Pokigron is a town in Suriname located on the Upper Suriname River near the Brokopondo Reservoir . It is located in the Boven Suriname municipality (resort) in the Sipaliwini District . It has a population of approximately 400 people in 2018. Pokigron is located at the end of a paved road via Brownsweg to the Avobakaweg . Pokigron is often referred to as Atjoni which is the nearby quay, and literally the end of the road. Villages to the South of Pokigron have to be accessed by boat. The village is home to Maroons of the Saramaka tribe.
22-404: Nearby towns and villages include Wittiehede Ston (19.6 nm ), Mofina (15.6 nm), Wittikamba (1.4 nm), Malrosee-Kondre (5.1 nm) and Abenaston (3.0 nm). Pokigron was, up to 1986, a village with a population of 700, and reasonably prosperous as the main transport hub to the south of the country. Many of the typical huts with thatched roofs had been replaced by houses, and
44-568: A quarter meridian . So 10,000,000 m / 90 × 60 = 1,851.85 m ≈ 1,852 m became the metric length for a nautical mile. France made it legal for the French Navy in 1906, and many metric countries voted to sanction it for international use at the 1929 International Hydrographic Conference. Both the United States and the United Kingdom used an average arcminute—specifically,
66-406: A degree (5866 2 / 3 feet per arcminute ). In 1633, William Oughtred suggested 349,800 feet to a degree (5830 feet per arcminute). Both Gunter and Oughtred put forward the notion of dividing a degree into 100 parts, but their proposal was generally ignored by navigators. The ratio of 60 miles, or 20 leagues, to a degree of latitude remained fixed while the length of the mile
88-469: A degree is a map by Nicolaus Germanus in a 1482 edition of Ptolemy 's Geography indicating one degree of longitude at the Equator contains " milaria 60 ". An earlier manuscript map by Nicolaus Germanus in a previous edition of Geography states " unul gradul log. et latitud sub equinortiali formet stadia 500 que fanut miliaria 62 1 / 2 " ("one degree longitude and latitude under
110-571: A minute of arc of a great circle of a sphere having the same surface area as the Clarke 1866 ellipsoid . The authalic (equal area) radius of the Clarke 1866 ellipsoid is 6,370,997.2 metres (20,902,222 ft). The resulting arcminute is 1,853.2480 metres (6,080.210 ft). The United States chose five significant digits for its nautical mile, 6,080.2 feet , whereas the United Kingdom chose four significant digits for its Admiralty mile, 6,080 feet. In 1929
132-511: Is the knot , one nautical mile per hour. There is no single internationally agreed symbol, with several symbols in use. The word mile is from the Latin phrase for a thousand paces: mille passus . Navigation at sea was done by eye until around 1500 when navigational instruments were developed and cartographers began using a coordinate system with parallels of latitude and meridians of longitude . The earliest reference of 60 miles to
154-644: The Jungle Commando, and according to a report by Aide Médicale Internationale , killed civilians including women and children. Both parties have denied that any civilians had been killed. On 27 September 1989, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights looked into the matter, declared that this constituted a very serious violation of the Right to Life, recommended that the Government of Suriname investigate
176-445: The definition of territorial waters . Historically, it was defined as the meridian arc length corresponding to one minute ( 1 / 60 of a degree) of latitude at the equator, so that Earth's polar circumference is very near to 21,600 nautical miles (that is 60 minutes × 360 degrees). Today the international nautical mile is defined as 1,852 metres (about 6,076 ft; 1.151 mi). The derived unit of speed
198-500: The distance along a great circle was 60 miles per degree. However, these referred to the old English mile of 5000 feet and league of 15,000 feet, relying upon Ptolemy's underestimate of the Earth's circumference . In the early seventeenth century, English geographers started to acknowledge the discrepancy between the angular measurement of a degree of latitude and the linear measurement of miles. In 1624 Edmund Gunter suggested 352,000 feet to
220-475: The equator forms 500 stadia , which make 62 1 / 2 miles"). Whether a correction or convenience, the reason for the change from 62 1 / 2 to 60 miles to a degree is not explained. Eventually, the ratio of 60 miles to a degree appeared in English in a 1555 translation of Pietro Martire d'Anghiera 's Decades: "[Ptolemy] assigned likewise to every degree three score miles." By
242-567: The incidents squatted in a terrain near Paramaribo , and have named their camp Sunny Point. It is located in Koewarasan , Wanica . As of 3 February 2018, the village of Pokigron now has 24 hours of electricity, because the Diesel generators could only provide for 5 to 6 hours. Pokigron is home to a Medische Zending healthcare centre. Nautical mile A nautical mile is a unit of length used in air, marine, and space navigation , and for
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#1732859461305264-547: The international nautical mile was defined by the First International Extraordinary Hydrographic Conference in Monaco as exactly 1,852 metres (which is 6,076.12 ft). The United States did not adopt the international nautical mile until 1954. Britain adopted it in 1970, but legal references to the obsolete unit are now converted to 1,853 metres (which is 6,079.40 ft). The metre
286-671: The late 16th century English geographers and navigators knew that the ratio of distances at sea to degrees was constant along any great circle (such as the equator , or any meridian), assuming that Earth was a sphere. In 1574, William Bourne stated in A Regiment for the Sea the "rule to raise a degree" practised by navigators: "But as I take it, we in England should allowe 60 myles to one degrée: that is, after 3 miles to one of our Englishe leagues, wherefore 20 of oure English leagues shoulde answere to one degrée." Likewise, Robert Hues wrote in 1594 that
308-452: The length of the foot varied in different parts of the Greek world, and the length of the stadion has been the subject of argument and hypothesis for hundreds of years. An empirical determination of the length of the stadion was made by Lev Vasilevich Firsov, who compared 81 distances given by Eratosthenes and Strabo with the straight-line distances measured by modern methods, and averaged
330-429: The location. Stadion (unit) The stadion (plural stadia , Ancient Greek : στάδιον ; latinized as stadium ), also anglicized as stade , was an ancient Greek unit of length , consisting of 600 Ancient Greek feet ( podes ). Its exact length is unknown today; historians estimate it at between 150 m and 210 m. According to Herodotus , one stadium was equal to 600 Greek feet ( podes ). However,
352-540: The matter, and that the relatives of the victims are entitled to fair compensation. The IACHR identified 15 cases of deaths, four disappearances and one was unclear. Six of the cases were children, and three were women of which one was raped before she was killed. In October 1993, the IACHR sentenced the Government of Suriname to pay $ 400,000 (~$ 761,926 in 2023) in damages to the victims. A group of civilians from Pokigron following
374-430: The measurement based on this ( 40,075.017 km / 360 × 60 = 1,855.3 metres) is known as the geographical mile . Using the definition 1 / 60 of a degree of latitude on Mars , a Martian nautical mile equals to 983 m (1,075 yd). This is potentially useful for celestial navigation on a human mission to the planet , both as a shorthand and a quick way to roughly determine
396-403: The poles and 1,843 metres at the Equator. France and other metric countries state that in principle a nautical mile is an arcminute of a meridian at a latitude of 45°, but that is a modern justification for a more mundane calculation that was developed a century earlier. By the mid-19th century, France had defined a nautical mile via the original 1791 definition of the metre , one ten-millionth of
418-419: The results. He obtained a result of about 157.7 metres (172.5 yd). Various equivalent lengths have been proposed, and some have been named. Among them are: Which measure of the stadion is used can affect the interpretation of ancient texts. For example, the error in the calculation of Earth's circumference by Eratosthenes or Posidonius is dependent on which stadion is chosen to be appropriate. From
440-537: The village even had street lights. This changed on 23 April 1987. The Surinamese Interior War which had started far away in Albina and Moengotapoe the previous year, had come to Sipaliwini. The Jungle Commando headed by Ronnie Brunswijk ordered the villagers into the jungle, robbed them of their possessions, and burned their houses. On 11 September 1987, the National Army led by Dési Bouterse retaliated by attacking
462-487: Was originally defined as 1 ⁄ 10,000,000 of the length of the meridian arc from the North pole to the equator (1% of a centesimal degree of latitude), thus one kilometre of distance corresponds to one centigrad (also known as centesimal arc minute) of latitude. The Earth's circumference is therefore approximately 40,000 km. The equatorial circumference is slightly longer than the polar circumference –
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#1732859461305484-449: Was revised with better estimates of the earth’s circumference. In 1637, Robert Norwood proposed a new measurement of 6120 feet for an arcminute of latitude, which was within 44 feet of the currently accepted value for a nautical mile. Since the Earth is not a perfect sphere but is an oblate spheroid with slightly flattened poles, a minute of latitude is not constant, but about 1,862 metres at
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