The Greater Manchester Portal
Greater Manchester is a ceremonial county in North West England. It borders Lancashire to the north, Derbyshire and West Yorkshire to the east, Cheshire to the south, and Merseyside to the west. Its largest settlement is the city of Manchester.
The county has an area of 493 sq mi (1,277 km2) and is highly urbanised, with a population of 2.9 million. The majority of the county's settlements are part of the Greater Manchester Built-up Area, which extends into Cheshire and Merseyside and is the second most populous urban area in the UK. The city of Manchester is the largest settlement. Other large settlements are Altrincham, Bolton, Rochdale, Sale, Salford, Stockport and Wigan. Greater Manchester contains ten metropolitan boroughs: Manchester, Salford, Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford and Wigan, the councils of which collaborate through Greater Manchester Combined Authority. The county was created on 1 April 1974 from parts of north-east Cheshire, south-east Lancashire, and a small part of the West Riding of Yorkshire.
The centre and south-west of Greater Manchester are lowlands, similar to the West Lancashire Coastal Plain to the north-west and the Cheshire Plain to the south-west. The north and east are part of the Pennines: the West Pennine Moors in the northwest, the South Pennines in the northeast and the Peak District in the east. Most of the county's rivers rise in the Pennines and are tributaries of the Mersey and Irwell, the latter of which is itself a tributary of the Mersey. The county is connected to the Mersey Estuary by the Manchester Ship Canal, which for its entire length within Greater Manchester consists of canalised sections of the Mersey and Irwell. (Full article...)
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Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. Manchester was granted city status in 1853. It has a population of , and lies at the centre of the Greater Manchester Urban Area, which has a population of 2,240,230, the United Kingdom's third largest conurbation. Manchester has the second largest urban zone in the UK and the fourteenth most populous in Europe. l Forming part of the English Core Cities Group, often described as the second city of the UK, and the "Capital of the North", Manchester today is a centre of the arts, the media, higher education and commerce. In a poll of British business leaders published in 2006, Manchester was regarded as the best place in the UK to locate a business. A report commissioned by Manchester Partnership, published in 2007, showed Manchester to be the "fastest-growing city" economically.
Manchester was the world's first industrialised city and played a central role during the Industrial Revolution. Manchester City Centre is now on a tentative list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, mainly due to the network of canals and mills constructed during its 19th-century development.
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Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS (23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, logician and cryptographer.
Turing is often considered to be the father of modern computer science. Turing provided an influential formalisation of the concept of the algorithm and computation with the Turing machine. With the Turing test, he made a significant and characteristically provocative contribution to the debate regarding artificial intelligence: whether it will ever be possible to say that a machine is conscious and can think. He later worked at the National Physical Laboratory, creating one of the first designs for a stored-program computer, the ACE although it was never actually built in its full form. In 1948 he moved to the University of Manchester to work on the Manchester Mark I, then emerging as one of the world's earliest true computers.
During the Second World War Turing worked at Bletchley Park, the UK's codebreaking centre, and was for a time head of Hut 8, the section responsible for German naval cryptanalysis. He devised a number of techniques for breaking German ciphers, including the method of the bombe, an electromechanical machine that could find settings for the Enigma machine.
Did you know?
- ...that the Albert Medal was one of the awards given to Mark Addy for rescuing more than 50 people from the highly polluted River Irwell, Manchester, in the 19th Century?
- ...that the Port of Runcorn in Cheshire, England, was an independent customs port for two separate periods before becoming part of the Port of Manchester in 1894?
- ...that a word square found in Mamucium (pictured), a Roman fort in Manchester, may be one of the earliest examples of Christianity in Britain?
- ...that the women's scratch race at the 2008 UCI Track Cycling World Championships was held in Manchester and was won by Ellen van Dijk?
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Featured articles: Altrincham • Bert Trautmann • Chat Moss • City of Manchester Stadium • Duncan Edwards • Emmeline Pankhurst • Greater Manchester • Joy Division • M62 motorway • Manchester • Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal • Manchester City F.C. • Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine • Peterloo Massacre • Oldham • Scout Moor Wind Farm • Shaw and Crompton • Stretford • Trafford
Featured lists: Castles in Greater Manchester • Grade I listed buildings in Greater Manchester • List of Manchester City F.C. managers • List of Manchester United F.C. managers • List of Manchester United F.C. records and statistics • List of Manchester United F.C. seasons • List of Manchester United F.C. players • List of Manchester United F.C. players (25–99 appearances) • List of Manchester United F.C. players (fewer than 25 appearances) • List of railway stations in Greater Manchester • List of Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Greater Manchester • List of tallest buildings and structures in Manchester • List of tallest buildings and structures in Salford • Manchester City F.C. seasons
Good articles: 1990 Strangeways Prison riot • Alan Turing • Ashton-under-Lyne • B of the Bang • Bank Street (stadium) • Bridgewater Canal • Buckton Castle • Castleshaw Roman fort • Chadderton • Cine City, Withington • City of Salford • Controversy over the usage of Manchester Cathedral in Resistance: Fall of Man • David Beckham • Didsbury • Dunham Massey • Hale Barns • Henry Taylor (swimmer) • Hugh Mason • Hulme Arch Bridge • Hyde Road • Mamucium • Manchester and Bolton Railway • Manchester Liners • Manchester Mummy • Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine • Manchester United F.C. • Milnrow • Murrays' Mills • Nico Ditch • Noel Gallagher • North Road (stadium) • Ordsall Hall • Old Trafford • Oasis (band) • Radcliffe, Greater Manchester • River Irwell • Ronnie Wallwork • Royton • Sale, Greater Manchester • Tameside • Trafford Park • Upper Brook Street Chapel, Manchester • Urmston • Warburton, Greater Manchester
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