Portal:Geography
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Geography (from Greek: γεωγραφία, geographia. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth description") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. The first recorded use of the word γεωγραφία was as a title of a book by Greek scholar Eratosthenes (276–194 BC). Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding of Earth and its human and natural complexities—not merely where objects are, but also how they have changed and come to be. While geography is specific to Earth, many concepts can be applied more broadly to other celestial bodies in the field of planetary science. One such concept, the first law of geography, proposed by Waldo Tobler, is "everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things." Geography has been called "the world discipline" and "the bridge between the human and the physical sciences." (Full article...)
In this month
- 1 January 2006 – University of Oklahoma College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences started, when it and the College of Earth and Energy were spun off of the old College of Geosciences
- 12 January 2001 – National Geographic Channel launched in the United States
- 25 January 1983 – Creation of the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (pictured) in Mexico
- 27 January 1888 – Formation of the National Geographic Society


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Caspar David Friedrich (5 September 1774 – 7 May 1840) was a 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation. He is best known for his mid-period allegorical landscapes, which typically feature contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies, morning mists, barren trees or Gothic ruins. His primary interest was the contemplation of nature, and his often symbolic and anti-classical work seeks to convey a subjective, emotional response to the natural world. Friedrich's paintings characteristically set a human presence in diminished perspective amid expansive landscapes, reducing the figures to a scale that, according to the art historian Christopher John Murray, directs "the viewer's gaze towards their metaphysical dimension".
Friedrich was born in the town of Greifswald on the Baltic Sea in what was at the time Swedish Pomerania. He studied in Copenhagen until 1798, before settling in Dresden. He came of age during a period when, across Europe, a growing disillusionment with materialistic society was giving rise to a new appreciation of spirituality. This shift in ideals was often expressed through a reevaluation of the natural world, as artists such as Friedrich, J. M. W. Turner and John Constable sought to depict nature as a "divine creation, to be set against the artifice of human civilization". (Full article...)Did you know
- ... that although Constance Kies was a nutrition scientist, she majored in English, and minored in history, geography, library science, and home economics?
- ... that glaciation in Wisconsin 17 thousand years ago helped create its unique geography?
- ... that Johann Reinhold Forster's 1778 book Observations Made During a Voyage Round the World has been described as "the beginning of modern geography"?
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