Secret Service

The agentes in rebus were the late Roman imperial courier service and general agents of the central government from the 4th to the 7th centuries. Two were appointed to each province in 357, one in 395 and more again after 412.

In modern times, the French police officer Joseph Fouché is sometimes regarded as the primary pioneer within secret intelligence. Among other things, he is alleged to have prevented several murder attempts on Napoleon, through a large and tight net of various informers.

By the end of the American Civil War, between one-third and one-half of all U.S. paper currency in circulation was counterfeit. This served as the catalyst behind the formation of the U.S. Secret Service. On July 5, 1865, the Secret Service was created under the U.S. Treasury Department in Washington, D.C

Badge of the United States Secret Service

The legislation creating the agency was on Abraham Lincoln's desk on April 14, 1865, the same day he was assassinated.

The secret service did not start protecting the President until after President William McKinley was shot and killed in 1901.The following year, President Theodore Roosevelt became the first President to be protected by Secret Service agents. Since then, every president has received Secret Service Protection.

In 1902, William Craig became the first Secret Service agent to die while serving, in a road accident while riding in the presidential carriage.

Eleanor Roosevelt regularly refused Secret Service protection, and instead traveled with a .22 Smith and Wesson on her person.

James Brady, the Secret Service agent that saved President Reagan's life became a Secret Service agent after seeing a movie starring Ronald Reagan as a Secret Service Agent.

Secret Service agents respond to the assassination attempt of Ronald Reagan

In 1565 Ivan the Terrible set up the Oprichnik, who were the forerunner of the KGB. Riding black horses and led by Ivan himself, the private army terrorized the populace. After seven years of abuse Ivan disbanded them.

The KGB was the main Soviet security agency, intelligence agency or spy agency, and the secret police agency during the Cold War. It was formed on March 13, 1954 as a successor of earlier agencies, the Cheka, NKGB, and MGB.

KGB is an initialism for Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, which translated in English as Committee for State Security,

During the Cold War it was Soviet policy for the KGB to monitor public and private opinion, internal subversion and possible counter-revolutionary plots in the Soviet Bloc. The KGB was instrumental in crushing the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, and the Prague Spring of "Socialism with a Human Face", in 1968 Czechoslovakia.

Vladimir Putin was a KGB Foreign Intelligence Officer for 16 years. He gave up his position in the KGB in 1991, during the putsch against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

Putin in KGB uniform, circa 1980

After the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, the KGB was split into the Federal Security Service and the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation.

Belarus is the only post-Soviet Union era country where the national security organization is still called "KGB", albeit it is lost in translation when written in Belarusian (becoming KDB rather than KGB).

The British Intelligence Agency MI6 was formed in 1909 but it was kept such a secret that it wasn't formally acknowledged until the year 1994.

The British Secret Service (James Bond's employer) really can issue a "license to kill". It's called a Class Seven authorization, and must be approved by the MI6 agent's superiors all the way up to the Foreign Minister.

Because the American Secret Service aren't allowed into the Oval Office, they turned the floor into a giant, digital scale so that they can monitor where the President is at all times.

All presidents and first ladies have secret service protection for life, and further that any children of former presidents get secret service protection until they turn 16.

Seaweed

THE PLANT 

Seaweed is the general name for a vast collection of marine algae. Red algae, green algae and brown algae are commonly considered to be seaweed.

They grow from about high water mark to depths of 100 to 200 metres (300 to 600 ft).

Pixabay

Seaweed gets its energy from photosynthesis just as plants do. However seaweeds aren't plants, but instead belong in the kingdom Protista. Seaweeds lack the vascular system and roots of a plant; they can absorb the water and nutrients they need directly from the ocean.

Seaweed can be an aggressive species: it invades areas of the ocean, chokes out other seaweeds and damages local ecosystems.

The fresh, salty smell of beach air is actually the smell of rotting seaweed.

The largest known seaweed, the Macrocystis pyrifera, or Giant Kelp, has been measured at 215 ft long and can grow at up to one and a half feet a day.

USES 

From the 1960s to 70s seaweeds have been farmed and the alginates extracted are used in chocolate milk, processed meat, ice cream, and animal feed, as well as toothpaste, soap, air freshener gel and the manufacture of odine and glass.

The colouring in blue Smarties comes from a seaweed called spirulina.

Seaweed baths are said to soften skin and fight cellulite.

Many types of seaweed have traditionally been gathered for food, such as purple laver, green laver and carragheen moss.

People living on the coast often eat seaweed, especially those in East Asia.

Laver and toast. Wikipedia Commons

Seaweed accounts for 10 per cent of the Japanese diet, with an average consumption of nearly 8lb per person.

Traditionally, Koreans eat seaweed soup on their birthdays. People believe the soup is also good for pregnant women.

It's illegal to sell seaweed in the UK without a license.

Adding a type of seaweed to the diet of cows reduces their methane production by nearly 60%.

Sources Hutchinson Encyclopedia, Daily Mail 

Seattle

HISTORY

The Seattle area had been inhabited by native tribes for more than 4,000 years, before George Vancouver became the first European to visit the area. The British explorer stopped by in 1792 during his voyage to chart the Pacific coast of North America.

Downtown Seattle, Washington and the Bainbridge Island ferry

Arthur A Denny and his group of travelers from New York State, subsequently known as the Denny Party left Cherry Grove, Illinois in April 1851 to head west. They arrived on a cold, stormy day on the schooner Exact at Alki Point on November 13, 1851.They originally called their settlement in what’s today known as West Seattle, "New York." After the party moved across Elliott Bay, they renamed the territory “Seattle” after Chief Si'ahl of the local Duwamish and Suquamish tribes befriended them.

The president of Denny-Renton Clay and Coal Company was the first boy born to the settlers of Seattle.

The Great Seattle Fire destroyed the entirety of downtown Seattle, on June 6, 1889. It started with a woodworker who mishandled hot glue, and resulted in an estimated $8,000,000 of damage. 116 acres were reduced to ash and the city's opera house and 11 of its 23 churches were among the buildings destroyed by the blaze.

The Great Seattle Fire of 1889 also killed 1 million rats, which completely eliminated the town's major rodent problem.

The picture below shows Seattle's first streetcar, at the corner of Occidental and Yesler in 1884. All of the buildings visible in this picture were destroyed by the Great Seattle Fire.

Seattle became a boomtown during the Klondike Gold Rush, a migration by an estimated 100,000 prospectors to the Klondike region of the Yukon in north-western Canada between 1896 and 1899. Many Seattle citizens made a fortune outfitting the hordes of prospectors heading north to strike it rich.

Pike Place Market, the most popular tourist destination in Seattle, opened for business on August 17, 1907. The market is located in the heart of downtown Seattle, on the waterfront of Elliott Bay. It is home to over 250 farmers, merchants, and craftspeople who sell a wide variety of goods, including fresh produce, seafood, flowers, meats, cheeses, prepared foods, and souvenirs.

Vegetable vendors selling from Main Arcade daystalls, 1917

William Edward Boeing first formed Pacific Aero Products in Seattle, in 1916. It later became the Boeing Aircraft company.

Seattle was the site of a mass collective delusion in the 1950s, when thousands of people thought their cars were being pitted by cosmic rays or sand fleas.

The Seattle Center Monorail was constructed for the 1962 Century 21 Exposition, a world's fair hosted at the Seattle Center. The system still uses its original fleet of two Alweg trains that each carry up to 450 people and were designated as a historic landmark by the city in 2003.

In the 1970s Boeing fired 60,000 employees following the failure of their Concorde knock-off and a downturn in general aviation. So many people left the city there was a billboard that read "Will the last person leaving Seattle turn out the lights"

Thirteen people died and one was seriously injured in the Wah Mee massacre in Seattle on February 18, 1983.  Kwan Fai "Willie" Mak, Wai-Chiu "Tony" Ng, and Benjamin Ng gunned down fourteen people in the Wah Mee gambling club at the Louisa Hotel in Chinatown-International District, Seattle. It is said to be the largest robbery-motivated mass-murder in U.S. history.

Seattle is the home of the Space Needle and a monorail, both of which were built for the 1962 World's Fair.

Kurt Cobain formed Nirvana with Krist Novoselic in Aberdeen, Washington, in 1985 and established it as part of the Seattle rock music scene. Other grunge music artists like Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains and Soundgarden from the city also became popular in the early 1990s.

FUN SEATTLE FACTS 

Seattle's official nickname is the "Emerald City", the result of a contest held in 1981; the reference is to the lush evergreen forests of the area.

With an estimated 704,352 residents as of 2016, Seattle is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region of North America.

In July 2016, Seattle was the fastest-growing major U.S. city, with a 3.1% annual growth rate.

Nearly a third of deployed US nuclear weapons are based near downtown Seattle.

Since 2015, throwing away food is illegal in Seattle.

Despite its rainy image, Seattle actually gets less rain than almost every city on the East Coast. It does, however, have quite a few cloudy days and days with light precipitation, particularly in the wintertime.

Downtown Seattle averages 71 completely sunny days a year, with most of those days occurring between May and September.

Seattle has few African Americans downtown due to racial restrictive covenants which lasted well into the 1960 preventing minorities from owning homes in certain neighborhoods.

The American headquarters of Internet retailer Amazon, coffee chain Starbucks, department store Nordstrom, freight forwarder Expeditors International of Washington and Weyerhaeuser, the forest products company are all located in Seattle.

Amazon.com headquarters building in the Denny Triangle. By Adamajreynolds

The comedy TV series Frasier was very influential on Seattle. Newly wealthy software millionaires asked real-estate agents for apartments with a view of the Space Needle like what Frasier Crane has. The show helped the city's culture to change from manufacturing and grunge to what it is today.

Source Mental Floss

Season

INTRODUCTION

A season is a particular climatic type, at any place, associated with a particular time of the year.

The change and seasons is mainly due to the change in attitude of the Earth's axis in relation to the sun, and hence the position of the sun in the sky at a particular place. 


During May, June, and July, the Northern Hemisphere is exposed to more direct sunlight because the hemisphere faces the Sun. The same is true of the Southern Hemisphere in November, December, and January.

The differences between the seasons are more marked inland than near the coast, where the sea has a moderating effect on the temperatures.

Illumination of the earth at each change of astronomical season

In temperate latitudes four seasons are recognized: spring, summer, autumn (fall), and winter. The northern temperate latitudes have summer when southern temperate latitudes have winter, and vice versa.

Tropical regions have two seasons - wet and dry. The belt of rain associated with a convergence of trade winds moves north and south with the Sun, as do the dry conditions associated with the belts of high pressure near the tropics.

Monsoon areas around the Indian Ocean have three seasons - the cold, the hot and the rainy - because of the influence of the oceanic water body surrounded at its north end by Asia.

Pixabay

India's Hindu calendar has six seasons: spring, summer, monsoon, autumn, pre-winter and winter.

Ancient Japan had 72 seasons, lasting around five days each.

The spring and autumn equinoxes are the only days when the Sun rises directly due east and sets due west in the northern hemisphere.

THE SEASONS

The earth's “axial tilt” is 23.5 degrees. Uranus, by comparison, spins at 98 degrees.  Earth’s four seasons are comparatively mild and, thanks to our proximity to the sun, relatively brief.  Much of Uranus, by contrast, spends winters in permanent darkness and summers under constant sunlight. And those seasons last decades. 

Commonly we think of March, April and May as the spring months, but astronomically, spring officially begins on the spring equinox.

We have used the word 'spring' for the season since the 16th century. Before that it was used for centuries to apply to the source of a river.

Before we called it spring this season was known as Lent or Lenten.

Persephone was the Greek goddess of spring. She spent winters as Queen of the Underworld but returned in spring to preside over rebirth.

The earliest known use of the term 'spring-cleaning' was in 1857.

Every year, spring gets 30 seconds to one minute shorter in the Northern Hemisphere.

Pixabay

The word 'Summer' comes from the Old English name for the season "sumor."

Until the 17th century, autumn (or fall) was most often referred to as “harvest”.

In Greek myth, autumn was a sign of the grief of harvest goddess Demeter at her daughter Persephone being abducted to the Underworld.

Autumn” and “column” are the only common words in English ending in -umn.

Winter’ comes from the Germanic ‘Wintar’ which itself comes from the root ‘Wed’  meaning 'wet' or water'.

During winter the sun is low in the sky has less heating effect because of the oblique angle of incidence and because of sunlight as further to travel through the atmosphere

Sources Daily Express, Hutchinson Encyclopedia

Sears

One of the oldest operating retail operations in America. began by accident in 1886 when railroad station agent Richard W. Sears (December 7, 1863 – September 28, 1914) received a box of watches by mistake. He began selling the timepieces to his colleagues in Redwood Falls, Minnesota before branching out into mail order catalogs.

Sears moved to Chicago, where he met Alvah C. Roebuck, who joined him in the business. Sears Roebuck and Company was officially born in 1893 at which point the pair began to diversify.

Richard Sears

By 1894, the Sears catalog had grown to 322 pages, and a year later the company was producing a 532-page catalog. By the early twentieth century it had become known in the industry as "the Consumers' Bible".

The sailor suit was a classic outfit for young boys in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1905, Sears Roebuck advertised a popular boy's sailor blouse suit, with the blouse "trimmed with black tape and two rows of silk soutache," for $1.35.

From 1908 to 1940, the Sears catalog even included ready-to-assemble kit houses. There were over 370 home designs, and the house had over 30,000 parts worth 25 tons. You'd select your house then Sears would ship it to you by railroad and you'd assemble it yourself based on the instructions. Sears claimed a man of “average” abilities could assemble it in 90 days.They sold 70,000 to 75,000 such homes, many of which are still lived in today.

When the Sears catolg printers switched from a thin, newspaper-like stock to a more modern glossy paper stock, people wrote in to the company to complain that the magazine couldn't be used for toilet paper anymore.

Sears, Roebuck and Company catalog, 1918

Sears' first department store opened in 1925 within the company's huge 16-hectare (40-acre) headquarters complex of offices, laboratories and mail-order operations at Homan Aveue and Arthington Street on Chicago's West Side. The store opened in 1925.

From the 1920s to the 1950s, Sears built many urban department stores in the USA, Canada and Mexico, and by the mid twentieth century they'd overshadowed the mail-order business.

On January 1, 1961, The National Bank of Chicago issued a check for $960.242 billion to Sears, the largest check ever issued.

In 1969, Sears, Roebuck & Co. was the largest retailer in the world, with about 350,000 employees.

The CIA paid Vietnam War spies by ordering them items from the Sears catalog because the spies operated in areas that had a barter economy and didn't rely on cash.

In the late 1960s, the Sears executives decided to consolidate the thousands of employees in offices distributed throughout the Chicago area into one building on the western edge of Chicago's Loop. The 110-story Sears Tower in Chicago was topped out on May 3, 1973, becoming the world's tallest building, a title it took from the former World Trade Center towers in New York.

Sears created well-know financial services brands to sell diversified products in it's stores like brokerage business Dean Witter Reynolds and Discover Card.  In the 1990s, the company began divesting itself of many non-retail entities, which were detrimental to the company's bottom line. Sears spun off its financial services arm which included Dean Witter Reynolds and Discover Card.

On November 17, 2004 the American big box departmental store chain Kmart Corp announced it was buying Sears, Roebuck and Co. for $11 billion. The Kmart management formed "Sears Holdings" upon completion of the merger the following year.

Sears Holdings Corporation was the 20th-largest retailing company in the United States in 2015, However after poor sales for several years it was forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 15, 2018, the same day that a $134 million debt payment was due. It sold its assets the following year to ESL Investments.

The Sears Tower in Chicago contains enough steel to build 50,000 automobiles.

Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower), Chicago.

At one point in the 1970s, 1 out of every 204 working Americans was employed by Sears.

In terms of domestic revenue, Sears was the largest retailer in the United States until October 1989, when Walmart surpassed the record.

Sears moved from the Sears Tower to the new Prairie Stone Business Park in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, between 1993 and 1995.

Sears' current logo

Source About.com

Seal

Seals are a widely distributed clade of fin-footed, semiaquatic marine mammals. They comprise the extant families Odobenidae (walrus), Otariidae (the eared seals: sea lions and fur seals), and Phocidae (the earless seals, or true seals).

The earless seals or true seals are found mainly in the cold seas of the world.

True seals include the grey seal whose main population is around British coast, and grows to 2.7 m 9 feet , also the shorter-nosed common seal found in coastal regions over much of the northern hemisphere.

ANATOMY 

The largest seal is the Southern elephant seal which can be 6 metres (20 feet) long and weighs as much as four and a half tonnes.

The smallest of the species is the Baikal seal, which is only 1.2 m 4 feet long, and is the only seal to live in entirely in freshwater.

Streamlined in body shape, seals have thick blubber insulation, no external ear flaps and small front flippers.

The hind flippers point backwards and are swung from side to side to provide a thrust for swimming, but unlike the sea lion, they cannot be bought under the body for walking on them. To "walk" on land, a seal has to wriggle with their front flippers and abdominal muscles.

Deprived of sight and hearing, seals can still accurately pinpoint the locations of fish because they have 1,500 nerve endings in their whiskers.

Seal pups gain between three and five pounds each day because their mothers’ milk contains 50 per cent fat.

A seal was once abandoned in her colony because was ginger. Born with rare brownish-red fur and wonky blue eyes, the unfortunate baby seal was rescued from a beach on Tyuleniy Island, in the Caspian Sea, after it was abandoned by its mother. The pup's color is the result of an accumulation of iron in its fur.

BEHAVIOR 

Seals are rampant carnivores – consuming up to five per cent of their body weight a day in fish, squid and scrustaceans.

Antarctic fur seals can eat about a ton of fish and krill a year – the male of the species needs to keep up its strength as it can have more than 12 female partners in any one breeding system.

Male elephant seals keep a harem of up to 50 females.

The male gray seal tries to impress the ladies by stretching out his neck and showing off his nose.

Seals have been known to swim for as long as 8 months, and as far as 6,000 miles, without touching land.

Seal spend many months at a time at sea, so they must sleep in the water. Like other marine mammals, seals sleep in water with half of their brain awake so that they can detect and escape from predators. When they are asleep on land, both sides of their brain go into sleep.

HABITAT 

Seals mainly inhabit polar and subpolar regions, particularly the North Atlantic, the North Pacific and the Southern Ocean. They are entirely absent from Indo-Malayan waters.

Seals usually require cool, nutrient-rich waters with temperatures lower than 20 °C (68 °F). Only monk seals live in waters that are not typically cool or rich in nutrients.

It remains a scientific mystery how Baikal Seals originally came to Lake Baikal, hundreds of kilometers from any ocean. Estimated to have inhabited Lake Baikal for some two million years, the Baikal Seal is the only true freshwater seal on Earth.

Baikal Seal. Photo taken by Uryah

They have relatively long life expectancies – with some adults living for up to 30 years.

Humans used to hunt seals for their blubber, meat and fur, but they are now protected under international law.

Northern elephant seals were hunted extensively for their oil and fur during the 19th century, leading to their populations declining significantly. In 1892 an expedition from the Smithsonian found what could have been the last eight individuals on Guadalupe Island of which the expedition killed several for their collection. The species has made a remarkable recovery since then. Conservation efforts, including protection under international agreements, have helped elephant seals to re-establish their populations and they are now considered to be a relatively abundant species.

Sources Hutchinson Encyclopedia, Daily Mail

Seahorse

ANATOMY 

They are called 'seahorses' because their head looks like that of a horse.

The body is small and compressed and covered with bony plates raised into tubercles or spines.

The tail is prehensile, and the tubular mouth sucks in small animals as food.

Seahorses don't have stomachs, just intestines to absorb nutrients from food, so they eat almost constantly.

Unlike most fish which have scales, seahorses have skin.

Seahorses are adept at camouflage with the ability to grow and reabsorb spiny appendages depending on their habitat

MATING  

Father seahorses are the only male animals to become pregnant. They accept around 50–1,500 eggs from the female, fertilize them, and then carry the eggs for several weeks until they hatch.

Seahorses are monogamous and mate for life.

Only one seahorse in five makes it to adulthood.

BEHAVIOR 

Seahorses are the only fish that swim upright.

Seahorses move along at about 0.01 mph, making them what scientists believe to be the slowest fish in the ocean.

Seahorses feed on small crustaceans floating in the water or crawling on the bottom. Helped by their excellent camouflage abilities, seahorses are able to ambush prey that floats within striking range.

HABITAT 

Seahorses are mainly found in shallow tropical and temperate waters ranging from the Atlantic through the Mediterranean to Australia.

They live in sheltered areas such as seagrass beds, estuaries, coral reefs, or mangroves.

Colonies have been found in European waters such as the Thames Estuary.

Sea turtle

The term "Sea Turtle" is US English. In British English they are simply called "turtles". They are also sometimes called "marine turtles."

Green seas turtle By User:Simm 

There are seven types of sea turtles: green, loggerhead, kemp's ridley, olive ridley, hawksbill, flatback, and leatherback. All but the leatherback are in the family Chelonioidea. The leatherback belongs to the family Dermochelyidae and is its only member.

ANATOMY 

The leatherback is the largest sea turtle, measuring six or seven feet (2 m) in length at maturity, and three to five feet (1 to 1.5 m) in width, weighing up to 2000 pounds (about 900 kg).

A leatherback sea turtle weighs as much as a Smart car.

The other species of sea turtles are smaller, being mostly two to four feet in length (0.5 to 1 m) and proportionally narrower.

The majority of a sea turtle's body is protected by its shell. The leatherback is the only sea turtle that does not have a hard shell. Instead, it bears a mosaic of bony plates beneath its leathery skin.

Sea turtles don’t have teeth.

Sea turtles have lungs and breathe atmospheric air and they need to come back to the surface to breathe.

BEHAVIOR 

Male sea turtles never return to the shore once they are hatched, whereas females come to the shore only during nesting season.

Sea turtles have a built-in GPS. They use the earth’s magnetic field to navigate their epic voyages.

Loggerhead turtle

Thousands of sea turtle hatchlings die annually due to artificial light—they can only find the sea by using the natural glow of the horizon.

Leatherback turtles feed almost exclusively on jellyfish and help control jellyfish populations.

HABITAT 

Sea turtles are found in all the world's oceans except the Arctic Ocean, and some species travel between oceans.

The Flatback turtle is found solely on the northern coast of Australia.

The Kemp's ridley sea turtle can only be found in the Gulf of Mexico and along the East Coast of the United States.

Jairo Mora Sandoval dedicated his life to protecting leatherback sea turtle nests from poachers on Moin beach in Costa Rica. Him and volunteers, would collects the eggs and guard them in a hatchery. On May 30, 2014 Mora and four female volunteers were abducted by a group of masked men. The women eventually escaped and informed the police. 26-year-old Mora's bound and beaten body was found on the beach the next morning

FUN SEA TURTLE FACTS

Turtle gender depends on sand temperature while the egg is incubating. Warmer temperatures produce female hatchlings, while cooler temperatures produce male hatchlings.

Sea turtle eggs. By Yosri at ms.wikipedia 

In 1974 52 year old Candelaria Villanueva was thrown overboard when her passenger ship sank off the coast of Manila, Philippines, but survived for two days at sea on the back of a giant sea turtle.

In the United States, sitting on a sea turtle is a third degree felony.

Sea otter

ANATOMY

The sea otter is the furriest animal on Earth, with up to 150,000 hairs per square centimeter of skin.

Sea otters have flaps of skin under their forelegs that act as pockets. When diving, they use these pouches to store their favorite rocks to use for breaking open shellfish.

Adult sea otters typically weigh between 14 and 45 kg (31 and 99 lb), making them the heaviest members of the weasel family, but among the smallest marine mammals.

BEHAVIOR

Sea otters hold each other’s paws whilst they are asleep so they don’t drift apart from each other.

Mother sea otters have been observed to lick and fluff a newborn for hours; after grooming, the pup's fur retains so much air, the pup floats like a cork and cannot dive.

Sea otters have to eat 25–38% of their body weight to counteract heat loss in cold, watery environments.

The sea otter is the only marine mammal that catches fish with its forepaws rather than its teeth.

Sea otters swim in same-sex groups called rafts.

HABITAT 

Sea otters live along the Pacific coast of North America. Their historic range stretched in an arc across the North Pacific from northern Japan to the central Baja California Peninsula in Mexico.

Unlike other mustelids, the sea otter doesn't make dens and can live its entire life without ever leaving the water. In fact, it's so different from other mustelids that some scientists have suggested it's more closely related to earless seals.

Humans hunted the sea otter for their rich fur almost to extinction. By the time the 1911 Fur Seal Treaty gave them protection, so few sea otters remained that the fur trade had become unprofitable.

Although once near extinction, the sea otter has begun to spread again, from small populations in Alaska and California. Their global population has rebounded from 1,000 to 100,000.

Sea lion

The sea lion is a marine animal of the family Otariidae (eared seals), which also includes fur seals.

There are two species of sea lion in the northern hemisphere, three in the south.

North Pacific Sea Lion

ANATOMY

The largest of the species is Steller's sea lion, which can grow up to 3.4 metres (11 ft) long.

The male Steller's sea lion has a thick neck with the characteristic main, and can weigh up to 1 tonne. Females are one third that weight.

The California sea lion only reaches 2.3 metres (7 feet).

The sea lion has large fore flippers which it uses to row itself through the water.

The hind flippers can be turned beneath the body to walk on them.

Sea lions are characterized by external ear flaps, unlike true seals.

Sea lions cannot tell the color red from grey.

BEHAVIOR 

Sea lions feed on fish, squid and crustaceans.

They consume large quantities of food at a time and are known to eat about 5–8% of their body weight (about 15–35 lb (6.8–15.9 kg)) at a single feeding.

Sea lions are the first nonhuman mammals that have demonstrated the ability to keep a beat.

They have an average lifespan of 20–30 years.

San Franciscan Kevin Hines survived a jump from the Golden Gate Bridge but broke his back on impact. He was saved from drowning by a sea lion who kept him afloat until rescuers could reach him.

HABITAT 

The sea lion lives all around the world, except in the northern Atlantic Ocean.

Steller's sea lion lives in the North Pacific, with large numbers breeding on the Aleutian Islands.

The California sea lion is the species most often seen in zoos and as a performing seal.

Sea lions entertaining a crowd in Central Park Zoo. By MusikAnimal 

In Sweden, it is illegal to train a seal to balance a ball on its nose.

Source Hutchinson Encyclopedia

Sea

A sea is a large body of salt water that is surrounded in whole or in part by land.

Only 1 in 1000 animals born in the sea survives to maturity.

135 million tons of seafood is consumed worldwide every year.

The modern scientific study of the sea—oceanography—dates broadly to the British Challenger expedition of the 1870s.

On January 23, 1960, Swiss engineer Professor Jacques Piccard, and US Navy Captain Don Walsh, took the submersible Trieste to a depth of 10,916 m (35,814 ft) in the Mariana Trench in the Pacific, the sea’s deepest point.

The deepest ocean sinkhole in the world is in the South China Sea and is named the Dragon Hole, or Longdong. It is roughly 987 feet (301 meters) deep. Below 328 feet (100 meters) the hole is devoid of oxygen, and deadly to marine life.

The Sargasso Sea is a region in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by ocean currents. It is the only sea that has no coast.

Icarus tried to fly using a pair of wings his father made fashioned from wax and feathers. The youth flew too close to the sun, thus melting the wax. He then fell into the sea and drowned. The Icarian Sea in the Aegean is named after him.

The sea offers a very large supply of energy carried by ocean waves, tides, salinity differences, and ocean temperature differences which can be harnessed to generate electricity.

The first tidal power station in the world, the kilometer-long Rance Tidal Power Station, opened in 1966 on the estuary of the Rance River in Brittany, France. It produces around 540 GWh per year, around 3% of Brittany's total electrical consumption.

The Rance Tidal Power Station By User:Dani 7C3 

Sea foam is a type of foam created by the agitation of seawater, particularly when it contains higher concentrations of dissolved organic matter. These compounds can act as surfactants or foaming agents. As the seawater is churned by breaking waves in the surf zone adjacent to the shore, the compounds trap air, forming bubbles which stick to each other through surface tension.

Aea level rise is caused by two main factors, melting glaciers, and "thermal expansion" the expansion of space between water molecules as the ocean gets warmer. So the ocean is both gaining water molecules, and the water molecules are spreading out and taking up more space.

The salinity of seawater is almost four times that of our urine. Therefore, to get rid of all the excess salt taken in by drinking seawater, you have to urinate more water than you drank. Eventually, you die of dehydration even as you become thirstier.

Scurvy

Scurvy is a disease that is caused by not eating enough vitamin C, which is contained in fresh vegetables, fruit and milk. Early symptoms include feeling tired and sore arms and legs. Without treatment, the victim's skin and hair dries up, their teeth may loosen and even fall out and they may bleed from the mouth, nose, and gums. As scurvy worsens there can be poor wound healing, and finally death from infection or bleeding.

Page from the journal of Henry Walsh Mahon showing effects of scurvy (1841)

The Ancient Egyptians recorded scurvy's symptoms as early as 1550 BC and the disease was later documented by Hippocrates.

In 1498 Vasco Da Gama became the first European to reach India by sea. There was an outbreak of scurvy that killed so many of his men that due to a shortage of crewmen, he was forced to burn one of his ships.

When Ferdinand Magellan became the first person to reach Asia by sailing westwards across the Atlantic and Pacific, scurvy ran rampant amongst many of his crew. Magellan noted that the destructive effect of scurvy on his men was that "gums grew so over their teeth that they died miserably for hunger."

Scorbutic gums

In 1536, the French explorer Jacques Cartier, travelling up the St. Lawrence River, used the local natives' knowledge to save his men who were dying of scurvy. The Canadian Indians were able to show him how to cure the disease with by drinking a "tea" made from  pine needles and eating the bark and leaves of a tree. Pine needles have approximately 3 to 5 times more vitamin C than an orange.

Basque whalers and sailors didn’t die of scurvy because they drank 2-3 liters of cider everyday which, unbeknownst to them, contains vitamin C.

During the Seven Years War (1754–63), 1,512 British soldiers were killed in action and 100,000 died from scurvy.

The Scottish naval surgeon James Lind published his Treatise of the Scurvy in 1753, in which he showed the effectiveness of citrus fruits in preventing the disease. Lind was aware that the Dutch had employed citrus fruits for several centuries and his discoveries came as a result of searching for objective evidence of the healing effects of such fruits by doing experiments.

A portrait of Scottish doctor James Lind (1716–1794)

Captain James Cook lost 41 of his 98 men to scurvy on his first voyage to the Pacific in 1768. Inspired by Lind's findings the British explorer introduced lemon and lime juice, carrot marmalade and unfermented malt. Cook also placed on the deck of his ship a large barrel containing sauerkraut (cabbage reserved in brine, an unpopular food due to its German origins). To encourage his men to eat it he placed a notice on the barrel "FOR USE OF THE CAPTAIN AND OFFICER'S ONLY"
The crafty plan worked. No one caught scurvy and each night the levels of sauerkraut slowly decreased. Cook also made sure his men had clean and well-ventilated living quarters and their bedding and clothes was aired twice a week.

Only one sailor died of scurvy on Cook's last two voyages.

By the end of the eighteenth century, the importance of eating citrus to prevent scurvy was acknowledged and Sir Gilbert Blane made the use of lemon and lime juice mandatory in the British navy.

The singer James Blunt developed scurvy at Bristol university when he ate only meat for eight weeks.  Blunt started his carnivorous diet because he found himself surrounded by vegan and vegetarian classmates. 

Today, rates of scurvy in most of the world are low. Those most commonly affected are malnourished people in the developing world and the homeless.

Scurvy only exists in primates. It's only gorillas, chimps, humans, and a few monkeys that the body stops producing this necessary vitamin.

Sculpture

The Great Sphinx of Giza was constructed in the Old Kingdom of Ancient Egypt during the reign of Khafra, it is the largest monolith statue and monumental sculpture in the world.

The Great Sphinx was so named about 2000 years after its construction. Despite its prominence, very little is known about the statue, though the face of the Sphinx is generally believed to represent the Pharaoh Khafre; however, there are no inscriptions anywhere describing its construction or original purpose. It is not even known what it was originally called, as no references survive in known Egyptian sources, sphinx being the name of a similar classical Greek creature.

The Great Sphinx is so old that its first restoration dates to 1400 BC, when it was already a thousand years old.

The Great Sphinx of Giza by By MusikAnimal 

A carved self-portrait on a stone stele, or slab, by Bak, sculptor to the Pharaoh Akhenaten in ancient Egypt, is thought to be the earliest surviving self-portrait. It dates to 1345 BC and depicts Bak with his wife Taheret.

The Ancient Olympics were staged in the wooded valley of Olympia in Elis. Here the Greeks erected statues and built temples in a grove dedicated to Zeus, supreme among the gods. The greatest shrine was an ivory and gold statue of Zeus. Created by the sculptor Phidias, it was considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

Ancient Roman and Greek sculptors colored their statues, and most were painted or "polychromed." Over the course of years, rain washed the colors off the marble. White marble fashion came with Renaissance.

During the Middle Ages, Gothic sculpture represented the agonies and passions of the Christian faith. Romanesque sculptors working on the churches showed a boundless imagination. In particular the tortures of hell inspired some fantastic scenes. So much so that some of the church authorities complained. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, for instance, remarked on this subject "What good are all these horrible monkeys, ferocious lions, and imaginary centaurs? We spend more time looking at these strange creatures than thinking about 'God's law'".

Judas Iscariot hangs himself, assisted by devils. Autun Cathedral. By La case photo de Got 

The Capitoline Museums, the oldest public collection of art in the world, began in 1471 when Pope Sixtus IV donated a group of important ancient sculptures to the people of Rome.

The revival of classical models in the Renaissance produced famous sculptures such as Michelangelo's 13ft high stone carving of King David, which he unveiled in 1504.

Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin took some of the sculptures, now called the Elgin Marbles, from the Parthenon in 1759. They have been on display in the British Museum since 1816.

Artist Edwin Landseer’s four bronze lions have lain at the foot of Nelson’s Column in London's Trafalgar Square since 1867. It took him nine years from receiving the £17,000 commission (worth over £1.7 million today), to installing all four, which are not identical — each has a different face and mane.

The statue by Auguste Rodin that has come to be called "The Thinker" was not meant to be a portrait of a man in thought. It was originally called "The Poet" and depicted Dante.

Le Penseur in the Musée Rodin in Paris

Mount Rushmore National Memorial is a sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore near Keystone, South Dakota, United States. Sculpted by Danish-American Gutzon Borglum and his son, Lincoln Borglum, it features 60-foot (18 m) sculptures of the heads of former United States presidents (in order from left to right) George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.

The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., featuring a sculpture of the sixteenth U.S. President Abraham Lincoln by Daniel Chester French, opened in 1922.

Fallen Astronaut is an an 8.5-centimeter (3.3 in) aluminum sculpture meant to depict an astronaut in a spacesuit, commemorating the astronauts and cosmonauts who died in the advancement of space exploration. It was placed on the Moon by the crew of Apollo 15 on August 1, 1971.

The Molinere Underwater Sculpture Park in the Caribbean island of Grenada became the world's first underwater sculpture park when it opened in 2006. It comprises concrete figures, mostly of people, installed on the ocean floor.

The Blue Mustang, a 32-foot tall sculpture of a blue horse at Denver International Airport. It was designed by sculptor Luis Jiménez who was unable to complete the project after the head fell on him and severed an artery in his leg, killing him in 2006. His staff and family finished the job for Jiménez and it was unveiled at Denver International Airport on February 11, 2008.

Unilever, who own the brand Marmite, spent £15,000 on a sculpture of a Marmite jar in 2010 to honor the product.

"L'Homme au doigt" by Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti was auctioned for $141.3m at Christie's in New York City on May 11, 2015, setting the record for most expensive sculpture sold at an auction. It is a slender, elongated figure of a man pointing with his right hand. The figure is only 6 feet tall, but it has a commanding presence. The surface of the sculpture is rough and unfinished, giving it a sense of movement and energy.

Giacometti created L'Homme au doigt in the aftermath of World War II. The sculpture is a powerful expression of the artist's hopes for the future. The man pointing is a symbol of hope and resilience. He is pointing to a better future, a future of peace and prosperity.

L'Homme au doigt Alberto Giacometti

"Geese in Flight,” which stands along the “Enchanted Highway” between Regent and Gladstone in North Dakota, holds the Guinness World Record as the largest scrap metal sculpture.

Philadelphia has more outdoor sculptures and murals than any other American city.