Mont Sokbaro
Mont Sokbaro is the highest point of Benin. The altitude is . It is on the border between Benin and Togo.
John Lawrence
Sir John Laird Mair Lawrence, 1st Baron Lawrence, GCB, GCSI, PC (4 March 1811 – 27 June 1879), better known as Lawrence of the Punjab was a famous British colonial officer, administrator and statesman in British India. He had the distinction of serving as the Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab and later Viceroy of India from 1864 to 1869. He was the younger brother of Sir Henry Lawrence.
The Lawrence Gardens, Lahore (now renamed "Bagh i Jinnah") were originally named after John Lawrence.
W National Park
The W Regional Park is a major national park in West Africa. It is formed around a meander in the River Niger shaped like a "W". The park includes areas of the three countries Niger, Benin and Burkina Faso.
The W National Park of Niger was formed by decree on 4 August 1954. In 1996 it was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
In the three nations, the Regional park covers about 10,000 km². Almost no people live in this area.
The park is known for its large mammals, including aardvarks, baboons, buffalo, caracal, cheetahs, elephants, hippopotamuses, leopards, lions, serval and warthogs. The park has a home for some of West Africa's last wild African Elephants. The W Park used to have packs of the endangered Painted Hunting Dog. The National Park is one of the last strongholds for the Northwest African cheetah. There is a small but increasing population of at least 15-25 animals of this rare cat in the park.
The W area is also known for its bird populations. There are over 350 species identified in the park.
Pendjari National Park
The Pendjari National Park is in north western Benin. It is next to the Arli National Park in Burkina Faso. It is named for the Pendjari River. The national park is known for its wildlife and is home to some of the last populations of big game like elephants, West African lions, hippopotamuses, buffalo and various antelopes in West Africa. The Park is also famous for its variety of birds.
The Pendjari National Park has an area of 2755 square kilometres. The park is part of the WAP complex. The WAP complex is the W, Arli and Pendjari parks. This is a large protected area in Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger.
Nkroful
Nkroful is a village in Ghana. The village is known because it was the birthplace of Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana. Kwame Nkrumah who lead the country to independence from Great Britain is also buried there.
The local language spoken in Nkroful is the Akan language dialect Nzema but Fante is also spoken.
Spring (device)
A spring is a device typically made of metal, usually steel.
The metal can be compressed (squeezed). When the compression force is removed, the spring returns to its original length. The metal is usually spring steel, and it is wound tightly. There is lot of varitions with size and type, example some springs have designed for pulling, not pushing. Gas-springs are often used with vehicles tailgate.
Simple non-coiled springs were used throughout human history e.g., the bow. In the Bronze Age more advanced spring devices were used, as shown by the spread of tweezers in many cultures. Ctesibius of Alexandria developed a method for making bronze with spring-like characteristics by producing an alloy of bronze with an increased proportion of tin, and then hardening it by hammering after it is cast.
Coiled springs appeared early in the 15th century, in door locks. The first spring powered-clocks appeared in that century. They evolved into the first large watches by the 16th century.
In 1676 British physicist Robert Hooke discovered the principle behind springs' action, that the force it exerts is proportional to its extension, now called Hooke's law.
The Fens
The Fens, or , are a naturally marshy region in eastern England. Most of the fens were drained several centuries ago. They are now mostly a flat, damp, low-lying agricultural region.
A "fen" is an individual area of marshland or former marshland. The marsh is (or was) neutral or alkaline water with relatively large quantities of dissolved minerals, but few other plant nutrients.
The Fenland is mostly around the coast of the Wash. It includes parts of four counties: Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and a small area of Suffolk. The whole occupies an area of nearly .
Most of the Fenland lies within a few metres of sea level. As with similar areas in the Netherlands, much of the Fenland originally consisted of fresh- or salt-water wetlands, which have been artificially drained and continue to be protected from floods by drainage banks and pumps. With the support of this drainage system, the Fenland has become a major arable agricultural region in Britain for grains and vegetables. The Fens are particularly fertile, containing around half of the grade 1 agricultural land in England.
The Fens include the churches and cathedrals of Ely, Ramsey, Crowland, Thorney and Peterborough.
Other significant settlements in the Fens include Cambridge, Boston, Spalding, Wisbech and King's Lynn.
The Fens are very low-lying compared with the chalk and limestone uplands that surround them – in most places no more than 10 m above sea level. Indeed, as a result of drainage and the subsequent shrinkage of the peat fens, many parts of the Fens now lie below the average sea level. Although one writer in the seventeenth century described the Fenland as all lying above sea level (in contrast to the Netherlands), the area is now home to the lowest land point in the United Kingdom, Holme Fen in Cambridgeshire, at around 2.75 metres below sea level. Within the Fens there are a few hills, which have historically been called "islands" as they remained dry when the low-lying fens around them were flooded. The largest of the fen-islands is the Isle of Ely, on which the cathedral city of Ely was built; its highest point is 39 m above mean sea-level.
Without artificial drainage and flood protection, the Fens would be liable to periodic flooding, particularly in winter due to the heavy load of water flowing down from the uplands and overflowing the rivers. Some areas of the Fens were once permanently flooded, creating small lakes or "meres", while others were only flooded during periods of high water. In the pre-modern period arable farming was limited to the higher areas of the surrounding uplands, the fen islands and the so-called "Townlands", an arch of silt ground around the Wash where the towns had their arable fields. Though these lands were lower than the peat fens before the peat shrinkage began, the more stable silt soils were reclaimed by medieval farmers and embanked against any floods coming down from the peat areas or from the sea. The rest of the Fenland was dedicated to pastoral farming, fishing, fowling and the harvesting of reeds or sedge, for example for thatch. In this way, the medieval and early modern Fens stood in contrast to the rest of southern England, which was primarily an arable agricultural region.
Since the advent of modern drainage in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Fens have been radically transformed, so that today arable farming has almost entirely replaced pastoral and the economy of the Fens is heavily invested in the production of crops such as grains, vegetables and some cash crops such as rapeseed or canola.
Cult suicide
An incident where all members of a group considered a cult kill themselves has been called a cult suicide. In some cases, all or nearly all members commit suicide at the same time and place. Very often, this has been arranged as a mass suicide.