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Canal Du Midi
The Canal du Midi (; ) is a long canal in Southern France (french: le Midi). Originally named the ''Canal royal en Languedoc'' (Royal Canal in Languedoc) and renamed by French revolutionaries to ''Canal du Midi'' in 1789, the canal is considered one of the greatest construction works of the 17th century. The canal connects the Garonne to the Étang de Thau on the Mediterranean and, along with the long Canal de Garonne, forms the Canal des Deux Mers, joining the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. Strictly speaking, ''"Canal du Midi"'' refers to the portion initially constructed from Toulouse to the Mediterranean – the Deux-Mers canal project aimed to link together several sections of navigable waterways to join the Mediterranean and the Atlantic: first the Canal du Midi, then the Garonne which was more or less navigable between Toulouse and Bordeaux, then the Garonne Lateral Canal built later, and finally the Gironde estuary after Bordeaux. Jean-Baptiste Colbert authorized t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orb Aqueduct
The Orb Aqueduct (french: Pont-canal de l'Orb, Pont-canal de Béziers ) is a bridge which carries the Canal du Midi over the Orb in the city of Béziers in Languedoc, France. The aqueduct is wide, tall and at is the longest on the Canal du Midi. Prior to the opening of the aqueduct in 1858, the Canal du Midi traversed a short section of the Orb itself. The opening of the aqueduct allowed boats to avoid the river , which was unpredictable and sometimes dangerous, and often caused extended delays. For example, in 1779 exceptional floods caused the river section to be impassable for seventeen days. Various schemes were proposed to bypass the Orb; an aqueduct of over 1 km in length was proposed in 1739 and in 1756 a plan to carry the canal in a tunnel ''under'' the Orb was put forward. However, neither proposal was implemented. In April 1854, the Chief Engineer of the Canal Company, M. Magues, prepared designs for the present aqueduct together with new channels to take th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Southern France
Southern France, also known as the South of France or colloquially in French language, French as , is a defined geographical area consisting of the regions of France that border the Atlantic Ocean south of the Marais Poitevin,Louis Papy, ''Le midi atlantique'', Atlas et géographie de la France moderne, Flammarion, Paris, 1984. Spain, the Mediterranean Sea and Italy. It includes southern Nouvelle-Aquitaine in the west, Occitania (administrative region), Occitanie in the centre, the southern parts of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes in the northeast, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur in the southeast, as well as the island of Corsica in the southeast. Southern France is generally included into Southern Europe because of its association with the Mediterranean Sea. The term derives from ('middle') and ('day') in Old French, comparable to the term to indicate southern Italy, which is a synonym for south in Romanian language, Romanian, or which is a synonym for the south direction in Spanish langu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Montagne Noire
The Montagne Noire ( oc, Montanha Negra, known as the 'Black Mountain' in English) is a mountain range in central southern France. It is located at the southwestern end of the Massif Central at the juncture of the Tarn, Hérault and Aude departments. Its highest point is the Pic de Nore at . The mountain is within the Haut-Languedoc Regional Nature Park. The GSSP for the Tournaisian is near the summit of La Serre hill, in the commune of Cabrières, in the Montagne Noire .The GSSP was published by Paproth ''et al.'' (1991) The GSSP is in a section on the southern side of the hill, in an 80 cm deep trench, about 125 m south of the summit, 2.5 km southwest of the village of Cabrières and 2.5 km north of the hamlet of Fontès Fontès (; Languedocien: ''Fontés'') is a commune in the Hérault department in southern France. Population See also *Communes of the Hérault department The following is a list of the 342 Communes of France, communes of the Héraul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Briare Canal
The Briare Canal (french: Canal de Briare, ) is one of the oldest canals in France. Its construction started in 1604. It was the first summit level canal in Europe that was built using pound locks, connecting the Rhone-Saône and Seine valleys. It is long and is part of the Bourbonnais route from Saint-Mammès on the Seine to Chalon-sur-Saône on the Saône. From Briare to Buges, the canal rises through the first 12 locks some and then falls through the remaining 24 locks. Construction The canal was initiated by Maximilien de Béthune, duc de Sully, with support from Henry IV in order to develop the grain trade, and to reduce food shortages. Its construction started in 1604 and was completed in 1642. Between 6,000 and 12,000 labourers worked on this canal which connects the basins of the rivers Loire and Seine. Hugues Cosnier obtained the contract to build the second canal crossing a watershed in Europe, involving many more locks than on the first. It was thus necessary to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Louis XIV
, house = Bourbon , father = Louis XIII , mother = Anne of Austria , birth_date = , birth_place = Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France , death_date = , death_place = Palace of Versailles, Versailles, France , burial_date = 9 September 1715 , burial_place = Basilica of Saint-Denis , religion = Catholicism (Gallican Rite) , signature = Louis XIV Signature.svg Louis XIV (Louis Dieudonné; 5 September 16381 September 1715), also known as Louis the Great () or the Sun King (), was King of France from 14 May 1643 until his death in 1715. His reign of 72 years and 110 days is the longest of any sovereign in history whose date is verifiable. Although Louis XIV's France was emblematic of the age of absolutism in Europe, the King surrounded himself with a variety of significant political, military, and cultural figures, such as Bossuet, Colbert, Le Brun, Le Nôtre, Lully, Mazarin, Molière, Racine, Turenne, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wheat
Wheat is a grass widely cultivated for its seed, a cereal grain that is a worldwide staple food. The many species of wheat together make up the genus ''Triticum'' ; the most widely grown is common wheat (''T. aestivum''). The archaeological record suggests that wheat was first cultivated in the regions of the Fertile Crescent around 9600 BCE. Botanically, the wheat kernel is a type of fruit called a caryopsis. Wheat is grown on more land area than any other food crop (, 2014). World trade in wheat is greater than for all other crops combined. In 2020, world production of wheat was , making it the second most-produced cereal after maize. Since 1960, world production of wheat and other grain crops has tripled and is expected to grow further through the middle of the 21st century. Global demand for wheat is increasing due to the unique viscoelastic and adhesive properties of gluten proteins, which facilitate the production of processed foods, whose consumption is inc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean-Baptiste Colbert
Jean-Baptiste Colbert (; 29 August 1619 – 6 September 1683) was a French statesman who served as First Minister of State from 1661 until his death in 1683 under the rule of King Louis XIV. His lasting impact on the organization of the country's politics and markets, known as Colbertism, a doctrine often characterized as a variant of mercantilism, earned him the nickname ''le Grand Colbert'' (; "the Great Colbert"). A native of Reims, he was appointed Intendant of Finances on 4 May 1661. Colbert took over as Controller-General of Finances, a newly elevated position, in the aftermath of the arrest of Nicolas Fouquet for embezzlement, an event that led to the abolishment of the office of Superintendent of Finances. He worked to develop the domestic economy by raising tariffs and encouraging major public works projects, as well as to ensure that the French East India Company had access to foreign markets, so that they could always obtain coffee, cotton, dyewoods, fur, pepper, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gironde Estuary
The Gironde estuary ( , US usually ; french: estuaire de la Gironde, ; oc, estuari de aGironda, ) is a navigable estuary (though often referred to as a river) in southwest France and is formed from the meeting of the rivers Dordogne and Garonne just downstream of the centre of Bordeaux. Covering around , it is the largest estuary in western Europe. Named after the French ''département'' Gironde, the Gironde estuary is approximately long and 3–12 km (2–7 miles) wide. It is subject to very strong tidal currents and great care is needed when navigating the estuary by any size or type of boat. Since 2015, the Gironde estuary has been part of the Gironde estuary and Pertuis sea Marine Nature Park. Islands of the Gironde Within the estuary between the Pointe de Grave at the seaward end and the Bec d'Ambès are a series of small islands. The Île de Patiras is 200 ha in size with a lighthouse to aid navigation in the estuary. Vines and maize are gro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bordeaux
Bordeaux ( , ; Gascon oc, Bordèu ; eu, Bordele; it, Bordò; es, Burdeos) is a port city on the river Garonne in the Gironde department, Southwestern France. It is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture of the Gironde department. Its inhabitants are called ''"Bordelais"'' (masculine) or ''"Bordelaises"'' (feminine). The term "Bordelais" may also refer to the city and its surrounding region. The city of Bordeaux proper had a population of 260,958 in 2019 within its small municipal territory of , With its 27 suburban municipalities it forms the Bordeaux Metropolis, in charge of metropolitan issues. With a population of 814,049 at the Jan. 2019 census. it is the fifth most populated in France, after Paris, Lyon, Marseille and Lille and ahead of Toulouse. Together with its suburbs and exurbs, except satellite cities of Arcachon and Libourne, the Bordeaux metropolitan area had a population of 1,363,711 that same year (Jan. 2019 census), ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Canal De Garonne
Canals or artificial waterways are waterways or engineered channels built for drainage management (e.g. flood control and irrigation) or for conveyancing water transport vehicles (e.g. water taxi). They carry free, calm surface flow under atmospheric pressure, and can be thought of as artificial rivers. In most cases, a canal has a series of dams and locks that create reservoirs of low speed current flow. These reservoirs are referred to as ''slack water levels'', often just called ''levels''. A canal can be called a ''navigation canal'' when it parallels a natural river and shares part of the latter's discharges and drainage basin, and leverages its resources by building dams and locks to increase and lengthen its stretches of slack water levels while staying in its valley. A canal can cut across a drainage divide atop a ridge, generally requiring an external water source above the highest elevation. The best-known example of such a canal is the Panama Canal. Many ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant. The Sea has played a central role in the history of Western civilization. Geological evidence indicates that around 5.9 million years ago, the Mediterranean was cut off from the Atlantic and was partly or completely desiccated over a period of some 600,000 years during the Messinian salinity crisis before being refilled by the Zanclean flood about 5.3 million years ago. The Mediterranean Sea covers an area of about , representing 0.7% of the global ocean surface, but its connection to the Atlantic via the Strait of Gibraltar—the narrow strait that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and separates the Iberian Peninsula in Europe from Morocco in Africa—is only wide. The Mediterranean Sea e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Garonne
The Garonne (, also , ; Occitan, Catalan, Basque, and es, Garona, ; la, Garumna or ) is a river of southwest France and northern Spain. It flows from the central Spanish Pyrenees to the Gironde estuary at the French port of Bordeaux – a length of , of which is in Spain (Val d'Aran); The Ratera-Saboredo cirque has been pointed by many researchers as the origin of the Garonne.Faura i Sans (M.); Sobre hidrología subterránea en los Pirineos Centrales de Aragón y Cataluña. Bol. de la Real Soc. de Hist. Nat, vom. XVI, pgs. 353-354. Madrid, 1916. The third thesis holds that the river rises on the slopes of Pic Aneto at above sea level and flows by way of a sinkhole known as the '' Forau de Aigualluts'' () through the limestone of the Tuca Blanca de Pomèro and a resurgence in the Val dera Artiga above the Aran Valley in the Spanish Pyrenees. This underground route was suggested by the geologist Ramond de Carbonnières in 1787, but there was no confirmation until 1931, whe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
