User:Wiki User 68/My Portal

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Wiki User 68/My Portal

Flag of England
Flag of England
English Coat of arms
English Coat of arms
Location on the world map
Location on the world map
Location on the world map

Wiki User 68 hails from the Great British Isles specifically England /ˈɪŋɡlənd/ which is a country that is part of the United Kingdom.[1][2][3] Its inhabitants account for more than 83% of the total UK population,[4] whilst its mainland territory occupies most of the southern two-thirds of the island of Great Britain. England shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west and elsewhere is bordered by the North Sea, Irish Sea, Celtic Sea, Bristol Channel and English Channel. The capital is London, the largest urban area in Great Britain, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most, but not all, measures.[5]

England became a unified state in the year 927 and takes its name from the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes who settled there during the 5th and 6th centuries. It has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world[6] being the place of origin of the English language, the Church of England, and English law, which forms the basis of the common law legal systems of countries around the world. In addition, England was the birth place of the Industrial Revolution and the first country in the world to industrialise.[7] It is home to the Royal Society, which laid the foundations of modern experimental science.[8] England is the world's oldest parliamentary system[9] and consequently constitutional, governmental and legal innovations that had their origin in England have been widely adopted by other nations.

Selected Panorama

This approximate true-color image, taken by the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, shows the view of Victoria Crater from Cape Verde. It was captured over a three-week period, from October 16 – November 6, 2006.

Selected Article

The Great Depression - (Lange) a Migrant Mother

The Great Depression was a worldwide economic downturn starting in most places in 1929 and ending at different times in the 1930s or early 1940s for different countries.[10] It was the largest and most important economic depression in the 20th century, and is used in the 21st century as an example of how far the world's economy can fall.[11] The Great Depression originated in the United States; historians most often use as a starting date the stock market crash on October 29, 1929, known as Black Tuesday.

The depression had devastating effects in virtually every country, rich or poor. International trade plunged by half to two-thirds, as did personal income, tax revenue, prices and profits. Cities all around the world were hit hard, especially those dependent on heavy industry. Construction was virtually halted in many countries. Farming and rural areas suffered as crop prices fell by roughly 60 percent.[12][13][14] Facing plummeting demand with few alternate sources of jobs, areas dependent on primary sector industries such as farming, mining and logging suffered the most.[15] However, even shortly after the Wall Street Crash of 1929, optimism persisted; John D. Rockefeller said that "These are days when many are discouraged. In the 93 years of my life, depressions have come and gone. Prosperity has always returned and will again."[16]

Selected Picture

Hong Kong sunset c. 1992 after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo.

Selected Natural History

A ship stranded by the retreat and desertification of the Aral Sea
A ship stranded by the retreat and desertification of the Aral Sea

Desertification is the degradation of land in arid and dry sub-humid areas, resulting primarily from natural activities and influenced by climatic variations. It is also a failure of the ecological succession process. A major impact of desertification is biodiversity loss and loss of productive capacity, for example, by transition from land dominated by shrublands to non-native grasslands. In the semi-arid regions of southern California, many coastal sage scrub and chaparral ecosystems have been replaced by non-native, invasive grasses due to the shortening of fire return intervals. This can create a monoculture of annual grass that cannot support the wide range of animals once found in the original ecosystem. In Madagascar's central highland plateau, 10% of the entire country has been lost to desertification due to slash and burn agriculture by indigenous peoples. In Africa, if current trends of soil degradation continue, the continent will be able to feed only 25% of its population by 2025, according to UNU's Ghana-based Institute for Natural Resources in Africa.[17] Globally, desertification claims a Nebraska-sized area of productive capacity each year.[18]

Selected Technology

NASA researcher checking hydroponic onions with Bibb lettuce to his left and radishes to the right

Hydroponics (from the Greek words hydro water and pono labor) is a method of growing plants using mineral nutrient solutions, without soil. Terrestrial plants may be grown with their roots in the mineral nutrient solution only or in an inert medium, such as perlite, gravel, or mineral wool.

Plant physiology researchers discovered in the 19th century that plants absorb essential mineral nutrients as inorganic ions in water. In natural conditions, soil acts as a mineral nutrient reservoir but the soil itself is not essential to plant growth. When the mineral nutrients in the soil dissolve in water, plant roots are able to absorb them. When the required mineral nutrients are introduced into a plant's water supply artificially, soil is no longer required for the plant to thrive. Almost any terrestrial plant will grow with hydroponics. Hydroponics is also a standard technique in biology research and teaching.

In the news

World News
World News
In the news
In the news


25 May 2024 – 2023–24 FA Cup
Manchester United win their 13th FA Cup title after beating the defending champions, Manchester City, by a score of 2–1 in the final at Wembley Stadium in London, England. (The Guardian)
21 May 2024 – Singapore Airlines Flight 321
A Singapore Airlines flight from London, England, to Singapore makes an emergency landing at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, Thailand, after experiencing severe air turbulence over the Bay of Bengal, resulting in one death and at least 30 injuries. (BBC News)
4 May 2024 – 2024 London mayoral election
Sadiq Khan wins re-election as mayor of London, England, with 43.8% of the vote, becoming the first London mayor to be elected to a third term. (BBC News)
30 April 2024 – 2024 Hainault sword attack
A man attacks people with a sword after crashing a car into a house in Hainault, London, England, United Kingdom, killing a 14-year-old boy and injuring four other people, including two police officers. (BBC News) (The New York Times)

Selected Biography

44th President of the United States of America
44th President of the United States of America

Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African-American president in United States history. Obama previously served as a U.S. senator representing Illinois from 2005 to 2008, as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004, and as a community service organizer, civil rights lawyer, and university lecturer. (Full article...)

Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review. He worked as a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree, and practiced as a civil rights attorney in Chicago before serving three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. He also taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004.

Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, Obama ran for United States Senate in 2004. Obama's unexpected landslide victory in the March 2004 U.S. Senate primary made him a rising star in the national Democratic Party, with his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004 further raising his visibility. He was elected by a landslide margin to the U.S. Senate in November 2004.

After a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won his party's nomination, becoming the first major African American candidate for President. In the 2008 general election, he defeated Republican candidate John McCain and was inaugurated as President on January 20, 2009.

Selected Geography

Medieval map of the Black Sea
Medieval map of the Black Sea

The Black Sea is an inland sea bounded by southeastern Europe, the Caucasus and the Anatolian peninsula (Turkey) and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas and various straits. The Bosporus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects it to the Aegean Sea region of the Mediterranean. These waters separate eastern Europe and western Asia. The Black Sea also connects to the Sea of Azov by the Strait of Kerch.

The Black Sea has a positive water balance, which results in a net outflow of water 300 km³ per year through the Bosphorus into the Aegean Sea (part of the Mediterranean Sea). Mediterranean water flows into the Black Sea as part of a 2-way hydrological exchange. The Black Sea outflow is less salinated and cool, therefore floats over the warm, relatively more salinated Mediterranean inflow. The Black Sea also receives river water from large Eurasian fluvial systems to the north of the Sea, of which the Don, Dnieper and Danube are the most significant.

In the past, the water level has varied significantly. Depending on the water level in the basin, more or less of the surrounding shelf and associated aprons are aerially exposed. At certain critical depths, it is possible for connections with surrounding water bodies to become established. It is through the most active of these connective routes, the Turkish Straits System (TSS), that the Black Sea joins the global ocean system. When this hydrological link is not present, the Black Sea is a lake, operating independently of the global ocean system. Currently the Black Sea water level is relatively high, thus water is being exchanged with the Mediterranean. The TSS connects the Black and Aegean Seas and comprises the Strait of Bosphorus Strait (Strait of Istanbul), the Marmara sea and the Strait of Dardanelles (Strait of Canakkale). The Black Sea also connects to the Sea of Azov via the Strait of Kerch

Categories

Selected quote

We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

Richard Dawkins
biologist and author (b. 1941).

Did you know?

  • ...that optimistic estimations of peak oil production forecast the global decline will begin by 2020 or later, and assume major investments in alternatives will occur before a crisis, without requiring major changes in the lifestyle of heavily oil-consuming nations. These models show the price of oil at first escalating and then retreating as other types of fuel and energy sources are used?[19]
  • ...that if the Greenland ice-sheet melted through global warming, it would raise the global sea level by 7 meters, or 22 feet?

Topics

Cities: AmsterdamBangkokBarcelonaBrusselsCalcuttaCologneFlorenceGibraltarLas VegasLisbonLos AngelesLondonMaastrichtMarbellaMarrakechMumbaiOttawaPaphosSan FranciscoTokyoTorontoYokohama

Climate change: Global warmingGlobal dimmingFossil fuelsSea level riseGreenhouse gas

Conservation: The British IslesSpecies extinctionPollinator declineCoral bleachingHolocene extinction eventInvasive speciesPoachingEndangered species

Computer science: Artificial intelligenceCompilersComputer programmingCryptographyOperating systemsProgramming languages

Geography: GeologyClimateOceansIslandsRivers

History: Prehistoric BritainRoman BritainAnglo-Saxon EnglandHouse of LancasterHouse of Stuart

Linguistics: Anthropological linguisticsEurolinguisticsWriting systems

Resource depletion: Acid mine drainageClearcuttingConsumerismOver-consumptionBlast fishingBottom trawlingCyanide fishingDeforestationGhost netsIllegal loggingIllegal, unreported and unregulated fishingLoggingMountaintop removal miningOverfishingShark finningWhaling

Science: AstronomyBiologyChemistryFormal scienceGeologyMathmaticsPhysics

Related portals

WikiProjects

Test
Test
Wikipedia:WikiProject Cape Verde
Wikipedia:WikiProject Cape Verde
Wikipedia:WikiProject Council
Wikipedia:WikiProject Council
WikiProject Africa WikiProject Cape Verde WikiProject Council

Things to do

Things you can do!
Things you can do!
  • Keep finishing off the various Portals that need creating/completing and start writing content on the relevant interested issues.
  • Be bold. Wikipedia is for the people, by the people and needs YOU as a contributor to spread global knowledge.

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  1. ^ The Countries of the UK statistics.gov.uk, accessed 10 October, 2008
  2. ^ "Countries within a country". 10 Downing Street. Retrieved 2007-09-10. The United Kingdom is made up of four countries: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
  3. ^ "ISO 3166-2 Newsletter Date: 2007-11-28 No I-9. "Changes in the list of subdivision names and code elements" (Page 11)" (PDF). International Organisation for Standardisation codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions -- Part 2: Country subdivision codes. Retrieved 2008-05-31. ENG England country
  4. ^ National Statistics Online - Population Estimates. Retrieved 6 June 2007.
  5. ^ The official definition of LUZ (Larger Urban Zone) is used by the European Statistical Agency (Eurostat) when describing conurbations and areas of high population. This definition ranks London highest, above Paris (see Larger Urban Zones (LUZ) in the European Union); and a ranking of population within municipal boundaries also puts London on top (see Largest cities of the European Union by population within city limits). However, research by the University of Avignon in France ranks Paris first and London second when including the whole urban area and hinterland, that is the outlying cities as well (see Largest urban areas of the European Union).
  6. ^ England - Culture. Britain USA. Retrieved 12 September 2006.
  7. ^ "Industrial Revolution". Retrieved 2008-04-27.
  8. ^ "History of the Royal Society". The Royal Society. Retrieved 2008-09-03.
  9. ^ "Country profile: United Kingdom". BBC News. Retrieved 2009-04-27.
  10. ^ Great Depression, Encyclopaedia Britannica
  11. ^ Charles Duhigg, "Depression, You Say? Check Those Safety Nets," New York Times, March 23, 2008
  12. ^ "Commodity Data". US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retrieved 2008-11-30.
  13. ^ Cochrane, Willard W. (1958). "Farm Prices, Myth and Reality": 15. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  14. ^ "World Economic Survey 1932–33". League of Nations: 43.
  15. ^ Mitchell, Depression Decade
  16. ^ Schultz, Stanley K. (1999). "Crashing Hopes: The Great Depression". American History 102: Civil War to the Present. University of Wisconsin-Madison. Retrieved 2008-03-13..
  17. ^ Africa may be able to feed only 25% of its population by 2025
  18. ^ Environmental failure: a case for a new green politics
  19. ^ "CERA says peak oil theory is faulty". Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA). 2006-11-14. Retrieved 2008-07-27.