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Thomas Abel Brimage Spratt
Thomas Abel Brimage Spratt (11 May 181112 March 1888) was an English vice-admiral, hydrographer, and geologist. Life Thomas Spratt was born at Woodway House, East Teignmouth, the eldest son of Commander James Spratt, RN, who was a hero of the Battle of Trafalgar. He joined the Royal Navy at age 16 in 1827 and was attached to the surveying branch on HMS ''Victory''. He was engaged almost continuously until 1863 in surveying the Mediterranean. He received his early training in surveying from Thomas Graves in HMS ''Mastiff'' and . He was promoted to Lieutenant in 1841 and his first command was the converted sixth-rate . He then succeeded Graves as commander of the HMS ''Spitfire''. He rendered distinguished service in the Black Sea during the Crimean War, planning the attacks on Kertch and Kinburn. He was promoted to captain in 1855, and was appointed Companion of the Order of the Bath in the same year. He was then given command of in which ship he continued surv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Tunbridge Wells
Royal Tunbridge Wells is a town in Kent, England, southeast of central London. It lies close to the border with East Sussex on the northern edge of the High Weald, whose sandstone geology is exemplified by the rock formation High Rocks. The town was a spa in the Restoration and a fashionable resort in the mid-1700s under Beau Nash when the Pantiles, and its chalybeate spring, attracted visitors who wished to take the waters. Though its popularity as a spa town waned with the advent of sea bathing, the town still derives much of its income from tourism. The town has a population of around 56,500, and is the administrative centre of Tunbridge Wells Borough and in the parliamentary constituency of Tunbridge Wells. History Iron Age Evidence suggests that Iron Age people farmed the fields and mined the iron-rich rocks in the Tunbridge Wells area, and excavations in 1940 and 1957–61 by James Money at High Rocks uncovered the remains of a defensive hill-fort. It is thou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Battle Of Kinburn (1855)
The Battle of Kinburn, a combined land-naval engagement during the final stage of the Crimean War, took place on the tip of the Kinburn Peninsula (on the south shore of the Dnieper–Bug estuary in what is now Ukraine) on 17 October 1855. During the battle a combined fleet of vessels from the French Navy and the British Royal Navy bombarded Russian coastal fortifications after an Anglo-French ground force had besieged them. Three French ironclad batteries carried out the main attack, which saw the main Russian fortress destroyed in an action that lasted about three hours. The battle, although strategically insignificant with little effect on the outcome of the war, is notable for the first use of modern ironclad warships in action. Although frequently hit, the French ships destroyed the Russian forts within three hours, suffering minimal casualties in the process. This battle convinced contemporary navies to design and build new major warships with armour plating; this insti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Asia Minor
Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The region is bounded by the Turkish Straits to the northwest, the Black Sea to the north, the Armenian Highlands to the east, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and the Aegean Sea to the west. The Sea of Marmara forms a connection between the Black and Aegean seas through the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits and separates Anatolia from Thrace on the Balkan peninsula of Southeast Europe. The eastern border of Anatolia has been held to be a line between the Gulf of Alexandretta and the Black Sea, bounded by the Armenian Highlands to the east and Mesopotamia to the southeast. By this definition Anatolia comprises approximately the western two-thirds of the Asian part of Turkey. Today, Anatolia is sometimes considered to be synonymou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hugh Falconer
Hugh Falconer MD FRS (29 February 1808 – 31 January 1865) was a Scottish geologist, botanist, palaeontologist, and paleoanthropologist. He studied the flora, fauna, and geology of India, Assam,Burma,and most of the Mediterranean islands and was the first to suggest the modern evolutionary theory of punctuated equilibrium. He studied the Siwalik fossil beds, and may also have been the first person to discover a fossil ape. Early life Falconer was the youngest son of David Falconer of Forres, Elginshire. In 1826 Hugh Falconer graduated at the University of Aberdeen, where he studied natural history. Afterward, he studied medicine in the University of Edinburgh, taking the degree of MD in 1829.Arnold, David (2006) ''The Tropics and the Traveling Gaze: India, Landscape, and Science, 1800–1856'' University of Washington Press, Seattlepp. 156–157 During this period he zealously attended the botanical classes of Prof. R. Graham (1786–1845), and those on geology by Pro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pygmy Elephant
The Borneo elephant, also called the Bornean elephant or the Borneo pygmy elephant, is a subspecies of Asian elephant ''(Elephas maximus)'' that inhabits northeastern Borneo, in Indonesia and Malaysia. Its origin remains the subject of debate. A definitive subspecific classification as ''Elephas maximus borneensis'' awaits a detailed range-wide morphometric and genetic study. Since 1986, the Asian elephant has been listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List as the population has declined by at least 50% over the last three generations, estimated to be 60–75 years. It is pre-eminently threatened by loss, degradation and fragmentation of habitat. The Sultan of Sulu was thought to have introduced captive elephants to Borneo in the 18th century, which were released into the jungle. Comparison of the Borneo elephant population to putative source populations in DNA analysis indicates that the Borneo elephants more likely derived from Sundaic stock and are indigenous to Borneo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Malta
Malta ( , , ), officially the Republic of Malta ( mt, Repubblika ta' Malta ), is an island country in the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of an archipelago, between Italy and Libya, and is often considered a part of Southern Europe. It lies south of Sicily (Italy), east of Tunisia, and north of Libya. The official languages are Maltese language, Maltese and English language, English, and 66% of the current Maltese population is at least conversational in the Italian language, Italian language. Malta has been inhabited since approximately 5900 BC. Its location in the centre of the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean has historically given it great strategic importance as a naval base, with a succession of powers having contested and ruled the islands, including the Phoenicians and Ancient Carthage, Carthaginians, Romans, Greeks, Arabs, Normans, Aragonese, Knights Hospitaller, Knights of St. John, French, and British, amongst others. With a population of about 516,000 over an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South Devon Railway Company
The South Devon Railway Company built and operated the railway from Exeter to Plymouth and Torquay in Devon, England. It was a broad gauge railway built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The line had to traverse difficult hilly terrain, and the company adopted the Atmospheric railway, atmospheric system in which trains were drawn by a piston in a tube laid between the rails, a vacuum being created by stationary engines. The revolutionary system proved to have insuperable technical difficulties and was abandoned. The line continued as a conventional locomotive railway. The company promoted a number of branches, through the medium of nominally independent companies. Its original main line between Exeter and Plymouth remains in use today as an important part of the main line between London and Plymouth. Chronology * 1844 South Devon Railway Act passed by Parliament * 1846 opened to Newton Abbot * 1847 opened to Totnes, atmospheric trains start running * 1848 atmospheric trains withdraw ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Isambard Kingdom Brunel (; 9 April 1806 – 15 September 1859) was a British civil engineer who is considered "one of the most ingenious and prolific figures in engineering history," "one of the 19th-century engineering giants," and "one of the greatest figures of the Industrial Revolution, [who] changed the face of the English landscape with his groundbreaking designs and ingenious constructions." Brunel built dockyards, the Great Western Railway (GWR), a series of steamships including the first propeller-driven Transatlantic crossing, transatlantic steamship, and numerous important bridges and tunnels. His designs revolutionised public transport and modern engineering. Though Brunel's projects were not always successful, they often contained innovative solutions to long-standing engineering problems. During his career, Brunel achieved many engineering firsts, including assisting in the building of the Thames Tunnel, first tunnel under a Navigability, navigable river (th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects humans and other animals. Malaria causes symptoms that typically include fever, tiredness, vomiting, and headaches. In severe cases, it can cause jaundice, seizures, coma, or death. Symptoms usually begin ten to fifteen days after being bitten by an infected mosquito. If not properly treated, people may have recurrences of the disease months later. In those who have recently survived an infection, reinfection usually causes milder symptoms. This partial resistance disappears over months to years if the person has no continuing exposure to malaria. Malaria is caused by single-celled microorganisms of the '' Plasmodium'' group. It is spread exclusively through bites of infected '' Anopheles'' mosquitoes. The mosquito bite introduces the parasites from the mosquito's saliva into a person's blood. The parasites travel to the liver where they mature and reproduce. Five species of ''Plasmodium'' can infect and be spr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fellow Of The Royal Society
Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathematics, engineering science, and medical science". Fellowship of the Society, the oldest known scientific academy in continuous existence, is a significant honour. It has been awarded to many eminent scientists throughout history, including Isaac Newton (1672), Michael Faraday (1824), Charles Darwin (1839), Ernest Rutherford (1903), Srinivasa Ramanujan (1918), Albert Einstein (1921), Paul Dirac (1930), Winston Churchill (1941), Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1944), Dorothy Hodgkin (1947), Alan Turing (1951), Lise Meitner (1955) and Francis Crick (1959). More recently, fellowship has been awarded to Stephen Hawking (1974), David Attenborough (1983), Tim Hunt (1991), Elizabeth Blackburn (1992), Tim Berners-Lee (2001), Venki Ramakrishnan ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geology
Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other astronomical objects, the features or rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Earth sciences, including hydrology, and so is treated as one major aspect of integrated Earth system science and planetary science. Geology describes the structure of the Earth on and beneath its surface, and the processes that have shaped that structure. It also provides tools to determine the relative and absolute ages of rocks found in a given location, and also to describe the histories of those rocks. By combining these tools, geologists are able to chronicle the geological history of the Earth as a whole, and also to demonstrate the age of the Earth. Geology provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and the Earth's past climates. Geologists broadly study the properties and processes of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
