Ruby Throated Hummingbird

Manresa Island is a former island located in Norwalk, Connecticut, at the mouth of Norwalk Harbor in the Long Island Sound. The earliest name for the landform was Boutons Island, which dates to 1664. By the 19th century, the island had been purchased by John H. Keyser, who lived there and cultivated rare vegetation. He built a causeway in 1860, connecting the island to the mainland of South Norwalk. This gave rise to the name Keyser Island, which was sold to the Jesuits toward the end of the century.

In the 1950s, Connecticut Light & Power constructed a coal-fired power plant on the land. Over the years, the company filled in much of the tidal flats surrounding the island with coal ash, greatly increasing the size of the island from its original 23 acres (9.3 hectares) to 144 acres (58 hectares), and leading to significant ground pollution. In 1972, the plant was converted to burn fuel oil, and an oil spill occurred, damaging the surrounding environment. The plant was sold to NRG Energy in 1999, and was severely damaged by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, leading to its permanent closure in 2013. A portion of the land today is an undeveloped and ecologically important marine habitat. (Full article...)

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• During World War I, the German Army produced shale oil from Yarmouk oil shale deposits in Jordan to operate the Hijazi Railway (pictured)?

• Dennis Spurgeon, formerly chief operating officer at uranium supplier USEC Inc., became the United States Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy in 2006?

• Japan Canada Oil Sands Limited was the first offshore oil company to exploit the Athabasca oil sands in Canada?

• Teesside Power Station is the largest combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) plant in Europe.?

• The Klaipėda Geothermal Demonstration Plant in Lithuania was the first geothermal plant in the Baltic Sea region?

• Hitachi Zosen Corporation built the first oil tanker in Japan in 1908 per an order by Standard Oil Company?

• Coalbed methane is a form of natural gas extracted from coal beds?

• When constructed in 1906, the Baku–Batumi pipeline was the world's longest kerosene pipeline?

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James Clerk Maxwell (13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) was a Scottish mathematician and theoretical physicist. His most significant achievement was formulating a set of equations – eponymously named Maxwell's equations – that for the first time expressed the basic laws of electricity and magnetism in a unified fashion. Maxwell's contributions to physics are considered by many to be of the same magnitude as those of Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein.

Maxwell studied natural philosophy, moral philosophy, and mental philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, before graduating in mathematics at the University of Cambridge, where he would conduct much of his career. He built on Michael Faraday's work on magnetic induction, using elements of geometry and algebra to demonstrate that electric and magnetic fields travel through space, in the form of waves, and at the constant speed of light. Finally, in 1861, Maxwell proposed that light consisted of undulations in the same medium that is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena. In the same year he was elected to the Royal Society.

In 1864, Maxwell presented what are now known as Maxwell's equations to the Royal Society. These collectively describe the behaviour of both the electric and magnetic fields, as well as their interactions with matter.

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