Oldham is a large town in Greater Manchester, England. It lies amid the Pennines on elevated ground between the rivers Irk and Medlock. Oldham is surrounded by several smaller towns which together form the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham, of which Oldham is the administrative centre. Historically a part of Lancashire, and with little early history to speak of, Oldham rose to prominence during the 19th century as an international centre of textile manufacture. It was a boomtown of the Industrial Revolution, and among the first ever industrialised towns, rapidly becoming "one of the most important centres of cotton and textile industries in England". At its zenith, it was the most productive cotton spinningmill town in the world, spinning more cotton than France and Germany combined. Oldham's textile industry began to fall into decline during the mid-20th century, and its last mill closed in 1998. The demise of textile processing in Oldham depressed the local economy. Today Oldham is a predominantly residential town, and a centre for further education and the performing arts. It is, however, still distinguished architecturally by the surviving cotton mills and other buildings associated with that industry. (more...)
The Réunion stonechat (Saxicola tectes) is a species of stonechat in the family Muscicapidae, the Old World flycatchers. It is found across the French Indian Ocean island of Réunion in forests, shrublands, and artificial environments such as gardens and plantations. The Réunion stonechat is a member of the common stonechat superspecies, but it is distinct, together with its closest relative the Madagascar stonechat, from the rest of that group being insular derivatives of the African stonechat. The male is black above and white below, with a white supercilium (sometimes absent), half-collar, covert patch, and a variable-sized orange patch on the breast. Females differ from males in being browner above, more buff-toned below, and often lacking the white greater covert patch. This male Réunion stonechat was photographed in La Roche Écrite, south of the Réunion capital Saint-Denis.
... that a poem by Moses da Rieti includes an encyclopedia of the sciences, a Jewish paradise fantasy, and a post-biblical history of Jewish literature?
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