Salta

Salta is a city located in the Lerma Valley, at 1,152 metres (3780 feet) above sea level in the northwest part of Argentina. It is also the name for the capital city of Salta Province. Along with its metropolitan area, it has a population of 619,000 inhabitants, which makes it the second most populated city in the northwest of the country.

Overview

It is situated in the Lerma Valley, 1,152 metres (3780 feet) above sea level, at the foothills of the Andes mountains.

The weather is warm and dry, with annual averages of 756 mm of rainfall and an average temperature of 16.4 °C (20.4 °C in summer, 10.8 °C in winter). January and February are the months with greatest rainfall. During the spring, Salta is occasionally plagued by severe, week-long dust storms.

Nicknamed Salta la Linda ("Salta the beautiful"), it has become a major tourist destination due to its old, colonial architecture, tourism friendliness, excellent weather and natural scenery of the valleys westward. Attractions in the city proper include the 18th century Cabildo, the neo-classical style Cathedral, and the 9 de julio central square along with San Bernardo hill and its surroundings. The city's museums exhibit a wide range of artifacts and art work from the native civilizations that flourished in the area (Salta is located in the southernmost region of what was the Inca empire, belonging to the Collasuyu, one of the four areas the empire was divided until the Spanish conquest), as well as from the 16th century Spanish conquest and the colonial and post-colonial periods. Salta is also the starting point of the "Train to the Clouds" (Tren a las nubes), and on the way to red-soiled Cafayate, as well as to other nearby tourist destinations.

Salta (game)

Salta is two-player abstract strategy board game invented by Konrad Heinrich Büttgenbach in 1899 in Germany. Büttgenbach (1870–1939) was born in Heerdt, near Düsseldorf, Germany. The game attained its highest popularity in the early 1900s before World War I especially in France and Germany. The World Trade Fair of 1900 in Paris exhibited a Salta board made of mahogany with golden counters adorned with more than 5,000 diamonds. Famous players were the US chess master Frank Marshall, the German World Chess Champion Emanuel Lasker, and the French actress Sarah Bernhardt (the "Divine").

Salta means "jump" in Italian or Latin. The game is related to Halma, Chinese Checkers, and Conspirateurs. Players attempt to jump over pieces without capturing them, and be first to advance their pieces to the other player's side. Salta is played on a Continental Checker board with 10x10 chequered squares. One player has green markings on white pieces, and the other player has red markings on black pieces.

HMS Shah (D21)

The USS Jamaica (CVE-43) (originally AVG-43 then later ACV-43), was an escort aircraft carrier of World War II that served in the British Royal Navy as HMS Shah (D21). Returned to the USA at War's end, she was converted into a merchant vessel and she was sold into civilian service in 1946 as Salta. She was ultimately scrapped in 1966.

Design and description

HMS Shah was a Ruler class escort carrier in the Royal Navy. The ships in this class were all larger and had a greater aircraft capacity than all preceding American-built escort carriers. Their hulls were designed as merchant ships but they were laid down as escort carriers and were not later conversions. All had a complement of 646 men and an overall length of 492 feet 3 inches (150.0 m), a beam of 69 feet 6 inches (21.2 m) and a draught of 25 ft 6 in (7.8 m). Propulsion was provided a steam turbine, two boilers connected to one shaft giving 9,350 brake horsepower (SHP), which could propel the ship at 16.5 knots (30.6 km/h; 19.0 mph).