GOTHAM - BATMAN'S VIOLENT HOMETOWN / GOTHAM - Violenta ciudad natal y hogar de Batman.

Hi my dear friends, are you fond of comics? Today we are going to know a bit more about BATMAN and his violent hometown "GOTHAM".

Hola mis queridos amigos,¿sois aficionados a los comics? Hoy vamos a saber un poquito más sobre Batman y su violenta ciudad natal "GOTHAM".

Info:  Speak Up Magazine.
Photos: allposters.es / lists.20.minutos/ comics.books.com

GOTHAM CITY  /  BATMAN'S VIOLENT HOME

GANGS

Like all Batman movies, "The Dark Knight Rises" is set in Gotham City.  Gotham City is a major economic centre located on the northeast coast of America. It has major industries such as Ace Chemical Processing, Incorporated.  This is where the Joker fell into a vat of chemicals. There is the Diamond District, famous for its jewellers.  This district was ruled by the Penguin.  The Penguin also dominated the celebrated Fashion District.  Then there is the East End, where Italian and Irish criminals fight for control.  This is also the location of Crime Alley, where Batman's parents were murdered.


THE BATCAVE

Another important landmark is Arkham Asylum. Gotham's insane super villains are imprisoned here. In contrast, we can go uptown to Gotham Heights. Here we find Wayne Manor, a stylish country home. Bruce Wayne (Batman's real name) lives here. It is also, of course, the location of Batman's famous base, the Batcave.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

Is Gotham City based on New York?  Well, Gotham City is one of New York's nicknames.  In the 19th century the writer Washington Irving compared New York to a corrupt English village, Gotham in Nottinghamshire.  The people of this village pretended to suffer from a dangerous plague.  In this way they avoided visits from the taxman.  Irving was writing about the corruption of New York.


OR CHICAGO?

Many New York businesses adopted Gotham as their name.  Batman writer Bill Finger remembers: "Originally, I liked the names Civic City, Capital City and Coast City. Then I saw the name Gotham Jewellers in a New York phonebook. That was it: Gotham City!"

Finger didn't call it New York City because he wanted everyone to identify with the story.  Ironically director Christopher Nolan chose Chicago as the main location for his film "The Dark Knight Rises".

GOTHAM CITY'S HISTORY

Gotham City's history is very similar to that of New York City.
It was founded by a Norwegian mercenary.  Later the English took control of the City.

New York City was founded by the Dutch. It was originally called New Amsterdam. During the American Revolutionary War, Gotham City was the location of an important battle. Gotham City appears in other DC comics:  the story of this battle takes place in the Tomahawk series, for example, New York was the site of the Battle of Brooklyn in 1776.

On the other hand, Gotham City has suffered terrible disasters. The city was hit by a virus called the Clench. The city survived, but immediately after this, there was a terrible earthquake. It measured 7.6 on the  Richter Scale.


THE ORIGIN OF THE NAME

Gotham was a village in a farming region in Nottinghamshire. The name Gotham comes from Old English: "gat" was goat and "ham" was home. So Gotham means "goat home!" (goat farm)
   
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VOCABULARY
-TO WOUND: herir.
-TO SHOUT: gritar.
-MAJOR: importante.
-VAT: cuba, tanque.
-CHEMICAL: sustancia química.
-TO RULE: controlar, gobernar.
-LANDMARK: lugar emblemático.
-INSANE: loco.
-NICKNAME: apodo.
-TAXMAN: recaudador de impuestos.
-DUTCH: holandés.
-GOAT: cabra.


I HOPE YOU'LL LIKE THIS POST ABOUT GOTHAM CITY!

SEE YOU!!!

CURIOUS NEWS - LIVING IN A DREAM / NOTICIAS CURIOSAS - VIVIENDO EN UN SUEÑO.

Hi my dear friends, from time to time we read or listen to curious news or information. Today we're going to look at some of these curious things.

Hola mis queridos amigos, de vez en cuando leemos o escuchamos información o noticias curiosas. Hoy vamos a ver algunas de estas cosas curiosas.  


Info: Speak Up magazine.
Photos: psiquicos.org / makeuseofcom / amazon.es / huffingtonpost.co.uk/ newsweek.com

LIVING IN A DREAM

If you have ever experienced a lucid dream, that is, a dream that you knowingly experience and control, then you will be aware of its potential benefits.  In an attempt to potentially trigger such a dream, an online community surveyed its users, who reported being more likely to have a lucid dream after the morning alarm had been switched off.  This led to a study which found that you are more likely to have a lucid dream if you're woken up during the late stages of sleep and then drift back off again.  If you want to test out this theory  my advice would be to set two alarms -just in case.

SAFE AND SECURE WALLET

A mini safe wallet designed by Ögon Designs allows you to carry and protect your most valuable personal effects: cash, credit cards, driver's licence...
The CODE WALLET features a 3 digit locking code and RFID blocking technology designed to deter pickpockets while also protecting your contactless cards from electronic data theft.

NATURAL REMINDER

The death of a loved one is devastating, but BIOS URN offer a way of creating a natural homage and reminder of that person.
The Bios Incube acts as an urn, an incubator and a plantpot. It containes a seed that, nourished by human ashes, cultivates a tree which will grow in the name of your loved one.
www.urnabios.com

KEEPING WINE

Company Kuvée claims to have designed a bottle that keeps wine oxygen-free and so "fresh" for up to 30 days.
It consists of a sealed capsule with a valve that replaces the cork. An outer, sealed valve opens when a pin punctures it and reseals again after the wine has been poured.

COMFY CRUTCH

A crutch by Mobility Design, bids to improve a user's quality of life by making crutches more comfortable.
The M&D crutch has flexible armbands that hold it to the arm, allowing the crutch to be used hands free, while concentrating the body weight on the elbows not on the armpits.

                                             


VOCABULARY

-KNOWLINGLY:  a sabiendas.
-TO TRIGGER: desencadernar.
-TO DRIFT...AGAIN: volver a dormirse.
-TO TEST OUT: comprobar.
-TO SET: poner.
-TO DETER: impedir, disuadir.
-PICKPOCKET: carterista.
-REMINDER: recuerdo.
-PLANTPOT: maceta.
-SEED: semilla.
-ASHES: cenizas.
-COMFY: cómodo.
-CRUTCH: muleta.
-TO BID: pretender.
-TO HOLD: ajustar, sujetar.
-ELBOW: codo.
-ARMPIT: axilar.


SEE YOU MY FRIENDS!!!

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK - THE OLDEST NATIONAL PARK IN THE US / PARQUE YELLOWSTONE - EL PARQUE NACIONAL MÁS ANTIGUO DE ESTADOS UNIDOS.

Hi my dear friends, today we are going to know a bit more about National Parks and especially about the oldest National Park in the  USA :  "YELLOWSTONE".

Hola mis queridos amigos, hoy vamos a conocer un poquito más sobre Parques Nacionales y especialmente sobre el Parque  Nacional más antiguo de Estados Unidos: "Yellowstone".

Information: from Speak Up magazine.
Photos: alpinehouse.com  /  yellowstonenationalpark.com  / yellowstonepark.com / largestnationalpark.com

THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

Millions of children love Yogi Bear.  This popular cartoon character was on TV for the first time in 1958, and has been in many comic books, TV shows and films.  He lives in Jellystone Park and often steals picnic baskets from the park's visitors, to the disapproval of Park Ranger Smith.  But did you know that the cartoon is based on a real place and on real people?

THE OLDEST PARK

The place is Yellowstone National Park, which is the oldest national park in the US.  The people are the National Park Service Rangers, or simply park rangers. They work for the National Park Service (NPS), a US government agency that protects all of the country's national parks.  The NPS was 100 years old on August 25th last year so that was an important year in its history.

NATIVE AMERICANS

Before Yellowstone became a national park, it was simply another area of land in North America, situated over the biggest supervolcano on the continent. For 11,000 years, Native Americans lived there alone. Then in the early 1800s, explorers from Europe began to go there and document what they saw : hot springs, geysers, canyons, forests, rivers and animals, including of course bears like Yogi!

THE PRESIDENT

In 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant officialy named this area of almost 3,500 square miles in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, Yellowstone National Park.  A national park is an area that the government protects and preserves for public enjoyment. Today there are 59 national parks in the US, and many other protected monuments and properties.

PARK RANGERS

So who's going to protect and preserve those millions of acres? The answer is:  park rangers. If you go to any national park in the US, they will probably be among the first people you see. They are indenfifiable by their iconic uniform, which includes a grey shirt, green pants and a hat. Their job is to educate people and enforce the law by helping visitors, for instance, and ensuring that they obey the rules.

VOLUNTEERS OF AMERICA

If you want to become a park ranger, you must have a bachelor's degree or one year of pertinent work experience. You must also do special training.  Most people who are interested in the job begin by volunteering at a national park. Each year, more than 85,000 volunteers do more than three million hours of work in US national parks, so their role is also very important.

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THE TOP FIVE MAGNIFICENT NATIONAL PARKS IN THE US

-YOSEMITE National Park (California)
-GRAND CANYON National Park (Arizona)
-CARLSBAD CAVERNS National Park (New Mexico)
-GLACIER National Park (Montana)
-HAWAII VOLCANOES National Park (Hawaii)


DANGER!!!!

In general, national parks are very safe but accidents sometimes happen.

In April 2015 a 29-year-old man from Nevada tragically died after he fell 120 metres into the Grand Canyon.

In August, a French couple died of heat exhaustion while hiking in the desert at White Sands National Monument, New Mexico.

Three days later, a grizzly bear killed a 63-year-old man in Yellowstone National Park.

But the biggest killer seems to be water. According to the National Park Service, 34 per cent of all deaths in the parks are caused by drowning, followed by falls (14 per cent) and motor vehicle accidents (12 per cent)

NATURAL AND CURIOUS FACTS

**Forget forests and desert:  New York's Statue of Liberty and Alcatraz Island off the coast of San Francisco are also officially National Parks.

**Sequoia National Park, California is home to the largest living singlestem tree (one trunk only) in the world, the wonderfully named "General Sherman".  The tree is 84 m tall.

**The biggest park is Wrangell-St Elias in Alaska.  It covers an area larger than Switzerland.

**Poor Delaware!! It's the only state in the country not to have a national park, monument or any other site in the federal system.

**White Sands National Monument in New Mexico contains the largest gypsum dune fields in the world. But because the park lies adjacent to a military installation, it is often closed to the public.

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Alaska

EXERCISES
1 Choose the noun from the list that best fits the gap.
explorers  /  characters  /  programmes  /  parks  /  rangers  /  volunteers

a) Yogi Bear is one of the most popular cartoon _______ in the US.
b) The country has 59 national _______ of which Yellowstone is the oldest.
c) These are protected and preserved by the park __________, who work for the NPS.
d) They are joined by thousands of _________many in the hope of a permanent job.
e) Yellowstone was first documented by European _______ in the early 1800s.
f) A series of special ______ was planned to celebrate the NPS's 100th anniversary.

2 Park rangers have different responsibilities. Match these duties fo their meanings.

Protect        a) defend
Preserve      b) maintain
Enforce       c) uphold
                    d) apply
                    e) administer
                    f) shield
                    g) impose
                    h) sustain
                    i) guard

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VOCABULARY
-SPRING: manantial.
-GYPSUM:  yeso.
-ENJOYMENT: disfrute.
-PANTS: pantalones (en inglés americano)
-TO ENFORCE:  hacer cumplir.
-LAW: ley
-BACHELOR'S DEGREE: licenciatura, grado.
-HEAT EXHAUSTION: golpe de calor.
-TO HIKE: ir de excursión, hacer una caminata.
-TO DROWN: ahogarse.

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SOLUTIONS TO THE EXERCISES.

Exercise 1  a) characters  b) parks  c) rangers  d) volunteers  e) explorers  f) programmes
Exercise 2  PROTECT:  defend, shield, guard.  PRESERVE: maintain, uphold, sustain. ENFORCE: apply, administer, impose.


HAVE A NICE DAY MY FRIENDS!

HAVE YOU EVER VISITED YELLOWSTONE PARK?