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Cabo Corso
Cape Coast is a city, fishing port, and the capital of Cape Coast Metropolitan District and Central Region of Ghana. It is one of the country's most historic cities, a World Heritage Site, home to the Cape Coast Castle, with the Gulf of Guinea situated to its south. According to the 2010 census, Cape Coast had a settlement population of 169,894 people. The language of the people of Cape Coast is Fante. The older traditional names of the city are Oguaa and Kotokuraba (meaning "River of Crabs" or "Village of Crabs"). The Portuguese navigators João de Santarém and Pedro Escobar who sailed past Oguaa in 1471 designated the place ''Cabo Corso'' (meaning "short cape"), from which the name Cape Coast derives. From the 16th century to the country's independence in 1957, the city changed hands between the British, the Portuguese, the Swedish, the Danish and the Dutch. It is home to 32 festivals and celebrations. History Cape Coast was founded by the people of Oguaa and the region rul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arch Bridge
An arch bridge is a bridge with abutments at each end shaped as a curved arch. Arch bridges work by transferring the weight of the bridge and its loads partially into a horizontal thrust restrained by the abutments at either side. A viaduct (a long bridge) may be made from a series of arches, although other more economical structures are typically used today. History Possibly the oldest existing arch bridge is the Mycenaean Arkadiko Bridge in Greece from about 1300 BC. The stone corbel arch bridge is still used by the local populace. The well-preserved Hellenistic Eleutherna Bridge has a triangular corbel arch. The 4th century BC Rhodes Footbridge rests on an early voussoir arch. Although true arches were already known by the Etruscans and ancient Greeks, the Romans were – as with the vault and the dome – the first to fully realize the potential of arches for bridge construction. A list of Roman bridges compiled by the engineer Colin O'Connor featur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cape Coast Castle
Cape Coast Castle ( sv, Carolusborg) is one of about forty "slave castles", or large commercial forts, built on the Gold Coast of West Africa (now Ghana) by European traders. It was originally a Portuguese "feitoria" or trading post, established in 1555, which they named ''Cabo Corso''. However, in 1653 the Swedish Africa Company constructed a timber fort there. It originally was a centre for the trade in timber and gold. It was later used in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Other Ghanaian slave castles include Elmina Castle and Fort Christiansborg. They were used to hold enslaved Africans before they were loaded onto ships and sold in the Americas, especially the Caribbean. This "gate of no return" was the last stop before crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Cape Coast Castle, along with other forts and castles in Ghana, are included on the UNESCO World Heritage List because of their testimony to the Atlantic gold and slave trades. Trade history The large quantity of gold dust fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Window Tax
Window tax was a property tax based on the number of windows in a house. It was a significant social, cultural, and architectural force in England, France, and Ireland during the 18th and 19th centuries. To avoid the tax, some houses from the period can be seen to have bricked-up window-spaces (ready to be glazed or reglazed at a later date). In England and Wales it was introduced in 1696 and was repealed 155 years later, in 1851. In France it was established in 1798 and was repealed in 1926. Scotland had window tax from 1748 until 1798. History The tax was introduced in England and Wales in 1696 under King William III and was designed to impose tax relative to the prosperity of the taxpayer, but without the controversy that then surrounded the idea of income tax. At that time, many people in Britain opposed income tax, on principle, because the disclosure of personal income represented an unacceptable governmental intrusion into private matters, and a potential threat to pers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gold Coast (British Colony)
The Gold Coast was a British Crown colony on the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa from 1821 until its independence in 1957 as Ghana. The term Gold Coast is also often used to describe all of the four separate jurisdictions that were under the administration of the Governor of the Gold Coast. These were the Gold Coast itself, Ashanti, the Northern Territories Protectorate and the British Togoland trust territory. The first European explorers To arrive at the coast were the Portuguese in 1471. They encountered a variety of African kingdoms, some of which controlled substantial deposits of gold in the soil. In 1483, the Portuguese came to the continent for increased trade. They built the Castle of Elmina, the first European settlement on the Gold Coast. From here they acquired slaves and gold in trade for European goods, such as metal knives, beads, mirrors, rum, and guns. News of the successful trading spread quickly, and British, Dutch, Danish, Prussian and Swedish traders ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Triangular Trade
Triangular trade or triangle trade is trade between three ports or regions. Triangular trade usually evolves when a region has export commodities that are not required in the region from which its major imports come. It has been used to offset trade imbalances between different regions. The Atlantic slave trade used a system of three-way trans-Atlantic exchanges – known historically as the triangular trade – which operated between Europe, Africa and the Americas from the 16th to 19th centuries. A classic example is the colonial molasses trade, which involved the circuitous trading of slaves, sugar (often in liquid form, as molasses), and rum between West Africa, the West Indies and the northern colonies of British North America in the 17th and 18th centuries. The slaves grew the sugar that was used to brew rum, which in turn was traded for more slaves. In this circuit, the sea lane west from Africa to the West Indies (and later, also to Brazil) was known as the Middle Passag ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
