Technique for the surface mining of coal by removing the soil and rock overburden above a seam and extracting the exposed mineral. The method is used to best advantage where the coal seam is thin and not deeply buried. (Thicker and deeper seams would be extracted by open-pit or underground mining.) Strip mining is most economical where flat terrain and horizontal seams permit a large area to be stripped. Where deposits occur in rolling or mountainous terrain, a contour method is used that creates a shelf with a slope on one side and an almost vertical wall on the other. A variety of equipment is used, including dozers, scrapers, hydraulic shovels, draglines, and bucket-wheel excavators. Concern over the environmental effects of strip mining have resulted in numerous requirements for the reclamation of excavated land.
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Series of drawings that read as a narrative, arranged together on the page of a newspaper, magazine, or book. In the 1890s several U.S. newspapers featured weekly drawings that were funny, but without indicated speech. In 1897 Rudolph Dirks's Katzenjammer Kids, in the New York Journal, featured humorous strips containing words presumably spoken by the characters. Soon speeches in balloons appeared in other cartoons, arranged in a series to form a strip. The comic strip arrived at its maturity in 1907 with Bud Fisher's Mutt and Jeff, which appeared daily in the San Francisco Chronicle. Important later comic-strip artists include George Herriman, Al Capp, Walt Kelly, and Charles Schulz. Seealso comic book.
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Territory, southeastern Mediterranean Sea coast. Occupying 140 sq mi (363 sq km) northeast of the Sinai Peninsula, it is also the location of the city of Gaza, which has been a prosperous trading centre for much of its history and was first mentioned in the 15th century BC. Often besieged by invaders, including Israelites, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians, it declined in importance after the Crusades. It was ruled by the Ottoman Empire from the 16th century. After World War I (1914–18) the city and the strip became part of the British mandate of Palestine. Following the first Arab-Israeli war (1948–49), the territory was occupied by Egypt, and the city became that country's headquarters in Palestine. The occupied area was later reduced to an area 25 mi (40 km) long, which became known as the Gaza Strip, still under Egyptian control. In the Six-Day War (1967) it was captured by Israel. The area's chief economic problem was the extreme poverty of the large number of Palestinian Arab refugees living there. In 1987, rioting among Gaza's Palestinians marked the beginning of the first
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In the 1950's, this process for building canoes was adapted from ship/boat building techniques, and refined by a group of Minnesota canoe racers; primarily Eugene Jensen, Irwin C.(Buzzy) Peterson, and Karl Ketter.