São Luís, Maranhão

São Luís (Portuguese pronunciation: [sɐ̃w luˈis], Saint Louis) is the capital and largest city of the Brazilian state of Maranhão. The city is located on Ilha de São Luís (Saint Louis' Island) in the Baía de São Marcos (Saint Mark's Bay), an extension of the Atlantic Ocean which forms the estuary of Pindaré, Mearim, Itapecuru and other rivers. Its coordinates are 2.53° south, 44.30° west. The city proper has a population of some 986,826 people (2008 IBGE estimate). The metropolitan area totals 1,227,659, ranked as the 16th largest in Brazil.

São Luís, created originally as Saint-Louis, is the only Brazilian state capital founded by France (see France Équinoxiale) and it is one of the three Brazilian state capitals located on islands (the others are Vitória and Florianópolis).

The city has two major sea ports: Madeira Port and Itaqui Port, through which a substantial part of Brazil's iron ore, originating from the (pre)-Amazon region, is exported. The city's main industries are metallurgical with Alumar, and VALE. São Luís is home of the Federal University of Maranhão.

São Luís

São Luís or São Luiz (Portuguese language for Saint Louis) may refer to several places in the Portuguese-speaking world:

Brazil

Portugal

Rivers

See also

SAO

Sao may refer to:

SAO or S.A.O. may stand for:

Sao civilisation

The Sao civilization flourished in Middle Africa from ca. the sixth century BC to as late as the sixteenth century AD. The Sao lived by the Chari River south of Lake Chad in territory that later became part of Cameroon and Chad. They are the earliest people to have left clear traces of their presence in the territory of modern Cameroon. Sometime around the 16th century, conversion to Islam changed the cultural identity of the former Sao. Today, several ethnic groups of northern Cameroon and southern Chad but particularly the Sara, Kotoko claim descent from the civilization of the Sao.

Origins and decline

The Sao civilization may have begun as early as the sixth century BC, and by the end of the first millennium BC, their presence was well established south of Lake Chad and near the Chari River. The city states of the Sao reached their apex sometime between the ninth and fifteenth centuries AD.

The Sao's demise may have come about due to conquest, Islamization, or both. Traditional tales say that the Sao west of Lake Chad fell to "Yemenites" from the east. These invaders made several unsuccessful attempts to conquer the Sao before finally succeeding by resorting to trickery. If true, the newcomers may have been Arab Bedouin or Sayfuwa raiders coming from the east who moved into the region in the fourteenth century . Although some scholars estimate that the Sao civilization south of Lake Chad lasted until the fourteenth or fifteenth century, the majority opinion is that it ceased to exist as a separate culture sometime in the 16th century subsequently to the expansion of the Bornu Empire. The Kotoko are the inheritors of the former city states of the Sao.

15 Arietis

15 Arietis (abbreviated 15 Ari) is a singlevariable star in the northern constellation of Aries. 15 Arietis is the Flamsteed designation; it also bears the variable star designation AV Arietis. It has an apparent visual magnitude of 5.74, which is just bright enough to be visible to the naked eye from dark suburban skies. An annual parallax shift of 5.84 mas corresponds to a physical distance of approximately 560 light-years (170 parsecs) from Earth. At that distance, the star's brightness is reduced by 0.33 in magnitude because of extinction from interstellar gas and dust.

This is a red giant star with a stellar classification of M3 III. The measured angular diameter of this star is 3.67 ± 0.11 mas. At the estimated distance of Delta Ophiuchi, this yields a physical size of about 67 times the radius of the Sun. It is a pulsating variable; the first pulsation period is 18.1 days with an amplitude of 0.028 magnitudes, while the second is 21.9 days and 0.030 in magnitude.

References

Luis

Luis (and its variant forms) is the Spanish, Portuguese, Galician, Aragonese form of the Germanic given name Hludowig and Chlodovech (modern German Ludwig). The Germanic name is composed of the words for "fame" (hlūd) and "warrior" (wīg) which may be translated to famous warrior or "famous in battle".

List of people with the given name Luis

Luis (disambiguation)

Luis is a male given name. It can also refer to: