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ManchesterEngland Manchester is a city in the North West of England. The place is named from the old British name Mamucium plus ceaster, derived from the old Latin "Castra". Manchester is a metropolitan borough with city status. The city has a population of 437,000 and is situated in the county of Greater Manchester which has a population of 2,539,000. It is one of England's core cities and is regarded by some as England's second city, a title also claimed by Birmingham. Geography and climate Manchester is located on the River Irwell and at the foot of the southern slope of a range of hills. It has some geographic features which were influential in its early development as an industrial city. These are its proximity to a sea port at Liverpool, the availability of water power and nearby coal reserves. Manchester has a damp climate and a reputation as a rainy city. The average annual rainfall is 809mm, meaning that this reputation is relatively undeserved. This total is less than Plymouth, Cardiff, Glasgow, and Edinburgh for example. In international terms, Manchester receives substantially less rain than New York City, which receives 1200mm of rain in an average year and the average annual rainfall total is comparable with that of Rome. Manchester has been at the forefront of scientific and technological research since the beginning of the industrial revolution. At Manchester University in 1917 (reported 1919) Ernest Rutherford (b. Brightwater, N.Z. 1871) "split the atom", having previously with colleagues Hans Geiger (inventor, with Müller, of the Geiger Counter) and Ernest Marsden helped discover the existence of the atomic nucleus. Whilst at Manchester Rutherford was awarded the 1908 Nobel prize for Chemistry. The University of Manchester was at the forefront of computer research after the second world war. In 1948 F. C. Williams and Tom Kilburn of the Electrical Engineering Department built the the world's first stored-program computer (a true universal computer, where changing a program would take minutes rather than days). These practical developments were accompanied by important theoretical contributions by Alan Turing. At 11.20 am on Saturday 15 June 1996 the IRA detonated a large bomb in the city centre. The consequent reconstruction spurred a massive regeneration of the city centre, with complexes such as the Printworks and the Triangle creating new city focal points for both shopping and entertainment. The city has twice failed in its bid to host the Olympic Games, losing to Atlanta in 1996 and Sydney in 2000. Places of interest Manchester has a wide variety of buildings from Victorian architecture through to modern. Much of the architecture in the city harks back to its former days as a global centre for the cotton trade. Many warehouses have now been converted for other uses but the external appearance remains mostly unchanged so the city maintains much of its original character. Structures of interest The Corn Exchange (now the Triangle shopping centre) The G-Mex Centre Imperial War Museum North by Daniel Libeskind and Lowry Footbridge Beetham Tower, due for completion in 2006 John Rylands Library, Deansgate London Road Fire Station and many others External links
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (see Copyrights for details). About Wikipedia Disclaimers This information was correct in November 2005. E. & O.E. Sarolta and I visited this place during our trip around the British Isles in 1978. You can click on
these photos for an enlargement.
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