Cohens v Virginia was an important American legal case, heard before the US Supreme Court, and decided in 1821. In 1820, P J and M J Cohen were presented before the Quarter Sessions Court at Norfolk for selling lottery tickets in defiance of the statute of the State prohibiting such sales. The Cohens appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States against the fine imposed by the Virginiacourt, pleading the legality of their sale under the 'Act to amend the charter of the city of Washington', passed by Congress in 1812, which permitted the drawing of lotteries. The attorney for Virginia denied the jurisdiction of the court, because a State was defendant and because in cases in which States were parties its jurisdiction was original and not appellate. But the court decided that the EleventhAmendment did not apply, and that in constitutional cases it had always appellate jurisdiction. Research Cohens V Virginia
The ISO (International Standards Organisation) assigns a two character code to each country name. These codes are used by Internet 'whois' databases (these two character abbreviations are the whois country codes) and also other applications.
The Emancipation Proclamation was a proclamation reluctantly issued by President Abraham Lincoln in the US on January 1st 1863. During the first eighteen months of the Civil War President Abraham Lincoln had listened unmoved to the clamouring of abolitionists for an emancipation proclamation. He declared he would preserve the Union without freeing the slaves, if such a thing were possible. However, on September the 22nd 1862, he issued a preliminary proclamation that, unless the inhabitants of the revolted States returned to their allegiance by January 1, the slaves should be declared free. This had no effect. January 1, 1863, the proclamation was issued declaring the freedom of slaves in all the States which had seceded except forty-eight counties of West Virginia, seven counties in Virginia, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth, and thirteen parishes of Louisiana, including New Orleans. These districts were practically under the control of the Union army. Abraham Lincoln expected the proclamation to take effect gradually. Its legal effect has been disputed, its practical effect was enormous. Research Emancipation Proclamation
Enamel is a vitreous glaze of various colours fused to the surface of gold, silver, copper, and other substances. The art of enamelling, which is of great antiquity, was practised by the Assyrians and by the Egyptians, from whom it may have passed into Greece, and thence into Rome and its provinces, including Great Britain, where various Roman antiquities with enamelled ornamentation have been discovered. The enamelled gold cup given by King John to the corporation of Lynn, in Norfolk, proves that the art was known among the Normans. The Byzantines of the 10th century produced excellent cloisonne enamels on a gold base, the cloisonne process consisting in tracing the design in fillets of gold upon the gold plate and filling up the small moulds thus formed with enamels the design appearing in coloured enamels separated by thin gold partitions or cloisons. In some cases, however, the enamels were filled into hollows beaten out in the gold plate, which formed part of the field.
In the 12th century the town of Limoges acquired the high reputation for inlaid enamels which it held until the 14th century, aud re-acquired in the 16th for its painted enamels. The costliness of the sculptured ground had led the Italians early in the 14th century to substitute the practice of incising the design on the face of the plate, and then covering it with a transparent enamel. The further step, which made the Limousin workshops famous, consisted in the method of superficial enamelling, in which opaque colours or colours laid on a white opaque ground were used. The Limoges school degenerated greatly in the 17th century, but its method with certain modifications in detail is still employed.
The basis of all kinds of enamel is a perfectly transparent and fusibleglass, which is rendered either semitransparent or opaque by the admixture of metallic oxides. White enamels are composed by melting the oxide of tin with glass, and adding a small quantity of manganese or phosphate of calcium to increase the brilliancy of the colour. The addition of the oxide of lead, or antimony, or oxide of silver, produces a yellow enamel. Reds are formed by copper, and by an intermixture of the oxides of gold and iron. Greens, violets, and blues are formed from the oxides of copper, cobalt, and iron.
In the middle of the 18th century enamelling was largely applied to the decoration of snuff-boxes, tea-canisters, candlesticks, and other small articles. Of later years it was extensively applied to the coating of iron vessels for domestic purposes, the protection of the insides of baths, cisterns, and boilers, and the like. Enamelling in colours upon iron was common, iron plates being thus treated by means of various mixtures, and words and designs of various kinds being permanently fixed upon them by stencilling, for advertising, signboards, etc.
Gonville and Caiss College is a college of Cambridge University. It was founded in 1358 by Edmund Gonville, of Terrington, Norfolk. In 1558 Dr. Caius obtained the royal charter by which all the former foundations were confirmed and his own foundation was established. By this charter the college was thenceforth to be called Gonville and Caius College. Research Gonville and Caius College
Ket's Rebellion was a revolt in July 1549 instigated by William Ket, a tanner, of Wymondham, Norfolk. He demanded the abolition of enclosures and the dismissal of evil counsellors. The insurgents amounted to 20,000 men, but were quickly defeated by the earl of Warwick. More than 2000 were killed, and Ket and some others were tried and hanged. Research Ket's Rebellion
Lakes are accumulations of water in hollows on the earth's surface. When they are drained by rivers their waters are fresh, but when they have no outlet they are salty, e.g. the Dead Sea, Sea of Aral, etc.
Lakes may owe their origin to:
Barriers across a river valley hold back the water, which forms a lake. Such barriers may be of various types. (a) Sometimes artificial barriers of concrete and masonry are built across a valley so as to make a lake which can act as a reservoir for the water-supply of a large city, e.g. LakeVyrnwy for Liverpool. (b) A glacier may deposit a mass of morainic material across a valley. In this way the lakes of the Lake District and many of the Scottish lakes were formed. (c) A landslip may occur. A lake was formed thus in the Upper GangesValley in 1892. Two years later the landslip dam gave way, and disastrous floods occurred downstream. (d) Oxbow lakes are formed from the meanders of rivers. The deposition of silt at the two ends of the 'oxbow' closes the channel between the main river and its old loop. Many oxbow lakes border the River Murray in Australia, and the lower Mississippi. (e) Sometimes a lavastream may flow across a valley and cause the formation of a lake, e.g. LakeTaupo in New Zealand. (f) Sometimes large estuaries are partially filled with silt. In the portions not so filled are large shallow lagoons. Such lagoons are found in deltaic areas. The NorfolkBroads are portions of an old river estuary. (g) When a silt-laden stream enters a lake its speed is checked and a barrier or delta is built across the lake splitting it into two portions. This has happened in the Lake District, where Keswick stands in the alluvial flats between Lakes Bassenthwaite and Derwentwater, and in Switzerland, where Interlaken is situated in the flats between Lakes Thun and Brienz. (h) The action of the sea often causes an accumulation of sand and pebbles which cuts off a lagoon of sea water. The Fleet in Dorset is such a lagoon, cut off from the sea by Chesil Bank, a long pebble beach which joins Portland Island to the mainland.
The nehrungs of East Prussia are sand-spits which enclose the shallow salt-water lagoons or halls, such as Kurische Haff. Earth movements cause lakeformation when subsidence occurs. This is most easily seen in rift valleys. Examples of riftvalley lakes are the Dead Sea, Lakes Nyasa and Tanganyika in Africa, and LakeTorrens in Australia. These are all long, narrow, and very deep lakes.
In Cheshire, the removal of underground beds of salt has caused subsidence resulting in the 'meres' of the Weaver Valley. The 'folding' of the earth across the line of a river valley may partially block a river and help to form a lake. The study of a good physical map will reveal the connection between mountain building and the formation of LakeGeneva and LakeConstance in Switzerland. Where there are large areas of depressed lowland wide and shallow lakes are formed in the lowest part of the depression, for example the Sea of Aral in Asiatic Russia, LakeBalaton in Hungary, and LakeEyre in Australia. Ice sheets and valley glaciers may scoop out hollows to form 'rock basins'. Mountain tarns and corrie lakes in North Wales and Scotland have been formed in this way. Water also accumulates in the hollows of unevenly- distributed glacial drift. Such are the lakes of East Prussia, and also those of the Cheshire-Shropshire borders near Ellesmere. Subsidence of the land surface and consequent lakeformation may be directly related to volcanic action. Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland is a shallow lake formed by subsidence of this type. Lakes are often formed by the accumulation of water in the craters of extinct volcanoes, for example the Laachersee in the Eifel region of Germany. Research Lakes
The Pilgrimage of Grace was a popular uprising which occurred in 1536, as a reaction to the dissolution of the monasteries. In the barren north, where towns were few and far between, the monks were still popular. In Yorkshire they had been the only people to dispense hospitality to the wandering beggar and the ordinary traveller. The work of the Cistercians, too, as sheep-farmers, was a benefit to a country where agriculture was difficult; and it was feared that the dissolution of the larger abbeys (like Fountains) was only a matter of time. A lawyer called Robert Aske mustered the rebels on Skipworth Moor, and then took possession of York; the expelled monks were restored to their monasteries.
The king then sent the Duke of Norfolk to Yorkshire, but when the latter reached Doncaster he found the rising too formidable to risk a battle. So he adopted the usual expedient in such cases - a general promise of a pardon if the rebels would submit, and this was successful for the time being. But a further outbreak in 1537 caused the king to act with a ferocity congenial to his temper. 'You shall in any wise', he wrote to his agents, 'cause such dreadful execution to be done upon a good number of the inhabitants of every town, village and hamlet...as well by the hanging of them up in trees or by the quartering of them, and the setting of their heads and quarters in every town great or small, as they may be a fearful spectacle to others hereafter that they would practise any like matter.' The leaders and no less than twelve abbots were hanged for their part in the rebellion, and that was the end of the Pilgrimage of Grace. Research Pilgrimage of Grace
Adam's Pearmain is a late dessert apple, probably from Norfolk, which was a Victorian favourite because of its rich aromatic flavour and crisp texture. It was widely grown in the nineteenth century, when fruiterers ' always paid good prices because it was attractive for windows'. The pear shaped fruits are of a medium size and can be stored until March. The vigorous trees have a spreading habit and pretty blossom. Research Adam's Pearmain
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Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Cohens V Virginia
