Invasion of the Sea is an adventure novel written by Jules Verne.  It was published in 1905, the last to be published in the author's lifetime, and describes the exploits of Berber nomads and European travelers in Saharan Africa.  The European characters arrive to study the feasibility of flooding a low-lying region of the Sahara desert to create an inland sea and open up the interior of Northern Africa to trade.  In the end, however, the protagonists' pride in humanity's potential to control and reshape the world is humbled by a cataclysmic earthquake which results in the natural formation of just such a sea.  The novel Invasion of the Sea, as well the plans of the characters in the novel, are inspired by the real life exploits of Captain François Élie Roudaire.  Roudaire was a French military officer and geographer who surveyed parts of Tunisia in the late 1800s.  He discovered that large areas of the Sahara Desert were below sea level and proposed that a canal be dug from the Mediterranean Sea to these Saharan basins, which would allow for the creation of an inland "Sahara Sea".  Others had made similar proposals at the same time, and canal building generally was a popular geopolitical endeavor of the first decade of the 1900s, when Invasion of the Sea was written.  Parts of the novel, under the title Captain Hardizan, were serialized in The American Weekly (the Sunday Supplement to the Boston newspaper) on August 6 and August 13, 1905 by Oswald Mathew.  The first complete English translation was published by Wesleyan University Press in 2001 by Edward Baxter  It was slated to be the first in a series of early science fiction reprints from Wesleyan University Press.  It contained many illustrations from the original French edition.  For years before the Baxter translation, Invasion of the Sea was one of four late Voyages Extraordinaires novels left unpublished in their whole form (the others being The Mighty Orinoco, The Kip Brothers, and Traveling Scholarships).  Early translators of Verne for British and American readers in the late 1800s and early 1900s were notorious for making major changes to Verne's novels in the translation and editing process.  Translators would, for example, change names and even character motivations at times.  Other changes were aimed at removing the anti-imperialist themes which Verne was known to espouse in his work,  while others still were made by Verne's son.  No contemporary translation was as notorious for its revisionism as the Captain Hardizan edition of Invasion of the Sea, however. Mathew's translation changes were so dramatic that they changed the focus to a young European woman captured by an Arab raiding party.  The Arabs themselves were described as being led by a different woman of supernatural abilities.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_the_Sea

Definition of CASBAH

1.  a North African castle or fortress  2.  the native section of a North African city
Variant  also kas·bah  Origin  French, from Arabic dialect qaṣba
First Known Use:  1844  http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/casbah

Arbutus unedo, the Strawberry Tree  The strawberry tree is a beautiful small evergreen tree or shrub that can occasionally reach 9 metres tall and 8 metres wide, though it is usually rather smaller. There are several named forms and some of these are no more than 2 - 3 metres tall.  A very easily grown and trouble-free plant, it does best in a nutrient-rich well-drained moisture-retentive soil in sun or semi-shade.  It also grows well in heavy clay soils and in dry soils.  This is a very good tree to grow in towns because it tolerates industrial pollution.  The strawberry tree produces masses of beautiful white flowers in November and December.  Since the fruit takes 12 months to ripen, the tree carries both mature fruit and flowers at the same time and is then incredibly beautiful.  The fruit varies considerably in size, though it averages about 15 - 20mm in diameter.  It is a lovely red colour and, from a distance, does look a little like strawberries - hence the common name of the plant.  The resemblance to strawberries, however, does not apply to the taste.  The books say that it is sweet but insipid, and the Latin name 'unedo' means 'I eat one (only)' and suggests that the fruit is not very palatable.  Whilst it does have a somewhat gritty skin, when fully ripe the fruit itself has the texture of a lush tropical fruit and has a delicate pleasant flavour.  For those people with sensitive taste buds, this is a fruit that can be enjoyed when eaten in moderate quantities.  See pictures at:  http://www.pfaf.org/user/cmspage.aspx?pageid=55 

Gate   movable barrier, opening, tower, entrance and more 

Find 16 definitions for gate as a noun and 3 as a verb.  Idioms:  get the gate,  Slang. to be dismissed, sent away, or rejected.  give (someone) the gate, Slang. a. to reject (a person), as one's fiancé, lover, or friend.   b. to dismiss from one's employ
Origin:  before 900; Middle English gat, gate, Old English geat (plural gatu ); cognate with Low German, Dutch gat hole, breach; cf. gate²  http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/gate

The Sahara is the world’s largest hot desert and one of the harshest environments on the planet. It is third largest desert overall after Antarctica and the Arctic, which are cold deserts.  At 3.6 million square miles (9.4 million square kilometers), the Sahara, which is Arabic for "The Great Desert," engulfs most of North Africa.  The desert covers large sections of Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Western Sahara, Sudan and Tunisia.  The Sahara is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean on the western edge, the Atlas Mountains and the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Red Sea on the east, and the Sudan and the valley of the Niger River on the south.  See pictures at:  http://www.livescience.com/23140-sahara-desert.html

A ukase (or ukaz, formally "imposition"), in Imperial Russia, was a proclamation of the tsar, government, or a religious leader (patriarch) that had the force of law.  "Edict" and "decree" are adequate translations using the terminology and concepts of Roman law.  From the Russian term, the word ukase has entered the English with the meaning of "any proclamation or decree; an order or regulation of a final or arbitrary nature".  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukase

Sheep were among the first animals to be domesticated by humankind; sources provide a domestication date between nine and eleven thousand years ago in Mesopotamia.  Their wild relatives have several characteristics—such as a relative lack of aggression, a manageable size, early sexual maturity, a social nature, and high reproduction rates—which made them particularly suitable for domestication.  Today, Ovis aries is an entirely domesticated animal that is largely dependent on man for its health and survival.  Feral sheep do exist, but exclusively in areas devoid of large predators (usually islands) and not on the scale of feral horses, goats, pigs, or dogs, although some feral populations have remained isolated long enough to be recognized as distinct breeds.  The exact line of descent between domestic sheep to their wild ancestors is presently unclear.  The most common hypothesis states that Ovis aries is descended from the Asiatic (O. orientalis) species of mouflon.  It has been proposed that the European mouflon (O. musimon) is an ancient breed of domestic sheep turned feral rather than an ancestor, despite it commonly being cited as ancestor in past literature.  See many pictures at:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sheep

Travelers ranked Toledo's restaurants on TripAdvisor placing the Toledo Museum of Art Cafe as #1 of 369 with 25 reviews.  Mancy's Steak House is #2 with 117 reviews.  Real Seafood is # 3 with 69 reviews.  See the list at:  http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurants-g51048-Toledo_Ohio.html

May 3, 2013  The Senate is expected to vote on legislation next week that would allow the 45 states (and the District of Columbia) that charge sales tax to require online retailers to collect taxes on purchases made by their residents.  If approved, the bill will move to the House.  Under the proposed law, states would be able to require online sellers to collect sales tax if they have sales of at least $1 million in states where they don't have operations.  If you live in Arizona, California, Kansas, Kentucky, New York, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington -- states where Amazon.com has warehouses -- you are already paying taxes on Amazon purchases.  And some states, like New York, have laws that require any online retailer with a so-called in-state "affiliate," such as marketers who link to the retailer's site, to collect taxes on purchases.   Like other products, the Marketplace Fairness Act wouldn't create any new taxes on so-called "digital goods," but it would let states enforce the laws they have in place already.  Many sellers already collect these taxes.  For example, if you live in Washington, where Amazon.com is based, you're already paying tax on digital purchases.  Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) already collects sales tax for iTunes purchases in states where digital music is taxed, according to its website.  And Netflix (NFLX) also already collects tax where applicable.  Find links to state tax websites at:  http://www.taxadmin.org/fta/link/default.php?lnk=10#  Read more about the Marketplace Fairness Act  at:  http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/03/pf/internet-sales-tax/