Verdi wrote some famous music called the "Anvil Chorus" in his opera "Il Trovatore". Wagner asked for 18 anvils in "Das Rheingold" in the scene which takes place below the earth where the Nibelungs are working at their forges. Albert Parlow wrote an "Anvil Polka", Varèse used an anvil in "Ionisation", Walton uses an anvil in "Belshazzar’s Feast" and there is an anvil in the orchestra in Howard Shore's music for "The Lord of the Rings" movie trilogy.
Inca Empire
The Inca were a pre-Columbian civilization and empire in the Andes of South America. The word Inca can also mean the emperor or king of the Inca people. It was the largest empire in the Americas, and was large even by world standards. It existed shortly before Christopher Columbus arrived in the Americas.
The Inca ruled along the western coast of South America for a little over 100 years, until the Spanish invasion in the 16th century. The empire was centred around the city of Cusco, or Qosqo, in what is now southern Peru. This was the administrative, political and military center of the empire. In later years, it was also centred around Quito. The Inca were ruled by an Emperor known as the "Sapa Inca". Throughout their empire, they built many roads and bridges to make travel between their communities easy.
The Inca Empire was called in Quechua, which means "four regions". The empire only lasted for about 100 years as the arrival of the conquering Spaniards in 1532 AD marked the end of their reign. Their main language was Quechua, but as the Empire was made up of many different groups there were probably many different languages as well.
The Inca Empire began around Lake Titicaca in about 1197. From 1438 to 1533, the Incas used conquest and non-violent assimilation to gain a large portion of western South America. Their empire centered on the Andean mountain ranges. It included large parts of what is now Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina and Chile.
In 1533, Atahualpa, the last sovereign emperor, was executed by the conquistador Francisco Pizarro. That meant the beginning of Spanish rule in South America. The Inca Empire was supported by an economy based on the collective ownership of the land.
Pre-Columbian era
The pre-Columbian era means the history and prehistory of the Americas before there were important European influences on the American continent.
The word pre-Columbian refers to the era before Christopher Columbus, but sometimes it can include the history of American indigenous cultures as they continued to develop after the Christopher Columbus' first landing in 1492, until they were conquered or influenced by Europeans, even if this happened decades or even centuries after the arrival of Columbus.
Pre-Columbian can also mean cultures of any one of the great native civilizations of the Americas, such as those of Mesoamerica (the Aztec and Maya) and of the Andes (Inca, Moche and Chibcha).
Duct tape
Duct tape, sometimes called duck tape, is a very strong adhesive tape with a cloth backing . Usually duct tape is grey or black, but it is made in other colors including transparent, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, flames, zebra stripe, leopard spot, tye dye, and others. People use duct tape to repair many things, for example a broken handbag or a broken chair.
Duct tape was designed during World War I. It was first used to keep water out of ammunition cases. It was found to work so well that people started using it to fix many other things. Duct tape was also called "100 mph tape" by the military because it is said the tape will still stick in winds at speeds of 100 miles per hour. Duct tape got its name from its use on heating and air conditioning ducts but oddly enough, that is the one use that the tape is not very good for. It is illegal in California to use duct tape on ducts and most professional builders in the United States are not allowed to use it either.
In the United States, people use duct tape in many action movies and television shows. Strips of duct tape can be used to tie a person up because it is very hard to get them off.
Duct tape is also great for making things like wallets, purses, clothes, and sometimes even sculptures. The use of it as an art medium is fairly new, though.
Text editor
A text editor is a program that is run on a computer that can create and change text. The text can be saved into a file that is called a "text file". Text editors can be used for a lot of things. Many people use them to write documents. Some people write code (like HTML or C++) using a text editor.
Some text editors can edit "rich text". Rich text allows bold text, "italic text", and other things. This is why rich text is different form "text file" which do not have bold text or "italic text" properties.
Most text editors today support "search and replace". A computer will quickly find some text the user wants. The user can tell the computer to replace the found text with something else. This can be in part or all of the document.
Copy, cut and paste are other common options in text editors. Copy allows users to instantly add a copy of text in one place to another place. Cut and paste are similar, except that the text is moved from one place to another instead of being copied. This is very useful when a writer wishes to put his paragraphs in a different order, for example.
Sometimes users make mistakes, or need to do the same thing over and over without getting bored. This is what the undo and redo features do. Users can reverse their mistakes, or quickly repeat their actions. Some text editors allow many mistakes in a row to be reversed; others allow only one or two.
Valency
In chemistry, valency or valence is the number of chemical bonds that an atom of a certain element can form.
For a long time, people thought that this number was a fixed property of the element in question. They thought that carbon always has four bonds, oxygen always has two, and hydrogen always has one. The problem was seen only later. For example, phosphorous sometimes behaves as if it had three bonds, a valence of three. At other times, though, it seems to have five bonds.
IUPAC saw this problem, and proposed oxidation numbers. This means there is one number per chemical element. The problem with this approach is that it leaves aside most chemical properties of the elements in question.
A valence band is the highest occupied molecular orbital normally occupied by valence electrons for a given solid at absolute zero temperature.
Valence (Charente)
Valence is a village in France, in Poitou-Charentes. It is near Angoulême. In 1999, 240 people lived there.
Valence (Tarn-et-Garonne)
Valence is a village in the Midi-Pyrénées region of France. It is in the department Tarn-et-Garonne. In 1999, about 4800 people lived there. Together with 23 other, similar villages, it formed the "Communauté de communes des Deux Rives". In that structure (that is, in all the villages together) there are about 15.500 people.
Valence is located 25 km from Agen, 45 km from Montauban, 60 km from Cahors, 90 km from Toulouse and 160 km from Bordeaux
Valence-d'Albigeois
Valence-d'Albigeois is a village in the department of Tarn, in French region Midi-Pyrénées. It is near Albi. In 1999, 1142 people lived there.
Valence-en-Brie
Valence-en-Brie is a village in the Île-de-France region in France. It is located near Melun in the department Seine-et-Marne. In 1999, 583 people lived there.
Valence-sur-Baïse
Valence-sur-Baïse is a city in the Gers department of the Midi-Pyrénees region in France. It is near Condom-en-Armagnac. It was founded in 1274 by Gerald V, Count of Armagnac, and the Cistercian Abbey of Flaran as a Bastide (a fortified city). In 1999, 1151 people lived there. There is an old cisercian abbey at the place. Today the abbey serves as a cultural center. There is also a public washing basin, and a port, where ships can land.
Bastide