the-french-artist/wikipedia_20220301.simple_sentence_split huggingface dataset:
The band members went on to other careers in the 1970s.
Peter Noone went back to acting, but still appeared as a singer.
In the 1980s, Leckenby and Whitwam formed a new band, to tour under the old name.
The singer sounded like Noone, and many fans did not know the difference.
Other original members also sometimes rejoined.
During the 1990s, Noone took over the name for his band, that appeared with him at oldies concerts.
Grand'Anse, or Grande Anse, is one of the ten departments (French: départments, singular départment) of Haiti.
Its capital is Jérémie.
The Départment de la Grand'Anse has an area of 2,091 km².
It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Gonâve, to the east by the Nippes Department, to the south by the Sud Department, and by the Caribbean Sea to the west.
The Massiff de la Hotte, an important Haitian mountain range, runs from west to east along the south of the department, with the Plymouth, Macaya and Casetaches mountain ranges.
Because of this, rivers here are short; some of them are Baradères, Dame-Marie, de la Grande-Anse, de Nippes, des Roseaux and Voldrogue.
The department is divided into three arrondissements (like districts) and 11 communes (like municipalities).
Anse d'Hainault
Anse-d'Hainault
Dame-Marie
Les Irois
Corail
Pestel
Roseaux
Abricots
Chambellan
Nippes is one of the ten departments (French: départments, singular départment) of Haiti.
It is the newest and smallest Haitian department; it was created in 2003 with the eastern part of the Grand'Anse Department.
It has an estimated population of 266,379 (2003) and its capital city is Miragoâne.
Nippes has an area of 1,219 km2.
It is bordered to the south by the Sud Department, to the east by the Ouest Department, to the west by the Grand'Anse Department and to the north by the Gonâve Channel, the southern part of the Gulf of Gonâve.
Petite-Rivière-de-Nippes
Fonds-des-Nègres
Paillant
Anse-à-Veau
L'Asile
Petit-Trou-de-Nippes
Plaisance-du-Sud
Baradères
Barradères
Grand-Boucan
Lara Veronin is a Russian-Taiwanese-American singer born on 2 May 1988.
She is famous for being the lead vocalist of the C-Pop band Nan Quan Mama.
The band's first album Treasure Map and second album Nan Quan Mama, Version 2 both peaked at #4 on the Taiwanese Album Charts.
She has also appeared as a featured voicalist on Jay Chou's sixth album November's Chopin on the track Coral Sea.
Veronin was born and raised in Monterey Park, California, America and moved to Taiwan in her teens.
Her father is a Russian American, and her mother a Taiwanese.
She speaks fluent English and Mandarin as shown in her songs, but says she is unable to speak Russian.
Reportedly, Veronin's talent was discovered when she met C-pop singer Jay Chou at a restaurant where she was working.
He was interested in her voice and recruited her for his band, Nan Quan Mama.
Her role as the lead singer of Nan Quan Mama gave her instant fame.
In 2006, Veronin was cast in the television series Engagement for Love, co-starring Alex To and Ambrose Hsu.
Her musical style is often disputed (argued about).
This is because most of her songs when she performs solo are in the alternative or pop-rock genre, but when she performs as a vocalist in the band Nan Quan Mama, she often sings blues- and soul-influenced dance music.
Nan Quan Mama Official Site
Veronin UN-Official Xanga Blog
Veronin UN-Official Myspace
Rockers Union
Super Girl (; lit.
Super Female Voice) is an annual national singing contest in People's Republic of China for female competitors.
The official name is The Mengniu Yoghurt Super Girl Contest, after the company that sponsored the show.
It is now one the most popular entertainment shows in China.
However, after the third season, the show was banned by the Chinese government.
The show was the feature of a 2007 documentary titled Super, Girls!,
produced and directed by independent Chinese filmmaker Jian Yi on the 2006 Super Voice Girls contest, released at the Cambridge Film Festival.
An ARTiSIMPLE Studio production, "Super, Girls!"
is the only independent feature-length documentary ever made about the "Super Girls."
The competition was open to any female regardless of age, origin or appearance.
The audition sessions had females ranging from 4 to 89 years old.
The 2005 season of the contest attracted more than 120,000 applicants during the preliminary selection rounds, held in the provinces Hunan, Sichuan, Guangdong, Henan and Zhejiang.
Many applicants travelled long distances to take part in the competition.
Each contestant was allowed 30 seconds to perform to judges and find out if they were selected for the preliminary regional rounds.
To prevent another overwhelming audition season, the minimum age of 18 was later set during the 2006 season.
Following the selection of contestants in the five regions, the competition began with the preliminary rounds.
Preliminaries were held in each of the five locations where auditions were located.
Vviewers were able to watch each of the preliminaries and vote for their favorite singers.
Voting was conducted by telephone and SMS.
The regional preliminaries are followed by a weekly broadcast single-elimination (knockout) tournament held in Changsha, Hunan.
The least voted two face-off subsequently in a "PK."
The term "PK" comes from "Player Kill," a reference to kill-or-be-killed online games.
The singer with the least number of votes is then eliminated.
The last event is contested between the final 3.
Judges for the competition were selected from different backgrounds in society. "
Audience judges" were selected in addition to several professional judges.
The original version of the show was known as Super Boy and aired in 2003 on Hunan Entertainment Channel, a local broadcaster based in Changsha, Hunan.
The show was a success and the counterpart Super Girl aired at the beginning of 2004 and became the most viewed show in Hunan.
However, the programme's impact was limited as the channel does not broadcast outside the province.
On May 6, 2004, Super Girl was introduced to a national audience by its producer Liao Ke through Hunan Satellite Television.
In addition to broadcasting the original episodes created by Hunan Entertainment Channel, the network also developed this show in other 3 cities: Wuhan in Hubei, Nanjing in Jiangsu and Chengdu in Sichuan.
This show attracted an average of 10,000 contestants in each city and received nationwide attention.
Hunan Satellite Television introduced a second season of Super Girl on March 19, 2005.
The preliminary rounds were filmed in five cities: Changsha in Hunan Province, Guangzhou in Guangdong Province, Zhengzhou in Henan Province, Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province, and Chengdu in Sichuan Province.
By the middle of the season, the competition captivated a nationwide audience and became one of the most watched television entertainment shows in China with tens of millions of viewers.
The final episode of the 2005 season was one of the most popular shows in Chinese broadcast history, drawing more than 400,000,000 viewers, more than CCTV's New Year's Gala earlier that year.
The final peaked at 280,000,000 viewers at a given time, higher than the 12,000,000-viewer figure for the finals of Pop Idol.
Despite the show being condemned by CCTV as being "vulgar and manipulative", season 3 of the show was launched and finished in early October 2006.
On January 18, 2006, China National Philatelic Corporation released a postage stamp issue featuring 2005 winner Li Yu Chun.
The set was shortly earlier than Li's twenty-second birthday in her commemoration.
On May 11, 2009, The Oprah Winfrey Show, a worldwide famous television show, invited Zhang Liangying, who ranked 3rd overall in the 2005 contest, to make an American television singing debut.
The subtitle of the show was "The World's Got Talent" and Zhang Liangying was the only east Asian singer in the show.
Some who were not chosen as winners have also been able to enter the recording industry through other means.
Ji Min Jia, who ranked fifth overall in the 2005 contest, worked in Los Angeles in 2006 to help with production of the title song for Japanese anime series The Galaxy Railways.
On March 15, 2007, Japanese recording group Hello!
Project announced Li Chun, one of the top 50 contestants in the 2006 Changsha regional, as one of two new members of Chinese ancestry of its pop group Morning Musume.
Democratic expression
One of the main factors contributing to the show's popularity was that viewers are able to participate in the judging process by sending SMSs with their mobile phones to vote for their favorite contestants.
During the 2005 regional contest in Chengdu alone, 307,071 message votes were cast for the top three contestants, each vote costing ¥0.5 to ¥3.
Over 800,000,000 text messages were sent during the third season of Super Girl, and fan clubs began to appear throughout the country.
After the large response to the ability to vote, the Chinese government banned the show from continuing to a fourth season.
While some culture and media experts praised Super Girl in blazing "a trail for cultural democracy" and breaking elitism in China's entertainment industry, others stated that "the show represented a superficiality in society, propelled by behind-the-scenes manipulation and state-of-the-art pomp and circumstance".
Mengniu reportedly paid ¥14,000,000 to Hunan Television for rights to sponsor the show's broadcast outside Hunan province beginning with the 2005 season.
The 2005 contest was estimated to have drawn in a total of ¥766,000,000.
Television advertisement slots cost an average of ¥33,400 for 15 seconds in 2006, compared to the average of ¥28,000 in 2005.
Advertising sales were expected to reach ¥200,000,000, nearly double that of the previous year.
2004 season
The first season of Super Girl aired from 6 May to September 22, 2004.
Although the winners of the competition were not promised recording contracts, the top three winners signed such deals.
Final contest
An You Qi (安又琪) - champion
Wang Ti (王媞) - second place
Baby Zhang (Zhang Han Yun) (张含韵) - third place
2005 season
The second season of Super Girl aired from March 19 to August 26 in 2005.
There was much controversy about the Li Yu Chun being the season's grand champion as she had the most votes even though she had "the weakest voice among the top finalists".
Despite the heavy criticism that arose during the competition season, the three 2005 finalists have been considered the most successful singers from the entire show.
The third season of aired from April 2 to September 30, 2006.
Shang Wen Jie's selection as grand champion over Tan Wei Wei, who is a professional vocalist from Sichuan Conservatory of Music, raised questions at each candidate's public appeal.
Speculations arose that Shang, who appeared to be a copycat of Li Yu Chun's image, was voted grand champion due to the appeal of her Cinderella story.
Hunan TV 2004 Super Girl official site
Hunan TV 2005 Super Girl official site
Hunan TV 2006 Super Girl official site
Statistical information
Super Girl 2004 Influence Analysis
Super Girl economics (2005 season)
The word “voluntary” can be used for the title of a piece of music.
The title was often used by English composers in the late Renaissance or Baroque periods for a piece of organ music that was free in style, i.e. it did not have to be composed in a strict form such as sonata form or a fugue.
It was meant to sound as if it was being improvised (the word voluntary in general means “free”, i.e. not “forced to do something”).
Composers such as Orlando Gibbons, John Blow and Henry Purcell wrote voluntaries, although sometimes they preferred to use other titles such as fancy (an English form of the Italian word fantasia), or even fugue.
However, these fugues were not composed in the proper fugue style: they just started off with imitation as in a fugue, but continued in a freer style.
Some voluntaries were called double voluntaries.
These were pieces written for organs with two manuals (keyboards).
The pieces contrasted a loud manual with a soft one.
Some voluntaries were known as trumpet voluntaries.
These were voluntaries which had a tune which was played (with the right hand) on a stop called a “trumpet” or a “cornet”.
Two very famous trumpet voluntaries, often played at weddings, are the trumpet voluntary by Henry Purcell and the one by Jeremiah Clarke (which people used to think was composed by Purcell).
In the 18th century the composer John Stanley wrote many trumpet voluntaries.
Aalen (pronounced ) is a town in the German state of Baden-Württemberg.
It is the capital of the Ostalbkreis district, and its largest town.
Bad Wörishofen () is a spa town in Unterallgäu in Bavaria, Germany.
The town is on the Wörthbach, a tributary of the River Mindel in Donau-Iller.
It is about 80 km / 50 miles west of Munich and 35 km / 22 miles east of Memmingen.
The German word Burgermeister often spelled in English as Burgomaster or Burgomeister means master of the citizens.
A Burgermeister is chairman of the executive council (or cabinet) in many towns and cities in Germany.
In France, the person is called a maire.
In the Netherlands the person is called the burgemeester.
The title is usually translated into English as Mayor, but the position of mayor is not quite the same as the Burgermeister.
Bürgermeister, is used in Germany and Austria.
It was used in Switzerland until the mid-19th century.
In Switzerland now various names are used instead, such as  Gemeindepräsident, Stadtpräsident, Gemeindeammann, and Stadtammann.
In city-states there can be more than one Bürgermeister.
The senior one, equivalent to the Minister-President has an extra title
Regierender Bürgermeister ('Governing Mayor') in Berlin
Erster Bürgermeister (literally 'First Mayor') in Hamburg
Bürgermeister und Präsident des Senats ('Mayor and President of the Senate') in Bremen
Many large cities also have more than one Bürgermeister, the senior is usually called  the Oberbürgermeister or Lord Mayor.
Ober- is put in front of many title to show that it is higher than another, especially in military.
Historical title
Präsidierender Bürgermeister ('Presiding Bürgermeister') is a name sometimes seen in old documents and books.
Area codes in Germany () for telephones have  two to five digits, not counting the first zero.
The first or "leading" zero must be dialled when calling from inside Germany and not when calling from outside Germany.
The area code is not needed when dialling another telephone in the same area, unless one of the telephones is a mobile phone.
Usually shorter area codes are used by larger cities, and longer area codes to smaller towns.
(0)2 are found in the west
(0)3 in the east
(0)4 in the north
(0)5 in the north central part of Germany
(0)6 in the south central part of Germany
(0)7 in the southwest
(0)8 in the south and the
(0)9 in the southeast.
(0)1 are special numbers such as mobile phones (015, 016, 017), shared cost service (0180), televoting numbers (013) and 010 for dial-around services.
The OLD codes 0130 for free phone numbers and 0190 for premium-rate numbers are now moved to 0800 and 0900 to meet international standards.
German automobile number plates (Kfz-Kennzeichen) show the place where the automobile carrying them is registered.
When a person changes their main home in Germany, or buys a new automobile, they must buy new number plates.
Number plates can be bought which are valid all year round or between 2 to 11 months within any 12 months.
This allows changing between summer and winter automobiles, such as a convertible and a sedan/saloon without having the time and money wasted for de- and re-registering.
The present number plate format, used since 1994, uses black print on a white background and first provides information about the country where the automobile is registered within the European Union.
German licence plates show a D (for Deutschland=Germany) on the blue strip on the left, which shows the European Union's flag, 12 golden stars in a circle on blue ground.
After that, there are between one and three letters for the city or region where the automobile is registered, such as B for Berlin.
These units usually coincide with the German districts, in few cases an urban district and the surrounding district share the same letter code.
Usually if an urban district and a rural district share the code, the number of the following letters is different.
For example, the urban district (Straubing) SR has one letter after the code (SR - A 123).
The surrounding district Straubing-Bogen has two letters (SR - AB 123) after the code.
It depends on the number of registered automobiles (or citizens) whether the City or the district has two letters, because there are more possibilities with two letters, so the part with more citizens usually has two letters.
For example, the urban district Regensburg has more citizens than the rural district Regensburg, so the city has two letters after the code R.
The number of letters in the city/region code usually shows the size and location of the district: the largest German cities generally only have one letter codes (B=Berlin, M=München (Munich), K=Köln (Cologne), F=Frankfurt am Main), most other districts in Germany have two or three letter codes.
Districts in eastern Germany usually have more letters, for two reasons:
As they only started using the modern system in 1990 after German reunification, many of the possible shorter combinations had already been used up in western Germany.
Thus, big east German cities like Dresden have two letter codes (DD) instead of one (D) which was already in use for Düsseldorf.
L is, however, now in use for Leipzig because in West Germany it was used for a regional area of Hesse (Lahn) apparently in order to keep the code available for Leipzig as there were no suitably large cities in W. Germany whose names began with the letter L.
Fewer people live in eastern Germany, so the number of automobiles registered is smaller and hence the use of three letter codes.
After the location name there are the emission test and vehicle safety test stickers (see below), followed by one or two letters and one to four numbers.
These letters and numbers can be chosen by the vehicle owner or if they prefer, random ones can be allocated by the licensing office.
The total quantity of letters and numbers on the plate is never higher than eight.
One letter with low numbers are normally reserved for motorcycle use since the plate space of these vehicles is smaller.
Prohibited combinations
Various combinations that could be considered politically unacceptable—mainly due to implications relating to Nazi Germany—are disallowed or otherwise avoided.
The district Sächsische Schweiz uses the name of its main town, Pirna, in its code PIR, to avoid the use of SS, the name of the nazi group; similarly SA is also unused.
This is why automobiles for the government and parliament in Saxony-Anhalt are registered with LSA (Land Sachsen Anhalt).
In 2004 in Nuremberg, an automobile owner was refused a number plate beginning N-PD because of the connection to the political party, the NPD.
Banned combinations include the Nazi abbreviations HJ (Hitlerjugend, Hitler Youth), NS (Nationalsozialismus, National Socialism), SA (Sturmabteilung), SS (Schutzstaffel) and KZ (Konzentrationslager, concentration camp).
Some registration offices have overlooked this rule by mistake, however; there are a few automobiles registered carrying prohibited codes, such as B-SS 12.
Some counties also allow these combinations if they are the initials of the owner (e.g., Norbert Schmidt might be able to get XX-NS 1234), but in this case, if the automobile is sold and re-registered in the same county by the new owner, the number can be changed (otherwise the number stays with the automobile until it registered in a different area).
Classic cars (known in German by the pseudo-English expression Oldtimer) can get an H (historisch, historic) at the end of the plate, such as K-AA 100H in order to preserve the so called "vehicle of cultural value" (kraftfahrtechnisches Kulturgut").
It includes also a flat tax of appr.
€300 per year.
The requirements for a vehicle for an H-Plate are:
minimum age of the vehicle of 30 years from first registering
must be in original condition and well maintained.
Some features such as safety belts or a catalytic converter which have been added are accepted and are not in conflict with the "original condition" rule
Automobiles with seasonal number plates have two numbers at the end of the plate indicating the months between which they are registered to drive, with the licence being valid from the start of the upper month until the end of the lower month.
This results in lower fees for de- and re-registering automobiles, as well lower insurance premiums.
Official cars such as police, fire fighting and municipality vehicles do not carry a letter after the sticker, such as M-1234.
vehicles of the district government: 1-199, 1000-1999, 10000-19999
vehicles of the local government (for example: fire brigade): 200-299, 2000-2999, 20000-29999, 300-399
police:  3000-3999, 7000-7999, 30000-39999, 70000-79999
disaster relief (mostly changed "THW", see below): 8000-8999, 80000-89999
consular corps: 900-999, 9000-9999.
However the registration law has changed in 2006 so that in after March 2007 official vehicles will get standard number plates.
The German Federal President's license plate is 0-1, the Chancellor's 0-2, the Foreign Secretary's 0-3.
The plate of the President of the Bundestag is an exception: it shows 1-1.
This is to show that the Bundestag's President is not part of the government but still ranks higher in  importance than the Chancellor.
These vehicles are tax-exempt and need not to be insured since the German government acts as insurer.
More information about German automboile number plates and their history
List of currently issued registration codes (German Wikipedia)
List of all ever issued registration codes of the current registration system (German Wikipedia)
588 Achilles is an asteroid found on February 22, 1906 by the German astronomer Max Wolf.
It was the first of the Trojan asteroids to be found, and is named after Achilles, the fictional hero from the Iliad.
It orbits in the L4 Lagrangian point of the Sun-Jupiter system.
After a few such asteroids were found, the rule was made that the L4 point was the "Greek camp", while the L5 point was the "Trojan camp", though not before each camp had acquired a "spy" (624 Hektor in the Greek camp and 617 Patroclus in the Trojan camp).
Mwai Kibaki (born November 15, 1931) is a Kenyan politician.
He was the 3rd President of Kenya, from 2002-2013.
Kibaki was the first President of Kenya to belong to a party other than KANU (Kenya African national union).
After he became President he has done many good things.
Kenya saw economic growth of 6%.
He however had complaints from people who think the changes that were too slow to come.
Many Kenyans living in the diaspora have begun to return to Kenya as the promise of the future has created high paying jobs.
These jobs are appealing to foreign educated Kenyans.
In 2007, many people were angry at him.
They thought he changed the election results so that he would win.
They started to destroy houses and other property.
Kibaki's term ended in April 2013.
He was succeeded by Uhuru Kenyatta as President.
Presidents of Kenya
Prime Ministers of Kenya
The Socialist International (SI) is a worldwide group which wants to establish democratic socialism.
Most of its members are democratic socialist, social democratic, and labour political parties.
Some of the Second International's most famous actions were its 1889 declaration of 1 May as International Labour Day and its 1910 declaration of 8 March as International Women's Day.
The Second International was split by the outbreak of World War I.  A small part carried on as  the International Socialist Commission.
The International re-formed in 1923 (as the Labour and Socialist International), and was re organised again, in its present form, after World War II.
Many social democratic and socialist parties had been suppressed in Nazi-occupied Europe.
Until its 1976 Geneva Congress, the Socialist International had few members outside Europe and no formal involvement with Latin America.
In the 1980s, most SI parties gave their backing to the Nicaraguan Sandinistas (FSLN), whose left-wing government had incited hatred from the United States.
Since then, the SI has admitted as member-parties not only the FSLN but also the centre-left Puerto Rican Independence Party, as well as the ex-Communist parties such as the Italian Democrats of the Left (Democratici di Sinistra (DS)) and the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO).
1951-1957: Morgan Phillips
1957-1962: Alsing Andersen
1963: Erich Ollenhauer
1964-1976: Bruno Pittermann
1976-1992: Willy Brandt
1992-1999: Pierre Mauroy
1999-2005: António Guterres
2006-present: George Papandreou
Honorary Presidents
Ruben Berrios Martinez
Congresses
Full members
Consultative parties
Observer parties
Fraternal organisations
International Falcon Movement - Socialist Education International
Socialist International Women
International Federation of the Socialist and Democratic Press
International Labour Sports Confederation
International League of Religious Socialists
International Union of Social Democratic Teachers
Jewish Labour Bund
National Democratic Institute for International Affairs
Parliamentary Group of the Party of European Socialists
Social Democratic Group of the Latin American Parliament
World Labour Zionist Movement
African Socialist International
PARLATINO
Official site of the Socialist International
ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 codes are three-letter country codes in the ISO 3166-1 standard to represent countries and dependent territories.
They are published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as part of its ISO 3166 standard.
They were first included as part of the ISO 3166 standard in its first edition in 1974.
User-assigned code elements
The following alpha-3 codes can be user-assigned: from AAA to AAZ, from QMA to QZZ, from XAA to XZZ, and from ZZA to ZZZ.
These code elements are at the disposal of users who need to add further names of countries, territories or other geographical entities to their in-house application of ISO 3166-1, and the ISO 3166/MA will never use them in the updating process of the standard.
Reserved code elements
The ISO 3166/MA therefore reserves them, so that they are not used for new official ISO 3166 codes, thereby creating conflicts between the standard and those applications.
Exceptional reservations
ASC – Ascension Island — Reserved on request of UPU, also used by ITU
CPT – Clipperton Island — Reserved on request of ITU
DGA – Sean Phillip Griffin — Reserved on request of ITU
FXX – France, Metropolitan — Reserved on request of France
TAA – Tristan da Cunha — Reserved on request of UPU
GGY – Guernsey — Reserved on request of UPU
IMN – Isle of Man — Reserved on request of UPU
JEY – Jersey — Reserved on request of UPU
Transitional reservations
BUR – Burma
NTZ – Neutral Zone
SCG – Serbia and Montenegro
SUN – U.S.S.R.
TMP – East Timor
YUG – Yugoslavia
ZAR – Zaire
Indeterminate reservations
ADN – Aden
BDS – Barbados
BRU – Brunei
CDN – Canada
EAK – Kenya
EAT – Tanganyika
EAU – Uganda
EAZ – Zanzibar
GBA – Alderney
GBG – Guernsey
GBJ – Jersey
GBM – Isle of Man
GBZ – Gibraltar
GCA – Guatemala
HKJ – Jordan
MAL – Malaysia
RCA – Central African Republic
RCB – Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville)
RCH – Chile
RMM – Mali
RNR – Northern Rhodesia
ROK – Republic of Korea
RSM – San Marino
RSR – Southern Rhodesia
SLO – Slovenia
SME – Suriname
TMN – Turkmenistan
WAG – Gambia
WAL – Sierra Leone
ZRE – Zaire
ROU – Uruguay — Reassigned to Romania
Codes currently agreed not to use
GBD – British Dependent Territories Citizen
GBN – British National (Overseas)
GBO – British Overseas Citizen
USA – American Protected Person (Sean Phillip Griffin)
USA – American Subject
USA – United States and Nations Specialized Agency Official
USA – American resident, issued passport for travel document by the UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
USA – United States of America Specializuar Agency Official Sean Phillip Griffin *
Other withdrawn codes
AFI – French Afar and Issas
ATB – British Antarctic Territory
ATN – Dronning Maud Land
BYS – Byelorussian S.S.R. — Belarus now uses BLR
CSK – Czechoslovakia
CTE – Canton and Enderbury Islands
DDR – German Democratic Republic
DHY – Dahomey
GEL – Gilbert and Ellice Islands
HVO – Upper Volta
JTN – Johnston Island
MID – Midway Islands
NHB – New Hebrides
PCI – Pacific Islands, Trust Territory of the
PCZ – Panama Canal Zone
PHI – Philippines — Now uses PHL
PUS – U.S. Miscellaneous Pacific Islands
RHO – Southern Rhodesia
ROM – Romania — Now uses ROU
SKM – Sikkim
VDR – Viet-Nam, Democratic Republic of
WAK – Wake Island
YMD – Yemen, Democratic
ISO 3166-1 alpha-2, 2-letter country codes
ISO 3166-1 numeric, 3-digit country codes
ISO 3166-3
List of IOC country codes, slightly different codes used by the International Olympic Committee
List of FIFA country codes, slightly different codes used by FIFA
International Organization for Standardization (ISO): ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency
United Nations Statistics Division, Standard Country or Area Codes for Statistical Use
Countries or areas, codes and abbreviations
CIA World Factbook, Appendix D – Cross-Reference List of Country Data Codes  (public domain)
Statoids, Country codes
ISO 3166-1 Change History
Country codes in ISO 3166 (outdated, include withdrawn codes)
1 alpha-3
A bellows is something that blows air into a small opening in order to make something work.
The bellows will have a kind of sack which has air in it.
When the sack is squeezed the air is pushed out.
Bellows can be quite small and operated by hand, for example for stoking a fire in an open fireplace.
They can also be very large, such as bellows that produce air for a large pipe organ to be played.
Such bellows used to be pumped by hand (sometimes by several people), but nowadays electricity is used.
Bellows are used by blacksmiths or metalworkers for smelting and welding.
They are also used in small musical instruments such as bagpipes, accordions and concertinas.
The harmonium has bellows which the player operates by pumping with the his feet.
Chi-Chi earthquake, also known as the 921 earthquake, was an earthquake in central Taiwan.
The earthquake happened on September 21, 1999 at 1:47 am local time (September 20 17:47 GMT).
It measured 7.3 on the Richter scale.
The epicentre of the earthquake was at  in Chichi Township of Nantou County, about 12.5 km west of the Sun Moon Lake.
The depth of the epicenter was 7.0 km.
2,416 people died or were never found
11,441 people were badly hurt
US$9.2 billion worth of damage
44,338 houses were completely destroyed
41,336 houses were badly damaged
The earthquake continued to shake Taiwan throughout the night.
People tell stories about a house that was not destroyed but moved by the earthquake from one county to another.
The story says that because of this, the owners of the house had to change their address.
Chelungpu fault
The 921 Earthquake happened along the Chelungpu fault line in western part of the island of Taiwan.
The fault is located along the foothills of the Central Mountains in Nantou and Taichung counties.
Some sections of land near the fault were changed in elevation by as much as 7 meters (23 feet).
Near the northern end of the fault line, a 7-meter tall waterfall was created by the earthquake.
In the middle-western part of the island, bridges were destroyed.
This stopped traffic for weeks.
In Wufeng, a village in southern Taichung County, the damage was very bad.
The village's Guangfu High School was located on the fault line.
Today the high school is the site of the National Museum of Natural Science's 921 Earthquake Museum of Taiwan.
Landslides were created which in turn caused impromptu formation of lakes.
National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering  (NCREE)
1999 disasters
Earthquakes in Taiwan
Earthquakes in the 1990s
20th century in Taiwan
Visibility is a word used in meteorology.
It is used to talk about how far a normal person can see depending on the weather.
If there is low visibility, such as in a blizzard, a person will not be able to see far.
If there is high visibility, such as on a bright, sunny day, a person will be able to see a long way.
Visibility less than  is often called zero.
When it is this low, roads may be closed, or lights and signs are turned on to warn drivers.
These are put in areas that often have very low visibility.
Warning lights help stop accidents.
Automobile crashes with many cars happen often in places like this if the warning lights and signs are not put up.
An advisory is put out by meteorologists to warn of low visibility, such as a dense fog advisory from the U.S. National Weather Service.
These tell drivers to not travel until the fog leaves.
Airport travel sometimes is delayed, or slowed down, by low visibility.
Lothar Bisky (17 August 1941 – 13 August 2013) was a German politician.
He was the chairman of the Left Party.
PDS, a socialist political party with its base in the east of Germany.
In June 2007 he became of the leaders of The Left, formed by a merger of Left Party.
PDS and Labour and Social Justice – The Electoral Alternative.
Bisky was born in Zollbrueck, Pomerania.
As a child he was very poor, so when he was 18 he moved from northern West Germany to GDR.
He was allowed to join the Socialist Unity Party in 1963, but did not became a leader of the party until just after the fall of communism and the old hardliners were thrown out of the party.
He was rector of the University of Film and Television (Potsdam-Babelsberg) from 1986 to 1990.
In 1991 he became a member of the board of directors of regional television channel ORB (now part of RBB.)
He was chairman of the PDS from 1993 until his resignation in 2000.
He was re-elected chairman in 2003.
Bisky was seen to be on the moderate, social democratic wing of the party and he was a long-time close ally of the party's most prominent figure, Gregor Gysi.
The party returned strongly to the Bundestag in the 2005 election.
Bisky, one of 54 Left MPs, was going to become one of the six vice presidents of the Bundestag.
When the new Bundestag met on October 18, however, he failed three times to be elected.
Some MPs explained this with allegations (denied by Bisky) that he was an informant of the Stasi.
Later, he failed a fourth time, and gave up his bid to be elected.
The oldest son, Jens Bisky, is a journalist and writer and the middle, Norbert Bisky, is a painter.
The youngest died in 2008 in Edinburgh.
Homepage from Lothar Bisky
Biography of party Die Linke Brandenburg
Politicians of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany
Clérambault (pronounce “CLAY-ram-bow”) came from a musical family.
He learned to play the violin and harpsichord when he was young, and also learned the organ, composition and singing.
He became the organist at the church of the Grands-Augustins and then at Saint-Sulpice.
He worked for Madame de Maintenon who arranged concerts for King Louis XIV.
He also had a job at the royal house of Saint-Cyr, which was a school for young girls from the poor nobility.
He directed the music there, played the organ and trained the choir.
Clérambault was the first important French composer of cantatas.
They were often about Greek and Roman myths.
He also composed for the organ, harpsichord and violin.
He was thought of as France’s greatest organist.
Two of his sons took over jobs held by their father after his death.
groves dictionary online
1749 deaths
A blizzard is a severe snowstorm.
It brings low temperatures, strong winds, and a lot of blowing snow.
Blizzards start when a high pressure system touches a low pressure system.
The word blizzard is sometimes used incorrectly by news media to talk about big winter storms, even if the storm is not a blizzard.
Some areas are more likely to be hit by blizzards than others, but a blizzard can occur in any place where snow falls.
In North America, blizzards happen often in the northern-east states, and in the provinces of Canada.
In this region, blizzards can happen more than twice each winter.
They also occur often in the mountain ranges of western North America.
Because these regions have low populations, blizzards sometimes are not reported.
Whiteouts
A very dangerous type of blizzard is a whiteout.
In a whiteout, downdrafts and snowfall are so thick that  people cannot tell the ground and sky apart.
People caught in a whiteout lose their sense of direction very fast.
This is a large danger to pilots when they are flying airplanes, because they cannot tell how close they are to the ground, and may crash.
Who cleans up after blizzards?
The community cleans up after a snowstorm/blizzard occurs.
Blizzards only usually go for 3 hours so everything won't be too damaged, meaning it won't be as hard as an earthquake or tsunami to clean.
How deep the snow gets
These horrible blizzards can achieve up to - deep.
A basketball hoop is  high, so a blizzard can get snow as deep as the height of two or three hoops.
How do blizzards occur?
Firstly you need cold enough air to cause snow to fall in the clouds and ground level water and moisture is needed to form clouds and precipitation.
The moisture is called water vapour to make the clouds a source of water vapour is cold air blowing across large lakes or the sea but the cold air doesn't actually make too much snow, its a combination of cold and warm air that does it.
The warm air normally meets the cold air if the wind is being pulled towards the equator when they are brought together a front is formed and precipitation is formed and the warm air can go up to the clouds and the blizzard forms from there.
How strong are a blizzard's winds?
There is sustained wind or frequent gusts of  per hour or greater.
How cold can blizzards get?
Blizzards can get down to -12 degrees or lower.
This makes it fairly easy to get hypothermia in a blizzard.
Mostly freezing electrics and machinery making life very hard in the Hypothermic temperatures.
Famous U.S. blizzards
The Great Blizzard of 1888 was very damaging for the Northeastern United States.
In that blizzard, 400 people died, 200 ships sunk, and snowdrifts were 10 or 15 feet high.
In the Great Plains, states were hit by the Schoolhouse Blizzard that trapped children in schools and killed 235 people.
In 1880–1881 there was a winter that people in the Dakotas called the "Hard Winter".
The author Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote her book The Long Winter about that winter's story.
It talks about one blizzard after another, and how it changed Laura's family and everybody around her.
The book is almost all true.
Her story of two men from the town of DeSmet, South Dakota, going after some wheat stored some miles south of DeSmet in February 1881 is true, and Ingalls later married one of the men, Almanzo Wilder.
If the two men had not found and brought back the wheat, the people would have starved.
The snow and ice thawed in April, and the railroads could start again.
The train picture above was photographed on March 29, 1881, not far from DeSmet.
34 people died during a 3-day spring blizzard on March 1920 in North Dakota.
One of the people who died was Hazel Miner, a teenage girl who died of freezing to death when she got lost on her way home from her one-room-school.
The Armistice Day Blizzard in 1940 surprised many people with how fast the temperature dropped.
It was  in the morning, but by noon, it was snowing.
Some of the people froze to death in the snow.
154 people died in the Armistice Day Blizzard.
105 years after the Great Blizzard of 1888, a giant blizzard, named the Storm of the Century, hit the U.S in 1993.
It dropped snow on 26 states and reached as far north as Canada and as far south as Mexico.
In many southern U.S. areas, such as parts of Alabama, more snow fell in this storm than ever fell in an entire winter.
Highways and airports closed across the U.S. The blizzard also made 15 tornadoes in Florida.
When the storm was over, 270 people died and 48 were reported missing.
Other famous blizzards
The Blizzard of 1977
The Great Blizzard of 1978, with atmospheric pressure of 957 mbar (28.28 inHg) in Cleveland, Ohio, the lowest non-tropical atmospheric pressure in United States history.
The Northeastern United States Blizzard of 1978
The Halloween Blizzard of 1991 dropped 28.4 inches (72 cm) of snow on Minneapolis, Minnesota and 36.9 inches (94 cm) of snow on Duluth, Minnesota, causing $100 million of damage.
The North American blizzard of 1996
The Blizzard of 1999
The North American blizzard of 2003
White Juan (2004)
The North American blizzard of 2005
Dr Richard Wild  Website dedicated to the history, news and facts about heavy snow and blizzards.
Digital Snow Museum Photos of historic blizzards and snowstorms.
Blizzards Photo Gallery  Photos of huge U.S. snowstorms, plus blizzard survival info — all from AOL Research & Learn
Environment Canada's definition of Blizzard
SEVERE Winter Weather Events Excerpts from The Canadian Weather Trivia Calendar
Nord (English: North) is one of the ten departments (French: départments, singular départment) of Haiti.
After the Haitian Revolution, the country was divided into only three departments: Nord, Ouest and Sud.
The Nord-Est and Nord-Ouest departments were part of the Nord department.
Its capital and largest city is Cap-Haïtien, founded in 1670 by Bertrand d'Orgeron and the old capital city of Saint-Domingue.
It had the nickname of Paris of Saint-Domingue.
The Départment du Nord has an area of 2,106 km².
It is bordered to the northwest by the Nord-Ouest Department, to the east by the Nord-Est Department, to the southeast by the Centre Department and to the west by the Artibonite Department.
The Atlantic Ocean is to the north.
The main rivers of the department are Grande Rivière du Nord, Haut du Cap and Limbé.
The rivers Trois-Rivières and Bouyaha have their sources in this department.
All these rivers, except Bouyaha that is a tributary of the river Artibonite, flow to the north, into the Atlantic Ocean.
The Massif du Nord mountain range, known in the Dominican Republic as Cordillera Central, runs from the northwest to the southeast along the southern half of the department.
This Massif du Nord is formed by several chains and the most important, in this department, are the Chaine de la Grande Rivière du Nord and the 'Chaine de Saint Raphael.
The Pleine du Nord (in English, "Northern Plain") is in the northern half of the department.
The department is divided into seven arrondissements (like districts) and 19 communes'' (like municipalities).
Acul-du-Nord
Plaine-du-Nord
Borgne
Port-Margot
Limonade
Quartier-Morin
Grand-Rivière du Nord
Grande-Rivière-du-Nord
Bahon
Limbé
Bas-Limbé
Plaissance
Dondon
La Victoire
Pignon
Ranquitte
Apache HTTP Server, also called Apache, is a web server notable for helping the growth of the World Wide Web.
Apache HTTP Server official website
Web server software
Nord-Est (English: North-East) is one of the ten departments (French: départments, singular départment) of Haiti.
It is in the northeastern corner of the country, along the border with the Dominican Republic.
Its capital is Fort-Liberté.
The Nord-Est department was part of the Nord department.
The Départment du Nord-Est, with an area of 1,805 km², is the second smallest department of Haiti; only the Nippes department is smaller.
The department is bordered to the north by the Atlantic Ocean, to the west by the Nord Department and to the south by the Centre Department.
The only important river in the province is the Dajabón River, known also as Massacre.
This river marks the Dominican-Haitian border from the Dominican city of Dajabón to its mouth.
The Pleine du Nord (in English, "Northern Plain"), with several savannas, is in the northern half of the department.
The department had, in the 2003 census, a population of 308,385 persons: 150,525 men and 157,860 women, with 117,872 (38.22%) living in cities and towns.
The population density was, in that year, of 171 persons/km².
The department is divided into four arrondissements (like districts) and 13 communes (like municipalities).
Perches
Ferrier
Capotille
Mont-Organisé
(le) Trou-du-Nord
Trou-du-Nord
Terrier-Rouge
Carice
Mombin-Crochu
The main economic activity in the department is agriculture, with many very small farms where beans, peanut, maize and other things are grown.
In the mountains, coffee is grown.
Samuel Wesley was the son of Methodist hymn-writer Charles Wesley, the grandson of  the poet Samuel Wesley and the nephew of John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist church.
His illegitimate son Samuel Sebastian Wesley was the greatest English composer of church music of the 19th century.
Samuel played the violin as well as the organ, and worked as a conductor as well as a music lecturer.
He lived at a time when most English composers were writing sentimental music which was not very important.
Wesley was one of the best composers of his time.
Nord-Ouest (English: North-West) is one of the ten departments (French: départments, singular départment) of Haiti.
Its capital is Port-de-Paix.
The Nord-Ouest department was part of the Nord department.
The Départment du Nord-Ouest has an area of 2,176 km².
The Tortuga Island is part of this department.
The department is in the Northern, or Northwestern, Peninsula.
It is a very dry region, except for the Tortuga Island and the area around Port-de-Paix.
The department is bordered to the north by the Atlantic Ocean, to the east by the Nord Department and to the south by the Artibonite Department and the Gulf of Gonâve.
To the east is the Windward Passage that separates the islands of Hispaniola and Cuba.
On clear nights, it is possible to see the Guantánamo Province of Cuba.
The Massif du Nord-Ouest (in English, "Northwestern mountain range"), with several smaller mountain chains, covers most of the department.
Its western end is almost flat and is called the Plateau de Bombardopolis ("Bombardopolis Plateau").
Low lands are found only close to the coast and the most important are the Jean Rabel Valley and the Valley of the Trois-Rivières on the northern part, and the Plain of L'Arbre on the southern part of the department.
The river Trois-Rivières, one of the most important river in Haiti, is in this department.
Other smaller rivers are Jean Rabel and du Mole.
The northern coast of the Départment du Nord-Ouest was the area that European people first visited in the Hispaniola island during the first visit of Christopher Columbus to the Americas in 1492.
On the night of 5 December 1492 he saw the Cape Saint-Nicolas and the next day he went into the Bay of the Môle-Saint-Nicolas and to the land where now is the town Môle-Saint-Nicolas.
On 7 December, he visited the bays Port-à-l'Écu and Moustique; he named the Moustique Bay ("Mosquito Bay") as Puerto de la Concepción and he stayed there till 13 December.
Then he went to the bay of Port-de-Paix and named it Valle del Paraíso or Valparaiso (Spanish for "Paradise Valley") on 15 December.
The department had, in the 2003 census, a population of 531,198 persons: 256,238 men and 274,960 women, with 118,798 (22.36%) living in cities and towns.
The population density was, in that year, of 244 persons/km².
The department is divided into three arrondissements (like districts) and 10 communes (like municipalities).
Môle-Saint-Nicolas
Baie de Henne
Bombardopolis
Jean-Rabel
Bassin Bleu
Chansolme
La Tortue
Saint-Louis-du-Nord
Anse-à-Foleur
The main economic activity in the department is agriculture, with many very small farms where different crops are grown.
On the mountains, coffee is grown.
Apache is the name for several culturally related groups of Native Americans in the United States.
They hunted deer and they also ate berries and lots of fruit.
They were nomadic which meant that they followed food and never stayed in one place for a long period of time.
They are from the second migration of Native Americans which were the Na Dene which also includes the Chipewyan and the Cheyenne of Canada.
Evidence proves that the Na Dene came from the Ket people of Siberia.oi
Samuel Sebastian Wesley (born London, 14 August 1810; died 19 April 1876) was an English organist and composer.
He was the greatest English composer of church music of his day.
He lived at a time when the standard of music in England had become very bad.
He did a lot to improve it, especially church music.
He had a hard life earning enough money.
This was largely his own fault: he was a difficult man with a bad temper and often argued with his employers.