The Life Of Harriet Tubman

Araminta Ross was born into the world on 1819 in Dorchester Maryland. Oblivious to the world around her, she was going to be born into a life of slavery. Her name was the first names of her parents, and she was descended from pure African ancestry. Her years as an infant passed very quickly, and those days of playing were now far behind. As soon as Araminta turned 6, her life changed very quickly. The days were now only for brutally hard work, and she was whipped and forced to sleep and work in the bitter cold of winter, or the harsh heat of summer. Araminta would try and crawl in front of the fire to keep herself warm, and sometimes in dire weather, she would wait for the fire to reduce to cinders, and put her toes in the ashes as an attempt to stop frostbite. T the current time, Araminta resided with her grandmother who was too old for the harsh slave labour.

Instead of being sent to the fields to do work, Araminta was lent to a man named Edward Brodas, he was a cruel master, who often beat for screwing up the sewing, or slacking off. At one point, Edward forced Araminta to check all the Musk-Rat traps, and because of this extremely unhygienic work, she caught the measles. Because of this Edward sent Araminta back, because he said she was an uncompetent worker. Almost immediately after she recovered, she was sent to another owner, for the chores of Babysitting, and housekeeping. During this time, she was beat a lot, and it wasn't much better then her last master Edward. In the end though, Araminta was given back, because she ate a sugar cube that belonged to her mistress.

At this time Araminta had turned 11, and she would be given her proper name, which was Harriet (her mother's name) Ross. But as life on the cotton fields were harsh, they were not unbearable. Another disaster struck though, as Harriet was 12, she was seriously injured by a blow to the head by a heavy object, that a white overseer threw at her because she refused to help tie up a man trying to escape. Because of this Harriet had many lapses and moments where she seemed to drift away, it was said that she suffered from "Temporal Lobe epilepsy". And she claimed that while she was having her seizures, god was sending her messages. For, Harriet was a very religious woman, as she learned from her grandmother.
In 1844, she married a free black man by the name of John Tubman. But unfortunately he did not share her dream of getting all slaves free. Because Harriet was told that in the north, there was no more slavery, a dream which she had since she was a child. He told her, that she was going for something too big. So after much debate, Harriet realized that she had to leave her husband, and left for Philadelphia in 1849.
To help Harriet a kind white abolitionist assisted her in her trip, by giving her instructions on how to get each safe house. Ideas such as hiding underneath a sack in a wagon was one of them.
After Harriet finally reached her destination, she was paid and given shelter by members of the Underground Railroad. Where she would help slaves escape into safety. Here she even met William Still, who was a renowned Underground Railroad master. With the help of her new allies, Harriet quickly learned all about the Underground Railroad, and the in the following year of 1850, she helped her first lot of slaves escape, and they were her sister's oldest son and his family. To accomplish this task successfully, they would have to remain unseen and unnoticed. To do this Harriet told her friends to board a fishing boat that would lead to Chesapeake Bay, where Harriet would meet them at Boskin's Point and guide them to a safe-house in Pennsylvania, and finally getting them to their free ground of Philadelphia.


After this rescue, and many others, all the members of the Underground Railroad realized how quick and efficient Harriet was and made her an official conductor of the Underground Railroad. As she gained this title, she was granted the knowledge of all the routes and pathways that the Underground Railroad possessed leading to slave free territory. But with great power comes great responsibility, and she made to swear an oath to never reveal anything about the Underground Railroad.


However. The 1850 Slave Fugitive act was passed, and this made it illegal for any person, not mattering if they were a free citizen, would make things a lot harder for the members of the Underground Railroad, so they had to make sure that everything doubly as safe as per usual, and had to move the slaves to Canada instead of Philadelphia.
So at this point, Harriet decided to go get her husband John Tubman to move back with her to Canada, but same as always John had said, there was nothing wrong about the South and remarried in Harriet's absence. So Harriet left, rejected back to her only home, the society of the Underground Railway up North. As Harriet returned home, a new job with Garrett had to be done.


As they reached Garrett's house there were many more run-aways then expected, but Harriet did not back down. In the process of getting the passengers to safety she gave a baby sedative to make sure it's cries did not attract any unwanted attention on the way to Pennsylvania. Here they gathered money and sent the escaped slaves to Canada.
In the Winter of 1852 Harriet returned to the US to help some more slaves to escape. She returned to Maryland, where it was soon renamed the "Land Of Egypt to freedom" and Harriet from here on gained the nickname of "Moses".
Harriet had a legacy to never leave anyone behind, and in one severe case where a man wanted to give up and turn back, Harriet actually pointed a gun at the man's head, and said:
"You're going to die a free man, or I'll kill you right now"
the man quickly shut up after this. Around this time Harriet had a huge bounty of $40,000 on her head, and another $12,000 in Maryland alone.


Sometime in the spring of 1857, Harriet decided to go on a daring rescue to rescue her father Ben Ross, and set off in the broad daylight even with the huge price on her head.
In 1860, Harriet helped 7 more slaves escape to Canada. This was her last rescue as conductor of the Underground Railroad, and in her career, she rescued of 300 slaves, she made 19 trips from South to North, to Canada.
and she never lost a passenger.

In 1861, the Civil war came upon and Harriet soon got caught amidst the action, here she played the roll of Nurse, Spy and Slave rescuer again. She would regularly treat wounded soldiers with herbs and roots that she knew were helpful, and some how Harriet never caught any disease from them. She also rescued over 500 slaves at once at the Combahee River Raid.

After all of this action, in 1869 Harriet was denied payment for her wartime service, and left back to Auburn and married a man named Nelson Davis. And after this they lived a quiet 19 years of good marriage, until Nelson died. After this Harriet was left alone in the world, and she took the view of two things that she had a right to : liberty or death. So she went a built a home for the elderly with friends such as William and Frances Seward. Here she worked, until her death in 1913. When she passed away she gave ownership of her home to a church, and she was buried with military rights in Fort Hill. And a year after her death a 1-day memorial was held in her honour in Auburn.

Harriet Tubman, was truly an inspirational hero.

Bibliography
http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/0history/hwny-tubman.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Tubman
http://www.nyhistory.com/harriettubman/life.htm
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1535.html

Canadian Economy

Canada is second only to Russia in being the largest in the world. It is also the 8th largest economy in the world. With this it is one of the worlds wealthiest country, therefor of course making it one of the developed economies.

Canada has a variety of natural resources and the main ones are: gold, nickel, uranium, diamonds and lead. However different regions specialize in different kinds of resources as shown below:

British Columbia- Forestry
Alberta - Oil Industry
Newfoundland - Oil Industry
Labrador- Oil Industry
Northern Ontario- mining
Atlantic Provinces- fishing

However, these resources are becoming less and less important to the Canadian economy, as only 4% of all Canadians are employed under these fields. These fields also only provide 6% of the GDP for Canada, although several of Canada's largest companies are based around natural resources e.g. EnCana, Cameco, Goldcorp etc...

The sectors in the Canadian economy that are the largest employers are the:

Retail employers(12% of all Canadians) which is like Super-Markets and chain stores
Business services(just under 12%), which is financial services, real estate and communications
Education and Health(?) these two sectors are Canada's largest employers, however they are currently under the scheme/scope of the government, this sector is growing quite rapidly as well and can pose problems to the government because it would mean more spending funds into schools and educational services.

Canada is a mixed economy. This means that the government makes all the decisions as if to add new hospitals, schools or change the price of tax, but the citizens of the country can effect decisions and adapt to the change fairly well. Mixed economies such as Canada are very effective because they combine the benefits of a planned/capitalist and unplanned economy.

Canada has many resources to choose from, the country being so big. Yet the two biggest industries are ones that have risen in price quite quickly and are of major importance in the world right now. Logging and Oil. Logging would be more Labour Intensive because it requires so much human labour to operate machinery and actually cut down the trees+ drivers etc. Oil would again still be closer towards the side of Labor intensive, because although it does operate through a lot of machinery, it is still required to have people on the job operating everything in the rigs etc.

Canada is a country that depends on primary industries/resources. We know this because two of Canada's major industries are Oil and Forestry which are both primary industries that don't require that much advanced technology. Although it has a few advanced technologies like AeroSpace Technologies they are not used much, so Canada is more or less like a semi-technological country.

Canada, being a very wealthy country, you would think that it has no weaknesses. However, Canada has very imbalanced regions with money equalization. For an example, the four Atlantic provinces in Canada used to be booming with trade and had a growing economy. Now since the fishing industry recently collapsed therefor making the Atlantic provinces a whole lot poorer.

Canada and Australia have a lot to do with one another from the same language, to having too much room for our small population. We both are mixed economies and are both very developed countries with booming economy. But Australia has a lot higher inflation rate due to the actions of previous treasurer Peter Costello. Our major resources are both of great importance in the world today. Australia has Mining and Agriculture as its main industries, whilst Canada has Logging and Oil. The ores that Australia mine are of utmost importance to a lot of countries to power things up and create new things. And food and crops are always in great demand with the growing population of the world, and the oil market currently is in chaos with prices sky rocketing everywhere which means great money for producers such as Canada. Also, Canada and Australia both depend on primary industries such as logging etc. to get all their money, they dont need that much ultra high-tech things. Overall Canada and Australia are very alike.



















Bibliography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Canada
http://www.canadianeconomy.gc.ca/English/economy/overview.html
http://www40.statcan.ca/l01/cst01/

Western Australian Economy

Western Australian Economy

Western Australia is one of Australia's leading states, in economic growth and is the biggest sate of Australia. Western Australia is one of the worlds leading contributors to petroleum, mining, iron, gas, nickel and gold(WA extracts 75% of the whole of Australia's gold!) . It also produces 20% of the world's Alumina. Not only is WA one of the worlds leading ore and mineral providers, it also has great agricultural exports and imports. It creates and exports things such as wheat, barley and wool. WA even has a rising tourism rates which just tops off WA as being probably one of the best states in the entire country.

WA has many regions since it is such a big state, these different states create different goods and services.

The Kimberley-

Pearling, mining, agriculture, aquaculture, indigenous art and tourism

Pilbara-
Mining, petroleum, iron ore

GoldFields-
Gold, nickel, agriculture, fishing, wheat, barley

South West-
Alumina, mineral sands, agriculture, timber, viticulture

As mentioned above, Western Australia is a very strong economy with quite a few strengths. But just like everything that seems perfect in life, it has its flaws.
Western Australia's strengths are: good employment rate, high literacy rate, having the highest per capita output then any other state, it includes the state offices of many major banks such as NAB, Westpac and ANZ, it is very good with it's foreign exchange with countries such as China and a few European countries and we are having a HUGE boom.
The Weaknesses of WA are not very noticeable yet there are still some:
The price of our housing and land is sky rocketing due to the demand of housing because of the boom (the price of housing has gone up by over 40% since 2006!), WA is quickly becoming very crowded since it has such high job appeal because of all the job opportunities.

Western Australia like all things around the world is changing. From the rising prices of land, to the developing technologies. WA's changes are majorly contributed by the rising global problems. Global warming seems to be making weather a lot hotter which means more drought for us, the price of fuel is soon going to be $2.00 per litre, due to rising sea levels in the near future our beaches might be too far into shore to properly enjoy any more. Since there are now more people living WA then ever demand and supply for things will be greatly disrupted.

Antarctica

Society and Environment:
Climate Change in Antarctica

An Introduction to Antarctica

Antarctica is a huge continent that is 1.4 times bigger then the USA, and 58 times bigger then the UK. It is the coldest place on earth and contains 70% of the world’s freshwater frozen as ice, and also contains 90% of all the ice in the world. There are no native tribes or permanent human residences there, but around 26,000 tourists from around the world come to experience the Antarctic every year.

The land features are as follows:

• Has an area of 13,829,430km2


• Has a mountain that is 4892m tall called Mt.Vinson


• 0.32% of Antarctica is not covered in ice.
  
• The average Winter temperature at the South Pole is -60 degrees Celsius.


• The average summer temperature at the South Pole is -27.5 degrees Celsius
  
• It has the record for the lowest temperature ever -89.2 degrees Celsius, and the windiest place on earth with winds reaching 248.4km/h
  

Antarctica is made of many landforms, most of which come from ice. The main few ones are:

• Glaciers


• Deserts


• Mountains


• Plains


• Plateaus


• Valleys


• Nunataks
  

How has Antarctica been effected by Climate Change?
Antarctica has always been a place that has been known as the coldest place in the world, a place of ice and a place full of interesting biodiversity. And everybody has always expected it to be the same, always keeping the earth's temperature down. But what happens if the Antarctic suddenly disappears? then what happens? The truth is, this is becoming a reality as a result of global warming. Since Antarctica is such a cold place, any rises at all in temperature can have a huge effect on an area. It has been recorded that the average temperature in Antarctica has gone up by 2.5degrees celsius since the 1990s. This has caused ice fields to melt faster then they can grow back, glaciers have begun to show signs of shrinking (all around the world in fact) , it has melted away lands of ice, so that water is in its place. As a result of this, for the first time ever a polar bear has drowned from not being able to find sufficient land to rest upon. Another major thing that has happened in Antarctica is that the Larsen B iceshelf has broken away as shown:
And the terrifying truth of it is, this is only the beginning of the effects of Global warming, and if we don't stop letting off carbon dioxide and living the way we are things are only going to get more and more extreme, not just for Antarctica but for the entire world.

This graph here shows us how much our Co2 emissions have been rising with temperature

How Will This Effect the Inhabitants of Antarctica?

Antarctica has no permanent human settlers, but there are always scientists in Antarctica to study and check on everything there. So there is no-one to complain or adapt to the changing climate (apart from the scientists, because thats what they go there for). However Antarctica has a diverse range of wild life living in it, such as: Polar bears, Penguins (of all different species), whales, seals and variety of birds. At the moment global warming is only beginning to start its effects, and no animals have been forced into becoming endangered yet. But it will happen soon, because krill, a type of food for penguins and numerous other animals are being affected by the rise in temperature. This is because krill feed off algae that lives underneath the surface ice, but since the ice is breaking/melting up, the krill are starting lose their source of food. If they were ever to become extinct this would have a chain reaction effect on the entire food chain in the Antarctic.

FACT: The number of krill has declined by almost 80% since 1970

Polar bears, as mentioned before are losing pieces of land to rest upon and are now occasionally drowning because of it.

Future change to the environment

If the temperature continues to rise like it is, then the Antarctic summer ice will disappear altogether, sea ice will shrink even more, and the permafrost will begin to thaw. Krill will end up being unable to breed faster then the demand for them, and will die out, and polar bears will have to find a new habitat.These are just some of the consequences that could happen if we continue with our ways as we are now. As you see below, krill is one of the most important creatures in the Antarctic food chain therefor showing how devastating it will be if they die out. The entire landscape will eventually disappear, because almost all of Anarctica is covered in ice, and all habitats for antarctic animals will be destroyed. If this happens a huge part of the worlds unique biodiversity will be rendered extinct, or they will have to adapt very quickly.

How this effects the entire world?

Economical Effects:

If the Antarctic melts, then the global sea level will rise immensely. this means that there will be less land to live on, on top of the fact that the world is covered by over 70% with oceans. And with growing populations means the need for more houses. The price of land will sky rocket, even more then it is now and the countries will be running out of places for tourists and even their own citizens to live in. But also, this will make ship routes, and ships themselves more effective, so the boating companies could benefit greatly from this. This could also flood popular tourist attractions or certain landmarks and lose tourism for certain countries.

Political Effects

Global warming, and the Antarctic ice caps are a currently big issue in politics. As most people would know, Al Gore ex-vice president of the US has been going around flying to places around the world to get the threat of global warming across. But a lot of scientists and politicians have said all of this Global warming hype is for nothing, that our ice caps are not melting, that the temperature we have is completely normal. I believe that the truth is that politicians would prefer to focus on things they think are more important then climate change. Because they are more occupied with things like the war in Iraq, and earning more money for their country's budget. If the ice caps melted away completely in Antarctica, then people would have to believe Gore's theory and the politcal world would be thrown around, with all other current issues abandoned to try and cover up the effects of global warming, but of course by then it would be too late. And all there would be is to throw around the blame, and could lead to fighting and even maybe wars, for the blame of who has contributed most to global warming. This all my idea/ opinion on this matter so it has a high chance of being false.

Shortly put-

Short term effects : distracts politicians from other troubles in the world

Long term effects: can end up with a lot of debate and fighting with blame.

Social Effects

If the Antarctic melts then as said many times before, the global sea level will rise, this will cause societies to have to move to a more crowded place, that they cannot call their own. If the amount of water continues to expand, then it will open up new ship routes which could bring some countries closer to one another, maybe opening up more friendships. The fact that the low lying islands are being flooded, has made it so that they must move to a different country, meaning that the country will not have much room left in it, and fighting could break out, because the locals might not like having others in their country.

My Bibliography

http://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/science/global_warming2.htm +

http://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/science/global_warming.htm - for general info on Antarctica’s problems and useful diagrams
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http://www.climatehotmap.org/antarctica.html- Early warming signs that global warming is serious to the Antarctic
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http://www.livescience.com/environment/060330_warming_antarctic.html online news/science articles
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http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200508/s1429905.htm

More proof that global warming effects the Antarctic, even the news agrees.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0203-03.htm

information on how penguins are affected by global warming

http://images.wri.org/climatescience_larsenb.jpg

Images of the Larsen B iceshelf

Seahorses

Seahorses

Why are Seahorses endangered?

• They are hunted by asian countries for medicinal use.
• Trawling nets by ships destroy their natural habitat.
• Storms sometimes push Seahorses onto the shore, or make the seahorses fall off their anchored area e.g. seaweed, macro-algae. *Seahorses cannot live without being anchored on to something, because they cannot swim for long before becoming exhausted.
• They have predators, such as crabs, rays and tunas.

Information on Seahorses

Seahorses is a very interesting animal, with over 35+ known species. They ae birth to the babies. Their diet consists of brine shrimp, plankton and other microscopic creatures in the sea, and they eat over 3000 shrimp everyday because they have no teeth or stomach and need to eat constantly to stay alive. They live in salt water, and cannot live in fresh water for very long. They are thought to have evolved 40 million years ago. They are a very unique animal because they are the only animal in the world where males gives birth to the babies, because although that the female makes the eggs, she implants the eggs into the male's pouch, which he then fertilises and gives birth to. Their average life span is thought to be from 1-5 years, and can grow from 1 inch to 1 foot, they like to live in warmer waters because it's more calm in warmer water.

What we're doing to preserve/ save them

Since seahorses are a currently endangered species there are of course people trying to save them. CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) currently is protecting them, and have made them illegal to hunt. Although this makes Seahorses even more rare, because it makes the seahorses even more expensive for illegal trades to sell. Currently there are places that have a high health gene bank for breeding each one of the seahorse species, to make sure that they cannot be hunted and never become extinct. They are not officially endangered, but research has shown that in the past 5 years, some seahorse populations have decreased by 50%!

What effect would this have on the ecosystem if seahorses became extinct?

Although seahorses may not seem to do any good for the ecosystem, they are actually very important to other animals. Such as those that prey upon seahorses e.g crabs, rays etc... and brine shrimp would over populate greatly. Because seahorses are known to eat 360 brine fish per hour. Baby seahorses provide a meal for some a large variety of plankton eating animals because they are so small.

Information on the GreyHeaded Flying Fox

The Grey Headed Flying fox is a currently endangered Australian animal that is nocturnal. It is currently very vulnerable in New South Wales, because of loss of habitat the creation of so many suburban areas are getting rid of forests and mangroves fast, and that is where the Grey headed Flying Fox dwells, also another problem is that the Grey Headed Flying Fox has a very slow reproductive rate, one born per year per couple, and it takes males quite long to gain sexual maturity
The Grey Headed Flying Fox has characteristics of :
Has a Grey head, with a red/orange mantle around the neck
They are one of the biggest bats in Australia with a wingspan of over 1m.
They have furry heads.
Although, not a decade ago, Grey Headed Flying Fox's were considered to be fine, and living in millions, but recently it has been that are only 300,000 now, and it has been found that their total population has gone done by 30%
They have a 15 year life span, which lets them survive better then a lot of other animals
Grey Headed Foxes play a big role in helping the regeneration of hardwood forests by pollinating and dropping seeds while they feed. It is estimated that one Grey Headed Flying Fox can disperse 60,000 seeds in one night

My Sose Bibliography

These are sites i used to find out about the Greyheaded flying fox
http://www.faunanet.gov.au/wos/factfile.cfm?Fact_ID=307
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey-headed_Flying_Fox
http://www.dpi.vic.gov.au/dse/nrenpa.nsf/FID/-BAA86C6B029BC723CA256BF2001E4069?OpenDocument
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These are the site where i found information on Seahorses