In 1499, the Uzbek Turks took control of Samarkand. They moved the capital to Bukhara and Samarkand went into decline. The city came under Russian rule in 1868. The Russian section of the city was built after this point, largely to the west of the old city.
The city later became the capital of the Samarkand Oblast of Russian Turkestan and grew in importance still further when the Trans-Caspian railway reached the city in 1888. It became the capital of the Uzbek SSR in 1925 before being replaced by Tashkent in 1930.
Kōchō
Arovell Verlag
Arovell Verlag is an Austrian publishing house for modern literature. It was founded in 1991 by the Austrian writer, artist and musician, Paul Jaeg. Today, Jaeg is still the director.
Each year, Arovell prints between ten and twenty new books. Some authors, such as Peter Paul Wiplinger, have already published several books with Arovell, but others use Arovell to publish their first book(s).
Arovell publishes modern literature in the German language. They include short prose, stories and poetry. The covers of all books show a painting by Paul Jaeg.
Arovell also publishes a magazine about literature, music and art, which gives information about new books and public events. The magazine prints sometimes short texts from the books by Arovell.
The publisher organizes literary, musical and artistic events, especially in Upper Austria and Salzburg, but also in Vienna.
Arovell's headquarter is in Gosau in Upper Austria and has branch offices in Vienna and Salzburg.
Powder monkey
Powder monkeys were boys or young teenagers who used to work on board the old sailing ships when they went to war. When there was a battle it was the powder monkeys' job to carry bags of gunpowder from the place where it was stored to the people who were operating the guns. This had to be done quickly, so young boys were ideal because they could run fast and they were small. It was not unknown for girls to disguise themselves as boys and get a job as a powder monkey.
Seismic analysis
Seismic performance analysis or seismic analysis is an intellectual tool of earthquake engineering which breaks the complex topic into smaller parts to gain a better understanding of seismic performance of building and non-building structures or their models.
In general, seismic analysis is based on the methods of "structural dynamics". For decades, the most prominent instrument of seismic analysis has been the earthquake "response spectrum method" which, also, contributed to the proposed building code's concept of today.
However, those "response spectra" are good, mostly, for single-degree-of-freedom systems. Numerical "step-by-step integration", applied with the "charts of seismic performance", seems to be a more effective method of analysis for multi-degree-of-freedom structural systems at severe process of earthquake excitation.
The design of structures rests on authorized engineering procedures, principles and criteria meant to design or retrofit structures subject to earthquake exposure. Those criteria are consistent just with the contemporary state of the knowledge about building structures. Therefore, the building design which blindly follows some seismic code regulations does not guarantee safety against collapse or serious damage.
The price of poor seismic analysis may be enormous. Nevertheless, seismic analysis has always been a trial and error process no matter it was based upon physical laws or empirical knowledge.
Wiener Werkstattpreis
The international Wiener Werkstattpreis is a literary prize in Austria and has been founded in 1992. Since the year 2000, the prize is given every year. The organizers want to promote writers who are not well-known yet.
The prize is 1,100 EUR. In 2007, the authors could send in their texts in three categories: short story, poetry and essay.
Supported and partly paid by the Austrian government and the city administration of Vienna, the prize is organized by the publishing house FZA.
Petting, Germany
Petting is a village near Traunstein, in Bavaria. It is next to the Waginger See, Lake Waging. The village was built on what was once an island, during the last Ice Age. The island was known as safe, and secure, and was inhabited even at that time. According to the records, the place name means "place where there is water, at times". There used to be a church in the village, around 800 AD. Unfortunately, this church was destroyed by the Hungarians around the year 900. There had been a castle in what was then the churchyard; the owners of the castle can be traced back to the 6th century. It is believed that Petting had already existed during the time of the Romans, with the same name.
The part of the village called "Ringham" can be traced to 788 AD, when it's mentioned by a chronicle of the bishop of Salzburg. In 1970, about 1,700 people lived in Petting; in 2000 they were about 2,200.
Japanese American internment
Japanese American internment happened during World War II when the United States government forced about 110,000 Japanese Americans to leave their homes and live in internment camps. These were like prisons. Many of the people who were sent to internment camps had been born in the United States.
On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and declared war on the United States. Many Americans were furious, and some blamed all Japanese people for what had happened at Pearl Harbor. Some Japanese people knew about the attack ahead of time and had helped the Japanese military.
Japanese Americans began to feel that other Americans were becoming upset with them. For example, John Hughes, a man who read the news and listened to the radio in Los Angeles, California, spoke about Japanese Americans. There were reports of businesses that had anti-Japanese signs. For example, a barber shop put up a sign saying "Free shaves for Japs" and "not responsible for accidents." A funeral home hung a sign saying "I'd rather do business with a Jap than an American."
In February 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. This order said that people who lived in some parts of the country could be taken out of those areas for any reason. While the order did not use the exact words "Japanese Americans", people knew that those were the people who would be taken out of those areas. The areas included all of California and the western parts of Oregon, Washington, and Arizona. (See the area marked "exclusion zone" on the map on this page.) This was where most Japanese Americans lived at that time.
To keep Japanese Americans from leaving these areas on their own, the government stopped many of them from taking money out of their bank accounts. This made it harder for them to move.
Japanese Americans were given only 48 hours to leave for internment camps in other states. They were only allowed to carry one bag with them, and could not bring radios or cameras.
In total, the United States forced over 110,000 Japanese Americans into internment camps.
About 80% of the Japanese-American people who lived in the continental United States were forced to leave their homes and live in internment camps. More than three out of every five of these people were born in the United States, and were United States citizens. About half of the people sent to the camps were children.
Most of the Japanese Americans who were interned lived in the continental United States. About 160,000 Japanese Americans lived in Hawaii, but only a little over 1,000 of them were interned. Because there were so many Japanese American people living in such a small territory, interning them would have been almost impossible.
There were three government agencies that ran camps. Ninety percent of the Japanese Americans were in camps run by the War Relocation Authority (WRA). Only Japanese Americans lived in the WRA camps.