| The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07. |
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| Longyearbyen |
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(lông´y rbü´´ n) (KEY) , town and administrative center of Svalbard, on Isfjorden, Spitsbergen island. It is a coal-mining settlement, founded (1905) by an American company and named after the American miner J. M. Longyear. Its coal mines were transferred to a Norwegian company in 1916. It was destroyed (Sept., 1943) by German battleships but was quickly rebuilt. The Svalbard International Seed Vault, a seed bank designed as a global backup storage facility, is under construction inside a mountain near the town. |
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| | | The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright © 2007 Columbia University Press. |
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