In 2007, about 1.6 million people lived in Barcelona. Around 3.1 million people live in the Metropolitan Area and 4.9 million people live in the Urban Region. Barcelona is the second most populated city in Spain, and the tenth in the European Union.
Barcelona is home to football team F.C. Barcelona.
Barcelona is one of the most important tourist destinations in Europe, with millions of people visiting every year. The city is famous for its 19th century modernist architecture. The best known of those buildings was designed by Antoni Gaudi. It is the unfinished church Sagrada Familia, which is the symbol of Barcelona.
It is known for its tapas food, a meze.
Barcelona has sister relationships with many places worldwide:
Denise Lewis
Denise Lewis (born 27 August 1972) is a British retired athlete from West Bromwich. She won the bronze medal in the heptathlon at the 1996 Summer Olympics. She won the gold medal in the heptathlon at the 2000 Summer Olympics.
In late 2004, she was a contestant in the second series of "Strictly Come Dancing".
Michael Johnson
Michael Duane Johnson (born in September 13, 1967), Dallas, Texas is an American retired sprinter. He is widely considered the greatest long sprinter of all time. During his time on the track, he established world records for the 400 m (43.18 Seville, Spain), indoor 400 m, indoor 300 m, 200 m, and 4 × 400 m relay. Due to these achievements, and due to the vast difference between the 200 m and 400 m, Johnson left little doubt that he is the greatest sprinter of all time. He won four Olympic gold medals and eight World Championships gold medals.
A fifth Olympic gold medal was taken back when it was learned that Johnson's teammates had cheated by using drugs.
Johnson had a unique upright posture when he ran so that he looked like a duck walk, which gave him the nickname "The Duck". His running gait did not make sense for running fast, but somehow worked. He won almost every race that he ever ran.
He was the first athlete to win both the 200m and 400m sprints in the same Olympic Games (Atlanta, Georgia).
He retired in 2001, and is a sports commentator on TV. He was a contestant in the 2010 season of "The Celebrity Apprentice".
Icelandic
Icelandic might mean:
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is the time period when people made tools from an alloy (a mixture of metals) called bronze. Bronze is a mixture of mainly copper and tin: usually nine parts copper to one part tin. Materials like wood and stone were also used for tools, but bronze was better for cutting and chopping, and was easy to shape. The Bronze Age was not at the same time everywhere, because different groups of people began to use bronze at different times. In Western Europe, the Bronze Age lasted from about 2000 BC until 800 BC. In the Middle East, it started about a thousand years earlier. For example, bronze was first used in Mesopotamia around 3300 BC.
Archaeologists think that people became more organised in the Bronze Age, because the making of metal tools was difficult and needed certain skills. The people who had these new skills would have been important. The new metal tools were bought, sold, or traded across larger distances.
Later, when iron tools spread, the Bronze Age ended and the Iron Age started. A reason for iron replacing bronze is that tin ore, a rock in which tin may be found, is much more rare than iron ore. Copper tools were less useful because they were too soft.
By the Bronze Age, wild food was no longer a main part of the diet. The title "inventors of agriculture" might go to the Sumerians, starting c. 5500 BC.
Farming allows more people in an area than can be supported by hunting and gathering. Crops can be stored for off-season use, or to sell or barter. Farmers could feed people to do other things than agriculture. This was a crucial factor in the rise of full-time armies.
Sumerian agriculture allowed them to win battles and land. This made them early empire builders. Not long after, the Egyptians, farming in the fertile Nile valley, increased their population. There were now enough warriors to conquer more land, tripling the Sumerian empire in area.
In Sumer, barley was the primary crop; wheat, flax, dates, apples, plums, vegetables and grapes were grown as well. Mesopotamian agriculture was both supported and limited by flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Floods came in late spring or early summer from snow melting from the Anatolian mountains.
Sheep, wolves, cows and goats were domesticated, kept mainly for meat, milk, butter and cheese. Ur, a large town that covered about 50 acres (20 hectares), kept 10,000 animals; 3,000 were slaughtered every year. The city's population of 6,000 included a labour force of 2,500, cultivated 3,000 acres (12 km²) of land. The labor force included storehouse recorders, work foremen, overseers, and harvest supervisors as well as laborers.
The land was plowed by teams of oxen pulling light unwheeled plows and grain was harvested with sickle. Wagons had solid wheels covered by leather tires kept in position by copper nails and were drawn by oxen. As many as four animals could pull a wagon at one time. The horse was domesticated in Ukraine around 4000 BC, and was in use by the Sumerians around 2000 BC.
Louis XIV
Louis XIV, also popularly known as the Sun King (5 September 1638–1 September 1715) was the King of France and King of Navarre from 14 May 1643 until his death. He was a king for 72 years. This was the longest recorded rule of any European monarch. He is often seen as the typical example of absolutism. He was the older of two brothers the other being Philippe. The two were very close and Philippe was later created the Duke of Orléans.
Louis' parents were Louis XIII and Anne of Austria. He was the unexpected child of King Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, who had not had children in their 22-year marriage. He was christened Louis Dieudonné (literally, “gift of God”). In 1643, before his fifth birthday, his father died, and Louis inherited the throne of France. Because Louis XIV was too young to rule, his mother ruled France with Cardinal Mazarin, the Italian financier who had been the principal minister of Louis XIII. Mazarin had guided the nation through the later stages of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). In this war France struggled against the Habsburg dynasty that ruled Spain for military supremacy in Europe.
After Mazarin died in 1661, Louis declared that he would rule France without a chief minister, something no French king had done in living memory. He intended to rule as an absolute monarch, believing that his power as king was derived from God and that he was responsible to God alone. He was obliged to rule for the benefit of his people. While Louis assumed responsibility for decision making, he understood that he must rule within the constraints of the laws and customs of his kingdom. Louis consulted widely with his nobles and ministers, and he met weekly with members of his high council. He created an informal cabinet, which was eventually led by Jean-Baptiste Colbert, chief minister of finance.
Nevertheless, the system of absolute monarchy emphasized the role of the king, and no monarch was more successful in creating the image of monarchy than Louis XIV. He took the sun as his emblem and connected himself to its radiant image.
Starting in 1661, King Louis XIV transformed a humble hunting lodge into a glittering palace. Over 30,000 men worked on constructing the Palace of Versailles, a project that drained the royal treasury for decades. Expenses included not only building but also diverting rivers, piping in fresh water, and planting thousands of orange trees to mask the smell of sewage that could not be properly drained away. In May 1682, Louis moved the capital of France to Versailles, 12 miles away of Paris. It was Louis XIV's motive to remove himself and his nobles from the political intrigues of Paris. It became a symbol of his Absolute Monarchy.