- Woodland Park Zoo (historylink.org)
Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo, now regarded as one of the nation’s best, began with a small menagerie on Guy Phinney’s sprawling Woodland Park estate between Phinney Ridge and Green Lake. In 1899, the City of Seattle purchased the estate, and in 1903 John C. Olmsted (1852-1920) designed the first plan for its permanent “Zoological Gardens.” In 1932, construction of Aurora Avenue N (Highway 99) severed the zoo from “lower” Woodland Park. In 1976, neighborhood opposition to improvements authorized by the 1968 Forward Thrust bond election led to a new Long-Range Plan, later implemented by director David Hancocks. The plan’s natural “bioclimatic” exhibits revolutionized zoo design and won numerous international awards. King County voters approved additional zoo improvements in 1985, which were completed in 1999 under the guidance of director David L. Towne.
- Ur (Wikipedia)
Ur (/ΚΙr/; Sumerian: πΆπ , πππ , or πππ Urim; Akkadian: πππ Uru; Arabic: Ψ£ΩΩΩΨ±, romanized: ΚΎΕ«r; Hebrew: ΧΧΦΌΧ¨β) was an important Sumerian city-state in ancient Mesopotamia, located at the site of modern Tell el-Muqayyar (Arabic: ΨͺΩ Ω±ΩΩΩ
ΩΩΩΩΩΩΨ±) in south Iraq’s Dhi Qar Governorate. Although Ur was once a coastal city near the mouth of the Euphrates on the Persian Gulf, the coastline has shifted and the city is now well inland, on the south bank of the Euphrates, 16 km (10 mi) from Nasiriyah in modern-day Iraq. The city dates from the Ubaid period circa 3800 BC, and is recorded in written history as a city-state from the 26th century BC, its first recorded king being Mesannepada.