The Grand Strand is a large stretch of beaches on the East Coast of the United States extending from Little River to Georgetown in South Carolina. It consists of more than 60 miles along an essentially uninterrupted arc of beach land, beginning around the Little River and terminating at Winyah Bay. The population of the Grand Strand is at 480,000. The term Grand Strand dates back to a November 19, 1949 The Myrtle Beach Sun column titled “From the Grandstand” and another titled “From the Grand Strand” on December 3, 1949 in The Myrtle Beach News. “Strand” itself derives from the German Strand, meaning “beach”. The area has become a major tourist attraction along the Southeastern coast, with its primary city, Myrtle Beach, attracting over ten million visitors each season. It is home to numerous restaurants and theme parks, making it popular with families and college students in the summer and snowbirds during the winter. The Grand Strand’s economy is dominated by the tourist industry, with tourism bringing in millions of dollars each year. Hotels, motels, resorts, restaurants, attractions, and retail developments exist in abundance to service visitors. There are over 100 golf courses in and around Myrtle Beach as the golfing industry represents a significant presence in the area. A manufacturing base produces plastic, rubber, cardboard, foam, and ceramic products usually in small scale. read more…
The Miami Biltmore Hotel is a luxury hotel in Coral Gables in Florida. It was designed by Schultze and Weaver and was built in 1926 by John McEntee Bowman and George Merrick as part of the Bowman-Biltmore Hotels chain. When completed it became the tallest building in Florida at 315 feet (96m) holding the record until 1928 when the Dade County Courthouse was built. The Miami-Biltmore Hotel & Country Club was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1996. On April 18, 2012, the AIA‘s Florida Chapter placed the building on its list of Florida Architecture: 100 Years. 100 Places as the Biltmore Hotel. It served as a hospital during World War II and as a VA Hospital and campus of the University of Miami medical school until 1968. It became a hotel again in 1987 managed by the Seaway Hotels Corporation. Some people claim this hotel to be haunted, most often by the spirit of Thomas Walsh. When completed, it was the tallest building in Florida, surpassing the Freedom Tower in Downtown Miami. It was surpassed in 1928 by the Dade County Courthouse, also in Downtown Miami. At one time the pool was the largest pool in the world and among the many attractions was swimming instructor (and later Tarzan actor) Johnny Weissmuller. The hotel has been used as a setting for the movie Bad Boys and television programs like CSI: Miami and Miami Vice. The hotel was also a major setting for Ken Wiederhorn‘s 1977 cult horror film Shock Waves, starring John Carradine and Peter Cushing. The film was shot at a time when the hotel was in a state of abandoned disrepair, and featured long camera shots and eerily shot angles. Currently, the acclaimed GableStage Theater operates out of the Biltmore Hotel. It is owned and managed by Joseph Adler. The Biltmore spa is 12,000-square-foot (1,100 m2) full service spa which is a member of Leading Spas of the World. read more…
Tripoli is the capital city and the largest city of Libya. Tripoli, with its metropolitan area, has a population of about 1.1 million people. The city is located in the northwestern part of Libya on the edge of the desert, on a point of rocky land projecting into the Mediterranean and forming a bay. Tripoli includes the Port of Tripoli and the country’s largest commercial and manufacturing centre. It is also the site of the University of Tripoli. The vast Bab al-Azizia barracks, which includes the former family estate of Muammar Gaddafi, is also located in the city. Colonel Gaddafi largely ruled the country from his residence in this barracks. Tripoli was founded in the 7th century BC by the Phoenicians, who named it Oea. Due to the city’s long history, there are many sites of archaeological significance in Tripoli. “Tripoli” may also refer to the shabiyah (top-level administrative division in the current Libyan system), the Tripoli District. read more…
Misurata is a city in the Misrata District in northwestern Libya, situated 187 km (116 mi) to the east of Tripoli and 825 km (513 mi) west of Benghazi on the Mediterranean coast near Cape Misurata. With a population of about 281,000, Misrata is the third-largest city in Libya, after Tripoli and Benghazi. It is the capital city of the Misurata District and has been called the trade capital of Libya. The harbor is at Qasr Ahmad. The name “Misurata” derives from the Misrata tribe, a section of the larger Berber Hawwara confederacy, whose homeland in Roman and early Arab times was coastal Tripolitania. The location of the city creates a dualism of sea and sand, bounded by the sea to the north and east and to the south by golden sands dotted with palm and olive trees. Like Benghazi and Tripoli, Misurata is divided into two distinct sections. Older Misurata consists of small stone houses and narrow arched streets while the newer part of the city, which began to develop in the 20th century, consists of modern buildings, homes, factories and industrial areas. Aside from its distinct location, which makes it a centre for the exchange of commodities and materials with the rest of the cities of the country, Misrata has modern infrastructure, including paved roads, electricity and communications. read more…
Clearwater Beach includes a resort area and a residential area on the Gulf of Mexico in Pinellas County on the west central coast of Florida. Located just west over the Intracoastal Waterway by way of the Clearwater Memorial Causeway from the city of Clearwater, of which it is part. Clearwater Beach is characterized by white sand beaches stretching for 2.5 miles (4 km) along the Gulf and sits on a barrier island. It has a full marina on the Intracoastal Waterway side and is linked on the south by a short bridge to another barrier island called Sand Key, where Sand Key Park is located. read more…
Kufra is a basin and oasis group in the Kufra District of southeastern Cyrenaica in Libya. At the end of nineteenth century Kufra became the center and holy place of the Senussi order. It also played a minor role in the Western Desert Campaign of World War II. It is located in a particularly isolated area, not only because it is in the middle of the Sahara Desert but also because it is surrounded on three sides by depressions which make it dominate the passage in east-west land traffic across the desert. For the colonial Italians, it was also important as a station on the north-south air route to Italian East Africa. These factors, along with Kufra’s dominance of the southeastern Cyrenaica region of Libya, explains the oasis’s strategic importance and why it was a point of conflict during World War II. read more…
Benghazi is the second most populous city in Libya and the largest in Cyrenaica. A port on the Mediterranean Sea in the Kingdom of Libya, Benghazi had joint-capital status alongside Tripoli, possibly because the King and the Senussi royal family were associated with Cyrenaica rather than Tripolitania. The city was also provisional capital of the National Transitional Council. Benghazi continues to hold institutions and organizations normally associated with a national capital city, such as the country’s parliament, national library, and the headquarters of Libyan Airlines, the national airline, and of the National Oil Corporation. This creates a constant atmosphere of rivalry and sensitivities between Benghazi and Tripoli, and between Cyrenaica and Tripolitania. The population was 670,797 at the 2006 census. read more…
Henry Morrison Flagler was an American industrialist and a founder of Standard Oil. He was also a key figure in the development of the Atlantic coast of Florida and founder of what became the Florida East Coast Railway. He is known as the father of St. Augustine, Miami, West Palm beach and Palm Beach. When looking back at Flagler’s life, after Flagler’s death, George W. Perkins, of J.P. Morgan & Co., reflected, “But that any man could have the genius to see of what this wilderness of waterless sand and underbrush was capable and then have the nerve to build a railroad here, is more marvelous than similar development anywhere else in the world.” Miami’s main east-west street is named Flagler Street and is the main shopping street in Downtown Miami. There is also a monument to him on Flagler Monument Island in Biscayne Bay in Miami; Flagler College and Flagler Hospital are named after him in St. Augustine. Flagler County and Flagler Beach in Florida and Flagler in Colorado are also named for him. Whitehall in Palm Beach is open to the public as the Henry Morrison Flagler Museum; his private railcar No. 91 is preserved inside a Beaux Arts pavilion built to look like a 19th-century railway palace. On February 24, 2006, a statue of Flagler was unveiled in Key West near the spot where the Oversea Railroad once terminated. Also, on July 28, 2006, a statue of Flagler was unveiled on the southeast steps of Miami’s Dade County Courthouse, located on Miami’s Flagler Street. read more…
Tobruk is a port city on Libya’s eastern Mediterranean coast, near the border of Egypt. It is the capital of the Butnan District (formerly Tobruk District) and has a population of 120,000 (2011 est.). King Idris of Libya had his palace at Bab Zaytun. Tobruk was traditionally a stronghold of the Senussi royal dynasty and one of the first to rebel against Colonel Gaddafi in the Arab Spring. At the outset of the 2011 Libyan Civil War, the city quickly came under the control of the NTC. In September 2014 the internationally recognized government of Libya relocated to a Greek car ferry in Tobruk harbor. A rival New General National Congress parliament continued to operate in Tripoli. In October 2014 they again re-located, to a hotel named Dar al-Salam also known as the Al Masira Hotel in Tobruk. In November 2014 that government was declared illegal by Libya’s highest court. Tobruk has a strong, naturally protected deep harbour. It is probably the best natural port in northern Africa, although due to the lack of important nearby land sites it is certainly not the most popular. The city is effectively surrounded by a desert lightly populated with nomadic herdsmen who travel from oasis to oasis. There are many escarpments (cliffs) to the south of Tobruk (and indeed in all of Cyrenaica, the eastern half of Libya). These escarpments generally have their high sides to the south and their low sides (dip slopes) to the north. This constitutes a substantial physical barrier between the north and south of Libya in the Tobruk area. read more…
