Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone National Park is the largest US nature reserve. Located in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, it spans an area of 3,468.4 square miles (8,983 km2), bigger than Rhode Island or Delaware.

About 96 percent of the park is in Wyoming. Three percent is in Montana and one percent in Idaho.

The park comprises canyons, lakes, rivers, and mountain ranges. It is known for its wildlife and its many geothermal features.

Yellowstone, widely held to be the first national park in the world, was signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872.

The name was taken from the Yellowstone River, which flows through the park.

Although Yellowstone was not officially termed a "national park" in its establishing law, it was always termed such in practice and is widely held to be the first and oldest national park in the world.

The US Army ran Yellowstone Park until 1917 when the National Park Service was created.

Detailed pictorial map from 1904

Yellowstone Lake is one of the largest high-altitude lakes in North America and is centered over the Yellowstone Caldera, the largest supervolcano on the continent. The caldera is considered an active volcano. It has erupted with tremendous force several times in the last two million years, but experts say there is no immediate danger of eruption. Half of the world's geothermal features are in Yellowstone, fueled by this ongoing volcanism.

The park is the center of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, which is the largest remaining nearly intact ecosystem in the Earth's northern temperate zone. It includes many types of ecosystems, but the biggest is the subalpine forest.

The vast forests and grasslands include unique species of plants. It is the largest and most famous megafauna location in the continental United States.

Hundreds of species of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles have been documented in the park, including several that are either endangered or threatened.

The Yellowstone Park bison herd is the oldest and largest public bison herd in the United States. It is descended from a remnant population of 23 individual bison that survived a mass slaughter in the 19th century by hiding out in the Pelican Valley of Yellowstone Park.

About 600 grizzly bears live in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, with more than half living within Yellowstone.

There are over 30,000 elk—the largest number of any large mammal species in Yellowstone.

Yellowstone has more than 3,000 geysers and hot springs, including Old Faithful Geyser, one of the most popular features in the park. Old Faithful erupts approximately every 90 minutes.

Old Faithful. By Grahampurse 

It's possible for a human to dissolve in Yellowstone's hot springs. On June 7, 2016, Colin Scott slipped and tumbled into the acidic boiling waters of the Norris Geyser while looking for a hot spot to soak in. Scott had illegally ventured off the boardwalk and within 24hrs he dissolved.

There was a record of 4,257,177 recreational visitors to Yellowstone in 2016.

July is the busiest month for tourism at Yellowstone National Park.

At peak summer levels, 3,700 employees work for Yellowstone National Park concessionaires.

Hollywood legend Gary Cooper worked as a Yellowstone Park guide for several seasons before becoming an actor.

Wave (ocean)

A wave is the formation of a ridge or swell in a fluid surface by wind or other causes.

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LARGE WIND WAVES

Large waves form under certain weather conditions at certain times of the year, travelling big distances in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans. They become dangerous when they reach the shallow waters of the continental shelves at 200 metres/100 fathoms, especially when they meet currents, for example the Agulhas current to the east of South Africa and the Gulf Stream.

By Shalom Jacobovitz 

The highest wave ever recorded was 91ft (27m) — as tall as six double-decker buses — in the Gulf of Mexico during Hurricane Ivan in September, 2004.

The highest wave ever detected by a buoy was 62.3 feet (19m) high and happened on February 4, 2013, in the  North Atlantic Ocean between Iceland and the United Kingdom at coordinates 59° N, 11° W.

ROGUE WAVES 

Rogue or monster waves appear without warning and are extremely huge and often steep (cliff like) with very deep troughs.

Rogue waves are distinct from tides, caused by the Moon and Sun's gravitational pull, waves generated by underwater explosions or the fall of meteorites or tsunamis that are caused by underwater earthquakes, landslides or volcanic eruptions—all having far longer wavelengths than wind waves.

A widely reported phenomenon among sailors for centuries the first rogue wave documented and witnessed with measurable equipment was recorded at the Draupner platform in the North Sea off the coast of Norway on January 1, 1995 and was 25.6m (84ft) tall.

Merchant ship labouring in heavy seas as a huge wave looms ahead, ca. 1940.

The Agulhas Current, off the coast of Durban, in South Africa, produces some of the biggest waves in the world. In this busy shipping area, rogue waves can reach heights of over 100 feet (30 meters).

Rogue waves are considered responsible for the sudden disappearance, without distress calls of many sound ships.

TSUNAMI

A tsunami is a series of fast-moving waves in the ocean caused by powerful earthquakes or volcanic eruptions.

The typical length of tsunami waves is about 100 times the depth. As a result, the speed of travel of a wave in the ocean with an average depth of approximately 13,200 feet (4,000 meters) is of around 440 miles per hour (700 kilometers per hour), which means the speed of a jet aircraft.

The largest wave ever recorded by humans measured 1,720 feet (524 meters). It occurred on July 9, 1958 when Alaska's Lituya Bay was hit by a megatsunami triggered by an earthquake. The force of the wave removed all trees and vegetation from elevations as high as 1720 feet above sea level. Two occupants of a small fishing boat that was in the area surfed that wave and survived to tell the story.

The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was among the deadliest natural disasters in human history, with at least 230,000 people killed or missing in 14 countries bordering the Indian Ocean.

One of the few coastal areas to evacuate ahead of the 2004 tsunami was on the island of Simeulue. Due to island folklore recounting an earthquake/tsunami in 1907, the islanders fled inland following the initial shaking. Generational folklore saving the lives of the islanders 97 years later.

WAVE POWER

Wave power is power obtained by harnessing the power of the waves.

The idea of turning wave energy into electricity first took place in Paris in 1799 when Monsieur Girard and his son patented a mechanism to drive wave power to activate pumps, mills, saws and heavy machinery.

Various schemes to harness the power of the waves were advanced in the mid-1970s when oil prices rose dramatically and the prospects of an energy shortage became serious.

Pelamis Wave Energy Converter on site at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC), in 2008

The world's first wave energy farm was installed in September 2008. Three Pelamis wave-following attenuation devices were installed offshore near Póvoa de Varzim north of Porto in Portugal.

In theory, the wave energy potential of the United States is estimated to be of 2.64 trillion kWh, which means around 65 percent of all the electricity in the country in 2016.

FUN WAVE FACTS

Most waves we see coming in from the horizon are a product of wind that blows over large areas of the ocean. Length, height, period and speed are the main characteristics of a typical sea wave.

In the Southern Hemisphere, there is less difference in wave height between the warm and cold seasons, resulting in more consistent surfing conditions throughout the year.

The sound of a wave breaking is actually that of hundreds of millions of air bubbles bursting at the shoreline.

Sources Hutchinson Encyclopedia, Surfertoday

Town

A town is a populous place bigger or less rural than a village.

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HISTORY

The Neolithic town of Khirokitia was situated on the slope of a hill in the valley of the Maroni River towards the southern coast of Cyprus. Khirokitia was one of the first known examples of an organised functional society in the form of a collective settlement. It had a paved public street with lanes leading off to courtyards of round tent-like houses. Khirokitia was occupied from the 7th until the 4th millennium BC.

There was a widespread and long-lasting tradition in what is now Southeastern and Eastern Europe of building settlements, and living in them, just to burn them to the ground every 75 -80 years. This lasted from as early as 6500 BC (the beginning of the Neolithic) to as late as 2000 BC (the end of the Chalcolithic and the beginning of the Bronze Age). The reasons for this are still being researched.

In ancient China, towns were often arranged in patterns so that if seen from above, the whole community would resemble an animal or a symbolic design. Some were arranged to resemble dragons, snakes, stars and sunbursts.

Hippodamus of Miletus (498 – 408 BC), was an ancient Greek architect who is considered to be "the father of European urban planning". Hippodamus developed a new way of laying out the towns and cities of Greece. Using a rectangular grid, he brought together a number of large units, each of which was dedicated to some function of the town's life.

Hippodamus laid out the port town of Piraeus with wide streets radiating from the central Agora, which was called the Hippodameia in his honor. 

Map of Piraeus, showing the grid plan of the town

Plymouth, England, became the first town incorporated by the English Parliament on November 12, 1439. At the time the settlement was called Sutton. 

When the town walls of Sutton were built in 1404, the townsfolk were still under the local governmental control of the Priors of Plympton. They petitioned King Henry IV to be granted a charter allowing self-government, but one was not forthcoming.  In 1439 another attempt was made, to both King – by then Henry VI – and Parliament and this time Parliament passed an Act giving the place municipal status, the first time that Parliament had granted such powers. The name Plymouth first officially replaced Sutton in a charter of King Henry VI the following year.

Prysten House, 1498, is the oldest surviving house in Plymouth By Pierre Terre,

Spanish admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés founded St. Augustine in Spanish Florida on September 8, 1565. He named the settlement "San Agustín", as his ships bearing settlers, troops, and supplies from Spain had first sighted land in Florida eleven days earlier on August 28, the feast day of St. Augustine. It is the oldest continually occupied European settlement in the continental United States. 

View of St. Augustine from the top of the lighthouse on Anastasia Island. By Ebyabe

The North Carolina town of Whynot was first settled in the 18th century by German and English people. The community was originally spelled with two separate words, "Why Not". It has its name because as residents were arguing over a name for the settlement, some person stood up and said "Why not name the town Why Not and let's go home?" And so they did.

The world's first water-powered cotton spinning mill was Cromford Mill, a five-storey cotton mill built in the Derwent Valley, Derbyshire, England by Richard Arkwright, the father of the factory system in 1771. Arkwright then built homes for the textile workers, making Cromford the first company town.

World Urbanism Day, also known as "World Town Planning Day" is an opportunity to unite planners and celebrate town planning around the globe. The day was founded in 1949 by Professor Carlos Maria della Paolera of the University of Buenos Aires, a graduate at the Institut d'urbanisme in Paris, to advance public and professional interest in planning. It is celebrated in more than 30 countries on four continents on November 8th.

FUN TOWN FACTS

Washington is the most common place name in the United States, with 88 different cities and towns throughout the country named Washington. Springfield takes second place and Franklin third place.

The town named Agloe, New York doesn't exist actually exist. Map Makers have made it up to catch people infringing on their copyrighted maps. It's an example of a Paper Town. 

The Arizona town of Why was originally known as just "Y" due to the Y-shaped intersection of two roads. It changed its name to "Why" due to an Arizona state law requiring town names to be at least 3 letters long.

Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! in Quebec, Canada, is the only town in the world with two exclamation points in its name.

Hum in Istria, Croatia is the world's smallest town. Hum has a museum, an inn, a railway station and two churches. According to the 2021 census its population was 52.

Hum (Croatia) By Ivana - Own work, 

Inhabitants of Arlesey, Bedfordshire (population 5,584) claim it is the longest town in Britain. Its main street is three miles long.

Rudyard, Montana is the only town in the contiguous United States in which you could dig a hole through the center of the earth and emerge from the other side on dry land. (Kerguelen Island in the Indian Ocean sits opposite of northern Montana.)

Sources Chronicle of The World, Information-Britain

Tibet

Tibet is a historical region in Inner Asia. It covers a barren plateau bounded south and south west by the Himalayas and north by the Kunlun Mountains. 

Tibet. By Mak at zh.wikipedia 

A kingdom established in the 7th century, Tibet came under nominal suzerainty in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries before independence was regained after a revolt in 1912.

Tibet was invaded by China in 1950 and has since been known as the Xizang Autonomous Region of China.

Before the Chinese takeover of Tibet, 25 percent of the males in the country were Buddhist monks.

Between the 17th century and 1959, the Dalai Lama was the head of the Tibetan government.

Induction of Lungtok Gyatso, 9th Dalai Lama, in the presence of Ambans around 1808.

On May 23, 1951 delegates of the 14th Dalai Lama and the government of the newly established People's Republic of China signed the Seventeen Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet, affirming Chinese sovereignty over Tibet.

Between 1951 and 1959 the Chinese People's Liberation Army controlled Tibet, although the Dalai Lama remained the nominal spiritual and temporal head of state. 

In 1959, the Dalai Lama had to flee from Tibet to Dharamsala, India. This is still his base today.

The first election of the Parliament of the Central Tibetan Administration in the history of Tibet took place in 1960. The Tibetan community observes this date as the Democracy Day.

The Qinghai–Tibet Railway, the world's highest railway and the only railway line to the Tibet Autonomous Region, was inaugurated on July 1, 2006.

Tanggula Railway Station, located at 5,068 m (16,627 ft), is the highest station in the world. 

Tanggula Railway Station By Yaohua200027999

Tibet is the highest region on Earth, with an average elevation of 4,900 meters (16,000 ft).

Lhasa is Tibet's traditional capital and the capital of Tibet Autonomous Region. It contains two world heritage sites – the Potala Palace and Norbulingka, which were the residences of the Dalai Lama. 

The Potala Palace in Lhasa. By Antoine Taveneaux 

Tibet has a smaller GDP than Malta, but is 4,000 times its size.

It is ranked the lowest among China’s 31 provinces on the Human Development Index according to UN Development Programme data.

Tibetans say hello by sticking their tongues out at each other.

In Tibet, it's good manners to stick out your tongue at your guests.

In Tibet distances used to be measured by the number of cups of tea that would need to be drunk to get there.

In Tibet hard slabs of compressed tea are used as money before being finally brewed.

South Pole

The South Pole is the the southernmost point on the surface of the Earth. It is located in Antarctica and is the center of the Southern Hemisphere.

On January 9, 1909 Ernest Shackleton, leading the Nimrod Expedition, reached a new Farthest South latitude of 88° 23' S, around 97 nautical miles (180 km) from the South Pole. They fell short of reaching the South Pole due to a shortage of food and fuel and challenging conditions.

Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his team left in August 1910 intending to beat the Englishman Robert Falcon Scott, to become the first men to reach the South Pole.

On December 14, 1911 Amundsen and his men arrived at the South Pole and planted the Norwegian flag beating Scott by 34 days.

Amundsen's party at the South Pole, December 1911

Robert Falcon Scott's ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition reached the South Pole on January 17, 1912, only to find that Roald Amundsen's team had arrived there a month earlier.

American explorer Richard Evelyn Byrd is credited with being the first person to fly over the South Pole. On November 29, 1929, Byrd, along with pilot Bernt Balchen and two other crew members, took off from their base on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica and flew 1,575 miles to the South Pole and back in 18 hours and 41 minutes. Their aircraft, a Ford Trimotor monoplane named "Floyd Bennett," was equipped with a variety of instruments, including compasses, sextants, and airspeed indicators, which helped them navigate the treacherous polar environment.

Igloo, a Wire Fox Terrier flew traveled everywhere with Admiral Byrd in the 1920s, including flying over the South Pole.

Today there is an American science base at the South Pole, which is named the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station to honor the two explorers. Established in 1956, it has been permanently staffed since that year. The buildings are raised on stilts to prevent snow build up.

Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station.  By Bill Henriksen, 

On October 31, 1956 humans set foot at the South Pole for the first time since Captain Robert F. Scott and his team in 1912, when a party led by Admiral George J. Dufek of the US Navy landed there in an R4D-5L Skytrain) aircraft.

Sir Edmund Hillary became the first explorer to reach the South Pole overland since Captain Robert F. Scott on January 4, 1958, The New Zealander — along with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay — had become the first man to reach the 29,035ft summit of Everest five years earlier.

Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin is the oldest person to ever reach the South Pole, having visited it in November 2016 as part of a tourist group at the age of 86.

In January 2024, former Royal Marine Dave Thomas reached the geographic South Pole after skiing ~1,130 km from Hercules Inlet. He did so at age 68 years, 40 days, making him (as of 2024) the oldest person to reach the South Pole unassisted.

The Geographic South Pole is marked by a stake in the ice alongside a small sign; these are repositioned each year in a ceremony on New Year's Day to compensate for the movement of the ice.

The Ceremonial South Pole as of February 2008.

The Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in the South Pole recorded temperatures of 7.5 °F (-13.6 °C), making it the highest temperature to ever be recorded in the South Pole.

Since all the longitude lines meet in Antarctica, the South Pole has no specific time zone. The South Pole has only one research station (US-owned), and they use New Zealand time because researchers fly in from Christchurch.

Because of the amount of ice it sits on, the South Pole actually has an elevation of 9,300 ft. (2800m) and people have had to be evacuated due to altitude sickness.

At the South Pole, the Sun does not set in December.

The South Pole has a desert climate. It almost never gets any precipitation. However, high winds can cause the blowing of snowfall, and the accumulation of snow amounts to about 20 cm (7.9 in) per year.

New York City gets 15 times as much snow as the South Pole.

Siberia

The territory of Siberia extends eastwards from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific. It stretches southwards from the Arctic Ocean to the hills of north-central Kazakhstan and to the national borders of Mongolia and China.

HISTORY

In 1581 the Cossack leader Yermak Timofeyevich conquered Siberia for Russia. The conquest expanded Ivan the Terrible's empire to the east and allowed him to style himself "Tsar of Siberia" in the ruler's very last years.

By the mid-17th century, Russia had established areas of control that extended to the Pacific. Some 230,000 Russians had settled in Siberia by 1709.

Siberia has been used since the 18th century to house political and criminal prisoners.

Until the nineteenth century, solid blocks of tea were used as money in Siberia.

The Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow to Vladivostok was constructed during 1891–1916. The railway linked Siberia more closely to the rapidly industrializing Russia of Nicholas II.

Siberian peasants watching a train at a station, 1902

Around seven million people moved to Siberia from European Russia between 1801 and 1914.

In 1955 Soviet geologists discovered the Mir mine, the first diamond mine in the USSR and the second largest excavated hole in the world, in Eastern Siberia.

FUN SIBERIA FACTS

Siberia covers 77 per cent of Russia. If Siberia were independent, it would be the largest country in the world.

Siberia is home to just 40 million people—27% of Russia's population. The territory has a population density of less than eight people per square mile.

Novosibirsk is the largest city in Siberia, with a population near 1.5 million.

Novosibirsk  by Imdestroy 

Lake Baikal in Siberia is 400 miles long, 50 miles wide and a mile deep. It is the world's largest freshwater lake and contains 20 per cent of the world's non-frozen fresh water supplies.

The highest point in Siberia is the volcano Klyuchevskaya Sopka, considered sacred by many locals as the place the Earth was created.

More than 25% of the world's forests are found in Siberia.

Siberia has extensive natural resources. It has some of the world's largest deposits of coal, diamonds, gold, lead, nickel, silver and zinc, as well as extensive unexploited resources of oil and natural gas

Siberia is well known primarily for its long, harsh winters, with a January average of −25 °C (−13 °F),

Pixiebay

Kindergartners in Siberia run outside in their underwears and dump freezing water over themselves to strengthen their immune systems.

Yakutsk in Siberia is said to be the coldest city on Earth. The average January temperature is around –40C, though it can be hot in summer.

The coldest permanently inhabited place is the Siberian village of Oymyakon (pop. 4000) in Russia, where the temperature reached -68°C (-90°F) in 1933 (the coldest ever recorded outside Antarctica)

The Trans-Siberian train from Moscow to Vladivostok takes a week to complete its journey.

Stroganina, a thinly shaved raw, frozen fish or meat, has long been a favorite snack in northern Siberia.

The Siberian tiger is the largest member of the cat family. Only about 500 remain in the wild.

Source Daily Express

Sahara

The Sahara Desert is a hot, dry area covering most of North Africa. Its area of 9,200,000 square kilometres (3,600,000 sq mi)  makes it about the same size of the United States.

90 percent of Algeria is covered by the Sahara Desert.

The name 'Sahara' is derived from ṣaḥārā, the plural of the Arabic word for "desert".

Eva Dickson was the first woman to cross the Sahara Desert by car in 1932. After meeting Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke, the former spouse of Karen Blixen, in Kenya, she took a bet and drove by car from Nairobi to Stockholm, thus becoming the first woman to have crossed the Sahara by automobile.

The 1974 World Cup Rally was first rally to cross the Sahara Desert. It was won by the Australian team of Ken Tubman, Andre Welenski, and Jim Reddiex driving a Citroën.

The 1974 World Cup Rally was blighted by an error in the navigational notes which saw the majority of the field become lost in the Algerian Sahara. However, the journey through the desert planted the seed that would become the Dakar Rally in 1980.

Snow fell in the Sahara Desert for the first time in recorded history on February 18, 1979 in southern Algeria.

Michael Asher and Mariantonietta Peru made the first known crossing of the Sahara from west to east by non-mechanical means. Setting off in August 1986, with three camels, they passed through Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, and the Sudan, and finally arrived at the Nile at Abu Simbel in southern Egypt in May 1987, having made a journey of 271 days and 4500 miles by camel.

Reza Pakravan of Iran made the fastest crossing of the Sahara Desert by bicycle in 2011. He completed his journey from Algeria to Sudan in 13 days 5 hours 50 minutes and 14 seconds, on March 17, 2011, overcoming rain, sandstorms, arrest and numerous flies.

Only a quarter of the Sahara desert is sandy, the desert also have salt flats, gravel plains, plateaus, and mountains that have snow.

About 200,000 km² (77,000 sq miles) of the Sahara are fertile oases, where dates, corn, and fruits are grown. The few fertile regions today are fed by underground rivers and underground basins.

An Idehan Ubari oasis lake, with native grasses & date palms. By I, Luca Galuzzi

Sand from the Sahara desert is blown by the wind all the way to the Amazon and fertilizes the rainforest by recharging its minerals.

A wobble of Earth's axis causes the Sahara to cycle between desert and grassland every 23,000 years. At present, we are in a dry period, but it is expected that the Sahara will become green again in 15,000 years.

Around 4 million people live in the Sahara Desert. Dominant groups of people are Sahrawis and Tuareg.

The largest city in the Sahara is Nouakchott, Mauritania's capital. The 2013 census gave the city's population as 958,399.

The Grand Mosque in Nouakchott

At 3415 m, the Emi Koussi in Chad is the Sahara's highest mountain.

The Sahara's lowest point lies in the Qattara Depression in Egypt, at about 130 metres below sea level.

River

The Amazon River in South America is the largest river in the world. It moves more water than the next eight largest rivers of the world combined and has the largest drainage basin in the world. It accounts for about one fifth of the world's total river flow.

Amazon River near Iquitos, Peru. By M M from Switzerland 

The Nile is the longest river on Earth (about 6,650 km or 4,132 miles), though other rivers carry more water.

The Congo is the world's deepest river with measured depths in excess of 220 m (720 ft).[

Grand Canyon's Thunder River is the steepest in the United States.

Britain's shortest river is the Brun which runs through Burnley in Lancashire.

The Brun near Heasandford, Burnley. By Richard Spencer, 

There are no rivers In Saudi Arabia. It is the largest country on this planet without a river.

Russia has to bomb their rivers every winter to prevent dangerous flooding caused by ice dams.

There is a "boiling river" in Peru where over six kilometers of the river can reach temperatures as high as 86C/187F.  It turns out, it's not the Sun that boils the water, but fault-fed hot springs.

Contrary to popular belief, not all rivers flow south. The Nile River flows north and downhill due to gravity.

Evening, Nile River, Uganda. By Rod Waddington, 

The left bank on a river is the left side as you look downstream.

Quebec

HISTORY

The first French explorer to reach Quebec was Jacques Cartier. He sailed into the St. Lawrence River in 1534 and established a colony near present-day Quebec City.

In 1608 French explorer Samuel de Champlain traveled into the St. Lawrence River. He founded Quebec City as a permanent fur trading outpost at the site of a long abandoned St. Lawrence Iroquoian settlement called Stadacona and signed trading and military agreements with the native people.

The arrival of Samuel de Champlain on the site of Quebec City

The name "Québec" comes from the Algonquin word kébec meaning "where the river narrows."

Quebec City started off with 28 men and colonization was slow and difficult. Many settlers died early, because of harsh weather and diseases. In 1630, there were only 103 colonists living in the settlement, but by 1640, the population had reached 355.

New France became a Royal Province of France in 1663. That same year France sent 800 women to Quebec. The "Filles du Roi" ("Daughters of the King") were poor women who agreed to go to the mostly male New France colony to marry. It worked; the population grew from about 3,000 to 60,000 people between 1666 and 1760.

At its peak in 1712 (before the Treaty of Utrecht), the territory of New France extended from Newfoundland to the Canadian prairies and from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, including all the Great Lakes of North America.

In 1758, the British attacked New France by sea and captured the French fort at Louisbourg. The following year British General James Wolfe defeated General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm outside Quebec City. The garrison in Quebec surrendered on September 18, 1759, and by the next year New France had been conquered by the British after the attack on Montreal, which had refused to acknowledge the fall of Canada.

Drawing by a soldier of Wolfe's army depicting the easy climbing of soldiers

France formally ceded its North American land to the British in the Treaty of Paris, signed February 10, 1763. The following year, New France was renamed the Province of Quebec.

In 1774, the British Parliament passed the Quebec Act, giving recognition to French law, Catholic religion, and French language in the colony. The Quebec Act gave the Quebec people their first Charter of rights.

On January 25, 1791 the British Parliament passed the Constitutional Act, which split the old Province of Quebec into Upper Canada and Lower Canada.

Lower Canada gave black men the right to vote on March 24, 1837. However, public sentiment against extending the franchise to Blacks existed, and local conventions did prevent Black persons from voting. The prejudice and discrimination they faced affected Black peoples’ decision to attend polling stations.

The British North America Act of 1867 instituted home rule for most of British North America and established French-speaking Quebec (the former Lower Canada) as one of the original provinces of the Dominion of Canada.

The Flag of Quebec, also known as the Fleurdelisé, was first flown on January 21, 1948. This date is now celebrated as Quebec Flag Day to commemorate the adoption of this powerful symbol of provincial identity.

The Fleurdelisé, with its white fleur-de-lis on a blue background, was chosen through a public competition and quickly became a popular symbol of Quebec's distinct culture and heritage.

Flag of Quebec. 

During an official state visit to Canada on July 24, 1967, French President Charles de Gaulle declared to a crowd of over 100,000 in Montreal: "Vive le Québec libre!" ("Long live free Quebec!"). The statement, interpreted as support for Quebec independence, delighted many Quebecers but angered the Canadian government and many English Canadians.

Quebec incurred one-and-a-half billion Canadian dollars to host the Olympics in 1976 – the city took until 2006 to pay off the debt.

In a 1980 referendum the Quebec population rejected by a 60% vote the proposal from its government to move towards independence from Canada.

In 1995 Quebec held a second referendum to become independent of Canada – it was a close run thing this time, but the vote came in 50.58% against.

In 1998, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Quebec cannot legally secede from Canada without the federal government's approval.

FUN QUEBEC FACTS

Quebec is the largest of Canada's ten provinces by size.

Most of Quebec's inhabitants live along or close to the banks of the Saint Lawrence River. Not many people live in the north part of the province.

Quebec has the second-highest population of Canada's ten provinces, after Ontario.

Unlike the other provinces, most people in Quebec speak French (Canadian French) and French is the only official language. There is a strong French-language culture, which includes French-language magazines, newspapers, movies, television and radio shows.

In Quebec, both spouses keep their birth names after marriage and continue to exercise their civil rights under that name, meaning they must use their birth name in contracts, on credit cards, on their driver’s licence, and so on. This rule applies even if they were married outside Quebec.

Quebec is the world's largest producer of maple syrup, responsible for a whopping 70% of the world's supply.

Québec is one of the only places in the world where Pepsi outsells Coca-Cola.

Population

HISTORY

In 8000 BC there may not have been more than 8 million humans on earth.

The world population at the time of the birth of Christ has been estimated at about 300 million, which is just below the present US population.

In 1315 Bad weather and crop failures result in famines across north western Europe. Unsanitary conditions and malnutrition increase the death rate. Even after the revival of agricultural conditions, weather disasters reappeared. A mixture of war, famine and plague in the Late Middle Ages reduced the population by half.

At the time of the Black Death in the mid-14th century, the world population was only 370 million.

Miicrobiologist Anton van Leeuwenhoek calculated there was roughly 13.4 billion people back in 1679, based on the population density of his native Holland and its size relative to the rest of the globe.

The world population is estimated to have reached one billion in 1804, with two, three and four billion in 1927, 1960 and 1974 respectively.

July 11, 1987 was designated "The Day of Five Billion" by the United Nations, marking its estimate of the day on which the world's population would pass that figure. Matej Gašpar from Zagreb, Croatia (then SR Croatia, SFR Yugoslavia), was chosen as the symbolic 5-billionth person concurrently alive on Earth.

The proclaimed 6 billionth living human in the world was born on October 12, 1999. Shortly after midnight in Sarajevo, Bosnia, Fatima Nevic gave birth to a historic 8-pound boy. The United Nations Population Fund designated this Bosnian baby was the special six billionth human.

The United Nations declared October 31, 2011 to be 'The Day of Seven Billion' when the world population officially reached that figure. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon spoke at the United Nations building in New York City on this new milestone about the size of world population and the issues it raises.

The years taken for every billion people to be added to the world's population

Between 1960 and 2010, the world population rose from 3 billion to 6.8 billion. In other words, there has been more growth in population in the last fifty years than the previous 2 million years that humans have existed.

CURRENT POPULATION STATISTICS

Every minute the world's population increases by 146, with 249 births set against 103 deaths.

For every person that dies, 2.39 people are born.

Around the world, 107 baby boys are born for every 100 baby girls, but because women tend to live longer than men, in the total world population there are only about 101 men for every 100 women.

The total weight of the global population is 287 million tonnes, according to researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. About 18.5 million tonnes of this is down to people being overweight.

There are currently 1.8 billion young people, aged between 10 and 24- years-old.

Demographers say the average couple needs to have 2.1 children to keep the population steady. In Western Europe, that number had dropped to 1.4 by the late 1990s.

The total number of people who have ever lived was estimated by the Population Bureau in 2017 to be 108,470,690,115. The current world population is about 7.8 billion and increases by 2.3 people every second. These figures mean that about one fifteenth of all the people who have ever lived are alive today.

China, India, USA, Indonesia, Brazil and Pakistan account for half the world's people. More than one in three people are Chinese or Indian.

As a percentage of world population, China's population has declined from 37% to 19% since 1750.

Only 10% of the World’s population lives in the Southern Hemisphere.

If Earth's population was a village of precisely 100 people, there would be 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 from the Americas and 8 Africans.

Vatican City (800) and Nauru (9,378) are the states with the lowest populations.

If all the world's countries swapped land masses according to their population sizes, the US, Yemen, Brazil, and Ireland wouldn't move.

Source Daily Express