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Tonga (20°00'S
175°00'W / GMT+13), officially the Kingdom of Tonga is
an independent autochthonous monarchy in the Commonwealth,
on the archipelago of the same name in the southern Pacific
Ocean. It lies about a third of the way between New Zealand
and Hawai‘i, south of Samoa and east of Fiji.
The Tongan archipelago consists of 169 islands, 36 of them
inhabited, and is divided into three main groups – Vava‘u,
Ha‘apai, and Tongatapu, which together cover an 800
kilometre (500 mi) long north–south line. The largest
island, Tongatapu, on which the capital city of Nuku‘alofa
is located, covers 257 square kilometres (99 sq mi).
The daylight readings will be taken and broadcast across the
web to today from a location approximately two kilometres
from Nuku'alofa. |
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San Jose (37°18'15"N,
121°52'22"W GMT-7) is the third-most populous city
in California after Los Angeles and San Diego, and is the
county seat of Santa Clara County. It is the tenth-most
populous city in the United States, and has held the title
of The Safest Big City in America for the past several years.
The city is located at the
south end of the San Francisco Bay within the informal boundaries
of Silicon Valley. With an estimated population of 950,000,
San Jose is also the largest city in Northern California.
San Jose lies near the San Andreas Fault; a major source
of earthquake activity in California. The Guadalupe River
runs from the Santa Cruz Mountains (which separate the South
Bay from the Pacific Coast) flowing north through San Jose,
ending in the San Francisco Bay at Alviso. Along the southern
part of the river is the neighborhood of Almaden Valley,
originally named for the mercury mines which produced mercury
needed for gold extraction from quartz during the California
gold rush as well as mercury fulminate blasting caps and
detonators for the U.S. military from 1870 to 1945. |
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