Pony Express: right across the United States / articles.latimes.com
Though it lasted only two romantic and dangerous years, the Pony Express lived up to its name. It was horse-borne mail delivery, operated by the Missouri freight company Russell, Majors and Waddell and founded in 1860. (more…)
Asian Georgia is separated from Russia by the Caucasus Mountains. It has a coast on the Black Sea, shares a border with Turkey to the west, and has boundaries with Azerbaijan and Armenia to the east and south. All these proximities have affected Georgia in one way or the other (usually the other) throughout her history. (more…)
Present:
I work = I work hard all day
Past:
I worked = I worked hard all last year.
Future:
I will work = I will work hard after I have finished my exams.
Present Continuous or Present Progressive: (made with the verb TO BE)
I am working = I am working at the moment on a nuclear project.
Present Perfect: (made by using the vern TO HAVE; this tense indicates a mixture of the past and the present)
I have worked = I have worked hard all my life.
Past Perfect: (a sense of something that is now in the past, but no longer exists)
I had worked = I had worked hard all my life until I retired.
Future Perfect: (a sense of something that lies in the future, but that also has roots in the past and present, always used with the main verb in the past participle – worked)
I will have worked = I will have worked hard all my life even when I am too old to work . . . because I love work!
Present Perfect Continuous (use of the verbs To HAVE and TO BE plus the main verb. A sense of the present, past and future in a continuous manner):
I have been working = I have been working for a considerable time on this project.
Past Perfect Continuous (something that was continuous, but which had to stop)
I had been working for months on the project, but last year I was forced to retire from it!
Future Perfect Continuous (the same as the Future Perfect, but with a continuous sense):
I will have been working on this project for twenty years by this time next year.
(a sense of someone looking back over the last 19 years, while still working, and looking forward to another year’s work, after which the 20 years will be completed)
SPECIAL NOTE: The Conditional tense is made by adding the word would:-
I would work all the time if I had a job.
I would be working if only I could find a job
I would have been working hard all day if I had not been so lazy!
I would have worked very well as a public relations officer.
ETC.
Another special note:- The –ing suffix indicates the Present Participle of the verb: working. The –ed suffix indicates the Past Participle of the verb: worked.
Transitive: Transitive verbs are those which require to be followed by a direct object: example:- These verbs are bloody difficult. You could not say ‘these verbs are’
The direct object is ‘bloody difficult’.
This is one of the planet’s biggest and most unknown continents. It surrounds the South Pole, and lies almost entirely to the south of latitude 66º 33’ S. This is called ‘The Antarctic Circle’.
Travellers who have dared to enter this formidable area of the Earth have noted that the sun neither rises at midwinter nor sets at midsummer. At the South Pole itself the temperature is on average -50º C; this is because an excessively thick icecap covers the continent, forming a huge plateau. Strong winds invariably blow from the centre of the icecap, and it usually too cold to snow. The little snow that does fall takes hundreds of years to change into ice. The ice moves so grindingly slowly that parts of the icecap are millions of years old. (more…)
Of course we have all heard of New England, though its composition may confuse us at times, but did we know that there was a New France?
America first: New England is a region in the north-east, comprising the six states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine. If such a thing exists still in America, it is the classiest region in the United States, but not necessarily the richest. If you descend from a Signer of the Declaration of Independence, your permanent residence is likely to be in New England. (more…)
The hanging of old John Brown / civiliansscholars.com
“John Brown’s body lies a mouldr’n in his grave . . .” The words and music are American, but the song remembering Brown and what happened to him is truly international. In the Spanish Catholic church there is even a hymn sung to the same music, though few priests will admit it.
Brown was born in Torrington, Connecticut in 1800. His family was religious, and strongly affected by insanity. As he grew up he became convinced that he had been placed on Earth especially by God to save the blacks and abolish slavery. In 1851, at Springfield, Mass., he organised a black defence group called The League of Gileadites, trained to attack slave-catchers, help escaped slaves to the North on the ’Underground Railroad’, and prevent captured slaves from being returned to the South. As part of a band of the Free Soilers, in 1856 his men savagely murdered five pro-slavery farmers at Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas. (more…)
The Dowager Empress Cixi of China / en.wikipedia.com
She was the real ruler in China from 1861 – 1908. She was intelligent, literate, well able to express herself, and able in all matters. She did not like foreigners and said so. She was also the only woman to exercise true power within the Quing Dynasty which ruled China from 1644 to 1912. They were originally Manchus, a hunting tribe from ther north-east, It was the Quing who extended China’s control to Mongolia, Tibet and part of Turkestan. None of these had been a part of China under the Mings (1368 – 1644). The Quings were the first to hold Tibet. (more…)
This preamble to the United Nations has vanished without trace. It was one of the oddest disasters waiting to happen the world has ever seen. It appeared after the Treaty of Versailles (1918 – 25) had sealed the fate of this planet. Indeed its creation was the last and most important of President Woodrow Wilson of the United States’ famous ‘Fourteen Points’. Wilson insisted that it should appear in each one of the peace treaties, covering the Covenent or Constitution of the League. But then the United States itself refused to join. (more…)
Getulio Vargas / elreports.com.uy
Vargas was born in 1883. A small, chubby and discreet man, he grew to become a rich cattle man in Brazil, and in 1928 became the Governor of his state –Rio Grande do Sul. In 1930 he was propelled into the Presidency of his country by the army, which claimed that too much of the country’s wealth was being invested in the coffee trade, in effect propping it up, which it needed due to bad management. The second of many things the army disliked was that too much money was going in the direction of one state of Brazil –Sao Paulo.
Having Vargas in the presidency did not amuse the coffee barons, and they (and the rest of this enormous country) came to dislike even more Vargas’s methods of governing, which he did by decree. He replaced state governors at will, and constructed a patronage network in individual states. Historians agree that he appeared not to recommend any particular political stance, Right or the Left for instance. He was, however, a master of political opportunism, changing policies according to circumstances, and coinciding with the mood in general of the nation. (more…)
Morris, who became Lord Nuffield / bbc.co.uk
William Richard Morris Nuffield started off well, but ended as the man who almost singlehandedly destroyed the British car industry. I don’t suppose this was his intention, but he did, helped by his opposite number at the Rootes Group.
In the 1950s, Britain had a long line of prosperous carmakers, famous for the typical British design, safety, elegance and comfort. The names of these motor cars filled two columns on a double page spread in Motor Magazine. Now only Morgan, LandRover, Jaguar and Aston-Martin and perhaps Bristol remain British and independent. Rolls-Royce and Bentley are German. The Mini is German. Vauxhall is American, and designed by Opel. Nuffield is solely responsible for the loss of Austin, Morris, Wolseley, Riley, MG & Rover (he started the rot here). Jaguar survived, though it was briefly a Ford. Here is how the disaster happened. (more…)