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West Rigolets Light
The West Rigolets Light was a lighthouse which stood at the west end of the Rigolets where the channel meets Lake Pontchartrain. Built in 1855, it was deactivated sometime around World War II and was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. History This light was built to supplement the East Rigolets Light, which marked the other end of the passage and which was built by the Pleasonton administration in 1838. It was constructed in 1855 as part of a set of four lights which were erected around Lake Pontchartrain that year, all to the same design: a square house with an overhanging hipped roof, the lantern at the peak. The light was extinguished at the beginning of the Civil War, but as Union forces gained control of the area it was relit in November 1862, using a ship's lantern. Two days later the keeper, Thomas Harrison, was found shot to death. He was the only keeper killed on duty during the war. A year later the light was renovated and equipped with a fifth-order Fresnel lens. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rigolets
Rigolets is a 12.9 kilometer (8 mi) long deepwater strait in Louisiana. "Rigolets" comes from the word ''rigole'', French language, French for 'trench' or 'gutter'. The name is now locally pronounced "RIG-uh-leez". The strait begins at and follows a generally eastward course to Lake Borgne, a lagoon in the Gulf of Mexico, and finally to the Gulf of Mexico, where it ends at . Along with nearby Chef Menteur Pass, the Rigolets connects Lake Pontchartrain and Lake St. Catherine (Louisiana), Lake St. Catherine in Louisiana to Lake Borgne, and then to the Gulf of Mexico. It forms the boundary between New Orleans (Orleans Parish) and St. Tammany Parish. Tidal pass As a deepwater tidal pass, the Rigolets helps supply salt water from the Gulf to Lake Pontchartrain. Tidal scouring has produced a deep pit in the lake at the western mouth of the strait. Since the Rigolets is a channel through which Gulf storm surges can approach the New Orleans area, there have been proposals to con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lake Pontchartrain
Lake Pontchartrain ( ) is an estuary located in southeastern Louisiana in the United States. It covers an area of with an average depth of . Some shipping channels are kept deeper through dredging. It is roughly oval in shape, about from west to east and from south to north. In descending order of area, the lake is located in parts of six Louisiana parishes: St. Tammany, Orleans, Jefferson, St. John the Baptist, St. Charles, and Tangipahoa. The water boundaries were defined in 1979 (see list of parishes in Louisiana). The lake is crossed by the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, the longest continuous bridge over water in the world. A power line also crosses the lake. Its towers stand on caissons in Lake Pontchartrain, and its length can be used to visually demonstrate the curvature of the earth. Toponymy Lake Pontchartrain is named for , . He was the French Minister of the Marine, Chancellor, and Controller-General of Finances during the reign of France's "Sun King", L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lighthouse
A lighthouse is a tower, building, or other type of physical structure designed to emit light from a system of lamps and lenses and to serve as a beacon for navigational aid, for maritime pilots at sea or on inland waterways. Lighthouses mark dangerous coastlines, hazardous shoals, reefs, rocks, and safe entries to harbors; they also assist in aerial navigation. Once widely used, the number of operational lighthouses has declined due to the expense of maintenance and has become uneconomical since the advent of much cheaper, more sophisticated and effective electronic navigational systems. History Ancient lighthouses Before the development of clearly defined ports, mariners were guided by fires built on hilltops. Since elevating the fire would improve the visibility, placing the fire on a platform became a practice that led to the development of the lighthouse. In antiquity, the lighthouse functioned more as an entrance marker to ports than as a warning signal for reefs a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina was a destructive Category 5 Atlantic hurricane that caused over 1,800 fatalities and $125 billion in damage in late August 2005, especially in the city of New Orleans and the surrounding areas. It was at the time the costliest tropical cyclone on record and is now tied with 2017's Hurricane Harvey. The storm was the twelfth tropical cyclone, the fifth hurricane, and the third major hurricane of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, as well as the fourth-most intense Atlantic hurricane on record to make landfall in the contiguous United States. Katrina originated on August 23, 2005, as a tropical depression from the merger of a tropical wave and the remnants of Tropical Depression Ten. Early the following day, the depression intensified into a tropical storm as it headed generally westward toward Florida, strengthening into a hurricane two hours before making landfall at Hallandale Beach on August 25. After briefly weakening to tropical storm strength o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
East Rigolets Light
The East Rigolets Light was an early lighthouse marking the entrance to the Rigolets from Lake Borgne in Louisiana. It was deactivated in 1874 and destroyed sometime after 1923. History This light was built in Stephen Pleasonton's administration, and the light was commonly referred as "Pleasonton's Light". While construction funds were provided in 1831, the light was not completed until two years later, built according to the usual plan of the time of a conical masonry tower housing an array of ten Argand lamps with reflectors; this was eventually replaced with a fourth-order Fresnel lens. It was located on present-day Rabbit Island (then named Pleasonton Island) opposite the mouth of the Pearl River. While the original keeper Isaac H. Smith served for seven years, his immediate successors were not so creditable: the first was dismissed for drunkenness, and from 1840 to 1844 there were no less than five keepers. Not surprisingly, the state of the light suffered. Like other sou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stephen Pleasonton
Stephen Pleasonton (1776? – January 31, 1855) was the first "Fifth Auditor" of the U.S. Treasury Department; he is historically significant for his part in saving priceless early government documents from possible destruction, but is chiefly remembered today for his singularly bureaucratic work in overseeing the Treasury Department's Lighthouse Establishment during most of its existence. He was also the father of Union Civil War Generals Alfred Pleasonton and Augustus Pleasonton. Early career Little information has survived regarding Pleasonton's early life and career. He is known to have begun work as a clerk with the State Department. He moved to Washington, D.C. in 1800 along with the government, and he was still there in 1814 when he saved the Declaration of Independence and other papers from being burned by British forces. In 1817, President James Monroe named Pleasonton to the new position of 'Fifth Auditor' in the Treasury Department, which he would hold until his dea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hipped Roof
A hip roof, hip-roof or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope (although a tented roof by definition is a hipped roof with steeply pitched slopes rising to a peak). Thus, a hipped roof has no gables or other vertical sides to the roof. A square hip roof is shaped like a pyramid. Hip roofs on houses may have two triangular sides and two trapezoidal ones. A hip roof on a rectangular plan has four faces. They are almost always at the same pitch or slope, which makes them symmetrical about the centerlines. Hip roofs often have a consistent level fascia, meaning that a gutter can be fitted all around. Hip roofs often have dormer slanted sides. Construction Hip roofs are more difficult to construct than a gabled roof, requiring more complex systems of rafters or trusses. Hip roofs can be constructed on a wide variety of plan shapes. Each ridge is central over the rectangle of the building below it. The tri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states that had seceded. The central cause of the war was the dispute over whether slavery would be permitted to expand into the western territories, leading to more slave states, or be prevented from doing so, which was widely believed would place slavery on a course of ultimate extinction. Decades of political controversy over slavery were brought to a head by the victory in the 1860 U.S. presidential election of Abraham Lincoln, who opposed slavery's expansion into the west. An initial seven southern slave states responded to Lincoln's victory by seceding from the United States and, in 1861, forming the Confederacy. The Confederacy seized U.S. forts and other federal assets within their borders. Led by Confederate President Jefferson Davis, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fresnel Lens
A Fresnel lens ( ; ; or ) is a type of composite compact lens developed by the French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel (1788–1827) for use in lighthouses. It has been called "the invention that saved a million ships." The design allows the construction of lenses of large aperture and short focal length without the mass and volume of material that would be required by a lens of conventional design. A Fresnel lens can be made much thinner than a comparable conventional lens, in some cases taking the form of a flat sheet. The simpler dioptric (purely refractive) form of the lens was first proposed by Count Buffon and independently reinvented by Fresnel. The ''catadioptric'' form of the lens, entirely invented by Fresnel, has outer elements that use total internal reflection as well as refraction; it can capture more oblique light from a light source and add it to the beam of a lighthouse, making the light visible from greater distances. Description The Fresnel lens redu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
