Black Country Black Country The Black Country is an area of the West Midlands, England, west of Birmingham and commonly refers to a region covering most of the four Metropolitan Boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton. During the Industrial Revolution, it became one of the most industrialised parts of Britain with coal mines, coking, iron foundries, glass factories, brickworks and steel mills producing a high level of air pollution. The road between Wolverhampton and Birmingham was described as "one continuous town" in 1785. The first trace of "The Black Country" as an expression dates from the 1840s. The name is believed
Virginia Living Museum existing natural sciences; at this time it was renamed the Peninsula Nature and Science Center. The museum began its transformation to a "living museum", incorporating living exhibits and preservation land together with traditional exhibits, in 1983, following the example of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. It reopened as the Virginia Living Museum in 1987 under Virginia governor Gerald L. Baliles. The museum expanded throughout the 1990s, opening the Coastal Plain Aviary in 2001 and a museum building in 2004. The main building features animals living in several exhibits that depict the many environments of Virginia, including the coastal plain, a Chesapeake