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Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway , is a Nordic , European country and an independent state in the west of the Scandinavian Peninsula . Geographically speaking, the country is long and narrow, and on the elongated coast towards the North Atlantic are Norway's well-known fjords . The Kingdom of Norway includes the main country (the mainland with adjacent islands within the baseline ), Jan Mayen and Svalbard . With these two Arctic areas, Norway covers a land area of ​​385,000 km² and has a population of approximately 5.5 million (2023). Mainland Norway borders Sweden in the east , Finland and Russia in the northeast .

 

Norway is a parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy , where Harald V has been king and head of state since 1991 , and Jonas Gahr Støre ( Ap ) has been prime minister since 2021 . Norway is a unitary state , with two administrative levels below the state: counties and municipalities . The Sami part of the population has, through the Sami Parliament and the Finnmark Act , to a certain extent self-government and influence over traditionally Sami areas. Although Norway has rejected membership of the European Union through two referendums , through the EEA Agreement Norway has close ties with the Union, and through NATO with the United States . Norway is a significant contributor to the United Nations (UN), and has participated with soldiers in several foreign operations mandated by the UN. Norway is among the states that have participated from the founding of the UN , NATO , the Council of Europe , the OSCE and the Nordic Council , and in addition to these is a member of the EEA , the World Trade Organization , the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and is part of the Schengen area .

 

Norway is rich in many natural resources such as oil , gas , minerals , timber , seafood , fresh water and hydropower . Since the beginning of the 20th century, these natural conditions have given the country the opportunity for an increase in wealth that few other countries can now enjoy, and Norwegians have the second highest average income in the world, measured in GDP per capita, as of 2022. The petroleum industry accounts for around 14% of Norway's gross domestic product as of 2018. Norway is the world's largest producer of oil and gas per capita outside the Middle East. However, the number of employees linked to this industry fell from approx. 232,000 in 2013 to 207,000 in 2015.

 

In Norway, these natural resources have been managed for socially beneficial purposes. The country maintains a welfare model in line with the other Nordic countries. Important service areas such as health and higher education are state-funded, and the country has an extensive welfare system for its citizens. Public expenditure in 2018 is approx. 50% of GDP, and the majority of these expenses are related to education, healthcare, social security and welfare. Since 2001 and until 2021, when the country took second place, the UN has ranked Norway as the world's best country to live in . From 2010, Norway is also ranked at the top of the EIU's democracy index . Norway ranks third on the UN's World Happiness Report for the years 2016–2018, behind Finland and Denmark , a report published in March 2019.

 

The majority of the population is Nordic. In the last couple of years, immigration has accounted for more than half of population growth. The five largest minority groups are Norwegian-Poles , Lithuanians , Norwegian-Swedes , Norwegian-Syrians including Syrian Kurds and Norwegian-Pakistani .

 

Norway's national day is 17 May, on this day in 1814 the Norwegian Constitution was dated and signed by the presidency of the National Assembly at Eidsvoll . It is stipulated in the law of 26 April 1947 that 17 May are national public holidays. The Sami national day is 6 February. "Yes, we love this country" is Norway's national anthem, the song was written in 1859 by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (1832–1910).

 

Norway's history of human settlement goes back at least 10,000 years, to the Late Paleolithic , the first period of the Stone Age . Archaeological finds of settlements along the entire Norwegian coast have so far been dated back to 10,400 before present (BP), the oldest find is today considered to be a settlement at Pauler in Brunlanes , Vestfold .

For a period these settlements were considered to be the remains of settlers from Doggerland , an area which today lies beneath the North Sea , but which was once a land bridge connecting today's British Isles with Danish Jutland . But the archaeologists who study the initial phase of the settlement in what is today Norway reckon that the first people who came here followed the coast along what is today Bohuslân. That they arrived in some form of boat is absolutely certain, and there is much evidence that they could easily move over large distances.

 

Since the last Ice Age, there has been continuous settlement in Norway. It cannot be ruled out that people lived in Norway during the interglacial period , but no trace of such a population or settlement has been found.

 

The Stone Age lasted a long time; half of the time that our country has been populated. There are no written accounts of what life was like back then. The knowledge we have has been painstakingly collected through investigations of places where people have stayed and left behind objects that we can understand have been processed by human hands. This field of knowledge is called archaeology . The archaeologists interpret their findings and the history of the surrounding landscape. In our country, the uplift after the Ice Age is fundamental. The history of the settlements at Pauler is no more than fifteen years old.

 

The Fosna culture settled parts of Norway sometime between 10,000–8,000 BC. (see Stone Age in Norway ). The dating of rock carvings is set to Neolithic times (in Norway between 4000 BC to 1700 BC) and show activities typical of hunters and gatherers .

 

Agriculture with livestock and arable farming was introduced in the Neolithic. Swad farming where the farmers move when the field does not produce the expected yield.

 

More permanent and persistent farm settlements developed in the Bronze Age (1700 BC to 500 BC) and the Iron Age . The earliest runes have been found on an arrowhead dated to around 200 BC. Many more inscriptions are dated to around 800, and a number of petty kingdoms developed during these centuries. In prehistoric times, there were no fixed national borders in the Nordic countries and Norway did not exist as a state. The population in Norway probably fell to year 0.

 

Events in this time period, the centuries before the year 1000, are glimpsed in written sources. Although the sagas were written down in the 13th century, many hundreds of years later, they provide a glimpse into what was already a distant past. The story of the fimbul winter gives us a historical picture of something that happened and which in our time, with the help of dendrochronology , can be interpreted as a natural disaster in the year 536, created by a volcanic eruption in El Salvador .

 

In the period between 800 and 1066 there was a significant expansion and it is referred to as the Viking Age . During this period, Norwegians, as Swedes and Danes also did, traveled abroad in longships with sails as explorers, traders, settlers and as Vikings (raiders and pirates ). By the middle of the 11th century, the Norwegian kingship had been firmly established, building its right as descendants of Harald Hårfagre and then as heirs of Olav the Holy . The Norwegian kings, and their subjects, now professed Christianity . In the time around Håkon Håkonsson , in the time after the civil war , there was a small renaissance in Norway with extensive literary activity and diplomatic activity with Europe. The black dew came to Norway in 1349 and killed around half of the population. The entire state apparatus and Norway then entered a period of decline.

 

Between 1396 and 1536, Norway was part of the Kalmar Union , and from 1536 until 1814 Norway had been reduced to a tributary part of Denmark , named as the Personal Union of Denmark-Norway . This staff union entered into an alliance with Napoléon Bonaparte with a war that brought bad times and famine in 1812 . In 1814, Denmark-Norway lost the Anglophone Wars , part of the Napoleonic Wars , and the Danish king was forced to cede Norway to the king of Sweden in the Treaty of Kiel on 14 January of that year. After a Norwegian attempt at independence, Norway was forced into a loose union with Sweden, but where Norway was allowed to create its own constitution, the Constitution of 1814 . In this period, Norwegian, romantic national feeling flourished, and the Norwegians tried to develop and establish their own national self-worth. The union with Sweden was broken in 1905 after it had been threatened with war, and Norway became an independent kingdom with its own monarch, Haakon VII .

 

Norway remained neutral during the First World War , and at the outbreak of the Second World War, Norway again declared itself neutral, but was invaded by National Socialist Germany on 9 April 1940 .

 

Norway became a member of the Western defense alliance NATO in 1949 . Two attempts to join the EU were voted down in referendums by small margins in 1972 and 1994 . Norway has been a close ally of the United States in the post-war period. Large discoveries of oil and natural gas in the North Sea at the end of the 1960s led to tremendous economic growth in the country, which is still ongoing. Traditional industries such as fishing are also part of Norway's economy.

 

Stone Age (before 1700 BC)

When most of the ice disappeared, vegetation spread over the landscape and due to a warm climate around 2000-3000 BC. the forest grew much taller than in modern times. Land uplift after the ice age led to a number of fjords becoming lakes and dry land. The first people probably came from the south along the coast of the Kattegat and overland into Finnmark from the east. The first people probably lived by gathering, hunting and trapping. A good number of Stone Age settlements have been found which show that such hunting and trapping people stayed for a long time in the same place or returned to the same place regularly. Large amounts of gnawed bones show that they lived on, among other things, reindeer, elk, small game and fish.

 

Flintstone was imported from Denmark and apart from small natural deposits along the southern coast, all flintstone in Norway is transported by people. At Espevær, greenstone was quarried for tools in the Stone Age, and greenstone tools from Espevær have been found over large parts of Western Norway. Around 2000-3000 BC the usual farm animals such as cows and sheep were introduced to Norway. Livestock probably meant a fundamental change in society in that part of the people had to be permanent residents or live a semi-nomadic life. Livestock farming may also have led to conflict with hunters.

 

The oldest traces of people in what is today Norway have been found at Pauler , a farm in Brunlanes in Larvik municipality in Vestfold . In 2007 and 2008, the farm has given its name to a number of Stone Age settlements that have been excavated and examined by archaeologists from the Cultural History Museum at UiO. The investigations have been carried out in connection with the new route for the E18 motorway west of Farris. The oldest settlement, located more than 127 m above sea level, is dated to be about 10,400 years old (uncalibrated, more than 11,000 years in real calendar years). From here, the ice sheet was perhaps visible when people settled here. This locality has been named Pauler I, and is today considered to be the oldest confirmed human traces in Norway to date. The place is in the mountains above the Pauler tunnel on the E18 between Larvik and Porsgrunn . The pioneer settlement is a term archaeologists have adopted for the oldest settlement. The archaeologists have speculated about where they came from, the first people in what is today Norway. It has been suggested that they could come by boat or perhaps across the ice from Doggerland or the North Sea, but there is now a large consensus that they came north along what is today the Bohuslän coast. The Fosna culture , the Komsa culture and the Nøstvet culture are the traditional terms for hunting cultures from the Stone Age. One thing is certain - getting to the water was something they mastered, the first people in our country. Therefore, within a short time they were able to use our entire long coast.

 

In the New Stone Age (4000 BC–1700 BC) there is a theory that a new people immigrated to the country, the so-called Stone Ax People . Rock carvings from this period show motifs from hunting and fishing , which were still important industries. From this period, a megalithic tomb has been found in Østfold .

It is uncertain whether there were organized societies or state-like associations in the Stone Age in Norway. Findings from settlements indicate that many lived together and that this was probably more than one family so that it was a slightly larger, organized herd.

 

Finnmark

In prehistoric times, animal husbandry and agriculture were of little economic importance in Finnmark. Livelihoods in Finnmark were mainly based on fish, gathering, hunting and trapping, and eventually domestic reindeer herding became widespread in the Middle Ages. Archaeological finds from the Stone Age have been referred to as the Komsa culture and comprise around 5,000 years of settlement. Finnmark probably got its first settlement around 8000 BC. It is believed that the coastal areas became ice-free 11,000 years BC and the fjord areas around 9,000 years BC. after which willows, grass, heather, birch and pine came into being. Finnmarksvidda was covered by pine forest around 6000 BC. After the Ice Age, the land rose around 80 meters in the inner fjord areas (Alta, Tana, Varanger). Due to ice melting in the polar region, the sea rose in the period 6400–3800 BC. and in areas with little land elevation, some settlements from the first part of the Stone Age were flooded. On Sørøya, the net sea level rise was 12 to 14 meters and many residential areas were flooded.

 

According to Bjørnar Olsen , there are many indications of a connection between the oldest settlement in Western Norway (the " Fosnakulturen ") and that in Finnmark, but it is uncertain in which direction the settlement took place. In the earliest part of the Stone Age, settlement in Finnmark was probably concentrated in the coastal areas, and these only reflected a lifestyle with great mobility and no permanent dwellings. The inner regions, such as Pasvik, were probably used seasonally. The archaeologically proven settlements from the Stone Age in inner Finnmark and Troms are linked to lakes and large watercourses. The oldest petroglyphs in Alta are usually dated to 4200 BC, that is, the Neolithic . Bjørnar Olsen believes that the oldest can be up to 2,000 years older than this.

 

From around 4000 BC a slow deforestation of Finnmark began and around 1800 BC the vegetation distribution was roughly the same as in modern times. The change in vegetation may have increased the distance between the reindeer's summer and winter grazing. The uplift continued slowly from around 4000 BC. at the same time as sea level rise stopped.

 

According to Gutorm Gjessing, the settlement in Finnmark and large parts of northern Norway in the Neolithic was semi-nomadic with movement between four seasonal settlements (following the pattern of life in Sami siida in historical times): On the outer coast in summer (fishing and seal catching) and inland in winter (hunting for reindeer, elk and bear). Povl Simonsen believed instead that the winter residence was in the inner fjord area in a village-like sod house settlement. Bjørnar Olsen believes that at the end of the Stone Age there was a relatively settled population along the coast, while inland there was less settlement and a more mobile lifestyle.

 

Bronze Age (1700 BC–500 BC)

Bronze was used for tools in Norway from around 1500 BC. Bronze is a mixture of tin and copper , and these metals were introduced because they were not mined in the country at the time. Bronze is believed to have been a relatively expensive material. The Bronze Age in Norway can be divided into two phases:

 

Early Bronze Age (1700–1100 BC)

Younger Bronze Age (1100–500 BC)

For the prehistoric (unwritten) era, there is limited knowledge about social conditions and possible state formations. From the Bronze Age, there are large burial mounds of stone piles along the coast of Vestfold and Agder, among others. It is likely that only chieftains or other great men could erect such grave monuments and there was probably some form of organized society linked to these. In the Bronze Age, society was more organized and stratified than in the Stone Age. Then a rich class of chieftains emerged who had close connections with southern Scandinavia. The settlements became more permanent and people adopted horses and ard . They acquired bronze status symbols, lived in longhouses and people were buried in large burial mounds . Petroglyphs from the Bronze Age indicate that humans practiced solar cultivation.

 

Finnmark

In the last millennium BC the climate became cooler and the pine forest disappears from the coast; pine forests, for example, were only found in the innermost part of the Altafjord, while the outer coast was almost treeless. Around the year 0, the limit for birch forest was south of Kirkenes. Animals with forest habitats (elk, bear and beaver) disappeared and the reindeer probably established their annual migration routes sometime at that time. In the period 1800–900 BC there were significantly more settlements in and utilization of the hinterland was particularly noticeable on Finnmarksvidda. From around 1800 BC until year 0 there was a significant increase in contact between Finnmark and areas in the east including Karelia (where metals were produced including copper) and central and eastern Russia. The youngest petroglyphs in Alta show far more boats than the earlier phases and the boats are reminiscent of types depicted in petroglyphs in southern Scandinavia. It is unclear what influence southern Scandinavian societies had as far north as Alta before the year 0. Many of the cultural features that are considered typical Sami in modern times were created or consolidated in the last millennium BC, this applies, among other things, to the custom of burying in brick chambers in stone urns. The Mortensnes burial ground may have been used for 2000 years until around 1600 AD.

 

Iron Age (c. 500 BC–c. 1050 AD)

 

The Einangsteinen is one of the oldest Norwegian runestones; it is from the 4th century

 

Simultaneous production of Vikings

Around 500 years BC the researchers reckon that the Bronze Age will be replaced by the Iron Age as iron takes over as the most important material for weapons and tools. Bronze, wood and stone were still used. Iron was cheaper than bronze, easier to work than flint , and could be used for many purposes; iron probably became common property. Iron could, among other things, be used to make solid and sharp axes which made it much easier to fell trees. In the Iron Age, gold and silver were also used partly for decoration and partly as means of payment. It is unknown which language was used in Norway before our era. From around the year 0 until around the year 800, everyone in Scandinavia (except the Sami) spoke Old Norse , a North Germanic language. Subsequently, several different languages ​​developed in this area that were only partially mutually intelligible. The Iron Age is divided into several periods:

 

Early Iron Age

Pre-Roman Iron Age (c. 500 BC–c. 0)

Roman Iron Age (c. 0–c. AD 400)

Migration period (approx. 400–600). In the migration period (approx. 400–600), new peoples came to Norway, and ruins of fortress buildings etc. are interpreted as signs that there has been talk of a violent invasion.

Younger Iron Age

Merovingian period (500–800)

 

The Viking Age (793–1066)

Norwegian Vikings go on plundering expeditions and trade voyages around the coastal countries of Western Europe . Large groups of Norwegians emigrate to the British Isles , Iceland and Greenland . Harald Hårfagre starts a unification process of Norway late in the 8th century , which was completed by Harald Hardråde in the 1060s . The country was Christianized under the kings Olav Tryggvason , fell in the battle of Svolder ( 1000 ) and Olav Haraldsson (the saint), fell in the battle of Stiklestad in 1030 .

 

Sources of prehistoric times

Shrinking glaciers in the high mountains, including in Jotunheimen and Breheimen , have from around the year 2000 uncovered objects from the Viking Age and earlier. These are objects of organic material that have been preserved by the ice and that elsewhere in nature are broken down in a few months. The finds are getting older as the melting makes the archaeologists go deeper into the ice. About half of all archaeological discoveries on glaciers in the world are made in Oppland . In 2013, a 3,400-year-old shoe and a robe from the year 300 were found. Finds at Lomseggen in Lom published in 2020 revealed, among other things, well-preserved horseshoes used on a mountain pass. Many hundreds of items include preserved clothing, knives, whisks, mittens, leather shoes, wooden chests and horse equipment. A piece of cloth dated to the year 1000 has preserved its original colour. In 2014, a wooden ski from around the year 700 was found in Reinheimen . The ski is 172 cm long and 14 cm wide, with preserved binding of leather and wicker.

 

Pytheas from Massalia is the oldest known account of what was probably the coast of Norway, perhaps somewhere on the coast of Møre. Pytheas visited Britannia around 325 BC. and traveled further north to a country by the "Ice Sea". Pytheas described the short summer night and the midnight sun farther north. He wrote, among other things, that people there made a drink from grain and honey. Caesar wrote in his work about the Gallic campaign about the Germanic tribe Haruders. Other Roman sources around the year 0 mention the land of the Cimbri (Jutland) and the Cimbri headlands ( Skagen ) and that the sources stated that Cimbri and Charyds lived in this area. Some of these peoples may have immigrated to Norway and there become known as hordes (as in Hordaland). Sources from the Mediterranean area referred to the islands of Scandia, Scandinavia and Thule ("the outermost of all islands"). The Roman historian Tacitus wrote around the year 100 a work about Germania and mentioned the people of Scandia, the Sviones. Ptolemy wrote around the year 150 that the Kharudes (Hordes) lived further north than all the Cimbri, in the north lived the Finnoi (Finns or Sami) and in the south the Gutai (Goths). The Nordic countries and Norway were outside the Roman Empire , which dominated Europe at the time. The Gothic-born historian Jordanes wrote in the 5th century about 13 tribes or people groups in Norway, including raumaricii (probably Romerike ), ragnaricii ( Ranrike ) and finni or skretefinni (skrid finner or ski finner, i.e. Sami) as well as a number of unclear groups. Prokopios wrote at the same time about Thule north of the land of the Danes and Slavs, Thule was ten times as big as Britannia and the largest of all the islands. In Thule, the sun was up 40 days straight in the summer. After the migration period , southern Europeans' accounts of northern Europe became fuller and more reliable.

 

Settlement in prehistoric times

Norway has around 50,000 farms with their own names. Farm names have persisted for a long time, over 1000 years, perhaps as much as 2000 years. The name researchers have arranged different types of farm names chronologically, which provides a basis for determining when the place was used by people or received a permanent settlement. Uncompounded landscape names such as Haug, Eid, Vik and Berg are believed to be the oldest. Archaeological traces indicate that some areas have been inhabited earlier than assumed from the farm name. Burial mounds also indicate permanent settlement. For example, the burial ground at Svartelva in Løten was used from around the year 0 to the year 1000 when Christianity took over. The first farmers probably used large areas for inland and outland, and new farms were probably established based on some "mother farms". Names such as By (or Bø) show that it is an old place of residence. From the older Iron Age, names with -heim (a common Germanic word meaning place of residence) and -stad tell of settlement, while -vin and -land tell of the use of the place. Farm names in -heim are often found as -um , -eim or -em as in Lerum and Seim, there are often large farms in the center of the village. New farm names with -city and -country were also established in the Viking Age . The first farmers probably used the best areas. The largest burial grounds, the oldest archaeological finds and the oldest farm names are found where the arable land is richest and most spacious.

 

It is unclear whether the settlement expansion in Roman times, migrations and the Iron Age is due to immigration or internal development and population growth. Among other things, it is difficult to demonstrate where in Europe the immigrants have come from. The permanent residents had both fields (where grain was grown) and livestock that grazed in the open fields, but it is uncertain which of these was more important. Population growth from around the year 200 led to more utilization of open land, for example in the form of settlements in the mountains. During the migration period, it also seems that in parts of the country it became common to have cluster gardens or a form of village settlement.

 

Norwegian expansion northwards

From around the year 200, there was a certain migration by sea from Rogaland and Hordaland to Nordland and Sør-Troms. Those who moved settled down as a settled Iron Age population and became dominant over the original population which may have been Sami . The immigrant Norwegians, Bumen , farmed with livestock that were fed inside in the winter as well as some grain cultivation and fishing. The northern border of the Norwegians' settlement was originally at the Toppsundet near Harstad and around the year 500 there was a Norwegian settlement to Malangsgapet. That was as far north as it was possible to grow grain at the time. Malangen was considered the border between Hålogaland and Finnmork until around 1400 . Further into the Viking Age and the Middle Ages, there was immigration and settlement of Norwegian speakers along the coast north of Malangen. Around the year 800, Norwegians lived along the entire outer coast to Vannøy . The Norwegians partly copied Sami livelihoods such as whaling, fur hunting and reindeer husbandry. It was probably this area between Malangen and Vannøy that was Ottar from the Hålogaland area. In the Viking Age, there were also some Norwegian settlements further north and east. East of the North Cape are the scattered archaeological finds of Norwegian settlement in the Viking Age. There are Norwegian names for fjords and islands from the Viking Age, including fjord names with "-anger". Around the year 1050, there were Norwegian settlements on the outer coast of Western Finnmark. Traders and tax collectors traveled even further.

 

North of Malangen there were Norse farming settlements in the Iron Age. Malangen was considered Finnmark's western border until 1300. There are some archaeological traces of Norse activity around the coast from Tromsø to Kirkenes in the Viking Age. Around Tromsø, the research indicates a Norse/Sami mixed culture on the coast.

 

From the year 1100 and the next 200–300 years, there are no traces of Norwegian settlement north and east of Tromsø. It is uncertain whether this is due to depopulation, whether it is because the Norwegians further north were not Christianized or because there were no churches north of Lenvik or Tromsø . Norwegian settlement in the far north appears from sources from the 14th century. In the Hanseatic period , the settlement was developed into large areas specialized in commercial fishing, while earlier (in the Viking Age) there had been farms with a combination of fishing and agriculture. In 1307 , a fortress and the first church east of Tromsø were built in Vardø . Vardø became a small Norwegian town, while Vadsø remained Sami. Norwegian settlements and churches appeared along the outermost coast in the Middle Ages. After the Reformation, perhaps as a result of a decline in fish stocks or fish prices, there were Norwegian settlements in the inner fjord areas such as Lebesby in Laksefjord. Some fishing villages at the far end of the coast were abandoned for good. In the interior of Finnmark, there was no national border for a long time and Kautokeino and Karasjok were joint Norwegian-Swedish areas with strong Swedish influence. The border with Finland was established in 1751 and with Russia in 1826.

 

On a Swedish map from 1626, Norway's border is indicated at Malangen, while Sweden with this map showed a desire to control the Sami area which had been a common area.

 

The term Northern Norway only came into use at the end of the 19th century and administratively the area was referred to as Tromsø Diocese when Tromsø became a bishopric in 1840. There had been different designations previously: Hålogaland originally included only Helgeland and when Norse settlement spread north in the Viking Age and the Middle Ages, Hålogaland was used for the area north approximately to Malangen , while Finnmark or "Finnmarken", "the land of the Sami", lay outside. The term Northern Norway was coined at a cafe table in Kristiania in 1884 by members of the Nordlændingernes Forening and was first commonly used in the interwar period as it eventually supplanted "Hålogaland".

 

State formation

The battle in Hafrsfjord in the year 872 has long been regarded as the day when Norway became a kingdom. The year of the battle is uncertain (may have been 10-20 years later). The whole of Norway was not united in that battle: the process had begun earlier and continued a couple of hundred years later. This means that the geographical area became subject to a political authority and became a political unit. The geographical area was perceived as an area as it is known, among other things, from Ottar from Hålogaland's account for King Alfred of Wessex around the year 880. Ottar described "the land of the Norwegians" as very long and narrow, and it was narrowest in the far north. East of the wasteland in the south lay Sveoland and in the north lay Kvenaland in the east. When Ottar sailed south along the land from his home ( Malangen ) to Skiringssal, he always had Norway ("Nordveg") on his port side and the British Isles on his starboard side. The journey took a good month. Ottar perceived "Nordveg" as a geographical unit, but did not imply that it was a political unit. Ottar separated Norwegians from Swedes and Danes. It is unclear why Ottar perceived the population spread over such a large area as a whole. It is unclear whether Norway as a geographical term or Norwegians as the name of a ethnic group is the oldest. The Norwegians had a common language which in the centuries before Ottar did not differ much from the language of Denmark and Sweden.

 

According to Sverre Steen, it is unlikely that Harald Hårfagre was able to control this entire area as one kingdom. The saga of Harald was written 300 years later and at his death Norway was several smaller kingdoms. Harald probably controlled a larger area than anyone before him and at most Harald's kingdom probably included the coast from Trøndelag to Agder and Vestfold as well as parts of Viken . There were probably several smaller kingdoms of varying extent before Harald and some of these are reflected in traditional landscape names such as Ranrike and Ringerike . Landscape names of "-land" (Rogaland) and "-mark" (Hedmark) as well as names such as Agder and Sogn may have been political units before Harald.

 

According to Sverre Steen, the national assembly was completed at the earliest at the battle of Stiklestad in 1030 and the introduction of Christianity was probably a significant factor in the establishment of Norway as a state. Håkon I the good Adalsteinsfostre introduced the leasehold system where the "coastal land" (as far as the salmon went up the rivers) was divided into ship raiders who were to provide a longship with soldiers and supplies. The leidange was probably introduced as a defense against the Danes. The border with the Danes was traditionally at the Göta älv and several times before and after Harald Hårfagre the Danes had control over central parts of Norway.

 

Christianity was known and existed in Norway before Olav Haraldson's time. The spread occurred both from the south (today's Denmark and northern Germany) and from the west (England and Ireland). Ansgar of Bremen , called the "Apostle of the North", worked in Sweden, but he was never in Norway and probably had little influence in the country. Viking expeditions brought the Norwegians of that time into contact with Christian countries and some were baptized in England, Ireland and northern France. Olav Tryggvason and Olav Haraldson were Vikings who returned home. The first Christians in Norway were also linked to pre-Christian local religion, among other things, by mixing Christian symbols with symbols of Odin and other figures from Norse religion.

 

According to Sverre Steen, the introduction of Christianity in Norway should not be perceived as a nationwide revival. At Mostratinget, Christian law was introduced as law in the country and later incorporated into the laws of the individual jurisdictions. Christianity primarily involved new forms in social life, among other things exposure and images of gods were prohibited, it was forbidden to "put out" unwanted infants (to let them die), and it was forbidden to have multiple wives. The church became a nationwide institution with a special group of officials tasked with protecting the church and consolidating the new religion. According to Sverre Steen, Christianity and the church in the Middle Ages should therefore be considered together, and these became a new unifying factor in the country. The church and Christianity linked Norway to Roman Catholic Europe with Church Latin as the common language, the same time reckoning as the rest of Europe and the church in Norway was arranged much like the churches in Denmark, Sweden and England. Norway received papal approval in 1070 and became its own church province in 1152 with Archbishop Nidaros .

 

With Christianity, the country got three social powers: the peasants (organized through the things), the king with his officials and the church with the clergy. The things are the oldest institution: At allthings all armed men had the right to attend (in part an obligation to attend) and at lagthings met emissaries from an area (that is, the lagthings were representative assemblies). The Thing both ruled in conflicts and established laws. The laws were memorized by the participants and written down around the year 1000 or later in the Gulationsloven , Frostatingsloven , Eidsivatingsloven and Borgartingsloven . The person who had been successful at the hearing had to see to the implementation of the judgment themselves.

 

Early Middle Ages (1050s–1184)

The early Middle Ages is considered in Norwegian history to be the period between the end of the Viking Age around 1050 and the coronation of King Sverre in 1184 . The beginning of the period can be dated differently, from around the year 1000 when the Christianization of the country took place and up to 1100 when the Viking Age was over from an archaeological point of view. From 1035 to 1130 it was a time of (relative) internal peace in Norway, even several of the kings attempted campaigns abroad, including in 1066 and 1103 .

 

During this period, the church's organization was built up. This led to a gradual change in religious customs. Religion went from being a domestic matter to being regulated by common European Christian law and the royal power gained increased power and influence. Slavery (" servitude ") was gradually abolished. The population grew rapidly during this period, as the thousands of farm names ending in -rud show.

 

The urbanization of Norway is a historical process that has slowly but surely changed Norway from the early Viking Age to today, from a country based on agriculture and sea salvage, to increasingly trade and industry. As early as the ninth century, the country got its first urban community, and in the eleventh century we got the first permanent cities.

 

In the 1130s, civil war broke out . This was due to a power struggle and that anyone who claimed to be the king's son could claim the right to the throne. The disputes escalated into extensive year-round warfare when Sverre Sigurdsson started a rebellion against the church's and the landmen's candidate for the throne , Magnus Erlingsson .

 

Emergence of cities

The oldest Norwegian cities probably emerged from the end of the 9th century. Oslo, Bergen and Nidaros became episcopal seats, which stimulated urban development there, and the king built churches in Borg , Konghelle and Tønsberg. Hamar and Stavanger became new episcopal seats and are referred to in the late 12th century as towns together with the trading places Veøy in Romsdal and Kaupanger in Sogn. In the late Middle Ages, Borgund (on Sunnmøre), Veøy (in Romsdalsfjorden) and Vågan (in Lofoten) were referred to as small trading places. Urbanization in Norway occurred in few places compared to the neighboring countries, only 14 places appear as cities before 1350. Stavanger became a bishopric around 1120–1130, but it is unclear whether the place was already a city then. The fertile Jæren and outer Ryfylke were probably relatively densely populated at that time. A particularly large concentration of Irish artefacts from the Viking Age has been found in Stavanger and Nord-Jæren.

 

It has been difficult to estimate the population in the Norwegian medieval cities, but it is considered certain that the cities grew rapidly in the Middle Ages. Oscar Albert Johnsen estimated the city's population before the Black Death at 20,000, of which 7,000 in Bergen, 3,000 in Nidaros, 2,000 in Oslo and 1,500 in Tunsberg. Based on archaeological research, Lunden estimates that Oslo had around 1,500 inhabitants in 250 households in the year 1300. Bergen was built up more densely and, with the concentration of exports there, became Norway's largest city in a special position for several hundred years. Knut Helle suggests a city population of 20,000 at most in the High Middle Ages, of which almost half in Bergen.

 

The Bjarkøyretten regulated the conditions in cities (especially Bergen and Nidaros) and in trading places, and for Nidaros had many of the same provisions as the Frostating Act . Magnus Lagabøte's city law replaced the bjarkøretten and from 1276 regulated the settlement in Bergen and with corresponding laws also drawn up for Oslo, Nidaros and Tunsberg. The city law applied within the city's roof area . The City Act determined that the city's public streets consisted of wide commons (perpendicular to the shoreline) and ran parallel to the shoreline, similarly in Nidaros and Oslo. The roads were small streets of up to 3 cubits (1.4 metres) and linked to the individual property. From the Middle Ages, the Norwegian cities were usually surrounded by wooden fences. The urban development largely consisted of low wooden houses which stood in contrast to the relatively numerous and dominant churches and monasteries built in stone.

 

The City Act and supplementary provisions often determined where in the city different goods could be traded, in Bergen, for example, cattle and sheep could only be traded on the Square, and fish only on the Square or directly from the boats at the quayside. In Nidaros, the blacksmiths were required to stay away from the densely populated areas due to the risk of fire, while the tanners had to stay away from the settlements due to the strong smell. The City Act also attempted to regulate the influx of people into the city (among other things to prevent begging in the streets) and had provisions on fire protection. In Oslo, from the 13th century or earlier, it was common to have apartment buildings consisting of single buildings on a couple of floors around a courtyard with access from the street through a gate room. Oslo's medieval apartment buildings were home to one to four households. In the urban farms, livestock could be kept, including pigs and cows, while pastures and fields were found in the city's rooftops . In the apartment buildings there could be several outbuildings such as warehouses, barns and stables. Archaeological excavations show that much of the buildings in medieval Oslo, Trondheim and Tønsberg resembled the oblong farms that have been preserved at Bryggen in Bergen . The land boundaries in Oslo appear to have persisted for many hundreds of years, in Bergen right from the Middle Ages to modern times.

 

High Middle Ages (1184–1319)

After civil wars in the 12th century, the country had a relative heyday in the 13th century. Iceland and Greenland came under the royal authority in 1262 , and the Norwegian Empire reached its greatest extent under Håkon IV Håkonsson . The last king of Haraldsätten, Håkon V Magnusson , died sonless in 1319 . Until the 17th century, Norway stretched all the way down to the mouth of Göta älv , which was then Norway's border with Sweden and Denmark.

 

Just before the Black Death around 1350, there were between 65,000 and 85,000 farms in the country, and there had been a strong growth in the number of farms from 1050, especially in Eastern Norway. In the High Middle Ages, the church or ecclesiastical institutions controlled 40% of the land in Norway, while the aristocracy owned around 20% and the king owned 7%. The church and monasteries received land through gifts from the king and nobles, or through inheritance and gifts from ordinary farmers.

 

Settlement and demography in the Middle Ages

Before the Black Death, there were more and more farms in Norway due to farm division and clearing. The settlement spread to more marginal agricultural areas higher inland and further north. Eastern Norway had the largest areas to take off and had the most population growth towards the High Middle Ages. Along the coast north of Stad, settlement probably increased in line with the extent of fishing. The Icelandic Rimbegla tells around the year 1200 that the border between Finnmark (the land of the Sami) and resident Norwegians in the interior was at Malangen , while the border all the way out on the coast was at Kvaløya . From the end of the High Middle Ages, there were more Norwegians along the coast of Finnmark and Nord-Troms. In the inner forest and mountain tracts along the current border between Norway and Sweden, the Sami exploited the resources all the way down to Hedmark.

 

There are no censuses or other records of population and settlement in the Middle Ages. At the time of the Reformation, the population was below 200,000 and only in 1650 was the population at the same level as before the Black Death. When Christianity was introduced after the year 1000, the population was around 200,000. After the Black Death, many farms and settlements were abandoned and deserted, in the most marginal agricultural areas up to 80% of the farms were abandoned. Places such as Skien, Veøy and Borgund (Ålesund) went out of use as trading towns. By the year 1300, the population was somewhere between 300,000 and 560,000 depending on the calculation method. Common methods start from detailed information about farms in each village and compare this with the situation in 1660 when there are good headcounts. From 1300 to 1660, there was a change in the economic base so that the coastal villages received a larger share of the population. The inland areas of Eastern Norway had a relatively larger population in the High Middle Ages than after the Reformation. Kåre Lunden concludes that the population in the year 1300 was close to 500,000, of which 15,000 lived in cities. Lunden believes that the population in 1660 was still slightly lower than the peak before the Black Death and points out that farm settlement in 1660 did not reach the same extent as in the High Middle Ages. In 1660, the population in Troms and Finnmark was 6,000 and 3,000 respectively (2% of the total population), in 1300 these areas had an even smaller share of the country's population and in Finnmark there were hardly any Norwegian-speaking inhabitants. In the High Middle Ages, the climate was more favorable for grain cultivation in the north. Based on the number of farms, the population increased 162% from 1000 to 1300, in Northern and Western Europe as a whole the growth was 200% in the same period.

 

Late Middle Ages (1319–1537)

Due to repeated plague epidemics, the population was roughly halved and the least productive of the country's farms were laid waste. It took several hundred years before the population again reached the level before 1349 . However, those who survived the epidemics gained more financial resources by sharing. Tax revenues for the state almost collapsed, and a large part of the noble families died out or sank into peasant status due to the fall in national debt . The Hanseatic League took over trade and shipping and dominated fish exports. The Archbishop of Nidaros was the country's most powerful man economically and politically, as the royal dynasty married into the Swedish in 1319 and died out in 1387 . Eventually, Copenhagen became the political center of the kingdom and Bergen the commercial center, while Trondheim remained the religious center.

 

From Reformation to Autocracy (1537–1660)

In 1537 , the Reformation was carried out in Norway. With that, almost half of the country's property was confiscated by the royal power at the stroke of a pen. The large seizure increased the king's income and was able, among other things, to expand his military power and consolidated his power in the kingdom. From roughly the time of the Reformation and in the following centuries, the state increased its power and importance in people's lives. Until around 1620, the state administration was fairly simple and unspecialised: in Copenhagen, the central administration mainly consisted of a chancellery and an interest chamber ; and sheriffs ruled the civil (including bailiffs and sheriffs) and the military in their district, the sheriffs collected taxes and oversaw business. The accounts were not clear and without summaries. The clergy, which had great power as a separate organization, was appointed by the state church after the Reformation, administered from Copenhagen. In this period, Norway was ruled by (mainly) Danish noble sheriffs, who acted as intermediaries between the peasants and the Oldenborg king in the field of justice, tax and customs collection.

 

From 1620, the state apparatus went through major changes where specialization of functions was a main issue. The sheriff's tasks were divided between several, more specialized officials - the sheriffs retained the formal authority over these, who in practice were under the national administration in Copenhagen. Among other things, a separate military officer corps was established, a separate customs office was established and separate treasurers for taxes and fees were appointed. The Overbergamtet, the central governing body for overseeing mining operations in Norway, was established in 1654 with an office in Christiania and this agency was to oversee the mining chiefs in the Nordenfjeld and Sønnenfjeld areas (the mines at Kongsberg and Røros were established in the previous decades). The formal transition from county government to official government with fixed-paid county officials took place after 1660, but the real changes had taken place from around 1620. The increased specialization and transition to official government meant that experts, not amateurs, were in charge of each area, and this civil service meant, according to Sverre Steen that the dictatorship was not a personal dictatorship.

 

From 1570 until 1721, the Oldenborg dynasty was in repeated wars with the Vasa dynasty in Sweden. The financing of these wars led to a severe increase in taxation which caused great distress.

 

Politically-geographically, the Oldenborg kings had to cede to Sweden the Norwegian provinces of Jemtland , Herjedalen , Idre and Särna , as well as Båhuslen . As part of the financing of the wars, the state apparatus was expanded. Royal power began to assert itself to a greater extent in the administration of justice. Until this period, cases of violence and defamation had been treated as civil cases between citizens. The level of punishment was greatly increased. During this period, at least 307 people were also executed for witchcraft in Norway. Culturally, the country was marked by the fact that the written language became Danish because of the Bible translation and the University of Copenhagen's educational monopoly.

 

From the 16th century, business became more marked by production for sale and not just own consumption. In the past, it was particularly the fisheries that had produced such a large surplus of goods that it was sold to markets far away, the dried fish trade via Bergen is known from around the year 1100. In the 16th century, the yield from the fisheries multiplied, especially due to the introduction of herring in Western Norway and in Trøndelag and because new tools made fishing for herring and skre more efficient. Line fishing and cod nets that were introduced in the 17th century were controversial because the small fishermen believed it favored citizens in the cities.

 

Forestry and the timber trade became an important business, particularly because of the boom saw which made it possible to saw all kinds of tables and planks for sale abroad. The demand for timber increased at the same time in Europe, Norway had plenty of forests and in the 17th century timber became the country's most important export product. There were hundreds of sawmills in the country and the largest had the feel of factories . In 1680, the king regulated the timber trade by allowing exports only from privileged sawmills and in a certain quantity.

 

From the 1520s, some silver was mined in Telemark. When the peasants chased the German miners whereupon the king executed five peasants and demanded compensation from the other rebellious peasants. The background for the harsh treatment was that the king wanted to assert his authority over the extraction of precious metals. The search for metals led to the silver works at Kongsberg after 1624, copper in the mountain villages between Trøndelag and Eastern Norway, and iron, among other things, in Agder and lower Telemark. The financial gain of the quarries at that time is unclear because there are no reliable accounts. Kongsberg made Denmark-Norway self-sufficient in silver and the copper works produced a good deal more than the domestic demand and became an important export commodity. Kongsberg and Røros were the only Norwegian towns established because of the quarries.

 

In addition to the sawmills, in the 17th century, industrial production ( manufactures ) was established in, among other things, wool weaving, soap production, tea boiling , nail production and the manufacture of gunpowder .

 

The monopoly until the Peace of Kiel (1660–1814)

Until 1660, the king had been elected by the Danish Riksråd, while he inherited the kingdom of Norway, which was a tradition in Norway. After a series of military defeats, the king committed a coup d'état and deposed the Riksdag. King Frederik III introduced absolute power, which meant that there were hardly any legal restrictions on the king's power. This reinforced the expansion of the state apparatus that had been going on for a few decades, and the civil administration was controlled to a greater extent from the central administration in Copenhagen. According to Sverre Steen, the more specialized and expanded civil service meant that the period of autocracy was not essentially a personal dictatorship: The changing monarchs had the formal last word on important matters, but higher officials set the conditions. According to Steen, the autocracy was not tyrannical where the citizens were treated arbitrarily by the king and officials: the laws were strict and the punishments harsh, but there was legal certainty. The king rarely used his right to punish outside the judiciary and often used his right to commute sentences or pardons. It almost never happened that the king intervened in a court case before a verdict had been passed.

 

In 1662, the sheriff system (in which the nobility played an important role) was abolished and replaced with amt . Norway was divided into four main counties (Akershus, Kristiansands, Bergenhus and Trondhjems) which were later called stiftamt led by stiftamtmen with a number of county marshals and bailiffs (futer) under them. The county administrator in Akershus also had other roles such as governor. The former sheriffs were almost absolute within their fiefs, while the new stifamtmen and amtmen had more limited authority; among other things, they did not have military equipment like the sheriffs. The county officials had no control over state income and could not enrich themselves privately as the sheriffs could, taxes and fees were instead handled by their own officials. County officials were employed by the king and, unlike the sheriffs, had a fixed salary. Officials appointed by the king were responsible for local government. Before 1662, the sheriffs themselves appointed low officials such as bailiffs, mayors and councillors. A church commissioner was given responsibility for overseeing the churchwardens' accounts. In 1664, two general road masters were appointed for Norway, one for Sonnafjelske (Eastland and Sørlandet) and one for Nordafjelske (Westlandet and Trøndelag; Northern Norway had no roads).

 

Both Denmark and Norway got new law books. The wretched state finances led to an extensive sale of crown property, first to the state's creditors. Further sales meant that many farmers became self-owned at the end of the 18th century. Industrial exploitation of Norwegian natural resources began, and trade and shipping and especially increasing timber exports led to economic growth in the latter part of the 1700s.

 

From 1500 to 1814, Norway did not have its own foreign policy. After the dissolution of the Kalmar Union in 1523, Denmark remained the leading power in the Nordic region and dominated the Baltic Sea, while Sweden sought to expand geographically in all directions and strengthened its position. From 1625 to 1660, Denmark lost its dominance: Christian IV lost to the emperor in the Thirty Years' War and ceded Skåne, Blekinge, Halland, Båhuslen , Jemtland and Herjedalen as well as all the islands in the inner part of the Baltic Sea. With this, Norway got its modern borders, which have remained in place ever since. Sweden was no longer confined by Norway and Denmark, and Sweden became the great power in the Nordic region. At the same time, Norway remained far from Denmark (until 1660 there was an almost continuous land connection between Norway and Denmark). During the Great Nordic War, Danish forces moved towards Scania and ended with Charles the 12th falling at Fredriksten . From 1720 to 1807 there was peace except for the short Cranberry War in 1788. In August 1807, the British navy surrounded Denmark and demanded that the Danish fleet be handed over. After bombing 2-7. On September 1807, the Danes capitulated and handed over the fleet (known as the "fleet robbery") and the arsenal. Two weeks later, Denmark entered into an alliance with Napoleon and Great Britain declared war on Denmark in November 1807. The Danish leadership had originally envisioned an alliance with Great Britain. Anger at the fleet robbery and fear of French occupation of Denmark itself (and thus breaking the connection with Norway) were probably the motive for the alliance with France. According to Sverre Steen, the period 1807-1814 was the most significant in Norway's history (before the Second World War). Foreign trade was paralyzed and hundreds of Norwegian ships were seized by the British. British ships, both warships and privateers , blocked the sea route between Norway and Denmark as described in " Terje Vigen " by Henrik Ibsen . During the Napoleonic Wars , there was a food shortage and famine in Norway, between 20 and 30 thousand people out of a population of around 900 thousand died from sheer lack of food or diseases related to malnutrition.

 

From the late summer of 1807, Norway was governed by a government commission led by the governor and commander-in-chief, Prince Christian August . Christian August was considered an honorable and capable leader. In 1808, a joint Russian and Danish/Norwegian attack on Sweden was planned; the campaign fails completely and Christian August concludes a truce with the Swedes. The Swedish king was deposed, the country got a new constitution with a limited monarchy and in the summer of 1808, Christian August was elected heir to the throne in Sweden. Christian August died a few months after he moved to Sweden and the French general Jean Baptiste Bernadotte became the new heir to the throne with the name "Karl Johan". After Napoleon was defeated at Leipzig in 1813, Bernadotte entered Holstein with Swedish forces and forced the Danish king to the Peace of Kiel .

 

Colonies and slave trade

Denmark-Norway acquired overseas colonies: St. Thomas (1665), St. Jan and St. Croix (18th century). At the same time, the kingdom entered into an agreement with rulers on the Gold Coast (Ghana) regarding the establishment of slave forts, including Christiansborg in Accra . The trade was triangular from Copenhagen to the Gold Coast with weapons, gunpowder and liquor which were exchanged for gold, ivory and slaves . The slaves were transported across the Atlantic to the Caribbean, among other things to the Danish-Norwegian colonies where St. Croix was most important. The ships returned to Copenhagen with sugar, tobacco, cotton and other goods. About 100,000 slaves were transported across the sea on Danish and Norwegian ships from 1660 to 1802. About 10% of the slaves died during the crossing. At least two of the slave ships ("Cornelia" and "Friderich") were in Norwegian ownership. Engelbret Hesselberg was a fut on St. Croix and after a slave rebellion in 1759, he had some of the rebels executed, among other things, by burning them alive, hanging them by their feet or putting them naked in a cage in the sun. At the end of the 18th century, opposition to the slave trade grew in Denmark-Norway, among others the Norwegian Claus Fasting promoted strong criticism. The slave trade was banned from 1803, while slavery itself was banned in Denmark from 1848.

 

Immigration to Norway

In the 1500s and 1600s, many people moved within Europe. From Germany, France and the Netherlands, enterprising people came to Sweden and Denmark, and gave rise to influential families. Danes in particular came to Norway who, formally speaking, were not foreigners, but were probably perceived as strangers by the local population. There was some immigration of ethnic Germans, some from areas under the Danish crown and others. Some immigrated from the Netherlands, England and Scotland. For example, half of those who applied for citizenship in Bergen in the 17th century were foreigners and they were often founders of new businesses. Immigrants from the Netherlands brought knowledge of line fishing and the preparation of herring; the Scot came with knowledge of the production of cuttlefish ; and Germans engaged in mining. Some foreigners ran large farms they bought near the cities, for example Frogner near Christiania and Lade near Trondheim. A large part of the country's leading echelon of officials and merchants were around 1,800 descendants of immigrants, and family names of foreign origin had a higher status. According to Sverre Steen, it was special for Norway that the immigrants and their descendants were given such a much stronger position than other residents.

 

Social and cultural conditions

Around 1800, most people, both women and men, in Norway could read and many could write. Foreigners traveling in Norway were surprised at how well-informed and interested Norwegian farmers were about the situation outside the country. In the 17th century, Peder Claussøn Friis translated Snorre Sturlason's royal sagas from Old Norse, and in a new edition this book became important in nation-building in later centuries. Early in the 18th century, Tormod Torfæus wrote Norway's history to 1387 in 4 volumes in Latin ; the preparation is considered to be scientifically unsustainable. In the 1730s, Ludvig Holberg wrote the popular scientific Danmarks Reges Historie , which is considered to maintain a high standard. According to Holberg, Norway emerged as a kingdom after the "nomenclature union in 1380". Holberg was the most important Norwegian cultural figure in the Danish era. Gerhard Schøning wrote Norges Reges Historie (in Danish) in the 1770s ; Schøning claimed that the Norwegians were a separate people from the dawn of time and had immigrated from the north-east without visiting Denmark.

 

1814

Norway remained the hereditary kingdom of the Oldenborg kings until 1814 , when the king had to renounce Norway at the Peace of Kiel on 14 January 1814 after being on the losing side during the Napoleonic Wars . Greenland, the Faroe Islands and Iceland were not included in the transfer to Sweden. The King of Sweden undertook to maintain the laws and freedoms the Norwegians had and Norway was to take over its share of the national debt. At the same time, the Swedish king ceded Rügen and Swedish Pomerania as well as 1 million dalers. Norway was ceded to the king of Sweden and the Treaty of Kiel established that Norway was a separate kingdom. Prince Christian Frederik traveled to Trondheim to calm the mood. Sixty leading citizens of Trondheim signed a letter in which they supported the prince's policy of independence and at the same time asked that a congress should be convened to lay the foundations for Norway's future constitution. On his return from Trondheim, he gathered 15 civil servants and 6 businessmen for the Stormannsmøetet at Eidsvoll 16-17. February where it was agreed on a constitutional assembly in the same place from 10 April. Until then, the prince was to rule the country as regent with the support of a government council. After the meeting, the prince announced that the Norwegian people had been released from their oath to Frederik VI and, as a free and independent people, had the right to decide their own government constitution.

 

Sverre Steen describes these as revolutionary ideas: It involved a transition from princely sovereignty to popular sovereignty as was known from the US Constitution and from the French Revolution. Georg Sverdrup stated at the nobles' meeting in February that the Norwegian krone had thus "returned home" to the Norwegian people and that the people could, by their own decision, transfer the krone to whoever was deemed most suitable. The transition was not prepared in Norway except as an idea as individuals. In the previous years, there had been dissatisfaction (especially in Eastern Norway) with the Danish government, but no stated demands for secession from Denmark. When the rumor spread in 1813 that Denmark would probably have to cede Norway, there was talk of independence. At the elders' meeting, it was agreed that the congregations should gather in the churches and swear allegiance to Norway, as a simple referendum on independence and against union with Sweden. At the same time, the priests organized elections for the National Assembly, which was to convene later.

 

In public, there was overwhelming support for independence, while those who wanted union with Sweden advanced their views in silence. The mood of the people was for full independence.

13/7/16 #1290. Summer still seems to be appearing fleetingly, between periods of Autumnal-ness

Classic British transport, the stage for one of the characters at the Goodwood Revival.

A win for Shoreham against Pulborough 2 at Buckingham Park. Quite muddy under foot there today.

30 June 2014

Nikon D7000

Tokina AT-X 116 PRO DX-II 11-16mm f/2.8

 

The B&O Railroad Museum is a museum exhibiting historic railroad equipment in Baltimore, Maryland, originally named the Baltimore & Ohio Transportation Museum when it opened on July 4, 1953. It has been called one of the most significant collections of railroad treasures in the world and has the largest collection of 19th-century locomotives in the U.S.

The museum is located in the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's old Mount Clare Station and adjacent roundhouse, part of the B&O's sprawling Mount Clare Shops site begun in 1829, the oldest railroad manufacturing complex in the United States.

 

Mount Clare is considered to be a birthplace of American railroading, as the site of the first regular railroad passenger service in the U.S., beginning on May 22, 1830. It was also to this site that the first telegraph message, "What hath God wrought [disambiguation needed]?" was sent on May 24, 1844, from Washington, D.C., using Samuel F. B. Morse's invention.

 

The museum houses collections of 19th- and 20th-century artifacts related to America's railroads. The collection includes 250 pieces of railroad rolling stock, 15,000 artifacts, 5,000 cubic feet (140 m3) of archival material, four significant 19th-century buildings, including the historic roundhouse, and a mile of track, considered the most historic mile of railroad track in the United States. Train rides are offered on the mile of track on Wednesday through Sunday from April through December and weekends in January. In 2002, the museum had 160,000 visitors annually.

 

The museum also features an outdoor G-scale layout, an indoor HO scale model, and a wooden model train that children will enjoy climbing on. From Thanksgiving through the New Year, local model railroad groups set up large layouts on the roundhouse floor and in select locations on the grounds of the museum. A museum store offers toys, books, DVDs and other railroad-related items.

 

The museum and station were designated as a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 1961.

In 2008, the Museum won three awards in Nickelodeon's Parents' Picks Awards in the categories of: Best Museum for Little Kids, Best Indoor Playspace for Little Kids, and Best Indoor Playspace for Big Kids. Television and film actor Michael Gross is the museum's "celebrity spokesman"

Nice light on the River Adur at lunchtime

Lea Francis Fourteen (14:70) (1946-54) Engine 1767cc S4 OHV Production 3137 (includes 1946-48 12hp)

Registration Number LXK 358

LEA FRANCIS SET

www.flickr.com/photos/45676495@N05/sets/72157623795841928...

 

Introduced in 1946, alongside the similar Lea Francis 12, and powered by a Riley like twin camshaft, high pushrod engine. Relatively expensive, which led to the early demise of the 12 in 1948 after poor sales.

Mechanical brakes until 1951, hydraulics thereafter. Torsion bar independant front suspension for 1949, headlamps recessed into the wings in 1951. Coupe versions available for 1947 and 1948 model years.

 

This car was offered for sale in the Silverstone Classic auction, it was originally supplied by Charles Follet of London to a Evelyn Haywood from Ross on Wye. on the 9th January 1951, in it's current colour of light ivory the car passed through various owners during the 50's and 60's and was put in to long term storage in 1982. Purchased and then restored in 1995, the car has since been a regular on the Classic Car scene and is well known in Lea Francis circles.

The car remained unsold at auction/

 

Many Thanks for a fan'dabi'dozi 28,425,600 views

 

Shot 28:07:2014 at Silverstone Historic Festival REF: 103-732

The bright planet Venus in conjunction with the Pleiades Star Cluster

Traditionally, Oneiromancy refers to divination – seeing the unseen in the past, present, or future – through the use of dreams. Here I will refer to a whole system of Magic which includes dream recall, dream interpretation, lucid dreaming, protection spells for the dreamer, and spell work through dreams. Why Dreams? Dreams are our primary connection with the unconscious mind. They occur along the boarder between conscious mental activity and the unconscious, and a good deal of mixing occurs between these two levels of consciousness in dreams. Because of this, dreams may reflect a number of different things, and may be interpreted at different levels. 1) Dreams can be genuine spiritual experiences containing messages from the gods, deceased loved ones, or personal guardian or familiar spirits. 2) Dreams may be messages from deeper aspects of ourselves warning us of problems, or giving us insight into our fears, insecurities, and desires. 3) Dreams can sometimes be just silly play, containing nonsense imagery and conscious ego fantasies, with little or no deeper meaning. Or, a single dream may incorporate all three levels in one twisted surrealist serving. Deeper awareness of our dreams can effect us at different levels as well – it gives us deeper knowledge and understanding of ourselves, a stronger connection to the spiritual, and a healthy outlet for fantasies and creative inspiration. It therefore benefits one to become more aware of the dream experience. Remembering Your Dreams The first step toward any type of dream work is to remember more dreams and to keep a record of them. The dream journal is a record of dream experiences over a period of time. It is a tool not only for recording specific dreams in detail, but also for documenting recurring themes and patterns that can be observed by comparing several different dreams over the course of a few weeks or months. The dream journal can be any blank book or notebook used specifically for the purpose of recording your dreams. Keep this beside your bed with a pen, and as soon as you awaken from a dream, write it down in as much detail as possible. You may find, that as you are writing, previously unremembered details and images will emerge. Jotting down a few notes before writing out the whole dream will help you to remember more. Begin with the end of the dream, the first detail you will remember, and work backwards. Then go back and describe the entire dream in as much detail as you can. An easier way to record dreams is to use a digital voice recorder, and dictate the dream upon waking. This method is especially useful for recording dreams in the middle of the night quickly and returning to sleep. You may forget that you even woke and recorded a dream. Listen to the recordings once a week and record the dreams in a dream journal. Even if you don’t remember your dreams at first, get yourself in the habit of writing something in your dream journal every morning, even if it is “I don’t remember any dreams.” Consistent use of the dream journal will help you to remember more dreams. Dream Interpretation There are many books on dream interpretation in both the psychology section and New Age section of every major bookstore. A few of them contain helpful guidelines. Most of them are crap. Avoid “dream dictionaries,” books that contain alphabetized listings of “common” dream symbols and a dictionary definition of what they mean. Dream symbols and their meanings are never precise, always changing, and are different from person to person and culture to culture. Take as an example, the snake. In the Hebrew Bible, the serpent is the tempter of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and is seen as a symbol of evil. A person in such a culture who dreams of a snake would interpret it as a very grave omen. However, because the snake sheds its skin, it was a symbol for healing, regeneration, and growth in certain Greek mystery cults. This is the origin of the Caduceus, the winged wand entwined by two snakes which was carried by Hermes – and is now the universal symbol of the medical profession. The same symbol may mean different things to different people, or may mean something different to the same person at different stages of life. It is necessary, therefore, to interpret your own dreams, because only you can interpret them with the greatest accuracy. Try to record an entire week of dreams, then go back and read over that week’s dreams, looking for recurring themes and patterns. Think carefully about the details of each dream – how did you feel during the dream? What were your emotional reactions to strange events in the dream? How would you respond to those events in waking life? What does this dream mean to you? Does it offer any insight to problems and concerns you are having now? Does the dream seem to touch something deeper? Also, pay attention to recurring places and events. Are there particular memories, people, or places from your past that keep coming up? Take note of these, and think about why they keep coming up. Over the course of a few months, watch your dreams and the circumstances of your waking life carefully. Do you notice any interesting sychronicities between the dreams and your waking life? Did the ream seem to foretell, or foreshadow something that eventually happened? Or, do particular dreams seem to coincide with particular events? For example, you dream about finding the milk carton empty, and a week later your wife gets her period. If this happens a few months in a row, then you can conclude that a dream of an empty milk carton is an accurate prediction of the arrival of Aunt Flo. Then, if you dream of a full carton of milk, this may be a positive omen that your family is about to get bigger. No single book can teach you how to use your dreams as oracles better than your own experience, and there is no better oracle than your own dreams. Lucid Dreaming A Lucid Dream is a dream in which the dreamer knows that they are dreaming, and can control their own actions, and to some extent with practice, the events, content, and duration of the dream. The first step in Lucid Dreaming is to train yourself to know the difference between dreaming and waking reality while you are dreaming! After working with the dream journal consistently for a few weeks or a month, look back through it and read each dream. As you read over each dream, make a list of little details that don’t seem to posses much meaning, but that are consistent with many of your other dreams, yet divergent with reality. These are dream signs; little clues in the dreams that, once recognized, will alert the dreamer that they are dreaming. Common dream signs are; “No one seems to notice that I’m bare-ass naked in the middle of this Christian bookstore,” or “In real life, cats don’t talk, and they are even less likely to turn into hot Goth chicks.” A dream sign can be something subtle, like the text of the newspaper printed upside down, or in strange characters, or interspersed with the word “fnord.” Or it could be something stranger and more obvious that you’ll kick yourself for not noticing when you wake up. Like seeing Gene Simmons sitting on a toilet at the bus stop with a purple tiger on a leash eating a dead platypus (Gene, not the tiger). In waking life, get yourself into the habit of questioning your state of consciousness several times during the day. Ask yourself the question, “am I dreaming?” and look for dream signs How can you prove to yourself that you are awake, or are not? How is this state of consciousness like or unlike a dream? How is it like or unlike waking? Do this often enough and eventually one of two things will happen; 1) you will have a cataclysmic existential crisis and wind up in a rubber room eating pre-cut meat with a plastic fork, or 2) you will ask yourself if you are dreaming, while you are dreaming! Once you know you are dreaming, anything can happen. You can meet, talk to, have sex with, famous or historical persons that are either dead or otherwise inaccessible. You can bid farewell to dead loved ones or pets. You can travel the worlds, meet Gods, tame mythical beasts, rescue yummy maidens from being maidens, or anything else you can imagine. You can do things that would otherwise be unsafe, foolish, or impossible in waking life. Lucid dreaming can be used as an exploration of fantasy and play, as and exploration of self and inner healing, or magically to bring results into the waking world. In dreams, you can act out that which you want to happen in waking life, to bring that goal closer to manifestation. For example, you want a new job. Dream about the interview. How will you dress? How will you be received? What questions will be asked? Practicing potentially stressful trials, such as job interviews and first dates, in dreams can help to alleviate the stress of the event, and give you greater confidence because you’ve done it once before. Also, if you practice daily rituals or meditations, try doing them in your dreams. It is also exciting to think that two people can have the same dream. Two experienced lucid dreamers can experiment with having the same dream, and communicating in dreams. Protection for the Sleeper People once believed that nightmares were caused by evil spirits, or black Magic Because of this belief, a number of spells and protective amulets were devised to protect the sleeper from the negative influence of bad dreams. Modern psychology now tells us that bad dreams are manifestations of anxieties and fears that plague us at the edge of consciousness, and that we may or may not be consciously aware of. Therefore, bad dreams are often more productive than good ones because they force the dreamer to be aware of problems that may hinder their growth. Whatever the cause, however, nightmares can be extremely unpleasant and frightening, and magical protection is an effective way to prevent nightmares. The simplest way is to cast a circle around the bed before going to sleep. The ancient Egyptians practiced a version of this by drawing a circle in the dirt floor around the bed with a ritual dagger. Stand on or in front of your bed. (You can face East if you want. You don’t have to, if it’s not important to you. Some people like to, though, for some reason.) Visualize a ball of white light at you center, in the region around your heart. See this ball of light glowing brighter with each breath. Take a few deep breaths to concentrate your personal energy at your center. Point toward the air in front of you with your index finger, wand, or athame (magic knife), and feel your whole arm tingle as the energy moves from your center and flows through your fingertips. Walk clockwise around the bed, or pivot where you stand, and as you do imagine that your finger is drawing a circle of light in the air around your bed. This circle becomes a sphere, a protective globe of energy surrounding you and protecting you from negative influences and bad dreams. State in a firm and certain voice that this circle of light will keep out all harmful energies and entities, and allow only positive energies and entities to enter, and that it will hold strong all night and vanish like mist with the coming sun. One common form of nightmare is called “the Old Hag” or “the Witch riding your back,” also known as “night terrors,” or “incubus attacks.” This type of dream occurs during the in-between state as the sleeper is just waking up. The sleeper thinks they are awake, but are unable to move and may feel as though they are under attack by an unseen entity. It was once a common belief that these dreams were caused by evil spirits or malevolent witches. Several protective measures against suck attacks are found in European and American folklore traditions. One was to make sure the toes of your shoes were pointing away from the bed before going to sleep. Another was to sleep with either the Bible or a knife under the pillow (if you decide to do the latter, I suggest using the witches’ athame, and place it between the pillow and the pillowcase so that it doesn’t slip out from under the pillow and cause traumatic injuries while you sleep). Sleeping on your side is another way to avoid this type of nightmare, since it seems to only occur when you are sleeping on your back. The cause of this type of dream is unknown, but I believe it has something to do with the neurotransmitter your brain secretes when you sleep to paralyze the body and prevent you from acting out your dreams. Sometimes this paralysis lingers for a few seconds after the sleeper has awaken. Although the physical body is paralyzed, the astral body is not. Personal experience has told me that this state of consciousness can be ideal for astral projection(or inducing lucid dreams), and can be induced by falling asleep on your back (if you’re married, or have a frequent bedroom companion, I do not recommend this, as it also causes snoring. Unless you use a CPAP mask. If so, then go with your bad self, and sleep on your back!) Dream Pillows A dream pillow is a small pouch or pillow placed on or under the pillow to bring pleasant dreams, and keep bad dreams away. It can be made out of any old cloth, or cloth pouch, of any color that represents dreams to the sleeper. The dream pouch is stuffed with sweet-smelling herbs and should be blessed by the deities of your choice (I chose Morpheus and Aradia). In my dream pouch, I used hops, jasmine flowers, lavender, mugwort, Valerian, and chamomile. Sweetgrass, star anise, marigold, or skullcap can also be used, or a few of these herbs in different combinations. Also, different books on herbalism and witchcraft will have different recipes. As long as it smells good and dreamy to you. Dream Tea Some of the above listed herbs, such as sweetgrass, marigold, and star anise, were chosen because of their pleasant smell, and symbolic or magical associations. The others were chosen because they have a sedative effect when taken in tea. Here is a brief description of these sedative herbs. Chamomile and jasmine are sweet smelling flowers, that make an equally sweet tea. Chamomile can be steeped in hot water by itself, or with a little jasmine, and a little honey for a light, relaxing evening tea to curl up with a book with. Valerian root contains a naturally occurring oil which is very similar to Valium. It has a rich, earthy taste and smell, which some people find unpleasant. Adding a little peppermint, chamomile, or both to the tea helps to improve the taste. Valerian and skullcap are great sedatives, and can be used alone or together for a restful night’s sleep. Mugwort is an herb associated with the moon, and has been used in teas for prophetic dreams, and for feminine moon-related discomfort. It is also an oneirogen, an herb that can induce dreams, or create a dream-like state of consciousness. Mugwort grows along the side of the road with goldenrod and ragweed, and should be avoided if you suffer from hay fever (late summer/early autumn allergies). Hops is used in brewing beer. While it is useful for getting a good night’s sleep, it is a depressant, and should be avoided by individuals who are taking anti-depressants. Any good book on herbalism will go into more detail on the uses and effects of these herbs. Here is a simple recipe for a tea to induce restful sleep and pleasant dreams; 1 tbs. Valerian root 1 tbs. Skullcap 1 tsp. Jasmine blossoms 1 tsp. chamomile (add a pinch of mugwort for prophetic dreams) steep in 1 cup of hot water, covered for 20 minutes. An even simpler recipe is to mix 1 tbs. Valerian root with 1 tsp. Mugwort. Drink 20 minutes before bedtime. Relax and let the tea take effect. For further reading;Cunningham, Scott, Sacred Sleep; Dreams & the Divine, The Crossing Press, Freedom, CA, 1992 LaBerge, Stephen, Ph. D, Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming, Ballentine Books, New York, 1990 Miller, Richard Alan, The Magical and Ritual use of Herbs, Destiny Books, Rochester, Vermont, 1993; the Oneiromancy texte by Fred

 

Includes 2 minifigures: Orion in royal armor and Scallow

ஐBlog Post: 75ஐ

 

::Sponsors:: Thank you!!! ♥

 

...:::Beautiful Dirty Rich:::...

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...:::Beautiful Dirty Rich:::... Celebration -Dress- & Miss Claus

 

Celebration -Dress- comes in 20 color options. Sizes include Maitreya Lara, Belleza Isis + Freya, Slink Physiqu & Hourglass and Legacy. Now compatible with LaraX, Kupra, Belleza Gen. X, Reborn + Waifu, Legacy Perky + Bombshell.

 

Miss Claus includes Dress and Hat. 3 color packs available: Velvet, Satin, Patterns. Customizable and Hideable Fur. Materials Enabled. Tintable. Copy & MOD (except for Scripts & HUD). Sizes include Maitreya + Petite, LaraX + Petite, Legacy + Perky + Bombshell, Reborn + Waifu, Kupra, Belleza Gen.X Classic & Curvy, and Peach. Boots come in 22 color HUD. Customizable base, fur and laces. Can be worn with and without fur. Materials enabled. Copy & MOD (except for scripts & HUD). Bonus! HUD to mix & match with Patterns Version of Miss Claus Dress. Sizes include Maitreya, LaraX, Legacy, Reborn, Kupra, Belleza Gen.X and Peach. Gloves come with 2 color packs, both with 22 solid colors. 3rd color pack is a Pattern Mix containing 10 Patterns + 10 Matching Colors. Hideable Fur. Materials Enabled. Copy & MOD (except for scripts & HUD).

 

◕‿◕ Mainstore Teleport Link:

maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Beautiful%20Dirty%20Rich/1...

 

Extra Credits:

Dimples: .Incomum. Dimples - LEL EVO X, Hair: !KILOWATT - Layla, Heads: LeLUTKA Briannon 4.0, Jewelry: Kaithleen's Floral Spinal Piercing, MICHAN - Nola Rings Fatpack (reborn), [SG] Emo Gauges w/HUD Female Pack, RAWR! Chrysalis Choker, Body: eBody Reborn, Body Scars: - Ophilus - Face Scar & Tapes (Unisex -EvoX Bom Only), Tattoos: .:Inkling:. Lippy Ink // Brat Pack, [HOLMGANG] Cow spots Tattoo, *HP* Little Buddy, Skin: [Heaux] Winter - Browless - Icy *VE for Briannon head, Velour: The "Ipanema Body" for ebody Reborn - Fit (Icy), Eyes: VELOUR "KRYSTAL" EYES, Ears: ^^ Swallow^^ PIXIE Gauged S lel Evo E Ears (f), Extras: KOKOS-VEINS BREAST-BOM, R.O.S.S - Bento Drool (LeLUTKA Briannon), R.O.S.S - Bento Tears - (LeLUTKA Briannon), LooKatMe - Naughty Bandaids Bom, (The DeadBoy) Morus Tongue 1.6, Shape: tsuki. moon shape {lel briannon & ebody reborn}

ODC-Include Your Hand

 

Some of the Organic Squash Blossoms in our garden are enormous this year. We don't know for sure exactly what variety this one is. Stu figures it is a Zucchini of some sort because the plant has an upright growth pattern as opposed to a Vine. We will find out when it starts producing to know for sure.

   

More from the Bicester Sunday Scramble.

Another named storm passing across the UK today - as Storm Franklin hit the harbour at Newhaven. Very overcast, the the raw photos were very low in contrast, so processing in mono was my choice of edit.

Another sunny evening at Woods Mill. The chicks in the Kestrel nest box look close to fledging.

Dear friends, you are more than welcome to visit my flickr.

 

These are some pictures regarding my second Lego MOC set named Military series.

 

This set includes:

(1) Chibi Batquad (The original moccer: sok117). A very stylish compact ATV made by sok117. After observavtion of several pictures, I made a replica first and then modified many parts of it. Thanks to you- sok117.

 

(2) Batmobile (The original moccer: lost_scotsman): I have used flickr to share pictures for long, and have always acquired some great concept as well as ideas from many fantastic moccer from all over the world. This result of this batmobile is one of them. Again, many modifications have made to it, and I quite love what it is right now.

 

(3) Bat Sand Buggy: This is a MOC that built from scratch by myself. I then put joints to the front wheel to make them able to turn. As a matter of fact, the part I like most about is its protective net on the cockpit. If possible, please take a close look at some little touches that I made on this vehicles. I believe you will enjoy them.

 

(4) Bat Tank: Actually, most of the components and parts on this tank is from the official set 76055, so you may as well say this is an alternative build. However, I also used quite a few extra/ additional bricks to complete it. I am pretty glad how it finally turned out, especially the shape and style of it.

 

(5) Batsub: The idea is from the official set 76027. The thickness of the original set doesn't make it look strong/ bulky enough; Hence, making it has a chucky appearance became my priority. This batsub is absolutely one of my favorites among all my mocs.

 

(6) Batcopter: Obviously, i didn't made a big difference on this batcopter, and you probably know already this batcopter's prototype is the official set-76054. Yes, it is shorter and bulkier. I hope I successfully gave it a menacing look.

 

Thank you so much for viewing my Lego works. More photos of other sets are coming in soon. My only intention is to share. Hope you like these cute toys. peace. :)

 

My Youtube:

www.youtube.com/user/thedarkknight0527

From the 2016 archives - the garden at the Chateau de Villandry, Loire Valley, France

More from the Laser show on Worthing Pier. The lasers were directed by the public via an app during assigned timeslots. Great for public engagement, however for photos, I would have preferred that the show was directed by someone who knew what they were doing :-)

Includes:

 

RT Helmet

RT Armor

Impaler AR

Ground Dweller BR

Head Hunter Pistol

 

I'm quite pleased with how the new Charcoal color came out...it's a little darker than the Steel but a little shinier than the black.

Block Island is part of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. It is located in the Atlantic Ocean about 13 miles (21 km) south of the coast of Rhode Island, 14 miles (23 km) east of Montauk Point on Long Island, and is separated from the Rhode Island mainland by Block Island Sound. The United States Census Bureau defines Block Island as Census Tract 415 of Washington County, Rhode Island. As of the 2010 census the population of 1,051 lived on a land area of 9.734 square miles (25.211 km2).[1] The island is part of the Outer Lands region, a coastal archipelago made by the recessional and terminal moraine that resulted from the Wisconsonian Laurentide glacier retreat, about 22,000 years ago.[citation needed]

 

The Nature Conservancy added Block Island to its list of "The Last Great Places"; the list consists of twelve sites in the Western Hemisphere. About 40 percent of the island is set aside for conservation.[2] Presidents Bill Clinton,[3][4] Dwight D. Eisenhower,[5] Franklin Delano Roosevelt,[6] and Ulysses S. Grant[7][8] have visited Block Island. Other famous visitors include Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh, who each made separate trips to the island in 1929.[9]

 

Block Island is coextensive with the town of New Shoreham. The island is a popular summer tourist destination and is known for its bicycling, hiking, sailing, fishing, and beaches. The island hosts two historic lighthouses: Block Island North Light, on the northern tip of the island, and Block Island Southeast Light, on the southeastern side. Much of the northwestern tip of the island is an undeveloped natural area and resting stop for birds along the Atlantic Flyway.[citation needed]

 

Every summer the island hosts Block Island Race Week, a competitive, week-long sailboat race. On odd years, the event is held by the Storm Trysail Club, and on even years by the Block Island Race Week. Yachts compete in various classes, sailing courses in Block Island Sound and circumnavigating the island.[citation needed]

 

Other popular events include the annual Fourth of July Parade and celebration. During these times the island's population can triple over the normal summer vacation crowd.

With 27 acres of woodland, water gardens, and a collection of rare, exotic and award-winning plants, High Beeches Garden is a botanical treasure trove, and one of Sussex's finest gardens. High Beeches Garden is home to a plant collection that includes specimens from many parts of the world. It's a hidden gem in the High Weald of West Sussex. A botanical treasure trove and classic English idyll make it one of the finest gardens in the South East.

Seasonal mystique

Whether you want a quiet stroll through the glades of a beautiful Sussex garden, somewhere to watch the wild life or marvel at some magnificent plants High Beeches is a harmonious sanctuary at any time of the year.

Immerse yourself in bursts of colour and perfume as Summer flowers bloom, or view the breath-taking colours of Autumn.

 

A unique and ancient Wild Flower Meadow in Sussex

 

Plant Life, the wild plant conservation charity, has named High Beeches as one of the 7 great gardens to see wild flowers www.plantlife.org.uk/wildflower_garden.

The Wildflower Meadow, or Front Meadow, at High Beeches has been called a meadow since l848, when Sir Robert Loder bought ‘The Beeches’ and in all likelihood was a meadow long before that. It has not been cultivated for at least 80 years and grazing ceased in about l980. The only plants introduced are some narcissi cultivars in about l980 and the original clump of native birches has been replaced with the existing one. Evolving endlessly, some years it is a mass of ox-eye daises and other years the buttercups predominate. Recently the cowslips, Primula veris, the Common Twayblade, Listera ovata, and the Devilsbit Scabious, Succisa pratensis have been on the increase.

The meadow slopes to the southwest and the soil is slightly acid. There are 46 species of wildflower and 13 species of grasses, sedges, rushes and ferns to be found, which have been identified by Arthur Hoare of the Sussex Botanical Recording Society. The meadow attracts a huge number of insects including butterflies and moths.

The meadow is a Site of Nature Conservation Importance, SNCI, one of over 300 in West Sussex. There are 11 plants which are indicators of ancient meadow land, all of which are to be found at High Beeches and they are: Sweet Vernal- grass, Red Clover, Ribwort Plaintain, Red fescue, Crested Dog’s Tail, Red Fescue, Cock’sFoot, Yorkshire Fog, White Clover, Bird’s-foot-trefoil, Common Bent and Common Knapweed.

 

Maintenance: The grass is cut in August and the hay removed by mechanical means.

The heavy horses from The Working Horse Trust then harrow the meadow to removethe thatch, scatter seed and open up the sward to enable the wildflowers to seed successfully.

Through the Seasons: In April the first meadow grasses flower, one of the first is the Sweet Vernal-grass, Anthoxanthum odoratum followed by the Meadow Foxtail,

The first colour to be seen is yellow from the cowslips then in May the buttercups start to flower followed by the Yellow Rattle, Rhinianthus minor agg., Meadow Vetchling, Lathyrus pratensis and Common Bird’s-foot-trefoil, Lotus cornicula. Late May and June sees the red of Red Clover, Trifolium pratense, pink of the Common Spotted-orchid, Dactylorhiza fuchsia and the whites of the Oxeye Daisy, Leucanthemum vulgare and the Lesser Stitchwort, Stellaria graminea. Later in the summer/early autumn the beautiful Devilsbit Scabious, Succisa pratensis gives parts of the meadow a purple haze.

Many of the wildflowers and grasses in the meadow provide food for the numerous insects, butterflies and moths. Amongst them bees, including Bumble Bees, and hover flies feed on Bird’s-foot-trefoil, Knapweed, Clover, Selfheal, Betony and many more. Cock’s Foot is an important food for the caterpillars of the Ringlet and Large Skipper butterflies. The caterpillars of the Small Skipper feed on Yorkshire Fog and Common Sorrel is a food source for the Small Copper butterfly. Other insects to be seen in the meadow include spiders, beetles, damsel flys, grasshoppers, crickets, ladybirds and dragonflies.

 

www.highbeeches.com/

 

Catching up with some snowy pictures taken as I walked to work. St. Nicolas with its recently restored Lytch Gate.

The Canyon Diablo meteorites include the many fragments of the asteroid that created the Barringer Crater (Meteor Crater), Arizona, USA. Meteorites have been found around the crater rim, and are named for nearby Canyon Diablo, which lies about three to four miles west of the crater.

 

The asteroid fell about 50,000 years ago. The meteorites have been known and collected since the mid-19th century and were known and used by pre-historic Native Americans. The Barringer Crater, from the late 19th to the mid-20th century, was the center of a long dispute over the origin of craters that showed little evidence of volcanism. That debate was settled in the 1950s thanks to Eugene Shoemaker's study of the crater.

 

In 1953, Clair Cameron Patterson measured ratios of the lead isotopes in samples of the meteorite. The result permitted a refinement of the estimate of the age of the Earth to 4.550 billion years (± 70 million years).

Includes Rights

Beautiful sculptures and arches in Castle de Haar , Kasteel de Haar near the suburb of Vleuten that includes village of Haarzuilen rebuild by architect Pierre Cuyper Project was finished in around 1912 took 20 years to be finished , Photograph converted to black and white , Martin’s photograph , Utrecht , the Netherlands , June 5. 2019

 

Beautiful arches

Fireplace with beautiful screen and mantel

Beautiful formal gardens with piramide shaped trees

Beautiful staircase

Beautiful staircase in castle , Kasteel de Haar

Staircase

Formal gardens

Stairway critters sculptures in Castle

Stairway sculptures

Spiral stairway

Central Station in Amsterdam , build by architect Pierre Cuyper

de Rijks Museum in Amsterdam build by architect Pierre Cuyper

de Rijks Museum in Amsterdam

Central Station in Amsterdam

Amsterdam

Lavet bad tub

Lavet bad tub and washing machine

main door

Beautiful staircase

Kasteel de Haar near the suburb of Vleuten that includes village of Haarzuilen

architect Pierre Cuyper

Martin’s photograph

Utrecht

the Netherlands

Nederland

June 2019

Favourites

IPhone 6

Village of Haarzuilen

Kasteel de Haar

Castle the Haar

Kasteel de Haar was rebuild by architect Pierre Cuyper Project was finished in around 1912 took 20 years to be finished

city of Utrecht in the province Utrecht

Beautiful staircase in Kasteel de Haar

Door knocker

Beautiful window and seating

Stairway critters sculptures in Castle

Stairway sculptures

Spiral stairway

Stairway sculptures

Black and white

Photograph converted to black and white

Black & white

Monochrome

A selection from Friday at the Goodwood Revival. A grassy moment for this Alfa driver

 

© all rights reserved by B℮n

 

Khao Sok Nation Park is one of the most beautiful national parks in Thailand. Khao Sok is a virgin forest where various types of plant life can be found. This includes a number of very rare and sacred tree species.The park serves as a home for a wide variety of wildlife such as the gaur, banteng, sambar deer, bear, Malayan tapir, macaque, gibbon, mouse deer, porcupine, marbled cat, wild boar, and Asian wild dog. There are four types of monkeys. Long-tailed macaques are the most common monkeys. They are brown in color and often move in groups of 5-20. They are not shy and are seen in many places - sometimes they swing through the trees near your house. They can often be found in the fruit orchard. Two other species - the pig-tailed macaque and the stump-tailed macaque – are often found deeper in the jungle, and can be quite aggressive, so do not try to befriend them if you meet them while hiking. The dusky langur, also known as a leaf monkey, lives in the upper canopy. You can sometimes see them playing on the cliffs across the stream. The gibbon is hard to see, since it spends most of its life high in the canopy, but it is common to hear its song, a beautiful series of rising and falling whoops. These songs are a way of marking territory and communicating with family members. Gibbons have a lifespan of about 25 years in the wild, and are monogamous mammals forming bonds for life. Gibbons are not monkeys but members of the ape family, and thus have no tail. Their long arms enable them to swing between tree branches. Unlike most primates, who simply jump between branches, a gibbon can swing at speeds as high as 56 km/u and can travel as far as 9 meter in one swing. It also acts as the natural habitat for several for several bird species. A lot of visitors come to Khao Sok just to marvel the beauty of the nature but you can also enjoy your time taking part experiencing the tropical rainforest on foot. Different trekkings are possible.

 

Turn your back on the crowded beaches of Phuket and head inland to Khao Sok National Park, a spectacularly diverse wilderness. Here you’ll find a land of primordial limestone mountains, wildlife to rival the Amazon, and eco-friendly lakeside and treetop camps. River trips, mangrove canoeing and trekking are some of the ways to experience this part of Khao Sok. The forest around the lake is rich in wildlife. If you're into photography, this means you'll have a very good chance to get one of those once-in-a-lifetime wildlife shots! We were lucky to catch a Long-tail Macaque near the river. Its defining characteristic, for which they are named, is their extraordinarily long tail that is almost always longer than their height from head to rump. You will catch them usually in the afternoon when the temperature is a bit cooler near the river Sok.

 

Khao Sok เขาสก is een groot nationaal park, gelegen in Thailand in de provincie Surat Thani. Het heeft een oppervlakte van 739 km². In het park bevindt zich naast oerbos, wat een overblijfsel is van een regenwoud dat ouder en diverser is dan het Amazoneregenwoud. Het is één van de mooiste nationale parken van Thailand. met een eeuwenoud regenwoud met watervallen, kalksteenformaties die meer dan 900 meter de lucht in schieten, een groot meer met honderden kleine eilandjes, grotten, prachtige tropische planten en een grote variëteit aan wildlife waaronder de Aziatische olifant, luipaarden, sambars, bantengs, tapirs, dwergherten, cobra's, pythons en verscheidene soorten reptielen, apen en 311 soorten vogels. Met een beetje geluk vind je hier ook nog de wilde lotus Rafflesia kerri Meyer of in het Thais bua phút, de grootste bloem ter wereld. Volledig volgroeide bloemen halen de 90 centimeter en leven in de wortels van lianen. Khao Sok is een perfecte plek voor jungle tochten. Er zijn verschillende paden om te verkennen. Wij maken een jungle tocht vanaf Khao Sok National Park - Headquarters. Een wandeling van 1.5 uur naar een de perfecte bestemming voor wie op zoek is naar avontuur. Het lopen door het regenwoud is echt iets bijzonders. Je ruikt de lucht van grond, vocht en planten. Om je heen staan planten als in een tropisch tuincentrum; palmen, lianen, met varens begroeide stammen van inheemse bomen en reuzenbamboestengels. Wang Pai Ha is prachtige stroomversnelling. Er is genoeg rustig water om hier het hele jaar te kunnen zwemmen. Lekker genieten bij het riviertje. Een mooie gelegenheid om de flora en fauna van het regenwoud te leren kennen. we houden onze ogen en oren open voor hagedissen, insecten en apen. Tot onze verrassing zien we Java apen op de rotsen zitten. Deze apen leven in bosrijke gebieden langs rivieren en aan de kust en brengt veel tijd van de dag door boven in de bomen, maar komt ook vaak op de grond en kan ook erg goed zwemmen. De java-aap eet voornamelijk fruit. Daarnaast ook wel bladeren, knoppen, gras, bloemen en zaden, maar ook insecten, krabben, garnalen en kikkers. Deze apen leven altijd in groepen. Wij vonden dit een bijzondere manier om dit regenwoud te ontdekken. Khao Sok is Thailand's natste regio met een jaarlijkse regenval van 3500mm. Wat te verwachten van het regenseizoen in Thailand - juni tot oktober: af en toe een flinke tropische regenbuien van 30 minuten tot 2 uur.

  

Seoul – officially the Seoul Special City – is the capital and largest metropolis of the Republic of Korea (commonly known as South Korea), forming the heart of the Seoul Capital Area, which includes the surrounding Incheon metropolis and Gyeonggi province, the world's 16th largest city. It is home to over half of all South Koreans along with 678,102 international residents.

 

Situated on the Han River, Seoul's history stretches back more than two thousand years when it was founded in 18 BCE by Baekje, one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea. It continued as the capital of Korea under the Joseon Dynasty. The Seoul Capital Area contains five UNESCO World Heritage Sites: Changdeok Palace, Hwaseong Fortress, Jongmyo Shrine, Namhansanseong and the Royal Tombs of the Joseon Dynasty. Seoul is surrounded by mountains, the tallest being Mt. Bukhan, the world's most visited national park per square foot. Modern landmarks include the iconic N Seoul Tower, the gold-clad 63 Building, the neofuturistic Dongdaemun Design Plaza, Lotte World, the world's second largest indoor theme park, Moonlight Rainbow Fountain, the world's longest bridge fountain and the Sevit Floating Islands. The birthplace of K-pop and the Korean Wave, Seoul received over 10 million international visitors in 2014, making it the world's 9th most visited city and 4th largest earner in tourism.

 

Today, Seoul is considered a leading and rising global city, resulting from an economic boom called the Miracle on the Han River which transformed it to the world's 4th largest metropolitan economy with a GDP of US$845.9 billion in 2014 after Tokyo, New York City and Los Angeles. In 2015, it was rated Asia's most livable city with the second highest quality of life globally by Arcadis. A world leading technology hub centered on Gangnam and Digital Media City, the Seoul Capital Area boasts 15 Fortune Global 500 companies such as Samsung, the world's largest technology company, as well as LG and Hyundai-Kia. In 2014, the city's GDP per capita (PPP) of $39,786 was comparable to that of France and Finland. Ranked sixth in the Global Power City Index and Global Financial Centres Index, the metropolis exerts a major influence in global affairs as one of the five leading hosts of global conferences.

 

Seoul is the world's most wired city and ranked first in technology readiness by PwC's Cities of Opportunity report. It is served by the KTX high-speed rail and the Seoul Subway, providing 4G LTE, WiFi and DMB inside subway cars. Seoul is connected via AREX to Incheon International Airport, rated the world's best airport nine years in a row (2005–2013) by Airports Council International. Lotte World Tower, a 556-metre supertall skyscraper with 123 floors, has been built in Seoul and become the OECD's tallest in 2016, with the world's tallest art gallery. Its Lotte Cinema houses the world's largest cinema screen. Seoul's COEX Mall is the world's largest underground shopping mall.

 

Seoul hosted the 1986 Asian Games, 1988 Summer Olympics, 2002 FIFA World Cup, the Miss Universe 1980 pageant, and the 2010 G-20 Seoul summit. A UNESCO City of Design, Seoul was named the 2010 World Design Capital.

 

ETYMOLOGY

The city has been known in the past by the names Wirye-seong (Hangul: 위례성; Hanja: 慰禮城, during the Baekje era), Hanju (Hangul: 한주; Hanja: 漢州, during the Silla era), Namgyeong (Hangul: 남경; Hanja: 南京, during the Goryeo era), Hanseong (Hangul: 한성; Hanja: 漢城, during both the Baekje and Joseon eras), Hanyang (Hangul: 한양; Hanja: 漢陽, during the Joseon era), Gyeongseong (京城, during the colonial era).

 

During Japan's annexation in Korea, "Hanseong" (Hangul: 한성; Hanja: 漢城) was renamed to "Keijō" (京城, or Template:Korean 한국, Gyeongseong) by the Imperial authorities to prevent confusion with the hanja '漢', as it also refers to the Han Chinese. In reality, the ancient name of Seoul, Hanseong (Hangul: 한성; Hanja: 漢城), originally had the meaning of "big" or "vast".

 

Its current name originated from the Korean word meaning "capital city," which is believed to be derived from the word Seorabeol (Hangul: 서라벌; Hanja: 徐羅伐), which originally referred to Gyeongju, the capital of Silla.

 

Unlike most place names in Korea, "Seoul" has no corresponding hanja (Chinese characters used in the Korean language). On January 18, 2005, Seoul government officially changed its official Chinese language name to Shou'er (simplified Chinese: 首尔; traditional Chinese: 首爾; pinyin: Shǒu'ěr) from the historic Hancheng (simplified Chinese: 汉城; traditional Chinese: 漢城; pinyin: Hànchéng), of which use is becoming less common.

 

HISTOY

Settlement of the Han River area, where present-day Seoul is located, began around 4000 BC.

 

Seoul is first recorded as Wiryeseong, the capital of Baekje (founded in 18 BC) in the northeastern Seoul area. There are several city walls remaining in the area that date from this time. Pungnaptoseong, an earthen wall just outside Seoul, is widely believed to have been at the main Wiryeseong site. As the Three Kingdoms competed for this strategic region, control passed from Baekje to Goguryeo in the 5th century, and from Goguryeo to Silla in the 6th century.

 

In the 11th century Goryeo, which succeeded Unified Silla, built a summer palace in Seoul, which was referred to as the "Southern Capital". It was only from this period that Seoul became a larger settlement. When Joseon replaced Goryeo, the capital was moved to Seoul (also known as Hanyang and later as Hanseong), where it remained until the fall of the dynasty. The Gyeongbok Palace, built in the 14th century, served as the royal residence until 1592. The other large palace, Changdeokgung, constructed in 1405, served as the main royal palace from 1611 to 1872.

 

Originally, the city was entirely surrounded by a massive circular stone wall to provide its citizens security from wild animals, thieves and attacks. The city has grown beyond those walls and although the wall no longer stands (except along Bugaksan Mountain (Hangul: 북악산; Hanja: 北岳山), north of the downtown area), the gates remain near the downtown district of Seoul, including most notably Sungnyemun (commonly known as Namdaemun) and Heunginjimun (commonly known as Dongdaemun). During the Joseon dynasty, the gates were opened and closed each day, accompanied by the ringing of large bells at the Bosingak belfry. In the late 19th century, after hundreds of years of isolation, Seoul opened its gates to foreigners and began to modernize. Seoul became the first city in East Asia to introduce electricity in the royal palace, built by the Edison Illuminating Company and a decade later Seoul also implemented electrical street lights.

 

Much of the development was due to trade with foreign countries like France and United States. For example, the Seoul Electric Company, Seoul Electric Trolley Company, and Seoul Fresh Spring Water Company were all joint Korean–American owned enterprises. In 1904, an American by the name of Angus Hamilton visited the city and said, "The streets of Seoul are magnificent, spacious, clean, admirably made and well-drained. The narrow, dirty lanes have been widened, gutters have been covered, roadways broadened. Seoul is within measurable distance of becoming the highest, most interesting and cleanest city in the East.

"After the annexation treaty in 1910, the Empire of Japan annexed Korea and renamed the city Gyeongseong ("Kyongsong" in Korean and "Keijo" in Japanese). Japanese technology was imported, the city walls were removed, some of the gates demolished. Roads became paved and Western-style buildings were constructed. The city was liberated at the end of World War II.

 

In 1945, the city was officially named Seoul, and was designated as a special city in 1949.

 

During the Korean War, Seoul changed hands between the Russian/Chinese-backed North Korean forces and the American-backed South Korean forces several times, leaving the city heavily damaged after the war. The capital was temporarily relocated to Busan. One estimate of the extensive damage states that after the war, at least 191,000 buildings, 55,000 houses, and 1,000 factories lay in ruins. In addition, a flood of refugees had entered Seoul during the war, swelling the population of the city and its metropolitan area to an estimated 1.5 million by 1955.

 

Following the war, Seoul began to focus on reconstruction and modernization. As Korea's economy started to grow rapidly from the 1960s, urbanization also accelerated and workers began to move to Seoul and other larger cities. From the 1970s, the size of Seoul administrative area greatly expanded as it annexed a number of towns and villages from several surrounding counties.

 

According to 2012 census data, the population of the Seoul area makes up around 20% of the total population of South Korea, Seoul has become the economic, political and cultural hub of the country, with several Fortune Global 500 companies, including Samsung, SK Holdings, Hyundai, POSCO and LG Group headquartered there.

 

Seoul was the host city of the 1986 Asian Games and 1988 Summer Olympics as well as one of the venues of the Football World Cup 2002.

 

GEOGRAPHY

Seoul is in the northwest of South Korea. Seoul proper comprises 605.25 km2, with a radius of approximately 15 km, roughly bisected into northern and southern halves by the Han River. The Han River and its surrounding area played an important role in Korean history. The Three Kingdoms of Korea strove to take control of this land, where the river was used as a trade route to China (via the Yellow Sea). The river is no longer actively used for navigation, because its estuary is located at the borders of the two Koreas, with civilian entry barred. Historically, the city was during the Joseon Dynasty bounded by the Seoul Fortress Wall, which stretched between the four main mountains in central Seoul: Namsan, Naksan, Bukaksan and Inwangsan. The city is bordered by eight mountains, as well as the more level lands of the Han River plain and western areas. Due to its geography and to economic development policies, Seoul is a very polycentric city. The area that was the old capital in the Joseon Dynasty, and mostly comprises Jongno District and Jung District, constitutes the historical and political center of the city. However, for example, the city's financial capital is widely considered to be in Yeouido, while its economic capital is Gangnam District.

 

CLIMATE

Seoul is either classified as a humid subtropical climate (Köppen Cwa), using the −3 °C isotherm of the original Köppen scheme, or a humid continental climate (Köppen Dwa), using the 0 °C isotherm preferred by some climatologists. Summers are generally hot and humid, with the East Asian monsoon taking place from June until September. August, the warmest month, has average high and low temperatures of 29.6 and 22.4 °C with higher temperatures possible. Winters are often cold to freezing with average January high and low temperatures of 1.5 and −5.9 °C and are generally much drier than summers, with an average of 28 days of snow annually. Sometimes, temperatures do drop dramatically to below −10.0 °C, in odd occasions rarely as low as −15.0 °C in the mid winter period between January and February.

  

ADMINISTRATIVE DISTRICTS

Seoul is divided into 25 gu (Hangul: 구; Hanja: 區) (district). The gu vary greatly in area (from 10 to 47 km2) and population (from fewer than 140,000 to 630,000). Songpa has the most people, while Seocho has the largest area. The government of each gu handles many of the functions that are handled by city governments in other jurisdictions. Each gu is divided into "dong" (Hangul: 동; Hanja: 洞) or neighbourhoods. Some gu have only a few dong while others like Jongno District have a very large number of distinct neighbourhoods. Gu of Seoul consist of 423 administrative dongs (Hangul: 행정동) in total. Dong are also sub-divided into 13,787 tong (Hangul: 통; Hanja: 統), which are further divided into 102,796 ban in total.

 

DEMOGRAPHICS

Seoul proper is noted for its population density, which is almost twice that of New York and eight times greater than Rome. Its metropolitan area was the most densely populated in the OECD in Asia in 2012, and second worldwide after that of Paris. As of December 2013, the population was 10.14 million, in 2012, it was 10,442,426. As of the end of June 2011, 10.29 million Republic of Korea citizens lived in the city. This was a 24% decrease from the end of 2010. The population of Seoul has been dropping since the early 1990s, the reasons being the high costs of living and an aging population.

 

The number of foreigners living in Seoul is 255,501 in 2010 according to Seoul officials.[58] As of June 2011, 281,780 foreigners were located in Seoul. Of them, 186,631 foreigners (66%) were Chinese citizens of Korean ancestry. This was an 8.84% increase from the end of 2010 and a 12.85% increase from June 2010. The next largest group was Chinese citizens who are not of Korean ethnicity; 29,901 of them resided in Seoul. The next highest group consisted of the 9,999 United States citizens who were not of Korean ancestry. The next highest group were the Republic of China (Taiwan) citizens, at 8,717.

 

The two major religions in Seoul are Christianity and Buddhism. Other religions include Muism (indigenous religion) and Confucianism. Seoul is home to one of the world's largest Christians congregations, Yoido Full Gospel Church , which has around 830,000 members. Seoul is home to the world's largest modern university founded by a Buddhist Order, Dongguk University. Other Christian faiths like The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) maintains a presence in the city.

 

ECONOMY

Seoul is the business and financial hub of South Korea. Although it accounts for only 0.6 percent of the nation's land area, 48.3 percent of South Korea's bank deposits were held in Seoul in 2003, and the city generated 23 percent of the country's GDP overall in 2012. In 2008 the Worldwide Centers of Commerce Index ranked Seoul No.9. The Global Financial Centres Index in 2015 listed Seoul as the 6th financially most competitive city in the world. The Economist Intelligence Unit ranked Seoul 15th in the list of "Overall 2025 City Competitiveness" regarding future competitiveness of cities.

 

MANUFACTURING

The traditional, labour-intensive manufacturing industries have been continuously replaced by information technology, electronics and assembly-type of industries; however, food and beverage production, as well as printing and publishing remained among the core industries. Major manufacturers are headquartered in the city, including Samsung, LG, Hyundai, Kia and SK. Notable food and beverage companies include Jinro, whose soju is the most sold alcoholic drink in the world, beating out Smirnoff vodka; top selling beer producers Hite (merged with Jinro) and Oriental Brewery. It also hosts food giants like Seoul Dairy Cooperative, Nongshim Group, Ottogi, CJ, Orion, Maeil Dairy, Namyang dairy and Lotte.

 

FINANCE

Seoul hosts large concentration of headquarters of International companies and banks, including 15 companies on fortune 500 list such as Samsung, LG and Hyundai. Most bank headquarters and the Korea Exchange are located in Yeouido (Yeoui island), which is often called "Korea's Wall Street" and has been serving as the financial center of the city since the 1980s. The Seoul international finance center & SIFC MALL, Hanhwa 63 building, the Hanhwa insurance company head office. Hanhwa is one of the three largest Korean insurance companies, along with Samsung Life and Gangnam & Kyob life insurance group.

 

COMMERCE

The largest wholesale and retail market in South Korea, the Dongdaemun Market, is located in Seoul. Myeongdong is a shopping and entertainment area in downtown Seoul with mid- to high-end stores, fashion boutiques and international brand outlets. The nearby Namdaemun Market, named after the Namdaemun Gate, is the oldest continually running market in Seoul.

 

Insadong is the cultural art market of Seoul, where traditional and modern Korean artworks, such as paintings, sculptures and calligraphy are sold. Hwanghak-dong Flea Market and Janganpyeong Antique Market also offer antique products. Some shops for local designers have opened in Samcheong-dong, where numerous small art galleries are located. Itaewon caters mainly to foreign tourists and American soldiers based in the city. The Gangnam district is one of the most affluent areas in Seoul and is noted for the fashionable and upscale Apgujeong-dong and Cheongdam-dong areas and the COEX Mall. Wholesale markets include Noryangjin Fisheries Wholesale Market and Garak Market.

 

The Yongsan Electronics Market is the largest electronics market in Asia. Electronics markets are Gangbyeon station metro line 2 Techno mart, ENTER6 MALL & Shindorim station Technomart mall complex.

 

Times Square is one of Seoul's largest shopping malls featuring the CGV Starium, the world's largest permanent 35 mm cinema screen.

 

KOREA WORLD TRADE CENTER COMPLEX which comprises COEX mall, congress center, 3 Inter-continental hotels, Business tower (Asem tower), Residence hotel,Casino and City airport terminal was established in 1988 Seoul Olympic . 2nd World trade trade center is planning at Seoul Olympic stadium complex as MICE HUB by Seoul city. Ex-Kepco head office building was purchased by Hyundai motor group with 9billion USD to build 115-storey Hyundai GBC & hotel complex until 2021. Now ex-kepco 25-storey building is under demolition.

 

ARCHITECTURE

The traditional heart of Seoul is the old Joseon Dynasty city, now the downtown area, where most palaces, government offices, corporate headquarters, hotels, and traditional markets are located. Cheonggyecheon, a stream that runs from west to east through the valley before emptying into the Han River, was for many years covered with concrete, but was recently restored by an urban revival project in 2005. Jongno street, meaning "Bell Street," has been a principal street and one of the earliest commercial steets of the city, on which one can find Bosingak, a pavilion containing a large bell. The bell signaled the different times of the day and controlled the four major gates to the city. North of downtown is Bukhan Mountain, and to the south is the smaller Namsan. Further south are the old suburbs, Yongsan District and Mapo District. Across the Han River are the newer and wealthier areas of Gangnam District, Seocho District and surrounding neighborhoods.

 

HISTORICAL ARCHITECTURE

Seoul has many historical and cultural landmarks. In Amsa-dong Prehistoric Settlement Site, Gangdong District, neolithic remains were excavated and accidentally discovered by a flood in 1925.

 

Urban and civil planning was a key concept when Seoul was first designed to serve as a capital in the late 14th century. The Joseon Dynasty built the "Five Grand Palaces" in Seoul – Changdeokgung, Changgyeonggung, Deoksugung, Gyeongbokgung and Gyeonghuigung – all of which are located in the district of Jongno District and Jung District. Among them, Changdeokgung was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1997 as an "outstanding example of Far Eastern palace architecture and garden design". The main palace, Gyeongbokgung, underwent a large-scale restoration project. The palaces are considered exemplary architecture of the Joseon period. Beside the palaces, Unhyeongung is known for being the royal residence of Regent Daewongun, the father of Emperor Gojong at the end of the Joseon Dynasty.

 

Seoul has been surrounded by walls that were built to regulate visitors from other regions and protect the city in case of an invasion. Pungnap Toseong is a flat earthen wall built at the edge of the Han River which is widely believed to be the site of Wiryeseong. Mongchon Toseong (Hangul: 몽촌토성; Hanja: 蒙村土城) is another earthen wall built during the Baekje period which is now located inside the Olympic Park. The Fortress Wall of Seoul was built early in the Joseon Dynasty for protection of the city. After many centuries of destruction and rebuilding, approximately ⅔ of the wall remains, as well as six of the original eight gates. These gates include Sungnyemun and Heunginjimun, commonly known as Namdaemun (South Great Gate) and Dongdaemun (East Great Gate). Namdaemun was the oldest wooden gate until a 2008 arson attack, and was re-opened after complete restoration in 2013. Situated near the gates are the traditional markets and largest shopping center, Namdaemun Market and Dongdaemun Market.

 

There are also many buildings constructed with international styles in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Independence Gate was built in 1897 to inspire an independent spirit. Seoul Station was opened in 1900 as Gyeongseong Station.

 

MODERN ARCHITECTURE

Various high-rise office buildings and residential buildings, like the Gangnam Finance Center, the Tower Palace, N Seoul Tower and Jongno Tower, dominate the city's skyline. A series of new high rises are under construction, including the Lotte World Tower, scheduled to be completed by 2016. As of July 2016, and excluding the still unopened Lotte World Tower, the tallest building in the city is the 279-metre-high Three International Finance Center.

 

The World Trade Center Seoul, located in Gangnam District, hosts various expositions and conferences. Also in Gangnam District is the COEX Mall, a large indoor shopping and entertainment complex. Downstream from Gangnam District is Yeouido, an island that is home to the National Assembly, major broadcasting studios, and a number of large office buildings, as well as the Korea Finance Building and the Yoido Full Gospel Church. The Olympic Stadium, Olympic Park, and Lotte World are located in Songpa District, on the south side of the Han River, upstream from Gangnam District. Two new modern landmarks of Seoul are Dongdaemun Design Plaza & Park, designed by Zaha Hadid, and the new wave-shaped Seoul City Hall, by Yoo Kerl of iArc.

 

In 2010 Seoul was designated the World Design Capital for the year.

 

CULTURE

TECHNOLOGY

Seoul has a very technologically advanced infrastructure. It has the world's highest fibre-optic broadband penetration, resulting in the world's fastest internet connections with speeds up to 1 Gbps. Seoul provides free Wi-Fi access in outdoor spaces. This 47.7 billion won ($44 million) project will give residents and visitors Internet access at 10,430 parks, streets and other public places by 2015.

 

MUSEUMS

Seoul is home to 115 museums, including four national and nine official municipal museums. Amongst the city's national museum, The National Museum of Korea is the most representative of museums in not only Seoul but all of South Korea. Since its establishment in 1945, the museum has built a collection of 220,000 artifacts. In October 2005, the museum moved to a new building in Yongsan Family Park. The National Folk Museum is situated on the grounds of the Gyeongbokgung Palace in the district of Jongno District and uses replicas of historical objects to illustrate the folk history of the Korean people. The National Palace Museum of Korea is also located on the grounds of the Gyeongbokgung Palace. Finally, the Seoul branch of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, whose main museum is located in Gwacheon, opened in 2013, in Sogyeok-dong.

 

Bukchon Hanok Village and Namsangol Hanok Village are old residential districts consisting of hanok Korean traditional houses, parks, and museums that allows visitors to experience traditional Korean culture.

 

The War Memorial, one of nine municipal museums in Seoul, offers visitors an educational and emotional experience of various wars in which Korea was involved, including Korean War themes. The Seodaemun Prison is a former prison built during the Japanese occupation, and is currently used as a historic museum.The Seoul Museum of Art and Ilmin Museum of Art have preserved the appearance of the old building that is visually unique from the neighboring tall, modern buildings. The former is operated by Seoul City Council and sits adjacent to Gyeonghuigung Palace, a Joseon dynasty royal palace. Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, is widely regarded as one of Seoul's largest private museum. For many Korean film lovers from all over the world, the Korean Film Archive is running the Korean Film Museum and Cinematheque KOFA in its main center located in Digital Media City (DMC), Sangam-dong. The Tteok & Kitchen Utensil Museum and Kimchi Field Museum provide information regarding Korean culinary history.

 

RELIGIOUS MONUMENTS

There are also religious buildings that take important roles in Korean society and politics. The Wongudan altar was a sacrificial place where Korean rulers held heavenly rituals since the Three Kingdoms period. Since the Joseon Dynasty adopted Confucianism as its national ideology in the 14th century, the state built many Confucian shrines. The descendants of the Joseon royal family still continue to hold ceremonies to commemorate ancestors at Jongmyo. It is the oldest royal Confucian shrine preserved and the ritual ceremonies continue a tradition established in the 14th century. Munmyo and Dongmyo were built during the same period. Although Buddhism was suppressed by the Joseon state, it has continued its existence. Jogyesa is the headquarters of the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism. Hwagyesa and Bongeunsa are also major Buddhist temples in Seoul.

 

The Myeongdong Cathedral is a landmark of the Myeongdong, Jung District and the biggest Catholic church established in 1883. It is a symbol of Catholicism in Korea. It was also a focus for political dissent in the 1980s. In this way the Roman Catholic Church has a very strong influence in Korean society.

 

There are many Protestant churches in Seoul. The most numerous are Presbyterian, but there are also many Methodist, Baptist, and Lutheran churches. Yoido Full Gospel Church is a Pentecostal church affiliated with the Assemblies of God on Yeouido in Seoul. With approximately 830,000 members (2007), it is the largest Pentecostal Christian congregation in the world, which has been recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records.

 

FESTIVALS

In October 2012 KBS Hall in Seoul hosted major international music festivals – First ABU TV and Radio Song Festivals within frameworks of Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union 49th General Assembly. Hi! Seoul Festival is a seasonal cultural festival held four times a year every spring, summer, autumn, and winter in Seoul, South Korea since 2003. It is based on the "Seoul Citizens' Day" held on every October since 1994 to commemorate the 600 years history of Seoul as the capital of the country. The festival is arranged under the Seoul Metropolitan Government. As of 2012, Seoul has hosted Ultra Music Festival Korea, an annual dance music festival that takes place on the 2nd weekend of June.

 

TRANSPORTATION

Seoul features one of the world's most advanced transportation infrastructures that is constantly under expansion. Its system dates back to the era of the Korean Empire, when the first streetcar lines were laid and a railroad linking Seoul and Incheon was completed. Seoul's most important streetcar line ran along Jongno until it was replaced by Line 1 of the subway system in the early 1970s. Other notable streets in downtown Seoul include Euljiro, Teheranno, Sejongno, Chungmuro, Yulgongno, and Toegyero. There are nine major subway lines stretching for more than 250 km, with one additional line planned. As of 2010, 25% of the population has a commute time of an hour or more.

 

BUS

Seoul's bus system is operated by the Seoul Metropolitan Government (S.M.G.), with four primary bus configurations available servicing most of the city. Seoul has many large intercity/express bus terminals. These buses connect Seoul with cities throughout South Korea. The Seoul Express Bus Terminal, Central City Terminal and Seoul Nambu Terminal are located in the district of Seocho District. In addition, East Seoul Bus Terminal in Gwangjin District and Sangbong Terminal in Jungnang District operate in the east of the city.

 

SUBWAY

Seoul has a comprehensive urban railway network that interconnects every district of the city and the surrounding areas. With more than 8 million passengers per day, Seoul has one of the busiest subway systems in the world. The Seoul Metropolitan Subway has 19 total lines which serve Seoul, Incheon, Gyeonggi province, western Gangwon province, and northern Chungnam province. In addition, in order to cope with the various modes of transport, Seoul's metropolitan government employs several mathematicians to coordinate the subway, bus, and traffic schedules into one timetable. The various lines are run by Korail, Seoul Metro, Seoul Metropolitan Rapid Transit Corporation, NeoTrans Co. Ltd., AREX, and Seoul Metro Line 9 Corporation.

 

TRAIN

Seoul is connected to every major city in South Korea by rail. Seoul is also linked to most major South Korean cities by the KTX high-speed train, which has a normal operation speed of more than 300 km/h. Major railroad stations include:

 

Seoul Station, Yongsan District: Gyeongbu line (KTX/Saemaul/Mugunghwa-ho), Gyeongui line (Saemaul/Commuter)

Yongsan Station, Yongsan District: Honam line (KTX/Saemaul/Mugunghwa), Jeolla/Janghang lines (Saemaul/Mugunghwa)

Yeongdeungpo Station, Yeongdeungpo District: Gyeongbu/Honam/Janghang lines (Saemaul/Mugunghwa)

Cheongnyangni Station, Dongdaemun District: Gyeongchun/Jungang/Yeongdong/Taebaek lines (Mugunghwa)

 

In addition, Suseo Station,in Gangnam District, is scheduled to open in late 2016, and offer KTX service on the newly built Suseo High Speed Railway.

 

AIRPORTS

Two international airports serve Seoul. Gimpo International Airport, formerly in Gimpo but annexed to Seoul in 1963, was for many years (since its original construction during the Korean War) the only international airport serving Seoul. Other domestic airports were also built around the time of the war, including Yeouido.

 

When it opened in March 2001, Incheon International Airport on Yeongjong island in Incheon changed the role of Gimpo Airport significantly. Incheon is now responsible for almost all international flights and some domestic flights, while Gimpo serves only domestic flights with the exception of flights to Haneda Airport in Tokyo, Osaka Kansai International Airport, Taipei Songshan Airport in Taipei, Hongqiao Airport in Shanghai, and Beijing Capital International Airport in Beijing. This has led to a significant drop in flights from Gimpo Airport, though it remains one of South Korea's busiest airports.

 

Meanwhile, Incheon International Airport has become, along with Hong Kong, a major transportation center for East Asia.

 

Incheon and Gimpo are linked to Seoul by highways, and to each other by the Incheon International Airport Railroad, which is also linked to Incheon line #1. Gimpo is also linked by subway (line No. 5 and #9). The Incheon International Airport Railroad, connecting the airport directly to Seoul Station in central Seoul, was recently opened. Shuttle buses also transfer passengers between Incheon and Gimpo airports.

 

CYCLING

Cycling is becoming increasingly popular in Seoul and in the entire country. Both banks of the Han River have cycling paths that run all the way across the city along the river. In addition, Seoul introduced in 2015 a bicycle-sharing system named Ddareungi.

 

EDUCATION

UNICERSITIES

Seoul is home to the majority of South Korea's most prestigious universities, including Seoul National University, Yonsei University, Korea University, Sungkyunkwan University, Sogang University, Hanyang University, Chung-Ang University, Ewha Womans University, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Hongik University, Kyung Hee University, Soongsil University, Sookmyung Women's University, Korea Military Academy, and the University of Seoul.

 

SECONDARY EDUCATION

Education from grades 1–12 is compulsory. Students spend six years in elementary school, three years in middle school, and three years in high school. Secondary schools generally require that the students wear uniforms. There is an exit exam for graduating from high school and many students proceeding to the university level are required to take the College Scholastic Ability Test that is held every November. Although there is a test for non-high school graduates, called school qualification exam, most of Koreans take the test

 

Seoul is home to various specialized schools, including three science high schools (Hansung Science High School, Sejong Science High School and Seoul Science High School), and six foreign language High Schools (Daewon Foreign Language High School, Daeil Foreign Language High School, Ewha Girls' Foreign Language High School, Hanyoung Foreign Language High School, Myungduk Foreign Language High School and Seoul Foreign Language High School). Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education comprises 235 College-Preparatory High Schools, 80 Vocational Schools, 377 Middle Schools, and 33 Special Education Schools as of 2009.

 

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Seoul is a member of the Asian Network of Major Cities 21 and the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Ha Long Bay, in the Gulf of Tonkin, includes some 1,600 islands (limestone karsts) and islets, forming a spectacular seascape of limestone pillars. Ha Long Bay is a UNESCO World Heritage site located in Quang Ninh province, Vietnam. Because of their precipitous nature, most of the islands are uninhabited and unaffected by a human presence. The site's outstanding scenic beauty is complemented by its great biological interest.

 

Fatpack Includes:

- Plats

- HUD (20 colors in total | 8 metal colors | Mix & Match options | Transparency levels)

 

Parts are separately change color in the fatpack versions only!

 

Each single pack comes with HUD for metals & straps transparency

 

Rigged for: eBODY Reborn | Legacy - PLEASE TRY DEMO!

 

♥

 

TAXI: - TRIGGERED -

 

____________________________

 

Credits:

 

Stockings: rotten {deviant rubbers + stockings} black 40% [reborn]

Tattoo: Messy. Store - Forever Leg Tattoo

 

____________________________

 

INWORLD • DISCORD • SL GROUP • PRIMFEED

 

Includes Teams from Wagner/Bon Homme, Britton-Hecla, Vermillion, Stanley County and West Central. Permission granted for journalism outlets and educational purposes. Not for commercial use. Must be credited. Photo courtesy of South Dakota Public Broadcasting.

©2021 SDPB

 

This is a collaged canvas with a modern take on rosemaling, a decorative folk art that originated in Norway. It includes the word Velkommen, which is Welcome in Norwegian, and the collage is inspired my grandma, who was very proud of her Norwegian heritage. It includes bits of her handwriting, crochet patterns, photographs of the lace from her wedding dress and the tiny community, Petersburg, Minnesota, where she lived the majority of her long life. It also includes a striped pattern that I painted inspired by piano keys, as she played organ for our country church from when she was a teenager until well into her 90s. I realize this collage is more personal than "mass market” (I seem to have forgotten that the class is called “Make Art that Sells”, not “Make Art that Only Your Family Would Buy”!), but as soon as I started gathering pieces of her handwriting, recipes, photographs, and an old school yearbook, I knew that they needed to find their way into the collage. I initially thought about using photoshop to create a digital version where I would replace the pieces that are specific to my grandma with more general imagery and patterns for the final submission. But in the end, I decided to submit it this way, as it just felt right to me, even if it may not be exactly right for the assignment.

 

By today’s standards, my grandma didn’t have a lot of opportunities in life. She wasn’t able to go to college. They didn’t have a lot of money, and she lived the majority of her life two miles from where she grew up in a tiny rural village that slowly deteriorated from a thriving community into a quiet shell of abandoned buildings and shuttered businesses. But she was always joyful, hardworking, and kind. She taught piano lessons, she knitted, she cooked, crocheted, read voraciously, and wrote a weekly newspaper column for well over 50 years that chronicled the lives of people in Petersburg. She never had a mean word to say about anything or anyone and touched and impacted many lives. She was an inspiration.

Includes Teams from Wagner/BH, Vermillion, Britton-Hecla, Stanley County West Central. Permission granted for journalism outlets and educational purposes. Not for commercial use. Must be credited. Photo courtesy of South Dakota Public Broadcasting.

©2021 SDPB

 

Includes Farmers Market in Marion Square, Charleston, South Carolina, and Pride Parade 2016

A roosting Common Blue on Mill Hill

The Jardin des plantes (French for "Garden of the Plants"), also known as the Jardin des plantes de Paris (French: [ʒaʁdɛ̃ dɛ plɑ̃t də paʁi]) when distinguished from other jardins des plantes in other cities, is the main botanical garden in France. The term Jardin des plantes is the official name in the present day, but it is in fact an elliptical form of Jardin royal des plantes médicinales ("Royal Garden of the Medicinal Plants"), which is related to the original purpose of the garden back in the 17th century.

 

Headquarters of the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle (National Museum of Natural History), the Jardin des plantes is situated in the 5th arrondissement, Paris, on the left bank of the river Seine, and covers 28 hectares (280,000 m2). Since 24 March 1993,[2] the entire garden and its contained buildings, archives, libraries, greenhouses, ménagerie (a zoo), works of art, and specimens' collection are classified as a national historical landmark in France (labelled monument historique).

 

Garden plan

The grounds of the Jardin des plantes include four buildings containing exhibited specimens. These buildings are officially considered as museums following the French law (they are labelled musée de France) and the French Museum of Natural History calls them galeries (French for 'galleries'):

 

The grande galerie de l'Évolution ('Gallery of Evolution') was inaugurated in 1889 as the galerie de Zoologie ('Gallery of Zoology'). In 1994, the gallery was renamed with its current name, grande galerie de l'Évolution, and its exhibited specimens were completely reorganised so that the visitor is oriented by the common thread of the evolution as the major subject treated by the gallery.

The galerie de Minéralogie et de Géologie ('Gallery of Mineralogy and Geology'), a mineralogy museum, built as of 1833, inaugurated in 1837.

The galerie de Paléontologie et d'Anatomie comparée ('Gallery of Paleontology and Comparative Anatomy'), a comparative anatomy museum in the ground floor and a paleontology museum in the first and second floors. The building was inaugurated in 1898.

The galerie de Botanique ('Gallery of Botany'), inaugurated in 1935 thanks to funds provided by the Rockefeller Foundation, contains botany laboratories and the French Muséum's National Herbarium (the biggest in the world with a collection of almost 8 million samples of plants). The building also contains a small permanent exhibition about botany.[citation needed]

In addition to the gardens and the galleries, there is also a small zoo, the ménagerie du Jardin des plantes, founded in 1795 by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre from animals of the ménagerie royale de Versailles, the menagerie at Versailles, which was dismantled during the French Revolution.[citation needed]

 

The Jardin des plantes maintains a botanical school, which trains botanists, constructs demonstration gardens, and exchanges seeds to maintain biotic diversity. About 4,500 plants are arranged by family on a one hectare (10,000 m2) plot. Three hectares are devoted to horticultural displays of decorative plants. An Alpine garden has 3,000 species with world-wide representation. Specialized buildings, such as a large Art Deco winter garden, and Mexican and Australian hothouses display regional plants, not native to France. The Rose Garden, created in 1990, has hundreds of species of roses and rose trees

 

The garden was formally founded in 1635 as the Royal Garden of Medicinal Plants by an edict of King Louis XIII. The garden was put under the authority of the Physician of the king, Guy de la Brosse. It was staffed by a group of "demonstrateurs", who lectured visitors, particularly future physicians and pharmacists, on botany, chemistry, and geology, illustrated by the garden collections.[3]

 

In 1673, under Louis XIV, and his new royal physician and director of the Garden, Guy-Crescent Fagon, great-nephew of Guy de la Brosse, the garden was given a new amphitheater, where dissections and other medical courses were conducted. The lecturers included the celebrated physician and anatomist Claude Perrault, who was equally famous as the architect; he designed the facade of the Louvre Palace.

 

In the early 18th century, the chateau was given an additional floor to house the collections the royal botanist's medicinal plant collection. This section was gradually turned into galleries to display the royal collection of minerals. At the same time, the greenhouses on the west and south were enlarged, to hold the plants brought back to France by numerous scientific expeditions around the world. New plants were studied, dried, and cataloged. A group of artists made Herbiers, books with detailed illustrations of each new plant, and the plants of the collection were carefully studied for their possible medical or culinary uses.[4] One example was the group of coffee plants brought from Java to Paris, which were raised and studied by Antoine de Jussieu for their possible medical and commercial use. His studies led to the plantation of coffee in the French colonies of North America.

 

The most celebrated head of the garden was Georges-Louis Leclerc, who served as its head from 1739 until his death in 1788. While director of the garden, he also owned and operated a large and successful iron works and foundry in Burgundy, but lived in the garden, in the house that now carries his name. Buffon was responsible for doubling the size of the garden, expanding down to the banks of Seine. He enlarged the Cabinet of Natural History in the main building, and added a new gallery to the south. He also brought into the scientific community of the garden a team of important botanists and naturalists, including Jean Baptiste Lamarck, author of one of the earliest theories of Evolution,[6]

 

Under the sponsorship of Buffon, explorers and botanists were sent to different corners of the world to collect specimens for garden and museum. Michel Adanson was sent to Senegal, and the navigator La Perouse to the islands of the Pacific. They returned with shiploads of specimens, which were carefully studied and classified. This research caused a conflict between the scientists of Royal Gardens and the professors of the Sorbonne over the question of Evolution. The scientists, led by Buffon and his followers, claimed that natural species gradually evolved, while the theologians of the Sorbonne insisted that nature was exactly as it was at the time of the Creation. Since the scientists had the backing of the Royal court, they were able to continue their studies and publish their work

 

On June 7, 1793, in the course of the French Revolution, the new government, the National Convention, ordered a complete transformation of the former royal institutions. They created a new Museum of Arts and Techniques, transformed the Louvre from a royal residence to a museum of art, and joined the Royal Garden of Plants and the Cabinet of Natural Sciences together into a single organization: the Museum of Natural History. It also received a number of important collections which had belonged to members of the aristocracy, such as a famous group of wax models illustrating anatomy which had been created by André Pinson.[8]

 

The Museum and gardens also benefited from the 1798 expedition launched by First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte to Egypt; the military force was accompanied by one hundred and fifty-four botanists, astronomers, archeologists, chemists, artists and other scholars, including Gaspard Monge, Joseph Fourier, and Claude Louis Berthollet. Drawings and paintings of their findings are found in the collections of the Natural History Museum.[8]

 

The holdings today include 6,963 specimens of the herbarium collection of Joseph Tournefort, donated on his death to the Jardin du Roi.[9]

 

The major addition to the garden in the late 18th century was the Ménagerie du Jardin des plantes. It was proposed in 1792 by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, the intendant of the gardens, in large part to rescue the animals of the royal menagerie at the Palace of Versailles, who had been largely abandoned during the Revolution. The Duke of Orleans had a similar private zoo, also abandoned. At the same time the government of the Convention ordered the seizure of all the animals put on public display by various circuses in Paris. In 1795, the government acquired the Hôtel de Magné, the large estate of a French nobleman next to the gardens, and installed the large cages that had housed the animals at Versailles. It went through a very difficult early period, when the majority of the animals died, before it was given sufficient funding and more suitable structures by Napoleon. It became the home of animals brought back to France in scientific expeditions in the early 19th century, including a famous giraffe given to King Charles X by the Sultan of Cairo in 1827.[10]

 

On 25 August 1944, Allied American troops (2nd DB) were stationed here for the night after the Liberation of Paris from Nazi Germany.[11]

 

Late 19th–20th century – additions and experiments

Throughout the 19th and early 20th century, the primary mission of the gardens and museums was research. Working in the laboratories there, the chemist Eugene Chevreul first isolated fatty acids and cholesterol, and studied the chemistry of vegetal dyes. The physiologist Claude Bernard studied the functions of the glycogen in the liver. In 1896, the physicist Henri Becquerel, working in a laboratory in the museum, discovered radioactivity. He wrapped uranium salts together with an unexposed photographic plate wrapped in black cloth, to keep out the sunlight. When he unwrapped them, the photographic plate had changed color from exposure to the radiation. He received the Nobel Prize in 1903 for his discovery.[12]

 

The Gallery of Paleontology and of Comparative Anatomy was opened in 1898, replacing structures built between 1795 and 1807, to contain and display the thousands of skeletons the museum had collected. The buildings of menagerie were also expanded, with the construction of immense Bird House, by architect Jules André, 12 meters high, 37 meters long and 25 meters long,[13]

 

The appearance of the gardens changed in late 19th and early 20th century with the construction of new buildings. In 1877, the gallery of zoology, the landmark building that overlooks the formal garden, designed by Jules André, was begun. It was built to contain the immense zoological collections of the museum; the central hall is a landmark of iron construction, comparable to the Grand Palais and the Musée d'Orsay. It was inaugurated in 1888, but thereafter suffered from a long lack of maintenance. It was closed in 1965, In the 1980s, a new home was found for the museum's gigantic collections. The Zoothêque, was constructed between 1980 and 1986 underneath the Esplanade Milne-Edwards, directly in front of the Gallery of Zoology. It is accessible only to researchers, and contains the thirty million specimens of insects, five hundred thousand fish and reptiles, one hundred fifty thousand birds, and seven thousand other animals. The building above underwent a major renovation from 1991 to 1994, to house the updated Grand Gallery of Evolution.[12]

 

National Museum of Natural History

Main article: National Museum of Natural History, France

The National Museum of Natural History has been called "the Louvre of the Natural Sciences." It is contained in a five buildings laid out along the formal garden; the Gallery of Evolution; the Gallery of Mineralogy and Geology; the Gallery of Botany; the Gallery of Paleontology and Comparative Anatomy; and the Laboratory of Entomology

 

The Grand Gallery of Evolution was designed by Jules André, whose other works in Paris included, in collaboration with Henri Labrouste. the Beaux-arts Bibliotheque National. He became architect of the museum in 1867, and his works are found throughout the Jardin des Plantes. It opened during the Paris Universal Exposition of 1889, though it was not finished as intended; it still lacks a grand facade on the side of rue Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire. The main facade, facing the two principal alleys of the formal garden, is flanked by two lantern towers. A series of medallions between the bays on the main facade overlooking the garden honors ten of the notable scientists who have worked in the Museum along with an allegorical statue of a woman holding an open book of knowledge.[15]

 

While the exterior is Beaux-Arts architecture, the interior iron structure was entirely modern, contemporary with the Grand Palais and the new railroad station of the gare d'Orsay (now the Musée d'Orsay). It encloses a rectangular hall 55 meters long, 25 meters wide and 15 meters high, with the glass roof of one thousand square meters supported by rows of slender iron columns. The structure deteriorated, had to be closed in 1965, then underwent extensive restoration between 1991 and 1995. It now presents, through preserved animals and media displays, the evolution of species. It gives special attention to species that has disappeared or are endangered. The collection of preserved animals includes the rhinoceros brought to France in the 18th century by Louis XV.

 

In front of the Gallery of Mineralogy and Geology stands one of the trees of the royal garden, a Sophora Japonica tree planted by Bernard de Jussieu in 1747. The gallery was constructed between 1833 and 1837 by Charles Rohault de Fleury in neoclassical style, with triangular frontons and pillars. The collection inside includes some six hundred thousand stones, gens, and fossils. Among the notable exhibits is the petrified trunk of bald cypress tree from the tertiary geological era, discovered in Essonne region of France in 1986.

 

In front of the Gallery of Botany is the oldest tree in Paris, a "Robinier Faux Acacia" brought to France from America in 1601. The gallery was built in 1930–35 with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. The gallery keeps the Herbier National, specimens of all known plant species, with 7.5 million plants represented. The ground floor gallery is used for temporary exhibitions.

 

This gallery is sited next to the Iris garden, which contains 260 varieties of Iris. The building was constructed between 1894 and 1897 by Ferdinand Dutert, a specialist in metallic architecture, whose most famous building was the Gallery of Machines at the 1889 Paris Exposition. The gallery was expanded in 1961 with a brick addition by architect Henri Delage. The interior is highly decorated with lace-like iron stairways and detail. It displays a large collection of fossilized skeletons of dinosaurs and other large vertebrates.

 

The garden covers an area of twenty-four hectares (59.3 acres). It is bordered by the River Seine on the east, on the west by the Rue Geofroy-Saint-Hilaire, on the south by the Rue Buffon, and on the north by Rue Cuvier, all streets named for French scientists whose studies were carried out within the garden and its museums.

 

The main entrance is on the east, along the Seine, at Place Valhubert, reaching to the Grand Gallery, which copies its width. It is in the style of a French formal garden and extends for five hundred meters (547 yards) between two geometrically-trimmed rows of platane trees. Its rectangula beds contain over a thousand plants. This part of the garden is bordered on the left by a row of galleries, and on the right by the School of Botany, the Alpine Garden, and greenhouses.[19]

 

The iron grill gateways and fence at Place Valubuert were created in the beginning of the formal garden on the east is a statue of the botanist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, the director the school of botany beginning in 1788. He is best known for devising the first coherent theory of biological evolution.[20]

 

At the other end of the formal garden, facing the Grand gallery, is a statue of another major figure in the garden's history, the naturalist Buffon, in a dressing gown, seated comfortably in an armchair atop the skin of a lion, holding a bird in his hand. Between the statue and the Gallery is the Esplanade Mine Edwards, beneath which is the Zoothéque, the massive underground storage area for the museum's collections. It is not open to the public.

 

Four large serres chaudes, or greenhouses, are placed in a row to the right front of the Gallery of Evolution. facing onto the Esplanade Milne-Edwards. They replaced the earliest greenhouses, built on the same site in the early 18th century, to house the plants brought to France from tropical climates by French explorers and naturalists. The Mexican greenhouse, which houses succulents, is separated by an alley from the Australian greenhouse, which hosts plants from that country. They were built between 1834 and 1836 by the architect Rohault de Fleury. Each of the two greenhouses is 20 meters by 12 meters in size. Their iron and glass structure was revolutionary for Paris, preceding by fifteen years the similar pavilions built by Victor Baltard for the Paris markets of Les Halles.[22][23]

 

A larger structure, the "Jardin d'hiver" (Winter Garden), covering 750 square meters, was designed by René Berger and completed in 1937. It features an Art Deco entrance, between two illuminated glass and iron pillars built for nighttime visits. The heating system keeps the interior temperature at 22 degrees Celsius year-round, creating a suitable environment for bananas, palms, giant bamboo, and other tropical plants. Its central feature, designed to create a more natural environment, is a fifteen-meter-high waterfall.[

 

The Alpine Garden was created in 1931, and is about three meters higher than the other parts of the garden. It is divided into two zones, connected by a tunnel. It contains several different microclimates, controlled by the water distribution, the orientation toward the sun, the type of soil and the distribution of the rocks. It is home to plants for Corsica, the Caucasus, North America and the Himalayas. The oldest plant is a pistachio tree, planted in about 1700. This tree was the subject of research by the botanist Sebastien Vaillant in the 18th century which confirmed the sexuality of plants. Another ancient tree found there is the metasequoia, or dawn redwood, a primitive conifer.

 

A large section alongside the formal garden, with an entrance on the Allee Bequrerel, belongs to the School of Botany, and is dedicated to plants that have medicinal or economic uses. It was originally created in the 18th century, and now has over three thousand eight hundred specimens, organised by genus and family. Regular tours my museum guides are given of this section. One of its special attractions is the "Pinus nigra" or black pine, of the variety Laricio, from Corsica, which was planted in the garden by Jussieu in the 1770s.

 

The small garden is placed directly behind the Winter Garden greenhouse. Its prominent features are a large platane tree from the Orient, planted by Buffon in 1785, and a Ginkgo biloba, a tree originating in China considered a living fossil, since traces show that these trees existed in the Second Era of living things, as defined by botanists. It was planted in 1811.

 

In the center of the garden is monument to the botanist Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. the last director of the garden named by the King before the French Revolution, and the creator of the menagerie. He is better known in France as the author of a well-known romantic movel, "Paul et Virginie", published in 1788.

 

The Grand Labyrinth features a winding path to the top of the Butte Copeaux, a hill overlooking the garden. It was originally created under Louis XIII, then redone in its present form under Louis XVI, on the site of an old garbage dump. At the beginning of the upward path is a Cedar of Lebanon, planted in 1734 by Jussieu, with a trunk four meters in circumference. The butte was largely planted with trees from the Mediterranean, including an old erable tree from Crete planted in 1702 and still in place. including from in it is topped by a picturesque 18th-century cast-iron viewing platform, the oldest work of iron architecture in Paris. The labyrinth was created under Louis XIII, then redone by the garden director Buffon for Louis XVI.

 

At the top is a neoclassical viewing platform called the Gloriette de Buffon. It was made of cast iron, bronze and copper in 1786-87, using metal from the foundry owned by Buffon. It is considered the oldest metallic structure in Paris.[26] The eight iron columns carry a roof in the shape of a Chinese hat, topped by a lantern with a frieze decorated with swastikas a popular motif in the period. The top is inscribed with a tribute to Louis XVI, honouring his "justice, humanity, and munificence", as well as a quotation from Bouffon, in Latin, translated; "I only count the hours without clouds". It was originally equipped with a precise clock which chimed exactly at noon, but it disappeared in 1795.[26]

 

Nearby is the Lion Fountain, built in 1834 into the wall of a former reservoir. It is decorated with two bronze lions made in 1863 by the noted animal sculptor Henri Jacquemart.

 

The Menagerie is the second-oldest public zoo in the world still in operation (following the Tiergarten Schönbrunn in Vienna, Austria), founded in 1752.[27] It was laid out in its current form between 1798 and 1836, and occupies 5.5 hectares (13.6 acres). Besides displaying and studying animals, it has the mission, in cooperation with the zoos of other European cities, to preserve the genetic pool of certain endangered species, with the longer-term goal of trying to re-introduce some of these species into nature.[26]

 

The menagerie, in the style of 19th century zoos, is composed of a series of fenced areas, separated by paths, each with "Fabriques" or shelters in pictureesque styles, ranging from rustic to Art Deco. The largest building is the rotunda, built of brick and stone between 1804 and 1812, which unites five separate structures. Its form is said to have been inspired by the medal of the Legion of Honor. It was restored in 1988. It formerly contained the large animals of the collection, including the elephants and the famous giraffe given to King Charles X of France, which lived there for twenty-seven years. The trenches around the rotunda were part of the residence of bears. In 1934, most of the large animals were moved to the new zoo in the Bois de Vincennes, and now the building is used mainly for events and receptions.

 

The major structures in the Menagerie include the neoclassical Grand Volerie, built for flying animals by Louis-Jules André, the designer of the garden's central building, the Gallery of Evolution. It was built in 1888 of iron, stone and wood, in an oval form. Like the main building of the gardens, it features two neoclassical lantern towers. The Palace of Reptiles is also a work of André. It was built between 1870 and 1874. Its decoration includes a bronze statue of "The Snake Charmer" from 1862.

 

The Vivarium is a gallery by Emmanuel Pontremoli from 1926; it is a modernist update of a Classical Greek villa, with an Art Deco portico dating from 1926. Other notable buildings include the Art Deco Ape House from 1934, a ceramic-covered oval building with the cages on the exterior. In 1934, the apes were transferred to Vincennes.

 

The garden has a large collection of fossil plants, collected from around the world. Some of them are displayed in the greenhouses of the garden.

 

The Maison de l'Intendance or Maison de Bouffon, located the entrance to the garden at 36 Rue Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire, was the residence of the Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, the industrialist, naturalist, and director and chief creator of the gardens from 1739 to his death in 1788. It became part of the garden in 1777–79. (not open to public).[14]

The Cuvier House, next to the Gallery of Comparative Anatomy, was the residence of the scientist Georges Cuvier until his death in 1832. Cuvier was one of the founders of Paleontology, and the first to identify the skeleton of a mastodon as a prehistoric animal. Its facade displays his motto in Latin "The "Transibunt et augebitur scientia" ("The Hours Pass and science progresses"). The house was also the place where, in 1896, Henri Becquerel carried out the experiment in 1893 which led to the discovery of uranium. This event is marked by plaque on the facade. (not open to public).[29]

The Cuvier Fountain is across the street from the garden at the intersection of Rue Linné and Rue Cuvier, across the street from the very decorative wrought iron gates of the garden. The fountain honors George Cuvier, considered the father of comparative anatomy, with his statue surrounded by a varied collection of animals. It was built by the park architect Vigoureux and the sculptor Jean-Jacques Feuchère in 1840.

The Amphitheater near Rue Cuvier in the northwest corner, was constructed in 1787-88 in the garden of the Hôtel de Magny on Rue Cuvier. It was built under the direction of Buffon as a venue for lectures on natural science and the discoveries in the gardens. It was built in a purely neoclassical, or Paladian style. The frontons are decorated with 18th century sculpture depicting the natural sciences. The building was extensively restored in 2002–2003. A large stone vase in front of the amphitheater is a vestige of the Royal Abbey of Saint-Victor, which occupied the site of the amphitheater, and was destroyed during the French Revolution.[29]

The Pavilion of New Converts, in the northwest corner of the garden on the Allée Chevreul, is a vestige of the Convent of New Converts, founded in 1622 by Father Hyacinth of Paris and moved to the site in 1656. It was built to shelter Protestant converts to Catholicism. The surviving north facade, with a fronton in the Louis XIV style, contained the refectory, a parlour and bedrooms. After the French Revolution it became part of the gardens. It was the residence and laboratory of a director of the museum for 28 years, the chemist Eugene Chevreul, who died there in 1899 at the age of 103. Chevreul developed the use of color wheels or chromatic circles to resolve the definition of colors. His theory of colors was used at the Gobelins Manufactory of tapestries, where his laboratory was located, and inspired the palette of colors used by Eugène Delacroix. A statue of Chevreul is placed in the Carré Chevreul in the gardens.[29]

The hôtel de Magny at 57 Rue Cuvier is the administration building of the gardens. It was built in about 1700 under Louis XIV as a residence, designed by the royal architect Pierre Bullet, whose works included the Porte Saint-Martin and mansions in Le Marais and Place Vendôme After the Revolution, it turned into a boarding school; the celebrated actor Talma was one of the students. The house and estates were purchased, by Buffon in 1787 to enlarge the gardens (not open to the public).

 

The Paris Zoological Park was created in 1934 in the Bois de Vincennes, as space in menagerie of the Jardin des Plantes became scarce. It is administered, like the Jardin des Plantes, by the Museum of Natural History. New environments were created there for the larger mammals, including the giraffes, elephants, and hippopotamus. The new zoo covers 14.5 hectares (36 acres). The centrepiece is a large artificial rock, 65 meters (213 feet) high. It also includes a large greenhouse with 4000 square meters (43,000 square feet) of plantations, simulating a tropical rain forest.

The Parc des Clères in the Normandy specialises in birds and certain quadrupeds, including kangaroos and cervids.

The Arboretum de Chèvreloup, located near Versailles was founded in 1927. It covers 222 hectares, and has species raised from seeds collected from botanical gardens around the world. it focuses particularly upon

The Jardin botanique exotique de Menton, is located near Menton in the Alpes-Maritimes province. It specialises in tropical plants and those from the Mediterranean climate.

The Animal Park of la Haute Touche, between Sologne and Berry, specialises in reproducing endangered species in a large natural setting.

The Alpine Garden of Jaysinia at Samoëns in Haut-Savoie specialises in high-altitude plants from around the world, particularly from the Alps.

  

Paris is the capital and most populous city of France. With an official estimated population of 2,102,650 residents as of 1 January 2023[2] in an area of more than 105 km2 (41 sq mi) Paris is the fourth-most populated city in the European Union and the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2022. Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of the world's major centres of finance, diplomacy, commerce, culture, fashion, and gastronomy. For its leading role in the arts and sciences, as well as its early and extensive system of street lighting, in the 19th century, it became known as the City of Light.

 

The City of Paris is the centre of the Île-de-France region, or Paris Region, with an official estimated population of 12,271,794 inhabitants on 1 January 2023, or about 19% of the population of France, The Paris Region had a GDP of €765 billion (US$1.064 trillion, PPP) in 2021, the highest in the European Union. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit Worldwide Cost of Living Survey, in 2022, Paris was the city with the ninth-highest cost of living in the world.

 

Paris is a major railway, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports: Charles de Gaulle Airport (the third-busiest airport in Europe) and Orly Airport. Opened in 1900, the city's subway system, the Paris Métro, serves 5.23 million passengers daily; it is the second-busiest metro system in Europe after the Moscow Metro. Gare du Nord is the 24th-busiest railway station in the world and the busiest outside Japan, with 262 million passengers in 2015. Paris has one of the most sustainable transportation systems and is one of the only two cities in the world that received the Sustainable Transport Award twice.

 

Paris is especially known for its museums and architectural landmarks: the Louvre received 8.9. million visitors in 2023, on track for keeping its position as the most-visited art museum in the world. The Musée d'Orsay, Musée Marmottan Monet and Musée de l'Orangerie are noted for their collections of French Impressionist art. The Pompidou Centre Musée National d'Art Moderne, Musée Rodin and Musée Picasso are noted for their collections of modern and contemporary art. The historical district along the Seine in the city centre has been classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1991.

 

Paris hosts several United Nations organizations including UNESCO, and other international organizations such as the OECD, the OECD Development Centre, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, the International Energy Agency, the International Federation for Human Rights, along with European bodies such as the European Space Agency, the European Banking Authority and the European Securities and Markets Authority. The football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris. The 80,000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros. The city hosted the Olympic Games in 1900 and 1924, and will host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The 1938 and 1998 FIFA World Cups, the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup, the 2007 Rugby World Cup, as well as the 1960, 1984 and 2016 UEFA European Championships were also held in the city. Every July, the Tour de France bicycle race finishes on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris.

 

The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the area's major north–south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité, which gradually became an important trading centre. The Parisii traded with many river towns (some as far away as the Iberian Peninsula) and minted their own coins.

 

The Romans conquered the Paris Basin in 52 BC and began their settlement on Paris's Left Bank. The Roman town was originally called Lutetia (more fully, Lutetia Parisiorum, "Lutetia of the Parisii", modern French Lutèce). It became a prosperous city with a forum, baths, temples, theatres, and an amphitheatre.

 

By the end of the Western Roman Empire, the town was known as Parisius, a Latin name that would later become Paris in French. Christianity was introduced in the middle of the 3rd century AD by Saint Denis, the first Bishop of Paris: according to legend, when he refused to renounce his faith before the Roman occupiers, he was beheaded on the hill which became known as Mons Martyrum (Latin "Hill of Martyrs"), later "Montmartre", from where he walked headless to the north of the city; the place where he fell and was buried became an important religious shrine, the Basilica of Saint-Denis, and many French kings are buried there.

 

Clovis the Frank, the first king of the Merovingian dynasty, made the city his capital from 508. As the Frankish domination of Gaul began, there was a gradual immigration by the Franks to Paris and the Parisian Francien dialects were born. Fortification of the Île de la Cité failed to avert sacking by Vikings in 845, but Paris's strategic importance—with its bridges preventing ships from passing—was established by successful defence in the Siege of Paris (885–886), for which the then Count of Paris (comte de Paris), Odo of France, was elected king of West Francia. From the Capetian dynasty that began with the 987 election of Hugh Capet, Count of Paris and Duke of the Franks (duc des Francs), as king of a unified West Francia, Paris gradually became the largest and most prosperous city in France.

 

By the end of the 12th century, Paris had become the political, economic, religious, and cultural capital of France.[36] The Palais de la Cité, the royal residence, was located at the western end of the Île de la Cité. In 1163, during the reign of Louis VII, Maurice de Sully, bishop of Paris, undertook the construction of the Notre Dame Cathedral at its eastern extremity.

 

After the marshland between the river Seine and its slower 'dead arm' to its north was filled in from around the 10th century, Paris's cultural centre began to move to the Right Bank. In 1137, a new city marketplace (today's Les Halles) replaced the two smaller ones on the Île de la Cité and Place de Grève (Place de l'Hôtel de Ville). The latter location housed the headquarters of Paris's river trade corporation, an organisation that later became, unofficially (although formally in later years), Paris's first municipal government.

 

In the late 12th century, Philip Augustus extended the Louvre fortress to defend the city against river invasions from the west, gave the city its first walls between 1190 and 1215, rebuilt its bridges to either side of its central island, and paved its main thoroughfares. In 1190, he transformed Paris's former cathedral school into a student-teacher corporation that would become the University of Paris and would draw students from all of Europe.

 

With 200,000 inhabitants in 1328, Paris, then already the capital of France, was the most populous city of Europe. By comparison, London in 1300 had 80,000 inhabitants. By the early fourteenth century, so much filth had collected inside urban Europe that French and Italian cities were naming streets after human waste. In medieval Paris, several street names were inspired by merde, the French word for "shit".

 

During the Hundred Years' War, Paris was occupied by England-friendly Burgundian forces from 1418, before being occupied outright by the English when Henry V of England entered the French capital in 1420; in spite of a 1429 effort by Joan of Arc to liberate the city, it would remain under English occupation until 1436.

 

In the late 16th-century French Wars of Religion, Paris was a stronghold of the Catholic League, the organisers of 24 August 1572 St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in which thousands of French Protestants were killed. The conflicts ended when pretender to the throne Henry IV, after converting to Catholicism to gain entry to the capital, entered the city in 1594 to claim the crown of France. This king made several improvements to the capital during his reign: he completed the construction of Paris's first uncovered, sidewalk-lined bridge, the Pont Neuf, built a Louvre extension connecting it to the Tuileries Palace, and created the first Paris residential square, the Place Royale, now Place des Vosges. In spite of Henry IV's efforts to improve city circulation, the narrowness of Paris's streets was a contributing factor in his assassination near Les Halles marketplace in 1610.

 

During the 17th century, Cardinal Richelieu, chief minister of Louis XIII, was determined to make Paris the most beautiful city in Europe. He built five new bridges, a new chapel for the College of Sorbonne, and a palace for himself, the Palais-Cardinal. After Richelieu's death in 1642, it was renamed the Palais-Royal.

 

Due to the Parisian uprisings during the Fronde civil war, Louis XIV moved his court to a new palace, Versailles, in 1682. Although no longer the capital of France, arts and sciences in the city flourished with the Comédie-Française, the Academy of Painting, and the French Academy of Sciences. To demonstrate that the city was safe from attack, the king had the city walls demolished and replaced with tree-lined boulevards that would become the Grands Boulevards. Other marks of his reign were the Collège des Quatre-Nations, the Place Vendôme, the Place des Victoires, and Les Invalides.

 

18th and 19th centuries

Empire, and Haussmann's renovation of Paris

Paris grew in population from about 400,000 in 1640, to 650,000 in 1780. A new boulevard named the Champs-Élysées extended the city west to Étoile, while the working-class neighbourhood of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine on the eastern side of the city grew increasingly crowded with poor migrant workers from other regions of France.

 

Paris was the centre of an explosion of philosophic and scientific activity, known as the Age of Enlightenment. Diderot and d'Alembert published their Encyclopédie in 1751, and the Montgolfier Brothers launched the first manned flight in a hot air balloon on 21 November 1783. Paris was the financial capital of continental Europe, and the primary European centre of book publishing, fashion and the manufacture of fine furniture and luxury goods.

 

In the summer of 1789, Paris became the centre stage of the French Revolution. On 14 July, a mob seized the arsenal at the Invalides, acquiring thousands of guns, and stormed the Bastille, which was a principal symbol of royal authority. The first independent Paris Commune, or city council, met in the Hôtel de Ville and elected a Mayor, the astronomer Jean Sylvain Bailly, on 15 July.

 

Louis XVI and the royal family were brought to Paris and incarcerated in the Tuileries Palace. In 1793, as the revolution turned increasingly radical, the king, queen and mayor were beheaded by guillotine in the Reign of Terror, along with more than 16,000 others throughout France. The property of the aristocracy and the church was nationalised, and the city's churches were closed, sold or demolished. A succession of revolutionary factions ruled Paris until 9 November 1799 (coup d'état du 18 brumaire), when Napoleon Bonaparte seized power as First Consul.

 

The population of Paris had dropped by 100,000 during the Revolution, but after 1799 it surged with 160,000 new residents, reaching 660,000 by 1815. Napoleon replaced the elected government of Paris with a prefect that reported directly to him. He began erecting monuments to military glory, including the Arc de Triomphe, and improved the neglected infrastructure of the city with new fountains, the Canal de l'Ourcq, Père Lachaise Cemetery and the city's first metal bridge, the Pont des Arts.

  

The Eiffel Tower, under construction in November 1888, startled Parisians—and the world—with its modernity.

During the Restoration, the bridges and squares of Paris were returned to their pre-Revolution names; the July Revolution in 1830 (commemorated by the July Column on the Place de la Bastille) brought to power a constitutional monarch, Louis Philippe I. The first railway line to Paris opened in 1837, beginning a new period of massive migration from the provinces to the city. In 1848, Louis-Philippe was overthrown by a popular uprising in the streets of Paris. His successor, Napoleon III, alongside the newly appointed prefect of the Seine, Georges-Eugène Haussmann, launched a huge public works project to build wide new boulevards, a new opera house, a central market, new aqueducts, sewers and parks, including the Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes. In 1860, Napoleon III annexed the surrounding towns and created eight new arrondissements, expanding Paris to its current limits.

 

During the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), Paris was besieged by the Prussian Army. Following several months of blockade, hunger, and then bombardment by the Prussians, the city was forced to surrender on 28 January 1871. After seizing power in Paris on 28 March, a revolutionary government known as the Paris Commune held power for two months, before being harshly suppressed by the French army during the "Bloody Week" at the end of May 1871.

 

In the late 19th century, Paris hosted two major international expositions: the 1889 Universal Exposition, which featured the new Eiffel Tower, was held to mark the centennial of the French Revolution; and the 1900 Universal Exposition gave Paris the Pont Alexandre III, the Grand Palais, the Petit Palais and the first Paris Métro line. Paris became the laboratory of Naturalism (Émile Zola) and Symbolism (Charles Baudelaire and Paul Verlaine), and of Impressionism in art (Courbet, Manet, Monet, Renoir).

 

20th and 21st centuries

World War, Paris between the Wars (1919–1939), Paris in World War II, and History of Paris (1946–2000)

By 1901, the population of Paris had grown to about 2,715,000. At the beginning of the century, artists from around the world including Pablo Picasso, Modigliani, and Henri Matisse made Paris their home. It was the birthplace of Fauvism, Cubism and abstract art, and authors such as Marcel Proust were exploring new approaches to literature.

 

During the First World War, Paris sometimes found itself on the front line; 600 to 1,000 Paris taxis played a small but highly important symbolic role in transporting 6,000 soldiers to the front line at the First Battle of the Marne. The city was also bombed by Zeppelins and shelled by German long-range guns. In the years after the war, known as Les Années Folles, Paris continued to be a mecca for writers, musicians and artists from around the world, including Ernest Hemingway, Igor Stravinsky, James Joyce, Josephine Baker, Eva Kotchever, Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, Sidney Bechet and Salvador Dalí.

 

In the years after the peace conference, the city was also home to growing numbers of students and activists from French colonies and other Asian and African countries, who later became leaders of their countries, such as Ho Chi Minh, Zhou Enlai and Léopold Sédar Senghor.

  

General Charles de Gaulle on the Champs-Élysées celebrating the liberation of Paris, 26 August 1944

On 14 June 1940, the German army marched into Paris, which had been declared an "open city". On 16–17 July 1942, following German orders, the French police and gendarmes arrested 12,884 Jews, including 4,115 children, and confined them during five days at the Vel d'Hiv (Vélodrome d'Hiver), from which they were transported by train to the extermination camp at Auschwitz. None of the children came back. On 25 August 1944, the city was liberated by the French 2nd Armoured Division and the 4th Infantry Division of the United States Army. General Charles de Gaulle led a huge and emotional crowd down the Champs Élysées towards Notre Dame de Paris, and made a rousing speech from the Hôtel de Ville.

 

In the 1950s and the 1960s, Paris became one front of the Algerian War for independence; in August 1961, the pro-independence FLN targeted and killed 11 Paris policemen, leading to the imposition of a curfew on Muslims of Algeria (who, at that time, were French citizens). On 17 October 1961, an unauthorised but peaceful protest demonstration of Algerians against the curfew led to violent confrontations between the police and demonstrators, in which at least 40 people were killed. The anti-independence Organisation armée secrète (OAS) carried out a series of bombings in Paris throughout 1961 and 1962.

 

In May 1968, protesting students occupied the Sorbonne and put up barricades in the Latin Quarter. Thousands of Parisian blue-collar workers joined the students, and the movement grew into a two-week general strike. Supporters of the government won the June elections by a large majority. The May 1968 events in France resulted in the break-up of the University of Paris into 13 independent campuses. In 1975, the National Assembly changed the status of Paris to that of other French cities and, on 25 March 1977, Jacques Chirac became the first elected mayor of Paris since 1793. The Tour Maine-Montparnasse, the tallest building in the city at 57 storeys and 210 m (689 ft) high, was built between 1969 and 1973. It was highly controversial, and it remains the only building in the centre of the city over 32 storeys high. The population of Paris dropped from 2,850,000 in 1954 to 2,152,000 in 1990, as middle-class families moved to the suburbs. A suburban railway network, the RER (Réseau Express Régional), was built to complement the Métro; the Périphérique expressway encircling the city, was completed in 1973.

 

Most of the postwar presidents of the Fifth Republic wanted to leave their own monuments in Paris; President Georges Pompidou started the Centre Georges Pompidou (1977), Valéry Giscard d'Estaing began the Musée d'Orsay (1986); President François Mitterrand had the Opéra Bastille built (1985–1989), the new site of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (1996), the Arche de la Défense (1985–1989) in La Défense, as well as the Louvre Pyramid with its underground courtyard (1983–1989); Jacques Chirac (2006), the Musée du quai Branly.

 

In the early 21st century, the population of Paris began to increase slowly again, as more young people moved into the city. It reached 2.25 million in 2011. In March 2001, Bertrand Delanoë became the first socialist mayor. He was re-elected in March 2008. In 2007, in an effort to reduce car traffic, he introduced the Vélib', a system which rents bicycles. Bertrand Delanoë also transformed a section of the highway along the Left Bank of the Seine into an urban promenade and park, the Promenade des Berges de la Seine, which he inaugurated in June 2013.

 

In 2007, President Nicolas Sarkozy launched the Grand Paris project, to integrate Paris more closely with the towns in the region around it. After many modifications, the new area, named the Metropolis of Grand Paris, with a population of 6.7 million, was created on 1 January 2016. In 2011, the City of Paris and the national government approved the plans for the Grand Paris Express, totalling 205 km (127 mi) of automated metro lines to connect Paris, the innermost three departments around Paris, airports and high-speed rail (TGV) stations, at an estimated cost of €35 billion.The system is scheduled to be completed by 2030.

 

In January 2015, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed attacks across the Paris region. 1.5 million people marched in Paris in a show of solidarity against terrorism and in support of freedom of speech. In November of the same year, terrorist attacks, claimed by ISIL, killed 130 people and injured more than 350.

 

On 22 April 2016, the Paris Agreement was signed by 196 nations of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in an aim to limit the effects of climate change below 2 °C.

 

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Kew Gardens is the world's largest collection of living plants. Founded in 1840 from the exotic garden at Kew Park in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, UK, its living collections include more than 30,000 different kinds of plants, while the herbarium, which is one of the largest in the world, has over seven million preserved plant specimens. The library contains more than 750,000 volumes, and the illustrations collection contains more than 175,000 prints and drawings of plants. It is one of London's top tourist attractions. In 2003, the gardens were put on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites.

 

Kew Gardens, together with the botanic gardens at Wakehurst Place in Sussex, are managed by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (brand name Kew), an internationally important botanical research and education institution that employs 750 staff, and is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

 

The Kew site, which has been dated as formally starting in 1759, though can be traced back to the exotic garden at Kew Park, formed by Lord Capel John of Tewkesbury, consists of 121 hectares (300 acres) of gardens and botanical glasshouses, four Grade I listed buildings and 36 Grade II listed structures, all set in an internationally significant landscape.

 

Kew Gardens has its own police force, Kew Constabulary, which has been in operation since 1847.

 

History

Kew, the area in which Kew Gardens are situated, consists mainly of the gardens themselves and a small surrounding community. Royal residences in the area which would later influence the layout and construction of the gardens began in 1299 when Edward I moved his court to a manor house in neighbouring Richmond (then called Sheen). That manor house was later abandoned; however, Henry V built Sheen Palace in 1501, which, under the name Richmond Palace, became a permanent royal residence for Henry VII. Around the start of the 16th century courtiers attending Richmond Palace settled in Kew and built large houses. Early royal residences at Kew included Mary Tudor's house, which was in existence by 1522 when a driveway was built to connect it to the palace at Richmond. Around 1600, the land that would become the gardens was known as Kew Field, a large field strip farmed by one of the new private estates.

 

The exotic garden at Kew Park, formed by Lord Capel John of Tewkesbury, was enlarged and extended by Augusta, Dowager Princess of Wales, the widow of Frederick, Prince of Wales. The origins of Kew Gardens can be traced to the merging of the royal estates of Richmond and Kew in 1772. William Chambers built several garden structures, including the lofty Chinese pagoda built in 1761 which still remains. George III enriched the gardens, aided by William Aiton and Sir Joseph Banks. The old Kew Park (by then renamed the White House), was demolished in 1802. The "Dutch House" adjoining was purchased by George III in 1781 as a nursery for the royal children. It is a plain brick structure now known as Kew Palace.

 

Some early plants came from the walled garden established by William Coys at Stubbers in North Ockendon. The collections grew somewhat haphazardly until the appointment of the first collector, Francis Masson, in 1771. Capability Brown, who became England's most renowned landscape architect, applied for the position of master gardener at Kew, and was rejected.

 

In 1840 the gardens were adopted as a national botanical garden, in large part due to the efforts of the Royal Horticultural Society and its president William Cavendish. Under Kew's director, William Hooker, the gardens were increased to 30 hectares (75 acres) and the pleasure grounds, or arboretum, extended to 109 hectares (270 acres), and later to its present size of 121 hectares (300 acres). The first curator was John Smith.

 

The Palm House was built by architect Decimus Burton and iron-maker Richard Turner between 1844 and 1848, and was the first large-scale structural use of wrought iron. It is considered " the world's most important surviving Victorian glass and iron structure." The structure's panes of glass are all hand-blown. The Temperate House, which is twice as large as the Palm House, followed later in the 19th century. It is now the largest Victorian glasshouse in existence. Kew was the location of the successful effort in the 19th century to propagate rubber trees for cultivation outside South America.

 

In February 1913, the Tea House was burned down by suffragettes Olive Wharry and Lilian Lenton during a series of arson attacks in London.[19] Kew Gardens lost hundreds of trees in the Great Storm of 1987. From 1959 to 2007 Kew Gardens had the tallest flagpole in Britain. Made from a single Douglas-fir from Canada, it was given to mark both the centenary of the Canadian Province of British Columbia and the bicentenary of Kew Gardens. The flagpole was removed after damage by weather and woodpeckers.

 

In July 2003, the gardens were put on the list of World Heritage Sites by UNESCO.

 

Features

Treetop walkway

A new treetop walkway opened in 2008. This walkway is 18 metres (59 ft) high and 200 metres (660 ft) long and takes visitors into the tree canopy of a woodland glade. Visitors can ascend and descend by stairs or by a lift. The floor of the walkway is made from perforated metal and flexes as it is walked upon. The entire structure sways in the wind.

  

Sackler Crossing

The Sackler Crossing bridge, made of granite and bronze, opened in May 2006. Designed by Buro Happold and John Pawson, it crosses the lake and is named in honour of philanthropists Dr Mortimer and Theresa Sackler.

 

The minimalist-styled bridge is designed as a sweeping double curve of black granite. The sides of the bridge are formed of bronze posts that give the impression, from certain angles, of forming a solid wall whereas from others, and to those on the bridge, they are clearly individual entities that allow a view of the water beyond.

 

The bridge forms part of a path designed to encourage visitors to visit more of the gardens than had hitherto been popular and connects the two art galleries, via the Temperate and Evolution Houses and the woodland glade, to the Minka House and the Bamboo Garden.

 

The crossing won a special award from the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2008.

 

Vehicular tour

Kew Explorer is a service that takes a circular route around the gardens, provided by two 72-seater road trains that are fuelled by Calor Gas to minimise pollution. A commentary is provided by the driver and there are several stops.

   

Compost heap

Kew has one of the largest compost heaps in Europe, made from green and woody waste from the gardens and the manure from the stables of the Household Cavalry. The compost is mainly used in the gardens, but on occasion has been auctioned as part of a fundraising event for the gardens.

 

The compost heap is in an area of the gardens not accessible to the public, but a viewing platform, made of wood which had been illegally traded but seized by Customs officers in HMRC, has been erected to allow visitors to observe the heap as it goes through its cycle.

 

Guided walks

Free tours of the gardens are conducted daily by trained volunteers.

 

Plant houses

 

Alpine House

A narrow semicircular building of glass and steel latticework stands at the right, set amid an area of worked rock with a line of deciduous trees in the rear left, under a blue sky filled with large puffy white clouds. In front of it, curving slightly away to the left, is a wooden platform with benches on it and a thin metal guardrail in front of a low wet area with bright red flowers

 

In March 2006, the Davies Alpine House opened, the third version of an alpine house since 1887. Although only 16 metres (52 ft) long the apex of the roof arch extends to a height of 10 metres (33 ft) in order to allow the natural airflow of a building of this shape to aid in the all-important ventilation required for the type of plants to be housed.

 

The new house features a set of automatically operated blinds that prevent it overheating when the sun is too hot for the plants together with a system that blows a continuous stream of cool air over the plants. The main design aim of the house is to allow maximum light transmission. To this end the glass is of a special low iron type that allows 90 per cent of the ultraviolet light in sunlight to pass. It is attached by high tension steel cables so that no light is obstructed by traditional glazing bars.

 

To conserve energy the cooling air is not refrigerated but is cooled by being passed through a labyrinth of pipes buried under the house at a depth where the temperature remains suitable all year round. The house is designed so that the maximum temperature should not exceed 20 °C (68 °F).

 

Kew's collection of Alpine plants (defined as those that grow above the tree-line in their locale – ground level at the poles rising to over 2,000 metres (6,562 feet)), extends to over 7000. As the Alpine House can only house around 200 at a time the ones on show are regularly rotated.

  

The Nash Conservatory

Originally designed for Buckingham Palace, this was moved to Kew in 1836 by King William IV. With an abundance of natural light, the building is used various exhibitions, weddings, and private events. It is also now used to exhibit the winners of the photography competition.

  

Kew Orangery

The Orangery was designed by Sir William Chambers, and was completed in 1761. It measures 28 by 10 metres (92 by 33 ft). It was found to be too dark for its intended purpose of growing citrus plants and they were moved out in 1841. After many changes of use, it is currently used as a restaurant.

  

The Palm House and Parterre

The Palm House (1844–1848) was the result of cooperation between architect Decimus Burton and iron founder Richard Turner,[28] and continues upon the glass house design principles developed by John Claudius Loudon[29][30] and Joseph Paxton. A space frame of wrought iron arches, held together by horizontal tubular structures containing long prestressed cables,[30][31] supports glass panes which were originally[28] tinted green with copper oxide to reduce the significant heating effect. The 19m high central nave is surrounded by a walkway at 9m height, allowing visitors a closer look upon the palm tree crowns. In front of the Palm House on the east side are the Queen's Beasts, ten statues of animals bearing shields. They are Portland stone replicas of originals done by James Woodford and were placed here in 1958.[32]

  

Princess of Wales Conservatory

Kew's third major conservatory, the Princess of Wales Conservatory, designed by architect Gordon Wilson, was opened in 1987 by Diana, Princess of Wales in commemoration of her predecessor Augusta's associations with Kew. In 1989 the conservatory received the Europa Nostra award for conservation.[34] The conservatory houses ten computer-controlled micro-climatic zones, with the bulk of the greenhouse volume composed of Dry Tropics and Wet Tropics plants. Significant numbers of orchids, water lilies, cacti, lithops, carnivorous plants and bromeliads are housed in the various zones. The cactus collection also extends outside the conservatory where some hardier species can be found.

 

The conservatory has an area of 4499 square metres. As it is designed to minimise the amount of energy taken to run it, the cooler zones are grouped around the outside and the more tropical zones are in the central area where heat is conserved. The glass roof extends down to the ground, giving the conservatory a distinctive appearance and helping to maximise the use of the sun's energy.

 

During the construction of the conservatory a time capsule was buried. It contains the seeds of basic crops and endangered plant species and key publications on conservation.

 

Rhizotron

 

The Rhizotron

A rhizotron opened at the same time as the "treetop walkway", giving visitors the opportunity to investigate what happens beneath the ground where trees grow. The rhizotron is essentially a single gallery containing a set of large bronze abstract castings which contain LCD screens that carry repeating loops of information about the life of trees.

 

Temperate House

 

Inside the Temperate House

The Temperate House, currently closed for restoration, is a greenhouse that has twice the floor area of the Palm House and is the world's largest surviving Victorian glass structure. When in use it contained plants and trees from all the temperate regions of the world. It was commissioned in 1859 and designed by architect Decimus Burton and ironfounder Richard Turner. Covering 4880 square metres, it rises to a height of 19 metres. Intended to accommodate Kew's expanding collection of hardy and temperate plants, it took 40 years to construct, during which time costs soared. The building was restored during 2014 - 15 by Donald Insall Associates, based on their conservation management plan.

 

There is a viewing gallery in the central section from which visitors were able to look down on that part of the collection.

 

Waterlily House

The Waterlily House is the hottest and most humid of the houses at Kew and contains a large pond with varieties of water lily, surrounded by a display of economically important heat-loving plants. It closes during the winter months.

 

It was built to house the Victoria amazonica, the largest of the Nymphaeaceae family of water lilies. This plant was originally transported to Kew in phials of clean water and arrived in February 1849, after several prior attempts to transport seeds and roots had failed. Although various other members of the Nymphaeaceae family grew well, the house did not suit the Victoria, purportedly because of a poor ventilation system, and this specimen was moved to another, smaller, house.

 

The ironwork for this project was provided by Richard Turner and the initial construction was completed in 1852. The heat for the house was initially obtained by running a flue from the nearby Palm House but it was later equipped with its own boiler.

 

Ornamental buildings

 

The Pagoda

In the south-east corner of Kew Gardens stands the Great Pagoda (by Sir William Chambers), erected in 1762, from a design in imitation of the Chinese Ta. The lowest of the ten octagonal storeys is 15 m (49 ft) in diameter. From the base to the highest point is 50 m (164 ft).

 

Each storey finishes with a projecting roof, after the Chinese manner, originally covered with ceramic tiles and adorned with large dragons; a story is still propagated that they were made of gold and were reputedly sold by George IV to settle his debts. In fact the dragons were made of wood painted gold, and simply rotted away with the ravages of time. The walls of the building are composed of brick. The staircase, 253 steps, is in the centre of the building. The Pagoda was closed to the public for many years, but was reopened for the summer months of 2006 and is now open permanently. During the Second World War holes were cut in each floor to allow for drop-testing of model bombs.

  

The Japanese Gateway (Chokushi-Mon)

Built for the Japan-British Exhibition (1910) and moved to Kew in 1911, the Chokushi-Mon ("Imperial Envoy's Gateway") is a four-fifths scale replica of the karamon (gateway) of the Nishi Hongan-ji temple in Kyoto. It lies about 140 m west of the Pagoda and is surrounded by a reconstruction of a traditional Japanese garden.

  

The Minka House

Following the Japan 2001 festival, Kew acquired a Japanese wooden house called a minka. It was originally erected in around 1900 in a suburb of Okazaki. Japanese craftsmen reassembled the framework and British builders who had worked on the Globe Theatre added the mud wall panels.

 

Work on the house started on 7 May 2001 and, when the framework was completed on 21 May, a Japanese ceremony was held to mark what was considered an auspicious occasion. Work on the building of the house was completed in November 2001 but the internal artefacts were not all in place until 2006.

 

The Minka house is located within the bamboo collection in the west central part of the gardens.

  

Queen Charlotte's Cottage

Within the conservation area is a cottage that was given to Queen Charlotte as a wedding present on her marriage to George III. It has been restored by Historic Royal Palaces and is separately administered by them.

It is open to the public on weekends and bank holidays during the summer.

 

Kew Palace

Kew Palace is the smallest of the British royal palaces. It was built by Samuel Fortrey, a Dutch merchant in around 1631. It was later purchased by George III. The construction method is known as Flemish bond and involves laying the bricks with long and short sides alternating. This and the gabled front give the construction a Dutch appearance.

To the rear of the building is the "Queen's Garden" which includes a collection of plants believed to have medicinal qualities. Only plants that were extant in England by the 17th century are grown in the garden.

The building underwent significant restoration, with leading conservation architects Donald Insall Associates, before being reopened to the public in 2006.

It is administered separately from Kew Gardens, by Historic Royal Palaces.

In front of the palace is a sundial, which was given to Kew Gardens in 1959 to commemorate a royal visit. It was sculpted by Martin Holden and is based on an earlier sculpture by Thomas Tompion, a celebrated 17th century clockmaker.

 

Galleries and Museums

 

The Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanic Art

The Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanic Art opened in April 2008, and holds paintings from Kew's and Dr Shirley Sherwood's collections, many of which had never been displayed to the public before. It features paintings by artists such as Georg D. Ehret, the Bauer brothers, Pierre-Joseph Redouté and Walter Hood Fitch. The paintings and drawings are cycled on a six-monthly basis. The gallery is linked to the Marianne North Gallery (see above).

 

Near the Palm House is a building known as "Museum No. 1" (even though it is the only museum on the site), which was designed by Decimus Burton and opened in 1857. Housing Kew's economic botany collections including tools, ornaments, clothing, food and medicines, its aim was to illustrate human dependence on plants. The building was refurbished in 1998. The upper two floors are now an education centre and the ground floor houses the "Plants+People" exhibition which highlights the variety of plants and the ways that people use them.

 

Admission to the galleries and museum is free after paying admission to the gardens. The International Garden Photographer of the Year Exhibition is an annual event with an indoor display of entries during the summer months.

 

The Marianne North Gallery of Botanic Art

The Marianne North Gallery was built in the 1880s to house the paintings of Marianne North, an MP's daughter who travelled alone to North and South America, South Africa and many parts of Asia, at a time when women rarely did so, to paint plants. The gallery has 832 of her paintings. The paintings were left to Kew by the artist and a condition of the bequest is that the layout of the paintings in the gallery may not be altered.

 

The gallery had suffered considerable structural degradation since its creation and during a period from 2008 to 2009 major restoration and refurbishment took place, with works lead by with leading conservation architects Donald Insall Associates. During the time the gallery was closed the opportunity was also taken to restore the paintings to their original condition. The gallery reopened in October 2009.

 

The gallery originally opened in 1882 and is the only permanent exhibition in Great Britain dedicated to the work of one woman.

 

Plant collections

 

The plant collections include the Aquatic Garden, which is near the Jodrell laboratory. The Aquatic Garden, which celebrated its centenary in 2009, provides conditions for aquatic and marginal plants. The large central pool holds a selection of summer-flowering water lilies and the corner pools contain plants such as reed mace, bulrushes, phragmites and smaller floating aquatic species.

 

The Arboretum, which covers over half of the total area of the site, contains over 14,000 trees of many thousands of varieties. The Bonsai Collection is housed in a dedicated greenhouse near the Jodrell laboratory. The Cacti Collection is housed in and around the Princess of Wales Conservatory. The Carnivorous Plant collection is housed in the Princess of Wales Conservatory. The Grass Garden was created on its current site in the early 1980s to display ornamental and economic grasses; it was redesigned and replanted between 1994 and 1997. It is currently undergoing a further redesign and planting. Over 580 species of grasses are displayed.

 

The Herbaceous Grounds (Order Beds) were devised in the late 1860s by Sir Joseph Hooker, then director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, so that botany students could learn to recognise plants and experience at first hand the diversity of the plant kingdom. The collection is organised into family groups. Its name arose because plant families were known as natural orders in the 19th century. Over the main path is a rose pergola built in 1959 to mark the bicentennial of the Gardens. It supports climber and rambling roses selected for the length and profusion of flowering.

 

The Orchid Collection is housed in two climate zones within the Princess of Wales Conservatory. To maintain an interesting display the plants are changed regularly so that those on view are generally flowering. The Rock Garden, originally built of limestone in 1882, is now constructed of Sussex sandstone from West Hoathly, Sussex. The rock garden is divided into six geographic regions: Europe, Mediterranean and Africa, Australia and New Zealand, Asia, North America, and South America. There are currently 2,480 different "accessions" growing in the garden.

 

The Rose Garden, based upon original designs by William Nesfield, is behind the Palm House, and was replanted between 2009 and 2010 using the original design from 1848. It is intended as an ornamental display rather than a collection of a particularly large number of varieties. Other collections and specialist areas include the rhododendron dell, the azalea garden, the bamboo garden, the juniper collection, the berberis dell, the lilac garden, the magnolia collection, and the fern collection.

  

The Palm House and lake to Victoria Gate

The world's smallest water-lily, Nymphaea thermarum, was saved from extinction when it was grown from seed at Kew, in 2009.

 

Herbarium

The Kew herbarium is one of the largest in the world with approximately 7 million specimens used primarily for taxonomic study. The herbarium is rich in types for all regions of the world, especially the tropics.

 

Library and archives

The library and archives at Kew are one of the world's largest botanical collections, with over half a million items, including books, botanical illustrations, photographs, letters and manuscripts, periodicals, and maps. The Jodrell Library has been merged with the Economic Botany and Mycology Libraries and all are now housed in the Jodrell Laboratory.

 

Forensic horticulture

Kew provides advice and guidance to police forces around the world where plant material may provide important clues or evidence in cases. In one famous case the forensic science department at Kew were able to ascertain that the contents of the stomach of a headless corpse found in the river Thames contained a highly toxic African bean.

 

Economic Botany

 

The Sustainable Uses of Plants group (formerly the Centre for Economic Botany), focus on the uses of plants in the United Kingdom and the world's arid and semi-arid zones. The Centre is also responsible for curation of the Economic Botany Collection, which contains more than 90,000 botanical raw materials and ethnographic artefacts, some of which are on display in the Plants + People exhibit in Museum No. 1. The Centre is now located in the Jodrell Laboratory.

 

Jodrell Laboratory

The original Jodrell laboratory, named after Mr T. J. Phillips Jodrell who funded it, was established in 1877 and consisted of four research rooms and an office. Originally research was conducted into plant physiology but this was gradually superseded by botanical research. In 1934 an artists' studio and photographic darkroom were added, highlighting the importance of botanical illustration. In 1965, following increasing overcrowding, a new building was constructed and research expanded into seed collection for plant conservation. The biochemistry section also expanded to facilitate research into secondary compounds that could be derived from plants for medicinal purposes. In 1994 the centre was expanded again, tripling in size, and a decade later it was further expanded by the addition of the Wolfson Wing.

 

Kew Constabulary

Main article: Kew Constabulary

The gardens have their own police force, Kew Constabulary, which has been in operation since 1847. Formerly known as the Royal Botanic Gardens Constabulary, it is a small, specialised constabulary of two sergeants and 12 officers, who patrol the grounds in a green painted electric buggy. The Kew Constables are attested under section 3 of the Parks Regulation Act 1872, which gives them the same powers as the Metropolitan Police within the land belonging to the gardens.

 

Media

A number of films, documentaries and short videos have been made about Kew Gardens.

 

They include:

 

a short colour film World Garden by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth in 1942

three series of A Year at Kew (2007), filmed for BBC television and released on DVD

Cruickshank on Kew: The Garden That Changed the World, a 2009 BBC documentary, presented by Dan Cruickshank, exploring the history of the relationship between Kew Gardens and the British Empire

David Attenborough's 2012 Kingdom of Plants 3D

a 2003 episode of the Channel 4 TV series Time Team, presented by Tony Robinson, that searched for the remains of George III's palace

a 2004 episode of the BBC Four series Art of the Garden which looked at the building of the Great Palm House in the 1840s.

"Kew on a Plate", a TV programme showing the kinds of produce grown at Kew Gardens and how they can be prepared in a kitchen.

In 1921 Virginia Woolf published her short story "Kew Gardens", which gives brief descriptions of four groups of people as they pass by a flowerbed.

 

Access and transport

 

Elizabeth Gate

Kew Gardens is accessible by a number of gates. Currently, there are four gates into Kew Gardens that are open to the public: the Elizabeth Gate, which is situated at the west end of Kew Green, and was originally called the Main Gate before being renamed in 2012 to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II; the Brentford Gate, which faces the River Thames; the Victoria Gate (named after Queen Victoria), situated in Kew Road, which is also the location of the Visitors' Centre; and the Lion Gate, also situated in Kew Road.

 

Other gates that are not open to the public include Unicorn Gate, Cumberland Gate and Jodrell Gate (all in Kew Road) and Isleworth Gate (facing the Thames).

  

Victoria Gate

Kew Gardens station, a London Underground and National Rail station opened in 1869 and served by both the District line and the London Overground services on the North London Line, is the nearest train station to the gardens – only 400 metres (1,300 ft) along Lichfield Road from the Victoria Gate entrance. Built by the London and South Western Railway, the Historic England listed building is one of the few remaining original 19th-century stations on the North London Line, and the only station on the London Underground with a pub on the platform (though the platform entrance is now closed off). Kew Bridge station, on the other side of the Thames, 800 metres from the Elizabeth Gate entrance via Kew Bridge, is served by South West Trains from Clapham Junction and Waterloo.

 

London Buses route 65, between Ealing Broadway and Kingston, stops near the Lion Gate and Victoria Gate entrances; route 391, between Fulham and Richmond, stops near Kew Gardens station; while routes 237 and 267 stop at Kew Bridge station.

 

London River Services operate from Westminster during the summer, stopping at Kew Pier, 500 metres (1,600 ft) from Elizabeth Gate. Cycle racks are located just inside the Victoria Gate, Elizabeth Gate and Brentford Gate entrances. There is a 300-space car park outside Brentford Gate, reached via Ferry Lane, as well as some free, though restricted, on-street parking on Kew Road.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kew_Gardens

Kew Gardens is the world's largest collection of living plants. Founded in 1840 from the exotic garden at Kew Park in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, UK, its living collections include more than 30,000 different kinds of plants, while the herbarium, which is one of the largest in the world, has over seven million preserved plant specimens. The library contains more than 750,000 volumes, and the illustrations collection contains more than 175,000 prints and drawings of plants. It is one of London's top tourist attractions. In 2003, the gardens were put on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites.

 

Kew Gardens, together with the botanic gardens at Wakehurst Place in Sussex, are managed by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (brand name Kew), an internationally important botanical research and education institution that employs 750 staff, and is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

 

The Kew site, which has been dated as formally starting in 1759, though can be traced back to the exotic garden at Kew Park, formed by Lord Capel John of Tewkesbury, consists of 121 hectares (300 acres) of gardens and botanical glasshouses, four Grade I listed buildings and 36 Grade II listed structures, all set in an internationally significant landscape.

 

Kew Gardens has its own police force, Kew Constabulary, which has been in operation since 1847.

 

History

Kew, the area in which Kew Gardens are situated, consists mainly of the gardens themselves and a small surrounding community. Royal residences in the area which would later influence the layout and construction of the gardens began in 1299 when Edward I moved his court to a manor house in neighbouring Richmond (then called Sheen). That manor house was later abandoned; however, Henry V built Sheen Palace in 1501, which, under the name Richmond Palace, became a permanent royal residence for Henry VII. Around the start of the 16th century courtiers attending Richmond Palace settled in Kew and built large houses. Early royal residences at Kew included Mary Tudor's house, which was in existence by 1522 when a driveway was built to connect it to the palace at Richmond. Around 1600, the land that would become the gardens was known as Kew Field, a large field strip farmed by one of the new private estates.

 

The exotic garden at Kew Park, formed by Lord Capel John of Tewkesbury, was enlarged and extended by Augusta, Dowager Princess of Wales, the widow of Frederick, Prince of Wales. The origins of Kew Gardens can be traced to the merging of the royal estates of Richmond and Kew in 1772. William Chambers built several garden structures, including the lofty Chinese pagoda built in 1761 which still remains. George III enriched the gardens, aided by William Aiton and Sir Joseph Banks. The old Kew Park (by then renamed the White House), was demolished in 1802. The "Dutch House" adjoining was purchased by George III in 1781 as a nursery for the royal children. It is a plain brick structure now known as Kew Palace.

 

Some early plants came from the walled garden established by William Coys at Stubbers in North Ockendon. The collections grew somewhat haphazardly until the appointment of the first collector, Francis Masson, in 1771. Capability Brown, who became England's most renowned landscape architect, applied for the position of master gardener at Kew, and was rejected.

 

In 1840 the gardens were adopted as a national botanical garden, in large part due to the efforts of the Royal Horticultural Society and its president William Cavendish. Under Kew's director, William Hooker, the gardens were increased to 30 hectares (75 acres) and the pleasure grounds, or arboretum, extended to 109 hectares (270 acres), and later to its present size of 121 hectares (300 acres). The first curator was John Smith.

 

The Palm House was built by architect Decimus Burton and iron-maker Richard Turner between 1844 and 1848, and was the first large-scale structural use of wrought iron. It is considered " the world's most important surviving Victorian glass and iron structure." The structure's panes of glass are all hand-blown. The Temperate House, which is twice as large as the Palm House, followed later in the 19th century. It is now the largest Victorian glasshouse in existence. Kew was the location of the successful effort in the 19th century to propagate rubber trees for cultivation outside South America.

 

In February 1913, the Tea House was burned down by suffragettes Olive Wharry and Lilian Lenton during a series of arson attacks in London.[19] Kew Gardens lost hundreds of trees in the Great Storm of 1987. From 1959 to 2007 Kew Gardens had the tallest flagpole in Britain. Made from a single Douglas-fir from Canada, it was given to mark both the centenary of the Canadian Province of British Columbia and the bicentenary of Kew Gardens. The flagpole was removed after damage by weather and woodpeckers.

 

In July 2003, the gardens were put on the list of World Heritage Sites by UNESCO.

 

Features

Treetop walkway

A new treetop walkway opened in 2008. This walkway is 18 metres (59 ft) high and 200 metres (660 ft) long and takes visitors into the tree canopy of a woodland glade. Visitors can ascend and descend by stairs or by a lift. The floor of the walkway is made from perforated metal and flexes as it is walked upon. The entire structure sways in the wind.

  

Sackler Crossing

The Sackler Crossing bridge, made of granite and bronze, opened in May 2006. Designed by Buro Happold and John Pawson, it crosses the lake and is named in honour of philanthropists Dr Mortimer and Theresa Sackler.

 

The minimalist-styled bridge is designed as a sweeping double curve of black granite. The sides of the bridge are formed of bronze posts that give the impression, from certain angles, of forming a solid wall whereas from others, and to those on the bridge, they are clearly individual entities that allow a view of the water beyond.

 

The bridge forms part of a path designed to encourage visitors to visit more of the gardens than had hitherto been popular and connects the two art galleries, via the Temperate and Evolution Houses and the woodland glade, to the Minka House and the Bamboo Garden.

 

The crossing won a special award from the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2008.

 

Vehicular tour

Kew Explorer is a service that takes a circular route around the gardens, provided by two 72-seater road trains that are fuelled by Calor Gas to minimise pollution. A commentary is provided by the driver and there are several stops.

   

Compost heap

Kew has one of the largest compost heaps in Europe, made from green and woody waste from the gardens and the manure from the stables of the Household Cavalry. The compost is mainly used in the gardens, but on occasion has been auctioned as part of a fundraising event for the gardens.

 

The compost heap is in an area of the gardens not accessible to the public, but a viewing platform, made of wood which had been illegally traded but seized by Customs officers in HMRC, has been erected to allow visitors to observe the heap as it goes through its cycle.

 

Guided walks

Free tours of the gardens are conducted daily by trained volunteers.

 

Plant houses

 

Alpine House

A narrow semicircular building of glass and steel latticework stands at the right, set amid an area of worked rock with a line of deciduous trees in the rear left, under a blue sky filled with large puffy white clouds. In front of it, curving slightly away to the left, is a wooden platform with benches on it and a thin metal guardrail in front of a low wet area with bright red flowers

 

In March 2006, the Davies Alpine House opened, the third version of an alpine house since 1887. Although only 16 metres (52 ft) long the apex of the roof arch extends to a height of 10 metres (33 ft) in order to allow the natural airflow of a building of this shape to aid in the all-important ventilation required for the type of plants to be housed.

 

The new house features a set of automatically operated blinds that prevent it overheating when the sun is too hot for the plants together with a system that blows a continuous stream of cool air over the plants. The main design aim of the house is to allow maximum light transmission. To this end the glass is of a special low iron type that allows 90 per cent of the ultraviolet light in sunlight to pass. It is attached by high tension steel cables so that no light is obstructed by traditional glazing bars.

 

To conserve energy the cooling air is not refrigerated but is cooled by being passed through a labyrinth of pipes buried under the house at a depth where the temperature remains suitable all year round. The house is designed so that the maximum temperature should not exceed 20 °C (68 °F).

 

Kew's collection of Alpine plants (defined as those that grow above the tree-line in their locale – ground level at the poles rising to over 2,000 metres (6,562 feet)), extends to over 7000. As the Alpine House can only house around 200 at a time the ones on show are regularly rotated.

  

The Nash Conservatory

Originally designed for Buckingham Palace, this was moved to Kew in 1836 by King William IV. With an abundance of natural light, the building is used various exhibitions, weddings, and private events. It is also now used to exhibit the winners of the photography competition.

  

Kew Orangery

The Orangery was designed by Sir William Chambers, and was completed in 1761. It measures 28 by 10 metres (92 by 33 ft). It was found to be too dark for its intended purpose of growing citrus plants and they were moved out in 1841. After many changes of use, it is currently used as a restaurant.

  

The Palm House and Parterre

The Palm House (1844–1848) was the result of cooperation between architect Decimus Burton and iron founder Richard Turner,[28] and continues upon the glass house design principles developed by John Claudius Loudon[29][30] and Joseph Paxton. A space frame of wrought iron arches, held together by horizontal tubular structures containing long prestressed cables,[30][31] supports glass panes which were originally[28] tinted green with copper oxide to reduce the significant heating effect. The 19m high central nave is surrounded by a walkway at 9m height, allowing visitors a closer look upon the palm tree crowns. In front of the Palm House on the east side are the Queen's Beasts, ten statues of animals bearing shields. They are Portland stone replicas of originals done by James Woodford and were placed here in 1958.[32]

  

Princess of Wales Conservatory

Kew's third major conservatory, the Princess of Wales Conservatory, designed by architect Gordon Wilson, was opened in 1987 by Diana, Princess of Wales in commemoration of her predecessor Augusta's associations with Kew. In 1989 the conservatory received the Europa Nostra award for conservation.[34] The conservatory houses ten computer-controlled micro-climatic zones, with the bulk of the greenhouse volume composed of Dry Tropics and Wet Tropics plants. Significant numbers of orchids, water lilies, cacti, lithops, carnivorous plants and bromeliads are housed in the various zones. The cactus collection also extends outside the conservatory where some hardier species can be found.

 

The conservatory has an area of 4499 square metres. As it is designed to minimise the amount of energy taken to run it, the cooler zones are grouped around the outside and the more tropical zones are in the central area where heat is conserved. The glass roof extends down to the ground, giving the conservatory a distinctive appearance and helping to maximise the use of the sun's energy.

 

During the construction of the conservatory a time capsule was buried. It contains the seeds of basic crops and endangered plant species and key publications on conservation.

 

Rhizotron

 

The Rhizotron

A rhizotron opened at the same time as the "treetop walkway", giving visitors the opportunity to investigate what happens beneath the ground where trees grow. The rhizotron is essentially a single gallery containing a set of large bronze abstract castings which contain LCD screens that carry repeating loops of information about the life of trees.

 

Temperate House

 

Inside the Temperate House

The Temperate House, currently closed for restoration, is a greenhouse that has twice the floor area of the Palm House and is the world's largest surviving Victorian glass structure. When in use it contained plants and trees from all the temperate regions of the world. It was commissioned in 1859 and designed by architect Decimus Burton and ironfounder Richard Turner. Covering 4880 square metres, it rises to a height of 19 metres. Intended to accommodate Kew's expanding collection of hardy and temperate plants, it took 40 years to construct, during which time costs soared. The building was restored during 2014 - 15 by Donald Insall Associates, based on their conservation management plan.

 

There is a viewing gallery in the central section from which visitors were able to look down on that part of the collection.

 

Waterlily House

The Waterlily House is the hottest and most humid of the houses at Kew and contains a large pond with varieties of water lily, surrounded by a display of economically important heat-loving plants. It closes during the winter months.

 

It was built to house the Victoria amazonica, the largest of the Nymphaeaceae family of water lilies. This plant was originally transported to Kew in phials of clean water and arrived in February 1849, after several prior attempts to transport seeds and roots had failed. Although various other members of the Nymphaeaceae family grew well, the house did not suit the Victoria, purportedly because of a poor ventilation system, and this specimen was moved to another, smaller, house.

 

The ironwork for this project was provided by Richard Turner and the initial construction was completed in 1852. The heat for the house was initially obtained by running a flue from the nearby Palm House but it was later equipped with its own boiler.

 

Ornamental buildings

 

The Pagoda

In the south-east corner of Kew Gardens stands the Great Pagoda (by Sir William Chambers), erected in 1762, from a design in imitation of the Chinese Ta. The lowest of the ten octagonal storeys is 15 m (49 ft) in diameter. From the base to the highest point is 50 m (164 ft).

 

Each storey finishes with a projecting roof, after the Chinese manner, originally covered with ceramic tiles and adorned with large dragons; a story is still propagated that they were made of gold and were reputedly sold by George IV to settle his debts. In fact the dragons were made of wood painted gold, and simply rotted away with the ravages of time. The walls of the building are composed of brick. The staircase, 253 steps, is in the centre of the building. The Pagoda was closed to the public for many years, but was reopened for the summer months of 2006 and is now open permanently. During the Second World War holes were cut in each floor to allow for drop-testing of model bombs.

  

The Japanese Gateway (Chokushi-Mon)

Built for the Japan-British Exhibition (1910) and moved to Kew in 1911, the Chokushi-Mon ("Imperial Envoy's Gateway") is a four-fifths scale replica of the karamon (gateway) of the Nishi Hongan-ji temple in Kyoto. It lies about 140 m west of the Pagoda and is surrounded by a reconstruction of a traditional Japanese garden.

  

The Minka House

Following the Japan 2001 festival, Kew acquired a Japanese wooden house called a minka. It was originally erected in around 1900 in a suburb of Okazaki. Japanese craftsmen reassembled the framework and British builders who had worked on the Globe Theatre added the mud wall panels.

 

Work on the house started on 7 May 2001 and, when the framework was completed on 21 May, a Japanese ceremony was held to mark what was considered an auspicious occasion. Work on the building of the house was completed in November 2001 but the internal artefacts were not all in place until 2006.

 

The Minka house is located within the bamboo collection in the west central part of the gardens.

  

Queen Charlotte's Cottage

Within the conservation area is a cottage that was given to Queen Charlotte as a wedding present on her marriage to George III. It has been restored by Historic Royal Palaces and is separately administered by them.

It is open to the public on weekends and bank holidays during the summer.

 

Kew Palace

Kew Palace is the smallest of the British royal palaces. It was built by Samuel Fortrey, a Dutch merchant in around 1631. It was later purchased by George III. The construction method is known as Flemish bond and involves laying the bricks with long and short sides alternating. This and the gabled front give the construction a Dutch appearance.

To the rear of the building is the "Queen's Garden" which includes a collection of plants believed to have medicinal qualities. Only plants that were extant in England by the 17th century are grown in the garden.

The building underwent significant restoration, with leading conservation architects Donald Insall Associates, before being reopened to the public in 2006.

It is administered separately from Kew Gardens, by Historic Royal Palaces.

In front of the palace is a sundial, which was given to Kew Gardens in 1959 to commemorate a royal visit. It was sculpted by Martin Holden and is based on an earlier sculpture by Thomas Tompion, a celebrated 17th century clockmaker.

 

Galleries and Museums

 

The Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanic Art

The Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanic Art opened in April 2008, and holds paintings from Kew's and Dr Shirley Sherwood's collections, many of which had never been displayed to the public before. It features paintings by artists such as Georg D. Ehret, the Bauer brothers, Pierre-Joseph Redouté and Walter Hood Fitch. The paintings and drawings are cycled on a six-monthly basis. The gallery is linked to the Marianne North Gallery (see above).

 

Near the Palm House is a building known as "Museum No. 1" (even though it is the only museum on the site), which was designed by Decimus Burton and opened in 1857. Housing Kew's economic botany collections including tools, ornaments, clothing, food and medicines, its aim was to illustrate human dependence on plants. The building was refurbished in 1998. The upper two floors are now an education centre and the ground floor houses the "Plants+People" exhibition which highlights the variety of plants and the ways that people use them.

 

Admission to the galleries and museum is free after paying admission to the gardens. The International Garden Photographer of the Year Exhibition is an annual event with an indoor display of entries during the summer months.

 

The Marianne North Gallery of Botanic Art

The Marianne North Gallery was built in the 1880s to house the paintings of Marianne North, an MP's daughter who travelled alone to North and South America, South Africa and many parts of Asia, at a time when women rarely did so, to paint plants. The gallery has 832 of her paintings. The paintings were left to Kew by the artist and a condition of the bequest is that the layout of the paintings in the gallery may not be altered.

 

The gallery had suffered considerable structural degradation since its creation and during a period from 2008 to 2009 major restoration and refurbishment took place, with works lead by with leading conservation architects Donald Insall Associates. During the time the gallery was closed the opportunity was also taken to restore the paintings to their original condition. The gallery reopened in October 2009.

 

The gallery originally opened in 1882 and is the only permanent exhibition in Great Britain dedicated to the work of one woman.

 

Plant collections

 

The plant collections include the Aquatic Garden, which is near the Jodrell laboratory. The Aquatic Garden, which celebrated its centenary in 2009, provides conditions for aquatic and marginal plants. The large central pool holds a selection of summer-flowering water lilies and the corner pools contain plants such as reed mace, bulrushes, phragmites and smaller floating aquatic species.

 

The Arboretum, which covers over half of the total area of the site, contains over 14,000 trees of many thousands of varieties. The Bonsai Collection is housed in a dedicated greenhouse near the Jodrell laboratory. The Cacti Collection is housed in and around the Princess of Wales Conservatory. The Carnivorous Plant collection is housed in the Princess of Wales Conservatory. The Grass Garden was created on its current site in the early 1980s to display ornamental and economic grasses; it was redesigned and replanted between 1994 and 1997. It is currently undergoing a further redesign and planting. Over 580 species of grasses are displayed.

 

The Herbaceous Grounds (Order Beds) were devised in the late 1860s by Sir Joseph Hooker, then director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, so that botany students could learn to recognise plants and experience at first hand the diversity of the plant kingdom. The collection is organised into family groups. Its name arose because plant families were known as natural orders in the 19th century. Over the main path is a rose pergola built in 1959 to mark the bicentennial of the Gardens. It supports climber and rambling roses selected for the length and profusion of flowering.

 

The Orchid Collection is housed in two climate zones within the Princess of Wales Conservatory. To maintain an interesting display the plants are changed regularly so that those on view are generally flowering. The Rock Garden, originally built of limestone in 1882, is now constructed of Sussex sandstone from West Hoathly, Sussex. The rock garden is divided into six geographic regions: Europe, Mediterranean and Africa, Australia and New Zealand, Asia, North America, and South America. There are currently 2,480 different "accessions" growing in the garden.

 

The Rose Garden, based upon original designs by William Nesfield, is behind the Palm House, and was replanted between 2009 and 2010 using the original design from 1848. It is intended as an ornamental display rather than a collection of a particularly large number of varieties. Other collections and specialist areas include the rhododendron dell, the azalea garden, the bamboo garden, the juniper collection, the berberis dell, the lilac garden, the magnolia collection, and the fern collection.

  

The Palm House and lake to Victoria Gate

The world's smallest water-lily, Nymphaea thermarum, was saved from extinction when it was grown from seed at Kew, in 2009.

 

Herbarium

The Kew herbarium is one of the largest in the world with approximately 7 million specimens used primarily for taxonomic study. The herbarium is rich in types for all regions of the world, especially the tropics.

 

Library and archives

The library and archives at Kew are one of the world's largest botanical collections, with over half a million items, including books, botanical illustrations, photographs, letters and manuscripts, periodicals, and maps. The Jodrell Library has been merged with the Economic Botany and Mycology Libraries and all are now housed in the Jodrell Laboratory.

 

Forensic horticulture

Kew provides advice and guidance to police forces around the world where plant material may provide important clues or evidence in cases. In one famous case the forensic science department at Kew were able to ascertain that the contents of the stomach of a headless corpse found in the river Thames contained a highly toxic African bean.

 

Economic Botany

 

The Sustainable Uses of Plants group (formerly the Centre for Economic Botany), focus on the uses of plants in the United Kingdom and the world's arid and semi-arid zones. The Centre is also responsible for curation of the Economic Botany Collection, which contains more than 90,000 botanical raw materials and ethnographic artefacts, some of which are on display in the Plants + People exhibit in Museum No. 1. The Centre is now located in the Jodrell Laboratory.

 

Jodrell Laboratory

The original Jodrell laboratory, named after Mr T. J. Phillips Jodrell who funded it, was established in 1877 and consisted of four research rooms and an office. Originally research was conducted into plant physiology but this was gradually superseded by botanical research. In 1934 an artists' studio and photographic darkroom were added, highlighting the importance of botanical illustration. In 1965, following increasing overcrowding, a new building was constructed and research expanded into seed collection for plant conservation. The biochemistry section also expanded to facilitate research into secondary compounds that could be derived from plants for medicinal purposes. In 1994 the centre was expanded again, tripling in size, and a decade later it was further expanded by the addition of the Wolfson Wing.

 

Kew Constabulary

Main article: Kew Constabulary

The gardens have their own police force, Kew Constabulary, which has been in operation since 1847. Formerly known as the Royal Botanic Gardens Constabulary, it is a small, specialised constabulary of two sergeants and 12 officers, who patrol the grounds in a green painted electric buggy. The Kew Constables are attested under section 3 of the Parks Regulation Act 1872, which gives them the same powers as the Metropolitan Police within the land belonging to the gardens.

 

Media

A number of films, documentaries and short videos have been made about Kew Gardens.

 

They include:

 

a short colour film World Garden by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth in 1942

three series of A Year at Kew (2007), filmed for BBC television and released on DVD

Cruickshank on Kew: The Garden That Changed the World, a 2009 BBC documentary, presented by Dan Cruickshank, exploring the history of the relationship between Kew Gardens and the British Empire

David Attenborough's 2012 Kingdom of Plants 3D

a 2003 episode of the Channel 4 TV series Time Team, presented by Tony Robinson, that searched for the remains of George III's palace

a 2004 episode of the BBC Four series Art of the Garden which looked at the building of the Great Palm House in the 1840s.

"Kew on a Plate", a TV programme showing the kinds of produce grown at Kew Gardens and how they can be prepared in a kitchen.

In 1921 Virginia Woolf published her short story "Kew Gardens", which gives brief descriptions of four groups of people as they pass by a flowerbed.

 

Access and transport

 

Elizabeth Gate

Kew Gardens is accessible by a number of gates. Currently, there are four gates into Kew Gardens that are open to the public: the Elizabeth Gate, which is situated at the west end of Kew Green, and was originally called the Main Gate before being renamed in 2012 to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II; the Brentford Gate, which faces the River Thames; the Victoria Gate (named after Queen Victoria), situated in Kew Road, which is also the location of the Visitors' Centre; and the Lion Gate, also situated in Kew Road.

 

Other gates that are not open to the public include Unicorn Gate, Cumberland Gate and Jodrell Gate (all in Kew Road) and Isleworth Gate (facing the Thames).

  

Victoria Gate

Kew Gardens station, a London Underground and National Rail station opened in 1869 and served by both the District line and the London Overground services on the North London Line, is the nearest train station to the gardens – only 400 metres (1,300 ft) along Lichfield Road from the Victoria Gate entrance. Built by the London and South Western Railway, the Historic England listed building is one of the few remaining original 19th-century stations on the North London Line, and the only station on the London Underground with a pub on the platform (though the platform entrance is now closed off). Kew Bridge station, on the other side of the Thames, 800 metres from the Elizabeth Gate entrance via Kew Bridge, is served by South West Trains from Clapham Junction and Waterloo.

 

London Buses route 65, between Ealing Broadway and Kingston, stops near the Lion Gate and Victoria Gate entrances; route 391, between Fulham and Richmond, stops near Kew Gardens station; while routes 237 and 267 stop at Kew Bridge station.

 

London River Services operate from Westminster during the summer, stopping at Kew Pier, 500 metres (1,600 ft) from Elizabeth Gate. Cycle racks are located just inside the Victoria Gate, Elizabeth Gate and Brentford Gate entrances. There is a 300-space car park outside Brentford Gate, reached via Ferry Lane, as well as some free, though restricted, on-street parking on Kew Road.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kew_Gardens

Includes Teams from Wagner/Bon Homme, Britton-Hecla, Vermillion, Stanley County and West Central. Permission granted for journalism outlets and educational purposes. Not for commercial use. Must be credited. Photo courtesy of South Dakota Public Broadcasting.

©2021 SDPB

 

Includes teams from Mitchell, Harrisburg, Watertown, Aberdeen Central. Permission granted for journalism outlets and educational purposes. Not for commercial use. Must be credited. Photo courtesy of South Dakota Public Broadcasting.

©2021 SDPB

 

Rushmore Cave is the closest show cave to Mount Rushmore National Memorial in the United States. It contains a wide variety of natural formations. It is the ninth longest cave in South Dakota. It measures a distance of 3,652.6 feet (1,113.3 m).

 

It was discovered in 1876 when a log flume that supplied water to mining operations in town of Hayward broke and spilled onto the side of the hill. As the water flowed down the hill it started flowing into a small hole in the hillside. The local miners who went up to fix the flume noticed this abnormality and became suspicious of where this water was going. After fixing the flume, the men decided to go inside and explore. After about 30 feet (9.1 m), the men came to a large drop off which went down about 15 feet (4.6 m). They exited the cave, and went out into the woods where they cut down a tree and then used this tree as a ladder to access the cave. The miners then noticed that the majority of the cave was made out of limestone. Knowing that limestone doesn't contain any gold deposits, they abandoned the cave as a mining opportunity, and left it alone. Some of the local townspeople heard news of this discovery, and became very curious as to what they might find inside the cave.

 

The cave was created by a very long process stretching over a 360 million year time period. It started during the Mississippian Period, during which the entire Black Hills area was covered by a large inland sea. In this sea lived many kinds of sea creatures, and crustaceans. As these sea creatures died, their bodies sunk down to the sea floor. The flesh rotted away leaving behind many solid bone fragments which then compressed, and over time hardened into a rock known as limestone.

 

The cave has a cornucopia of rooms including the Entrance Room, Post Office, Image Room, Big Room, Fairyland, Rope Room, Geode Room, The Rouge Room (Party Room), Arrowhead Room, and the Floral Room.

 

The cave also includes boxwork and many dripstone formations including stalactites, stalagmites, columns, helictites and flowstone.

 

South Dakota is a landlocked U.S. state in the North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Dakota Sioux tribe, which comprises a large portion of the population with nine reservations currently in the state and has historically dominated the territory. South Dakota is the 17th largest by area, but the 5th least populous, and the 5th least densely populated of the 50 United States. Pierre is the state capital, and Sioux Falls, with a population of about 213,900, is South Dakota's most populous city. The state is bisected by the Missouri River, dividing South Dakota into two geographically and socially distinct halves, known to residents as "East River" and "West River". South Dakota is bordered by the states of North Dakota (to the north), Minnesota (to the east), Iowa (to the southeast), Nebraska (to the south), Wyoming (to the west), and Montana (to the northwest).

 

Humans have inhabited the area for several millennia, with the Sioux becoming dominant by the early 19th century. In the late 19th century, European-American settlement intensified after a gold rush in the Black Hills and the construction of railroads from the east. Encroaching miners and settlers triggered a number of Indian wars, ending with the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890. As the southern part of the former Dakota Territory, South Dakota became a state on November 2, 1889, simultaneously with North Dakota. They are the 39th and 40th states admitted to the union; President Benjamin Harrison shuffled the statehood papers before signing them so that no one could tell which became a state first.

 

Key events in the 20th century included the Dust Bowl and Great Depression, increased federal spending during the 1940s and 1950s for agriculture and defense, and an industrialization of agriculture that has reduced family farming. Eastern South Dakota is home to most of the state's population, and the area's fertile soil is used to grow a variety of crops. West of the Missouri River, ranching is the predominant agricultural activity, and the economy is more dependent on tourism and defense spending. Most of the Native American reservations are in West River. The Black Hills, a group of low pine-covered mountains sacred to the Sioux, is in the southwest part of the state. Mount Rushmore, a major tourist destination, is there. South Dakota has a temperate continental climate, with four distinct seasons and precipitation ranging from moderate in the east to semi-arid in the west. The state's ecology features species typical of a North American grassland biome.

 

While several Democrats have represented South Dakota for multiple terms in both chambers of Congress, the state government is largely controlled by the Republican Party, whose nominees have carried South Dakota in each of the last 14 presidential elections. Historically dominated by an agricultural economy and a rural lifestyle, South Dakota has recently sought to diversify its economy in other areas to both attract and retain residents. South Dakota's history and rural character still strongly influence the state's culture.

 

The history of South Dakota describes the history of the U.S. state of South Dakota over the course of several millennia, from its first inhabitants to the recent issues facing the state.

 

Human beings have lived in what is today South Dakota for at least several thousand years. Early hunters are believed to have first entered North America at least 17,000 years ago via the Bering land bridge, which existed during the last ice age and connected Siberia with Alaska. Early settlers in what would become South Dakota were nomadic hunter-gatherers, using primitive Stone Age technology to hunt large prehistoric mammals in the area such as mammoths, sloths, and camels. The Paleolithic culture of these people disappeared around 5000 BC, after the extinction of most of their prey species.

 

Between AD 500 and 800, much of eastern South Dakota was inhabited by a people known as the 'Mound Builders'. The Mound Builders were hunters who lived in temporary villages and were named for the low earthen burial mounds they constructed, many of which still exist. Their settlement seems to have been concentrated around the watershed of the Big Sioux River and Big Stone Lake, although other sites have been excavated throughout eastern South Dakota. Either assimilation or warfare led to the demise of the Mound Builders by the year 800. Between 1250 and 1400 an agricultural people, likely the ancestors of the modern Mandan of North Dakota, arrived from the east and settled in the central part of the state. In 1325, what has become known as the Crow Creek Massacre occurred near Chamberlain. An archeological excavation of the site has discovered 486 bodies buried in a mass grave within a type of fortification; many of the skeletal remains show evidence of scalping and decapitation.

 

The Arikara, also known as the Ree, began arriving from the south in the 16th century. They spoke a Caddoan language similar to that of the Pawnee, and probably originated in what is now Kansas and Nebraska. Although they would at times travel to hunt or trade, the Arikara were far less nomadic than many of their neighbors, and lived for the most part in permanent villages. These villages usually consisted of a stockade enclosing a number of circular earthen lodges built on bluffs looking over the rivers. Each village had a semi-autonomous political structure, with the Arikara's various subtribes being connected in a loose alliance. In addition to hunting and growing crops such as corn, beans, pumpkin and other squash, the Arikara were also skilled traders, and would often serve as intermediaries between tribes to the north and south It was probably through their trading connections that Spanish horses first reached the region around 1760. The Arikara reached the height of their power in the 17th century, and may have included as many as 32 villages. Due both to disease as well as pressure from other tribes, the number of Arikara villages would decline to only two by the late 18th century, and the Arikara eventually merged entirely with the Mandan to the north.

 

The sister tribe of the Arikaras, the Pawnee, may have also had a small amount of land in the state. Both were Caddoan and were among the only known tribes in the continental U.S. to have committed human sacrifice, via a religious ritual that occurred once a year. It is said that the U.S. government worked hard to halt this practice before their homelands came to be heavily settled, for fear that the general public might react harshly or refuse to move there.

 

The Lakota Oral histories tell of them driving the Algonquian ancestors of the Cheyenne from the Black Hills regions, south of the Platte River, in the 18th century. Before that, the Cheyenne say that they were, in fact, two tribes, which they call the Tsitsistas & Sutaio After their defeat, much of their territory was contained to southeast Wyoming & western Nebraska. While they had been able to hold off the Sioux for quite some time, they were heavily damaged by a smallpox outbreak. They are also responsible for introducing the horse to the Lakota.

 

The Ioway, or Iowa people, also inhabited the region where the modern states of South Dakota, Minnesota & Iowa meet, north of the Missouri River. They also had a sister nation, known as the Otoe who lived south of them. They were Chiwere speaking, a very old variation of Siouan language said to have originated amongst the ancestors of the Ho-Chunk of Wisconsin. They also would have had a fairly similar culture to that of the Dhegihan Sioux tribes of Nebraska & Kansas.

 

By the 17th century, the Sioux, who would later come to dominate much of the state, had settled in what is today central and northern Minnesota. The Sioux spoke a language of the Siouan language family, and were divided into two culture groups – the Dakota & Nakota. By the early 18th century the Sioux would begin to move south and then west into the plains. This migration was due to several factors, including greater food availability to the west, as well as the fact that the rival Ojibwe & other related Algonquians had obtained rifles from the French at a time when the Sioux were still using the bow and arrow. Other tribes were also displaced during some sort of poorly understood conflict that occurred between Siouan & Algonquian peoples in the early 18th century.

 

In moving west into the prairies, the lifestyle of the Sioux would be greatly altered, coming to resemble that of a nomadic northern plains tribe much more so than a largely settled eastern woodlands one. Characteristics of this transformation include a greater dependence on the bison for food, a heavier reliance on the horse for transportation, and the adoption of the tipi for habitation, a dwelling more suited to the frequent movements of a nomadic people than their earlier semi-permanent lodges.

 

Once on the plains, a schism caused the two subgroups of the Sioux to divide into three separate nations—the Lakota, who migrated south, the Asiniboine who migrated back east to Minnesota & the remaining Sioux. It appears to be around this time that the Dakota people became more prominent over the Nakota & the entirety of the people came to call themselves as such.

 

The Lakota, who crossed the Missouri around 1760 and reached the Black Hills by 1776, would come to settle largely in western South Dakota, northwestern Nebraska, and southwestern North Dakota. The Yankton primarily settled in southeastern South Dakota, the Yanktonnais settled in northeastern South Dakota and southeastern North Dakota, and the Santee settled primarily in central and southern Minnesota. Due in large part to the Sioux migrations, a number of tribes would be driven from the area. The tribes in and around the Black Hills, most notably the Cheyenne, would be pushed to the west, the Arikara would move further north along the Missouri, and the Omaha would be driven out of southeastern South Dakota and into northeastern Nebraska.

 

Later, the Lakota & Assiniboine returned to the fold, forming a single confederacy known as the Oceti Sakowin, or Seven council fire. This was divided into four cultural groups—the Lakota, Dakota, Nakota & Nagoda-- & seven distinct tribes, each with their own chief—the Nakota Mdewakan (Note—Older attempts at Lakota language show a mistake in writing the sound 'bl' as 'md', such as summer, Bloketu, misprinted as mdoketu. Therefore, this word should be Blewakan.) & Wahpeton, the Dakota Santee & Sisseton, the Nagoda Yankton & Yanktonai & the Lakota Teton. In this form, they were able to secure from the U.S. government a homeland, commonly referred to as Mni-Sota Makoce, or the Lakotah Republic. However, conflicts increased between Sioux & American citizens in the decades leading up the Civil War & a poorly funded & organized Bureau of Indian Affairs had difficulty keeping peace between groups. This eventually resulted in the United States blaming the Sioux for the atrocities & rendering the treaty which recognized the nation of Lakotah null and void. The U.S., however, later recognized their fault in a Supreme Court case in the 1980s after several decades of failed lawsuits by the Sioux, yet little has been done to smooth the issue over to the best interests of both sides.

 

France was the first European nation to hold any real claim over what would become South Dakota. Its claims covered most of the modern state. However, at most a few French scouting parties may have entered eastern South Dakota. In 1679 Daniel G. Duluth sent explorers west from Lake Mille Lacs, and they may have reached Big Stone Lake and the Coteau des Prairies. Pierre Le Sueur's traders entered the Big Sioux River Valley on multiple occasions. Evidence for these journeys is from a 1701 map by William De L'Isle that shows a trail to below the falls of the Big Sioux River from the Mississippi River.

 

After 1713, France looked west to sustain its fur trade. The first Europeans to enter South Dakota from the north, the Verendrye brothers, began their expedition in 1743. The expedition started at Fort La Reine on Lake Manitoba, and was attempting to locate an all-water route to the Pacific Ocean. They buried a lead plate inscribed near Ft. Pierre; it was rediscovered by schoolchildren in 1913.

 

In 1762, France granted Spain all French territory west of the Mississippi River in the Treaty of Fontainebleau. The agreement, which was signed in secret, was motivated by a French desire to convince Spain to come to terms with Britain and accept defeat in the Seven Years' War. In an attempt to secure Spanish claims in the region against possible encroachment from other European powers, Spain adopted a policy for the upper Missouri which emphasized the development of closer trade relations with local tribes as well as greater exploration of the region, a primary focus of which would be a search for a water route to the Pacific Ocean. Although traders such as Jacques D'Eglise and Juan Munier had been active in the region for several years, these men had been operating independently, and a determined effort to reach the Pacific and solidify Spanish control of the region had never been undertaken. In 1793, a group commonly known as the Missouri Company was formed in St. Louis, with the twin goals of trading and exploring on the upper Missouri. The company sponsored several attempts to reach the Pacific Ocean, none of which made it further than the mouth of the Yellowstone. In 1794, Jean Truteau (also spelled Trudeau) built a cabin near the present-day location of Fort Randall, and in 1795 the Mackay-Evans Expedition traveled up the Missouri as far as present-day North Dakota, where they expelled several British traders who had been active in the area. In 1801, a post known as Fort aux Cedres was constructed by Registre Loisel of St. Louis, on Cedar Island on the Missouri about 35 miles (56 km) southeast of the present location of Pierre. This trading post was the major regional post until its destruction by fire in 1810.[30] In 1800, Spain gave Louisiana back to France in the Treaty of San Ildefonso.

 

In 1803, the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon for $11,000,000. The territory included most of the western half of the Mississippi watershed and covered nearly all of present-day South Dakota, except for a small portion in the northeast corner of the state. The region was still largely unexplored and unsettled, and President Thomas Jefferson organized a group commonly referred to as the Lewis and Clark Expedition to explore the newly acquired region over a period of more than two years. The expedition, also known as the Corps of Discovery, was tasked with following the route of the Missouri to its source, continuing on to the Pacific Ocean, establishing diplomatic relations with the various tribes in the area, and taking cartographic, geologic, and botanical surveys of the area. The expedition left St. Louis on May 14, 1804, with 45 men and 15 tons of supplies in three boats (one keelboat and two pirogues). The party progressed slowly against the Missouri's current, reaching what is today South Dakota on August 22. Near present-day Vermillion, the party hiked to the Spirit Mound after hearing local legends of the place being inhabited by "little spirits" (or "devils"). Shortly after this, a peaceful meeting took place with the Yankton Sioux, while an encounter with the Lakota Sioux further north was not as uneventful. The Lakota mistook the party as traders, at one point stealing a horse. Weapons were brandished on both sides after it appeared as though the Lakota were going to further delay or even halt the expedition, but they eventually stood down and allowed the party to continue up the river and out of their territory. In north central South Dakota, the expedition acted as mediators between the warring Arikara and Mandan. After leaving the state on October 14, the party wintered with the Mandan in North Dakota before successfully reaching the Pacific Ocean and returning by the same route, safely reaching St. Louis in 1806. On the return trip, the expedition spent only 15 days in South Dakota, traveling more swiftly with the Missouri's current.

 

Pittsburgh lawyer Henry Marie Brackenridge was South Dakota's first recorded tourist. In 1811 he was hosted by fur trader Manuel Lisa.

 

In 1817, an American fur trading post was set up at present-day Fort Pierre, beginning continuous American settlement of the area. During the 1830s, fur trading was the dominant economic activity for the few white people who lived in the area. More than one hundred fur-trading posts were in present-day South Dakota in the first half of the 19th century, and Fort Pierre was the center of activity.[citation needed] General William Henry Ashley, Andrew Henry, and Jedediah Smith of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, and Manuel Lisa and Joshua Pilcher of the St. Louis Fur Company, trapped in that region. Pierre Chouteau Jr. brought the steamship Yellowstone to Fort Tecumseh on the Missouri River in 1831. In 1832 the fort was replaced by Fort Pierre Chouteau Jr.: today's town of Fort Pierre. Pierre bought the Western Department of John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company and renamed it Pratte, Chouteau and Company, and then Pierre Chouteau and Company. It operated in present-day South Dakota from 1834 to 1858. Most trappers and traders left the area after European demand for furs dwindled around 1840.

 

Main articles: Kansas–Nebraska Act, Nebraska Territory, Organic act § List of organic acts, and Dakota Territory

In 1855, the U.S. Army bought Fort Pierre but abandoned it the following year in favor of Fort Randall to the south. Settlement by Americans and Europeans was by this time increasing rapidly, and in 1858 the Yankton Sioux signed the 1858 "Treaty of Washington", ceding most of present-day eastern South Dakota to the United States.

 

Land speculators founded two of eastern South Dakota's largest present-day cities: Sioux Falls in 1856 and Yankton in 1859. The Big Sioux River falls was the spot of an 1856 settlement established by a Dubuque, Iowa, company; that town was quickly removed by native residents. But in the following year, May 1857, the town was resettled and named Sioux Falls. That June, St. Paul, Minnesota's Dakota Land Company came to an adjacent 320 acres (130 ha), calling it Sioux Falls City. In June 1857, Flandreau and Medary, South Dakota, were established by the Dakota Land Company. Along with Yankton in 1859, Bon Homme, Elk Point, and Vermillion were among the new communities along the Missouri River or border with Minnesota. Settlers therein numbered about 5,000 in 1860. In 1861, Dakota Territory was established by the United States government (this initially included North Dakota, South Dakota, and parts of Montana and Wyoming). Settlers from Scandinavia, Germany, Ireland, Czechoslovakia[citation needed] and Russia,[citation needed] as well as elsewhere in Europe and from the eastern U.S. states increased from a trickle to a flood, especially after the completion of an eastern railway link to the territorial capital of Yankton in 1872, and the discovery of gold in the Black Hills in 1874 during a military expedition led by George A. Custer.

 

The Dakota Territory had significant regional tensions between the northern part and the southern part from the beginning, the southern part always being more populated – in the 1880 United States census, the population of the southern part (98,268) was more than two and a half times of the northern part (36,909), and southern Dakotans saw the northern part as bit of disreputable, "controlled by the wild folks, cattle ranchers, fur traders” and too frequently the site of conflict with the indigenous population. Also, the new railroads built connected the northern and southern parts to different hubs – northern part was closer tied to Minneapolis–Saint Paul area; and southern part to Sioux City and from there to Omaha. The last straw was territorial governor Nehemiah G. Ordway moving the territorial capital from Yankton to Bismarck in modern-day North Dakota. As the Southern part had the necessary population for statehood (60,000), they held a separate convention in September 1883 and drafted a constitution. Various bills to divide the Dakota Territory in half ended up stalling, until in 1887, when the Territorial Legislature submitted the question of division to a popular vote at the November general elections, where it was approved by 37,784 votes over 32,913. A bill for statehood for North Dakota and South Dakota (as well as Montana and Washington) titled the Enabling Act of 1889 was passed on February 22, 1889, during the Administration of Grover Cleveland, dividing Dakota along the seventh standard parallel. It was left to his successor, Benjamin Harrison, to sign proclamations formally admitting North and South Dakota to the Union on November 2, 1889. Harrison directed his Secretary of State James G. Blaine to shuffle the papers and obscure from him which he was signing first and the actual order went unrecorded.

 

With statehood South Dakota was now in a position to make decisions on the major issues it confronted: prohibition, women's suffrage, the location of the state capital, the opening of the Sioux lands for settlement, and the cyclical issues of drought (severe in 1889) and low wheat prices (1893–1896). In early 1889 a prohibition bill passed the new state legislature, only to be vetoed by Governor Louis Church. Fierce opposition came from the wet German community, with financing from beer and liquor interests. The Yankee women organized to demand suffrage, as well as prohibition. Neither party supported their cause, and the wet element counter-organized to block women's suffrage. Popular interest reached a peak in the debates over locating the state capital. Prestige, real estate values and government jobs were at stake, as well as the question of access in such a large geographical region with limited railroads. Huron was the temporary site, centrally located Pierre was the best organized contender, and three other towns were in the running. Real estate speculators had money to toss around. Pierre, population 3200, made the most generous case to the voters—its promoters truly believed it would be the next Denver and be the railway hub of the Dakotas. The North Western railroad came through but not the others it expected. In 1938 Pierre counted 4000 people and three small hotels.

 

The national government continued to handle Indian affairs. The Army's 1874 Custer expedition took place despite the fact that the western half of present-day South Dakota had been granted to the Sioux by the Treaty of Fort Laramie as part of the Great Sioux Reservation. The Sioux declined to grant mining rights or land in the Black Hills, and the Great Sioux War of 1876 broke out after the U.S. failed to stop white miners and settlers from entering the region. The Sioux were eventually defeated and settled on reservations within South Dakota and North Dakota.

 

In 1889 Harrison sent general George Crook with a commission to persuade the Sioux to sell half their reservation land to the government. It was believed that the state would not be viable unless more land was made available to settlers. Crook used a number of dubious methods to secure agreement and obtain the land.

 

On December 29, 1890, the Wounded Knee Massacre occurred on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. It was the last major armed conflict between the United States and the Sioux Nation, the massacre resulted in the deaths of 300 Sioux, many of them women and children. In addition 25 U.S. soldiers were also killed in the episode.

 

Railroads played a central role in South Dakota transportation from the late 19th century until the 1930s, when they were surpassed by highways. The Milwaukee Road and the Chicago & North Western were the state's largest railroads, and the Milwaukee's east–west transcontinental line traversed the northern tier of the state. About 4,420 miles (7,110 km) of railroad track were built in South Dakota during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, though only 1,839 miles (2,960 km) were active in 2007.

 

The railroads sold land to prospective farmers at very low rates, expecting to make a profit by shipping farm products out and home goods in. They also set up small towns that would serve as shipping points and commercial centers, and attract businessmen and more farmers. The Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway (M&StL) in 1905, under the leadership of vice president and general manager L. F. Day, added lines from Watertown to LeBeau and from Conde through Aberdeen to Leola. It developed town sites along the new lines and by 1910, the new lines served 35 small communities.

 

Not all of the new towns survived. The M&StL situated LeBeau along the Missouri River on the eastern edge of the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation. The new town was a hub for the cattle and grain industries. Livestock valued at one million dollars were shipped out in 1908, and the rail company planned a bridge across the Missouri River. Allotment of the Cheyenne River Reservation in 1909 promised further growth. By the early 1920s, however, troubles multiplied, with the murder of a local rancher, a fire that destroyed the business district, and drought that ruined ranchers and farmers alike. LeBeau became a ghost town.

 

Most of the traffic was freight, but the main lines also offered passenger service. After the European immigrants settled, there never were many people moving about inside the state. Profits were slim. Automobiles and busses were much more popular, but there was an increase during World War II when gasoline was scarce. All passenger service was ended in the state by 1969.

 

In the rural areas farmers and ranchers depended on local general stores that had a limited stock and slow turnover; they made enough profit to stay in operation by selling at high prices. Prices were not marked on each item; instead the customer negotiated a price. Men did most of the shopping, since the main criterion was credit rather than quality of goods. Indeed, most customers shopped on credit, paying off the bill when crops or cattle were later sold; the owner's ability to judge credit worthiness was vital to his success.

 

In the cities consumers had much more choice, and bought their dry goods and supplies at locally owned department stores. They had a much wider selection of goods than in the country general stores and price tags that gave the actual selling price. The department stores provided a very limited credit, and set up attractive displays and, after 1900, window displays as well. Their clerks—usually men before the 1940s—were experienced salesmen whose knowledge of the products appealed to the better educated middle-class housewives who did most of the shopping. The keys to success were a large variety of high-quality brand-name merchandise, high turnover, reasonable prices, and frequent special sales. The larger stores sent their buyers to Denver, Minneapolis, and Chicago once or twice a year to evaluate the newest trends in merchandising and stock up on the latest fashions. By the 1920s and 1930s, large mail-order houses such as Sears, Roebuck & Co. and Montgomery Ward provided serious competition, making the department stores rely even more on salesmanship and close integration with the community.

 

Many entrepreneurs built stores, shops, and offices along Main Street. The most handsome ones used pre-formed, sheet iron facades, especially those manufactured by the Mesker Brothers of St. Louis. These neoclassical, stylized facades added sophistication to brick or wood-frame buildings throughout the state.

 

During the 1930s, several economic and climatic conditions combined with disastrous results for South Dakota. A lack of rainfall, extremely high temperatures and over-cultivation of farmland produced what was known as the Dust Bowl in South Dakota and several other plains states. Fertile topsoil was blown away in massive dust storms, and several harvests were completely ruined. The experiences of the Dust Bowl, coupled with local bank foreclosures and the general economic effects of the Great Depression resulted in many South Dakotans leaving the state. The population of South Dakota declined by more than seven percent between 1930 and 1940.

 

Prosperity returned with the U.S. entry into World War II in 1941, when demand for the state's agricultural and industrial products grew as the nation mobilized for war. Over 68,000 South Dakotans served in the armed forces during the war, of which over 2,200 were killed.

 

In 1944, the Pick-Sloan Plan was passed as part of the Flood Control Act of 1944 by the U.S. Congress, resulting in the construction of six large dams on the Missouri River, four of which are at least partially located in South Dakota.[83] Flood control, hydroelectricity and recreational opportunities such as boating and fishing are provided by the dams and their reservoirs.

 

On the night of June 9–10, 1972, heavy rainfall in the eastern Black Hills caused the Canyon Lake Dam on Rapid Creek to fail. The failure of the dam, combined with heavy runoff from the storm, turned the usually small creek into a massive torrent that washed through central Rapid City. The flood resulted in 238 deaths and destroyed 1,335 homes and around 5,000 automobiles.[84] Damage from the flood totaled $160 million (the equivalent of $664 million today).

 

On April 19, 1993, Governor George S. Mickelson was killed in a plane crash in Iowa while returning from a business meeting in Cincinnati. Several other state officials were also killed in the crash. Mickelson, who was in the middle of his second term as governor, was succeeded by Walter Dale Miller.

 

In recent decades, South Dakota has transformed from a state dominated by agriculture to one with a more diversified economy. The tourism industry has grown considerably since the completion of the interstate system in the 1960s, with the Black Hills being especially impacted. The financial service industry began to grow in the state as well, with Citibank moving its credit card operations from New York to Sioux Falls in 1981, a move that has since been followed by several other financial companies. In 2007, the site of the recently closed Homestake gold mine near Lead was chosen as the location of a new underground research facility. Despite a growing state population and recent economic development, many rural areas have been struggling over the past 50 years with locally declining populations and the emigration of educated young adults to larger South Dakota cities, such as Rapid City or Sioux Falls, or to other states. The Cattleman's Blizzard of October 2013 killed tens of thousands of livestock in western South Dakota, and was one of the worst blizzards in the state's history.

Mephedrone, also known as 4-methylmethcathinone (4-MMC) or 4-methylephedrone, is a synthetic stimulant drug of the amphetamine and cathinone classes. Slang names include drone,[5] M-CAT,[6] and meow meow.[7] It is chemically similar to the cathinone compounds found in the khat plant of eastern Africa. It comes in the form of tablets or a powder, which users can swallow, snort or inject, producing similar effects to MDMA, amphetamines and cocaine.

 

In addition to its stimulant effects, mephedrone produces side effects, of which teeth grinding is the most common. The metabolism of mephedrone has been studied in rats and humans and the metabolites can be detected in urine after usage. Despite similarities to known neurotoxins such as methamphetamine and cathinone derivatives, mephedrone does not appear to produce neurotoxic effects in the dopamine system of mice.[8]

 

Mephedrone was first synthesised in 1929, but did not become widely known until it was rediscovered in 2003. By 2007, mephedrone was reported to be available for sale on the internet, by 2008 law enforcement agencies had become aware of the compound, and by 2010, it had been reported in most of Europe, becoming particularly prevalent in the United Kingdom. Mephedrone was first made illegal in Israel in 2008, followed by Sweden later that year. In 2010, it was made illegal in many European countries and in December 2010, the EU ruled it illegal. In Australia, New Zealand and the USA, it is considered an analog of other illegal drugs and can be controlled by laws similar to the Federal Analog Act. In September 2011, the USA temporarily classified mephedrone as illegal, in effect from October 2011.

Mephedrone is one of hundreds of designer drugs or legal highs that have been reported in recent years, including artificial chemicals such as synthetic cannabis and semisynthetic substances such as methylhexanamine. These drugs are primarily developed to avoid being controlled by laws against illegal drugs, thus giving them the label of designer drugs.[9] According to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, the synthesis of mephedrone was first reported in 1929 by Saem de Burnaga Sanchez in the Bulletin de la Société Chimique de France, under the name "toluyl-alpha-monomethylaminoethylcetone",[1]:17[10] but the compound remained an obscure product of academia until 2003, when it was "re-discovered" and publicised by an underground chemist on The Hive website, working under the pseudonym "Kinetic".[11] Kinetic posted on the site, "I’ve been bored over the last couple of days and had a few fun reagents lying around, so I thought I’d try and make some 1-(4-methylphenyl)-2-methylaminopropanone hydrochloride, or 4-methylmethcathinone." before going on to describe that after taking it, the user had a "fantastic sense of well-being that I haven’t got from any drug before except my beloved Ecstasy."[12] In interviews Kinetic was described as "a mathematician who used to design sleeping pills for a major pharmaceutical company" and he stated that he was based in Israel when he rediscovered mephedrone.[13][14]

 

A drug similar to mephedrone, containing cathinone, was sold legally in Israel from around 2004, under the name hagigat. When this was made illegal, the cathinone was modified and the new products were sold by the Israeli company, Neorganics.[15][16][17] The products had names such as Neodoves pills, but the range was discontinued in January 2008 after the Israeli government made mephedrone illegal.[5][18][19] The Psychonaut Research Project, an EU organisation that searches the internet for information regarding new drugs, first identified mephedrone in 2008. Their research suggested the drug first became available to purchase on the internet in 2007, when it was also discussed on internet forums.[9][20] Mephedrone was first seized in France in May 2007, after police sent a tablet they assumed to be ecstasy to be analysed, with the discovery published in a paper titled "Is 4-methylephedrone, an "Ecstasy" of the twenty first century?"[21] Mephedrone was reported as having been sold as ecstasy in the Australian city of Cairns, along with ethylcathinone, in 2008.[22][23] An annual survey of regular ecstasy users in Australia in 2010 found 21% of those surveyed had used mephedrone, with 17% having done so in the previous six months. The price they paid per gram varied from A$16 to $320.[3]

 

Europol noted they became aware of it in 2008, after it was found in Denmark, Finland and the UK.[24] The Drug Enforcement Administration noted it was present in the United States in July 2009.[25] By May 2010, mephedrone had been detected in all 22 EU member states that reported to Europol, as well as in Croatia and Norway.[1]:21 The Daily Telegraph reported in April 2009 that it was manufactured in China, but it has since been made illegal there.[26][27] In March 2009, Druglink magazine reported it only cost a "couple of hundred pounds" to synthesise a kilogram of mephedrone,[15] the same month, The Daily Telegraph reported manufacturers were making "huge amounts of money" from selling it.[28] In January 2010, Druglink magazine reported dealers in Britain spent £2,500 to ship one kilogram from China, but could sell it for £10 a gram, making a profit of £7,500.[12][29] A later report, in March 2010, stated the wholesale price of mephedrone was £4000 per kilogram.[30]

 

In March 2011, the International Narcotics Control Board published a report about designer drugs, noting mephedrone was by then being used recreationally in Europe, North America, Southeast Asia, New Zealand and Australia.[31][32]

 

In the UK[edit]

 

The number of samples analysed by the Forensic Science Service of seized MDMA, piperazines and cathinones between the third quarter of 2005 and the first quarter of 2010: MDMA seizures in blue, piperazine seizures in orange and cathinone seizures in purple[33]

Between the summer of 2009 and March 2010, the use of mephedrone grew rapidly in the UK, with it becoming readily available at music festivals, head shops and on the internet.[34] A survey of Mixmag readers in 2009, found it was the fourth most popular street drug in the United Kingdom, behind cannabis, cocaine, and ecstasy.[30] The drug was used by a diverse range of social groups. Whilst the evidence was anecdotal, researchers, charity workers, teachers and users reported widespread and increasing use of the drug in 2009. The drug's rapid growth in popularity was believed to be related to both its availability and legality.[34]

 

Fiona Measham, a criminologist at The University of Lancaster, thought the emergence of mephedrone was also related to the decreasing purity of ecstasy and cocaine on sale in the UK,[34] a view reinforced in a report by the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse.[35] The average cocaine purity fell from 60% in 1999 to 22% in 2009 and about half of ecstasy pills seized in 2009 contained no MDMA,[36] and by June 2010 almost all ecstasy pills seized in the UK contained no MDMA.[37] A similar pattern was observed in the Netherlands, with the number of ecstasy tablets containing no MDMA rising from 10% in mid-2008 to 60% by mid-2009, with mephedrone being detected in 20% of ecstasy tablets by mid-2009.[38] The decrease of MDMA was thought to be partly due to the seizure of 33 tonnes of sassafras oil, the precursor to MDMA, in Cambodia in June 2008, which could have been used to make 245 million doses of MDMA.[12] According to John Ramsey, a toxicologist at St George's, University of London, the emergence of mephedrone was also related to the UK government banning the benzylpiperazine class of drugs in December 2009.[15][39] gamma-Butyrolactone (GBL), another previously "legal high", was also banned in August 2009 despite concerns it would be replaced by other drugs.[40]

 

By December 2009 mephedrone was available on at least 31 websites based in the UK and by March 2010 there were at least 78 online shops, half of which sold amounts of less than 200 grams and half that also sold bulk quantities. The price per gram varied from £9.50 to £14.[1]:11 Between July 2009 and February 2010, UK health professionals accessed the National Poisons Information Service '​s (NPIS) entry on mephedrone 1664 times and made 157 telephone inquiries; the requests increased month on month over this period. In comparison over a similar time period, the entries for cocaine and MDMA were accessed approximately 2400 times.[41] After mephedrone was made illegal the number of inquiries to the NPIS fell substantially, to only 19 in June 2010.[42]

 

Media organisations including the BBC and The Guardian incorrectly reported mephedrone was commonly used as a plant fertiliser. In fact sellers of the drug described it as "plant food" because it was illegal to sell the compound for human consumption.[36] In late 2009 UK newspapers began referring to the drug as meow or miaow (sometimes doubled as meow meow or miaow miaow), a name that was almost unknown on the street at the time.[43] In November 2009, the tabloid newspaper, The Sun published a story stating that a man had ripped off his own scrotum whilst using mephedrone.[44] The story was later shown to be an online joke posted on mephedrone.com, later included in a police report with the caveat that it could be unreliable. The police report was used as a source for the story in The Sun.[45][46] Other myths the media often repeated during 2010 were that mephedrone had led to the deaths of over 20 people, teachers were unable to confiscate the drug from pupils and the government was too slow to ban the drug.[47] Parallels were drawn between the media coverage of mephedrone and a piece of satire by Chris Morris in 1997 on Brass Eye when he tricked public figures into talking of the dangers of taking the fictional legal drug "cake".[46] The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) have suggested that the media coverage of the drug led to its increased usage.[48] Jon Silverman, a former BBC Home Affairs Correspondent, has written two articles discussing how the media had a strong influence over the UK government's drugs policy, particularly in that the government wished to demonstrate they were being "tough" on drugs.[40][49]

 

A survey of 1000 secondary school pupils and university students in Tayside conducted in February 2010 found 20% of them had previously taken mephedrone. Although at the time it was available legally over the internet, only 10% of users reported purchasing it online, with most purchasing it from street dealers. Of those who had used mephedrone, 97% said it was easy or very easy to obtain. Around 50% of users reported at least one negative effect associated with the use of mephedrone, of which teeth grinding is the most common.[50] Detailed interviews with users in Northern Ireland similarly found that few purchased mephedrone online, with most interviewees citing concerns that their address would be traced or that family members could intercept the package.[9]

 

On 30 March 2010, Alan Johnson, the then Home Secretary, announced mephedrone would be made illegal "within weeks" after the ACMD sent him a report on the use of cathinones.[51][52] The legislation would make all cathinones illegal, which Johnson said would "stop unscrupulous manufacturers and others peddling different but similarly harmful drugs".[53] The ACMD had run into problems with the UK Government in 2009 regarding drugs policy, after the government did not follow the advice of the ACMD to reclassify ecstasy and cannabis, culminating in the dismissal of the ACMD chairman, David Nutt, after he reiterated the ACMD's findings in an academic lecture.[54] Several members resigned after he was sacked, and prior to the announcement that mephedrone was to be banned, the trend continued when Dr Polly Taylor resigned, saying she "did not have trust" in the way the government would use the advice given by the ACMD.[55] Eric Carlin, a member of the ACMD and former chairman of the English Drug Education Forum, also resigned after the announcement. He said the decision by the Home Secretary was "unduly based on media and political pressure" and there was "little or no discussion about how our recommendation to classify this drug would be likely to impact on young people's behaviour."[56] Some former members of the ACMD and various charity groups expressed concern over the banning of the drug, arguing it would inevitably criminalise users, particularly young people.[57] Others expressed concern that the drug would be left in the hands of black market dealers, who will only compound the problem.[58] Carlin's resignation was specifically linked to the criminalisation of mephedrone, he stated: "We need to review our entire approach to drugs, dumping the idea that legally-sanctioned punishments for drug users should constitute a main part of the armoury in helping to solve our country’s drug problems. We need to stop harming people who need help and support".[59]

 

The parliamentary debate was held on 8 April, one day after the 2010 general election had been announced, meaning it was during the so-called "wash-up period" when legislation is passed with little scrutiny. Only one hour was spent debating the ban and all three parties agreed, meaning no vote was required.[60] In an interview conducted in July 2010, when he was no longer a minister, Johnson admitted the decision to ban mephedrone was sped up after widespread reporting of deaths caused by the drug, and because the government wished to pass the law before parliament was dissolved prior to the upcoming general election.[40] In January 2011, however, Johnson told the Scunthorpe Telegraph that the decision was based only on information from the ACMD.[61] An editorial in the April 2010 edition of The Lancet questioned the decision to ban mephedrone, saying the ACMD did not have enough evidence to judge the potential harms caused by mephedrone and arguing that policy makers should have sought to understand why young people took it and how they could be influenced to not take it.[48] Evan Harris, then the Liberal Democrat science spokesman, stated the ACMD "was not 'legally constituted'" as required by the Misuse of Drugs Act, when the report on cathinones was published, since after Taylor resigned, it lacked a veterinary surgeon.[53] In the rush to make mephedrone illegal, the act that was passed specified the inactive enantiomer of mephedrone, leaving the active form legal until the loophole was closed in February 2011 by another act of parliament.[62] In Chemistry World, John Mann, professor of chemistry at Queen's University Belfast, suggested the UK create a law similar to the Federal Analog Act of the United States, which would have made mephedrone illegal as an analog of cathinone.[63] In August 2010, James Brokenshire, the Home Office drugs minister, announced plans to create a new category in the Misuse of Drugs Act, through the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill, that would allow new legal highs to be made temporarily illegal, without the need for a vote in parliament or advice from the ACMD, as was required to categorise mephedrone.[64][65][66]

 

According to the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, after mephedrone was made illegal, a street trade in the drug emerged, with prices around double those prior to the ban, at £20–£25 per gram.[67] In September 2010, Druglink reported the ban had had a mixed effect on mephedrone use, with it decreasing in some areas, remaining similar in others and becoming more prevalent in some areas.[68] In an online survey of 150 users after the ban, 63% said they were continuing to use mephedrone, half of those used the same amount and half said they used less. Compared to previous surveys, more users purchased it from dealers, rather than the internet. The average price per gram was £16, compared to around £10 before the ban.[69] The 2010 Mixmag survey of 2500 nightclubbers found one-quarter had used mephedrone in the previous month, the price had roughly doubled since it was made illegal, and it was more likely to be cut with other substances.[70] Of those who had already used mephedrone prior to the ban, 75% had continued to use it after the ban. Of the various drugs used by the survey participants, users were more likely to have concerns about it.[71] Interviews with users in Northern Ireland also found the price had roughly doubled since it was made illegal, to around £30 a gram. Rather than the price rising due to increased scarcity of the drug, it is thought to have risen for two other reasons. Firstly, dealers knew there was still demand for mephedrone, but were aware the supplies may be exhausted in the future. Secondly, the dealers perceived customers were likely to be willing to pay more for an illegal substance.[9]

 

Professor Shiela Bird, a statistician at the Medical Research Council, suggested the ban of mephedrone may lead to more cocaine-related deaths. In the first six months of 2009, the number of cocaine-related deaths fell for the first time in four years, and fewer soldiers tested positive for cocaine in 2009 than in 2008. She suggested this may have been due to users switching to mephedrone from cocaine, but cautioned that before full figures are available for 2009 and 2010, it will be difficult to determine whether mephedrone saved lives, rather than cost them.[72][73] Other supposedly legal drugs have filled the gap in the market since mephedrone was made illegal, including naphyrone (NRG-1) (since made illegal)[74] and Ivory Wave, which has been found to contain MDPV, a compound made illegal at the same time as mephedrone. However, some products branded as Ivory Wave possibly do not contain MDPV.[75] When tested, some products sold six weeks after mephedrone was banned, advertised as NRG-1, NRG-2 and MDAI, were found to be mephedrone.[76] A Drugscope survey of drugs workers at the end of 2012 reported that mephedrone use was still widespread in the UK and that there increasing reports of problematic users. It was being taken as not only a "poor man's cocaine" but also amongst users of heroin and crack cocaine. Cases of intravenous use were also reported to be on the increase.[77]

 

Effects[edit]

No formal published studies have been conducted into the psychological and/or behavioural effects of mephedrone on humans, nor on animals (from which the potential effects might be extrapolated). As a result, the only information available comes from users themselves and clinical reports of acute mephedrone toxicity.[1]:12 Psychologists at Liverpool John Moores University were to conduct research into the effects of mephedrone on up to 50 students already using the drug, when it was still legal in the UK.[78] At the time the study was proposed, Les Iversen, the chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs called the experiments "pretty unethical".[79] The study was discontinued in August 2010, following the change in the legal status of the drug.[80]

 

Intended effects[edit]

Users have reported that mephedrone causes euphoria, stimulation, an enhanced appreciation for music, an elevated mood, decreased hostility, improved mental function and mild sexual stimulation; these effects are similar to the effects of cocaine, amphetamines and MDMA, and last different amounts of time, depending on the way the drug is taken. When taken orally, users reported they could feel the effects within 15–45 minutes; when snorted, the effects were felt within minutes and peaked within half an hour. The effects last for between two and three hours when taken orally or nasally, but only half an hour if taken intravenously.[1]:12 Of 70 Dutch users of mephedrone, 58 described it as an overall pleasant experience and 12 described it as an unpleasant experience.[38] In a survey of UK users who had previously taken cocaine, most users found it produced a better-quality and longer-lasting high, was less addictive and carried the same risk as using cocaine.[2]

 

Side effects[edit]

The ECMDDA reported mephedrone can cause various unintended side effects including: dilated pupils,[81] poor concentration, teeth grinding, problems focusing visually, poor short-term memory, hallucinations, delusions, and erratic behaviour.[1]:13 They noted the most severe effects appear anecdotally to be linked with high doses or prolonged usage, and the effects may be due to users taking other intoxicants at the same time. Other effects users in internet forums have noted include changes in body temperature, increased heart rate, breathing difficulties, loss of appetite, increased sweating, discolouration of extremities, anxiety, paranoia and depression.[1]:13 When snorted, it can also cause nose bleeds and nose burns.[1]:13[82] A survey conducted by the National Addiction Centre, UK, found 67% of mephedrone users experienced sweating, 51% suffered from headaches, 43% from heart palpitations, 27% from nausea and 15% from cold or blue fingers,[83] indicative of vasoconstriction occurring.[41] Doctors at Guy's Hospital, London reported, of 15 patients they treated after taking mephedrone in 2009, 53% were agitated, 40% had increased heart rates, 20% had systolic hypertension and 20% had seizures; three required treatment with benzodiazepines, predominantly to control their agitation. They reported none of their patients suffered from cold or blue peripheries, contrary to other reports. Nine of the 15 of patients had a Glasgow coma scale (GCS) of 15, indicating they were in a normal mental state, four had a GCS below 8, but these patients all reported using a central nervous system depressant, most commonly GHB, with mephedrone. The patients also reported polydrug use of a variety of compounds.[84]

 

Long-term effects[edit]

Almost nothing is known about the long-term effects of the drug due to the short history of its use.[83] BBC News reported one person who used the drug for 18 months became dependent on the drug, in the end using it twice a week, and had to be admitted to a psychiatric unit after he started experiencing hallucinations, agitation, excitability and mania.[1]:13[85]

 

Typical use and consumption[edit]

Mephedrone can come in the form of capsules, tablets or white powder that users may swallow, snort, inject, smoke or use rectally.[1]:12[2][3] It is sometimes sold mixed with methylone in a product called bubbles in the UK[86] and also mixed with other cathinones, including ethcathinone, butylone, fluoromethcathinone and methedrone.[1]:9 The Guardian reported some users compulsively redose, consuming their whole supply when they only meant to use a small dose,[87] and there have been other similar reports of users craving mephedrone, suggesting it may be addictive.[1]:13[38] A survey conducted in late 2009 by the National Addiction Centre (UK) found 41.3% of readers of Mixmag had used mephedrone in the last month, making it the fourth most popular drug amongst clubbers. Of those, two-thirds snorted the drug and the average dosage per session was 0.9 g; the length of sessions increased as the dosage increased. Users who snorted the drug reported using more per session than those who took it orally (0.97 g compared to 0.74 g) and also reported using it more often (five days per month compared to three days per month).[2] An Irish study of people on a methadone treatment program for heroin addicts found 29 of 209 patients tested positive for mephedrone usage.[88] A study of users in Northern Ireland found they did not equate the fact that mephedrone was legal with it being safe to use. This was contrary to another study in New Zealand, where users of benzylpiperazine thought that because it was legal, it was safe.[9]

 

Harm reduction[edit]

See also: Harm reduction and Responsible drug use

The drugs advice charity Lifeline recommends that to reduce the potential harm caused by using mephedrone, users should only use mephedrone occasionally (less than weekly), use less than 0.5 g per session, dose orally rather than snorting the drug, and avoid mixing it with alcohol and other drugs. Users should also drink plenty of water at sensible intervals while taking the drug, as it causes dehydration.[89]

 

Pharmacology[edit]

The pharmacology and toxicology of mephedrone had not been studied in detail until well after its sale as a designer drug and its addition to controlled drug lists in many countries.[90][91] Writing in the British Medical Journal, psychiatrists stated, given its chemical structure, "mephedrone is likely to stimulate the release of, and then inhibit the reuptake of monoamine neurotransmitters".[81] The cathinone derivatives methcathinone and methylone act in a similar way to amphetamines, mainly acting on catecholamine transporters, so mephedrone is expected also to act in this way. The actions of amphetamines and cathinones are determined by the differences in how they bind to noradrenalin, dopamine and serotonin transporters.[90] Molecular modelling of mephedrone suggests it is more hydrophilic than methyl-amphetamines, which may account for the higher doses required to achieve a similar effect, because mephedrone is less able to cross the blood–brain barrier.[1]:12[92] Mephedrone has a chiral centre, so exists in two forms, called enantiomers; the S form is thought to be more potent than the R form, because this applies to cathinone.[90] Professor David Nutt, former chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) in the UK has said, "people are better off taking ecstasy or amphetamines than those [drugs] we know nothing about" and "Who knows what's in [mephedrone] when you buy it? We don't have a testing system. It could be very dangerous, we just don't know. These chemicals have never been put into animals, let alone humans."[93] Les King, a former member of the ACMD, has stated mephedrone appears to be less potent than amphetamine and ecstasy, but that any benefit associated with this could be negated by users taking larger amounts. He also told the BBC, "all we can say is [mephedrone] is probably as harmful as ecstasy and amphetamines and wait until we have some better scientific evidence to support that."[94]

 

Several articles published near the end of 2011 examined the effects of mephedrone, compared to the similar drugs MDMA and amphetamine in the nucleus accumbens of rats, as well as examining the reinforcing potential of mephedrone. Dopamine and serotonin were collected using microdialysis, and increases in dopamine and serotonin were measured using HPLC. Reward and drug seeking are linked to increases in dopamine concentrations in the nucleus accumbens, and drug half-life plays a role in drug seeking, as well. Based on histological examination, most of the author's probes were in the nucleus accumbens shell. Mephedrone administration caused about a 500% increase in dopamine, and about a 950% increase in serotonin. They reached their peak concentrations at 40 minutes and 20 minutes, respectively, and returned to baseline by 120 minutes after injection. In comparison, MDMA caused a roughly 900% increase in serotonin at 40 minutes, with an insignificant increase in dopamine. Amphetamine administration resulted in about a 400% increase in dopamine, peaking at 40 minutes, with an insignificant increase in serotonin. Analysis of the ratio of the AUC for dopamine (DA) and serotonin (5-HT) indicated mephedrone was preferentially a serotonin releaser, with a ratio of 1.22:1 (serotonin vs. dopamine). Additionally, half-lives for the decrease in DA and 5-HT were calculated for each drug. Mephedrone had decay rates of 24.5 minutes and 25.5 minutes, respectively. MDMA had decay values of 302.5 minutes and 47.9 minutes, respectively, while amphetamine values were 51 minutes and 84.1 minutes, respectively. Taken together, these findings show mephedrone induces a massive increase in both DA and 5-HT, combined with rapid clearance. The rapid rise and subsequent fall of DA levels could explain some of the addictive properties mephedrone displays in some users.[95][96]

 

Metabolism[edit]

Based on the analysis of rat and human urine by gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, mephedrone is thought to be metabolised by three phase 1 pathways. It can be demethylated to the primary amine (producing compounds 2, 3 and 5), the ketone group can be reduced (producing 3) or the tolyl group can be oxidised (producing 6). Both 5 and 6 are thought to be further metabolised by conjugation to the glucuronide and sulfate derivatives. Knowledge of the primary routes of metabolism should allow the intake of mephedrone to be confirmed by drug tests, as well as more accurate determination of the causes of side effects and potential for toxicity.[97]

 

Deaths[edit]

Sweden[edit]

In 2008, an 18-year-old Swedish woman died in Stockholm after taking mephedrone. The newspaper Svenska Dagbladet reported the woman went into convulsions and turned blue in the face.[104] Doctors reported she was comatose and suffering from hyponatremia and severe hypokalemia; the woman died one and a half days after the onset of symptoms. An autopsy showed severe brain swelling.[105] Mephedrone was scheduled to be classified as a "dangerous substance" in Sweden even before the woman's death at Karolinska University Hospital on 14 December, but the death brought more media attention to the drug. The possession of mephedrone became classified as a criminal offence in Sweden on 15 December 2008.[104]

 

UK[edit]

In 2010, unconfirmed reports speculated about the role mephedrone has played in the deaths of several young people in the UK. By July 2010, mephedrone had been alleged to be involved in 52 fatalities in the UK, but detected in only 38 of these cases. Of the nine that coroners had finished investigating, two were caused directly by mephedrone.[106] The first death reported to be caused by mephedrone use was that of 46-year-old, John Sterling Smith,[107] who had underlying health problems and repeatedly injected the drug.[108] A report in Forensic Science International in August 2010 stated mephedrone intoxication has been recorded as the cause of death in two cases in Scotland. Post mortem samples showed the concentration of mephedrone in their blood was 22 mg/l in one case and 3.3 mg/l in the other.[109] The death of a teenager in the UK in November 2009 was widely reported as being caused by mephedrone, but a report by the coroner concluded she had died from natural causes.[46] In March 2010, the deaths of two teenagers in Scunthorpe were widely reported by the media to be caused by mephedrone. Toxicology reports showed the teenagers had not taken any mephedrone and had died as a result of consuming alcohol and the heroin substitute methadone.[108][110] According to Fiona Measham, a criminologist who is a member of the ACMD, the reporting of the unconfirmed deaths by newspapers followed "the usual cycle of ‘exaggeration, distortion, inaccuracy and sensationalism'" associated with the reporting of recreational drug use.[34]

 

USA[edit]

Mephedrone has been implicated in the death of a 22-year-old male, who had also injected black tar heroin. Mephedrone was found in his blood at a concentration of 0.50 mg/l and in his urine at a concentration of 198 mg/l. The blood concentration of morphine, a metabolite of heroin, was 0.06 mg/l.[111] For comparison, the average blood morphine concentration resulting from deadly overdoses involving only heroin is around 0.34 mg/l.[112]

 

Chemistry[edit]

Appearance[edit]

Mephedrone is a white substance. It is sold most commonly as crystals or a powder, but also in the form of capsules or pills.[21][94] It can have a distinctive odour, reported to range from a synthetic fishy smell[113] to the smell of vanilla and bleach, stale urine, or electric circuit boards.[114]

 

Synthesis[edit]

Mephedrone can be synthesised in several ways. The simplest method, due to the availability of the compounds,[1]:17 is to add 4-methylpropiophenone dissolved in glacial acetic acid to bromine, creating an oil fraction of 4'-methyl-2-bromopropiophenone. The oil fraction can then be dissolved in dichloromethane (CH2Cl2) and drops of the solution added to another solution of CH2Cl2-containing methylamine hydrochloride and triethylamine. Hydrochloric acid (HCl) is then added and the aqueous layer is removed and turned alkaline using sodium hydroxide before the amine is extracted using CH2Cl2. The CH2Cl2 is then evaporated using a vacuum, creating an oil which is then dissolved in a nonaqueous ether. Finally, HCl gas is bubbled through the mixture to produce 4-methylmethcathinone hydrochloride.[18] This method produces a mixture of both enantiomers and requires similar knowledge to that required to synthesise amphetamines and MDMA.[1]:17

  

Mephedrone synthesis scheme from 4-methylpropiophenone

It can also be produced by oxidising the ephedrine analogue 4-methylephedrine using potassium permanganate dissolved in sulfuric acid. Because 4-methylephedrine can be obtained in a specific enantiomeric form, mephedrone consisting of only one enantiomer can be produced. The danger associated with this method is it may cause manganese poisoning if the product is not correctly purified.[1]:17

 

A stereospecific form of (S)-mephedrone could be prepared via Friedel–Crafts acylation. The first step in the synthesis would be to react toluene and (S)-N-trifluoroacetylalanoyl chloride in the presence of aluminium chloride, then deprotect the intermediate with hydrochloric acid-propyl alcohol. This would produce (S)-4-methylcathinone, which could then be methylated to produce mephedrone.[90][115]

 

Purity[edit]

One published study that analysed samples of mephedrone bought using the internet in the UK in 2010 found it was racemic (a mixture of both stereoisomers) and of high purity.[92] An unpublished study of six samples also ordered off the internet in the UK in 2010 found they contained very few organic impurities.[116] Four products sold in Irish head shops were tested in 2010 and were found to contain between 82% and 14% mephedrone, with some products containing benzocaine and caffeine.[117]

 

Legal status[edit]

 

A sample of mephedrone that was confiscated in Oregon, USA, 2009

When mephedrone was rediscovered in 2003, it was not specifically illegal to possess in any country. As its use has increased, many countries have passed legislation making its possession, sale, and manufacture illegal. It was first made illegal in Israel, where it had been found in products such as Neodoves pills, in January 2008.[5] After the death of a young woman in Sweden in December 2008 was linked to the use of mephedrone, it was classified as a hazardous substance a few days later, making it illegal to sell in Sweden. In June 2009, it was classified as a narcotic with the possession of 15 grams or more resulting in a minimum of two years in prison – a longer sentence, gram for gram than given for the possession of cocaine or heroin.[118][119] In December 2008, Denmark also made it illegal[120] and through the Medicines Act of Finland, it was made illegal to possess without a prescription.[121] In November 2009, it was classified as a "narcotic or psychotropic" substance and added to the list of controlled substances in Estonia[122] and made illegal to import into Guernsey along with other legal highs,[123] before being classified as a Class B drug in April 2010.[124] It was classified as a Class C drug in Jersey in December 2009.[125]

 

In 2010, as its use became more prevalent, many countries passed legislation prohibiting mephedrone. It became illegal in Croatia[126] and Germany[127] in January, followed by Romania[128] and the Isle of Man in February.[129] In March 2010, it was classified as an unregulated medicine in the Netherlands, making the sale and distribution of it illegal.[130][131] The importation of mephedrone into the UK was banned on 29 March 2010.[132] The next day, the ACMD in the UK published a report on the cathinones, including mephedrone, and recommended they be classified as Class B drugs. On 7 April 2010, the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (Amendment) Order 2010 was passed by parliament, making mephedrone and other substituted cathinones, Class B drugs from 16 April 2010.[133][134] Prior to the ban taking effect, mephedrone was not covered by the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.[26] It was, though, an offence under the Medicines Act to sell it for human consumption, so it was often sold as "plant food" or "bath salts", although it has no use as these products; this, too, was possibly illegal under the Trade Descriptions Act 1968.[52][82][83] In the USA, similar descriptions have been used to describe mephedrone, as well as methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDPV).[135] In May 2010, the Republic of Ireland made mephedrone illegal,[136][137][138] followed by Belgium,[139] Italy,[140] Lithuania,[141] France[142][143] and Norway[144] in June and Russia in July.[145] In August 2010, Austria[146] and Poland[147] made it illegal and China announced it would be illegal as of 1 September 2010.[27] Mephedrone had been reported to be used in Singapore in February 2010,[148] but it was made illegal in November 2010.[149] In December 2010, following the advice of the EMCDDA, mephedrone was made illegal throughout the EU, a move Switzerland also made shortly afterwards.[150][151] Countries which have not already banned it, such as the Netherlands, Greece and Portugal, will need to change legislation to comply with the EU ruling.[151] In Hungary, a government advisory body recommended mephedrone should be made illegal in August 2010, which was followed, making it illegal in January 2011;[152][153] Spain followed in February 2011.[154] Mexico, by Decree,[155] outlawed mephedrone as a substance "with low or no therapeutical use which pose a serious threat to public health"[156] in 2014.

 

In some countries, mephedrone is not specifically listed as illegal, but is controlled under legislation that makes compounds illegal if they are analogs of drugs already listed. In Australia during 2010, it was not specifically listed as prohibited,[18] but the Australian Federal Police stated it is an analogue to methcathinone and therefore illegal. In February 2010, 22 men were arrested in connection with importing mephedrone.[157] By January 2011, every state in Australia, other than Victoria, had listed it as a controlled drug.[158] In New Zealand, it is not included in the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975,[159] but is illegal, as it is similar to controlled substances.[160] In Canada, mephedrone is not explicitly listed in any schedule of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, but "amphetamines, their salts, derivatives, isomers and analogues and salts of derivatives, isomers and analogues" are included in Section 19 of Schedule I of the act. Cathinone and methcathinone are listed in separate sections of Schedule III, while diethylpropion and pyrovalerone (also cathinones), are listed in separate sections of Schedule IV, each without language to capture analogues, isomers, etc.[161] Mephedrone is considered a controlled substance by Health Canada.[162] According to the Canadian Medical Association, mephedrone is grouped with other amphetamines as Schedule I controlled substances.[163] There have been several media reports of the Canadian police seizing mephedrone.[164][165][166] Mephedrone is also currently scheduled in the United States as of 2011. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) states, as an analogue of methcathinone, possession of mephedrone can be controlled by the Federal Analog Act, but according to the Los Angeles Times, this only applies if it is sold for human consumption.[167][168][169] Several cities and states, such as New York,[170] have passed legislation to specifically list mephedrone as illegal, but in most areas it was legal, so long as it is not sold for human consumption, so retailers described it as 'bath salts'.[169] In September 2011, The DEA began using its emergency scheduling authority to temporarily control mephedrone. Except as authorized by law, this action made possessing and selling mephedrone or the products that contain it illegal in the USA for at least one year while the DEA and the United States Department of Health and Human Services conduct further study.[171] Control of these compounds became permanent on 9 July 2012, via passage of the Synthetic Drug Abuse Prevention Act of 2012.[172]

 

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©2021 SDPB

 

Includes Teams from Wagner/Bon Homme, Britton-Hecla, Vermillion, Stanley County and West Central. Permission granted for journalism outlets and educational purposes. Not for commercial use. Must be credited. Photo courtesy of South Dakota Public Broadcasting.

©2021 SDPB

 

Includes teams from Deuel, Hot Springs, Madison, Parkston/Ethan/Hanson/Mt. Vernon. Permission granted for journalism outlets and educational purposes. Not for commercial use. Must be credited. Photo courtesy of South Dakota Public Broadcasting.

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Beautiful old steam heater in Castle de Haar , Kasteel de Haar near the suburb of Vleuten that includes village of Haarzuilen rebuild by architect Pierre Cuyper Project was finished in around 1912 took 20 years to be finished , Martin’s photograph , Utrecht , the Netherlands , June 5. 2019

 

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A outside service walk way inside the castle

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Kasteel de Haar near the suburb of Vleuten that includes village of Haarzuilen

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