Leicester Square

Leicester Square ⁱ/ˈlɛstər/ is a pedestrianised square in the West End of London, England. It was laid out in 1670 and is named after the contemporary Leicester House, itself named after Robert Sidney, 2nd Earl of Leicester.

The square was originally a gentrified residential area, with notable tenants including Frederick, Prince of Wales and artists William Hogarth and Joshua Reynolds. It became more down-market in the late 18th century as Leicester House was demolished and retail developments took place, becoming a centre for entertainment. Several major theatres were established in the 19th century, which were converted to cinemas towards the middle of the next. Leicester Square holds a number of nationally important cinemas such as the Odeon Leicester Square, Empire, Leicester Square and Odeon West End, which are frequently used for film premières, The nearby Prince Charles Cinema is popular for showing cult films and marathon film runs. The square remains a popular tourist attraction, including hosting events for the Chinese New Year.

Leicester

Coordinates: 52°38′N 1°8′W / 52.633°N 1.133°W / 52.633; -1.133

Leicester (ⁱ/ˈlɛstər/ LESS-tər,but often locally /ˈlɛstɒ/) is a city and unitary authority area in the East Midlands of England, and the county town of Leicestershire. The city lies on the River Soar and at the edge of the National Forest. It is the burial place of King Richard III.

In the 2011 census the population of the Leicester unitary authority was c.330,000 making it the most populous unitary authority in the East Midlands region. The associated urban area is also the 11th largest by population in England and the 13th largest in the United Kingdom.

"Unlike almost every other city in the UK, Leicester has retained a remarkable record of its past in buildings that still stand today". Ancient Roman pavements and baths remain in Leicester from its early settlement as Ratae, a Roman military outpost in a region inhabited by the Celtic Corieltauvi tribe. Following the Roman withdrawal from Britain, the early medieval Ratae is shrouded in obscurity, but when the settlement was captured by the Danes it became one of five fortified towns important to the Danelaw and it appeared in the Domesday Book as "Ledecestre". Leicester continued to grow throughout the Early Modern period as a market town, although it was the Industrial Revolution that facilitated a process of rapid unplanned urbanisation in the area.

Empire

An empire is defined as "an aggregate of nations or people ruled over by an emperor or other powerful sovereign or government, usually a territory of greater extent than a kingdom, as the former British Empire, French Empire, Spanish Empire, Russian Empire, Byzantine Empire or Roman Empire." An empire can be made solely of contiguous territories such as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, or of territories far remote from the homeland, such as a colonial empire.

Aside from the more formal usage, the term "empire" can also be used to refer to a large-scale business enterprise (e.g. a transnational corporation), a political organisation controlled by a single individual (a political boss) or a group (political bosses). The term "empire" is associated with other words such as imperialism, colonialism, and globalization. Empire is often used to describe a displeasure to overpowering situations. The effects of imperialism exist throughout the world today.

An imperial political structure can be established and maintained in two ways: (i) as a territorial empire of direct conquest and control with force or (ii) as a coercive, hegemonic empire of indirect conquest and control with power. The former method provides greater tribute and direct political control, yet limits further expansion because it absorbs military forces to fixed garrisons. The latter method provides less tribute and indirect control, but avails military forces for further expansion. Territorial empires (e.g., the Mongol Empire and Median Empire) tend to be contiguous areas. The term, on occasion, has been applied to maritime empires or thalassocracies, (e.g., the Athenian and British empires) with looser structures and more scattered territories. Empires are usually larger than kingdoms.

Square

In geometry, a square is a regular quadrilateral, which means that it has four equal sides and four equal angles (90-degree angles, or right angles). It can also be defined as a rectangle in which two adjacent sides have equal length. A square with vertices ABCD would be denoted ABCD.

The square is the n=2 case of the families of n-hypercubes and n-orthoplexes.

A square has Schläfli symbol {4}. A truncated square, t{4}, is an octagon, {8}. An alternated square, h{4}, is a digon, {2}.

Properties

A square is a special case of a rhombus (equal sides, opposite equal angles), a kite (two pairs of adjacent equal sides), a parallelogram (opposite sides parallel), a quadrilateral or tetragon (four-sided polygon), and a rectangle (opposite sides equal, right-angles) and therefore has all the properties of all these shapes, namely: