Thriller is the sixth studio album by American singer Michael Jackson, released on November 30, 1982, by Epic Records. In just over a year, it became, and currently remains, the world's best-selling album, with estimated sales surpassing 65 million copies. It is the best-selling album in the United States and the first album to be certified 32x multi-platinum, having shipped 32 million album-equivalent units. The album won a record-breaking eight Grammy Awards in 1984, including Album of the Year. Seven singles were released from the album, all of which reached the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
Thriller, the follow-up to Jackson's successful fifth album Off the Wall (1979), explores genres similar to those of its predecessor, including pop, post-disco, rock and funk. Quincy Jones produced the album, while Jackson wrote four of its nine songs. Thriller explores different music genres, including pop, post-disco, rock and funk.
The album includes the ballads The Lady in My Life, Human Nature and The Girl Is Mine; the funk pieces Billie Jean and Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'; and the disco set Baby Be Mine and "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)" and has a similar sound to the material on Off the Wall. Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' is accompanied by a bass and percussion background and the song's centerpiece, a climaxing African-inspired chant (often misidentified as Swahili, but actually syllables based on Duala), gave the song an international flavor. The Girl Is Mine tells of two friends' fight over a woman, arguing over who loves her more and concludes with a spoken rap.
I'm never pleased with anything, I'm a perfectionist,
After four days on The Orient Express crossing East Bulgaria without any kind of connection, The Grandma has just arrived this afternoon to Bucharest. The weather is cold 1ºC and 89% of humidity. After visiting the most incredible cathedrals, The Grandma prefers to stay inside the train until tomorrow when the weather predictions are better than today. Meanwhile, she's reading some information about the capital of Romania before visiting one of the most beautiful and enigmatic places in Romania: Transylvannia.
Bucharest is the largest city of Romania, as well as its cultural, industrial, and financial centre. It is located in the southeast of the country on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, less than 60 km north of the Danube River and the Bulgarian border.
The Romanian name București has an uncertain origin. Tradition connects the founding of Bucharest with the name of Bucur, who was a prince, an outlaw, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a hunter, according to different legends. In Romanian, the word stem bucurie means joy and it is believed to be of Dacian origin.
First mentioned as the Citadel of București in 1459, it became the residence of the famous Wallachian prince Vlad III the Impaler.
The Grandma inside St. Spyridon Cathedral
Partly destroyed by natural disasters and rebuilt several times during the following 200 years, and hit by Caragea's plague in 1813–14, the city was wrested from Ottoman control and occupied at several intervals by the Habsburg Monarchy (1716, 1737, 1789) and Imperial Russia (three times between 1768 and 1806). It was placed under Russian administration between 1828 and the Crimean War, with an interlude during the Bucharest-centred 1848 Wallachian revolution. Later, an Austrian garrison took possession after the Russian departure, remaining in the city until March 1857. On 23 March 1847, a fire consumed about 2,000 buildings, destroying a third of the city.
In 1862, after Wallachia and Moldavia were united to form the Principality of Romania, Bucharest became the new nation's capital city. In 1881, it became the political centre of the newly proclaimed Kingdom of Romania under King Carol I. During the second half of the 19th century, the city's population increased dramatically, and a new period of urban development began.
Between 6 December 1916 and November 1918, the city was occupied by German forces as a result of the Battle of Bucharest, with the official capital temporarily moved to Iași, in the Moldavia region.
In January 1941, the city was the scene of the Legionnaires' rebellion and Bucharest pogrom. As the capital of an Axis country and a major transit point for Axis troops en route to the Eastern Front, Bucharest suffered heavy damage during World War II due to Allied bombings. On 23 August 1944, Bucharest was the site of the royal coup which brought Romania into the Allied camp. The city suffered a short period of Nazi Luftwaffe bombings, as well as a failed attempt by German troops to regain the city.
After the establishment of communism in Romania, the city continued growing. New districts were constructed, most of them dominated by tower blocks. During Nicolae Ceaușescu's leadership (1965–89), much of the historic part of the city was demolished and replaced by Socialist realism style development: the Civic Centre and the Palace of the Parliament, for which an entire historic quarter was razed to make way for Ceaușescu's megalomaniac plans. On 4 March 1977, an earthquake centered in Vrancea, about 135 km away, claimed 1,500 lives and caused further damage to the historic centre.
The Romanian Revolution of 1989 began with massive anti-Ceaușescu protests in Timișoara in December 1989 and continued in Bucharest, leading to the overthrow of the Communist regime.
To see far is one thing, going there is another- Constantin Brancusi.
The Grandma wants to explain to you a story of an old and traditional guard who has been attacked by The AntiChrist. This is its story:
The essentially rural structure of Catalonia in the 18th century meant that the Esquadres de Catalunya were the ideal police force to meet the needs of public order at the time.
In many Catalan cities there was no other police force apart from the army. Barcelona bore highly different features to the remaining cities in Catalonia, for instance, it was a capital, undergoing demographic growth and it was served by a port.
In Barcelona, the modern precedents of the urban and security police were beginning to take shape.
In 1573, Barcelona had specialised officials who oversaw compliance with the rules of the urban police: the Obreros or workers, the Mostaza – someone who was in charge of checking the weights, measures, and quality of food – and the administrator.
A guard in 1930
The experience of Barcelona spread to other major Catalan communities.
As far as the security police are concerned, in 1579 the Council of Barcelona city approved a proposal from the Provincial Court to divide the city into districts and, in turn, to divide these districts into neighbourhoods in order to ensure public peace of mind.
During the initial stage of French domination in Spain (1812-1814) a Barcelona Police Board was set up, headed by Ramon Casanovas. It replicated the French police system and its goal was to prevent uproar against the invaders.
Napoleon divided Catalonia into four departments, set up the French Civil Regime and the common administration, and additionally reorganised the police of the principality in accordance with his own model.
In 1840 there was a need in Barcelona for an organised surveillance force to ensure compliance with ordinances. Hygiene had been greatly overlooked in neighbourhoods and posed major problems for such a densely populated major city confined within the walls.
In spite of this, the 1812 Constitution did not consider the organisation of any local police force. The police scene was composed of regional or countywide police forces that were just an extension of the army.
A guard in 1960
On 21 July 1841, councillor Manuel Torrents suggested the City Council organise a force that would be available around the clock, grouping the various dispersed bodies that were attached to the City Hall. This force would gather the night watchmen, the avenue guards, the street-lamp lighters, the brigade workers, the macebearers and the guards watching the oil tanks for the street lamps. In order to carry out their unusual tasks, these men wore uniforms and some were armed.
The Guardia Municipal was created on 26 November 1843 during the term of mayor Josep Bertran Ros. The Guardia Municipal was directly attached to the major’s office and its regulations stated that one of its missions was to preserve calm in the community. It stated: If disturbances, quarrels or rows break out during surveillance of streets and squares, the peaceful residents shall be protected.
At the start the Municipales Guards were armed with a sabre and gun, a rifle and even a bayonet. However, the decision was made to disarm them stemming from the events which took place during the tragic week in 1909.
1856 saw the creation of the Mounted Section, which was based on the ground floor of the Town Hall in Plaça Sant Jaume. The first contingent had ten posts. Its goal was to carry out surveillance over the ports of the city, which at the time was still enclosed by the walls; to assist in collecting revenue from consumption; to disperse gangs of dangerous people who loitered at night; and to prevent stone fights, a practice that was popular among groups of children at the time.
The Mounted Unit in 2016
This force first took to the streets on 19 November 1859 on the occasion of the saint’s day of Isabella II. They made a huge impression on the citizens of Barcelona on account of their uniform and the public soon came to grow fond of them.
In addition to their acclaimed involvement in the Carrousel, in which they show off their conquering abilities, the plume guards, as they were commonly known, had specific missions, such as surveillance in the outskirts of the city – particularly in the mountain areas such as Les Planes, the areas of El Laberint, Horta, Torre Baró and Arrabassada; they were active in major gatherings; they carried out surveillance in gardens; they prevented secret constructions and were involved in uncovering criminals’ hide-outs.
In Autumn 2006, celebrations were held marking the 150th anniversary of the Mounted Unit with a show on horseback taking place on La Rambla and a magnificent performance being given by the horsemen and horses at the Palau Sant Jordi. During the events, the citizens of Barcelona demonstrated their feelings of warmth towards this unit.
Meanwhile The Grandma is writing these lines, The AntiChrist who has no culture, who doesn't respect traditions, who doesn't attend anybody, who confuses authority with imposition, is closing the Musical Section of the Mounted Unit of the Guàrdia Urbana. We can not wait anything good from a person who represents ignorance and sectarism. God saves us!
Five enemies of peace inhabit with us: avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride; if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.
Tina Picotes is still in New York City. Today, she's celebrating Thanksgiving Day. She wants to explain us some things about this special day, its history and celebration.
Thanksgiving or Thanksgiving Day, is a public holiday celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States. It originated as a harvest festival. Thanksgiving has been celebrated nationally on and off since 1789, after a proclamation by George Washington. It has been celebrated as a federal holiday every year since 1863, when, during the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens, to be celebrated on the last Thursday in November. Together with Christmas and the New Year, Thanksgiving is a part of the broader holiday season.
The event that Americans commonly call the First Thanksgiving was celebrated by the Pilgrims after their first harvest in the New World in October 1621. This feast lasted three days, and as accounted by attendee Edward Winslow, it was attended by 90 Native Americans and 53 Pilgrims. The New England colonists were accustomed to regularly celebrating thanksgivings, days of prayer thanking God for blessings such as military victory or the end of a drought.
Thanksgiving Day is a good day to recommit our energies
When The Grandma arrived to Istanbul, some days ago, she didn't avoid to think in the last events in that country, especially, the constant and eternal suffering of a community who lives there and demands its recognition and respect towards its culture, the Kurds.
Kurdistan, Homeland of the Kurds or Land of the Kurds also formerly spelled Curdistan; ancient name: Corduene or Greater Kurdistan, is a roughly defined geo-cultural region wherein the Kurdish people form a prominent majority population,and Kurdish culture, language, and national identity have historically been based. Kurdistan roughly encompasses the northwestern Zagros and the eastern Taurus mountain ranges.
Contemporary use of the term refers to four parts of Kurdistan, which include southeastern Turkey (Northern Kurdistan), northern Syria (Rojava or Western Kurdistan), northern Iraq (Southern Kurdistan), and northwestern Iran (Eastern Kurdistan). Some Kurdish nationalist organizations seek to create an independent nation state consisting of some or all of these areas with a Kurdish majority, while others campaign for greater autonomy within the existing national boundaries.
Iraqi Kurdistan first gained autonomous status in a 1970 agreement with the Iraqi government, and its status was re-confirmed as an autonomous entity within the federal Iraqi republic in 2005. There is a province by the name Kurdistan in Iran; it is not self-ruled. Kurds fighting in the Syrian Civil War were able to take control of large sections of northern Syria. Having established their own government, they called for autonomy in a federal Syria after the war.
Self-determination could mean independence, confederacy,
Today, The Grandma is travelling to Bucarest, the capital of Romania on The Orient Express. The Grandma likes reading press every morning to know what is happening around the world. Her favourite tool is Twitter and she has been reading about a missing girl in Barcelona.
It's difficult to understand a teenager's brain. It's an age full of influences and they perceive a simple mistake like a great fail. Every case is a different story but, although The Grandma is sure that this pretty girl isn’t going to read this post, she would like to demand her only one thing: return home, return with your beloved family and friends. You need them and they need you.
In Portuguese, there is a beautiful word to explain how you feel when you’re far away your beloved people or your beloved country: saudade.There's also a beautiful kind of music: fado.
Fado was inscribed in 2011 on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
There are lots of incredible, popular and wonderful singers but The Grandma wants to talk about one of them, her favourite, the best in her opinion: Mísia.
Mísia was born in 1955 in Porto, one of the most important cities of Portugal. Mísia is a polyglot. Despite singing mostly fado, she has sung some of her themes in Spanish, French, Catalan, English, and even Japanese.
Mísia's mother was Catalan, from Barcelona. She used to be a cabaret dancer, which accounts for many of the influences that shaped her music: tango, bolero, the use of Portuguese guitar with accordion, violin and the piano. Mísia’s father was Portuguese. Mísia lived some years between Oporto and Barcelona and grew up under the influence of these two different cultures.
Throughout her career, Mísia developed a new style: she modernized Amália Rodrigues's fado, shocking orthodox audiences by adding to the traditional instruments, bass guitar, classical guitar and Portuguese guitar, the sensuality of the accordion and the violin, and borrowing their finest verses from the greatest Portuguese poets.
The only thing that matters is to feel the fado.
The fado is not meant to be sung; it simply happens.
You feel it, you don’t understand it and you don’t explain it.
Bloody Sunday, in Irish Domhnach na Fola, was a day of violence in Dublin on 21 November 1920, during the Irish War of Independence. In total, 31 people were killed, including eleven British soldiers and police, sixteen Irish civilians, and three Irish republican prisoners.
The day began with an Irish Republican Army operation, organised by Michael Collins, to assassinate the Cairo Gang, a team of undercover British intelligence agents working and living in Dublin. IRA members went to a number of addresses and shot dead fourteen people: nine British Army officers, a Royal Irish Constabulary officer, two members of the Auxiliary Division, two civilians, and one man, Leonard Wilde, whose exact status is uncertain.
Later that afternoon, members of the Auxiliary Division and RIC opened fire on the crowd at a Gaelic football match in Croke Park, killing fourteen civilians and wounding at least sixty.
That evening, three IRA suspects being held in Dublin Castle were beaten and killed by their captors, who claimed they were trying to escape.
Overall, while its events cost relatively few lives, Bloody Sunday was considered a great victory for the IRA, as Collins's operation severely damaged British intelligence, while the later reprisals did no real damage to the guerrillas but increased support for the IRA at home and abroad.
Bloody Sunday was one of the most significant events to take place during the Irish War of Independence, which followed the declaration of an Irish Republic and its parliament, Dáil Éireann. The army of the new republic, the Irish Republican Army (IRA), waged a guerrilla war against the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), its auxiliary organisations, and the British Army, who were tasked with suppressing the Irish rebellion. Some members of the Gaelic Athletic Association which owned Croke Park were nationalists, but others were not.
Bloody Sunday, sometimes called the Bogside Massacre, was an incident on 30 January 1972 in the Bogside area of Derry, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland.
British soldiers shot 26 unarmed civilians during a peaceful protest march against internment.Fourteen people died: thirteen were killed outright, while the death of another man four months later was attributed to his injuries.
Many of the victims were shot while fleeing from the soldiers and some were shot while trying to help the wounded. Other protesters were injured by rubber bullets or batons, and two were run down by army vehicles.
The march had been organised by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association and the Northern Resistance Movement. The soldiers involved were members of the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment, also known as 1 Para.
Give us the future. We’ve had enough of your past.
Give us back our country to live in, to grow in, to love.
Claire Fontaine talks about La Seu de Lleida, one of the most beautiful monuments you can visit.
The Cathedral of St. Mary of La Seu Vella is the former cathedral church of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Lleida, in Lleida, Catalonia located on top of Lleida hill.
Nevertheless, the Seu Vella is the defining monument of Lleida, the symbol of the city, being visible from its hilltop site anywhere in the city.
The site was previously occupied by a Palaeo-Christian and Visigothic cathedral, which later, after the Islamic conquest of Spain, was rebuilt in 832 to be used as a mosque. In 1149, after the city's conquest by the Christian Ramon Berenguer IV of Barcelona and Ermengol VI of Urgell (1149), the structure was reconsecrated as Santa Maria Antiqua, and entrusted to canons regular.
In 1193, however, the Lleida cathedral chapter ordered the construction of a new edifice, following the contemporary Romanesque architectural canons, to master Pere de Coma. The first stone was laid in 1203 by King Peter II of Aragon and count Ermengol VII of Urgell. Construction continued throughout the reign of James I. It was consecrated to the Virgin Mary on 31 October 1278. The cloisters were not completed until the 14th century, at which time work on the belltower was begun. It was finished in 1431.
In 1707, the city was conquered by the troops of Philip V: the king ordered the destruction of the cathedral because it has taken a prominent part in the city's defense. Nevertheless, the order was never executed, and the cathedral was converted into barracks.
Silvestra and Mònica, the bells.
The building was declared a national monument in 1918, and restoration works were started in 1950.
The cathedral is designed in a transitional style between Romanesque and Gothic. It lacks almost any influence of Islamic architecture. The floor plan is of a basilica in a Latin cross with a nave and two aisles. The tower is octagonal with a central space of five apses. The interior was decorated in painted murals and sculpture, much of which is still preserved, but much of which has been despoiled during the War of Spanish Succession.
The octagonal tower is 12.65 metres in diameter at its base, but 9.62 metres at the top. Its maximum height is 60.00 metres and it contains 238 steps. A bell named Mònica announces the quarter-hours and one Silvestra announces the hours. The bells are of the international Gothic style of the 15th century.
The cloister is unusually placed in front of the main entrance of the church, and is notable for both its rare opened gallery with views over the city and for its extraordinary size. In fact, this cloister has been regarded as one of the largest cloisters in Europe. This cloister has 17 ornate Gothic windows, each them different. Among them, one could point out the Muslim window of the palmtrees and the central one of the westernmost wing, with a complex decoration witch includes both a King David's Star and a Christian cross.
Quan per la muntanya que tanca el ponent el falcó s'enduia la claror del cel, he mirat aquesta terra, he mirat aquesta terra.
When the hawk takes away the light of the sky
on the mountain that closes the west,
I have looked at this land, I have looked at this land.
Mount Vesuvius also Vesevus or Vesaevus in some Roman sources is a somma-stratovolcano located on the Gulf of Naples in Campania. It is one of several volcanoes which form the Campanian volcanic arc.
Vesuvius consists of a large cone partially encircled by the steep rim of a summit caldera caused by the collapse of an earlier and originally much higher structure.
Mount Vesuvius is best known for its eruption in AD 79 that led to the burying and destruction of the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, as well as several other settlements. More than 1,000 people died in the eruption, but exact numbers are unknown. The only surviving eyewitness account of the event consists of two letters by Pliny the Younger to the historian Tacitus.
Today, it is regarded as one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world because of the population of 3,000,000 people living nearby and its tendency towards violent, explosive eruptions of the Plinian type. It is the most densely populated volcanic region in the world.
Vesuvius has a long historic and literary tradition. It was considered a divinity of the Genius type at the time of the eruption of 79 AD: it appears under the inscribed name Vesuvius as a serpent in the decorative frescos of many lararia, or household shrines, surviving from Pompeii. An inscription from Capua to IOVI VESVVIO indicates that he was worshipped as a power of Jupiter; that is, Jupiter Vesuvius.
Marte e Veneris in Pompeii
Since the eruption of AD 79, Vesuvius has erupted around three dozen times. It erupted again in 203, during the lifetime of the historian Cassius Dio. In 472, it ejected such a volume of ash that ashfalls were reported as far away as Constantinople. The eruptions of 512 were so severe that those inhabiting the slopes of Vesuvius were granted exemption from taxes by Theodoric the Great, the Gothic king of Italy. Further eruptions were recorded in 787, 968, 991, 999, 1007 and 1036 with the first recorded lava flows. The volcano became quiescent at the end of the 13th century and in the following years it again became covered with gardens and vineyards as of old. Even the inside of the crater was moderately filled with shrubbery.
Vesuvius entered a new phase in December 1631, when a major eruption buried many villages under lava flows, killing around 3,000 people. Torrents of lahar were also created, adding to the devastation. Activity thereafter became almost continuous, with relatively severe eruptions occurring in 1660, 1682, 1694, 1698, 1707, 1737, 1760, 1767, 1779, 1794, 1822, 1834, 1839, 1850, 1855, 1861, 1868, 1872, 1906, 1926, 1929 and 1944.
The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 1944
The government emergency plan for an eruption therefore assumes that the worst case will be an eruption of similar size and type to the 1631. In this scenario the slopes of the volcano, extending out to about 7 kilometres from the vent, may be exposed to pyroclastic surges sweeping down them, whilst much of the surrounding area could suffer from tephra falls. Because of prevailing winds, towns and cities to the south and east of the volcano are most at risk from this, and it is assumed that tephra accumulation exceeding 100 kilograms per square metre at which point people are at risk from collapsing roofs, may extend out as far as Avellino to the east or Salerno to the south-east.
Towards Naples, to the north west, this tephra fall hazard is assumed to extend barely past the slopes of the volcano. The specific areas actually affected by the ash cloud will depend upon the particular circumstances surrounding the eruption.
The plan assumes between two weeks and 20 days' notice of an eruption and foresees the emergency evacuation of 600,000 people, almost entirely comprising all those living in the zona rossa, red zone, at greatest risk from pyroclastic flows. The evacuation, by trains, ferries, cars, and buses is planned to take about seven days, and the evacuees will mostly be sent to other parts of the country rather than to safe areas in the local Campania region, and may have to stay away for several months. However, the dilemma that would face those implementing the plan is when to start this massive evacuation, since if it is left too late then thousands could be killed, while if it is started too early then the precursors of the eruption may turn out to have been a false alarm. In 1984, 40,000 people were evacuated from the Campi Flegrei area, another volcanic complex near Naples, but no eruption occurred.
Joseph de Ca'th Lon in the summit of Vesuvius
Ongoing efforts are being made by the government at various levels, especially of Campania, to reduce the population living in the red zone, by demolishing illegally constructed buildings, establishing a national park around the whole volcano to prevent the future construction of buildings and by offering sufficient financial incentives to people for moving away. One of the underlying goals is to reduce the time needed to evacuate the area, over the next 20 or 30 years, to two or three days.
The volcano is closely monitored by the Osservatorio Vesuvio in Naples with extensive networks of seismic and gravimetric stations, a combination of a GPS-based geodetic array and satellite-based synthetic aperture radar to measure ground movement and by local surveys and chemical analyses of gases emitted from fumaroles. All of this is intended to track magma rising underneath the volcano. No magma has been detected within 10 km of the surface, and so the volcano is classified by the Observatory as at a Basic or Green Level. The area around Vesuvius was officially declared a national park on June 5, 1995.
The summit of Vesuvius is open to visitors and there is a small network of paths around the volcano that are maintained by the park authorities on weekends. There is access by road to within 200 metres of the summit but thereafter access is on foot only. There is a spiral walkway around the volcano from the road to the crater.
You cannot say, because I am from Naples so
I like the mixture of drama and comedy all together.
The Grandma has arrived to Istanbul on The Orient Express although she has decided to not visit the city. She's reading the travel guide and she wants to know about the different names of this historic city.
Istanbul, historically known as Constantinople and Byzantium, is the most populous city in Turkey and the country's economic, cultural, and historic center. Istanbul is a transcontinental city in Eurasia, straddling the Bosphorus strait, which separates Europe and Asia, between the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea. Its commercial and historical center lies on the European side and about a third of its population lives on the Asian side.
The city's biggest attraction is its historic center, partially listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and its cultural and entertainment hub can be found across the city's natural harbor, the Golden Horn, in the Beyoğlu district.
The first known name of the city is Byzantium, the name given to it at its foundation by Megarean colonists around 660 BCE. The name is thought to be derived from a personal name, Byzas. Ancient Greek tradition refers to a legendary king of that name as the leader of the Greek colonists. Modern scholars have also hypothesized that the name of Byzas was of local Thracian or Illyrian origin and hence predated the Megarean settlement.
After Constantine the Great made it the new eastern capital of the Roman Empire in 330 CE, the city became widely known as Constantinopolis, which, as the Latinized form of Konstantinoúpolis, means the City of Constantine.
By the 19th century, the city had acquired other names used by either foreigners or Turks. Europeans used Constantinople to refer to the whole of the city, but used the name Stamboul, as the Turks also did, to describe the walled peninsula between the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara.
Pera was used to describe the area between the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus, but Turks also used the name Beyoğlu, today the official name for one of the city's constituent districts. Islambol, meaning either City of Islam or Full of Islam was sometimes colloquially used to refer to the city, and was even engraved on some Ottoman coins, but the belief that it was the precursor to the present name, İstanbul, is belied by the fact that the latter existed well before the former and even predates the Ottoman conquest of the city.
Istanbul is inspiring because it has its own code of architecture, literature, poetry, music.
Joseph de Ca'th Lon wants to talk us about UNESCO in its 74th anniversary. Let's go to know its beginning and its fantastic work.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) based in Paris. Its declared purpose is to contribute to peace and security by promoting international collaboration through educational, scientific, and cultural reforms in order to increase universal respect for justice, the rule of law, and human rights along with fundamental freedom proclaimed in the United Nations Charter.
UNESCO has 195 member states and nine associate members. Most of its field offices are cluster offices covering three or more countries; national and regional offices also exist.
On 18 December 1925, the International Bureau of Education (IBE) began work as a non-governmental organization in the service of international educational development. However, the work of these predecessor organizations was largely interrupted by the onset of World War II.
After the signing of the Atlantic Charter and the Declaration of the United Nations, the Conference of Allied Ministers of Education (CAME) began meetings in London which continued between 16 November 1942 to 5 December 1945.
UNESCO pursues its objectives through five major programs: education, natural sciences, social/human sciences, culture and communication/information.
UNESCO Headquarters in Paris
Projects sponsored by UNESCO include literacy, technical, and teacher-training programmes, international science programmes, the promotion of independent media and freedom of the press, regional and cultural history projects, the promotion of cultural diversity, translations of world literature, international cooperation agreements to secure the world cultural and natural heritage, World Heritage Sites, and to preserve human rights, and attempts to bridge the worldwide digital divide. It is also a member of the United Nations Development Group.
UNESCO's aim is to contribute to the building of peace, the eradication of poverty, sustainable development and intercultural dialogue through education, the sciences, culture, communication and information. Other priorities of the organization include attaining quality Education For All and lifelong learning, addressing emerging social and ethical challenges, fostering cultural diversity, a culture of peace and building inclusive knowledge societies through information and communication.
The broad goals and concrete objectives of the international community, as set out in the internationally agreed development goals, including the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), underpin all UNESCO's strategies and activities.
The United Nations is our world's greatest mechanism
All big cities have their industrial suburbs. They are often near rivers or next to the sea. These suburbs grew up a lot in those days of a non-stopped industrial development. This is the case of our suburb. It was a zone plenty of virgin beaches between the Jewish mountain of the city and the delta of the main river of the zone until the dictatorship decided to build lots of enterprises there. All of these enterprises were very important, especially one which was dedicated to the car industry.
Thousands of people from other parts of the state arrived and created a new suburb which grew up higher and higher. This suburb was home of one of our best writers: Paco Candel, who arrived from Valence and established here. The railways of the train and the underground created a great wall and the suburb was isolated next to sea without public transports to the centre of the big city. People created their suburb with its idiosyncrasy and they learnt to live alone without the same services than the rest of the citizens of the district.
The dictatorship finished and nothing changed until the city was nominated to organize the Olympic Games. The city was transformed, especially other industrial suburbs of the city but nothing affected our suburb. The main car industry was moved to another city in another county; the most important group of industries which formed an industrial colony disappeared; it was time to build houses and houses, expensive, very expensive ones. The military quartiers were substituted by new buildings home of Justice Services and although the underground continued without arriving, the suburb had some bus lines which connected with the centre of the city and the upper zone until the AntiChrist arrived.
Yes. The AntiChrist is working against the population again. Bus 37 was a regular line which connected this popular suburb with the most important Hospital in the area. It's an important line. The AntiChrist, the person who arrived to save our souls, the goddess, the leader, the most perfect person who has ever existed, the person who has sacrificed her life to guide all the mortals has decided to eliminate this line and aisle the suburb again, this suburb plenty of popular citizens, these kind of people that she promised to defence. She's lazy, she does nothing. She's the opposite to the brave and hard worker neighbours of this historical suburb.
God protect us. We’re living a nightmare.
The independent, in politics, is the one that most depend on everyone and everything, the only one who is nobody.
Tina Picotes is in New York City. She's going to spend some days in this incredible city and today she's visiting The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Tina is a great fan of Claude Monet and The Impressionist Painters and she's going to enjoy the pictures explaining them to us.
Oscar-Claude Monet (14 November 1840-5 December 1926) was a founder of French Impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. The term Impressionism is derived from the title of his painting Impression, soleil levant (Impression, Sunrise), which was exhibited in 1874 in the first of the independent exhibitions mounted by Monet and his associates as an alternative to the Salon de Paris.
Monet's ambition of documenting the French countryside led him to adopt a method of painting the same scene many times in order to capture the changing of light and the passing of the seasons. From 1883 Monet lived in Giverny, where he purchased a house and property, and began a vast landscaping project which included lily ponds that would become the subjects of his best-known works.
Camille Monet on a Garden Bench, 1873
In 1899 he began painting the water lilies, first in vertical views with a Japanese bridge as a central feature, and later in the series of large-scale paintings that was to occupy him continuously for the next 20 years of his life.
The first Impressionist exhibition was held in 1874 at 35 boulevard des Capucines, Paris, from 15 April to 15 May. The primary purpose of the participants was not so much to promote a new style, but to free themselves from the constraints of the Salon de Paris. The exhibition, open to anyone prepared to pay 60 francs, gave artists the opportunity to show their work without the interference of a jury.
