Stafford

Coordinates: 52°48′24″N 2°07′02″W / 52.8066°N 2.1171°W / 52.8066; -2.1171

Stafford (/ˈstæfəd/) is the county town of Staffordshire, in the West Midlands of England. It lies approximately 16 miles (26 km) north of Wolverhampton, 18 miles (29 km) south of Stoke-on-Trent and 24 miles (39 km) north-west of Birmingham. The population in 2001 was 63,681 and that of the wider borough of Stafford 122,000, the fourth largest in the county after Stoke-on-Trent, Tamworth and Newcastle-under-Lyme.

History

Stafford means 'ford' by a 'staithe' (landing place). The original settlement was on dry sand and gravel peninsula that provided a strategic crossing point in the marshy valley of the River Sow, a tributary of the River Trent. There is still a large area of marshland northwest of the town, which has always been subject to flooding, such as in 1947, 2000 and 2007.

It is thought Stafford was founded in about 700 AD by a Mercian prince called Bertelin who, according to legend, established a hermitage on the peninsula named Betheney or Bethnei. Until recently it was thought that the remains of a wooden preaching cross from this time had been found under the remains of St Bertelin's chapel, next to the later collegiate Church of St Mary in the centre of the town. Recent re-examination of the evidence shows this was a misinterpretation – it was a tree trunk coffin placed centrally in the first, timber, chapel at around the time Æthelflæd founded the burh, in 913 AD. The tree trunk coffin may have been placed there as an object of commemoration or veneration of St Bertelin.

List of Major League Baseball players with unidentified given names

Forty-one individuals who played professional baseball at the major league level lack identified given names. Identification of players remains difficult due to a lack of information; a Brooklyn, New York directory, for instance, lists more than 30 men that could be the professional player "Stoddard". Possible mistakes in reading box scores from the 19th century could have also led to players without given names: "Eland", for example, could be another player from the Baltimore Marylands roster whose name was simply misread. Four of the 41, McBride, Stafford, Sterling, and Sweigert, were local players added to the Philadelphia Athletics team by manager Bill Sharsig for Philadelphia's last game of the season against the Syracuse Stars on October 12, 1890. Sterling pitched five innings for the Athletics and conceded 12 runs. McBride, Philadelphia's center fielder, and Stafford, the team's right fielder, both failed to reach base, but left fielder Sweigert reached base on a walk and stole a base. Society for American Baseball Research writer Bill Carle "doubt[s] we will ever be able to identify them".

HM Prison Stafford

HM Prison Stafford is a Category C men's prison, located in Stafford, Staffordshire, England. The prison is operated by Her Majesty's Prison Service.

History

Stafford Prison was built on its current site in 1793, and has been in almost continuous use, save a period between 1916 and 1939. It held Irish Internees taken by the British after the 1916 Easter Rising from May. They were released Christmas 1916.

Among its earlier prisoners was George Smith who served several sentences for theft there but began his later work as a hangman while a prisoner, assisting William Calcraft. He officiated at several executions in the prison later in his life, notably that of poisoner William Palmer in 1866.

In November 1998, an inspection report from Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons heavily criticised security at Stafford Prison, after it emerged that inmates were being supplied with drugs flown in on paper planes. Inmates were fashioning strips of paper into planes, then attaching lines to them and flying them over the 19-foot (5.8-metre) perimeter wall. The lines were then used to pull packages containing drugs and other banned substances back over the wall. The prison was also criticised for being overcrowded, under-resourced, and failing to prepare prisoners for release.

Belarus

Coordinates: 53°N 23°E / 53°N 23°E / 53; 23

Belarus (ⁱ/bɛləˈruːs/ bel-ə-ROOSS; Belarusian: Белару́сь, tr. Bielaruś, IPA: [bʲɛlaˈrusʲ]; Russian: Белоруссия, tr. Byelorussiya; IPA: [bʲɪloˈrussɪʲɐ]), officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe bordered by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Hrodna (Grodno), Homiel (Gomel), Mahilioŭ (Mogilev) and Vitsebsk (Vitebsk). Over 40% of its 207,600 square kilometres (80,200 sq mi) is forested. Its strongest economic sectors are service industries and manufacturing.

Until the 20th century, different states at various times controlled the lands of modern-day Belarus: for example: the Principality of Polotsk (11th to 14th centuries), the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Russian Empire. In the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution, Belarus declared independence as the Belarusian People's Republic, succeeded by the Socialist Soviet Republic of Byelorussia, which became a founding constituent republic of the Soviet Union in 1922 and was renamed as the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (Byelorussian SSR). Belarus lost almost half of its territory to Poland after the Polish-Soviet war of 1919-1921. Much of the borders of Belarus took their modern shape in 1939 when some lands of the Second Polish Republic were reintegrated into it after the Soviet invasion of Poland and were finalized after World War II. During World War II, military operations devastated Belarus, which lost about a third of its population and more than half of its economic resources. The republic was redeveloped in the post-war years. In 1945 Belarus became a founding member of the United Nations, along with the Soviet Union and the Ukrainian SSR.

Belarus (pianos)

Belarus (Беларусъ) is a Belarusian manufacturer of upright pianos, founded in 1935 in Belarus (then the Soviet Union). Currently it is owned by the joint-stock company "Muzinstrument - Borisov". It is also known as the piano manufactures Sängler & Söhne, Schubert and Wieler pianos.

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Belarus (tractor)

Belarus («Белару́с», earlier «Белару́сь») is a series of four-wheeled tractors produced since 1950 at Minsk Tractor Works, MTZ (Мінскі трактарны завод; Ми́нский тра́кторный заво́д, МТЗ) in Minsk, Belarus.

These tractors are very well known throughout the Commonwealth of Independent States and are exported to more than 100 countries worldwide, including USA and Canada.

History

At the end of World War II, agricultural infrastructure in the Soviet Union (USSR) was in a poor state, production of agricultural machinery having been non existent during the later years of the War. Those tractors and machinery still working on the Large Collective Farms were tired from heavy use and also dated, most having been produced in the early 1930s or earlier. At best these tractors were unreliable and were poorly maintained. The Communist state ordered new tractors to be made at several locations within the USSR, the main assembly plant for MTZ being in Minsk, Belarus, with smaller tractors being produced in other locations, while other factories produced high-horsepower articulated and tracked tractors. All these tractors were exported under the name "Belarus" but were of a different design to each other. Within the Eastern bloc the tractors had no paint scheme, they were simply painted the same colour all over, red, green and blue being the most common. In the late 1980s Belarus tractors gained a paint livery of cream/white, cream wheels, with a red chassis, this remained until the late 1990s when it changed to red with a black chassis and cream wheels (later silver). A green alternative to the red was available for some markets during the 2000s (decade). While blue with a black chassis is currently the livery for the more basic 2wd cabless models.