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Pointe Saint-Gildas
The Saint Gildas Point (french: Pointe Saint-Gildas, br, Beg Gweltaz) is a rocky point located on the Côte de Jade, in the far west of the Pays de Retz, in the municipality of Préfailles (Loire-Atlantique), France. The point lies at the south of the Loire estuary and the port of Saint-Nazaire lies on the opposite, north, bank. The Baie de Bourgneuf and island of Noirmoutier lie to the south. Toponymy It owes its present name to Saint Gildas who landed in the sixth century. It was formerly known as "Terra de Chevesché", "Pointe de Chevesché" or "Pointe de Chevêché" until 1750. The term '' is a deformation of , which formerly designated in ecclesiastical terminology the one who supervised the ' chevet' (apse or chancel) of a church and who, by extension, had custody of the treasury. This religious dignitary who received the income from an abbey (in this case that of Pornic ), lived in a ''. Activities A summer tourist destination (300,000 visitors per year), the point ho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Région Française
France is divided into eighteen administrative regions (french: régions, singular ), of which thirteen are located in metropolitan France (in Europe), while the other five are overseas regions (not to be confused with the overseas collectivities, which have a semi-autonomous status). All of the thirteen metropolitan administrative regions (including Corsica ) are further subdivided into two to thirteen administrative departments, with the prefect of each region's administrative centre's department also acting as the regional prefect. The overseas regions administratively consist of only one department each and hence also have the status of overseas departments. Most administrative regions also have the status of regional territorial collectivities, which comes with a local government, with departmental and communal collectivities below the region level. The exceptions are Corsica, French Guiana, Mayotte and Martinique, where region and department functions are managed by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chevet
In architecture, an apse (plural apses; from Latin 'arch, vault' from Ancient Greek 'arch'; sometimes written apsis, plural apsides) is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical vault or semi-dome, also known as an ''exedra''. In Byzantine, Romanesque, and Gothic Christian church (including cathedral and abbey) architecture, the term is applied to a semi-circular or polygonal termination of the main building at the liturgical east end (where the altar is), regardless of the shape of the roof, which may be flat, sloping, domed, or hemispherical. Smaller apses are found elsewhere, especially in shrines. Definition An apse is a semicircular recess, often covered with a hemispherical vault. Commonly, the apse of a church, cathedral or basilica is the semicircular or polygonal termination to the choir or sanctuary, or sometimes at the end of an aisle. Smaller apses are sometimes built in other parts of the church, especially for reliquaries or shrines of saints. Hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Headlands Of France
A headland, also known as a head, is a coastal landform, a point of land usually high and often with a sheer drop, that extends into a body of water. It is a type of promontory. A headland of considerable size often is called a cape.Whittow, John (1984). ''Dictionary of Physical Geography''. London: Penguin, 1984, pp. 80, 246. . Headlands are characterised by high, breaking waves, rocky shores, intense erosion, and steep sea cliff. Headlands and bays are often found on the same coastline. A bay is flanked by land on three sides, whereas a headland is flanked by water on three sides. Headlands and bays form on discordant coastlines, where bands of rock of alternating resistance run perpendicular to the coast. Bays form when weak (less resistant) rocks (such as sands and clays) are eroded, leaving bands of stronger (more resistant) rocks (such as chalk, limestone, and granite) forming a headland, or peninsula. Through the deposition of sediment within the bay and the erosion of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Biotope
A biotope is an area of uniform environmental conditions providing a living place for a specific assemblage of plants and animals. ''Biotope'' is almost synonymous with the term "habitat", which is more commonly used in English-speaking countries. However, in some countries these two terms are distinguished: the subject of a habitat is a population, the subject of a biotope is a ''biocoenosis'' or "biological community". It is an English loanword derived from the German ''Biotop'', which in turn came from the Greek ''bios'' (meaning 'life') and ''topos'' ('place'). (The related word ''geotope'' has made its way into the English language by the same route, from the German '' Geotop''.) Ecology The concept of a biotope was first advocated by Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919), a German zoologist famous for the recapitulation theory. In his book ''General Morphology'' (1866), which defines the term "ecology", he stresses the importance of the concept of habitat as a prerequisite for an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saint-Nazaire Pocket
The Saint-Nazaire Pocket ( de , Festung St. Nazaire, french: Poche de Saint-Nazaire) existed from August 1944 until 11 May 1945 and was formed by the withdrawal of German troops from Loire-Inférieure (now Loire-Atlantique) during the liberation of the department by the allied forces. It was centred around the port and the submarine base of Saint-Nazaire and extended to the east as far as Saint-Omer-de-Blain and from La Roche-Bernard in the north to Pornic in the south. Background After the battle of Normandy and Operation Cobra, the Allies quickly liberated the west of France during the first fortnight of August 1944 (Rennes on 6 August, Nantes on the 12th, Rezé on the 29th). Pockets of resistance however formed as German troops withdrew to the Atlantic coastal ports of Brest, Lorient, Saint-Nazaire, La Rochelle and Royan . The Germans wanted to retain these strategic areas and declared them "fortresses" ( de , Festung). On 31 July 1944, Hitler ordered his Generals Jodl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Operation Cobra
Operation Cobra was the codename for an Offensive (military), offensive launched by the United States First United States Army, First Army under Lieutenant General Omar Bradley seven weeks after the D-Day landings, during the Invasion of Normandy, Normandy campaign of World War II. The intention was to take advantage of the distraction of the Nazi Germany, Germans by the British and Canadian attacks around Caen in Operation Goodwood,Trew, p. 64 and thereby break through the German defenses that were penning in their forces while the Germans were unbalanced. Once a corridor had been created, the First Army would then be able to advance into Brittany, rolling up the German flanks once free of the constraints of the bocage country. After a slow start, the offensive gathered momentum and German resistance collapsed as scattered remnants of broken units fought to escape to the Seine. Lacking the resources to cope with the situation, the German response was ineffectual and the entire N ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Normandy Landings
The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as D-Day, it was the largest seaborne invasion in history. The operation began the liberation of France (and later western Europe) and laid the foundations of the Allied victory on the Western Front. Planning for the operation began in 1943. In the months leading up to the invasion, the Allies conducted a substantial military deception, codenamed Operation Bodyguard, to mislead the Germans as to the date and location of the main Allied landings. The weather on D-Day was far from ideal, and the operation had to be delayed 24 hours; a further postponement would have meant a delay of at least two weeks, as the invasion planners had requirements for the phase of the moon, the tides, and the time of day that meant only a few days each month were ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Artillery Battery
In military organizations, an artillery battery is a unit or multiple systems of artillery, mortar systems, rocket artillery, multiple rocket launchers, surface-to-surface missiles, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, etc., so grouped to facilitate better battlefield communication and command and control, as well as to provide dispersion for its constituent gunnery crews and their systems. The term is also used in a naval context to describe groups of guns on warships. Land usage Historically the term "battery" referred to a cluster of cannon in action as a group, either in a temporary field position during a battle or at the siege of a fortress or a city. Such batteries could be a mixture of cannon, howitzer, or mortar types. A siege could involve many batteries at different sites around the besieged place. The term also came to be used for a group of cannon in a fixed fortification, for coastal or frontier defence. During the 18th century "battery" began to be used as a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
RMS Lancastria
RMS ''Lancastria'' was a British ocean liner requisitioned by the UK Government during the Second World War. She was sunk on 17 June 1940 during Operation Aerial. Having received an emergency order to evacuate British nationals and troops from France the ship was loaded well in excess of its capacity of 1,300 passengers. Modern estimates suggest that between 4,000 and 7,000 people died during the sinking — the largest single-ship loss of life in British maritime history. Career The ship was launched in 1920 as ''Tyrrhenia'' by William Beardmore and Company of Dalmuir on the River Clyde for the Anchor Line, a subsidiary of Cunard. She was the sister ship of RMS which Beardmore had built for the Anchor Line the previous year. ''Tyrrhenia'' was , long and could carry 2,200 passengers in three classes. She made her maiden voyage, Glasgow–Quebec City–Montreal, on 19 June 1922. In 1924 she was refitted for two classes and renamed ''Lancastria'' after passengers compla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
