AcharyaChanakya/simple-wikipedia huggingface dataset:
Some people are blonde because they have less pigment in their hair than dark haired people. To be blonde is usually to have blonde ancestors. Then it is genetic - blondes have genes that make them blond. Sometimes it is not genetic - this is called albinism. People can also use chemicals to make themselves blonde. Bleach is sometimes used to make the color of a person's hair lighter.
Most people are not blondes by their genes. Only some people, mostly with European ancestry, are blondes by their genes, and also some Australian Aborigines have a different gene that makes them blonde. Natural blondes are most common around the Baltic Sea and Scandinavia. The Nordic countries such as Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, and Finland also have many blond people. Ireland and Scotland also have a high number of natural blondes. According to recent genetic analysis, both mtDNA and Y chromosome exist in Austrians. There is also a large number of blondes in England, Baltic countries, Slavic countries (especially Poland), north-western parts of Russia and among European descent that have lived in Kazakhstan since the Soviet Union. Natural blondes are also common in Canada, United States, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Chile, The Netherlands, United Kingdom, and Germany. Light hair can also brought on by environmental factors, especially exposure to sunlight.
Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, OM, PC (10 February 1894 – 29 December 1986), was a Conservative statesman. He was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1963.
Macmillan served in the Grenadier Guards during the First World War. After the war he joined his family publishing company, then entered Parliament at the 1924 general election. After losing his seat in 1929, he regained it in 1931.
During World War II, Churchill made Macmillan Minister Resident in the Mediterranean. This made him the go-between for Churchill and the British forces in North Africa and the Middle East. The Mediterranean was a major theatre of war, and Macmillan's work made his name as a serious politician.
Macmillan became Foreign Secretary and then Chancellor of the Exchequer under Churchill's successor Sir Anthony Eden. When Eden resigned in 1957 after the Suez Crisis, Macmillan succeeded him as Prime Minister and Leader of the Conservative Party.
Macmillan presided over a country becoming more affluent (rich), with low unemployment and high (but uneven) economic growth. In his Bedford speech of July 1957 he told the nation they had 'never had it so good'.
Crucifixion is a way to execute (kill) someone, usually because they have committed a crime. It was used as a capital punishment by the government of Rome. A prisoner was beaten with whips, and made to carry their own cross. They were either tied or nailed to the cross. The Romans used different types of crosses: T-shaped, X-shaped, and sometimes just trees. It killed people by making them bleed, go into shock, and making it hard for them to breathe, eventually dying of suffocation. Some of the people would live for several days before dying. The Roman soldiers (which were like the police of that time) would often break the legs of the criminal to speed it up.
The most famous person to have been crucified was Jesus Christ, the Son of God according to the Christian religion. He was crucified along with two thieves. The cross later became a symbol of Christianity. Six of the twelve apostles of Jesus were also crucified later on, but most of them asked to be crucified in a different way from Jesus. For example, Andrew (who later became the patron saint of Scotland) was crucified on an X-shaped cross. In the year 337 AD, Emperor Constantine I abolished crucifixion in the Roman Empire.
Baltic paganism
Baltic Paganism are different religions and mythologies that people had in Baltic countries before Christianity and that some people still have. All of those religions have their own features but also between these religions many things are similar. Baltic pagans just like Scandinavian and Finnish pagans believes that greatest god is a male god of sky and thunder. He has a hammer or axe that makes lightning. This belief is very old. In the Stone Age, Corded Ware culture already had this kind of a god and that his weapon was a boat shaped stone axe. Corded Ware culture lived in a large area and many features of Nordic and Baltic people are derived from it.
Kaleva
Kaleva or Kalevi and his sons are people or creatures in Finnish, Karelian and Estonian stories. However many things about them are forgotten.
The name of Estonian national Epos Kalevipoeg means "Sons of Kalevi" and the name of Finnish national epos Kalevala means "Land of Kaleva".
In Estonian stories sons of Kaleva are sons of King.
Finnish people called Sirius "Kalevantähti" which means "Star of Kaleva". Belt of Orion was called Kalevas sword.
In Finnish stories they are more often giants. People told that some things in nature, like big or weird stones, are made by Kalevas sons. Stories tells that while people became Christians, they started to hate Kaleva's sons who remained pagans. Soon Kaleva's sons had to go away. All the time Christian people took more land, Kaleva's sons had to go farther away. At one island they staid and did not want to leave. Priests came and they cursed Kaleva's sons until they took a big stone and sailed with it away. They have not been seen since that, but sometimes they come at night and hits crop or even forest down.
Almost the same thing happened to Hiisi people who resembles trolls. Christian humans made them to flee also.
Yellowstone National Park is a national park in the United States. It was the world's first national park. United States President Ulysses S. Grant signed a law to create it. The name was taken from the Yellowstone River, which flows through the park. Yellowstone was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978.
Yellowstone National Park is famous for its geysers and hot springs. The park contains about half the world's geysers. The world's most famous geyser, the Old Faithful Geyser, is in Yellowstone National Park. It also is a home to grizzly bears, wolves, bison and elk. Many tourists visit the park each year to see the geysers and animals there.
The park is the center of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. This is the largest remaining nearly intact ecosystem in the Earth's northern temperate zone. It includes many types of ecosystems, but the biggest is the subalpine forest.
People have lived in the Yellowstone area for about 11,000 years. Some native Americans still lived there when the first people came from Europe in 1807/1808. John Colter, a trapper, came within the Lewis and Clark Expedition and visited a large area that was unknown to the western world at that time. Three years later, he returned to St. Louis and told the people there that he had discovered a wonderland of hot springs and geysers. This area was Yellowstone, but nobody believed him, so Yellowstone still was not a famous place.
For the next sixty years, only a few other trappers traveled through the area, and the same thing happened to them. When they reported that Colter had been right, nobody listened to their stories. Then three expeditions between 1868 and 1871 visited Yellowstone and took the news of its wonders back to the East. One year later, on March 1, 1872, the United States President Ulysses S. Grant signed a law to create the first national park in the world.
For the first sixteen years, there was no money for the park. So from 1886 to 1917, the US Army ran it. Then the new National Park Service took over, which has run Yellowstone ever since.
Yellowstone was proposed to be a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978. The UNESCO committee elected Yellowstone because it has "significant geological phenomena and processes, unique... geothermal forces, natural beauty, and wild ecosystems where rare and endangered species thrive. [It is] one of the few remaining intact large ecosystems in the northern temperate zone of Earth".
About 96 percent of the park is in Wyoming. Three percent is in Montana and only one percent in Idaho. It is about large, bigger than Rhode Island or Delaware.
The park is on the Yellowstone Plateau, at an average elevation of above sea level. There are mountain ranges on most sides of the plateau. These are mountain ranges of the Middle Rocky Mountains, which range from to in elevation.
Three deep canyons are in the park. They were cut through the volcanic tuff of the Yellowstone Plateau by rivers over the last 640,000 years (since the last huge explosion). The most famous is called the "Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone".
The Continental Divide of North America runs diagonally through the southwestern part of the Park. This separates the Pacific from Atlantic water drainage areas. The origins of the Yellowstone and Snake Rivers are near each other but on opposite sides of the divide. As a result, the waters of the Snake River flow to the Pacific Ocean, while those of the Yellowstone find their way to the Atlantic Ocean via the Gulf of Mexico.
Yellowstone is the site of a huge ancient volcano, whose remains are called the Yellowstone Caldera. The caldera is the largest volcanic system in North America.
The cause of the volcano was a "hotspot" in the Earth's mantle, over which the American continental plate moved. 640,000 years ago a huge volcanic explosion blew of rock and lava into the air. It was 1000 times larger than the Mount St. Helens eruption.
Yellowstone is still a geologically active volcano; which means that an eruption is expected in the future. The U.S monitors it. Geological Survey. There is ground movement, geysers, and small earthquakes. The caldera floor has been rising, but experts say there is no immediate danger of eruption.
For three months in 1985, 3,000 minor earthquakes occurred in the northwestern section of the park. Beginning on April 30, 2007, sixteen small earthquakes with magnitudes up to 2.7 occurred in the Yellowstone Caldera for several days. These swarms of earthquakes are common, and there have been 70 such swarms between 1983 and 2008. In January 2010, more than 250 earthquakes were detected over a two-day period. Seismic activity in Yellowstone National Park continues and is reported hourly by the Earthquake Hazards Program of the U.S. Geological Survey.
Yellowstone is widely seen to have the finest megafauna (very big animals) wildlife in all over the United States. There are almost 60 species of mammals in the park, including the gray wolf, the threatened lynx, and grizzly bears. Other large mammals are the bison (buffalo), black bear, elk, moose, mule deer, white-tailed deer, mountain goat, pronghorn, bighorn sheep and mountain lion.
Bison once numbered between 30 and 60 million throughout North America. Yellowstone is one of their last strongholds. Their number had increased from less than 50 in the park in 1902 to 4,000 by 2003.
The highest number of bison in the park was 4,900, in 2005. Despite a summer estimated number of 4,700 in 2007, the number dropped to 3,000 in 2008. That was after a harsh winter and a controversial brucellosis management when hundreds were sent to slaughter. The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has stated that with vaccinations and other means, brucellosis can be eliminated from the bison and elk herds throughout Yellowstone.
Starting in 1914, the U.S. Congress gave funds for ""destroying wolves, prairie dogs, and other animals injurious to agriculture and animal husbandry"" on public lands. After the wolves were gone from Yellowstone, the coyote became the park's top canine predator. However, the coyote cannot bring down large animals. The result was a great increase in lame and sick megafauna.
By the 1990s, the Federal government had changed its mind on wolves, in a controversial decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, wolves, imported from Canada, were brought into the park. A survey conducted in 2005 showed there were 13 wolf packs, totaling 118 wolves in Yellowstone and 326 in the whole ecosystem.
The increase in the number of wolves in the states of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho has been so successful that they are no longer on the endangered species list.
About 600 grizzly bears live in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, with more than half living within Yellowstone.
There are over 30,000 elk—the largest number of any large mammal species in Yellowstone. The northern herd has become much smaller since the mid-1990s. Wolves may cause this. Also, elk use more forested regions to evade the wolves, and make it harder for researchers to count them. The northern herd migrates west into southwestern Montana in the winter. The southern herd migrates southward, and the majority of these elk spend the winter on the National Elk Refuge, southeast of Grand Teton National Park. The southern herd migration is the largest migration of mammals in the U.S. outside of Alaska.
In 2003, the tracks of one female lynx and her cub were spotted and followed for over . Fecal material and other evidence obtained were tested and confirmed to be those of a lynx. No one actually saw a lynx, however. Lynx have not been seen in Yellowstone since 1998, though DNA taken from hair samples showed that lynx were at least passing through the park. Other mammals that are seen less often are the mountain lion and wolverine. There are about 25 mountain lions in the park. People do not know how many wolverines there are.
Yellowstone is also home to six species of reptiles, such as the painted turtle and prairie rattlesnake, and four species of amphibians, including the boreal chorus frog.
Eighteen species of fish live in Yellowstone, including the Yellowstone cutthroat trout. This fish is highly sought by anglers, and most of them live in Yellowstone. The Yellowstone cutthroat trout has faced several threats since the 1980s, including the suspected illegal introduction into Yellowstone Lake of lake trout, an invasive species which eat the smaller cutthroat trout. The cutthroat trout has also faced an ongoing drought, as well as the accidental introduction of a parasite—whirling disease—which kills younger fish. Since 2001, all native sport fish species caught in Yellowstone waterways are subject to a catch and release law.
311 species of birds have been reported. Almost half of them nest in Yellowstone. As of 1999, twenty-six pairs of nesting bald eagles have been documented. Extremely rare sightings of whooping cranes have been recorded; only three are known to live in the Rocky Mountains, out of 385 known worldwide. Other birds, considered to be species of special concern because of their rarity in Yellowstone, include the common loon, harlequin duck, osprey, peregrine falcon and the trumpeter swan.
The reason for the extraordinary climate in Yellowstone is the location of the Rocky Mountains. The temperature at the Mammoth Hot Springs is between in January and in July. Sudden temperature increase or decrease in the middle of a year are not a rare thing.
In summer, there are temperatures of about in the lower areas, but they can go up to sometimes. There are many thunderstorms during the afternoons. There are relatively low temperatures during the night; they can get down to lower null in the mountains. Typical temperatures in winter are between .
The highest temperature was metered with in year 1936, while the lowest metered temperature is in year 1933 in Mason.
Yellowstone has had many tourists. This is mostly because of the natural beauty of Yellowstone Park. Millions of people come to see it every year.
Yellowstone offers many attractions, for example geysers, hot springs, a deep canyon, a river with many falls, forests, seas, mountains, wilderness, and wildlife. A lot of visitors say these attractions are beautiful.
More than 2.8 million tourists have visited Yellowstone since 1990. In 2010, 3.64 million people visited it. About 140,000 people come in the winter to see snow attractions, for example driving snowmobiles. More than 4,500 people work in the various hotels, parks and shops.
Conservation of the environment and life was the main reason for creating the national parks.
Even before the creation of Yellowstone, the naturalist Henry David Thoreau and other supporters asked the government to protect nature and animals in that area. However, when the park was finally created, there was no such law. A law to protect most of the animals from being shot was not adopted until 1883, nearly 10 years after creating the park. Hunting "protected" animals were forbidden under that law. Nevertheless, poachers could still operate. So in 1894, a new law called the "National Park Protection Act" was adopted. The US Congress protected nature, wildlife and other natural resources. The new law forbade the killing or destroying of them, and only fishing was allowed. Nature, for example, trees, mineral resources, and other things, were not allowed to be harmed.
Because Yellowstone has many forests, some fires could occur. The last big fires were the "Yellowstone fires of 1988". They damaged more than of forest area and burned out more than of trees and forest. Also, of bush and grass were damaged. The effect of the fire can still be seen in some places, even after more than 30 years.
After 1988, new fire management plans were introduced: people are now not to fight the fire, but let them burn and observe them. This is to keep the fire controlled. According to the 2004 plan, natural wildfires are allowed to burn so long as fire size, weather, and potential danger are within limits.
National park
A national park is a park or a area of land officially recognized and protected by a nation's government. National parks are often made to protect the animals that live inside them or the land itself. There are many National Parks in the world.
The first one established (in 1872) was the United States Yellowstone National Park. It was the first national park in the world. But the idea of protecting areas from human development was proposed years earlier. American painter George Catlin offered the idea during the 1830s.
An international organization, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and its World Commission on Protected Areas, has defined National Parks as its category II type of protected areas. The largest national park in the world meeting the IUCN definition is the Northeast Greenland National Park, which was established in 1974. According to the IUCN, there are about 7000 national parks worldwide (2010 figure).
In 1969 the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) declared a national park to be a relatively large area with:
While national parks are generally understood to be administered by national governments (hence the name), in Australia national parks are run by State Governments and predate the Federation of Australia. Also in Japan, some of them called "Quasi-national Parks" (国定公園) are recognized by the government and managed by local governments.
William Ewart Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone (29 December 1809 – 19 May 1898) was a British Victorian politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for the Liberal Party in four terms between 1868 and 1894.
His career lasted more than 60 years. He served as Liberal Prime Minister four times. This was more than any other person (1868–1874, 1880–1885, 1886 and 1892–1894). Gladstone was 84 years old when he resigned for the last time. This made him Britain's oldest ever Prime Minister. He served as Chancellor of the Exchequer four times (1853–1855, 1859–1866, 1873–1874 and 1880–1882).
Gladstone was educated at Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford.
Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon (12 June 1897 – 14 January 1977) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He was better known throughout his time in office as Sir Anthony Eden. He was educated at Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford.
Eden was one of the best-known politicians of his generation. He was appointed Foreign Secretary in 1935 by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, and resigned in 1938 in protest at Chamberlain's appeasement of Adolf Hitler. He was Churchill's Foreign Secretary during World War II, and again in 19511955.
He had operation to remove gallstones in 1953. The operation went wrong, and his health was ruined. He became Prime Minister in 1955 when Winston Churchill retired. He stopped being Prime Minister in 1957 when Harold Macmillan replaced him. The Suez Crisis of 1956 was a critical period. This and his health led up to his resignation as Prime Minister. Eden died of liver cancer, aged 79. His widow, Clarissa Eden, Countess of Avon, was born in 1920. She is a niece of Winston Churchill.
Eden's life can be described in two halves. The first half, in the 1930s and in wartime, was brilliant. But he is often ranked among the least successful British Prime Ministers of the 20th century, although two broadly sympathetic biographies (in 1986 and 2003) have gone some way to redressing the balance of opinion. D.R. Thorpe says the Suez Crisis "was a truly tragic end to his premiership, and one that came to assume a disproportionate importance in any assessment of his career".
Eden had three sons. The elder and middle sons died before him. His Earl of Avon title was inherited by the younger son, Nicholas. When Nicholas died, the title became extinct.
Stanley Baldwin
Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, (3 August 186714 December 1947) was a Prime Minister of the United Kingdom three times. He presided over the economic crisis of the 1930s and abdication of King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom.
Alec Douglas-Home
Alexander Frederick Douglas-Home, Baron Home of the Hirsel, (; 2 July 1903 – 9 October 1995) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1963 to 1964. He was better known as Alec Douglas-Home.
Home was a Member of Parliament and a junior official (a Parliamentary Private Secretary) when Neville Chamberlain went to Munich to meet Adolf Hitler in 1938. He was present at the main meetings between Hitler and Chamberlain. Later in life, he was appointed by Harold Macmillan as Foreign Secretary in 1960–1963, and again in Edward Heath's government from 1970–1974.
Home's name and title changed a few times during his life. Born as Alexander Frederick Douglas-Home, he became Lord Dunglass when his father became the Earl of Home. Dunglass is a junior title, that is, a lower title which is held by the eldest son. When his father died Alec became the 14th Earl of Home. He also became Baron Douglas in the peerage of the United Kingdom (that was also a junior title).
When he was chosen as Leader of the Conservative Party after Harold Macmillan retired, he knew it would be difficult to lead a government from the House of Lords. So he renounced his title, four days after becoming Prime Minister. Once he renounced the title, he became simply Sir Alec Douglas-Home. He had been made a Knight of the Thistle in 1962. Finally, after he lost the election of 1964, he was given a life peerage, titled 'Baron Home of the Hirsel'. That title is not hereditary but, after his death, his son became the 15th Earl of Home.
Rapidly, after the title was renounced, arrangements were made. The safe Conservative seat of Kinross and Western Perthshire was vacant, and Douglas-Home was adopted as his party's candidate. Parliament was due to meet on 24 October after the summer recess, but its return was postponed until 12 November pending the by-election. For twenty days Douglas-Home was Prime Minister while a member of neither house of Parliament, a situation without modern precedent. He won the by-election with a majority of 9,328.
A former peer as Prime Minister was open to attack, and Douglas-Home was attacked by the Labour Party leader Harold Wilson. Wilson attacked the new prime minister as "an elegant anachronism". He said that nobody from Douglas-Home's background knew the problems of ordinary families. In particular, Wilson asked how "a scion of an effete establishment" could lead the technological revolution which was needed. His premiership was ended by the general election of 1970, which put in the Labour Party with Harold Wilson as Prime Minister.
When the Conservatives returned to power in 1974, Home was made Foreign Secretary. He was a considerable success in this role. His speeches explained the world situation, which was then at the height of the Cold War.
In east–west relations, Douglas-Home spoke against the Soviet Union and its spying activities in Britain. In September 1971 he expelled 105 Soviet diplomats, who were spying. Although this was an extraordinary incident, Gromyko was realistic enough to keep a working relationship with the British government. Within days of the expulsions from London he and Douglas-Home met and discussed the Middle East and disarmament.
"The Times" considered that his reputation rested not on his brief premiership, but on his two spells as Foreign Secretary: "He brought to the office ... his capacity for straight talking, for toughness towards the Soviet Union and for firmness (sometimes interpreted as a lack of sympathy) towards the continents of Africa and Asia. But he brought something else as well: an unusual degree of international respect".
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield (21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881), born Benjamin D'Israeli, was a British politician. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1852, from 1858–1859 and from 1866–1868. He was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1868 and from 1874–1880. His main opponent was William Ewart Gladstone. Disraeli was also a novelist and biographer.
Disraeli was born into a Jewish family which converted to Anglicanism. He is the only prime minister of Jewish heritage in British history. He followed his father, and converted to Anglicanism at the age of 12.
Disraeli invented the idea of "One Nation" conservatism, designed to appeal to all ranks in society. This is conservatism that values paternalism and pragmatism. Paternalism means looking after people, and pragmatism means it was practical not ideological. Disraeli wanted it to appeal to working class men as a solution to worsening divisions in society. This idea was opposed to the Liberals (or "Whigs"), which was the party of the urban elite (moneyed and well-educated people in towns and cities).
Disraeli made the Conservatives the party that supported the British Empire and the military action to go with it. This was partly in reaction to Gladstone, who disliked the expense of empire, and partly because Disraeli knew it would be popular.
The 19th century saw the Commons gradually take over from the Lords. In the first half of the century the prime minister and most of the cabinet were peers, members of the House of Lords. By the late 19th century, the prime minister and most of the cabinet came from the House of Commons. This happened gradually, and perhaps the reform of elections helped make the Commons the more important chamber.
In Disraeli's first short period as prime minister, his government passed legislation which had wide support. It ended public executions, and the Corrupt Practices Act did much to end electoral bribery. The government used an early version of nationalisation: the Post Office bought up the telegraph companies. There were changes to the school law, the Scottish legal system, and the railway laws were passed.
Disraeli's second government was from 1874 to 1880. The 12 cabinet members were equally divided between the Commons and Lords. His government passed a number of laws to improve the life and working conditions of ordinary people.
Also, he arranged for Britain to buy the Suez Canal, which was until then a private company. The canal was critical to Britain because it was the short route between the UK and British India. Disraeli got news that the Khedive of Egypt, Ismail Pasha, was planning to sell his shares in the canal company. Disraeli arranged for the banker Lionel de Rothschild to loan the funds to the government. Rothschild took a commission on the deal, and the Disraeli went to Queen Victoria saying, "it is settled; you have it, madam!".
Disraeli was made Earl of Beaconsfield by Victoria in 1876.
William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (15 November 1708 – 11 May 1778) was a prime minister of Great Britain. He was appointed by King George III.
His London house, in St. James's Square, is now the home of the international affairs think tank called Chatham House.
In 1758, during the Seven Years' War, he came up with the strategy of blocking the St. Lawrence River so the French troops in Quebec and Montreal could not get more . This weakened the French side, and helped to win the war.
His son, William Pitt the Younger, was also a prime minister.
Herbert Asquith
Herbert Henry Asquith, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith (12 September 1852 – 15 February 1928) served as the Liberal Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1908 to 1916. Until 5 January 1988, he had been the longest continuously serving Prime Minister in the 20th century. He was not, however, in favour of the right of women to vote.
As Prime Minister, he led the Liberal Party to a series of domestic reforms, including social insurance and the reduction of the power of the House of Lords. He led the nation into the First World War, but a series of military and political crises led to his replacement in late 1916 by David Lloyd George. His falling out with Lloyd George played a major part in the downfall of the Liberal Party.
His ministry was significant for the Old Age Pension (1908), National Insurance Act (1911) and the Parliamentary Act (1911), which restricted the power of the House of Lords.
Asquith's descendants include: ambassador Dominic Asquith (great-grandson), actress Helena Bonham Carter (great-granddaughter) and actress Anna Chancellor (great-great-granddaughter).
Commerce is another word for trade or business, and can mean simply the buying and selling of goods and services. Some commerce involves high finance and big companies and organisations. Commercial real estate is a place for commerce, a place to do business. Interstate commerce is the movement of goods, money or transportation between two or more states. International trade is the exchange of goods and services between countries.
A plantation is a large farm which is specialized on farming one type of crop. Plantations grow cash crops, mostly for export, and less for local use. Crops grown on plantations include banana, sugarcane, coffee, tea, cotton and tobacco.
Some of the problems with plantations come from the fact that they are monocultures, that is there is only one kind of crop that is grown there. This makes them vulnerable to pests, for example.
Among the earliest examples of plantations were the latifundia of the Roman Empire. They produced large quantities of wine and olive oil for export. Plantation agriculture grew rapidly with the increase in international trade and the relative decline of subsistence farming. Like every economic activity, it has changed over time. Earlier forms of plantation agriculture were associated with large disparities of wealth and income, foreign ownership and political influence, and exploitative social systems such as indentured labor and slavery.
Pines are a large and important genus of conifers in the family Pinaceae. The Plant List of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Missouri Botanical Garden lists 126 species of pines, plus some synonyms.
Pines live in almost the entire Northern Hemisphere. In North America, they live in the southern part of Arctic to Nicaragua and Hispaniola. In Europe, they live in areas from Portugal and Scotland to Russia. In Asia, they live in areas from Russia to Japan and the Philippines. They also live in the Himalayas, some northern parts of Africa, and north of Majorca (Mallorca) on the rugged mountains.
Pines are long-lived, typically reaching ages of 100–1,000 years, some even more. The longest-lived is the Great Basin bristlecone pine, "Pinus longaeva". One individual of this species, dubbed Methuselah, is one of the world's oldest living organisms at around 4,600 years old. This tree can be found in the White Mountains of California.
Pines usually have male and female cones on the same tree (monoecious). The male cones are small, typically 1–5 cm long, and are only present for a short period, usually in spring. They fall as soon as they have shed their pollen. The female cones take 1.5–3 years (depending on species) to mature after pollination, with actual fertilization delayed by one year. At maturity, the female cones are 3–60 cm long. Each cone has numerous spirally arranged scales, with two seeds on each fertile scale; the scales at the base and tip of the cone are small and sterile, without seeds. The seeds are mostly small and winged, and are wind-dispersed. Some are bird-dispersed.
At maturity, the cones usually open to release the seeds, but in some of the bird-dispersed species (e.g. whitebark pine), the seeds are only released by the bird breaking the cones open. In others, the seeds are stored in closed ("serotinous") cones for many years until an environmental cue triggers the cones to open, releasing the seeds. The most common form of serotiny is pyriscence, in which a resin binds the cones shut until melted by a forest fire.
Philip II of France
Philip II of France (August 21, 1165 – July 14, 1223), was King of France from 1180 to 1223.
Pohjola
Pohjola is an evil country in Finnish and Karelian ancient stories. Pohjola is at north and it is very cold place. Ruler of Pohjola is Louhi, an evil witch woman. We think that Pohjola does not really exist, but long ago when people thought about Pohjola they thought about Lapland and a region of Pohjanmaa.
There was high wall around Pohjola and there were gates of Pohjola that could be seen from far away.
Many evil things, like diseases and cold are from Pohjola. In Pohjola lives people of Pohjola. They are great warriors and magicians. The ruler of Pohjola Louhi is ugly but powerful old woman who can do great magic. She had a husband and daughters. Daughters of Louhi were very beautiful. They were so white and bright that they were actually transparent; you could see flesh through their skin, bones through their flesh, and bone marrow through their bones. Daughters of Pohjola were sitting on the sky weaving gold and silver threads.
Many heroes went to Pohjola to ask daughters of Louhi them to be their wives. Louhi did not give her daughters easily. She made men to do almost impossible missions to have her daughters. One such mission was to make Sampo, a machine that would do money, crop and salt. One hero, Ilmarinen, did this machine, but still Louhi did not let her daughter to marry Ilmarinen. Ilmarinen and other heroes then stole Sampo from Louhi. Louhi attacked them. There was a big battle and Sampo was destroyed. Some pieces of Sampo drifted on sea and they came to shores of Finland. Since that they have made wealth to Finnish people.
Gulf of Finland
The Gulf of Finland is a body of water that points east from the Baltic Sea with Finland on its north side and Estonia on its south side. Both Finnish capital Helsinki and Estonian capital Tallinn are at shore of Gulf of Finland. At the bottom of the gulf of Finland is Russia and its most important coast city St. Petersburg.
The water is less salty in the eastern side of the Gulf. This is because the Neva River flows into the Gulf in the east.
Edmund II of England
Edmund Ironside or Edmund II (; c. 989 – 30 November 1016) was the son of Æthelred the Unready. When his father died he was king of England from 23 April to 18 October 1016 and of Wessex from 23 April to 30 November 1016.
Arthur Balfour
Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, (25 July 1848 – 19 March 1930) was a British Conservative statesman and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1902 until 1905.
He was minister of Foreign Affairs from 1916 to 1919. In this capacity he wrote the so-called Balfour Declaration in 1917.
Henry Pelham
Henry Pelham (25 September 1694–6 March 1754) was a British Whig statesman. He was Prime Minister of Great Britain from 27 August 1743 to his death about ten years later.
List of U.S. states by elevation
Household income in the United States
The Household income in the United States is a measure of current private income commonly used by the United States government and private institutions. To measure the income of a household, the pre-tax money receipts of all residents over the age of 15 are combined. Most of these receipts are in the form of wages and salaries (before withholding and other taxes), but many other forms of income, such as unemployment insurance, disability, child support, etc., are included as well. The residents of the household do not have to be related to the householder for their earnings to be considered part of the household's income. While the use of household income remains among the most widely accepted as households tend to share a common economic fate, the size of a household which is commonly not considered may off-set gains in household income.
In 2005, the median annual household income according to the US Census Bureau was determined to be $46,326, similar to that of Canada which was roughly $41,510 (USD) in the year 2000. The median income per household member (including all working and non-working members above the age of 14) in the year 2003 was $23,535. In the year 2005, there were approximately 113,146,000 households in the United States. 17.23% of all households had annual incomes exceeding $100,000, while another 12.7% fell below the federal poverty threshold while the bottom 20% earned less than $19,178. While the aggregate income distribution tends to tilt towards the top with the top 6.37% earning roughly one third of all income, those with upper-middle incomes also controlled a large, though declining, share of the total earned income. Households in the top quintile, 77% of which had two income earners, had incomes exceeding $91,705. Households in the mid quintile, with a mean of one income earner per household had incomes between $36,000 and 57,657.
The 2005 economic survey also found that households in the top 40%, those with an annual household income exceeding $55,331, had a median of two income earners while those in the lower quintiles (2nd and middle quintile) had median of only one income earner per household. Due to high unemployment among those in the lowest quintile the median number of income earners for this particular group was determined to be zero. Overall the United States followed the trend of other developed nations with a relatively large population of relatively rich households outnumbering the poor. Among those in-between the relative extremes of the income strata a large and quite powerful section of households with moderately high middle class incomes and an even larger number of households with moderately low incomes. While the median household income has increased 44% since 1990 it has decreased very slightly when considering inflation. In 1990, the median household income was determined to be $30,056; $44,603 in 2003 dollars. While personal income has remained relatively stagnant since over the past few decades, household income has risen due to the rising percentage of households with two or more income earners. Between 1999 and 2004 household income stagnated showing a slight increase since 2004.
SOURCE: US Census Bureau, 2005
Households are often divided into quintiles according to their gross income. Each quintile represents 20%, or one fifth, of the population.
Household type is strongly correlated with household income. Married couples are disproportionately represented in the upper two quintiles, compared to the general population of households. Cross-referencing shows that this is likely due to the presence of multiple income earners in these families. Non-family households (individuals) are disproportionately represented in the lower two quintiles. Households headed by single males are disproportionately found in the middle three quintles; single females head households concentrated in the bottom three quintiles.
The highest income households are almost ten times as likely to own their homes rather than rent, but in the lowest quintile, the ratio of owners to renters is nearly one to one.
The New York Times has used the quintiles to define class. It has assigned the quintiles from lowest to highest as lower class, lower middle class, middle class, upper middle class, and upper class.
SOURCE: US Census Bureau, 2004
Despite great advances made to lift minorities out of poverty and many African Americans and Latino Americans joining the middle class, there is still an uneven racial distribution among the groups. While Caucasians who were not of Hispanic descent made up roughly 75.1% of all persons in 2000, 87.93% of all households in the top 5% were headed by a person who identified as being White alone. Only 4.75% of all household in the top 5% were headed by someone who identified him or herself as being Hispanic or Latino of any race, versus 12.5% of persons identifying themselves as Hispanic or Latino in the general population. Overall 86.01% of all households in the top two quintiles with upper-middle range incomes of over $55,331 were headed by a head of household who identified him or herself as White alone, while only 7.21% were being headed by someone who identified as being Hispanic and 7.37% by someone who idenitified as being African American or Black. Overall households headed by Hispanics and African Americans or Blacks were underrepresented in the top two quintiles and overrepresented in the bottom two quintiles. Households headed by persons who identified as being Asian alone, on the other hand, were overrepresented among the top two quintiles. In the top five percent the percentage of Asians was nearly twice as high as the percentage of Asians among the general population. European Americans were relatively even distributed throughout the quintiles only being underrepresented in the lowest quintile and slightly overrepresented in the top quintile and the top five percent.
Household income as well as per capita income in the United States rise significantly as the educational attainment increases. In 2005 graduates with a Master's in Business Administration (MBA) who accepted job offers are expected to earn a base salary of $88,626. They are also expected to receive "…[a]n average signing bonus of $17,428." According to the US Census Bureau persons with doctorates in the United States had an average income of roughly $81,400. The average for an advanced degree was $72,824 with men averaging $90,761 and women averaging $50,756 annually. Year-round full-time workers with a Professional degree had an average income of $109,600 while those with a Master's degree had an average income of $62,300. Overall "…[a]verage earnings ranged from $18,900 for high school dropouts to $25,900 for high school graduates, $45,400 for college graduates and $99,300 for workers with professional degrees (M.D., D.O., J.D., D.D.S., or D.V.M.).
Considering how education significantly enhances the earnings potential of individuals, it should come as no surprise that individuals with graduate degrees have an average per capita income exceeding the median household income of married couple families among the general population ($63,813). Higher educational attainment did not, however, help close the income gap between the genders as the life-time earnings for a male with a professionals degree were roughly forty percent (39.59%) higher than those of a female with a professionals degree. The life-time earnings gap between males and females was the smallest for those individuals holding an Associate degrees with male life-time earnings being 27.77% higher than those of females. While educational attainment did not help reduce the income inequality between men and women, it did increase the earnings potential of individuals of both sexes, greatly enabling many households with (a) graduate degree householder(s) to enter the top household income quintile.
Household income also increased significantly with the educational attainment of the householder. The US Census Bureau publishes educational attainment and income data for all households with a householder who was aged twenty-five or older. The biggest income difference was between those with some college education and those who had a Bachelor's degree, with the latter making $23,874 more. Income also increased substantially with increased post-secondary education. While the median household income for a household with a household holding an associate degree was $51,970, the median household income for those with a bachelor's degree or higher was $73,446. Those with doctorates had the second highest median household with a median of $96,830; $18,289 more higher than that for those at the Master's degree level, but $3,170 lower than the median for households with a professionals degree holding householder.
SOURCE: US Census Bureau, 2003
The change in median personal and household since 1991 also varied greatly with educational attainment. While, both the overall median personal and household icome increased since 1991, this increase did not take place on all levels of educational attainment. The overall income increased over the course of the 1990s, reaching its high in 1999, but decreasing has been ever since. In 1991 the median household income in the US was $40,873 in 2003 dollars, while the median household income in 2003 was $45,016. In 1999, however, the median household income was $46,236, 2.7% higher than today. While this trend held true for all levels of educational attainment the extend of chorinical falcutations in income were greatly influenced by educational attainment. Overall the median household and personal income decreased for those with more than a 9th grade education but less than a four-year college degree since 1991. In other words, the median household income decreased for households and individuals at the high school drop-outs and graduate, some-college, and an Associates degree level. Income did, however, increase for those with a Bachelor's degree or more. The following table shows the median household income according to the educational attainment of the householder. All data is in 2003 dollars and only applies to householders whose householder is aged twenty-five or older. The highest and lowest points of the median household income are presented in bold face.
Household income in the United States varies substantially with the age of the person who heads the household. Overall the median household income increased with the age of householder until retirement age when household income started to decline. The highest median household income was found among households headed by working baby-boomers. Households headed by persons between the ages of 45 and 54 had a median household income of $61,111 and a mean household income of $77,634. The median income per member of household for this particular group was $27,924. The highest median income per member of household was among those between the ages of 54 and 64 with $30,544. The group with the second highest median household income, were households headed by persons between the ages 35 and 44 with a median income of $56,785, followed by those in the age group between 55 and 64 with $50,400. Not surprisingly the lowest income group was mainly comprised of those households headed by individuals younger than 24, followed by those headed by persons over the age of 75. Overall households headed by persons above the age of seventy-five had a median household income of $20,467 with the median household income per member of household being $18,645. These figures support the general assumption that median household income as well as the median income per member of household peaked among those households headed by middle aged persons, increasing with the age of the householder and the size of the household until the householder reaches the age of 64. With retirement income replacing salaries and the size of the household declining, the median household income decreases as well.
Please note that all figures are presented in 2003 dollars.