55 Degrees North Latitude Map

It's a building, a line of breadth, and fifty-fifty a TV cop show.

But just what is 55 Degrees North?

Scientists will tell you the 55th parallel n is a circumvolve of latitude that is 55 degrees north of the Earth's equatorial plane.

But we've taken the imaginary line to our hearts - and it at present feels as Geordie as the Tyne Bridge and panhaggerty.

Even so, we share 55 Degrees North with other places in the earth.

Information technology's a story of tragedy, political prisoners, and a spectacular volcano.

Newcastle

Built betwixt 1963 and 1969, Newcastle's Swan House part block became 55 degrees North in 2002.

Today the building is home to executive apartments with Zoopla recently list a two-bed apartment for £950 a month. Another was on sale at £264,950.

For years it was known - and still is by many - as Swan House, and was a BT role complex.

It has sometimes sparked controversy.

For some it is a Newcastle landmark only for others information technology's an eyesore gear up in the middle of a roundabout.

Entering the city over the Tyne Span, it is the first thing you see, dominating nearby buildings, old and new.

Information technology is also home to Bar 55 and Metro Radio.

Derry

Also at 55 degrees North is Derry, the second biggest city in Northern Ireland.

While the city is more normally known as Derry, and the local council is chosen Derry, information technology is legally known as Londonderry.

Derry is one of the oldest inhabited places in Ireland and there is a slight link to the Northward East.

One of the earliest historical records is about a monastery built past St Columba - the aforementioned St Columba who appeared in a dream to Male monarch Oswald of Northumbria promising victory in a battle.

In more than modern times Derry was a flashpoint for sectarian violence.

What became known as "the troubles" is thought to be started in Derry at the Battle of the Bogside.

4 years afterwards thirteen people were killed when British troops opened fire on demonstrators in Derry,

Omsk

Omsk is a city in south-western Siberia at 55 degrees Northward.

What's it like?

Well, allow'southward just say the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky said: "Omsk is a hateful pigsty. At that place is hardly a tree hither. In summer — rut and winds that bring sandstorms, in winter — snowstorms.

"The place is dingy, almost exclusively inhabited by military, and dissolute to the last degree."

Simply he might have been biased.

The Russian authorities had exiled him to a prison camp in Omsk for spreading banned books.

But today it is known for spectacular cathedrals and a host of musuems.

Novosibirsk

Novosibirsk is also in Siberia and also shares the degree of latitude.

It is the 3rd-largest city in Russia after Moscow and St. Petersburg and the first in Siberia in which a metro system was established.

The city, which has the nickname Chicago of Siberia thanks to rapid industrialisation, is home to the Monument to the Heroes of the Revolution commemorating the early on days of communism.

North Body of water

Afterward leaving Newcastle in an easterly direction the line of latitude heads to the N Sea.

It was the sea that enabled the Vikings to launch an invasion of England, starting at Lindisfarne, and in more modern times it was the battle ground for military conflicts with Germany.

Present it is used for fishing and shipping lanes.

The N Ocean produces expert fishing only is hard to navigate with a number of banks, some of them rising a mere 15 to thirty metres (l–100 ft) beneath the surface.

It has acquired its share of trouble for the N Eastward with many shipwrecks and lost trawlers.

Alaska

Unimak Island, part of Alaska, is also at 55 degrees N and as different to Newcastle every bit chalk is to cheese.

It is dwelling to Mount Shishaldin, one of the ten about active volcanoes in the world, only only 64 people lived at that place according to a 2000 census study.

Canada

Polar bears at Churchill on the Hudson Bay

55 degrees North too passes through some of the nigh remote parts of Canada.

Locations include Hudson Bay, the 2d largest bay in the globe, which is largely frozen from December to June.

The coast of Hudson Bay is extremely sparsely populated, In that location are only about a dozen villages founded as trading posts in the 17th and 18th centuries by the Hudson'southward Bay Company and at present inhabited by

Inuit and Cree natives.

Gretna Green

Yeah, that Gretna, the 1 where English sweethearts often ran abroad to exist married.

Much of the local economy is driven by the marriage industry, where by some accounts, every bit many every bit one of every six Scottish weddings takes place in Gretna.

Historically information technology grew because it was a border crossing between England and Scotland and the location of a place where taxes were collected on cattle crossing betwixt the two countries.

The local blacksmith and his anvil have get the lasting symbols of Gretna Green weddings where, due to a quirk in the law, anyone could officiate at a matrimony ceremony at one indicate.

The Television set show

55 Degrees North was a BBC television drama series starring Don Gilet as DS Nicky Cole, a London detective relocated to Newcastle upon Tyne on the dark shift, subsequently exposing police corruption. Dervla Kirwan co-starred as solicitor Claire Maxwell.

Much was made of how Cole was exiled to the N Eastward equally a punishment for whistle-blowing on his colleagues.

The exterior of the police station used in the program is really the base of operations of HMS Calliope, a Royal Navy Reserve training centre, in Gateshead while the local force was the fictitious Tyneside Police.

Gilet went on to play serial killer Lucas Johnson in EastEnders and Consultant Anaesthetist Jesse Police force in Holby Urban center.