe railroads in 1916. People like Forest Supervisor J. W. Humphrey promoted the scenic wonders of Bryce Canyon's amphitheaters, and by 1918 nationally distributed articles also helped to spark interest. However, poor access to the remote area and the lack of accommodations kept visitation to a bare minimum.

 

Ruby Syrett, Harold Bowman and the Perry brothers later built modest lodging, and set up "touring services" in the area. Syrett later served as the first postmaster of Bryce Canyon. Visitation steadily increased, and by the early 1920s the Union Pacific Railroad became interested in expanding rail service into southwestern Utah to accommodate more tourists.

 

At the same time, conservationists became alarmed by the damage overgrazing, logging, and unregulated visitation were having on the fragile features of Bryce Canyon. A movement to have the area protected was soon started, and National Park Service Director Stephen Mather responded by proposing that Bryce Canyon be made into a state park. The governor of Utah and the Utah State Legislature, however, lobbied for national protection of the area. Mather relented and sent his recommendation to President Warren G. Harding, who on June 8, 1923, declared Bryce Canyon a national monument.

 

A road was built the same year on the plateau to provide easy access to outlooks over the amphitheaters. From 1924 to 1925, Bryce Canyon Lodge was built from local timber and stone.

 

Members of the United States Congress started work in 1924 on upgrading Bryce Canyon's protection status from a national monument to a national park in order to establish Utah National Park. A process led by the Utah Parks Company for transferring ownership of private and state-held land in the monument to the federal government started in 1923. The last of the land in the proposed park's borders was sold to the federal government four years later, and on February 25, 1928, the renamed Bryce Canyon National Park was established.

 

In 1931, President Herbert Hoover annexed an adjoining area south of the park, and in 1942 an additional 635 acres (257 ha) was added. This brought the park's total area to the current figure of 35,835 acres (14,502 ha). Rim Road, the scenic drive that is still used today, was completed in 1934 by the Civilian Conservation Corps. Administration of the park was conducted from neighboring Zion National Park until 1956, when Bryce Canyon's first superintendent started work.

 

The USS Bryce Canyon, which was named for the park, served as a supply and repair ship in the U.S. Pacific Fleet from September 15, 1950, to June 30, 1981.

 

Bryce Canyon Natural History Association (BCNHA) was established in 1961. It runs the bookstore inside the park visitor center and is a non-profit organization created to aid the interpretive, educational and scientific activities of the National Park Service at Bryce Canyon National Park. A portion of the profits from all bookstore sales are donated to public land units.

 

Responding to increased visitation and traffic congestion, the National Park Service implemented a voluntary, summer-only, in-park shuttle system in June 2000. In 2004, reconstruction began on the aging and inadequate road system in the park.

 

The Bryce Canyon area shows a record of deposition that spans from the last part of the Cretaceous period and the first half of the Cenozoic era. The ancient depositional environment of the region around what is now the park varied. The Dakota Sandstone and the Tropic Shale were deposited in the warm, shallow waters of the advancing and retreating Cretaceous Seaway (outcrops of these rocks are found just outside park borders). The colorful Claron Formation, from which the park's delicate hoodoos are carved, was laid down as sediments in a system of cool streams and lakes that existed from 63 to about 40 million years ago (from the Paleocene to the Eocene epochs). Different sediment types were laid down as the lakes deepened and became shallow and as the shoreline and river deltas migrated.

 

Several other formations were also created but were mostly eroded away following two major periods of uplift. The Laramide orogeny affected the entire western part of what would become North America starting about 70 million to 50 million years ago. This event helped to build the Rocky Mountains and in the process closed the Cretaceous Seaway. The Straight Cliffs, Wahweap, and Kaiparowits formations were victims of this uplift. The Colorado Plateaus were uplifted 16 million years ago and were segmented into different plateaus, each separated from its neighbors by faults and each having its own uplift rate. The Boat Mesa Conglomerate and the Sevier River Formation were removed by erosion following this uplift.

 

This uplift created vertical joints, which over time were preferentially eroded. The soft Pink Cliffs of the Claron Formation were eroded to form freestanding pinnacles in badlands called hoodoos, while the more resistant White Cliffs formed monoliths. The brown, pink and red colors are from hematite (iron oxide; Fe2O3); the yellows from limonite (FeO(OH)·nH2O); and the purples are from pyrolusite (MnO2). Also created were arches, natural bridges, walls, and windows. Hoodoos are composed of soft sedimentary rock and are topped by a piece of harder, less easily eroded stone that protects the column from the elements. Bryce Canyon has one of the highest concentrations of hoodoos of any place on Earth.

 

The formations exposed in the area of the park are part of the Grand Staircase. The oldest members of this supersequence of rock units are exposed in the Grand Canyon, the intermediate ones in Zion National Park, and its youngest parts are laid bare in Bryce Canyon area. A small amount of overlap occurs in and around each park.

 

More than 400 native plant species live in the park. There are three life zones in the park based on elevation: The lowest areas of the park are dominated by dwarf forests of pinyon pine and juniper with manzanita, serviceberry, and antelope bitterbrush in between. Aspen, cottonwood, water birch, and willow grow along streams. Ponderosa pine forests cover the mid-elevations with blue spruce and Douglas fir in water-rich areas and manzanita and bitterbrush as underbrush. Douglas fir and white fir, along with aspen and Engelmann spruce, make up the forests on the Paunsaugunt Plateau. The harshest areas have limber pine and ancient Great Basin bristlecone pine, some more than 1,600 years old, holding on.

 

The forests and meadows of Bryce Canyon provide the habitat to support diverse animal life including foxes, badgers, porcupines, elk, skunks, black bears, bobcats, and woodpeckers. Mule deer are the most common large mammals in the park. Elk and pronghorn, which have been reintroduced nearby, sometimes venture into the park.

 

Bryce Canyon National Park forms part of the habitat of three wildlife species that are listed under the Endangered Species Act: the Utah prairie dog, the California condor, and the southwestern willow flycatcher. The Utah prairie dog is a threatened species that was reintroduced to the park for conservation, and the largest protected population is found within the park's boundaries.

 

About 170 species of birds visit the park each year, including swifts and swallows. Most species migrate to warmer regions in winter, although jays, ravens, nuthatches, eagles, and owls stay. In winter, the mule deer, cougars, and coyotes migrate to lower elevations. Ground squirrels and marmots pass the winter in hibernation.

 

Eleven species of reptiles and four species of amphibians have been found in the park. Reptiles include the Great Basin rattlesnake, short-horned lizard, side-blotched lizard, striped whipsnake, and amphibians include the tiger salamander.

 

Also in the park are the black, lumpy, very slow-growing colonies of cryptobiotic soil, which are a mix of lichens, algae, fungi, and cyanobacteria. Together these organisms slow erosion, add nitrogen to the soil, and help it to retain moisture.

 

A line of snowshoers with colorful rock cliff in background.

Snowshoes are required for winter hiking.

Most park visitors sightsee using the scenic drive, which provides access to 13 viewpoints over the amphitheaters. Bryce Canyon has eight marked and maintained hiking trails that can be hiked in less than a day. The following list includes round trip time and trailhead for each in parentheses:

 

Easy to moderate hikes

Mossy Cave (one hour, State Route 12 northwest of Tropic)

Rim Trail (5–6 hours, anywhere on the rim)

Bristlecone Loop (one hour, Rainbow Point), and Queens Garden (1–2 hours, Sunrise Point)

 

Moderate hikes

Navajo Loop (1–2 hours, Sunset Point)

Tower Bridge (2–3 hours, north of Sunrise Point)

 

Strenuous hikes

Fairyland Loop (4–5 hours, Fairyland Point)

Peekaboo Loop (3–4 hours, Bryce Point)

Several of the above trails intersect, allowing hikers to combine routes for more challenging hikes.

 

The park also has two trails designated for overnight hiking: the 9-mile (14 km) Riggs Spring Loop Trail and the 23-mile (37 km) Under-the-Rim Trail.[27] Both require a backcountry camping permit. In total, 50 miles (80 km) of trails in the park.

 

More than 10 miles (16 km) of marked but ungroomed skiing trails are available off of Fairyland, Paria, and Rim trails in the park. Twenty miles (32 km) of connecting groomed ski trails are in nearby Dixie National Forest and Ruby's Inn.

 

The air in the area is so clear that on most days from Yovimpa and Rainbow points, Navajo Mountain and the Kaibab Plateau can be seen 90 miles (140 km) away in Arizona. On extremely clear days, the Black Mesas of eastern Arizona and western New Mexico can be seen some 160 miles (260 km) away.

 

The park also has a 7.4 magnitude night sky, making it one of the darkest in North America. Stargazers can, therefore, see 7,500 stars with the naked eye, while in most places fewer than 2,000 can be seen due to light pollution, and in many large cities only a few dozen can be seen. Park rangers host public stargazing events and evening programs on astronomy, nocturnal animals, and night sky protection. The Bryce Canyon Astronomy Festival, typically held in June, attracts thousands of visitors. In honor of this astronomy festival, Asteroid 49272 was named after the national park.

 

There are two campgrounds in the park: North Campground and Sunset Campground. Loop A in North Campground is open year-round. Additional loops and Sunset Campground are open from late spring to early autumn. The 114-room Bryce Canyon Lodge is another way to stay overnight in the park.

 

Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It borders Colorado to its east, Wyoming to its northeast, Idaho to its north, Arizona to its south, and Nevada to its west. Utah also touches a corner of New Mexico in the southeast. Of the fifty U.S. states, Utah is the 13th-largest by area; with a population over three million, it is the 30th-most-populous and 11th-least-densely populated. Urban development is mostly concentrated in two areas: the Wasatch Front in the north-central part of the state, which is home to roughly two-thirds of the population and includes the capital city, Salt Lake City; and Washington County in the southwest, with more than 180,000 residents. Most of the western half of Utah lies in the Great Basin.

 

Utah has been inhabited for thousands of years by various indigenous groups such as the ancient Puebloans, Navajo, and Ute. The Spanish were the first Europeans to arrive in the mid-16th century, though the region's difficult geography and harsh climate made it a peripheral part of New Spain and later Mexico. Even while it was Mexican territory, many of Utah's earliest settlers were American, particularly Mormons fleeing marginalization and persecution from the United States via the Mormon Trail. Following the Mexican–American War in 1848, the region was annexed by the U.S., becoming part of the Utah Territory, which included what is now Colorado and Nevada. Disputes between the dominant Mormon community and the federal government delayed Utah's admission as a state; only after the outlawing of polygamy was it admitted in 1896 as the 45th.

 

People from Utah are known as Utahns. Slightly over half of all Utahns are Mormons, the vast majority of whom are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), which has its world headquarters in Salt Lake City; Utah is the only state where a majority of the population belongs to a single church. A 2023 paper challenged this perception (claiming only 42% of Utahns are Mormons) however most statistics still show a majority of Utah residents belong to the LDS church; estimates from the LDS church suggests 60.68% of Utah's population belongs to the church whilst some sources put the number as high as 68%. The paper replied that membership count done by the LDS Church is too high for several reasons. The LDS Church greatly influences Utahn culture, politics, and daily life, though since the 1990s the state has become more religiously diverse as well as secular.

 

Utah has a highly diversified economy, with major sectors including transportation, education, information technology and research, government services, mining, multi-level marketing, and tourism. Utah has been one of the fastest growing states since 2000, with the 2020 U.S. census confirming the fastest population growth in the nation since 2010. St. George was the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the United States from 2000 to 2005. Utah ranks among the overall best states in metrics such as healthcare, governance, education, and infrastructure. It has the 12th-highest median average income and the least income inequality of any U.S. state. Over time and influenced by climate change, droughts in Utah have been increasing in frequency and severity, putting a further strain on Utah's water security and impacting the state's economy.

 

The History of Utah is an examination of the human history and social activity within the state of Utah located in the western United States.

 

Archaeological evidence dates the earliest habitation of humans in Utah to about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Paleolithic people lived near the Great Basin's swamps and marshes, which had an abundance of fish, birds, and small game animals. Big game, including bison, mammoths and ground sloths, also were attracted to these water sources. Over the centuries, the mega-fauna died, this population was replaced by the Desert Archaic people, who sheltered in caves near the Great Salt Lake. Relying more on gathering than the previous Utah residents, their diet was mainly composed of cattails and other salt tolerant plants such as pickleweed, burro weed and sedge. Red meat appears to have been more of a luxury, although these people used nets and the atlatl to hunt water fowl, ducks, small animals and antelope. Artifacts include nets woven with plant fibers and rabbit skin, woven sandals, gaming sticks, and animal figures made from split-twigs. About 3,500 years ago, lake levels rose and the population of Desert Archaic people appears to have dramatically decreased. The Great Basin may have been almost unoccupied for 1,000 years.

 

The Fremont culture, named from sites near the Fremont River in Utah, lived in what is now north and western Utah and parts of Nevada, Idaho and Colorado from approximately 600 to 1300 AD. These people lived in areas close to water sources that had been previously occupied by the Desert Archaic people, and may have had some relationship with them. However, their use of new technologies define them as a distinct people. Fremont technologies include:

 

use of the bow and arrow while hunting,

building pithouse shelters,

growing maize and probably beans and squash,

building above ground granaries of adobe or stone,

creating and decorating low-fired pottery ware,

producing art, including jewelry and rock art such as petroglyphs and pictographs.

 

The ancient Puebloan culture, also known as the Anasazi, occupied territory adjacent to the Fremont. The ancestral Puebloan culture centered on the present-day Four Corners area of the Southwest United States, including the San Juan River region of Utah. Archaeologists debate when this distinct culture emerged, but cultural development seems to date from about the common era, about 500 years before the Fremont appeared. It is generally accepted that the cultural peak of these people was around the 1200 CE. Ancient Puebloan culture is known for well constructed pithouses and more elaborate adobe and masonry dwellings. They were excellent craftsmen, producing turquoise jewelry and fine pottery. The Puebloan culture was based on agriculture, and the people created and cultivated fields of maize, beans, and squash and domesticated turkeys. They designed and produced elaborate field terracing and irrigation systems. They also built structures, some known as kivas, apparently designed solely for cultural and religious rituals.

 

These two later cultures were roughly contemporaneous, and appear to have established trading relationships. They also shared enough cultural traits that archaeologists believe the cultures may have common roots in the early American Southwest. However, each remained culturally distinct throughout most of their existence. These two well established cultures appear to have been severely impacted by climatic change and perhaps by the incursion of new people in about 1200 CE. Over the next two centuries, the Fremont and ancient Pueblo people may have moved into the American southwest, finding new homes and farmlands in the river drainages of Arizona, New Mexico and northern Mexico.

 

In about 1200, Shoshonean speaking peoples entered Utah territory from the west. They may have originated in southern California and moved into the desert environment due to population pressure along the coast. They were an upland people with a hunting and gathering lifestyle utilizing roots and seeds, including the pinyon nut. They were also skillful fishermen, created pottery and raised some crops. When they first arrived in Utah, they lived as small family groups with little tribal organization. Four main Shoshonean peoples inhabited Utah country. The Shoshone in the north and northeast, the Gosiutes in the northwest, the Utes in the central and eastern parts of the region and the Southern Paiutes in the southwest. Initially, there seems to have been very little conflict between these groups.

 

In the early 16th century, the San Juan River basin in Utah's southeast also saw a new people, the Díne or Navajo, part of a greater group of plains Athabaskan speakers moved into the Southwest from the Great Plains. In addition to the Navajo, this language group contained people that were later known as Apaches, including the Lipan, Jicarilla, and Mescalero Apaches.

 

Athabaskans were a hunting people who initially followed the bison, and were identified in 16th-century Spanish accounts as "dog nomads". The Athabaskans expanded their range throughout the 17th century, occupying areas the Pueblo peoples had abandoned during prior centuries. The Spanish first specifically mention the "Apachu de Nabajo" (Navaho) in the 1620s, referring to the people in the Chama valley region east of the San Juan River, and north west of Santa Fe. By the 1640s, the term Navaho was applied to these same people. Although the Navajo newcomers established a generally peaceful trading and cultural exchange with the some modern Pueblo peoples to the south, they experienced intermittent warfare with the Shoshonean peoples, particularly the Utes in eastern Utah and western Colorado.

 

At the time of European expansion, beginning with Spanish explorers traveling from Mexico, five distinct native peoples occupied territory within the Utah area: the Northern Shoshone, the Goshute, the Ute, the Paiute and the Navajo.

 

The Spanish explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado may have crossed into what is now southern Utah in 1540, when he was seeking the legendary Cíbola.

 

A group led by two Spanish Catholic priests—sometimes called the Domínguez–Escalante expedition—left Santa Fe in 1776, hoping to find a route to the California coast. The expedition traveled as far north as Utah Lake and encountered the native residents. All of what is now Utah was claimed by the Spanish Empire from the 1500s to 1821 as part of New Spain (later as the province Alta California); and subsequently claimed by Mexico from 1821 to 1848. However, Spain and Mexico had little permanent presence in, or control of, the region.

 

Fur trappers (also known as mountain men) including Jim Bridger, explored some regions of Utah in the early 19th century. The city of Provo was named for one such man, Étienne Provost, who visited the area in 1825. The city of Ogden, Utah is named for a brigade leader of the Hudson's Bay Company, Peter Skene Ogden who trapped in the Weber Valley. In 1846, a year before the arrival of members from the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints, the ill-fated Donner Party crossed through the Salt Lake valley late in the season, deciding not to stay the winter there but to continue forward to California, and beyond.

 

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as Mormon pioneers, first came to the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. At the time, the U.S. had already captured the Mexican territories of Alta California and New Mexico in the Mexican–American War and planned to keep them, but those territories, including the future state of Utah, officially became United States territory upon the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, February 2, 1848. The treaty was ratified by the United States Senate on March 10, 1848.

 

Upon arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormon pioneers found no permanent settlement of Indians. Other areas along the Wasatch Range were occupied at the time of settlement by the Northwestern Shoshone and adjacent areas by other bands of Shoshone such as the Gosiute. The Northwestern Shoshone lived in the valleys on the eastern shore of Great Salt Lake and in adjacent mountain valleys. Some years after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley Mormons, who went on to colonize many other areas of what is now Utah, were petitioned by Indians for recompense for land taken. The response of Heber C. Kimball, first counselor to Brigham Young, was that the land belonged to "our Father in Heaven and we expect to plow and plant it." A 1945 Supreme Court decision found that the land had been treated by the United States as public domain; no aboriginal title by the Northwestern Shoshone had been recognized by the United States or extinguished by treaty with the United States.

 

Upon arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormons had to make a place to live. They created irrigation systems, laid out farms, built houses, churches, and schools. Access to water was crucially important. Almost immediately, Brigham Young set out to identify and claim additional community sites. While it was difficult to find large areas in the Great Basin where water sources were dependable and growing seasons long enough to raise vitally important subsistence crops, satellite communities began to be formed.

 

Shortly after the first company arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, the community of Bountiful was settled to the north. In 1848, settlers moved into lands purchased from trapper Miles Goodyear in present-day Ogden. In 1849, Tooele and Provo were founded. Also that year, at the invitation of Ute chief Wakara, settlers moved into the Sanpete Valley in central Utah to establish the community of Manti. Fillmore, Utah, intended to be the capital of the new territory, was established in 1851. In 1855, missionary efforts aimed at western native cultures led to outposts in Fort Lemhi, Idaho, Las Vegas, Nevada and Elk Mountain in east-central Utah.

 

The experiences of returning members of the Mormon Battalion were also important in establishing new communities. On their journey west, the Mormon soldiers had identified dependable rivers and fertile river valleys in Colorado, Arizona and southern California. In addition, as the men traveled to rejoin their families in the Salt Lake Valley, they moved through southern Nevada and the eastern segments of southern Utah. Jefferson Hunt, a senior Mormon officer of the Battalion, actively searched for settlement sites, minerals, and other resources. His report encouraged 1851 settlement efforts in Iron County, near present-day Cedar City. These southern explorations eventually led to Mormon settlements in St. George, Utah, Las Vegas and San Bernardino, California, as well as communities in southern Arizona.

 

Prior to establishment of the Oregon and California trails and Mormon settlement, Indians native to the Salt Lake Valley and adjacent areas lived by hunting buffalo and other game, but also gathered grass seed from the bountiful grass of the area as well as roots such as those of the Indian Camas. By the time of settlement, indeed before 1840, the buffalo were gone from the valley, but hunting by settlers and grazing of cattle severely impacted the Indians in the area, and as settlement expanded into nearby river valleys and oases, indigenous tribes experienced increasing difficulty in gathering sufficient food. Brigham Young's counsel was to feed the hungry tribes, and that was done, but it was often not enough. These tensions formed the background to the Bear River massacre committed by California Militia stationed in Salt Lake City during the Civil War. The site of the massacre is just inside Preston, Idaho, but was generally thought to be within Utah at the time.

 

Statehood was petitioned for in 1849-50 using the name Deseret. The proposed State of Deseret would have been quite large, encompassing all of what is now Utah, and portions of Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico and California. The name of Deseret was favored by the LDS leader Brigham Young as a symbol of industry and was derived from a reference in the Book of Mormon. The petition was rejected by Congress and Utah did not become a state until 1896, following the Utah Constitutional Convention of 1895.

 

In 1850, the Utah Territory was created with the Compromise of 1850, and Fillmore (named after President Fillmore) was designated the capital. In 1856, Salt Lake City replaced Fillmore as the territorial capital.

 

The first group of pioneers brought African slaves with them, making Utah the only place in the western United States to have African slavery. Three slaves, Green Flake, Hark Lay, and Oscar Crosby, came west with this first group in 1847. The settlers also began to purchase Indian slaves in the well-established Indian slave trade, as well as enslaving Indian prisoners of war. In 1850, 26 slaves were counted in Salt Lake County. Slavery didn't become officially recognized until 1852, when the Act in Relation to Service and the Act for the relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners were passed. Slavery was repealed on June 19, 1862, when Congress prohibited slavery in all US territories.

 

Disputes between the Mormon inhabitants and the federal government intensified after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' practice of polygamy became known. The polygamous practices of the Mormons, which were made public in 1854, would be one of the major reasons Utah was denied statehood until almost 50 years after the Mormons had entered the area.

 

After news of their polygamous practices spread, the members of the LDS Church were quickly viewed by some as un-American and rebellious. In 1857, after news of a possible rebellion spread, President James Buchanan sent troops on the Utah expedition to quell the growing unrest and to replace Brigham Young as territorial governor with Alfred Cumming. The expedition was also known as the Utah War.

 

As fear of invasion grew, Mormon settlers had convinced some Paiute Indians to aid in a Mormon-led attack on 120 immigrants from Arkansas under the guise of Indian aggression. The murder of these settlers became known as the Mountain Meadows massacre. The Mormon leadership had adopted a defensive posture that led to a ban on the selling of grain to outsiders in preparation for an impending war. This chafed pioneers traveling through the region, who were unable to purchase badly needed supplies. A disagreement between some of the Arkansas pioneers and the Mormons in Cedar City led to the secret planning of the massacre by a few Mormon leaders in the area. Some scholars debate the involvement of Brigham Young. Only one man, John D. Lee, was ever convicted of the murders, and he was executed at the massacre site.

 

Express riders had brought the news 1,000 miles from the Missouri River settlements to Salt Lake City within about two weeks of the army's beginning to march west. Fearing the worst as 2,500 troops (roughly 1/3rd of the army then) led by General Albert Sidney Johnston started west, Brigham Young ordered all residents of Salt Lake City and neighboring communities to prepare their homes for burning and evacuate southward to Utah Valley and southern Utah. Young also sent out a few units of the Nauvoo Legion (numbering roughly 8,000–10,000), to delay the army's advance. The majority he sent into the mountains to prepare defenses or south to prepare for a scorched earth retreat. Although some army wagon supply trains were captured and burned and herds of army horses and cattle run off no serious fighting occurred. Starting late and short on supplies, the United States Army camped during the bitter winter of 1857–58 near a burned out Fort Bridger in Wyoming. Through the negotiations between emissary Thomas L. Kane, Young, Cumming and Johnston, control of Utah territory was peacefully transferred to Cumming, who entered an eerily vacant Salt Lake City in the spring of 1858. By agreement with Young, Johnston established the army at Fort Floyd 40 miles away from Salt Lake City, to the southwest.

 

Salt Lake City was the last link of the First Transcontinental Telegraph, between Carson City, Nevada and Omaha, Nebraska completed in October 1861. Brigham Young, who had helped expedite construction, was among the first to send a message, along with Abraham Lincoln and other officials. Soon after the telegraph line was completed, the Deseret Telegraph Company built the Deseret line connecting the settlements in the territory with Salt Lake City and, by extension, the rest of the United States.

 

Because of the American Civil War, federal troops were pulled out of Utah Territory (and their fort auctioned off), leaving the territorial government in federal hands without army backing until General Patrick E. Connor arrived with the 3rd Regiment of California Volunteers in 1862. While in Utah, Connor and his troops soon became discontent with this assignment wanting to head to Virginia where the "real" fighting and glory was occurring. Connor established Fort Douglas just three miles (5 km) east of Salt Lake City and encouraged his bored and often idle soldiers to go out and explore for mineral deposits to bring more non-Mormons into the state. Minerals were discovered in Tooele County, and some miners began to come to the territory. Conner also solved the Shoshone Indian problem in Cache Valley Utah by luring the Shoshone into a midwinter confrontation on January 29, 1863. The armed conflict quickly turned into a rout, discipline among the soldiers broke down, and the Battle of Bear River is today usually referred to by historians as the Bear River Massacre. Between 200 and 400 Shoshone men, women and children were killed, as were 27 soldiers, with over 50 more soldiers wounded or suffering from frostbite.

 

Beginning in 1865, Utah's Black Hawk War developed into the deadliest conflict in the territory's history. Chief Antonga Black Hawk died in 1870, but fights continued to break out until additional federal troops were sent in to suppress the Ghost Dance of 1872. The war is unique among Indian Wars because it was a three-way conflict, with mounted Timpanogos Utes led by Antonga Black Hawk fighting federal and Utah local militia.

 

On May 10, 1869, the First transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory Summit, north of the Great Salt Lake. The railroad brought increasing numbers of people into the state, and several influential businessmen made fortunes in the territory.

 

Main article: Latter Day Saint polygamy in the late-19th century

During the 1870s and 1880s, federal laws were passed and federal marshals assigned to enforce the laws against polygamy. In the 1890 Manifesto, the LDS Church leadership dropped its approval of polygamy citing divine revelation. When Utah applied for statehood again in 1895, it was accepted. Statehood was officially granted on January 4, 1896.

 

The Mormon issue made the situation for women the topic of nationwide controversy. In 1870 the Utah Territory, controlled by Mormons, gave women the right to vote. However, in 1887, Congress disenfranchised Utah women with the Edmunds–Tucker Act. In 1867–96, eastern activists promoted women's suffrage in Utah as an experiment, and as a way to eliminate polygamy. They were Presbyterians and other Protestants convinced that Mormonism was a non-Christian cult that grossly mistreated women. The Mormons promoted woman suffrage to counter the negative image of downtrodden Mormon women. With the 1890 Manifesto clearing the way for statehood, in 1895 Utah adopted a constitution restoring the right of women's suffrage. Congress admitted Utah as a state with that constitution in 1896.

 

Though less numerous than other intermountain states at the time, several lynching murders for alleged misdeeds occurred in Utah territory at the hand of vigilantes. Those documented include the following, with their ethnicity or national origin noted in parentheses if it was provided in the source:

 

William Torrington in Carson City (then a part of Utah territory), 1859

Thomas Coleman (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1866

3 unidentified men at Wahsatch, winter of 1868

A Black man in Uintah, 1869

Charles A. Benson in Logan, 1873

Ah Sing (Chinese man) in Corinne, 1874

Thomas Forrest in St. George, 1880

William Harvey (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1883

John Murphy in Park City, 1883

George Segal (Japanese man) in Ogden, 1884

Joseph Fisher in Eureka, 1886

Robert Marshall (Black man) in Castle Gate, 1925

Other lynchings in Utah territory include multiple instances of mass murder of Native American children, women, and men by White settlers including the Battle Creek massacre (1849), Provo River Massacre (1850), Nephi massacre (1853), and Circleville Massacre (1866).

 

Beginning in the early 20th century, with the establishment of such national parks as Bryce Canyon National Park and Zion National Park, Utah began to become known for its natural beauty. Southern Utah became a popular filming spot for arid, rugged scenes, and such natural landmarks as Delicate Arch and "the Mittens" of Monument Valley are instantly recognizable to most national residents. During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, with the construction of the Interstate highway system, accessibility to the southern scenic areas was made easier.

 

Beginning in 1939, with the establishment of Alta Ski Area, Utah has become world-renowned for its skiing. The dry, powdery snow of the Wasatch Range is considered some of the best skiing in the world. Salt Lake City won the bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics in 1995, and this has served as a great boost to the economy. The ski resorts have increased in popularity, and many of the Olympic venues scattered across the Wasatch Front continue to be used for sporting events. This also spurred the development of the light-rail system in the Salt Lake Valley, known as TRAX, and the re-construction of the freeway system around the city.

 

During the late 20th century, the state grew quickly. In the 1970s, growth was phenomenal in the suburbs. Sandy was one of the fastest-growing cities in the country at that time, and West Valley City is the state's 2nd most populous city. Today, many areas of Utah are seeing phenomenal growth. Northern Davis, southern and western Salt Lake, Summit, eastern Tooele, Utah, Wasatch, and Washington counties are all growing very quickly. Transportation and urbanization are major issues in politics as development consumes agricultural land and wilderness areas.

 

In 2012, the State of Utah passed the Utah Transfer of Public Lands Act in an attempt to gain control over a substantial portion of federal land in the state from the federal government, based on language in the Utah Enabling Act of 1894. The State does not intend to use force or assert control by limiting access in an attempt to control the disputed lands, but does intend to use a multi-step process of education, negotiation, legislation, and if necessary, litigation as part of its multi-year effort to gain state or private control over the lands after 2014.

 

Utah families, like most Americans everywhere, did their utmost to assist in the war effort. Tires, meat, butter, sugar, fats, oils, coffee, shoes, boots, gasoline, canned fruits, vegetables, and soups were rationed on a national basis. The school day was shortened and bus routes were reduced to limit the number of resources used stateside and increase what could be sent to soldiers.

 

Geneva Steel was built to increase the steel production for America during World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had proposed opening a steel mill in Utah in 1936, but the idea was shelved after a couple of months. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States entered the war and the steel plant was put into progress. In April 1944, Geneva shipped its first order, which consisted of over 600 tons of steel plate. Geneva Steel also brought thousands of job opportunities to Utah. The positions were hard to fill as many of Utah's men were overseas fighting. Women began working, filling 25 percent of the jobs.

 

As a result of Utah's and Geneva Steels contribution during the war, several Liberty Ships were named in honor of Utah including the USS Joseph Smith, USS Brigham Young, USS Provo, and the USS Peter Skene Ogden.

 

One of the sectors of the beachhead of Normandy Landings was codenamed Utah Beach, and the amphibious landings at the beach were undertaken by United States Army troops.

 

It is estimated that 1,450 soldiers from Utah were killed in the war.

 

In the middle of his preparations for Movie Night, Stormtrooper Bruce receives an unexpected guest. STB is used to interruptions, but sometimes they can be a little challenging.

 

KH: Unka Dude! Unka Dude! Hello! It's me! I know it's only been a few weeks, but I sure missed you! Did you miss me? Oh, I brought Cujo Kitty with me, too! Momma sent me accause I owe you a pology!

 

STB: Well hello, Little Dude! I see you're still enjoying your fancy schmancy robot. But, why does your Momma say you owe me an apology? Oh, and what's your name today?

 

KH: Oh, yes, my robot and I have been exploring the entire ship. He's so big sometimes it gets really tricky to get into certain places. And he's the perfect pet carrier, too! Cujo loves him accause he feels safe up there where no one can bother him. Oh, and today my name is Knuckle Head, accause that's what everyone is calling me!

 

STB: What?!? Why in the Great Galaxy is everyone calling you that?

 

KH: Well, it's a long story. Remember last week when you were assigned Security Duty at Unka Pappy's Petting Zoo, accause of a break in? Well... that was my fault. My robot and I were checking out the critters there, and we accidentally bumped into some things and broke some things, and maybe some of the critters got loose. My robot was still new, so I was still trying to learn how to work him.

 

STB: OK. I think I see where this is going. Continue.

 

KH: Well, the next few days, all I heard Unka Pappy and that Dark Vader man say was, "What knucklehead breaks into a Petting Zoo?" Or they'd say, "What knucklehead vandalizes a Petting Zoo?!?" Over and over they would say things like that. Then, when Momma learned what happened, she knew ... it was me! And she told them! And now I'm here to pologize for making you miss your Movie Night last weekend. My bad! I'm really sorry!

 

STB:

 

KH: I'm really super-duper sorry!

 

STB: Well, accidents happen. So, I accept your apology. Too bad you can't stay... but, unless your robot is equipped with a kitty litter box, you may need to hurry back to your quarters. Cujo Kitty looks like he needs a potty break! Thanks for stopping by and zinging my brain with your WTMIAO apology. Way too much information at once takes time to process, so I'll see you later, alligator. After while crocodile. Time for bed, knucklehead.

 

KH: Oh Unka Dude, you're so silly! You might be right about Cujo Kitty. My robot needs an upgrade, and fast! We better hurry before it's too late!

 

_________________________________________

Viewing Large is always fun. Just click on the image.

I regularly receive emails from students asking questions about my work, a recent one asked what a particular sculpture was called. I don't think I named it anything as I used to always do, I don't think they necessarily need names any more. So instead I replied with the story of how that particular design came about, I thought they might find it an interesting insight perhaps you will too.

 

With my backlit - stained-glass-style - leaf sculptures I often experiment with different shapes using structures in the leaves such as the veins, and light and shadow through different opacities of different varieties of leaves or indeed the same variety at different times of the year. It's all about exploring the leaves themselves, their properties, their variance and how they change from season to season and year to year.

 

One time I used yellow and green cherry laurel leaves to make a square of their central veins, -picture 1-. Several months later I made the same design again but with fragile and fresh deciduous leaves and made the square thicker using the stems of ferns, - picture 2-. Perhaps this highlights the main aspect of what I do which is simply to spend time with the materials, trying out different things, in order to make new discoveries.

 

Several more months passed and whilst out walking I made the first design again, during which I suddenly realised that the square made by the veins was in fact one side of a cube. So I made six identical sculptures just like the first one and with difficulty secured the outer flaps to each other inside the cube, - picture 3-.

 

There is a place in West Cumbria called Muncaster which has a 1000 year old castle, still inhabited by the original family line, and they have a wonderful Himalayan forest which includes one variety of rhododendron that displays four colours in Autumn: orange, yellow, red and green. I made a box from those leaves in the original way and the result was -picture 4-.

 

Over the next few months I explored the design and came to see it was over-engineered and didn't require as many leaves as I first used and at the same time I started to teach others how to make them on workshops. And on a particular one of those one participant pointed out that the current method was still over-engineered and even fewer leaves were needed to successfully create a cube.

 

This all happened over a couple of years and finally the result was the perfectly efficient design, the right number of leaves and several repeating patterns in its appearance. They now looked the same from any angle with a four leaf pattern in the middle of each face and a three leaf pattern on each corner.

 

Then I began a ritual where I would try and make one whenever I visited a new place in an experiment to find out whether I could with only nature's materials I would find immediately around me. And I found that wherever there are leaves that I could. -Picture 5- was a box I created in the garden of @Anachar_Basbous in Rachana, Lebanon.

 

It was spring when the final leaf box design emerged and at that time there were no plants that were producing four colours in their leaves, so I had to wait a further six months to discover what would happen with this final design and four colours.

 

In the Autumn of that year I visited Muncaster again to lead another workshop and set about making a four colour leaf box with that particular rhododendron again and I was delighted to discover that it was perfect, no two of the same colours touched each other all around it and it added another layer to it looking identical whatever angle you looked at it, - picture 6-.

 

By now I was very familiar with this design, had shown many people how to make them for themselves so now I used their creation to explore more deeply into the properties of nature.

 

On another workshop held on a cold and windy February day I made another box and hung it up in a tree using string made from juncus grass. Exactly four weeks later I returned to the same spot for another teaching session and was surprised to find it still hanging there.

 

This time it had taken on some attributes of the four weeks it was hanging there. The whole country had been battered by strong, dry and cold easterly winds straight from Siberia and this leaf box, very gradually, had all the moisture drawn out of it which resulted in a subtle russety brown colour and it had squared up and made almost the most perfect cube. I had seen many, many boxes left to nature and what she did with them and this one was very unusual and a product of the unique conditions it had existed within. This one really stuck with me and is so much what my art is really about, when I look at the picture I see all of those four weeks in nature and for that reason -picture 7- is one of my favourites.

 

A year or two later I created seven much larger boxes using rubber plant leaves and some very long white thorns I found outside the Museo Archeologico in Agrigento, Sicily for an event that the good folks of @coopculture_it had invited me to. Here I wanted to show the stages of decay with green, green/yellow, yellow/green, yellow, yellow/brown, brown/yellow to brown, -picture 8-. With there being yet another design aspect here where one colour boxes are made one way, two colour boxes another and four colour boxes yet another.

 

The latest stage in this evolution has been to try and create larger sculptures using the same techniques the most recent being these windows I made to study the river that runs through it, -picture 8-.

 

This whole thing played out over several years and never at one point did I sit down and try to figure out what I was doing, how to do any of it better or to start with an idea that I wanted to carry out. At each stage I simply went out into nature and with no plan just saw what happened as I created something intuitively. Perhaps if I had set off with the idea of creating a cube with leaves then I could have worked it out much more quickly but this process was much richer and more interesting as each step popped out intuitively, both in me and others who helped along the way.

 

Each step, as each picture here describes, anchors me to the memory of the place and time they happened, who I was with, what I and nature was doing and how I felt.

 

My leaf boxes mean more to me than simply what you can see. Each is unique. One may look like another but the environment around it when each was made is never the same. Nature is in constant flux and to different degrees of success I try to put some of what is happening around it into each one or at least hand it over to mother nature and marvel when she does that for me.

 

I'm doing my best to stay off social media right now, for various reasons, so apologies if I don't reply to any comments for a while.

D8048 receives bodywork repairs inside the diesel shed at Swanwick on the Midland Railway, 12th July 2008.

 

Locomotive History

D8048 was built by English Electric at the Vulcan Foundry and entered traffic in December 1959, allocated to Hornsea MPD. I have a record of this engine stabled on Kirkby In Ashfield shed thirty nine years earlier (bar eight days) on the 20th July 1969 along with another twenty five class 20’s, one class 45 and five class 47’s. At this time the old steam shed at Kirkby was a sub shed to Toton and was responsible for providing traction for the numerous coal trains serving the Nottinghamshire coal field around Mansfield. D8048 became 20048 in the 1974 TOPS renumbering scheme, it was withdrawn in November 1990. Acquired for preservation it was leased to RFS and was renumbered 2014 for work involved with construction of the Channel Tunnel and is now over fifty years old.

 

S, Mansur by Mansoor Saleem

Some notes ABOUT MY WORK (a brief sample of local or regional anthropology at micro level):

The word "Gravity" is a symbol of reality that exists. Similarly E=mc2 is a combination of symbols trying to express some reality. In similar fashion my depiction of flashes (kashf) should be conceived that they are equations not in math but in language that nature uses. Perhaps fate had dropped flashes in my lap and I am depicting these flashes for world to know how to derive knowledge out of these flashes. May be from Archetypal plane I am receiving flashes and transforming these into phenomenal plane, but for more perfect transformation, sponsorship is required, like flashes roughly depicted demands super realistic treatment or animations at some points, or arrangements in 3- Dimension or performing activities or etc. at some other points, because each of my work either illustrated or arranged for photo is a part of animation and is just a one shot from one angle of bigger reality, therefore I am not a sur-realist. For deriving knowledge from my flashes their access to wider researchers in form of website, book, Museum, CD, video, etc. are required. And due to unavailability of resources, most of the paintings were sold before I could photographed these works which basically are like the fossils of the time and region and are done with hope that in future in order to get some data out of these works, the dimensions of anthropology, psychology, historiography, neurology, neuro-physics and other aspects will also be taken into account and the result may benefit in understanding some aspect of the complex Nature. The importance of flashes can be realized from the ripple effect observable in art and multi-media community that somehow came in contact with the work and hijacked ideology out of these flashes, such benefits, scientific community has not taken yet. From art point of view the art community produced high quality variations out of flashes but their work lack archetypal dimension which is one of the aspect, useful for scientific community to explore.

For cataloguing purpose somewhere title or art terminology like: "oil on canvas", "collage", "performance", "installations", "construction", etc. are used has nothing to do with meaning of the work, flashes are independent of these terminologies borrowed from art for cataloguing purpose only, flashes are beyond art. Flashes can include any ism, any element, bizarre thing, anything or things we don't know, that's why thousands of my flashes goes waste due to lack of energy and resources. Besides colorful images, performance and animation, Flashes also comes in form of sound as well, for instance I heard the sound: "Quranic archaeology is a mighty subject," this flash took me into the archaeology.

Researchers are invited to reply on enigma of colorful flashes. From where they come? they come to all or to few,? Few interesting pieces of writing below could be the starting point for debate: One is by David V. Tansley in his book: 'Subtle body' , author writes,..."the pineal gland has been found to contain vestigial traces of optic tissue. Experiments have shown that nerve impulses arise in the pineal in response to stimulation by light. Galen claimed that the pineal was a regulator of thought, and the Greeks said that the soul was anchored there. According to esoteric tradition this gland is the focal point for the masculine positive energy of spirit which is represented by the first hexagram of l-Ching, its six yang lines symbolizing the primal power of heaven and the creative action of the holy man".

But spirituality or metaphysical dimension is relevant in my case or not is a question unsolved or perhaps I should confine myself to physical dimension of Flashes (or call it images) which stay in my eyes just for less than a half second, perhaps for 0.01 second and I simply illustrate these Flashes and what it holds for future Fine Art, Sciences, Meta-science or Spirituality, I do not know yet, so I isolate myself from dada and sur-realism because I avoid title and avoid mixing my imagination or experimentation in recording of Flashes which is very rare or unrecorded. In dada and sur-realism we do read about dreams and drug infused random thoughts, but not flashes, so far no word about flashes I find even in Freud or Jungian psychology, they talk about dream importance. And in Christian art history so far I have only observed mixing of dream and inspiration from Bible. No body so far I have read in Dada and sur-realism that somebody is claiming that he is depicting Flashes or depicting flashes without mixing his imagination or experimentation. After seeing the difference between two (1) Pure Flashes and (2) some of my work based on mixing of imagination or experimentation with Flashes, now I can pin point the Flash, mixed or unmixed. My major work which is unmixed are pure Flashes (1) and my mixed work (2) can be termed as sur-realistic which I did for commercial reason on client's demand who was mad of sur-realism, I wish I could destroy these sur-realistic works. Since I can now perceive the difference between Flashes and work based on mixing of imagination or experimentation, now I can pin point the Flash, mixed or unmixed, so my major work should not be equate with William Blake, Dali, De Chirico, Carra, Marcel Duchamp, Magrette, etc., because I am not competing in art aesthetic, or in painterly compositions, I have no experience of spirituality, so my work should not also be confuse with any oriental mystics or artists who refer to the metaphysical in some form or another.

My work from (1974-81) of installations, performances based on flashes is still unpublished, so new generation do not know about it, in South Asian art also so far, no artist has ever claimed flashes mixed or un-mixed. For future science world, un-mixed flashes will be more important. Please inform on email mansursalim@hotmail.com, if reader come up with something related to science of flashes, or near to it, for instance few near relevant things I found are:

Physicist Mitchell Feigenbaum (reported in the New York Times, 1984), that when inspiration came to Feigenbaum, it was in the form of a picture, a mental image of two small wavy forms and one big one. This gave him an idea about scaling, the way the small features of a thing relate to the large features, it gave him the path he needed. For period doubling, scaling showed not only when one value-a total population or a fluid speed-would break into two, but also just where the new values would be found, Scaling was an intimate feature of the peculiar world Feigenbaum was beginning to explore.

Arthur I. Miller in a discussion of "redefining visualizability" makes it clear...the experimental evidence prevents us from forming a mental image bridging the wave-particle duality, such an image is available by 'Anschaulichheit' (German term for intuition, plus more) of another kind. It is the kind of image the physicist Werner Heisenberg had in mind when he asserted that, although the causality of classical mechanics has no access to quantum theory, quantum mechanics should not be considered unanschaulich, that is, excluded from imagery (Miller, Imagery in Scientific Thought). One example of such image is Albert Einstein's famous thought experiment in which he demonstrated the equivalence of inertia and gravitation by imagining an observer pulled through empty space in a closed container. Such images, however, lead by degrees of abstraction to others limited to spatial diagrams of a theoretical situation. Sigmund Freud, for example, writes, "We assume that the psychic life has the function of an apparatus, to which we attribute spatial extension and which we imagine as being composed of several pieces, similar to a telescope or microscope" Although such an image provides complementarity with a concrete percept of its models, it would not seem to provide it with a representable reality. But some physicists disagree that Niels Bohr never apply his notion of complementarity to subject other than physics. But for some physicists the contrary is true. (From Rudolf Arnheim's essay: “Complementarity from the outside” in book: Rescue of art).

May be or may not be these above references are relevant here for flashes I do not know, but for scientific analysis it is important to state briefly here the background of how I realized the importance of these flashes, but for scientific cause I have to write what I should not. I hope my friends will forgive me for this cause, because for good Gestalt one should have all the possible details in mind, it is beyond humans to perceive Perfect Gestalt, only Allah knows everything. A year before Metric and much before Diploma in fine art, my art works (flashes, mixed and unmixed) since 1974 were on display at Atelier BM and at Indus gallery, and since then I am observing the ripple effect of those works. After solo show of my works at Pakistan American Cultural Center, January 1979, I went to CIAC, Karachi Arts Council, to check effects of my Flash-works among artists. Before flashes since 1973 I was only doing super realistic sort of paintings of surrounding and of interior Sindh culture and capturing the local environment to come up with something: Pakistani avant-garde which I displayed at PACC solo show in Jan. 1979. But was ignored by media, only small press coverage came with a suggestion: "Mansoor has to stick to his remarkably sound realistic style instead of delving into many styles". (Art show, Daily News, Jan. 9, 1979). But anyhow I was realizing the importance of my flashes which were inspiring the most intelligent and talented of artist community for example: Ghalib Baqar changed his Dali sort of Sur realism into experimental water color, other water colorists like Abdul Hayee, Ather Jamal, Zahin Ahmad, Hanif Shezad, etc. added Karachi and interior Sindh imagery into their work. But at the same time I was learning the techniques of art from them. From Hayee and Baqar I learned the techniques of water color, from Farhan Ehsan I learned the techniques of drawing and calligraphy, from Amir Khan Tareen I learned the techniques of Rembrandt, from Abul Fateh I learned the techniques of ceramics, from Dr. Sajid Khan and Naseem Khan I learned the techniques of photography, from A.G. Khalid I learned the techniques of using computer and so on.

One of world's best super realist artist Shakil Siddiquei changed his Rembrandt sort of style into super realistic abstraction, for instance his paintings of Book shelf, Notice board, door, windows, composition with Dawn news paper, Sindhi dari, fruit packing wooden peyti, Chilmun and etc., in subject matter, were directly inspired by my flashes in form of photos or artworks I shared with him. Art critic Dr. S. Amjad Ali in his article: "Growing trend towards realism", wrote;..."Saleem Mansoor was the first to begin this kind of realism in Karachi but he was well advised to give up after creating a few interesting pieces. It is a good way of gaining command over technique and then putting it to other use in which more thought and feeling comes into play." (Dawn, April 20, 1984).

Ejazul Hassan wrote in Page 17, 123 in the catalogue of 5th National Exhibition, 1985, Published by Idara Saqafat Pakistan, written by Ejazul Husan.

"Young Mansoor Saleem has his own unusual way with objects and space. He sometimes likes to call his work as "installation" in the environment around him. He always wants to place things where he thinks these should be placed. The coiled wire, with a crescent on top, placed on a gray composition is evidence of his restless imagination. The title "Pakistani Avant Garde" also shows his wit." (—page 123, Ejazul Husan)

"The young painter Saleem Mansoor....investigates new methods and techniques not only meant to widen the scope and definition of realism but also to discover fresh methods to stimulate the viewers' response. His 'painting' titled The Pakistani Avant-garde' is wittily fabricated with tan-gue-in-cheek humor making an apt comment on elitist attitudes and trends in modern art."—(page: 17, from the introduction of 5th National Exhibition by Ejazul Hasan)

Most helping and highly creative artist and multi media man Imran Mir in 1975 appreciated my work in high remarks when he was discussing with Bashir Mirza at Atelier BM. BM was telling him that before going to Canada what Imran observed in art scene was still the same when he returned after many years, that Ahmed Pervaiz is repeating Allen Davy, and Shakir Ali, Mansur Rahi and their students were repeating Picasso and Braque's cubism in Indian or Bengali styles and Jamil Naqsh, Lubna Agha, Mansur Aye, Mashkoor, and others are repeating the same compositions, Rabia Zuberi and Shahid Sajjad repeating Henry Moor and so on. Imran pointing towards my work replied: "he is the change"! and BM acknowledged it. Imran like Zahoor ul Akhlaque, also absorbed elements from my flashes (like geometry, etc) but both only absorbed post modern art-elements from my flashes (but they absorbed postmodern element from other sources like we see in work of Herbert Bayer, Jennifer Bartlett, Ross Blacker, Sean Scully and etc) which not much is my concerned.

During my slide show at NCA in 1981, Zahoor and his wife asked me about my future plan, they were surprised to hear that I will soon be joining Archaeology Department in some university because from inside I am an anthropologist also. All my work is not only a statement in anthropology, but is also a statement in neurology, physics, and other sciences. Imran sincerely wanted to bring post modern trends in the region, perhaps for variety he introduced me to many artists, for instance, one day Imran came to me and carried my work's photos in his car and took me to David Alesworth's house and showed my work to him and his wife Durriya and Imran told them to do something like that and after one month of that, Imran's wife Nighat, told me; "Mansoor! You know Durriya is taking your sort of Truck art from Karachi to Peshawar". Nighat was saying that because she much before this event has written an article in press on my 1977 Truck art collection and Sara Irshad has written on my 1981 work: "Taking art show on donkey cart to the folk". Durriya and David not only took the advantage of my flashes but others also followed similar ideology, for instance Ruby Chisti, Masooma Syed, Naiza Khan, Adeela Khan, Rashid Rana, Noorjehn Bilgramy, Huma Mulji, Farida Batool, Ali Raza, Sophie Ernst, Faiza But, M. Ali Talpur, Imran Qureshi, Ameen Gulgee, Jamal Shah, Nazish Ataullah, Aaisha Khalid, Risham Syed and many others who spread the ideology to Melbourne, Dubai, London, New York, Berlin, etc.

Before their first thesis, IVSAA'S principal invited me for slide show of my work, but to my surprise only the faculty staff was invited and not the students. After a month or so one of the faculty member Kamran Hamid told me, "Mansoor go and see student's thesis at IVSAA where teachers has influenced students to do work which is similar to your ideology"." Now it is a tradition there. Even their very architecture is based on the ideology of some of my old flashes and on article published in press. Against me, I even find wrong propaganda by hijackers of my work. And rather through lobby in media they even sensor or edit my interviews according to their need of representing me with those works which they have not preferred to hijack from my flashes. In Shisha, Shanakht, Carce, IVSAA, Fomma and VASL works I have observed direct influence of ideologies, imageries derived out of my flashes. For assessment of the influence, historiographical approach is required. For commercial reason, they can ignore me too but future history will not. Local art magazine and art book writers were chased to ignore me.

I also held slide show of the work at NCA in 1981, where Zahoor-ul-Akhlaque, his wife and his students saw the show. Salima Hashmi wrote an article on my exhibition at Alhambra gallery Lahore, in March, 1984. The effort bore its fruit, through historiography one can trace after 1981, the change in NCA and change in Zahoor, Ejazul Hasan, Salima Hashmi, Shahid Sajjad, Mehar Afroze, etc., and change in their younger generation of students. They and other agents and technology (since 1974 perhaps) spread the influence of my flashes abroad as well, for instance on Beverly Pepper, Nicole Eisenman, Anish Kapoor, Mohsin Zaidi, Susanne Kessler and etc.

All the names mentioned above have the right to disagree with me, these are just friendly assumptions for researchers to look at such debate too to guess what the Flashes are? I too was inspired by many but after receiving Flashes from nature, I painted these with realization that they are more important than Mona Lisa, E=mc2 or Taj Mahal. I have no solo shows in prestigious gallery abroad I have no big post, scholarship or any sponsorship or awards, etc. But what Nature has given me in form of Flashes is more important that they are prototype for all time to come, back to the future or forward into the past. All artists are free to make anything they wish or according to market forces but I have to make (for science) what I receive in form of Flashes. Historiographicaly speaking Flashes' influence is more than what the work of Shakir Ali, Sadequein, Gulgee, M.F. Hussain and etc. had. But no comment I see in the catalogue of 2007- National exhibition, even the Karachiets have ignored me too. Sindh Governor is not using his Legend Fund; I now in time of Parkinson disease need sponsorship to continue the mission, if possible Inshallah. ...MS

 

Mansoor Saleem's solo show, May, 2008

Shakil Ismail Art Gallery

Ground Floor, Marine Point, Block 9, Clifton Karachi. Tel: 0321-2409949, E-mail: shakilismailartgallery@yahoo.com

Gallery is not responsible what artists express freely

 

JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii (Aug. 18, 2021) - U.S. Marine Corps F-35B Lightning II’s, Marine Fighter Attack Squadron based out of Marine Corps Air Station MCAS Iwakuni, Japan, prepare to receive fuel from a KC-135 Stratotanker assigned to the 909th Air Refueling Squadron, Kadena Air Base, Japan during a Large Scale Global Exercise 21 mission over the western Pacific Ocean, Aug. 18, 2021. The U.S. has the ability to operate from the sanctuary of bases across the region and projecting sustained combat power. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Micaiah Anthony) 210818-F-DM566-0724

 

** Interested in following U.S. Indo-Pacific Command? Engage and connect with us at www.facebook.com/indopacom | twitter.com/INDOPACOM |

www.instagram.com/indopacom | www.flickr.com/photos/us-pacific-command; | www.youtube.com/user/USPacificCommand | www.pacom.mil/ **

 

William Stone Images - Limited Edition Fine Art Prints

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We celebrate light in our pictures. Understanding how light interacts with the camera is paramount to the work we do. The temperature, intensity and source of light can wield different photography effect on the same subject or scene; add ISO, aperture and speed, the camera, the lens type, focal length and filters…the combination is varied and multi-layered and if you know how to use them all, you will come to appreciate that all lights are useful, even those surrounded by a lot of darkness.

 

We are guided by three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, our longing to capture in print, that which is beautiful, the constant search for the one picture, and constant barrage of new equipment and style of photography. These passions, like great winds, have blown us across the globe in search of the one and we do understand the one we do look for might be this picture right here for someone else out there.

 

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WS-118-57142210-111180599-4607221-2842023115732

Barbie® by Christian Louboutin receives a complete head-to-toe Parisian makeover, as envisioned by Christian. Inspired by legendary beauties such as Nefertiti and Marilyn Monroe, Barbie® goes ultra modern glam with sleek makeup, a fiery red mane of luscious locks and — of course — four pairs of Christian Louboutin designed shoes (complete with miniature shoe boxes and cloth shoe bags! ). Turning up the va-va-voom factor, Barbie® wears a sleek black catsuit, perfect for strutting her stuff.

"Cross of Gallantry: Marine Sergeant Harvey E. Steiner, right, receives the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry from Lieutenant General Hoang Xuan Lam, I Corps Commander during ceremonies yesterday in Da Nang. Steiner (Oregon, Wisconsin) was one of 27 members of the 3d Military Police Battalion who received the decoration, one of the Vietnam’s highest decorations (official USMC photo by Staff Sergeant Jerry M. Baker)."

 

From the Jonathan Abel Collection (COLL/3611), Marine Corps Archives & Special Collections.

 

OFFICIAL USMC PHOTOGRAPH

President Barack Obama receives a briefing on the earthquake in Japan and the tsunami warnings across the Pacific in the Oval Office, March 11, 2011. Briefing the President, from left, are: Assistant to the President for Homeland Security John Brennan; National Security Staff Senior Director for Resilience Richard Reed; and National Security Staff Director Asian Affairs Daniel Russel. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

 

This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.

Jim Haley receives a U.S. flag honoring the memory of his brother, John Haley, Jr., killed in Vietnam, September, 1967. Ceremony took place at the annual Memorial Day remembrance at Triton High School, Runnemede, NJ in 2014. The annual ceremony honors the memory of Triton students lost in the Vietnam war. John was a classmate of mine, and I got to Vietnam two weeks after he was killed.

 

John's story is here: deadreckoning1.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/taken-from-us/

 

An injured soldier receives help to change his shoes for the Wounded Warrior Project Soldier Ride, New York City, July 23. The bicycle ride through Manhattan is part of the organization?s goal to raise awareness for those who have been injured while fighting overseas. (Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Randall A. Clinton)

  

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جلالة الملك عبدالله الثاني وجلالة الملكة رانيا يتسلمان جائزة زايد للأخوة الإنسانية لعام ٢٠٢٢ وذلك خلال زيارة لدولة الإمارات

أبو ظبي، الإمارات / 26 شباط 2022

Their Majesties King Abdullah II and Queen Rania receive the 2022 Zayed Award for Human Fraternity during a visit to the United Arab Emirates

Abu Dhabi, UAE/ 26 February 2022

© Royal Hashemite Court

 

"There was a little girl who asked God:

How will there be peace on earth

with so much anger in my own family?

How can others in the world be my brothers and sisters

when my classmates are bullies and despise those who are different?

As a young teen she asked the Christed One:

How can there possibly be only one Creator

while each religion maintains its own exclusivity

of rules and regulations for salvation?

As a young woman she asked:

How can more people find true love

when the sanctity of womanhood is forgotten

and sex is no longer considered an act of Union?

When She saw one patient after another dying

from aggressive treatment of disease,

she asked the Heavenly Father:

How can there be a cure for fatal illness

when healing is a multinational business?

She called out to Jesus

To Mother Mary

To Krishna and Ram

She called out to Buddha

And Shiva, Vishnu and Brahman

She called out to Mother Earth and Father Sky

but it wasn't until she became a widow,

that she heard One small unspoken Voice whisper:

“It is by asking that we truly love

It is by giving we receive"

It was then that she asked her final question:

What is the purpose of my life?

 

In that swirling vacuum a song arose

Shining and brilliant like the Sun

In that instant was a great letting go

A surrendering to the way of Love

A relief from the aching to understand

everything on the outside

A surge of unforgettable Solitude

A wellspring of purpose fulfilled:

Peace"

 

Ganga Fondan, 2010

 

Creating a new Vision out of this:

Living Dreams One song at a Time

    

jsc2019e067107 - Outside the headquarters of the Russian space agency Roscosmos in Moscow, NASA astronaut Nick Hague (right) receives the medal of the Order of Courage from the head of Roscosmos, Dmitri Rogozin Dec. 2. The awarding of the medal to Hague accompanied the unveiling of the Soyuz spacecraft in front of Roscosmos’ headquarters building in which Hague and crewmate and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin launched on Oct. 11, 2018 on an aborted mission to the International Space Station. About two minutes after launch, a booster separation problem triggered a launch abort, resulting in Hague and Ovchinin flying free of their Soyuz booster and landing safely in their Soyuz capsule downrange on the steppe of Kazakhstan. Hague and Ovchinin were reassigned to fly again, launching on March 15, 2019 for a mission that spanned 203 days in space. Image Credit: Roscosmos.

When you receive about 40 millions visitors a year, it only takes one trend that's not so bright to jeopardize the integrity of what you came to admire.

 

Take those locks which picture has been taken when the love-lock situation was at its absolute worst on most parisian bridges which were not built to support dozens of tons of additionnal iron left by people who were just passing by.

 

Look at the concentration of the ensemble and the size of some of them that could be used to attach a motorcycle or a ferry boat.

  

Hugo's is a steakhouse at the Four Queens Hotel and Casino on Fremont St. Every lady that dines there receives a rose!

I receive many questions regarding the D600 performance. This picture might help those who have inquired.

Final Bits Of 1163s M.O.T Prep Before It Goes The 2nd Week Of January To Receive A Fresh M.O.T Finally. Then Summer 2025 It Will Be Onto Alot Of Body Work Including Rebuilding The Back Of The Bus While It Gets Ready For A Full Repaint. Can't Wait To Have This And OP81 Attending Shows And Running Days Together In My Preserved Bus Livery One Day In The Future Sometime 💪

(more pictures or information you can receive by going to the end of page!)

House of the Teutonic Order

The House of the Teutonic Order was as a Viennese commandry of the in 1198 in Acre founded Teutonic Order under Duke Leopold VI in the early years of the 13th Century built. The German Order was next to the Hospitallers and the Templars the third major order of knights of the Middle Ages. Duke Leopold gave him the large area between Stephansplatz, Churhausgasse, Singerstraße and blood alley (Blutgasse). Documentarily proven is the existence of the house from 1222. Here resided the Landkomtur (province commanders) of the Bailiwick of Austria, to which the commandries Vienna, Wiener Neustadt, Graz, Friesach and Groß-Sonntag (Krain) belonged. In the great fire of 1258 all the religious buildings except the church tower burned down. In the Middle Ages the complex of the German monastic house was limited to the area along the Singerstraße and Blutgasse. 1309 exchanged the Order part of the land that was needed for the extension of Stephen's cemetery against a neighboring area. The sprawling building had in its, the Stephansplatz adjacent part a large farm yard, which was surrounded by stables. Since 1526 the Head of the Order bore the title "Grand and German master (Hoch- und Deutschmeister)". The famous Viennese house regiment of the same name by the way in 1696 emerged from those Truppenkontigenten (contigent of troops) which the Order for the Turkish war had provided. After the first Turkish siege of Vienna, numerous residents of the suburbs whose houses had been burned were housed here. From 1667 the already dilapidated buildings were torn down with the exception of the church under the Landkomtur (province commander) Gottfried Freiherr von Lambert and provided by Carlo Canevale with three-storey new buildings. As plasterers Jacob Schlag and Simon Alio were mentioned. 1679/82 increased Canevale and Johann Bernhard Ceresola the complex.

Sala terrena. In the years 1720-1725 the German religious house under the Landkomtur Guidobald Starhemberg by Anton Erhard Martinelli was further extended and baroquised. In 1785 it received under Landkomtur Alois Graf Harrach by placing a fourth storey its present shape. In the 18th Century several fires caused major damages. Especially those of 1735 raged for three days, because the urban fighting personnel the entry was denied by the German Order of Knights. Among the prominent residents of the German religious house, which in the 18th and 19th century first also as a guest house of the Order served and then was largely rented, included Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1781), Johannes Brahms (1863 - 1865) and the comedy writer Cornelius Hermann Paul von Ayrenhoff. At the beginning of the 19th Century on Stephansplatz the German Order Cellar (Deutschordenskeller) was opened. Was in its place in the second half of the 20th Century the Restaurant "Deutsches Haus". Since 1809 the German religious house is the residence of the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order. Until then, this one resided in Mergentheim (Baden-Württemberg). From 1864 the Landkomtur Eugen Graf von Haugwitz the church by the cathedral architect from Gran, Josef Lippert, partially had re-gothicised. At that time at the gable above the church windows the already damaged pinnacles and figures were removed. Only the Grand Master coat of arms was left. 1929 the community of the German Teutonic Knights was transformed into a purely religious order. It is one of the very few religious institutions whose top management is not located in Rome. First Grand Master living in Vienna was Archduke Anton Viktor (1804 - 1835).

Church - interior. The House of the Teutonic Order is now a sprawling complex of buildings, grouped around two courtyards. The façade at the Blutgasse is the oldest. Those at the Singerstraße stems from the 17th Century. It represents today the face side of the building. The structuring of the façade by high Baroque inonic giant pilasters followed around 1720. The ground floor is grooved. The two early-Baroque round-arched portals are framed with Tuscan pilasters. The simple façades of the courtyards are held in the style of the 17th Century. On the west side of the pentagonal courtyard on the ground floor walled arched arcades as well as glazed Pawlatschen (access galleries) from the 19th Century on the first floor can be seen. In the courts were various, in 1903 discovered grave plates placed. The ground floor rooms are vaulted, early Baroque lunette barrels and groin vaults prevailing. Among them is the Sala terrene, a with a flat dome vaulted central room which is decorated with illusionistic wall paintings of the late 18th Century. The wall and ceiling frescoes depict mythological scenes and figural ornaments. The hall was once opened to the garden through a portal, but this was later reworked into a window. The tract between Stephansplatz and Blutgasse encloses two two-aisled halls. While the cross vault of the first ones is resting on sturdy pillars is those of the other ones supported by Tuscan columns. In the partially with Rococo and Neoclassical stucco ceilings provided rooms of the first floor are located the library and archives of the Order with documents and books dating back to the 12th Century. Some beautifully crafted wood cabinets were personally manufactured ​​by the Grand and Deutschmeister Archduke Eugen. In the treasure chamber on the second floor are in addition to religious insignias and paintings, inter alia, parts of the Kunstkammer (Art chamber) of the Grand Master Archduke Maximilian III of Austria from the time about 1600 exposed.

Church - Empore. Attention getter and center of the tract at the Singerstraße are the three tall lancet windows of the church of the Teutonic Order. The first chapel already in 1258 fell victim to a town fire. From 1326 it was replaced by Jörg von Schiffering by a new building yet today the core of the Church of the Teutonic Order forming. At that time this one was still but free on three sides. In 1375 it was dedicated to St. Elizabeth. Guidobald Starhemberg 1720/22 the Chapel had remodelled in the Baroque style and flanked at both longitudinal sides by newly built religious houses, by which the three stained glass windows became the central projection of the House of the Teutonic Order. Presumably Anton Erhard Martinelli also was involved in the planning. The quite gothical appearing church facade is a beautiful example of the baroque tinge of the time after the Gothic period of 18th Century, unique in Austria. In the neo-Gothic restoration of 1864/68 the Baroque dome of the narrow and high tower was replaced by a pointed Gothic helmet. After the church was severely damaged in 1945 by bomb hits, followed its restoration 1946/47. Its vaults possess Gothic stucco decorations. In the Baroque reconstruction in the corners eight galleries were built-in, which are accessible from the apartments situated behind. The Dutch polyptych (1520) comes from Mechelen, but was until 1864 in the St. Mary's Church of Danzig. The altarpiece was created in 1667 by Tobias Pock. In the four corners of the room Evangelists Statues by Johann Hutter (1864) replace the missing sculptures by Giovanni Giuliani from the year 1721. On the walls hang several grave slabs, including an epitaph of the scholar Johannes Cuspinian (1515) and the by Jacob Schletterer created grave monument of the Landkomtur Josef Philipp Graf Harrach. Most of the more than eighty coats of arms of German knights, covering the upper part of the walls were designed by Johann Andreas Frank 1722.

Location / Address : 1010 Vienna, Singerstraße 7

 

Viewing: with the exception of the church and the museum allowed only outside

www.burgen-austria.com/archive.php?id=1002

Bodie is a ghost town in the Bodie Hills east of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in Mono County, California, United States. It is about 75 miles (121 km) southeast of Lake Tahoe, and 12 mi (19 km) east-southeast of Bridgeport, at an elevation of 8,379 feet (2554 m). Bodie became a boom town in 1876 (146 years ago) after the discovery of a profitable line of gold; by 1879 it had a population of 7,000–10,000.

 

The town went into decline in the subsequent decades and came to be described as a ghost town by 1915 (107 years ago). The U.S. Department of the Interior recognizes the designated Bodie Historic District as a National Historic Landmark.

 

Also registered as a California Historical Landmark, the ghost town officially was established as Bodie State Historic Park in 1962. It receives about 200,000 visitors yearly. Bodie State Historic Park is partly supported by the Bodie Foundation.

 

Bodie began as a mining camp of little note following the discovery of gold in 1859 by a group of prospectors, including W. S. Bodey. Bodey died in a blizzard the following November while making a supply trip to Monoville (near present-day Mono City), never getting to see the rise of the town that was named after him. According to area pioneer Judge J. G. McClinton, the district's name was changed from "Bodey," "Body," and a few other phonetic variations, to "Bodie," after a painter in the nearby boomtown of Aurora, lettered a sign "Bodie Stables".

 

Gold discovered at Bodie coincided with the discovery of silver at nearby Aurora (thought to be in California, later found to be Nevada), and the distant Comstock Lode beneath Virginia City, Nevada. But while these two towns boomed, interest in Bodie remained lackluster. By 1868 only two companies had built stamp mills at Bodie, and both had failed.

 

In 1876, the Standard Company discovered a profitable deposit of gold-bearing ore, which transformed Bodie from an isolated mining camp comprising a few prospectors and company employees to a Wild West boomtown. Rich discoveries in the adjacent Bodie Mine during 1878 attracted even more hopeful people. By 1879, Bodie had a population of approximately 7,000–10,000 people and around 2,000 buildings. One legend says that in 1880, Bodie was California's second or third largest city. but the U.S. Census of that year disproves this. Over the years 1860-1941 Bodie's mines produced gold and silver valued at an estimated US$34 million (in 1986 dollars, or $85 million in 2021).

 

Bodie boomed from late 1877 through mid– to late 1880. The first newspaper, The Standard Pioneer Journal of Mono County, published its first edition on October 10, 1877. Starting as a weekly, it soon expanded publication to three times a week. It was also during this time that a telegraph line was built which connected Bodie with Bridgeport and Genoa, Nevada. California and Nevada newspapers predicted Bodie would become the next Comstock Lode. Men from both states were lured to Bodie by the prospect of another bonanza.

 

Gold bullion from the town's nine stamp mills was shipped to Carson City, Nevada, by way of Aurora, Wellington and Gardnerville. Most shipments were accompanied by armed guards. After the bullion reached Carson City, it was delivered to the mint there, or sent by rail to the mint in San Francisco.

 

As a bustling gold mining center, Bodie had the amenities of larger towns, including a Wells Fargo Bank, four volunteer fire companies, a brass band, railroad, miners' and mechanics' union, several daily newspapers, and a jail. At its peak, 65 saloons lined Main Street, which was a mile long. Murders, shootouts, barroom brawls, and stagecoach holdups were regular occurrences.

 

As with other remote mining towns, Bodie had a popular, though clandestine, red light district on the north end of town. There is an unsubstantiated story of Rosa May, a prostitute who, in the style of Florence Nightingale, came to the aid of the town menfolk when a serious epidemic struck the town at the height of its boom. She is credited with giving life-saving care to many, but after she died, was buried outside the cemetery fence.

 

Bodie had a Chinatown, the main street of which ran at a right angle to Bodie's Main Street. At one point it had several hundred Chinese residents and a Taoist temple. Opium dens were plentiful in this area.

 

Bodie also had a cemetery on the outskirts of town and a nearby mortuary. It is the only building in the town built of red brick three courses thick, most likely for insulation to keep the air temperature steady during the cold winters and hot summers. The cemetery includes a Miners Union section, and a cenotaph erected to honor President James A. Garfield. The Bodie Boot Hill was located outside of the official city cemetery.

 

On Main Street stands the Miners Union Hall, which was the meeting place for labor unions. It also served as an entertainment center that hosted dances, concerts, plays, and school recitals. It now serves as a museum.

 

The first signs of decline appeared in 1880 and became obvious toward the end of the year. Promising mining booms in Butte, Montana; Tombstone, Arizona; and Utah lured men away from Bodie. The get-rich-quick, single miners who came to the town in the 1870s moved on to these other booms, and Bodie developed into a family-oriented community. In 1882 residents built the Methodist Church (which still stands) and the Roman Catholic Church (burned 1928). Despite the population decline, the mines were flourishing, and in 1881 Bodie's ore production was recorded at a high of $3.1 million. Also in 1881, a narrow-gauge railroad was built called the Bodie Railway & Lumber Company, bringing lumber, cordwood, and mine timbers to the mining district from Mono Mills south of Mono Lake.

 

During the early 1890s, Bodie enjoyed a short revival from technological advancements in the mines that continued to support the town. In 1890, the recently invented cyanide process promised to recover gold and silver from discarded mill tailings and from low-grade ore bodies that had been passed over. In 1892, the Standard Company built its own hydroelectric plant approximately 13 miles (20.9 km) away at Dynamo Pond. The plant developed a maximum of 130 horsepower (97 kW) and 3,530 volts alternating current (AC) to power the company's 20-stamp mill. This pioneering installation marked the country's first transmissions of electricity over a long distance.

 

In 1910, the population was recorded at 698 people, which were predominantly families who decided to stay in Bodie instead of moving on to other prosperous strikes.

 

The first signs of an official decline occurred in 1912 with the printing of the last Bodie newspaper, The Bodie Miner. In a 1913 book titled California Tourist Guide and Handbook: Authentic Description of Routes of Travel and Points of Interest in California, the authors, Wells and Aubrey Drury, described Bodie as a "mining town, which is the center of a large mineral region". They referred to two hotels and a railroad operating there. In 1913, the Standard Consolidated Mine closed.

 

Mining profits in 1914 were at a low of $6,821. James S. Cain bought everything from the town lots to the mining claims, and reopened the Standard mill to former employees, which resulted in an over $100,000 profit in 1915. However, this financial growth was not in time to stop the town's decline. In 1917, the Bodie Railway was abandoned and its iron tracks were scrapped.

 

The last mine closed in 1942, due to War Production Board order L-208, shutting down all non-essential gold mines in the United States during World War II. Mining never resumed after the war.

 

Bodie was first described as a "ghost town" in 1915. In a time when auto travel was on the rise, many travelers reached Bodie via automobiles. The San Francisco Chronicle published an article in 1919 to dispute the "ghost town" label.

 

By 1920, Bodie's population was recorded by the US Federal Census at a total of 120 people. Despite the decline and a severe fire in the business district in 1932, Bodie had permanent residents through nearly half of the 20th century. A post office operated at Bodie from 1877 to 1942

 

In the 1940s, the threat of vandalism faced the ghost town. The Cain family, who owned much of the land, hired caretakers to protect and to maintain the town's structures. Martin Gianettoni, one of the last three people living in Bodie in 1943, was a caretaker.

 

Bodie is now an authentic Wild West ghost town.

 

The town was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1961, and in 1962 the state legislature authorized creation of Bodie State Historic Park. A total of 170 buildings remained. Bodie has been named as California's official state gold rush ghost town.

 

Visitors arrive mainly via SR 270, which runs from US 395 near Bridgeport to the west; the last three miles of it is a dirt road. There is also a road to SR 167 near Mono Lake in the south, but this road is extremely rough, with more than 10 miles of dirt track in a bad state of repair. Due to heavy snowfall, the roads to Bodie are usually closed in winter .

 

Today, Bodie is preserved in a state of arrested decay. Only a small part of the town survived, with about 110 structures still standing, including one of many once operational gold mills. Visitors can walk the deserted streets of a town that once was a bustling area of activity. Interiors remain as they were left and stocked with goods. Littered throughout the park, one can find small shards of china dishes, square nails and an occasional bottle, but removing these items is against the rules of the park.

 

The California State Parks' ranger station is located in one of the original homes on Green Street.

 

In 2009 and again in 2010, Bodie was scheduled to be closed. The California state legislature worked out a budget compromise that enabled the state's Parks Closure Commission to keep it open. As of 2022, the park is still operating, now administered by the Bodie Foundation.

 

California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2 million residents across a total area of approximately 163,696 square miles (423,970 km2), it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the most populated subnational entity in North America and the 34th most populous in the world. The Greater Los Angeles area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second and fifth most populous urban regions respectively, with the former having more than 18.7 million residents and the latter having over 9.6 million. Sacramento is the state's capital, while Los Angeles is the most populous city in the state and the second most populous city in the country. San Francisco is the second most densely populated major city in the country. Los Angeles County is the country's most populous, while San Bernardino County is the largest county by area in the country. California borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, the Mexican state of Baja California to the south; and has a coastline along the Pacific Ocean to the west.

 

The economy of the state of California is the largest in the United States, with a $3.4 trillion gross state product (GSP) as of 2022. It is the largest sub-national economy in the world. If California were a sovereign nation, it would rank as the world's fifth-largest economy as of 2022, behind Germany and ahead of India, as well as the 37th most populous. The Greater Los Angeles area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second- and third-largest urban economies ($1.0 trillion and $0.5 trillion respectively as of 2020). The San Francisco Bay Area Combined Statistical Area had the nation's highest gross domestic product per capita ($106,757) among large primary statistical areas in 2018, and is home to five of the world's ten largest companies by market capitalization and four of the world's ten richest people.

 

Prior to European colonization, California was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in pre-Columbian North America and contained the highest Native American population density north of what is now Mexico. European exploration in the 16th and 17th centuries led to the colonization of California by the Spanish Empire. In 1804, it was included in Alta California province within the Viceroyalty of New Spain. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821, following its successful war for independence, but was ceded to the United States in 1848 after the Mexican–American War. The California Gold Rush started in 1848 and led to dramatic social and demographic changes, including large-scale immigration into California, a worldwide economic boom, and the California genocide of indigenous people. The western portion of Alta California was then organized and admitted as the 31st state on September 9, 1850, following the Compromise of 1850.

 

Notable contributions to popular culture, for example in entertainment and sports, have their origins in California. The state also has made noteworthy contributions in the fields of communication, information, innovation, environmentalism, economics, and politics. It is the home of Hollywood, the oldest and one of the largest film industries in the world, which has had a profound influence upon global entertainment. It is considered the origin of the hippie counterculture, beach and car culture, and the personal computer, among other innovations. The San Francisco Bay Area and the Greater Los Angeles Area are widely seen as the centers of the global technology and film industries, respectively. California's economy is very diverse: 58% of it is based on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific, and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5% of the state's economy, California's agriculture industry has the highest output of any U.S. state. California's ports and harbors handle about a third of all U.S. imports, most originating in Pacific Rim international trade.

 

The state's extremely diverse geography ranges from the Pacific Coast and metropolitan areas in the west to the Sierra Nevada mountains in the east, and from the redwood and Douglas fir forests in the northwest to the Mojave Desert in the southeast. The Central Valley, a major agricultural area, dominates the state's center. California is well known for its warm Mediterranean climate and monsoon seasonal weather. The large size of the state results in climates that vary from moist temperate rainforest in the north to arid desert in the interior, as well as snowy alpine in the mountains.

 

Settled by successive waves of arrivals during at least the last 13,000 years, California was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in pre-Columbian North America. Various estimates of the native population have ranged from 100,000 to 300,000. The indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct ethnic groups, inhabiting environments from mountains and deserts to islands and redwood forests. These groups were also diverse in their political organization, with bands, tribes, villages, and on the resource-rich coasts, large chiefdoms, such as the Chumash, Pomo and Salinan. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered social and economic relationships between many groups.

 

The first Europeans to explore the coast of California were the members of a Spanish maritime expedition led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo in 1542. Cabrillo was commissioned by Antonio de Mendoza, the Viceroy of New Spain, to lead an expedition up the Pacific coast in search of trade opportunities; they entered San Diego Bay on September 28, 1542, and reached at least as far north as San Miguel Island. Privateer and explorer Francis Drake explored and claimed an undefined portion of the California coast in 1579, landing north of the future city of San Francisco. Sebastián Vizcaíno explored and mapped the coast of California in 1602 for New Spain, putting ashore in Monterey. Despite the on-the-ground explorations of California in the 16th century, Rodríguez's idea of California as an island persisted. Such depictions appeared on many European maps well into the 18th century.

 

The Portolá expedition of 1769-70 was a pivotal event in the Spanish colonization of California, resulting in the establishment of numerous missions, presidios, and pueblos. The military and civil contingent of the expedition was led by Gaspar de Portolá, who traveled over land from Sonora into California, while the religious component was headed by Junípero Serra, who came by sea from Baja California. In 1769, Portolá and Serra established Mission San Diego de Alcalá and the Presidio of San Diego, the first religious and military settlements founded by the Spanish in California. By the end of the expedition in 1770, they would establish the Presidio of Monterey and Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo on Monterey Bay.

 

After the Portolà expedition, Spanish missionaries led by Father-President Serra set out to establish 21 Spanish missions of California along El Camino Real ("The Royal Road") and along the Californian coast, 16 sites of which having been chosen during the Portolá expedition. Numerous major cities in California grew out of missions, including San Francisco (Mission San Francisco de Asís), San Diego (Mission San Diego de Alcalá), Ventura (Mission San Buenaventura), or Santa Barbara (Mission Santa Barbara), among others.

 

Juan Bautista de Anza led a similarly important expedition throughout California in 1775–76, which would extend deeper into the interior and north of California. The Anza expedition selected numerous sites for missions, presidios, and pueblos, which subsequently would be established by settlers. Gabriel Moraga, a member of the expedition, would also christen many of California's prominent rivers with their names in 1775–1776, such as the Sacramento River and the San Joaquin River. After the expedition, Gabriel's son, José Joaquín Moraga, would found the pueblo of San Jose in 1777, making it the first civilian-established city in California.

  

The Spanish founded Mission San Juan Capistrano in 1776, the third to be established of the Californian missions.

During this same period, sailors from the Russian Empire explored along the northern coast of California. In 1812, the Russian-American Company established a trading post and small fortification at Fort Ross on the North Coast. Fort Ross was primarily used to supply Russia's Alaskan colonies with food supplies. The settlement did not meet much success, failing to attract settlers or establish long term trade viability, and was abandoned by 1841.

 

During the War of Mexican Independence, Alta California was largely unaffected and uninvolved in the revolution, though many Californios supported independence from Spain, which many believed had neglected California and limited its development. Spain's trade monopoly on California had limited the trade prospects of Californians. Following Mexican independence, Californian ports were freely able to trade with foreign merchants. Governor Pablo Vicente de Solá presided over the transition from Spanish colonial rule to independent.

 

In 1821, the Mexican War of Independence gave the Mexican Empire (which included California) independence from Spain. For the next 25 years, Alta California remained a remote, sparsely populated, northwestern administrative district of the newly independent country of Mexico, which shortly after independence became a republic. The missions, which controlled most of the best land in the state, were secularized by 1834 and became the property of the Mexican government. The governor granted many square leagues of land to others with political influence. These huge ranchos or cattle ranches emerged as the dominant institutions of Mexican California. The ranchos developed under ownership by Californios (Hispanics native of California) who traded cowhides and tallow with Boston merchants. Beef did not become a commodity until the 1849 California Gold Rush.

 

From the 1820s, trappers and settlers from the United States and Canada began to arrive in Northern California. These new arrivals used the Siskiyou Trail, California Trail, Oregon Trail and Old Spanish Trail to cross the rugged mountains and harsh deserts in and surrounding California. The early government of the newly independent Mexico was highly unstable, and in a reflection of this, from 1831 onwards, California also experienced a series of armed disputes, both internal and with the central Mexican government. During this tumultuous political period Juan Bautista Alvarado was able to secure the governorship during 1836–1842. The military action which first brought Alvarado to power had momentarily declared California to be an independent state, and had been aided by Anglo-American residents of California, including Isaac Graham. In 1840, one hundred of those residents who did not have passports were arrested, leading to the Graham Affair, which was resolved in part with the intercession of Royal Navy officials.

 

One of the largest ranchers in California was John Marsh. After failing to obtain justice against squatters on his land from the Mexican courts, he determined that California should become part of the United States. Marsh conducted a letter-writing campaign espousing the California climate, the soil, and other reasons to settle there, as well as the best route to follow, which became known as "Marsh's route". His letters were read, reread, passed around, and printed in newspapers throughout the country, and started the first wagon trains rolling to California. He invited immigrants to stay on his ranch until they could get settled, and assisted in their obtaining passports.

 

After ushering in the period of organized emigration to California, Marsh became involved in a military battle between the much-hated Mexican general, Manuel Micheltorena and the California governor he had replaced, Juan Bautista Alvarado. The armies of each met at the Battle of Providencia near Los Angeles. Marsh had been forced against his will to join Micheltorena's army. Ignoring his superiors, during the battle, he signaled the other side for a parley. There were many settlers from the United States fighting on both sides. He convinced these men that they had no reason to be fighting each other. As a result of Marsh's actions, they abandoned the fight, Micheltorena was defeated, and California-born Pio Pico was returned to the governorship. This paved the way to California's ultimate acquisition by the United States.

 

In 1846, a group of American settlers in and around Sonoma rebelled against Mexican rule during the Bear Flag Revolt. Afterward, rebels raised the Bear Flag (featuring a bear, a star, a red stripe and the words "California Republic") at Sonoma. The Republic's only president was William B. Ide,[65] who played a pivotal role during the Bear Flag Revolt. This revolt by American settlers served as a prelude to the later American military invasion of California and was closely coordinated with nearby American military commanders.

 

The California Republic was short-lived; the same year marked the outbreak of the Mexican–American War (1846–48).

 

Commodore John D. Sloat of the United States Navy sailed into Monterey Bay in 1846 and began the U.S. military invasion of California, with Northern California capitulating in less than a month to the United States forces. In Southern California, Californios continued to resist American forces. Notable military engagements of the conquest include the Battle of San Pasqual and the Battle of Dominguez Rancho in Southern California, as well as the Battle of Olómpali and the Battle of Santa Clara in Northern California. After a series of defensive battles in the south, the Treaty of Cahuenga was signed by the Californios on January 13, 1847, securing a censure and establishing de facto American control in California.

 

Following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (February 2, 1848) that ended the war, the westernmost portion of the annexed Mexican territory of Alta California soon became the American state of California, and the remainder of the old territory was then subdivided into the new American Territories of Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Utah. The even more lightly populated and arid lower region of old Baja California remained as a part of Mexico. In 1846, the total settler population of the western part of the old Alta California had been estimated to be no more than 8,000, plus about 100,000 Native Americans, down from about 300,000 before Hispanic settlement in 1769.

 

In 1848, only one week before the official American annexation of the area, gold was discovered in California, this being an event which was to forever alter both the state's demographics and its finances. Soon afterward, a massive influx of immigration into the area resulted, as prospectors and miners arrived by the thousands. The population burgeoned with United States citizens, Europeans, Chinese and other immigrants during the great California Gold Rush. By the time of California's application for statehood in 1850, the settler population of California had multiplied to 100,000. By 1854, more than 300,000 settlers had come. Between 1847 and 1870, the population of San Francisco increased from 500 to 150,000.

 

The seat of government for California under Spanish and later Mexican rule had been located in Monterey from 1777 until 1845. Pio Pico, the last Mexican governor of Alta California, had briefly moved the capital to Los Angeles in 1845. The United States consulate had also been located in Monterey, under consul Thomas O. Larkin.

 

In 1849, a state Constitutional Convention was first held in Monterey. Among the first tasks of the convention was a decision on a location for the new state capital. The first full legislative sessions were held in San Jose (1850–1851). Subsequent locations included Vallejo (1852–1853), and nearby Benicia (1853–1854); these locations eventually proved to be inadequate as well. The capital has been located in Sacramento since 1854 with only a short break in 1862 when legislative sessions were held in San Francisco due to flooding in Sacramento. Once the state's Constitutional Convention had finalized its state constitution, it applied to the U.S. Congress for admission to statehood. On September 9, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850, California became a free state and September 9 a state holiday.

 

During the American Civil War (1861–1865), California sent gold shipments eastward to Washington in support of the Union. However, due to the existence of a large contingent of pro-South sympathizers within the state, the state was not able to muster any full military regiments to send eastwards to officially serve in the Union war effort. Still, several smaller military units within the Union army were unofficially associated with the state of California, such as the "California 100 Company", due to a majority of their members being from California.

 

At the time of California's admission into the Union, travel between California and the rest of the continental United States had been a time-consuming and dangerous feat. Nineteen years later, and seven years after it was greenlighted by President Lincoln, the First transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869. California was then reachable from the eastern States in a week's time.

 

Much of the state was extremely well suited to fruit cultivation and agriculture in general. Vast expanses of wheat, other cereal crops, vegetable crops, cotton, and nut and fruit trees were grown (including oranges in Southern California), and the foundation was laid for the state's prodigious agricultural production in the Central Valley and elsewhere.

 

In the nineteenth century, a large number of migrants from China traveled to the state as part of the Gold Rush or to seek work. Even though the Chinese proved indispensable in building the transcontinental railroad from California to Utah, perceived job competition with the Chinese led to anti-Chinese riots in the state, and eventually the US ended migration from China partially as a response to pressure from California with the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.

 

Under earlier Spanish and Mexican rule, California's original native population had precipitously declined, above all, from Eurasian diseases to which the indigenous people of California had not yet developed a natural immunity. Under its new American administration, California's harsh governmental policies towards its own indigenous people did not improve. As in other American states, many of the native inhabitants were soon forcibly removed from their lands by incoming American settlers such as miners, ranchers, and farmers. Although California had entered the American union as a free state, the "loitering or orphaned Indians" were de facto enslaved by their new Anglo-American masters under the 1853 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians. There were also massacres in which hundreds of indigenous people were killed.

 

Between 1850 and 1860, the California state government paid around 1.5 million dollars (some 250,000 of which was reimbursed by the federal government) to hire militias whose purpose was to protect settlers from the indigenous populations. In later decades, the native population was placed in reservations and rancherias, which were often small and isolated and without enough natural resources or funding from the government to sustain the populations living on them. As a result, the rise of California was a calamity for the native inhabitants. Several scholars and Native American activists, including Benjamin Madley and Ed Castillo, have described the actions of the California government as a genocide.

 

In the twentieth century, thousands of Japanese people migrated to the US and California specifically to attempt to purchase and own land in the state. However, the state in 1913 passed the Alien Land Act, excluding Asian immigrants from owning land. During World War II, Japanese Americans in California were interned in concentration camps such as at Tule Lake and Manzanar. In 2020, California officially apologized for this internment.

 

Migration to California accelerated during the early 20th century with the completion of major transcontinental highways like the Lincoln Highway and Route 66. In the period from 1900 to 1965, the population grew from fewer than one million to the greatest in the Union. In 1940, the Census Bureau reported California's population as 6.0% Hispanic, 2.4% Asian, and 89.5% non-Hispanic white.

 

To meet the population's needs, major engineering feats like the California and Los Angeles Aqueducts; the Oroville and Shasta Dams; and the Bay and Golden Gate Bridges were built across the state. The state government also adopted the California Master Plan for Higher Education in 1960 to develop a highly efficient system of public education.

 

Meanwhile, attracted to the mild Mediterranean climate, cheap land, and the state's wide variety of geography, filmmakers established the studio system in Hollywood in the 1920s. California manufactured 8.7 percent of total United States military armaments produced during World War II, ranking third (behind New York and Michigan) among the 48 states. California however easily ranked first in production of military ships during the war (transport, cargo, [merchant ships] such as Liberty ships, Victory ships, and warships) at drydock facilities in San Diego, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area. After World War II, California's economy greatly expanded due to strong aerospace and defense industries, whose size decreased following the end of the Cold War. Stanford University and its Dean of Engineering Frederick Terman began encouraging faculty and graduates to stay in California instead of leaving the state, and develop a high-tech region in the area now known as Silicon Valley. As a result of these efforts, California is regarded as a world center of the entertainment and music industries, of technology, engineering, and the aerospace industry, and as the United States center of agricultural production. Just before the Dot Com Bust, California had the fifth-largest economy in the world among nations.

 

In the mid and late twentieth century, a number of race-related incidents occurred in the state. Tensions between police and African Americans, combined with unemployment and poverty in inner cities, led to violent riots, such as the 1965 Watts riots and 1992 Rodney King riots. California was also the hub of the Black Panther Party, a group known for arming African Americans to defend against racial injustice and for organizing free breakfast programs for schoolchildren. Additionally, Mexican, Filipino, and other migrant farm workers rallied in the state around Cesar Chavez for better pay in the 1960s and 1970s.

 

During the 20th century, two great disasters happened in California. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake and 1928 St. Francis Dam flood remain the deadliest in U.S. history.

 

Although air pollution problems have been reduced, health problems associated with pollution have continued. The brown haze known as "smog" has been substantially abated after the passage of federal and state restrictions on automobile exhaust.

 

An energy crisis in 2001 led to rolling blackouts, soaring power rates, and the importation of electricity from neighboring states. Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric Company came under heavy criticism.

 

Housing prices in urban areas continued to increase; a modest home which in the 1960s cost $25,000 would cost half a million dollars or more in urban areas by 2005. More people commuted longer hours to afford a home in more rural areas while earning larger salaries in the urban areas. Speculators bought houses they never intended to live in, expecting to make a huge profit in a matter of months, then rolling it over by buying more properties. Mortgage companies were compliant, as everyone assumed the prices would keep rising. The bubble burst in 2007–8 as housing prices began to crash and the boom years ended. Hundreds of billions in property values vanished and foreclosures soared as many financial institutions and investors were badly hurt.

 

In the twenty-first century, droughts and frequent wildfires attributed to climate change have occurred in the state. From 2011 to 2017, a persistent drought was the worst in its recorded history. The 2018 wildfire season was the state's deadliest and most destructive, most notably Camp Fire.

 

Although air pollution problems have been reduced, health problems associated with pollution have continued. The brown haze that is known as "smog" has been substantially abated thanks to federal and state restrictions on automobile exhaust.

 

One of the first confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States that occurred in California was first of which was confirmed on January 26, 2020. Meaning, all of the early confirmed cases were persons who had recently travelled to China in Asia, as testing was restricted to this group. On this January 29, 2020, as disease containment protocols were still being developed, the U.S. Department of State evacuated 195 persons from Wuhan, China aboard a chartered flight to March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County, and in this process, it may have granted and conferred to escalated within the land and the US at cosmic. On February 5, 2020, the U.S. evacuated 345 more citizens from Hubei Province to two military bases in California, Travis Air Force Base in Solano County and Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, San Diego, where they were quarantined for 14 days. A state of emergency was largely declared in this state of the nation on March 4, 2020, and as of February 24, 2021, remains in effect. A mandatory statewide stay-at-home order was issued on March 19, 2020, due to increase, which was ended on January 25, 2021, allowing citizens to return to normal life. On April 6, 2021, the state announced plans to fully reopen the economy by June 15, 2021.

 

Bodie is a ghost town in the Bodie Hills east of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in Mono County, California, United States. It is about 75 miles (121 km) southeast of Lake Tahoe, and 12 mi (19 km) east-southeast of Bridgeport,[6] at an elevation of 8,379 feet (2554 m). Bodie became a boom town in 1876 (146 years ago) after the discovery of a profitable line of gold; by 1879 it had a population of 7,000–10,000.

 

The town went into decline in the subsequent decades and came to be described as a ghost town by 1915 (107 years ago). The U.S. Department of the Interior recognizes the designated Bodie Historic District as a National Historic Landmark.

 

Also registered as a California Historical Landmark, the ghost town officially was established as Bodie State Historic Park in 1962. It receives about 200,000 visitors yearly. Bodie State Historic Park is partly supported by the Bodie Foundation.

 

Bodie began as a mining camp of little note following the discovery of gold in 1859 by a group of prospectors, including W. S. Bodey. Bodey died in a blizzard the following November while making a supply trip to Monoville (near present-day Mono City), never getting to see the rise of the town that was named after him. According to area pioneer Judge J. G. McClinton, the district's name was changed from "Bodey," "Body," and a few other phonetic variations, to "Bodie," after a painter in the nearby boomtown of Aurora, lettered a sign "Bodie Stables".

 

Gold discovered at Bodie coincided with the discovery of silver at nearby Aurora (thought to be in California, later found to be Nevada), and the distant Comstock Lode beneath Virginia City, Nevada. But while these two towns boomed, interest in Bodie remained lackluster. By 1868 only two companies had built stamp mills at Bodie, and both had failed.

 

In 1876, the Standard Company discovered a profitable deposit of gold-bearing ore, which transformed Bodie from an isolated mining camp comprising a few prospectors and company employees to a Wild West boomtown. Rich discoveries in the adjacent Bodie Mine during 1878 attracted even more hopeful people. By 1879, Bodie had a population of approximately 7,000–10,000 people and around 2,000 buildings. One legend says that in 1880, Bodie was California's second or third largest city. but the U.S. Census of that year disproves this. Over the years 1860-1941 Bodie's mines produced gold and silver valued at an estimated US$34 million (in 1986 dollars, or $85 million in 2021).

 

Bodie boomed from late 1877 through mid– to late 1880. The first newspaper, The Standard Pioneer Journal of Mono County, published its first edition on October 10, 1877. Starting as a weekly, it soon expanded publication to three times a week. It was also during this time that a telegraph line was built which connected Bodie with Bridgeport and Genoa, Nevada. California and Nevada newspapers predicted Bodie would become the next Comstock Lode. Men from both states were lured to Bodie by the prospect of another bonanza.

 

Gold bullion from the town's nine stamp mills was shipped to Carson City, Nevada, by way of Aurora, Wellington and Gardnerville. Most shipments were accompanied by armed guards. After the bullion reached Carson City, it was delivered to the mint there, or sent by rail to the mint in San Francisco.

 

As a bustling gold mining center, Bodie had the amenities of larger towns, including a Wells Fargo Bank, four volunteer fire companies, a brass band, railroad, miners' and mechanics' union, several daily newspapers, and a jail. At its peak, 65 saloons lined Main Street, which was a mile long. Murders, shootouts, barroom brawls, and stagecoach holdups were regular occurrences.

 

As with other remote mining towns, Bodie had a popular, though clandestine, red light district on the north end of town. There is an unsubstantiated story of Rosa May, a prostitute who, in the style of Florence Nightingale, came to the aid of the town menfolk when a serious epidemic struck the town at the height of its boom. She is credited with giving life-saving care to many, but after she died, was buried outside the cemetery fence.

 

Bodie had a Chinatown, the main street of which ran at a right angle to Bodie's Main Street. At one point it had several hundred Chinese residents and a Taoist temple. Opium dens were plentiful in this area.

 

Bodie also had a cemetery on the outskirts of town and a nearby mortuary. It is the only building in the town built of red brick three courses thick, most likely for insulation to keep the air temperature steady during the cold winters and hot summers. The cemetery includes a Miners Union section, and a cenotaph erected to honor President James A. Garfield. The Bodie Boot Hill was located outside of the official city cemetery.

 

On Main Street stands the Miners Union Hall, which was the meeting place for labor unions. It also served as an entertainment center that hosted dances, concerts, plays, and school recitals. It now serves as a museum.

 

The first signs of decline appeared in 1880 and became obvious toward the end of the year. Promising mining booms in Butte, Montana; Tombstone, Arizona; and Utah lured men away from Bodie. The get-rich-quick, single miners who came to the town in the 1870s moved on to these other booms, and Bodie developed into a family-oriented community. In 1882 residents built the Methodist Church (which still stands) and the Roman Catholic Church (burned 1928). Despite the population decline, the mines were flourishing, and in 1881 Bodie's ore production was recorded at a high of $3.1 million. Also in 1881, a narrow-gauge railroad was built called the Bodie Railway & Lumber Company, bringing lumber, cordwood, and mine timbers to the mining district from Mono Mills south of Mono Lake.

 

During the early 1890s, Bodie enjoyed a short revival from technological advancements in the mines that continued to support the town. In 1890, the recently invented cyanide process promised to recover gold and silver from discarded mill tailings and from low-grade ore bodies that had been passed over. In 1892, the Standard Company built its own hydroelectric plant approximately 13 miles (20.9 km) away at Dynamo Pond. The plant developed a maximum of 130 horsepower (97 kW) and 3,530 volts alternating current (AC) to power the company's 20-stamp mill. This pioneering installation marked the country's first transmissions of electricity over a long distance.

 

In 1910, the population was recorded at 698 people, which were predominantly families who decided to stay in Bodie instead of moving on to other prosperous strikes.

 

The first signs of an official decline occurred in 1912 with the printing of the last Bodie newspaper, The Bodie Miner. In a 1913 book titled California Tourist Guide and Handbook: Authentic Description of Routes of Travel and Points of Interest in California, the authors, Wells and Aubrey Drury, described Bodie as a "mining town, which is the center of a large mineral region". They referred to two hotels and a railroad operating there. In 1913, the Standard Consolidated Mine closed.

 

Mining profits in 1914 were at a low of $6,821. James S. Cain bought everything from the town lots to the mining claims, and reopened the Standard mill to former employees, which resulted in an over $100,000 profit in 1915. However, this financial growth was not in time to stop the town's decline. In 1917, the Bodie Railway was abandoned and its iron tracks were scrapped.

 

The last mine closed in 1942, due to War Production Board order L-208, shutting down all non-essential gold mines in the United States during World War II. Mining never resumed after the war.

 

Bodie was first described as a "ghost town" in 1915. In a time when auto travel was on the rise, many travelers reached Bodie via automobiles. The San Francisco Chronicle published an article in 1919 to dispute the "ghost town" label.

 

By 1920, Bodie's population was recorded by the US Federal Census at a total of 120 people. Despite the decline and a severe fire in the business district in 1932, Bodie had permanent residents through nearly half of the 20th century. A post office operated at Bodie from 1877 to 1942

 

In the 1940s, the threat of vandalism faced the ghost town. The Cain family, who owned much of the land, hired caretakers to protect and to maintain the town's structures. Martin Gianettoni, one of the last three people living in Bodie in 1943, was a caretaker.

 

Bodie is now an authentic Wild West ghost town.

 

The town was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1961, and in 1962 the state legislature authorized creation of Bodie State Historic Park. A total of 170 buildings remained. Bodie has been named as California's official state gold rush ghost town.

 

Visitors arrive mainly via SR 270, which runs from US 395 near Bridgeport to the west; the last three miles of it is a dirt road. There is also a road to SR 167 near Mono Lake in the south, but this road is extremely rough, with more than 10 miles of dirt track in a bad state of repair. Due to heavy snowfall, the roads to Bodie are usually closed in winter .

 

Today, Bodie is preserved in a state of arrested decay. Only a small part of the town survived, with about 110 structures still standing, including one of many once operational gold mills. Visitors can walk the deserted streets of a town that once was a bustling area of activity. Interiors remain as they were left and stocked with goods. Littered throughout the park, one can find small shards of china dishes, square nails and an occasional bottle, but removing these items is against the rules of the park.

 

The California State Parks' ranger station is located in one of the original homes on Green Street.

 

In 2009 and again in 2010, Bodie was scheduled to be closed. The California state legislature worked out a budget compromise that enabled the state's Parks Closure Commission to keep it open. As of 2022, the park is still operating, now administered by the Bodie Foundation.

 

California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2 million residents across a total area of approximately 163,696 square miles (423,970 km2), it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the most populated subnational entity in North America and the 34th most populous in the world. The Greater Los Angeles area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second and fifth most populous urban regions respectively, with the former having more than 18.7 million residents and the latter having over 9.6 million. Sacramento is the state's capital, while Los Angeles is the most populous city in the state and the second most populous city in the country. San Francisco is the second most densely populated major city in the country. Los Angeles County is the country's most populous, while San Bernardino County is the largest county by area in the country. California borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, the Mexican state of Baja California to the south; and has a coastline along the Pacific Ocean to the west.

 

The economy of the state of California is the largest in the United States, with a $3.4 trillion gross state product (GSP) as of 2022. It is the largest sub-national economy in the world. If California were a sovereign nation, it would rank as the world's fifth-largest economy as of 2022, behind Germany and ahead of India, as well as the 37th most populous. The Greater Los Angeles area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second- and third-largest urban economies ($1.0 trillion and $0.5 trillion respectively as of 2020). The San Francisco Bay Area Combined Statistical Area had the nation's highest gross domestic product per capita ($106,757) among large primary statistical areas in 2018, and is home to five of the world's ten largest companies by market capitalization and four of the world's ten richest people.

 

Prior to European colonization, California was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in pre-Columbian North America and contained the highest Native American population density north of what is now Mexico. European exploration in the 16th and 17th centuries led to the colonization of California by the Spanish Empire. In 1804, it was included in Alta California province within the Viceroyalty of New Spain. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821, following its successful war for independence, but was ceded to the United States in 1848 after the Mexican–American War. The California Gold Rush started in 1848 and led to dramatic social and demographic changes, including large-scale immigration into California, a worldwide economic boom, and the California genocide of indigenous people. The western portion of Alta California was then organized and admitted as the 31st state on September 9, 1850, following the Compromise of 1850.

 

Notable contributions to popular culture, for example in entertainment and sports, have their origins in California. The state also has made noteworthy contributions in the fields of communication, information, innovation, environmentalism, economics, and politics. It is the home of Hollywood, the oldest and one of the largest film industries in the world, which has had a profound influence upon global entertainment. It is considered the origin of the hippie counterculture, beach and car culture, and the personal computer, among other innovations. The San Francisco Bay Area and the Greater Los Angeles Area are widely seen as the centers of the global technology and film industries, respectively. California's economy is very diverse: 58% of it is based on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific, and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5% of the state's economy, California's agriculture industry has the highest output of any U.S. state. California's ports and harbors handle about a third of all U.S. imports, most originating in Pacific Rim international trade.

 

The state's extremely diverse geography ranges from the Pacific Coast and metropolitan areas in the west to the Sierra Nevada mountains in the east, and from the redwood and Douglas fir forests in the northwest to the Mojave Desert in the southeast. The Central Valley, a major agricultural area, dominates the state's center. California is well known for its warm Mediterranean climate and monsoon seasonal weather. The large size of the state results in climates that vary from moist temperate rainforest in the north to arid desert in the interior, as well as snowy alpine in the mountains.

 

Settled by successive waves of arrivals during at least the last 13,000 years, California was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in pre-Columbian North America. Various estimates of the native population have ranged from 100,000 to 300,000. The indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct ethnic groups, inhabiting environments from mountains and deserts to islands and redwood forests. These groups were also diverse in their political organization, with bands, tribes, villages, and on the resource-rich coasts, large chiefdoms, such as the Chumash, Pomo and Salinan. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered social and economic relationships between many groups.

 

The first Europeans to explore the coast of California were the members of a Spanish maritime expedition led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo in 1542. Cabrillo was commissioned by Antonio de Mendoza, the Viceroy of New Spain, to lead an expedition up the Pacific coast in search of trade opportunities; they entered San Diego Bay on September 28, 1542, and reached at least as far north as San Miguel Island. Privateer and explorer Francis Drake explored and claimed an undefined portion of the California coast in 1579, landing north of the future city of San Francisco. Sebastián Vizcaíno explored and mapped the coast of California in 1602 for New Spain, putting ashore in Monterey. Despite the on-the-ground explorations of California in the 16th century, Rodríguez's idea of California as an island persisted. Such depictions appeared on many European maps well into the 18th century.

 

The Portolá expedition of 1769-70 was a pivotal event in the Spanish colonization of California, resulting in the establishment of numerous missions, presidios, and pueblos. The military and civil contingent of the expedition was led by Gaspar de Portolá, who traveled over land from Sonora into California, while the religious component was headed by Junípero Serra, who came by sea from Baja California. In 1769, Portolá and Serra established Mission San Diego de Alcalá and the Presidio of San Diego, the first religious and military settlements founded by the Spanish in California. By the end of the expedition in 1770, they would establish the Presidio of Monterey and Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo on Monterey Bay.

 

After the Portolà expedition, Spanish missionaries led by Father-President Serra set out to establish 21 Spanish missions of California along El Camino Real ("The Royal Road") and along the Californian coast, 16 sites of which having been chosen during the Portolá expedition. Numerous major cities in California grew out of missions, including San Francisco (Mission San Francisco de Asís), San Diego (Mission San Diego de Alcalá), Ventura (Mission San Buenaventura), or Santa Barbara (Mission Santa Barbara), among others.

 

Juan Bautista de Anza led a similarly important expedition throughout California in 1775–76, which would extend deeper into the interior and north of California. The Anza expedition selected numerous sites for missions, presidios, and pueblos, which subsequently would be established by settlers. Gabriel Moraga, a member of the expedition, would also christen many of California's prominent rivers with their names in 1775–1776, such as the Sacramento River and the San Joaquin River. After the expedition, Gabriel's son, José Joaquín Moraga, would found the pueblo of San Jose in 1777, making it the first civilian-established city in California.

  

The Spanish founded Mission San Juan Capistrano in 1776, the third to be established of the Californian missions.

During this same period, sailors from the Russian Empire explored along the northern coast of California. In 1812, the Russian-American Company established a trading post and small fortification at Fort Ross on the North Coast. Fort Ross was primarily used to supply Russia's Alaskan colonies with food supplies. The settlement did not meet much success, failing to attract settlers or establish long term trade viability, and was abandoned by 1841.

 

During the War of Mexican Independence, Alta California was largely unaffected and uninvolved in the revolution, though many Californios supported independence from Spain, which many believed had neglected California and limited its development. Spain's trade monopoly on California had limited the trade prospects of Californians. Following Mexican independence, Californian ports were freely able to trade with foreign merchants. Governor Pablo Vicente de Solá presided over the transition from Spanish colonial rule to independent.

 

In 1821, the Mexican War of Independence gave the Mexican Empire (which included California) independence from Spain. For the next 25 years, Alta California remained a remote, sparsely populated, northwestern administrative district of the newly independent country of Mexico, which shortly after independence became a republic. The missions, which controlled most of the best land in the state, were secularized by 1834 and became the property of the Mexican government. The governor granted many square leagues of land to others with political influence. These huge ranchos or cattle ranches emerged as the dominant institutions of Mexican California. The ranchos developed under ownership by Californios (Hispanics native of California) who traded cowhides and tallow with Boston merchants. Beef did not become a commodity until the 1849 California Gold Rush.

 

From the 1820s, trappers and settlers from the United States and Canada began to arrive in Northern California. These new arrivals used the Siskiyou Trail, California Trail, Oregon Trail and Old Spanish Trail to cross the rugged mountains and harsh deserts in and surrounding California. The early government of the newly independent Mexico was highly unstable, and in a reflection of this, from 1831 onwards, California also experienced a series of armed disputes, both internal and with the central Mexican government. During this tumultuous political period Juan Bautista Alvarado was able to secure the governorship during 1836–1842. The military action which first brought Alvarado to power had momentarily declared California to be an independent state, and had been aided by Anglo-American residents of California, including Isaac Graham. In 1840, one hundred of those residents who did not have passports were arrested, leading to the Graham Affair, which was resolved in part with the intercession of Royal Navy officials.

 

One of the largest ranchers in California was John Marsh. After failing to obtain justice against squatters on his land from the Mexican courts, he determined that California should become part of the United States. Marsh conducted a letter-writing campaign espousing the California climate, the soil, and other reasons to settle there, as well as the best route to follow, which became known as "Marsh's route". His letters were read, reread, passed around, and printed in newspapers throughout the country, and started the first wagon trains rolling to California. He invited immigrants to stay on his ranch until they could get settled, and assisted in their obtaining passports.

 

After ushering in the period of organized emigration to California, Marsh became involved in a military battle between the much-hated Mexican general, Manuel Micheltorena and the California governor he had replaced, Juan Bautista Alvarado. The armies of each met at the Battle of Providencia near Los Angeles. Marsh had been forced against his will to join Micheltorena's army. Ignoring his superiors, during the battle, he signaled the other side for a parley. There were many settlers from the United States fighting on both sides. He convinced these men that they had no reason to be fighting each other. As a result of Marsh's actions, they abandoned the fight, Micheltorena was defeated, and California-born Pio Pico was returned to the governorship. This paved the way to California's ultimate acquisition by the United States.

 

In 1846, a group of American settlers in and around Sonoma rebelled against Mexican rule during the Bear Flag Revolt. Afterward, rebels raised the Bear Flag (featuring a bear, a star, a red stripe and the words "California Republic") at Sonoma. The Republic's only president was William B. Ide,[65] who played a pivotal role during the Bear Flag Revolt. This revolt by American settlers served as a prelude to the later American military invasion of California and was closely coordinated with nearby American military commanders.

 

The California Republic was short-lived; the same year marked the outbreak of the Mexican–American War (1846–48).

 

Commodore John D. Sloat of the United States Navy sailed into Monterey Bay in 1846 and began the U.S. military invasion of California, with Northern California capitulating in less than a month to the United States forces. In Southern California, Californios continued to resist American forces. Notable military engagements of the conquest include the Battle of San Pasqual and the Battle of Dominguez Rancho in Southern California, as well as the Battle of Olómpali and the Battle of Santa Clara in Northern California. After a series of defensive battles in the south, the Treaty of Cahuenga was signed by the Californios on January 13, 1847, securing a censure and establishing de facto American control in California.

 

Following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (February 2, 1848) that ended the war, the westernmost portion of the annexed Mexican territory of Alta California soon became the American state of California, and the remainder of the old territory was then subdivided into the new American Territories of Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Utah. The even more lightly populated and arid lower region of old Baja California remained as a part of Mexico. In 1846, the total settler population of the western part of the old Alta California had been estimated to be no more than 8,000, plus about 100,000 Native Americans, down from about 300,000 before Hispanic settlement in 1769.

 

In 1848, only one week before the official American annexation of the area, gold was discovered in California, this being an event which was to forever alter both the state's demographics and its finances. Soon afterward, a massive influx of immigration into the area resulted, as prospectors and miners arrived by the thousands. The population burgeoned with United States citizens, Europeans, Chinese and other immigrants during the great California Gold Rush. By the time of California's application for statehood in 1850, the settler population of California had multiplied to 100,000. By 1854, more than 300,000 settlers had come. Between 1847 and 1870, the population of San Francisco increased from 500 to 150,000.

 

The seat of government for California under Spanish and later Mexican rule had been located in Monterey from 1777 until 1845. Pio Pico, the last Mexican governor of Alta California, had briefly moved the capital to Los Angeles in 1845. The United States consulate had also been located in Monterey, under consul Thomas O. Larkin.

 

In 1849, a state Constitutional Convention was first held in Monterey. Among the first tasks of the convention was a decision on a location for the new state capital. The first full legislative sessions were held in San Jose (1850–1851). Subsequent locations included Vallejo (1852–1853), and nearby Benicia (1853–1854); these locations eventually proved to be inadequate as well. The capital has been located in Sacramento since 1854 with only a short break in 1862 when legislative sessions were held in San Francisco due to flooding in Sacramento. Once the state's Constitutional Convention had finalized its state constitution, it applied to the U.S. Congress for admission to statehood. On September 9, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850, California became a free state and September 9 a state holiday.

 

During the American Civil War (1861–1865), California sent gold shipments eastward to Washington in support of the Union. However, due to the existence of a large contingent of pro-South sympathizers within the state, the state was not able to muster any full military regiments to send eastwards to officially serve in the Union war effort. Still, several smaller military units within the Union army were unofficially associated with the state of California, such as the "California 100 Company", due to a majority of their members being from California.

 

At the time of California's admission into the Union, travel between California and the rest of the continental United States had been a time-consuming and dangerous feat. Nineteen years later, and seven years after it was greenlighted by President Lincoln, the First transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869. California was then reachable from the eastern States in a week's time.

 

Much of the state was extremely well suited to fruit cultivation and agriculture in general. Vast expanses of wheat, other cereal crops, vegetable crops, cotton, and nut and fruit trees were grown (including oranges in Southern California), and the foundation was laid for the state's prodigious agricultural production in the Central Valley and elsewhere.

 

In the nineteenth century, a large number of migrants from China traveled to the state as part of the Gold Rush or to seek work. Even though the Chinese proved indispensable in building the transcontinental railroad from California to Utah, perceived job competition with the Chinese led to anti-Chinese riots in the state, and eventually the US ended migration from China partially as a response to pressure from California with the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.

 

Under earlier Spanish and Mexican rule, California's original native population had precipitously declined, above all, from Eurasian diseases to which the indigenous people of California had not yet developed a natural immunity. Under its new American administration, California's harsh governmental policies towards its own indigenous people did not improve. As in other American states, many of the native inhabitants were soon forcibly removed from their lands by incoming American settlers such as miners, ranchers, and farmers. Although California had entered the American union as a free state, the "loitering or orphaned Indians" were de facto enslaved by their new Anglo-American masters under the 1853 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians. There were also massacres in which hundreds of indigenous people were killed.

 

Between 1850 and 1860, the California state government paid around 1.5 million dollars (some 250,000 of which was reimbursed by the federal government) to hire militias whose purpose was to protect settlers from the indigenous populations. In later decades, the native population was placed in reservations and rancherias, which were often small and isolated and without enough natural resources or funding from the government to sustain the populations living on them. As a result, the rise of California was a calamity for the native inhabitants. Several scholars and Native American activists, including Benjamin Madley and Ed Castillo, have described the actions of the California government as a genocide.

 

In the twentieth century, thousands of Japanese people migrated to the US and California specifically to attempt to purchase and own land in the state. However, the state in 1913 passed the Alien Land Act, excluding Asian immigrants from owning land. During World War II, Japanese Americans in California were interned in concentration camps such as at Tule Lake and Manzanar. In 2020, California officially apologized for this internment.

 

Migration to California accelerated during the early 20th century with the completion of major transcontinental highways like the Lincoln Highway and Route 66. In the period from 1900 to 1965, the population grew from fewer than one million to the greatest in the Union. In 1940, the Census Bureau reported California's population as 6.0% Hispanic, 2.4% Asian, and 89.5% non-Hispanic white.

 

To meet the population's needs, major engineering feats like the California and Los Angeles Aqueducts; the Oroville and Shasta Dams; and the Bay and Golden Gate Bridges were built across the state. The state government also adopted the California Master Plan for Higher Education in 1960 to develop a highly efficient system of public education.

 

Meanwhile, attracted to the mild Mediterranean climate, cheap land, and the state's wide variety of geography, filmmakers established the studio system in Hollywood in the 1920s. California manufactured 8.7 percent of total United States military armaments produced during World War II, ranking third (behind New York and Michigan) among the 48 states. California however easily ranked first in production of military ships during the war (transport, cargo, [merchant ships] such as Liberty ships, Victory ships, and warships) at drydock facilities in San Diego, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area. After World War II, California's economy greatly expanded due to strong aerospace and defense industries, whose size decreased following the end of the Cold War. Stanford University and its Dean of Engineering Frederick Terman began encouraging faculty and graduates to stay in California instead of leaving the state, and develop a high-tech region in the area now known as Silicon Valley. As a result of these efforts, California is regarded as a world center of the entertainment and music industries, of technology, engineering, and the aerospace industry, and as the United States center of agricultural production. Just before the Dot Com Bust, California had the fifth-largest economy in the world among nations.

 

In the mid and late twentieth century, a number of race-related incidents occurred in the state. Tensions between police and African Americans, combined with unemployment and poverty in inner cities, led to violent riots, such as the 1965 Watts riots and 1992 Rodney King riots. California was also the hub of the Black Panther Party, a group known for arming African Americans to defend against racial injustice and for organizing free breakfast programs for schoolchildren. Additionally, Mexican, Filipino, and other migrant farm workers rallied in the state around Cesar Chavez for better pay in the 1960s and 1970s.

 

During the 20th century, two great disasters happened in California. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake and 1928 St. Francis Dam flood remain the deadliest in U.S. history.

 

Although air pollution problems have been reduced, health problems associated with pollution have continued. The brown haze known as "smog" has been substantially abated after the passage of federal and state restrictions on automobile exhaust.

 

An energy crisis in 2001 led to rolling blackouts, soaring power rates, and the importation of electricity from neighboring states. Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric Company came under heavy criticism.

 

Housing prices in urban areas continued to increase; a modest home which in the 1960s cost $25,000 would cost half a million dollars or more in urban areas by 2005. More people commuted longer hours to afford a home in more rural areas while earning larger salaries in the urban areas. Speculators bought houses they never intended to live in, expecting to make a huge profit in a matter of months, then rolling it over by buying more properties. Mortgage companies were compliant, as everyone assumed the prices would keep rising. The bubble burst in 2007–8 as housing prices began to crash and the boom years ended. Hundreds of billions in property values vanished and foreclosures soared as many financial institutions and investors were badly hurt.

 

In the twenty-first century, droughts and frequent wildfires attributed to climate change have occurred in the state. From 2011 to 2017, a persistent drought was the worst in its recorded history. The 2018 wildfire season was the state's deadliest and most destructive, most notably Camp Fire.

 

Although air pollution problems have been reduced, health problems associated with pollution have continued. The brown haze that is known as "smog" has been substantially abated thanks to federal and state restrictions on automobile exhaust.

 

One of the first confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States that occurred in California was first of which was confirmed on January 26, 2020. Meaning, all of the early confirmed cases were persons who had recently travelled to China in Asia, as testing was restricted to this group. On this January 29, 2020, as disease containment protocols were still being developed, the U.S. Department of State evacuated 195 persons from Wuhan, China aboard a chartered flight to March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County, and in this process, it may have granted and conferred to escalated within the land and the US at cosmic. On February 5, 2020, the U.S. evacuated 345 more citizens from Hubei Province to two military bases in California, Travis Air Force Base in Solano County and Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, San Diego, where they were quarantined for 14 days. A state of emergency was largely declared in this state of the nation on March 4, 2020, and as of February 24, 2021, remains in effect. A mandatory statewide stay-at-home order was issued on March 19, 2020, due to increase, which was ended on January 25, 2021, allowing citizens to return to normal life. On April 6, 2021, the state announced plans to fully reopen the economy by June 15, 2021.

 

Model: Codie Leigh

Secretary-General António Guterres receives the Path to Peace Award.

Mr. Guterres (right) speaks with Gabriele Giordano Caccia, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, during the Path to Peace Award Ceremony.

 

UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

16 November 2021

New York, United States of America

Photo # UN7917552

The newly reconstituted Free French air force formally receives its first frontline combat aircraft, Curtiss P-40Fs, on January 8, 1943, at Casablanca from the U.S. Army Air Forces. This was the first of 1,000 combat aircraft promised by President Roosevelt to General de Gaulle. This is Groupe de Chasse GC II/5, which had just adopted the designation Lafayette Escadrille as a reciprocal tribute to the World War I French squadron of American recruits that had fought the Germans before the U.S. entered WWI in 1917. Less than two months earlier, these P-40s had been catapult launched from a U.S. carrier with U.S. Army Air Forces pilots during Operation Torch, the U.S. invasion of North Africa, while the French pilots of GC II/5 were fighting U.S. Navy Grumman F4F Wildcats under the flag of Vichy France, allied to Germany. The hostilities lasted for only three days, when, on November 11, 1942, the Vichy French forces in North Africa swore allegiance to Free French commander General Charles de Gaulle, resulting in Germany occupying all of Vichy France.

 

National Archives and Records Administration, 342-C-K-91

Ushaw College (formally St Cuthbert's College, Ushaw), is a former Catholic seminary near the village of Ushaw Moor, County Durham, England, which is now a heritage and cultural tourist attraction. The college is known for its Georgian and Victorian Gothic architecture and listed nineteenth-century chapels. The college now hosts a programme of art exhibitions, music and theatre events, alongside tearooms and a café.

 

It was founded in 1808 by scholars from the English College, Douai, who had fled France after the French Revolution. Ushaw College was affiliated with Durham University from 1968 and was the principal Roman Catholic seminary for the training of Catholic priests in the north of England.

 

In 2011, the seminary closed, due to the shortage of vocations. It reopened as a visitor attraction, marketed as Ushaw: Historic House, Chapels & Gardens in late 2014 and, as of 2019, receives around 50,000 visitors a year. The County Durham Music Service and Durham University Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring are based at the college and buildings at the college are also used by Durham University Business School.

 

The English College, Douai was founded in 1568 but was forced to leave France in 1795 following the French Revolution. Part of the college settled temporarily at Crook Hall near Lanchester, northwest of Durham. In 1804 Bishop William Gibson began to build at Ushaw Moor, four miles west of Durham. These buildings, designed by James Taylor, were opened as St Cuthbert's College in 1808. There was a steady expansion during the nineteenth century with new buildings put up to cater for the expanding number of clerical and secular students. In 1847, the newly built chapel, designed by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin was opened. This was followed by the Big Library and Exhibition Hall designed by Joseph Hansom, 1849–1851. The Junior House, designed by Peter Paul Pugin, was added in 1859. St Cuthbert's Chapel, designed by Dunn and Hansom, was opened in 1884, replacing AWN Pugin's 1847 chapel which the seminary had outgrown. The Refectory was designed and built by E. W. Pugin. The final development came in the early 1960s with the opening of a new East wing, providing additional classrooms and single bedrooms for 75 students. The main college buildings are Grade II listed, the College Chapel is Grade II* and the Chapel of St Michael is Grade I.

 

Although independent, Ushaw College had a close working relationship with Durham University. The college became a Licensed Hall of Residence of the University of Durham in 1968. It was independent of the university but offered courses validated by the university, and both Church and lay students studied at the college. The Junior House closed in 1972, its younger students being transferred to St Joseph's College, Up Holland in Lancashire.

 

In 2002, the college rejected a report from the Roman Catholic hierarchy that it should merge with St Mary's College, Oscott, near Birmingham. However, in October 2010 it was announced that the college would close in 2011 due to the shortage of vocations in the Roman Catholic Church, and that the site might be sold. Following a detailed feasibility study by the college's Trustees and Durham University, and with support from Durham County Council and English Heritage, it was announced in January 2012 that Durham Business School would temporarily relocate to the college during rebuilding of the school's buildings in Durham. This was seen as the first step in a long-term education-based vision for the site.

 

The university also agreed to catalogue and archive the Ushaw library and inventory the other collections to ensure their preservation and specialist conservation, with a view to creating a proposed Ushaw Centre for Catholic Scholarship and Heritage. In March 2019, an uncatalogued early charter of King John was found in the library manuscript collection.

 

In 2017, Durham University announced plans to develop an international residential research library at Ushaw College, with the aim of attracting scholars from around the world to work on the collections of Ushaw, Durham University and Durham Cathedral. The university has also confirmed that it has extended the agreement to lease the east wing of the college (used by the Business School) to 2027. The college is also used for numerous musical events and for the Ushaw Lecture Series, organised by the university's Centre for Catholic Studies.

 

In 2018, Durham University's Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring (CEM) moved into the east wing of the college, previously used by the Business School.

 

The college armorial bearings are "Per pale dexter Argent a Cross Gules on a Canton Azure a Cross of St Cuthbert proper sinister impaling Allen Argent three Rabbits couchant in pale Sable."

 

Various emblems on shield represent the college's history and foundation, for example:-

 

Three coneys are from the family coat of arms of William Allen, the founder of English College, Douai. See Three hares.

The small cross of St Cuthbert represents the college's patron saint (it is modelled on St Cuthbert's own pectoral cross, which is kept in the Treasury at Durham Cathedral).

The large cross of St George honours the English Roman Catholic Martyrs.

 

Alumni

Clergy

 

Nicholas Cardinal Wiseman – first Archbishop of Westminster

Francis Cardinal Bourne – Archbishop of Westminster

Arthur Cardinal Hinsley – Archbishop of Westminster

William Cardinal Godfrey – Archbishop of Westminster

John Carmel Cardinal Heenan – Archbishop of Westminster

Rafael Cardinal Merry del Val y Zulueta – Cardinal Secretary of State

Charles Petre Eyre – Archbishop of Glasgow.

Louis Charles Casartelli – 4th Bishop of Salford

Hugh Lindsay – 10th Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle

James Chadwick – 2nd Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle

Alexander Goss – Bishop of Liverpool

Thomas Grant – Bishop of Southwark

Mark Davies, Bishop of Shrewsbury

John Lingard – author of The History Of England, From the First Invasion by the Romans to the Accession of Henry VIII

Bernard Łubieński - Redemptorist missionary priest

John Furniss – English Roman Catholic priest, known for his mission to children

James Nugent – Roman Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Liverpool

Nicholas Rigby – English Roman Catholic priest and author of The Real Doctrine of the Church on Scripture

Constantine Scollen – Irish Roman Catholic missionary priest and outstanding linguist in Canada in the mid- to late 19th century and author of Thirty Years among the Indians of the Northwest

Paul Swarbrick - Bishop of Lancaster

Philip Moger - Auxiliary Bishop of Southwark

Lay

 

George Goldie – nineteenth-century ecclesiastical architect

Edward Goldie – nineteenth- and twentieth-century ecclesiastical architect

Alexander Martin Sullivan – Irish lawyer and defence counsel in the trial of Roger Casement

Charles Napier Hemy – artist and Royal Academician

Francis Thompson – English poet

Joseph Gillow – author of Bibliographical Dictionary of the English Roman Catholics

William Shee – first Roman Catholic to sit as a judge in England and Wales since the Reformation

Francis Joseph Sloane (aka Francesco Giuseppe Sloane) - born 1794, died October 23, 1871, tutor at Ushaw and lifelong friend of Nicolas (later Cardinal) Wiseman, responsible for reviving the Montecatini Val di Cecina copper mine, which was the largest in Europe

Paul Goggins – Labour Member of Parliament for Wythenshawe and Sale East and junior minister in the Northern Ireland Office.

Joseph Scott – attorney in Los Angeles, founder of the Southwest Museum of the American Indian, vice-president of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (1915)

A.J. Hartley bestselling novelist and Shakespeare scholar

Lafcadio Hearn (also known as Koizumi Yakumo) – author, best known for his books about Japan

Francis Petre - prominent New Zealand-born architect designed the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, Christchurch

Peter Paul Pugin – English architect

James Joseph Foy – Ontario Attorney General and political figure

Myles William Patrick O'Reilly – Roman Catholic soldier and politician

Archibald Matthias Dunn – Roman Catholic ecclesiastical architect

Joe Tasker - Himalayan climber

Charles Bruzon – Gibraltarian government minister and curate

List of presidents

1794–1810 Thomas Eyre

1811–1828 John Gillow

1828–1833 Thomas Youens

1833–1836 John Briggs

1836–1837 Thomas Youens

1837–1863 Charles Newsham

1863–1876 Robert Tate

1876–1877 Francis Wilkinson

1877–1878 James Chadwick

1878–1885 William Wrennall

1885–1886 William Dunderdale

1886–1890 James Lennon

1890–1909 Thomas Wilkinson

1909–1910 Joseph Corbishley

1910–1934 William Brown

1934–1950 Charles Corbishley

1950–1967 Paul Grant

1967–1977 Philip Loftus

1977–1984 Peter Cookson

1984–1991 Peter Walton

1991–1997 Richard Atherton

1997–2003 James O’Keefe

2003–2008 Terence Drainey

2008–2011 John Marsland

The crew of Soyuz MS-13 receive the traditional blessing from a Russian Orthodox priest prior to departing for the Baikonour cosmodrome, in Kazakhstan on 20 July 2019.

 

ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano, NASA astronaut Drew Morgan and Roscosmos cosmonaut and Soyuz commander Alexander Skvortsov will be launched in their Soyuz MS-13 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Saturday 20 July. This date coincides with the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing and marks the start of Luca’s second space mission known as ‘Beyond’.

 

While in orbit, Luca will support over 50 European experiments and more than 200 international experiments. He is also expected to perform a number of spacewalks to repair the cooling systems of dark matter hunter, AMS-02.

 

More information about Luca’s Beyond mission is available on the blog. This will be updated throughout his mission, with updates also shared on Twitter via @esaspaceflight.

 

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

 

First Lady Michelle Obama receives a hug while meeting with Young African Women Leaders Forum members at the Rosa Parks Library in Soweto, South Africa, June 22, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Samantha Appleton)

 

This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.

A new cadet receives his first of many haircuts at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point during Reception Day June __, 2021. More than 1,200 new cadets will undergo administrative processing, are fitted with their initial military clothing issue, medical and physical evaluations, begin their first lessons in marching, military courtesy, and discipline before they begin their six weeks of Cadet Basic Training before beginning the academic year. (U.S. Army photo by CDT Hannah Lamb).

Some of my favorite types of cards to send and receive are unexpected cards - thinking of you, thanks for your kindness, and in this case, You Go Girl! I made this encouragement or motivation card for my niece who likes to display her mail on her bulletin board. Thanks so much for looking. :-)

 

To create the watercolored origami swans, I stamped each image with Hero Arts Intense Black ink on white card stock. I love this ink!! I was able to loosely watercolor over each image immediately.

 

Supplies: Hero Arts Origami Animals, Hero Arts Origami Animals Frame Cuts, Hero Arts Dare to Dream, Hero Arts Many Everyday Messages, Hero Arts Intense Black Ink, Hero Arts Cup O'Joe Ink, Hero Arts Kraft Paper, and Hero Arts Mixed Accents.

This is my daughter's reaction on seeing the unbelievable package that arrived today from Jaime!

 

A couple weeks ago I mentioned finding a bead shop in one of my descriptions, and Jaime contacted me to let me know that she had beads she wasn't using and would be happy to send them to us if we were interested.

 

My daughter and I were really excited to receive what we expected might be a manila envelope full of beads, and were totally unprepared for the massive (and I mean massive) package that arrived on our doorstep today, containing boxes upon boxes of gorgeous beads, findings, tools, and books, all beautifully organized!

 

Those of you who have any inkling of what's been going on in our life this summer will know that this is a picture a mother can hardly look at without bursting into tears of joy (apologies to my daughter here who won't like how sappy I'm being, but I can't help it!).

 

I must add that my younger daughter is absolutely thrilled as well!

 

Jaime, we truly can't thank you enough.

Women receive training at a computer class at the Association for the Welfare and Rehabilitation of Deaf and Dumb. The Social Fund for Development supports the center by providing teacher training and equipment. Republic of Yemen. Photo: Dana Smillie / World Bank

 

Photo ID: DS-RY103 World Bank

President Barack Obama receives an update on the ongoing response to Hurricane Sandy at the National Response Coordination Center at FEMA headquarters in Washington, D.C., Sunday, Oct. 28, 2012. Seated with the President are FEMA Deputy Administrator Richard Serino, left, and FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

 

This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.

Arches National Park is a national park in eastern Utah, United States. The park is adjacent to the Colorado River, 4 miles (6 km) north of Moab, Utah. More than 2,000 natural sandstone arches are located in the park, including the well-known Delicate Arch, as well as a variety of unique geological resources and formations. The park contains the highest density of natural arches in the world.

 

The park consists of 310.31 square kilometres (76,680 acres; 119.81 sq mi; 31,031 ha) of high desert located on the Colorado Plateau. The highest elevation in the park is 5,653 feet (1,723 m) at Elephant Butte, and the lowest elevation is 4,085 feet (1,245 m) at the visitor center. The park receives an average of less than 10 inches (250 mm) of rain annually.

 

Administered by the National Park Service, the area was originally named a national monument on April 12, 1929, and was re designated as a national park on November 12, 1971. The park received more than 1.6 million visitors in 2018.

 

As stated in the foundation document in U.S. National Park Service website:

 

The purpose of Arches National Park is to protect extraordinary examples of geologic features including arches, natural bridges, windows, spires, and balanced rocks, as well as other features of geologic, historic, and scientific interest, and to provide opportunities to experience these resources and their associated values in their majestic natural settings.

 

The national park lies above an underground evaporite layer or salt bed, which is the main cause of the formation of the arches, spires, balanced rocks, sandstone fins, and eroded monoliths in the area. This salt bed is thousands of feet thick in places and was deposited in the Paradox Basin of the Colorado Plateau some 300 million years ago (Mya) when a sea flowed into the region and eventually evaporated. Over millions of years, the salt bed was covered with debris eroded from the Uncompahgre Uplift to the northeast. During the Early Jurassic (about 200 Mya), desert conditions prevailed in the region and the vast Navajo Sandstone was deposited. An additional sequence of stream laid and windblown sediments, the Entrada Sandstone (about 140 Mya), was deposited on top of the Navajo. Over 5,000 feet (1,500 m) of younger sediments were deposited and have been mostly eroded. Remnants of the cover exist in the area including exposures of the Cretaceous Mancos Shale. The arches of the area are developed mostly within the Entrada formation.

 

The weight of this cover caused the salt bed below it to liquefy and thrust up layers of rock into salt domes. The evaporites of the area formed more unusual "salt anticlines" or linear regions of uplift. Faulting occurred and whole sections of rock subsided into the areas between the domes. In some places, they turned almost on edge. The result of one such 2,500-foot (760 m) displacement, the Moab Fault, is seen from the visitor center.

 

As this subsurface movement of salt shaped the landscape, erosion removed the younger rock layers from the surface. Except for isolated remnants, the major formations visible in the park today are the salmon-colored Entrada Sandstone, in which most of the arches form, and the buff-colored Navajo Sandstone. These are visible in layer-cake fashion throughout most of the park. Over time, water seeped into the surface cracks, joints, and folds of these layers. Ice formed in the fissures, expanding and putting pressure on surrounding rock, breaking off bits and pieces. Winds later cleaned out the loose particles. A series of free-standing fins remained. Wind and water attacked these fins until, in some, the cementing material gave way and chunks of rock tumbled out. Many damaged fins collapsed. Others, with the right degree of hardness and balance, survived despite their missing sections. These became the famous arches.

 

Although the park's terrain may appear rugged and durable, it is extremely fragile. More than 1 million visitors each year threaten the fragile high-desert ecosystem. The problem lies within the soil's crust, which is composed of cyanobacteria, algae, fungi, and lichens that grow in the dusty parts of the park. Factors that make Arches National Park sensitive to visitor damage include being a semiarid region, the scarce, unpredictable rainfall, lack of deep freezing, and lack of plant litter, which results in soils that have both a low resistance to and slow recovery from, compressional forces such as foot traffic. Methods of indicating effects on the soil are cytophobic soil crust index, measuring of water infiltration, and t-tests that are used to compare the values from the undisturbed and disturbed areas.

 

Geological processes that occurred over 300 million years ago caused a salt bed to be deposited, which today lies beneath the landscape of Arches National Park.[ Over time, the salt bed was covered with sediments that eventually compressed into rock layers that have since been named Entrada Standstone. Rock layers surrounding the edge of the salt bed continued to erode and shift into vertical sandstone walls called fins. Sand collected between vertical walls of the fins, then slightly acidic rain combined with carbon dioxide in the air allowed for the chemical formation of carbonic acid within the trapped sand. Over time, the carbonic acid dissolved the calcium carbonate that held the sandstone together. Many of the rock formations have weaker layers of rock on bottom that are holding stronger layers on top. The weaker layers would dissolve first, creating openings in the rock. Gravity caused pieces of the stronger rock layer to fall piece by piece into an arch shape. Arches form within rock fins at points of intense fracturing localization, or weak points in the rock's formation, caused by horizontal and vertical discontinuities. Lastly, water, wind, and time continued this erosion process and ultimately created the arches of Arches National Park. All of the arches in the park are made of Entrada Sandstone, however, there are slight differences in how each arch was developed. This allows the Entrada Sandstone to be categories into 3 groups including Slick rock members, Dewey rock members, and Moab members. Vertical arches can be developed from Slick rock members, a combination of Slick rock members and Moab members, or Slick rock members resting above Dewey rock members. Horizontal arches (also called potholes) are formed when a vertical pothole formation meets a horizontal cave, causing a union into a long arch structure. The erosion process within Arches National Park will continue as time continues to pass. Continued erosion combined with vertical and horizontal stress will eventually cause arches to collapse, but still, new arches will continue to form for thousands of years.

 

Humans have occupied the region since the last ice age 10,000 years ago. Fremont people and Ancestral Puebloans lived in the area until about 700 years ago. Spanish missionaries encountered Ute and Paiute tribes in the area when they first came through in 1775, but the first European-Americans to attempt settlement in the area were the Mormon Elk Mountain Mission in 1855, who soon abandoned the area. Ranchers, farmers, and prospectors later settled Moab in the neighboring Riverine Valley in the late 1870s. Word of the beauty of the surrounding rock formations spread beyond the settlement as a possible tourist destination.

 

The Arches area was first brought to the attention of the National Park Service by Frank A. Wadleigh, passenger traffic manager of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad. Wadleigh, accompanied by railroad photographer George L. Beam, visited the area in September 1923 at the invitation of Alexander Ringhoffer, a Hungarian-born prospector living in Salt Valley. Ringhoffer had written to the railroad to interest them in the tourist potential of a scenic area he had discovered the previous year with his two sons and a son-in-law, which he called the Devils Garden (known today as the Klondike Bluffs). Wadleigh was impressed by what Ringhoffer showed him, and suggested to Park Service director Stephen T. Mather that the area be made a national monument.

 

The following year, additional support for the monument idea came from Laurence Gould, a University of Michigan graduate student (and future polar explorer) studying the geology of the nearby La Sal Mountains, who was shown the scenic area by local physician Dr. J. W. "Doc" Williams.

 

A succession of government investigators examined the area, in part due to confusion as to the precise location. In the process, the name Devils Garden was transposed to an area on the opposite side of Salt Valley that includes Landscape Arch, the longest arch in the park. Ringhoffer's original discovery was omitted, while another area nearby, known locally as the Windows, was included. Designation of the area as a national monument was supported by the Park Service in 1926 but was resisted by President Calvin Coolidge's Interior Secretary, Hubert Work. Finally, in April 1929, shortly after his inauguration, President Herbert Hoover signed a presidential proclamation creating the Arches National Monument, consisting of two comparatively small, disconnected sections. The purpose of the reservation under the 1906 Antiquities Act was to protect the arches, spires, balanced rocks, and other sandstone formations for their scientific and educational value. The name Arches was suggested by Frank Pinkely, superintendent of the Park Service's southwestern national monuments, following a visit to the Windows section in 1925.

 

In late 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a proclamation that enlarged the Arches to protect additional scenic features and permit the development of facilities to promote tourism. A small adjustment was made by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1960 to accommodate a new road alignment.

 

In early 1969, just before leaving office, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a proclamation substantially enlarging the Arches. Two years later, President Richard Nixon signed legislation enacted by Congress, which significantly reduced the total area enclosed, but changed its status. Arches National Park was formally dedicated in May 1972.

 

In 1980, vandals attempted to use an abrasive kitchen cleanser to deface ancient petroglyphs in the park, prompting park officials to recruit physicist John F. Asmus, who specialized in using lasers to restore works of art, to use his technology to repair the damage. Asmus "zapped the panel with intense light pulses and succeeded in removing most of the cleanser".

 

Climbing Balanced Rock or any named or unnamed arch in Arches National Park with an opening larger than 3 ft (0.9 m) is banned by park regulations. Climbing on other features in the park is allowed but regulated; in addition, slacklining and BASE jumping are banned parkwide.

 

Climbing on named arches within the park had long been banned by park regulations, but following Dean Potter's successful free climb on Delicate Arch in May 2006, the wording of the regulations was deemed unenforceable by the park attorney. In response, the park revised its regulations later that month, eventually imposing the current ban on arch climbing in 2014.

 

Approved recreational activities include auto touring, hiking, bicycling, camping at the Devils Garden campground, backpacking, canyoneering, and rock climbing, with permits required for the last three activities. Guided commercial tours and ranger programs are also available.

 

Astronomy is also popular in the park due to its dark skies, despite the increasing light pollution from towns such as Moab.

 

Delicate Arch is the subject of the third 2014 quarter of the U.S. Mint's America the Beautiful Quarters program commemorating national parks and historic sites. The Arches quarter had the highest production of the five 2014 national park quarters, with more than 465 million minted.

 

American writer Edward Abbey was a park ranger at Arches National Monument in 1956 and 1957, where he kept journals that became his book Desert Solitaire. The success of Abbey's book, as well as interest in adventure travel, has drawn many hikers, mountain bikers, and off-pavement driving enthusiasts to the area. Permitted activities within the park include camping, hiking along designated trails, backpacking, canyoneering, rock climbing, bicycling, and driving along existing roads, both paved and unpaved. The Hayduke Trail, an 812 mi (1,307 km) backpacking route named after one of Edward Abbey's characters, begins in the park.

 

An abundance of wildlife occurs in Arches National Park, including spadefoot toads, antelope squirrels, scrub jays, peregrine falcons, many kinds of sparrows, red foxes, desert bighorn sheep, kangaroo rats, mule deers, cougars, midget faded rattlesnakes, yucca moths, western rattlesnakes, and collared lizards.

 

A number of plant species are common in the park, including prickly pear cactus, Indian ricegrass, bunch grasses, cheatgrass, moss, liverworts, Utah juniper, Mormon tea, blackbrush, cliffrose, four-winged saltbrush, pinyon pine, evening primrose, sand verbena, yucca, and sacred datura.

 

Biological soil crust consisting of cyanobacteria, lichen, mosses, green algae, and microfungi is found throughout southeastern Utah. The fibrous growths help keep soil particles together, creating a layer that is more resistant to erosion. The living soil layer readily absorbs and stores water, allowing more complex forms of plant life to grow in places with low precipitation levels.

 

Among the notable features of the park are the following:

Balanced Rock – a large balancing rock, the size of three school buses

Courthouse Towers – a collection of tall stone columns

Dark Angel – a free-standing 150 ft-tall (46 m) sandstone pillar at the end of the Devils Garden Trail

Delicate Arch – a lone-standing arch that has become a symbol of Utah and the most recognized arch in the park

Devils Garden – many arches and columns scattered along a ridge

Double Arch – two arches that share a common end

Fiery Furnace – an area of maze-like narrow passages and tall rock columns (see biblical reference, Book of Daniel, chapter 3)

Landscape Arch – a very thin and long arch in the Devils Garden with a span of 290 ft (88 m) (the longest arch in the park)

Petrified Dunes – petrified remnants of dunes blown from the ancient lakes that covered the area

The Phallus – a rock spire that resembles a phallus

Wall Arch – located along the popular Devils Garden Trail; collapsed sometime on August 4/5, 2008

The Three Gossips –a mid-sized sandstone tower located in the Courthouse Towers area.

 

Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It borders Colorado to its east, Wyoming to its northeast, Idaho to its north, Arizona to its south, and Nevada to its west. Utah also touches a corner of New Mexico in the southeast. Of the fifty U.S. states, Utah is the 13th-largest by area; with a population over three million, it is the 30th-most-populous and 11th-least-densely populated. Urban development is mostly concentrated in two areas: the Wasatch Front in the north-central part of the state, which is home to roughly two-thirds of the population and includes the capital city, Salt Lake City; and Washington County in the southwest, with more than 180,000 residents. Most of the western half of Utah lies in the Great Basin.

 

Utah has been inhabited for thousands of years by various indigenous groups such as the ancient Puebloans, Navajo, and Ute. The Spanish were the first Europeans to arrive in the mid-16th century, though the region's difficult geography and harsh climate made it a peripheral part of New Spain and later Mexico. Even while it was Mexican territory, many of Utah's earliest settlers were American, particularly Mormons fleeing marginalization and persecution from the United States via the Mormon Trail. Following the Mexican–American War in 1848, the region was annexed by the U.S., becoming part of the Utah Territory, which included what is now Colorado and Nevada. Disputes between the dominant Mormon community and the federal government delayed Utah's admission as a state; only after the outlawing of polygamy was it admitted in 1896 as the 45th.

 

People from Utah are known as Utahns. Slightly over half of all Utahns are Mormons, the vast majority of whom are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), which has its world headquarters in Salt Lake City; Utah is the only state where a majority of the population belongs to a single church. A 2023 paper challenged this perception (claiming only 42% of Utahns are Mormons) however most statistics still show a majority of Utah residents belong to the LDS church; estimates from the LDS church suggests 60.68% of Utah's population belongs to the church whilst some sources put the number as high as 68%. The paper replied that membership count done by the LDS Church is too high for several reasons. The LDS Church greatly influences Utahn culture, politics, and daily life, though since the 1990s the state has become more religiously diverse as well as secular.

 

Utah has a highly diversified economy, with major sectors including transportation, education, information technology and research, government services, mining, multi-level marketing, and tourism. Utah has been one of the fastest growing states since 2000, with the 2020 U.S. census confirming the fastest population growth in the nation since 2010. St. George was the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the United States from 2000 to 2005. Utah ranks among the overall best states in metrics such as healthcare, governance, education, and infrastructure. It has the 12th-highest median average income and the least income inequality of any U.S. state. Over time and influenced by climate change, droughts in Utah have been increasing in frequency and severity, putting a further strain on Utah's water security and impacting the state's economy.

 

The History of Utah is an examination of the human history and social activity within the state of Utah located in the western United States.

 

Archaeological evidence dates the earliest habitation of humans in Utah to about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Paleolithic people lived near the Great Basin's swamps and marshes, which had an abundance of fish, birds, and small game animals. Big game, including bison, mammoths and ground sloths, also were attracted to these water sources. Over the centuries, the mega-fauna died, this population was replaced by the Desert Archaic people, who sheltered in caves near the Great Salt Lake. Relying more on gathering than the previous Utah residents, their diet was mainly composed of cattails and other salt tolerant plants such as pickleweed, burro weed and sedge. Red meat appears to have been more of a luxury, although these people used nets and the atlatl to hunt water fowl, ducks, small animals and antelope. Artifacts include nets woven with plant fibers and rabbit skin, woven sandals, gaming sticks, and animal figures made from split-twigs. About 3,500 years ago, lake levels rose and the population of Desert Archaic people appears to have dramatically decreased. The Great Basin may have been almost unoccupied for 1,000 years.

 

The Fremont culture, named from sites near the Fremont River in Utah, lived in what is now north and western Utah and parts of Nevada, Idaho and Colorado from approximately 600 to 1300 AD. These people lived in areas close to water sources that had been previously occupied by the Desert Archaic people, and may have had some relationship with them. However, their use of new technologies define them as a distinct people. Fremont technologies include:

 

use of the bow and arrow while hunting,

building pithouse shelters,

growing maize and probably beans and squash,

building above ground granaries of adobe or stone,

creating and decorating low-fired pottery ware,

producing art, including jewelry and rock art such as petroglyphs and pictographs.

 

The ancient Puebloan culture, also known as the Anasazi, occupied territory adjacent to the Fremont. The ancestral Puebloan culture centered on the present-day Four Corners area of the Southwest United States, including the San Juan River region of Utah. Archaeologists debate when this distinct culture emerged, but cultural development seems to date from about the common era, about 500 years before the Fremont appeared. It is generally accepted that the cultural peak of these people was around the 1200 CE. Ancient Puebloan culture is known for well constructed pithouses and more elaborate adobe and masonry dwellings. They were excellent craftsmen, producing turquoise jewelry and fine pottery. The Puebloan culture was based on agriculture, and the people created and cultivated fields of maize, beans, and squash and domesticated turkeys. They designed and produced elaborate field terracing and irrigation systems. They also built structures, some known as kivas, apparently designed solely for cultural and religious rituals.

 

These two later cultures were roughly contemporaneous, and appear to have established trading relationships. They also shared enough cultural traits that archaeologists believe the cultures may have common roots in the early American Southwest. However, each remained culturally distinct throughout most of their existence. These two well established cultures appear to have been severely impacted by climatic change and perhaps by the incursion of new people in about 1200 CE. Over the next two centuries, the Fremont and ancient Pueblo people may have moved into the American southwest, finding new homes and farmlands in the river drainages of Arizona, New Mexico and northern Mexico.

 

In about 1200, Shoshonean speaking peoples entered Utah territory from the west. They may have originated in southern California and moved into the desert environment due to population pressure along the coast. They were an upland people with a hunting and gathering lifestyle utilizing roots and seeds, including the pinyon nut. They were also skillful fishermen, created pottery and raised some crops. When they first arrived in Utah, they lived as small family groups with little tribal organization. Four main Shoshonean peoples inhabited Utah country. The Shoshone in the north and northeast, the Gosiutes in the northwest, the Utes in the central and eastern parts of the region and the Southern Paiutes in the southwest. Initially, there seems to have been very little conflict between these groups.

 

In the early 16th century, the San Juan River basin in Utah's southeast also saw a new people, the Díne or Navajo, part of a greater group of plains Athabaskan speakers moved into the Southwest from the Great Plains. In addition to the Navajo, this language group contained people that were later known as Apaches, including the Lipan, Jicarilla, and Mescalero Apaches.

 

Athabaskans were a hunting people who initially followed the bison, and were identified in 16th-century Spanish accounts as "dog nomads". The Athabaskans expanded their range throughout the 17th century, occupying areas the Pueblo peoples had abandoned during prior centuries. The Spanish first specifically mention the "Apachu de Nabajo" (Navaho) in the 1620s, referring to the people in the Chama valley region east of the San Juan River, and north west of Santa Fe. By the 1640s, the term Navaho was applied to these same people. Although the Navajo newcomers established a generally peaceful trading and cultural exchange with the some modern Pueblo peoples to the south, they experienced intermittent warfare with the Shoshonean peoples, particularly the Utes in eastern Utah and western Colorado.

 

At the time of European expansion, beginning with Spanish explorers traveling from Mexico, five distinct native peoples occupied territory within the Utah area: the Northern Shoshone, the Goshute, the Ute, the Paiute and the Navajo.

 

The Spanish explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado may have crossed into what is now southern Utah in 1540, when he was seeking the legendary Cíbola.

 

A group led by two Spanish Catholic priests—sometimes called the Domínguez–Escalante expedition—left Santa Fe in 1776, hoping to find a route to the California coast. The expedition traveled as far north as Utah Lake and encountered the native residents. All of what is now Utah was claimed by the Spanish Empire from the 1500s to 1821 as part of New Spain (later as the province Alta California); and subsequently claimed by Mexico from 1821 to 1848. However, Spain and Mexico had little permanent presence in, or control of, the region.

 

Fur trappers (also known as mountain men) including Jim Bridger, explored some regions of Utah in the early 19th century. The city of Provo was named for one such man, Étienne Provost, who visited the area in 1825. The city of Ogden, Utah is named for a brigade leader of the Hudson's Bay Company, Peter Skene Ogden who trapped in the Weber Valley. In 1846, a year before the arrival of members from the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints, the ill-fated Donner Party crossed through the Salt Lake valley late in the season, deciding not to stay the winter there but to continue forward to California, and beyond.

 

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as Mormon pioneers, first came to the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. At the time, the U.S. had already captured the Mexican territories of Alta California and New Mexico in the Mexican–American War and planned to keep them, but those territories, including the future state of Utah, officially became United States territory upon the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, February 2, 1848. The treaty was ratified by the United States Senate on March 10, 1848.

 

Upon arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormon pioneers found no permanent settlement of Indians. Other areas along the Wasatch Range were occupied at the time of settlement by the Northwestern Shoshone and adjacent areas by other bands of Shoshone such as the Gosiute. The Northwestern Shoshone lived in the valleys on the eastern shore of Great Salt Lake and in adjacent mountain valleys. Some years after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley Mormons, who went on to colonize many other areas of what is now Utah, were petitioned by Indians for recompense for land taken. The response of Heber C. Kimball, first counselor to Brigham Young, was that the land belonged to "our Father in Heaven and we expect to plow and plant it." A 1945 Supreme Court decision found that the land had been treated by the United States as public domain; no aboriginal title by the Northwestern Shoshone had been recognized by the United States or extinguished by treaty with the United States.

 

Upon arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormons had to make a place to live. They created irrigation systems, laid out farms, built houses, churches, and schools. Access to water was crucially important. Almost immediately, Brigham Young set out to identify and claim additional community sites. While it was difficult to find large areas in the Great Basin where water sources were dependable and growing seasons long enough to raise vitally important subsistence crops, satellite communities began to be formed.

 

Shortly after the first company arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, the community of Bountiful was settled to the north. In 1848, settlers moved into lands purchased from trapper Miles Goodyear in present-day Ogden. In 1849, Tooele and Provo were founded. Also that year, at the invitation of Ute chief Wakara, settlers moved into the Sanpete Valley in central Utah to establish the community of Manti. Fillmore, Utah, intended to be the capital of the new territory, was established in 1851. In 1855, missionary efforts aimed at western native cultures led to outposts in Fort Lemhi, Idaho, Las Vegas, Nevada and Elk Mountain in east-central Utah.

 

The experiences of returning members of the Mormon Battalion were also important in establishing new communities. On their journey west, the Mormon soldiers had identified dependable rivers and fertile river valleys in Colorado, Arizona and southern California. In addition, as the men traveled to rejoin their families in the Salt Lake Valley, they moved through southern Nevada and the eastern segments of southern Utah. Jefferson Hunt, a senior Mormon officer of the Battalion, actively searched for settlement sites, minerals, and other resources. His report encouraged 1851 settlement efforts in Iron County, near present-day Cedar City. These southern explorations eventually led to Mormon settlements in St. George, Utah, Las Vegas and San Bernardino, California, as well as communities in southern Arizona.

 

Prior to establishment of the Oregon and California trails and Mormon settlement, Indians native to the Salt Lake Valley and adjacent areas lived by hunting buffalo and other game, but also gathered grass seed from the bountiful grass of the area as well as roots such as those of the Indian Camas. By the time of settlement, indeed before 1840, the buffalo were gone from the valley, but hunting by settlers and grazing of cattle severely impacted the Indians in the area, and as settlement expanded into nearby river valleys and oases, indigenous tribes experienced increasing difficulty in gathering sufficient food. Brigham Young's counsel was to feed the hungry tribes, and that was done, but it was often not enough. These tensions formed the background to the Bear River massacre committed by California Militia stationed in Salt Lake City during the Civil War. The site of the massacre is just inside Preston, Idaho, but was generally thought to be within Utah at the time.

 

Statehood was petitioned for in 1849-50 using the name Deseret. The proposed State of Deseret would have been quite large, encompassing all of what is now Utah, and portions of Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico and California. The name of Deseret was favored by the LDS leader Brigham Young as a symbol of industry and was derived from a reference in the Book of Mormon. The petition was rejected by Congress and Utah did not become a state until 1896, following the Utah Constitutional Convention of 1895.

 

In 1850, the Utah Territory was created with the Compromise of 1850, and Fillmore (named after President Fillmore) was designated the capital. In 1856, Salt Lake City replaced Fillmore as the territorial capital.

 

The first group of pioneers brought African slaves with them, making Utah the only place in the western United States to have African slavery. Three slaves, Green Flake, Hark Lay, and Oscar Crosby, came west with this first group in 1847. The settlers also began to purchase Indian slaves in the well-established Indian slave trade, as well as enslaving Indian prisoners of war. In 1850, 26 slaves were counted in Salt Lake County. Slavery didn't become officially recognized until 1852, when the Act in Relation to Service and the Act for the relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners were passed. Slavery was repealed on June 19, 1862, when Congress prohibited slavery in all US territories.

 

Disputes between the Mormon inhabitants and the federal government intensified after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' practice of polygamy became known. The polygamous practices of the Mormons, which were made public in 1854, would be one of the major reasons Utah was denied statehood until almost 50 years after the Mormons had entered the area.

 

After news of their polygamous practices spread, the members of the LDS Church were quickly viewed by some as un-American and rebellious. In 1857, after news of a possible rebellion spread, President James Buchanan sent troops on the Utah expedition to quell the growing unrest and to replace Brigham Young as territorial governor with Alfred Cumming. The expedition was also known as the Utah War.

 

As fear of invasion grew, Mormon settlers had convinced some Paiute Indians to aid in a Mormon-led attack on 120 immigrants from Arkansas under the guise of Indian aggression. The murder of these settlers became known as the Mountain Meadows massacre. The Mormon leadership had adopted a defensive posture that led to a ban on the selling of grain to outsiders in preparation for an impending war. This chafed pioneers traveling through the region, who were unable to purchase badly needed supplies. A disagreement between some of the Arkansas pioneers and the Mormons in Cedar City led to the secret planning of the massacre by a few Mormon leaders in the area. Some scholars debate the involvement of Brigham Young. Only one man, John D. Lee, was ever convicted of the murders, and he was executed at the massacre site.

 

Express riders had brought the news 1,000 miles from the Missouri River settlements to Salt Lake City within about two weeks of the army's beginning to march west. Fearing the worst as 2,500 troops (roughly 1/3rd of the army then) led by General Albert Sidney Johnston started west, Brigham Young ordered all residents of Salt Lake City and neighboring communities to prepare their homes for burning and evacuate southward to Utah Valley and southern Utah. Young also sent out a few units of the Nauvoo Legion (numbering roughly 8,000–10,000), to delay the army's advance. The majority he sent into the mountains to prepare defenses or south to prepare for a scorched earth retreat. Although some army wagon supply trains were captured and burned and herds of army horses and cattle run off no serious fighting occurred. Starting late and short on supplies, the United States Army camped during the bitter winter of 1857–58 near a burned out Fort Bridger in Wyoming. Through the negotiations between emissary Thomas L. Kane, Young, Cumming and Johnston, control of Utah territory was peacefully transferred to Cumming, who entered an eerily vacant Salt Lake City in the spring of 1858. By agreement with Young, Johnston established the army at Fort Floyd 40 miles away from Salt Lake City, to the southwest.

 

Salt Lake City was the last link of the First Transcontinental Telegraph, between Carson City, Nevada and Omaha, Nebraska completed in October 1861. Brigham Young, who had helped expedite construction, was among the first to send a message, along with Abraham Lincoln and other officials. Soon after the telegraph line was completed, the Deseret Telegraph Company built the Deseret line connecting the settlements in the territory with Salt Lake City and, by extension, the rest of the United States.

 

Because of the American Civil War, federal troops were pulled out of Utah Territory (and their fort auctioned off), leaving the territorial government in federal hands without army backing until General Patrick E. Connor arrived with the 3rd Regiment of California Volunteers in 1862. While in Utah, Connor and his troops soon became discontent with this assignment wanting to head to Virginia where the "real" fighting and glory was occurring. Connor established Fort Douglas just three miles (5 km) east of Salt Lake City and encouraged his bored and often idle soldiers to go out and explore for mineral deposits to bring more non-Mormons into the state. Minerals were discovered in Tooele County, and some miners began to come to the territory. Conner also solved the Shoshone Indian problem in Cache Valley Utah by luring the Shoshone into a midwinter confrontation on January 29, 1863. The armed conflict quickly turned into a rout, discipline among the soldiers broke down, and the Battle of Bear River is today usually referred to by historians as the Bear River Massacre. Between 200 and 400 Shoshone men, women and children were killed, as were 27 soldiers, with over 50 more soldiers wounded or suffering from frostbite.

 

Beginning in 1865, Utah's Black Hawk War developed into the deadliest conflict in the territory's history. Chief Antonga Black Hawk died in 1870, but fights continued to break out until additional federal troops were sent in to suppress the Ghost Dance of 1872. The war is unique among Indian Wars because it was a three-way conflict, with mounted Timpanogos Utes led by Antonga Black Hawk fighting federal and Utah local militia.

 

On May 10, 1869, the First transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory Summit, north of the Great Salt Lake. The railroad brought increasing numbers of people into the state, and several influential businessmen made fortunes in the territory.

 

Main article: Latter Day Saint polygamy in the late-19th century

During the 1870s and 1880s, federal laws were passed and federal marshals assigned to enforce the laws against polygamy. In the 1890 Manifesto, the LDS Church leadership dropped its approval of polygamy citing divine revelation. When Utah applied for statehood again in 1895, it was accepted. Statehood was officially granted on January 4, 1896.

 

The Mormon issue made the situation for women the topic of nationwide controversy. In 1870 the Utah Territory, controlled by Mormons, gave women the right to vote. However, in 1887, Congress disenfranchised Utah women with the Edmunds–Tucker Act. In 1867–96, eastern activists promoted women's suffrage in Utah as an experiment, and as a way to eliminate polygamy. They were Presbyterians and other Protestants convinced that Mormonism was a non-Christian cult that grossly mistreated women. The Mormons promoted woman suffrage to counter the negative image of downtrodden Mormon women. With the 1890 Manifesto clearing the way for statehood, in 1895 Utah adopted a constitution restoring the right of women's suffrage. Congress admitted Utah as a state with that constitution in 1896.

 

Though less numerous than other intermountain states at the time, several lynching murders for alleged misdeeds occurred in Utah territory at the hand of vigilantes. Those documented include the following, with their ethnicity or national origin noted in parentheses if it was provided in the source:

 

William Torrington in Carson City (then a part of Utah territory), 1859

Thomas Coleman (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1866

3 unidentified men at Wahsatch, winter of 1868

A Black man in Uintah, 1869

Charles A. Benson in Logan, 1873

Ah Sing (Chinese man) in Corinne, 1874

Thomas Forrest in St. George, 1880

William Harvey (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1883

John Murphy in Park City, 1883

George Segal (Japanese man) in Ogden, 1884

Joseph Fisher in Eureka, 1886

Robert Marshall (Black man) in Castle Gate, 1925

Other lynchings in Utah territory include multiple instances of mass murder of Native American children, women, and men by White settlers including the Battle Creek massacre (1849), Provo River Massacre (1850), Nephi massacre (1853), and Circleville Massacre (1866).

 

Beginning in the early 20th century, with the establishment of such national parks as Bryce Canyon National Park and Zion National Park, Utah began to become known for its natural beauty. Southern Utah became a popular filming spot for arid, rugged scenes, and such natural landmarks as Delicate Arch and "the Mittens" of Monument Valley are instantly recognizable to most national residents. During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, with the construction of the Interstate highway system, accessibility to the southern scenic areas was made easier.

 

Beginning in 1939, with the establishment of Alta Ski Area, Utah has become world-renowned for its skiing. The dry, powdery snow of the Wasatch Range is considered some of the best skiing in the world. Salt Lake City won the bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics in 1995, and this has served as a great boost to the economy. The ski resorts have increased in popularity, and many of the Olympic venues scattered across the Wasatch Front continue to be used for sporting events. This also spurred the development of the light-rail system in the Salt Lake Valley, known as TRAX, and the re-construction of the freeway system around the city.

 

During the late 20th century, the state grew quickly. In the 1970s, growth was phenomenal in the suburbs. Sandy was one of the fastest-growing cities in the country at that time, and West Valley City is the state's 2nd most populous city. Today, many areas of Utah are seeing phenomenal growth. Northern Davis, southern and western Salt Lake, Summit, eastern Tooele, Utah, Wasatch, and Washington counties are all growing very quickly. Transportation and urbanization are major issues in politics as development consumes agricultural land and wilderness areas.

 

In 2012, the State of Utah passed the Utah Transfer of Public Lands Act in an attempt to gain control over a substantial portion of federal land in the state from the federal government, based on language in the Utah Enabling Act of 1894. The State does not intend to use force or assert control by limiting access in an attempt to control the disputed lands, but does intend to use a multi-step process of education, negotiation, legislation, and if necessary, litigation as part of its multi-year effort to gain state or private control over the lands after 2014.

 

Utah families, like most Americans everywhere, did their utmost to assist in the war effort. Tires, meat, butter, sugar, fats, oils, coffee, shoes, boots, gasoline, canned fruits, vegetables, and soups were rationed on a national basis. The school day was shortened and bus routes were reduced to limit the number of resources used stateside and increase what could be sent to soldiers.

 

Geneva Steel was built to increase the steel production for America during World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had proposed opening a steel mill in Utah in 1936, but the idea was shelved after a couple of months. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States entered the war and the steel plant was put into progress. In April 1944, Geneva shipped its first order, which consisted of over 600 tons of steel plate. Geneva Steel also brought thousands of job opportunities to Utah. The positions were hard to fill as many of Utah's men were overseas fighting. Women began working, filling 25 percent of the jobs.

 

As a result of Utah's and Geneva Steels contribution during the war, several Liberty Ships were named in honor of Utah including the USS Joseph Smith, USS Brigham Young, USS Provo, and the USS Peter Skene Ogden.

 

One of the sectors of the beachhead of Normandy Landings was codenamed Utah Beach, and the amphibious landings at the beach were undertaken by United States Army troops.

 

It is estimated that 1,450 soldiers from Utah were killed in the war.

There are extraordinary views of the Llŷn Peninsula from this unusual little village. Trefor developed thanks to the local granite quarry. Its small harbour became extremely busy in the days when the granite was shipped to all over Europe. The beach, a mix of sand and pebbles, is mostly sheltered, though it does receive winds from the north-west. Trevor’s pier – built during the granite boom years and now a popular spot with fishermen – extends into the sea for about 650ft/200m. Nowadays, the inner harbor is mostly occupied by pleasure boats. Close by, at Clynnog Fawr, there’s the ancient Church of St Beuno, a major Llŷn landmark on the Pilgrims’ Route to Bardsey Island.

 

Trefor is a village on the northern coast of the Llŷn Peninsula, in Gwynedd, Wales. It had a population of 1,067 at the 2021 Census. Trefor is in the Community of Llanaelhaearn, and Llithfaen is nearby. There is a beach in Trefor and also a shop in the village centre. It was in the historic county of Caernarfonshire.

 

Trefor is 9 miles (14 km) north of Pwllheli and 13 miles (21 km) south of Caernarfon. It is surrounded by the sea and mountains, overlooking Caernarfon Bay.

 

Just off the main A499 road, Trefor has a small harbour and a beach with some sand. At the top of the beach is an emergency telephone to summon help in the event of a maritime emergency. The land behind the beach is made of boulder clay deposited during the last glaciation, and is being slowly eroded by the sea. Because of this land erosion, a large expanse of clay is exposed when the tide is out which is dangerous to walk on.

 

Rising steeply behind the village is Yr Eifl, a range of three hills that dominate the skyline. A granite quarry, known to the locals as Y Gwaith Mawr ("the large works"), Trefor Granite Quarry or the Yr Eifl Quarry, opened in 1850. The industrial narrow-gauge railway—Trefor Quarry railway—opened in 1865 and brought mined and refined rock from the quarry to the pier on the coast. From here it was transported via a conveyor belt onto ships, but the railway was gradually replaced by road transport. Large-scale industry ended with its closure in 1960, after which began the clean up: many of the buildings were demolished, rubble was either discarded beside the roads or/and buried, and the majority of the rail tracks were removed and reused as fence and gate posts, which can still be seen around the village. The rare properties of the granite within the quarry made it the perfect material to produce curling stones for the winter Olympics. Trefor is one of only two locations where this particular granite is found (the other being Ailsa Craig in Scotland).

 

Tre'r Ceiri, the second highest of the hills, has one of the best examples of a Stone Age or Neolithic settlement in Europe on its summit. Views from the summits, on a clear day, extend to Ireland, the whole of Cardigan Bay, Anglesey, Snowdonia, and the northern mountains of England. The central peak, the tallest at 561 metres (1,841 ft), is called Garn Ganol; the summit nearest the sea, and the lowest, is Garn For, home to the quarry.

 

There is one school in Trefor, a primary school called Ysgol yr Eifl. As of 2023, 58 pupils were enrolled at the school. 88.6% of statutory school age pupils are from Welsh-speaking homes.

 

There was a football club in Trefor, which was re-established in the 2000–01 season. It has won one cup in its history, in the 2001–02 season.

 

There are two retail outlets in Trefor: a village shop which opens between 7.00 am and 7.00 pm Monday to Friday with shorter hours at the weekend, and a post office. To the north end of the village is a children's play area. It is possible to go on a pushchair-friendly circular walk, starting at the play area, down to the beach, across the headland and back into the village again.

 

Visitors can surf the other side of the harbour wall at Trefor. It can be a nice left-hand point over a stony reef thrown off the headland. There is a small pier next to the harbour; it has been deemed unsafe so is currently closed to the public.

 

Since 2015 a cycle club has been established in the village and surrounding area called Clwb Beicio'r Eifl. Its members regularly take part in sportives and club rides.

 

Notable people

Alice Gray Jones (1852–1943), Welsh writer and editor, known by the pseudonym "Ceridwen Peris"

 

Gwynedd is a county in the north-west of Wales. It borders Anglesey across the Menai Strait to the north, Conwy, Denbighshire, and Powys to the east, Ceredigion over the Dyfi estuary to the south, and the Irish Sea to the west. The city of Bangor is the largest settlement, and the administrative centre is Caernarfon. The preserved county of Gwynedd, which is used for ceremonial purposes, includes the Isle of Anglesey.

 

Gwynedd is the second largest county in Wales but sparsely populated, with an area of 979 square miles (2,540 km2) and a population of 117,400. After Bangor (18,322), the largest settlements are Caernarfon (9,852), Bethesda (4,735), and Pwllheli (4,076). The county has the highest percentage of Welsh speakers in Wales, at 64.4%, and is considered a heartland of the language.

 

The geography of Gwynedd is mountainous, with a long coastline to the west. Much of the county is covered by Snowdonia National Park (Eryri), which contains Wales's highest mountain, Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa; 3,560 feet, 1,090 m). To the west, the Llŷn Peninsula is flatter and renowned for its scenic coastline, part of which is protected by the Llŷn AONB. Gwynedd also contains several of Wales's largest lakes and reservoirs, including the largest, Bala Lake (Llyn Tegid).

 

The area which is now the county has played a prominent part in the history of Wales. It formed part of the core of the Kingdom of Gwynedd and the native Principality of Wales, which under the House of Aberffraw remained independent from the Kingdom of England until Edward I's conquest between 1277 and 1283. Edward built the castles at Caernarfon and Harlech, which form part of the Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in Gwynedd World Heritage Site. During the Industrial Revolution the slate industry rapidly developed; in the late nineteenth century the neighbouring Penrhyn and Dinorwic quarries were the largest in the world, and the Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales is now a World Heritage Site. Gwynedd covers the majority of the historic counties of Caernarfonshire and Merionethshire.

 

In the past, historians such as J. E. Lloyd assumed that the Celtic source of the word Gwynedd meant 'collection of tribes' – the same root as the Irish fine, meaning 'tribe'. Further, a connection is recognised between the name and the Irish Féni, an early ethnonym for the Irish themselves, related to fían, 'company of hunting and fighting men, company of warriors under a leader'. Perhaps *u̯en-, u̯enə ('strive, hope, wish') is the Indo-European stem. The Irish settled in NW Wales, and in Dyfed, at the end of the Roman era. Venedotia was the Latin form, and in Penmachno there is a memorial stone from c. AD 500 which reads: Cantiori Hic Iacit Venedotis ('Here lies Cantiorix, citizen of Gwynedd'). The name was retained by the Brythons when the kingdom of Gwynedd was formed in the 5th century, and it remained until the invasion of Edward I. This historical name was revived when the new county was formed in 1974.

 

Gwynedd was an independent kingdom from the end of the Roman period until the 13th century, when it was conquered by England. The modern Gwynedd was one of eight Welsh counties created on 1 April 1974 under the Local Government Act 1972. It covered the entirety of the historic counties of Anglesey and Caernarfonshire, and all of Merionethshire apart from Edeirnion Rural District (which went to Clwyd); and also a few parishes of Denbighshire: Llanrwst, Llansanffraid Glan Conwy, Eglwysbach, Llanddoged, Llanrwst and Tir Ifan.

 

The county was divided into five districts: Aberconwy, Arfon, Dwyfor, Meirionnydd and Anglesey.

 

The Local Government (Wales) Act 1994 abolished the 1974 county (and the five districts) on 1 April 1996, and its area was divided: the Isle of Anglesey became an independent unitary authority, and Aberconwy (which included the former Denbighshire parishes) passed to the new Conwy County Borough. The remainder of the county was constituted as a principal area, with the name Caernarfonshire and Merionethshire, as it covers most of the areas of those two historic counties. As one of its first actions, the Council renamed itself Gwynedd on 2 April 1996. The present Gwynedd local government area is governed by Gwynedd Council. As a unitary authority, the modern entity no longer has any districts, but Arfon, Dwyfor and Meirionnydd remain as area committees.

 

The pre-1996 boundaries were retained as a preserved county for a few purposes such as the Lieutenancy. In 2003, the boundary with Clwyd was adjusted to match the modern local government boundary, so that the preserved county now covers the two local government areas of Gwynedd and Anglesey. Conwy county borough is now entirely within Clwyd.

 

A Gwynedd Constabulary was formed in 1950 by the merger of the Anglesey, Caernarfonshire and Merionethshire forces. A further amalgamation took place in the 1960s when Gwynedd Constabulary was merged with the Flintshire and Denbighshire county forces, retaining the name Gwynedd. In one proposal for local government reform in Wales, Gwynedd had been proposed as a name for a local authority covering all of north Wales, but the scheme as enacted divided this area between Gwynedd and Clwyd. To prevent confusion, the Gwynedd Constabulary was therefore renamed the North Wales Police.

 

The Snowdonia National Park was formed in 1951. After the 1974 local authority reorganisation, the park fell entirely within the boundaries of Gwynedd, and was run as a department of Gwynedd County Council. After the 1996 local government reorganisation, part of the park fell under Conwy County Borough, and the park's administration separated from the Gwynedd council. Gwynedd Council still appoints nine of the eighteen members of the Snowdonia National Park Authority; Conwy County Borough Council appoints three; and the Welsh Government appoints the remaining six.

 

There has been considerable inwards migration to Gwynedd, particularly from England. According to the 2021 census, 66.6% of residents had been born in Wales whilst 27.1% were born in England.

 

The county has a mixed economy. An important part of the economy is based on tourism: many visitors are attracted by the many beaches and the mountains. A significant part of the county lies within the Snowdonia National Park, which extends from the north coast down to the district of Meirionnydd in the south. But tourism provides seasonal employment and thus there is a shortage of jobs in the winter.

 

Agriculture is less important than in the past, especially in terms of the number of people who earn their living on the land, but it remains an important element of the economy.

 

The most important of the traditional industries is the slate industry, but these days only a small percentage of workers earn their living in the slate quarries.

 

Industries which have developed more recently include TV and sound studios: the record company Sain has its HQ in the county.

 

The education sector is also very important for the local economy, including Bangor University and Further Education colleges, Coleg Meirion-Dwyfor and Coleg Menai, both now part of Grŵp Llandrillo Menai.

 

The proportion of respondents in the 2011 census who said they could speak Welsh.

Gwynedd has the highest proportion of people in Wales who can speak Welsh. According to the 2021 census, 64.4% of the population aged three and over stated that they could speak Welsh,[7] while 64.4% noted that they could speak Welsh in the 2011 census.

 

It is estimated that 83% of the county's Welsh-speakers are fluent, the highest percentage of all counties in Wales.[9] The age group with the highest proportion of Welsh speakers in Gwynedd were those between ages 5–15, of whom 92.3% stated that they could speak Welsh in 2011.

 

The proportion of Welsh speakers in Gwynedd declined between 1991 and 2001,[10] from 72.1% to 68.7%, even though the proportion of Welsh speakers in Wales as a whole increased during that decade to 20.5%.

 

The Annual Population Survey estimated that as of March 2023, 77.0% of those in Gwynedd aged three years and above could speak Welsh.

 

Notable people

Leslie Bonnet (1902–1985), RAF officer, writer; originated the Welsh Harlequin duck in Criccieth

Sir Dave Brailsford (born 1964), cycling coach; grew up in Deiniolen, near Caernarfon

Duffy (born 1984), singer, songwriter and actress; born in Bangor, Gwynedd

Edward II of England (1284–1327), born in Caernarfon Castle

Elin Fflur (born 1984), singer-songwriter, TV and radio presenter; went to Bangor University

Bryn Fôn (born 1954), actor and singer-songwriter; born in Llanllyfni, Caernarfonshire.

Wayne Hennessey (born 1987), football goalkeeper with 108 caps for Wales; born in Bangor, Gwynedd

John Jones (c. 1530 – 1598), a Franciscan friar, Roman Catholic priest and martyr; born at Clynnog

Sir Love Jones-Parry, 1st Baronet (1832–1891), landowner and politician, co-founder of the Y Wladfa settlement in Patagonia

T. E. Lawrence (1888–1935), archaeologist, army officer and inspiration for Lawrence of Arabia, born in Tremadog

David Lloyd George (1863–1945), statesman and Prime Minister; lived in Llanystumdwy from infancy

Sasha (born 1969), disc jockey, born in Bangor, Gwynedd

Sir Bryn Terfel (born 1965), bass-baritone opera and concert singer from Pant Glas

Sir Clough Williams-Ellis (1883–1978), architect of Portmeirion

Owain Fôn Williams, (born 1987), footballer with 443 club caps; born and raised in Penygroes, Gwynedd.

Hedd Wyn (1887–1917), poet from the village of Trawsfynydd; killed in WWI

It's your life!

 

HKD

 

Das Ende der Gier

 

Kurz gesagt ist es so, dass der Alltag und die mit ihm zusammenhängende Ebene des Bewusstseins automatisch und vom Instinkt gesteuert abläuft. Die Motivationskräfte, metaphorisch die Götter, regieren, und das Ich-Bewusstsein reagiert auf die Impulse indem es sie in Handlungen umsetzt. Wer kennt nicht den Gott Amor, der mit seinen Pfeilen jeden Menschen bewegt, sich mit einem anderen Menschen zu paaren, zu verschmelzen. Zwei werden für einen seligen Augenblick Eins.

Doch die Seligkeit ist nicht dauerhaft, denn die Zweiheit taucht wieder auf. Und mit ihr die schmerzende Sehnsucht, die mit der Trennung einhergeht.

Die Vereinigung ist jeweils ekstatisch und kurz, und die Trennung lang und schmerzhaft. Der Liebende kennt den Schmerz und sucht Erlösung. Und diese liegt in der Aufklärung der automatischen Abläufe. Die Durchdringung der unbewussten Antriebskräfte (Gottheiten) mit Bewusstheit ist ein Akt der Selbsterkenntnis. Wer leitet mich? Die Götter. Wer sind die Götter? Herrscher (Zeus), Strategen (Athene), Händler (Hermes), Krieger (Ares), Denker (Apollo) und viele mehr. Wird mein Bewusstsein also von Amor oder von Aphrodite beeinflusst, motiviert mich der Instinkt, einen Weg zur Befriedigung des Geschlechtstriebes zu beschreiten.

Niemand wird ernsthaft behaupten, er könne sich verliebt machen oder sich willentlich wieder Entlieben. Doch ist es trotz der Überflutung mit Gefühlen möglich, diese bewusst zu fühlen. Von der Lustgöttin motiviert sagt man plötzlich: „Ich bin geil!“

Venus und Dionysos sind dem Bewusstsein relativ präsent, doch wie steht es mit Göttern wie Zeus, Athene und Ares, die in zahlreichen Köpfen von Politikern ihre Spielchen treiben. Kaum jemand von ihnen wird sich bewusst darüber sein und sagen: „Ich bin machtbesessen.“ Den Willen zum Sieg spüren viele Sportler und versuchen auch für sie unpassende Gefühle zu besiegen. Sie wollen ihre Schwächen ausmerzen, harte Zeiten fordern ein hartes Herz. Ein starker Regent erlässt Gesetze und schafft Ordnung. Natürlich eine Ordnung, die seinen Vorstellungen entspricht.

Wer von der Gottheit Hermes stark motiviert ist, dem liegen der Handel im Blut und die Gier nach mehr Erfolg, nach mehr Geld und noch mehr Party. Und die glänzende Erfolgsfassade wird mit allen Mitteln erkauft, auch mit illegalen. Hermes ist die Schutzgottheit der Devisenhändler, der Banker, der Schauspieler und der Taschendiebe. Er kauft und verkauft alles. Doch wer sagt schon: „Ich bin vom Spieltrieb, vom Zocken und von Eitelkeit ergriffen?“

Bei der Schwester oder dem Schulfreund sieht man, dass er auf neuester Markenmode steht, sich einen schicken Sportwagen least und unbedingt den nächsten Sprung auf der Karriereleiter machen will.

Instinkte, Triebe, Motivationskräfte bei sich selbst zu erkennen ist doppelt schwer, denn das eigene psychische System versucht zu verhindern, dass man seine Motive erkennt. Die Götter möchten weiterhin aus dem Unbewussten heraus spielen, denn dann können sie sich frei entfalten.

Menschen, die sich ihrer Gier nach Prestige, nach Lust, nach Macht bewusst werden, können mit den Göttern in Verhandlung treten und erreichen ein Mitspracherecht. Sie emanzipieren sich von den unbewussten Instinkten und bauen aus Einsicht bestehende Schutzwälle, die emotionale Sturmfluten eindämmen.

Uneingeschränkte Lust und Gier aber sind den Göttern lieber. Daher torpedieren sie die Versuche, Licht in die emotionalen und triebhaften Abläufe im Leben zu bringen, und sie bestrafen jene Verräter in den eigenen Reihen, die wie Prometheus den Menschen das Feuer und mit ihm das Licht in die Dunkelheit bringen.

Der Göttervater Zeus bestraft Prometheus für seinen mitfühlenden Akt für die leidende Menschheit. Die Menschen allerdings ehren Prometheus, wenn auch nicht gebührend, so doch mit immer einmal wieder mit großen Kunstwerken.

Es gibt Zeiten, in denen wird das harte Herz des Kämpfers hoch angesehen. In vielen Teilen der Welt erleben wir dies. Die Wettbewerbsgesellschaft verherrlicht sich selbst. In der Wirtschaft oder im Sport, auch in der Politik zählt der Kampf. Auszeichnungen, Plaketten, Medaillen, Orden, Zertifikate, Gratifikationen, Urkunden und so weiter sind leistungsbezogene Anerkennungen in einer Gesellschaft, deren Fundamente auf Wettbewerb beruhen.

Von der überwiegenden Mehrheit der von den Basisinstinkten angetriebenen Menschen wird das so gewünscht. Mehrheiten wählen die Regierenden. Die Regierung spiegelt des Volkes Meinung, und das Volk wird von unbewussten Instinkten geleitet. Und die Regierenden, sind sie sich der sie treibenden Kräfte bewusst?

Die Kaufleute, Banker und Händler, sind sie sich bewusst, was sie veranlasst, um den Bären und den Bullen zu tanzen?

Selbsterkenntnis beginnt mit der Frage: Was motiviert mich? Warum will ich schön sein? Warum suche ich Anerkennung? Warum ereignen sich bestimmte Dinge immer wieder wie zwangsläufig? Situationen wiederholen sich. Warum bin ich immer wieder allein?

Selbsterkenntnis ist ein Weg zu sich selbst und zur Liebe zu sich selbst. Selbstliebe sucht keine Anerkennung mehr im Außen. Alles ist da, in jedem Augenblick. Das ist die Frucht. Das ist Fülle und Seligkeit in Selbstgenügsamkeit. Selbstliebe ist das Ende der Gier nach oberflächlichem, nur flüchtig befriedigenden Ersatz.

 

HKD

 

Digital art based on own photography and textures

 

HKD

   

The latest archive shot to receive a 2022 make over in the virtual dark room.

 

Before the 47/7s the Edinburgh to Glasgow Queen Street services were worked by push pull fitted class 27s.

It was a chilly morning in Falkirk, I was a 17 year old lad on an all line rover, this was the last day. I had arrived at Falkirk High behind 27211 being pushed by 27110 on the 0800 GQS-ED and spent an hour waiting for the next service back to Edinburgh. In that hour I got this picture of 27205 being pushed by 27212 pushing from the rear on this ED- GQS push pull service. They were great fun.

I departed Falkirk High behind 27208 being pushed by 27112 on the 0830 GQS-ED. From Edinburgh I joined 55018 on the 0950 ED-PLM as far as Newcastle where 47411 replaced Ballymoss which took me to York. At York I joined the 1411 YK-KX behind 55006 as far as Kings Cross. I then crossed London to Paddington and boarded the 1830 PAD-PLM behind 50046 as far as Exeter. From there I joined the 2152 ESD-NAB for the final leg home to Teignmouth behind 31257 hauling 3 Mk1s. What a trip.

Belgian postcard by Victoria Biscuits Chocolats, no. 26. Photo: M.G.M. Lana Turner and June Allyson in The Three Musketeers (George Sidney, 1948), based on the novel by Alexandre Dumas.

 

The Three Musketeers (George Sidney, 1948) is a classic Swashbuckler, starring Gene Kelly as D’Artagnan and Lana Turner as Milady De Winter. Other stars in the cast include Van Heflin, June Allyson, Gig Young, Angela Lansbury, and Vincent Price. It is one of the many, adaptations of the famous French book ‘Les trois mousquetaires’ by Alexandre Dumas père, and possibly the liveliest one, full of acrobatics, galloping horses, flapping cloaks, and sword fights with almost operatic intensity. Dumas’s story is followed quite faithfully, but the creative fantasy is in the theatrical way of depicting it.

 

As in the book: the story of The Three Musketeers (George Sidney, 1948) is set in 1625 in France. The young and inexperienced D'Artagnan (Gene Kelly) leaves his home village in Gascony to become a musketeer in Paris in the service of His Majesty King Louis XIII (Frank Morgan). In his pocket, he has the letter of recommendation from his father (silent film star Robert Warwick), a former musketeer and friend of the current captain of the musketeers, Treville (Reginald Owen). His father has taught him the art of fencing masterfully and gives him the good advice never to let himself be compromised with impunity. He is only too happy to follow this advice. Very soon, before he has even reached Paris, D'Artagnan gets into a confrontation with Rochefort (Ian Keith), Cardinal Richelieu's (Vincent Price) confidant, and his companion, the mysterious Lady de Winter (Lana Turner). At this first opportunity to preserve his honour in battle, he is unceremoniously struck down and robbed by Rochefort's henchmen, and his credentials are also taken from him. Once in Paris, he not only meets his new friends and comrades-in-arms Athos (Van Heflin), Porthos (Gig Young), and Aramis (Robert Coote), but also his landlord's niece, Constance Bonacieux (June Allyson), and falls in love. Many adventures and entanglements lie ahead and in the path of the brave hero D'Artagnan. Driven by his desire to become the king's musketeer and to prove himself in battle, he falls into the clutches of both the queen (Angela and the cardinal, experiences numerous dangerous situations and sometimes needs his new friends to get away at all. Nevertheless, he sets out to travel to England for the Queen's honour, to retrieve a jewellery box given away by the Queen's secret lover, Lord Buckingham (John Sutton), and to prevent Richelieu from plotting. To assist him, he is accompanied by Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, as well as his dull but loyal servant Planchet (Keenan Wynn). Shortly after D'Artagnan's return from England, Constance is kidnapped at the behest of Cardinal Richelieu. D'Artagnan makes a pass at Milady de Winter, discovers a delicate secret, and only just manages to save himself. Constance is freed and taken to safety in England, shortly after which war breaks out, and our four friends are drawn into it. They overhear a conspiratorial meeting between the Cardinal and Lady de Winter in an inn. The latter is to travel to England and kill Buckingham. Planchet also travels to England at D'Artagnan's behest to warn Buckingham. Lady de Winter is convicted and is to be executed. Constance is appointed her guardian. Milady de Winter, after a lengthy psychological duel, manages to take out Constance as well as a guard and Buckingham and then escapes. Athos and D'Artagnan, who wanted to help Constance, arrive too late; after Constance dies in D'Artagnan's arms, they themselves also have only escaped. Back in Paris, the four friends track down Lady de Winter, pronounce the death sentence on her, and have the prisoner executed. During their subsequent escape towards Spain, they are overpowered and arrested. Their fate seems to be sealed, but young D'Artagnan still has one trump card: the Countess's passport, personally sealed and signed by Cardinal Richelieu, with the note that everything the bearer of this letter undertakes will serve the good of the state. The king is not allowed to know the background of this letter - so Richelieu has to give in. Aramis receives permission to take up a clerical office. Porthos is allowed to marry richly, Athos gets his property back and D'Artagnan is to negotiate a peace offer with the enemy England on behalf of France.

 

Among the many American film versions of Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers are the 1914 Film Attractions Co. production, directed by Charles V. Henkel, the 1921 Douglas Fairbanks production, directed by Fred Niblo, the 1935 RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. production, directed by Rowland V. Lee and starring Walter Abel, Paul Lucas and Margot Grahame, Richard Lester's 1974 Twentieth Century-Fox production starring Michael York, Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain, and Raquel Welch; and the 1993 Buena Vista release, directed by Stephen Herek and starring Charlie Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland, Chris O'Donnell, and Rebecca de Mornay. This splashy 1948 MGM adaptation of The Three Musketeers was the third sound version and was also the first version in Technicolor. In 1947, a representative of the National Catholic Legion of Decency, an organisation that monitored the interests of the Church in motion pictures, objected to the characterisation of Cardinal Richelieu in the planned MGM adaptation of Dumas' story. In a letter to MGM producer Pandro S. Berman, the organisation stated its objection to the cardinal being portrayed as a "worldly and unscrupulous man" and urged the studio to remove the character from the film. Berman refused to remove the character from the film but promised he would use great caution in all sensitive matters pertaining to the story and in the film, Richelieu is never referred to as Cardinal Richelieu. Berman also indicated that Constance, the married mistress of D'Artagnan in the novel, would be unmarried in the film version. While early sound versions of Three Musketeers eliminated the deaths of Constance and Milady, this adaptation telescopes the novel's events to allow for these tragedies. According to AFI, screenwriter Robert Ardry was displeased with Sidney's irreverent approach to the Dumas story and objected to the spoof elements that were added to the film. A biography of Kelly noted that Belgian fencing champion Jean Heremans, who appears in the film as the cardinal's guard, taught Kelly how to fence. Kelly's biography also noted that during the filming of a bedroom scene, Kelly flung Turner onto a bed with such force that she fell to the ground and suffered a broken elbow. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: “True to form, MGM saw to it that Lana Turner, as Milady, was dressed to the nines and heavily bejeweled for her beheading sequence. Portions of the 1948 Three Musketeers, in black and white, showed up in the silent film-within-a-film in 1952's Singin' in the Rain, which of course also starred Gene Kelly.” The Three Musketeers opened to mostly favourable reviews, with several reviewers commenting on the film's unusual tongue-in-cheek approach. New York Times reviewer Bosley Crowther noted that "more glittering swordplay, more dazzling costumes, more colors or more of Miss Turner's chest have never been seen in a picture than are shown in this one." And added: “Completely fantastic, however, is Miss Turner as the villainess, the ambitious Lady de Winter who does the boudoir business for the boss. Loaded with blond hair and jewels, with twelve-gallon hats and ostrich plumes, and poured into her satin dresses with a good bit of Turner to spare, she walks through the palaces and salons with the air of a company-mannered Mae West.” In 1948, there was an Oscar nomination for Robert Planck in the category Best Cinematography/Colour. Hans J. Wollstein at AllMovie: “The Three Musketeers remains an outrageously entertaining yarn, the Southern California locales perfectly standing in for 17th Century France and England.” And finally, Yvette Banek at her blog In so many words: “Lana Turner is really quite superb in her evilness. So evil that she is even photographed without make-up. Well, as 'without make-up' as MGM got, at any rate. Even then, she is exquisitely beautiful - especially when praying.”

 

Sources: Bosley Crowther (New York Times), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Yvette Banek (In so many words), AFI, Wikipedia (Dutch, German), and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Edinburgh Zoo formerly the Scottish National Zoological Park, is an 82-acre (33 ha) non-profit zoological park in the Corstorphine area of Edinburgh, Scotland.

 

The zoo is positioned on the south-facing slopes of Corstorphine Hill, giving extensive views of the city. Established in 1913, and owned by the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, it receives over 600,000 visitors a year, which makes it one of Scotland's most popular paid-for tourist attractions. As well as catering for tourists and locals, the zoo is involved in many scientific pursuits, such as captive breeding of endangered animals, researching into animal behaviour, and active participation in various conservation programmes around the world.

 

Edinburgh Zoo was the first zoo in the world to house and breed penguins. It is the only zoo in Britain to house Queensland koalas and giant pandas, the latter of which left in December 2023. The zoo is a member of the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums (BIAZA), the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA), the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA), and the Association of Scottish Visitor Attractions. It has also been granted four stars by the Scottish Tourism Board. The zoo gardens boast one of the most diverse tree collections in the Lothians.

 

Edinburgh Zoo is a zoological park in Corstorphine, Edinburgh, Scotland which opened on 22 July 1913. Edinburgh had previously been home to a zoological garden which failed to thrive. The new zoo is owned and run by the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland and initially opened as the Scottish National Zoological Park. Modern zoological methods allowed animals to survive in Edinburgh's cold climate.

 

Edinburgh is the only zoo in the United Kingdom to be incorporated by royal charter, and was the first zoo in the world to house and breed penguins. The zoo's penguins have been famous throughout its history, and since the 1950s have performed a daily parade around the park.

 

The zoo was largely unaffected by war, though some animals were euthanised for safety reasons during the Second World War. After the war the park housed a brown bear named Wojtek who had served with the Polish military. In 1972 one of the zoo's king penguins was adopted by the Norwegian military.

 

In the 21st century Edinburgh Zoo was briefly forced to close by the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak, and in 2005 received threats from the Animal Liberation Front. In 2000 a plan for the complete redevelopment of the zoo was begun.

Precursors

 

Scotland's first zoo was called The Royal Edinburgh Zoological Gardens, and predated the modern Edinburgh Zoo by some 70 years. After the death of James Donaldson, a wealthy Scottish publisher and bookseller, the gardens of his country house, Broughton Hall (the area now covered by Bellevue) were converted into a zoological park. Occupying a 6-acre (2.4 ha) site, the park was situated about a mile to the north-east of Central Edinburgh, near East Claremont Street. Naturalist John Graham Dalyell was one of the original promoters of the project and eventually president of the board of directors. The Zoological Gardens opened in 1839 with a collection of stock zoo animals including lions, tigers, monkeys, bears and an elephant.

 

At the time, animals in zoos were typically held in poor conditions in small, cramped cages, and the Zoological Gardens presented no exception. As a result, its animals were frequently afflicted by disease, and also suffered from the harsh easterly winds of the Edinburgh climate. Despite these setbacks, the menagerie attempted to maintain its popularity by putting on concerts, acrobatics shows and displays of fireworks and Montgolfier balloons. Children were carried around the park on the back of the zoo's elephant, giving it a rare opportunity for exercise. Even with these entertainments, the Zoological Gardens were eventually forced to admit defeat. The park was closed and the site developed as tenement flats in 1857. Nothing now remains of the house or its gardens.

 

Foundation

Edinburgh Zoo was created by Thomas Haining Gillespie, a solicitor from Dumfries who dreamed of establishing a zoological park in Scotland. At first he was told that tropical animals would never be able to live in a cold climate like Edinburgh's—a view that had to some extent been borne out by the failure of the Royal Zoological Gardens. In 1908, though, he was encouraged to read of the pioneering methods employed by Carl Hagenbeck, which were allowing tropical animals to thrive in the recently opened Tierpark Hagenbeck in Hamburg, Germany.

 

In 1909, Gillespie and others founded a registered charity which was to become the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland. The Society's first president was lawyer and politician Edward Theodore Salvesen, son of the Norwegian merchant Christian Salveson—a connection which would prove significant in later years. A series of lectures given to the society by J. Arthur Thomson gave yet more momentum to the modern approach being spearheaded by Hagenbeck in Germany.

 

All that remained was to find a suitable site for the new zoo. Gillespie hoped for a site with plenty of sun and with shelter from the north and east winds. He also intended the zoo to be cheaply and quickly accessible via public transport. The society secured an option to purchase the 75-acre (30 ha) Corstorphine Hill House estate for £17,000. The house had been built in 1793 as the home of Scottish accountant William Keith. Its current Scottish Baronial architecture is mostly thanks to remodelling by the Macmillan family in 1891.

 

The zoological society found they were having difficulty gathering the necessary funds before the approaching expiry of the purchase option. Edinburgh City Council stepped in, purchasing the site outright in February 1913. The zoological society was granted full use of the estate in return for a 4 percent annual repayment of the cost.

 

A further £8,000, raised with the help of the society's members, was set aside for the construction and stocking of the park. Initially the zoo occupied only the southernmost 27 acres (11 ha), while the land to the north was used as a golf course. The park was designed by town planner Patrick Geddes and his son-in-law Frank Mears. Following Gillespie's vision, they modeled the park after the open designs of zoos like the New York Zoological Park and Hagenbeck's zoo in Hamburg. These modern zoological parks promoted a more spacious and natural environment for the animals, and stood in stark contrast to the steel cages typical of the menageries built during the Victorian era. The Scottish National Zoological Park, as it was initially called, opened to the public with a large collection of donated and borrowed animals on 22 July 1913, after only 15 weeks of work. The zoo still occupies very much the same area of land today, though the park is being extensively redeveloped.

Early history

 

In its opening year the zoo was incorporated by royal charter—though it was not granted the use of the "Royal" title until 1948, following a visit by King George VI. As of June 2011 Edinburgh Zoo was the only zoo in Britain with a royal charter. The original charter defined the zoological society's mission as being "to promote, facilitate and encourage the study of zoology and kindred subjects and to foster and develop amongst the people an interest in and knowledge of animal life."

 

Thanks to the zoological society's connection with the Salvesen family, some of the zoo's first animals were three king penguins, arriving from South Georgia with a Christian Salvesen whaling expedition that docked in Leith in early 1914. They were the first penguins to be seen anywhere in the world outside of the South Atlantic. The zoo successfully hatched the first ever captive king penguin chick in 1919. Penguins continued to arrive with whaling ships for years afterwards. Today, king penguins are perhaps the zoo's most famous animals.

 

A tropical bird and reptile house was added in 1925, followed by an aquarium, paid for by a grant, in 1927, and an ape house in 1929. The now famous penguin pool was constructed in 1930—though it has since been rebuilt, in 1990, to include a new viewing area. It was in 1928 that the Corstorphine Golf Club finally evacuated the 47 acres (19 ha) to the north of the estate, allowing the zoo to expand significantly. This new area of the park was again designed by Mears, along with his partner Carus-Wilson, and was completed in 1937.

 

Hagenbeck's modern zoo techniques proved effective, and Edinburgh quickly gained a reputation for its good animal conditions. 1934 saw the births in captivity of a sea lion and beaver, and in 1936 a baby chimpanzee followed. A litter of wolves was born in 1938, and soon afterwards the first orangutan to be born in Britain.

 

War years

Edinburgh Zoo was bombed twice during the Second World War, but remained mostly unharmed. One of the bombs, in around 1940, was reported to have killed a giraffe. Nevertheless, Edinburgh was, like all zoos in Britain, affected by the war. Since bombs could fall at any time, it was not considered safe to keep dangerous animals that might escape if their enclosures were damaged. In 1941 the recently born wolves had therefore to be euthanized, along with a collection of dangerous snakes, to guard against any possible danger to the public. Despite the war the zoo continued to grow, with land to the east being purchased in 1942 and construction of a lake beginning soon afterwards.

 

Post-war era

Gillespie retired from his post as director in 1950. In 1956 he was succeeded by Gilbert Fisher, who took over as director-secretary of the Zoological Society and effectively gained control of the zoo.

 

It was around this time that Edinburgh Zoo's now famous Penguin Parade was established. A zookeeper accidentally left a gate to the penguin pool open, and was followed around the zoo by a train of penguins. Visitors were so delighted with the procession that it became a regular occurrence, and today around two-thirds of the zoo's penguins parade round the park every day.

 

One of the zoo's famous inhabitants during the post-war period was Wojtek, a Syrian brown bear. Wojtek had been sold to a group of Polish soldiers during the war. He learned to help the soldiers by carrying crates of ammunition, and became an unofficial mascot. In 1944 the Polish II Corps sailed to Italy to join the British 8th Army. Wojtek had to be officially drafted into the Polish army in order to secure his passage on a British transport ship. In 1946 the II Corps were demobilised and settled in Scotland, at Winfield Camp near Hutton, Berwickshire. Wojtek retired to Edinburgh Zoo in 1947 and lived there until his death in 1963. During his time in the army the bear had developed a liking for cigarettes, and this may have contributed to his popularity as an attraction at the zoo.

 

In 1972 the zoo gained yet more military credentials when king penguin Nils Olav was adopted by the Norwegian King's Guard. Norway's connection with Edinburgh's penguins began with the Salvesen family's links to the zoo, and renewed interest was sparked when a lieutenant called Nils Egelien visited the zoo with the King's Guard in 1961. On his return in 1972 Egelien arranged for the unit to adopt one of the penguins. Nils Olav was named after Egelien and in honour of King Olav V of Norway, and given the rank of lance corporal. A statue of the penguin now stands outside the zoo.

 

Three-year-old polar bear Mercedes was given to the zoo in 1984, after she was rescued in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada. She had begun wandering into the town in search of food. Because of the danger she posed to residents, Mercedes was tagged with a number so she could be tracked. When she could not be persuaded to return to the wild, a decision was taken to shoot her. A member of the Edinburgh Zoological Society collaborated with a cousin in Canada and they were able to rescue Mercedes, finding her a new home at Edinburgh zoo. The bear would become one of the zoo's most popular attractions.

 

In 1986, the society acquired the Highland Wildlife Park, a 259-acre (105 ha) safari park and zoo near Kingussie, 30 miles (48 km) south of Inverness. When opened in 1972 by Neil Macpherson, the Wildlife Park's goal was to showcase animals native to the Highlands of Scotland. Today its focus has changed and it primarily houses tundra species, including some animals which have been moved from Edinburgh Zoo itself.

 

21st century

In October 1999 the zoo had begun to explore the possibility of relocating in order to improve its facilities. As of February 2000 the zoo had scrapped its plans to relocate, instead announcing a "masterplan" for the redevelopment of the entire site.

 

The foot-and-mouth scare of 2001 forced the zoo to close to protect the animals from possible infection. Since the zoo could not welcome any visitors, it faced significant financial losses. Questions were posed about the zoo's future, though in the end the park was able to reopen after only five weeks. Further help came in the form of a £1.9 million donation from an anonymous former resident of the city in early April, just as the zoo reopened.

 

In 2005 the new Budongo chimp house was unveiled, along with the Living Links to Human Evolution Centre, Britain's first primate behaviour research site. In a scientific breakthrough in 2006 chimpanzees at Edinburgh were found to use word-like vocal labels for food.

  

In late 2005 the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) threatened action over the holding in captivity of Mercedes, then Britain's only polar bear. The zoo had initially planned to retire their polar bear exhibit after Mercedes died. When zoo officials announced plans to create a new attraction, citing their responsibility to ensure the survival of the species, the ALF threatened damage to zoo workers' property and other scare-tactics. Edinburgh's treatment of polar bears had often been subject to criticism, punctuated by incidents like the death in 1997 of Mercedes' partner Barney, who choked on a plastic child's toy thrown into his enclosure. In 2009 the zoo carried out their plans to create a new exhibit and improve conditions for Mercedes, moving her to the Highland Wildlife Park, where she was joined by a young male polar bear named Walker. Mercedes was euthanized on compassionate grounds in 2011, suffering from severe arthritis.

 

2007 council troubles

In January 2006 the zoo put forward plans to sell off 15 acres (6.1 ha) of land in order to raise funds for the ongoing redevelopment. The plans were rejected by the council in October 2007 by a single vote, leaving the zoological society "extremely disappointed". In November the zoo announced that it planned to fight the council's decision. A rumor circulated later that month that the zoo was considering a move to Glasgow, though zoo officials insisted the rumor had no truth to it. Organised opposition to the sale resulted in the zoo being allowed to sell only a small portion of the originally proposed land

Jane Hill, the house professor for Allen House. (Photo by Joshua Renaud ’17)

 

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In May 2021 route 7 became the first TfL bus route in London to receive a fleet of hydrogen-powered double-deck buses, with these 20 Wright StreetDeck Hydroliner FCEV vehicles being allocated to Metroline's Perivale (PV) bus garage following Metroline being re-awarded the TfL contract to operate route 7 for a further five years. Although hydrogen-powered buses are no stranger to London (with London having hydrogen fuel cell-powered buses running in service back in 2003), this is the first time double-decker buses in London have been powered by this gas as hydrogen used in a fuel cell is free from harmful emissions; the only by-product is water from the chemical reaction of hydrogen with oxygen from air, a process that produces electricity to power the bus. In this rear view Metroline's WHD 2727 is seen in Old Oak Common Lane in East Acton where once the traffic lights up ahead change to green the vehicle will make the left turn into Du Cane Road in order to head east towards the likes of North Kensington and Ladbroke Grove and into the hustle and bustle of central London.

"Receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves."

- James 1:21f, which is part of the Epistle in today's Mass.

 

Statue from the National Shrine of St Elizabeth Ann Seton in Emmitsburg, MD.

mornings

Zeeke receives messages from the Mystical Sphere OR Zeeke prepares for a fun night of miniature bowling.

Many lotus and water lilies use entrapment for pollination. When flowers open on the first day, the stamen are not yet producing pollen. Pollinators, commonly beetles, will visit the flower and become trapped when the flower closes.