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The Sultan's Elephant
The Sultan's Elephant was a show created by the Royal de Luxe theatre company, involving a huge moving mechanical elephant, a giant marionette of a girl and other associated public art installations. In French it was called ''La visite du sultan des Indes sur son éléphant à voyager dans le temps'' (literally, "Visit from the Sultan of the Indies on His Time-Travelling Elephant"). The show was commissioned to commemorate the centenary of Jules Verne's death, by the two French cities of Nantes and Amiens, funded by a special grant from the French Ministry of Culture and Communication. The show was performed at various locations around the world between 2005 and 2006. Design and construction The elephant was designed by François Delarozière. It was made mostly of wood, and was operated by 22 'manipulateurs' using a mixture of hydraulics and motors. It weighed 42 tons, as much as seven African elephants. ithhundreds of moving parts and scores of pumping pistons (22 in the tru ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Asphalt Concrete
Asphalt concrete (commonly called asphalt, blacktop, or pavement in North America, and tarmac, bitumen macadam, or rolled asphalt in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland) is a composite material commonly used to surface roads, parking lots, airports, and the core of embankment dams. Asphalt mixtures have been used in pavement construction since the beginning of the twentieth century. It consists of mineral aggregate bound together with asphalt, laid in layers, and compacted. The process was refined and enhanced by Belgian-American inventor Edward De Smedt. The terms ''asphalt'' (or ''asphaltic'') ''concrete'', ''bituminous asphalt concrete'', and ''bituminous mixture'' are typically used only in engineering and construction documents, which define concrete as any composite material composed of mineral aggregate adhered with a binder. The abbreviation, ''AC'', is sometimes used for ''asphalt concrete'' but can also denote ''asphalt content'' or ''asphalt cement'', ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robots Of France
"\n\n\n\n\nThe robots exclusion standard, also known as the robots exclusion protocol or simply robots.txt, is a standard used by websites to indicate to visiting web crawlers and other web robots which portions of the site they are allowed to visit.\n\nThis relies on voluntary compliance. Not all robots comply with the standard; email harvesters, spambots, malware and robots that scan for security vulnerabilities may even start with the portions of the website where they have been told to stay out.\n\nThe \"robots.txt\" file can be used in conjunction with sitemaps, another robot inclusion standard for websites.\n History\nThe standard was proposed by Martijn Koster, when working for Nexor in February 1994\n on the ''www-talk'' mailing list, the main communication channel for WWW-related activities at the time. Charles Stross claims to have provoked Koster to suggest robots.txt, after he wrote a badly-behaved web crawler that inadvertently caused a denial-of-service attack on Kost ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theatre In France
This article is an overview of the theatre of France. Historic overview Secular French theatre Discussions about the origins of non-religious theatre ("théâtre profane") -- both drama and farce—in the Middle Ages remain controversial, but the idea of a continuous popular tradition stemming from Latin comedy and tragedy to the 9th century seems unlikely. Most historians place the origin of medieval drama in the church's liturgical dialogues and "tropes". At first simply dramatizations of the ritual, particularly in those rituals connected with Christmas and Easter (see ''Mystery play''), plays were eventually transferred from the monastery church to the chapter house or refectory hall and finally to the open air, and the vernacular was substituted for Latin. In the 12th century one finds the earliest extant passages in French appearing as refrains inserted into liturgical dramas in Latin, such as a Saint Nicholas (patron saint of the student clercs) play and a Saint Stephen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reykjavík
Reykjavík ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Iceland. It is located in southwestern Iceland, on the southern shore of Faxaflói bay. Its latitude is 64°08' N, making it the world's northernmost capital of a sovereign state. With a population of around 131,136 (and 233,034 in the Capital Region), it is the centre of Iceland's cultural, economic, and governmental activity, and is a popular tourist destination. Reykjavík is believed to be the location of the first permanent settlement in Iceland, which, according to Landnámabók, was established by Ingólfr Arnarson in 874 CE. Until the 18th century, there was no urban development in the city location. The city was officially founded in 1786 as a trading town and grew steadily over the following decades, as it transformed into a regional and later national centre of commerce, population, and governmental activities. It is among the cleanest, greenest, and safest cities in the world. History According to lege ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Santiago, Chile
Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital (political), capital and largest city of Chile as well as one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is the center of Chile's most densely populated Regions of Chile, region, the Santiago Metropolitan Region, whose total population is 8 million which is nearly 40% of the country's population, of which more than 6 million live in the city's continuous urban area. The city is entirely in the country's Chilean Central Valley, central valley. Most of the city lies between above mean sea level. Founded in 1541 by the Spanish conquistador Pedro de Valdivia, Santiago has been the capital city of Chile since colonial times. The city has a downtown core of 19th-century neoclassical architecture and winding side-streets, dotted by art deco, neo-gothic, and other styles. Santiago's cityscape is shaped by several stand-alone hills and the fast-flowing Mapocho River, lined by parks such as Parque Forestal and Balm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Le Havre
Le Havre (, ; nrf, Lé Hâvre ) is a port city in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy region of northern France. It is situated on the right bank of the estuary of the river Seine on the Channel southwest of the Pays de Caux, very close to the Prime Meridian. Le Havre is the most populous commune of Upper Normandy, although the total population of the greater Le Havre conurbation is smaller than that of Rouen. After Reims, it is also the second largest subprefecture in France. The name ''Le Havre'' means "the harbour" or "the port". Its inhabitants are known as ''Havrais'' or ''Havraises''. The city and port were founded by King Francis I in 1517. Economic development in the Early modern period was hampered by religious wars, conflicts with the English, epidemics, and storms. It was from the end of the 18th century that Le Havre started growing and the port took off first with the slave trade then other international trade. After the 1944 bombings the firm of Auguste ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Calais
Calais ( , , traditionally , ) is a port city in the Pas-de-Calais department, of which it is a subprefecture. Although Calais is by far the largest city in Pas-de-Calais, the department's prefecture is its third-largest city of Arras. The population of the city proper is 72,929; that of the urban area is 149,673 (2018).Comparateur de territoire: Aire d'attraction des villes 2020 de Calais (073), Commune de Calais (62193) INSEE Calais overlooks the Strait of Dover, the narrowest point in the |
Carousel
A carousel or carrousel (mainly North American English), merry-go-round (List of sovereign states, international), roundabout (British English), or hurdy-gurdy (an old term in Australian English, in South Australia, SA) is a type of amusement ride consisting of a rotation, rotating circular platform with seats for riders. The "seats" are traditionally in the form of rows of wooden horses or other animals mounted on posts, many of which are moved up and down by gears to simulate Horse gallop, galloping, to the accompaniment of Music loop, looped circus music. Carousels are commonly populated with horses, each horse weighing roughly 100 lbs (45 kg), but may include a variety of mounts, for example pigs, zebras, tigers, or mythological creatures such as dragons or unicorns. Sometimes, chair-like or bench-like seats are used, and occasionally mounts can be shaped like aeroplanes or cars. The names ''carousel'' and ''merry-go-round'' are also used, in varying dialects, to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antwerp
Antwerp (; nl, Antwerpen ; french: Anvers ; es, Amberes) is the largest city in Belgium by area at and the capital of Antwerp Province in the Flemish Region. With a population of 520,504,Statistics Belgium; ''Loop van de bevolking per gemeente'' (Excel file) Population of all municipalities in Belgium, . Retrieved 1 November 2017. it is the most populous municipality in Belgium, and with a metropolitan population of around 1,200,000 people, it is the second-largest metrop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Princesse
La Princesse is a 15-metre (50-foot) mechanical spider designed and operated by French performance art company La Machine. The spider was showcased in Liverpool, England, as part of the 2008 European Capital of Culture celebrations, travelling around the city between 3-7 September. In 2009, it was on display in Yokohama, Japan, as part of Yokohama's 150th anniversary of its port opening. Arts reviewer Lyn Gardner wrote in ''The Guardian'' "There were times when it seemed to be leading the entire population of the city on a merry dance, like some kind of arachnid pied piper." Design The spider was designed by La Machine's François Delarozière, who also designed the mechanical elephant and the giant girl for Royal de Luxe's performance of The Sultan's Elephant which visited London in May 2006. Both projects were brought to the UK by the company and charitable trust Artichoke. The spider was built in Nantes in France, using steel and poplar wood and complex hydraulics, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Battersea Power Station
Battersea Power Station is a decommissioned Grade II* listed coal-fired power station, located on the south bank of the River Thames, in Nine Elms, Battersea, in the London Borough of Wandsworth. It was built by the London Power Company (LPC) to the design of Leonard Pearce, Engineer in Chief to the LPC, and CS Allott & Son Engineers. The architects were J. Theo Halliday and Giles Gilbert Scott. The station is one of the world's largest brick buildings and notable for its original, Art Deco interior fittings and decor. The building comprises two power stations, built in two stages, in a single building. Battersea A Power Station was built between 1929 and 1935 and Battersea B Power Station, to its east, between 1937 and 1941, when construction was paused owing to the worsening effects of the Second World War. The building was completed in 1955. "Battersea B" was built to a design nearly identical to that of "Battersea A", creating the iconic four-chimney structure. "Battersea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
