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Barthélemy Faujas De Saint-Fond
Barthélemy Faujas de Saint-Fond (17 May 174118 July 1819) was a French geologist, volcanologist and traveller. Life He was born at Montélimar. He was educated at the Jesuit's College at Lyon and afterwards at Grenoble where he studied law and was admitted as an advocate to the parlement. He rose to be president of the seneschal's court in Montélimar (1765), where he acquitted himself with distinction. However, he became disenchanted with law and wished to pursue his love of nature that had begun earlier in his life. His favourite pastime was visiting the mountain regions in the Alps and Massif Central. There he began to study the forms, structure, composition and superposition of rocks. In 1775 in the Velay he discovered a rich deposit of pozzuolana, that was eventually mined by the government. In 1776 he established a relationship with Buffon, who recognised the value of his scientific efforts immediately. Invited by Buffon to Paris, Faujas ceased his legal work and was a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Montélimar
Montélimar (; Vivaro-Alpine: ''Montelaimar'' ; la, Acumum) is a town in the Drôme department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region in north Provence, Southeastern France. It is the second-largest city in the department after Valence. In 2018, the commune had a population of 39,415; its urban area had a population of 57,372. History The site where the city of Montélimar stands today has been inhabited since the Celtic era. It was reconstructed during the Roman reign, including a basilica, aqueducts, thermae and a forum. The Adhémar family reigned over the city in the Middle Ages and built a castle (Château des Adhémar) which dominates the city silhouette even today. Demographics Personalities * French navigator Louis de Freycinet and Émile Loubet, President of France from 1899 till 1906, who served also as mayor of Montélimar. * Formula One racing driver Charles Pic, brother and fellow racing driver Arthur Pic and motorcycle racer Sylvain Guintoli. * Encyclopédis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of the world's major centres of finance, diplomacy, commerce, fashion, gastronomy, and science. For its leading role in the arts and sciences, as well as its very early system of street lighting, in the 19th century it became known as "the City of Light". Like London, prior to the Second World War, it was also sometimes called the capital of the world. The City of Paris is the centre of the Île-de-France region, or Paris Region, with an estimated population of 12,262,544 in 2019, or about 19% of the population of France, making the region France's primate city. The Paris Region had a GDP of €739 billion ($743 billion) in 2019, which is the highest in Europe. According to the Economist Intelli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Banks
Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, (19 June 1820) was an English naturalist, botanist, and patron of the natural sciences. Banks made his name on the 1766 natural-history expedition to Newfoundland and Labrador. He took part in Captain James Cook's first great voyage (1768–1771), visiting Brazil, Tahiti, and after 6 months in New Zealand, Australia, returning to immediate fame. He held the position of president of the Royal Society for over 41 years. He advised King George III on the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and by sending botanists around the world to collect plants, he made Kew the world's leading botanical garden. He is credited for bringing 30,000 plant specimens home with him; amongst them, he was the first European to document 1,400. Banks advocated British settlement in New South Wales and the colonisation of Australia, as well as the establishment of Botany Bay as a place for the reception of convicts, and advised the British government on all Australian matte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fingal's Cave
Fingal's Cave is a sea cave on the uninhabited island of Staffa, in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland, known for its natural acoustics. The National Trust for Scotland owns the cave as part of a national nature reserve. It became known as Fingal's Cave after the eponymous hero of an epic poem by 18th-century Scots poet-historian James Macpherson. Formation Fingal's Cave is formed entirely from hexagonally jointed basalt columns within a Paleocene lava flow and is similar in structure to both the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland and Ulva. In these locations, cooling on the upper and lower surfaces of the solidified lava resulted in contraction and fracturing, starting in a blocky tetragonal pattern and transitioning to a regular hexagonal fracture pattern with fractures perpendicular to the cooling surfaces. As cooling continued these cracks gradually extended toward the centre of the flow, forming the long hexagonal columns we see in the wave-eroded cross-section today. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Basalt
Basalt (; ) is an aphanite, aphanitic (fine-grained) extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of low-viscosity lava rich in magnesium and iron (mafic lava) exposed at or very near the planetary surface, surface of a terrestrial planet, rocky planet or natural satellite, moon. More than 90% of all volcanic rock on Earth is basalt. Rapid-cooling, fine-grained basalt is chemically equivalent to slow-cooling, coarse-grained gabbro. The eruption of basalt lava is observed by geologists at about 20 volcanoes per year. Basalt is also an important rock type on other planetary bodies in the Solar System. For example, the bulk of the plains of volcanism on Venus, Venus, which cover ~80% of the surface, are basaltic; the lunar mare, lunar maria are plains of flood-basaltic lava flows; and basalt is a common rock on the surface of Mars. Molten basalt lava has a low viscosity due to its relatively low silica content (between 45% and 52%), resulting in rapidly moving lava flo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paolo Andreani
Paolo Andreani (27 May 1763 – 11 May 1823) was an Italian who made the first balloon flight over Italian soil. He also made an exploration around the Great Lakes in North America. Life Andreani was born in Milan on 27 May 1763. His father was Giovanni Pietro Paolo Andreani (1705–1772) and his mother, Clementine Sormani (1733–1763). His father's family can be traced back to the aristocracy of the 13th century, and he was made a Count in 1748.Andreani Family lombardiabeniculturali.it, Retrieved 6 August 2015 Andreani was the last of the children and they were left without a father in 1772, when they were placed in the care of a guardian. Andreani's wide range of interests started at an early age. At fifteen he was a member of the "Arcadia Literary ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Thornton
William Thornton (May 20, 1759 – March 28, 1828) was a British-American physician, inventor, painter and architect who designed the United States Capitol. He also served as the first Architect of the Capitol and first Superintendent of the United States Patent Office. Early life From an early age William Thornton displayed interest and discernible talent in "the arts of design," to employ an 18th-century term that is particularly useful in assessing his career. Thornton was born on Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands, West Indies, in a Quaker community.Frary (1969), p. 29 where he was heir to sugar plantations. He was sent to England at age five to be educated. Frary Thornton was brought up strictly by his father's relations, Quakers and merchants, in and near the ancient castle town of Lancaster, in northern Lancashire, England. There was never any question of his pursuing the fine arts professionally—he was to be trained for a useful life, according to the Q ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Staffa
Staffa ( gd, Stafa, , from the Old Norse for stave or pillar island) is an island of the Inner Hebrides in Argyll and Bute, Scotland. The Vikings gave it this name as its columnar basalt reminded them of their houses, which were built from vertically placed tree-logs. Staffa lies about west of the Isle of Mull; its area is and the highest point is above sea level. The island came to prominence in the late 18th century after a visit by Sir Joseph Banks. He and his fellow-travellers extolled the natural beauty of the basalt columns in general and of the island's main sea cavern, which Banks renamed 'Fingal's Cave'. Their visit was followed by those of many other prominent personalities throughout the next two centuries, including Queen Victoria and Felix Mendelssohn. The latter's ''Hebrides Overture'' brought further fame to the island, which was by then uninhabited. It is now in the care of the National Trust for Scotland. Geology and pre-history In prehistoric times (Plei ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Caroline Herschel
Caroline Lucretia Herschel (; 16 March 1750 – 9 January 1848) was a German born British astronomer, whose most significant contributions to astronomy were the discoveries of several comets, including the periodic comet 35P/Herschel–Rigollet, which bears her name.Nysewander, Melissa. Caroline Herschel. Biographies of Women Mathematicians, Atlanta: Agnes Scott College, 1998. She was the younger sister of astronomer William Herschel, with whom she worked throughout her career. She was the first woman to receive a salary as a scientist and the first woman in England to hold a government position. She was also the first woman to publish scientific findings in the ''Philosophical Transactions'' of the Royal Society, to be awarded a Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1828), and to be named an Honorary Member of the Royal Astronomical Society (1835, with Mary Somerville). She was named an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy (1838). The King of Prussia presented h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Herschel
Frederick William Herschel (; german: Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel; 15 November 1738 – 25 August 1822) was a German-born British astronomer and composer. He frequently collaborated with his younger sister and fellow astronomer Caroline Herschel (1750–1848). Born in the Electorate of Hanover, William Herschel followed his father into the military band of Hanover, before emigrating to Great Britain in 1757 at the age of nineteen. Herschel constructed his first large telescope in 1774, after which he spent nine years carrying out sky surveys to investigate double stars. Herschel published catalogues of nebulae in 1802 (2,500 objects) and in 1820 (5,000 objects). The resolving power of the Herschel telescopes revealed that many objects called nebulae in the Messier catalogue were actually clusters of stars. On 13 March 1781 while making observations he made note of a new object in the constellation of Gemini. This would, after several weeks of verification and consultation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Volcano
A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often found where tectonic plates are diverging or converging, and most are found underwater. For example, a mid-ocean ridge, such as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, has volcanoes caused by divergent tectonic plates whereas the Pacific Ring of Fire has volcanoes caused by convergent tectonic plates. Volcanoes can also form where there is stretching and thinning of the crust's plates, such as in the East African Rift and the Wells Gray-Clearwater volcanic field and Rio Grande rift in North America. Volcanism away from plate boundaries has been postulated to arise from upwelling diapirs from the core–mantle boundary, deep in the Earth. This results in hotspot volcanism, of which the Hawaiian hotspot is an example. Volcanoes are usually not created where two tectonic plates slide ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
