Bahía Blanca vs Mashhad

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Bahía Blanca (Spanish pronunciation: [baˈi.a ˈβlaŋka]; English: White Bay) is a city in the southwest of the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, by the Atlantic Ocean, and is the seat of government of Bahía Blanca Partido. It had 301,572 inhabitants according to the 2010 census [INDEC]. It is the principal city in the Greater Bahía Blanca urban agglomeration. The city has an important sea port with a depth of 45 feet (15 m), kept constant upstream almost all along the length of the bay, where the Napostá Stream drains.

Bahía Blanca means "White Bay". The name is due to the typical colour of the salt covering the soil surrounding the shores. The bay (which is actually an estuary) was seen by Ferdinand Magellan during his first circumnavigation of the world on the orders of Charles I of Spain, in 1520, looking for a canal connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean along the coasts of South America.

Source: Wikipedia

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Mashhad (Persian: مشهد‎, romanized: Mašhad [mæʃˈhæd] (listen)), also spelled Mashad or Meshad, is the second-most-populous city in Iran and the capital of Razavi Khorasan Province. It is located in the northeast of the country. It has a population of 3,001,184 (2016 census), which includes the areas of Mashhad Taman and Torqabeh. It was a major oasis along the ancient Silk Road connecting with Merv to the east. The city is named after the shrine of Imam Reza, the eighth Shia Imam. The Imam was buried in a village in Khorasan, which afterward gained the name Mashhad, meaning the place of martyrdom. Every year, millions of pilgrims visit the Imam Reza shrine. The Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid is also buried within the same shrine. Mashhad has been governed by different ethnic groups over the course of its history.

The city enjoyed relative prosperity in the Mongol period. Mashhad is also known colloquially as the city of Ferdowsi, after the Iranian poet who composed the Shahnameh. The city is the hometown of some of the most significant Iranian literary figures and artists, such as the poet Mehdi Akhavan-Sales, and Mohammad-Reza Shajarian, the traditional Iranian singer and composer. Ferdowsi and Akhavan-Sales are both buried in Tus, an ancient city that is considered to be the main origin of the current city of Mashhad. On 30 October 2009 (the anniversary of Imam Reza's martyrdom), Iran's then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared Mashhad to be "Iran's spiritual capital".

Source: Wikipedia