The question who should invest (appoint) whom was the subject of a conflict between the Catholic church (mainly the papacy) and state (mainly the Holy Roman Empire) in the Middle Ages during the so-called lay investiture controversy.
Insignia
Insignia (the plural of Latin "insigne": emblem, symbol) is a symbol or token of personal power, status or office, or of an official body of government or jurisdiction. Insignia are especially used as an emblem of a specific or general authority.
Typical examples of insignia are:
Official insignia are often protected by law as to allow their use only by people holding a specific office or staff members action on behalf of such a person. Misuse, defacement and destruction of such symbols is considered an offense in many countries.
Irish War of Independence
The war was fought between 1919 and July 1921. The fighting stopped while a peace treaty was worked out.
It began because of the 1916 Easter Rising. The Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) men who fought the British soldiers that day wanted Ireland to be its own country and wanted Britain to move its army out of Ireland.
82 IRB members were killed including 16 who were executed. These executions angered the Irish people and caused many people to become "Republicans". Republicans lived mostly in the south of Ireland. Ulster was considered to be the most unionist part of Ireland. This was caused by the Ulster Plantations. The Unionists wanted to stay under control of the British Government.
In 1917 the IRB was renamed the IRA and in 1919, the fighting started. By 1921, the IRA had beaten the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and Ireland had no police forces. In London, the British government began to debate about Ireland's rule. The war went on until 1922 when Irish Sinn Féin leaders and British MPs made a peace treaty (called the Anglo-Irish Treaty). This treaty created the Irish Free State this meant that Ireland was made its own independent country. The treaty gave all the same rights to the Irish government as that of the Canadian government
It handed power of 26 of the 32 counties to the Irish Government. The 6 counties that were kept by the British Government were all in Ulster (mostly Unionist) and now form Northern Ireland.
Bishop (chess)
A bishop () is a piece in the board game of chess. Each player starts the game with two bishops. One starts between the king's knight and the king, the other between the queen's knight and the queen. The pieces are called either the "king's bishop" or the "queen's bishop". In chess notation the starting squares are c1 and f1 for White's bishops, and c8 and f8 for Black's bishops.
The bishop first appeared in that form in medieval European chess. In Chaturanga he was represented as an armed attendant who sat on the back of an elephant. The Arabs called this figure "al-fil", which means "elephant". The problem was that in Central Europe elephants were not known, so they could not recognize the figure. The bishops were interpreted differently by the different nations. That is why the bishop is a "Läufer" (runner) in Germany, a "fou" (fool) in France and a "alfiere" (standard-bearer) in Italy.
The bishop moves diagonally, and can move as far as a player wants it to unless another piece blocks it. A bishop can never leave the color of square that it starts on, and so can only move to 32 squares of the board.
Bathurst 1000
The Bathurst 1000 is a car race held at Mount Panorama, Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia. It is held every year.
South Atlantic tropical cyclone
A South Atlantic tropical cyclone is an unusual form of weather event. Usually, strong wind shear is the biggest problem why tropical cyclones do not normally form in the southern Atlantic Ocean. If there was ever a "hurricane season" in the south Atlantic, it would most likely happen during the opposite of the north Atlantic season, from December to May with mid-March being the peak when the oceans are warmest in the Southern Hemisphere.
Cyclone (or Hurricane) Catarina was an extraordinarily rare tropical cyclone, forming in the southern Atlantic Ocean in March 2004. Just after becoming a hurricane, it hit the southern coast of Brazil in the state of Santa Catarina on the evening of March 28, with winds estimated near 180 km/h (112 mph), making it a Category 2 storm on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. The cyclone killed 3-10 people and caused millions of dollars in damage in Brazil.
This event is thought to be a nearly once-in-a-lifetime event by meteorologists.
On April 10, 1991, what was either a strong tropical depression or a weak tropical storm formed in the eastern South Atlantic, recorded by weather satellites off the coast of Angola. It reached a peak on the 13th, and dissipated two days later, drifting west-southwestward from where it formed. Of the few South Atlantic tropical cyclones that have existed, this was the only one in the eastern Atlantic. This was also the first South Atlantic tropical cyclone ever observed.
A small area of convection developed on a trough of low pressure in mid-January off Brazil. It organized and appeared to become a tropical depression on January 18. The next morning, it had a small amounts of convection near the center and well-defined bands, and the system, either a weak tropical storm or a strong tropical depression, likely reached its peak. Located 150 n miles southeast of Salvador, Brazil, it weakened as upper level shear, normal for the basin, prevailed. The depression moved inland on the 20th as a circulation with no convection, and dissipated the next day over Brazil, where it caused heavy rains and flooding. This would mark the first time in recorded history that two tropical cyclones (Catarina and the January storm) have been seen during the same year in the South Atlantic, and may be considered to make up the 2003-04 South Atlantic hurricane season.
A small area of convection 600 miles southeast of Rio de Janeiro moved into an area of low wind shear and barely 26°C warm waters on February 23, 2006. The wave had deep convection, was able to form a closed LLC and had 35 mi/h (56 km/h) winds as measured by Quikscat on February 24, 2006. These characteristics were operationally recognized for three hours before high shear began to tear the system apart, just short of the six hours required to be officially declared a tropical depression. It is possible that the system maintained these features longer and may have briefly been a tropical depression. While under study, the system was referred to as 90L Invest. The shear would eventually cause the system to dissipate later that night. Picture
Opera buffa
Opera buffa is an Italian term meaning “comic opera”. It is mainly used for 18th century Italian comic operas. Opera buffa contrasts with opera seria (“serious opera”) in which the story was a tragedy. Opera seria was supposed to be “serious”, while opera buffa was an entertaining musical comedy. Like the opera seria, everything was sung, there was no spoken dialogue. This was different from comic opera in other countries. The story in opera buffa is told in recitative and then there were arias for the characters to show their feelings and show off their voices.
Although we use the term “opera buffa” today, in the 18th century they called such operas by other names, e.g. “commedia in musica”, “dramma giocosa”, “operetta”, “burlesca” etc. An opera buffa was usually a full length work: one which would fill a whole evening’s entertainment. It was different from an “intermezzo” or “farsa” which was a short musical comedy that was performed during the intervals of a musical tragedy, although the difference between the two is not always obvious. The intermezzo became longer and longer during the 18th century and gradually developed into opera buffa. Pergolesi’s "La Serva Padrone" was an intermezzo which became very famous after Pergolesi’s death. It influenced opera buffa.