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ensimple/5215.html.txt

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+The Soviet Union (short for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or USSR) [10] was a single-party Marxist–Leninist state. It existed for 69 years, from 1922 until 1991. It was the first country to declare itself socialist and build towards a communist society. It was a union of 14 Soviet Socialist Republics and one Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Russia).
+
+The Soviet Union was created about five years after the Russian Revolution. It was announced after Vladimir Lenin overthrew Alexander Kerensky as Russian leader. The communist government developed industry and over time became a major, powerful union. The largest country in the Union was Russia, and Kazakhstan was the second. The capital city of the Soviet Union was Moscow. The Soviet Union expanded its political control greatly after World War II. It took over the whole of Eastern Europe. Those countries were not made part of the Soviet Union, but they were controlled by the Soviet Union indirectly. These countries, like Poland, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany, were called satellite states.
+
+The top-level committee which made the laws was the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. In practice, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the leader and most important decision-maker in their system of government.
+
+Although the constitution said the Republics could leave the Union if they wanted, in practice it was a completely centralized government, with no states' rights for the member countries. Many believe[who?] that the Soviet Union was the final stage of the Russian Empire, since the USSR covered most of the land of the former Empire.
+
+The Union was formed with the professed idea to give everyone equal social and economic rights. There was virtually no private property—everything belonged to the state. 'Soviets', or workers' councils, were created by the working class to lead the socialist state democratically, but they soon lost power with the rise of Stalinism. The Union was successful in many fields, putting the first man and satellite into space and winning World War II alongside the United States and United Kingdom. However, its centralized government found innovation and change difficult to handle. The Union collapsed in 1991, partly due to the efforts at reform by its leader, Mikhail Gorbachev.
+
+Since 2013, the document that confirmed the dissolution of the Soviet Union has been missing.[11]
+
+The Soviet Union was made of 15 republics. These were either Soviet Socialist Republics, or Soviet Socialist Federal Republics. Each republic was independent and handled its own cultural affairs. Each also had the right to leave the union, which they did in 1991.
+
+The Federal Republics were different in that they had more autonomy, and were made up of states themselves. These were often called Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics. There were a number of them. Most of them still exist; though they are now republics, within the independent state. The Tatar ASSR turned into the Republic of Tatarstan, for example (It is located around Kazan).
+
+The Soviet Union at its largest size in 1991, with 22,400,000 square kilometres (8,600,000 sq mi), was the world's biggest country. Covering a sixth of the world's lived in land, its size was comparable to North America's. The western part (in Europe) accounted for a quarter of the country's area, and was the country's cultural and economic center. The eastern part (in Asia) extended to the Pacific Ocean to the east and Afghanistan to the south, and was much less lived in than the western part. It was over 10,000 kilometres (6,200 mi) across (11 time zones) and almost 7,200 kilometres (4,500 mi) north to south. Its five climatic (different weather, temperature, humidity and atmospheric pressure) zones were tundra, taiga, steppes, desert, and mountains.
+
+The Soviet Union had the world's longest border, measuring over 60,000 kilometres (37,000 mi) in 1991. Two thirds of the Soviet border was coastline of the Arctic Ocean. Across the Bering Strait was the United States. The Soviet Union bordered Afghanistan, China, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Hungary, Iran, Mongolia, North Korea, Norway, Poland, Romania, and Turkey at the end of WWII.
+
+The Soviet Union's longest river was the Irtysh. The Soviet Union's highest mountain was Communism Peak (today it is called the Ismail Samani Peak) in Tajikistan measured at 7,495 metres (24,590 ft). The world's largest lake, the Caspian Sea, was mostly in the Soviet Union. The world's deepest lake, Lake Baikal, was in the Soviet Union.
+
+The last Russian Tsar (emperor), Nicholas II, ruled Russia until March 1917, when the Russian Empire was taken over and a short-lived "provisional government" replaced it, led by Alexander Kerensky and soon to be overthrown in November by Bolsheviks.
+
+From 1917 to 1922, the country that came before the Soviet Union was the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), which was its own country, as were other Soviet republics at the time. The Soviet Union was officially created in December 1922 as the union of the Russian (also known as Bolshevist Russia), Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Transcaucasian Soviet republics ruled by the communist Bolshevik parties.
+
+Extreme government-changing activity in the Russian Empire began with the Decembrist Revolt of 1825, and although serfdom was removed in 1861, its removal was achieved on terms unfavorable to the peasants (poor agricultural workers) and served to encourage changers (revolutionaries). A parliament (legislative assembly)—the State Duma—was created in 1906 after the Russian Revolution of 1905, but the Tsar protested people trying to move from absolute to constitutional monarchy. Rebellion continued and was aggravated during World War I by failure and food shortages in popular cities.
+
+A rebellion in Saint Petersburg, in response to the wartime decay of Russia's economy and morale, caused the "February Revolution" and the removal of the government in March 1917. The tsarist autocracy was replaced by the Russian "Provisional government", whose leaders intended to have elections to Russian Constituent Assembly and to continue war on the side of the Entente in World War I.
+
+At the same time, workers' councils, known as Soviets, sprang up across the country. The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, pushed for socialist revolution in the Soviets and on the streets. In November 1917, during the "October Revolution", they took power from the Provisional Government. In December, the Bolsheviks signed an armistice (peace) with the Central Powers. In March, after more fighting, the Soviets quit the war for good and signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
+
+In the long and bloody Russian Civil War the new Soviet power won. The civil war between the Reds and the Whites started in 1917 and ended in 1923. It included the Siberian Intervention and other foreign interference, the killing of Nicholas II and his family and the famine in 1921, which killed about 5 million. In March 1921, during a related conflict with Poland, the Peace of Riga was signed and split disputed territories in Belarus and Ukraine between the Republic of Poland and Soviet Russia. The Soviet Union had to resolve similar conflicts with the newly established Republic of Finland, the Republic of Estonia, the Republic of Latvia, and the Republic of Lithuania which had all escaped the empire during the civil war.
+
+On 28 December 1922, people from the Russian SFSR, the Transcaucasian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Byelorussian SSR approved the Treaty of Creation of the USSR and the Declaration of the Creation of the USSR, creating the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. These two documents were made true by the 1st Congress of Soviets of the USSR and signed by heads of delegations.
+
+On 1 February 1924, the USSR was accepted as a country by the British Empire. Also in 1924, a Soviet Constitution (set of laws) was approved, making true the December 1922 union of the Russian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, the Belarusian SSR, and the Transcaucasian SFSR to form the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" (USSR).
+
+The big changes of the economy, industry and politics of the country began in the early days of Soviet power in 1917. A large part of this was performed according to Bolshevik Initial Decrees, documents of the Soviet government, signed by Vladimir Lenin. One of the most important and notable breakthroughs was the GOELRO plan, that planned a major change of the Soviet economy based on total electrification of the country. The Plan was developed in 1920 and covered a 10- to 15-year period. It included the making of a network of 30 regional power stations, including ten large hydroelectric power plants, and numerous electric-powered large industrial organizations. The Plan became the prototype for subsequent Five-Year Plans and was basically fulfilled by 1931.
+The End
+
+From its beginning years, government in the Soviet Union was ruled as a one-party state by the Communist Party (Bolsheviks). After the economic policy of War Communism during the Civil War, the Soviet government permitted some private enterprise to coexist with nationalized industry in the 1920s and total food requisition in the countryside was replaced by a food tax (see New Economic Policy).
+
+Soviet leaders argued that one-party rule was necessary because it ensured that 'capitalist exploitation' would not return to the Soviet Union and that the principles of Democratic Centralism would represent the people's will. Debate over the future of the economy provided the background for Soviet leaders to take more power in the years after Lenin's death in 1924. Initially, Lenin was to be replaced by a "troika" composed of Grigory Zinoviev of Ukraine, Lev Kamenev of Moscow, and Joseph Stalin of Georgia.
+
+Stalin led the country through World War II and into the Cold War. Gulag camps greatly expanded to take millions of prisoners. After he died, Georgy Malenkov, continued his policies. Nikita Khrushchev reversed some of Stalin's policies but Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin kept things as they were.
+
+After the 1936 revised constitution, the Soviet Union stopped acting as a union of republics and more as a single super-country.
+
+Stalin died on 5 March 1953. Nikita Khrushchev eventually won the following power struggle by the mid-1950s. In 1956 he denounced Stalin's repression and eased controls over party and society. This was known as de-Stalinization.
+
+Moscow considered Eastern Europe to be a very vital buffer zone for the forward defense of its western borders. For this reason, the USSR sought to strengthen its control of the region. It did this by transforming the Eastern European countries into satellite states, dependent upon and obedient to its leadership. Soviet military force was used to suppress anti-Stalinist uprisings in Hungary and Poland in 1956.
+
+In the late 1950s, a confrontation with China regarding the USSR's policies led to the Sino–Soviet split. This resulted in a break throughout the global Marxist–Leninist movement. The governments in Albania, Cambodia and Somalia chose to ally with China instead of the USSR.
+
+During this period of the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Soviet Union continued to make progress in the Space Race. It rivalled the United States. The USSR launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1 in 1957; a living dog named Laika in 1957; the first human being, Yuri Gagarin in 1961; the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova in 1963; Alexei Leonov, the first person to walk in space in 1965; the first soft landing on the Moon by spacecraft Luna 9 in 1966; and the first Moon rovers, Lunokhod 1 and Lunokhod 2.
+
+Leonid Brezhnev led the Soviet Union from 1964 until his death in 1982. He came to power after he convinced the government to overthrow the then-leader Nikita Krushchev. Brezhnev's rule is often linked with the decline in Soviet economy and starting the chain of events that would lead to the union's eventual collapse. He had many self-awarded medals. He was awarded Hero of the Soviet Union (the highest honor) on three separate occasions. Brezhnev was succeeded by Yuri Andropov, who died a few years later. Andropov was succeeded by the frail and aging Konstantin Chernenko. Chernenko died a mere year after taking office.
+
+In 1980 the Soviet Union hosted the Summer Olympics with Brezhnev opening and closing the games. The games were heavily boycotted by the western nations, particularly the United States. During the closing ceremony, the flag of the City of Los Angeles was raised instead of the flag of the United States (to symbolise the next host city/nation) and the anthem of the Olympics was played instead of the anthem of the United States in response to the boycott.
+
+Brezhnev was the second longest serving Soviet leader after Stalin. The Following is a list of leaders (General Secretary of the Communist Party) in order of their tenure and length of leadership:
+
+Khrushchev and Gorbachev are the only Soviet leaders to have not died whilst in office. Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev are the only leaders who were not (de jure) head of state during their leaderships.
+
+Mikhail Gorbachev was the Soviet Union's last leader. He was the only Soviet leader to have been born after the October revolution and was thus a product of the Soviet Union having grown up in it. He and US president Ronald Reagan signed a treaty to get rid of some nuclear weapons. Gorbachev started social and economic reforms that gave people freedom of speech; which allowed them to criticise the government and its policies. The ruling communist party lost its grip on the media and the people. Newspapers began printing the many failures that the Soviet Union had covered up and denied in its past. The Soviet Union's economy was lagging and the government was spending a lot of money on competing with the west.
+
+By the 1980s the Soviet economy was suffering but it was stable. Gorbachev's new ideas had gotten out of hand and the communist party lost control.  Boris Yeltsin was elected (democratically) the President of the Russian SFSR even though Gorbachev did not want him to come into power. Lithuania announced its independence from the Union and the Soviet government demanded it surrender its independence or it would send the Red Army to keep order.  Gorbachev invented the idea of keeping the Soviet Union together with each republic being more independent but under the same leader.  He wanted to call it the 'Union of Soviet Sovereign Republics' to keep the Russian initials as CCCP (USSR in English).
+
+A group of communist leaders, unhappy with Gorbachev's idea, tried to take over Moscow and stop the Soviet Union from collapsing.  It only made people want independence more. Although he survived the attempted takeover, he lost all of his power outside of Moscow. Russia declared independence in December 1991. Later in the month, leaders of Russia, Byelorussia and Ukraine signed a treaty called the Belavezha Agreement to dissolve the USSR, extremely angering Gorbachev. He had no choice but to accept the treaty and resigned on Christmas Day 1991. The Soviet Union's parliament (Supreme Soviet) made the Belavezha Agreement law, marking formally the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The next day the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time.

ensimple/5216.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,70 @@
+The Soviet Union (short for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or USSR) [10] was a single-party Marxist–Leninist state. It existed for 69 years, from 1922 until 1991. It was the first country to declare itself socialist and build towards a communist society. It was a union of 14 Soviet Socialist Republics and one Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Russia).
+
+The Soviet Union was created about five years after the Russian Revolution. It was announced after Vladimir Lenin overthrew Alexander Kerensky as Russian leader. The communist government developed industry and over time became a major, powerful union. The largest country in the Union was Russia, and Kazakhstan was the second. The capital city of the Soviet Union was Moscow. The Soviet Union expanded its political control greatly after World War II. It took over the whole of Eastern Europe. Those countries were not made part of the Soviet Union, but they were controlled by the Soviet Union indirectly. These countries, like Poland, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany, were called satellite states.
+
+The top-level committee which made the laws was the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. In practice, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the leader and most important decision-maker in their system of government.
+
+Although the constitution said the Republics could leave the Union if they wanted, in practice it was a completely centralized government, with no states' rights for the member countries. Many believe[who?] that the Soviet Union was the final stage of the Russian Empire, since the USSR covered most of the land of the former Empire.
+
+The Union was formed with the professed idea to give everyone equal social and economic rights. There was virtually no private property—everything belonged to the state. 'Soviets', or workers' councils, were created by the working class to lead the socialist state democratically, but they soon lost power with the rise of Stalinism. The Union was successful in many fields, putting the first man and satellite into space and winning World War II alongside the United States and United Kingdom. However, its centralized government found innovation and change difficult to handle. The Union collapsed in 1991, partly due to the efforts at reform by its leader, Mikhail Gorbachev.
+
+Since 2013, the document that confirmed the dissolution of the Soviet Union has been missing.[11]
+
+The Soviet Union was made of 15 republics. These were either Soviet Socialist Republics, or Soviet Socialist Federal Republics. Each republic was independent and handled its own cultural affairs. Each also had the right to leave the union, which they did in 1991.
+
+The Federal Republics were different in that they had more autonomy, and were made up of states themselves. These were often called Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics. There were a number of them. Most of them still exist; though they are now republics, within the independent state. The Tatar ASSR turned into the Republic of Tatarstan, for example (It is located around Kazan).
+
+The Soviet Union at its largest size in 1991, with 22,400,000 square kilometres (8,600,000 sq mi), was the world's biggest country. Covering a sixth of the world's lived in land, its size was comparable to North America's. The western part (in Europe) accounted for a quarter of the country's area, and was the country's cultural and economic center. The eastern part (in Asia) extended to the Pacific Ocean to the east and Afghanistan to the south, and was much less lived in than the western part. It was over 10,000 kilometres (6,200 mi) across (11 time zones) and almost 7,200 kilometres (4,500 mi) north to south. Its five climatic (different weather, temperature, humidity and atmospheric pressure) zones were tundra, taiga, steppes, desert, and mountains.
+
+The Soviet Union had the world's longest border, measuring over 60,000 kilometres (37,000 mi) in 1991. Two thirds of the Soviet border was coastline of the Arctic Ocean. Across the Bering Strait was the United States. The Soviet Union bordered Afghanistan, China, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Hungary, Iran, Mongolia, North Korea, Norway, Poland, Romania, and Turkey at the end of WWII.
+
+The Soviet Union's longest river was the Irtysh. The Soviet Union's highest mountain was Communism Peak (today it is called the Ismail Samani Peak) in Tajikistan measured at 7,495 metres (24,590 ft). The world's largest lake, the Caspian Sea, was mostly in the Soviet Union. The world's deepest lake, Lake Baikal, was in the Soviet Union.
+
+The last Russian Tsar (emperor), Nicholas II, ruled Russia until March 1917, when the Russian Empire was taken over and a short-lived "provisional government" replaced it, led by Alexander Kerensky and soon to be overthrown in November by Bolsheviks.
+
+From 1917 to 1922, the country that came before the Soviet Union was the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), which was its own country, as were other Soviet republics at the time. The Soviet Union was officially created in December 1922 as the union of the Russian (also known as Bolshevist Russia), Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Transcaucasian Soviet republics ruled by the communist Bolshevik parties.
+
+Extreme government-changing activity in the Russian Empire began with the Decembrist Revolt of 1825, and although serfdom was removed in 1861, its removal was achieved on terms unfavorable to the peasants (poor agricultural workers) and served to encourage changers (revolutionaries). A parliament (legislative assembly)—the State Duma—was created in 1906 after the Russian Revolution of 1905, but the Tsar protested people trying to move from absolute to constitutional monarchy. Rebellion continued and was aggravated during World War I by failure and food shortages in popular cities.
+
+A rebellion in Saint Petersburg, in response to the wartime decay of Russia's economy and morale, caused the "February Revolution" and the removal of the government in March 1917. The tsarist autocracy was replaced by the Russian "Provisional government", whose leaders intended to have elections to Russian Constituent Assembly and to continue war on the side of the Entente in World War I.
+
+At the same time, workers' councils, known as Soviets, sprang up across the country. The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, pushed for socialist revolution in the Soviets and on the streets. In November 1917, during the "October Revolution", they took power from the Provisional Government. In December, the Bolsheviks signed an armistice (peace) with the Central Powers. In March, after more fighting, the Soviets quit the war for good and signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
+
+In the long and bloody Russian Civil War the new Soviet power won. The civil war between the Reds and the Whites started in 1917 and ended in 1923. It included the Siberian Intervention and other foreign interference, the killing of Nicholas II and his family and the famine in 1921, which killed about 5 million. In March 1921, during a related conflict with Poland, the Peace of Riga was signed and split disputed territories in Belarus and Ukraine between the Republic of Poland and Soviet Russia. The Soviet Union had to resolve similar conflicts with the newly established Republic of Finland, the Republic of Estonia, the Republic of Latvia, and the Republic of Lithuania which had all escaped the empire during the civil war.
+
+On 28 December 1922, people from the Russian SFSR, the Transcaucasian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Byelorussian SSR approved the Treaty of Creation of the USSR and the Declaration of the Creation of the USSR, creating the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. These two documents were made true by the 1st Congress of Soviets of the USSR and signed by heads of delegations.
+
+On 1 February 1924, the USSR was accepted as a country by the British Empire. Also in 1924, a Soviet Constitution (set of laws) was approved, making true the December 1922 union of the Russian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, the Belarusian SSR, and the Transcaucasian SFSR to form the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" (USSR).
+
+The big changes of the economy, industry and politics of the country began in the early days of Soviet power in 1917. A large part of this was performed according to Bolshevik Initial Decrees, documents of the Soviet government, signed by Vladimir Lenin. One of the most important and notable breakthroughs was the GOELRO plan, that planned a major change of the Soviet economy based on total electrification of the country. The Plan was developed in 1920 and covered a 10- to 15-year period. It included the making of a network of 30 regional power stations, including ten large hydroelectric power plants, and numerous electric-powered large industrial organizations. The Plan became the prototype for subsequent Five-Year Plans and was basically fulfilled by 1931.
+The End
+
+From its beginning years, government in the Soviet Union was ruled as a one-party state by the Communist Party (Bolsheviks). After the economic policy of War Communism during the Civil War, the Soviet government permitted some private enterprise to coexist with nationalized industry in the 1920s and total food requisition in the countryside was replaced by a food tax (see New Economic Policy).
+
+Soviet leaders argued that one-party rule was necessary because it ensured that 'capitalist exploitation' would not return to the Soviet Union and that the principles of Democratic Centralism would represent the people's will. Debate over the future of the economy provided the background for Soviet leaders to take more power in the years after Lenin's death in 1924. Initially, Lenin was to be replaced by a "troika" composed of Grigory Zinoviev of Ukraine, Lev Kamenev of Moscow, and Joseph Stalin of Georgia.
+
+Stalin led the country through World War II and into the Cold War. Gulag camps greatly expanded to take millions of prisoners. After he died, Georgy Malenkov, continued his policies. Nikita Khrushchev reversed some of Stalin's policies but Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin kept things as they were.
+
+After the 1936 revised constitution, the Soviet Union stopped acting as a union of republics and more as a single super-country.
+
+Stalin died on 5 March 1953. Nikita Khrushchev eventually won the following power struggle by the mid-1950s. In 1956 he denounced Stalin's repression and eased controls over party and society. This was known as de-Stalinization.
+
+Moscow considered Eastern Europe to be a very vital buffer zone for the forward defense of its western borders. For this reason, the USSR sought to strengthen its control of the region. It did this by transforming the Eastern European countries into satellite states, dependent upon and obedient to its leadership. Soviet military force was used to suppress anti-Stalinist uprisings in Hungary and Poland in 1956.
+
+In the late 1950s, a confrontation with China regarding the USSR's policies led to the Sino–Soviet split. This resulted in a break throughout the global Marxist–Leninist movement. The governments in Albania, Cambodia and Somalia chose to ally with China instead of the USSR.
+
+During this period of the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Soviet Union continued to make progress in the Space Race. It rivalled the United States. The USSR launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1 in 1957; a living dog named Laika in 1957; the first human being, Yuri Gagarin in 1961; the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova in 1963; Alexei Leonov, the first person to walk in space in 1965; the first soft landing on the Moon by spacecraft Luna 9 in 1966; and the first Moon rovers, Lunokhod 1 and Lunokhod 2.
+
+Leonid Brezhnev led the Soviet Union from 1964 until his death in 1982. He came to power after he convinced the government to overthrow the then-leader Nikita Krushchev. Brezhnev's rule is often linked with the decline in Soviet economy and starting the chain of events that would lead to the union's eventual collapse. He had many self-awarded medals. He was awarded Hero of the Soviet Union (the highest honor) on three separate occasions. Brezhnev was succeeded by Yuri Andropov, who died a few years later. Andropov was succeeded by the frail and aging Konstantin Chernenko. Chernenko died a mere year after taking office.
+
+In 1980 the Soviet Union hosted the Summer Olympics with Brezhnev opening and closing the games. The games were heavily boycotted by the western nations, particularly the United States. During the closing ceremony, the flag of the City of Los Angeles was raised instead of the flag of the United States (to symbolise the next host city/nation) and the anthem of the Olympics was played instead of the anthem of the United States in response to the boycott.
+
+Brezhnev was the second longest serving Soviet leader after Stalin. The Following is a list of leaders (General Secretary of the Communist Party) in order of their tenure and length of leadership:
+
+Khrushchev and Gorbachev are the only Soviet leaders to have not died whilst in office. Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev are the only leaders who were not (de jure) head of state during their leaderships.
+
+Mikhail Gorbachev was the Soviet Union's last leader. He was the only Soviet leader to have been born after the October revolution and was thus a product of the Soviet Union having grown up in it. He and US president Ronald Reagan signed a treaty to get rid of some nuclear weapons. Gorbachev started social and economic reforms that gave people freedom of speech; which allowed them to criticise the government and its policies. The ruling communist party lost its grip on the media and the people. Newspapers began printing the many failures that the Soviet Union had covered up and denied in its past. The Soviet Union's economy was lagging and the government was spending a lot of money on competing with the west.
+
+By the 1980s the Soviet economy was suffering but it was stable. Gorbachev's new ideas had gotten out of hand and the communist party lost control.  Boris Yeltsin was elected (democratically) the President of the Russian SFSR even though Gorbachev did not want him to come into power. Lithuania announced its independence from the Union and the Soviet government demanded it surrender its independence or it would send the Red Army to keep order.  Gorbachev invented the idea of keeping the Soviet Union together with each republic being more independent but under the same leader.  He wanted to call it the 'Union of Soviet Sovereign Republics' to keep the Russian initials as CCCP (USSR in English).
+
+A group of communist leaders, unhappy with Gorbachev's idea, tried to take over Moscow and stop the Soviet Union from collapsing.  It only made people want independence more. Although he survived the attempted takeover, he lost all of his power outside of Moscow. Russia declared independence in December 1991. Later in the month, leaders of Russia, Byelorussia and Ukraine signed a treaty called the Belavezha Agreement to dissolve the USSR, extremely angering Gorbachev. He had no choice but to accept the treaty and resigned on Christmas Day 1991. The Soviet Union's parliament (Supreme Soviet) made the Belavezha Agreement law, marking formally the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The next day the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time.

ensimple/5217.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+Rutherford Birchard Hayes (October 4, 1822 - January 17, 1893) was the 19th President of the United States. He served only one term, from 1877 to 1881. Hayes was a Republican. He was elected governor of Ohio three times before becoming president. Hayes barely won the election of 1876, only defeating Democratic opponent Samuel Tilden after a Congressional committee gave Hayes some disputed electoral votes.
+
+Hayes was born in Delaware, Ohio. He went to Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and then went to Harvard Law School. After graduating from law school, he became a lawyer.[1] In 1849, he joined the Republican Party, which was new then, because he was against slavery.[2] In 1852, he married Lucy Webb, a woman who was also against slavery. In the 1860s, he served in the American Civil War on the Union side, and became a major general. After the war ended, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a part of the Republican Party. In 1867, he became the governor of Ohio.
+
+Ulysses S. Grant had been president since 1869, and was not going to run for president a third time in 1876. Grant was a member of the Republican Party, and while he was president, became known for allowing corruption to go on around him. The Republican Party did not want people to think that everybody in the party was corrupt, so they decided to make Hayes their candidate. They thought he was a good candidate because he had made many changes in Ohio while he was governor there that people thought were good, and because he was thought to have been a hero in the Civil War.
+
+Hayes ran against Samuel Tilden, whom the Democratic Party nominated. The election was close, and many people who did not think that Hayes fairly won the election called him "His Fraudulency".[3] Tilden actually got more votes than Hayes, but Hayes got 185 votes in the Electoral College, while Tilden got 184, so Hayes won the election.[4]
+
+While he was president, Hayes ended the Reconstruction period that followed the American Civil War. Rutherford B. Hayes ordered military forces that had been in the Southern states to leave. He also sent federal troops to end a railroad strike. Hayes refused to seek a second term as president.
+
+After being president, Hayes retired to Fremont, Ohio where he would die of a heart attack on January 17, 1893. Meanwhile, He spent time talking about his beliefs that all children should have the chance to go to school, that people who had been in the military should get their fair payments for their service, and that people in prisons should be treated better.[5]

ensimple/5218.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,25 @@
+Rwanda is a country in Africa. It is near Burundi, Congo-Kinshasa, Uganda, and Tanzania. The official language is Kinyarwanda.  It is now known mostly because it is the place where the most efficient genocide in history happened.[source?]
+
+During the Scramble for Africa, Belgium conquered Rwanda. The Belgians then began to divide Rwandans into groups: Bahutu, and Batutsi. The Belgians picked people that they thought looked more European to be abatutsi. The rest became abahutu. The Belgians told Rwandans that Batutsi were superior to Bahutu. They allowed Batutsi to rule over Bahutu.
+
+On July 1, 1962, Rwanda became independent and Bahutu were given power. Thus, anti-Tutsi purges occurred frequently. Many abatutsi fled to Uganda, where they formed the Rwandan Patriotic Front, or RPF, which tried to invade Rwanda in 1990.
+
+On the night of April 6, 1994, dictator Juvénal Habyarimana's plane was shot down, but it is still not clear who did it. Within half an hour, roadblocks manned by the Interahamwe militia were seen all over the capital, Kigali. The Genocide against Tutsi had begun. It lasted for about 100 days, and it left over one million, (1,000,000), Tutsi and moderate Hutu dead. The main weapon used was the machete, or umupanga. Other countries paid little attention to the killing. On July 2, 1994, the RPF captured Kigali. The other countries let the Rwandans sort out their own problems because they didn't care.
+
+There are five provinces in Rwanda.  These are Northern Province, Southern Province, Eastern Province, Western Province, and the Kigali City in the centre.
+
+This is a list of districts in Rwanda.
+
+At 26,338 square kilometres (10,169 sq mi), Rwanda is the world's 149th-largest country. The entire country is at a high altitude.  The lowest point is the Rusizi River at 950 metres (3,117 ft) above sea level. Rwanda is in Central/Eastern Africa.  It is bordered by the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, Uganda to the north, Tanzania to the east, and Burundi to the south. It is a few degrees south of the equator and is landlocked. The capital, Kigali, is near the centre of Rwanda.
+
+The country's longest river is the Nyabarongo. The Nyabarongo-Kagera eventually drains into Lake Victoria. Rwanda has many lakes, the largest being Lake Kivu. It is one of the twenty deepest lakes in the world. Other sizeable lakes include Burera, Ruhondo, Muhazi, Rweru, and Ihema. Ihema is the largest of a string of lakes in the eastern plains of Akagera National Park.
+
+There are many mountains in central and western Rwanda. The highest peaks are found in the Virunga volcano chain in the northwest. This includes Mount Karisimbi, Rwanda's highest point, at 4,507 metres (14,787 ft). The centre of the country is mostly rolling hills. The eastern border area has savanna, plains and swamps.
+
+Rwanda has a temperate tropical highland climate.  It has lower temperatures than are typical for equatorial countries.  This is because of its high elevation. Kigali, in the centre of the country, has a typical daily temperature range between 12 °C (54 °F) and 27 °C (81 °F).  There is little change through the year. There are two rainy seasons in the year. The first runs from February to June and the second from September to December. These are separated by two dry seasons.  The major one is from June to September, during which there is often no rain at all.  There is a shorter and less severe one from December to February.
+
+In prehistoric times montane forest occupied covered one third of the land of present-day Rwanda. Naturally occurring vegetation is now mostly in the three National Parks, with terraced agriculture in the rest of the country. Nyungwe, the largest remaining forest, has 200 species of tree as well as orchids and begonias. Vegetation in the Volcanoes National Park is mostly bamboo and moorland, with small areas of forest. Akagera has a savanna ecosystem.  Here there are mostly acacia. There are several rare or endangered plant species in Akagera, including Markhamia lutea and Eulophia guineensis.
+
+The greatest diversity of large mammals is found in the three National Parks. Akagera has typical savanna animals such as giraffes and elephants, while Volcanoes is home to about one third of the worldwide mountain gorilla population. Nyungwe Forest has thirteen primate species including chimpanzees and Ruwenzori colobus arboreal monkeys. The Ruwenzori colobus move in groups of up to 400, the largest troop size of any primate in Africa.
+
+There are 670 bird species in Rwanda.  There is a difference between the east and the west. Nyungwe Forest, in the west, has 280 recorded species. Species include the Ruwenzori Turaco and Handsome Francolin. Eastern Rwanda, by contrast, has savanna birds such as the Black-headed Gonolek and those who live near swamps and lakes, including storks and cranes.

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+The word savanna comes from a Panamanian word for prairie or plains. 
+They are covered with tall grasses. They may have scattered bushes and trees, but not enough to keep grasses from growing.  The most common definition of savanna is the tropical grassland, such as in Africa. They have seasonal rains and dry periods.  All savanna plants and trees can survive periods of drought.[1] Most savannas  get enough rain to support a forest, but the forest never happens because something keeps the trees from growing.  This can be animals that graze and knock over trees (like elephants in Africa), or fires that kill most kinds of trees.  Instead there is lots of grasses and other plants that can regrow from the roots.[2]
+
+The savannas of Africa are the best known savannas. Some herbivores found in the savanna are antelopes, impalas, gazelles, buffalos, wildebeests, zebras, rhinos, giraffes, elephants, and warthogs. There is also a large number of carnivores, including cats (lions, leopards, cheetahs, servals), dogs (jackals, wild dogs), and hyenas. The vegetation in the Eastern African is also rich with grass and some scattered trees, mostly acacia trees.  The dry season is the winter, from December to February it may not rain at all.  But in the summer there is lots of rain.[1]
+
+In North America, the word savanna is also used to describe the tall grass prairies that have scattered trees, typically oaks.  This is a temperate climate (colder than the tropics).  It is called an oak savanna since the oak tree is the main tree.  At least half of the view of the sky must be open.  If there are more trees, then it is called a grove or a woodland.  If there are fewer trees, it is a prairie. (If there are many kinds of trees and brush and very little grass, then it is a forest).  Oak savannas are found in California and Oregon on the west coast.  In the southwest it is found in Arizona, New Mexico, and northern Mexico.  In the midwest it is found in the tall-grass prairie.  Often a grove or a savanna is east of a river, which stopped the fire often enough to let trees grow.  Large oak trees will survive grass fires.  The savannas in the midwest of the United States are kept open by regular fires, not because it is too dry for many trees.[3]
+
+Brazil's cerrado is an open woodland of short twisted trees. The are many kinds of plants and animals here, many that don't exist anywhere else on earth.
+The llanos of the Orinoco basin of Venezuela and Colombia are grass savannas, some parts of it get flooded every year.
+
+Northern Australia also has a savanna. Eucalyptus trees are the main tree in the Australian savanna. There are many species of kangaroos but not much else.[1]

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+
+
+The blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) is a marine mammal of the suborder of baleen whales (called Mysticeti). They grow to be about 30 meters long. The biggest blue whale found was 190 tons and measured 98 feet long.[2][3] Larger specimens have been measured at 110 feet, but never weighed. This makes blue whales the largest animals ever to be on Earth, even bigger than the largest dinosaurs.
+
+The blue whale eats mostly very tiny creatures, like krill. These inch-long, shrimp-like crustacean swim in swarms. In the Antarctic summer, there are so many of these krill that they turn the waters orange. A blue whale can eat eight to ten tons of krill every day.[4]
+
+The blue whale's body is long and slender. It can be various shades of bluish-grey above and somewhat lighter underneath.[5] There are at least three distinct subspecies: B. m. musculus of the North Atlantic and North Pacific, B. m. intermedia of the Southern Ocean and B. m. brevicauda (also known as the pygmy blue whale) found in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific Ocean. B. m. indica, found in the Indian Ocean, may be another subspecies. As with other baleen whales, its diet consists almost exclusively of small krill.[6]
+
+Blue whales were once abundant around the world. In the nineteenth century, they were hunted almost to extinction by whalers. They were finally protected by the international community in 1966. A 2002 report estimated there were 5,000 to 12,000 blue whales worldwide,[7] located in at least five groups. More recent research into the Pygmy subspecies suggests this may be an underestimate.[8] Before whaling, the largest population was in the Antarctic, numbering approximately 239,000 (range 202,000 to 311,000).[9] There remain only much smaller (around 2,000) concentrations in each of the eastern North Pacific, Antarctic, and Indian Ocean groups. There are two more groups in the North Atlantic, and at least two in the Southern Hemisphere.

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+Sand is a mixture of very small pieces of different rocks or minerals. It is the same minerals from which those pieces are broken, such as granite and feldspar. Sand is gritty to touch. It is a naturally occurring granular material composed of finely divided rock and mineral particles. Sand is also formed various rocks by weathering and erosion. Erosion breaks large boulders into smaller rocks. They get smaller and smaller until they reach the beach or a low-lying area as sand.
+
+Sand grains are between the size of gravel grains (which is from 2 mm to 64 mm) and the size of silt (which is around 0.0625 mm to 0.004 mm). Most sand is found on beaches, and in deserts. The most common sands are made of silica (silicon dioxide, or SiO2). Calcium carbonate is the second more common.
+
+Sand dunes are made when wind or a river pulls sand into a mountain-like shape. They can be found in deserts, but sometimes high up on beaches too.
+
+Sand is crucial in the process of mixing concrete. It can also be used to make sand castles. Sand is sometimes in households for aesthetic purposes.
+
+Sand dune on a beach in Calabria.
+
+A sand road in Namibia
+
+Media related to Sand at Wikimedia Commons
+

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+A clog is a kind of shoe. There are different kinds of clogs. They can be shoes, sandals or completely made out of wood.
+

ensimple/5222.html.txt

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+Safari is a web browser developed by Apple Inc. which can be downloaded free of charge.  It also comes with a Mac computer.  It is based on the WebKit engine, which is a fork of KDE's KHTML engine.
+
+Apple Inc. replaced the previous default web browser, Internet Explorer, with their Safari many years ago. Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, said that it would be released in January of 2003. Since then, 6 types of Safari have been made. The newest one was made in June of 2012.
+
+Safari has a number of features. Some are specific to certain operating systems or platforms.
+Here is a list of some of Safari's features:
+

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+Safari is a web browser developed by Apple Inc. which can be downloaded free of charge.  It also comes with a Mac computer.  It is based on the WebKit engine, which is a fork of KDE's KHTML engine.
+
+Apple Inc. replaced the previous default web browser, Internet Explorer, with their Safari many years ago. Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, said that it would be released in January of 2003. Since then, 6 types of Safari have been made. The newest one was made in June of 2012.
+
+Safari has a number of features. Some are specific to certain operating systems or platforms.
+Here is a list of some of Safari's features:
+

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+Wisdom is knowing things that help a person to live sensibly and make good decisions. Wisdom is defined differently by many cultures. Some say that wisdom is something a person learns as they grow older. Other cultures expect people to complete certain rituals in order to get wisdom.
+
+If someone has wisdom we say he is wise.
+
+Most cultures from the past have had special people who were supposed to be wise. People asked them for advice when they had problems because they knew things that ordinary people did not know or could not know. They were often called "sages".
+
+There are many stories in Western culture in which the owl is supposed to be a wise bird.
+
+
+

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+The Sahara[1] in North Africa, is the largest desert in the world except for Antarctica and is the largest hot desert.
+
+It is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the Atlas Mountains, the Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea, and the Sahel region. It runs through many countries including Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, and The Sudan. Most parts are uninhabited, but some people manage to survive in places where there is water.[2]
+
+The Sahara Desert is about 9,000,000 square kilometers (3.5 million square miles) in size. It has been both larger and smaller at different times. After the last ice age it became more fertile, then dried up again. It is the hottest place on the Earth, but not the driest. The driest is the Atacama Desert in South America. The Sahara has about the same size as the whole United States.
+
+The Sahara has one of the world's most harsh climates. Typically, the Sahara landscape experiences little rainfall, powerful winds and wide temperature ranges. In some areas, there can be no rainfall for up to years at a time.
+
+In the summer, daytime air temperatures across the Sahara often reach over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. In the winter, freezing temperatures may occur in the northern Sahara, and milder temperatures, across the southern Sahara. Snow may fall occasionally in some of the higher mountain ranges and rarely, on the desert floor.[3]
+
+The highest mountain is 3415 m, and is the Emi Koussi in Chad. Some mountain peaks in the Sahara Desert have snow even in the summer.[4][5] The main mountain ranges is the Atlas Mountains in Algeria. The Sahara's lowest point lies in the Qattara Depression in Egypt, at about 130 metres below sea level. Sand sheets and dunes are about 25% of the Sahara. The other parts are mountains, steppes with a lot of stones, and oases.[4]
+
+Several rivers run through the Sahara. However, most of them come and go through the seasons, except for the Nile River and Niger River.[4]
+
+Metallic minerals are very important to most Saharan countries. Algeria and Mauritania have several major deposits of iron ore.  There are also uranium mines, mostly in Niger.  A lot of phosphates are in Morocco and Western Sahara.  Petroleum is mainly found in Algeria, where it is very important to the economy.  While mineral exploitation has led to economic growth in Sahara, this has rarely helped the indigenous population, as skilled workers have been brought from other countries.
+
+Of the Sahara's around 4 million people, most live in Mauritania, Western Sahara, Algeria, Libya and Egypt.  Dominant groups of people are Sahrawis and Tuareg people.  The largest city is Nouakchott, Mauritania's capital.  Other important cities are Tamanrasset in Algeria, and Sebha and Ghat in Libya.
+
+Only 200,000 km² of the Sahara are fertile oases, where dates, corn, and fruits are grown. The few fertile regions today are fed by underground rivers and underground basins. Many of Sahara's oases rests in depressions (areas under sea level) allowing water to surface from underground reservoirs; artesian wells.
+
+The soil in Sahara is low in organic matter. The soil in depressions is often saline.
+
+Other sorts of vegetation include scattered concentrations of grasses, shrubs and trees in the highlands, as well as in the oases and along river beds. Some plants are well adjusted to the climate, allowing them to germinate within 3 days of rain and sow their seeds within 2 weeks after that.
+
+Animals living in the Sahara include gerbil, jerboa, cape hare and desert hedgehog, barbary sheep, oryx, gazelle, deer, wild ass, baboon, hyena, jackal, sand fox, weasel and mongoose. The bird life counts more than 300 species. Reptiles, including 4 species of snake also live here.  The most venomous scorpion in the world lives here.
+
+4,000 years ago, the Sahara was a thriving savanna grassland with a great variety of wildlife.  This included animals such as elephants and giraffes.  Climate change has caused the rainfall to be less and turn the Sahara into the barren, desert wilderness as we know it today.
+

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+The Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis (pronounced /seɪnt ˌkɪts ænd ˈniːvɪs/, also known as the Federation of Saint Christopher and Nevis),[2] is a federal nation made up of two small islands in the Caribbean Sea. It is the smallest independent country in the Western Hemisphere.
+
+The capital city is Basseterre. It is on the main island of St Kitts, also called Saint Christopher. The island of Nevis has some rights of self-government and two seats in the federal parliament.
+
+St Kitts and Nevis is about one-third of the way from Puerto Rico to Trinidad and Tobago.
+
+The headquarters of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank is in St Kitts. That bank controls the East Caribbean dollar.
+
+The two islands were part of the Leeward Islands Colony from 1871 to 1956, and of the West Indies Federation from 1958 to 1962.
+
+The Islands, plus Anguilla, got limited self-government in 1967.  Anguilla objected and the Metropolitan Police were sent there in 1968 to stop rioting. Until 19 December 1980 the official name of St Kitts and Nevis was Saint Christopher, Nevis and Anguilla.[3]
+
+St Kitts and Nevis became an independent Commonwealth realm in 1983, Anguilla has stayed a British overseas territory.
+
+In 1970, a movement to make Nevis separate from St Kitts started.
+
+In 1983, the constitution set up a 15-member National Assembly.  The Assembly is unicameral, that is, it only has one chamber.  3 members of the Assembly are appointed by the Governor General, on the advice of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition.  The other members are elected.  If the Speaker decides to stand for re-election he is automatically elected, without a contest.
+
+Nevis is responsible for its own internal affairs.  There is an eight-member Nevis Island Assembly, and an Island administration headed by the premier.
+
+The country has two main islands, Saint Kitts and Nevis. The highest peak, at 1,156 metres, is Mount Liamuiga. There is also a smaller island named Booby Island.  No one lives on Booby Island.
+
+The islands are of volcanic origin.  There are large central peaks covered in tropical rainforest.  People do not live on the steeper slopes leading to these peaks. Most of the people on both islands live closer to the sea. There are many rivers coming from the mountains of both islands.  These give fresh water to the people.  St. Kitts also has one small lake.
+
+The federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis is divided into fourteen parishes.  There are nine divisions on Saint Kitts and five on Nevis.
+
+Saint Kitts
+
+and
+Saddlers[4]
+
+Saint Kitts
+
+These are some of the more important cities and towns in Saint Kitts and Nevis.
+
+Cricket is common in Saint Kitts and Nevis. Top players go to the West Indies cricket team. The late Runako Morton was from Nevis. Saint Kitts and Nevis is the smallest country on Earth to ever host a World Cup event. It was one of the host venues of the 2007 Cricket World Cup.
+
+The St. Kitts and Nevis national football team, also known as the "Sugar Boyz", has had some international success. They went to the semifinal round of qualification for the 2006 FIFA World Cup in the CONCACAF region. Led by Glence Glasgow they defeated U.S. Virgin Islands and Barbados.  They then lost to Mexico, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago.
+
+The St. Kitts and Nevis Billiard Federation, SKNBF, is the governing body for cue sports across the two islands.
+
+Kim Collins is the country's best known track and field athlete. He has won gold medals in the 100 metres at both the World Championships in Athletics and Commonwealth Games. At the 2000 Sydney Olympics he was the country's first athlete to reach an Olympic final. He and three other athletes represented St. Kitts and Nevis at the 2008 Summer Olympics. The four by one hundred metre relay team won a bronze medal in the 2011 world championships.
+
+American writer and former figure skater and triathlete Kathryn Bertine was given dual citizenship.  She tried to qualify for the 2008 Summer Olympics representing St. Kitts and Nevis in women's cycling. She did not make enough points to go the Olympics.[5]
+
+St. Kitts and Nevis had two athletes ride in the time trial at the 2010 UCI Road World Championships.  Athletes included Reginald Douglas and James Weekes.[6]

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+Saint Denis is the patron saint of France.
+
+Saint Denis was the first bishop of Paris. He supposedly went there between 250 and 270. He was executed in 272. According to legend, he was beheaded. After his beheading, he walked away, his head under his arms, along what is today the Rue des Martyrs in Paris. After about 6 km (3.7 mi), he gave his head to a pious woman, who had a basilica erected in the spot.

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+Saint Lucia is a tropical island country in the eastern Caribbean Sea. It is a part of the Lesser Antilles, and it is north of the islands of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and south of Martinique.  As of 2010 there are about 174,000 people.
+
+The official language is English.[1][2] Saint Lucian Creole French (Kwéyòl), which is a French-based Creole is spoken by 95% of the people.  About 70% of the people are Roman Catholic.
+
+Two Nobel laureates, Arthur Lewis, an economist, and Derek Walcott, a poet and playwright, have come from the island.
+
+Saint Lucia is a full and participating member of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) and La Francophonie.
+
+Saint Lucia has 11 quarters, or parishes of the island.
+
+The cities in Saint Lucia are:
+
+The volcanic island of Saint Lucia is more mountainous than many other Caribbean islands. The highest point is Mount Gimie, at 950 metres (3,120 ft) above sea level. Two other mountains, the Pitons, form the island's most famous landmark. They are between Soufrière and Choiseul on the western side of the island. Saint Lucia is also one of the few islands in the world that has a drive-in volcano. It is also famous for clear seas and sandy beaches.
+
+The capital city of Saint Lucia is Castries. Over one third of all the people live in the capital. Major towns include Gros Islet, Soufrière and Vieux Fort.
+
+The local climate is tropical.  They have northeast trade winds.  There is a dry season from December 1 to May 31, and a wet season from June 1 to November 30.
+
+The Windward Islands cricket team includes players from Saint Lucia.  They play in the West Indies regional tournament. Darren Sammy is the first Saint Lucian to represent the West Indies.  He is the current captain.[4]
+
+Tourism is important to Saint Lucia's economy.  There are more tourists during the dry season (January to April).  Saint Lucia tends to be popular due to its tropical weather and scenery and its many beaches and resorts.
+
+Other tourist attractions include a drive-in volcano, Sulphur Springs, the Botanical Gardens, the Majestic twin Peaks "The Pitons", a world heritage site, the rain forests, and Pigeon Island National Park.
+
+Most tourists visit Saint Lucia as part of a cruise. Most of their time tends to be spent in Castries, although Soufriere, Marigot Bay and Gros Islet are popular locations to visit.

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+Saint Lucia is a tropical island country in the eastern Caribbean Sea. It is a part of the Lesser Antilles, and it is north of the islands of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and south of Martinique.  As of 2010 there are about 174,000 people.
+
+The official language is English.[1][2] Saint Lucian Creole French (Kwéyòl), which is a French-based Creole is spoken by 95% of the people.  About 70% of the people are Roman Catholic.
+
+Two Nobel laureates, Arthur Lewis, an economist, and Derek Walcott, a poet and playwright, have come from the island.
+
+Saint Lucia is a full and participating member of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) and La Francophonie.
+
+Saint Lucia has 11 quarters, or parishes of the island.
+
+The cities in Saint Lucia are:
+
+The volcanic island of Saint Lucia is more mountainous than many other Caribbean islands. The highest point is Mount Gimie, at 950 metres (3,120 ft) above sea level. Two other mountains, the Pitons, form the island's most famous landmark. They are between Soufrière and Choiseul on the western side of the island. Saint Lucia is also one of the few islands in the world that has a drive-in volcano. It is also famous for clear seas and sandy beaches.
+
+The capital city of Saint Lucia is Castries. Over one third of all the people live in the capital. Major towns include Gros Islet, Soufrière and Vieux Fort.
+
+The local climate is tropical.  They have northeast trade winds.  There is a dry season from December 1 to May 31, and a wet season from June 1 to November 30.
+
+The Windward Islands cricket team includes players from Saint Lucia.  They play in the West Indies regional tournament. Darren Sammy is the first Saint Lucian to represent the West Indies.  He is the current captain.[4]
+
+Tourism is important to Saint Lucia's economy.  There are more tourists during the dry season (January to April).  Saint Lucia tends to be popular due to its tropical weather and scenery and its many beaches and resorts.
+
+Other tourist attractions include a drive-in volcano, Sulphur Springs, the Botanical Gardens, the Majestic twin Peaks "The Pitons", a world heritage site, the rain forests, and Pigeon Island National Park.
+
+Most tourists visit Saint Lucia as part of a cruise. Most of their time tends to be spent in Castries, although Soufriere, Marigot Bay and Gros Islet are popular locations to visit.

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+
+
+Whales are a large marine mammal species which live in the ocean. Like other mammals, they breathe oxygen from the air, have a small amount of hair, and are warm blooded.
+
+There are two basic kinds of whales, and about 100 species.[1]
+
+People use the word whale in different ways.  Some use it for all Cetaceans including dolphins and porpoises.  These people say that dolphins and porpoises were also whales, because they are also Cetaceans.  Others separate out the dolphins and porpoises: common English-speaking people have never called them or thought of them as whales unless they are very large.  Actually, there is no clear line between whales and dolphins.
+
+Whales have been killed for meat and oil by whalers.  However, many countries have laws saying not to kill whales anymore.  Some countries, such as Iceland and Japan, do not have these laws.  In other countries, such as the USA, only Eskimos and some American Indians may legally kill whales such as the blue whale and beluga whale.
+
+Baleen whales eat plankton and krill. Plankton are clouds of very small fish floating in the water. The whales' mouths are very large. They open their mouths very wide and hold a big mouthful of sea water. Their throats stretch very wide to make the space inside their mouth even bigger. Then they close their mouth and squeeze out the seawater. The food does not escape because, instead of teeth, these whales have filters called baleen. Baleen is long, hard strips that act like a strainer. The water goes through the baleen. Animals and plants in the water are trapped and swallowed, while the water goes back out.[2] This is very different from the way that toothed whales eat.
+
+Toothed whales eat larger fish or meat and are like big dolphins.  They have sharp teeth and usually have a big forehead.  Inside the big forehead is a chamber to make and direct sounds.  They make all kinds of sounds, including sounds so loud they can shock fish.  They can use echolocation to locate things that they can not see.  Some toothed whales, such as the sperm whale, are almost never called dolphins.  Some of them are always called dolphins.  Others are like dolphins in some ways and like whales in others.
+
+Cetaceans are divided into two suborders:
+
+Both cetaceans and artiodactyl are now classified under the super-order  Cetartiodactyla, which includes both whales and hippopotamuses. Whales are the hippopotamus's closest living relatives.[3]
+
+All cetaceans, including whales, dolphins and porpoises, are descendants of land-living mammals of the Artiodactyl order (even-toed ungulates). Both are related to Indohyus (an extinct semi-aquatic deer-like ungulate) from which they split around 54 million years ago.[4][5]
+Primitive whales probably first took to the sea about 50 million years ago and became fully aquatic about 5-10 million years later.[6] Pakicetus is an important transitional species.
+
+Scientists from the University of Plymouth studied many animals that dive and hold their breath, from insects to whales, and they found that larger animals can hold their breath longer than smaller animals because they can store more oxygen for their size, and this difference was much bigger for warm-blooded animals than for cold-blooded animals.  They said this may be why modern whales and extinct diving animals like plesiosaurs became so large.[7][8]
+
+Because of where they live (and unlike many animals), whales are conscious breathers: they decide when to breathe. Whales breathe through blowholes. Baleen whales have two and toothed whales have one. These are on the top of the head: the animal breathes while most of their body is underwater. Breathing first shoots out extra water from the blowhole, making a jet into the air, followed by inhaling air into the lungs.
+
+All mammals sleep, including whales, but they cannot stay in an unconscious state for too long, because they need to be conscious to breathe. It is thought that only one hemisphere (half) of their brains sleeps at a time, so that whales are never completely asleep, but still get the rest they need.[9] Whales are thought to sleep around eight hours a day.
+
+A baby whale is called a "calf". One calf is born every two or three years. Gestation takes up to a year. Nursing continues for more than a year in many species; there is a strong bond between mother and calf. Reproductive maturity occurs at seven to ten years. This mode of reproduction produces few offspring, but increases their chance of surviving. The effect of hunting is severe on these animals, who replace their numbers slowly.[10]
+
+Whales are known to teach, learn, cooperate, scheme, and even grieve.[11]
+
+Breaching is what happens when a whale jumps into the air and then purposefully flops down on the water with a great splash. Sometimes it twirls in the air when it does this. Scientists are not sure whether breaching is done to play, to clean the whale's skin of things that are stuck to it, or to tell other whales something.[12]
+
+There are a number of other behaviors on the surface which are not well understood.[13] 'Logging' is when a whale swims slowly at the surface of the ocean with very little movement. When a whale does this, it looks like a log in the water. Some scientists think this is a kind of rest or sleep for whales. 'Spyhopping' is when a whale sits straight up in the water with its head straight up and out of the water. It will sometimes turn around in circles as it spyhops. Some scientists think this might be because whales are trying to see what is happening above water. 'Lobtailing' is done when a whale faces downward in the water. It then slaps the water with a thunderous sound. Scientists think this might be done to warn other whales of danger, or as a method of feeding.[14]

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+Hagia Sofia is a prestigious buliding in Istanbul. It is located in the European part of Istanbul. It was bulit between 532, and 537, to serve as a Byzanine Church.[1][2] Until 1452 it was used as an Eastern Orthodox church. Between 1204 and 1261 it was converted into a Roman Catholic cathedral.  From 1453 it was used as a mosque.  Mustafa Kemmal Atatürk stopped this and turned the building into a museum.  After an earthquake Trdat the Architect finished rebuilding it again in 994. Ottoman sultan Mehmed the conqueror made it into a mosque in 1453 after conquering istanbul.[1] It became a museum in 1935 after the decision of the Turkish government in 1934. Hagia Sophia is often said to be one of the greatest, and most beautiful buildings in history.
+
+In July 2020, the Turkish government ordered the Hagia Sophia to be turned back into a mosque following a supreme court annulment of a 1934 presidential decree that made it a museum.[3]

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+Saint Louis IX (25 April, 1214–25 August, 1270), also called Saint Louis, was King of France from 1226 to his death. He established the Parlement of Paris. after his death he was canonised (declared a saint) in 1297 by Pope Boniface VIII.
+
+Jean de Joinville was a close friend of Louis and wrote a famous biography of the king, from which we have most of our information about him.
+
+Two other important biographies were written by the king's confessor, Geoffrey of Beaulieu, and his chaplain, William of Chartres. While several other people wrote biographies about the king, only Jean de Joinville, Geoffrey of Beaulieu, and William of Chartres had reliable information.
+
+Louis was born at Poissy, near Paris. He was the son of Louis VIII of France and Blanche of Castile. Louis was eleven years old when his father died on November 8, 1226. He was crowned king the same year in the cathedral at Reims. Because Louis was so young, his mother ruled France as regent while he was a child.
+
+His younger brother Charles I of Sicily (1227–1285) was made Count of Anjou.
+
+On May 27, 1234 Louis married Marguerite of Provence (1221 – December 21, 1295), whose sister Eleanor was the wife of Henry III of England.
+
+At the age of 15 in 1229, Louis brought an end to the Albigensian Crusade after signing an agreement with Count Raymond VII of Toulouse.
+
+He went on crusade twice, in his mid-30s in 1248 and then again in his mid-50s in 1270.  In 1250, after initial success in his first crusade, Louis's army of 15,000 men was met by overwhelming resistance from the Egyptian army and people.  Louis and his army were captured by Muslims in Egypt. Later that year, they were released.  To be released, he had to give back the land that he had taken over.[1] where he was captured.  After his release from Egypt, Louis spent four years in the crusader Kingdoms of Acre, Caesarea, and Jaffe.  Both crusades were complete disasters;
+
+Louis's kindness towards the poor was much celebrated.
+
+In 1252, Louis attempted an alliance with the Egyptians, for the return of Jerusalem if the French assisted with the subduing of Damascus. In 1253, Louis tried to seek allies from the Ismailian Assassins and the Mongols.[2]
+
+Louis was Catholic, and he built the Sainte Chapelle ("Holy Chapel") on the Île de la Cité in the centre of Paris. It is thought that the French monarchy was trying to establish the kingdom of France as the "new Jerusalem."[source?]
+
+Louis IX tried to make France, which was seen as being a very religious place, a protector of the Church. It worked, and between the 12th and 13th centuries, France and the pope were very close.
+
+During his second crusade, Louis died at Tunis, August 25, 1270, and his son, Philip III, replaced him as king. He may have died either of bubonic plague or dysentry.
+
+His body was taken to the French royal necropolis at Saint-Denis in Lyon.
+
+The cities of San Luis Potosí in Mexico, Saint Louis, Missouri, Saint-Louis du Sénégal in Senegal, Saint-Louis in Alsace, Lake Saint-Louis in Quebec, and the Mission San Luis Rey de Francia in California.
+
+Many places in Brazil are called São Luís in Portuguese are named after Saint Louis.

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+on the European continent  (dark grey)  —  [Legend]
+
+San Marino is one of the smallest countries in the world. It is found in southern Europe and is fully surrounded by Italy (this is called an enclave, and only the Vatican City, Lesotho and San Marino are like this). Fewer than 30,000 people live there. Its total area is 61 km2.  Its capital is the City of San Marino.
+
+San Marino is the world's oldest republic that still exists. It was started on 3 September in A.D. 301 by a skilled builder called Saint Marinus. Its written constitution was adopted on October 8, 1600. The very small nation was recognized by Napoleon's France in 1797, and by the other European nations at the 1815 Congress of Vienna.
+
+Even though it is an independent country, it depends very much on Italy. Since the 19th century, when Italy was unified, San Marino has been fully surrounded by Italy.
+
+The biggest industry in San Marino is tourism. Selling postage stamps is an important source of income, too. San Marino is not a member of the European Union, but the euro is used in San Marino.
+
+People in San Marino speak the Italian language. Most people in San Marino believe in Roman Catholicism.
+
+San Marino is covered by the Apennine mountain range, and it has a rugged terrain. The highest point in the country is Monte Titano.  There are no bodies of water of any significant size. San Marino has no natural level ground. It is hilly terrain.
+
+San Marino is the third smallest country in Europe, Only Vatican City and Monaco are smaller.
+
+Two rivers flow through San Marino. There is no major water transport, and no major port or harbour.
+
+These are the 9 castelli (municipalities) of San Marino:
+
+The cuisine of San Marino is strongly similar to Italian, especially that of the Emilia-Romagna and Marche regions. It has a number of its own unique dishes and products. Its best known is probably the Torta Tre Monti ("Cake of the Three Mountains" or "Cake of the Three Towers"), a wafer layered cake covered in chocolate.  It shows The Three Towers of San Marino. The country also has a small wine industry.
+

ensimple/5233.html.txt

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+on the European continent  (dark grey)  —  [Legend]
+
+San Marino is one of the smallest countries in the world. It is found in southern Europe and is fully surrounded by Italy (this is called an enclave, and only the Vatican City, Lesotho and San Marino are like this). Fewer than 30,000 people live there. Its total area is 61 km2.  Its capital is the City of San Marino.
+
+San Marino is the world's oldest republic that still exists. It was started on 3 September in A.D. 301 by a skilled builder called Saint Marinus. Its written constitution was adopted on October 8, 1600. The very small nation was recognized by Napoleon's France in 1797, and by the other European nations at the 1815 Congress of Vienna.
+
+Even though it is an independent country, it depends very much on Italy. Since the 19th century, when Italy was unified, San Marino has been fully surrounded by Italy.
+
+The biggest industry in San Marino is tourism. Selling postage stamps is an important source of income, too. San Marino is not a member of the European Union, but the euro is used in San Marino.
+
+People in San Marino speak the Italian language. Most people in San Marino believe in Roman Catholicism.
+
+San Marino is covered by the Apennine mountain range, and it has a rugged terrain. The highest point in the country is Monte Titano.  There are no bodies of water of any significant size. San Marino has no natural level ground. It is hilly terrain.
+
+San Marino is the third smallest country in Europe, Only Vatican City and Monaco are smaller.
+
+Two rivers flow through San Marino. There is no major water transport, and no major port or harbour.
+
+These are the 9 castelli (municipalities) of San Marino:
+
+The cuisine of San Marino is strongly similar to Italian, especially that of the Emilia-Romagna and Marche regions. It has a number of its own unique dishes and products. Its best known is probably the Torta Tre Monti ("Cake of the Three Mountains" or "Cake of the Three Towers"), a wafer layered cake covered in chocolate.  It shows The Three Towers of San Marino. The country also has a small wine industry.
+

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+Paul the Apostle, previously known as Saul of Tarsus and now often called St Paul (AD 9–67), was a Messianic Jewish-Roman writer and rabbi. He was a convert to Christianity. It is believed that he wrote thirteen books of the Bible, together called the Pauline epistles. They are letters to churches and Christians. He wrote these letters to encourage them, to help them understand Christian teaching, and to help them to live Christian lives.
+
+Paul's name was originally Saul (not to be confused with King Saul from the books of Samuel in the Old Testament). He grew up learning both the Jewish law and the Greek ways of discussing things. We are first introduced to Saul in the Bible near the end of Acts 7. The Christian movement had begun with the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. Saul was strongly against this, and he was happy as he watched Saint Stephen, the first martyr of Jesus, being killed by stoning after giving a speech that made the Jewish court angry.  He worked for the Roman Government and helped lead the arrests and killing of many Christians in Israel and the nearby area.
+
+Later on, Saul was told to go to Damascus to find and bring back Christians there to be punished. On the way, God came down from heaven and spoke to Saul. The Bible tells of what happened like this:
+
+On his journey, Saul approached Damascus. Suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground. He heard a voice speak to him.
+
+"Saul! Saul!" the voice said. "Why are you opposing me?"
+
+"Who are you, Lord?" Saul asked.
+
+"I am Jesus," he replied. "I am the one you are opposing. Now get up and go into the city. There you will be told what you must do."
+
+The men traveling with Saul stood there. They weren't able to speak. They had heard the sound. But they didn't see anyone. Saul got up from the ground. He opened his eyes, but he couldn't see. So they led him by hand into Damascus. For three days he was blind. He didn't eat or drink anything.
+
+When Saul reached Damascus, he was taken to Ananias, one of Jesus's disciples, where he got his sight back and was baptized as a Christian. He spent the next three years studying the Jewish scriptures again to find explanations for the Christian teachings. His experiences changed his view on Christianity completely. In Acts 13:9, he begins to be called Paul.  This was the Hellenized version of the name Saul. He used his earlier education to explain his new faith to other people and to discuss things with people who had other beliefs.
+
+He traveled around the Roman Empire, teaching others about Christianity, and wrote letters back and forth with the churches he helped to begin. The letters contain many important parts of Christian teaching and have since been part of the New Testament of the Bible, coming between the Acts of the Apostles and the General Epistles. It is not known whether Paul actually wrote all of these letters, or whether other people could have written the letters for him. Part of these letters are read at Mass as the second of two readings that come before the Gospel.
+
+Although the Bible does not say how Paul died, it was told of that Paul was put to death by orders of the emperor Nero in Rome, in 67 AD. He had the rights of a Roman citizen, which meant that he could be put to death by having his head cut off with a sword, rather than by crucifixion.
+
+
+
+Catholic: Roman Catholic · Eastern Catholic · Independent Catholic · Old Catholic
+Protestant: Lutheran · Reformed · Anabaptist · Baptist · Anglican · Methodist · Evangelical · Holiness · Pentecostal
+Eastern: Eastern Orthodox · Oriental Orthodox · Assyrian

ensimple/5235.html.txt

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+Paul the Apostle, previously known as Saul of Tarsus and now often called St Paul (AD 9–67), was a Messianic Jewish-Roman writer and rabbi. He was a convert to Christianity. It is believed that he wrote thirteen books of the Bible, together called the Pauline epistles. They are letters to churches and Christians. He wrote these letters to encourage them, to help them understand Christian teaching, and to help them to live Christian lives.
+
+Paul's name was originally Saul (not to be confused with King Saul from the books of Samuel in the Old Testament). He grew up learning both the Jewish law and the Greek ways of discussing things. We are first introduced to Saul in the Bible near the end of Acts 7. The Christian movement had begun with the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. Saul was strongly against this, and he was happy as he watched Saint Stephen, the first martyr of Jesus, being killed by stoning after giving a speech that made the Jewish court angry.  He worked for the Roman Government and helped lead the arrests and killing of many Christians in Israel and the nearby area.
+
+Later on, Saul was told to go to Damascus to find and bring back Christians there to be punished. On the way, God came down from heaven and spoke to Saul. The Bible tells of what happened like this:
+
+On his journey, Saul approached Damascus. Suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground. He heard a voice speak to him.
+
+"Saul! Saul!" the voice said. "Why are you opposing me?"
+
+"Who are you, Lord?" Saul asked.
+
+"I am Jesus," he replied. "I am the one you are opposing. Now get up and go into the city. There you will be told what you must do."
+
+The men traveling with Saul stood there. They weren't able to speak. They had heard the sound. But they didn't see anyone. Saul got up from the ground. He opened his eyes, but he couldn't see. So they led him by hand into Damascus. For three days he was blind. He didn't eat or drink anything.
+
+When Saul reached Damascus, he was taken to Ananias, one of Jesus's disciples, where he got his sight back and was baptized as a Christian. He spent the next three years studying the Jewish scriptures again to find explanations for the Christian teachings. His experiences changed his view on Christianity completely. In Acts 13:9, he begins to be called Paul.  This was the Hellenized version of the name Saul. He used his earlier education to explain his new faith to other people and to discuss things with people who had other beliefs.
+
+He traveled around the Roman Empire, teaching others about Christianity, and wrote letters back and forth with the churches he helped to begin. The letters contain many important parts of Christian teaching and have since been part of the New Testament of the Bible, coming between the Acts of the Apostles and the General Epistles. It is not known whether Paul actually wrote all of these letters, or whether other people could have written the letters for him. Part of these letters are read at Mass as the second of two readings that come before the Gospel.
+
+Although the Bible does not say how Paul died, it was told of that Paul was put to death by orders of the emperor Nero in Rome, in 67 AD. He had the rights of a Roman citizen, which meant that he could be put to death by having his head cut off with a sword, rather than by crucifixion.
+
+
+
+Catholic: Roman Catholic · Eastern Catholic · Independent Catholic · Old Catholic
+Protestant: Lutheran · Reformed · Anabaptist · Baptist · Anglican · Methodist · Evangelical · Holiness · Pentecostal
+Eastern: Eastern Orthodox · Oriental Orthodox · Assyrian

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+St. Peter's Basilica, which is called "Basilica di San Pietro in Vaticano" in Italian, is a large church in the Vatican City, in Rome, Italy. It is often called "the greatest church in Christendom".[2][3] In Catholic tradition, St. Peter's Basilica is believed to be the burial place of Saint Peter, who was one of the twelve apostles of Jesus. It is believed that Saint Peter was the first Bishop of Rome.
+
+Although the Bible does not say that the apostle Peter went to Rome, other Roman Christians who were alive in the 1st century AD have written about him.[4] Catholics believe that after Peter was killed, his body was buried in a cemetery where the basilica now stands. A tomb has been found below the altar of the basilica, and there were some bones, but no-one can say for certain if they are the bones of St. Peter.
+
+A church was built here in the 4th century AD. The building that stands here now was begun on April 18, 1506 and was finished in 1626.[5] Many Popes have been buried there. Although many people think St. Peter's is a cathedral, it is not, because it does not have a bishop. The pope is the Bishop of Rome, and although he usually uses St. Peter's as his main church, because he lives in the Vatican, his bishop's throne is in a different church, the cathedral of Saint John Lateran. Large important churches like St. Peter's are often called basilicas. There are four ancient basilicas in Rome that were begun by the Emperor Constantine soon after he made Christianity the legal religion of the Roman Empire in the early 4th century AD (300s). The basilicas are St. Peter's Basilica, St. John Lateran, Santa Maria Maggiore and St. Paul outside the Walls.
+
+St. Peter's is famous for many reasons:
+
+One of the books of the Bible, called the Acts of the Apostles, tells what happened to the disciples of Jesus after he was put to death by crucifixion in the 1st century AD. One of his twelve disciples became the leader. His name was Simon Peter and he was a fisherman from Galilee. Peter became one of the most important people in starting the Christian Church. Another important disciple was Paul of Tarsus, who travelled to many places and wrote lots of letters to teach and to encourage people in the new Christian groups that began to spring up in many different parts of the Roman Empire. St. Paul travelled to Rome. It is believed that St. Peter also travelled to Rome and that both Paul and Peter were put to death there as Christian martyrs. St. Paul was beheaded with a sword. Peter was crucified up-side-down. It is believed that the body of St. Peter was buried in a cemetery near the Via Cornelia, a road leading out of the city, on the hill called Vaticanus. Peter's grave was marked, by a red rock, the symbol of his name. The place where Peter died was marked, in the 1400s, by a little round temple called the "Tempietto" designed by Bramante.
+
+St. Peter is very important in Roman Catholic tradition because Peter is believed to have been the head of the Christian Church in Rome, and so he was the first bishop. The Gospel of Matthew (chapter 16, verse 18) tells that Jesus said these words to Peter:
+
+The name Peter means a "rock". The Roman Catholic Church believes that Jesus made Peter the head of the Christian Church, and so all the Bishops of Rome (the Popes) must be the leaders of the Christian Church throughout the whole world. The Protestant and Orthodox churches believe that Jesus was speaking about the important words Peter had just said: "You are the Christ and the Son of the Living God" (Matthew 16:16), and that this Confession of Faith is the rock that the Christian Church is built on.
+
+On December 23, 1950, while making his Christmas radio broadcast to the world, Pope Pius XII announced that Saint Peter's tomb had been discovered.[8] Archaeologists had been searching for ten years in a place under the basilica that had been covered up for about a thousand years. They had found part of a small building dating from soon after St. Peter's death, and some bones, but no-one could be sure if they were the bones of St. Peter.
+
+St. Peter's Basilica, as it stand today, was begun in 1506. The first basilica, which is now called "Old St. Peter's Basilica" was begun by the Emperor Constantine between 326 and 333 AD. This was a big wide church in the shape of a Latin Cross, over 103.6 metres (350 feet) long. The central part called the "nave" had two aisles on either side, separated by rows of talls Roman columns. In front of the main entrance was large courtyard with a covered walkway all around. This church had been built over a small "shrine" (little chapel) believed to mark the burial place of St. Peter. The old basilica contained a very large number of tombs and memorials, including those of most of the popes from St. Peter to the 15th century.[9]
+
+By the end of the 15th century (1400s), the old basilica was falling to pieces. Pope Nicholas V, (1447–55), was worried about it and got two architects, Leone Battista Alberti and Bernardo Rossellino, to make plans to restore it or build a new one. But Pope Nicholas had so many political problems that when he died, very little of the work had been done.[10]
+In 1505, Pope Julius II decided to demolish (pull down) the old St. Peter's and build a basilica that would be the grandest church in the world and make Rome (and himself) famous.[6] He held a competition and invited lots of artists and architects to draw designs. A plan was selected and the build was begun, but Pope Julius did not get his new basilica. In fact, it was not finished for 120 years. The planning and construction (or "building work") lasted through the reigns of 21 popes and 8 architects.
+
+The changing plans for St. Peter's. The architectural terms are explained in the article.
+
+The Old Saint Peter's Basilica drawn by H. W. Brewer, 1891. He used very old drawings and writings to work out how it must have looked.
+
+Bramante's plan is for a Greek Cross with a dome on four big piers. There is a tower at each corner.
+
+Raphael's plan is simpler and is for a Latin Cross like the old basilica.
+
+The finished basilica shows Michelangelo's plan, with four huge piers. It also shows Maderna's nave, portico and facade.
+
+When Pope Julius decided to build the "grandest church in Christendom"[6] the design by Donato Bramante was chosen, and Pope Julius laid the foundation stone in 1506. Bramante's plan was in the shape of an enormous Greek Cross, which means that it had four arms all of equal length, and a large dome at the middle. For the next hundred years, the groundplan got changed backwards and forwards between a "Greek Cross" like Bramante's plan and a "Latin Cross" like the old basilica, but one thing never changed, and that was the idea of having an enormous dome at the place where the two arms crossed.
+
+At that time, there were only three very large domes in the whole world. One was far away in Constantinople on the church of Hagia Sophia and not many people in Italy had seen it. The other two domes were both very well known. One was the dome on the temple to the Ancient Roman gods, called the Pantheon. The other dome was built in the early 15th century (1400s) on Florence Cathedral by Filippo Brunelleschi. The dome of the Pantheon is 43.3 metres (142.06 ft) across and the dome of Florence Cathedral is about 42.1 metres (138 ft), but is much taller. Bramante's plan for the dome of St. Peter's was for it to be about as wide as the dome of Florence, and even taller.
+
+No architect with any sense would try to design a dome without first checking out how these other two domes were made. Bramante checked them out. He discovered that the dome of the Pantheon, which had been standing for nearly 1500 years, was made of concrete. So that the concrete wouldn't be too heavy, it was mixed with pumice stone which comes out of a volcano and is full of gas holes so it is very light weight. Bramante learned how to make concrete like the Ancient Romans.
+
+Bramante's dome was to be like the one on the Pantheon. But there was one very big difference between the Pantheon dome and Bramante's design. The Pantheon's dome stands on a round wall like a drum, with only one doorway in it, but Bramante's dome was designed to stand on a drum, which was standing high up on four wide arches. The aches rested on four enormous piers (pillars of stone). He had got this idea from Florence Cathedral which had an enormous dome resting on eight big piers. Another idea that Bramante got from Florence Cathedral was the design for the little stone tower which sits on top of the dome and is called the lantern.
+
+When Pope Julius died in 1513, the next pope, Leo X, called in three architects, Giuliano da Sangallo, Fra Giocondo and Raphael. Sangallo and Fr Giocondo both died in 1515. Raphael made a big change to the plan. Instead of having a Greek Cross, he decided to change the plan to a Latin Cross, which had a long nave and aisles like the old basilica.[11]
+
+Raphael also died, in his mid-30s, in 1520, before any important changes could be made to the building. The next architect was Peruzzi who like some of the ideas that Raphael had, but did not like the Latin Cross plan. Peruzzi went back to Bramante's Greek Cross plan.[12] But there were so many arguments in the church that the building stopped completely. Then in 1527 Rome was invaded by Emperor Charles V. Peruzzi died in 1536 without his plan being built.[6] The only main parts of the building which had been constructed were Bramante's four big piers to hold the dome.
+
+Antonio da Sangallo (known as "Sangallo the Younger") looked at all the different plans by Peruzzi, Raphael and Bramante. He put some of their ideas together in a design that had a very short nave, (not a long one like Raphael's design) and had a big porch at the front. He changed Bramante's dome to be much stronger and also much more decorated. The main new idea that he added were 16 stone ribs to strengthen the dome. This idea came from Florence Cathedral which had eight stone ribs.[13] But Sangallo's plan never got built, either. The main job that he did was to strengthen Bramante's piers which had begun to crack.[14]
+
+On January 1st, 1547 in the reign of Pope Paul III, Michelangelo, who was already over 70, became the architect of St. Peter's.[15] He is the main designer of the building as it stands today. Michelangelo died before the job was finished, but by that time, he had got the construction up to a point where other people could get it finished. Michelangelo had already done a lot of work for the popes, carving figures for the tomb of Pope Julius II, painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling, which took five years, and the enormous fresco the "Last Judgement" on the wall of the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo found the popes and the cardinals very difficult to work with. When Pope Paul asked him to be the new architect for St. Peter's, Michelangelo did not want the job. In fact, Pope Paul did not really want Michelangelo. But his first choice, Giulio Romano, died suddenly. Michelangelo told the pope that he would only do the job, if he could do it in whatever way he thought was best.[14]
+
+Michelangelo wrote:
+
+When Michelangelo took over a building site in 1547, the nave of the old basilica was still standing and in use. There were four of the most enormous piers in the world standing where the western part of the old basilica had been. The building work had stopped for so long that weeds and bushes were growing out between the stones of the unfinished building as if it was a cliff. Michelangelo looked at all the plans that had been drawn by some of the greatest architects and engineers of the 16th century. He knew he could do whatever he liked but he had respect for the other designers, especially Bramante. He knew that he was expected to make a design that would be the symbol of the city of Rome, in the same way as Brunelleschi's dome was the symbol of Florence where Michelangelo had lived as a young man. He went back to the Greek Cross idea and re-drew Bramante's plan, making every part of it much stronger and simpler.[16] It had to be strong enough to support the tallest dome in the world.
+
+Michelangelo was a sculptor. When he was going to carve something, he would start by making a clay model. Michelangelo could imagine the building like a lump of clay. What if the building could be pushed and pulled and squeezed? If you could squeeze the corners in, then other bits would bulge out. If you could put your hands around the whole building and squeeze it, then the dome would bulge upwards. The idea of imagining buildings as bendy and bulgy was a completely new one. But other artists like Gianlorenzo Bernini looked at what Michelangelo did at St. Peter's and used this clever new idea in their own work. This is called the Baroque style.
+
+As it stands today, the Greek Cross part of the basilica is Michelangelo's design and the nave, which was added later, is by Carlo Maderna.[17] Comparing Michelangelo's plan with Raphael's plan shows that while the outside-line of Raphael's plan has clear square and round shapes, the outside-line in Michelangelo's plan has lots of changes of direction. That is the way it was built. All around the outside of the building are enormous "pilasters" (which are like giant columns stuck on the building). Almost every pilaster is set at a different angle to the next one as if the flat walls had been folded up. Right around the top of the building is a band called the "cornice". A "cornice" is usually quite flat, but because of all the changes of direction, this cornice ripples like a giant piece of ribbon, tied around the outside of the building.[18] The art historian Helen Gardner wrote that it looked as of the whole building was being held together from top to bottom.[16]
+
+Michelangelo designed the dome again, using ideas from Bramante and Sangallo the Younger. Three important ideas came from the dome that Brunelleschi had built in Florence more than 100 years earlier.
+
+When Michelangelo died in 1564, the walls were being built, the piers had been strengthened and everything was ready for the building of the dome. The Pope wanted Michelangelo's assistant Vignola to finish it, but he was not able to. After twenty years Pope Sixtus V gave the job to the architect Giacomo della Porta and the engineer Domenico Fontana.[6][14] Giacomo Della Porta successfully built the dome. He made some changes to the design, like adding some lions' heads to the decoration because they were the symbol of Pope Sixtus' family. The main way that the dome is different from the wooden model is that it is much more pointy.[14]
+
+Some writers believe that Michelangelo had changed his mind from his first plan, and did not want the pointy dome. They believe he wanted a round dome which would look more "restful". Other writers believe that Michelangelo wanted the pointed dome, not just because it was safer to build, but also because it looked more exciting, as if the building was pushing upwards.[16][18] Pope Sixtus V lived just long enough to see the dome finished in 1590. His name is written in gold letters around the inside, just below the lantern.
+
+Pope Clement III, had a cross raised into place on top of the lantern. It took a whole day and everyone in Rome was given a holiday, and all the church-bells of the city were rung. In the arms of the cross are set two lead boxes, one containing a fragment of the True Cross and a bone of Saint Andrew and the other containing medals of the "Holy Lamb".[14][19]
+
+The dome of St. Peter's rises to a height of 136.57 m (448.06 ft) from the floor of the basilica. It is the tallest dome in the world.[20] Its inside diameter is 41.47 metres (136.06 ft), just slightly smaller than those of the Pantheon and the Florence Cathedral.
+
+Around the inside of the dome is written in letters 2 metres (6.5 ft) high:
+
+In 1602 Pope Paul V put Carlo Maderna in charge of the building. On February 18 1606, workmen began to pull down the rest of the old basilica. Some people were very upset. The building committee felt guilty. They decided that the church was the wrong shape, and that they wanted a Latin Cross plan because it was the symbol of the death of Jesus.[14] They wanted a nave which would cover all the Holy Ground where the old building had been. In 1607 Maderna's plans for the nave and the facade (the front) were accepted. For the inside, he used very large piers with pilasters like Michelangelo's, but he made a clear join between the two parts of the building. The building work began on May 7 1607 and 700 men were employed to do the work. In 1608, the facade was begun. In December 1614 the building was all finished except for the decorations on the ceiling. Early in 1615 the temporary wall between Michelangelo's building and the new nave was pulled down. All the mess was carted away, and the nave was ready for use by Palm Sunday.[14]
+
+The façade was designed by Maderna. It is 114.69 metres (376.28 ft) wide and 45.55 metres (149.44 ft) high and is built of pale grey travertine stone, with a giant Corinthian columns and a central triangular pediment. Along the roof-line are statues of Christ, John the Baptist, and eleven of the apostles.
+
+Inside the main doors is a portico (a long hall) which runs across the front of the building and has five doors leading into the basilica. Its has a long curving roof decorated with gold. The light that comes through the doors shines on the beautifully patterned marble floor. At each end of the portico, set between columns, is a statue of a figure on horseback. They are Charlemagne sculpted by Cornacchini (18th century) to the south and Emperor Constantine by Bernini (1670) to the north. Maderna's last work at St. Peter's was to design a sunken crypt called the "Confessio" under the dome, where people can go to be nearer the burial place of the apostle. All around its marble handrail are 95 bronze lamps.
+
+As a young boy Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) visited St. Peter's and said that one day he wanted to build "a mighty throne for the apostle". His wish came true. As a young man, in 1626, Pope Urban VIII asked him to work as architect for the basilica. Bernini spent the next fifty years thinking of new and beautiful things to design. He is thought of as the greatest architect and sculptor of the Baroque period.[14][16]
+
+Bernini's first work at St. Peter's was to design the "baldacchino" which is like a tent or "pavilion" above the High Altar. This amazing thing is 30 metres (98 ft) tall and is probably the largest piece of bronze in the world. It stands underneath the dome and has four huge bronze twisted columns decorated with olive leaves and bees, because bees were the symbol of Pope Urban. Pope Urban had a niece that he loved very much and he got Bernini to put her face and the face of her new-born baby boy on the columns as well.[14][16]
+
+Bernini had a great idea for Bramante's great big piers. He had four hollow "niches" carved into them where four huge statues could stand. The basilica owns some precious relics: a piece of the True Cross of Jesus, a veil that a woman wiped the face of Jesus with, while he was carrying the cross, the spear that was used to pierce Jesus side, and the bones of St. Andrew, the brother of St. Peter. No-one knows for sure whether these things are real or not, but for hundreds of years they have been precious. Bernini's plan was the make four marble statues of the four Holy people: St. Helena who found the cross, St. Longinus who was the soldier with the spear, St Veronica who wiped Jesus' face and St. Andrew.[14] (See below)
+
+Bernini's next job was to make a special throne out of bronze, to hold an ancient wood and ivory throne that had been at the basilica for more than 500 years. It is called the Cattedra Petri or "throne of St. Peter". The bronze throne, with the old wooden throne inside it, is held up high at the end of the basilica, by four important saints who are called "Doctors of the Church" because they were all great writers and teachers.[21] The statues are made of bronze. They are Saints Ambrose and Augustine for the Church of Rome and Saints Athanasius and John Chrysostum for the Orthodox Church. Above the chair is a window which is made not from glass but thin translucent stone called alabaster. The Dove of the Holy Spirit is in the middle of the window with rays of light spreading out into the basilica through a sculpture of golden clouds and angels. Bernini designed this to look like a window into Heaven. There was a great celebration when the chair was put in place on January 16, 1666.[14][16]
+
+Bernini's last work for St. Peter's, 1676, was to decorate of the Chapel of the Sacrament. He designed a miniature version of Bramante's Tempietto, and made it in gilt bronze. On either side is an angel, one gazing in adoration and the other looking towards the viewer in welcome. Bernini died in 1680 in his 82nd year.[14]
+
+To the east of the basilica is the Piazza di San Pietro (St. Peter's Place).[22] The piazza was designed by Bernini and built between 1656 and 1667. It was not an easy job because the designer had lots of things to think about. Firstly, many people complained that Maderna's facade on St. Peter's looked too wide, so Bernini wanted to make it look narrower, not wider. Secondly, in the old square left over from the Old St. Peter's, Pope Sixtus V had a monument set up. This monument was a precious Ancient Egyptian obelisk (which is like a tall column, but with four flat sides). From its base to the top of the cross (that the pope had put on top) it was 40 metres (131 ft) high, and had been brought to Rome in ancient times. The obelisk really should be at the center of the new square, but it was not in quite the right place, and was very difficult to move without breaking. The third problem was that Maderna had built a fountain to one side of the obelisk, and Bernini needed to make another fountain to match it, otherwise the design would look unbalanced.[14]
+
+Bernini solved the problem by making two areas, instead of one huge one. The first area is an almost-square area right in front of the facade. It is cleverly designed with sloping sides that make the building look taller and not so wide. The second part of the piazza is oval. It has the obelisk at the center with two fountains on either side at the widest part. The two parts of the piazza are surrounded by a colonnade (covered walk-way) which is carried on tall columns. All around are large statues of saints which seem to look down on the thousands of visitors that come to the square every day. The colonnade is in two great arcs that seem to stretch out like loving arms, welcoming people to the Basilica.[16] In recent times some buildings were demolished, making another square, to match the one near the piazza.
+
+The famous architectural historian, Sir Banister Fletcher, said that no other city in the world had given such a wonderful view to people visiting their main church. He said that no other architect except Bernini could have imagined such a noble design. He said it is the greatest entrance to the greatest Christian church in the whole world.[23]
+
+St. Peter's Basilica has many treasures. These include Christian relics, the tombs of popes and many other important people, famous artworks which are mostly sculpture and other interesting things.
+
+The Egyptian obelisk stands in the centre of the piazza.
+
+The fountains of Maderna and Bernini are lit up at night.
+
+Outside the basilica stand two statues. This is St. Paul.
+
+There are many statues on the colonnade and roof.
+
+The Holy Door is opened only for great celebrations.
+
+No-one knows how old the statue of St. Peter is. Its feet are worn down from people kissing them.
+
+The Pietà by Michelangelo is the most famous artwork in St. Peter's. It shows the Virgin Mary holding the body of her son, Jesus.
+
+The body of The Blessed Pope John XXIII can be seen inside his tomb.
+
+There are many sculptured decorations like this angel.
+
+The window of the Holy Spirit designed by Bernini
+
+Many parts of the basilica are decorated with mosaics. This is St. John the Gospel Writer.
+
+The mosaic decoration of this small dome shows the Blessed Virgin Mary in Heaven.
+
+The Dove of Peace showing the different coloured marbles used to decorate the piers.
+
+The tomb of Queen Christina of Sweden, who gave up her throne and became a nun.
+
+The tomb of Pope Innocent XII has the figures of Caring and Justice.
+
+This carved altarpiece shows Attila the Hun being driven out of Rome.
+
+Four large statues are in the piers near the High Altar. Saint Helena holds the True Cross which she found in Jerusalem.
+
+Saint Longinus carries the spear that pierced the side of Jesus.
+
+Saint Andrew carries the cross on which he was crucified. His bones are at St. Peter's
+
+Saint Veronica carries the veil that she used to wipe the face of Jesus, when he was carrying his cross.
+

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+St. Peter's Basilica, which is called "Basilica di San Pietro in Vaticano" in Italian, is a large church in the Vatican City, in Rome, Italy. It is often called "the greatest church in Christendom".[2][3] In Catholic tradition, St. Peter's Basilica is believed to be the burial place of Saint Peter, who was one of the twelve apostles of Jesus. It is believed that Saint Peter was the first Bishop of Rome.
+
+Although the Bible does not say that the apostle Peter went to Rome, other Roman Christians who were alive in the 1st century AD have written about him.[4] Catholics believe that after Peter was killed, his body was buried in a cemetery where the basilica now stands. A tomb has been found below the altar of the basilica, and there were some bones, but no-one can say for certain if they are the bones of St. Peter.
+
+A church was built here in the 4th century AD. The building that stands here now was begun on April 18, 1506 and was finished in 1626.[5] Many Popes have been buried there. Although many people think St. Peter's is a cathedral, it is not, because it does not have a bishop. The pope is the Bishop of Rome, and although he usually uses St. Peter's as his main church, because he lives in the Vatican, his bishop's throne is in a different church, the cathedral of Saint John Lateran. Large important churches like St. Peter's are often called basilicas. There are four ancient basilicas in Rome that were begun by the Emperor Constantine soon after he made Christianity the legal religion of the Roman Empire in the early 4th century AD (300s). The basilicas are St. Peter's Basilica, St. John Lateran, Santa Maria Maggiore and St. Paul outside the Walls.
+
+St. Peter's is famous for many reasons:
+
+One of the books of the Bible, called the Acts of the Apostles, tells what happened to the disciples of Jesus after he was put to death by crucifixion in the 1st century AD. One of his twelve disciples became the leader. His name was Simon Peter and he was a fisherman from Galilee. Peter became one of the most important people in starting the Christian Church. Another important disciple was Paul of Tarsus, who travelled to many places and wrote lots of letters to teach and to encourage people in the new Christian groups that began to spring up in many different parts of the Roman Empire. St. Paul travelled to Rome. It is believed that St. Peter also travelled to Rome and that both Paul and Peter were put to death there as Christian martyrs. St. Paul was beheaded with a sword. Peter was crucified up-side-down. It is believed that the body of St. Peter was buried in a cemetery near the Via Cornelia, a road leading out of the city, on the hill called Vaticanus. Peter's grave was marked, by a red rock, the symbol of his name. The place where Peter died was marked, in the 1400s, by a little round temple called the "Tempietto" designed by Bramante.
+
+St. Peter is very important in Roman Catholic tradition because Peter is believed to have been the head of the Christian Church in Rome, and so he was the first bishop. The Gospel of Matthew (chapter 16, verse 18) tells that Jesus said these words to Peter:
+
+The name Peter means a "rock". The Roman Catholic Church believes that Jesus made Peter the head of the Christian Church, and so all the Bishops of Rome (the Popes) must be the leaders of the Christian Church throughout the whole world. The Protestant and Orthodox churches believe that Jesus was speaking about the important words Peter had just said: "You are the Christ and the Son of the Living God" (Matthew 16:16), and that this Confession of Faith is the rock that the Christian Church is built on.
+
+On December 23, 1950, while making his Christmas radio broadcast to the world, Pope Pius XII announced that Saint Peter's tomb had been discovered.[8] Archaeologists had been searching for ten years in a place under the basilica that had been covered up for about a thousand years. They had found part of a small building dating from soon after St. Peter's death, and some bones, but no-one could be sure if they were the bones of St. Peter.
+
+St. Peter's Basilica, as it stand today, was begun in 1506. The first basilica, which is now called "Old St. Peter's Basilica" was begun by the Emperor Constantine between 326 and 333 AD. This was a big wide church in the shape of a Latin Cross, over 103.6 metres (350 feet) long. The central part called the "nave" had two aisles on either side, separated by rows of talls Roman columns. In front of the main entrance was large courtyard with a covered walkway all around. This church had been built over a small "shrine" (little chapel) believed to mark the burial place of St. Peter. The old basilica contained a very large number of tombs and memorials, including those of most of the popes from St. Peter to the 15th century.[9]
+
+By the end of the 15th century (1400s), the old basilica was falling to pieces. Pope Nicholas V, (1447–55), was worried about it and got two architects, Leone Battista Alberti and Bernardo Rossellino, to make plans to restore it or build a new one. But Pope Nicholas had so many political problems that when he died, very little of the work had been done.[10]
+In 1505, Pope Julius II decided to demolish (pull down) the old St. Peter's and build a basilica that would be the grandest church in the world and make Rome (and himself) famous.[6] He held a competition and invited lots of artists and architects to draw designs. A plan was selected and the build was begun, but Pope Julius did not get his new basilica. In fact, it was not finished for 120 years. The planning and construction (or "building work") lasted through the reigns of 21 popes and 8 architects.
+
+The changing plans for St. Peter's. The architectural terms are explained in the article.
+
+The Old Saint Peter's Basilica drawn by H. W. Brewer, 1891. He used very old drawings and writings to work out how it must have looked.
+
+Bramante's plan is for a Greek Cross with a dome on four big piers. There is a tower at each corner.
+
+Raphael's plan is simpler and is for a Latin Cross like the old basilica.
+
+The finished basilica shows Michelangelo's plan, with four huge piers. It also shows Maderna's nave, portico and facade.
+
+When Pope Julius decided to build the "grandest church in Christendom"[6] the design by Donato Bramante was chosen, and Pope Julius laid the foundation stone in 1506. Bramante's plan was in the shape of an enormous Greek Cross, which means that it had four arms all of equal length, and a large dome at the middle. For the next hundred years, the groundplan got changed backwards and forwards between a "Greek Cross" like Bramante's plan and a "Latin Cross" like the old basilica, but one thing never changed, and that was the idea of having an enormous dome at the place where the two arms crossed.
+
+At that time, there were only three very large domes in the whole world. One was far away in Constantinople on the church of Hagia Sophia and not many people in Italy had seen it. The other two domes were both very well known. One was the dome on the temple to the Ancient Roman gods, called the Pantheon. The other dome was built in the early 15th century (1400s) on Florence Cathedral by Filippo Brunelleschi. The dome of the Pantheon is 43.3 metres (142.06 ft) across and the dome of Florence Cathedral is about 42.1 metres (138 ft), but is much taller. Bramante's plan for the dome of St. Peter's was for it to be about as wide as the dome of Florence, and even taller.
+
+No architect with any sense would try to design a dome without first checking out how these other two domes were made. Bramante checked them out. He discovered that the dome of the Pantheon, which had been standing for nearly 1500 years, was made of concrete. So that the concrete wouldn't be too heavy, it was mixed with pumice stone which comes out of a volcano and is full of gas holes so it is very light weight. Bramante learned how to make concrete like the Ancient Romans.
+
+Bramante's dome was to be like the one on the Pantheon. But there was one very big difference between the Pantheon dome and Bramante's design. The Pantheon's dome stands on a round wall like a drum, with only one doorway in it, but Bramante's dome was designed to stand on a drum, which was standing high up on four wide arches. The aches rested on four enormous piers (pillars of stone). He had got this idea from Florence Cathedral which had an enormous dome resting on eight big piers. Another idea that Bramante got from Florence Cathedral was the design for the little stone tower which sits on top of the dome and is called the lantern.
+
+When Pope Julius died in 1513, the next pope, Leo X, called in three architects, Giuliano da Sangallo, Fra Giocondo and Raphael. Sangallo and Fr Giocondo both died in 1515. Raphael made a big change to the plan. Instead of having a Greek Cross, he decided to change the plan to a Latin Cross, which had a long nave and aisles like the old basilica.[11]
+
+Raphael also died, in his mid-30s, in 1520, before any important changes could be made to the building. The next architect was Peruzzi who like some of the ideas that Raphael had, but did not like the Latin Cross plan. Peruzzi went back to Bramante's Greek Cross plan.[12] But there were so many arguments in the church that the building stopped completely. Then in 1527 Rome was invaded by Emperor Charles V. Peruzzi died in 1536 without his plan being built.[6] The only main parts of the building which had been constructed were Bramante's four big piers to hold the dome.
+
+Antonio da Sangallo (known as "Sangallo the Younger") looked at all the different plans by Peruzzi, Raphael and Bramante. He put some of their ideas together in a design that had a very short nave, (not a long one like Raphael's design) and had a big porch at the front. He changed Bramante's dome to be much stronger and also much more decorated. The main new idea that he added were 16 stone ribs to strengthen the dome. This idea came from Florence Cathedral which had eight stone ribs.[13] But Sangallo's plan never got built, either. The main job that he did was to strengthen Bramante's piers which had begun to crack.[14]
+
+On January 1st, 1547 in the reign of Pope Paul III, Michelangelo, who was already over 70, became the architect of St. Peter's.[15] He is the main designer of the building as it stands today. Michelangelo died before the job was finished, but by that time, he had got the construction up to a point where other people could get it finished. Michelangelo had already done a lot of work for the popes, carving figures for the tomb of Pope Julius II, painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling, which took five years, and the enormous fresco the "Last Judgement" on the wall of the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo found the popes and the cardinals very difficult to work with. When Pope Paul asked him to be the new architect for St. Peter's, Michelangelo did not want the job. In fact, Pope Paul did not really want Michelangelo. But his first choice, Giulio Romano, died suddenly. Michelangelo told the pope that he would only do the job, if he could do it in whatever way he thought was best.[14]
+
+Michelangelo wrote:
+
+When Michelangelo took over a building site in 1547, the nave of the old basilica was still standing and in use. There were four of the most enormous piers in the world standing where the western part of the old basilica had been. The building work had stopped for so long that weeds and bushes were growing out between the stones of the unfinished building as if it was a cliff. Michelangelo looked at all the plans that had been drawn by some of the greatest architects and engineers of the 16th century. He knew he could do whatever he liked but he had respect for the other designers, especially Bramante. He knew that he was expected to make a design that would be the symbol of the city of Rome, in the same way as Brunelleschi's dome was the symbol of Florence where Michelangelo had lived as a young man. He went back to the Greek Cross idea and re-drew Bramante's plan, making every part of it much stronger and simpler.[16] It had to be strong enough to support the tallest dome in the world.
+
+Michelangelo was a sculptor. When he was going to carve something, he would start by making a clay model. Michelangelo could imagine the building like a lump of clay. What if the building could be pushed and pulled and squeezed? If you could squeeze the corners in, then other bits would bulge out. If you could put your hands around the whole building and squeeze it, then the dome would bulge upwards. The idea of imagining buildings as bendy and bulgy was a completely new one. But other artists like Gianlorenzo Bernini looked at what Michelangelo did at St. Peter's and used this clever new idea in their own work. This is called the Baroque style.
+
+As it stands today, the Greek Cross part of the basilica is Michelangelo's design and the nave, which was added later, is by Carlo Maderna.[17] Comparing Michelangelo's plan with Raphael's plan shows that while the outside-line of Raphael's plan has clear square and round shapes, the outside-line in Michelangelo's plan has lots of changes of direction. That is the way it was built. All around the outside of the building are enormous "pilasters" (which are like giant columns stuck on the building). Almost every pilaster is set at a different angle to the next one as if the flat walls had been folded up. Right around the top of the building is a band called the "cornice". A "cornice" is usually quite flat, but because of all the changes of direction, this cornice ripples like a giant piece of ribbon, tied around the outside of the building.[18] The art historian Helen Gardner wrote that it looked as of the whole building was being held together from top to bottom.[16]
+
+Michelangelo designed the dome again, using ideas from Bramante and Sangallo the Younger. Three important ideas came from the dome that Brunelleschi had built in Florence more than 100 years earlier.
+
+When Michelangelo died in 1564, the walls were being built, the piers had been strengthened and everything was ready for the building of the dome. The Pope wanted Michelangelo's assistant Vignola to finish it, but he was not able to. After twenty years Pope Sixtus V gave the job to the architect Giacomo della Porta and the engineer Domenico Fontana.[6][14] Giacomo Della Porta successfully built the dome. He made some changes to the design, like adding some lions' heads to the decoration because they were the symbol of Pope Sixtus' family. The main way that the dome is different from the wooden model is that it is much more pointy.[14]
+
+Some writers believe that Michelangelo had changed his mind from his first plan, and did not want the pointy dome. They believe he wanted a round dome which would look more "restful". Other writers believe that Michelangelo wanted the pointed dome, not just because it was safer to build, but also because it looked more exciting, as if the building was pushing upwards.[16][18] Pope Sixtus V lived just long enough to see the dome finished in 1590. His name is written in gold letters around the inside, just below the lantern.
+
+Pope Clement III, had a cross raised into place on top of the lantern. It took a whole day and everyone in Rome was given a holiday, and all the church-bells of the city were rung. In the arms of the cross are set two lead boxes, one containing a fragment of the True Cross and a bone of Saint Andrew and the other containing medals of the "Holy Lamb".[14][19]
+
+The dome of St. Peter's rises to a height of 136.57 m (448.06 ft) from the floor of the basilica. It is the tallest dome in the world.[20] Its inside diameter is 41.47 metres (136.06 ft), just slightly smaller than those of the Pantheon and the Florence Cathedral.
+
+Around the inside of the dome is written in letters 2 metres (6.5 ft) high:
+
+In 1602 Pope Paul V put Carlo Maderna in charge of the building. On February 18 1606, workmen began to pull down the rest of the old basilica. Some people were very upset. The building committee felt guilty. They decided that the church was the wrong shape, and that they wanted a Latin Cross plan because it was the symbol of the death of Jesus.[14] They wanted a nave which would cover all the Holy Ground where the old building had been. In 1607 Maderna's plans for the nave and the facade (the front) were accepted. For the inside, he used very large piers with pilasters like Michelangelo's, but he made a clear join between the two parts of the building. The building work began on May 7 1607 and 700 men were employed to do the work. In 1608, the facade was begun. In December 1614 the building was all finished except for the decorations on the ceiling. Early in 1615 the temporary wall between Michelangelo's building and the new nave was pulled down. All the mess was carted away, and the nave was ready for use by Palm Sunday.[14]
+
+The façade was designed by Maderna. It is 114.69 metres (376.28 ft) wide and 45.55 metres (149.44 ft) high and is built of pale grey travertine stone, with a giant Corinthian columns and a central triangular pediment. Along the roof-line are statues of Christ, John the Baptist, and eleven of the apostles.
+
+Inside the main doors is a portico (a long hall) which runs across the front of the building and has five doors leading into the basilica. Its has a long curving roof decorated with gold. The light that comes through the doors shines on the beautifully patterned marble floor. At each end of the portico, set between columns, is a statue of a figure on horseback. They are Charlemagne sculpted by Cornacchini (18th century) to the south and Emperor Constantine by Bernini (1670) to the north. Maderna's last work at St. Peter's was to design a sunken crypt called the "Confessio" under the dome, where people can go to be nearer the burial place of the apostle. All around its marble handrail are 95 bronze lamps.
+
+As a young boy Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) visited St. Peter's and said that one day he wanted to build "a mighty throne for the apostle". His wish came true. As a young man, in 1626, Pope Urban VIII asked him to work as architect for the basilica. Bernini spent the next fifty years thinking of new and beautiful things to design. He is thought of as the greatest architect and sculptor of the Baroque period.[14][16]
+
+Bernini's first work at St. Peter's was to design the "baldacchino" which is like a tent or "pavilion" above the High Altar. This amazing thing is 30 metres (98 ft) tall and is probably the largest piece of bronze in the world. It stands underneath the dome and has four huge bronze twisted columns decorated with olive leaves and bees, because bees were the symbol of Pope Urban. Pope Urban had a niece that he loved very much and he got Bernini to put her face and the face of her new-born baby boy on the columns as well.[14][16]
+
+Bernini had a great idea for Bramante's great big piers. He had four hollow "niches" carved into them where four huge statues could stand. The basilica owns some precious relics: a piece of the True Cross of Jesus, a veil that a woman wiped the face of Jesus with, while he was carrying the cross, the spear that was used to pierce Jesus side, and the bones of St. Andrew, the brother of St. Peter. No-one knows for sure whether these things are real or not, but for hundreds of years they have been precious. Bernini's plan was the make four marble statues of the four Holy people: St. Helena who found the cross, St. Longinus who was the soldier with the spear, St Veronica who wiped Jesus' face and St. Andrew.[14] (See below)
+
+Bernini's next job was to make a special throne out of bronze, to hold an ancient wood and ivory throne that had been at the basilica for more than 500 years. It is called the Cattedra Petri or "throne of St. Peter". The bronze throne, with the old wooden throne inside it, is held up high at the end of the basilica, by four important saints who are called "Doctors of the Church" because they were all great writers and teachers.[21] The statues are made of bronze. They are Saints Ambrose and Augustine for the Church of Rome and Saints Athanasius and John Chrysostum for the Orthodox Church. Above the chair is a window which is made not from glass but thin translucent stone called alabaster. The Dove of the Holy Spirit is in the middle of the window with rays of light spreading out into the basilica through a sculpture of golden clouds and angels. Bernini designed this to look like a window into Heaven. There was a great celebration when the chair was put in place on January 16, 1666.[14][16]
+
+Bernini's last work for St. Peter's, 1676, was to decorate of the Chapel of the Sacrament. He designed a miniature version of Bramante's Tempietto, and made it in gilt bronze. On either side is an angel, one gazing in adoration and the other looking towards the viewer in welcome. Bernini died in 1680 in his 82nd year.[14]
+
+To the east of the basilica is the Piazza di San Pietro (St. Peter's Place).[22] The piazza was designed by Bernini and built between 1656 and 1667. It was not an easy job because the designer had lots of things to think about. Firstly, many people complained that Maderna's facade on St. Peter's looked too wide, so Bernini wanted to make it look narrower, not wider. Secondly, in the old square left over from the Old St. Peter's, Pope Sixtus V had a monument set up. This monument was a precious Ancient Egyptian obelisk (which is like a tall column, but with four flat sides). From its base to the top of the cross (that the pope had put on top) it was 40 metres (131 ft) high, and had been brought to Rome in ancient times. The obelisk really should be at the center of the new square, but it was not in quite the right place, and was very difficult to move without breaking. The third problem was that Maderna had built a fountain to one side of the obelisk, and Bernini needed to make another fountain to match it, otherwise the design would look unbalanced.[14]
+
+Bernini solved the problem by making two areas, instead of one huge one. The first area is an almost-square area right in front of the facade. It is cleverly designed with sloping sides that make the building look taller and not so wide. The second part of the piazza is oval. It has the obelisk at the center with two fountains on either side at the widest part. The two parts of the piazza are surrounded by a colonnade (covered walk-way) which is carried on tall columns. All around are large statues of saints which seem to look down on the thousands of visitors that come to the square every day. The colonnade is in two great arcs that seem to stretch out like loving arms, welcoming people to the Basilica.[16] In recent times some buildings were demolished, making another square, to match the one near the piazza.
+
+The famous architectural historian, Sir Banister Fletcher, said that no other city in the world had given such a wonderful view to people visiting their main church. He said that no other architect except Bernini could have imagined such a noble design. He said it is the greatest entrance to the greatest Christian church in the whole world.[23]
+
+St. Peter's Basilica has many treasures. These include Christian relics, the tombs of popes and many other important people, famous artworks which are mostly sculpture and other interesting things.
+
+The Egyptian obelisk stands in the centre of the piazza.
+
+The fountains of Maderna and Bernini are lit up at night.
+
+Outside the basilica stand two statues. This is St. Paul.
+
+There are many statues on the colonnade and roof.
+
+The Holy Door is opened only for great celebrations.
+
+No-one knows how old the statue of St. Peter is. Its feet are worn down from people kissing them.
+
+The Pietà by Michelangelo is the most famous artwork in St. Peter's. It shows the Virgin Mary holding the body of her son, Jesus.
+
+The body of The Blessed Pope John XXIII can be seen inside his tomb.
+
+There are many sculptured decorations like this angel.
+
+The window of the Holy Spirit designed by Bernini
+
+Many parts of the basilica are decorated with mosaics. This is St. John the Gospel Writer.
+
+The mosaic decoration of this small dome shows the Blessed Virgin Mary in Heaven.
+
+The Dove of Peace showing the different coloured marbles used to decorate the piers.
+
+The tomb of Queen Christina of Sweden, who gave up her throne and became a nun.
+
+The tomb of Pope Innocent XII has the figures of Caring and Justice.
+
+This carved altarpiece shows Attila the Hun being driven out of Rome.
+
+Four large statues are in the piers near the High Altar. Saint Helena holds the True Cross which she found in Jerusalem.
+
+Saint Longinus carries the spear that pierced the side of Jesus.
+
+Saint Andrew carries the cross on which he was crucified. His bones are at St. Peter's
+
+Saint Veronica carries the veil that she used to wipe the face of Jesus, when he was carrying his cross.
+

ensimple/5238.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+on the European continent  (dark grey)  —  [Legend]
+
+Vatican City (/ˈvætkən ˈsɪti/ (listen); officially Vatican City State, Italian: Stato della Città del Vaticano)[6] is an independent sovereign state and the smallest country in the world by size, at 0.44 km².[7] Its territory is completely surrounded by Italy and it is only one of three countries in the world that are enclaves of another country (the others being San Marino, also in Italy, and Lesotho in southern Africa). Also, it is the only country in the world that is an enclave of a city, as all of the land around it is part of Rome, the capital of Italy.
+
+The Vatican City is the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church and its government, the Holy See. Its head of state is the Pope which is, religiously speaking, the Bishop of Rome and head of the Roman Catholic Church. The current Pope, Pope Francis, former cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, was elected on 13 March 2013.
+
+Established on 11 February 1929 with the Lateran Agreement (Patti Lateranensi) signed by Benito Mussolini and Pope Pius XI, the Vatican City is also important for its culture and art. The Vatican's masterpieces are very well known in the world: St. Peter's Square, St. Peter's Basilica, the Sistine Chapel, the Vatican Museums and the Apostolic Palace, where the Pope lives. There are also hundreds of other sculptures and pictures.
+
+The Pope used to rule the Papal States, which included most of Italy. Catholic popes had generally tried to stop Italy from becoming one country because they feared they would lose their control of at least one of the Papal States.[source?] In 1861 Italy was unified under the King of Savoy, but Rome and Latium remained unconquered. On September 20, 1870 Italian troops invaded. Rome became capital of the new kingdom.
+
+The Pope claimed he was a prisoner of the Italian state and excommunicated all the people who helped invade the Papal state. This stopped Catholics from taking part in public life under Catholic government.
+
+In 1929 Benito Mussolini, decided to sign an agreement with the Holy See, called the Lateran Treaty, which created the Vatican State. Another treaty gave the Vatican money each year to compensate for the lost territories.
+
+The government structure is theocracy with the pontifical leader being the highest authority. The pope is elected by the College of Cardinals which can lead the Roman Catholic Church and the city-state itself. The Pope also holds the title of "Bishop of Rome".
+
+The religion of the city is the Roman Catholic Church.
+
+St. Peter's square seen from the basilica.
+
+The basilica, in early morning

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+Coordinates: 13°10′N 61°14′W / 13.167°N 61.233°W / 13.167; -61.233 (Saint Vicent and the Grenadines)
+
+Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is an island nation in the Caribbean Sea. It is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States and CARICOM.
+
+The country speaks English as its official language. The capital, and its main port, is Kingstown.
+
+Its national bird is the Saint Vincent Amazon, an endemic bird of the Saint Vincent island.[3]
+
+Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is a parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy with Queen Elizabeth II as head of state. The Queen does not live in the islands but she is represented in the country by the Governor-General, currently Sir Frederick Ballantyne.
+
+Control of the government rests with the elected prime minister and his or her cabinet. The current Prime Minister is Ralph Gonsalves.
+
+The country has no formal armed forces, although the police has a Special Service Unit that has a supporting role on the island.
+
+The Parliament is unicameral is formed only by the House of Assembly with 21 seats: 15 representatives elected by popular vote to serve five-year terms and 6 appointed senators. The last elections were held on 13 December 2010 and the next will be held in 2015.[1]
+
+The island now known as Saint Vincent was originally named Youloumain[4]  by the native Caribs. The Caribs inhabited Saint Vincent before the Europeans arrived, and it is possible still to find Carib artifacts in the island.
+
+Christopher Columbus explored in 1498 the main island on Saint Vincent's Day.[5] The Caribs did not allowed Europeans to settle in Saint Vincent until 1719 when some French people came from Martinique and began to grow coffee, tobacco, indigo, cotton and sugar cane with the help of African slaves.
+
+In 1763 by the Treaty of Paris, France gave control of Saint Vincent to Britain; France took the island again in 1779, but the British then regained Saint Vincent under the Treaty of Versailles (1783).
+
+In 1834 slavery was abolished and people from the Portuguese island of Madeira and from India came to work as agricultural workers.[5]
+
+In 1871 the group of islands became part of the Windward Islands Colony and in 1956 a member of the Federation of the Windward Islands. In 1958 Saint Vincent joined the Federation of the West Indies and in 1969 it got full internal self-government. Finally in 1979 it became an Independent Sovereign State within the Commonwealt.[5]
+
+The estimated population in 2003 was 103,220. The population density is 265 persons per square kilometre.
+
+The ethnic composition was 66% Black, 19% Mixed, 6.0% East Indian, 4.0% European (mainly Portuguese), 2.0% Carib Amerindian, 3.0% others.[1]
+
+The official language of the islands is English but most people use the Vicentian Creole English.[6]
+
+The people of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines was 75% Protestant (47% Anglicans, 28% Methodists), 13% Catholics, 12% other (Hindu, Seventh-Day Adventists, other Protestant).[1]
+
+Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is a group of islands of the Caribbean Sea. It lies to the west of Barbados, south of Saint Lucia and north of Grenada in the Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles.
+
+There are 32 islands and cays, including the main island of Saint Vincent (344 square kilometres (133 sq mi)) and the northern two-thirds of the Grenadines (45 square kilometres (17 sq mi)), which are a chain of small islands stretching south from Saint Vincent to Grenada. The largest and most populated Grenadines islands are Bequia, Mustique, Canouan and Union Island.[7]
+
+The main island of Saint Vincent, at 13°15′N 61°12′W / 13.250°N 61.200°W / 13.250; -61.200 (Saint Vincent), is 18 kilometres (11 mi) long and 11 kilometres (6.8 mi) wide, and has an area of 344 square kilometres (133 sq mi), or about 88% of the total country area, 19 times that of the country's second largest island Bequia. It is dominated by the highest mountain in the country and an active volcano, La Soufrière (1,234 metres (4,049 ft)), which erupted violently in 1812 and 1902. The most recent eruption was on April 13, 1979. The island has many mountains and forests. The island is tropical humid, with an average of between 18 and 31 °C depending on the altitude.
+
+The Saint Vincent Passage is between the Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent islands, and the Bequia Channel is between the Grenadines and Saint Vincent islands.
+
+The Grenadines islands lie between the islands of Saint Vincent in the north and Grenada in the south. Neither Saint Vincent nor Grenada are Grenadine islands. The islands north of the Martinique Channel belong to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and the islands south of the channel belong to Grenada.
+
+These islands make up the Grenadines Parish
+
+Administratively, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is divided into six parishes. Five parishes are on Saint Vincent, while the sixth is made up of the Grenadine islands. Kingstown is located in the Parish of Saint George and is the capital city and central administrative centre of the country.
+
+Tropical rainforest climate is a type of tropical climate in which there is no dry season - all months have mean precipitation values of at least 60 millimetres (2.4 in). Tropical rainforest climates have no pronounced summer or winter; it is typically hot and wet throughout the year and rainfall is both heavy and frequent.[8]
+
+The Köppen climate classification subtype for this climate is Af (Tropical Rainforest Climate).[8]
+
+The average yearly temperature is 27 °C (81 °F). The coolest months are between November and February. During the rainy season, May through October, rain is frequent in the mountains of St. Vincent with the annual average rainfall being 380 centimetres (150 in) away from the coast and 200 centimetres (79 in) on the coast.[7]

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@@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
+The Balearic Islands (officially and in Catalan Illes Balears) are an autonomous community of Spain, formed by the Balearic Islands province. The main Balearic islands are Mallorca (also called in English Majorca), Minorca, Eivissa or Ibiza, and Formentera. The capital is Palma de Mallorca, and other cities are Mahon, Ibiza, Inca, Ciutadella, and Calvia.
+
+
+
+
+

ensimple/5240.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,53 @@
+Coordinates: 13°10′N 61°14′W / 13.167°N 61.233°W / 13.167; -61.233 (Saint Vicent and the Grenadines)
+
+Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is an island nation in the Caribbean Sea. It is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States and CARICOM.
+
+The country speaks English as its official language. The capital, and its main port, is Kingstown.
+
+Its national bird is the Saint Vincent Amazon, an endemic bird of the Saint Vincent island.[3]
+
+Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is a parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy with Queen Elizabeth II as head of state. The Queen does not live in the islands but she is represented in the country by the Governor-General, currently Sir Frederick Ballantyne.
+
+Control of the government rests with the elected prime minister and his or her cabinet. The current Prime Minister is Ralph Gonsalves.
+
+The country has no formal armed forces, although the police has a Special Service Unit that has a supporting role on the island.
+
+The Parliament is unicameral is formed only by the House of Assembly with 21 seats: 15 representatives elected by popular vote to serve five-year terms and 6 appointed senators. The last elections were held on 13 December 2010 and the next will be held in 2015.[1]
+
+The island now known as Saint Vincent was originally named Youloumain[4]  by the native Caribs. The Caribs inhabited Saint Vincent before the Europeans arrived, and it is possible still to find Carib artifacts in the island.
+
+Christopher Columbus explored in 1498 the main island on Saint Vincent's Day.[5] The Caribs did not allowed Europeans to settle in Saint Vincent until 1719 when some French people came from Martinique and began to grow coffee, tobacco, indigo, cotton and sugar cane with the help of African slaves.
+
+In 1763 by the Treaty of Paris, France gave control of Saint Vincent to Britain; France took the island again in 1779, but the British then regained Saint Vincent under the Treaty of Versailles (1783).
+
+In 1834 slavery was abolished and people from the Portuguese island of Madeira and from India came to work as agricultural workers.[5]
+
+In 1871 the group of islands became part of the Windward Islands Colony and in 1956 a member of the Federation of the Windward Islands. In 1958 Saint Vincent joined the Federation of the West Indies and in 1969 it got full internal self-government. Finally in 1979 it became an Independent Sovereign State within the Commonwealt.[5]
+
+The estimated population in 2003 was 103,220. The population density is 265 persons per square kilometre.
+
+The ethnic composition was 66% Black, 19% Mixed, 6.0% East Indian, 4.0% European (mainly Portuguese), 2.0% Carib Amerindian, 3.0% others.[1]
+
+The official language of the islands is English but most people use the Vicentian Creole English.[6]
+
+The people of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines was 75% Protestant (47% Anglicans, 28% Methodists), 13% Catholics, 12% other (Hindu, Seventh-Day Adventists, other Protestant).[1]
+
+Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is a group of islands of the Caribbean Sea. It lies to the west of Barbados, south of Saint Lucia and north of Grenada in the Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles.
+
+There are 32 islands and cays, including the main island of Saint Vincent (344 square kilometres (133 sq mi)) and the northern two-thirds of the Grenadines (45 square kilometres (17 sq mi)), which are a chain of small islands stretching south from Saint Vincent to Grenada. The largest and most populated Grenadines islands are Bequia, Mustique, Canouan and Union Island.[7]
+
+The main island of Saint Vincent, at 13°15′N 61°12′W / 13.250°N 61.200°W / 13.250; -61.200 (Saint Vincent), is 18 kilometres (11 mi) long and 11 kilometres (6.8 mi) wide, and has an area of 344 square kilometres (133 sq mi), or about 88% of the total country area, 19 times that of the country's second largest island Bequia. It is dominated by the highest mountain in the country and an active volcano, La Soufrière (1,234 metres (4,049 ft)), which erupted violently in 1812 and 1902. The most recent eruption was on April 13, 1979. The island has many mountains and forests. The island is tropical humid, with an average of between 18 and 31 °C depending on the altitude.
+
+The Saint Vincent Passage is between the Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent islands, and the Bequia Channel is between the Grenadines and Saint Vincent islands.
+
+The Grenadines islands lie between the islands of Saint Vincent in the north and Grenada in the south. Neither Saint Vincent nor Grenada are Grenadine islands. The islands north of the Martinique Channel belong to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and the islands south of the channel belong to Grenada.
+
+These islands make up the Grenadines Parish
+
+Administratively, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is divided into six parishes. Five parishes are on Saint Vincent, while the sixth is made up of the Grenadine islands. Kingstown is located in the Parish of Saint George and is the capital city and central administrative centre of the country.
+
+Tropical rainforest climate is a type of tropical climate in which there is no dry season - all months have mean precipitation values of at least 60 millimetres (2.4 in). Tropical rainforest climates have no pronounced summer or winter; it is typically hot and wet throughout the year and rainfall is both heavy and frequent.[8]
+
+The Köppen climate classification subtype for this climate is Af (Tropical Rainforest Climate).[8]
+
+The average yearly temperature is 27 °C (81 °F). The coolest months are between November and February. During the rainy season, May through October, rain is frequent in the mountains of St. Vincent with the annual average rainfall being 380 centimetres (150 in) away from the coast and 200 centimetres (79 in) on the coast.[7]

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+A season is a part of a year. Most areas of the Earth have four seasons in a year: spring, summer, autumn (British English) or fall (US English), and winter.
+
+In some areas, there are a different number of seasons.  For example, the tropical parts of Australia (the northern parts of Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory) have wet and dry seasons.  These are in addition to, or replace the regular season names.[1]
+
+In places which are tropical and subtropical, there are two seasons: the rainy (or wet, or monsoon) season and the dry season. This is because the rain changes more than the temperature.
+
+Summer is a warm season because the days are longer and the Sun is high in the sky, giving direct light to the ground.    Winter is a cold season because the days are shorter and the Sun is low in the sky, giving indirect light to the ground.  Both the changes in the length of the day and the height of the Sun at noon are caused by the tilt of the Earth's spin axis with respect to the plane of the Earth's path around the Sun.  At any time, in any season, the northern and southern hemispheres (halves of the Earth) have opposite seasons.
+
+Seasons begin and end on different dates in different countries. In the United States, people say the seasons begin at the solstices and equinoxes. The summer solstice is the longest day of the year, and the winter solstice is the shortest. The equinox is the time when the day and the night are the same number of hours, assuming the sun were a point of light at its center. Since civil dawn occurs when the edge of the sun first appears over the horizon and civil dusk occurs when the edge drops over the horizon, the civil length of day is 12 hours long several days prior to the equinoxes. In the USA, summer begins at summer solstice, winter at winter solstice, spring at the spring (vernal) equinox and autumn at the autumnal equinox.
+
+In Britain, people traditionally say that the seasons begin about seven weeks earlier: spring begins on Candlemas (February 2), summer on May Day (May 1), autumn on Lammas (August 1), and winter on All Hallows (November 1). These are near the cross-quarter days halfway between the solstices and the equinoxes. The Irish calendar is similar, but Spring begins on February 1.
+
+In Denmark, spring begins on March 1, summer on June 1, autumn on September 1 and winter on December 1. In Australia, summer begins on December 1, autumn on March 1, winter on June 1, and spring on September 1.
+
+In the Chinese calendar and the Northern parts of India, the solstices and equinoxes are in the middle of each season. Summer happens in the hemisphere tilted towards the sun.
+
+High season is the time of year that people travel. During high season hotels and resorts increase their prices because demand is higher than in offseason. For example, winter is high season for skiing; summer is high season for beaches.

ensimple/5242.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,17 @@
+A season is a part of a year. Most areas of the Earth have four seasons in a year: spring, summer, autumn (British English) or fall (US English), and winter.
+
+In some areas, there are a different number of seasons.  For example, the tropical parts of Australia (the northern parts of Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory) have wet and dry seasons.  These are in addition to, or replace the regular season names.[1]
+
+In places which are tropical and subtropical, there are two seasons: the rainy (or wet, or monsoon) season and the dry season. This is because the rain changes more than the temperature.
+
+Summer is a warm season because the days are longer and the Sun is high in the sky, giving direct light to the ground.    Winter is a cold season because the days are shorter and the Sun is low in the sky, giving indirect light to the ground.  Both the changes in the length of the day and the height of the Sun at noon are caused by the tilt of the Earth's spin axis with respect to the plane of the Earth's path around the Sun.  At any time, in any season, the northern and southern hemispheres (halves of the Earth) have opposite seasons.
+
+Seasons begin and end on different dates in different countries. In the United States, people say the seasons begin at the solstices and equinoxes. The summer solstice is the longest day of the year, and the winter solstice is the shortest. The equinox is the time when the day and the night are the same number of hours, assuming the sun were a point of light at its center. Since civil dawn occurs when the edge of the sun first appears over the horizon and civil dusk occurs when the edge drops over the horizon, the civil length of day is 12 hours long several days prior to the equinoxes. In the USA, summer begins at summer solstice, winter at winter solstice, spring at the spring (vernal) equinox and autumn at the autumnal equinox.
+
+In Britain, people traditionally say that the seasons begin about seven weeks earlier: spring begins on Candlemas (February 2), summer on May Day (May 1), autumn on Lammas (August 1), and winter on All Hallows (November 1). These are near the cross-quarter days halfway between the solstices and the equinoxes. The Irish calendar is similar, but Spring begins on February 1.
+
+In Denmark, spring begins on March 1, summer on June 1, autumn on September 1 and winter on December 1. In Australia, summer begins on December 1, autumn on March 1, winter on June 1, and spring on September 1.
+
+In the Chinese calendar and the Northern parts of India, the solstices and equinoxes are in the middle of each season. Summer happens in the hemisphere tilted towards the sun.
+
+High season is the time of year that people travel. During high season hotels and resorts increase their prices because demand is higher than in offseason. For example, winter is high season for skiing; summer is high season for beaches.

ensimple/5243.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,17 @@
+A season is a part of a year. Most areas of the Earth have four seasons in a year: spring, summer, autumn (British English) or fall (US English), and winter.
+
+In some areas, there are a different number of seasons.  For example, the tropical parts of Australia (the northern parts of Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory) have wet and dry seasons.  These are in addition to, or replace the regular season names.[1]
+
+In places which are tropical and subtropical, there are two seasons: the rainy (or wet, or monsoon) season and the dry season. This is because the rain changes more than the temperature.
+
+Summer is a warm season because the days are longer and the Sun is high in the sky, giving direct light to the ground.    Winter is a cold season because the days are shorter and the Sun is low in the sky, giving indirect light to the ground.  Both the changes in the length of the day and the height of the Sun at noon are caused by the tilt of the Earth's spin axis with respect to the plane of the Earth's path around the Sun.  At any time, in any season, the northern and southern hemispheres (halves of the Earth) have opposite seasons.
+
+Seasons begin and end on different dates in different countries. In the United States, people say the seasons begin at the solstices and equinoxes. The summer solstice is the longest day of the year, and the winter solstice is the shortest. The equinox is the time when the day and the night are the same number of hours, assuming the sun were a point of light at its center. Since civil dawn occurs when the edge of the sun first appears over the horizon and civil dusk occurs when the edge drops over the horizon, the civil length of day is 12 hours long several days prior to the equinoxes. In the USA, summer begins at summer solstice, winter at winter solstice, spring at the spring (vernal) equinox and autumn at the autumnal equinox.
+
+In Britain, people traditionally say that the seasons begin about seven weeks earlier: spring begins on Candlemas (February 2), summer on May Day (May 1), autumn on Lammas (August 1), and winter on All Hallows (November 1). These are near the cross-quarter days halfway between the solstices and the equinoxes. The Irish calendar is similar, but Spring begins on February 1.
+
+In Denmark, spring begins on March 1, summer on June 1, autumn on September 1 and winter on December 1. In Australia, summer begins on December 1, autumn on March 1, winter on June 1, and spring on September 1.
+
+In the Chinese calendar and the Northern parts of India, the solstices and equinoxes are in the middle of each season. Summer happens in the hemisphere tilted towards the sun.
+
+High season is the time of year that people travel. During high season hotels and resorts increase their prices because demand is higher than in offseason. For example, winter is high season for skiing; summer is high season for beaches.

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+A salad is a serving in a meal that includes leaf vegetables such as lettuce, spinach, or arugula. Uncooked or cold cooked vegetables that are sliced into small pieces (for example tomato or onion) are then mixed with the leaf vegetables.
+
+A salad dressing or vinaigrette is then poured on top of the vegetables. Salad dressings and vinaigrettes are a mixture of oil, herbs, spices, and flavorings.
+
+Some people also add other foods to the salad, such as croutons, bacon, chicken, grated cheese, tuna, pasta, olives, cooked potatoes, rice, or beans.
+
+A green salad or garden salad has leafy vegetables such as lettuce, spinach, or rocket (arugula). The salad leaves may be cut or torn into bite-sized fragments and tossed together (a tossed salad). They may also have nuts or croutons.
+
+A wedge salad is made from a head of lettuce (such as iceberg) halved or quartered, with other ingredients on top.[1]
+
+Vegetables other than greens may be used in a salad. Common raw vegetables used in a salad include cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, onions, carrots, celery, and radishes. Other ingredients include mushrooms, avocado, olives, hard boiled egg, artichoke hearts, heart of palm, green beans, cheeses.
+
+Fruit salads are made of fruit, and include the fruit cocktail that can be made fresh or from canned fruit.[2]
+
+Dessert salads rarely include leafy greens and are often sweet. Common variants are made with gelatin or whipped cream; e.g. jello salad, pistachio salad, and ambrosia. Other forms of dessert salads include snickers salad, glorified rice, and cookie salad popular in parts of the Midwestern United States.
+
+A composed salad is a salad arranged on a plate rather than put into a bowl.[3][4] It can be used as a meal in itself rather than as a part of a meal.[4]
+
+A green salad is often served with a salad dressing. Some examples include:
+
+The purpose of salad dressing depends across cultures. There are many often used salad dressings in North America. Traditional dressings in southern Europe are vinaigrettes, while mayonnaise is predominant in eastern European countries and Russia. In Denmark dressings are often based on crème fraîche. In China, where Western salad is a recent adoption from Western cuisine, the term salad dressing (沙拉酱, shalajiang) means to mayonnaise or mayonnaise-based dressings.
+
+There are many vegetables and other fare that are often added to salads. Some of them include:
+
+Again, individual taste usually governs the choice of salad garnishes.

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+Fascism is a form of government that is ruled by an authoritarian leader. They work for a totalitarian one-party state.[1] This aim is to prepare the nation for armed conflict, and to respond to economic difficulties.[2] Fascism a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.[3] Historically, fascist governments tend to be autocratic and  militaristic. In the Third Reich, the national socialist party, ethnic German society was pictured as a racially unified society, the Volksgemeinschaft.
+
+Fascism appeared in Italy in the early 1920s and developed fully in the 1930s.[4] The fascist party in Italy was ruled by a "grand council" from 1922 until the end of World War II.[5] However, in practice it became ruled by the first of the fascist leaders, Benito Mussolini.
+
+Hitler in Germany, Franco in Spain and Salazar in Portugal took control in the 1930s in their countries. After World War II, fascism continued in the form of military dictatorships in Portugal, Spain, in some parts of Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
+
+Fascism brought national unity and solidarity instead of the divisions of class struggle and party politics. Fascism is generally considered to be a facet of totalitarianism; although with majority support of its population (e.g. in Germany and Italy in WW2).
+
+There is more than one reason why people living in democratic states oppose fascism, but the main reason is that in a Fascist government the individual citizen doesn’t always have the option to vote, nor do they have the option to live a lifestyle which may be seen as immoral, useless, and unproductive towards society. If you are not heterosexual (homosexual, cross-dressing, changing genders, etc.) you can be arrested and put on trial.
+
+Fascist governments are different from communist ones in that fascists, in theory, support the right of labor representatives and corporate representatives (CEOs, company presidents, etc.) to negotiate - through a system called corporatism.    Fascists usually work closely with corporations and economic elites, and use the resources to build up the military,  other parts of the fascist state, or to help improve the lives of their citizens. Fascist states typically fund, help, and observe schools and other parts of civil society in order to promote and encourage nationalism. Most adults are encouraged to either join the fascist party or support it as the government.
+
+Communism, on the other hand is viewed as totalitarian in the sense that it calls for complete economic control and ownership of the economy by the people, in common.
+
+The first fascist government was run by Benito Mussolini in Italy from 1922 until 1943. The governments of Engelbert Dollfuss in Austria and Adolf Hitler in Germany are also iconic examples of fascism.  Spain under the rule of Francisco Franco, and Portugal when António de Oliveira Salazar was the head of the government. All of these governments were much like Italian fascism, especially before and during World War II.
+
+Fascism is named after the fasces, which is an old Roman name for a group of sticks tied together. It is easy to break one stick in half. It is very hard to break many sticks tied together in half. Fascists think that everyone following the same leader and nationalist ideas makes the country strong the same way the sticks are.
+
+In countries led by fascist governments, the government tries to control certain areas of life, such as the military, economy, and the educational system. Fascist ideas were most common around the time of World War II. 
+Some people were put on trial and executed by Fascist governments because they proved to be a threat to the views of the party or they committed treason along with acts of political dissent and resistance. However, the fascist governments of Portugal and Spain did not take part in World War II, and stayed in power until the 1970s. Many scholars consider these governments to have been or evolved into traditionalist and conservative rather than fascist. Fascism, while supporting order and stability as conservatism does, wants to transform society in new ways.
+
+After World War II, fascism is still around today, although there are no current Fascist governments, movements and politicians inspired by fascism are still in existence.

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+Saliva is the watery substance made in the mouths of humans and many animals.  Saliva begins digesting food in the mouth, and moistens food to make swallowing easier. Saliva consists of 99.5% water.
+
+The mouth is obviously the point of entry to the whole alimentary canal. It follows from this that saliva must both help digestion, and protect against infections.
+
+The digestion part is by three enzymes, one each for carbohydrates, fats and proteins. The digestion started here carries on in the stomach. There are some other 'minor' enzymes as well, and we do not know the full story about them yet. Also there is a pain-killing opiorphin, and a wrap-around haptocorrin which keeps vitamin B12 safe from stomach acids. Finally, there are a set of anti-bacterial proteins which make life difficult for any bacteria which get in with the food.[1]
+

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+Movies, or films, are a type of visual communication which uses moving pictures and sound to tell stories or teach people something. Most people watch (view) movies as a type of entertainment or a way to have fun. For some people, fun movies can mean movies that make them laugh, while for others it can mean movies that make them cry, or feel afraid.
+
+Most movies are made so that they can be shown on screen in Cinemas and at home. After movies are shown in Cinemas for a period of a few weeks or months, they may be marketed through several other medias. They are shown on pay television or cable television, and sold or rented on DVD disks or videocassette tapes, so that people can watch the movies at home. You can also download or stream movies. Older movies are shown on television broadcasting stations.
+
+A movie camera or video camera takes pictures very quickly, usually at 24 or 25 pictures (frames) every second. When a movie projector, a computer, or a television shows the pictures at that rate, it looks like the things shown in the set of pictures are really moving. Sound is either recorded at the same time, or added later. The sounds in a movie usually include the sounds of people talking (which is called dialogue), music (which is called the "soundtrack"), and sound effects, the sounds of activities that are happening in the movie (such as doors opening or guns being fired). In the 20th century the camera used photographic film. The product is still often called a "film" even though there usually is no film.
+
+A screenwriter writes a script, which is the story of the movie with dialogue and things that the actors will say and do. A producer hires people to work on the movie and gets all of the money that will be needed to pay for the actors and the equipment. Producers usually get the money by borrowing it from a bank or by getting investors to lend money to the movie production. Some producers work for a movie studio; other producers are independent (they do not work for a movie studio).
+
+Actors and directors read scripts to find out what to say and what to do. The actors memorize the words from the script that they will say in the movie, and learn the actions that the script tells them to do. Then, the director tells the actors what to do and a cameraman takes motion pictures of them with a motion picture camera.
+
+When filming has finished, an editor puts the moving pictures together in a way that tells the whole story within a set amount of time. Audio engineers and sound engineers record music and singing and join it with the moving pictures. When the movie is done, many copies of the movie are made by movie labs and put onto film reels. Then the reels are sent to cinemas. An electric machine called a projector shines a very bright light through the film, and people sitting in a dark room see it on a big screen.
+
+A genre is a word for a type of movie or a style of movie. Movies can be fictional (made up), or documentary (showing 'real life'), or a mix of the two. Although hundreds of movies are made every year, there are very few that do not follow a small number of set plots, or stories. Some movies mix together two or more genres.
+
+Most movies lose money but some make profits in the hundreds of millions, be they dollars, euro or pounds. In India movies have become an enormous part of the economy. The industry has always been dominated by a few major movie studios like MGM/UA, Warner Bros., Columbia, Lucasfilm, Paramount or Disney.
+
+There are many large companies that provide all of the services needed to make movies, such as special effects, lighting, set building. Many of these employees belong to trade unions who say how much their members must be paid. A huge number of smaller companies also offer services, such as music studios (which record the music for original movie sound tracks) and CGI computer animation.
+
+Finally there are movie distribution companies (which send movies around the world or around a country), and advertising companies who let people know about the movie and promote it (try to make people want to see the movie).
+
+Movies with famous stars and large budgets (lots of money), are designed to have a wide appeal, so that hopefully millions of people will pay to see them. These most expensive movies are called blockbusters.
+
+Special effects can add a huge amount to the cost of a movie, especially the newest CGI effects, but people have come to expect them and every blockbuster movie tries to outdo the last. Even in 2008, some movies cost up to $200 million to make.
+
+Very successful movies can make many times that amount in profit, and that's why the studios keep producing them. This kind of movie will have a lot of promotion through television advertising, billboards and internet sites.
+
+In blockbuster movies, there is usually a happy ending, in which all of the problems in the plot (story) are figured out or fixed and almost everyone (except the baddie) live happily ever after. Some movies have been so successful that the studios keep releasing more and more sequels, or movies with the same characters and basic plots.
+
+At the opposite end of the scale to the blockbuster, there is the independent, art, or Indie movie. These are usually made by small movie companies, or even just a small group of people that do not have much money. An example is The Blair Witch Project, which cost only about $60,000, but which has so far taken perhaps $200 million in ticket and DVD sales. Movies like this are very unusual and usually become popular 'underground' (word of mouth advertising), so that they become cult, or popular but not mainstream.
+
+Independent movies often tell more creative or unusual (strange) stories, or may have sad endings that do not appeal to the big studios, because they can not be sure how the public will react to them. They rarely make a lot of money, but if they are successful, the big studios will quickly try to get the people involved to sign a contract with them, by offering them a lot of money to make another movie. Often the new movie, with its big budget and its stars will be less successful than the first.

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+Salvador is a Brazilian city, capital of the state of Bahia. It has about 2.7 million inhabitants and an area of 709 square kilometres (274 sq mi).
+
+In 2010, the city of Salvador had the 3rd most people in Brazil, after São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.[2]
+
+Salvador is the second most popular tourism destination in Brazil, after Rio de Janeiro.[3]  Among the points of interest are its famous Pelourinho (named after the colonial pillories that once stood there) district, its historic churches,[4] and its beaches.
+
+In 1985 the Historic Centre of Salvador was made a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
+
+According to the Guinness Book of Records, the carnival or Carnaval of Salvador da Bahia is the biggest party on the planet. For an entire week, almost 4 million people celebrate throughout 25 kilometers (16 mi) of streets, avenues and squares. It takes about 100 thousand people to organize the event.[5] Salvador has about 800 thousand visitors for this event.
+
+The first books that arrived in Salvador were brought by the Jesuits.[6] The first libraries or bookstores that appeared were under the control of the religious missionaries.  They mostly had books on religion.
+
+Salvador has many sport activities. The Fonte Nova Stadium, also known as Estádio Octávio Mangabeira is a football stadium started on January 28, 1951.  It can hold 66,080 people. The stadium is owned by the Bahia government, and is the home ground of Esporte Clube Bahia. Its formal name honors Octávio Cavalcanti Mangabeira, a civil engineer, journalist, and former Bahia state governor from 1947 to 1954. The stadium is nicknamed Fonte Nova, because it is at Ladeira das Fontes das Pedras. The stadium was closed in 2007 due to an accident.  The E.C. Bahia home matches now happen in another stadium, in Pituaçu.
+
+Esporte Clube Bahia and Esporte Clube Vitória are Salvador's main football teams. Bahia has won 2 national titles, Brazil Trophy in 1959 and the Brazilian League in 1988. Vitória was a runner up in the Brazilian league in 1993 and Brazil Cup in 2010.
+
+Salvador has two large green areas for the practice of golf. Cajazeiras Golf and Country Club has a 18-hole course. Itapuã Golf Club has a 9-hole course. Tennis is very popular among Salvador's elites. Brasil Open, the country’s most important tournament, happens every year in Bahia.
+
+During the last decades, volleyball has grown steadily in Salvador.  It became popular after the gold medal won by Brazil in the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona. The most important tournaments in Bahia are the State Championship, the State League tournament and the Primavera Games. There are also beach volleyball events. Salvador has had many international tournaments. Bowling is practiced both by teenagers and adults in Salvador.
+
+Bahia's basketball league has competed since 1993.  They have 57 teams. The sport is very popular in the city of Salvador, especially among students.[7]
+
+Todos os Santos Bay and Salvador's climatic conditions are ideal for competition and recreational sailing. Salvador has a national racing schedule with dozens of events, also receiving the Mini Transat 6.50 and Les Illes du Soleil races.
+
+Rowing boat races started in the city more than a hundred years ago. It was first practiced by young men from traditional families, who spent their summer vacations there. With the recent fixing of the Dique do Tororó area, Salvador received new lanes for the practice of the sport.
+
+
+

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+Salvador Dalí [1] (11 May 1904 – 23 January 1989) was a Spanish painter who became famous for the unusual images he used in his paintings. He was born in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain. He was a key figure in surrealist art.[2]
+
+His most famous work was The Persistence of Memory (1931), which is now in MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It is a dream-like landscape with a soft, melted pocket-watch.[3]
+
+Dalí died of heart failure in Figueras. Salvador Dalí had a wife called Gala Dalí.

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+Coordinates: 47°34′N 7°36′E / 47.567°N 7.600°E / 47.567; 7.600
+
+Basel (French: Bâle) is a city in the north of Switzerland. It is sometimes called Basle in English.[1] Basel is the capital of the Swiss canton of Basel Stadt. It is surrounded by the Basel-Land canton. The city has a population of about 170,000 people.
+

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+Salvador Dalí [1] (11 May 1904 – 23 January 1989) was a Spanish painter who became famous for the unusual images he used in his paintings. He was born in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain. He was a key figure in surrealist art.[2]
+
+His most famous work was The Persistence of Memory (1931), which is now in MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It is a dream-like landscape with a soft, melted pocket-watch.[3]
+
+Dalí died of heart failure in Figueras. Salvador Dalí had a wife called Gala Dalí.

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+Salvador is a Brazilian city, capital of the state of Bahia. It has about 2.7 million inhabitants and an area of 709 square kilometres (274 sq mi).
+
+In 2010, the city of Salvador had the 3rd most people in Brazil, after São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.[2]
+
+Salvador is the second most popular tourism destination in Brazil, after Rio de Janeiro.[3]  Among the points of interest are its famous Pelourinho (named after the colonial pillories that once stood there) district, its historic churches,[4] and its beaches.
+
+In 1985 the Historic Centre of Salvador was made a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
+
+According to the Guinness Book of Records, the carnival or Carnaval of Salvador da Bahia is the biggest party on the planet. For an entire week, almost 4 million people celebrate throughout 25 kilometers (16 mi) of streets, avenues and squares. It takes about 100 thousand people to organize the event.[5] Salvador has about 800 thousand visitors for this event.
+
+The first books that arrived in Salvador were brought by the Jesuits.[6] The first libraries or bookstores that appeared were under the control of the religious missionaries.  They mostly had books on religion.
+
+Salvador has many sport activities. The Fonte Nova Stadium, also known as Estádio Octávio Mangabeira is a football stadium started on January 28, 1951.  It can hold 66,080 people. The stadium is owned by the Bahia government, and is the home ground of Esporte Clube Bahia. Its formal name honors Octávio Cavalcanti Mangabeira, a civil engineer, journalist, and former Bahia state governor from 1947 to 1954. The stadium is nicknamed Fonte Nova, because it is at Ladeira das Fontes das Pedras. The stadium was closed in 2007 due to an accident.  The E.C. Bahia home matches now happen in another stadium, in Pituaçu.
+
+Esporte Clube Bahia and Esporte Clube Vitória are Salvador's main football teams. Bahia has won 2 national titles, Brazil Trophy in 1959 and the Brazilian League in 1988. Vitória was a runner up in the Brazilian league in 1993 and Brazil Cup in 2010.
+
+Salvador has two large green areas for the practice of golf. Cajazeiras Golf and Country Club has a 18-hole course. Itapuã Golf Club has a 9-hole course. Tennis is very popular among Salvador's elites. Brasil Open, the country’s most important tournament, happens every year in Bahia.
+
+During the last decades, volleyball has grown steadily in Salvador.  It became popular after the gold medal won by Brazil in the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona. The most important tournaments in Bahia are the State Championship, the State League tournament and the Primavera Games. There are also beach volleyball events. Salvador has had many international tournaments. Bowling is practiced both by teenagers and adults in Salvador.
+
+Bahia's basketball league has competed since 1993.  They have 57 teams. The sport is very popular in the city of Salvador, especially among students.[7]
+
+Todos os Santos Bay and Salvador's climatic conditions are ideal for competition and recreational sailing. Salvador has a national racing schedule with dozens of events, also receiving the Mini Transat 6.50 and Les Illes du Soleil races.
+
+Rowing boat races started in the city more than a hundred years ago. It was first practiced by young men from traditional families, who spent their summer vacations there. With the recent fixing of the Dique do Tororó area, Salvador received new lanes for the practice of the sport.
+
+
+

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+White: 17%
+
+Black: 0%
+
+Native American: 1%
+
+El Salvador (Spanish: República de El Salvador) is the smallest and most densely populated country in Central America. The country's capital and largest city is San Salvador. Other important cities are: Santa Ana and Sonsonate. El Salvador borders the Pacific Ocean on the south, and the countries of Guatemala to the west and Honduras to the north and east.
+
+In 2010 El Salvador ranked in the top 10 Latin American countries in terms of Human Development Index. It was in the top 3 in Central America (behind Costa Rica and Panama). Also, tropical forests and overall forests have expanded by nearly 20% from the year 1992 to 2010, making it one of the few countries experiencing reforestation.[6]
+
+In El Salvador there are only two seasons. The dry season starts in mid-October and it lasts until mid May. During the dry season, it hardly ever rains. The wet season starts in mid-May and ends in mid-October. In this season it rains every day. The dry season is called summer and the rainy season is called winter.
+
+Most of the population is mestizo, a mixture of European and American people.
+
+The civilization of El Salvador began around 1500 B.C., leaving an evidence that would be the Tazumal Ruins and Chalchuapa Ruins. The first habitants were Pocomanes, Lencas and Pipiles; they stayed in the middle and east zone of El Salvador until about the eleventh century. The Spaniard Andrés Niño led an expedition from Central America and arrived in Meanguera Island in the Gulf of Fonseca on May 31, 1522. That was the first Salvadoran territory visited by Spaniard men.
+
+In June of 1524, Pedro de Alvarado began a war of conquest against Cuzcatlán (Land of beautiful things) that was populated by native tribes of the country. During 17 days of bloody battles many natives and Spaniard men died, including the native Atlacatl. Pedro de Alvarado, deterred and injured, left the battle and set off to Guatemala, leaving his brother, Gonzalo de Alvarado, to continue the conquest of Cuzcatlan. After this, their cousin, Diego de Alvardo established the San Salvador Ville on April 1525 in a site named La Bermuda, near Suchitoto City. In 1546, Carlos I from Spain named San Salvador a city.
+
+During the following years, the country grew under Spaniard control. In 1810 a feeling of freedom formed between the countries of Central America. On the morning of November 5th, 1811, the priest José Matías Delgado rang the bells of La Merced Church in San Salvador, calling for an uprising. After many internal conflicts, the Declaration of Independence of Central América was signed in Guatemala on September 15th, 1821. That day is the Independence day all around Central America.
+
+El Salvador has a total area of 21,041 km2 (8,124 sq mi). As the smallest country in continental America, El Salvador is sometimes called Pulgarcito de America (the "Tom Thumb of the Americas"). The highest point in El Salvador is Cerro El Pital, at 2,730 metres (8,957 ft), on the border with Honduras.
+
+El Salvador has a long history of destructive earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. The capital San Salvador was destroyed in 1756 and 1854, and it suffered heavy damage in the 1919, 1982, and 1986 tremors. El Salvador has over twenty volcanoes. Two of them, San Miguel and Izalco, have been active in recent years.
+
+El Salvador has over 300 rivers. The most important is the Rio Lempa. Important lakes are Lake Ilopango (70 km²) and Lake Coatepeque (26 km²).
+
+There are eight species of sea turtles in the world. Of these six nest on the coasts of Central America, and four make their home on the Salvadoran coast: the leatherback turtle, the hawksbill, the Galapagos green turtle and the olive ridley sea turtle.
+
+It is estimated that there are 500 species of birds, 1,000 species of butterflies, 400 species of orchids, 800 species of trees, and 800 species of marine fish in El Salvador.
+
+There are 4 national parks in El Salvador: El Imposible, Los Volcanes, Montecristo, and San Diego y San Felipe Las Barras.
+
+El Salvador is divided into 14 departments (departamentos). These are divided into 262 municipalities (municipios).
+
+Department names and abbreviations for the 14 Salvadoran Departments:

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+Salvatore Garau (born 1953) is an Italian artist from Sardinia.
+
+Garau was born in Santa Giusta, a town in the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, Italy. He studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze. He graduated from then 1974. In 1977 he became the drummer in the  progressive rock group Stormy Six. After Stormy Six disbanded, he became a visual artist. He had his first solo show in 1984.[1] He participated in the 50th Biennale di Venezia in 2003[2] and showed work at the European Parliament in Strasbourg in the same year.
+
+In 2005 he painted a large abstract work on sheet of PVC. The sheet was hung to cover the scaffolding on a building in Corso Magenta in Milan.[3] In 2006 he made the Installation art Ichthys Sacro Stagno. For that work he created large ponds on the floors of three churches in towns in the Province of Oristano. He then put fish from nearby ponds into the church ponds.[1][4]
+
+In 2009 he had a solo show at the Musée d'art moderne et contemporain of Saint-Etienne, in France.[5]
+
+Garau has work in several museums including the Museo del Novecento (formerly in the Civico Museo d'Arte Contemporanea),[6]:383 the Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna and the Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea in Milan.[1]

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+Salzburg is the capital and also a district of the Austrian state of Salzburg or Salzburgerland. The population is about 150,000 and is the 4th largest city of Austria.
+
+Its most famous citizen was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Another famous inhabitant of Salzburg was the physicist Christian Doppler who found the Doppler effect which was named after him.
+
+The Salzach river crosses the city. The old town was adopted by the UNESCO as  World Heritage Site in 1996. Known is Salzburg also for being one of the settings for the movie "The Sound of Music" which based on the musical by  Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein.
+
+People lived in Salzburg since the New Stone Age till present. The oldest  finding in the city area is dated around 4500 B.C. From 15 B.C. onwards after the Roman occupation the city was called Iuvavum. The roman city was situated in today's old town around the Waagplatz. The city became an important place from the east to the province of Germania. The Romans left on the beginning of the  barbarian migration around 500. Up to 696 only few can be said about the history. 696 the city was given to bishop Rupert by Duke Theodo II. of Bavaria. Rupert was orderd by the Duke to bring Christianity to the east and southeast of his country. Rupert founded the monastery St. Peter and for women the monastery Nonnberg. 739 Salzburg became the seat of a bishop and 774 the first cathedral was built. 998 Salzburg became archbishopric ruling the whole Bavarian area.
+
+In the Middle Ages Salzburg became wealthy by the trade with salt from the nearby Dürnberg in Hallein. Till th 14th century Salzburg became independent from Bavaria and was a state within the Holy Roman Empire. The citizens of Salzburg were under the command of the archbishop unlike other cities in the empire. In the baroque era the look of today's city was shaped. The cathedral was rebuilt in the baroque style. Most of the architects came from Italy. 1622 a university was founded. Due to the fact that it was a catholic state Protestants had a severe standing in Salzburg. Yet 1731 Protestants, who came not back to the catholic belief had do leave Salzburg within eight days.
+
+In the early 19th century Napoleon Bonaparte promoted the Duchy of Salzburg, than later was a part of the Kingdom of Bavaria. Then, Salzburg was annexed by Austria, returned to Bavarian and divided between Bavaria and Austria. 1918 Salzburg became a federal state of the new Republic of Austria. In 1938 Germany annexed Austria and Salzburg was a part of Germany. In 1945, when Austria was independent from Germany, Salzburg became a federal state again.
+
+Urban districts (Stadtteile):
+
+Salzburg is a World Heritage. There are some places of interes like:
+
+St. Peters cemetery
+
+Festspielhaus
+
+Fortress Hohensalzburg
+
+Kollegienkirche
+
+Fountain on the Residenzplatz
+
+Getreidegasse
+
+Mirabell gardens with fortress in the background
+
+Schloss Mirabell and gardens
+
+City Tours and Tour operators in Salzburg

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+Salzburgerland or Salzburg (officially Land Salzburg) is one of the States of Austria. It has 7,156 square kilometres (2,763 sq mi) and about 546,000 inhabitants (2016). Its capital city is Salzburg.
+
+The last results in May 2013[update] were:
+
+Total 36 seats.
+
+In the Modern Era Salzburg was an independent state.
+
+Austrian German is the main written language. Austro-Bavarian language is also spoken, especially in the rural areas.
+
+Salzburger Land has six districts, (Bezirke or Gaue):
+
+Settlements in Salzburgerland with town privileges:
+
+
+
+Burgenland ·
+Carinthia ·
+Lower Austria ·
+Salzburg(erland) ·
+Styria ·
+Tyrol ·
+Upper Austria ·
+Vienna ·
+Vorarlberg

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+The Salzkammergut is a resort area in Austria. It goes from City of Salzburg to the Dachstein mountain range. The main river of the region is the Traun. The name Salzkammergut means "Estate of the Salt Chamber".  This is from the Imperial Salt Chamber, the group who ran the precious salt mines in the Habsburg empire.[1]
+
+With its many lakes and mountains, the Salzkammergut has many opportunities for water sports, bathing, hiking, cycling and golf.
+
+Parts of the area around Hallstatt were listed as a World Heritage Site in 1997. The World Heritage Site includes the towns Hallstatt, Obertraun, Gosau and Bad Goisern.[2]
+
+Coordinates: 47°33′34″N 13°38′47″E / 47.5594444544°N 13.6463888989°E / 47.5594444544; 13.6463888989
+
+
+

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+In some countries, like the United States of America, Saturday is the seventh and final day of the week. In other parts of the world, like the United Kingdom, Saturday is said to be the sixth day of the week. It is also the day of rest and worship for Jewish people. Along with Sunday, it makes up the weekend. Its name comes from the Roman god Saturn.

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+Sana'a or Sanˤā' (Arabic: صنعاء‎, romanized as Ṣanʻāʼ or Sanaa), is the capital city of Yemen and the center of Sana'a Governorate. It had a population of 1,747,627 (as of 2004). In the 2010s it became a battlefield in the Civil War and the government moved to Aden.

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+San Francisco is a city in the U.S. state of California. It is famous for the Golden Gate Bridge. With a population of 744,041, San Francisco is the 13th largest city in the United States, and the 4th largest city in California behind Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Jose. It is in the northern part of California, between the Pacific Ocean and the San Francisco Bay. The urbanized San Francisco Bay Area surrounds it. San Francisco was founded in 1776 by the Spanish conquerors. It was called "Yerba Buena" which is Spanish for "Good Herb", because mint grew there in abundance.[10] After the Mexican-American War, Yerba Buena was taken over by the United States. In 1848 it was renamed "San Francisco" and became a city in 1850. The city is famous for its many internet companies and being home to a large gay population.
+
+San Francisco has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate (Csb in the Köppen climate classification). The record high temperature is 41.1°C (106°F) on September 1, 2017. The record low temperature is -4.4°C (24°F) on December 9, 1972.
+
+
+

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+
+
+The blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) is a marine mammal of the suborder of baleen whales (called Mysticeti). They grow to be about 30 meters long. The biggest blue whale found was 190 tons and measured 98 feet long.[2][3] Larger specimens have been measured at 110 feet, but never weighed. This makes blue whales the largest animals ever to be on Earth, even bigger than the largest dinosaurs.
+
+The blue whale eats mostly very tiny creatures, like krill. These inch-long, shrimp-like crustacean swim in swarms. In the Antarctic summer, there are so many of these krill that they turn the waters orange. A blue whale can eat eight to ten tons of krill every day.[4]
+
+The blue whale's body is long and slender. It can be various shades of bluish-grey above and somewhat lighter underneath.[5] There are at least three distinct subspecies: B. m. musculus of the North Atlantic and North Pacific, B. m. intermedia of the Southern Ocean and B. m. brevicauda (also known as the pygmy blue whale) found in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific Ocean. B. m. indica, found in the Indian Ocean, may be another subspecies. As with other baleen whales, its diet consists almost exclusively of small krill.[6]
+
+Blue whales were once abundant around the world. In the nineteenth century, they were hunted almost to extinction by whalers. They were finally protected by the international community in 1966. A 2002 report estimated there were 5,000 to 12,000 blue whales worldwide,[7] located in at least five groups. More recent research into the Pygmy subspecies suggests this may be an underestimate.[8] Before whaling, the largest population was in the Antarctic, numbering approximately 239,000 (range 202,000 to 311,000).[9] There remain only much smaller (around 2,000) concentrations in each of the eastern North Pacific, Antarctic, and Indian Ocean groups. There are two more groups in the North Atlantic, and at least two in the Southern Hemisphere.