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Louisiade Archipelago
The Louisiade Archipelago is a string of ten larger volcanic islands frequently fringed by coral reefs, and 90 smaller coral islands in Papua New Guinea. It is located 200 km southeast of New Guinea, stretching over more than and spread over an ocean area of between the Solomon Sea to the north and the Coral Sea to the south. The aggregate land area of the islands is about , with Vanatinai (Sudest) being the largest. Rogeia, Samarai and Sariba lie closest to New Guinea, while Misima, Vanatinai, and Rossel islands lie further east. History The islands were discovered by a Spanish expedition led by Luis Váez de Torres in 1606, that was part of the Fernandez de Quiros fleet which had sailed from South America in search of Australia. The Torres expedition visited various islands including Basilaki Island, which he named ''San Buenaventura'' in July 1606. It is possible that Malay and Chinese sailors also visited the islands earlier. More than a century later, i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Os Lusíadas
''Os Lusíadas'' (), usually translated as ''The Lusiads'', is a Portuguese epic poem written by Luís Vaz de Camões ( – 1580) and first published in 1572. It is widely regarded as the most important work of Portuguese-language literature and is frequently compared to Virgil's ''Aeneid'' (1st c. BC). The work celebrates the discovery of a sea route to India by the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama (1469–1524). The ten cantos of the poem are in ottava rima and total 1,102 stanzas. Written in Homeric fashion, the poem focuses mainly on a fantastic interpretation of the Portuguese voyages of discovery during the 15th and 16th centuries. ''Os Lusíadas'' is often regarded as Portugal's national epic, much as Virgil's ''Aeneid'' was for the Ancient Romans, or Homer's ''Iliad'' and ''Odyssey'' for the Ancient Greeks. It was written when Camões was an exile in Macau and was first printed in 1572, three years after the author returned from the Indies. Internal structure The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Louis Antoine De Bougainville
Louis-Antoine, Comte de Bougainville (; 12 November 1729 – 31 August 1811) was a French military officer and explorer. A contemporary of the British explorer James Cook, he served in the Seven Years' War and the American Revolutionary War. Bougainville later gained fame for his expeditions, including a circumnavigation of the globe in a scientific expedition in 1763, the first recorded settlement on the Falkland Islands, and voyages into the Pacific Ocean. Bougainville Island of Papua New Guinea as well as the flowering plant '' Bougainvillea'' are named in his honour. Biography Early career Bougainville was born in Paris, the capital of the Kingdom of France, the son of notary Pierre-Yves de Bougainville (1688–1756), on 12 November 1729. In early life, he studied law, but soon abandoned the profession. In 1753, he entered the French Army in the corps of Musketeers of the Guard. At the age of twenty-five he published a treatise on integral calculus, as a supplement to G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hopea
''Hopea'' is a genus of plants in the family Dipterocarpaceae. It contains some 113 species, distributed from Sri Lanka and southern India to the Andaman Islands, Myanmar, southern China, and southward throughout Malesia to New Guinea. They are mainly main and subcanopy trees of lowland rainforest, but some species can become also emergent trees, such as '' Hopea nutans''. The genus was named after John Hope, the first Regius Keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh .... Botany Trees in this genus are small or medium, but they can grow occasionally large. They have low branches and sometimes thick buttress roots. Their bark is chocolate brown and smooth at first, but later crack and mottle with grey spots. Species Spe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diospyros
''Diospyros'' is a genus of over 700 species of deciduous and evergreen trees and shrubs. The majority are native to the tropics, with only a few species extending into temperate regions. Individual species valued for their hard, heavy, dark timber, are commonly known as ebony trees, while others are valued for their fruit and known as persimmon trees. Some are useful as ornamentals and many are of local ecological importance. Species of this genus are generally dioecious, with separate male and female plants. Taxonomy and etymology The generic name ''Diospyros'' comes from a Latin name for the Caucasian persimmon ('' D. lotus''), derived from the Greek διόσπυρος : dióspyros, from ''diós'' () and ''pyrós'' (). The Greek name literally means "Zeus's wheat" but more generally intends "divine food" or "divine fruit". The genus is a large one and the number of species has been estimated variously, depending on the date of the source. The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, lis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pandanus
''Pandanus'' is a genus of monocots with about 578 accepted species. They are palm-like, dioecious trees and shrubs native to the Old World tropics and subtropics. Common names include pandan, screw palm and screw pine. The genus is classified in the order Pandanales, family Pandanaceae, and is the largest in the family. Description The species vary in size from small shrubs less than tall, to medium-sized trees tall, typically with a broad canopy, heavy fruit, and moderate growth rate. The trunk is stout, wide-branching, and ringed with many leaf scars. Mature plants can have branches. Depending on the species, the trunk can be smooth, rough, or warty. The roots form a pyramidal tract to hold the trunk. They commonly have many thick stilt roots near the base, which provide support as the tree grows top-heavy with leaves, fruit, and branches. These roots are adventitious and often branched. The top of the plant has one or more crowns of strap-shaped leaves that may be s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trees
In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, e.g., including only woody plants with secondary growth, only plants that are usable as lumber, or only plants above a specified height. But wider definitions include taller palms, tree ferns, bananas, and bamboos. Trees are not a monophyletic taxonomic group but consist of a wide variety of plant species that have independently evolved a trunk and branches as a way to tower above other plants to compete for sunlight. The majority of tree species are angiosperms or hardwoods; of the rest, many are gymnosperms or softwoods. Trees tend to be long-lived, some trees reaching several thousand years old. Trees evolved around 400 million years ago, and it is estimated that there are around three trillion mature trees in the world currently. A tree typically has many secondary branches supported clear o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Endemic (ecology)
Endemism is the state of a species being found only in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsewhere. For example, the Cape sugarbird is found exclusively in southwestern South Africa and is therefore said to be ''endemic'' to that particular part of the world. An endemic species can also be referred to as an ''endemism'' or, in scientific literature, as an ''endemite''. Similarly, many species found in the Western ghats of India are examples of endemism. Endemism is an important concept in conservation biology for measuring biodiversity in a particular place and evaluating the risk of extinction for species. Endemism is also of interest in evolutionary biology, because it provides clues about how changes in the environment cause species to undergo range shifts (potentially expanding their range into a larger area or bec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ecoregion
An ecoregion (ecological region) is an ecological and geographic area that exists on multiple different levels, defined by type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. Ecoregions cover relatively large areas of land or water, and contain characteristic, geographically distinct assemblages of natural communities and species. The biodiversity of flora, fauna and ecosystems that characterise an ecoregion tends to be distinct from that of other ecoregions. In theory, biodiversity or conservation ecoregions are relatively large areas of land or water where the probability of encountering different species and communities at any given point remains relatively constant, within an acceptable range of variation (largely undefined at this point). Ecoregions are also known as "ecozones" ("ecological zones"), although that term may also refer to biogeographic realms. Three caveats are appropriate for all bio-geographic mapping approaches. Firstly, no single bio-geographic fram ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tropical Moist Broadleaf Forests
Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests (TSMF), also known as tropical moist forest, is a subtropical and tropical forest habitat type defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). Description TSMF is generally found in large, discontinuous patches centered on the equatorial belt and between the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn. TSMF are characterized by low variability in annual temperature and high levels of rainfall of more than annually. Forest composition is dominated by evergreen and semi-deciduous tree species. These forests are home to more species than any other terrestrial ecosystem on Earth: Half of the world's species may live in these forests, where a square kilometer may be home to more than 1,000 tree species. These forests are found around the world, particularly in the Indo-Malayan Archipelago, the Amazon Basin, and the African Congo Basin. The perpetually warm, wet climate makes these environments more productive than any other te ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Raids On Deboyne (1942)
A series of raids on Deboyne were conducted by Allied forces against the Imperial Japanese Navy seaplane base in the Deboyne Islands of the Louisiade Archipelago between 9–11 May 1942. The seaplane base had been set up prior to the Battle of Coral Sea and became untenable and was abandoned by the Japanese, due to proximity to Allied airfields at Port Moresby and the failure of ''Mo Sakusen'' (Operation ''Mo''). Deboyne atoll installations Deboyne is the name for both an island and the atoll of which it is a part. Deboyne Island is also known as Panniet Island. It is in the Louisiade Archipelago east of Papua New Guinea. During World War II, the Japanese built a temporary seaplane base in the lagoon at Deboyne Atoll as part of MO Sakusen, the attempt to capture Port Moresby, Papua. The base was created by units that came from Rabaul, New Britain and Shortland Island in the Solomon Islands, including the seaplane tender ''Kamikawa Maru''. The base existed for approximately five ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Battle Of Coral Sea
The Battle of the Coral Sea, from 4 to 8 May 1942, was a major naval battle between the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) and naval and air forces of the United States and Australia. Taking place in the Pacific Theatre of World War II, the battle was the first naval action in which the opposing fleets neither sighted nor fired upon one another, attacking over the horizon from aircraft carriers instead. It was also the first military battle between aircraft carriers. To strengthen their defensive position in the South Pacific, the Japanese decided to invade and occupy Port Moresby (in New Guinea) and Tulagi (in the southeastern Solomon Islands). The plan, Operation Mo, involved several major units of Japan's Combined Fleet. Two fleet carriers and a light carrier were assigned to provide air cover for the invasion forces, under the overall command of Admiral Shigeyoshi Inoue. The U.S. learned of the Japanese plan through signals intelligence and sent two U.S. Navy carrier task f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Owen Stanley
Captain Owen Stanley FRS RN (13 June 1811 – 13 March 1850) was a British Royal Navy officer and surveyor. Life Stanley was born in Alderley, Cheshire, the son of Edward Stanley, rector of Alderley and later Bishop of Norwich. A brother was Arthur Penrhyn Stanley and his sister Mary Stanley. He entered the Royal Naval College at the age of fifteen and remained there in 1824–1826, but these dates are inconsistent. For a few months in 1826, he served as a volunteer on board the Royal Navy's which was then in the English Channel. After gaining the rank of midshipman in 1826, in 1826–1827, he spent time about South America on board . In 1827–1830, he was on the Royal Navy's . And then in 1830, he was with Phillip Parker King on board HMS ''Adventure'' while it surveyed the Straits of Magellan at the tip of South America. By 1830, the 1821–1829 Greek War of Independence had ended and the United Kingdom found itself in a 'peace keeping' role about Greece in the Medit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
