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How many teeth does an adult cat normally have?	How Many Teeth Do Cats Have? - Pets Pets How Many Teeth Do Cats Have? by Naomi Millburn Feline teeth are designed for meat consumption. Cats are more like humans than you may realize. Just like people, the fluffy cuties begin their lives with sets of deciduous "milk teeth," only for them to fall out and be replaced by permanent adult-caliber chompers shortly after. Fully-grown cats end up with 30 beautiful pearlies in total. Deciduous Teeth The amount of teeth a cat has depends on his specific age. Young kittens possess baby teeth until their adult sets appear at roughly 6 months old. During the tender kitten months, a cat will have 26 teeth -- four less than the adult amount. However, newborn kittens are completely toothless, with the first remnants typically emerging somewhere between the two and four week bracket. Baby Teeth Setup Kittens do not have any baby molar teeth. Molar teeth in felines are exclusive to adults. However, the fluff balls have two lower canines, two upper canines, six upper premolars, four lower premolars and 12 incisors. These teeth all function just fine for a kitten until they begin falling out at around 3 to 4 months old, notes the Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association. Adult Teeth For the most part, kittens attain their full set of adult teeth by the time they're approximately half a year old. Felines definitely mature a lot faster than human babies! Adult cats grow 30 teeth, including molars, premolars, canines and incisors. The incisors appear first, followed closely by the canine, premolar and then molar teeth. During the teething process you may notice some signs of discomfort in your kitty, including reluctance to eat, gum soreness and irritable behavior as a result of oral discomfort -- poor thing. Although these are all typical signs of teething, consult your veterinarian just to be 100 percent sure. Adult Teeth Setup Adult cats are equipped with 30 teeth with which to finely chop up their meals. The little guys are major carnivores to the core. Felines all have four molar, 10 premolar, four canine and 12 incisor teeth. Although cats have close to as many teeth as their human companions, the function is pretty different. Feline teeth don't have as strong a focus on chewing. The sharp little things focus heavily on grinding and chopping, so always watch your hands!	thirty
What is the first name of fictional character ‘Jones the Steam’, the driver of Ivor the Engine?	Do Cats Lose Their Baby Teeth? Do Cats Lose Their Baby Teeth? Do Cats Lose Their Baby Teeth? July 19, 2010 By: Norma Roche Your kitten will normally have lost her deciduous or baby teeth by 7 months of age. She has 26 baby teeth that are replaced by 30 permanent or adult teeth. It's important to know what's happening during teething, as baby teeth don't always fall out. If you spot a retained deciduous tooth -- a baby tooth still in the kitten's mouth after the adult tooth has erupted -- contact your veterinarian, as retained teeth can cause dental problems. Get your kitten used to having her teeth cleaned, using cat toothpaste on a finger brush or some gauze. credit: Rasulovs/iStock/Getty Images Baby Teeth Timetable Your kitten is born without teeth. Around 3 weeks old, her baby teeth start erupting through the gums. The 12 incisors -- the small teeth at the front -- and the four fang-like teeth, called canines, erupt between 3 to 4 weeks of age. From 4 to 6 weeks old, the four bottom premolars, located at the side and back of her mouth, come through. By 8 weeks of age, the six top premolars should have erupted and your kitten usually will have all her baby teeth. These tiny needle-pointed teeth look slightly translucent and are more fragile than adult teeth. Adult Teeth Timetable Your kitten starts teething when she's about 3 months old. Her deciduous incisors are replaced by permanent teeth between 3 1/2 to 5 1/2 months old. The adult premolars erupt at about 4 1/2 months and the canine permanent teeth at 5 1/2 to 6 1/2 months. Between 5 to 6 months of age, your kitten gets four extra teeth, two at the top and two at the bottom, called molars. At 6 to 7 months old, all of your kitten's baby teeth normally will have been replaced by 30 permanent teeth. What Happens During Teething During teething, it's common for a kitten to have smelly breath and swollen, red gums. She might start chewing on things, and even be reluctant to eat where her mouth is tender. This is caused by the adult teeth developing in the jaw and pressing on the roots of the baby teeth. The pressure, stimulates the kitten's body to start absorption -- dissolving -- of the baby tooth roots. The roots weaken and disappear, so only the crowns or visible part of the teeth are left. The crowns drop out as the permanent teeth push through the gum. You may notice the odd tooth in your kitten's bedding or on the floor. Most of them will fall out when she's eating and be swallowed with her food. Problems Caused By Retained Deciduous Teeth Some deciduous roots fail to dissolve. The adult tooth still erupts, but it's forced to come through at the wrong angle, or in the wrong position, because it has to share the same socket as the retained baby tooth. The upper canine teeth are most likely to be retained, but any tooth can be affected. Retained teeth can cause a number of problems. Food, trapped between the crowded teeth, may lead to tooth decay, tartar deposits and periodontal disease, all of which can result in your cat prematurely losing teeth. Malpositioned teeth can make chewing difficult and weaken other teeth by rubbing on them. They may cause painful sores if they dig into the gums or roof of the mouth. Occasionally, even the growth and development of the jawbones are affected. If a root is only partly resorbed, it can become infected. Treatment For Retained Deciduous Teeth Up to about 8 months of age, it's a good idea to check your kitten's mouth on a weekly basis. If you notice any retained teeth, make an appointment with a veterinarian straightaway. He usually will extract a retained baby tooth if it looks as though it won't fall out normally, taking care not to damage the adult tooth's root. If a retained tooth is extracted early on, the adult tooth generally will move back into its correct position. Like cute animals? Follow Cuteness.com on Facebook for more AWWs and LOLs. Related Articles	i don't know
Who is the lead singer of British band The Cure?	Robert Smith (musician) - Wikiquote Robert Smith (musician) Jump to: navigation , search Robert Smith Robert James Smith (born April 21 , 1959 ) is a guitarist, vocalist and songwriter. He has been the lead singer and driving force behind British post-punk band The Cure since its founding in 1976. Sourced[ edit ] A couple of years ago, we went to Eurodisney. That too was bearable, although it was a bit weird when Mickey Mouse came to ask for an autograph. (Humo Magazine, 2000) But everyone I know reaches a point where they throw out their arms and go beserk for a while; otherwise you never know what your limits are. I was just trying to find mine. (Guitar Player magazine 1992) I could write songs as bad as Wham's if I really felt the urge to, but what's the point? (The Hit magazine 1985) I don't think of death in a romantic way anymore. (L'Express newspaper 2000) I don't understand this obsession with banging out records. What a stupid attitude! Like the world is holding its breath waiting for the next Cure album. It isn't. (Papermag Paper Daily 1996) I have a bag full of words, and when one of us comes up with a good piece of music, I look in the bag to see if anything there will fit. If nothing does, I sit down and try to put down on paper what the music makes me feel; very rarely will a piece of writing inspire a piece of music. (CANOE 1996) I honestly don't class myself as a songwriter. I've got 'musician' written on my passport. That's even funnier. (The Hit magazine 1985) I think the rock'n'roll myth of living on the edge is a pile of crap. (Spin magazine 1987) I think we're in the Top 10 most bootlegged bands in history according to a web-poll. Pretty much every show we ever do is bootlegged, but it's very rare that one is of good enough quality to be listened to by anything other than the most fanatical people though I suppose only fanatical people buy bootlegs. (X-Press magazine 2000) I wake up and look at myself and think, 'yuck!'. (MTV) I wouldn't want to think people doted on us, hung on every word, or wanted to look like us. (Trouser Press 1980) I'm not going to worry about the Cure slipping down into the second division; it doesn't bother me because I never expected to be in the first division anyway. [A soccer reference] (Alternative Press) I've always spent more time with a smile on my face than not, but the thing is, I don't write about it. (Rolling Stone magazine 1997) I've experienced such extremes both in the band and in my personal life, feelings that last for just a few seconds at a time, that it's like a drug. After a while, when they're not there you notice the absence of it and nothing seems real anymore and nothings quite sharp enough or focused enough. (Spin magazine 1989) Jimi Hendrix changed my life. Each generation influences the following one and as a consequence brings it back to the past. (L'Express newspaper 2000) Most of the time I'm a professional idiot. I really don't care about what other people think, which can be a bad thing. (The Hit magazine 1985) No, come to think of it, I don't think the Cure will end, but I can make up an ending if you want me to. (Spin magazine 1989) Originally I was going to take perverse satisfaction in making a depressing album. (Spin magazine 1989) Refusing to grow up is like refusing to accept your limitations. That's why I don't think we'll ever grow up. (Melody Maker magazine 1992) The Cure, is the kind of band that wanders in and out of the mainstream's gaze. (The Boston Globe newspaper 1997) There have been very few virtuosos in the history of the group, but there have been a lot of really nice people. The Cure backstage is a notoriously fun-filled zone. (JAM TV) There is a reason for me always shoe-gazing. I simply can't look into the eyes of several thousand people. (Toronto Sun newspaper) They may not like us, but they can't get away from knowing who we are. (Spin magazine 1988) If Morrissey says not to eat meat, then I’m going to eat meat; that’s how much I hate Morrissey. (Q, May 1989) We wouldn't have been able to handle the fame if it would've hit us all of the sudden. When I was young I always dreamed of having a group that was adored by few and ignored by the rest of the world, like Nick Drake. Fortunately, when we became famous, I had no time to reflect upon anything anymore. (De Standaard newspaper 2001) What we do attracts to a certain type of people. I don't think age has anything to do with it: either you get into it or you don't. You can be 16 or 60 and you will like us or not depending on your sensibilities. (X-Press Magazine, Australia, September 2000) You know, the Internets made us more aware of what people think about us. (3RRR radio 2000) It's really weird but my parents used to tell me I could do anything I wanted to. I used to say, 'Well, what if I want to be an astronaut and go to the moon?" and my dad used to say, 'If you really want to you can'. I used to think he was talking absolute rubbish, particularly when I was 21 and he was still saying that. But in a way it really stuck with me cos my dad ended up doing exactly what he wanted to do. To an outside point of view he's totally conformed, he's had a family and four kids but he's only ever done things that made him genuinely happy. "He jacked in his job cos it made him unhappy and he didn't want to compromise his entire life just for the sake of carrying it through. It's very admirable, that quality, and I think it's very rare in people. Most people feel so conditioned, so oppressed by everything that goes on around them that they just give in. You have to refuse to give in. (Melody Maker, March 7th 1992) I got very frustrated when I was reading so-called classic books or films, or listening to underground music which is trying to tell you something. it´s all nonsense, and it´s disillusioning. So it would be a paradox for me to then decide I´m going to communicate something. (Sounds, August 24, 1985) I used to go out with Severin a lot to dance clubs but we wouldn't dance. It'd be more like take drugs and try to get to the toilet which would usually take about two hours...we became good friends but we were never really good for each other. Our friendship was based entirely on altered states. Whenever we went out together I would never come home until the next day. Mary hated it. (Faith, 1983) If I were offered the title [a knighthood] I would tell them to stick it up in their arses" (The FIB 2002) The fun thing is something people always miss out on with us. It's been brilliant making this album, but even as far back as Faith or Pornography we were still having a good crack. People would see me and Simon laughing and drinking ourselves unconscious together and they couldn't understand how we could be like that and still be in this angst-ridden band. But it's easy to be like that -- it's what being little, being a child, is all about. When you're grown up, you can't do it cos' you think about it too much. (Melody Maker, March 7, 1992) We never became a mainstream band. It's kind of like we've bridged two worlds, or fallen between two stools, between alternative and mainstream. To a lot of mainstream programmers, The Cure is still a bit too weird. To an alternative programmer, sometimes we're a bit too mainstream. Sometimes we've benefited from that and sometimes we've kind of suffered. I actually enjoy that kind of position because I think it reflects what the band does (CMJ, December 1999) I love the anonymity of being Mr Smith. If I book a hotel it's actually very funny. It's very nice to be a genuine Mr Smith (Q 2000) If the world could outlaw religion for one year you'd be surprised how much better the world would be. (Music Planet 2Nite, 2001)	Robert Smith
Which type of racing is held at the Belle Vue Stadium in Manchester?	25 years ago, The Cure's 'Disintegration' changed history FacebookEmail Twitter Google+ LinkedIn Pinterest 25 years ago, The Cure's 'Disintegration' changed history Robert Smith's hair and makeup aren't the only things that have withstood the test of time. The Cure's legacy has, too. Readers share their memories of the band's seminal album Post to Facebook 25 years ago, The Cure's 'Disintegration' changed history Robert Smith's hair and makeup aren't the only things that have withstood the test of time. The Cure's legacy has, too. Readers share their memories of the band's seminal album Check out this story on USATODAY.com: http://usat.ly/1naGAmU CancelSend A link has been sent to your friend's email address. Posted! A link has been posted to your Facebook feed. 5 To find out more about Facebook commenting please read the Conversation Guidelines and FAQs 25 years ago, The Cure's 'Disintegration' changed history Korina Lopez , USA TODAY Published 11:05 a.m. ET May 2, 2014 \| Updated 1:11 p.m. ET May 2, 2014 Posted! A link has been posted to your Facebook feed. The Cure's seminal album 'Disintegration' is 25. Yes, 25. Since The Cure formed in 1976, Robert Smith's moody blend of post-punk rock and pop has been felt not only in music but in all of pop culture, from movies to comics. Let's take a look back. Here, he performs at the 2013 Austin City Limits Music Festival. Jack Plunkett, Invision, via AP Fullscreen Siouxsie and the Banshees (shown here in 1991) was just as much of an influence on Smith as he was on them. In 1982, after The Cure released 'Pornography,' Smith, beleaguered by infighting, joined the Banshees as a part-time guitarist while staying on as The Cure's frontman. In 1983, he and the Banshees' bassist, Steven Severin, collaborated as the supergroup The Glove, putting out just one album, 'Blue Sunshine.'Siouxsie and the Banshees: Budgie, left, Jon Klein, Steven Severin, Martin McCarrick and Siouxsie Sioux. Donna Francesca, Geffen Nine Inch Nails led the industrial music revolution, which was heavily influenced by goth rock. Here, lead singer Trent Reznor rocks at Woodstock in 1994. Eileen Blass, USA TODAY Fullscreen 30 Seconds to Mars is another one of The Cure's proverbial disciples. Frontman and primary songwriter Jared Leto has cited The Cure as one of his influences behind his brand of boisterous, emotional rock.Here, he performs at the 2014 iHeartRadio Music Awards in Los Angeles. Kevin Winter, Getty Images, for Clear Channel Interpol's pensive indie rock takes a page from Smith's book.Here, Paul Banks performs on the 2014 NME Awards tour in Birmingham, England. Ollie Millington, WireImage Fullscreen Smashing Pumpkins is one of the more well-known bands that, with its layered style of synth and guitars, found inspiration in The Cure's music. The Pumpkins did a cover of 'A Night Like This.'Here, lead singer Billy Corgan performs during a concert at the 2013 Gurten music festival in Bern, Switzerland. Peter Klaunzer AP Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz is a vocal fan of Smith. In 2006, he interviewed him for 'Entertainment Weekly.'Here, Patrick Stump and Wentz perform during the 2014 Cartoon Network Hall of Game Awards in Santa Monica, Calif. Tommaso Boddi, WireImage The Killers' longing lyricism and melodramatic blend of pop and rock bear The Cure stamp. Frontman Brandon Flowers of The Killers performs during the Coke Zero Countdown at NCAA March Madness Music Festival in Dallas. Michael Loccisano, Getty Images, for Turner Fullscreen Filmmaker Tim Burton is an avid fan of The Cure and invited Smith to contribute music to his films. Smith worked on 'Alice in Wonderland' as well as 'Frankenweenie Unleashed!' In 1990's 'Edward Scissorhands,' Johnny Depp, who co-starred with Winona Ryder, has a similar hairstyle to Smith. In 2009, Burton presented Smith with the Shockwaves NME Godlike Genius Award and thanked Smith for influencing his work. Zade Rosenthal, 20th Century Fox The Cure's song 'Burn' was featured on the soundtrack of of the 1994 film 'The Crow,' starring the late Brandon Lee. Robert Zuckerman Some of comic artist Neil Gaiman's works, such as 'The Sandman,' were inspired by The Cure.These are members of The Endless from 2003's 'The Sandman.' Shown is the art by Frank Quitely. Frank Quitely, DC Comics Fullscreen Smith has even saved the world, at least the one in Comedy Central's 'South Park.' He voiced himself in the 1998 "Mecha-Streisand" episode, in which he, Smithra, who has the power of a robot punch, defeats Barbra Streisand. At the end of the episode, Kyle famous declares "'Disintegration' is the best album ever!" There you have it. Comedy Central Like this topic? You may also like these photo galleries: Replay Robert Smith, lead singer of The Cure, circa 1999. (Photo: Paul Cox) Robert Smith's hair and makeup aren't the only things that have withstood the test of time. The Cure's legacy has, too. Although the band's been through several member changes, and despite intermittent retirement announcements, Smith's leadership remains constant. The unmistakable sound of The Cure's gloomy post-punk pop gave rise to goth rock, but it was Smith's masterful orchestration that balanced his punk roots with pop sensibilities and tipped the band into the mainstream, making it one of the most important bands to come out of — and survive — the '80s. In 1989, the group released its seminal album Disintegration, considered one of its important, if not its most important, albums. Earlier this year, Smith announced he and his bandmates will release their 14th and 15th studio albums, called 4:14 Scream and 4:26 Dream. Maybe they'll top Disintegration? We'll see. In homage to the 25th anniversary of that album, USA TODAY invited readers to share their memories. I remember my mom driving me to kindergarten (1989), and we were listening to The Cure's Disintegration on cassette, and at some point, my mom hit the rewind button to point out a particular awesome part of Lullaby (those syncopated plucky strings). It was the first time I remember having a conversation about a certain part of a song — until then, music just washed over me like the sun or the breeze, just another uncontrollable part of the world — and I remember being fascinated with the power of the listener to intervene in the music. That REWIND button! So much power. In a lot of ways, it planted the seed of me eventually becoming a DJ, that active interventionist attitude to recordings. — Canyon Cody, Los Angeles I didn't get to see them live until the Wish tour. But I remember buying Disintegration on tape and bringing it home. I put it into my stereo and cranked the volume. Wind chimes before the beginning booms of Plainsong for the first time had me shivering! My father came into my room about halfway through the song, presumably because the music was too loud, and asked, "What's going on in here?" Thirteen-year-old me responded, "THIS MUSIC IS CHANGING MY LIFE FOREVER!" — Kellianne Benson, Berkeley, Calif. I was obsessed with Robert Smith. I even wore a floating heart necklace like the one he and his wife, Mary, wore. Senior year in high school, I dated a guy who played bass and looked just like him. That he turned out to be a raging alcoholic was secondary to his resemblance to my teenage music obsession. — Vanessa LaFaso Stolarski, Harper's Ferry, W.Va. I wore a scarlet brocade mandarin jacket I swiped from a costume shop fire sale, and got black hair dye all over it. I remember doing all of our makeup before a show. At my grandma's house! — Leanne Gonzalez Singer, New York City I bought myself a boom box with a CD player for my 17th birthday (November '89) and could only afford two CDs with it. One of them was Disintegration. I was determined only to buy classic albums while I switched over my collection from vinyl and tapes. I went home and cranked it up. Boom box still works, although it randomly cranks up the volume on its own sometimes. I think there's a New Wave ghost in the machine. — Cathleen Corrie, Portland, Ore. Disintegration was my favorite album when I was a preteen/high school student. I have memories of playing it (the whole thing) on the jukebox at the pizza place, squealing for joy when it got a shout-out on an early episode of South Park, and feeling like my life was complete when I got a copy on vinyl for a winter holiday gift. Not to mention the party where one dancer played the hook to Love Song on xylophone, or the college friend who played Lullaby on repeat just to annoy his roommate. One of the most significant creative works in my life. — Charlotte Stewart, Charlotte I was 12 years old when Disintegration came out. The girl next door, who frequently came over to babysit us when my mother was going out overnight, brought the tape over to listen to after my younger brother fell asleep. I had only the vaguest idea about alternative rock and had never even heard of The Cure when she pushed play on our stereo. The big sound of the opening of Plainsong absorbed the churn of emotion that I'd been experiencing but couldn't quite express. At the time, my mother had been going through a harrowing divorce from her second husband, a marriage that made the movie The Night of the Hunter look like a documentary. My classmates hated me for a raft of reasons (I was the new kid, I talked back to the boys who bothered me, there were rumors that I'd attacked a teacher the year prior), and I couldn't pick a side between boy bands and hair metal. I felt deeply cynical about love and romance, both from watching my mother's marriage disintegrate and from the way the boys at my school treated the girls. The lyrics on Disintegration matched up with the violence of love that I'd seen at home and on the playground, but that gorgeous, larger-than-life sound — the lush melodies and full arrangements — fed into my burgeoning romantic emotions. — Chelsea Spear, Medford, Mass. My dad used to play The Cure's Disintegration in the car for me and my sister all the time growing up. My parents are divorced, and they'd meet each other halfway every other weekend. Disintegration was one of the albums he played for us all the time, and whenever I hear it, it takes me back to the '90s: falling asleep in the back of my dad's Geo Prism, sunshine pouring in through the window while we're on the way to Charlotte, N.C., for the weekend. — Liz Stewart, Seattle When this album came out in 1989, it was the first by The Cure that I purchased for myself. It was only a year or two prior that I was introduced to the band by a new friend who moved into my neighborhood. Up to that point in 1989, I had copies of the cassettes that my friend owned. I was extremely excited to buy and listen to Disintegration, not only because it was new music by my now-favorite band, but it meant a tour was imminent as well, and I could see them live for the first time (which I did). And though the band already had made a deep impression on me through their catalog up to 1989, this particular album went deeper. Though I probably couldn't express or define then why this album meant so much to me, it is clear now. I was a 15-year-old kid who had only recently moved to Augusta, Ga. (My father was in the Army.) So I was in a new school — high school, nonetheless — and it was the largest school I had ever attended. Additionally, moving to Augusta was the first time I had ever attended a public school. Up to that point, all of my schools were on military bases. Needless to say, this was quite a shock. As if that weren't enough for a kid to handle, my mother had recently passed away from cancer, so life was kind of tough on me in my early teens. I must say, though, that my grades never suffered. My ambition never suffered. And I never let myself get too sad about life. I pushed through and thrived, actually. And while it may simply be a fact of my personality that I held it together, I also attribute my fanaticism with The Cure in those days — and particularly Disintegration — to helping me cope. Robert Smith's brilliantly written songs about love, loss, rejection, death, etc., spoke to me. While some people dismissed the band as just goths playing depressing music, I saw the poetry in the words and the beauty in the music. It was uplifting to me. And the music helped me to understand that loss, rejection, etc., were part of life, but there also was love. I knew I wasn't alone. My feelings weren't unique. My grief wasn't unique. This album — this band — left an indelible mark. Today, I still listen to their music. Hell, I own pretty much everything they've recorded. I still consider The Cure my favorite band. And I still consider Disintegration their finest work. The band's distinct perspective on the world opened up my perspective on the world, and I will be forever grateful to them for that.— Cory Sekine-Pettite, Smyrna, Ga. 5558 CONNECT TWEET LINKEDIN 5 COMMENTEMAILMORE Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1naGAmU NEVER MISS OUT Life Be a pop culture maven. Get the news, reviews and the juiciest celebrity stories that keep you in the know, Monday-Friday.	i don't know
A sevruga is what type of creature?	Types of Caviar, Facts and Figures: 26 Things to Know By Carola Traverso Saibante on December 11, 2015 Acipenseridae. The name of a prehistoric fish family from which caviar is obtained. Commonly known as sturgeon, there are around 20 different species native to the cold and temperate waters of the northern hemisphere. Beluga. The quality and price of caviar varies according to the species. The most highly priced caviar of all is that of Beluga, followed by Ossetra and Sevruga. Caspian. Most of the sturgeons killed for the caviar market come from the Caspian Sea. Diamond. The most exclusive quality of caviar is undoubtedly Almas, which is Russian for “diamond”: in fact its price can even be as high as this precious form of carbon. Extinction. Sturgeons are now in danger of extinction: overfishing, first and foremost, along with dams, pollution and an impoverished environment, have reduced the population by 70% in the space of one century. Fake. Fake caviar is very common. Each tin must carry a universal code with information regarding origin, species and whether or not the caviar derives from a wild or harvested source. All too often, however, such labels are also faked. Gold. “Black gold”, or “white gold” are names given to caviar; the exquisitely delicious eggs sometimes to be found behind the base of the gills of certain species are actually gold in colour; a 24 carat gold tin contains Almas caviar, the most expensive in the world: 25,000 Euro per kilo. And that's not all... (see letter T). Hundred. Female sturgeons can actually carry 100 pounds - 45 kilos - of eggs at one time. Italian. Italy sells caviar to Russia: this paradoxical achievement of “Italian business flair” has bypassed the Russian embargo against European imports - from which caviar is exempt -, and transformed Russia into the best customer of the most important producer of European caviar, an Italian company of course. Julius II. Julius II, known as the "Warrior Pope” and the papal patron of Michelangelo's works in the Sistine Chapel, used to love caviar: he was responsible for introducing it at European royal ceremonies, thus sealing its reputation forever as "food fit for a King", or more precisely as "food fit for a Tsar". Khāg-āvar. The Persian word from which the noun "caviar" derives literally translates as "roe generator". Lumpfish. Lumpfish, together with paddlefish and salmon, are other species of fish whose roe is salt-cured in the same way as sturgeon roe. However, since 2010 the Codex Alimentarius of the United Nations has decreed that the term "caviar" may only be used to indicate the latter. Malossol. The Russian term traditionally used to indicate that a caviar is "low in salt" - 3-5% - and therefore more valuable. Today, however, this wording is not such a reliable indicator of quality. Ninety. The number of sturgeon farms worldwide: a quantity, however, that is not sufficient to prevent this species from being overfished. Ounce. The finest caviar can easily cost as much as 200 $ an ounce (28 grams): this roe is taken from the larger and older animals, those which should not be fished at all since they are crucial to the survival of the population. Pearl. Pearl, or rather mother-of-pearl, is the ideal material a caviar spoon should be made of for gathering up the precious fish roe pearls. A metal spoon would ruin their taste. Qantas. The Australian national airline company is the latest to have added caviar to its First Class menu: an impressive amount of caviar is purchased by airline companies all over the world to serve to their top-ranking customers. Ringing. The sound made by caviar when the roe rub one against the other in the packaging. This perceivable sound will enable a connoisseur to recognize a high quality product: excellent caviar purrs like a cat... Spherificator. An ingenious device recently developed by a Canadian company. It transforms any type of food into pearls resembling caviar. A viral success. Teaspoon. One teaspoon of Strottarga caviar? 37,000 Euros. These are white caviar pearls covered with a 22 carat gold lace, marketed by an Austrian firm run by the Gruell family, father and son. Ukraine. Crimea, in the south of Ukraine, is the region from which ancient Greeks used to import caviar, already a luxury item in those days. Vivace. The name of the German fish farm which, after decades of research, has fine tuned a technique for producing “cruelty-free” caviar: a sort of “induced labour” thanks to which the creature not only survives but deposits its eggs after a belly massage, without even having to undergo a "caesarean". White. The white roe of over sixty year-old animals, an extremely rare albino caviar that is one of the most expensive in the world: the extremely famous Almas caviar. XXX. Casanova, the Venetian womanizer whose name has gone down in history, used to eat caviar by the teaspoonful... Caviar, consisting of eggs which in themselves symbolize fertility, also stands for decadent luxury and is one of the protagonists in any list of foods believed to be aphrodisiacal. Years. 20 is the age at which the females of many wild sturgeon species produce their roe; 100 years or more, on the other hand, is their life expectancy. Zeros. One, two or three zeros indicate the colour of the precious roe and their price: from dark to light, the latter being "Royal" caviar. Tags	Fish
In which year did English monarch Elizabeth I die?	Sources for Caviar \| Egg Sources for Caviar View More What is Caviar? It is the roe, or egg masses of the female sturgeon or paddlefish, which is considered a great delicacy. Eating caviar exemplifies the affluent lifestyle, because the normal working class cannot afford to purchase it. If you happen to be vegetarian, but also like to rub elbows with the elite, there is a caviar made just for you that is made from kelp. It is much less expensive, and very healthy, but no one has to know. Copyright: Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC) Sources for Caviar ==== ====For information about Kelp Caviar check this: www.kelpcaviar.org ==== ====Caviar Source Caviar is healthy for you; Here's why What is Caviar?Caviar is a luxury delicacy, consisting of the salted, non-fertilized eggs (roe) of sturgeon- aprimitive type of fish from the Acipenseridae family which swims in the Caspian Sea but returns tothe warm regions of Asia during winter. Brined with a salt solution, the roes of sturgeon areseasoned, and eaten as a delicacy or relish, especially in Russia. While this luxury delicacy was served primarily in Iran and Russia, it was so common in Americaduring the gold rush days that saloons served it to create thirsty customers. America's craving forsalty caviar has pushed the ancient sea creature to the brink of extinction. Types and Prices of Caviar: There are four main types of caviar- Beluga, Sterlet, Ossetra, and Sevruga- and several varietiesof fish that contribute to this ancient gourmet treat, eaten mainly by rich people. The size, flavor,color and price of the sturgeon eggs varies depending on the species of sturgeon. 1. Beluga Caviar: Beluga is the world's rarest and most expensive caviar coming from belugasturgeon that swim in the Caspian Sea and yields soft, extremely large (pea-size) translucenteggs, ranging in color from pale silver-gray to black. 2. Sterlet Caviar: Derived from sterlet- a common Eurasian species of sturgeon, one of thesmaller species of sturgeon, the small golden sterlet caviar is rare and was once reserved forRussian czars, Iranian shahs and Austrian emperors. 3. Ossetra Caviar: Ossetra sturgeons produce the widest range of eggs. This caviar consists ofmedium sized eggs, ranging in color from dark golden to a pale amber. The ossetra caviar tendsto have a subtle walnuts and cream flavor. 4. Sevruga Caviar: The Sevruga sturgeon are the smallest sturgeon producing predominantlysteel-grey eggs that taste distinctively salty. These caviar eggs are not as expensive as the otherthree, yet highly prized for the their unique flavor. Kelp Caviar: Kelp caviar is vegetarian caviar substitutes, made from a plant, not fish. Unlike traditional caviar, itis made from seaweed and algae for that "fishy" taste. About	i don't know
Glienicke, Oberbaum and Moltke are all bridges in which European city?	Oberbaum Bridge, Berlin, Germany Tourist Information Locals and travelers to connect with About Berlin, Germany 52.501913.4456 The Oberbaum Bridge (German: Oberbaumbrücke) is a double-deck bridge crossing Berlin 's River Spree , considered one of the city's landmarks. It links Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg , former boroughs that were divided by the Berlin Wall, and has become an important symbol of Berlin’s unity. The lower deck of the bridge carries a roadway, which connects Oberbaum Straße to the south of the river with Warschauer Straße to the north. The upper deck of the bridge carries Berlin U-Bahn line U1, between Schlesisches Tor and Warschauer Straße stations. The bridge appears prominently in the 1998 film Run Lola Run. Map	Berlin
Which bird is the unofficial national symbol of France?	Google Earth Hacks - Bridges, Tunnels Bridges, Tunnels Famous bridges, dams and canals from around the world Files Available In This Category To see only files from a specific country in this category select below: Country - Sunshine Skyway Bridge, Florida This shot shows the old and new. The new bridge, called the Sunshine Skyway, was build to replace the previous bridge damaged when hit by a freighter in 1980. The new bridge is 22,000 ft long and 175 ft above water. If you zoom in on the center crossing you will see the yellow cables. 08/08/2005 Szechenyi Chain Bridge, Budapest Szï¿½chenyi Lï¿½nchï¿½d or Szï¿½chenyi Chain Bridge is one of the most famous bridges of Budapest, Hungary. It connects Buda and Pest (the west and east side of the capital) across the River Danube. Its two ends are Roosevelt square (with the Gresham Palace and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences) and Adam Clark square (the Zero Kilometre Stone, and the lower end of the Budapest Funicular,... 08/07/2005 Northbridge Tunnel, Perth A four-year project, the Northbridge Tunnel was opened in April 2000, on time and within budget. Running beneath a commercial district in East Perth, the tunnel was built to alleviate the bottleneck of traffic battling to join the causeway across the Swan River, and links instead to a new road bridge over the river that allows traffic to bypass the city centre. 08/07/2005 Oberbaum Bridge, Berlin, Germany http://en.structurae.de/structures/data/index.cfm?ID=s0000453 2 subwaytrains (line U1/U15) are visible. the right one is bound for "Krumme Lanke"(U1) or "Uhlandstr."(U15) station, the left one is bound for "Warschauer Str." (U1/U15) station. follow the rails, more trains are visible and you will see where the trains are going underground. 08/06/2005 Glienicke Bridge, Berlin, Germany Glienicke Bridge was the scene of exchanges of secret agents. It was one of the few places in the world where the United States and the Soviet Union stood directly opposite each other. And so deals could be made here without any of their allies having any say in the matter. This bridge between West-Berlin and the former DDR was a hotspot of cold-war times. Spies were frequently exchang... 08/06/2005 Very cool floating bridge located in Brookfield, Vermont. The bridge is supported by some sort of pontoons. When driven on, car tires get wet as bridge sinks a bit. A little scary at first, but still really neat! 08/02/2005 Dingmans Bridge Dingmans Bridge, located in Dingmans Ferry, PA. This is the last privately owned bridge on the Delaware River. The bridge is quite old and has wood plank flooring that rattles when driven on. A person stands in the road, on the PA side and collects a 50 cent toll for each direction. 08/02/2005 Ponte Vecchio, Florence, Italy The Ponte Vecchio, literally "Old Bridge," is a famous medieval bridge over the Arno River, in Florence, Italy, noted for having numerous shops (mainly jewelers) built along it. It is Europe's oldest segmental arch bridge. Believed to have been first built in Roman times, it was originally made of wood. After being destroyed by a flood in 1333 it was rebuilt in 1345, this time in... 08/02/2005	i don't know
In Greek mythology, who slayed the half-man, half beast Minotaur, which was kept in a labyrinth on the island of Crete?	MINOTAUR (Minotauros) - Bull-Headed Man of Greek Mythology Bull of Minos Theseus and the Minotaur, Athenian black-figure kylix C6th B.C., Toledo Museum of Art THE MINOTAUROS (Minotaur) was a bull-headed monster born to Queen Pasiphae of Krete (Crete) after she coupled with a bull. The creature resided in the twisting maze of the labyrinth where it was offfered a regular sacrifice of youths and maidens to satisfy its cannibalistic hunger. The beast was eventually slain by the hero Theseus. The Minotauros' proper name Asterion, "the starry one," suggests he might have been associated with the constellation Tauros. FAMILY OF THE MINOTAUR PARENTS THE KRETAN BULL & PASIPHAE (Apollodorus 3.8, Callimachus Hymn 4.311, Diodorus Siculus 4.77.1, Philostratus Elder 1.16, Hyginus Fab. 40, Ovid Metamorphoses 8.130, Virgil Aeneid 6.24, Suidas) ENCYCLOPEDIA MINOTAURUS (Minôtauros), a monster with a human body and a bull's head, or, according to others, with the body of an ox and a human head; is said to have been the offspring of the intercourse of Pasiphaë with the bull sent from the sea to Minos, who shut him up in the Cnossian labyrinth, and fed him with the bodies of the youths and maidens whom the Athenians at fixed times were obliged to send to Minos as tribute. The monster was slain by Theseus. It was often represented by ancient artists either alone in the labyrinth, or engaged in the struggle with Theseus. (Paus. i. 24. § 2, 27, in fin. iii. 18. § 7; Apollod. iii. 1. § 4, 15. § 8.) Source: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. ALTERNATE NAMES Theseus and the Minotaur, Athenian red-figure kylix C6th B.C., Musée du Louvre Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 3. 8 - 11 (trans. Aldrich) (Greek mythographer C2nd A.D.) : "Minos aspired to the throne [of Krete (Crete)], but was rebuffed. He claimed, however, that he had received the sovereignty from the gods, and to prove it he said that whatever he prayed for would come about. So while sacrificing to Poseidon, he prayed for a bull to appear from the depths of the sea, and promised to sacrifice it upon its appearance. And Poseidon did send up to him a splendid bull. Thus Minos received the rule, but he sent the bull to his herds and sacrificed another . . . Poseidon was angry that the bull was not sacrificed, and turned it wild. He also devised that Pasiphae should develop a lust for it. In her passion for the bull she took on as her accomplice an architect named Daidalos (Daedalus) . . . He built a woden cow on wheels, . . . skinned a real cow, and sewed the contraption into the skin, and then, after placing Pasiphae inside, set it in a meadow where the bull normally grazed. The bull came up and had intercourse with it, as if with a real cow. Pasiphae gave birth to Asterios (Asterius), who was called Minotauros (Minotaur). He had the face of a bull, but was otherwise human. Minos, following certain oracular instructions, kept him confined and under guard in the labyrinth. This labyrinth, which Daidalos built, was a ‘cage with convoluted flextions that disorders debouchment.’" Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 3. 213 : "The god [i.e. the oracle of Delphoi (Delphi)] told them [the Athenians] to give Minos [king of Krete (Crete)] whatever retribution he should chose . . . He ordered them to send seven young men and seven girls, unarmed, to be served as food to the Minotauros (Minotaur). The Minotauros was kept in a labyrinth, from which there was no escape after one entered, for it closed off its imperceivable exit with convoluted flexions. It had been constructed by Daidalos (Daedalus)." Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca E1. 7 - 1. 9 : "Theseus was on the list of the third tribute to the Minotauros (Minotaur)--some day he volunteered--. . . [Ariadne] pleaded with Daidalos (Daedalus) to tell her the way out of the labyrinth. Following his instructions, she gave Theseus a ball of thread as he entered. He fastened this to the door and let it trail behind him as he went in. He came across the Minotauros in the furthest section of the labyrinth, killed him with jabs of his fist, and then made his way out again by pulling himself along the thread." Callimachus, Hymn 4 to Delos 311 ff (trans. Mair) (Greek poet C3rd B.C.) : "[Theseus] escaped the cruel bellowing and the wild [Minotauros (Minotaur)] son of Pasiphae and the coiled habitation of the crooked labyrinth." Strabo, Geography 10. 4. 8 (trans. Jones) (Greek geographer C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) : "[Minos] was tyrannical, harsh, and an exactor of tribute, representing in tragedy the story of the Minotauros (Minotaur) and the Labyrinth, and the adventures of Theseus and Daidalos (Daedalus)." Pausanias, Description of Greece 1. 24. 1 (trans. Jones) (Greek travelogue C2nd A.D.) : "[On the Akropolis (Acropolis) in Athens] is represented the fight which legend says Theseus fought with the so-called Tauros (Bull) of Minos [the Minotauros], whether this was a man or a beast of nature he is said to have been in the accepted story. For even in our time women have given birth to far more extraordinary monsters than this." Pausanias, Description of Greece 1. 27. 10 : "Minos sailed against Athens with a fleet, not believing that the Athenians were innocent of the death of Androgeos (Androgeus) [killed by the Marathonian Bull], and sorely harassed them until it was agreed that he should take seven maidens and seven boys for the Minotauros (Minotaur) that was said to dwell in the Labyrinth at Knossos." Pausanias, Description of Greece 2. 31. 1 : "In the market-place of Troizenos (Troezen) [in Argolis] is a temple of Artemis Soteira (Saviour), with images of the goddess. It was said that the temple was founded and the name Soteria (Saviour) given by Theseus when he returned from Krete after overcoming Asterion [the Minotauros (Minotaur)] the son of Minos." Pausanias, Description of Greece 3. 18. 10 - 16 : "[Amongst the scenes depicted on the throne of Apollon at Amyklai (Amyclae) :] I cannot say why Bathykles (Bathycles) has represented the Bull of Minos bound, and being led along alive by Theseus . . . There is represented the fight between . . . Theseus and the Bull of Minos (Tauron ton Mino) [the Minotauros]." Labyrinth of the Minotaur, Greco-Roman mosaic from Villa on the Via Cadolini C1st A.D., Archaeological Museum of Cremona Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 4. 61. 4 (trans. Oldfather) (Greek historian C1st B.C.) : "[Minos demands compensation from the Athenians for the murder of his son Androgeus :] Minos commanded them that they give seven youths and as many maidens every nine years to the Minotauros (Minotaur) for him to devour, for as long as the monster should live. And when the Athenians gave them, the inhabitants of Attika (Attica) were rid of their evils and Minos ceased warring on Athens . . . Theseus after conversing with her [Ariadne, daughter of Minos] and securing her assistance, both slew the Minotauros and got safely away, since he had learned from her the way out of the labyrinth." Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 4. 77. 1 : "Pasiphae, the wife of Minos, became enamoured of the bull [the Cretan Bull], and Daidalos (Daedalus), by fashioning a contrivance in the shape of a cow, assisted Pasiphae to gratify her passion. In explanation of this the myths offer the following account: before this time it had been the custom of Minos annually to dedicate to Poseidon the fairest bull born in his herds and to sacrifice it to the god; but at the time in question there was born a bull of extraordinary beauty and he sacrificed another from among those which were inferior, whereupon Poseidon becoming angry at Minos, caused his wife Pasiphae to become enamoured of the bull. And by means of the ingenuity of Daidalos Pasiphae had intercourse with the bull and gave birth to the Minotauros (Minotaur), famed in the myth. This creature, they say, was of double form, the upper parts of the body as far as the shoulders being those of a bull and the remaining parts those of a man. As a place in which to keep this monstrous thing Daidalos, the story goes, built a labyrinth, the passage-ways of which were so winding that those unfamiliar with them had difficulty in making their way out; in this labyrinth the Minotaur was maintained and here it devoured the seven youths and seven maidens which were sent to it from Athens, as we have already related." Plutarch, Life of Theseus 15. 1 & 17. 3 & 19. 1 (trans. Perrin) (Greek historian C1st to C2nd A.D.) : "[The young Theseus arrives in Athens :] Not long afterwards there came from Krete (Crete) for the third time the collectors of the tribute . . . an agreement to send him [Minos] every nine years a tribute of seven youths and as many maidens. And the most dramatic version of the story declares that these young men and women, on being brought to Krete, were destroyed by the Minotauros (Minotaur) in the Labyrinth, or else wandered about at their own will and, being unable to find an exit, perished there; and that the Minotauros, as Euripides says, was ‘A mingled form and hybrid birth of monstrous shape’, and that ‘Two different natures, man and bull, were joined in him’ . . . . Hellanikos (Hellanicus) . . . says the agreement was that the Athenians should furnish the ship, and that the youths should embark and sail with him carrying no warlike weapon, and that if the Minotauros was killed the penalty should cease. On the two former occasions, then, no hope of safety was entertained, and therefore they sent the ship with a black sail, convinced that their youth were going to certain destruction; but now Theseus encouraged his father and loudly boasted that he would master the Minotauros, so that he gave the pilot another sail, a white one, ordering him, if he returned with Theseus safe, to hoist the white sail, but otherwise to sail with the black one, and so indicate the affliction . . . When he reached Krete on his voyage, most historians and poets tell us that he got from Ariadne, who had fallen in love with him, the famous thread, and that having been instructed by her how to make his way through the intricacies of the Labyrinth, he slew the Minotauros and sailed off with Ariadne and the youths." Philostratus the Elder, Imagines 1. 16 (trans. Fairbanks) (Greek rhetorician C3rd A.D.) : "[Description of an ancient Greek painting :] Pasiphae is in love with the bull and begs Daidalos (Daedalus) to devise some lure for the creature; and he is fashioning a hollow cow like a cow of the herd to which the bull is accustomed. What their union brought forth is shown by the form of the Minotauros (Minotaur), strangely composite in its nature." Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana 4. 34 (trans. Conybeare) (Greek biography C1st to C2nd A.D.) : "[Apollonios of Tyana] sailed to Knossos (Cnossus) [in Krete (Crete)], where a labyrinth is shown, which, I believe, once on a time, contained the Minotauros (Minotaur)." Pseudo-Hyginus, Fabulae 40 - 43 (trans. Grant) (Roman mythographer C2nd A.D.) : "Pasiphae, daughter of Sol [Helios] and wife of Minos, for several years did not make offerings to the goddess Venus. Because of this Venus inspired in her an unnatural love for a bull. At the time when Daedalus came there as an exile, he asked her to help him. For her he made a wooden heifer, and put in it the hide of a real heifer, and in this she lay with the bull. From this intercourse she bore the Minotaur, with bull's head but human body. Then Daedalus made for the Minotaur a labyrinth with an undiscoverable exit in which it was confined. When Minos found out the affair he cast Daedalus into prson, but Pasiphae freed him from his chains . . . After he [Minos] conquered the Athenians their revenues became his; he decreed, moreover that each year they should send seven of their children as food for the Minotaur. After Theseus had come from Troezene, and had learned what a calamity afflicted the state, of his own accord he promised to go against the Minotaur . . . When Theseus came to Crete, Ariadne, Minos' daughter, loved him so much that she betrayed her brother and saved the stranger, or she showed Theseus the way out of the Labyrinth. When Theseus had entered and killed the Minotaur, by Ariadne's advise he got out by unwinding the thread. Ariadne, because she had been loyal to him, he took away, intending to marry her." Theseus and the slain Minotaur, Greco-Roman fresco from Pompeii C1st A.D., Naples National Archaeological Museum Pseudo-Hyginus, Fabulae 38 : "He [Theseus] killed the Minotaur in the town of Cnossus." Ovid, Metamorphoses 8. 130 ff (trans. Melville) (Roman epic C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) : "That adulteress [Pasiphae] who in a cow of wood beguiled a savage bull and bore a monster [the Minotaur] in her womb! . . . His [Minos'] dynasty's disgrace has grown; the monstrous beast [Minotauros] hybrid beast declared the queen's obscene adultery. To rid his precincts of this shame the king planned to confine him shut away within blind walls of intricate complexity. The structure was designed by Daedalus, that famous architect. Appearances were all confused; he led the eye astray by a mazy multitude of winding ways . . . Daedalus in countless corridors built bafflement, and hardly could himself make his way out, so puzzling was the maze. Within this labyrinth Minos shut fast the beast, half bull, half man, and fed him twice on Attic blood, lot-chosen each nine years, until the third choice mastered him. The door, so difficult, which none of those before could find again, by Ariadne's aid was found, the thread that traced the way rewound." Ovid, Heroides 2. 67 ff (trans. Showerman) (Roman poetry C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) : "With record of his [Theseus'] deeds. When men shall have read of . . . the mingled form of bull and man [i.e. the Minotaur]." Ovid, Heroides 4. 59 ff : "[Theseus] the faithless son of Aegeus followed the guiding thread, and escaped from the winding house through the aid my sister [Ariadne] gave." Ovid, Heroides 4. 113 ff : "The bones of my [Phaedra's] brother [the Minotaur] he [Theseus] crushed with his triple-knotted club and scattered o'er the ground; my sister [Ariadne] he left at the mercy of wild beasts." Ovid, Heroides 10. 99 ff : "[Ariadne laments after being abandoned by Theseus on Naxos :] O, that Androgeos (Androgeus) [Ariadne's brother] were still alive, and that thou, O Cecropian land [Athens], hadst not been made to atone for thy impious deeds with the doom of thy children! [I.e. the children sent to Krete (Crete) to feed the Minotaur.] And would that thy upraised right hand, O Theseus, had not slain with knotty club him [the Minotauros] that was man in part, and in part bull; and I had not given thee the thread to show the way of thy return--thread oft caught up again and passed through the hands led on by it. I marvel not--ah, no!--if victory was thine, and the monster smote with his length the Cretan earth. His horn could not have pierced that iron heart of thine." Ovid, Heroides 10. 125 ff : "You [Theseus] will go to the haven of Cecrops; but when you have been received back home, and have stood in pride before your thronging followers, gloriously telling the death of the man-and-bull [the Minotaur], and of the halls of rock cut out in winding ways, tell, too, of me [Ariadne], abandoned on a solitary shore." Virgil, Aeneid 6. 24 (trans. Day-Lewis) (Roman epic C1st B.C.) : "Crete rising out of the waves; Pasiphae, cruelly fated to lust after a bull, and privily covered; the hybrid fruit of that monstrous union--the Minotaurus (Minotaur), a memento of her unnatural love." Propertius, Elegies 4. 4 (trans. Goold) (Roman elegy C1st B.C.) : "What marvel that the horns of a monster [the Minotaur] were betrayed by his sister [Ariadne], when the twisted path was revealed by the gathering of her thread." Seneca, Hercules Furens 121 ff (trans. Miller) (Roman tragedy C1st A.D.) : "He [Daidalos (Daedalus)] should return, mighty in Attic cunning, who shut our monster [the Minotaur] in the dark labyrinth." Seneca, Phaedra 173 ff : "[Phaedra's nurse addresses her mistress :] ‘Why do monsters cease? Why does thy brother's [the Minotaur's] labyrinth stand empty? Shall the world hear of strange prodigies, shall nature's laws give way, whenever a Cretan woman [i.e. such as Pasiphae] loves?’" Seneca, Phaedra 647 ff : "I love, those former looks of his [Theseus'] which once as a youth he had, when his first beard marked his smooth cheeks, when he looked on the dark home of the Cretan monster [the Minotaur], and gathered in the long thread o'er the winding way." Seneca, Phaedra 687 ff : "Thy monster-bearing mother [Pasiphae] . . . She did but pollute herself with her shameful lust, and yet her offspring by its two-shaped infamy [the Minotaur] displayed her crime, though long concealed, and by his fierce visage the hybrid child made clear his mother's guilt." Seneca, Phaedra 1170 ff : "What Cretan bull [the Minotauros], fierce, two-formed monster, filling the labyrinth of Daedalus with his huge bellowings, has torn thee asunder with his horns?" Nonnus, Dionysiaca 47. 434 ff (trans. Rouse) (Greek epic C5th A.D.) : "[Dionysos addresses Ariadne :] ‘He [Theseus] shed the blood of the halfbull man [the Minotauros (Minotaur)] whose den was the earthdug labyrinth . . . But you know your thread was his saviour: for the man of Athens with his club would never have found victory in that contest without a rosy-red girl to help him.’" Suidas s.v. Aigaion pelagos (trans. Suda On Line) (Byzantine Greek Lexicon C10th A.D.) : "Theseus, the son of Aigeos (Aegeus) the king of Attika (Attica), ruled the Kretans (Cretans) and pursued the Minotauros (Minotaur) into the area of the labyrinthos (and killed him when he was hidden in a cavern. He took to wife the woman Ariadne, who had been born to Minos of Pasiphae, and thus he ruled Krete (Crete)." Suidas s.v. En panti muthoi kai to Daidalou musos : "It is said that Pasiphae was in love with a bull and begged Daidalos (Daedalus) to make a wooden cow and rig it up and put her in it; and mounting her like a cow, the bull made her pregnant. From her the Minotauros (Minotaur) was born. Minos for certain reasons became angry with the Athenians and collected a tribute of seven virgins and an equal number of young men from them; they were thrown to the beast." ANCIENT GREEK & ROMAN ART	Theseus
Who played the title role in the 1998 film ‘Stepmom’?	Minotaur Minotaur (MIN-uh-tawr) The Minotaur was a monster, half-man, half-bull, that devoured sacrificial victims thrown into the Labyrinth. Born of Queen Pasiphae's god-inflicted infatuation with a bull, the Minotaur was eventually killed by Theseus. The monster is generally depicted as having the head of a bull and the body of a man. But in the Middle Ages, artists portrayed a man's head and torso on a bull's body. Here's how the Minotaur figured into the complete legend of Theseus: It was by lifting a boulder that Theseus, grandson of the king of Troezen, first proved himself a hero. Theseus was sixteen at the time. He had been raised by his grandfather and his mother, Princess Aethra. One day the princess called Theseus to her side. It was time, she said, that he learned of his father, who was ruler of a mighty kingdom. This was news to Theseus, who had been under the impression that his father was one of the gods. "Before I divulge his identity," said the princess, "you must meet the challenge your father has set you." Years ago, the king had hefted a mighty stone. Underneath he had placed something for his son to find - if he could lift the weight. Aethra guided Theseus to a forest clearing, in the midst of which was a boulder. Theseus proceeded to lift the stone easily, or so the myth-tellers generally assume. But like most myths, this one is vague about the details. According to one theory, Theseus would have had trouble with a task involving brute strength. This theory was advanced by Mary Renault in her novel The King Must Die. It is based on the tradition that Theseus invented "scientific" wrestling. This is the discipline by which even a lightweight can beat a stronger adversary by fancy footwork, trick holds and using the opponent's momentum to advantage. Theseus would have had little cause to invent such tactics if he'd been capable of beating his adversaries by sheer physical strength. Therefore one may deduce that the hero was a lightweight. So when it came to lifting boulders, Theseus was at a disadvantage. Resourcefulness, another heroic trait, must have come to his aid. He would have looked for some mechanical means to multiply his physical strength. Beneath the stone Theseus found certain tokens left by his father. His name, Aethra now revealed, was King Aegeus of Athens. Prompted by a sense of heroic destiny, Theseus set out forthwith to meet this parent he had never known. He determined to journey to Athens by land, although his mother argued for the safer route by sea. And in fact the landward route proved to be infested by an unusual number of villains, thugs and thieves. Theseus quickly adopted the credo of doing unto these bad guys what they were in the habit of doing to others. Setting out from Troezen, his birthplace, the first community of any size through which he passed was Epidaurus. Here he was waylaid by the ruffian Periphetes. Periphetes was nicknamed Corynetes or "Club-Man", after his weapon of choice, a stout length of wood wrapped in bronze to magnify its impact upon the skulls of his victims. Theseus merely snatched this implement from Periphetes and did him in with it. Some say that this incident was manufactured to account for depictions of Theseus carrying a club like his cousin Heracles, one of a number of instances on Theseus's part of heroic imitation. The next malefactor who received a dose of his own medicine was a fellow named Sinis, who used to ask passers-by to help him bend two pine trees to the ground. Why the wayfarers should have wanted to help in this activity is not disclosed. Presumably Sinis was persuasive. Once he had bent the trees, he tied his helper's wrists - one to each tree. Then he took a break. When the strain became too much, the victim had to let go, which caused the trees to snap upright and scatter portions of anatomy in all directions. Theseus turned the tables on Sinis by tying his wrists to a couple of bent pines, then letting nature and fatigue take their course. Then, not far from Athens, Theseus encountered Sciron. This famous brigand operated along the tall cliffs which to this day are named after him. He had a special tub in which he made each passing stranger wash his feet. While they were engaged in this sanitary activity, Sciron kicked them over a cliff into the ocean below, where they were devoured by a man-eating turtle. Theseus turned the tables on Sciron, just as he had turned them on Pine-Bender. Perhaps the most interesting of Theseus's challenges on the road to adventure came in the form of an evildoer called Procrustes, whose name means "he who stretches." This Procrustes kept a house by the side of the road where he offered hospitality to passing strangers. They were invited in for a pleasant meal and a night's rest in his very special bed. If the guest asked what was so special about it, Procrustes replied, "Why, it has the amazing property that its length exactly matches whomsoever lies upon it." What Procrustes didn't volunteer was the method by which this "one-size-fits-all" was achieved, namely as soon as the guest lay down Procrustes went to work upon him, stretching him on the rack if he was too short for the bed and chopping off his legs if he was too long. Theseus lived up to his do-unto-others credo, fatally adjusting Procrustes to fit his own bed. When at last Theseus arrived in Athens to meet his father King Aegeus for the first time, the encounter was far from heartwarming. Theseus did not reveal his identity at first but was hailed as a hero by the Athenians, for he had rid the highway of its terrors. In honor of his exploits, he was invited to the palace for a banquet. Serving as hostess was his father's new wife, Medea. This was the same Medea who had helped Jason harvest a crop of armed warriors and steal the Golden Fleece out from under the nose of the dragon that guarded it. Jason had eventually abandoned Medea, and she had grown understandably bitter. Now she sized up Theseus and decided that he was a threat to her own son's prospects of ruling Athens after King Aegeus. In fact, Medea's magic disclosed the identity of Theseus. Years before, she had aided Aegeus, who was desperate for an heir. It was Medea's power that ensured the birth of Theseus to Princess Aethra of Troezen. Though he left instructions with Aethra should a child be born, Aegeus had either forgotten the incident or despaired of a birth. Now Medea played on the king's insecurity. Surely the stranger at the banquet was too popular for the good of the throne. With the people behind him, he might well seize it for himself. Medea persuaded King Aegeus to serve Theseus poisoned wine. And the hero, unawares, would have drunk it had he not paused first to carve his dinner. This, at any rate, is the prosaic version of the myth. Romantics claim that Theseus drew his sword not to mince his boar's meat but because he had chosen the dramatic moment to reveal his identity. In any case, Aegeus recognized the pattern on the sword's hilt. This was his own weapon, which he had left under a rock for his son to discover. Aegeus dashed the poisoned cup to the ground. Medea, meanwhile, stormed out and made her escape in a chariot pulled by dragons. Theseus was now the recognized heir to the kingdom of Athens. Thus he was on hand when King Minos of Crete arrived to collect his periodic tribute of young men and maidens to be sacrificed to the Minotaur. Because his son had died while in the safekeeping of the Athenians, Minos exerted the power of the Cretan navy to enforce this onerous demand. The Minotaur was a monster, half-man, half-bull, that lived in the center of a maze called the Labyrinth. It had been born to Minos's wife Pasiphae as a punishment from the gods. Minos had been challenged to prove that he was of divine parentage, so he called on the sea god Poseidon to send him a sign. The god obliged, and a beautiful white bull emerged from the sea. Minos liked it so much that he neglected to sacrifice it to the gods, as he should have done. As a punishment, Poseidon caused the king's wife to fall in love with the bull. She had the master craftsman Daedalus build her a hollow cow in which to approach the beast. As a result, the Minotaur was born. The monster is generally depicted as having the head of a bull and the body of a man. But in the Middle Ages, artists portrayed a man's head and torso on a bull's body. Some say that Theseus expressed his solidarity with his fellow citizens of Athens by volunteering to be one of the victims. Others maintain that Minos noticed the handsome young prince and chose him to be sacrificed. In any case, Theseus became one of the fated fourteen who embarked with the Cretan fleet. The sea upon which they sailed was the domain of Poseidon, who together with his brothers Zeus and Hades were the three most powerful gods of the Greek pantheon. They divided up creation, Zeus taking Mount Olympus and the sky, Hades the Underworld and Poseidon the sea. But there were other deities of the watery depths, notably the "old man of the sea", the god Nereus, with his fifty daughters, the Nereids. When Theseus was en route to Crete, he encountered one of these divinities. As the tribute ship drew near to harbor, King Minos made rude advances to one of the Athenian maidens and Theseus sprang to her defense, claiming this was his duty as a son of Poseidon. (Theseus, of course, also claimed to be the son of King Aegeus, but a true hero could be inconsistent in such matters.) Minos suggested that if Theseus's divine parentage were anything but a figment of his imagination, the gods of the sea would sponsor him. So Minos threw his signet ring overboard and challenged Theseus to dive in and find it. This Theseus did, being abetted indeed by the deities of the depths. Not only did he retrieve the ring from the underwater palace into which it had fallen, but he was given a jewelled crown by one of the Nereids, either Thetis or Amphitrite. It was not long after he arrived in Crete that the hero encountered Princess Ariadne, daughter of King Minos. She fell in love with him at first sight. It was Ariadne who gave Theseus a clew which she had obtained from Daedalus. In some versions of the myth it was an ordinary clew, a simple ball of thread. It was to prove invaluable in his quest to survive the terrors of the Labyrinth. The maze had been so cleverly and intricately contrived by the master builder Daedalus that once thrown inside, a victim could never find the way out again. Sooner or later, he or she would round a corner and come face to face with the all-devouring Minotaur. This was the fate which awaited Theseus. It is clear from the myth that the Labyrinth was a maze from which none could escape because it was so diabolically meandering. Hence the Minotaur was not just its monster but its prisoner. But how exactly this worked as a practical matter with regard to the victims is less clear. Some versions of the myth have it that they were "enclosed" in the Labyrinth, as if it were a box. But surely if the procedure were simply to push the victims in and then slam the door behind them, they would have cowered by the entrance rather than proceed into the terrors of the maze. Even if the guards threatened them with swords, it seems likely that some would have preferred the known death to being devoured alive by a monster. Nor could the guards have escorted the victims deep into the maze without getting lost themselves, or risking a run-in with the Minotaur. Maybe Daedalus built a roof over his invention, so that the victims could be dropped through a trap door into the very center. But perhaps on the whole it's better not to inquire too closely into the mechanics of the mythological. When Theseus first entered the maze he tied off one end of the ball of thread which Ariadne had given him, and he played out the thread as he advanced deeper and deeper into the labyrinthine passages. Many artists have depicted Theseus killing the Minotaur with his sword or club, but it is hard to see how he could have concealed such bulky weapons in his clothing. More probable are the versions of the tale which have him coming upon the Minotaur as it slept and then, in properly heroic fashion, beating it to death with his bare fists. Then he followed the thread back to the entrance. Otherwise he would have died of starvation before making his escape. Theseus now eloped with Ariadne, pausing only long enough to put holes in the bottom of her father's ships so that he could not pursue. But Theseus soon abandoned the princess, either because he was bewitched by a god or because he had fallen in love with her sister Phaedra. Some say that he left Ariadne on the island of Naxos, but others maintain that such was his haste that he left her on the small island of Dia, within sight of the harbor from which they had sailed. The deserted and pining Ariadne has been a favorite theme of artists down through the ages. As the ship bearing Theseus and his liberated fellow Athenians approached the promontory on which King Aegeus watched daily for his return, Theseus forgot the signal which he had prearranged with his father. The vessel's sails were to be black only if the expedition concluded as on all previous occasions, with the death of the hostages. In the exultation of triumph, or in anguish over the loss of Ariadne, Theseus neglected to hoist a sail of a different hue, and King Aegeus threw himself from the heights in despair. Theseus was now both king and bona fide hero, but this did not put an end to his adventuring. On one occasion he visited the Amazons, mythological warrior women who lived on the shores of the Black Sea. The Amazons were renowned horseback riders and especially skilled with the bow. They lived apart from men and only met with them on occasion to produce children for their tribe. Some say that Theseus had encountered the Amazons before, on another post-Minotaur adventure in the company of Heracles. Heracles had been challenged to bring back the belt of the Amazon queen. The queen, for all her reputation of man-hating, had willingly given it to him. But the goddess Hera, who despised Heracles, stirred up trouble. A great battle ensued in which many Amazons were killed. Now Theseus visited the Amazons on his own. Their leader, fearless and hospitable, came aboard his ship with a gift. Theseus immediately put to sea and kidnapped her. Unfortunately, the dubious nature of this achievement was matched if not exceeded in another of the hero's quests. It was the custom in early Greek historical times for the younger sons of noble houses to embark, in the fine sailing months of autumn, upon the honorable occupation of piracy. When Theseus received word that one such pirate and his crew were making off with the royal Athenian herds at Marathon, he raced to the seaside plain. He grabbed the miscreant by the scruff and spun him around to give him what for. But the moment king and pirate laid eyes upon one another, their enmity was forgotten. "You've caught me fair and square," said Peirithous, for this was the pirate's name, and he was of the royal house of the Thessalian Lapiths. "Name your punishment and it shall be done," said he, "for I like the looks of you." The admiration being mutual, Theseus named as penance an oath of perpetual friendship, and the two clasped hands upon it. And so, in the fullness of time, when Theseus decided to carry off young Helen of Sparta, Peirithous agreed to lend a hand. This was the same Helen whose face would "launch a thousand ships" when, as Helen of Troy, the lover and captive of the Trojan Paris, she caused the allies of her husband Menelaus to wage the Trojan War to bring her home. At the time of Theseus's contemplated abduction, however, she was a mere lass of thirteen. And Theseus, having succeeded in spiriting her off with Peirithous's assistance, left her with his mother for safekeeping while he went about his business and she grew of marriageable age. But before this had come to pass she was rescued by her brothers, the hero twins, Castor and Pollux, whose conjoined starry constellation still brightens the night sky between fellow heroes Orion and Perseus. One day not long after this escapade, Peirithous drew Theseus aside and spoke to him earnestly. "Remember when I agreed to help you with Helen?" he inquired, "and you pledged to help me in turn in any little outing of a similar nature?" Theseus nodded and muttered yes. "Good," responded Peirithous. "Spoken like a true pal. Well, I've picked my little exploit. I've decided to make off with Persephone, wife of Hades, King of the Dead." Theseus was speechless at the very idea of this sacrilege, but a pledge is a pledge. And so the two set off for the Underworld via one of the convenient caverns leading thereto. And at length they fetched up before the throne of Hades. Lacking any false modesty, Peirithous boldly stated his business, adding that he was sure the god would concede that Persephone would be happier with himself. Hades feigned consent. "Very well," he said. "If you love her that much and you're sure the feeling's mutual, you may have Persephone. But first, join me in a cordial. Please, take a seat." He gestured at a bench nearby, and the two heroes, little thinking it was bewitched, seated themselves upon it. And here they stuck like glue. Meanwhile, Hades loosed a flock of torments upon them in the form of serpents and Furies and the fangs of the hellhound Cerberus, not to mention the infamous water of Tartarus that recedes as parched lips draw near. And here the two heroes would be stuck today, were it not that Heracles happened to be passing by in furtherance of one of his Labors. Seeing his cousin Theseus's plight he freed him with one heroic yank, leaving only a small portion of his hindparts adhering to the bench. But Heracles couldn't or wouldn't free Peirithous. And so Theseus's pal pays for eternity the price of his heroic audacity.	i don't know
The tune to the hymn ‘I Vow To Thee My Country’ was taken from which ‘Planet’ by Gustav Holst?	Holst: "I Vow To Thee My Country" (Orchestral Arrangement) - YouTube Holst: "I Vow To Thee My Country" (Orchestral Arrangement) Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Uploaded on Jul 18, 2011 "I Vow To Thee My Country (Hymn from ''Jupiter'')" This hymn tune by the British composer Gustav Holst is based on the stately theme from the middle section of the "Jupiter" movement of his orchestral suite "The Planets." He adapted the theme in 1921 to fit the patriotic poem "I Vow to Thee, My Country" by Sir Cecil Spring-Rice. The hymn was first performed in 1925 and quickly became a patriotic anthem. It was played at Diana, Princess of Wales' wedding to Prince Charles and also performed as part of her funeral ceremony in 1997. I realized this arrangement for full "orchestra" including pipe organ and double choir. This piece is dedicated to my friends and distant relations living in the United Kingdom. Category	Jupiter
In which Irish county is the resort of Bray?	Holst - Jupiter from the Planets (theme) sheet music for Piano - 8notes.com September 21, 1874, , Cheltenham, United Kingdom Died: May 25, 1934, , London, United Kingdom The Artist: Gustav Theodore Holst was an English composer, arranger and teacher. Best known for his orchestral suite The Planets, he composed a large number of other works across a range of genres. Composed: Info: The Planets is a seven-movement orchestral suite by the English composer Gustav Holst. The concept of the work is astrological rather than astronomical (which is why Earth is not included): each movement is intended to convey ideas and emotions associated with the influence of the planets on the psyche, not the Roman deities. This is an arrangment of the main theme of the 'Jupiter' movement, "The Bringer of Jolity". But it is also well know as an British hymn, "I vow to thee, my county" Score Key:	i don't know
The Lev is the currency of which country?	BGN - Bulgarian Lev rates, news, and tools BGN - Bulgarian Lev Bulgaria, Lev The Bulgarian Lev is the currency of Bulgaria. Our currency rankings show that the most popular Bulgaria Lev exchange rate is the BGN to GBP rate . The currency code for Leva is BGN, and the currency symbol is лв. Below, you'll find Bulgarian Lev rates and a currency converter. You can also subscribe to our currency newsletters with daily rates and analysis, read the XE Currency Blog , or take BGN rates on the go with our XE Currency Apps and website.	Bulgaria
British television chef Phil Vickery married which television presenter in 2000?	Bulgarian Lev Exchange Rate \| BGN - Exchange Rate Calculator BULGARIAN LEV - BGN Todays Date : 01/20/2017 The Bulgarian lev, code BGN, is the official currency of Bulgaria, an eastern european country of 7.3 million people. The lev is subdivided into 100 stotinki, and the plural of the currency is expressed “leva.” The name for the lev currency comes from the translation of “lev”, meaning “lion” in Bulgarian. The central bank of Bulgaria is the Bulgarian National Bank in Sofia. The lev was first introduced in what is now the country of Bulgaria in 1881 as equal to the French franc. In 1928 the lev was valued under a new gold standard at 1 lev equal to 10.86956 mg gold. During the Second World War, the lev was initially pegged to the German Reichsmark at a rate of 32.75 leva equal to 1 Reichsmark, and then pegged to the Soviet ruble at 15 leva equal to 1 ruble during the Soviet occupation starting in 1944. Starting in 1945, the lev was pegged and re-pegged to the U.S. dollar three times over the next two years. No lev coins were minted between the years of 1943 to 1952. Since 1881, there have been four issues of lev currency: in 1881, 1952, 1962, and 1999. In 1952, the new lev replaced the old lev at a rate of 1 new to 100 old, and was pegged to the U.S. dollar at this time. By 1957, the lev had fallen to nearly 10 leva to every U.S. dollar. The third issue of lev replaced the second at a rate of 10 old lev equal to 1 new lev. In the early nineties, the fall of the Soviet Union brought rampant loss of value and uncontrolled inflation to the former Soviet republics. The fourth lev of 1999 saw another revaluing of the levat 100 old lev to one new lev, with each lev equal to 1 Deutsche mark. When Germany adopted the euro, the lev became pegged to the euro at 1.95 leva equal to 1 euro. Bulgaria began the European Union accession process in 2005, but it is estimated that Bulgaria will not officially join the EU until the year 2015. Bulgaria will more than likely adopt the euro immediately after acceptance into the EU. 15 days	i don't know
The eagle on the Great Seal of the US has how many arrows in its left talon?	A Bundle of 13 Arrows in the American Eagle's Left Talon on the U.S. Seal The Bundle of Thirteen Arrows in the Eagle's Left Talon on the U.S. Seal Arrows were first suggested by Francis Hopkinson , the consultant and artist on the second Great Seal committee. In his preliminary design, one of the figures supporting the shield was an Indian warrior holding a bow & arrow and carrying a quiver of arrows (shown here). The other figure was a lady representing Peace bearing an olive branch . Beneath them was a Latin motto that meant "Prepared in War or in Peace." When Charles Thomson put together the final design for the Great Seal, he placed a bundle of arrows in the eagle's left (sinister) talon. The official description specifies the bald Eagle holding "in his sinister a bundle of thirteen arrows." The official explanation describes the symbolism: "The Olive branch and arrows denote the power of peace & war which is exclusively vested in Congress." In heraldry, the symbol in a figure's right hand is more significant than the one in its left hand. All dies of the Great Seal have shown the American eagle facing the olive branch on its right side further emphasizing the power of peace. The eagle on the Seal of the President , however, used to face the arrows. Charles Thomson specified a bundle of arrows, and in his preliminary sketch (above) showed the thirteen arrows tightly aligned a symbol of "strength in unity " that's found in the traditional cultures everywhere, from the Romans to the Iroquois. We Are Unbreakable Rabbi Marc Gellman A Prayer for America, Yankee Stadium, September 23, 2001 The Talmud and the African tribe, the Masai tribe, both teach a wisdom for our wounded world. They both taught: Sticks alone can be broken by a child, but sticks in a bundle are unbreakable. The fears and sorrows of this moment are so heavy, they can break us if we try to bear them alone. But if we are bundled together if we stick together we are unbreakable. And we shall do far more than merely survive. We shall overcome. We shall overcome the forces of hatred, without allowing hatred to unbundle us. We shall overcome the forces of terror, without using fear to unbundle us. So in all our comings and our goings, from this time forth, let us remember: That the person next to you, in front of you, behind you, is not merely an obstacle to your free and unfettered life. They are a part of this bundle, that keeps you and each of us from breaking. Let us never again view our fellow New Yorkers, our fellow Americans, our fellow citizens of the world, as limitations on our life or freedom. But rather as the moral twine that binds us, and saves us, and delivers us from evil. A bundle of arrows was also an emblem on early paper money . "After much occasion to consider the folly and mischiefs of a state of warfare, and the little or no advantage obtained even by those nations who have conducted it with the most success, I have been apt to think that there has never been, or ever will be, any such thing as a good war, or a bad peace." Benjamin Franklin to Jonathan Shipley, June 10, 1782 The Eagle and the Arrow An Aesop's Fable An Eagle was soaring through the air. Suddenly it heard the whizz of an Arrow, and felt the dart pierce its breast. Slowly it fluttered down to earth. Its lifeblood pouring out. Looking at the Arrow with which it had been shot, the Eagle realized that the deadly shaft had been feathered with one of its own plumes. Moral: We often give our enemies the means for our own destruction. Historical content is based on the official history of the Great Seal.	thirteen
What is the name of the dog in the television series ‘The Magic Roundabout’?	Great Seal of the United States Great Seal of the United States Seal Description: Obverse (left): Centered on a round white field a bald eagle with its wings displayed, holding a bundle of thirteen arrows in its left talon and an olive branch in its right talon, in its beak carrying a scroll with the motto "E PLURIBUS UNUM" (Out of many, one). Superimposed on the eagle's breast a shield, paly of thirteen argent and gules, a chief azure. Reverse (right): In the centre an unfinished pyramid, inscribed on its base with the date 1776 in Roman numerals. In the Zenith an Eye in a triangle, virtually completing the pyramid, surrounded with a glory. Over the Eye these words ANNUIT CPTIS "Providence has Favored Our Undertakings." Beneath the pyramid a ribbon with the inscription: NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM, "New Order of the Ages."	i don't know
What colour, traditionally, are cabs in New York?	NYC Taxi & Limousine Commission - Boro Taxis Your guide to Boro Taxis The yellow taxi is an iconic symbol of New York City. But since the summer of 2013, New Yorkers can now spot a different color cab cruising city streets. The Taxi & Limousine Commission’s new Boro Taxi program (also known as the Street Hail Livery program) has licensed thousands of green Boro Taxis to serve areas of New York not commonly served by yellow medallion cabs. The goal of the Boro Taxi program is to improve access to street-hail transportation throughout the five boroughs – especially for persons with disabilities and people who live or spend time in areas of New York City historically underserved by the yellow taxi industry. Boro Taxi drivers can pick up passengers from the street in northern Manhattan (north of West 110th street and East 96th street), the Bronx, Queens (excluding the airports), Brooklyn and Staten Island and they may drop you off anywhere. Each vehicle is associated with a local car service that has been affiliated with the Boro Taxi program and can still participate in pre-arranged trips. Boro Taxi drivers can be dispatched to pick you up in northern Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island and at the airports, but may not pick up any trips – pre-arranged or street hail – in the Manhattan exclusionary zone. Boro Taxis can pick up passengers by street hail or prearranged trip outside the Manhattan exclusionary zone and by prearranged trip only at the airports. (Source: TLC) Boro Taxis have a number of features that ensure that they are easy to identify. Much like yellow taxis, Boro Taxis are uniform in color (apple green), have a debit/credit card reader, a meter, a roof light and a camera or a partition. The metered fare in a Boro Taxi is the same rate as for yellow taxis. Boro Taxis are equipped with GPS trackers to make it easier to find lost property and enforce our rules. These vehicles are inspected for safety and proper taxi equipment by the TLC twice every year. All Boro Taxis are required to have the same markings and equipment to make them easy recognizable to passengers. (Source: Smart Design) Passenger Resources	Yellow
What is the square root of 81?	All-Borough Taxis (Like Yellow Cabs, but Green) Hit the Streets - The New York Times The New York Times N.Y. / Region \|All-Borough Taxis (Like Yellow Cabs, but Green) Hit the Streets Search Continue reading the main story They remain a rare sighting, snaking across the Bronx and Upper Manhattan — the curious spawn of a yellow cab and a for-hire vehicle, cast in a green that is close to the color of wasabi. But on Friday, for the first time, New York City welcomed what is expected to become a transformative addition to its transportation network: the all-borough taxi, allowed to pick up passengers hailing a cab where yellow taxis rarely go. Furnished with roof lights,meters and credit card readers, the green taxis are not allowed to accept street hails in parts of Manhattan (south of East 96th Street and West 110th Street) or at the city’s airports. Everywhere else, they can behave as their peers in yellow do — legally. “I’ve been picking up people illegally for 15 years,” said Victor Alvarez, 47, a livery driver from Inwood, in Manhattan, who operated one of the first green cabs to reach the road on Friday. “Now I feel comfortable.” Mired in court for over a year amid objections from the yellow taxi industry, the Bloomberg administration’s plan to expand street hail service was upheld in June by the State Court of Appeals . The city expects to issue up to 6,000 green taxi permits in the first year, and up to 12,000 more in the next two years. Advertisement Continue reading the main story The city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission said more than 1,300 permits had been issued, suggesting that riders could expect to see the cabs regularly early in the fall. Only four cabs were operating on Friday afternoon, the commission said. “I think you’ll see some critical mass within the next couple months,” David S. Yassky, the city’s taxi commissioner, said in a phone interview. Mr. Yassky said that about half of Friday’s trips were paid by credit card, a sharp departure from the cash-only tradition of livery cabs. Some livery drivers and operators have expressed skepticism about the plan, citing the cost of converting cabs for the new specifications — about $3,000 on average, according to the taxi commission — and the prospect of a diminished supply of for-hire vehicles. Others have worried that the conspicuous green paint job could make it easier for enforcement agents to recognize illegal pickups. The cabs’ meters, equipped with GPS devices, do not operate if a driver tries to begin a trip within the area of Manhattan designated for yellow cabs, though a driver can drop off passengers anywhere in the city. Mr. Alvarez, who had picked up about a dozen passengers by midafternoon, many in northern Manhattan, said he did not feel restricted. “We have everything the yellow cab has,” he said, “except the color.” A version of this article appears in print on August 10, 2013, on Page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: All-Borough Taxis (Like Yellow Cabs, but Green) Hit the Streets. Order Reprints \| Today's Paper \| Subscribe	i don't know
In which war did Florence Nightingale nurse wounded soldiers?	Florence Nightingale and the Crimean War \| Understanding Uncertainty Florence Nightingale and the Crimean War Submitted by ims25 on Tue, 07/10/2008 - 5:06pm On 28 March 1854 Britain and France declared war on Russia, and for the next two years British, French, Sardinian, and Turkish troops fought against Russians in the Crimean War. The loss of life in the war was colossal; of 1 650 000 soldiers who began the war (of all nations), 900 000 died. The majority of those who perished did not die from wounds; rather they died from diseases brought about by the terrible living conditions which they suffered. In these notes we review the Crimean War, and the role Florence Nightingale had in highlighting the plight of the soldiers. Siege of Sevastopol Background to the war The Ottoman Empire (1293-1922) was a realm centred on Turkey, which, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, spanned thousands of miles into Africa, Asia, and Europe. The empire declined in the nineteenth century, and as it shrank there was conflict over control of the territory. The Holy Land (modern day Israel) was a region in the Ottoman Empire that had a long history of power struggles. In the 1850s France and Russia vied for authority of the Holy Land, each trying to force their will on the Ottomans who occupied the territory. Their disagreement escalated, and as the threat of Russian interference in the whole Ottoman Empire increased, Britain, Austria, and Prussia became involved to try to maintain stability of the empire. Initial peaceful negotiations failed, and the British and French sided with the Turkish Ottomans in war against the Russians. Major events of the war Most of the conflict in the Crimean War occurred on the Crimean Peninsula, which lies on the southern tip of Ukraine, and projects into the Black Sea. The Crimea was an important military position for the Russians, because their naval fleet could access the Mediterranean Sea from the region. Several of the more significant battles in the Crimean War are described below. The Battle of the Alma (20 September 1854). In the first battle of the Crimean War, British and French forces clashed with Russian forces near the River Alma in the Crimea. The Russians were defeated. Siege of Sevastopol (25 September 1854 to 8 September 1855). Sevastopol is a city in the south of the Crimea, and it was the home of a major fleet of Russian ships. The British, French, and Turkish troops besieged the city for one year before finally capturing it on the 9 September 1855. The Battle of Balaclava (25 October 1854). The Battle of Balaclava is now remembered for the calamitous Charge of the Light Brigade which saw British cavalry charge needlessly to their doom under the muddled and misinformed orders of their superiors. Much of the fame of this futile advance is due to a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson entitled 'The Charge of the Light Brigade', which describes the bravery of the cavalry under incompetent command. The Battle of Balaclava involved British, French, Turkish, and Russian armies. It finished inconclusively, although the Russians suffered heavier losses. The Battle of Eupatoria (17 February 1855). A large Russian force attacked the town of Eupatoria in the Crimea, which was occupied by the Turks. The Russians were repelled. The Sea of Azov naval campaign (25 May 1855 to 22 November 1855). British and French war ships attacked Russian ports from the Sea of Azov during a six month period in 1855. The object of these attacks was to intercept Russian communications and supplies. The war ships bombarded the Russian towns repeatedly, but they were met with stubborn resistance, and attempts to land and overthrow the port towns were quashed. Map of Crimea with locations of battles marked. The close of the war The war concluded in February 1856. The Ottoman and Russian Empires agreed to halt military activity on the Black Sea, and all nations agreed to respect the autonomy of the Ottoman Empire. The peace treaty was not to last long though. The balance of power and partnership in Europe was in a state of constant flux. Old alliances failed, new alliances were formed, and by the 1870s the treaty had been abandoned. Florence Nightingale's role in the war Those British troops wounded from fighting on the Crimean Peninsula were shipped across the Black Sea to medical stations in Turkey. These stations were poorly staffed, with insufficient supplies, and the medical and sanitary conditions were awful. This terrible state of affairs was reported by the media in Britain. Thirty eight voluntary nurses, amongst them Florence Nightingale, travelled to Turkey to help relieve the situation. Nightingale proved herself to be hugely resourceful. Her competence and generosity were reported back in Great Britain. The Times Newspaper described her deeds in the following excerpt. She is a 'ministering angel' without any exaggeration in these hospitals, and as her slender form glides quietly along each corridor, every poor fellow's face softens with gratitude at the sight of her. When all the medical officers have retired for the night and silence and darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds. Nightingale became known as 'The Lady with the Lamp' after these words were published in the Times. Florence Nightingale Diseases such as typhus, typhoid, cholera, and dysentery were rife in the army hospitals. Many more soldiers were dying from diseases than from wounds. Nightingale worked towards improvements in sanitation, nutrition, and activity for the patients of the hospitals. Death rates were reduced dramatically with the introduction of such measures. Nightingale kept meticulous records of the number of deaths, and the causes of deaths, so that on her return to Great Britain she could justify the need for improving conditions in hospitals. Following Nightingale's return to Great Britain and her campaign for better living conditions for the army, the Royal Commission on the Health of the Army was created. Nightingale prepared an 800 page report for the commission on the welfare of the army. She advocated the use of statistics as a tool in decision making. Nightingale created graphs to demonstrate that more soldiers died in the Crimean War from disease than from wounds. Many of these graphs were of a particular flower like type, and are now described as coxcombs. Levels:	Crimean War
If something is ‘Biennial’, how often does it occur?	Florence Nightingale - Women’s History - HISTORY.com Florence Nightingale A+E Networks Introduction Florence Nightingale was born in Florence, Italy on May 12, 1820. During the Crimean War, she and a team of nurses improved the unsanitary conditions at a British base hospital, reducing the death count by two-thirds. Her writings sparked worldwide health care reform. In 1860 she established St. Thomas’ Hospital and the Nightingale Training School for Nurses. She died August 13, 1910, in London. Google Early Life Florence Nightingale was born on May 12, 1820, in Florence, Italy. She was the younger of two children. Nightingale’s affluent British family belonged to elite social circles. Her mother, Frances Nightingale, hailed from a family of merchants and took pride in socializing with people of prominent social standing. Despite her mother’s interest in social climbing, Florence herself was reportedly awkward in social situations. She preferred to avoid being the center of attention whenever possible. Strong-willed, Florence often butted heads with her mother, whom she viewed as overly controlling. Still, like many daughters, she was eager to please her mother. “I think I am got something more good-natured and complying,” Florence wrote in her own defense, concerning the mother-daughter relationship. Florence’s father was William Shore Nightingale, a wealthy landowner who had inherited two estates—one at Lea Hurst, Derbyshire, and the other in Hampshire, Embley Park—when Florence was five years old. Florence was raised on the family estate at Lea Hurst, where her father provided her with a classical education, including studies in German, French and Italian. From a very young age, Florence Nightingale was active in philanthropy, ministering to the ill and poor people in the village neighboring her family’s estate. By the time she was 16 years old, it was clear to her that nursing was her calling. She believed it to be her divine purpose. When Nightingale approached her parents and told them about her ambitions to become a nurse, they were not pleased. In fact, her parents forbade her to pursue nursing. During the Victorian Era, a young lady of Nightingale’s social stature was expected to marry a man of means—not take up a job that was viewed as lowly menial labor by the upper social classes. When Nightingale was 17 years old, she refused a marriage proposal from a “suitable” gentleman, Richard Monckton Milnes. Nightingale explained her reason for turning him down, saying that while he stimulated her intellectually and romantically, her “moral…active nature…requires satisfaction, and that would not find it in this life.” Determined to pursue her true calling despite her parents’ objections, in 1844, Nightingale enrolled as a nursing student at the Lutheran Hospital of Pastor Fliedner in Kaiserwerth, Germany. Career In the early 1850s, Nightingale returned to London, where she took a nursing job in a Middlesex hospital for ailing governesses. Her performance there so impressed her employer that Nightingale was promoted to superintendant within just a year of being hired. The position proved challenging as Nightingale grappled with a cholera outbreak and unsanitary conditions conducive to the rapid spread of the disease. Nightingale made it her mission to improve hygiene practices, significantly lowering the death rate at the hospital in the process. The hard work took a toll on her health. She had just barely recovered when the biggest challenge of her nursing career presented itself. In October of 1853, the Crimean War broke out. The British Empire was at war against the Russian Empire for control of the Ottoman Empire. Thousands of British soldiers were sent to the Black Sea, where supplies quickly dwindled. By 1854, no fewer than 18,000 soldiers had been admitted into military hospitals. At the time, there were no female nurses stationed at hospitals in the Crimea. The poor reputation of past female nurses had led the war office to avoid hiring more. But, after the Battle of Alma, England was in an uproar about the neglect of their ill and injured soldiers, who not only lacked sufficient medical attention due to hospitals being horribly understaffed, but also languished in appallingly unsanitary and inhumane conditions. In late 1854, Nightingale received a letter from Secretary of War Sidney Herbert, asking her to organize a corps of nurses to tend to the sick and fallen soldiers in the Crimea. Nightingale rose to her calling. She quickly assembled a team of 34 nurses from a variety of religious orders, and sailed with them to the Crimea just a few days later. Although they had been warned of the horrid conditions there, nothing could have prepared Nightingale and her nurses for what they saw when they arrived at Scutari, the British base hospital in Constantinople. The hospital sat on top of a large cesspool, which contaminated the water and the hospital building itself. Patients lay on in their own excrement on stretchers strewn throughout the hallways. Rodents and bugs scurried past them. The most basic supplies, such as bandages and soap, grew increasingly scarce as the number of ill and wounded steadily increased. Even water needed to be rationed. More soldiers were dying from infectious diseases like typhoid and cholera than from injuries incurred in battle. The no-nonsense Nightingale quickly set to work. She procured hundreds of scrub brushes and asked the least infirm patients to scrub the inside of the hospital from floor to ceiling. Nightingale herself spent every waking minute caring for the soldiers. In the evenings she moved through the dark hallways carrying a lamp while making her rounds, ministering to patient after patient. The soldiers, who were both moved and comforted by her endless supply of compassion, took to calling her “the Lady with the Lamp.” Others simply called her “the Angel of the Crimea.” Her work reduced the hospital’s death rate by two-thirds. In additional to vastly improving the sanitary conditions of the hospital, Nightingale created a number of patient services that contributed to improving the quality of their hospital stay. She instituted the creation of an “invalid’s kitchen” where appealing food for patients with special dietary requirements was cooked. She established a laundry so that patients would have clean linens. She also instituted a classroom and a library, for patients’ intellectual stimulation and entertainment. Based on her observations in the Crimea, Nightingale wrote Notes on Matters Affecting the Health, Efficiency and Hospital Administration of the British Army, an 830-page report analyzing her experience and proposing reforms for other military hospitals operating under poor conditions. The book would spark a total restructuring of the War Office’s administrative department, including the establishment of a Royal Commission for the Health of the Army in 1857. Nightingale remained at Scutari for a year and a half. She left in the summer of 1856, once the Crimean conflict was resolved, and returned to her childhood home at Lea Hurst. To her surprise she was met with a hero’s welcome, which the humble nurse did her best to avoid. The Queen rewarded Nightingale’s work by presenting her with an engraved brooch that came to be known as the “Nightingale Jewel” and by granting her a prize of $250,000 from the British government. Nightingale decided to use the money to further her cause. In 1860, she funded the establishment of St. Thomas’ Hospital, and within it, the Nightingale Training School for Nurses. Nightingale became a figure of public admiration. Poems, songs and plays were written and dedicated in the heroine’s honor. Young women aspired to be like her. Eager to follow her example, even women from the wealthy upper classes started enrolling at the training school. Thanks to Nightingale, nursing was no longer frowned upon by the upper classes; it had, in fact, come to be viewed as an honorable vocation. Later Life While at Scutari, Nightingale had contracted “Crimean fever” and would never fully recover. By the time she was 38 years old, she was homebound and bedridden, and would be so for the remainder of her life. Fiercely determined, and dedicated as ever to improving health care and alleviating patients’ suffering, Nightingale continued her work from her bed. Residing in Mayfair, she remained an authority and advocate of health care reform, interviewing politicians and welcoming distinguished visitors from her bed. In 1859, she published Notes on Hospitals, which focused on how to properly run civilian hospitals. Throughout the U.S. Civil War, she was frequently consulted about how to best manage field hospitals. Nightingale also served as an authority on public sanitation issues in India for both the military and civilians, although she had never been to India herself. In 1908, at the age of 88, she was conferred the merit of honor by King Edward. In May of 1910, she received a congratulatory message from King George on her 90th birthday. Death and Legacy In August 1910, Florence Nightingale fell ill, but seemed to recover and was reportedly in good spirits. A week later, on the evening of Friday, August 12, 1910, she developed an array of troubling symptoms. She died unexpectedly at 2 pm the following day, Saturday, August 13, at her home in London. Characteristically, she had expressed the desire that her funeral be a quiet and modest affair, despite the public’s desire to honor Nightingale—who tirelessly devoted her life to preventing disease and ensuring safe and compassionate treatment for the poor and the suffering. Respecting her last wishes, her relatives turned down a national funeral. The “Lady with the Lamp” was laid to rest in a family plot at Westminster Abbey. The Florence Nightingale Museum, which sits at the site of the original Nightingale Training School for Nurses, houses more than 2,000 artifacts commemorating the life and career of the “Angel of the Crimea.” To this day, Florence Nightingale is broadly acknowledged and revered as the pioneer of modern nursing. Biography courtesty of Bio.com	i don't know
Zucchini is another name for which vegetable?	Zucchini - definition of zucchini by The Free Dictionary Zucchini - definition of zucchini by The Free Dictionary http://www.thefreedictionary.com/zucchini Also found in: Thesaurus , Encyclopedia , Wikipedia . zuc·chi·ni (zo͞o-kē′nē) n. pl. zucchini or zuc·chi·nis A variety of summer squash (Cucurbita pepo) having an elongated shape and a smooth, thin, dark green rind. [Italian, pl. of zucchino, diminutive of zucca, gourd, from Late Latin cucutia; possibly akin to Latin cucurbita, gourd.] zucchini (tsuːˈkiːnɪ; zuː-) n, pl -ni or -nis 1. (Plants) a small variety of vegetable marrow, cooked and eaten as a vegetable. Also called (esp in Britain): courgette 2. (Cookery) a small variety of vegetable marrow, cooked and eaten as a vegetable. Also called (esp in Britain): courgette [Italian, pl of zucchino, literally: a little gourd, from zucca gourd; see zucchetto] zuc•chi•ni	Zucchini
What is a group of lions called?	Zucchini - Kitchen Dictionary - Food.com Nutrition A popular summer squash, ranging in color from dark to light green with a bit of mottling. The flesh is white with a light and delicate flavor. Zucchini is cylindrical but irregular, and is often 4 to 8 inches in length, but can be found very small or homegrown at lengths up to 2 feet and 6 inches in diameter. Many explorers who came to the Americas brought back what they considered strange foods. The zucchini eventually found its way to Italy where it was named zucchino. Inhabitants of Central and South America have been eating zucchini for several thousand years, but the zucchini we know today is a variety of summer squash developed in Italy. The word zucchini comes from the Italian zucchino, meaning a small squash. The term squash comes from the Indian skutasquash meaning "green thing eaten green." Christopher Columbus originally brought seeds to the Mediterranean region and Africa. The French term for zucchini is courgette, often used interchangably for yellow squash as well. Although the term summer squash can mean a variety of different squashes depending on whom you are speaking with, you can pretty much use the different summer squash varieties interchangably. The English also refer to a variety that is slightly larger and plumper as marrow. Plural:	i don't know
Which footballer was best man at David and Victoria Beckham’s wedding?	David Beckham says he only has three close friends... but he is more than happy about that \| Daily Mail Online comments He has a life of celebrity and wealth that few of us can dream of. But David Beckham has revealed that there is an unfortunate downside to fame for him - he only has three friends. The footballer said that over the years his circle of ‘20 good friends’ has gradually decreased to a trio of ‘really good friends’. Beckham no-mates: Footballer David has revealed that he only has three good friends - but he is more than happy with that These three along with his wife Victoria and their four children are enough to keep him content, Mr Beckham said in an interview. He did not disclose if he chose to limit his number of friends, or if he has been gradually abandoned over the years. The 36-year-old also did not specify who the three were, although he is known to be on very good terms with Tom Cruise who lives close to him in Los Angeles. Wing man: Although Beckham didn't mention specifically who these three friends were, one of his best friends is football agent Dave Gardner, seen here with him in London last week Former Manchester United team mate Gary Neville was his best man at his wedding and he is chummy with Princes William and Harry. Speaking to the U.S. edition of Men’s Health magazine, Mr Beckham said: ‘I’ve got friends at the different teams I’ve played for, but family is the most important thing to me. 'That will always be the case. I’ve got my wife. I’ve got my four kids. I’ve got parents, grandparents still, and three really good friends. Top boy: David, seen here with Gary Neville in 2006, who was his best man at his wedding to Victoria 'It’s all you need. I’d rather have three really good friends than 20 good friends.' Should he so desire, Mr Beckham could have far more than his chosen trio of close associates. He is adored by millions of fans worldwide who recently drooled over him in his underwear for an advertising campaign for H&M. A-list buddies: David is also good friends with Tom Cruise, who he got to know well when he moved to Los Angeles He is still respected in the footballing world - he holds the record for the most number of outfield appearances for the England team and has won the Premier League six times. Now playing in the U.S. for the Los Angeles Galaxy, he helped them win last year’s tournament. By Royal appointment: David is also close to Princes William and Harry He and wife Victoria, 37, are said to be worth £125million. Despite limiting his friends, Mr Beckham said in the interview that he still enjoys playing football as much as ever. He told Men’s Health: 'Even at 36, I’m still running 12 miles a game. ‘But I’ve definitely become more aware on the field. I know what my limits are, what I can achieve, and which passes I can play. I have adapted to my age.' The most important: David, seen here with wife Victoria and their brood in December, said it's all about family for him	Gary Neville
Who was the first female Prime Minister of the UK?	David and Victoria Beckham: The story of their love - Photo 21 David and Victoria Beckham: The story of their love 21/21 by hellomagazine.com David and Victoria Beckham: a look back at their love story More on: love story When their paths first crossed in November 1996, there was an immediate chemistry between Manchester United footie ace David Beckham and the pouting, mysterious Spice Girl known as Victoria Adams. Both stars in their own right, together they captured public imagination and were propelled to the A list almost overnight. "My wife picked me out of a soccer sticker book. And I chose her off the telly ... It felt straight away like we'd always been meant to be together," wrote David in his autobiography. Here, hellomagazine.com takes a look back at the duo's love story – from their first meeting to their Hollywood lifestyle in America. After they met at a charity football match, David and Victoria began to see each other regularly on a series of low-key dates. "For the first three months it was amazing because no one found out about us being together,' says David of their early courtship. "We loved that because we could sneak around. Our first kiss was in the car park of a restaurant. "We used to drive to places and just spend as much time together as possible. That was an amazing time in our relationship." David got down on one knee and popped the question on January 25, 1998, slipping a 3-carat, marquise-cut sparkler from Boodle and Dunthorpe on Victoria's finger. The footballer ordered himself some serious bling too to mark the occasion too - a matching engagement band set with 96 diamonds. Both rings cost a total of £200,000. Shortly after announcing their engagement the couple celebrated their happy news with a romantic holiday in Marbella, Spain. But after a great start, that year turned out to be a difficult year for the midfielder. That summer, he became public enemy number one after being sent off in England’s World Cup quarter final clash with Argentina. Rumours abounded that he was set to quit the UK due to the backlash. His loyal girlfriend stuck by his side throughout. In their early days the couple's star status quickly rose - thanks in part to their penchant for appearing at showbiz parties in matching outfits. Soon, they were the most talked-about pairing in the country, and given the nickname Posh and Becks by the tabloids that charted their every move. By March 1999, the country had all but forgotten about David's World Cup woes, and the nation was delighted when he and Victoria announced the birth of their first child – a son. They called the baby boy Brooklyn – because they were in the New York district when they found out they were expecting. At a photo op outside their home in July 1999, the couple were brimming with happiness. And with good reason – they were about to fly to Ireland to tie the knot. The country's most high-profile couple wed at the Emerald isle's imposing Luttrellstown Castle, with David's team mate Gary Neville as best man, and baby Brooklyn acting as ring-bearer. The bride wore an Ivory Vera Wang creation, and they said their vows in front of a star-studded wedding party including the Spice Girls, Bobby Charlton and David Seaman. As they become man and wife, a single dove was released as a symbol of their love. Later that year, they purchased a £7.5 million mansion in Hertfordshire, affectionately dubbed Beckingham Palace by the media - and 'Brand Beckham' was born. The couple started married life by forging on ahead on the work front. Victoria - with new long locks - launched her solo career. But despite their busy schedules the couple still found the time for fun dates. David and his wife had a ball at Hyde Park event Party in the Park, checking out some of the other acts after Victoria took to the stage with Dane Bowers to perform their joint single Out of your Mind In 2002 they became proud parents for the second time, as baby son Romeo was born in London. Speaking outside the hospital, David gushed: "You're always nervous having children but it's the most beautiful thing in the world, so we're both delighted". And, explaining the unusual moniker, he added: "It's just a name we love". In-demand David was snapped up by Spanish giants Real Madrid for a cool £25 million in 2003 – and, naturally, the whole clan upped and moved to the Spanish capital. "It's been very hard finding a house," said Victoria, who was keen to avoid the typical outlandish footballers’ trappings and find a family home. "You should have seen some of the houses that we saw when we first came out. They were so Hollywood, they had lifts and discos and cinemas and I don't want anything like that, "I want something that's a nice size so that, when I'm on my own with the children, I'm not going to feel scared." They started off in the the sprawling property above, in the La Florida area, before finally moving to upmarket suburb La Moraleja. The same year, David picked up an OBE from the Queen – and, naturally, proud Victoria was on hand to celebrate his achievement. In 2004, the seemingly perfect couple's marriage was rocked by sensational claims that the footballer had been conducting an affair with his Madrid-based assistant Rebecca Loos (above left). After a media frenzy surrounding what experts called the biggest story since the death of Princess Diana, David issued a statement slamming the allegations as "ludicrous". Just a week later, Australian model Sarah Marbeck claimed that she too had had extramarital relations with him. Victoria stood by her man. "I'm not going to lie: it was a really tough time. It was hard for our entire families. But I realised a lot of people have a price," she later said of the scandal. They put the episode behind them and in February the following year they welcomed third son Cruz. "He's gorgeous, healthy and his mum is very good so we're a very happy family. He's got Victoria's lips and nose," said proud dad David. Putting an end to the tumultuous Madrid-based chapter in their lives, the Beckhams cemented their A-list status with a hotly-anticipated move to Los Angeles in July 2007. David had signed a contract with football team LA Galaxy. And it wasn’t long after their arrival that they began making a multitude of Hollywood friends – including Tom Cruise and his wife Katie Holmes, and Will Smith and his wife Jada. To mark their arrival in America they filmed a one-hour reality show Victoria Beckham: Coming to America, in which Posh was invited to pitch the first ball at a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball game It soon became apparent that the Beckham clan, pictured in New York, were revelling in their new lives in America. Despite Victoria's Spice Girls commitments – the group had reformed and embarked upon a sell-out world tour in December 2007 – their marriage seemed stronger than ever. And their boys had well and truly settled into life in America. "We love it here. It's good weather and the children are secure," the fashionista has said. "And the main thing is that America is a country where men and women are equal, and the sky's the limit for your career. So I think we'll live here for a while." The couple share a tender moment at the New York Costume Gala in 2008. Twelve years after their first meeting, it's clear the romance is still alive In 2010, the whole clan were still living the high life in Hollywood, often spotted out and about walking their dogs or watching basketball. The Beckhams – pictured at a Jonas Brothers concert in May – also regularly rubbed shoulders with other famous families, including Gwen Stefani and her children. The parents-of-three also celebrated their 11-year wedding anniversary with a weekend-long knees up in their South of France chateau. “We are as in love, if not more in love, than ever,” revealed Victoria. "We are best friends. We never put pressure on each other. It was our 11th wedding anniversary at the weekend and we celebrated it in style… It was a fabulous party." The family were overjoyed in July 2011 when Victoria welcomed Harper Seven, the first little girl to be born into the Beckham clan. "Baby Harper is the most beautiful baby girl I have ever seen," the former Spice Girl tweeted. "I have fallen in love all over again." "We feel so blessed and the boys love their baby sister so much." There was no maternity leave for Victoria though. The uber mum was soon back on the promotional trail for her fashion label, taking Harper with her on trips to New York Fashion Week and China. © 2000-2017, HELLO INC.	i don't know
Isabella ‘Bella’ Swan is the lead character in which series of vampire books?	Bella Swan \| Twilight Saga Wiki \| Fandom powered by Wikia Bella and Edward are married. "Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age." "The child is grown, and puts away childish things." "Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies." ―Bella quoting Edna St. Vincent Millay in Breaking Dawn: Part 1. [src] In the first chapter of Breaking Dawn, it is revealed that Bella and Edward have told both of her parents about their engagement and both given their blessing, though Charlie is still slightly resistant to the thought of their marriage. Alice is busy making preparations for the wedding, which is only one day away. Meanwhile, Edward has bought her a Mercedes Guardian, which she sees as either a sign of compassion and caring or as over-protectiveness and worry about her safety. This car is for temporary use until she is changed into a vampire, when she will not need the protection, and then he will replace it with a red Ferrari. Meanwhile, Bella feels guilty about Jacob, believing that her rejection caused him to run away. The wedding goes smoothly, and Bella meets the Denali coven for the first time. Jacob arrives at the party despite her rejection of him, and Bella is very relieved that Jacob has decided to come after all. However, he gets into an argument with Bella about her wanting to make love with Edward while she is still human. Luckily, only the werewolves and the Cullens hear the argument. Edward and Bella leave for their honeymoon to Isle Esme , where they consummate their marriage. Edward is horrified when he sees that he bruised Bella while doing so. He vows not to make love with her again until she has been turned, but Bella succeeds in getting him to do so. Bella later notices that she is getting unusual illnesses and changes of appetite, but does not make anything of it. After seeing a bag of unused tampons, she realizes that she is pregnant with a half-human half-vampire offspring. Edward immediately takes her back to Forks where he and Carlisle can abort the baby, but Bella asks Rosalie to protect her: she has already come to love the child. Bella realizes she is pregnant. Her baby develops at an extremely fast rate, and she becomes very sick. She becomes unable to adjust food, and is dying slowly. Edward asks Jacob to try to convince her to kill the baby that was killing her, but Bella refuses, because she loves it. Through Jacob's joking, Edward then suggests for Bella to drink donated human blood, and she quickly becomes stronger, but it also makes the baby so strong that it breaks her ribs by accident. Soon after, Edward realizes that he can hear the baby's thoughts now that it has developed enough of its brain, and starts to love the baby when he hears that it "absolutely adores Bella." Jacob remarks that Edward could never hate anyone who loved Bella, which is why Edward did not hate him. Also, after going against Sam's orders to kill Bella and her baby, Jacob forms his own pack with Leah and Seth Clearwater to protect her and the Cullens. After having a typical Bella moment, which includes dropping a cup full of blood, the hardened placenta detaches, and Edward, Rosalie, and Jacob are forced to perform an emergency surgery since Carlisle is hunting with Esme. Bella's body is nearly destroyed in the process—with several ribs broken, she loses vast amounts of blood, and her spinal cord is snapped. Seeing the baby is a girl, Bella names her " Renesmee " right before her heart stops beating. Edward then injects her heart with his own venom and bites her body in several places, effectively turning Bella into a vampire. Jacob goes to kill Renesmee since he believes she killed Bella, but when he looks her in the eyes, he imprints on her instead. Bella awakens after her transformation into a vampire. Bella experiences the full agony of transformation—the feeling of being burned alive, which she comments that James snapping her leg couldn't come close to this. But she remains completely still throughout the process to keep from hurting Edward's feelings. Her transformation completes after three days, now a vampire. She claims that she can notice how everything is different now that she is a newborn : Her senses are improved by great lengths. She explains her new eyesight, laying her new eyes first on a light on the ceiling, claiming to see an "eighth" color emanating from it—UV light. Shortly after her creation, Edward takes her out on her first hunt. She jumps out of the window very gracefully, impressing Edward, kicks off her shoes and runs barefoot through the forest. She proves to have incredible self control when she runs away from the scent of human blood, something newborns aren't supposed to be able to do. After she is full, they return to meet Renesmee. Even more so, she is amazed by the passionate touches of Edward now that he no longer has to worry about hurting her. While everyone is worried about her thirst, she manages to retain complete control and hugs her daughter. Bella later finds out Jacob imprinted on Renesmee, which makes her very angry; she calms down quickly, but not before trying to kill Jacob after also finding out that he had nicknamed her daughter "Nessie", after the Loch Ness Monster. Later, Jacob, aware that the Cullens are planning to move away, phases into his wolf form in front of Charlie (he thought Charlie was the reason they were leaving). Charlie is shocked to discover Bella has known about the mythical world for years, and tells her to tell him only what is absolutely necessary for him to know. This allows Bella to keep her father in her new life without putting him in danger. Bella adjusts to her new life extremely well, going as far as to think she was destined to be a vampire. Months later, Bella is hunting with Jacob and Renesmee in the forest when a vampire, Irina , sees her daughter and mistakes her for an immortal child , whose creation is a heinous crime of the vampire world. When Alice learns that the Volturi and their entire guard are coming to destroy the Cullens, she flees with Jasper on a secret mission and leaves clues for Bella to find J. Jenks to forge passports and IDs for Renesmee and Jacob if they fail to stop the Volturi. The Cullens look for other vampires to be witnesses, including nomads and other covens, such as the Irish and the Amazon covens . In the meantime, Bella finds out that she possesses the power to shield herself from the psychic abilities of other vampires. Kate from the Denali and Zafrina from the Amazon teach Bella to project said power so she could protect others from the Volturi 's gifted guards. Bella projects her shield to protect everyone. When the Volturi arrive at the end of December, the Cullens and their allies manage to convince them that Renesmee really is half-human, but Aro, dead-set on claiming the gifts of the Cullens and some of their friends, plots every possible justification to kill Renesmee. When Edward faces Aro alone, Bella's anger triggers her shield with absolute control, allowing her to shield everyone in her surrounding. Before the Volturi could declare a battle, Alice and Jasper arrive with vampires Kachiri and Huilen and half-vampire Nahuel to prove that Renesmee's existence is safe to the vampire world. The Volturi have no more plots to start a war with the Cullens, and, with the help of the shape-shifters, Alice's research, and Bella's gift, retreat to Volterra, though Irina pays for her mistake with her life. After the confrontation resolved, Bella and Edward embrace Renesmee with their arms. Edward reads Bella's thoughts. Bella's concern for Renesmee's future is also put to rest when she learns that her daughter will cease to age at seven, where she will remain young and healthy for at least 150 years. At the end of the series, Bella drops her shield to let Edward to read her mind for the first time, showing him how much she really loves him. The happily ever after begins here. Physical appearance "My first reaction was an unthinking pleasure. The alien creature in the glass was indisputably beautiful, every bit as beautiful as Alice or Esme. She was fluid even in stillness, and her flawless face was pale as the moon against the frame of her dark, heavy hair. Her limbs were smooth and strong, skin glistening subtly, luminous as a pearl." ―Bella on seeing herself for the first time since her transformation Bella is described as having a very pale complexion with long, straight, dark brown hair, a widow's peak, unique chocolate brown eyes and a heart-shaped face with a wide forehead. Her eyes are large and widely spaced. Her nose is thin and her cheekbones are prominent. Her lips are a bit too full for her slim jawline. Her eyebrows are darker than her hair and are straighter than they are arched. As such, even before she became a vampire and inherited god-like beauty, Bella was rather pretty, as she unintentionally attracted the attention of several boys in school, not just Edward. The scent of her blood is incredibly attractive to vampires, described by Bree Tanner to be the "sweetest scent she'd ever smelled", though it is a thousand times more intense to Edward Cullen . As for distinguishing features, Bella has a small crescent-shaped scar on her hand where she was bitten by James , a tracker vampire, in Twilight . The scar is described as being pale, always a few degrees colder than the rest of her body, and it shines like a vampire's skin when exposed to the sunlight. After Bella is changed into a vampire by Edward, she becomes extremely beautiful with even paler skin, straight waist-length hair, and crimson red eyes that will eventually turn gold after months of drinking animal blood. Her features are also heightened and perfected by the transformation. Bella mostly prefers to wear shirts, jeans and sneakers everywhere she goes, as she lacks an interest in fashion. In the films, Bella's hair is quite curly and wavy instead of straight. Personality and traits	Twilight
In Greek mythology, who was the ruler of the Olympian gods?	Bella Swan \| Frozen Apples \| Fandom powered by Wikia Kristen Stewart "Argh! I hate you, Bella Swan! I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate your stupid mood swings. I hate that you think Edward is neat. I hate that you can't see how rad Jacob is. I hate that one moment you're the smartest girl in all the land, and the next moment you can't remember what month it is. I hate that you're mature enough to take care of your parents, but so immature that you think it's flipping awesome when someone kidnaps you. I hate that you want to throw away your education, your future, your entire life just for the sake of some good-looking smelly monster. I hate your thoughts. I hate your dependence on others. I hate that you never scream and yell at Edward for treating you like a hamster. I hate that you left the Volturi Victims to die, and have never mentioned them or lost sleep over it since. I hate your shoes, because they're probably stupid. I hate the way you probably add an extra syllable to the word "theater." I hate you so much it hurts my hair. Agh! And now, after saying something negative, most therapists agree it's important to say something positive. So Bella, I like your truck very much. And I bet your lasagna doesn't taste bad. We cool?"-- Dan Bergstein Only the dumbest luckiest protagonist with a knack for cooking and the ability to think in overly elaborate prose when the need arises, (and when it does not) Bella Swan is our window to the Twiverse. She is, quite honestly, insane, and not in the fun way either, as well as quite possibly the biggest Mary-Sue we've ever come across. She has taught the reader many morals . Contents Her name comes out like a stupid question. "Is a bell a swan?" No. Role in the Series Edit The whole of the series is told from her 1st person POV, with the exception of a few chapters in the last book from Jacob 's POV and the retcon of the first book in Edward's view , both of which were written simply as an excuse for other characters to talk about how speshul Bella Sue is. Bella is quite possibly the most selfish and self-centered of all the characters in the whole of the series (something that's only reinforced due to the fact that her thoughts are shown in the first person POV, and all are extremely shallow); more reminiscent of the popular, back-stabbing bitch girl who uses and manipulates people only to diss them behind their backs that you knew in high school rather than the quiet, shy bookworm she likes to pretend she is, the difference of course being that Bella Sue lacks the intelligence and social skills to manipulate people. Instead she just whines about how everyone loves her. She spends the majority of the series ogling and having wet dreams over Edward, and when she's not detailing every aspect of his oh-so-perfect self ad nauseam, she's whining or complaining (or both), crying, lamenting her mortality, looking down on humans (non-speshul beings), or needlessly putting herself in dangerous situations. What an insane loser! She really should be in an asylum. Her primary role in the books is to gush mindlessly about how how gorgeous, fantastic, amazing, brilliant, flawless, scintillating, godlike, incandescent, handsome and generally perfect her Edward is and talking about her chagrin. She also gets herself into ridiculous situations through her own mindless stupidity from which the Big Strong Male must save her. This is because, being a helpless female, Bella couldn't possibly be expected to have anything resembling a whisper of common sense, which is a major reason as to why it takes her so long to figure out Edward is a vampire. Notable achievements include whining a lot, characterizing abuse as romantic, and getting married straight out of high school to have Edward's bizzarely growth-accelerated mutant spawn of Satan, which she names Renesmee Carlie Cullen ; heaven knows why. Supposedly it's because Renesmee is a mix of Renee and Esme , and Carlie is a mix of Charlie and Carlisle , but it's really just because she's a SPESHUL SNOWFLAKE and can't have a normally named child, because that would just be crazy talk. In the final book, Breaking Dawn , there is a change at last, and Bella finally stops telling us how unworthy she is to be with Edward... only to let us know just how amazing she is. This is because Stephenie Meyer desperately longs to be as attractive, which just demonstrates how ugly this woman truly is. A picture of Bella. Edit In fact, Bella is so speshul that she doesn't have to bring about any of the wonderful things in her life herself. Most young women who want to go to university or win an Olympic medal or overcome an illness or handicap or deal with loss have to earn their happy endings through their own gumption and hard work. Bella's is given to her on the proverbial silver platter. She wants to be a vampire--one of the Cullens has to oblige her on this, but since she's so enamored of their beauty and power and money , ADMIYURS DEM SO MUCH, both Alice and Carlisle offer to do the honors. She wants to be with Edward-since they're "soul mates," this scenario plays itself out. He can't help but want to be with her forever because she is so speshul and perfect. She wants Edward's baby, so our brilliant author breaks her own canon to give her one. She wants to maintain a relationship with the wolfboy Jacob . Tinkerbell our esteemed hack author waves her magic wand and Jacob imprints on Bella and Edward's baby, thus cementing a treaty between the Cullen clan and the Quileutes . She's too speshul to have to earn a happy ending for herself. Unlike other characters in other books who take years to discover and develop their special abilities, she only needs a month to develop her "shield," which she uses to protect the vampires and the wolf people in the longest and most boring non-battle ever published. The message to young women everywhere is: you have no power over your own life, so you'd better hope a rich and pretty family wants you. Twilight stoned "sexy". At the beginning of Twitlight , our poor snowflake Meyer Sue blinks into existence and has to move to Forks because she wants her neglectful mother to be happy with her new man-whore, Phil. Meyer would like us to believe that Bella is a modest martyr but Bella's good deed for her mom is soon overshadowed by the fact that she will not stop whining about everything. Even the good things: Her father buying her a truck, having her own room, being helped by other students, making friends with popular girls, getting the attention of the guy she can't figure out for a multitude of chapters is actually a vampire, etc. When Bella goes to Forks high school, all of the other students bend over backwards to make Bella feel welcome but she rejects them and comments rudely on their appearances as she does. Probably because they're just mere humans. Despite this clear mistreatment of them, nobody seems to mind or think ill of Bella at any point. Even the teacher, whose jaw apparently drops at the sight of her, is astounded by her speshulness when she first arrives and the little snip still makes a fail- tastic 'snarky' comment about it. To make a long story short, she meets the uber hawt and ever so emo dazzling Edward Cullen and two weeks later the two of them declare themselves soul-mates. Then shit hits the fan and Bella's apparent superspeshulness attracts evil Meyerpires to Forks with only a hundred pages to go before the much looked-forward-to ending. New Moon Edit Edward leaves Bella early on in New Moon , much to the chagrin of many fangirls, because of the fact that Jasper attacked her after she got a papercut. Bella spends the next 200 pages or so commenting about how she has a hole in her chest after her boyfriend of five months left her. Then she decides to go hang out with Jacob Black and uses him to make her feel better about herself. She discovers that stupidly putting herself in dangerous situations allows her to hear Edward's voice in her head. Meyer makes it clear that this voice is NOT actually Edward, but an actual hallucination. Fan speculation is that the "voice in her head" is actually that of her horribly neglected common sense talking to her in the only voice she'll listen to. In the midst of her repeated suicide attempts, Jacob falls in love with Bella and saves her life after she jumps off a cliff. However, when Alice comes back to town, Bella leaves Jacob and forgets about him when she learns that her glittery soul-mate Edward, the guy that broke up with her after a five-month relationship and has now been away from her for another 7 months, is in grave danger due to the fact that he is going to Italy to get himself killed by The Volturi Debate Team by showing off his vampire bling. Bella leaves town without even thinking about the fact that her dad just lost his best friend and probably doesn't need his only child running away to save her boytoy. The book ends with Bella saving her lover, the Volturi not doing anything (save for making a few lame threats and then eating some gullible tourists), and Edward yelling at her about how she believed he actually wanted to leave her, and that he still won't turn her into a Meyerpire. Eclipse Edit Bella Swan and Bella Swan on an Average Day Eclipse is the infamous "love triangle"/"nothing happens again" book. The goal in this book is to get into Edward's sparkly pants, but her efforts are somewhat deterred by her furry BFF. The events of the book are as follows: Jacob kisses her; she punches him and breaks her hand; she gets engaged to Edward and all the human friends she's dissed, neglected, pissed off, and nearly caused irreparable harm to have all come crawling back to her just in time for the wedding. Oh, and there is some lame battle scene near the end. We don't see most of the action, because Bella spends the battle hiding in a cave listening to Edward and Jacob discuss which of them should have her. Yet it's only second in length to Breaking Dawn. Kristen Stewart, the actress that portrays Bella Sue in the movies. Shield your eyes. Breaking Dawn Edit No, Bella doesn't die to the dismay of everyone. She and Eddiekins do get married. Bella, throughout the whole chapter is bitchy and jealous of Tanya , even though, logically, Tanya should be the jealous one considering she first wanted Edward, and is now losing him to Bella. Edward takes her to a random island off the WEST COAST OF BRAZIL where they spend weeks having sex and being bothered by Natives. Bella whines about the poor Native woman who only wants to make sure she's all right. Bella like the stupid retard she is hasn't noticed she hasn't had her period and when she looks at herself in the mirror somehow, a baby hand nudges her. She tells Edward and he goes catatonic. After getting home she has a one-month pregnancy where she doesn't even consider abortion because Meyer is forcing her beliefs on us her baby is speshul. Jacob gets his own filler book which had nothing to do with the series - although he does write awesome chapter titles. Bella gives birth to her demon spawn child which nearly kills her in the process. Edward injects her with his venom and turns her into a Meyerpire, saving her. For the rest of a book, Bella is a pwettyful Meyerpire who oh so magically can resist the overwhelming temptation to feed on humans that most newborn vamps have to deal with, has her own speshul power that is better and more amazing than everyone else's, and is now the best-looking and strongest Meyerpire to ever exist. The Volturi, who should have just killed her to begin with, come to start a huge fight which just turns out to be a crapload of angst and drama that ultimately leads to them turning around and going home without a fight because they're the worst villains ever written. Bella and Edward and demon child, who they call Renesmee (WHYYYY?!?!?) get their own happy piece of forever and the book finally, finally ends. Thank. You. Let's hope a vampire hunter catches them afterwards and makes them die a horrible death (Not that it would be hard). Personality Not much personality, except for the fact that she loves Edward and constantly rants on his beauty, though fans deny it. She is dull, bland and useless. Special Meyerpire Power Edit Bella's power is that she can form a shield that protects her and anyone near her from mental attacks but anything physical can go right through. Now of course because Bella being a Mary Sue, her ability becomes more powerful with time: 'Small shield protects only her - Medium shield protects her and anyone close to her - SUPER MASSIVE SHIELD protects everyone in a HUGE radius around her.' She did this in a matter off weeks, whereas other Meyerpires had to learn and control their abilities for years. She is able to let Edward read her mind at the end of the last book (like there's anything there to read). All Meyerpires gain strength and speed when they change, but only Bella acquires the ability to beat Emmett (whose power is super-strength) in an arm-wrestling match. (This is in fact justified, since she is a newborn vampire.) She has the following abilities: Graceful and elegant, even for a vampire Mega shield that blocks mental attacks Detects small changes in Renesmee's appearance Strong control over her blood-lust even though she is a newborn As you can see, Bella has more abilities than any other Meyerpire. This is because she is the main character, Aro even says that she will be or is the most powerful vampire ever. My sensors indicate that she is indeed a Mary-Sue. MARY SUE = YES!	i don't know
How many US Presidents faces are carved into Mount Rushmore?	Mount Rushmore--Presidents: A Discover Our Shared Heritage Travel Itinerary Amy Bracewell for National Park Service Every year, the many visitors to Mount Rushmore National Memorial in the Black Hills of South Dakota draw inspiration from the colossal portraits of four outstanding presidents of the United States: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. Gutzon Borglum carved his gigantic Shrine of Democracy Sculpture into ancient granite high on the southeast face of Mount Rushmore “in commemoration of the foundation, preservation, and continental expansion of the United States.” The faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt are about 60 feet high, and the grouping extends approximately 185 feet along the crest of Mount Rushmore. Dark ponderosa pines and other evergreens set off the stark white sculpture. Added at the time of the Bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence in 1976, a flag-lined formal Avenue of Flags creates an impressive approach. In 1923, South Dakota State Historian Doane Robinson came up with an idea for attracting tourists to the State. Robinson envisioned shaping a cluster of tall thin granite peaks called the Needles into statues of explorers and Indian leaders. The Needles stand where the Black Hills rise from the plains as a gateway to the Rocky Mountains and the West. In 1924, Robinson wrote sculptor Gutzon Borglum about his idea. Borglum telegraphed back his enthusiastic support. Avenue of Flags at Mount Rushmore National Memorial Amy Bracewell for National Park Service Born to a Danish American family on a homestead in Idaho in 1867, Gutzon Borglum made his name celebrating things American in a big way. In 1908, he created a large, 40 inches-high head of Abraham Lincoln. Representatives of the United Daughters of the Confederacy soon contacted him about creating a portrait head of Robert E. Lee on the side of Stone Mountain in Georgia. Convinced that the scale of the mountain would dwarf a single head, he convinced them to create a huge group portrait of General Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis. Borglum completed the head of Lee in 1924, but a dispute with the backers of the project soon led to his dismissal and the eventual removal of his work. His departure from Georgia made it possible for him to concentrate on Mount Rushmore. Borglum scouted out a location far better than the fragile Needles: 5,725-foot Mount Rushmore. Its broad wall of exposed granite was more suitable for sculpture and received direct sunlight for most of the day. Borglum himself selected the presidents for the memorial, to reflect the nation’s first 150 years of history and to make the project a national, rather than regional one. Original plans included only George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Borglum picked George Washington the father of the new country because he was a leader in the American Revolution, the first president of the United States, and the man who laid the foundation of American democracy. Abraham Lincoln was selected for preserving the Union during the Civil War and abolishment of slavery. As the project progressed, Borglum added Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt. Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, began America’s westward expansion by purchasing the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803, which doubled the size of the country, adding all or part of 15 present-day States. Theodore Roosevelt, 26th president of the United States and extremely popular in the early 20th century, linked the east and the west through the construction of the Panama Canal and was famous as a “trust buster,” fighting large corporate monopolies and championing the working man. Initial planning and fund-raising began in August 1925. The project was almost out of money in 1927 before carving even began. Borglum and the planners succeeded in getting the support of President Coolidge when he was vacationing in the Black Hills. Coolidge dedicated the memorial in 1927. In the closing days of his term in office, he signed a bill approving matching funds. The Federal Government would eventually cover almost all of the almost million-dollar cost of construction. On October 4, 1927, the carving process began. Local gold miners carefully removed rock from the mountain using small charges of dynamite, leaving a three to six inch layer of granite. They used 75-pound jackhammers to remove the next layer and then the carvers took over. First, they drilled a series of shallow holes and then removed the area between them, often by hand. Hand tools smoothed the stone and added small details, like wrinkles and moles. Four hundred people worked on the project. Frequently suspended because of bad weather and money problems, the work was dangerous, but miraculously there were no fatal accidents. During the Depression, it was welcome relief work for many, and for many others it came to be a labor of love. As “Red” Anderson said, "more and more we sensed that we were creating a truly great thing." Interpretive ranger program	4
Foinaven, Valentines and the Canal Turn are all features of which British racecourse?	Mount Rushmore National Memorial Information more "The purpose of the memorial is to communicate the founding, expansion, preservation, and unification of the United States with colossal statues of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt." - Gutzon Borglum Mount Rushmore National Memorial is host to almost three million visitors a year from across the country and around the world. They come to marvel at the majestic beauty of the Black Hills of South Dakota and to learn about the birth, growth, development, and preservation of our country. Over the decades, Mount Rushmore has grown as a symbol of America - a symbol of freedom and hope for people from all cultures and backgrounds. All the cultures that make up the fabric of this country are represented by the memorial and surrounding Black Hills. One of the most important gifts we can give our visitors at Mount Rushmore National Memorial is an understanding and love for our nation's history and cultures and an appreciation of the importance of caring for that legacy. more The Black Hills The Black Hills, known as Paha Sapa (hills that are black) are sacred to the Sioux. Throughout the centuries, many tribal nations lived and traveled within reach of what would become the Mount Rushmore National Memorial. The first European explorers to see the Black Hills were probably Francis and Louis-Joseph Verendrye. These French explorers were traveling through South Dakota near the Missouri River. The exact route they were using is unknown, but according to Louis-Joseph's journal, on New Year's Day in 1743, they were on a bluff overlooking the Missouri River and were "...in sight of mountains." It was reported that their American Indian guides would not take them any closer to the mountains because hostile bands of Indians were known to live there. Lewis and Clark heard tales about the Hills from other traders and trappers, but it wasn't until 1823 that Jedediah Smith and a group of about 15 traders actually traveled through them. While fur trade was at its peak, the Black Hills were explored to some extent by adventuresome trappers, but because the hills were considered sacred by the Lakota, most trappers avoided the area. Several reports of the discovery of gold in the "Black Hills" were heard during this time. However, the exact location where the gold was discovered was often confusing because the Laramie Range in Wyoming was also occasionally called the "Black Hills." As immigration across the continent increased there was a marked decline in American Indian-white relations. The Army established outposts nearby, but they seldom entered the Black Hills, thinking that doing so would surely cause trouble. Trouble, however, was already brewing. Bands of Lakota reportedly raided settlements and then retreated to the cover of the Hills. Because of this, Lt. G.K. Warren was assigned the task of making a thorough reconnaissance of the plains of South Dakota, including the area known as the Black Hills. The study of the area was supplemented by another reconnaissance in 1859-60 by Capt. W.F. Reynolds and Dr. F.V. Hayden. In 1861, residents of what is now Eastern South Dakota were organizing groups of miners and explorers to investigate the Hills and reports of gold found there. In 1865 they asked Congress for a military reconnaissance to do a geological survey on the Black Hills. The military recognized the importance that the Lakota Nations attached to the area, and in 1867 Gen. William T. Sherman stated that the Army was not in any position to investigate the Black Hills and would not protect any civilians who did so. Pressure to move into the Hills was temporarily halted in 1868 when the land west of the Missouri was granted to the Lakota in an effort to bring about a lasting peace with the tribes of the plains. The treaty prohibited settlers or miners from entering the Hills without authorization. In return, the Lakota agreed to cease hostilities against pioneers and people building the railroads. In 1870 stories continued to circulate in Eastern South Dakota about gold and other wealth to be had in the Hills. The citizens of Yankton again pressed for an expedition. The Army and the Department of the Interior tried to discourage any entry into the Hills. American Indian raids and constant pressure from the citizens of Yankton caused General Phillip Sheridan to propose an expedition to investigate the possibility of establishing a fort in the Black Hills. The Army suggested a fort to aid in controlling the bands of American Indians who would raid settlements and then return to the Hills to hide. The expedition, led by Lt. Col. George A. Custer left from Fort Lincoln rather than Fort Laramie because of the large concentration of American Indians at Fort Laramie and the trouble that such an expedition would have caused. The purpose of Custer's expedition was to find a suitable location for a fort. However, for unexplained reasons, a geologist and several miners were included in the party. The miners occupied their time searching for gold, and on July 30, near the present-day town of Custer, their efforts were rewarded. After Custer's report of gold in the Hills, the citizens of Yankton again petitioned the government to open the Hills. The government held firm to the position that the Hills belonged to the Lakota. This did not stop the rush of hopeful miners. The first group to reach the Hills was the Gordon Party. Originally lead by Thomas Russell and later by John Gordon, the party consisted of 28 adventurers including Annie Tallent (Tallent is credited with being the first white woman in the Black Hills). They were soon forced to leave by the Army. During the winter of 1874 and 1875 the Army tried to keep miners and settlers out, but by spring they found the task to be impossible. In 1875 another expedition organized by the Army entered the Hills to determine its true mineral value. Walter Jenney reported gold could be extracted with sophisticated equipment, but individual miners would have a hard time of it. By 1875 Col. Richard I. Dodge estimated 800 white men were mining or residing in the Hills. Mining camps were established near Custer, Hill City and Deadwood. As old claims played out, new ones were found and towns died or were born almost overnight. By 1876, approximately 10,000 people populated the Hills. In the spring of 1875 the federal government attempted to solve the problem of ownership of the Hills by inviting American Indian leaders to Washington D.C.. The American Indians refused all offers and would not relinquish ownership of the land. Some of the Indian wars that followed were a result of these problems. The ownership of the Black Hills is still in question. A 1980 Supreme Court decision that attempted to settle the issue by paying the Lakota tribes for the land was not accepted by the Lakota as many of them are still trying to gain ownership of the land sacred to them. Mount Rushmore Getting the sculpting project underway was a challenge all by itself. Once State Historian Doane Robinson and others found a sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, they had to get permission to do the carving. Senator Peter Norbeck and Congressman William Williamson were instrumental in getting the legislation passed to allow the carving. Williamson drafted two bills, one each, to be introduced to Congress and the State Legislature. The bill, requesting permission to use federal land for the monument, was easily passed. The bill sent to the State of South Dakota was not going to be as easy. The Mount Harney National Memorial bill was defeated twice and almost a third time when, on March 5, 1925 Governor Gunderson signed the bill. The Mount Harney Memorial Association was established by the Governor later that summer. Early in the project money was hard to find despite Borglum's promise that eastern businessmen would gladly make large donations. He also promised the people of South Dakota that they would not be responsible for paying for any of the mountain carving. In the summer of 1927, President Calvin Coolidge was in the Black Hills, and Borglum was planning a formal dedication of the mountain. Borglum hired a plane to fly over the State Game Lodge in Custer State Park where Coolidge was staying. As he flew by, Borglum dropped a wreath to invite the President to the dedication ceremony. Fortunately, Coolidge agreed to attend. On August 10, 1927 Mount Rushmore was formally dedicated. At the dedication ceremony President Coolidge gave a speech and promised federal funding for the project. A meeting was arranged for Borglum to meet with the Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew Mellon. Mellon's approval would be critical to the passage of the Mount Rushmore National Memorial Act through both houses of Congress. Borglum convinced Mellon of the project's importance. Mellon was willing to fund the entire project but Borglum said he would need only half the money from the government on a matching basis. The rest, he said, he could raise privately. Senator Norbeck was stunned that Borglum would turn down full funding. President Coolidge signed the bill authorizing federal funding. The Rushmore bill authorized government matching funds up to $250,000.00 and created the Mount Rushmore National Memorial Commission with 12 members appointed by the President. Coolidge appointed ten of the twelve members and said Hoover should appoint the other two. When Hoover took office, he quickly appointed the final two members to the commission but did not meet with the Commission. The Commission had to meet with the President to begin work. Congressman Williamson was asked to make an appointment with the President, asking him to organize the Commission meeting. Frustrated by the slow pace, Borglum decided he would try to get in to see the President himself. When he got to the White House, he got into an altercation with the President's secretary and Williamson's appointment was cancelled. Eventually, Williamson got in to see the President, convinced him of the importance of the project and getting the first meeting of the Commission set up. Hoover met with the Commission within a couple of days. Officers were elected and on the day following the meeting, Williamson and Boland, the secretary of the executive committee, went to Mellon and received the first funding from the government. Mellon gave them $54,670.56 to match funds already spent by the Mount Harney Association. One notable exclusion from the new Mount Rushmore National Memorial Commission was Doane Robinson. The father of the project was not even put on the list of potential candidates to serve on the committee to be selected by the President. Robinson continued to support the project and generously offered, "Let me help where I can." Soon, feeling unneeded, Robinson moved away from the Rushmore project. The Commission was organized and money was in the bank; work on the mountain could begin in earnest. Workers were hired, machinery was installed, and facilities were developed. In the 1930's Norbeck managed to get emergency relief funds through the New Deal and get those funds matched by the Rushmore Appropriation. In 1933 a major change developed with the signing of Executive Order 6166 by President Franklin Roosevelt. Mount Rushmore was placed under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service. Borglum did not like being under the "watchful eye of the government." Julian Spotts, an engineer by training, was sent by the National Park Service to assist with the work. Spotts made improvements that made work on the mountain more efficient and easier on the workers. In 1938 Borglum removed all roadblocks to his complete control over the Rushmore project. At this time the Mount Rushmore Memorial Commission was reorganized, and new members who allowed Borglum complete control over almost everything were named. Borglum wanted to create the Hall of Records, a large repository carved into the side of the canyon behind the carving of the presidents to tell the story of Mount Rushmore and America. Work was stopped in 1939 when there was a threat of losing funding for the entire sculpture if the money was not used exclusively on the carving of the faces as was originally intended. Work on the Hall of Records stopped and was never started again. For the final two years of the project, Lincoln, Borglum's son, was in charge while Gutzon was constantly trying to get more money for the project. In March of 1941, as a final dedication was being planned, Gutzon Borglum died. With the artist gone and the impending involvement of America in World War II, finishing work on Mount Rushmore drew to a close. On October 31, 1941 the monument was declared complete. Receiving permission to do the carving, finding funding, and managing personalities were all a part of the challenge to establish Mount Rushmore National Memorial. At times, it seemed harder to keep the project going than it was to do the colossal carving of the four presidents. In the end, cool heads, charm, and determination saw the memorial through to the end. Since, Mount Rushmore National Memorial has become a great icon of American history. more The field documentation at Mount Rushmore, including geo-referenced laser scanning and photography, took place in May of 2010. Teams from CyArk, Historic Scotland and the Glasgow School of Art (CDDV), RESPEC, and Wyss Associates, Inc. all worked together with National Park Service staff for over two weeks to fully document the sculpture and park grounds. In order to laser scan the face of the mountain sculpture completely, a special tripod rig was designed by the team, engineered by Hermanson Egge Engineering, and manufactured locally in Rapid City. The NPS ropes team repelled down the face of the mountain sculpture with this tripod rig and the laser scanner to scan the details of the sculpture that could not otherwise have been captured. During the two weeks of field documentation, over 200 laser scans were performed, collecting billions of data points. In addition to the laser scan data collected, individual photographs and panoramic images were taken on the sculpture and throughout the park grounds. These images were used to photo-texture the laser scan data. All the data collected has been used to create a variety of media for digital preservation. This media will be used for the on-going preservation and conservation of the mountain and for public education and interpretation of the memorial. more As stewards of Mount Rushmore National Memorial, the National Park Service strives to preserve the mountain sculpture and its surrounding natural environment. NPS has slowed the process of erosion by sealing the cracks on the top of the sculpted portions of Mount Rushmore, leaving the vertical cracks open to allow the release of water to minimize the process of freezing and thawing, especially in the harsh unpredictable South Dakota winters. The National Park Service team uses strain gauges and fiber optic communication lines to gather data on the monitored blocks within the sculpture. The laser scan data is being used to closely examine the cracks within the sculpted part of Mount Rushmore. Examining these cracks helps determine their “strike and dip” or simply illustrate the direction in which the individual blocks would go if they did move. This ability to forecast potential movement has been greatly enhanced by the data collected through the scanning process. The many facilities at the memorial have changed over time to better meet the needs of the increasing numbers of visitors over the years. In the mid-1990’s work began on the current facilities accommodating the nearly three million people that now visit Mount Rushmore National Memorial each year.	i don't know
Which British band released a 2006 album entitled ‘Beautiful World’?	Beautiful World - Take That — Listen and discover music at Last.fm Beautiful World 00s Beautiful World is the fourth studio album from the British band Take That . The album was released in November 2006, and was the band's first new studio album in 11 years. The album features what Take That describe as "a throwback to the 90s, but with a modern twist". Beautiful World is their first album in which every member of the band sings lead vocals on at least one song. The album was very well received in the United Kingdom… read more Don't want to see ads? Subscribe now Tracklist	Take That
In which 1969 film were Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper heading for New Orleans?	CD: Take That, Beautiful World \| Music \| The Guardian Take That, Beautiful World Share on Messenger Close Spare a thought for All Saints. No, come on, try. Last week, their comeback album, Studio One, limped into the charts at No 40. Think of what the reconstituted quartet have been through recently: the teeth-gritting, the pride-swallowing, the mental strain of keeping a straight face as you doggedly insist that you're "doing it for the fans". All that effort, and you're outsold by singing bin man Andy Abraham. Studio One's fate provides a lesson in the dangers of reformed pop bands releasing new material. Despite their recent tour's vast success, a cloud of doubt hovers over Take That's comeback album. For all the inarguable brilliance of their singles, Britain's best-loved boyband were hardly renowned as masters of the long-playing musical statement. Who today listens to the bits between the hits? Does anyone still ponder the imponderable lyrics of Take That and Party's title track ("don't catch the fall when I play real hard")? Who fast-forwards past I Found Heaven to enjoy its thought-provokingly titled B-side, I'm Out? Meanwhile, Beautiful World's credits hardly inspire you to dig out the bunting and streamers. Among the reasons Take That are still regarded so fondly is that they embodied the appealing wonkiness of British pop. Their image was predicated on Carry On sauciness. Their early singles were the handiwork of Blackpool's Ian Levine, roly-poly inventor of cheerfully tacky 80s gay-club sub-genre Hi Nrg and, rumours persist, inspiration for the Abzorbaloff monster played by Peter Kay in Dr Who. Rather charmingly, something of the end-of-the-pier whiff clung to Take That even after fame and wealth arrived: the ex-members were still wont to make guest appearances in cosy Sunday night comedy-dramas or croon easy listening standards with Jonathan Wilkes, recently to be found starring in Mother Goose at Stoke-on-Trent's Regent Theatre. But for Beautiful World, Take That have called upon songwriter/producer John Shanks, whose specialities are clinical, orthodontically corrected US pop (Ashlee Simpson, Lindsay Lohan, Hilary Duff) and the kind of drab AOR that sells millions (Anastacia, Alanis Morissette, Bonnie Raitt) - but never to anyone you've actually met. Other changes are afoot. As befits the reduced circumstances of a man who quickly went from being tipped for global megastardom to being upstaged by Bill "Selwyn Froggitt" Maynard on Heartbeat, Gary Barlow has ceded his role as Take That's musical supremo: all the band members contribute to songwriting. Ironically, the end result sounds less like Anastacia or Ashlee Simpson than the polished pop-rock Robbie Williams recently seems to have abandoned. (Odder still, Wooden Boat sounds like recent Williams collaborator Stephen Duffy's band the Lilac Time). Occasionally, you see why Williams has tired of this sound, its brash choruses decorated with subtle references to classic rock (Strawberry Fields Forever on the single Patience) and currently voguish trends (falsetto vocals and echoing Coldplay guitars). The ballads are frequently so boring that one briefly recants meting out such harsh treatment to Rudebox: better Robbie Williams repeatedly shouting "I've got a bucket of shit!" than I'd Wait For Life, which makes hanging on for an unrequited love to realise her mistake and rush to your side sound no more gripping than waiting for the British Gas engineer to have a look at your boiler. But Beautiful World lands more punches than a cynic might expect. The title track and Reach Out are dazzlingly effective pop songs. There are a handful of unexpected twists, hints of the old wonkiness that seem to have escaped their producer's notice: the folky Wooden Boat, the ersatz psychedelia of What You Believe In, and Shine, which matches Beatley pop to Scissor Sisters glitz. That the latter track is Beautiful World's solitary moment of camp excess is enough to give at least one listener pause for thought. In the mid-90s, Take That's best records offered a radically different reading of musical history to Oasis' classic rock orthodoxy: one that favoured disco and the Bee Gees' perfect pop confections over the thudding bloke-rock of Slade and the Jam; one that lauded Barry Manilow's songwriting skills long before Guilty Pleasures or the Feeling were invented; that suggested sexual ambiguity might be more interesting than new laddism. In 2006, Take That sound almost indistinguishable from post-Britpop mainstream rock: you can imagine Keane or James Blunt performing most of the songs here, albeit with substantially more bluster and substantially less charm. You can't deny that Take That have identified with devastating accuracy the kind of thing that grown-up former teenyboppers like nowadays - not for them the grim fate of All Saints. Nor can you really expect four thirtysomething men with any sense of personal dignity to once more climb into their PVC chaps and g-strings. But for all Beautiful World's polish, it's hard not to think that Take That might have lost something fundamental to their appeal along the way.	i don't know
In architecture, where in a house would you find a purlin?	What is the function of a purlin? \| Reference.com What is the function of a purlin? A: Quick Answer Purlin function as a form of support for rafters and are horizontal structural members in a building, architecture or structural engineering. They are used to increase roof spans without the need for increasing rafter sizes or compromising wall stability. Full Answer Purlins are also used to build wider roofs, as they provide mid-span support. In addition, they increase the rigidity of the roof and support the overall weight of the roof deck. Three types of purlin can be used in wood construction for framing: purlin plate, common purlin and principal purlin. In steel construction, purlins are used as roof framing members that support the roof sheeting or decking.	The Roof
‘Cheval’ is French for which animal?	What is a purlin used for? \| Reference.com What is a purlin used for? A: Quick Answer A purlin is used to support the rafters between the plate and the ridge of a roof. A purlin is a horizontal or longitudinal member in a roof frame. Full Answer There are several different types of purlins used in roof construction. An under purlin sits on the principal rafter of a truss or is propped off a wall to support the rafters. This type of purlin allows a longer span than the rafters alone are capable of spanning. An over purlin sits on the rafters or on a truss or a steel member to which the roofing material is directly attached. There are also several categories of purlins used in wood construction, including through purlins that pass over the top of the principal rafters and butt purlins that tenon into the sides of the principal rafters.	i don't know
What is a female Red Deer called?	What is a female deer called? \| Reference.com What is a female deer called? A: Quick Answer Female deer are commonly called does but may also be referred to as hinds or cows. Male deer are commonly called stags but are also known as harts, bucks or bulls, while young deer are known as calfs or fawns. Full Answer Deer can be found on every continent except Antarctica and Australia. The deer family includes around 100 different species, including moose, elk and reindeer. The deer is the only animal that has antlers, and these are typically only found on males, though the females of some species also have them. Deer can survive in most habitats but prefer edge habitats, such as croplands or woods.	Hind
Women competed in the 3,000 metre steeplechase for the first time in the Summer Olympics in which year?	Deer Information - Red, Fallow, Muntjac & Roe Facts Image Source In all deer species (except the reindeer), only the male has antlers. Antlers are shed each Spring and immediately a new set starts to grow, taking 16 weeks to reach full size in August. Antlers are made of a type of dense and very solid bone and whilst growing they are covered with a hairy skin called ‘velvet’ which is shed when the antlers have reached their full size for that year. The buck or stag uses his antlers to fight other males during the mating season, known as the rut, which lasts for three weeks in October. The ‘rut’ is the period of time when antlered ungulates mate. During the rut (also known as the rutting period), male ungulates often rub their antlers or horns on trees or shrubs, fight with each other and pursue estrus females by their scent. Fallow Deer Fallow deer (Dama dama) is a ruminant mammal belonging to the family Cervidae. They are now found throughout much of England and parts of Wales and locally in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Fallow deer were probably first brought to England by the Romans, however, the main introduction was by the Normans in the eleventh century for hunting purposes. Today, Fallow deer are easily tamed and are increasing in number and distributing slowly throughout the parks and forests of Britain. There are now more deer in the South East today than there were 500 years ago. The Fallow deer was a native of most of Europe during the last Interglacial. The population of Fallow deer pre-breeding season is estimated to be 128,000. Fallow Deer Description Male fallow deer (bucks) have ‘palmate’ antlers – a wider and flatter spread with less distinct tines than the red deer, these are broad and shaped like a shovel. Female fallow deer (does) do not have antlers. Young fallow deer are called ‘fawns’. Bucks measure around 140 – 160 centimetres in length, 90 – 100 centimetres in shoulder height and weigh around 60 – 85 kilograms. Does measure 130 – 150 centimetres in length, have a shoulder height of 75 – 85 centimetres and weigh 30 – 50 kilograms. Fawns are born in springtime and measure around 30 centimetres in height and weigh around 4.5 kilograms. Fallow deer are very variable in colour, with four main varieties, ‘common’, ‘menil’, ‘melanistic’ and ‘albinistic’. The common form has a bright chestnut coat with white mottles that are most pronounced in summer with a much darker, drab grey-brown coat in the winter. The albinistic is the lightest coloured, almost white. Common and menil are darker and melanistic is very dark, even black. ADVERTISEMENT Most herds consist of the common form but have menil form and melanistic form animals amongst them. Fallow deer have yellow-white undersides, white spots and a black line that runs along the back to the tip of the tail. The spots become less prominent or disappear completely in winter. Fallow Deer Habitats Fallow deer are grazing animals. Their preferred habitat is mixed woodland and open grassland. Fallow deer typically occupy deciduous woodland with open patches. They are also kept semi-domesticated in parks. Fallow Deer Diet Fallow deer are grazers and pure vegetarians/herbivores. Their diet consists of grass, young shoots, leaves, bark, heather, sweet chestnuts, acorns, cereals, herbs, berries and acorns. Fallow Deer Behaviour During the rut, bucks will spread out and females move between them, at this time of year fallow deer are relatively ungrouped compared to the rest of the year when they try to stay together in groups of up to 150 individuals. Fallow Deer Reproduction When competing for access to females, males ‘display’ by groaning, thrashing their antlers and by walking alongside their opponent. Fighting occurs if both stags are evenly matched and involves wrestling and clashing of antlers. Does give birth to a single fawn after a gestation period of 31 – 32 weeks (around 8 months). The Fallow doe usually leaves the herd to search for a private hiding place to give birth. After the fawn is born, usually in May or June, it remains in its hiding place (in bushes or undergrowth). The doe returns every four hours to feed it until it is about four months old, when it joins the herd. The fawn is weaned after 7 – 9 months. The life span of the Fallow deer is about 12 – 16 years. Fallow Deer Conservation Status The Persian fallow deer (Dama dama mesopotamica) is classified as Endangered, however, other subspecies are not considered to be at threat. Muntjac Deer Muntjac deer (Muntiacus reevesi), also known as Reeves Muntjac, Chinese Muntjac and Barking Deer, belong to the genus Muntiacus. Muntjac are the oldest known deer, appearing 15 – 35 million years ago, with remains found in Miocene deposits in France and Germany. Introduced into Britain from China in 1900, many escaped from their private estates and are now well established in southern England, where they colonize woodland and dense scrubland. Muntjac deer were introduced to Woburn Park, Bedfordshire and to parks in Hertfordshire and Northamptonshire. Muntjac deer are of great interest in evolutionary studies because of their dramatic chromosome variations and the recent discovery of new species. The pre-breeding season population of Muntjac deer is estimated 128,000 and increasing. Muntjac Deer Description The males, or bucks, have short backward curving antlers (maximum length 15 centimetres) which are shed in May or June and re-grow to full size by October or November. These are not used as weapons, however, the elongated, protruding tusk-like teeth of the male can be used for this purpose. In common with all deer species except the reindeer, the female muntjac deer do not have antlers, they have tufts of hair in place of antlers. Female Muntjac Deer have tusks, however, these are shorter than the males. Males also have a V-shaped marking running from their forehead to their nose. The Muntjac deers body length can measure up to 90 centimetres in length, about the same size as an adult fox. They have a shoulder height of 45 – 52 centimetres and weigh around 12 – 15 kilograms. Muntjacs are small deer, with dark red-brown fur and white patches on the chin, throat and rump. Muntjac Deer Habitats The Muntjac deers preferred habitats are Woodland, scrub and undisturbed gardens. Muntjac Deer Diet Muntjac deers are browsing mammals and feed on shrubs, shoots, grass, fruit and shoots. They sometimes cause damage by stripping bark from trees. Muntjac Deer Behaviour Active by day or night, muntjac deer are mostly seen at dusk. They utter loud barks over prolonged periods and equally loud distress calls. They are mainly solitary animals, however, they may be seen in family groups. Muntjac Deer Reproduction Muntjac deer have no seasonal rut and mating can take place at any time of year. However, this behaviour is retained by populations introduced to temperate countries. The gestation period is 210 days and the fawn is weaned after 8 weeks. Muntjac deer have a life span of up to 19 years. Muntjac Deer Conservation Status This species of Muntjac deer is not considered to be endangered. Red Deer Red deer (Cervus elaphus), commonly called ‘hart’ in the United Kingdom, are Britain’s largest native land mammal and, together with the roe deer, are our only native deer species. All other deer species have been introduced. A male red deer is called a ‘Stag’ and a female Red deer is called a ‘Hind’. Although red deer are native to Britain, they can be found in many other parts of the world. The Red Deer inhabits most of Europe, the Caucasus Mountains region, Asia Minor and parts of western and central Asia. It also inhabits the Atlas Mountains region between Algeria and Tunisia in northwestern Africa, being the only species of deer to inhabit Africa. Red Deer have been introduced to other areas including New Zealand and Argentina. In many parts of the world the meat (venison) from Red Deer is widely used as a food source. Although at one time Red Deer were rare in some areas, they were never close to extinction. Reintroduction and conservation efforts, especially in the United Kingdom, have resulted in an increase of Red Deer populations, while other areas, such as North Africa, have continued to show a population decline. In Britain the pre-breeding season population is estimated to be 316,000. Red Deer Description Red Deer are ruminants, characterized by an even number of toes on each hoof and a four-chambered stomach.The average male red deer has a body length of 210 centimetres, a shoulder height of 120 centimetres and weighs 295 kilograms (650 pounds). A female Red deer is slightly smaller and more lightly built, measuring 107 centimetres at shoulder height. A stag reaches its maximum size at the age of 6 – 7 years. Red Deer tend to be reddish-brown in their summer coats. Male Red deer grow branching antlers and have long neck hair in their winter coat. The male deer of the British Isles and Norway tend to have the thickest and most noticeable neck manes, compared to the other subspecies. Male deer of all subspecies, however, tend to have stronger and thicker neck muscles than female deer, which may give them an appearance of having neck manes. During the autumn, all Red Deer subspecies grow a thicker coat of hair which helps to insulate them during the winter. Autumn is also when some of the stags grow their neck manes. By the time summer begins, the heavy winter coat has been shed. The Red deers are known to rub against trees and other objects to help remove hair from their bodies. Red Deer have different colouration based on the seasons and types of habitats, with grey or lighter colouration prevalent in the winter and a more reddish and darker coat in the summer. Only the stags have antlers which start growing in the spring and are shed each year, usually at the end of winter. Antlers are made of bone which can grow at a rate of 2.5 centimetres (1 inch) a day. A soft covering known as ‘velvet’ helps to protect newly forming antlers in the spring. Red Deer Habitats The Red deer is essentially a forest animal, but mainly found in Britain on the moorlands of Scotland and Devon. Red Deer in Britain generally spend their winters in lower altitudes and more wooded terrain. Red Deer Diet Being a ruminant animal, the Red deer eats its food in two stages similar to camels, goats and cattle. The animal digests plant-based food by initially softening it within the its first stomach, known as the rumen, then regurgitating the semi-digested mass, now known as cud, and chewing it again. The process of again chewing the cud to further break down plant matter and stimulate digestion is called ‘ruminating’. The Red deers main diet is grass, young heather shoots, moss, young leaves, shoots of trees and in the winter they will strip bark from trees. Red Deer Behaviour During the summer, red deer migrate to higher elevations where food supplies are greater for the calving season. Red deer are active both day and night, however, activity peaks at dawn and dusk. Red Deer Reproduction The gestation period for the female Red deer is 9 months (33 – 34 weeks). A single calf is born (very rarely twins) in May or June and lies hidden in the undergrowth, well camouflaged. The calf is weaned after 9 – 12 months and reaches sexual maturity after one and a half years. The life span of a red deer is 25 years. Red Deer Conservation Status Red deer are not considered to be endangered in the UK, and in some areas, they are over-populated and may be culled. Other red deer subspecies are listed on the 2000 Red List. Shous (C.e.affinis) MacNeill’s red deer (C.e. macneilli) Tibetan red deer (C.e. wallichi) are classified as Data Deficient. Atlas deer (C.e. barbarus) are classified as Lower Risk. Bactrian deer (C.e. bactrianus) are listed as Vulnerable. Corsican red deer (C.e. corsicanus) Kashmir red deer (C.e. hanglu) Yarkand deer (C.e. yarkandensis) are listed as Endangered. Roe Deer Roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), became extinct in most of England during the 18th century, however, during the 19th century they were reintroduced. Before 1960 they were treated as vermin due to the damage they cause to the forestry industry. Roe deer are found throughout Europe, but they are absent from Ireland, much of Portugal, Greece and large parts of England and Wales. They also inhabit Asia. Sightings of Roe deer have become more common in back gardens in outer suburbs. One of the latest sightings of Roe deer was in a back garden in Brentwood, Essex. The Roe Deer is quite a small deer, with a body length of 95 – 135 centimetres (3.1 – 4.4 feet), a shoulder height of 65 – 75 centimetres (2.1 – 2.5 feet) and weighing 15 – 30 kilograms (33 – 66 pounds). The Roe Deer has rather short, erect antlers and a reddish body with a grey face. Its hide is golden red in summer, darkening to brown or even black in winter, with lighter undersides and a white rump patch. The Roe Deers tail is very short (2 – 3 centimetres (0.8 – 1.2 inches) and barely visible. Only the males have antlers, which are lost during winter, but which re-grow in time for the mating season. The first and second set of antlers are unbranched and short (5 – 12 centimetres (2 – 4.7 inches), while older bucks in good conditions develop antlers up to 20 – 25 centimetres (8 – 10 inches) long with 2 or 3, rarely even four, points. When the males antlers begin to regrow, they are covered in a thin layer of velvet-like fur which disappears later, after the hairs blood supply is lost. Males may speed up the process by rubbing their antlers on trees, so that their antlers are hard and stiff for the duels during the mating season. Roe Deer are the only type of deer that can regrow their antlers during winter. When alarmed, a Roe deer will bark a sound much like a dog and flash out its white rump patch. Rump patches differ between male and female, with the white rump patches heart-shaped on females and kidney-shaped on males. Roe Deer Habitats The Roe Deer is primarily crepuscular (animals that are primarily active during twilight, at dawn and at dusk). Roe deer are very quick and graceful, living in woods, although it may venture to grasslands and sparse forests. They prefer woodland, particularly with open patches of ground and with access to the edges of fields. Roe Deer Diet Roe deer feed mainly on grass, leaves, berries and young shoots. It particularly likes very young, tender grass with a high moisture content such as grass that has received rain the day before. Roe deer will not generally venture in to a field that either has livestock in it such as sheep and cattle, this is because the livestock will make the grass very unclean. Roe Deer Behaviour Male roe deer ‘bark’ and make a low grunting noise or make a high pitched wolf-like whine when attracting mates during the breeding season, often luring multiple female Roe deer into their territory. Both male and female roe deer are solitary and are highly territorial, with clearly defined boundaries. Both male and female Roe deer scent mark. These scents give information about the sex, age and dominance of the individual. Roe Deer Reproduction Roe deer are polygamous which means they have more than one mating partner. Roe Deer males clash over territory in early summer and mate in early fall. During courtship, when the males chase the females, they often flatten the underbrush leaving behind areas of the forest in the shape of a figure eight called ‘roe rings’. Males may also use their antlers to shovel around fallen foliage and dirt as a way of attracting a mate. Roebucks enter rutting during the July and August breeding season. Female Roe deers are monoestrous (having only one breeding season a year, typically in spring) and after delayed implantation, usually give birth the following June, after a 10 month gestation period. They typically give birth to two spotted kids of opposite sexes. The kids remain hidden in long grass from predators until they are ready to join the rest of the herd. They are suckled by their mother several times a day for around three months. Roe deer adults will often abandon their young if they sense or smell that an animal or human has been near it. Young female roe deer can begin to reproduce when they are around 16 months old. Roe deer have a life span of up to 10 – 12 years. Roe Deer Conservation Status Roe deer are not an endangered species, despite the fact that up to 90 per cent die during their first year. This is due to heavy predation on fawns by foxes and by lynx in mainland Europe. Starvation and respiratory infections also take their toll.	i don't know
Denzil Washington played which black militant leader in the 1992 film of the same name?	Malcolm X (1992) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error Biographical epic of the controversial and influential Black Nationalist leader, from his early life and career as a small-time gangster, to his ministry as a member of the Nation of Islam. Director: From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC a list of 47 titles created 18 Nov 2014 a list of 30 titles created 04 Dec 2015 a list of 22 titles created 05 Dec 2015 a list of 48 titles created 11 months ago a list of 36 titles created 7 months ago Search for " Malcolm X " on Amazon.com Connect with IMDb Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Nominated for 2 Oscars. Another 18 wins & 14 nominations. See more awards » Videos The story of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, a boxer wrongly imprisoned for murder, and the people who aided in his fight to prove his innocence. Director: Norman Jewison On the hottest day of the year on a street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, everyone's hate and bigotry smolders and builds until it explodes into violence. Director: Spike Lee A basketball player's father must try to convince him to go to a college so he can get a shorter sentence. Director: Spike Lee Friends and family of a married black architect react in different ways to his affair with an Italian secretary. Director: Spike Lee Robert Gould Shaw leads the US Civil War's first all-black volunteer company, fighting prejudices of both his own Union army and the Confederates. Director: Edward Zwick Antwone Fisher, a young navy man, is forced to see a psychiatrist after a violent outburst against a fellow crewman. During the course of treatment a painful past is revealed and a new hope begins. Director: Denzel Washington Jazz trumpeter Bleek Gilliam makes questionable decisions in his professional and romantic lives. Director: Spike Lee John Quincy Archibald takes a hospital emergency room hostage when his insurance won't cover his son's heart transplant. Director: Nick Cassavetes A drama based on the true story of Melvin B. Tolson, a professor at Wiley College Texas. In 1935, he inspired students to form the school's first debate team, which went on to challenge Harvard in the national championship. Director: Denzel Washington In 1970s America, a detective works to bring down the drug empire of Frank Lucas, a heroin kingpin from Manhattan, who is smuggling the drug into the country from the Far East. Director: Ridley Scott Edit Storyline Biograpical epic of Malcolm X, the legendary African American leader. Born Malcolm Little, his father (a Garveyite Baptist minister) was killed by the Ku Klux Klan. Malcolm became a gangster, and while in jail discovered the Nation of Islam writings of Elijah Muhammad. He preaches the teachings when let out of jail, but later on goes on a pilgrimage to the city of Mecca, there he converts to the original Islamic religion and becomes a Sunni Muslim and changes his name to El-Hajj Malik Al-Shabazz. He is assassinated on February 21, 1965 and dies a Muslim martyr. Written by Anonymous Rated PG-13 for a scene of violence, and for drugs and some language \| See all certifications » Parents Guide: 18 November 1992 (USA) See more » Also Known As: Dolby Digital (35 mm prints)\| 70 mm 6-Track (70 mm prints) Color: Richard Pryor was briefly attached to star in the early production stages. See more » Goofs Sarah Vaughan's surname is misspelled as "Vaughn" on the Apollo Theater's marquee. See more » Quotes [first lines] Announcer: In the name of Allah the merciful, all praises due to Allah, Lord of all the worlds. The one God to whom praise is due forever. The one who came to us in the person of Master Fard Muhammad and raised up the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. Amen. [pause] Announcer: How do you feel? Crowd: Good! Announcer: Who do we want to hear? Crowd: Malcolm X! Announcer: Are we gonna bring him on? Yes, we gonna bring him on. Well let us hear from our minister, Minister Malcolm X. Let us bring him on with a round of ... See more » Crazy Credits There is a seperate special thanks after the normal one that says: "Thank Allah for Bill Cosby, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Oprah Winfrey, Tracy Chapman, Prince, Janet Jackson, and Peggy Cooper-Carfritz." This is because they aided Spike Lee in raising money to finish the film when the production ran into financial trouble. See more » Connections A film that stands the test of time..... 23 April 2004 \| by rcj5365 (Durham,North Carolina) – See all my reviews This was a stirring tribute of a film that to this day still stands the test of time even after its release more than a decade ago. This was in fact a autobiography and educational film which some of the most electrifying performance ever displayed on film,and it is the reason to see why. This was Denzel Washington's finest piece of work and most notably the best of his career in which he should have been nominated for Best Actor Oscar category,instead of his work which he won the Best Actor statue for 2001's "Training Day". Anyway,"Malcolm X",was a brilliant tribute to the controversial black activist,a leader in the struggle for black liberation as well as black pride and one of the most outspoken individuals who had a different side of the civil rights movement where a time when America was at war with itself. Based on the best-selling autobiography by Malcolm X and Alex Haley,and with spellbinding direction by Spike Lee,it traces the story of Malcolm himself,from his days as a hustler and drug runner and hitting rock bottom during his imprisonment in the 1950's,he became a Black Muslim and then a leader in the Nation Of Islam under the guidance of the honorable Elijah Muhammad. His assassination in 1965 left a legacy of black nationalism,self-determination and racial pride that continues to the day and within a new generation whom for the first time has witnessed a masterpiece of cimematic work. This is marked by strong performances throughout with powerful direction by Spike Lee,cimematopgrapher Ernest Dickerson,and riveting breathtaking performances by Denzel Washington,Angela Bassett,and most notably from Al Freeman,Jr. as Elijah Muhammad. The real centerpiece of the film is from Denzel Washington himself,whose convincing performance in the title role brings this film alive. When this film came out,it only receive one Oscar nomination but however,the film garnered a lot of awards including the NAACP Image Film Award,The New York Film Critics Award for Best Actor,The Los Angeles Times Film Award for Best Director and Best Actor,and MTV Movie Awards for both Denzel Washington and Al Freeman,Jr.--all of this happened in 1992,when the film came out. As far as the cameos go,this film had a lot of them in one picture including Black Panther Bobby Seale,Reverend Al Sharpton,The Honorable Nelson Mandela,Reverend Jesse Jackson,along with Hollywood walk-ons: Christopher Plummer,Karen Allen,Peter Boyle and Danny Glover,and Whoopi Goldberg. Brilliant!-Five Stars 42 of 56 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes	Malcolm X
In the ‘Tom & Jerry’ cartoons, what is the name of Spike’s son?	Denzel Washington \| Moviepedia \| Fandom powered by Wikia Occupation Actor Denzel Washington (born Denzel Hayes Washington, Jr. on December 28, 1954) is an American actor, screenwriter, director and film producer. He has garnered much critical acclaim for his work in film since the 1990s, including for his portrayals of real-life figures, such as Steve Biko, Malcom X ( in the film of the same name ), Rubin Carter ( Hurricane ), Melvin B. Tolson, Frank Lucas ( American Gangster ), and Herman Boone. Washington has been awarded three Golden Globe awards and two Academy Awards for his work. He is notable as the second African American man (after Sidney Poitier ) to win the Academy Award for Best Actor, which he received for his role in the 2001 film Training Day. Career Edit Washington spent the summer of 1976 in Southern Maryland, in St. Mary's City, acting summer stock theater in the Wings of the Morning, the Maryland State play. Shortly after graduating from Fordham, Washington made his professional acting debut in the 1977 made-for-television movie Wilma. He made his film debut in the 1981 film Carbon Copy. His big break came when he starred in the popular television hospital drama, St. Elsewhere from 1982 to 1988. He was one of a few actors to appear on the series for its entire six-year run. In 1987, after appearing in several minor television, film and stage roles, such as "Carbon Copy" in 1981, A Soldier's Story" in 1984, "Hard Lessons" in 1986 and "Power"in the same year. Washington starred as South African Anti-Apartheid political activist Steve Biko in Richard Attenborough's Cry Freedom , a role for which he received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. In 1989, Washington won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for playing a defiant, self-possessed ex-slave in the film Glory . Also that same year, he gave a powerful performance as the conflicted and disillusioned Reuben James, a Caribbean-born British soldier who, despite a distinguished military career abroad, turns to a life of vigilantism and violence upon his return to civilian life in For Queen and Country . He was also in the film The Mighty Quinn the same year. In March, 1990 he starred in the Spike Lee movie Mo' Better Blues as Bleek Gilliam. In the Summer of 1992 he starred in a movie called Mississippi Masala where he played the character Demetrius Williams. Washington played one of his most critically acclaimed roles in 1992's Malcolm X , also directed by Spike Lee. His performance as the Black Nationalist leader earned him an Oscar nomination. Both the influential film critic Roger Ebert and the highly acclaimed film director Martin Scorsese called the movie one of the ten best films made during the 1990s. Malcolm X transformed Washington's career, turning him, practically overnight, into one of Hollywood's most respected actors. He turned down several similar roles, such as an offer to play Martin Luther King, Jr., because he wanted to avoid being typecast. The next year, in 1993, he took another risk in his career by playing Joe Miller, the homophobic lawyer of a homosexual man with AIDS in the movie Philadelphia starring Tom Hanks . During the early and mid 1990s, Washington became a renowned Hollywood leading man, starring in several successful thrillers, including The Pelican Brief and Crimson Tide , as well as in comedy Much Ado About Nothing and alongside legendary singer Whitney Houston in the romantic drama The Preacher's Wife . While filming the 1995 film Virtuosity , Washington refused to kiss his white female co-star, Kelly Lynch, during a romantic scene between their characters. During an interview, Lynch stated that while she wanted to, "Denzel felt very strongly about it. I felt there is no problem with interracial romance. But Denzel felt strongly that the white males, who were the target audience of this movie, would not want to see him kiss a white woman." Lynch further stated, "That's a shame. I feel badly about it. I keep thinking that the world's changed, but it hasn't changed quick enough." A similar situation occurred during the filming of The Pelican Brief when Julia Roberts expressed in an interview her desire to have her character in the film engaged in a romantic relationship with Washington's character. In 1999, Washington starred in The Hurricane , a movie about boxer Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter, whose conviction for triple murder was overturned after he had spent almost 20 years in prison. Various newspaper articles have suggested that the controversy over the film's accuracy may have cost Washington the Oscar for which he was nominated. Washington did receive a Golden Globe Award in 2000 and a 'Silberner Bär' (Silver Berlin Bear) at the Berlin International Film Festival for the role. He also presented the Arthur Ashe ESPY Award to Loretta Claiborne for her courage. He appeared as himself in the end of The Loretta Claiborne Story movie. Washington has been cited as an example of human physical attractiveness due to the symmetry of his facial features. In 2000, Washington appeared in the Disney film, Remember the Titans , which grossed over $100 million at the United States box office. He was nominated for and won an Oscar for Best Actor for his next film, the 2001 cop thriller, Training Day , as Det. Alonzo Harris, a rogue LAPD cop with questionable law-enforcement tactics. The role was a much-acclaimed change-of-pace for the actor, who was known for playing many heroic leads. Washington was the second African-American performer ever to win an Academy Award in the category of Best Actor, the first being Sidney Poitier, who happened to receive an Honorary Academy Award the same night that Washington won for Best Actor. Washington holds the record for most Oscar nominations by an actor of African descent; so far he has earned five. After appearing in 2002's box office success, the health care-themed John Q. , Washington directed his first film, a well-reviewed drama called Antwone Fisher , in which he also co-starred. Between 2003 and 2004, Washington appeared in a series of thrillers that performed generally well at the box office, including Out of Time , Man on Fire , and The Manchurian Candidate . In 2006 he starred in Inside Man , a Spike Lee -directed bank heist thriller co-starring Jodie Foster and Clive Owen , and Déjà Vu released in November 2006. In 2007, he co-starred with Russell Crowe in Ridley Scott 's American Gangster . Later, Denzel directed and starred in the drama The Great Debaters with Forest Whitaker. Washington next appeared as New York City subway security chief Walter Garber in The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 , a remake of the '70s thriller, The Taking of Pelham One, Two Three, opposite John Travolta and directed by Tony Scott ; the film opened in June 2009. In February 2009, Washington began filming The Book of Eli , a post-Apocalyptic drama set in the near future and released in January 2010. He is also set to star as a veteran railroad engineer in the action film, Unstoppable, which is about an unmanned, half-mile-long runaway freight train that is carrying dangerous liquids and poisonous gases that is set to wipe out a city, and an engineer and a young train conductor on another freight train must find a way to stop it. The film will be directed by Tony Scott and it will be the fifth collaboration between the two. Previous films include Crimson Tide (1995), Man on Fire (2004), Déjà Vu (2006) and The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009). In 2013 he appeared in the crime drama 2 Guns . He played undercover DEA Agent Bobby Trench and starred opposite Mark Wahlberg .	i don't know
What does each angle of a regular pentagon measure in degrees?	Cool math .com - Polygons - Pentagons - properties, interior angles Properties of pentagons, interior angles of pentagons Polygons: Properties of Pentagons Sum of the Interior Angles of a Pentagon: To find the sum of the interior angles of a pentagon, divide it up into triangles... There are three triangles... Because the sum of the angles of each triangle is 180 degrees... We get So, the sum of the interior angles of a pentagon is 540 degrees. Regular Pentagons: The properties of regular pentagons: All sides are the same length (congruent) and all interior angles are the same size (congruent). To find the measure of the interior angles, we know that the sum of all the angles is 540 degrees (from above)... And there are five angles... So, the measure of the interior angle of a regular pentagon is 108 degrees. The measure of the central angles of a regular pentagon: To find the measure of the central angle of a regular pentagon, make a circle in the middle... A circle is 360 degrees around... Divide that by five angles... So, the measure of the central angle of a regular pentagon is 72 degrees. Popular Topics	108
The island of Lanzarote lies in which body of water?	Interior Angles of Polygons Interior Angles of Polygons An Interior Angle is an angle inside a shape Triangles The Interior Angles of a Triangle add up to 180° Let's try a triangle: It works for this triangle Now tilt a line by 10°: 80° + 70° + 30° = 180° One angle went up by 10°, and the other went down by 10° Quadrilaterals (Squares, etc) (A Quadrilateral has 4 straight sides) Let's try a square: 90° + 90° + 90° + 90° = 360° A Square adds up to 360° Now tilt a line by 10°: 80° + 100° + 90° + 90° = 360° It still adds up to 360° The Interior Angles of a Quadrilateral add up to 360° Because there are 2 triangles in a square ... The interior angles in a triangle add up to 180° ... ... and for the square they add up to 360° ... ... because the square can be made from two triangles! Pentagon A pentagon has 5 sides, and can be made from three triangles, so you know what ... ... its interior angles add up to 3 × 180° = 540° And when it is regular (all angles the same), then each angle is 540° / 5 = 108° (Exercise: make sure each triangle here adds up to 180°, and check that the pentagon's interior angles add up to 540°) The Interior Angles of a Pentagon add up to 540° The General Rule Each time we add a side (triangle to quadrilateral, quadrilateral to pentagon, etc), we add another 180° to the total:	i don't know
Zugzwang, Skewer, Royal Fork and Indian Defence are all terms associated with which board game?	The Online Chess Glossary for Kids and Parents - ChessKid.com The Online Chess Glossary for Kids and Parents IM Daniel Rensch Apr 27, 2010 121318 reads Welcome to the ChessKid.com Glossary and Dictionary: Below you will find a list of commonly used chess words, phrases and terms -- defined just for kids! It is our pleasure to provide this list of original, "kid-friendly" definitions and example sentences of popular "chess vocabulary". We promise to keep this list current and available for you to reference as needed. Enjoy! Absolute Pin The phrase "absolute pin" is used when a piece is pinned (see " pin "), and it would be absolutely illegal to move the pinned piece away from the attack. Example: "I moved my bishop to attack, and pin my opponent's knight to his king. I knew that my bishop was putting the knight in an absolute pin, because my opponent would never be able to move that pinned knight as long as the king was behind it." Accept To accept in chess is also to agree. A chess player might "accept" a draw offer from his/her opponent. In chess, a player often "accepts" a pawn sacrifice (see " sacrifice ") by capturing it (this is also known as a "gambit". See " gambit "). To accept a piece often implies that you have captured that piece. Example: "I accepted my opponent's sacrifice by capturing the knight". Activity/ Active Piece To have an active piece or "active pieces" is to have your pieces in position, or on the squares where they are creating threats. Although a piece does not have to be "centralized" in order to be active, most of the time a piece that is in the center of the board is an active piece. Adjust To fix the placement of a piece. Players should announce "I adjust" or the French "j'adoube" before they fix a piece's placement. Otherwise they may be obligated to move the piece by the touch-move rule. Advantage To have the advantage in chess means that your position is better. Sometimes, a player might have a "slight advantage" which means his/her position is a little bit better than his/her opponent's position. To find out who has the advantage, a number of factors are usually added up: Material (see " material "); Piece Activity (see " activity "); King Safety; and Pawn Structure (see " pawn structure ") would be the most common factors to help a player figure out who has the advantage. Algebraic Notation Algebraic Notation is the modern (new and used by the best players in the world) way of keeping track of the moves played in your chess games. Most "tournament style" chess boards have letters and numbers on the sides (letters ranging from a-h and numbers from 1-8). Algebraic Notation is a system of using those letters and numbers so that every moved played in a chess game has a name. Example: "To start the game as white, Billy decides to move his knight from g1-f3. He then writes, in Algebraic Notation, 1. Nf3." Even though the word 'knight' starts with the letter K, because king also starts with the letter K, we use N for the word "knight" in chess." Analog Clock An "analog clock" is a chess timer that, like a digital clock, keeps track of your total time remaining in the chess game you are playing. An analog clock looks like a regular clock, with a big hand for the minutes and a little hand for the hours -- the hands show each player the remaining time for the rest of their moves in the game. Analysis Analysis is an explanation of what happened or might have happened in a chess game. See also " analyze ". Analyze To "analyze" a position is to try and figure out what you should have or could have done, or what your opponent should have or could have done in chess game. If you analyze your chess games, you can learn from your mistakes as well as your opponent's mistakes. The best chess players in the world spend hours, and sometimes days analyzing their own games. Annotation Annotation is another way of referring to analysis (see " analysis "). To make annotations on a scoresheet (see " scoresheet ") is to make written notes about the different possibilities that could have occurred in that chess game. Annotator A person who comments on a game, pointing out things that might have happened, showing mistakes, and explaining ideas. Arabian Mate The "Arabian Mate" is a checkmate (see " checkmate ") that involves one player's knight and rook giving checkmate to the enemy king, while that king is trapped in the corner. Example: "Tim had his knight on f6 and his rook on h3, so he captured the h7-pawn in front of the enemy king. Tim realized that this was an "Arabian Mate" because the knight was defending his rook, while his rook gave checkmate to the black king." The Arabian Mate is also called a "helper mate" (see " helper mate "). Arabian Mate Note: The term "Arabian" started because of the game "Chaturanga" (see " chaturanga ") -- as a direct reference to Chaturanga's (and therefore chess) time and place of invention. Arbiter An arbiter (see also " Tournament Director ") is the person who helps chess players with the rules during a chess tournament. Every chess tournament follows certain rules, such as "touch move", that all players need to know and follow. The arbiter knows and enforces these rules fairly. Attack To attack a piece is to threaten to capture that piece. To attack can also mean to coordinate a few pieces or all pieces toward a target. Back Rank (Mate) A back-rank mate occurs when a rook or queen checkmates an enemy king who is trapped on the the first or eighth ranks by his or her own pawns. Backward Pawn A pawn whose neighboring pawn or pawns have advanced ahead of it. A backward pawn cannot be defended by another pawn and cannot be supported to advance by another pawn. Bad Bishop A bad bishop is a bishop that has been "blocked in" by his/her own color pawns. For example, this bishop will have limited options or mobility (see " mobility "). Base of Pawn Chain [See " pawn chain(s) "] The base of a pawn chain is the pawn at the beginning of the chain. For example, if white has a pawn chain along the squares of f2, e3, d4, and c5 the base pawn is the f2-pawn. This pawn is considered to be the most important pawn in terms of keeping the chain together, and generally it is the hardest pawn for the enemy (in this case black) to attack. Battery A battery is created when two or more pieces are lined up, directly attacking one point, pawn, or square on the chess board. The term "battery" is normally used when major pieces (see " major pieces ") such as the queen and two rooks are lined up on an open file, attacking one square or pawn on the chess board. If they (the queen and rooks for example) are to make this huge breakthrough (perhaps the capture of the pawn) the battery is usually powerful enough to destroy the opponent's position. Bind To have a bind is to have control of the position. Usually the player with a bind has more space (see " space ") and more room for piece maneuvers. The opponent who is in a bind is cramped and cannot easily move pieces. Bishop Pair To own the bishop pair is when either side has two bishops versus the opponent's one bishop and knight or two knights. Because bishops perform well in open positions, and because most positions will eventually become open [as exchanges (see " exchanges ") are likely to happen], the bishop pair is usually considered to be a slight advantage (see " advantage "). If a player possessed the two knights, he/she might try to keep the position closed in order to prevent the bishop pair from taking over the chess board. Blindfold Chess A "blindfold" chess game is played only "in the minds" of two opponent's. This means that the players decide on a move, announce the move to their opponent [usually using Algebraic Notation (see " Algebraic Notation ")], and then wait for their opponent to tell them what he/she would like to play. A chess board is not necessary to play "blindfold chess". Blindfold Chess is difficult, and it is only practiced "well" by very experienced (Master level and higher) chess players. Blitz Chess A blitz chess game is a game of chess played with very little time on the clock for either player. Normally, a "blitz" game is played with 5 minutes for each player to complete the entire game. See also " rapid chess ", and " bullet chess ". Blockade/ Blockading Square To make a blockade is to place a piece in front of another piece, and thus prevent that piece from moving forward. The most common blockade might be placing a piece (usually a knight) in front of a pawn. Placing a piece in front of a passed pawn (see " passed pawn ") is usually a good idea, and knights are very good when blockading because they are the only pieces that attack over and around other pieces. The term "blockading square" usually refers to the square directly in front of a pawn, and that square is best occupied by a knight, as noted above. Blunder A blunder is a bad move that changes the course (direction) of the game. For example, if a player is in an equal position and "makes a move that is a blunder" his/her position can be immediately worse, and sometimes losing. In chess notation (see " symbols "), a blunder is often given the "?" symbol. Example: "Jane moved her queen to a square that was guarded by the enemy knight. Her opponent immediately captured the queen for free. Jane realized afterward that she lost the game because she had blundered away her queen". Book The term "book" in chess is another way of saying "main line" (see " main line ") or "theory" (see " theory "). Example: "Timmy was following book in the opening, and since he had studied these moves from the main line, he was able to gain time on the clock". Breakthrough An opening up of the position, usually with a pawn push or a sacrifice. Brilliancy Prize A brilliancy prize is awarded to the most original or beautiful game in a tournament. Winning a brilliancy prize is an important honor. Brilliancy prizes recognize a player's creativity and imagination. Bughouse Is a popular and fun "different way to play chess". Bughouse is played on two chessboards by four players in teams of two. Normal chess rules apply, except that captured pieces on one board are passed on to the players of the other board (the teammate), and your teammate then has the option of putting these pieces on their board. Bullet Chess A bullet chess game is a game of chess played with very little time on the clock for either player. "Bullet" is defined as anything less then 3 minutes, without time increment (see " increment ") for either player. While "lightning chess" is also a term used to describe these fast games of chess, lightning chess generally refers to games with less than 1 minute for either player. Bust "Bust" is a term used when someone exposes an idea, thought to be good by your opponent, and shows that the idea was not very good at all. It is a term often used when someone "busts" their opponent's Opening preparation (see " Opening "). Example: "Bill played a move he though was okay, but John completely busted the move with a surprise tactic (see " tactic ")". Bye A bye is something a player requests during a tournament when her/she is unable to play the game that round. A bye must be requested from the Arbiter/Tournament Director (see either " arbiter " or " tournament director ") well before the start of the round. Example: "Michael requested a bye for round 2 of the four round chess tournament so that he could go and play his soccer game". Calculate/ Calculation To calculate in chess is to try and see ahead in the game, without moving the pieces. A player who has "good calculation skills" is capable of thinking far in advance about what he/she might do, as well as what the opponent might do. (See also " visualize ".) Example: "In Chess Class, David learned that trying to calculate ahead without moving the pieces is a very good idea in chess". Candidate Move A candidate is another way of saying "option". When two people run for president of the United States, you have the "option" to vote for either "candidate". Looking for candidate moves in chess means that you are not playing too fast, and that you are trying to consider more than one option for your move that turn. Example: "Tom's chess coach told him that finding candidate moves is a very good thing, and that he should practice finding candidate moves on every turn". Capture Capture simply means that you are taking one of your opponent's (see " opponent ") pieces off of the board by moving your piece to that square. You "capture a piece" by moving your piece to occupy the square that your opponent's piece is currently on. Castle To castle is to move your king and one of your rooks at the same time. Castling is the only time in chess when you are allowed to move two of your own pieces in one move! You can castle when: 1 -- Your king is still on its original square and hasn't moved yet; 2 -- One of your rooks (either on a1 or h1) is still on its original square and hasn't moved yet; 3 -- Your king is not in check, will not "move through check" while castling, nor will the king be in check at the end of castling. Castling by Hand Because castling is considered to put your king in a very safe position on either g1 or c1, if you have lost the right to castle (by either moving your king or rook) then you may still try to "castle by hand". Castling by hand refers to the idea of trying to get your king to either g1 or h1 (or c1 and b1 on the queenside -- see " queenside "), where it is safest, and get your rooks into the center, even if you can't do it in one move like you can with regular castling. Castle Long Castling long means to castle on the queen's side (see " queenside ") as the rook makes a longer move than when castling on the king's side (see " kingside "). Castling Short To castle (see " castle ") on the side which requires a shorter jump by the rook. It is also called "castling on the kingside". Usually indicated in notation by "0-0". See also " kingside ". Center The word center in chess refers to the center, or middle, of the board (typically the e4, d4, d5, and e5 squares). The center can be described as the literal center (the four squares mentioned before) or it can extend to the squares f4, e4, d4, c4, c5, d5, e5, and f5). This term is used commonly in the Opening (see " Opening ") stage of the game as a recommendation for where you should develop (see " develop ") your pieces. Example: "Daniel learned that bringing your pieces towards, and constantly trying to attack the center, is a great plan". Center Pawns The center pawns are considered to be the e and d pawns for both white and black. The term "center pawns" can also extend to the f and c pawns as well. (See " center "). Centralization The term "centralization" means "to centralize", and this word is used to describe the act of "bringing your pieces towards the center". The "centralization" of a piece means that that piece is placed on a good square, and this square is usually either e4, d4, d5, or e5. Chaturanga Chaturanga is one of the oldest forms of chess. It was invented in India in the sixth century and had slightly different rules than we use today. Cheapo A cheapo is a small trick or tactic (see " tactic ") forl which the opponent is unlikely to fall. Check When either king (white's king or black's king) is being attacked by an opponent's piece. To "put your opponent in check" is to attack his or her king with one of your pieces. If a king is in check, it must find safety immediately! Checkmate Checkmate is the end of a chess game. When either white or black's king is being attacked by the opponent's piece, and 1 -- the king can not move to safety; 2 -- the checking (attacking) piece can not be blocked; 3 -- the checking piece can not be captured (see " capture "). The goal of every chess game you play is to checkmate the opponent's king! Classical A classical opening or player follows long-established principles like "develop your pieces" and "occupy the center with pawns." A classical time control is a longer time control, usually an hour or more. Clearance/ Clearance Sacrifice Clearance or a Clearance Sacrifice is a term used to describe a breakthrough (see " breakthrough ") of some kind. This means that you have captured (see " capture ") one of your enemy's pieces, and when you captured, you busted (see " bust ") open the position for the rest of your pieces to attack (see " attack "). In this case, a Clearance Sacrifice (see " sacrifice ") means that you gave up some material in order to blow open the position and make way for the rest of your pieces to get in the game. Clock/ Chess Clock A clock or chess clock is a timer. Either an analog (see " analog clock ") or digital (see " digital clock ") clock is used to track how much time is being used for the game. It is typical for a chess tournament to require the use of a chess clock, as this helps the players keep track of their time. If a player "runs out of time on the clock" during a chess game, he/she will "lose that game on time". The only situation where a player would not lose the game on time if he/she ran out of time on the chess clock, would be a case of Insufficient Losing Chances (see " Insufficient Losing Chances "). Closed File A file (see " file ") that has both black and white pawns on it. Closed Game A closed game is one with a locked pawn structure and few open files (see " open files " and " files ") or diagonals (see " diagonals "). Combination A combination is a series of forcing moves which leads to a favorable outcome. For example, you play a move. Your opponent's response (perhaps a recapture ) is forced. You then play a move which attacks your opponent's king and rook, winning the rook. Finding simple combinations like this is an important part of chess. Compensation A benefit you get for a sacrifice ("see sacrifice ") of some kind. For example, if you sacrifice a bishop for two pawns and an attack (see " attack ") on the king, your compensation for the sacrificed material is the attack on the king. Connected Passed Pawn (See " passed pawns "). The term, connected passed pawns, sometimes referred to as "connected passers" refers to a pair (which means two) of connected passed pawns. This means that a player possesses two passed pawns, and these passed pawns are "connected" on two adjacent files ("see files "). For example,if a player had a and b pawns, and they were both passed, this would mean that he/she had "connected passed pawns". Consolidate/ Consolidation To consolidate is to make your position solid again. You often need to consolidate after you have won material or accepted a sacrifice. Counterplay Counterplay occurs when you are in a worse position, but you can create threats (see " threat ") that make it harder for your opponent to win the game. Creating counterplay is an important part of good defense. Cramped A cramped position does not have enough space to accommodate a player's pieces. Usually the right strategy is to exchange pieces. The player will still lack space but may not be cramped. Critical Position The term "Critical Position" means that you have reached the moment in the game where every move you and your opponent make could determine the "result" (meaning who wins) the game. The "critical position" is considered to be one of the most, if not the most, important moment in the game and it is usually the move where both players will take a lot of time on their chess clock (see " clock "). Decline To decline something is to not take it. For example, a player might decline a sacrifice or a draw offer. Decoy A decoy is a distraction. Often a player might use a decoy to get his/her opponent (see " opponent ") to think about something else, while the player is actually threatening (see " threat ") something else. A decoy is a type of tactic (see " tactic "). Defense/ Defending To play defense, or defend, is to protect. One might "defend" a pawn with a piece, or you might "play defense on the kingside (see " kingside ")" in order to stop your opponent's threats on that side of the board. By moving your pieces into position to guard and protect either a piece or a square, you are defending. Deflection A tactic which distracts an opponent’s piece from its duty, such as defending a piece or a key square. Demolition Demolition means to break something up, such as the pawn structure around the opponent’s king. Descriptive Notation A more old-fashioned form of chess notation (see " notation "). Moves that the players make are written down "descriptively", rather than by using letters and numbers to point to the squares on the board. For example, "B-KN3" means "bishop to the king knight's third square"; the "king knight's third square" is the third square up from where the king's knight started out. In the more commonly used algebraic notation (see " algebraic notation ") that move would be written "Bg3". Descriptive notation is generally considered to be more confusing and is rarely used anymore. Desperado In a situation where a piece is going to be captured (see " capture ") anyway, that piece may try to take out any enemy piece, even just a pawn. This tactic (see " tactic ") often happens when both sides have pieces under attack; both sides pieces are going to be lost, so one (or sometimes both) players try to get at least something for their piece. Develop/ Development To develop is to bring one’s pieces out from their starting positions. If you have a lead in development, you have more pieces off of their starting squares and in the game than your opponent. Deviate To deviate is to play something other than the main line (see " main line " and also see " sideline "). If a player deviates in the opening, he or she is playing something that is not common or expected. Diagonal A line of squares, which are all one color (either white or black) going both up and over at the same time. For example, there is a diagonal going from the bottom left corner (a1) to the top right corner (h8). This is one of the two "long diagonals". Bishops and queens move along diagonals. Diagram A diagram is a picture taken of the chess board while the pieces are setup in a particular position. While reading any one of our educational articles here on ChessKid.com, you will likely come across diagrams of the chess board designed to help you learn more about the different strategies (see " strategy ") of chess. Digital Clock A chess clock which runs on electricity. Digital clocks are more accurate than wind-up analog clocks and can have delay or increment. Discovery, Discovered Attack/ Check An attack which happens when an attacking piece moves out of the way, opening a line for another attacking piece to threaten the opponent. Imagine a white knight in front of a white bishop, which is pointed at a black queen. The white knight moves out of the way, opening the way for the bishop to threaten to take the black queen. This is a discovered attack. A discovered check is the same thing, but the threatened piece is the king, so it is a check. Double Attack An attack on two things at once. This often happens as a result of a fork (see " fork ") or discovered attack (see " discovered attack "). The advantage of a double attack is that it is hard for the defender to defend two things with one move, so he/she might lose one of the pieces. Double Check A check by two attacking pieces at the same time. This always happens as a result of a discovered check (see " discovered check "). Imagine a black rook pointed at a white king, with a black knight in between. The knight moves, putting the white king in check, and also opening the way for the black rook to check the king. So the king is in check by both the knight and the rook at the same time. This is double check. Doubled Pawns Two pawns of the same color which stand one in front of the other [on the same file (see " file ")]. Since pawns all start off next to each other, each on a different file, the only way for two pawns of the same color to get to the same file is by capturing (see " capture "). Doubled pawns are often a weakness (see " weakness "), since they cannot protect each other and also cannot move as easily (one might be blocking the other). Draw A draw is a tie game. In the case of a draw, nobody wins. If you are playing in a tournament, you and your opponent each get half a point for a draw. If one of you wins, they get the whole point, and the loser gets no points. Draw Offer When one player asks his/her opponent to agree to a tie game. A player may "offer a draw" when the position is very equal (nobody has much chance to win) or for various other reasons. The opponent who receives a draw offer can either accept it (see " accept "), in which case the game is a draw; or decline it (see " decline "), in which case the game continues. Dynamic In chess, dynamic means active. A dynamic position is one with a lot of active pieces for both players. ECO (Encyclopedia of Chess Openings) Short for "Encyclopedia of Chess Openings", a book which is constantly being updated and which lists all the openings (see " opening ") and shows many ways the game can go at the start. It gives thousands of variations (see " variation ") and analysis (see " analysis ") describing what the authors think of them. It also has a coding system which allows chess players to look up the starting moves by a number, such as "B78" (which is a ECO Code for the Dragon Sicilian, a particular type of opening). Elo Rating A number which describes a chess player's level of skill, on a scale from 100 to about 3000. (See " rating "). The system was invented by Arpad Elo; the player's Elo rating goes up if he/she wins, and down if he/she loses. More points are gained by beating a higher-rated player, and more points are lost by losing to a lower-rated player. En Passant En passant is a special rule that allows pawns to capture (see " capture ") enemy pawns which try to skip by them. If an enemy pawn moves two squares in one turn and lands next to one of your pawns, it can be captured as if it had only moved one square. An en passant capture must be played on the move immediately after the enemy pawn moves or the right to capture en passant is lost. En Prise French for "in take"; it means a piece which can be captured (see " capture ") by the opponent. For example, if a knight is attacking a queen, that queen is said to be en prise. Encyclopedia of Chess Openings ( ECO) The Encyclopedia of Chess Openings, also called ECO, is a book that lists all the known openings that have been played in chess games. The Encyclopedia of Chess Openings contains thousands of variations with analysis and opinions by top experts who play the opening. ECO uses a code to identify each opening. For example, B78 is the ECO code for the popular opening variation, the Sicilian Dragon. Endgame ( Ending) The last part of the game, which takes place after the middlegame (see " middlegame "). The endgame is generally believed to start when most of the pieces have been traded, especially if the queens are traded. Usually in the endgame it is not possible to start a mating attack, and players instead try to win material (see " material ") or promote a pawn (see " promotion "). Equality When nobody has an overall advantage. The players may each have their weaknesses (see " weakness "), well-placed or badly-placed pieces, or even different amounts of material (see " material "); but if it all balances out, that is called "equality". Exchange When each player captures a piece of the same value from the opponent. Example: "Jon captured Betty's knight, and then Betty captured Jon's knight. The two players exchanged knights, and nobody gained any points of material." A rook against a bishop or knight is called "the exchange". If you win a rook for one of your minor pieces (see " minor piece ") you have "won the exchange", and your opponent "lost the exchange". If you have a rook against a minor piece, you are "up the exchange". Exchange Sacrifice To let your opponent take a rook in return for a minor piece (see " minor piece ") is to make an exchange sacrifice. Since a rook is worth more points than a knight or bishop, you lose points by making an exchange sacrifice; that is why it is a sacrifice (see " sacrifice "). Evaluate/ Evaluation To evaluate a position in chess is to decide who you think has the better position—White or Black. Your coach might give you a position to solve in which you are asked to evaluate the position and determine which move is best. That means you should decide who stands better and by how much. Then you should find a strong move that improves the evaluation for your side. Fianchetto To fianchetto is to develop a bishop to b2 or g2 (or b7 or g7 for Black) after advancing a knight's pawn. For example, White could begin with a fianchetto by playing 1.g2-g3 and 2.Bf1-g2. FIDE The French acronym for the “Federation Internationale des Echecs,” this is the world governing body of chess and is often referred to as either FIDE or the World Chess Federation. FIDE Master A master-level chess player who has reached the international Elo rating (see " Elo Rating ") of 2300. This is the title which is beneath the titles of Grandmaster and International Master. Fifty Move Rule The rule which says that the game is a draw if there have been no captures or moves by pawns (for either side) in the last fifty moves of a game. This is to keep games from going on forever when neither player is making any progress. For example, if you have king and rook against a king and rook, you can play that for fifty moves, but if neither side loses a rook or gets checkmated, then it will be a draw. If a rook gets captured, the count would start again. File An up-and-down (vertical) line on the chessboard. Rooks and queens can move along the files, which are called by letters in algebraic notation (see algebraic notation ), for example, the "a-file", the "b-file" and so on. Fish An unkind word for a bad chess player. See also " patzer ". Fixed Center A position in which the players' center pawns are locked together and unable to move. Flag To flag means to lose on time. The word comes from older chess clocks (see " chess clock ") that have a small flag that falls when one is out of time. Flank The side of the board (see also " wing "). Not the center. Fool's Mate The fastest possible way to get checkmated, also known as the "two-move checkmate". This happens when White moves his/her f- and g-pawns in the first two moves, allowing Black to come down with the queen and give checkmate on the h4 square. Forced Forced means "the only way possible". If a move is forced, then there are no other options. Example: "Tom played a move that forced me to give up my knight, and I had no choice." Forfeit To forfeit a game is to lose. The term forfeit can also mean that someone resigned (see " resign "). To have a "forfeit loss" means that someone lost the game without even showing up to play. If a player is more than one hour late for a game, he/she will be given a "forfeit loss". Fork A fork is a double attack (see " double attack "). Most of the time, we use the term fork to describe a double attack by the knight or the pawn. Example: "Our coach told us that when a knight attacks the enemy king and queen at the same time, this is called a Royal Fork." Formation The word formation is another way of saying "setup". A strong (good) formation or setup of your pieces might have them all placed in the center (see " center ") of the board, or it might mean that your pieces are on good squares to attack (see " attack ")."A good attacking formation" means "a good setup for your pieces to start an attack". Fortress A fortress is a wall or blockade (see " blockade ") that extends through out a certain area of the board, and would be very difficult to breakdown. To have a fortress surrounding your king, would suggest that your king is very safe. Gambit A gambit is an opening where one player sacrifices (allows the opponent to take) a small amount of material, such as a pawn or two, in the hopes of getting something in return for their sacrifice (see " sacrifice "). Often gambits involve sacrificing a pawn for a lead in development or control of the center. It is easy to remember "gambit", since it sounds like "gamble". When you are sacrificing material, you are taking a bit of a gamble. Good Bishop A bishop which is on the opposite color of most of its pawns. Since bishops always stay on the same color squares, if most of that side's pawns are on the opposite color, they will not block the bishop; so it will be able to move around the board freely. Grandmaster The highest international title which one can get (except for world champion) in chess. To become a grandmaster you need to get an international Elo rating (see " Elo Rating ") of 2500, and fulfill three norms (see " norm "). "GM" is short for grandmaster. Grandmaster Draw A very short draw by agreement, without any real battle and often agreed beforehand. Players do this for practical reasons, but sometimes it is frowned upon. Half-open File A file which has only one side's pawn on it. So it is "open" for the side which does not have a pawn, and he/she can use it for the rooks. See also " open file " and " file ". Hanging A piece that can be taken for free (see also " en prise "). For example, if a rook is being threatened by a pawn, that rook is said to be hanging, no matter whose move it is. Hanging Pawns Two of one side's pawns, standing side-by-side, with no other pawns of the same color on either side of them. For example, if White has pawns on d4 and c4, and no pawns on the b- or e- files, then he/she has hanging pawns. Heavy Piece A rook or a queen; see also "major piece". Helper Mate A checkmate (see " checkmate ") in which a piece attacking the king is defended by a "helper." The queen and helper mate, in which the queen attacks the king from up close with the support of a defensive helper, is the most common type of checkmate. Hole A square, usually in the opponent's side of the board, that can never be protected by a pawn. Holes make great posts (see also " outpost ") for your pieces, especially knights. Hypermodern An opening strategy that does not try to occupy the center (see " center ") with pawns. Instead, the hypermodern strategy tries to control the center with pieces from the flanks. Illegal Move An "illegal move" is a move that is not allowed under the rules of chess. The rules of chess are in place to guide the players to know what moves are allowed, and what moves are not allowed. So, an illegal move is a move that is not legal. Imbalance In chess the word "imbalance" may refer to a trade, a position, or a type of material (see " material "): An imbalanced trade refers to a trade that was not equal for both players. One of the players received the "better end" of the trade, and therefore the trade was imbalanced. An imbalanced position, or a position with imbalances, can refer to a position with often unclear (see " unclear ") but not the same type of chances for either player. A material imbalance refers to a situation where the material count for each player equals the same amount of total points, but the type of material is different. For example, three minor pieces (totaling nine points) is the same total value as the queen (also worth nine points), however the type of material (three minors vs a queen) is obviously completely different, and should be used differently. Increment An increment is time a player receives when they complete a move. For example, both players might start with 90 minutes, but when they move, they might get another 30 seconds. The 30 seconds added is the increment. Indian Defense/Defenses A group of openings that are usually reached by Black meeting the move 1.d4 with 1...Nf6. This includes all defenses to the main 1.d4 openings except for the Queen's Gambit. Initiative The player with the initiative is the one who is creating threats. It is usually good to have the initiative because your opponent may easily make mistakes while trying to defend against your threats. Insufficient Losing Chances A rule which allows a player to claim that his/her opponent does not have a realistic chance to win on the board and is only trying to win on time. This is to prevent players from playing a totally drawn position to try to win on time. You can only make this claim if you have less than five minutes and if there is no delay on the clock (see " time delay "). The tournament director (see " tournament director ") has to decide if the game should be a draw, if it should keep going as it is, or if you should switch to a clock with delay. Insufficient Material When there is not enough material left on the board to create a checkmate, then it is an automatic draw. For example, if there are only two kings left, that is insufficient material, since there is no way to checkmate, so the game is an immediate draw. Also, if there is only a king against a king and bishop or king and knight, that is also insufficient material, since a lone bishop or knight cannot checkmate. Interference Interference is a tactic in which a line is closed, usually by a sacrifice, and the defender is cut off. International Master International Master (abbreviated IM) is the second-highest title in chess. To become an IM, you must reach an Elo rating of 2400 and make three international master norms (see " norm "). Interpose To move a piece between an attacking piece and a piece that is attacked. Intuition A sort of "feeling" about what might be the best move or plan in a position. Intuition is something that a player develops from the experience of playing similar positions. Intuition makes it possible to "guess" what might be the best move without calculating (see " calculate/calculation ") everything. Invitational Tournament A chess tournament that players are only allowed to compete in if they have been invited to play. Irregular Opening An opening (see " opening ") with a very uncommon move in the first few moves. Openings that begin with pawns on the wing are often irregular. Isolated Pawn (Isolani) A pawn which does not have any other pawns of the same color on the files on either side of it. For example, if white has a pawn on d4 and no pawn on the c- or e- files, then he/she has an isolated pawn. This can be a disadvantage, since it cannot be guarded by pawns, so pieces might get stuck guarding it. J'Adoube French for "I adjust" (see " adjust "). If a piece is sitting a little bit out from the center of a square on the chessboard, you may want to fix it. But according to the touch move rule you would have to move any piece you touch. So you need to say "I adjust" before fixing the piece. Many players say "J'adoube", since this is understood by chess players everywhere. Kibitz To talk about a game which you are watching, in such a way that the players can hear. This is a very bad thing to do if it is a serious game, and probably not very polite if it is a casual game. Sometimes kibitz is used to describe people who are just watching a game and not saying anything. King Hunt An attack (see " attack ") on the king which involves the king being chased out of its home and going on a long journey, trying to escape from enemy pieces. Sometimes a king can be chased all the way into the opponent's half of the board in a king hunt. Kingside The side of the board where the king starts out. For White, this is the right-hand side of the board; for Black, it is the left-hand side. The kingside includes the e-, f-, g-, and h-files. Knight on the Rim A knight on the side of the board (one of the wings). Usually it is better to have your knights in the center (see " center ") of the board, where they have more mobility (see " mobility ") and can reach more important squares. So a knight on the rim is often in a bad position. There is a famous saying that rhymes "a knight on the rim is dim", meaning that the knight on the side of the board is not very good. Liquidation Liquidation is trading pieces. Players often liquidate by making many equal trades to reach an endgame (see " endgame "). Liquidation is a good way to use a material advantage (see " advantage " and " material ") or escape an attack. See " attack ." Long Diagonal The long diagonal stretches from one corner of the board to the opposite corner. There are two longest diagonals on the board. One starts on the square a1 and goes to h8; the other starts on h1 and goes to a8. Lucena Position The Lucena Position is well-known in endgame theory. One side has a king, rook, and pawn; the other has a king and rook. The side with the pawn can win using a method called “building a bridge” or the "Lucena Method” to escape the defender’s attempt to give perpetual check. Luft Luft means “air” in German. In chess, this means making an escape square for your king by pushing one of the pawns in front of the castled position. This purpose of "making luft" is to avoid being checkmated (see " checkmate ") on the back rank (see " back rank "). Main Line The most commonly played moves in an opening (see " opening "). An opening variation that has been played a lot and is very popular. Example: "The game followed a main line. So many players had already played the first fifteen moves before." Major Piece A rook or queen. These are the most powerful pieces, able to checkmate on their own needing only the help of their king. Compare to "minor piece": a knight or bishop. Majority A greater number of pawns on one side of the board, whether the kingside, queenside, or center. A majority can be used to make a passed pawn (see " passed pawn "). Maneuver A series of moves by one or several pieces with the goal of improving their position(s) on the board. Usually these are quiet moves without tactical threats. Example: "Billy used a maneuver to bring his knight to the strong outpost square." Master A player who is considered to have reached a certain level of achievement in chess. You can become a "national master" by achieving an ELO rating over 2200; internationally there are the FIDE Master, International Master, and Grandmaster titles, which require higher achievements. Match A series of games played between two opponents. Matches are often held to determine the champion of something, like a city, school, or the world! Mate Short for "checkmate". The end of the game, where a king is in check and has no way to get out of check. See " checkmate ". Material The pieces and pawns (not counting the king) and their point value. To "lose material", for example, is to lose pieces or pawns, or trade pieces or pawns for something of a lower value. Example: "John traded his knight for a pawn. Because a knight is worth 3 points and a pawn is worth 1 point, John lost material in that trade". Material Advantage A superiority [or advantage (see " advantage ")] in the total value of one's pieces and pawns. If you have more valuable pieces (for example, a queen against a knight and bishop) then you have a material advantage. Example: "Alice won a rook for a bishop. Since a rook is worth five points and a bishop is worth three points, Alice gained a material advantage. Mating Attack An attack (see " attack ") on the king, with the goal of giving checkmate. Mating Net A situation where the king's escape squares are taken away, and checkmate (see " checkmate ") is forced. Quiet, non-checking moves are often used to take away the king's escape squares. Middlegame The phase of the game after the opening (see " opening ") but before the endgame (see " endgame "). Usually the middlegame starts when the players have brought out their pieces and are no longer following an opening line that they know. The middlegame is typically considered to end when there are very few pieces on the board, or when queens and some of the other pieces have been traded. Miniature A very short game. Most people say that a miniature has to be twenty-five moves or less. Minor Exchange The exchange of bishop for knight. Most players consider the bishop a little better than the knight, but it depends on the position. Minor Piece A minor piece is a bishop or knight. Minority Attack A strategic plan in which a player advances a smaller number of pawns against a greater number of pawns on one wing (either the kingside or queenside). Usually the goal is to create weak squares or pawns in the opponent's position, and to open lines. A Minority Attack can be successful because, by definition, if you have two pawns versus three pawns then you also have an open file (see " file ") to go along with your pawns. Mobility The ability of a piece or pieces to move around freely. For example, a knight in the center (see " center ") typically has greater mobility (more available squares to which to move) than a knight on the side or edge of the board. Additionally, a player's entire position may have more mobility, if he/she has more space (see " space "). Move A single action on the chessboard. In chess, both players always take turns making moves. In chess notation, a move (move 1, 2, 3, etc) is considered complete when each side (white and black) has moved. Example: "The game between Amanda and Robert lasted for thirty moves; each player made thirty moves." Multiple Attack Attacking (see " attack ") two or more things at once. Usually this is caused by a fork or a discovered attack (see both " fork " and " discovered attack "). The multiple attack is one of the strongest methods of attack in chess, because the opponent will have trouble defending against more than one attack all at once. Mysterious Rook Move This phrase was made popular by Aron Nimzowitsch. This is a move by a rook to a file which is closed (see both " open file " and " closed file "). The player might be expecting the file to become open later, or trying to stop the opponent from opening the file. Norm A level of performance in a tournament. Norms are required to earn certain titles. For example, to become a grandmaster, a player must make earn grandmaster norms in which he or she performs like a strong grandmaster in a very strong tournament. Notation A system for writing down chess games. Algebraic notation is most common. It uses letters and numbers to describe the squares. There is also descriptive notation. Novelty The first move played in a game which has never been played before (in that exact position). Usually a novelty is played early in the game, but occasionally in very popular opening variations (see both " opening " and " variation ") a novelty might occur quite late in the game. Open Tournament A tournament which has no restrictions by age, rating, or gender. Anyone can compete. Open File A file that has no pawns on it. An open file is a great place for rooks and queens, who may use the open file to invade the opponent's position. Open Game A game that begins with the moves 1.e4 e5. It may also be called a Double King's Pawn Opening. Opening The beginning of a game, from the very first move until all the pieces are developed and the players begin creating middlegame plans. A way of starting the game which has been played before and is well-known. Most of the reasonable first moves fall into an opening. Example: "By responding to 1.e4 with 1...c5, I played the Sicilian Defense opening." Open Position Open positions have few pawns in the center of the board. They tend to be tactical and favor long-range pieces like bishops. Opening Repertoire The openings that a player tends to play with white and black. For example, Bobby Fischer's opening repertoire consisted mostly of playing 1.e4 as white, meeting 1.e4 with the Sicilian Defense as black, and meeting 1.d4 with the King's Indian Defense. Opponent In chess the "opponent" is the person you are playing against. For example, if you are white then the person sitting across the board playing the black pieces is your "opponent". Opposite-Color Bishops When one player has a single bishop on the light squares and the other player has a single bishop on dark squares, we say the players have opposite-color bishops. Opposite-color bishops are often drawish in endgames since the players may blockade on the color their bishop control. Opposition A situation where the kings face each other with one square in between them, in a king-and-pawn ending. The side who is not to move has the opposition - because the opposing king has to step aside. Outflanking This happens in a king-and-pawn ending, when after the opposition forces one side's king to move out of the way the other side's king then outflanks the opponent. This is the basic principle of winning the ending "king and pawn versus king", where the repeated outflanking allows the side with the pawn to gain control of the path to the queening square. Outpost An important square which cannot be controlled by the opponent and where one player hopes to establish a piece. Typically this is a central square, perhaps in the opponent's half of the board, where one player tries to place a knight, although outposts can also be used by other pieces. Outside Passed Pawn A passed pawn on the wing (rather than in the center) or, in general, distant from where the main battle is taking place. The advantage of an outside passed pawn is that it tends to distract the opponent's pieces from the main battle, since they must stop the pawn from queening. Overprotection A strategy, devised by Aron Nimzowitsch, where a player protects strong points more times than is necessary. The idea is that by protecting the strong point, the pieces become more powerful. Overworked Piece An overworked piece defends against multiple threats. Often an overworked piece can be exploited by executing one of the threats. If the overworked piece responds, it will leave the other threat undefended. Passed Pawn A pawn which has no opposing pawns either on the file in front of it, or on the files next to it. A pawn which can advance to the queening square without having to worry about being captured or blocked by the opponent's pawns. The ultimate goal of a passed pawn is to reach the other side of the board (8th rank for white or 1st rank for black) and "promote" (see " promotion ") to a better piece. Passer Short for passed pawn. See " passed pawn ". Passive Passive is the opposite of active. A passive piece or position has little mobility or chance to attack. Patzer An unkind term for a bad chess player. Pattern An arrangement of chess pieces that is often repeated. Strong players know many tactical, checkmating, and positional patterns. Pawn Center Having several unblocked pawns in the center, usually side-by-side. Example: "White had pawns on e4 and d4, against Black's pawn on d6. So he had a pawn center." A pawn center usually gives good central control; however, sometimes a pawn center can be attacked if it is not well supported. Pawn Chain Several pawns on a diagonal, guarding each other. For example, pawns on f3, e4, and d5 form a pawn chain. Pawn chains have the advantage that the pawns guard each other; their disadvantage is that since they are all on one color they leave holes between them which are not guarded. Pawn Island A pawn or a group of pawns that is separated from the other pawns of the same color by an open file. An isolated pawn is a pawn island with only one pawn. Pawn Storm An attacking method where one player advances a group of pawns toward the opponent, usually with the goal of destroying the opponent's king's pawn cover. Pawn Structure The overall position of the players' pawns; since pawns cannot be moved very fast, the pawn structure often stays the same for a long time, determining what kind of plans the player's use. Perpetual Check A situation where one player can check the opponent's king forever, but cannot checkmate it. Perpetual check is a draw if the side giving the checks wants it. When perpetual check happens, the players usually either agree to a draw or the same position is repeated three times, resulting in a draw by threefold repetition. See " threefold repetition ". Piece One unit on a chessboard. Usually when chess players say "piece", they mean a knight, bishop, queen, or rook. The kings and pawns are not considered "pieces". Example: "The chess teacher said that in the opening we should get our pieces into the game. We understood that this meant to bring out our knights, bishops, rooks, and queen; not to advance our king or push all of our pawns." Pin When a piece cannot move without exposing a more valuable piece (usually the king or queen) to attack. Pinned Piece A piece which cannot move because it is pinned; it must stay where it is to shield a more valuable piece from attack. Pinning Piece A long-range piece (a rook, queen, or bishop) which is aimed at one of the opponent's valuable pieces, with a less valuable defending piece blocking it. The pinning piece is the attacking piece in a pin. Plan The long-term purpose of a player's moves. A typical plan might be to create a pawn storm against the opponent's king (see " pawn-storm "), to create a weak square in an opponent's position, or to control an open file. A plan is different from calculation (see " calculation ") in that planning involves looking far ahead, but without seeing the exact moves. Poisoned Pawn A poisoned pawn can be captured, but capturing it will cause problems. An example is a wing pawn that that may be captured by the queen at the cost of time and development. Position The arrangement of each side’s pieces and pawns on the board. Positional "Positional" means the long-term strengths and weaknesses in a player's position. "Positional play" means play that is based around strengthening one's position, or weakening one's opponent's. A "positional player" focuses on building up long-term advantages. Positional is the opposite of "tactical", which is concerned with immediate and temporary things that are happening on the board (see " tactics "). Post-Mortem Literally meaning "after death"; in chess it means a discussion between the two opponents after a game. The players may explore different ways they could have played, or discuss why they made the moves that they did. Example: "In the post-mortem, we discovered that I could have won a rook by a knight fork. Neither of us saw it during the game!" Promotion The act of turning a pawn into another piece (queen, rook, bishop, or knight) after it reaches the other side of the board. See also " underpromotion ". Prophylaxis Prophylaxis (or a prophylactic move) tries to prevent the opponent's ideas. Protected A protected piece or pawn is defended by another piece. Protected Passed Pawn The term "protected passed pawn" refers to a passed pawn (see " passed pawn ") that is guarded (protected) by another pawn. If a passed pawn is protected by a piece (like a rook) it is not referred to as a protected passed pawn. Only a passed pawn that is protected by another pawn is referred to as a 'protected passed pawn'. Queening The act of promoting (see " promotion ") a pawn to a new queen after the pawn reaches the far side of the board. Queenside The side of the board where the queen starts out. For White, this is the left-hand side; for Black, it is the right-hand side. The queenside includes the a-, b-, c-, and d-files. "Castling queenside" means to castle on the side of the board where the queen started; to "castle long". Quiet Move A move that is not a check, capture, or direct threat. Rank A horizontal (side-to-side) line on the chessboard. In notation, ranks are the numbered lines; for example, third rank, fourth rank, etc. Rapid Chess Chess played with a fast time control (see " time control "). A game is usually considered "rapid" if a player has between 10 and 60 minutes for all the moves. Rating A way that chess federations measure a player's skill by a number. The main rating system was created by Arpad Elo, and is known as the Elo rating system. If a player wins, his or her rating goes up; if he or she loses, it goes down. How much it goes up or down depends on the rating of the opponent. Recapture (See " capture "). A recapture is made when our opponent (see " opponent ") has captured one of our pieces, and we capture his or her piece on that same square. Example: Sally's opponent captured her pawn on c6, but Sally recaptured with the pawn on b7. (I'm personally inclined to omit the example. I don't think it's essential.) Refute To show that a move, plan, combination, or opening variation is wrong. Relative Pin A pin which is not absolute (see " absolute pin "). The pinned piece can legally move, but moving it would lose a more valuable piece. For example, a knight that is pinned to the queen is in a relative pin; according the the rules it can move, but moving it would lose the queen. (See " pin "). Resign To give up and admit defeat in a chess game. Resigning a game has exactly the same result as being checkmated - either way it is a loss. Players often resign to avoid wasting time playing a game that they know they are going to lose. Romantic Having to do with a past time in history when less was known about chess, and players played "by the light of nature", attacking (see " attack ") and sacrificing (see " sacrifice ") without worrying too much if their ideas were correct. Sometimes people talk about a modern chess player's style as being "romantic" - or they might call a certain game or move "romantic", if it involves sacrificing pieces and playing carelessly and creatively. Rook Lift A maneuver which activates a rook by moving it up and to the side, in front of its own pawns. Usually, a rook is lifted on the third or fourth rank. This is an alternative to activating a rook by moving it to an open file. Round-Robin A tournament where everybody plays against everybody. Usually this is a smaller (in the number of players) but more important tournament. In a round-robin the order that the players play each other is usually random, but since every player plays against every other player, it is considered to be a very fair method. Royal Fork A fork between the king and queen. See " fork ". Sac Short for "sacrifice". See " sacrifice ". Sacrifice The act of giving up material (either making a trade that loses points or simply losing a piece or pawn for nothing) with the goal of getting something else in return. For example, a player may sacrifice the queen in order to open up a square for a knight where it can checkmate the opponent. A player may also make more strategic sacrifices, such as sacrificing a pawn to gain time to develop, or sacrificing a piece to destroy the opponent's king's pawn cover. Scholar's Mate Scholar's mate is also called the "four-move checkmate." In Scholar's Mate, White tries to play 1.e4, 2.Bc4, 3.Qh5 (or Qf3), and 4.Qxh7 mate. Scoresheet A piece of paper on which the players record the game. The scoresheet has a column for White’s moves and a column for Black’s moves. The players must write down both their moves and their opponent’s moves using chess notation. See " notation ". See-Saw A rare tactic in which a repeated discovered check allows one piece to go on a rampage, capturing multiple enemy pieces. See also " windmill ". The most famous example of a see-saw happened in the game Torre-Lasker, Moscow 1925. Semi-Open A game beginning with the move 1.e4, followed by any move other than 1...e5. For example, a Sicilian defense (1.e4 c5), French defense (1.e4 e6), Caro-Kann defense (1.e4 c6) or others. See also " open game " and " closed game ". A position which is somewhat open (having many open files and diagonals, and few blocked pawn) and somewhat closed (having blocked pawns and few open lines). Semi-Closed Sharp In chess, a sharp position is one where the slightest mistake can change the result of the game. Shot A strong, unexpected move which totally changes the course of the game. Sideline A "sideline" is the opposite of the "main line" (see " main line "). The term sideline or sidelines is often used to describe opening variations (see " opening " and " variation "). Example: "Billy played the sideline, which is not what I was expecting as I had spent most of my time learning the main line of this opening." Simplify To exchange pieces and make the position more "simple". Sometimes players simplify the position in order to win more easily with extra material (it is easier to win with extra material when there are less pieces on the board overall), to defend against the opponent's attack, or to use a long-term advantage. Simul Short for "simultaneous exhibition". See " simultaneous exhibition ". Simultaneous Exhibition A type of event or show ("exhibition") where a player plays many opponents at one time. Usually his or her opponents are sitting in a circle, each with their own board, and the player giving the simultaneous exhibition walks from board to board, making moves on each. Usually the player giving the simultaneous exhibition is a master and the opponents are weaker players. See also " simul ". Skewer A move which threatens a valuable piece (such as the king or queen), forcing that piece to move away and allowing the attacking piece to take a less valuable piece behind the valuable one. Imagine a bishop checking a king, forcing the king to move away and allowing the bishop to take a queen which was behind the king. A skewer is the opposite of a pin, since in the skewer the more valuable piece is in front. See " pin ". Skittles Games played for fun or otherwise not part of a tournament; casual games. Usually during tournaments there is a "skittles room", where players can go and play blitz games for fun (see " blitz chess "), analyze their tournament games (see " post-mortem "), or just talk without distracting the players in the tournament. Smothered Mate A checkmate by a knight against a king which has no way out because all of its escape squares are blocked by its own pieces. The king's own pieces keep it from moving, while the enemy knight puts it in check. It is called "smothered" because the king is squeezed in by its own pieces and cannot breathe. Sound A move or plan is sound if it cannot be defeated even if your opponent play the best moves. An attack that is sound is one that, even if the defender defends perfectly, will still give the attacker a good position. Space Space is the squares a player controls. A player with more space, called a space advantage, controls more squares. Spite Check One final check given by a player who is losing, which only delays his/her loss for one move, while the opponent gets out of check. Stalemate Stalemate occurs when a player has no legal moves but is not in check. A stalemate is a draw. Strategy A strategy is a plan. Strategy usually means that you are thinking long-term, rather than "I go here, he goes there" type of thinking. It means looking far ahead but without seeing the exact moves or positions that you will reach. Study A study In chess is a made-up position. A composer invents a study to show a beautiful, deep, or instructive idea. Style The way a player tends to play, or the positions he/she likes best. A player's style might be aggressive, tactical, strategic, positional, or others. Example: "Mikhail Tal had a very aggressive, attacking style - he liked open positions where he had a chance to attack his opponent's king. Tigran Petrosian had a very defensive, positional style - he liked to try to create strategic weaknesses in his opponent's position." Sudden Death A time control where a player must finish the game before his/her clock runs out. For example, a sudden death time control might be "Game in 60", which means that each player must not use more than sixty minutes for the game, or he/she will lose on time. Swindle A trick that allows a player who has a bad position to turn the game around. A swindle can only happen if the player with the advantage makes a mistake. Example: "I was losing my third round game, but then I managed to swindle my opponent and win. He fell for my trick because he didn't see the best move." Swiss System A system for deciding who plays against whom in chess tournaments that are too big for everybody to play everybody (a tournament where everyone plays everyone is a Round Robin. See " Round Robin "). The Swiss system is usually used in big, open tournaments. The system works by having players with the same number of points play against each other, with the top half (by ELO rating. See " ELO Rating ") in each score group playing the bottom half. Symbols (Notation Symbols) Symbols are used in notation (see " notation ") to explain whether a move is good or bad, and whether a position is better for white, better for black, or equal. Some symbols include "!" after a move, which means that the move played was a good move. Sometimes you will even see "!!" which means that a move played was a great move, maybe even brilliant. After a move or position is reached, you will also see the "=" symbol, which means that the position is considered to be equal. You may also see a "+/-" symbol which means the position is better for white. Symmetry There is symmetry in a position when both players' pieces are arranged in exactly the same way. If the board were folded in half at the middle, each piece would land on the same kind of opposing piece. For example, a white rook would land on a black rook, a white bishop would land on a black bishop, etc. At the beginning of a game, the position is symmetrical. There can also be symmetry just in pawn structure, when each side's pawns look exactly the same, but the pieces might be placed differently. Tactic(s) Short term attacks, such as forks, pins, skewers, and other kinds of attacks that take place over a few moves. The opposite of long-term strategy. Example: "If you want to be a great chess player, you need to be good at both tactics and planning. What good is it to plan to win a weak pawn twenty moves from now, if you let your opponent fork your king and rook in an immediate tactic?!" Tactician A tactician is a style of player who is very good at - or likes - tactics. A player who is good at finding forks, pins, and other small attacks, as opposed to long-term strategy. Example: "Alekhine was a good tactician - you had to be very careful or you might lose a piece against him to some kind of fork or you could be cleverly checkmated!" Technique Technique is the ability to achieve the correct result. A player who is winning and plays with good technique will win. Bad technique might let the win slip away. Tempo A single move which improves your position. For example, you "gain a tempo" if you get the chance to develop a piece while your opponent uses the time to do nothing useful. You can also "gain a tempo" if you are able to make a useful or developing move while creating a threat that forces your opponent to defend with an otherwise useless move. Theory Moves or positions which have been played or studied before. Theory is what the human race believes to be correct about chess - for example, opening theory includes the starting moves and variations which have been played before and what people generally think about them. There is also endgame theory, which includes positions which are known and considered to be won, lost, or drawn. Example: "According to endgame theory, king and queen should win against king and rook." Threat A move which one side plans to make, which would be bad for the opponent. Example: "If it were my move, I could checkmate my opponent. So I had a threat of checkmate. It was his move, so he had to defend against my threat, or he would lose." Threats can be as big as a threat to checkmate or a threat to the opponent's queen, or as small as a threat to weaken his/her pawn structure. Three-fold Repetition When the same position is reached three times in a game, the players may claim a draw by three-fold repetition. Tiebreaks Tiebreaks are used to decide who wins a prize that cannot be divided (such as a trophy or a title) if multiple players get the same score. Tiebreaks might be based on the opponents' average ratings, the opponents' total scores, the number of games you won, or the number of games in which you had black. Time Control The amount of time that the players have to finish a game. A chess clock is used to keep track of the time (see " clock "). A common time control for scholastic tournaments is "game in thirty minutes". This means that each player has thirty minutes to play all of his/her moves; if more than thirty minutes is used, he/she will lose the game. Blitz chess uses a time control of five minutes per game (see " blitz chess "). Also, there is the classical time control, "forty moves in two hours, and sudden death in an hour." Time Delay Some electronic clocks (see " clock ") allow the players to use a time delay. This means that the clock waits - usually - five seconds before it starts counting off time. If a player uses less than five seconds for a move, no time is subtracted from his/her clock. This means that if a position is very easy, such as king and queen versus king, a player will not lose on time by simply not being able to play the moves fast enough. Time Pressure/Time Trouble Time pressure, or time trouble, happens when a player has very little time to play his or her moves. This means that the player cannot think for a long time and it often leads to mistakes. It usually happens if a player used too much time (see " clock ") earlier in the game, and not much time is left in the time control. See " time control ". Touch Move A rule, which is used in all serious chess, that if a player touches a piece, he/she has to move that piece. If a player touches one of the opponent's pieces, that player has to capture (see " capture ") the piece if it is possible. Tournament A chess competition, where many players compete against each other. A tournament has at least three players; if it has only two then that is called a "match" (see " match "). Tournament Director A tournament director is the person who helps chess players with the rules and restrictions that are required during a chess tournament. Every chess tournament --whether online or "over the board"-- has guidelines and rules that chess players need to learn, know and follow. The tournament director (see also " arbiter ") knows all of these rules, and therefore helps with this process. In a tournament, for example, all players must move a piece or capture an opponent's piece if they touch it. A tournament director or an arbiter will help to enforce these rules. Trade A trade is an exchange (see " exchange ") of pieces. Most trades happen when one player captures an opponent's (see " opponent ") piece of the same value as the capturing piece and the opponent recaptures. Transpose/Transposition A transposition in chess occurs when, through a series of moves, a position is reached that is more commonly seen through a different series of moves. However, it is nonetheless the same exact position that is on the chess board, even though the moves were different. Example: "Tom noticed that the position had transposed into a the same position that he more commonly sees reached by a different move order." Trap A trap is a plan for your opponent to miss something important and therefore blunder (see " blunder "). Usually, the term trap is used when either you or your opponent are trying for a tactical (see " tactic ") trick of some kind. This is trick is not usually forced (see " forced ") when we use the term trap. Triangulation Triangulation is a very advanced way of "out-maneuvering" the enemy king with your own king in order to gain the opposition (see " opposition "). Usually this involves the creation of an imaginary triangle, if one were to draw lines between the three squares used in this maneuver (see " maneuver ") Unclear A position where it is too complicated to tell who has the advantage (see " advantage "). Example: "I couldn't tell if White stood better, if Black stood better, or if the position was equal! All I knew was that it was very complicated. So I wrote that it was an unclear position." Undermining To remove an important defensive piece, with the goal of attacking what it was guarding. Usually undermining has to do with pawn chains (see " pawn chains "); undermining a pawn chain means to attack the base pawn (see " base pawn "), trying to knock it out so you can destroy the whole chain. Underpromotion Promoting (see " promotion ") a pawn to a piece less than a queen (in other words, promoting a pawn to a knight, rook, or bishop). Since the queen is the strongest piece, players almost always choose to promote their pawns to queens. But sometimes underpromotion occurs when there are special reasons that a player needs a weaker piece rather than a queen. Unorthodox Unusual play; moves or style that is different than the way most people play, or different from the ways of playing which are generally considered to be correct. Unpin To break or escape from a pin (see " pin "). A player may unpin by: 1) moving the valuable piece away, thus allowing the pinned piece to move freely; 2) putting a less valuable piece in between the valuable piece and the pinned piece; 3) blocking the pin by putting a less valuable piece in front of the pinned piece; or 4) chasing away the pinning piece. Vacate To vacate is to leave a place; in chess, vacating means to clear one of your own pieces out of the way so another one of your pieces can use that square or file (see " file "). There can be vacating sacrifices, where you intentionally lose one of your own pieces to make way for a different one. Variation A variation is one way a game could go, or could have gone; it is a series of moves by White and Black that are forced or logical. A variation may be a series of moves that a player thinks about, but if he/she decides not to play the first move of the variation, it will not happen in the game. A variation is also one possible way of playing within a larger opening. For example, the "Averbakh variation of the King's Indian Defense", is a reference to a possible variation of a bigger Opening [the King's Indian Defense is an Opening (see " Opening ")]. Visualize To "visualize" is to try and see a position or a series of moves "in your head" without actually moving the pieces on the chess board. Waiting Move A move that doesn't change the position. A waiting move is often played to pass the move to the opponent. Weak Pawn(s) A pawn that cannot be easily guarded, especially a pawn that cannot be guarded by another pawn, such as an isolated pawn (see " isolated pawn "), doubled pawn see " doubled pawn ", or backward pawn (see " backward pawn "). Weak Square A square which is strategically (see " strategy ") important (it is usually in an important area of the board, such as in the center or in the opponent's side of the board) and cannot be easily guarded. A weak square usually cannot be easily guarded by one side's pawns, and can often become an outpost (see " outpost ") for the other side. Also known as a "hole". Weakness A square, group of squares, or piece that is difficult to defend, such as a doubled pawn, isolated pawn, backward pawn, or hole. Windmill A rare tactic in which a repeated discovered check allows one piece to go on a rampage, capturing multiple enemy pieces. (See also " see-saw "). The most famous example of a windmill happened in the game Torre-Lasker, Moscow 1925. Wing The sides of the board, as opposed to the center. Generally, these are the a-, b-, g-, and h-files. Winning Position A position where a player should win the game, if both players play the best moves. For example, if you are up a queen you might have a winning position. A winning position is not the same as a win; frequently you hear players say such things as "I had a winning position but made a terrible mistake and lost". X-Ray/X-Ray Attack An "x-ray" is a machine which sees through things. An x-ray in chess is when one of your long-range pieces (a rook, bishop, or queen) acts "through" your opponents piece to attack (see " attack ") or defend (see " defend ") beyond it. Zugzwang A German word meaning “move-need.” Zugzwang occurs when every legal move worsens the position, but not moving (if that were legal) would keep a good position. Zwischenschach A German word meaning "in-between check". This is a check that is inserted -- in between -- a forcing sequence of moves, which changes the result of the sequence. See also " zwischenzug ". Zwischenzug A German word meaning "in-between move". An - often unexpected - move inserted in a forcing sequence of moves, which changes the result of the sequence. See also " zwischenschach ". More by PoppaBear...	Chess
What is the name of the mythical, multi-headed dog that guards the gates of the Underworld?	chessterms * = World Chess Champion ** = Women's World Champion Accelerated Dragon: A variation of the Sicilian Defense involving 2)...Nc6 3) d4, cxd4 4) Nxd4, g6. Accelerated Pairing System: A Swiss System pairing method starting with four groups instead of the usual two; it is designed to produce a clear winner in as few rounds as possible.ï¿½ Accept: To respond to a gambit opening by capturing the material offered. Action Chess: See Quick chess. Active defense: To attack the opponent in the process of defending your position. Active piece: A developed piece that is free to attack the opponent. Active position: A position with a lot of possibilities for putting pressure on or attacking the opponent. Adams, Michael: England's top-ranked grandmaster. Adjournment: The suspension of a tournament game, to be finished later. Since the creation of sudden death time controls (shortening the time required for tournament games), adjournments have become extremely rare. Adjudication: In cases where a game is unable to be completed, adjudication is the process by which an impartial strong player determines the game's probable outcome. As with adjournments, since the advent of sudden death time controls, the need for adjudications has largely been eliminated. Advance variation: A variation of the French Defense that includes 3) e5. Advanced pawn: A pawn that has crossed the midpoint of the chessboard. Advantage: Superiority in material and/or strategic position on one side of a game. Advantage in time: See Tempo. Agreement: A type of draw where the players agree that neither side has a realistic chance of winning, and they decide to end the game without a winner or loser. Alburt, Lev: Former Soviet grandmaster who now lives and teaches chess in the U.S. Inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 2003. Alekhine, Alexander: Considered the fourth official World Chess Champion, he was champion twice--1927-1935 and 1937-1945. Alekhine Defense: The opening 1) e4, Nf6. Alexandria, Nana: WGM and Honorary Chairperson of the FIDE Committee on Women's Chess. Algebraic notation: The most common method currently used for recording chess moves. Vertical files are identified alphabetically, while horizontal rows are identified numerically (e.g., White's lower lefthand corner is always a1). Thus, each square has only one name. See also our Symbols/Notation page. Amateur: Any chess player ranked below master level. Analysis: The examination of the critical positions and various potential lines of play that have occurred or could occur in a chess game. Post-game analysis means going over all the moves of a finished game, identifying particularly good or bad moves, and examining how the winner's strategy succeeded and/or the loser's strategy failed. Anand, Viswanathan: Ranked #3 in the world, 'Vishy' is the strongest chess player in the history of India, where he is extremely popular. He was FIDE Knockout World Chess Champion in 2000. Anderssen, Adolf: One of the greatest tacticians in chess history. Unofficial World Chess Champion, 1851 and 1862. Annotation: Written commentary on the moves of a game, most helpful when authored either by one of the competitors or by a highly ranked player. Announced check: The optional practice of announcing "check" after making a move placing the opponent's king in check. Beginners may feel this is considerate, while more advanced players may think it is unnecessary and/or annoying to point out check. However, since the king cannot be captured in standard chess, if your opponent doesn't notice that he/she is in check and starts to make an illegal move, you need to point out the check to him/her (this is one of the rare situations in tournament chess when a player is allowed to "take back" a move). Announced mate: The largely obsolete practice of calling out an impending forced checkmate (e.g., "mate in four"), generally considered irritating nowadays. Arbiter: The European term for a qualified tournament director. Ashley, Maurice: The first African-American grandmaster in the U.S.; also a well-known chess ambassador and chess teacher. Attack: An aggressive move or series of moves. An attacking player attempts to lead the pace of the game and may gain advantages in time and/or by weakening the opponent's position. B: Abbreviation for bishop. Baburin, Alexander: Grandmaster, author and publisher of Chess Today. Back rank mate: One of the most common middlegame mates, it involves checkmating the White king on the first rank or the Black king on the eighth rank, using a lateral-moving piece (queen or rook). Backward pawn: A pawn that is lagging behind (i.e., not isolated, but can no longer be protected by other pawns). May be at the back of a pawn group. Bad bishop: A bishop whose pawns, particularly the central pawns, are on the same-colored squares as the bishop, limiting mobility. Bad move: Indicated by "?" in notation. Base of pawn chain: The last and weakest point in a pawn chain. Battery: Doubled rooks on a file, or queen and rook on a file, or a queen and bishop on a diagonal. Benjamin, Joel: American grandmaster and several-time U.S. champion. Benko, Pal: Hungarian/U.S. grandmaster and endgame expert. Inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 1993. Benko Gambit: The opening 1) d4, Nf6 2) c4, c5 3) d5, b5. Benoni Defense: The opening 1) d4, c5. Berliner, Hans: Correspondence Chess World Champion and pioneer computer chess researcher/theorist. Inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 1990. Bind: A position where one side's possibilities are significantly limited. Bird's Opening: 1) f4. Bisguier, Arthur: American grandmaster and New York chess personality. Inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 1994. Bishop: A minor chess piece that moves diagonally. Bishop pair: Two bishops versus a bishop and a knight or two knights; generally better materially, depending on the position. Bishop's Opening: An opening involving 1) e4, e5 2) Bc4. Bishops of opposite color: When one side has a single bishop moving on the light squares, and the other side has a single bishop moving on the dark squares. In the middlegame this gives the attacker the advantage; in the endgame it favors the defender, often allowing a draw. Blindfold chess: When a game is played without looking at the board. Moves are called to the "blindfolded" player (normally simply sitting with his back to the board), who visualizes the position on the board in his mind. Alekhine and Koltanowski were both famous for their blindfold simultaneous exhibitions. Blitz (a.k.a. Speed Chess): Standard chess played with clocks set at very short time controls (generally 5 minutes), with one major rule difference--the king MAY be captured as the final move of the game. Blockade: To stop the progress of an enemy pawn by placing a piece in front of it. Blunder: An obviously bad move, often leading to loss of material. Indicated by "??" in notation. Board: The 64-square playing surface for a chess game. Players should check for correct orientation (i.e., that the square to their lower right is light in color) before starting a game. Body check (a.k.a. shouldering): A technique most commonly seen in king and pawn endings in which one king blocks the other king from approaching his pawns; it may or may not involve opposition. Bogo-Indian Defense: The opening 1) d4, Nf6 2) c4, e6 3) Nf3, Bb4+. Boleslavsky, Isaak: A top Soviet grandmaster of the post World War II period and one of the most important opening theoreticians of all time. Book: Standard, well-analyzed moves in the opening, used by top players and documented in chess literature. Botvinnik, Mikhail: "The father of Soviet chess." Considered the sixth official World Chess Champion, Botvinnik was actually champion three separate times--1948-1957, 1958-1960 and 1961-1963. Founded the Botvinnik Chess School, which produced dozens of top grandmasters. Inducted into the World Chess Hall of Fame in 2003. Breakthrough: An infiltration into the opponent's position. See also Pawn breakthrough. Bridge: "Storming the bridge" is the term Coach Pete uses referring to invading your enemy's territory through the four center squares--the pawns are the foot soldiers who pave the way. Brilliancy: A game, generally involving a sacrifice, which shows exceptional creativity and/or shrewdness of calculation. Some tournaments give a "brilliancy" or "most beautiful game" award. Brilliant move: Indicated by "!!" in notation. Bronstein, David: Famous Soviet grandmaster of the 1940s-1960s and an important theoretician. Browne, Walter Shawn: Six-time U.S. champion and founder of the World Blitz Chess Association (WBCA). Inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 2003. Budapest Defense: The opening 1) d4, Nf6 2) c4, e5. Bughouse (a.k.a. Siamese chess): A crazy, fast-moving (generally 5-minute time controls) chess variant involving two boards/sets and four players (two teams of two). Pieces you capture from your board may be passed off to your teammate (sitting next to you), to be placed on any legal square on their board at their next turn, and vice versa (your partner feeds pieces to you as well). Thus, it is possible to have a very unusual inventory of pieces on the board at a given time (e.g., four white rooks, three black bishops, etc.). Pawns may suddenly appear on the seventh rank and promote to queen on their next move, checkmates may be accomplished via an overwhelming combination of pieces, etc. A win is accomplished by checkmating first on either board, or by winning on time (one of the opponent's flags falls first). Bullet chess: Chess games lasting under 3 minutes (generally one minute). Buried piece: A piece trapped behind its own army. Bye: An unplayed round in a tournament. See our Competition page for further info. *Bykova, Elizaveta (Soviet Union): The third official Women's World Chess Champion, 1953-1956, and again 1958-1962. Byrne, Donald: 20th century International Master/deceased brother of Robert Byrne. Inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 2003. Byrne, Robert: Strong U.S. grandmaster, as well as New York Times and Chess Life columnist. Inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 1994. Caissa (pronounced Ky-ee-suh): The mythical muse, or goddess, of chess. Calculation of variations: Mentally picturing possible move sequences and anticipating their consequences, without actually moving the pieces. Campomanes, Florencio: Highly controversial former FIDE president. Candidate: A player who competes in the eliminating contest for the privilege to challenge the World Chess Champion. Candidate move: A possible move in a given chess position, deserving careful consideration. Capablanca, Jose Raul: Often regarded as the most naturally gifted chess player in the history of the game, he was the third official World Chess Champion, 1921-1927. Inducted into the World Chess Hall of Fame in 2001. Capture: To move a piece or pawn to a square occupied by an enemy piece or pawn, removing the enemy piece or pawn from the board. Indicated by an "x" in notation (e.g., "Nxe5" indicates a knight captured a piece or pawn on the e5 square). Caro-Kann Defense: An opening beginning with 1) e4, c6 2) d4, d5. Castle: See Rook. Castling: The only time in a chess game when you are allowed to move two of your pieces during one turn, or the king more than one space at a time, it involves moving the king two squares to either side on the back rank, and then moving that side's rook over the king to the square on the other side of him. This move may happen only once per side in a game, usually in the opening phase, and only under certain conditions (refer to castling rules). The purpose of castling is to move the king to a more protected location, while developing the rook to a center file. Castling long: To castle queenside. Castling short: To castle kingside. Catalan: The opening 1) d4, Nf6 2) c4, e6 3) g3. Category: Number indicating the average strength of the field of players in a tournament, used by FIDE to calculate title qualifications--e.g., in a category 1 tournament the average FIDE rating of the competitors is in the range 2251-2275, and a category 19 averages 2701-2725. CBS: See Classic bishop sacrifice. Center: The four squares in the center (e4, e5, d4 and d5), considered strategic "high ground." One of the major goals of the opening in a chess game is to control the center of the board. Center-Counter: See Scandinavian Defense. Center pawns: The pawns on the queen and king (d and e) files. Central Chess Club: Famous chess club in Moscow. Centralization: The strategy of bringing one's pieces to the center. Chaturanga: Originating in India, this may be the oldest form of chess, and includes such differences as noncontrasting squares, a "counselor" instead of a queen, and "elephants" instead of bishops. Cheapo (a.k.a. cheap shot): A tactical trick used to attempt to compensate for a disadvantage. Cheapo potential: Playing for cheapo potential means purposely injecting chaos into a position, with the intention of increasing a position's capacity to yield cheap shots. Check: A move that directly attacks the enemy king. Indicated by "+" in notation. Checkmate (or simply "Mate"): A move that directly attacks the enemy king and for which there is no defending response. It is the object of the game and one way in which a chess game can be concluded. Indicated by "#" in notation. Chen, Zhu (China): The ninth official Women's World Chess Champion, 2001-present. Chess Base: German publisher of the most widely used chess database software, as well as several of the strongest chess-playing programs. Chess Journalists of America: "An American organization of chess journalists created to promote high quality chess journalism, to provide assistance to the working journalist through articles and contacts and to recognize chess journalism at its best through an annual awards program." Chess Life: Monthly magazine of the USCF. Chess problem: Composed puzzles for the purpose of mental exercise, not always relating to practical chess positions. Chessmaster: See Master. Chiburdanidze, Maya (Soviet Union): The sixth official Women's World Chess Champion, 1978-1991. Chigorin, Mikhail: The first great Russian master and contemporary of Steinitz. Choosing colors: A common way to decide who will play White in a casual game is to have one player hide a pawn of each color in each hand, "mix them up" behind their back, and hold them in front again for the other player to choose between. Christiansen, Larry: Strong U.S. grandmaster and former U.S. champion. Ciudad de Leon: The location in Spain of a major tournament on the annual international calendar, this one involving "advanced chess" (computer-assisted play). CJA: See Chess Journalists of America Class tournament: An event in which players compete against other players within their rating class. Classic bishop sacrifice: A standard attacking method beginning with the sacrifice Bxh7+ for White and Bxh2+ for Black. Classical: A style of play that was once standard, emphasizing the necessity of physically occupying the center squares with pieces and pawns. Classical variation: Many opening systems have "classical" variations--e.g., the classical variation of the French Defense is ...3) Nc3, Nf6, and the classical variation of the Silician Defense is 5)...Nc6. Clearance sacrifice: A sacrifice made for the purpose of clearing a line or freeing a square. Clock: A double-faced timer used to regulate a chess game. See our Clock Rules page for more info. Clock hand: Official chess rules require a player to press the clock with the same hand he used to make his move. Closed game/position/system: An opening in which pawns remain on their files, slowing the forward motion of the pieces; knights are more helpful in closed positions, since they can jump over pawns. Double queen pawn (d4, d5) and English openings (c4) are generally closed systems. Closed tournament: See Invitational tournament. Colle, Edgar: International Master and many-time champion of Belgium. Colle System: An opening developed by Edgar Colle and championed by his friend George Koltanowski for many years. The moves are: 1) d4, d5 2) Nf3, Nf6 3) e3, c5 4) c3. Collins, John: Influential New York-area chess master in the 1950s-1960s. Inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 1991. Combination: A series of forcing moves with an unifying purpose, leading either to winning material, improving one's position, or checkmate. May involve an initial sacrifice of material. Compensation: One or more advantage(s) balancing out one or more disadvantage(s) in a position. Completed move: Once a player lets go of the piece he has moved (and presses the clock, if applicable), the move is complete. Connected pawns: Pawns that are guarded by, or guarding, a fellow pawn on an adjacent file (may or may not be part of a pawn chain). Connected passed pawns: Connected pawns on files with no enemy pawns in front of them--this can be very powerful in the endgame. Connected rooks: Rooks doubled on a file or rank, working in tandem. Consolidation: To adjust your position so that your pieces are coordinated, and thus more effective. Control: To dominate a particular square, line or sector of the board, the center of the board being considered most desirable. Coordinate squares (a.k.a. related squares): In many king and pawn endings, one side can only win if his king can occupy a given square while the opposing king is on another specific square. See Opposition for an example. The squares in question are said to be coordinate squares. Coordinating one's pieces: Getting your pieces to work as a team, toward a particular purpose. Correspondence chess: Chess played by letter, postcard, fax, phone or email. Games may take days, weeks, or even years to complete, and players are usually allowed to consult books. Corus: Sponsor of the top tournament held annually at Wijk aan Zee. Counterattack: When a player under attack responds with an attack of his own, rather than simply defending against the opponent's attack. Countergambit: A violent attempt by Black, involving the sacrifice of a pawn or more, to wrest the initiative from White at an early stage of the game. Counterplay: Active operations that attempt to balance the opponent's aggression. Counting: 1. To determine whether a piece is safe on a square on which a series of captures is possible by counting the number of defenders--if they equal or exceed the number of attackers, the piece is usually adequately defended. 2. Masters' lingo for calculation of variations. Cramped position: A position in which there is insufficient space to coordinate one's pieces. Crippled majority: A pawn majority that cannot produce a passed pawn. Critical position/move: A possible "turning point," where the next move may end up determining the game's ultimate outcome. Crosstable: The formal listing of the final results of a tournament. Crosstables provided by the USCF include pre- and post-tournament ratings. Dake, Arthur: American grandmaster and the strongest player in Oregon history. Inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 1991. Danish Gambit: An opening involving 1) e4, e5 2) d4, exd4 3) c3. Dark square system: An opening system for Black that involves attacking White on the dark squares (e.g., as in the King's Indian). Decisive: An advantage that with proper play should lead to a win. Decline:ï¿½ï¿½To respond by ignoring the material offered in a gambit opening. Decoy: A sacrifice with the purpose of luring an enemy piece to a particular square. Deep Blue: IBM computer specifically designed to beat the world champion at the time (Kasparov). Two matches were played a year apart. In 1996 Kasparov won, but he lost a 1997 rematch with "Deeper Blue." Deep Fritz: Kramnik played this computer in 2002 and the match was drawn. Deep Junior: Kasparov played this computer in 2003 and the match was drawn. Defense: A move or sequence of moves intended to stop the opponent's attack. deFirmian, Nick: Strong American grandmaster and the current editor of Modern Chess Openings. Deflection: A tactical maneuver intended to remove an enemy guard. See also Distraction. Demolition sacrifice: A sacrifice designed to destroy a position, usually the king's position. Denker, Arnold: American grandmaster and chess activist. Inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 1992. Denker Tournament of High School Champions: The annual tournament of high school state champions played simultaneously with the U.S. Open every year, and awarding scholarships to up to two top finishers. Descriptive Notation: Two different types: English & Spanish. A method of notation found in older chess publications that names the squares based on the pieces which occupy them at the start of the game, either from White's perspective or from Black's. Desperado: When a piece which is destined to be lost is used to capture any possible enemy material. Destruction (a.k.a. "removing the guard"): A sacrificial technique employed in order to destroy the opponent's defender. Develop: To bring a piece into play by bringing it off the back rank to a position where it can be more effective and have more mobility.ï¿½ Diagonal: A row of squares of the same color running obliquely across the board rather than up and down (file) or side to side (rank). Discovered attack: A powerful tactic occurring when one piece is moved out of the way, uncovering an attacking piece behind it. Discovered check: A particularly potent double attack, when one piece moves out of the way, revealing another piece checking the opponent's king. Distance to conversion: Endgame king-pawn term; see Rule of the Square. Distraction: A tactical motif, typically with the purpose of driving an opponent's piece from its defending position. Dortmund: A major international tournament held every summer in Germany. Dos Hermanas: A major international tournament held every spring in Spain. Double attack: A move that threatens two things at once--e.g., skewers, forks and discovered attacks are all double attacks. Double bishop sacrifice: A specific attacking method wherein both bishops are sacrificed in order to break up the opponent's king position: Bxh7+ (Bxh2+) is combined with Bxg7+ (Bxg2+). Double check: An extremely powerful type of discovered check, in which the king is simultaneously checked by two pieces, often imminently leading to checkmate. Double king pawn opening: One of the most common categories of opening systems (e4, e5), resulting in an "open" game. Double queen pawn opening: Another common category of opening systems (d4, d5), this one resulting in a "closed" game. Doubled pawns: A pair of pawns of the same color on the same file, one in front of the other. Doubled rooks: See Battery. Dragon: The Dragon is a variation of the Sicilian Defense, continuing with 2) Nf3, d6 3) d4, cxd4 4) Nxd4, Nf6 5) Nc3, g6. Draw: A tied chess game. In formal competition, a half point is awarded to each player. A draw can result from both players running out of time on the clock before a win is claimed, a stalemated position, a claim of three-move repetition of a position, insufficient mating material on both sides or on the time winner's side at the end of the time control, the 50-move rule (very rare), or, most commonly, by agreement between the players. Draw offer: The proper way to make a draw offer to your opponent is to first make your move (your opponent has a right to see your move before considering your offer), then make the draw offer and finally press the clock. Your opponent then considers and responds to the draw offer on his/her own time. If your opponent does not agree to it, it is considered rude to repeat the draw offer on subsequent moves until the position on the board has changed noticeably. Drawing chances: When the weaker side appears to have significant opportunity to reach a drawn position, rather than lose the game. Drawing lots: A random drawing held before a major round robin tournament to determine color assignments and playing order. Drawn position: A position in which neither side can find a way to win. Duffer: A poor chess player. Dutch Defense: The opening 1) d4, f5. Dvoretsky, Mark: Russian international master, widely regarded as the best chess trainer in the world today. Dynamic: See Active play. Dzindzichashvili, Roman (a.k.a. "Dzindzi"): Strong grandmaster from (former Soviet) Georgia, now a U.S. resident. ECO: Encyclopedia of Chess Openings. Edge: See Rim. Edmondson, Ed: Former USCF Executive Director, inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 1995. Eleanor of Aquitane:ï¿½ï¿½Possibly the inspirational character for the increased powers of the queen piece in the 15th century (alternatively argued to be Queen Isabella). Eleanor was an extremely influential monarch who ultimately was married to two kings in her lifetime, and was also the mother of two kings, including Richard the Lionhearted. Her political maneuvers included leading palace rebellions against her husband, King Henry II, who had her locked up for 19 years in order to subdue her. Elo, Arpad: Credited with inventing the rating system named after him. Inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 1987. Elo rating: The most common rating system in current use. See our Ratings page for more info. En passant capture: En passant is French for "in passing." A pawn is considered en passant when it has advanced two squares on its first move, landing next to an enemy pawn. In this situation the enemy pawn is allowed by chess rules to capture the en passant pawn as if it had only advanced one square, but this may only occur on the opponent's next move. En prise: French for "in a position to be taken." A piece is en prise when it is undefended and thus vulnerable to capture without cost to the opponent. See also Hanging a piece. Endgame: The third and final stage of a chess game, when there are few pieces on the board, movements of the kings become more aggressive, and pawn promotion becomes a critical issue. English opening: A category of opening systems beginning with 1) c4, generally resulting in a "closed" game. Epaulet mate: A mating pattern in which the losing king's escape is blocked by his own pieces on either side of him. Equal chances: A position in which the likelihood of either player winning appears roughly the same. Equalize: To work to achieve a position where both sides have equal chances--e.g., White has the initiative in the opening and Black works to equalize this. Escape square (a.k.a. "flight square"): A square to which a king in check may move out of check. Euwe, Max: The fifth official World Chess Champion, 1935-1937. Evaluate: To judge the relative winning chances of either player. Evans, Larry: American grandmaster and Chess Life columnist, inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 1994. Evans Gambit: An opening that begins with the moves 1) e4, e5 2) Nf3, Nc6 3) Bc4, Bc5 4) b4.... Evergreen Game: A good example of a "brilliant game," it was played in 1852 by Anderssen and Dufresne. Steinitz felt it would always remain as fresh as the day it was played, and named it thus. Excellent move: Indicated by "!" in notation. Exchange ahead: A player is said to be "the exchange ahead" when he has taken a rook in exchange for one of his minor pieces. Exchanging pieces (also commonly called "trading" or "swapping"): The trading of pieces of equal value, unless otherwise stated. See also Losing the exchange and Winning the exchange. Exchange sacrifice: Intentionally giving up a rook in exchange for a minor piece in order to achieve a goal. Expansion: To gain control of an increasing amount of space on the board. Expert: A player with a USCF rating of between 2000 and 2199. Fairy chess: Chess compositions that in one or more ways do not conform to official chess rules (e.g., see Helpmate). Family fork: See Royal fork. FEN: See Forsythe-Edwards notation. Fianchetto: Italian for "on the flank," it refers to bishops developed on the long diagonals at b2, g2, b7, or g7. FIDE: The acronym for Fedï¿½ration Internationale des ï¿½checs, the French name for the World Chess Federation. See our USCF/FIDE page for more information. FIDE master (FM): Lowest title granted by FIDE; see requirements . Fifty-move rule: If fifty consecutive moves occur without a piece being captured or a pawn being moved, the game may be considered a draw. Figurine notation: Invented by Chess Informant magazine, figurine notation is a system of recording the moves of a chess game using small pictures of the pieces and pawns, rather than their names. File: A vertical column on a chessboard, denoted in algebraic notation by a letter name (e.g., the "a" file, "b" file, "c" file, etc.). Final Four of College Chess: The top four finishers of the Pan American Intercollegiate tournament each year are automatically qualified to play the "Final Four" college team competition, held in April. Fine, Reuben: U.S. grandmaster and one of the half dozen strongest players in U.S. history. Inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 1986. Fingerfehler: German for "finger slip," it is an obviously bad move made without thinking. Firepower: Coach Pete's term referring to the sum total of the attacking force of a player's army, taking into account both material and positional factors. First board: See Top board. Fischer, Robert or "Bobby": U.S. grandmaster, strongest player in American history, and one of the half dozen strongest players in chess history. The eleventh official World Chess Champion, 1972-1975. Charter inductee into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame. Inducted into the World Chess Hall of Fame in 2001. Fischer clock: A clock capable of incremental time controls in which a specific number of seconds are added to a player's clock after he has made his move in order to avoid desperate time scrambles at the end of a game. Increments differ from time delay in that unused time will accumulate from move to move. Fischerandom: A chess variant credited to Bobby Fischer in which the back rank pieces are randomly shuffled, eliminating the relevance of opening theory. Fish: Slang term for a chess player who has little skill or experience. Fixed center: A central formation characterized by blocked pawns. Fixed pawn structure: A structure in which the pawns have little or no mobility. A position may be fixed in a sector or globally. Flag: A physical feature (usually a small red flag) on an analog chess clock indicating when a player's time has expired. As the minute hand approaches 12:00, the flag is pushed upward. When the minute hand reaches 12:00 it no longer holds it up and the flag falls. Flag fall (a.k.a. "flagging"): Flag fall refers to the instant a player's time expires, whether or not the clock being used is equipped with a flag. Flank: The a, b, and c files on the queenside (queen's flank) and the f, g, and h files on the kingside (king's flank). Flank development/Flank opening: Openings emphasizing control of the center from a distance. See also Hypermodern. Flight square: See Escape square. FM: See FIDE master. Focal point: Technical phrase for the target square from which checkmate is to be delivered. Fool's mate: The shortest possible chess game ending in checkmate. Examples include 1. g4 e5 (or e6) 2. f4 (or f3) Qh4 mate and 1. f3 e5 2. g4 Qh4 mate. Forced move: A move for which there is no legal or reasonable alternative. When we create a situation on the board where an opponent is forced to make a certain move, we have taken the "lead" at that point in the game and may also calculate farther ahead.ï¿½ï¿½ Foresight: The ability to anticipate potential strategic or tactical operations. Forfeit: A game is considered forfeited (lost) by one or both players if they don't show up for a game; however, unplayed games do not affect a person's rating. Fork: A tactic in which one piece simultaneously attacks two of the opponent's pieces. Knights are especially useful in forking an opponent's major pieces. Forsythe-Edwards notation: A method of writing down the position of an unfinished game, devised by Scottish player David Forsythe. Beginning at the top left-hand corner of the board (a8), the position of the pieces, pawns and unoccupied squares are recorded, rank by rank. White's pieces/pawns are recorded using capital letters, while Black's are in lowercase (alternatively, Black's pieces and pawns may be circled to distinguish them). For example, the starting position is recorded as "rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR." Fortress: An endgame technique in which a player is able to create an impregnable position and thus draw the game, despite having a material deficit. Forward pawn: The lead pawn in a pawn formation. Four Knights Game: An opening that commonly begins with the moves 1) e4, e5 2) Nf3, Nc6 3) Nc3, Nf6, ending with the four knights occupying central squares. Four-Move Checkmate: See Scholar's Mate. Franklin, Benjamin: American Founding Father and 18th century chess player. Wrote The Morals of Chess . Inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 1999. Freedom: An important goal for one's pieces. A free piece has a lot of possible moves and is not required to perform defensive duties. French Defense: An opening most commonly beginning with 1) e4, e6 2) d4, d5. Fried Liver Attack: A variation of the Two Knights' Defense to the Italian Game. Frontier line: Nimzowitsch's term for an imaginary line running between the fourth and fifth ranks. Gain a tempo: See Tempo. Gambit: Italian for "trip up." A gambit is a type of opening variation in which one side offers to sacrifice at least a pawn in order to gain a lead in development/tempo, domination of the center, and/or attacking chances. Game of the Century: The Fischer-Byrne game at the 1956 Rosenwald tournament in which Fisher (age 13 at the time) brilliantly sacrificed his queen and rook to achieve checkmate. *Gaprindashvilli, Nona (Soviet Union): The fifth official Women's World Chess Champion, 1962-1978. Geller, Yefim: (Former) Soviet grandmaster active in the 1950s-1990s, Geller was an important opening theorist and one of the strongest players in the world during the second half of the 20th century. General principles: Guidelines helpful to beginning players. As they gain experience, players increasingly learn the exceptions to these guidelines. Gens una sumus: Latin for "we are one family," it is FIDE's official motto. Getting out of check: In most circumstances there are three ways to get out of check: the king may move away, a piece may be interposed between the attacking piece and the king, or the attacking piece may be captured. If, however, the attacking piece is a knight, the king must run or the knight be captured. In double check, the only way to save the king is to move him. Ghost: A ghost is a threat on the chessboard which exists only in your mind. GM: See Grandmaster. Good bishop: A bishop whose pawns, particularly the central pawns, are on opposite-colored squares from the bishop, leaving him free to move about. Goring Gambit: A variation of the Scotch Game; the opening moves are 1) e4, e5 2) Nf3, Nc6 3) d4, exd4 4) c3.... Grading: British numerical system for ranking chessplayers (not an Elo rating). Grand Prix: A special contest sponsored by USCF. All USCF players are eligible to participate. To qualify as a Grand Prix event, the tournament must offer a prize fund of more than $500. Throughout the year, "points" are awarded to those players who win open sections of tournaments that qualify as Grand Prix events. The amount of Grand Prix points available for each tournament is determined by the amount of prize money offered. At the end of the year, points are tallied and the winner is awarded a large cash prize. Grandmaster (GM): A title awarded by FIDE to players meeting an established set of performance standards, including an high Elo rating. It is the highest title, other than World Champion, attainable in chess; see requirements . Once earned, the title "grandmaster" cannot be taken away. According to FIDE records, as of 6/14/03 there were a total of 869 grandmasters in the world (only six of whom are women). Compare with the title "Woman Grandmaster" (WGM), which has a different set of requirements. Grandmaster draw: Disparaging term for a draw occurring early in a game, without any real battle having taken place. Gresser, Gisela: A top American female player of the 1950s-1960s, inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 1992. Grigoriev, Nicolai: One of the foremost composers of endgame studies, particularly king and pawn studies. Gruenfeld Defense: The opening 1) d4, Nf6 2) d4, g6 3) Nc3, d5. Guard: A piece or pawn defending another piece or pawn. Giuoco piano: Italian for "quiet game," it is a possible response Black can use with his kingside bishop in the Italian Game, continuing with 3)...Bc5. Hahn, Anna: 2003 U.S. Women's Champion. Half-open file: A file containing one or more pawns belonging to the opponent, and none belonging to oneself. Handicap: A means of trying to equalize chances in a game played between opponents of greatly differing strengths. There are several possible methods of implementing a handicap. The stronger player may, among other things: give his opponent more time on the clock (very common), give his opponent two moves in a row at the opening of the game, treat a draw as a loss, play several opponents at the same time, or remove one or more of his pieces from the board before play begins. Hanging a piece: To leave a piece unprotected and thus vulnerable to capture; see also En prise. Hanging pawns: Steinitz's term for two adjacent pawns on the fourth rank which cannot be supported by other pawns, are not passed pawns, and which are on half-open files. Harkness, Kenneth: U.S. chess organizer. Inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 1997. Harkness Score: See Median score. Harmony: The condition of one's pieces working well together. Hastings: A town in Sussex, England that has been the site of a chess congress every year since 1920. Heavy piece: See Major piece. Hedgehog: A resilient structure, normally for Black, in which most of the pawns are placed on his third rank and the bishops are usually fianchettoed. Helms, Hermann: Longstanding New York Times chess columnist of the first half of the 20th century. Inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 1988. Helpmate: A type of fairy chess composition in which both sides help checkmate Black's king. Holding: Effectively defending while under attack. Hole: A square that cannot be defended by a pawn, making it a natural base of operations for an enemy piece. Compare with Outpost. Horowitz, I.A. (a.k.a. "Al"): International master and founder of Chess Review, the first major American chess magazine. Inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 1989. Hypermodern: The theoretical school that arose in reaction to the classical approach, proposing that control of the center is better achieved from a distance than from physical occupation of the center squares. IA: See International Arbiter. ICCA: See International Computer Chess Association. ICS: See Internet chess server. Illegal move: A move which is in violation of the rules of chess (e.g., moving the rook like a bishop, placing one's own king in check, etc.). An illegal move must be taken back and replaced with a legal move using the same piece, unless no legal move is possible with that piece. If an illegal move is discovered several moves after it occurred, the game must be returned to the position it was in before the illegal move was made, as best recalled by both players. In Sudden Death, a two-minute time penalty is given for an illegal move (two minutes are added to the offended player's clock). Illegal position: An illegal position resulting from one or more illegal moves, or from setting up a position incorrectly. Ilyumzhinov, Kirsan: Controversial current FIDE President. IM: See International Master. Imbalance: A significant difference in advantage between the White and Black positions. An imbalance may be material or positional. Immobility: A deficiency of possible moves for a piece. For example, a knight may be immobilized by pawns controlling the squares to which he might otherwise move. Immortal Game: Famous game played between Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky at Simpson's-in-the-Strand, London. Inactive piece: A piece contributing nothing toward placing pressure on the opponent's position. Indian Defense: A family of openings in which Black responds to White's 1. d4 with Nf6. Initiative: Term describing the type of advantage held by a player who is leading the pace and direction of a game (e.g., via a series of threats or forcing moves), placing the opponent on the defense. Such a player is said to have "the initiative." Innovation: See Novelty. Insufficient Losing Changes: When a player using a nondigital-delay clock has less than 5 minutes remaining, he may claim a draw if he is clearly not losing but thinks he could end up losing on the clock in the final stages due to sudden death time pressure. The rule specifies that it must be a position in which a C player would draw against a master with no trouble. Since some tournaments are run without a master present to judge this, the use of digital-delay clocks is recommended to obviate this rule. Insufficient mating material: A situation in which one or both players lack enough pieces to mate their opponent, leading to a draw. Insufficient mating material is generally considered to include a lone king, a king and a bishop, a king and a knight, or, in most cases, a king and two knights. Interference: A tactical motif in which an enemy piece is lured into blocking a key line or square. Intermezzo: See Zwischenzug. International Arbiter (IA): A title first awarded by FIDE in 1951. An arbiter is nominated by his federation and may be selected by the qualification committee if he (1) has complete knowledge of the rules of chess and FIDE regulations, (2) is objective, (3) has knowledge of at least two FIDE languages (English, French, German, Spanish and Russian), and (4) has experience officiating four important tournaments, two of which must be international. International Computer Chess Association (ICCA): Organizes the World Computer Chess Championship every three years, and the World Microcomputer Chess Championship every year. International Master (IM): A title established and awarded by FIDE. An international master is a stronger player than a FIDE master but not as strong as a grandmaster; see requirements . International Rating List: FIDE publishes this list of the world's strongest players based on its own Elo-type rating scale. Internet chess server (ICS): Any of several Internet servers permitting users to play real-time chess games with others online. Interpose/interposition: A defensive move in which a piece or a pawn is placed between an enemy attacker and one's attacked piece. Interzonal Tournament: Historically, one tournament in a series of competitions held by FIDE to select a challenger to the World Champion (currently, procedures relating to arranging the world champion match are being reworked). Winners of the 14 Zonal championships would compete in an Interzonal tournament, first held in 1948. The top players from the Interzonal would play in Candidate matches until a challenger emerged. Intuition: A player's instincts for the possibilities in a position, guiding him in situations where calculation alone doesn't reveal a clear line of play. Intuition also helps a player select which moves to explore/analyze in more detail. Invasion square: A square in enemy territory on which the attacker's piece may safely land. Invitational tournament (a.k.a. "closed" tournament): An event requiring qualification or invitation in order to participate. IQP: See Isolated queen pawn. Isolani: In general, an isolated pawn; specifically, an isolated queen pawn. Isolated pawn: A pawn whose adjacent files contain no pawns of its own color. An isolated pawn is weak because it and the square in front of it cannot be defended by other pawns. Isolated queen pawn: Specifically, a d-pawn without pawns of like color on the c and e files. Italian Game: An opening that begins with the moves 1) e4, e5 2) Nf3, Nc6 3) Bc4.... J'adoube (pronounced zha-doob): French for "I adjust," this is the traditional phrase a chess player uses to indicate they are adjusting a piece on the board without the intention of moving it to another square. ï¿½ K: Abbreviation for king. Kaidonov, Gregor: Strong grandmaster from the former Soviet Union, now living in the United States. Karjakin, Sergei: Ukrainian who holds the record for youngest grandmaster ever (age 13). Karpov, Anatoly: The twelfth official World Chess Champion, 1975-1985; also FIDE champion, 1993-1998. Kashdan, Isaac: Top American player of the 1930s-1940s. Inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 1986. Kasparov, Garry (Azerbaijan): The thirteenth official World Chess Champion, 1985-2000, and still the highest-ranked grandmaster in the world. Kavalek, Lubomir: Czech/U.S. grandmaster and chess columnist for the Washington Post. Inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 2001. Keene, Raymond: British grandmaster, author and chess organizer. Keres, Paul: The strongest player in Estonian history. Keres was one of the top grandmasters in the world from the late 1930s until his tragically premature death in the mid 1970s. Key move: The unique first move in the solution to a chess problem. Khalifman, Alexander: Strong Russian grandmaster, teacher and founder of the St. Petersburg Chess School. Khalifman was the FIDE Knockout World Chess Champion in 1999. Kibitz: One who offers unsolicited advice, as in one who comments during a game or during analysis following a game. Kibitzing within the hearing of the players is not allowed during tournament play (Coach Pete says: "The price of watching someone else's game is keeping your mouth shut!"). Kibitzer: One who kibitzes. KID: See King's Indian Defense. King: The goal of a chess game is to checkmate your opponent's king while keeping your own king safe; therefore the king is the piece of highest value in a chess game and needs the most protection. A king moves one square in any direction, except when castling. King hunt: The process of driving the opponent's king out of his shelter and chasing him with the intention of checkmating him. King pawn: The pawn in front of your king at the start of the game. King pawn opening: The opening 1) e4. King safety: One of the most important goals in a chess game; castling is done with this purpose in mind. King's Gambit: An aggressive opening for White, involving 1) e4, e5 2) f4. King's Indian Defense: The opening 1) d4, Nf6 2) c4, g6 3) Nc3, Bg7 4) e4, d6. Kingside: The side of the board housing the kings at the start of a game, it is the same from both White's and Black's perspectives (the e, f, g, and h files). Kmoch, Hans: International master and author of Pawn Power in Chess, an influential work on the theory of pawn play. Knight: A chess piece which moves in an L-shaped pattern, either two squares vertically and one square horizontally, or two squares horizontally and one square vertically. The knight is the only piece that can "hop over" other pieces. Knight fork: A double attack by a knight. Knight's Tour: A chess puzzle in which the knight is moved 64 times, landing on each square of the chessboard only once. See Ulysses Challenge #3 and its solution for details. Knockout tournament: A tournament in which you are eliminated from the competition if you lose a game or a match. Koltanowski, George: U.S. International Master and Coach Pete's original chess teacher, friend and mentor. Koltanowski was one of the most important figures in U.S. chess history. Inducted into the US Chess Hall of Fame in 1986. Korchnoi, Viktor: Strong grandmaster from the 1950s to the present day. Korchnoi was the first top Soviet grandmaster to defect to the west (Switzerland, 1976). He is noted for his combative, materialistic and original style. Kotov, Alexander: Soviet grandmaster and author. Kotov wrote Think Like A Grandmaster, which was published in the early 1970s and proved to be one of the most influential books in modern chess history. Kotov's Tree of Analysis: A method of structuring one's calculation of a position. While Kotov's methodology has been refined by subsequent writers, his fundamental concept of using "candidate moves" to define the search parameters in a complex position is the bedrock of modern calculation technique. Kramnik, Vladimir: The fourteenth and current official World Chess Champion, 2000-present, and the second highest-ranked grandmaster in the world. Krush, Irina: Only 19 years old as of 2003, Irina is a popular role model with many chess accomplishments, including: International Master (first American woman to win that title), Woman Grandmaster, and 1998 U.S Women's Champion. Krylenko, Nikolai: Soviet Minister of Justice who used his power to spread organized chess through the newly formed union in the 1920s-1930s, with the goal of replacing religion as a pastime of the people. Ladder: A method of ranking chess players within a club or other group. Any player may challenge someone one step above them on the ladder. If the challenger wins, he moves up the ladder and his opponent moves down. Languageless code: A symbolic method of annotating a chess game first developed by the publisher Chess Informant, which allows players to share annotations despite language barriers. Also referred to as "international code." See our Symbols/Notation page for details. Larsen, Bent (a.k.a. The Great Dane): Larsen is the strongest player in Danish history, and was among the best players in the world in the 1960s and 1970s. Larsen's Opening: The opening 1) b3. Lasker, Emanuel: The second official World Chess Champion, 1894-1921. Inducted into the World Chess Hall of Fame in 2001. Laws of Chess: See Rules of chess. Legal move: Any move permitted by the rules of chess. If a player cannot make any legal moves and his king is not in check, the game is considered stalemated, resulting in a draw. Lï¿½gal's Mate: ï¿½A mating sequence appearing in the game between M. de Kermar Lï¿½gal and Saint Brie in about 1750, consisting of the moves: 1) e4, e5 2) Bc4, d6 3) Nf3, Bg4 4) Nc3, g6 5) Nxe5, Bxd1 6) Bxf7+, Ke7 7) ï¿½Nd5#. Leko, Peter: Brilliant young Hungarian grandmaster and one of four current (2003) contenders for the title of World Champion. Lever: When two opposing pawns are diagonal to each other on adjacent files, in a position to capture each other. Light square system: Similar to a dark square system, only typically more solid (e.g., as in the Nimzo-Indian). Lighthouse position: Coach Pete's phrase for a recognizable type of position in the middlegame or endgame that a player can use as a guide. Linares: ï¿½Small city in Spain which has been the site of numerous top international tournaments. Line clearance: The process of opening a rank, file or diagonal for one's pieces. Liquidation: The process of simplifying a position through exchanges. When a superior position is liquidated to a simpler position which is easier to play, Coach Pete refers to this process as "reduction." Living Chess: ï¿½The " performance" of a chess game wherein the pawns and pieces are represented by real people; often a re-enactment of a famous game. Lombardy, Father William: U.S. grandmaster, Catholic priest and a significant figure in U.S. (particularly New York) chess from the 1950s to 1970s. London System: The opening 1) d4, d5 2) Nf3, Nf6 3) Bf4. Long algebraic notation: ï¿½A form of algebraic notation which includes the name of the square the piece moves from, as well as the destination square--e.g., 1) e2-e4, e7-e5 2) Ng1-f3, Nb8-c6, etc. Lose: A chess game may be lost via checkmate, resignation, time forfeit or other type of forfeiture. Lose on time: ï¿½A player loses on time if he has not completed the required number of moves in the allotted period. If the opponent does not have sufficient mating material, the game is a draw. Losing chances: The degree of realistic possibilities for losing in an otherwise apparently equal position. Losing position: A position in which one side appears certain to lose, assuming best play on both sides. Losing the exchange: To give up a rook for either a bishop or a knight. Loyd, Sam (a.k.a. The Puzzle King): Legendary American composer of chess problems. Inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 1986. Lucena position: An important winning method in endgame theory. The Lucena position is the starting point for the method in which the superior side promotes a pawn in the endgame of king/rook/pawn vs. king/rook. It was first analyzed in a book by the Italian chessmaster Lucena, published in 1497. Luft: German for "air." See Escape square. Mackenzie, George: Scottish born American chessmaster and Civil War soldier. Dominated the New York chess scene for many years, winning the American Chess Championship in 1880. He was inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 1992. Magic square: In a king and pawn vs. king ending, a magic square is a square that, regardless of who is on the move, may be occupied by the attacking king, leading to a winning position by clearing a path for the pawn so it can promote. There may be three or more magic squares in a given position. See Ulysses Challenge #1 for an example. Main line: The most commonly played variation in a specific opening. Major pieces: Queens and rooks. Man: Any chess piece, including pawns. Maneuver: A series of moves unified by a central idea. Whereas a combination is unified by a tactical idea, a maneuver is unified by a strategic idea, such as the weakening of the opponent's pawn formation. Manhattan Chess Club: One of the two major/historical chess clubs in New York City. Marinello, Beatriz: Current USCF president. Marshall, Frank: Grandmaster and many-time U.S. champion. One of the world's premiere players in the first part of the 20th century. Inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 1986. Marshall Chess Club: One of the two major/historical chess clubs in New York City. Master: Title given by the USCF to players achieving a rating of 2200 or more. Match: A contest between two players (as distinguished from a tournament) and usually comprised of several games. Match of the Century: The 1970 match between the USSR and the Rest of the World. The USSR won by one point. Competitors included the following 20th century legends: Fischer, Spassky, Petrosian, Korchnoi, Larsen, Geller, Gligoric, Smyslov, Reshevsky, Botvinnik, Tal, Najdorf and Keres! Mate: See Checkmate. Mate in one (or two, or three, or four, etc.): A common type of chess problem in which the solution is checkmate in a certain number of moves, despite the opponent making the best possible moves in response. Material: The estimated value of a player's fighting force. Depending on the position, pawns are usually considered to be worth 1 point, bishops and knights 3 points, rooks 5 points, queens 9 points, and the king, of course, is priceless. The player with more points is said to have a "material advantage." Mating attack: An attack with the goal of achieving checkmate. Mating material: Sufficient material to be able to force checkmate. In addition to his king, the player in question must have at least a promotable pawn, a bishop and a knight, two bishops, a rook or a queen. Just a bishop or a knight is not enough. Two knights may constitute sufficient mating material in situations where the defending side has at least one pawn, or where there is a forced mate on the board; otherwise the position is likely to be a draw either via stalemate, three-move repetition of position or the 50-move rule. In a game where one player runs out of time first, unless the other player has sufficient mating material, the game is considered a draw, rather than a loss for the player who's flag fell first. Mating net: A positional structure in which the king is trapped and checkmate is imminent. Mating sacrifice: A material sacrifice made to achieve checkmate. MCO: Abbreviation for Modern Chess Openings. McCrary, John: Former USCF president and chess historian. Mechanical move: A poor move made with little or no thought, based on superficial understanding of a position. Mechanics' Institute: The major chess club in San Francisco, and one of the most important clubs in the United States. Median Score: Tie-breaking system applicable to Swiss tournaments. The scores of the opponents of each of the tied players are added, first throwing out the highest and lowest scores. In tournaments with a large number of rounds, two or more of the highest and lowest scores may be thrown out. Mednis, Edmar: U.S. grandmaster, author and Chess Life columnist. Inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 2000. *Menchik, Vera: The first official Women's World Chess Champion, 1927-1944. Middlegame: The second and most complex of the three phases of a chess game, typically in which most of the combat occurs. Miniature: A short, often dramatic, game of 25 moves or less, often used for teaching purposes. Minor pieces: The bishops and knights. Minority attack: The attack on a pawn majority by a pawn minority, with the object of inducing a weakness. Mobility: Freedom of movement of one's pieces. A mobile army is more flexible and easier to coordinate. Modern Benoni: The opening 1) d4, Nf6 2) c4, c5 3) d5, e6. Modern Defense (a.k.a. "The Rat"): The opening 1) e4, g6 2) d4, Bg7. Morphy, Paul: The greatest player of the mid 19th century and the originator of the positional approach to chess. Morphy was a genius with open positions. Unofficial World Chess Champion, 1858. Charter inductee into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame; inducted into the World Chess Hall of Fame in 2001. Motherboard: A form of Bughouse with three players per side, instead of two. Team members on the outer two boards pass captured men to the central board (the "motherboard"), and the central player passes captured men to either of the outer boards as needed. Move: One move technically consists of two "ply," or parts: White makes a play, followed by Black's response. My System: Aaron Nimzowitsch's enormously influential work describing his theory of chess, first published in English in 1929. N: Abbreviation for knight. Najdorf, Miguel: Popular Polish/Argentinian grandmaster. An exceptionally strong player, Najdorf was an extremely influential force in South American chess during the latter half of the 20th century. Najdorf variation: A variation of the Silician Defense involving 5)...a6. The Najdorf is one of the most powerful and well-analyzed variations in all of opening theory, and the favorite of both Fischer and Kasparov. Nakamura, Hikaru: Hikaru is the youngest American grandmaster ever, earning the title in February 2003 at age 15 years, 58 days, beating the record previously held by Bobby Fischer by 127 days. National Chess Day: October 9th. In 1976, U.S. President Gerald Ford established this date "to give special recognition to a game that generates challenge, intellectual stimulation and enjoyment for citizens of all ages." National Master: See Master. Neutralize: To eliminate or stop an enemy threat or advantage. New in Chess: The name of a highly regarded English language chess magazine from Holland; the same publishers also produce an opening theory quarterly (Yearbook). Nimzo-Indian Defense: One of Black's most dependable answers to 1) d4, the "Nimzo" runs 1)...Nf6 2) c4, e6 3) Nc3, Bb4. Nimzowitsch, Aron: Latvian/Danish grandmaster and theorist. Nimzowitsch was among the top players in the world during the 1920s and 1930s, and was one of the originators of the hypermodern approach. His books My System and Chess Praxis are among the most important chess books ever written. Nimzowitsch Defense: 1) e4, Nc6 2) d4, d5. Niro, Frank: Former USCF Executive Director. NM: See National Master. Norm: Part of a system used by FIDE for the granting of international master and grandmaster titles; see requirements . A norm is a benchmark based on achieving a predetermined score against a specified field of opponents (see also Category). Notation: System for writing down the moves of a chess game (see our Symbols/Notation page). Novelty: See Theoretical novelty. Novice: ï¿½A beginning chess player. Nunn, John: Popular British grandmaster, regarded as one of the strongest players in British history. Also one of the most literate and perceptive English language chess writers. Obstruction sacrifice: A material sacrifice intended to close a line or block a square. It is the opposite of a clearance sacrifice. Coach Pete calls this tactic "the old obstruction play." Odds: See Handicap. Official Rules of Chess: USCF publication delineating the official chess rules which must be followed in USCF-sanctioned tournaments. Old Indian Defense: An opening involving 1) d4, Nf6 2) c4, d6 3) Nc3, e5. Olympiad: Chess tournament organized by FIDE every two years, in which teams from FIDE member countries compete. It is hoped chess will also eventually become a competitive sport in the regular Olympic Games. Open file: A file without pawns on it. Such a file is often strategically critical because it provides an avenue down which the heavy pieces (queens and rooks) can easily invade the enemy position. Open game: A general name for any opening starting 1) e4, e5, leading to an open position. Double king pawn openings usually lead to open games. Open position: A position whose predominant characteristic is open lines. Typically a pair of central pawns will have been exchanged, and in many cases, all four central pawns are gone. Open tournament: A tournament with few restrictions on what types of players may participate. Opening: The initial phase of a game, incorporating the first dozen or so moves. The basic goals of the opening are to develop pieces, control the center of the board, and get the king to safety. There are dozens of standard openings which serious chess players study and may attempt to add to their repertoire. Opening repertoire: A set of openings that a player is prepared to play in advance of a game to give himself or herself an advantage. Openings: Standardized, analyzed sequences of proven effective moves made at the start of a game to either establish initiative (for White) or neutralize the opponent's initiative (for Black). There are over 1,000 recorded opening variations. Opera Box Game: Paul Morphy's celebrated win against The Duke of Brunswick and the Count Isouard during a performance of Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro" at the Paris Opera House in 1858. Opposite color bishops: A situation in which one player has only his dark squared bishop, while his opponent has only his light squared bishop. In the middlegame, opposite bishops can be a significant advantage for the attacker. In the endgame, however, such a situation generally favors the defender, often allowing him to draw a position despite being down, even as much as two pawns. Opposition: An endgame term referring to a position in which opposing kings stand on the same rank, file or diagonal, separated from each other by an odd number of squares. The player not on the move has the advantage, either because he is able to advance past the opponent's king, or because he is able to stop the opponent's king from advancing. This can be decisive in many endgame positions. Organic weakness: A weakness in the pawn structure that cannot be easily remedied. Orientation: The way the board is facing. With the correct orientation, each side will have a white square in the lower right corner. OTB: See Over-the-board chess. Outflank: To go around a piece. "Outflanking" is a fundamental technique in king and pawn endings, and is used in conjunction with opposition to break through the weaker side's defenses. Outpost: A square serving as a base in enemy territory, guarded by one's own pawn and not easily attacked by an opponent's pawn. An outpost can be a key strategic factor, and is particularly useful for the effective placement of knights. Outside passed pawn: The passed pawn which is furthest removed from the kings, thus usually in the best position to promote. It is useful for distracting the opponent's king in king-and-pawn endgames. Overextension: When a player advances too quickly, creating weaknesses in his position. Overload: See Overworked piece. Overprotection: Nimzowitsch's strategy of coordinating one's pieces via excessive protection of a well-placed piece or controlled square. Over-the-board chess (OTB): Chess games played face to face, as opposed to playing online, correspondence chess or computer chess. Overworked piece: A tactic in which an opponent's piece is forced to carry out more than one function at a time. P: Abbreviation for pawn. Pairings: A listing of who plays who in a tournament. Pairing charts are posted before each round and also indicate which board number each player is to play on, and which color of pieces they will have (White or Black). Pan American Intercollegiate: The top college teams in the Western Hemisphere compete each December--see also Final Four of College Chess. Palciauskas, Victor: U.S. correspondence chess grandmaster and world champion. Inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 1993. Pandolfini, Bruce: American chessmaster and teacher. Bruce's character was portrayed by Ben Kingsley in the movie "Searching for Bobby Fischer." He is also a well-known chess author and a regular contributor to Chess Life magazine. Passed pawn: A pawn not opposed by enemy pawns, either on its own file or adjacent files, increasing the odds of eventual promotion. Passive: A move which does not make a threat or increase the pressure on the opponent's position. Patzer: German word for a weak player. Pawn: The foot soldier of the chess board, pawns move straight ahead one square at a time (optionally two squares on its first move) but capture diagonally. If a pawn reaches the eighth rank, it must be promoted to another piece. Because there are so many of them (eight per side), pawns are a dominant factor in chess strategy. See also En passant, regarding a special type of pawn move. Pawn break: See Lever. Pawn breakthrough: Getting a pawn through a defending line of enemy pawns, often by sacrificial means. Pawn chain: A diagonal row of blocked White and Black pawns which protect each other. Pawn duo: Two pawns on the same rank on adjacent files. Many openings aim to create a pawn duo on e4/d4 to dominate the center of the board. Pawn endgame: An endgame that just involves kings and pawns. Pawn formation: See Pawn structure. Pawn Game: A teaching game in which each player has only his eight pawns in their original setup. The normal rules of chess apply, and the winner is the first player to get a pawn to the other side of the board. The game can be varied by adding various pieces to the board to allow a student to get a feel for the interplay of pawns and specific pieces. Pawn grabbing:ï¿½ A "pawn grabber" is a player who wins pawns in the opening at the expense of development. While this dangerous strategy is generally criticized by classical opening theory, contemporary analysis suggests there are situations in which it may be a good strategy. Pawn island: A group of two or more side-by-side pawns which are separated from any other pawn groups of their own color by at least one file. Pawn islands are generally a weakness because they are harder to defend from enemy attacks. Pawn majority: When a player has more pawns than their opponent on a given sector of the board. Pawn minority: When a player has fewer pawns than their opponent on a given sector of the board. Pawn promotion: See Promotion. Pawn push: Slang for advancing a pawn. Pawn roller: An advancing group of pawns of the same color on adjoining files. A pawn roller on central files can be a powerful attacking force because, for instance, two pawns together may control four files, clearing the board of hostile pieces. Pawn skeleton: See Pawn structure. Pawn storm: Two or more advancing connected pawns. A pawn storm is typically employed to attack the opponent's king by driving away defenders and eliminating the king's pawn shield. Pawn structure: The arrangement of the pawns of both White and Black on the board. Pawn structure is a major factor in developing good strategy in a given position. There are many standard pawn structures which have been studied in detail. Perpetual check: An endless series of checks to an opponent's king, not leading to checkmate, and culminating in a draw. While players often refer to "drawing by perpetual check," there is no such actual provision in the rules. Technically such draws occur by agreement or the "triple repetition of a position" rule. Petite combination: A combination involving only a few moves and/or affording apparently small gains for the side making the combination. Capablanca was a particular master of the petite combination. Petroff Defense (a.k.a. Russian Game): An opening involving 1) e4, e5 2) Nf3, Nf6. Petrosian, Tigran: Petrosian was noted for his profound positional play and prophylactic style. The ninth official World Chess Champion, 1963-1969. Inducted into the World Chess Hall of Fame in 2003. PGN: See Portable game notation. Phalanx: Greek military formation invented by Alexander the Great and perfected by the Roman legions. In chess, pawns form a phalanx when there are at least two of them standing next to each other on adjacent files. This is typically a strong formation, since a phalanx controls a minimum of four squares immediately in front of it. Philidor, Andre: French chessmaster and musician of the 18th century. Philidor was the first player to appreciate the importance of the pawns in chess strategy. He is famous for his aphorism, "Pawns are the soul of chess." Philidor position: An important drawing method in endgame theory. The Philidor position is the starting point for the fundamental method by which the inferior side draws the endgame of king/rook/pawn vs. king/rook. It was first analyzed by Philidor in the 18th century. Philidor's Defense: An opening involving 1) e4, e5 2) Nf3, d6. Piece: In the USCF rulebook, "piece" refers to any chessman (including pawns). However, in more common usage "piece" refers only to rooks, knights, bishops and queens. A third possible usage refers more specifically to just a bishop or a knight, as in "I'm up by a piece." Pig: Slang for a rook. Pigs on the seventh: Slang for two rooks doubled on the opponent's seventh rank (a.k.a. "the feeding trough"), ready to gobble up the opponent's pieces and pawns, and/or trap the opponent's king. Pillsbury, Harry Nelson: American master and winner of the great Hastings 1895 tournament. Pillsbury was famous for memory feats, and often played exhibitions that included a dozen chess games and a dozen checkers games, played simultaneously blindfolded while he was also playing double whist (a progenitor of bridge). Pillsbury was inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 1986. Pillsbury formation: The Pillsbury formation is characterized by a knight on e5, pawns on d4, f4, and e3, and normally a bishop on d3. It is a standard attacking formation developed by Harry Nelson Pillsbury, which has become a standard method of play in many queen pawn openings. Pin: One of the most important tactical devices in a chess game. A piece is pinned when it cannot move away from an enemy attack because it is shielding a more valuable piece behind it. If that piece is the king, then the pin is "absolute" because the pinned piece may not legally move. If the shielded piece is any other type, then the pin is "relative" because the pinned piece has the legal option to move. Pirc, Vasja (pronounced "Peertz"): Yugoslavian grandmaster and an important theorist of the opening sequence which came to be called the "Pirc Defense." Pirc Defense: The opening sequence: 1) e4, d6 2) d4, Nf6 3) Nc3, g6. Plan: A unified strategy to gain a specific goal, for instance to gain control over the center or to weaken the enemy king's defenses. Most plans are short-range in nature, encompassing only the next four or five moves of the game. Long-range plans are more general, and are typically made up of a series of short-range plans. Playbook: Coach Pete's term referring to the tactical weapons a player is prepared to use in a game, depending on how it progresses. Ply: Technically, moves in a chess game consists of two "ply" or parts--i.e., White takes a turn (one ply), followed by Black's response (two ply). Used most often in the context of computer chess. Point count: An approximate scale used to judge when it is appropriate to exchange one piece for another. In this system, a pawn is valued at 1 point, a knight or a bishop at 3 points, a rook at 5 points and the queen at 9 points. Various positional factors in a game can change these point values dramatically. (The king is not given a numeric value since he cannot be exchanged, and, of course, in a sense he is priceless; however, when the king actively participates in battle during the endgame he has an approximate working value of 3-4 points.) Poisoned pawn: A pawn sacrifice in the opening which promises serious trouble for the player accepting it (e.g., White's b2 pawn in some openings). Polgar family: Well-known Hungarian family which has produced three strong female chess players. See our Girls Only page for more info. Polgar, Judit: The strongest female player in the history of chess. Judit is the first woman to be able to compete with the elite male "Super Grandmasters" as an equal. She has, at times, been ranked among the top ten players in the world. Polgar, Zsuzsa (Susan): Never defeated in a match, she was the ninth official Women's World Chess Champion (1996-1999). Susan, who is Judit's older sister, now lives in the U.S. and continues to be very active in the chess world, serving as the USCF Women's Chess Committee chairperson, and working as a chess trainer and author. See our Girls Only page for more details. Ponomariov, Ruslan (Ukraine): FIDE Knockout World Chess Champion in 2002, and one of four current (2003) contenders for the title of World Champion. Portable Game Notation (PGN): Chess games stored in a cross-platform software format (.pgn) which may be read by all major chess database programs. Position: The arrangement of the pieces and pawns of both White and Black at a given point in a game. The ability to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of a position and to develop an appropriate plan of action is a critical skill among strong players, and is developed over time through serious study and play. Positional advantage: A type of advantage based on beneficial pawn structure and/or position of the pieces, as opposed to the material balance in a game. Positional chess: A style of play focusing on long-range considerations, including the gradual building up of small advantages, as opposed to short-term tactical infighting. Positional mistake: A strategic error, such as poor placement of a piece, as opposed to a tactical error. Positional sacrifice: A material sacrifice which is not followed by immediate material gain, or even the recovery of the sacrificed material, but instead seeks strategic advantage or compensation through such things as superior pawn structure, better piece coordination, or central domination. Post mortem: Analysis of a game shortly after its conclusion, usually done by the players themselves. Postal chess: See Correspondence Chess. Prepared variation: An opening variation which a player has analyzed in advanced, especially one containing a new move or idea in a standard line. Preventive sacrifice: The sacrifice of a piece with the purpose of preventing the opponent from castling, usually leading to a direct assault on the king trapped in the middle of the board. Promotable pawn: A pawn which has realistic chances for promotion. Promotion (a.k.a. "queening"): When a pawn reaches the last rank on the opposite side of the board it is replaced with either a queen, rook, bishop or knight. The piece a pawn is promoted to does not need to be one previously captured, so there may be two or more queens of the same color on the board at one time, or three knights, etc. The queen is most often used when promoting, since it is the most powerful piece; however, in certain positions a rook or a bishop may be better (i.e., to avoid stalemating), or a knight may be needed to give check or arrive at checkmate. The battle to promote pawns is one of the key struggles in most endgames. Prophylaxis: Term first used in the context of chess by Aron Nimzowitsch, it is the critical process of anticipating one's opponent's intentions and taking steps to thwart his/her plan. World Champions Tigran Petrosian and Anatoly Karpov have been well-known for their prophylactic styles of play. Protected passed pawn: A passed pawn that is supported by another pawn. Q: Abbreviation for queen. QGA: See Queen's Gambit Accepted. QGD: See Queen's Gambit Declined. Quad: A type of round robin or "all play all" tournament with four players in each section; thus, three rounds are played. Queen: The queen is the most powerful chess piece, as she has the combined powers of a rook and a bishop, and thus is able to move along a rank, file or diagonal. Queen pawn: The pawn sitting in front of one's queen at the start of the game. Queen pawn opening: Any opening starting with 1) d4, d5 in which White does not continue with c4 within the next few moves. Queen's Gambit: An opening beginning with 1) d4, d5 2) c4. Queen's Gambit Accepted: A possible response for Black to the Queen's Gambit opening, with 2)...dxc4. Queen's Gambit Declined: A possible response for Black to the Queen's Gambit opening, with 2)...e6. Queen's Indian Defense: The opening 1) d4, Nf6 2) c4, e6 3) Nf3, b6. Queen Raid: See Scholar's Mate. Queening square: The square on which a pawn promotes (eighth rank for White and first rank for Black). The pawn may also promote to a knight, bishop or rook, but it is called the "queening" square because a queen is most often selected. Queenside: The side of the board on which the queens reside at the start of a game, including the d, c, b, and a files. Quick chess (a.k.a. Action Chess or Rapid Chess): Timed games of between 10-29 minutes. May be USCF-rated; however, these games fall into a separate rating category from standard chess, which are games lasting 30 minutes or more. Quiet move: An unassuming move that is not a capture, check, or direct threat. R: Abbreviation for rook. Rabbit: Prey for a chessmaster. ;-) Radjabov, Teimour: Up and coming young grandmaster from Azerbaijan. Ram: Two pawns butted up against each other; for example, a White pawn on e4 and a Black pawn on e5. Term first coined by Hans Kmoch. Rank: Any of the eight horizontal rows on a chessboard designated in algebraic notation by the numbers 1-8. Rapid Chess: See Quick Chess. Rat: See Modern Defense. Rating: A numeric approximation of a player's strength based on his tournament results against other players. See our Ratings page for more info. Reduction: Coach Pete's philosophy of using exchanges to simplify a complex position to a more straightforward position which is easier to play. "Lighthouse positions" often provide a player with the proper direction for reduction by giving a player something recognizable to steer toward. Refutation: Analysis proving that a previously accepted move or variation is inferior upon comparison to a better one, assuming best play on both sides. Reinfeld, Fred: U.S. master and prolific author of the 1940s-1960s. Inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 1996. Related squares: See Coordinate squares. Remis: German for draw. Removing the guard: See Destruction. Reshevsky, Samuel: Polish-born chess prodigy/strong U.S. grandmaster. Many-time U.S. champion. Inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 1986. Resignation: Graciously surrendering a lost position, rather than taking the time and energy to play it out. The proper way to indicate you are resigning is to either gently tip your king over, or simply say, "I resign." Restricted position: See Cramped position. Reti opening: The opening 1) Nf3, d5 2) c4. Reti study: A famous king and pawn study composed by the Czech grandmaster Richard Reti, in which White achieves a seemingly impossible draw. Retrograde analysis: A type of chess puzzle in which the challenge is to deduce the previous moves or explain how the position was reached. Rohde, Michael: U.S. grandmaster and Chess Life columnist. Rim: The edge of a chess board. "Knights on the rim are dim" is a common expression, because a knight's possible movements are greatly reduced on the edge of the board. Risk: The possibility of losing in a given position, or of at least reaching an inferior position. Romantic: A risky style of play involving bold attacks and sacrifices, exemplified well by Adolf Anderssen and just about everybody prior to Morphy. Rook: The second strongest piece on the board. Rooks move horizontally and vertically. Rook endgame: An endgame involving only kings, rooks and (usually) pawns. Rook lift: A maneuver designed to propel the rook off the back rank and closer to the battlezone by bringing it off the first rank (typically to the third rank) and sliding it to the side, in front of its own pawns. Root, Alexey: Former U.S. Women's Champion, associate director of the chess program at University of Texas, Dallas, and advocate for women's chess. Round: Any one of a series of games (typically 3-9) played in a given tournament. Round robin tournament: Also called "all play all." A tournament where each competitor plays one game with every other competitor. Royal fork: Slang for when the king and queen are forked. Royal game: Common name for the game of chess. Rubinstein, Akiba: Polish grandmaster and one of the greatest players of the first half of the 20th century. Rubinstein was a great endgame player, and was especially famous for his skill in rook and pawn endings. Rubtsova, Olga: The fourth official Women's World Chess Champion, 1956-1962. Rudenko, Liudmila: The second official Women's World Chess Champion, 1950-1953. Rule of the square: A technique used in king and pawn endings to determine whether a king can catch an enemy pawn racing to promote. The spaces between the pawn and the promotion square are counted as one side of the square. If the defending king is in the square or on his move can enter the square he is able to catch the pawn, assuming he has a clear path to the promotion square. Russian Defense: See Petroff Defense. Ruy Lopez (a.k.a. Spanish Game): One of the oldest recorded chess openings, involving 1) e4, e5 2) Nf3, Nc6 3) Bb5. It was first analyzed in 1561 by the chess-playing Spanish priest Ruy Lopez, in his book Libro del Ajedrez. Sac: Slang for a sacrifice. Sacrifice: When a player voluntarily gives up material in order to gain an advantage, such as in space, tempo, pawn structure, or attacking force in a specific sector of the board. A gambit is a type of sacrifice, as it involves giving up a pawn in the opening in order to gain a lead in development. Another type of sacrifice is giving up a piece in order to break down the pawn shield in front of the enemy king as part of a mating attack. Sacrifices are often risky, since the eventual consequences are not always calculable. Sadler, Matthew: One of the strongest of the younger British grandmasters, he has now retired from active play. Author of several high quality chess books. Safe: A square not guarded by the enemy. Scandinavian Defense (a.k.a. Center-Counter Defense): The opening 1) e4, d5. Scholar's Mate (a.k.a. Four-Move Checkmate or Queen Raid): 1. e4 e5 ï¿½2. Qh5 Nc6 ï¿½3. Bc4 Nf6 4. Qxf7mate. This opening is one that everybody is likely to encounter at least once in a while, so it's important to be aware of it and how to defend against it. See Coach Pete's page on Trouncing the Four-Move Checkmate . Schvenningen variation: A variation of the Sicilian Defense involving the Black pawn formation e6/d6. Schwartzman, Gabriel: Young U.S. grandmaster and teacher. Score: 1) "Keeping score" means writing down all the moves of a game; 2) "the score" is the indication of players' results in a game, match, or tournament. Scorebook/scoresheet: Where to record a chess game. Scotch Gambit: A variation of the Scotch Game (below) in which, after the standard 3)...exd4, White refrains from recapturing the pawn immediately and instead focuses on development with 4) Bc4. Scotch Game: An opening beginning with the moves 1) e4, e5 2) Nf3, Nc6 3) d4. Sealed Move: Only necessary when a game is adjourned, it is the last move made before the adjournment, and is recorded on the playerï¿½s score sheet, but not played on the board. Both playersï¿½ scoresheets are then put in a sealed envelope and given to the arbiter. Second: One who helps a chess player prepare for a game or match. Section: A specific group of players who compete against each other in a tournament. Tournaments may have several sections. Players may be placed in sections according to a rating range (or "unrated" status), age or grade, or a variety of other possible categorizing factors. Seirawan, Yasser: Highly respected international competitor, author, and international chess diplomat, now living in Holland. A native of Seattle, Yasser is the highest-rated player in Northwest history, and one of the top U.S grandmasters. Semi-closed systems: A family of openings beginning with d4 and followed by any move other than d5 (contrast with double queen pawn openings), resulting in a "semi-closed" game. Semi-open file: See Half-open file. Semi-open systems: A family of openings beginning with e4 and followed by any move other than e5 (contrast with double king pawn openings), resulting in a "semi-open" game. Semi-Slav Defense: A variation of the Slav Defense that continues: 3) Nf3, Nf6 4) Nc3, e6. Serper, Gregory: Strong grandmaster from the former Soviet Union, now settled in the United States. Seventh rank (or second rank for Black): Usually the best place for a rook if the opponent's king is still on their back rank. Shabalov, Alexander: Former Soviet/now U.S. grandmaster and current (2003) U.S. champion. Shabalov is known for his dynamic and often risky style of play. Shahade, Jennifer: 2002 U.S. Women's Champion, chess writer and popular young role model. Sham sacrifice: A move which appears to be a sacrifice, but if accepted will yield the player offering the piece an almost immediate gain in material, or a strong positional advantage. Sharp: A position containing significant tactical complications and, normally, a good deal of risk. Shirov, Alexei: Latvian/Spanish grandmaster and one of the top players in the world. Shirov is noted for his complex, tactical style of play. He is one of the premier opening theorists in the world, as well as a remarkably talented endgame player. Short, Nigel: Top British grandmaster who challenged Garry Kasparov for the world title in 1992 and lost. Short side defense: The standard method for drawing the ending of K/R/P vs. K/R in cases where the Philidor defensive method isn't possible. Shot: Slang for a strong, and often surprising, tactical move. Shouldering: See Body Check. Sicilian Defense (to the king's pawn): Once defined by Larry Evans as, "An opening system invented by the Mafia, which embodies many of their highest principles." [Ha ha!--just kidding]. ;-) Seriously, the Sicilian Defense is the most popular and well-analyzed family of openings in modern tournament chess. It begins with 1) e4, c5, followed by sharp positions and exciting play. Simplify: To trade pieces in order to quiet down a position, eliminate the opponent's attacking potential, or clarify a situation. The player with the superior position is usually better off simplifying than the player with the inferior position. Simplifying down to just kings and pawns generally makes it easier to promote a pawn. Simul: Short for Simultaneous exhibition. Simultaneous exhibition: An event where a strong player plays several opponents at the same time. Multiple boards are set up in a circle or rectangle, and the single player stands inside this area, moving from board to board, making a single move at each pass. Skewer (a.k.a. X-ray): A tactic in which two of an opponent's pieces on the same line are attacked. For example, if a bishop were to threaten the opponent's rook and, say, the opponent also has a knight in the same line behind the rook. The rook must move to avoid capture, exposing the knight behind it to capture instead. Skittles: Informal chess. A skittles room at a tournament is an area where you can look over games with someone, talk out loud, eat and/or play in a casual environment in between rounds. Slav Defense: An opening beginning 1) d4, d5 2) c4, c6. Smothered mate: A checkmating pattern in which the losing king is unable to move out of check because all the squares around him are occupied by his own pieces. Smyslov, Vasily: (Former) Soviet grandmaster known for his extremely well-rounded style. The seventh official World Chess Champion, 1957-1958. Inducted into the World Chess Hall of Fame in 2003. Solkoff score: A tie-breaking system used in Swiss tournaments. A player's Solkoff score is equal to the scores of all his opponents. Soltis, Andrew: U.S. grandmaster and long time Chess Life columnist. Sonneborn-Berger score: A tie-breaking system specifically designed for use in round robin (or "all play all") tournaments. An individual's Sonneborn-Berger score equals the sum of the scores of the players he/she has beaten, plus half of the sum of the scores of the players they drew with. Space: The territory controlled by each player. Space advantage: When a player controls more of the board than his opponent (may be global or sectoral). Generally means having more mobile pieces, and the ability to better create or defend against threats. Spanish game: See Ruy Lopez. Spassky, Boris: Likeable "Russian bear" and one of the great attacking players in the history of the game. The tenth official World Chess Champion, 1969-1972. Lost his title to Bobby Fischer in an hugely publicized match at the height of the Cold War. Inducted into the World Chess Hall of Fame in 2003. Speculative sacrifice: A player is said to sacrifice "on spec" when his decision is based on his intuitive feel for the possibilities in a position, rather than concrete calculation of possible variations. The late world champion Mikhail Tal was especially known such speculative sacrifices, as is Alexei Shirov today. Spite check: When a player who is clearly about to be checkmated responds by checking their opponent's king, even though this does not thwart the checkmate, but only delays it. Square clearance: See Clearance. Square of a pawn: See Rule of the square. Stalemate: A position in which the player on the move has no legal options, and his king is not in check, thus the game cannot continue. Stalemates are recorded as a draw (1/2 point to each player) in tournament play. Standings chart: The posted results of each round in a tournament, sorted by players' current standings. Contrast with Wall chart. Staunton chessmen: A pattern of chess pieces named after 19th century British champion Howard Staunton and considered tournament standard throughout the world. The set was designed in 1835 by Nathaniel Cook, who later convinced Howard Staunton that they should be designated Staunton chessmen. Originally made by Jaques of London , they are also frequently referred to as "Jaques" sets. Steinitz, Wilhelm: Czech/American who was the first to enumerate the principles of modern chess theory, much of it arising from analysis of Paul Morphy's games. Steinitz was also the first official World Chess Champion, 1886-1894. Inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 1987 and the World Chess Hall of Fame in 2001. Strategy: The logic behind a player's moves. A strategy is a set of definable goals a player wants to carry out, while tactics involve how he/she goes about achieving them. See also Plan. Study: An especially instructive and/or beautiful position (usually a composition) in which one side is challenged to find a clear way to win or draw the game. Studies differ from some other types of chess problems, in that they could actually occur in a real game. Style: The individual way a player approaches the game, reflecting his/her personality and preferences. Style shows up best in positions that have more than one reasonable way to continue. In games between players with differing styles (for example, a bold attacker vs. a quiet positional player), the winner is likely to be the one who successfully imposes his/her style on their opponent. Sudden death: A type of final time control often used in tournaments, in which a specified number of minutes are given to finish a game. The person who runs out of time first loses, if a conclusion has not otherwise already been reached (unless the time winner has insufficient mating material, in which case the game is a draw). Support point: A square from which one piece can protect a fellow piece. Sveshnikov variation: A variation of the Sicilian Defense involving 2)...Nc6 3) d4, cxd4 4) Nxd4, Nf6 5) Nc3, e5. Swindle: A combination employed by a player in a losing position, which converts his position to a win or a draw. While such a turnabout ultimately depends on luck (i.e., the opponent is not forced to play weak moves allowing such a swindle), strong players are adept at creating the conditions in which such mistakes are more likely. Swiss system tournament: For large tournaments in which a round round format would be impractical, the Swiss system is most often used. Players are paired with opponents achieving similar results in a set number of rounds. For details, see our Competition page. Symmetrical position: A position in which the placement of each side's pieces and pawns mirrors that of the opponent's. A good deal of theory has been developed regarding proper play in such positions. Tablebase: A computer database comprised of all the possible endgame variations involving a limited number of pieces. Tablebases allow top computer programs to play out such endgames perfectly. Tactics: The "hand-to-hand combat" of the chessboard, involving making immediate threats and following through on them, or, as the defender, countering them, as need be. Specific tactics include pins, forks, skewers, checking the opponent's king, capturing the opponent's pieces or pawns, traps, promoting pawns, making forcing moves to gain a tempo, forcing stalemate to avoid losing, etc. Take back: Sometimes kids and/or beginning chessplayers change their minds after making a move and want to take it back and replay it. However, this is illegal according to chess rules. Players might agree to allow take backs in casual play, but it's not good practice because it prevents the development of the self-discipline required to sort through all the possible moves to determine the best one, rather than making an impulsive move. Tal, Mikhail (Misha): Latvian grandmaster noted for his daring, complex style, wit and passion for chess. The eighth official World Chess Champion, 1960-1961. Inducted into the World Chess Hall of Fame in 2003. Tarrasch, Siegbert (Germany): Top grandmaster, author and teacher. Tarrasch popularized many of Steinitz's strategic ideas. Tarrasch variation: A variation of the French Defense involving 3) Nd2. Tartakower, Saviely: Strong Polish grandmaster and chess wit. Tartakower was famous for quips such as, "The winner of a chess game is the player who makes the next-to-last mistake." TD: Abbreviation for tournament director. Team tournament: An event in which several players compete as a team. The most common format is match play, in which the players on one team face those on another team in a match contested on several boards (typically four). The team winning the most games wins the match point. Each team will play a number of matches in such a tournament. This is the format of the Chess Olympics and the U.S. Amateur Team Championships, as well as the Oregon Scholastic Team Championships. Other events may be organized as combined individual/team tournaments, in which the scores of some or all of the individual players on a team (once again, typically four) are totaled to produce a team score. This format is used in the U.S. National Scholastic Championships, and also the qualifying tournaments for the Oregon State Scholastic Championships. Tempo: Italian for "time," this term refers to a single move in a chess game ("tempi" means two or more moves). To "gain a tempo" means to get ahead of your opponent by a move at the beginning of a game, which may translate to a lead in development of pieces, an advantage such as control of the center squares, etc. This may be accomplished by forcing one's opponent to waste a turn because of having to move the same piece twice or defend a piece rather than making a preferable move. The opponent in such a situation is said to "lose a tempo" because they get behind by a move. The goal of gaining a tempo is the rationale behind many gambit-type openings. See also Initiative. The Week in Chess (TWIC): An extremely popular, frequently updated webzine, great for keeping up with top international chess news and downloading games. Thematic move: A move which advances a key element of a player's strategic plan. For example, if White had the idea of attacking Black's king castled on the kingside, the move Qh5 would be a thematic move because it brings the White queen into the Black king's attacking zone, . Theoretical novelty: A new move or idea in an established opening variation. Theory: Well- known opening, middle game, and endgame move sequences and positions, as well as the variations they lead to, which have been analyzed by masters and published in books, magazines and/or computer databases. Threat: An aggressive move leading to winning material or some other type of advantage on a subsequent move, if the opponent does not counter it. Three-fold repetition: See Triple repetition of a position. Tie-Break System: Any of a number of methods for determining a single winner in a tournament which has resulted in a tied score. See our Competition page for more info. Time control: In competitive chess, a time control is a specified amount of time each player has on the clock in which to either complete the game or make a required number of moves. Time delay: A feature on some digital chess clocks in which a certain number of seconds (usually 5) is added to the beginning of each move for both players; this added time does not accumulate from move to move. The purpose is to take some of the pressure off in "time crunch" situations. Time forfeit: See Lose on time. Time pressure: When there is little time left on the clock for making each move before one's allotted time expires, making blunders more likely. In a time control requiring that x number of moves be made, having less than one minute per move on the clock is generally considered a time pressure situation. In sudden death controls, time pressure is generally considered to be less than five minutes on the clock in which to complete the game. Time scramble: A situation in which both players are under time pressure. Time trouble: See Time pressure. Timman, Jan: Strong Dutch grandmaster and editor of New in Chess magazine. TN: See Theoretical novelty. Top board (a.k.a. first board): 1) The strongest player on a team, who will be paired against the strongest players on opposing teams in a team tournament; 2) board #1 in an individual tournament, on which the top-ranked player competes unless/until an opponent knocks him or her out. Topalov, Veselin: World class Bulgarian grandmaster, currently ranked among the top ten players in the world. Torre Attack: The opening 1) d4, Nf6 2) Nf3, e6 3) Bg5. Touch-Move rule: According to the USCF rule book, "a player on the move who deliberately touches one or more pieces of the same color, in a manner which may reasonably be interpreted as the beginning of a move, must move or capture the first piece touched that can be moved or captured." However, if such a move would be illegal this rule cannot be enforced. Also, it does not apply in situations where a player was adjusting a piece and not intending to move it (in which case they must either announce "I adjust" or "J'adoube"--the French phrase which means the same thing). While players sometimes do not enforce the touch-move rule with each other during casual games, it's important to be aware that it is a fundamental rule of chess, not just for tournament play. Tournament: A competition among more than two chess players. Tournament book: Less commonly produced than they once were, a tournament book is a collection of some or all of the games of a tournament. Tournament books often also include annotations of interesting or important games, as well as crosstables, background information on players, etc. Tournament director: According to USCF, rated tournaments involving more than 49 participants are to be run by a local tournament director meeting certain requirements (e.g., a certified TD must be a chess player themselves, with an established rating). Smaller or unrated tournaments may be run by a "club" director, which requires fewer qualifications, although they must be familiar with the USCF Official Rules of Chess. Senior directors, national directors and international arbiters are the more experienced TDs who run large events. In general, a tournament director's role is to act as an impartial referee by resolving potential disputes, overseeing pairings, and enforcing official chess rules, as well as whatever additional rules may apply in a particular tournament. Tournament organizer: The individual responsible for the venue, prize distribution, and other details necessary to run a successful tournament. Tournament types: See Round Robin, Knockout, Swiss System, Open, Closed, Invitational. Trade: See Exchange. Trading queens: Exchanging queens is a common strategy when a player is either ahead in material or facing a strong enemy attack. Transition: Moves made at the point when a game is changing phases (i.e., from the middlegame to the endgame). Transitions are often difficult to play well and can have a decisive impact on the outcome of a game. Transposition: Obtaining the same position in a standard opening by using an alternative series of moves. For example, the French Defense is usually reached by 1) e4 e6 2) d4 d5. However, 1) d4 e6 2) e4 d5 transposes to the identical position. Trap: A tactic designed to trick the opponent into making a mistake or losing material. Trending down: A position is said to be "trending down" for a player when their chances are decreasing. Trending up: A position is said to be "trending up" for a player when their chances are increasing. Triangulation: A technique used generally in king and pawn endgames in which one side's king deliberately takes an extra ("round about") move in getting to a key square, in order to gain the advantage in opposition. See also Opposition. Triple repetition of position: An official rule which applies when the same exact position is repeated three times in a game, though not necessarily on consecutive moves, and requiring that the same player be on the move at each repetition, with both players having the same move possibilities. If a player can demonstrate this (another good reason to keep an accurate score sheet), he/she may claim a draw, which is better than a loss in the case of an inferior position. See also Perpetual check. Tripled pawns: Three pawns of the same color on the same file. Trompowksy Attack: The opening 1) d4, Nf6 2) Bg5. TWIC: See The Week in Chess. Two Knights Defense: A possible response for Black to the Italian Game, involving 3)...Nf6. Unclear position: A position wherein it cannot be determined with certainty which side has the advantage. Underpromotion: Promoting a pawn to a piece other than a queen; useful in certain situations for specific reasons. Unit: Term referring to either a piece or a pawn. Unrated: A player is unrated if they have never played a rated game, or if they have not yet received an official rating from USCF. A tournament, or section thereof, may also be unrated, as long as it doesn't contain any players with a published rating. USCF: United States Chess Federation. The official governing body for chess in the United States. See our USCF/FIDE page for more info. Value: The amount a piece contributes to the overall firepower of an army. Variation: A series of moves within a game which have an unifying purpose. Opening variations are established series of moves at the start of a game. Vienna Game: An opening that begins with the moves 1) e4, e5 2) Nc3.... Vukcevich, Milan: U.S. master from Cleveland inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 1998. Waiting move: A move purposely designed to put the opponent on move without changing the basic structure of the position. Waitzkin, Josh: Now a grown man and an international master, Josh is the true character on which the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer is based. Wall chart: Tabular information periodically posted at a tournament which shows players sorted by their original rankings and to which cumulative results are added. Contrast with Standings chart. Weak square: A tactically or strategically important square which cannot be easily defended. Weak square complex (usually dark or light): A collection of related weak squares for one side--e.g., if Black had pawns on h7, g6, f7, e6 (all light squares) and no dark-squared bishop available for defending those squares, he could be said to have a "weak dark square complex." Weakness: An attackable target in a player's position, such as an exposed king position, a hanging piece, etc. WFM: See Woman FIDE Master. WGM: See Woman Grandmaster. Whisper: Spectator comments on a chess game in progress which are made outside of the players' hearing range (common practice on the Internet as well). Wijk aan Zee (pronounced Vike-on-zay): Dutch site of the annual Super GM tournament sponsored by Corus. Wild: A position featuring complex and often unclear tactical possibilities, in which both players have significant chances of either winning or losing. WIM: See Woman International Master. Win: Achieving a win is the chief goal in a game of chess, of course, and may result from checkmating your opponent, accepting your opponent's resignation, or time forfeit by your opponent. Winawer variation: A variation of the French Defense involving 3) Nc3, Bb4. Wing: See Flank. Winning chances: The level of realistic possibilities for victory in an otherwise apparently equal position. Winning move: A move leading directly, though perhaps not immediately, to a winning position. Winning position: A position in which one side appears certain to win, assuming best play on both sides play. Winning the exchange: To give up either a knight or a bishop for a rook. Wolff, Patrick: U.S. grandmaster, two-time U.S. champion and chess columnist for the Boston Globe. Woman FIDE Master: Title granted by FIDE (see requirements ). Woman Grandmaster: Title granted by FIDE (see requirements ). Woman International Master: Title granted by FIDE (see requirements ). Woodpusher: Derogatory term for a player who shows little or no understanding of chess. World champion: The top chess player in the world at a given point in time, proven via the appropriate competitive results. The first "official" world champion was Steinitz, and the lineage follows with Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Euwe, Botvinnik, Smyslov, Tal, Petrosian, Spassky, Fischer, Karpov, Kasparov and, currently, Kramnik. Ever since Kasparov broke with FIDE in 1992, various organizations have claimed the right to name the "true" world champion. However, the title has traditionally been passed from champion to champion via an extended head-to-head match (the last such match occurred in London in 2000, when Vladimir Kramnik wrested the title from longstanding world champion Garry Kasparov). Plans are currently underway to reunify the world title through the following matches: the winner of Kramnik (generally accepted to be the current official world champion) vs. Leko will play the winner of Kasparov vs. Ponomariov (the current FIDE world champion), in order to determine the current, undisputed world champion. World Chess Federation: See FIDE. x: Symbol indicating capture in notation. **Xie, Jun (China): The seventh official Women's World Chess Champion 1991-1996, and again 1999-2000. X-ray: See Skewer. Yugoslav Attack: White's most common attacking idea in the Sicilian Dragon, in which he supports the center with f3 and castles queenside in preparation for carrying out a kingside pawn storm. Yermolinksy, Alex: (Former) Soviet/U.S. grandmaster, several-time U.S. champion and author. Yusupov, Artur: World class (former) Soviet grandmaster now living in Germany, former World Junior Champion, several-time candidate for the world championship, well known student/teaching partner of Mark Dvoretsky, and outstanding chess author. Zeitnot: German for "time trouble." Zug: German for "move." Zugzwang: A German term which means "compulsion to move," it is an endgame situation in which a player would prefer to pass rather than make a move because all of his possible moves lead to deterioration of his position. Zukertort, Johannes: Strong grandmaster who lost the first official world championship match to Wilhelm Steinitz in 1867. Zukertort System (also known improperly as the Colle-Zukertort): The opening 1) d4, d5 2) Nf3, Nf6 3) e3, c5 4) b3. Zwischenzug (a.k.a. intermezzo): A German term meaning "in between move," it is a tactic in which a strong move interrupts an expected sequence of moves, altering the course of the game (for example, a check interrupting a series of exchanges). Click here to return to the Chess Odyssey home page. ï¿½ 2002-2004 Pete Prochaska. All rights reserved.	i don't know
‘O, say can you see by the dawn’s early light…’ is the opening line to which national anthem?	USA national anthem (with lyrics) - YouTube USA national anthem (with lyrics) Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Uploaded on Oct 17, 2008 ### READ ### IMPORTANT ### READ ### Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn's early light What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's lasted gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight, O 'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming. And the rockets` red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. Oh, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? Category	The Star-Spangled Banner
Who resigned as Prime Minister of France in August 1976?	The Star-Spangled Banner The Star-Spangled Banner O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro' the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming? And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof thro' the night that our flag was still there. O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? On the shore dimly seen thro' the mists of the deep, Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes, What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep, As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses? Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam, In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream: 'Tis the star-spangled banner: O, long may it wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave! And where is that band who so vauntingly swore That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion, A home and a country should leave us no more? Their blood has wash'd out their foul footsteps' pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave: And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. O thus be it ever when free-men shall stand Between their lov'd home and the war's desolation; Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land Praise the Pow'r that hath made and preserv'd us a nation! Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto: “In God is our trust!” And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave! On Sept. 13, 1814, Francis Scott Key visited the British fleet in Chesapeake Bay to secure the release of Dr. William Beanes, who had been captured after the burning of Washington, DC. The release was secured, but Key was detained on ship overnight during the shelling of Fort McHenry , one of the forts defending Baltimore . In the morning, he was so delighted to see the American flag still flying over the fort that he began a poem to commemorate the occasion. First published under the title “Defense of Fort M'Henry,” the poem soon attained wide popularity as sung to the tune “To Anacreon in Heaven.” The origin of this tune is obscure, but it may have been written by John Stafford Smith, a British composer born in 1750. “The Star-Spangled Banner” was officially made the national anthem by Congress in 1931, although it already had been adopted as such by the army and the navy.	i don't know
Who played Rosemary Shanahan in the 2001 film ‘Shallow Hal’?	View All Photos (14) Movie Info Jack Black continues his march to stardom with this typical Farrelly brothers blend of broad comedy and a heartfelt message. Black is Hal Larsen, a shallow man rapidly approaching middle age whose superficiality can be attributed to his father's deathbed admonition to only date young, beautiful women. Hal and his best friend, Mauricio (Jason Alexander), have taken the advice to heart, but Hal finds all of his physically impressive girlfriends consistently lacking in other qualities that would make them ideal mates. When he bumps into self-help guru Tony Robbins (playing himself), the motivational entrepreneur is intrigued by Hal's predicament and hypnotizes him so that he'll only see the inner beauty of women. Hal is quickly smitten with Rosemary Shanahan (Gwyneth Paltrow), a blonde Peace Corps volunteer who's tenderhearted, funny, and intelligent. She is also gorgeous and meets Hal's basic criteria of outer perfection, but what he doesn't realize is that Robbins' spell is working and he cannot see that Rosemary actually weights 300 pounds. When Mauricio is finally able to snap Hal out of his charmed state, Hal's in love with the inwardly perfect woman and must overcome his obsession with beauty. The script for Shallow Hal (2001) was developed when Peter Farrelly enjoyed the humorous letters written to a mutual friend by Sean Moynihan, a computer software executive who followed the filmmaker's advice to take up screenwriting. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi Rating: PG-13 (for language and sexual content) Genre:	Gwyneth Paltrow
In the human body, what is the name of the large muscle which covers the shoulder?	Movie Review - - FILM REVIEW; Inner Beauty Counts, And She's a Perfect 10 - NYTimes.com FILM REVIEW; Inner Beauty Counts, And She's a Perfect 10 By A. O. SCOTT Published: November 9, 2001 Peter and Bobby Farrelly have made a name (and a lot of money) for themselves as champions of tasteless, puerile humor. But their high-grossing gross-out movies -- ''Dumb and Dumber,'' ''Kingpin,'' ''There's Something About Mary'' and ''Me, Myself and Irene'' -- have all had an undercurrent of sweet humanism. Their naughtiness allows them to voice sentiments that in other hands might be unbearably preachy and mawkish. ''Shallow Hal,'' their new movie, is comparatively restrained when it comes to bodily effluvia and leering dirty jokes. The most shocking thing about it may be its unabashed sincerity. There are enough moments of demented comedy to make you aspirate your popcorn, but by the end you may find yourself, with some amazement, sniffing back tears. Like John Waters, the Farrellys like to wrap their smutty sensibilities around a moral that would not be out of place on ''Sesame Street.'' People come in all shapes and sizes, and their differences should be celebrated rather than mocked or feared. Actually, what makes ''Shallow Hal'' touching rather than icky is that it mocks and celebrates at the same time. A minor character in ''Shallow Hal'' is a man named Walt (Rene Kirby), who has spina bifida and who walks around on all fours (as Mr. Kirby, who has the condition, does in real life). Walt is an incorrigible ladies' man with a sly sense of humor, and his character's self-acceptance (and his social acceptance) are worth a dozen high-minded lectures on tolerance and dignity. The title character, played with tireless animation by Jack Black, is a man whose defining characteristic is an unlikely result of parental instruction. In an introductory scene, Hal's dying father, an upright man of the cloth, tells his young son that the most important thing in life is to have sex with firm-bodied young women. ''It's all here,'' he whispers, fingering his Bible. The boy grows up to be the kind of hormone-crazed loser who often shows up in beer commercials. As if to emphasize Hal's haplessness, his best pal, Mauricio, is played by Jason Alexander, who for nearly a decade was, as George Costanza on ''Seinfeld,'' the very personification of loserdom. To assure us that he is not just doing more George -- or perhaps to out-George George himself -- Mr. Alexander has taken on a grating Midwestern accent, a hideous wardrobe and a hairpiece that seems to be made of chocolate-covered AstroTurf. One day Hal finds himself trapped in an elevator with (his words) ''TV guru guy'' Tony Robbins, who quite literally changes Hal's outlook on women. Mr. Robbins's intervention, which Mauricio calls ''beer-goggle laser surgery,'' allows Hal to see only inner beauty. In cinematic terms, this becomes visible as conventional Hollywood outer beauty, as homely, good-hearted women take on the appearance of supermodels. And most consequentially an obese Peace Corps volunteer named Rosemary takes on the appearance of Gwyneth Paltrow. When we see her through Hal's eyes, Rosemary not only is a flaxen-haired beauty but also seems to have been shot through a honey-coated camera lens. We catch occasional glimpses of Rosemary from other points of view, but mostly our perspective is, pointedly, as shallow as Hal's. Mr. Robbins's hex is not entirely consistent: it appears to work in reverse only on one occasion, and only sometimes on men. Rosemary's father (Joe Viterelli), who happens to own the investment company for which Hal works, is stout and wrinkled from any angle, perhaps because the old man just is what he is. (Perhaps the same is true of Mauricio, who certainly doesn't get any more attractive.) The Farrellys cunningly transform a series of fat jokes -- the slender Ms. Paltrow causes restaurant furniture to collapse and causes a tidal wave when she cannonballs into a public pool -- into a tender fable and a winning love story. Mr. Black ping-pongs between goofiness and chivalry: his heartfelt paeans to Rosemary's beauty reveal a big-heartedness that the character grows into slowly and unwittingly. Hal's decency sneaks up on him, and by the time he faces a climactic test you really do feel that he has grown. Ms. Paltrow gracefully accepts the Farrellys' generous quota of funny lines -- something not many comic filmmakers bestow on women -- and plays the thin woman trapped in the fat woman's body with the right mixture of toughness and insecurity. Rosemary has learned to accept who she is, and her composure is ruffled by Hal's ardor. She takes his sincerity for sarcasm, and his uncontainable glee at being in the company of such a knockout as either derangement or cruelty. Playing these scenes, Ms. Paltrow manages the difficult trick -- necessary for the movie's premise to succeed -- of being utterly oblivious to her own beauty. If ''Shallow Hal'' faltered for a moment, it would drown in a puddle of bad faith. But the Farrellys present their parable with absolute conviction, so that when we (and Hal) finally see Rosemary as she really is, we are ashamed of our own shallowness. What a beautiful thing. ''Shallow Hal'' is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has a few sexual situations and mild profanity. SHALLOW HAL Directed by Bobby Farrelly and Peter Farrelly; written by Sean Moynihan, Peter Farrelly and Bobby Farrelly; director of photography, Russell Carpenter; edited by Christopher Greenbury; music by Ivy; production designer, Sidney J. Bartholomew Jr.; produced by Bradley Thomas, Charles B. Wessler, Bobby Farrelly and Peter Farrelly; released by 20th Century Fox. Running time: 114 minutes. This film is rated PG-13. WITH: Gwyneth Paltrow (Rosemary), Jack Black (Hal), Jason Alexander (Mauricio), Joe Viterelli (Steve Shanahan), Rene Kirby (Walt) and Tony Robbins (Himself).	i don't know
Which monarch united the Scottish and English thrones?	Scotish - definition of Scotish by The Free Dictionary Scotish - definition of Scotish by The Free Dictionary http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Scotish Related to Scotish: Scottish , Scottish Fold Scot·land (skŏt′lənd) A constituent country of the United Kingdom comprising the northern part of the island of Great Britain as well as the Hebrides, Shetland Islands, and Orkney Islands. Inhabited by Picts in prehistoric times, parts of the region were subsequently settled by Anglo-Saxons, Gaels, and Scandinavians. In the ninth century most of Scotland was unified into one kingdom, but conflicts with England soon erupted, leading to a series of bloody wars. When James VI, son of Mary Queen of Scots, succeeded to the English throne in 1603, the two kingdoms were united. Scotland became a part of the kingdom of Great Britain by a parliamentary act of 1707. Edinburgh is the capital and Glasgow the largest city. Scotland (ˈskɒtlənd) n (Placename) a country that is part of the United Kingdom, occupying the north of Great Britain: the English and Scottish thrones were united under one monarch in 1603 and the parliaments in 1707: a separate Scottish parliament was established in 1999. Scotland consists of the Highlands in the north, the central Lowlands, and hilly uplands in the south; has a deeply indented coastline, about 800 offshore islands (mostly in the west), and many lochs. Capital: Edinburgh. Pop: 5 295 403 (2011 est). Area: 78 768 sq km (30 412 sq miles). Scot•land (ˈskɒt lənd) n. a division of the United Kingdom in the N part of Great Britain. 5,035,315; 30,412 sq. mi. (78,772 sq. km). Cap.: Edinburgh. ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend: Noun 1. Scotland - one of the four countries that make up the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; located on the northern part of the island of Great Britain; famous for bagpipes and plaids and kilts curling - a game played on ice in which heavy stones with handles are slid toward a target Bannockburn - a battle in which the Scots under Robert the Bruce defeated the English and assured the independence of Scotland battle of Brunanburh , Brunanburh - a battle in 937 when Athelstan defeated the Scots battle of Langside , Langside - (1568) Catholic forces supporting Mary Queen of Scots were routed by Protestants Antonine Wall - a fortification 37 miles long across the narrowest part of southern Scotland (between the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde); built in 140 to mark the frontier of the Roman province of Britain Caledonian Canal - a canal in northern Scotland that links North Sea with the Atlantic Ocean; runs diagonally between Moray Firth at the northeastern end and Loch Linnhe at the southwestern end; now little used dirk - a relatively long dagger with a straight blade tawse - a leather strap for punishing children Scots , Scots English , Scottish - the dialect of English used in Scotland ceilidh - an informal social gathering at which there is Scottish or Irish folk music and singing and folk dancing and story telling scunner - a strong dislike; "they took a scunner against the United States" bap - a small loaf or roll of soft bread haggis - made of sheep's or calf's viscera minced with oatmeal and suet and onions and boiled in the animal's stomach Episcopal Church , Episcopal Church of Scotland - an autonomous branch of the Anglican Communion in Scotland Cheviot Hills , Cheviots - a range of hills on the border between England and Scotland Great Britain , GB - an island comprising England and Scotland and Wales Britain , Great Britain , U.K. , UK , United Kingdom , United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland - a monarchy in northwestern Europe occupying most of the British Isles; divided into England and Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland; `Great Britain' is often used loosely to refer to the United Kingdom Cumbria - a former Celtic kingdom in northwestern England; the name continued to be used for the hilly northwestern region of England including the Lake District and the northern Pennines Caledonia - the geographical area (in Roman times) to the north of the Antonine Wall; now a poetic name for Scotland Highlands , Highlands of Scotland - a mountainous region of northern Scotland famous for its rugged beauty; known for the style of dress (the kilt and tartan) and the clan system (now in disuse) Lowlands , Lowlands of Scotland - the southern part of Scotland that is not mountainous Galloway - a district in southwestern Scotland Aberdeen - a city in northeastern Scotland on the North Sea Balmoral Castle - a castle in northeastern Scotland that is a private residence of the British sovereign Lothian Region - a district in southeast central Scotland (south side of the Firth of Forth) and the location of Edinburgh Glasgow - largest city in Scotland; a port on the Clyde in west central Scotland; one of the great shipbuilding centers of the world	James
Which US President said ‘The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend’?	Scottish History Timeline \| Britroyals 1034 - Duncan I succeeds to the Scottish throne 1040 - Duncan is killed in a civil war. His cousin, Macbeth, succeeds 1040 - Macbeth becomes king 1050 - Macbeth goes on a pilgrimage to Rome 1054 - Macbeth�s forces defeated at Dunsinane by a combined army of English, Norse and lowland Scots under Siward Earl of Northumberland 1057 - Macbeth is slain at the Battle of Lumphanan by Malcolm, son of Duncan I 1057 - Lulach, Macbeth's stepson, ascended the throne and was crowned at Scone 1058 - King Lulach killed by Malcolm III at Essie, Strathbogie Malcolm III ( 1058 - 1093 ) 1058 - Malcolm III (Canmore) crowned 1069 - Malcolms married his 2nd wife Margaret of Wessex daughter Edgar the Aetheling who had been deposed by William I the Conqueror 1070 - Malcolm attacks Northumbria and Cumbria intent on expanding his kingdom into northern England. 1091 - The Norman forces of King William II of England advance North and capture Carlisle and Cumbria 1092 - At Abernethy Malcolm is forced to submit to the Normans who take his son Duncan and brother-in-law Edgar Aetheling as hostages 1093 - Malcolm invades England but is killed at the Battle of Alnwick. He is succeeded by his brother Donald II (Donald Blane) Donald III ( 1093 - 1094 ) 1093 - Donald III (Donald Bane) become king 1094 - Donald Bane is driven out by Duncan, Malcolm's III's son, who becomes Duncan II. He is killed a few months later at the Battle of Monthechin, Kincardine, and Donald Bane returns 1094 - Donald III regains the throne and jointly rules with Edmund. 1097 - Donald is overthrown, blinded and imprisoned by Edgar. Edmund flees to Montecute Abbey in Somerset. 1097 - Edgar deposes his uncle Donald and brother Edmund and becomes king 1098 - Edgar cedes the Western Isles to Magnus Barefoot 1100 - Edith known as Matilda, daughter of Malcolm III of Scotland, marries King Henry I of England. 1107 - Edgar dies and is succeeded by his younger brother, Alexander I 1107 - Alexander I become king 1114 - Alexander aids Henry I in his Welsh campaigns 1124 - Alexander dies and is succeeded by David I David I ( 1124 - 1153 ) 1124 - David I becomes king and introduces the feudal system of landholding to much of Scotland. 1138 - David I of Scotland invades England in support of his niece, Matilda wife of King Stephen of England, but is defeated at the Battle of the Standard in Yorkshire. 1139 - Treaty of Durham in which David I is recognised as King of an independent Scotland by King Stephen of England. 1153 - David I dies and is succeeded by his grandson Malcolm IV Malcolm IV ( 1153 - 1165 ) 1153 - Malcolm IV becomes king 1156 - Somerled defeats the Norse King of Mann and the Isles establishing his own semi-independent rule as Innse Gall - King of the Hebrides. 1157 - Henry II of England takes back lands in Northern England granted to David I. The border is fixed at the Solway and Tweed very close to where it is today. 1164 - Somerled is defeated by the Scottish crown in the Battle of Renfrew. 1165 - Malcolm IV dies at Jedburgh Castle and is succeeded by his brother, William the Lion Wlliam I, The Lion ( 1165 - 1214 ) 1165 - William the Lion become king 1173 - William the Lion invades England but is captured by Henry II at Alnwick and forced to surrender Scottish independence 1174 - William I signs the Treaty of Falaise in which he swears allegiance to Henry II of England. 1185 - William pays Richard I of England money to finance his crusades to the Holy Land. 1189 - Scotland is recognized as independent by Richard I of England 1192 - The Pope decress that the Scottish Church is answerable directly to him and not through the English Archbishop of York. Alexander II ( 1214 - 1249 ) 1214 - Accession of Alexander II, son of William the Lion 1216 - Alexander joins the barons of England against King John. A Scottish army marches to Dover and joins Prince Louis of France who captures the Tower of London before being driven back in 1217 1217 - Peace treaty with England guarantees peace for almost 20 years 1221 - Alexander marries Joan daughter of King John of England 1233 - Building of Glasgow cathedral starts 1234 - Galloway's independent existence ends with the death of Alan Lord of Galloway. 1235 - First Scottish Parliament known as the Three Estates meets at Kirkliston 1237 - Southern border of Scotland established in the Treaty of York. 1249 - Alexander launches an expedition to gain the Western Isles but dies on Isle of Kerrara, Oban Bay, before the expedition sets sail. He is succeeded by his son, Alexander III 1249 - Alexander III becomes king and is crowned on the Stone of Destiny 1263 - Alexander III defeats Viking army at the Battle of Largs 1263 - King Haakon of Norway (which at that time included Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles) dies on Orkney 1266 - Norway cedes the Western Isles to Scotland in the Treaty of Perth. 1282 - Devorgilla, Countess of Galloway, mother of John Balliol, founds Balliol College, Oxford. 1286 - Alexander dies in riding accident leaving the throne to his four-year-old granddaughter, Margaret Margaret, Maid of Norway ( 1286 - 1290 ) 1286 - Margaret, Maid of Norway, inherits the throne from her grandfather Alexander 1290 - Margaret dies in the Orkneys en route from Norway to Scotland. Edward I of England is asked to select a successor 1291 - Claimants to the Scottish throne met King Edward I of England at Norham on Tweed to resolve succession 1292 - Edward I of England grants the Scottish throne to John Balliol. 1295 - Treaty between King John Balliol of Scotland and King Philippe IV of France which promised mutual help against the English - the start of the "Auld Alliance". 1296 - Edward invades Scotland, defeats the Scots at Dunbar and deposes Balliol. He then takes over the throne of Scotland and removes the Stone of Scone to Westminster. 1296 - - 1306 Interregnum period with no Scottish monarch and rule by Edward I of England. 1297 - Andrew de Moray and William Wallace lead the Scots to victory over England at Stirling Bridge. 1298 - Edward invades Scotland again and defeats William Wallace at the Battle of Falkirk 1303 - France and England make peace, releasing forces to attack Scotland 1304 - Stirling Castle, the last of the Scottish castles to be captured by Edward I 1305 - Wallace is captured and taken to London, where he is tried for treason, and hanged, drawn, and quartered 1306 - Robert Bruce is crowned king at Scone but is driven into hiding by the English occupation army of Edward I 1307 - Edward I sets out to invade Scotland but dies on his way north. Bruce begins campaign to drive the English out of Scotland 1307 - English forces defeated by Bruce at Loudon Hill 1309 - King Robert the Bruce convenes his first parliament, at St Andrew 1311 - The Scots plunder the North of England 1314 - Bruce besieges Stirling Castle. An English army sent to break the siege is routed at the Battle of Bannockburn 1318 - Robert the Bruce captures Berwick on Tweed. 1320 - Nobles assert Scottish independence in the Declaration of Arbroath. 1323 - Truce between Bruce and Edward II fails to stop warfare between the two countries 1328 - Treaty of Edinburgh between King Robert I and Edward III which recognised Scotland's independence, ending the 30 years of Wars of Independence. 1329 - Robert the Bruce dies at Cardross Castle possibly of leprosy. 1329 - David II succeeds to the Scottish throne on the death of his father, Robert Bruce 1331 - David II (aged 7) crowned at Scone 1332 - Edward Balliol, son of John Balliol, invades Scotland and deposes David II. Edward Balliol is crowned King of Scotland by the English 1333 - David is restored to the throne. 1333 - Balliol flees to England but returns when Edward III of England invades Scotland and defeats the Scots at Halidon Hill. King David II goes into exile in France. 1341 - Edinburgh Castle captured from the English. David returns from exile. 1346 - David II invades England but is defeated at Neville�s Cross and captured. He is taken to the Tower of London, where he is imprisoned for the next 11 years 1350 - Scotland suffers from the Black Death. Up to a quarter of the population die. 1356 - Edward III devastates the Lothian region in a campaign known as 'The Burnt Candlemas' 1357 - David II is released from captivity and returns home to Scotland. 1371 - Death of David II. He is succeeded by his nephew, Robert Stewart, the first Stewart King of Scotland. Robert, the hereditary High Steward of Scotland and grandson of Robert Bruce, is crowned Robert II ( 1371 - 1390 ) 1371 - Robert Stewart, the first Stewart King of Scotland becomes king 1384 - Truce is arranged between England, Scotland, and France. Scotland refuses to recognize truce. Anglo Scottish war resumes 1388 - Battle of Otterburn in which Scots defeat Henry Percy (Harry Hotspur) 1390 - Robert II dies and is succeeded by his son John, who becomes Robert III. 1390 - Robert III becomes king. He delegates power to his younger brother, the Earl of Fife, later the Duke of Albany 1402 - English defeat Scots in the Battle of Nesbit Moor and the Battle of Humbleton Hill. 1406 - Robert II is disabled in a riding accident and his eldest son is killed by the Duke of Albany. Robert sends his second son to James to France but he is captured by English near Flamborough Head. James is taken to London, where Henry IV of England confines 1406 - King Robert III dies and James I ascended the throne but was not crowned until 1424 as he was a prisoner of the English. 1406 - James I succeeds to the throne but remains imprisoned in England 1413 - Foundation of the University of St Andrews. 1423 - Treaty of London, releasing James I from his years captivity in England 1437 - Assassination of James I. He is succeeded by his son, James II James II ( 1437 - 1460 ) 1437 - James II becomes king aged 6 years 1440 - Regents Douglas and Livingston struggle for power culminating in the 'Blach Dinner' at Edinburgh Castle during which William 6th Earl of Douglas was dragged out and executed. 1449 - James marries Mary of Gueldres, niece of the Duke of Burgundy 1451 - Establishment of the University of Glasgow. 1457 - James II decrees that football and golf are banned to encourage archery practice 1460 - King James II killed by an exploding cannon at the siege of Roxburgh Castle 1460 - James III becomes king at 8 years old 1472 - Denmark cedes Orkney and Shetland to Scotland. 1482 - Berwick on Tweed finally ceded to King Edward IV of England after changing hands 12 times 1488 - Battle of Sauchieburn, and the assassination of James III. He is succeeded by his son, James IV 1488 - James IV becomes king 1493 - Lordship of the Isles abolished. In 1540 the title was reserved to the crown. 1495 - Creation of the University of Aberdeen (King's College). 1496 - Education Act of 1496 makes education compulsory for barons and wealthy landowners. 1497 - Chair of Medicine established at Aberdeen University. 1502 - Marriage contract between James IV and Margaret Tudor signed by King James 1503 - King James IV marries Margaret Tudor, daughter of King Henry VII of England. The marriage was known as the Union of the Thistle and the Rose. 1507 - First printing press in Scotland is set up by Andrew Myllar 1513 - James IV invades England to support his French allies after the English king, Henry VIII, invades France. James and most of the Scottish nobility and clergy are slaughtered by the English army at the Battle of Flodden Field 1513 - The infant James V becomes king 1528 - Patrick Hamilton Protestant reformer is burned at the stake for heresy 1532 - Creation of the College of Justice and the Court of Session. 1542 - James invades England but is defeated at the Battle of Solway Moss and dies a few weeks later. His daughter, the one-week-old Mary, succeeds Mary Queen of Scots ( 1542 - 1567 ) 1542 - One-week-old Mary, succeeds to the throne on the death of her father James V 1543 - At the Treaty of Greenwich Mary is betrothed to Prince Edward son of Henry VIII of England, but the Scottish Lords refuse to ratify the treaty preferring an alliance with France, 1558 - Mary, Queen of Scots, marries French Dauphin, Francis Valois (he was aged 14) at Notre Dame in Paris. She adopts the French spelling of Stuart for her surname 1559 - John Knox returns to Scotland from Geneva to promote Calvinism. 1559 - Mary becomes Queen of France when her husband becomes King 1560 - Parliament legislates protestant reformation of the Church of Scotland. 1560 - Treaty of Edinburgh between France and England, recognising sovereignty of Mary Queen of Scots and her first husband Francis II 1560 - Latin Mass prohibited in Scotland by Parliament as Protestant faith gains the ascendancy 1561 - Mary Queen of Scots lands at Leith on her return from France, after the death of her husband, King Francis II 1565 - Mary marries her cousin Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. The marriage is a disaster 1566 - Darnley jealous of Mary's Italian secretary David Rizzio, bursts into her room at Holyrood and Rizzio is murdered. 1566 - Mary Queen of Scots gives birth to the future King James VI of Scotland and I of England 1567 - Lord Darnley, husband of Mary Queen of Scots, assassinated 1567 - Mary marries Earl of Bothwell. The Scottish Lords imprison Mary in Loch Leven castle. 1567 - Mary Queen of Scots abdicates and the young James VI accedes to Scottish throne. The Earl of Mar appointed regent. James VI (James I of England) ( 1567 - 1625 ) 1567 - King James VI (aged 13 months) is crowned at the Church of the Holy Rude, beside Stirling Castle 1568 - Mary Queen of Scots flees to England following the defeat of her army at the Battle of Langside near Glasgow. 1578 - James VI takes over government from his regent James Douglas. 1582 - Establishment of the University of Edinburgh by Royal Charter. 1587 - Mary is beheaded by the order of Queen Elizabeth I of England. 1592 - Presbyterianism becomes the established form of church government in Scotland by Act of Parliament. 1600 - The Gregorian Calendar is adopted in Scotland. The year begins on 1st January instead of 25th March 1603 - The Union of the Crowns James VI of Scotland becomes James I of England. 1614 - John Napier invents logarithms and publishes a book promoting their use in mathematics. 1618 - James VI forces episcopacy on the Church of Scotland through the Five Articles of Perth. 1625 - James VI dies. His son Charles I becomes king of England and Scotland 1633 - Education Act of 1633 ordains a school in every parish (partially successful). 1637 - William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, order the Scottish Kirk to use the new Anglican prayer book. 1638 - Scottish Covenanters rebel against Charles I. 1643 - The Solemn League and Covenant promises Scots army to aid English parliamentarians against the king. 1649 - Charles I is executed. There follows 11 years of rule by Parliament as the Commonwealth under Cromwell. 1651 - Scotland incorporated into the English Commonwealth and Protectorate. 1660 - The monarchy is restored and Scotland resumes its status as a separate kingdom. 1672 - The High Court of Judiciary is established as the high criminal court of Scotland 1679 - Archbishop Sharp a symbol of royal rule over the Kirk is killed by Covenanters who attempt an uprising. Duke of Monmouth defeats Covenanters at the Battle of Bothwell Brig. 1685 - James succeeds his brother, Charles II. 1688 - William of Orange lands at Torbay and advances on London. 1688 - James abdicates and flees to exile in France. William becomes King William III with his wife Mary. 1689 - Jacobite Highlanders rise in support of James and are victorious at Killiekrankie but are defeated a few months later at Dunkeld.� 1689 - The Claim of Right and the re-establishment of Presbyterianism. 1691 - King William offers Highlanders a pardon for the Jacobite uprising if they sign allegiance him� 1692 - Glencoe Massacre. MacDonalds are killed by Campbells allegedly for not signing the oath of allegiance�to the crown. 1695 - The Bank of Scotland is created by Act of Parliament. 1696 - Education Act of 1696 ordains a school in every Scottish parish 1700 - Attempt to establish a new Caledonian colony 'The Darien Scheme' in Panama is a disaster and nearly bankrupts Scotland, 1701 - Act of Settlement bars Catholics from the throne. The aim is to prevent the exiled James Edward Stuart 'The Old Pretender' from return. Queen Anne ( 1702 - 1714 ) 1702 - Anne succeeds her brother-in-law, William III. 1707 - The Act of Union is passed by the English and Scottish parliaments and unites the kingdoms transferring the seat of Scottish government to London 1708 - James Edward Stuart, 'The Old Pretender', sails to Scotland in an unsuccessful attempt to gain the throne.� 1709 - The Scottish Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge is founded with the aim to eradicate 'Popery' and the Gaelic language in the Highlands 1714 - Queen Ann the last Stuart monarch dies. King George I ( 1714 - 1727 ) 1714 - George I, the first Hanoverian King, succeeds his distant cousin, Anne. 1715 - The Jacobite rising begins in Scotland intending to place the �Old Pretender� James Edward Stuart, heir to James II on the throne. The rebellion is defeated after a few weeks. 1719 - A small Spanish pro Jacobite force land but are defeated at Glenshiel 1722 - Rob Roy MacGregor the outlaw surrenders to the Duke of Montrose 1723 - Adam Smith, author of 'The Wealth of Nations' born in Kirkcaldy 1727 - George II succeeds his father, George I. 1727 - Janet Horne is the last person in Scotland to be condemned and burnt for witchcraft 1736 - Captain of the Edinburgh town guard 'Black Jock' Porteus is lynched by a mob objecting to his harsh treatment of smugglers. 1739 - David Hulme publishes his 'Treatise of Human Nature' and founds the 'Scottish Enlightenment' movement 1740 - The Black Watch regiment is founded for policing the Highlands 1744 - The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers founded - the world's first golf club. 1745 - Charles Edward Stuart, raises his standard at Glenfinnan, at the start of the '45 Jacobite uprising 1745 - Charles Edward Stuart victorious at Battle of Prestonpans. His forces march South and reach Derby before retreating back to Scotland 1746 - Scots defeated at the Battle of Culloden. Duke of Cumberland, the King's 2nd son, ruthlessly represses the rebels and Scottish traditions. 1746 - Prince Charles Edward Stuart escapes capture helped by Flora MacDonald and returns on a French ship to exile in France. 1747 - Disarming Act bans Highland dress, weapons, and bagpipe music. 1747 - British Linen Company in Edinburgh founded. Wool, linen and fishery industries quickly grow as Scotland benefits from the Union.. 1754 - Joseph Black discovers "fixed air" (carbon dioxide). 1756 - John McAdam who developed the use of Tar Macadam for roads born in Ayr 1748 - David Hume publishes 'An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding'. 1755 - Scotland's population is 1,265,380 approximately on fifth of that of England. 1760 - The Carron Ironworks near Falkirk use the new system of coke-fired smelting for producing guns for the Royal Navy 1760 - George III becomes king on the death of his grandfather, George II. 1762 - Land tenure reform leads to the Highland Clearances and massive emigration for several decades. 1768 - Encyclopaedia Britannica first published in Edinburgh 1769 - James Watt patents condensing chamber in the Steam engine. 1771 - The first knitting machines used in Hawick starting a rapid expansion of the textile industry in the Borders 1771 - Novelist and poet Sir Walter Scott born. 1773 - James Boswell and Dr Johnson write about their trip to the Highlands and Islands 1776 - Adam Smith publishes The Wealth of Nations. 1778 - First Cotton Mill opened at Rothesay. By 1780 a mill near Glasgow employs 1,000 people. 1782 - Highland Dress Proscription act is repealed recognising that the Jacobite movement was no longer a political threat 1782 - -1820 The Highland Clearances. Highland landowners clear their estates of poor tenant farmers forcing many to move to Glasgow, Edinburgh and abroad 1783 - Glasgow Chamber of Commerce founded 1786 - Robert Burns' poems are first published as 'Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect'. They are an immediate success. 1788 - Charles Edward Stewart "Bonnie Prince Charlie" dies. 1788 - Penal Colony established at Botany Bay 1789 - Inveraray Castle completed the first major building in Britain in neo-Gothic style 1800 - The first Gaelic Bible is published 1802 - John Playfair publishes summary of James Hutton's theories of Geology. 1803 - Works begins on the Caledonian canal 1805 - The Glasgow Herald newspaper first published. 1813 - David Livingstone, missionary and explorer, born in Blantyre 1816 - Robert Owen sets up his New Lanark cotton mill under his scheme of 'enlightened capitalism' 1817 - The Scotsman newspaper first published. King George IV ( 1820 - 1830 ) 1820 - George IV accedes to the throne, having spent the last nine years as Prince Regent for his blind and deranged father. 1820 - 60,000 workers strike and appoint a 'provisional government' in Glasgow. They are put down by troops at Bonnymuir and their leaders transported. 1822 - King George IV visits Scotland. Encouraged by Walter Scott he wears Highland dress leading to a revival in tartan costume and in particular the kilt. 1823 - Charles Macintosh patents waterproof cloth used to make raincoats 1824 - The Licencing Act attempts to stamp out the many illegal whisky stills 1824 - Edinburgh's Great Fire burns for 2 days destroying the High Street and Parliament Square 1829 - Felix Mendelssohn visits Scotland and Staffa which inspires him to write the music Fingal's Cave 1830 - William IV succeeds his brother, George IV. 1831 - Scotland's first passenger railway opened between Glasgow and Garnkirk. 1831 - The Game Act sets 'The Glorious' 12th August as the start of the grouse shooting season 1832 - The Reform Act enlarges the franchise of those eligible to vote 1834 - St Andrews golf club is given a royal warrant to call itself the 'Royal and Ancient' Queen Victoria ( 1837 - 1901 ) 1837 - Queen Victoria succeeds her uncle, William IV 1837 - Thomas Carlyle publishes 'History of the French Revolution'. He becomes one of the most influential Victorian writers. 1841 - Scotland's population reaches 2.6 million. An economic recession makes many firms bankrupt with families relying on charity. 1843 - Disruption in the Church of Scotland (over the issue of patronage). Many leave to join the Free Church. 1846 - Beginning of the ten-year Highland Potato Famine. 1847 - The United Presbyterian Church of Scotland is established. 1848 - Queen Victoria and Prince Alber lease the Balmoral estate which they later buy. 1851 - Glasgow has 330,000 inhabitants including many Catholic immigrants from Ireland. One third of Scottish families live together in a single room. 1859 - The waters of Loch Katrine provide Glasgow with piped fresh water helping to reduce outbreaks of cholera and typhus in the city 1864 - James Clerk Maxwell presents equations describing electromagnetic fields. 1866 - David Livingstone sets out to find the source of the Nile 1871 - Scotland wins the first international rugby game against England. The Calcutta cup is made from melted down Indian rupees. 1874 - Patronage abolished in the Church of Scotland. 1876 - The Scottish Football Association is founded 1876 - Alexander Graham Bell demonstrates the telephone 1878 - Collapse of the City of Glasgow Bank 1879 - William Gladstone conducts the Midlothian campaign as part of a political comeback. 1879 - The Tay Bridge Disaster. 1882 - The Clyde becomes the world's large centre for ship building 1885 - Creation of the Scottish Office and the post of Secretary for Scotland later Secretary of State for Scotland. 1886 - John Dunlop from Ayr patents the pneumatic rubber tyre 1886 - Scottish Labour party founded 1888 - Birth in Helensburgh of John Logie Baird who develops of television 1890 - Opening of the Forth Railway Bridge. 1896 - Opening of the Glasgow Subway. 1897 - Glasgow School of Art designed by Rennie Macintosh opens 1900 - The Wee Frees split from the Free Church of Scotland 1901 - Edward VII becomes King on the death of his mother, Queen Victoria. 1901 - Population of Scotland reaches 4.5 million 1903 - Irn Bru first produced by AG Barr in Cumbernauld 1906 - Publishing company DC Thomson starts in Dundee. The Dandy and Beano first appear in 1930 1910 - Herring fishing industry reaches it peak 1910 - Edward VII dies and is succeeded by George V 1914 - Outbreak of World War I. Many Scottish regiments fight in the Germans France 1914 - Battles of Mons, the Marne, and Ypres. 1915 - Second Battle of Ypres. Allied Gallipoli expedition fails to remove Turkey from the war. 1916 - Battle of the Somme. Naval battle off Jutland between British and German fleets. 1918 - The end of World War I. The German battle fleet surrenders to the allies at Scapa Flow in Orkney. 1919 - The German fleet scuttles itself in Scarpa Flow 1921 - Unemployment reaches 20% 1926 - John Logie Baird demonstrates first television 1927 - Scotsman John Reith appointed Director General of the newly formed BBC 1928 - Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin 1929 - The Church of Scotland and the United Free Church of Scotland unite. 1930 - Evacuation of the island of St Kilda 1934 - Scottish National Party founded. 1936 - George VI accedes to the throne upon the abdication of his brother, Edward VIII 1938 - The Empire Exhibition Scotland 1938 is held at Bellahouston Park Glasgow. 1938 - The Queen Elizabeth the largest passenger ship at the time launched at John Browns shipyard 1939 - Start of Second World War 1940 - Evacuation of Dunkirk 1941 - The Clydebank Blitz by German bombers (13-15 May). 1941 - Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy, descends by parachute into Scotland 1943 - Creation of the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board to bring electricity to all parts of the Highlands and Islands. 1945 - End of Second World War 1945 - First Scottish Nationalist MP is elected. 1947 - Nationalisation of the railways - the Scottish Region of British Railways is created. 1947 - The first Edinburgh International Festival is held. 1948 - The Tattoo first performed at Edinburgh Castle 1950 - Students remove the Stone of Scone from Westminster. They leave it at Abroath Abbey from whence it is returned to London 1952 - Queen Elizabeth II accedes to the throne on the death of her father, George VI. 1957 - Scottish Television starts broadcasting. 1961 - Muriel Spark's 'The Pride of Miss Jean Brodie' published 1963 - Faslane becomes the base for Britain's nuclear submarines 1964 - Forth Road Bridge opened 1968 - The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland permits the ordination of women as ministers. 1969 - Oil discovered in the North Sea 1970 - The Scottish National Party win just one seat in the general election 1970 - 13th Commonwealth Games opened in Edinburgh 1975 - Local government reorganisation (replacing Counties and Burghs for administrative purposes with Regions and Districts). 1975 - North Sea oil is piped ashore and Aberdeen becomes a boom city 1978 - Launch of BBC Radio Scotland. 1979 - Referendum to create a Scottish Assembly fails to meet the required majority. 1988 - Terrorists blow up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie with the loss of 270 lives including 11 residents of the town. 1988 - Piper Alpha disaster	i don't know
How many lines make up the London Underground Railway system?	London Underground - History and Facts The London Underground The London Underground, or the Tube as it is often called, is the oldest underground train network in the world. Opened in 1863 there are a total of eleven lines, 270 stations and over 400 km of track, making it the third longest subway system in the world. The London Underground carries over a billion passengers a year, or about 3 million every day. The deepest stations are over 60 metres below the surface, however 55% of the tracks run above it. In the 1830s London’s authorities had the idea of linking the centre of London with the large train stations which were located farther away. In 1863 the first underground railway, the Metropolitan Line, opened. Wooden carriages were powered by steam locomotives. The system of tracks gradually expanded. By the end of the 19th century most lines used electricity to power the trains. During World War II many tube stations were air-raid shelters where people sought protection during the German bombing of the city. Over the course of history, the size of the tunnels changed, so that today, two different types of trains travel across the city. Modern escalators bring passengers to the deep level stations of the tube. The Jubilee Line is the last line to be built. It was opened in 1979 in honour of Queen Elizabeth’s 25th anniversary as monarch. In the 1990s it was extended eastwards to the Docklands. The London Underground normally operates daily between 5 a.m. and midnight. Some lines stay open throughout the night on special occasions, like New Year’s Eve. London Underground stations can get very crowded during the weekday rush hours. Even though the system is so large, trains usually run on time. Over the decades underground stations have been modernized. In the past years many have been equipped with Wi-Fi access to make journeys as comfortable as possible. The well-known symbol of the London Underground, a red circle with a blue bar, was developed at the beginning of the 20th century and has not changed much since then. Aldgate station - Sunil060902 Some of London’s Underground stations are buildings which have a special architectural value. Many original stations have been restored and look similar to the way they did over a century ago. Although so many people use the underground every day, the safety record of the system is very good. Most deaths occur as suicides. The London Underground also faces environmental problems. Because the water level of the Thames is constantly on the rise, thousands of cubic metres of water must be pumped out of some of the underground stations every day.	11
In the James Bond film ‘Goldfinger’, who is Goldfinger’s bodyguard?	London Underground: 150 fascinating Tube facts - Telegraph Telegraph 150 London Underground facts (including the birth of Jerry Springer in East Finchley station) It's closed today, but it's still interesting Credit: John Stillwell Jolyon Attwooll , Travel writer 9 January 2017 • 11:00am You can't ride it today, thanks to industrial action. But you can learn a few things about the Tube instead. 1. There is only one Tube station which does not have any letters of the word 'mackerel' in it: St John's Wood. 2. The average speed on the Underground is 20.5 miles per hour including station stops. 3. The busiest Tube station is Waterloo, which was used by around 95 million passengers in 2015. In 2014 Oxford Circus took top spot, in 2009 it was Victoria, and in 2005 it was King's Cross, 4. On the Metropolitan line, trains can reach over 60mph. The Night Tube service started on August 19, 2016 Credit: AFP or licensors/DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS 5. The shortest distance between two adjacent stations on the underground network is only 260 metres. The tube journey between Leicester Square and Covent Garden on the Piccadilly Line takes only about 20 seconds, but costs £4.90 (cash fare). Yet it still remains one of the most popular journeys with tourists. 6. Many tube stations were used as air-raid shelters during the Second World War, but the Central Line was even converted into a fighter aircraft factory that stretched for over two miles, with its own railway system. Its existence remained an official secret until the 1980s. 7. Angel has the Underground's longest escalator at 60m/197ft, with a vertical rise of 27.5m. 8. The shortest escalator is Stratford, with a vertical rise of 4.1m. 9. Only 45 per cent of the Underground is actually in tunnels. 10. The longest distance between stations is on the Metropolitan line from Chesham to Chalfont & Latimer: a total of only 3.89 miles. The history of the Tube in pictures 11. The longest continuous tunnel is on the Northern line and runs from East Finchley to Morden (via Bank), a total of 17.3 miles. 12. Aldgate Station, on the Circle and Metropolitan Lines, is built on a massive plague pit, where more than 1,000 bodies are buried. 13. The longest journey without change is on the Central line from West Ruislip to Epping, and is a total of 34.1 miles. 14. The deepest station is Hampstead on the Northern line, which runs down to 58.5 metres. 15. In Central London the deepest station below street level is also the Northern line. It is the DLR concourse at Bank, which is 41.4 metres below. Only 45 per cent of the Underground is actually in tunnels 16. The TARDIS, (Dr Who’s transport) can be found outside Earl’s Court station. Or at least an old police call box can. 17. The London Underground manages about 10 per cent of all green spaces in London. 18. Wildlife observed on the Tube network includes woodpeckers, deer, sparrowhawk, bats, grass snakes, great crested newts, slow worms. 19. Over 47 million litres water are pumped from the Tube each day, enough to fill a standard leisure centre swimming pool (25 metres x 10 metres) every quarter of an hour. 20. The London Underground trains were originally steam powered. 21. The station with the most platforms is Baker Street with 10 (Moorgate also has 10 platforms but only six are used by Tube trains - others are used by overground trains). 22.The District Line has the most stations: 60. There are 270 stations on the network Credit: Dominic Lipinski 23. The Waterloo and City Line has the fewest stations (no intermediate stations) 24. The Underground name first appeared on stations in 1908. 25. London Underground has been known as the Tube since 1890 due to the shape of the tunnels. 26. The first deep-level electric railway line also opened in 1890. 27. The Tube's logo is known as “the roundel” (a red circle crossed by a horizontal blue bar) 28. The station with the most escalators is Waterloo with 23. 29. The total number of passengers carried during 2013/14 was 1.265 billion – making it the world's 11th busiest metro. 30. The highest station above sea level is Amersham, at 147 metres. What we love about the London Underground 31. Tube trains travelled 76.4 million kilometres last year. 32. The Northern line has the highest maximum number of trains required for scheduled peak period service: 91. The Tube's logo is known as “the roundel” Credit: Reuters Photographer 33. The Waterloo & City line has the fewest scheduled for peak period service at just five. 34. The total length of the London Underground network is 250 miles. 35. In 1926, suicide pits were installed beneath tracks due to a rise in the numbers of passengers throwing themselves in front of trains. 36. The eastern extension of the Jubilee line is the only Underground line to feature glass screens to deter "jumpers". 37. The earliest trains run from Osterley to Heathrow on the Piccadilly line, starting at 4.45am. 38. The greatest elevation above the ground level is on the Northern line at Dollis Brook viaduct over Dollis road, Mill Hill: it rises a total of 18 metres (60ft). 39. One of the early names proposed for the Victoria Line was the Viking line. 40. In 1924, the first baby was born on the Underground, on a train at Elephant & Castle on the Bakerloo line. The Tube's prettiest stations 41. The American talk show host Jerry Springer was born at East Finchley during the Second World War: his mother had taken shelter in the station from an air raid. 42. Builders working on the Bakerloo Line are reported to have suffered from the bends while tunnelling under the Thames. 43. The inaugural journey of the first Central line train in 1900 had the Prince of Wales and Mark Twain on board. The total length of the London Underground network is 250 miles Credit: PA 44. The tunnels beneath the City curve significantly because they follow its medieval street plan. 45. The Central line introduced the first flat fare when it opened at the turn of the 20th century. The tuppence fare lasted until the end of June 1907 when a threepenny fare was introduced for longer journeys. 46. Charles Pearson, MP and Solicitor to the City of London, is credited with successfully campaigning for the introduction of the Underground. He died in 1862 shortly before the first train ran. 47. The first escalator on the Underground was installed at Earl's Court in 1911. 48. The first crash on the Tube occurred in 1938 when two trains collided between Waterloo and Charing Cross, injuring 12 passengers. 49. Harry Beck produced the well known Tube map diagram while working as an engineering draughtsman at the London Underground Signals Office. He was reportedly paid 10 guineas (£10.50) for his efforts. 50. Harry Beck’s map was considered too big a departure from the norm, but the public liked it and it became official in 1933. 51. Busking has been licensed on the Tube since 2003. 52. Sting and Paul McCartney are both rumoured to have busked on the Underground in disguise. 53. The phrase "Mind the gap" dates back to 1968. The recording that is broadcast on stations was first done by Peter Lodge, who had a recording company in Bayswater. A photo posted by bologna\|2001\|galvani (@_f_r_e_0_1_) on Aug 18, 2016 at 4:53am PDT 54. The Peter Lodge recording of “Mind the Gap” is still in use, but some lines use recordings by a Manchester voice artist Emma Clarke. On the Piccadilly line the recording is notable for being the voice of Tim Bentinck, who plays David Archer in The Archers. 55. The Jubilee Line was the only Underground Line to connect with all the others until the East London line ceased to be part of the Underground in 2007 (now the Central Line does too). 56. Approximately 50 passengers a year kill themselves on the Underground. 57. Fewer than 10 per cent of Tube stations lie south of the Thames. 58. The total number of lifts on the Underground, including four stair lifts, is 167. Ye Olde London Underground Credit: Getty 59. Smoking was banned on the Underground as a result of the King's Cross fire in November 1987 which killed 31 people. A discarded match was thought to be the cause of that inferno. 60. An estimated half a million mice live in the Underground system. London's lost Tube stations: in pictures 61. 1961 marked the end of steam and electric haulage of passenger trains on the London Underground. 62. One of the levels in Tomb Raider 3 is set in the disused Aldwych tube station, featuring scenes of Lara Croft killing rats. 63. In the film Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the Hogwarts headmaster has a scar that resembles a map of the London Underground on his knee. 64.There are only two tube station names that contain all five vowels: Mansion House, and South Ealing. 65. Edward Johnston designed the font for the London Underground in 1916. The font he came up with is still in use today. 66. Amersham is also the most westerly tube station, as well as the highest (see above). 67. A macabre statistic is that the most popular tube suicide time is around 11am. 68. In January 2005, in an attempt to alleviate a problem with loitering young people, the London Underground announced it would play classical music at problem stations. Which buildings survived the Great Fire of London? 69. The Underground has the oldest section of underground railway in the world, which opened in 1863. 70. The first section of the Underground ran between Paddington (Bishop's Road) and Farringdon Street. The same section now forms part of the Circle, Hammersmith & City, and Metropolitan lines. London Underground: 10 of the funniest videos 71.The Underground was first used for air raid shelters in September 1940. 72. During the Second World War, part of the Piccadilly line (Holborn - Aldwych branch), was closed and British Museum treasures were stored in the empty spaces. 73. The London Passenger Transport Board was nationalised and became the London Transport Executive in 1948. 74. The first Tube tunnel was opened in 1880, running from the Tower of London to Bermondsey. 75. The Central Line used to be nicknamed as the 'Twopenny Tube' for its flat fare. 76. Dot matrix train destination indicators were introduced onto London Underground platforms in 1983. 77. The single worst accident in terms of fatalities on the Underground occurred on February 28, 1975 at Moorgate, when 42 people died. 78. The Piccadilly line extended to serve Heathrow Terminal 4 in 1986. 79. Penalty fares were only introduced in 1994. 80. The Tube carried one billion passengers in a year for the first time in 2007. London Underground quiz 81.The last manually operated doors on Tube trains (replaced by air-operated doors) were phased out in 1929. 82.The Jubilee Line was named to mark Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee in 1977 – but the line did not open until 1979. A photo posted by Merve (@lknmerve) on Aug 1, 2016 at 12:25pm PDT 83. A census carried out on September 27, 1940, found that 177,500 Londoners were sleeping in Tube stations. 84. During the war, special supply trains ran, providing seven tonnes of food and 2,400 gallons of tea and cocoa every night to people staying in the Tube. 85. Covent Garden is believed to be haunted by the ghost of William Terris who met an untimely death near the station in 1897. 86. Another station that is believed to be haunted is Farringdon. The so-called Screaming Spectre is believed to have been a milliner. 87. The Seven Sisters Underground station is believed to have been named after a line of elm trees which stood nearby until the 1830s. 88. The fictitious station of Walford East, which features in the long-running soap opera Eastenders, is supposed to be on the District Line. 89. Every week, Underground escalators travel the equivalent distance of going twice around the world. 90. According to TFL, London Underground trains travel a total of 1,735 times around the world (or 90 trips to the moon and back) each year. 91. A spiral escalator was installed in 1907 at Holloway Road station, but linear escalators were favoured for the rest of the network. A small section of the spiral escalator is in the Acton depot. 92. A small section of the old London Wall survives in the trackside walls of Tower Hill station at platform level. One of the largest pieces of the wall also stands just outside this station. 93. Finsbury Park station has murals that show a pair of duelling pistols, harking back to a time when men would visit the park after hours to defend their honour. The Jubilee line receives the most complaints Credit: © Pixel Youth movement / Alamy Stock Photo/Pixel Youth movement / Alamy Stock Photo 94. In 2012, the most complained about line was the Jubilee. 95. The London Underground is thought to be the third largest metro system in the world, in terms of miles, after the Beijing Subway and the Shanghai Metro. 96. The London Underground is the third busiest metro system in Europe, after Moscow and Paris. 97. The coffin of Dr. Thomas Barnardo was carried in funeral cortege on an underground train in 1905, one of only two occasions this is known to have happened. 98. The Underground helped over 200,000 children escape to the countryside during the Second World War. 99. During the war, some stations (now mostly disused) were converted into government offices: a station called Down Street was used for meetings of the Railway Executive Committee, as well as for the War Cabinet before the Cabinet War Rooms were built. 100. Brompton Road (now disused) on the Piccadilly, Line was apparently used as a control room for anti-aircraft guns. 101. Only five London Underground stations lie outside the M25 motorway The Night Tube is finally here Credit: AFP or licensors/DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS 102. The Underground runs 24 hours a day at New Year, during special events (such as for the opening and closing ceremonies of the London Olympics), and on selected lines at the weekend. 103. According to a 2002 study air quality on the Underground was 73 times worse than at street level, with 20 minutes on the Northern Line having "the same effect as smoking a cigarette". 104. The former poet laureate John Betjeman created 'Metroland' series, a homage to the people and places served by the Metropolitan line in 1973. Ride the Emirates Air Line cable car with this 360° video 105. The Oyster card was introduced in 2003. 106. The worst civilian death toll on the Underground occurred at Bethnal Green Tube tragedy in 1943, when 173 people died. It is the largest loss of life in a single incident on the London Underground network. 107. The largest number of people killed by a single wartime bomb was 68 at Balham Station. 108. The 100th anniversary of the roundel (the Tube Logo) was celebrated in 2008 by TfL commissioning 100 artists to produce works that celebrate the design. 109. The largest Tube car park is at Epping and has 599 parking spots. 110. The Central Line has the most tube stations with no surface building (Bank, Bethnal Green, Chancery Lane, Gants Hill, Notting Hill Gate) 111. Of the stations that have stairs, Hampstead Station has the most steps (320 in total). 112. There are 14 journeys between stations that take less than a minute on average. 113. King's Cross St Pancras tube station is served by more Underground lines than any other station on the network. 114. Seven London Boroughs are not served by the underground system, six of them being situated south of the River Thames. 115. The total number of carriages in London Underground's fleet, as of January 2013, was 4,134. 116. The total number of stations served on the network is 270. 117. London Underground transferred from the control of the Government to Transport for London (TfL) on July 15, 2003. 118. Scenes from the film Sliding Doors were shot at Waterloo station on the Waterloo & City Line and at Fulham Broadway tube station on the District Line. 119. Filming on location in the Underground costs £500 per hour (plus VAT) unless you have a crew of less than five. 120. You can now no longer go around the Circle Line in a full circle. From 2009, the Circle Line terminated at Edgware Road. 121. Greenford on the Central Line was the last Tube station to use wooden escalators. They were replaced in 2014. 122. Arsenal (originally Gillespie Road) on Piccadilly line is the only station named after a football team. 123. There are three tube stations on the Monopoly board: Liverpool Street Station, King’s Cross and Marylebone. Watch \| How to land at Britain's trickiest airport 03:57 124. The number of stations that only use escalators is 12 125. Nineteen stations just use lifts. 126. The River Westbourne was funnelled above a platform on Sloane Square in a large iron pipe suspended from girders. It remains in place today. 127. The first tube station to be demolished was Westbourne Park on the Metropolitan Line. It was re-sited in 1871. 128. There is a mosquito named after the Tube – the London Underground mosquito, which was found in the London Underground. It was notable for its assault of Londoners sleeping in the Underground during the Blitz. 129.The London Underground Film Office handles over 200 requests a month. 130. In Alfred Hitchcock’s first feature film The Lodger (1926) featured the director making a cameo on the Tube. 131. The record for visiting all the stations on the London Underground network – known as the Tube Challenge – is currently held by Ronan McDonald and Clive Burgess of the United Kingdom, who completed the challenge in 16 hours, 14 minutes and 10 seconds on February 19, 2015 132. The Tube Challenge record did not appear in the Guinness book of records until its eighth edition in 1960, when it stood at 18 hours, 35 minutes. 133. An interactive novel has been published, set on the London Underground. You can read it here . 134. In cockney rhyming slang, the London Underground is known as the Oxo (Cube/Tube). 135. Around 30,000 passengers went on The Metropolitan Line on its first day of public business – January 10, 1863. 136. There were claims the first baby born on the Underground was called Thelma Ursula Beatrice Eleanor (so that her initials would have read TUBE) but this story later proved false – her actual name was Marie Cordery. London brunch 137. On August 3 2012, during the Olympic Games, the London Underground had its most hectic day ever, carrying 4.4 million passengers – but that record was beaten on Friday December 4 2015, when 4.82 million people used it. 138. St James is the only Underground Station to have Grade-I protected status. It includes 55 Broadway, the administrative headquarters of London’s Underground since the 1930s. 139. The most recent Tube birth – a boy – was in 2009. 140. The most common location for filming is Aldwych, a disused station. 141. As Princess Elizabeth, the Queen travelled on the Underground for the first time in May 1939, when she was 13 years old, with her governess Marion Crawford and Princess Margaret. Apr 30, 2016 at 3:30pm PDT 142. Poems on the Underground was launched in 1986, the idea of American writer Judith Chernaik. 143. A series of animal shapes have also been highlighted in the London Underground map, first discovered by Paul Middlewick in 1988. They're created using the tube lines, stations and junctions of the London Underground map. 144. A fragrance known as Madeleine was trialled at St. James Park, Euston, and Piccadilly stations in 2001, intended to make the Tube more pleasant. It was stopped within days after complaints from people saying they felt ill. 145. There were eight deep-level shelters built under the London Underground in the Second World War. One of them in Stockwell is decorated as a war memorial. 146. After the war, the deep level shelter at Clapham South housed immigrants from the West Indies. 147. A 2011 study suggested 30 per cent of passengers take longer routes due to the out-of-scale distances on the Tube map. 148. The first ever air-conditioned, walk-through Underground train ran on the Metropolitan line in 2010. 149. The average distance travelled by each Tube train annually stands at around 114,500 miles. 150. Alcohol was banned on the Tube – and all London Transport – from June 2008. Editor's note: Note that one or two facts have changed since this article was first published in 2014 and this has been updated to reflect those changes. The Best Hotels In London	i don't know
Who played the role of Becky Sharp in the 2004 film ‘Vanity Fair’?	Vanity Fair Movie Review & Film Summary (2004) \| Roger Ebert I had thought her a mere social climber. I see now she's a mountaineer. Advertisement So says one of her fascinated observers as Becky Sharp transforms herself from the impoverished orphan of an alcoholic painter into an adornment of the middle, if not the upper, reaches of the British aristocracy. "Vanity Fair" makes her a little more likeable than she was in the 1848 novel -- but then I always liked Becky anyway, because she so admirably tried to obey her cynical strategies and yet so helplessly allowed herself to be misled by her heart. Reese Witherspoon reflects both of those qualities effortlessly in this new film by Mira Nair , and no wonder, for isn't there a little of Elle Woods, her character in " Legally Blonde ," at work here? Becky to be sure never goes through a phase when anyone thinks her stupid, but she does use her sexuality to advantage, plays men at their own game and scores about as well as possible given the uneven 19th century playing field. When William Makepeace Thackeray wrote his funny and quietly savage novel, there were few career prospects for an educated young woman who did not fancy prostitution. She could become a governess, a teacher, a servant, a religious or a wife. The only male profession open to her was writing, which she could practice without the permission or license of men; that accounts for such as Jane Austen , the Brontes, George Eliot, Mrs. Gaskell and others who, as Virginia Woolf imagined them, wrote their masterpieces in a corner of the parlor while after-dinner chatter surrounded them. Advertisement Becky Sharp could probably have written a great novel, and certainly inspired one; Thackeray sees her dilemma and her behavior without sentiment, in a novel that must have surprised its first readers with its realism. We meet Becky just as she's leaving finishing school, where the French she learned from her Parisian mother won her a berth as a boarder and tutor. She made one good friend there: Amelia Sedley ( Romola Garai ), and now proposes to visit the Sedley family for a few days on her way to her first job, as a governess for the down-at-heels Sir Pitt Crawley ( Bob Hoskins ). But working as a governess is not Becky's life goal. She wants to marry well, and since she has neither fortune nor title it would be best if her husband brought both of those attributes into the marriage. Does this make her an evil woman? Not at all; romantic love is a modern and untrustworthy motive for marriage, and in England and India (where both Thackeray and Mira Nair were born), marriage strategies have always involved family connections and financial possibilities. Amelia likes Becky (she is the only one at school who did, Thackeray observes) and thinks it would be nice if Becky married her brother Joseph (Tony Maudsley). Amelia's own fiance, Capt. George Osborne ( Jonathan Rhys-Meyers ), discourages this plan, convincing the weak-willed Joseph that Becky is little better than a beggar with vague family irregularities, and would not adorn the Sedley household. Advertisement So Becky goes to Crawley Hall, where she mistakes the unshaven Sir Pitt for a servant. Servants, money and provisions seem in short supply in the Crawley family, but Becky makes one important conquest; Sir Pitt's rich maiden sister Matilde (played with magnificent biting wit by Eileen Atkins ) admires her pluck and becomes her friend and protector -- up to a point. That point is reached when Becky secretly marries her nephew Rawley Crawley ( James Purefoy ). As a second son, Rawley will not inherit the title or house, and as a gambler can't live within his allowance, so this marriage gives Becky a liaison with a good family but not the benefits. Some of the film's best moments come when characters administer verbal flayings to one another. Matilde is unforgiving when she is crossed. But the most astonishing dialogue comes from a character named Lord Steyne ( Gabriel Byrne ), who Becky meets for the first time when she's a girl in her father's studio. Steyne fancies a portrait of Becky's mother; her father prices it at 3 guineas, but Becky insists on 10, putting on a good show of sentimental attachment to her departed parent. Now, many years later, Steyne crosses Becky's path again. She reminds him of their first meeting. It occurs to him that having purchased a portrait of the parent, he might purchase the original of the daughter. This sets up a dinner-table scene in the Steyne household at which the lord verbally destroys every member of his family, not sparing the rich mulatto heiress from the Caribbean who married his son for his title even though "the whole world knows he's an idiot." The peculiar quality of "Vanity Fair," which sets it aside from the Austen adaptations such as "Sense and Sensibility" and " Pride and Prejudice ," is that it's not about very nice people. That makes them much more interesting. There are some decent blokes in the story, but on the fringes: William Dobbin ( Rhys Ifans ), for example, who persists in loving Amelia even though she falls for George, a thoroughgoing bounder. Joseph is a good sort, too. Advertisement And for that matter, how evil is Lord Steyn, really? He and Becky meet again after her husband, Rawley, has lost everything at the gambling tables and the bailiff is literally moving their furniture out of the house. Steyn pays off their debts. This would not have been considered by anybody as an act of selfless charity. Of course he expects Becky to show her gratitude, although oddly enough she shows it more frankly in the 1828 novel than in the 2004 movie; its PG-13 rating no doubt inspired Nair and her writers to suggest to their tender young audiences that Becky can be friendly and grateful without, as the saying goes, Steyn having sex with that young woman. In the real world, the furniture would have been back on the sidewalk. Is the Indian-born Mira Nair a strange choice to adapt what some think is the best English novel of the 19th century? Not at all. She has an instinctive feel for the comic possibilities of marital alliances, as she showed in her wonderful " Monsoon Wedding " (2001). And she brings to the movie an awareness of the role India played in the English imagination; in the 19th century, hardly a well-born family lacked relatives serving or living in India, and wasn't it Orwell who said the two nations deserved each other, because they shared the same love of eccentricity? Popular Blog Posts	Reese Witherspoon
Quomotion is a tribute band to which British band?	Witherspoon's Sharp contrast - tribunedigital-baltimoresun Witherspoon's Sharp contrast `Cute' actress plays social schemer role in `Vanity Fair' August 31, 2004\|By Elaine Dutka \| Elaine Dutka,LOS ANGELES TIMES HOLLYWOOD - In a town full of distinctive faces, Reese Witherspoon's stands out. Her pouty lips, saucy angularity and her contemporary sensibility are so singularly "Reese" that disappearing into a character - especially the 19th-century sort - can be a bit tough. Director Mira Nair, who hired the actress to play the calculating, corseted Becky Sharp in her film version of William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair, was taken with her portrayal of the super-perky class president candidate in 1999's Election, for which the National Society of Film Critics voted her best actress. Witherspoon's persona - which propelled Legally Blonde to the top of the charts two years later and made Sweet Home Alabama a hit in 2002 - always factors in the equation, she says. "Before this film, her first portrait of a full-blown woman, Reese was a cute, pesky sort," Nair said. "But there's a certain degree of steel in that peskiness that's appropriate for Becky. She has the guile and minx-like quality Thackeray describes ... `Beauty with the mind of a fox,' is how we describe it in the film." In 1998's Pleasantville, a younger Witherspoon still displayed that steely side, playing someone jaded and cynical who discovers innocence and humanity. "Reese hearkens back to a tradition of classic leading ladies such as Carole Lombard and Rosalind Russell who can hold the center of an intelligent comedy," said Pleasantville director Gary Ross. "It's rare that someone has that kind of control. Nothing is an accident with Reese. Acting since she was a teen, a wife and mother at an early age, she's also done a lot of living. I've never seen Reese as an ingenue - she's too forceful for that." There is a sort of essential "Reeseness" that colors any character Witherspoon plays, forcing a director to meld the reality with the fiction. In Vanity Fair, Witherspoon portrays the daughter of a French chorus girl and a penniless artist who schemes her way up the social ladder. The movie opens this week. Because "sass and fire" weren't encouraged in English women, Nair said, Witherspoon's contemporary American quality worked to her advantage. "Reese is as fearless as I am - not cocky, but quietly sure," Nair said. "Because Reese is also appealing ... it gave me license to keep the character complicated. If the audience finds her abrasive, you risk losing them." A onetime pre-med student at Stanford University, the 28-year-old actress both inhabits a character and has perspective on it and the movie as a whole, according to Ross. Though she has a wide range, humor is her strong suit, he says. But, then, intelligence has always been the mark of great comic actors, from Chaplin to Jack Lemmon. Witherspoon called Nair in January 2002 to discuss possible projects. When the director got the go-ahead to shoot Vanity Fair - her favorite book - Witherspoon was her choice for the lead. ("I try to avoid the obvious whenever possible," she said.) If some view the role as a major stretch, the actress begs to differ. Despite her contemporary aura, she says, she shares a lot with the Thackeray character. "I grew up a modern woman, with lots of opportunity and education," Witherspoon said on the phone from Memphis, where she's co-starring with Joaquin Phoenix in James Mangold's Walk the Line, the story of country music legend Johnny Cash. "But I'm also a Southern girl who grew up with manners - and I'm old-fashioned in many ways. One of the attractions of the part was that Becky isn't one-dimensional. Like everyone else in Mira's film, she has lots of different layers." Many of the external layers were provided by designer Beatrix Pasztor (The Fisher King, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues), who created 20 costumes for Witherspoon. Complicating matters, Witherspoon was in her second trimester of a pregnancy during which she put on 42 pounds. When she and her actor-husband Ryan Phillippe discovered that a second child was on the way, the shoot was moved ahead. Nair calls little Deacon "the boy inside Becky Sharp." "I was growing ... in all the wrong ways," the actress recalled. "And Beatrix's job was to disguise my pregnancy. ... She employed darker tones and optical illusions to make my stomach flatter. It was a blessing that the movie was set in the Regency period, with all those empire waistlines." Pasztor used light-colored inner panels and darker cutaway jackets to create a slimmer silhouette. She played up the actress' burgeoning chest, however, opting for plunging necklines when appropriate. "Reese has a very pretty face and upper part," she said. "Cleavage helped her develop her character - and I think she rather enjoyed it." Witherspoon, who made her feature film debut in 1991's The Man in the Moon, says she's prudish about overt sexuality. Even exposed midriffs make her uncomfortable, she concedes. But she trusted her director. "Mira is the first director who said she wanted me to gain weight and have bigger bosoms," the actress said. "She's very into feminine sensuality and I was happy to go there with her." The Los Angeles Times is a Tribune Publishing newspaper. MORE:	i don't know
What is the boiling point of water on the Farenheit scale?	The Straight Dope: On the Fahrenheit scale, why is 32 freezing and 212 boiling? What do 0 and 100 mean? Search The Straight Dope A Straight Dope Classic from Cecil's Storehouse of Human Knowledge On the Fahrenheit scale, why is 32 freezing and 212 boiling? What do 0 and 100 mean? December 15, 1989 Dear Cecil: Everybody knows 0 degrees on the Celsius scale is the freezing point of water and 100 degrees is the boiling point. On the Fahrenheit scale, however, freezing is 32 degrees and boiling 212. How on earth were these numbers arrived at? Do 0 and 100 degrees Fahrenheit mean anything? — Leslie, Montreal, Quebec Cecil replies: Researchers have gone to their graves trying to figure out what old man Fahrenheit was up to, Leslie. Here's the story as well as I can piece it together: Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686-1736) was a German instrument maker who invented the first practical mercury thermometer. Casting about for a suitable scale for his device, he visited the Danish astronomer Ole Romer, who had devised a system of his own. As it turned out, it was a case of the blind leading the blind. Romer had decided that the boiling point of water should be 60 degrees. This at least had the strength of numerological tradition behind it (60 minutes in an hour, right?). But zero was totally arbitrary, the main consideration apparently being that it should be colder than it ever got in Denmark. (Romer didn't like using negative numbers in his weather logbook.) In addition to the boiling point of water, the landmarks on Romer's scale were the freezing point of water, 7-1/2 degrees, and body temperature, 22-1/2 degrees. D.G., simple soul that he was, thought this cockeyed system was the soul of elegance. He made one useful change: to get rid of the fractions, he multiplied Romer's degrees by 4, giving him 30 for the freezing point and 90 for body temperature. Then, for reasons nobody has ever been able to fathom, he multiplied all the numbers by 16/15, making 32 freezing and 96 body temperature. Boiling point for the time being he ignored altogether. By and by Fahrenheit got ready to present his scale to London's Royal Society, the scientific big leagues of the day. It dawned on him that it was going to look a little strange having the zero on his scale just sort of hanging off the end, so to speak. So he cooked up the explanation that zero was the temperature of a mix of ice, water, and ammonium chloride. At some point Fahrenheit figured out that the boiling point of water came in at 212 degrees. Over time this replaced body temp as the upper landmark on his scale. Meanwhile, as more precise measurements were made, body temperature had to be adjusted to 98.6 degrees. In short, 100 means nothing at all on the Fahrenheit scale, 96 used to mean something but doesn't anymore, and 0 is colder than it ever gets in Denmark. Brilliant. Lest we get too down on Fahrenheit, though, consider Anders Celsius, who devised the centigrade scale (0 to 100). Everybody agrees Celsius's scale makes more sense than Fahrenheit's. Trouble is, the original Celsius scale had 100 for freezing, 0 for boiling. In other words, it was upside-down. (The numbers were reversed after Celsius's death.) These thermometer guys, what gets into them? Must be too much mercury exposure. OK, you're saying, very interesting. But what I REALLY need is a temperature trivia question that will make me the life of the party. I have just the thing. At what temperature are the Fahrenheit and Celsius readings the same? People will look at you with newfound respect when you reveal the astonishing answer: minus 40. — Cecil Adams	two hundred and twelve degrees
In 1970, Russia’s (USSR) Venera 7 became the first manmade spacecraft to land successfully on which planet, and transmit data back to Earth?	What is the boiling point of water in Kelvin? \| Reference.com What is the boiling point of water in Kelvin? A: Quick Answer The boiling point of water is 373.15 degrees Kelvin (K). Using the Fahrenheit scale, water’s boiling point is 212 degrees. This is also equivalent to 100 degrees Celsius. Full Answer Named after the scientist Lord Kelvin, also known as William Thomson, the Kelvin temperature scale designates absolute zero as the hypothetical point where all molecular movements cease. Absolute zero is given as 0 degree Kelvin and is equivalent to -273.15 degrees Celsius or -459.7 degrees Fahrenheit. To convert from Celsius to Kelvin temperature, the formula is C + 273.15 = K, where C represents temperature in degrees Celsius and K is degrees Kelvin. To find the melting point of ice with this conversion scale in degrees Kelvin, substitute the melting point of ice in degrees Celsius as 0 C into the formula to find that this becomes 273.15 degrees Kelvin.	i don't know
Who scored the first televised maximum snooker break, in 1982?	The First Televised Maximum (147 Break by Steve Davis in 1982) \| Snooker Videos \| PubSnooker.com The First Televised Maximum (147 Break by Steve Davis in 1982) The First Televised Maximum (147 Break by Steve Davis in 1982) Steve Davis made the first televised 147 break (Maximum) on 11th Jan 1982 in the Lada Classic against John Spencer. The Nugget (also known as the Ginger Magician) went on to dominate the 1980s and become one of the greatest ever snooker players and was still an elite player in 2010, but he never made another 147. In the 80s there were only 8 maximum breaks, in 1999 alone there were 10 147-breaks (the most in any year) with most years seeing 2-10 maximums these days. As of the end of 2010, Ronnie O'Sullivan has the most maximums with 10 to his name. The Fastest Ever 147 by Ronnie "The Rocket" O'Sullivan Watch Ronnie "The Rocket" O'Sullivan hit the fastest ever maximum break (147) in only 5mins 20secs! That's a perfect break, 15 reds with 15 backs followed by the yellow, green, brown, blue, pink and black in the time it takes Ebdon to pick up his cue! This... Jimmy White showing off his cue power with extreme screw as he wins his 1984 Masters semi-final match - back when snooker was watched by tens of millions in the UK. The 1985 World Snooker Championship Final Reviewed The 1985 World Snooker Championship Final between Steve Davis and Dennis Taylor is the most thrilling and the most epic of epic matches ever. Hear Steve Davis and Dennis Taylor talk you through the closing moments of the greatest snooker final in history.... The 1985 World Snooker Championship Final Frame (Part 1) Watch the final frame of the 1985 World Snooker Championship final between Steve Davis and Dennis Taylor. Watch and feel the tension and atmosphere grow to levels never seen before in a snooker match as the epic final goes to the wire, the final black in t... Watch the final frame of the 1985 World Snooker Championship final between Steve Davis and Dennis Taylor. This is it, the final few balls causing more problems then ever before in a final, and Dennis Taylor's unforgettable celebrations. The First Televised Maximum (147 Break by Steve Davis in 1982) Steve Davis made the first televised 147 break (Maximum) on 11th Jan 1982 in the Lada Classic against John Spencer. The Nugget (also known as the Ginger Magician) went on to dominate the 1980s and become one of the greatest ever snooker players and was sti... The First World Championships Maximum (147 Break by Cliff Thorburn in 1983) Cliff Thorburn made the first World Snooker Championships 147 break (Maximum) on 23rd April 1983 against Terry Griffiths. The Canadian's maximum took over 30 minutes to complete, maybe the slowest in history, and was famous for the fluked red that started... Maximum Break (147 Break by Jimmy White in 1992) Jimmy White made this 147 maximum in the World Snooker Championships on 22nd April 1992 against Tony Drago. This was The Whirlwind's only maximum in his long and unfortunate career. Jimmy, known as the people's champion, had bad fortune in the World Champi... Maximum Break (147 Break by Stephen Hendry in 1997) Stephen Hendry made this 147 maximum break in the Charity Challenge on 5th January 1997 against Ronnie O'Sullivan. This 147 was remarkable as it was in the deciding frame in the final of the championship. If that wasn't enough, Hendry was leading 8-2 in th...	Steve Davis
American Don King is well-known as a promoter of which sport?	Steve Davis 147 1982 Lada Classic Snooker "First Televised 147" - YouTube Steve Davis 147 1982 Lada Classic Snooker "First Televised 147" Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. The interactive transcript could not be loaded. Loading... Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Published on May 12, 2013 In the Lada Classic at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Oldham, Steve Davis made the first ever televised snooker 147. The break, which came in his quarter final match against John Spencer, was also the first maximum in a recognised professional tournament. Ronnie "Rocket" O'Sullivan is the best Snooker Player! Subscribe for latest videos. best snooker game, snooker, ronnie rocket, rocket o sullivan, ronnie o'sullivan vs mark selby, ronnie o'sullivan vs judd trump, Ronnie o'sullivan, steve davis, Ali carter, judd trump, Judd trump, shaun murphy, mark selby, neil robertson, john higgins, stephen hendary, mark Williams, ding junhui, alex higgins,jimmy white, 147 break, best snooker player, ronnie o'sullivan 147, world snooker championship, uk championship, grand prix, masters Category	i don't know
The 1937 novel ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’ was written by which British author?	The Road to Wigan Pier - George Orwell - Google Books The Road to Wigan Pier 1 Review https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier.html?id=qWzgkPqDxZIC A searing account of George Orwell's observations of working-class life in the bleak industrial heartlands of Yorkshire and Lancashire in the 1930s, The Road to Wigan Pier is a brilliant and bitter polemic that has lost none of its political impact over time. His graphically unforgettable descriptions of social injustice, cramped slum housing, dangerous mining conditions, squalor, hunger and growing unemployment are written with unblinking honesty, fury and great humanity. It crystallized the ideas that would be found in Orwell's later works and novels, and remains a powerful portrait of poverty, injustice and class divisions in Britain.	George Orwell
Which Californian computer software company was founded in 1995 by Bill Coleman, Ed Scott and Alfred Chuang?	The Road to Wigan Pier: Amazon.co.uk: G. Orwell: Books The Road to Wigan Pier Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought Page 1 of 1 Start over Page 1 of 1 This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading. Hardcover Â£17.93 Amazon Prime Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required. Apple To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number. or Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here , or download a FREE Kindle Reading App . Product details By Anita Treso on 1 April 2006 Format: Paperback 'The Road to Wigan Pier' is split into two parts. Part one is George Orwell's recording of his experiences in the North of England, meeting miner's families and reporting at first hand what he saw and heard. Orwell records with sincerity the working class condition. There is no blame or embellishment of what Orwell saw. Orwell's descriptions of the people in the boarding houses he was staying in, are wonderful. You really get a sense of the filth and depravation, and yet the people make you feel at home, to the point of marking your bread and butter with "a black thumb-print on it". I appreciate Orwell's candid writing. The stark reality of poverty is brought to life by Orwell, from his description of the conditions of working in the mines, to the weekly shopping bill and food consumption. Part two is Orwell's polemic on what he saw and experienced. I found this part of the book filled with passion, anger and justifications. Orwell always makes sure to explain the reasoning behind his arguements and even apologises for his background. Part two consists of political theories, language, class distinction and the personal journey Orwell experienced whilst researching part one. In my opinion, 'The Road to Wigan Pier' is a wonderful snapshot of a time and a place. It still has a place in literature today as a reminder to us all that there are still destitute people in the world and that things haven't changed as much as we hoped.	i don't know
Lake Chrissie is in which African country?	Lake Chrissie \| lake, South Africa \| Britannica.com Lake Chrissie East African lakes Lake Chrissie, Afrikaans Chrissiesmeer, shallow freshwater lake , Mpumalanga province, South Africa . It measures about 6 miles (9 km) long and 2 miles (3 km) wide and has a circumference of 14 miles (25 km). Its surface area and depth (maximum 20 feet [6 metres]) vary seasonally. The lake lies in the farming region known as New Scotland, which was settled about 1866 by Alexander McCorkindale. He named the lake for Christina, daughter of Marthinus Wessel Pretorius , then president of the South African Republic . The area had previously been known by the Swazis as Kachibibi (Big Lake) and by the Boers as Matotoland. Lake Chrissie is noted for its birdlife and herds of blesbok at the water’s edge. The town of Chrissiesmeer lies on the northern shore of the lake. Learn More in these related articles: Mpumalanga province, northeastern South Africa. It is bounded by Limpopo province to the north, Mozambique and Swaziland to the east, the provinces of KwaZulu-Natal and Free State to the south, and Gauteng province to the west. Mpumalanga province (called Eastern Transvaal province in 1994–95) was part... Marthinus Wessel Pretorius Sept. 17, 1819 near Graaff-Reinet, Cape Colony [now in South Africa] May 19, 1901 Potchefstroom, South African Republic [now in South Africa] Boer statesman, soldier, and founder of the town of Pretoria (1855). He was the first president of the South African Republic and also served as president of... Corrections? Updates? Help us improve this article! Contact our editors with your feedback. MEDIA FOR: You have successfully emailed this. Error when sending the email. Try again later. Edit Mode Submit Tips For Editing We welcome suggested improvements to any of our articles. You can make it easier for us to review and, hopefully, publish your contribution by keeping a few points in mind. Encyclopædia Britannica articles are written in a neutral objective tone for a general audience. You may find it helpful to search within the site to see how similar or related subjects are covered. Any text you add should be original, not copied from other sources. At the bottom of the article, feel free to list any sources that support your changes, so that we can fully understand their context. (Internet URLs are the best.) Your contribution may be further edited by our staff, and its publication is subject to our final approval. Unfortunately, our editorial approach may not be able to accommodate all contributions. Submit Thank You for Your Contribution! Our editors will review what you've submitted, and if it meets our criteria, we'll add it to the article. Please note that our editors may make some formatting changes or correct spelling or grammatical errors, and may also contact you if any clarifications are needed. Uh Oh There was a problem with your submission. Please try again later. Close Date Published: June 22, 2016 URL: https://www.britannica.com/place/Lake-Chrissie Access Date: December 29, 2016 Share	South Africa
Which Austrian Formula One racing driver was killed while qualifying for the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix?	Miss Chrissie's Country House (Chrissiesmeer, South Africa) - UPDATED 2017 Guest house Reviews - TripAdvisor Free Parking Official Description (provided by the hotel) A lovely country house in the middle of South Africa's lake district. Overlooking Lake Chrissie with 6km of private shoreline. ACCOMMODATION: 9 en-suite rooms (4 with self-catering) 1 Cottage, 3 bedrooms (self-catering) ... more less Additional Information about Miss Chrissie's Country House Address: Koolbank Road, \| Ermelo District, Mpumalanga, Chrissiesmeer 2332, South Africa Location: South Africa > Mpumalanga > Chrissiesmeer Hotel Class:4 star — Miss Chrissie's Country House 4* Number of rooms: 12 Is This Your TripAdvisor Listing? Own or manage this property? Claim your listing for free to respond to reviews, update your profile and much more.	i don't know
In humans, Polydactyl is the condition of having more than the normal number of what?	Polydactyly - definition of polydactyly by The Free Dictionary Polydactyly - definition of polydactyly by The Free Dictionary http://www.thefreedictionary.com/polydactyly adj. also pol·y·dac·ty·lous (-tə-ləs) Having more than the normal number of digits. n. A person or animal having more than the normal number of digits. pol′y·dac′tyl·ism, pol′y·dac′ty·ly n. polydactyly (Biology) the state of having more digits than is typical ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend: Noun 1. polydactyly - birth defect characterized by the presence of more than the normal number of fingers or toes pol·y·dac·ty·ly [MIM*603596] n. polidactilia, condición anormal de poseer más de cinco dedos en la mano o el pie. Want to thank TFD for its existence? Tell a friend about us , add a link to this page, or visit the webmaster's page for free fun content . Link to this page: trisomy 13 References in periodicals archive ? Holoprosencephaly was an expected finding in the fetus diagnosed with Patau syndrome (trisomy 13), although the other associated anomalies (such as polydactyly, flexion of the fingers, heart defects, facial clefting and neural tube defects [10]) were not identified. 12-finger VJ just our type 5 Weight, kg 16 [+ or -] 6 18 [+ or -] 7 Gender, male/female 14/12 16/13 ASA physical status, 1/2 24/2 27/2 Duration of anaesthesia, min 51 [+ or -] 18 45 [+ or -] 16 Duration of surgery, min 29 [+ or -] 13 26 [+ or -] 11 Type of surgery Inguinal hernia repair 10 12 Orchiopexy 6 7 Excision of skin tumour 3 3 Reconstruction of 5 6 polydactyly Central venous catheter 2 1 insertion Time from end of 33 [+ or -] 14 32 [+ or -] 12 dexmedetomidine/saline infusion to LMA removal, min Group [D.	Digit
Which actors play the blind man and the deaf man in the 1989 film ‘See No Evil, Hear No Evil’?	Genetic Disorder Research - Polydactyly Polydactyly by Julia and Coco Description of Disease Polydactyly is having more than the normal amount of fingers or toes. It is the most common of hand disabilities. It can also be called polydactylia, polydactilism, or hyperdactyly. It can occur without other diseases or symptoms and as a dominant trait in families that has one gene and several different variations to it. Polydactyly happens because of errors to the process of fetal development. The extra digits are because of genetic defects. The usual causes are familial polydactyly (inherited), Ellis-van Creveld Syndrome, Carpenter Syndrome, Trisomy 13, Rubenstein-Taybi Syndrome, Smith-Lemli-Opitz, Laurence-Moon-Biedl Syndrome, and Asphyxiating Thoracic Dystrophy.The condition is usually inherited as an autosomal dominant characteristic. This means that the gene is not sex-linked, so females and males are both able to inherit the condition equally. Because the gene is also dominant, a kid with one parent who has the trait will have a fifty percent chance of getting it. There may be different degrees of polydactyly even within the same family and the same gene. African Americans inherit six fingers or more more often than other ethnicities, but it doesn't show a genetic disease most of the time. However, polydactyly can happen at the same time as a genetic disease. There are two separate forms of polydactyly. There is post-axial (the thumb side of the hand before axis) and post-axial (the little finger side of the hand before axis).The excess digits can be undeveloped and only attached by a little stalk mostly on the small finger side of the hand or fully formed and working. People with the condition may have a small extra stub or many other fingers or toes. The different ways that poydactyly can affect the hand are one, a small bump on the side of the hand, two, having more than four fingers and a thumb,three,having a finger that hangs by a small amount of skin or a stalk from the hand, and four, having a finger that widens into two fingers in which both fingers are usually smaller. Also, polydactyly can happen at the same time when excess digits are fused together, which is called polysndactyly. Polydactyly is thought to be common in humans as a development abnormality; it is reported in 2 out of 1,000 kids. It is an old trait, and except for a quirk in evolution, all animals living in modern times would have seven or eight digits instead of five. The oldest animals with four legs had seven or eight digits, but they disappeared about 350 million years ago. Effects People with polydactyly usually have to learn to cope with the extra fingers or have them removed. If someone chooses to have excess fingers removed they would usually get them removed early in life, often under age one. People with this condition get their extra digits removed for a variety of reasons. This includes so that they can be accepted by society and for practicality reasons; most common utensils and ordinary objects are designed for hands with five fingers. People who are affected by polydactyly will not be affected by any illnesses due to the disord Treatment and Prognosis If the extra digits on the hands or feet are not fully developed digits, then it is possible to remove them by tying a piece of string around the skin or stalk that is attaching it to the hand, which causes the finger or toe to fall off within a period of time.If t he digits are fully developed and functional it can be surgically removed or kept. Discussion Questions 1. How are both types of polydactyly (fully developed digits and undeveloped digits) treated? 2. What are the four different ways polydactyly can affect the hand? 3. Why would people with polydactyly want to get their extra digits removed? 4. What is polysyndactyly? 1. Author not listed."Polydactyly".University of Maryland Medical Center. 5/9/07. http://www.umm.edu/ency/article/003176.htm . 2.Author not listed."Polydactyly(Extra Fingers)".Handworld. 5/9/07. http://www.eatonhand.com/hw/hw024.htm . 3.Author not listed."Polydactyly and Syndactyly".Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center College of Medecine.5/14/07. http://www.hmc.psu.edu/healthinfo/pq/poly.htm 4.Suzan Grindell."What is Polydactyly?".Maine Coon Polydactyls.5/8/07. http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~grins/polydactylmainecoons/page2.html	i don't know
‘The Picture of….’who’? Is a novel by Oscar Wilde?	Dorian Gray's true picture of Oscar Wilde \| Books \| The Guardian Books blog Dorian Gray's true picture of Oscar Wilde It is unique in the author's work for its direct sincerity, offering a uniquely authentic portrait of Wilde himself Portrait of the artist ... Colin Firth (left) and Ben Barnes in the 2009 film Dorian Gray Share on Messenger Close Though a product of the Victorian age, Oscar Wilde and his works always seemed thoroughly modern. I don't only mean that readers today easily relate to Wildean concepts; the universal will always be universal, and Shakespeare is as relevant as ever. Rather, Oscar's sensibilities are so perfectly fitted to our time: sarcastic, idealistic, playful, gloomy, melodramatic, conflicted. He was a self-created superstar, with a weirdly modern awareness of all that entailed: manipulation of image, distancing humour and irony, persona as artistic statement. And all those knowingly self-contradictory epigrams, simultaneously flippant and deathly serious, almost like Zen koans: coming at eternal truth by a sort of profound, solemn mischievousness. I've always adored Oscar Wilde: the effervescent dramas and witty essays, and the construct that was Oscar, glamorous, riotous, effortlessly brilliant. But in an odd, paradoxical – you might almost say Wildean – way, my favourite of his works is The Picture of Dorian Gray, subject of Dublin's One City, One Book initiative for the last month. Readings, exhibitions, walks and various other events have been marking the only novel Wilde published. And with a nice touch of synchronicity, I'd only recently reread the story, in a beautiful hardback collection of all Oscar's work , complete with Aubrey Beardsley's wonderfully stark illustrations, old playbills and so on. Its story of Dorian Gray – a young man beautiful of face and spirit, seduced into dissolution and degradation by the impish hedonist Lord Henry "Harry" Wotton – is an unflinching meditation on moral corruption, the nature of the soul, heaven and hell. In the opening scene we are introduced to the titular picture, painted by the deeply moral Basil Hallward. There's an air of foreboding from the beginning, as Basil declares he will never exhibit it, saying: "There is too much of myself in the thing … I am afraid that I have shown with it the secret of my own soul." With Harry's Mephistophelean whispers in his ears, Dorian eventually eschews moral sobriety to wallow in indulgences of the flesh. Under the censorious strictures of the period none of this is spelled out explicitly, which makes it more powerful: the reader's mind imagines the worst of all scenarios. Dorian's narcissism had already guaranteed his fall: he ushers up an unholy prayer that the portrait should age and bear the scars of his moral turpitude, while his physical self would forever look young and innocent. After he cruelly provokes the suicide of the sweet-natured Sybil, Dorian is fully lost but shows none of it on his angelic face; the picture, meanwhile, ages and degrades and grows rotten in the attic. For me, Dorian Gray is special – not necessarily Wilde's best work but unique in his canon – because it's so sincere: ineffably, inescapably, absolutely. It's a very good novel anyway: moving, exciting, full of dread, angst, horror, lucidity… and a great love, I think, for mankind and for the artist's own self. But above and underneath and beyond all this, he is sincere when he writes it. Not the normal Wildean sincere-in-his-insincerity (though Harry delivers a whirlwind of tremendous comic riffs), but old-fashioned, straight-up sincere. No arch one-liners to deflect attention, no glib protestations that it was all just a joke, not to be taken seriously. This is authentic, almost painfully so; this is Oscar laid bare. Elsewhere in his work we see mostly Public Oscar on display. Private Oscar was mostly kept concealed behind the dazzling wit. He can be found in a few other places: later works like De Profundis, some of the poetry and, in a strange way, the children's stories. But nowhere, for me, is the real Oscar revealed so much as through his alter-ego here, or rather his dual alter-egos: the beautiful, ruined Dorian and the cynical but empathetic Harry. The One City, One Book website chooses a most appropriate quote: "The whole book seemed to him to contain the story of his own life, written before he had lived it." And Dorian Gray is replete with similar lines, from various characters: "…seeing in that great work of art a presentation of the tragedy of his own soul." "I will show you my soul. You shall see the thing that you fancy only God can see." "It is the face of my soul." In the text they're talking about Basil's portrait, or other works of art; in the broader narrative of the author's life, he is talking about the essence of Oscar Wilde. He's writing the book of himself in words and actions. It's art imitating life imitating art, to infinity. It's pure Oscar. It's the real Oscar.	The Picture of Dorian Gray
Roman Emperor Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus is better known by what name?	The Picture of Dorian Gray : Oscar Wilde : 9780141439570 The Picture of Dorian Gray Paperback By (author) Oscar Wilde , Introduction by Robert Mighall Share US$6.88 US$8.99 You save US$2.11 Free delivery worldwide Add to basket Add to wishlist Description Oscar Wilde's tale of a Faustian pact in Victorian England, The Picture of Dorian Gray is a both a slow-burning Gothic horror and a brilliant philosophical investigation of youth, beauty and desire. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction and notes by Robert Mighall. Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life; indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his decadence. The Picture of Dorian Gray was a succes de scandale. Early readers were shocked by its hints at unspeakable sins, and the book was later used as evidence against Wilde at the Old Bailey in 1895. It has lost none of its power to fascinate and disturb. This definitive edition includes a selection of contemporary reviews condemning the novels immorality, and the introduction to the first Penguin Classics edition by Peter Ackroyd. Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), son of an eminent eye-surgeon and a nationalist poet, was educated in Dublin and Oxford and became the leading exponent of the new Aesthetic Movement. His work, including short fiction such The Happy Price (1888), his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), gradually won him a reputation, which was cemented by his phenomenally successful plays, including A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). Imprisoned for homosexual acts, he died after his release, in exile in Paris. If you enjoyed The Picture of Dorian Gray, you might like Joris-Karl Huysmans' Against Nature (A Rebours) Wilde's real-life inspiration for the novel that slowly corrupts Dorian Gray, also available in Penguin Classics. show more Product details 128 x 196 x 20mm \| 222.26g Publication date	i don't know
Which British fashion designer died at his London home in February 2010, aged 40?	Fashion designer Alexander McQueen dies aged 40 \| Fashion \| The Guardian Alexander McQueen Fashion designer Alexander McQueen dies aged 40 Tributes flow in for 'master of the fantastic' found dead at West End home a few days before London fashion week Thursday 11 February 2010 13.48 EST First published on Thursday 11 February 2010 13.48 EST Close This article is 6 years old The British fashion designer Alexander McQueen has been found dead at the age of 40 in his London home. His body was discovered at the property in Green Street, central London , shortly after 10am today. Paramedics were called but he was pronounced dead at the scene. A postmortem has been scheduled but police said his death was not being treated as suspicious. They would not comment on reports he had killed himself. A spokeswoman for McQueen said: "Mr McQueen was found dead this morning at his home. We're devastated and I hope you understand that out of respect to his family and his colleagues we're not going to be making any further statement." The death comes days before the start of London fashion week and a month before the designer was to unveil his new collection at Paris fashion week. His family asked for privacy to come to terms with the death of McQueen, whose first name was Lee. His company, Alexander McQueen, issued a statement saying: "On behalf of Lee McQueen's family, Alexander McQueen today announces the tragic news that Lee McQueen, the founder and designer of the Alexander McQueen brand, has been found dead at his home. At this stage it is inappropriate to comment on this tragic news beyond saying that we are devastated and are sharing a sense of shock and grief with Lee's family." "Lee's family has asked for privacy in order to come to terms with this terrible news and we hope the media will respect this." Tributes quickly poured in after news of McQueen's sudden death. Alexandra Shulman, the editor of British Vogue, said McQueen had influenced a whole generation of designers. "His brilliant imagination knew no bounds as he conjured up collection after collection of extraordinary designs," she said. "At one level he was a master of the fantastic, creating astounding fashion shows that mixed design, technology and performance and on another he was a modern-day genius whose gothic aesthetic was adopted by women the world over. His death is the hugest loss to anyone who knew him and for very many who didn't." The designer Katherine Hamnett said: "He was a genius. What a terrible, tragic waste." Dame Vivienne Westwood said she was "incredibly sorry" to hear the news. Matthew Williamson said: "I am shocked and deeply saddened by McQueen's death. He was a genius and his talent was second to none. Like many others I always cited him as a hugely inspirational leader of world fashion. He will be greatly missed." A spokesman for the model Kate Moss said: "Kate is shocked and devastated at the tragic loss of her dear friend Lee McQueen. Her thoughts are with his family at this sad time." McQueen was praised for raising the profile of British fashion around the world. "Alexander McQueen made an outstanding contribution to British fashion," said the culture secretary, Ben Bradshaw. "His extraordinary talent and creativity mean that his designs are adored not just by followers of haute couture but lovers of great style everywhere. This is a great loss to one of Britain's most successful industries and to the design world more widely." A spokeswoman for the British fashion council said: "He was a unique talent and one of the world's greatest designers. Our thoughts are with his friends and family at this sad time." Comments had been posted on McQueen's Twitter page, McQueenWorld, expressing his distress over the death of his mother on 2 February. He wrote last week: "i'm letting my followers know the my mother passed away yesterday if it she had not me nor would you RIP mumx" A minute later he added: "but life must go on!" On Sunday McQueen wrote: "sunday evening been a f****** awful week but my friends have been great but now i have to some how pull myself together..." Born in London in 1969 as the youngest of six children, McQueen left school at the age of 16 and was offered an apprenticeship at the traditional Savile Row tailors Anderson and Shephard, then at neighbouring Gieves and Hawkes. At 20 he was employed by the designer Koji Tatsuno. A year later McQueen travelled to Milan where he worked as a design assistant to Romeo Gigli. He returned to London in 1994 where he completed a master's degree in fashion design at Central St Martins College. His degree collection was famously bought in its entirety by Isabella Blow, a leading figure in the fashion world who died in 2007. In less than 10 years McQueen became one of the most respected fashion designers in the world. In October 1996 he was appointed chief designer at the French label Givenchy where he worked until March 2001. In December 2000, 51% of Alexander McQueen was acquired by luxury brand Gucci, where he became creative director. Expansion followed and included the opening of flagship stores in New York, London and Milan. McQueen was a four-time winner of the British designer of the year award as well as the international designer of the year award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America. He was awarded the CBE in 2003. The brilliant British designer whose fascination with psychology found expression in fashion has died, age 40 Published: 11 Feb 2010 Alexander McQueen has died aged 40. We take a look back at his catwalk collections, his career highs, and the celebrities who supported his label on the red carpet Published: 11 Feb 2010 Guardian fashion editor Jess Cartner-Morley looks back on Alexander McQueen's illustrious career as the bad boy of British fashion Published: 11 Feb 2010 Iconoclastic genius McQueen found dead at home nine days after death of his mother Published: 11 Feb 2010	Alexander McQueen
Thathanka Iyotake was the native name for which American tribal chief?	McQueen left a note and hanged himself, coroner says - CNN.com McQueen left a note and hanged himself, coroner says Fashion designer Alexander McQueen was found dead in his London home on February 11, 2010. STORY HIGHLIGHTS Coroner tells inquest designer left note and hanged himself Alexander McQueen, 40, found dead at London home last week Coroner's officer says police are looking at suicide note McQueen's death mourned by fashion world and fans worldwide London, England (CNN) -- Fashion designer Alexander McQueen hanged himself in his wardrobe and left a suicide note, a coroner told a London inquest Wednesday. McQueen , 40, was found dead at his London apartment Thursday. The cause of death was asphyxia and hanging, said coroner's officer Lynda Martindill. A police officer told the inquest that McQueen's death was "nonsuspicious," according to Martindill. "The coroner said a note had been found and is being looked at by the police," Martindill said, without offering details about the note. The coroner adjourned the inquest until April 28 in order to complete the full post-mortem report, she said. McQueen, who had dressed stars from Sarah Jessica Parker and Nicole Kidman to Rihanna and Sandra Bullock, killed himself nine days after the death of his mother. He expressed his devastation at her death on his Twitter account days before he died. Video: McQueen in his own words Video: Death of a fashion icon Video: McQueen's global impact McQueen, whose real name was Lee Alexander McQueen, had a reputation for controversy that earned him the titles "enfant terrible" and "the hooligan of English fashion." British Vogue Editor Alexandra Shulman called him a "modern-day genius." "His brilliant imagination knew no bounds," she said after his death. Eccentric singer Lady Gaga, who called herself a big fan and wore McQueen's alien-inspired stilettos in a recent video, dedicated her performance at Tuesday night's BRIT Awards in London to the designer. McQueen was born in 1970 in London's East End, the son of a taxi driver, according to a biography on the Vogue Web site. He trained in London's Savile Row at a company that made suits for Prince Charles. One anecdote that helped cement his bad-boy image was that he had once embroidered a suit for the Prince of Wales with a profanity sewn into the lining. His clothing line was purchased in 1991 by stylist Isabella Blow, who became a close friend. She committed suicide in 2007, five years after his label was brought into the Gucci Group, based in Paris, France. In an interview with CNN's Jim Bittermann in October, McQueen spoke of the changing nature of runway shows for fashion designers. His latest show was an invitation event for 1,000 people, and was streamed live on the Internet. "It's got to progress and it's got to move on," he said. "I've been doing these shows for over 15 years now; I must have done about 60 shows. Even I get bored with the same concept, so this way, I can see a brighter future for fashion." The designer was honored as a commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003, and won numerous other awards in the fashion world. Share this on:	i don't know
‘Going Straight’ was the sequel to which British television series?	Going Straight (TV Series 1978– ) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error Following his release from Slade prison, Fletcher tries to stick to the straight and narrow, but it isn't easy! Stars: Fletch is finally released - after getting his coat stuck in the prison gates - and on the train home meets Mr. Mackay, who, after a few drinks, tells him he will soon have to retire and is off to ... 8.4 Ingrid is marrying Lennie Godber but Fletch feels frustrated because his ex-wife and her partner are paying for the wedding when he feels that he should be. He is thus tempted when a man called Piper... 8.3 Fletch is well-regarded at the hotel, though he is not too well off as his wages go on repaying Ingrid and Godber, now engaged, for loans. An old lady called Mrs. Appleby comes to the hotel with some... 8.0 Famous Directors: From Sundance to Prominence From Christopher Nolan to Quentin Tarantino and every Coen brother in between, many of today's most popular directors got their start at the Sundance Film Festival . Here's a list of some of the biggest names to go from Sundance to Hollywood prominence. a list of 13 titles created 11 Nov 2012 a list of 250 titles created 27 Dec 2013 a list of 392 titles created 11 Mar 2014 a list of 33 titles created 22 Mar 2014 a list of 34 titles created 10 Aug 2015 Search for " Going Straight " on Amazon.com Connect with IMDb Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Add Image Add an image Do you have any images for this title? This prison comedy is based on the popular British television series of the same name. Long time Slade prison inmate Fletcher is ordered by Grouty to arrange a football match between the ... See full summary » Director: Dick Clement The prison life of Fletcher, a criminal serving a five-year sentence, as he strives to bide his time, keep his record clean, and refuses to be ground down by the prison system. Stars: Ronnie Barker, Brian Wilde, Fulton Mackay The adventures of two "likely lads" ostensibly set in the North East of England (but filmed in Willesden Junction, London). Terry and Bob have been friends since childhood. Bob is the ... See full summary » Stars: James Bolam, Rodney Bewes, Don McKillop Arkwright is a tight-fisted shop owner in Doncaster, who will stop at nothing to keep his profits high and his overheads low, even if this means harassing his nephew Granville. Arkwright's ... See full summary » Stars: Ronnie Barker, David Jason, Lynda Baron Popular sitcom set in a seedy bedsit lorded over by the mean, vain, boastful, cowardly landlord Rigsby. In each episode, his conceits are debunked by his long suffering tenants. Stars: Leonard Rossiter, Don Warrington, Frances de la Tour Terry and Bob from The Likely Lads (1964) continue their life after Terry arrives home from serving in the Army to discover that Bob is about to marry his girlfriend Thelma. Can Thelma lead... See full summary » Stars: James Bolam, Rodney Bewes, Brigit Forsyth Long running BBC comedy show consisting of sketches and humourous musical routines involving the large Ronnie Barker and the small Ronnie Corbett. Most sketches involved both men, but ... See full summary » Stars: Ronnie Barker, Ronnie Corbett, The Fred Tomlinson Singers A working-class Cockney bigot with a biased and expirienced opinion of everything shares them bluntly and almost carelessly. Stars: Warren Mitchell, Anthony Booth, Una Stubbs Alf and Elsie are getting old, Rita's left home, Elsie's confined to a wheelchair. Alf must now do battle with the Social Security system. Stars: Warren Mitchell, Carmel McSharry, Arthur English Bless This House centres on life in Birch Avenue, Putney, where travelling stationery salesman Sid Abbott (Sidney James) and his wife Jean (Diana Coupland) live with their teenagers: Mike (... See full summary » Stars: Sidney James, Diana Coupland, Sally Geeson BBC Television comedy detailing the fortunes of Reginald Iolanthe Perrin. Disillusioned after a long career at Sunshine Desserts, Perrin goes through a mid-life crisis and fakes his own ... See full summary » Stars: Leonard Rossiter, Pauline Yates, John Barron Accident-prone Frank Spencer fails to navigate the simplest tasks of daily life, while also trying to look after his wife and baby. Stars: Michael Crawford, Michele Dotrice, Jessica Forte Edit Storyline Following his release from Slade prison, Fletcher tries to stick to the straight and narrow, but it isn't easy! 24 February 1978 (UK) See more » Company Credits Did You Know? Trivia Fulton McKay makes a guest appearance in the first episode, reprising his role of Senior Prison Officer Mckay from Porridge, as does Tony Osoba as inmate, McLaren. See more » Connections It's different but every bit as good 31 March 2012 \| by crw1 (Australia) – See all my reviews I thoroughly endorse Liam's well expressed review. Going Straight deals with the same person in very different circumstances and one that has to have non-humorous aspects. The episodes are clever, and funny where they need to be, very funny, with Fletch's repartee as sharp as ever. And his delivery is flawless. I found myself chuckling all the time I wasn't feeling sorry for him or worried about him. It's an excellent supplement to the wonderful Porridge. And Godber was as perfect in his new circumstances as he ever was. Interesting to see some supporting actors who went on to considerable acclaim themselves. If I have any reservations they are only about Ingrid's London accent - though nothing could ever be as bad as Dick Van Dyke's chimney sweep. 1 of 3 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes	Porridge
How many sheets of identical paper are in a ream?	Porridge (Series) - TV Tropes The Boxing Episode : When Godber takes up boxing, culminating in a Double Knockout . Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick : According to Fletcher, the prison football team has a good mix of "youth, experience, flair and brutality". British Brevity : 21 episodes. The show came to an end at the height of its popularity, at Barker's request. The Butcher : Parodied with "The Butcher of Eastgate". He fiddled his VAT. Cacophony Cover Up : When Harry Grout is forced into organizing the digging of an escape tunnel for another prisoner, the noise of the tunneling is covered up by a choir singing Christmas carols. Chronic Villainy : Fletcher is described as an "habitual criminal" in the opening narration, and has spent a large portion of his adult life in prison. Explored more in the sequel, as Fletcher attempts to "go straight". Criminal Procedural : Of the convict variety. Cross-Referenced Titles : Episodes 3 and 4 are "A Night In" and "A Day Out". Decision Darts : Fletcher mentions that in his previous prison they used to run roulette by bribing a warden to turn a blind eye, blindfolding the "croupier" and spinning him around when he threw a dart at a dartboard covered with a list of numbers. Until the spinning was a little too vigorous and the warden "turned a blind eye to everything after that". Disproportionate Retribution : Grouty mentions an inmate who put four prison guards in hospital because someone knocked over his jigsaw puzzle. The Ditz : Heslop. Warren too, to a lesser extent. Warren: "Objection!" Rawley: "... Well go on, Warren. What is your objection?" Warren: "... I don't know." The Dreaded : Mackay has this reputation to an extent, his much much worse replacement is a much better example. However London Gangster Harry Grout is the true winner, simply cause everyone knows that angering him could lead to you losing your life. Drill Sergeant Nasty : Mackay, he even was a sergeant in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders regiment, before he because a prison officer. He likewise still acts like he is. Double Knockout : During their boxing match, Godber and Nesbitt knock each other out with the first punch, having both been bribed to lose . It works out well for Fletcher, though, as he was the only person in the prison to bet on a draw . Exact Words : An exchange between Mackay and Fletcher: Mackay: "Alright Fletcher, just don't let me catch you thieving!" Fletcher: "I won't." Mackay: "You won't what?" Fletcher: "I won't let you catch me Mr Mackay!" Fakeout Escape : This is the resolution of one episode, where boss-prisoner Grouty is strong-armed by contacts outside the prison into organising an escape tunnel for a stupid but well-connected inmate. The tunnel progresses and the noise is masked by a choir singing Christmas carols. Grouty is pessimistic about pulling it off, while crafty convict Fletch frets that if a prisoner escapes so close to Christmas, privileges will be withdrawn to everyone and Dec 25th will become just another grim, grey, day inside. Fletch eventually comes up with a face-saving solution allowing Grouty to keep his cred with the London gangs who are pressuring him; allow the warders to discover the tunnel. They will be so pleased at finding it that they will not be looking for the escapee being smuggled out by other means, ie hidden in a garbage truck. Faux Affably Evil : Genial Harry Grout, a high up London Crime boss. He is always charming, polite and never even raises his voice. If you do a job especially well for him, he'll pay back the favour and he's in a good mood, he might even be willing to bribe others. But fail him, anger him or just simply annoy him and he'll have one of his many heavies break your arms or beat you to blood. From the Latin "Intro Ducere" : Fletch drops this into his conversations from time to time. Genre Savvy : Mackay has his moments, but Fletcher is generally still one or two steps ahead. Gosh Dang It to Heck! : The prisoners use the words "naff" or "naffing", depending on context, for viewer-friendly swearing. [Godber bangs his head on a goalpost] Mackay: [holds up one finger] How many fingers am I holding up? Godber: You can't fool me, sir. Five. Godber: You talk with your mouth full. You whistle out of tune. You snore. You spit. Fletcher: How dare you! I do not whistle out of tune! Insane Troll Logic : One of Fletcherï¿½s skills acquired over his years in prison, how to give an answer that is seemingly satisfactory but on later examination is either nonsensical or raises more fridge logic than it settles... Q: What became of the soil that was excavated from the tunnel? A: We dug another tunnel and put it all down there. Jerk with a Heart of Gold : Why Fletch of course! Kangaroo Court : In "Rough Justice" Fletch puts Harris on trial for stealing from his fellow inmates. While the judge (an actual judge, convicted of corruption) tries to maintain some degree of fairness, he's hampered by everyone else's disregard for proper procedure and firm conviction that Harris must be guilty because he's Harris. (Including the defence counsel.) It turns out they're right, and he returns the watch when MacLaren threatens to "extract" a confession. Knight of Cerebus : Harry Grout, specifically the actor was told not to play it like he was in a comedy. Whenever he appears the threats hanging over Fletcher's head get a lot more serious and the show dips into more Black Comedy . London Gangster : Genial Harry Grout, an East London crime boss, serving time for an unspecified big job that required him being extradited from Italy. Grouty pretty much runs the whole prison: rigging sports matches, organising escapes of other high up criminals who can afford to get out and being completely in control of the entire prison drug trade. Likewise you really don't want to get on his bad side. His only rival in the prison, is another London crime boss, the two compete through betting on prison sports matches then rigging them in their favour. Luxury Prison Suite : We see Harry Grout only three times, each time in his large, well-furnished cell. Apparently when he was extradited he paid for himself and the policeman to be bumped up to first class. Manipulative Bastard : Fletch argues this is the moral choice. Since everyone in prison is out for what they can get, manipulating people is better than getting what you want with your fists. His teaching McLaren to do this gave the latter some character growth. Master Poisoner : Riggs, who now works in the prison kitchens. Military Moonshiner : Or prisoner moonshiner in this case. Moral Dissonance : Blanco, a kindly older prisoner who insisted for years that he was innocent of murdering his wife, later telling Fletcher it was his wife's lover who had actually done it. As he's now paroled pardoned , Fletcher tells him not to go looking for revenge, but Blanco replies that the lover is long dead, and he should know. "It were me that killed him". The Movie : aka Doing Time in the U.S. Made in 1979, featuring the same cast and writers but with no BBC involvement. Not as well-received as the series, though not as bad as some TV spin-offs. This was Richard Beckinsale's last performance before his untimely death. Never Learned to Read : "Bunny" Warren claims to be in prison because he could not read the sign: "Warning, Burglar Alarm". He also gets Fletcher to read him letters from his wife. No Theme Tune : The opening is the top-of-the-page quote (voiced by Barker as the judge) over a locking-the-prisoners-up montage. There is a closing theme tune. Odd Couple : Both Fletcher (cynical old timer) and Godber (naive young criminal), and Mackay (strict and nasty as they come) and Barrowclough (soft as ice cream in a Californian heatwave.) The Old Convict : Fletcher to some extent, but Blanco plays this more straight. He's completed a replica of Muffin the Mule in the prison workshop: "You know, him what's on television". (Muffin the Mule was broadcast from 1946 to 1957. The Porridge episode was broadcast in 1975.) Opening Narration : See the top of the page. Pet Homosexual : "Lukewarm". Prison : The setting, though unlike most examples its a comedy, their is very little violence or focus on the more dangerous inmates. Instead the focus is on more average people dealing with being imprisoned, and winning the occasional little victory. Rule Number One : According to Mr. Mackay, there are only two rules in Slade Prison. Rule number 1: Do not write on the walls. And rule number 2: Obey all the rules. Scary Black Man : Jock McLaren (though he's more of a scary Scot who happens to be black). Scary Minority Suspect : Ditto. Second Episode Introduction : Godber, and all other prisoners except Fletcher himself, does not appear in the pilot. Shout-Out : Harry Grout, who bears something of a resemblance to a certain Mr. Bridger , is apparently doing time for some sort of job in Italy ... Status Quo Is God : Averted. Fletch is sentenced to five years; as the original series had run for four, the sequel Going Straight focused on Fletch's release back into society. Tragic Villain : Reg Urwin from the Christmas Special "Desperate Hours" he's perfectly happy to hold Fletcher, Godber, Mr Barrowclough and the Governor's secretary at gunpoint and contemplates homicide a few times. However all he wants is to get out of Prison and be free again as he's clearly not coping with his incarceration and is also clearly mentally unwell. Its revealed he was recommended for psychiatric treatment three times before this event, but never got any. He admits if he doesn't get out he'll kill himself, having already attempting suicide once before. When Fletcher disarms him, he outright breaks down to tears. Fletcher and Godber even pass up a chance of a pardon for stopping him, so that Reg can surrender on his own and finally get some much needed help. Transatlantic Equivalent : ABC's short lived On The Rocks. Treasure Map : Blanco has a map showing where his ill-gotten gains are buried, though it turns out to be a fake. Another inmate, Norris, gets caught trying to dig it up under a football pitch. Unusual Euphemism : Retasked the existing word 'naff' as an expletive, as in "naff off". Also created 'nerk' (presumably in place of 'berk') and possibly 'scrote'. Violent Glaswegian : Jock McLaren, again. Wardens Are Evil : Averted, the Warden of Slade Prison is a all around genial, cheerful and friendly man, who firmly believes in treating the prisoners correctly and rehabilitation. While the inmates aren't above taking advantage of his occasional naivete he never the less even strikes up a reasonably friendly relationship with Fletcher. We Meet Again : Fletcher and Mr Wainwright. Fletcher and Judge Rawley. We Want Our Jerk Back : As mentioned above, Mr Mackay's overly-cruel replacement had the prisoners getting nostalgic.	i don't know
Which singer/actress attacked Russell Harty on his 1980 British television chat show?	Grace Jones on Russell Harty Barmy diva throws legendary strop!!!! - YouTube Grace Jones on Russell Harty Barmy diva throws legendary strop!!!! Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. The interactive transcript could not be loaded. Loading... Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Uploaded on Aug 3, 2009 Category	Grace Jones
How many fluid ounces in half an Imperial pint?	Terry Wogan: Welcome to his world \| The Independent Media Terry Wogan: Welcome to his world It could be the 1980s all over again as the broadcasting phenomenon that is Sir Terry finds himself back in the armchair with a new chat show on UKTV Gold. David Icke had better watch out. Ian Burrell meets the Togmeister Monday 23 January 2006 00:00 BST Click to follow The Independent Online he sight of David Icke in a turquoise and pink shellsuit, playing the messiah on the Wogan show in 1991, will surely rank pretty close to number one when Channel 4 or Five ever gets round to making a programme called "The most excruciating chat show moments ever". Icke, familiar to viewers as a Green Party politician and former BBC sports presenter, reduced the studio audience to hysterics with his eccentric theories, including one on the power of laughter for curing evil, only for host Terry Wogan to advise him: "They're laughing at you - they're not laughing with you." Last Wednesday evening the pair renewed their acquaintance for the first of a new series called Wogan Then and Now, which begins on UKTV Gold tomorrow. In this case, the now was very different from the then. For a start Icke had ditched his aquamarine sportswear in favour of a sombre, all-black ensemble, stepping smartly on to the stage with his hair in a greying mullet and an expression of intense seriousness on his face. Wogan, having tripped up the messiah first time round, elected to start this encounter on the back foot, replaying the original quip and then apologising: "When I see that I'm slightly embarrassed. I thought I was a bit sharp with that comment." With that Icke was off. "I couldn't walk down any street in Britain without being laughed at by most of the people. Going into a pub there was uproar. A comedian only had to say my name to get a laugh. What that does is it reveals to you the level of maturity that passes for adulthood in this country," he moaned. The remainder of the interview consisted of a stream-of-consciousness from Icke on how the world and international media are run by a sinister cabal, while Wogan interjected with the occasional "But who are these hidden hands?" and "But America is an open society, isn't it?". This latter comment provided the only burst of laughter from the studio audience as Icke retorted: "Oh pur-leese, I've got some seafront property in Birmingham Terry you might like to buy. And they say I'm crazy." Unlike the award-winning original BBC1 Wogan, which ran for eight years and established its Limerick-born host as Britain's best-known media figure, the new show is recorded. That particular interview may require some work in the edit suite, although an earlier exchange with Christopher Lee (also to be shown in the opening offering of a 13-show series) saw Old Tel at his best, engaging warmly with an acting legend who is even more of a box office attraction now than he was when he appeared on Wogan two decades earlier. At 67, Terry Wogan can still reasonably lay claim to being Britain's most successful broadcaster. His Wake Up to Wogan breakfast show on Radio 2 pulls an audience of eight million and has been a phenomenal success since he returned to his favourite medium a year after the BBC1 chat show was taken off air in 1992. Huge television audiences still watch him present the Eurovision Song Contest and Children in Need, neither of which would seem the same without him. So it is an extraordinary coup for UKTV to have brought him into the world of multichannel television, or "extra-terrestrial" as the host himself calls it. Speaking in a London hotel bar two days ahead of the first recording, Wogan expresses the view that the series is a "good idea" but he has hardly drawn breath before mildly rebuking the BBC for not having made it. "The reason I came to doing it - having said that I didn't want to do another talk show as long as I lived - is that it had that interesting aspect to it. It surprises me in a sense that nobody else in the BBC thought this might be a good idea. But then, they've been saying to me for at least the last five years 'We must find you something...'," he says. It is the link to the past that gives Wogan's new project something extra compared to younger chat show hosts such as Jonathan Ross. "It's the only point in doing it. Otherwise it's just another talk show and the woods are full of them," he says. He has plenty of fond memories of the original Wogan, even if "a number of my previous guests have since fallen off their perch", which could cause a few problems for the bookers at UKTV Gold. "The ones that I remember most are mostly gone. The one that I really had greatest affection for was James Stewart, and you know Gregory Peck, these are people from my youth. It's extraordinary that I talked to them," he says, still wide-eyed at the recollection. Indeed, the main criticism of his interviewing style of old was that he was too chummy, always avoiding a scene. When he found himself interviewing Sara Keays, who had been abandoned with a love child by the Tory minister Cecil Parkinson, he opened with the line: "Now Sara, yours is a story as old as time..." Ms Keays snapped back: "It's nothing of the sort. I was the victim of today's totalitarian Conservative Party." But in 2006 Wogan is not about to start grilling his guests. "I'm embarrassed by confrontation television," he says, perhaps explaining his decision to apologise to David Icke. "It's not an argument. It's not life or death. It's only show business - not Jeremy Paxman time." Whereas Paxo is known for his relentless questioning of a Home Secretary, Wogan accepts that he and his peers occupy another place in the broadcasting universe. "Michael Parkinson is going to be remembered for being attacked by an Emu, Russell Harty for being slapped by Grace Jones, and me for two - Georgie Best being speechless with drink and saying 'shag' and Anne Bancroft for being catatonic and refusing to speak at all. You are remembered for the bad ones. That's fair enough. Talk show is the cheapest form of televisual entertainment, apart from out-takes." That Wogan is prepared to embark on such a project again will come as a surprise to those who remember his oft-repeated comments after Wogan was dropped in favour of the ill-fated soap Eldorado. "Wogan was the only thing I didn't time right and I didn't because I was earning so much money from it," he has said. "So instead of following my instinct, which I'd always done before, in Come Dancing or Blankety Blank and stopping it when I thought I'd done enough, I let it go on for a year or two years too long." Wogan, who does a minimum of preparation for his radio and television work in order to protect the spontaneity of his presentation, will not be watching his new show when it goes out. "I've become ridiculously self-conscious. My wife and family know they can't watch it if I'm in the room. You think 'who is that?'. It's just what I do. I just like doing it," he says. He is charming company and appreciates the value of self-deprecation, both on air and in interviews. But John Keeling, controller of UKTV, who is trying to move his network beyond its reliance on the BBC's archive and bring in more original programming, can hardly believe his luck at being offered Britain's best-known broadcaster. "It just jumped off the page," he says. "We are talking Terry Wogan, who was an icon anyway, but who is also current because of the spectacular success of his broadcasts on Radio 2. When the opportunity to work with him was presented to UKTV Gold it just fitted the channel perfectly." If the project is successful, it could pave the way for other faces familiar to UKTV Gold audiences being offered fresh shows. Wogan has never gone cap in hand looking for work. "It's not my job to find me things. I'm just the presenter. I don't get involved in the production process," he says. But in spite of his protestations of lack of ambition, his hunger for more television work has been growing. Wogan was overlooked by the BBC for coverage of the Millennium and Golden Jubilee and he has watched Bruce Forsyth become the star of Saturday nights with a remake of a show he once hosted. He muses over the way his career has panned out and talks of the ambitions that he once had. "I would love to have been a journalist - that's what I wanted to be," he says. "When I started I was a newsreader on Irish radio so I was involved in the newsroom with the news all the time. Then Irish television started to present the odd documentary, which you would write yourself. I've always enjoyed writing." Log in to the online archive of the Irish state broadcaster RTE and you can hear the young Terry somewhat breathlessly describing the procession of John F Kennedy through the streets of Dublin in July 1963, his accent so much stronger that he pronounces "enthusiastic" without the H. But the journalistic impulses were never quite followed through. "I was such a conventional person and as I've always said if my father had been a doctor I would have been a doctor, although luckily he didn't have a profession to follow. I don't know," he sighs heavily. "I would just have walked around all my life, like a lot of Irishmen, saying, 'By God, I wish I'd been a journalist.'" In view of his comments on confrontation television it has probably turned out for the best. Certainly Wogan could hardly have been more successful. After taking a job hosting a successful RTE quiz show called Jackpot, he started working for the BBC in 1967 (at one early point commuting weekly from Dublin) and has been at the corporation pretty much ever since. He is known to every generation and was knighted by the Queen last year. When Wogan was taken off BBC1 there was a feeling that the public was irked by his ubiquity. A poll found that he was both the most and least popular person in the country, and Prince Philip purportedly said the difference between Wogan and the M1 was that you could turn off the motorway. As he returned to the radio in 1993 one headline styled the comeback "Last Chance for Game Old Wogan". How he has taken that chance. The show, he observes, is very different now from its original incarnation. Instead of relying on a constant patter he now knows when not to talk and uses his producer (Paulie Walters) and his news and travel presenters as his foils. Walters, says Wogan, speaks away from the microphone because "he's the person responding. The fact that he's off mike creates the atmosphere of intimacy". The producer, he says, is "quick-witted and understands that you don't go on (talking) for ever; it's monosyllables, a couple of words". Likewise, the travel and news reporters - Alan "Deadly Alancoat" Dedicoat, John "Boggy" Marsh and Fran Godfrey - have been carefully nurtured. "Although they're not in the studio, their sense of timing has grown with me so they know when to stop talking. The essence of anything like that, with two or three people talking, is to be able to walk away from it, leave it alone. I don't feel I have to top everything anybody says, you must let other people win." That is not to say that the show has been meticulously planned - quite the opposite. The only real preparation takes the form of Walters sifting through the hundreds of emails from hardcore listeners, the Togs (Terry's Old Geezers and Old Gals), often couched in the theatrical, innuendo-laced lexicon ("What Ho!") of the "Grand Togmeister", Wogan himself. The presenter, who lives in Buckinghamshire, is habitually dropped off at Broadcasting House by his driver less than half an hour before going on air at 7.30am and Walters drip feeds him the emails during the show. Wogan was inspired to this off-the-cuff approach by a Dean Martin television programme. "He just walked in and did the show and I thought that's what I want to do." The tone of Wake Up to Wogan is a strange mix of exasperation at the absurdity of modern life combined with quirky, slightly risqué observation and chuckling from Wogan, the "Cheerful Charlie" or "Johnny Jolly Pants" as he has variously described himself. It recalls the nonsense of classic 1970s Saturday night television such as Morecambe and Wise or The Two Ronnies, fused with provincial panto and some why-oh-whery from the op-ed pages of the Mail or the Express. To some, the show is radio genius, a source of comfort when the world outside has gone mad. (The Togs' website carries the catchline "an online home for the bewildered".) The site is aligned to Richard Ingrams' magazine The Oldie. Despite the fogeyism, Wogan has been, and remains, a force in influencing British popular culture. The backer of the Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band (whose tune "The Floral Dance" he made a late 1970s hit), he has more recently helped the careers of Jamie Cullum (who played at his daughter's wedding) and Katie Melua. The man who made a British hit of Dallas can also drive TV ratings. "The best thing on at the moment is Boston Legal. William Shatner is the archetypal television actor in this. He hardly moves and his little eyes have become recessed into his head. He understands televisual acting whereas so few British actors do because they train at Rada in big gestures and big movements," he says. The Stephen Poliakoff BBC drama Friends and Crocodiles shown the previous night had not impressed him. "God it was rubbish. I've never seen such a load of unstructured thing in all my life," he says, repeating criticisms he had made earlier on air. Although Wogan points out that he "never apologised for being Irish even when the most appalling things were being done in the name of Ireland over here", he has become a British institution. As a schoolboy he loved the Just William stories and listened to the BBC Light Programme. P G Wodehouse is his favourite author. "Speaking as an Irishman, the humour and whole ironic/cynical attitude (of the radio show) is peculiarly British. It's not something you would get even in Ireland where I worked for a long time," he says. Wogan especially comes into his own at the Eurovision Song Contest, which he has hosted for 33 years, with a growing sense of disbelief. "It's got more and more spectacular, grown to ridiculous proportions, with semi-finals. I always said it would keep me in my declining years, turning out like the World Cup with preliminary rounds," he says. He caused outrage in Denmark one year by describing the Danish presenters as "Dr Death and the Tooth Fairy", to the horror of Danes listening via the BBC and not sharing Wogan's scepticism at the artistic merit of the event. On the back page of this supplement, media figures are asked to say who they most admire in this industry. Recent respondents have included Graham Norton ("Terry Wogan because he works very hard and earns every penny he gets from the BBC. I wish he was on more"), and Chris Tarrant ("Terry Wogan because he's still the best and probably the nicest"). He has also been nominated by Virgin's Christian O'Connell and Radio 2 controller Lesley Douglas ("the broadcaster of his generation and one of the nicest, most amusing people I've ever met"). Chris Evans, who produced his unsuccessful channel Five daytime show Terry and Gaby, adores him. David Icke does not appear to share these views, as he walks huffily off stage at the end of his interview. He is generously applauded by the studio audience, which includes a number of Togs, some of them perhaps empathising a little with Icke's sense of distrust and bewilderment at the modern world. Icke storms into the green room saying: "He's a nasty, nasty man. Icke has his revenge!" And although Terry Wogan would have found it difficult to have enjoyed his usual cosy interview with such an intensely strange interviewee, they may have shared a little common ground. For when Wogan is asked about the serious issues that attract his attention when he is not entertaining his audience with "Terryisms", he responds promptly. First, he talks of his concerns over the ongoing conflict in Iraq, comparing the current urban terror with the experiences of the British Army in Northern Ireland ("It seems that nobody thought specifically about what to do after the event") and pondering whether America will take military action against Iran. Then he speaks of a favourite book, State of Fear by Michael Crichton, in which the author suggests that, after the Cold War, the powers that be have an interest in keeping the masses scared. "Look at avian flu - the chances of this affecting us in one way or another is highly negligible. We had Sars and mad cow disease before that. Every year we have to have something to strike terror," says the Grand Togmeister. Still, at least now we have Wogan on radio and television, using his unique line in patter to keep us laughing and hold the nastiness at bay. Now didn't somebody have a theory about that, back in 1991? ON EUROVISION	i don't know
Aggie, China, Onionskin and Cats Eyes are all types of which toy?	Types of marbles Types of Marbles Wholesale and Bulk Marbles Types of Marbles Marbles come in an astonishing variety and are commonly classified according to their size, appearance, and materials they are made from. Glass marbles are probably the most popular today, but they can also be made from clay, crockery, china, real marble, stone ivory, agate, steel and other materials. Generally, marbles are around 1/2-inch across, but they can range from less than 1/4-inch to more than 3 inches. Marble players often use terms like jumbo, pee wee, queenie, bumbo, bumboozer, and boulders to describe marble sizes. Sometimes the names given to marbles describe the materials from which they are made and sometimes they describe their appearance. Here are some of the major classifications. Alley or Real describes a marble that is made from real marble or alabaster. Alley stands for alabaster. These usually have wavy patterns with lots of color. Common names for these marbles include onyx, bumblebee, corkscrew, and swirl. Other examples include: Oxbloodï¿½these have streaks that resemble blood. Onionskinï¿½which contain a pattern that looks like an onion. Lutzï¿½the name comes from a skating term, describing a pattern that resembles this marble's streak. Toothpasteï¿½distinct waves of black, orange, white, blue and red. Cats Eyeï¿½these are created by injecting colored cores into the marble, which look like eyes in the center of the marble. Croton Alley or Jasper should not be confused with the alley marbles listed above. Instead, they are made of either glazed or unglazed china that is marbled with blue. These are usually larger than the other alley marbles. Commie or common marbles are usually brightly painted but are made of clay and don't often retain their finish over time. They generally don't have much value. A Steely is just what it sounds like, made of steel. Sulphide marbles are clear and have objects embedded inside of them. China and Plaster marbles are both made from china. China marbles are those that have been glazed, while plasters are those that have not been. Both of them have lines of various colors that sometimes cross each other, forming plaid designs. They also form circles called bull's eyes. Like any other form of china, they are created in wooden molds, then baked, and painted. An Aggie is made from agate, or sometimes carnelian and are usually quite beautiful. They vary in color from gray to blood red and sometimes have stripes or mottlings of different colors. When they are created, the rock is broken down into smaller pieces and then a hammer is used to form them into crude balls. They are then worn down on a grindstone until they are perfect spheres. They are then polished polished by hand. Aggies are perfect when you are making a difficult shot because of their balanced weight and symmetry. Crystal or Clearie marbles are made of clear colored glass, and are often known as rubies, bloods, glimmers, or opals. They too are often beautiful but don't stand up to wear and tear. After they have been used, their finish becomes full of nicks and has a dull sheen. Sometimes these marbles are called agates, so the genuine agate is often referred to as "real" to distinguish it from the glass ones. The terms galaxy, cloudy, swirly, mica, and milky are also familiar to many marble players. Take a look at the categories on the right and peruse the selection of marbles available for purchase on eBay. Be careful, though, you might get hooked on collecting these beautiful toys or showpieces!	Marble (toy)
Milos Forman directed which 1975 film starring Jack Nicholson?	Antique Handmade Marbles \| Marbles Galore Antique Handmade Marbles Antique handmade marbles are works of glass art and Old World craftsmanship, highly prized by marble collectors. Most were made in Germany from the late 1840s until around about 1915, and most are the swirl variety. For this reason they are sometimes called German swirls but most collectors refer to them as 'handmades'. Vintage handmade marbles sizes usually range from about 1/2" to 2" in diameter. Bigger ones in better condition hold more value to collectors, but rarity of style and "eye appeal" are major factors in value. It goes without saying that no toy marble collection is complete without at least one handmade. Don't despair if you cannot find or afford a mint condition one. These antique marbles come in many sizes and all conditions, so you are sure to find a worthy one that is affordable. Popular types include onionskins, clambroths, sulphides, indians, lutz, and mica.	i don't know
A rollmop is what type of uncooked pickled fish?	Rollmops Rollmops Rollmops © Denzil Green A Rollmop is a fish hors d'oeuvre made by rolling a pickled herring filet around another pickled food item, such as pickled onion, pickled cucumber or sauerkraut. It is then covered and preserved with spiced vinegar. They can be packed for sale in bottles, or in larger tubs for sale at deli counters. To make a Rollmop, a herring filet (skin on or off) is laid out, spread with mustard, and sometimes sprinkled with a few capers. It is then rolled tightly around a pickled cucumber, onion, etc. It may be held together with a toothpick. A spiced pickling solution is poured over, and it is allow to marinate for several days before using. Spices might include juniper berries and allspice berries, whole cloves and peppercorns, and bay leaf. You leave it rolled up to eat it. Each will have about three bites in it. It is usually eaten with fingers. Rollmops are made by the Swedes and the Danes, as well as the Germans and the Dutch. In Berlin, they are made with Bismarck herring filets. Storage Hints	Herring
What is the medical name for the shin bone?	Pickled Herring Home / Seafood / Vita Herring Vita Herring Vita Herring has been consumer's No. 1 choice for herring since 1898, and continues to please seafood lovers to this day. Vita offers wild caught herring from the icy waters of Canada for you to enjoy. From smaller cutlets of herring in a mild wine sauce or sour cream sauce to homestyle herring with sweet onions in a spicy wine sauce, there are a wide variety of ways to dine on this one-of-a-kind fish. Pickled herring, a culinary delicacy, was traditionally consumed by the Europeans. Many of those traditions have carried over to American cuisine. Most herring in the U.S. is pickled and purchased in wine or sour cream sauce. Herring eaters have taken notice to the healthful benefits of consuming herring. It is high in omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin D3 and B12. Pickled herring omega-3 fatty acids offer a large variety of health benefits. They can reduce inflammation, helping to prevent inflammatory diseases like heart disease and arthritis. The fatty acids are also essential to the brain and impacts behavior and cognitive function. Other benefits include reducing plaque buildup in arteries, reducing joint tenderness, insulating nerve cells in the brain and more. The American Heart Association recommends eating fish at least two to three times per week. Vita sources herring from the waters of Canada, herring eaters rest assured this fish is one of the most abundant in the sea and it is sustainably caught. Vita herring provides the taste that keeps people coming back for more. Herring in wine and in sour cream are just two delicious ways to enjoy the seafood favorite, but no matter how you eat it, you'll be reaping the multitude of health benefits it offers.	i don't know
According to the Bible, what was the name of Jesus maternal grandfather?	Who Was Jesus' Grandfather? \| Desiring God Who Was Jesus' Grandfather? Arrow Founder & Teacher, desiringGod.org Doubts about God's word can arise when we find apparent contradictions and don't see immediate solutions. For example, who was Jesus's grandfather? We know that, although Jesus was supernaturally conceived by the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:34f), his earthly, legal father was Joseph. But Luke says that Joseph is the son of Heli (3:23), while Matthew says that he was the son of Jacob (1:16). One of the best treatments of this problem is The Virgin Birth of Christ by J. Gresham Machen (New York: Harper Brothers, 1930). The solution Machen argues for is that "while the Matthean genealogy traces the successive heirs to the throne of David from David to Joseph, the Lucan genealogy traces the ancestors of Joseph back to David." (p. 206). He explains, "The Lucan genealogy, in other words, starts with the question, 'Who was Josheph's "father"?' the answer to that question is, 'Heli.' . . . In the Matthean genealogy, on the other hand, we start with the question, 'Who was the heir to David's throne?' The answer is, "Solomon,' and so on down to Joseph." (p. 207). You can see the signal that something like this is happening by comparing how the genealogies are the same from Abraham to king David, and then they diverge. For example, in Luke 3:31 it says that Nathan is David's son, while in Matthew 1:6 it says that David was the father of Solomon. Now we know from 2 Samuel 5:14 that Nathan and Solomon were both sons of David. But only Solomon was the heir of the throne (1 Kings 1:13). So the possible solution to why the genealogies are different from David down to Joseph is that Luke is giving the physical ancestors (or in one or two cases a very close adoptive relation), while Matthew is most interested in showing that the father of Jesus is the legal heir to the throne of David. The correctness of this view of the purpose and the meaning of each genealogy is confirmed by the fact that the genealogy in Luke begins at the end and works backward, whereas the genealogy in Matthew begins at the beginning. Where the point was to trace the actual descent of Joseph back to David that could be done by recording the tradition of the family as to his actual father, Heli, and the actual father of Heli, and so on up to Nathan the son of David. But where the point was to mention the successive heirs of the Davidic throne, it was natural to begin with David and work down. (p. 207). What then actually happened in the generations just before Jesus? Here is one possible scenario. And that is all we can do is offer plausible solutions since the actual facts are hidden from us. Matthew's genealogy	Heli
Which country won the 1978 FIFA World Cup?	Blacks in Biblical Antiquity \| Resources \| American Bible Society Blacks in Biblical Antiquity Audience: Youth Individuals Adult Format: Web The view of Africa that has evolved in recent centuries has little or no historical integrity inasmuch as it reflects Eurocentric interpretations of the Bible. However, new light is shining on biblical antiquity, and layers of unfavorable biases are being peeled away. In their place is a more congenial basis for inclusiveness and reconciliation in conjunction with an emergence of critical studies on the Black presence in the Bible and the recovering of ancient African heritage in the Scriptures. Consequently, persons of African descent now have the opportunity to rediscover consistent and favorable mentioning of their forebears within the pages of the Bible. The presence of Blacks in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible is rather substantial; fortunately ours is an age that increasingly allows such an important fact to be acknowledged more widely than perhaps ever before. This topic has long been studied by Dr. Gene Rice, Professor of Old Testament, and he has supplied a representative listing of key Old Testament passages that mention, indeed often celebrate, the Black biblical presence: Nimrod, son of Cush, "the first on earth to become a mighty warrior." Nimrod is also credited with founding and ruling the principal cities of Mesopotamia (Genesis 10:8-12). Hagar, the Egyptian maid of Sarah (Genesis 16; 21:8-21). If Abraham had had his way, Hagar would have become the forebear of the covenant people (Genesis 17:18). Asenath, daughter of Potiphera, priest of On (Heliopolis), wife of Joseph and mother of Ephraim and Manasseh (Genesis 41:45, 51, 52; 46:20), whom Jacob claimed and adopted. (Genesis 48). Moses' Cushite wife (Numbers 12:1). She was prpbably Zipporah of the Kenite clan of the Midianites (Exodus 2:21-23). If Moses' Cushite wife is indeed Zipporah, then her father, Jethro, (also called Reuel), would also have been an African. Since Jethro was the priest of Midian (Exodus 2:16; 3:1; 18:1) and the mountain of God where Moses was called was located in Midian (Exodus 3:1; 18:5), and Jethro presided at a meal where Aaron and the elders of Israel were guests (Exodus 18:12), the Kenites may have been the original worshipers of God by the name of the LORD, that is Yahweh (YHWH). Jethro also instructed Moses in the governance of the newly liberated Israelites (Exodus 8:13-27). Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron and a high priest (Exodus 6:25). The name, Phinehas, is Egyptian and means literally, "The Nubian," or "The Dark-skinned One." The "mixed multitude that accompanied the Israelites when they left Egypt undoubtedly included various Africans and Asian peoples (Exodus 12:38). The unnamed Cushite soldier in David's army. He bore the news of Absalom's death to David, and, in contrast to Ahimaaz, had the courage to tell David the truth about Absalom (2 Samuel 18:21, 31, 32). Solomon's Egyptian wife. She was an Egyptian princess and by his marriage to her, Solomon sealed an alliance with Egypt. (1 Kings 3:1; 11:1). The Queen of Sheba. She ruled a kingdom that included territory in both Arabia and Africa. When she visited Solomon, she was accorded the dignity and status of a head of state (1 Kings 10:1-13). Zerah, the Ethiopian. He commanded a military garrison at Gerar in SW Palestine and fought against King Asa of Judah and almost defeated him (2 Chronicles 14:9-15). After Egyptian influence ceased in Palestine, the Cushite soldiers stationed at Gerar settled down and became farmers. Some two centuries after the time of Zerah, the Simeonites took over Gerar "where they found rich, good pasture, and the land was very broad, quiet, and peaceful; for the former inhabitants there belonged to Ham" (2 Chronicles 4:40). Cush, a Benjaminite (heading to Psalm 7). He is identified as Saul in the Talmud. The Ethiopian ambassadors who came to Jerusalem to establish diplomatic relations with Judah (Isaiah 18:1,2). They represented the Ethiopian Pharaoh, Shabaka (716-702) of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt. The Ethiopian, Taharqa, spelled Tirhakah in the Bible. When Hezekiah revolted against Assyria in 705 B.C., he did so with the support of Shaboka and Shebitku (702-690), rulers of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt. Tirhakah led an army in support of Judah during Hezekiah's revolt against Assyria (2 Kings 19:9; Isaiah 37:9). Tirhakah later ruled Egypt from 690-664. The Prophet Zephaniah. Zephaniah's father was Cushi, his grandfather Gedaliah, his great-grandfather Amariah, and his great-great-grandfather (King) Hezekiah (Zephaniah 1:1). Zephaniah was active about 630 B.C. and sparked a religious revival in Judah. Jehudi ben Nathaniah ben Shlemiah ben Cushi. The context in Jeremiah 36 indicates that Jehudi was a trusted member of the cabinet of King Jehoiakim of Judah (Jeremiah 36:14, 21, 23). Ebed-melech ("Royal Servant"), the Ethiopian. He was an officer of King Zedekiah who, at great risk to himself, saved Jeremiah's life (Jeremiah 38:7-13)., and was blessed by Jeremiah (Jeremiah 39:15-18). The African presence in the Bible is not limited to the Old Testament. Indeed many Jews of the first century lived in regions where Africans intermingled freely with other racial and ethnic types. We too easily forget today that miscegenation or interracial marriage was an explicit part of Alexander the Great's policy; he wanted all subjects to have Greek blood flowing through their veins! Of course there was no notion of the modern idea of "race" during that time, but suffice it to say that the ancients had no problem with Black people nor did the Greeks and Romans consider them to be inferior. In the Gospel of Matthew, we find the quotation from Hosea 11:1 which reads, "out of Egypt I called my son." The passage is part of the notorious "Flight into Egypt" that describes the way in which Mary and Joseph fled to Egypt to hide the one that King Herod feared would displace him. Assuming that we can lend some historical credence to this report, it is difficult imagining, if the holy family were indeed persons who looked like typical "Europeans," that they could effectively "hide" in Africa. One must remember and take most seriously the fact that Egypt has always been and remains part of Africa. Her indigenous people are noticeably different from the European types, notwithstanding the Hellenistic cultural incursions, beginning in earnest just over 300 B.C. In fact, it has only been in recent centuries that the Egyptians and other North Americans have been officially racially classified as "Caucasian." Nevertheless, for thousands of years, Africans have migrated out of biblical Ethiopia and Egypt and have passed through Palestine en route to the Fertile Crescent or Mesopotamia. Thus, the term Afro-Asiatic emerged, and it is a fitting description of persons from Abraham to Jesus and his disciples. For the most part by modern standards of ethnicity, first-century Jews could be considered Afro-Asiatics. This is to say that Jesus, his family, his disciples and, doubtless, most of the fellow Jews he encountered in his public ministry, were persons of color. They would certainly not be Europeans. The point is made because it has become virtually axiomatic for people today to envision that somehow the ancient people of the New Testament were all Europeans. Without much reflection or critical analysis, people tend to project modern Jews back into antiquity as if two thousand years of assimilation never occurred. Having established this important interpretative principle, we can identify a few New Testament passages where there is an explicit African presence. Matthew 1:1-14 - The genealogy of Jesus, in which four Afro-Asiatic women are included: Rahab, Tamar, Ruth, and Bathsheba. Matthew 2:13-18 - Out of Egypt (Africa) have I called my son (see Hosea 11:1). Matthew 12:42 - The Queen of the South, meaning "the Queen of Sheba" (parallel reference in Luke 11:31; compare 1 Kings 10:1-10 and 2 Chronicles 9:1-9). Matthew 27:32 - Simon of Cyrene compelled to carry the cross (parallel accounts in Mark 15:21 and Luke 23:26). Mark 1:3 - Note the mentioning of "the wilderness" or desert as a reminder of the geographical context for the gospel and most of the biblical narratives. Luke 13:29 - Luke instructs us through his more inclusive editing of Jesus' sayings found in Matthew 8:11. Here, Luke adds "north and south," thereby underscoring the Lukan universalism of both the gospel and the plan of salvation. Luke 19:41-44 - Jesus weeps over the city and initiates change. Acts 2:9-10 - The Jewish pilgrims gathered at Pentecost included persons of African descent, notably the Elamites of Mesopotamia and those from Egypt, Libya, and Cyrene. Acts 8:26-40 - The Ethiopian Finance Minister on a mission for the Queen of the Ethiopians, the Kandake or Candace; he is baptized as perhaps the first non-Jew (an early tradition that rivals the baptism of Cornelius). Acts 13:1 - Two of the four prophets and teachers at Antioch (where persons of the Way were first called Christians--11:26) were Africans, namely Lucius of Cyrene and Simeon who was called Niger, a Latinism for "the Black Man." Acts 18:24,25 - Apollos, the Jew of Alexandria in North Africa, becomes converted (1 Corinthians 3). John 4:7-39 - The Samaritan as ancient outcast and here a metaphor for victims of racial, and ethnic, and gender bias today. John 8:32 - "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." Galatians 5:1 - "For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery." 1 Corinthians 3:11 - Apollos, the African Preacher (he was from Alexandria on the Nile Delta.) 1 Corinthians 7:21c - Further evidence of Paul's dislike of slavery: "If you are able to gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity" (2 Corinthians 11:20 and the Epistle to Philemon). James 2:1-8 - Outward appearances can lead to fraudulent judgments about people. (Although James principally has in mind class distinctions, the principle supports a wider application). 1 Peter 2:4-10 - Those who believe and do the will of God through humble service and self-sacrifice are the "Chosen People" and the true "royal priesthood" and the recipients of God's mercy. There is no racial or ethnic basis for divine election. As the Holy Scriptures testify, all people of faith are "one in Christ Jesus" and "heirs according to the promise" (Galatians 3:28,29). And as the apostle Paul stated, "From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us" (2 Corinthians 5:16-19). Thus, the Word of God shows itself to be a truly universal, inclusive, and multicultural message of salvation for the human race. This is an excerpt from a longer article by Dr. Cain Hope Felder, Professor of New Testament Language and Literature at the Howard University School of Divinity in Washington D.C., which appeared in the African American Jubilee Bible, published by the American Bible Society (1999). Scripture citations are from the New Revised Standard Version. Thanks to the support of our faithful financial partners, American Bible Society has been engaging people with the life-changing message of God’s Word for nearly 200 years. Help us share God's Word where needed most. 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From which country did Russia finally withdraw its troops in 1989, after an unsuccessful campaign that lasted nearly ten years?	Russia In World War 2 Russia In World War 2 The great war plan, preparations, collapse, and recovery - a revised view The history of Russia in World War 2 is still being revised. In the first decades after World War 2, the historiography of Russia's part in the war in between 1939 and the end of 1941, was largely based on a combination of the strictly censored Russian state propaganda's version and of what was known outside Russia, which was then closed behind the "Iron Curtain" of the Cold War. Eventually, two new factors provided new insights and new proofs which enable a revision that let us get much closer to the truth. The first factor was the great and laborious work of a few open-minded 2nd generation independent researchers like Viktor Suvorov and Mark Solonin, which applied analytic approaches to the vast scope of publicly available Russian wartime and post-war documentation and literature, detected thousands of small details of information that slipped over the years through the Soviet censorship, and processed these into coherent new insights which dramatically changed our perception of what happened, both before the German invasion (Suvorov's work), and after it started (Solonin's work). First and foremost of these researchers was Vladimir Rezun (known by his pen name Viktor Suvorov), a Russian military intelligence officer who applied his deep knowledge of intelligence gathering and analysis methods, and of Russian military doctrines, to Russia's World War 2 military literature, with dramatic results. The second factor was the partial removal of the deep cover of censorship from Russian military and state archives for a period of just five years, between the collapse of the Communist Soviet Union in 1991 and the gradual recovery of conservative nationalism in the Russian government, marked, for example, by the rise to power of Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer. This gap of five years of relative openness was used by historians to access previously closed archives and reach documents which provide previously unavailable proofs that further support the claims of Suvorov and the other researchers. Since the mid-1990s, 'mainstream' western historiography increasingly accepts both the main claims and the main supporting facts and evidence of the pioneering work of researchers like Suvorov, and the "history as we know it" of Russia in World War 2 is being re-written. The 'old' historiography of Russia in 1939-1941 can be summarized to this: In August 1939 Stalin's Communist Russia signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler's Nazi Germany in order to keep the aggressive Hitler away from Russia. The two dictatorships' mighty armies then attacked and occupied Poland from West and East and divided it between them. While Hitler occupied half of Europe from Norway to Greece, Russia occupied the Baltic states and parts of Finland and Romania. To keep Hitler appeased all this time, Stalin's Russia provided Germany, as agreed, with large quantities of war materials and even operational support services to assist the German war effort. On June 22, 1941, Germany, together with its allies (Finland, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Italy), invaded Russia in a gigantic surprise attack. The mighty German military, the most efficient in the world then, applied its successful Blitzkrieg tactic, and the terrible unpreparedness and deployment in concentrations close to the border of the giant Russian army, helped the Germans to achieve tremendous and rapid victories that defeated the brave and fully equipped but surprised and unprepared Russians, forcing millions of encircled Russian soldiers to surrender. Hitler's German military, exhausted and not equipped for the harsh Russian winter, was finally stopped just before Moscow. Russia survived and recovered from its enormous losses, increased its strength while fighting fiercely, and eventually pushed the Germans all the way back to Berlin, emerging from the long and terrible war as a super-power, an equal only to the United States. Most of this story is correct, but there are two major problems with this story that attracted the attention of the analytical researchers, and which I will discuss here: 1. It appears as if in all the time of years months and weeks before the German invasion in June 1941, the Russian military and leadership were consistently irrational and made almost every possible mistake, not just in how and where the majority of the giant Russian forces were deployed, but even in terms of military planning, military procurement, and political decisions. This was simply too bad to be true and demanded a better explanation, which Suvorov provides. 2. It appears as if once the fighting started, the quality advantage of the formidably efficient Germans over the poor Russian soldiers was so great, that it resulted in amazing, enormous, total and almost immediate German victories that dwarfed even their great victories in France a year earlier. The alleged tremendous rate of German success in destroying the giant Russian military in the first days and weeks of the invasion, was simply too high to be true, and demanded a better explanation, which Solonin provides. The most prepared for war - the great Soviet war plan It is well known how the western allies prepared for the invasion of Normandy for over two years, how they considered every possible aspect of the enormous preparations, trained huge forces, some purposely trained for specific roles, invented new purpose-designed weapons and other equipment, and even conducted smaller scale invasions in order to find out early enough where they were wrong and fix it before the big operation. Under Stalin's dictatorship, Russia's military, industrial, domestic, and diplomatic preparations for a second World War were of greater magnitude. Furthermore, in August 1939 Stalin was in a position in which he could prevent Hitler's invasion of Poland, the invasion that started World War 2, and he knew it well and said so. But at that decisive point in history, instead of preventing war, Stalin did the opposite. He cleared the way and provided guarantees for Hitler to invade, after he knew for sure that this will start a war not just in Poland but also in Western Europe, a war that the Communist ideology expected, planned and prepared for, and desired. Then, with Germany at war with Britain and France, Stalin's Russia moved to the 2nd phase of its long term preparations. Russia moved to a maximum effort war regime in which it enormously expanded its military force and military production rates, expanded its territory westwards, by force, which also gave it a long common border with Germany, and finally in 1941 began to mobilize millions and transferred its enormous attack-oriented forces to the German and Romanian borders, and prepared to enter the European war in a gigantic attack that would: 1. Immediately cut Germany's main source of oil in Ploesti, in southern Romania, just about 120 miles from the Russian border, in order to paralyze Hitler's armed forces for lack of oil (as eventually happened in 1944). 2. Defeat the exhausted Germany and its allies across the entire front from the Finland in the North to the Black Sea in the South - a mirror image of the German attack that eventually started in June 22, 1941. 3. Continue with the Communist "liberation" of the entire Europe, by advancing all the way first to Germany, then to France, and Spain, bringing all of Europe under the brutal totalitarian regime which the Russian people already "enjoyed" then, that made Russia one big prison with countless prisons in it. Hitler's Germany managed to be the first to attack, by a narrow gap of a few weeks at most (Suvorov's conclusion, based on various evidence, is that Russia's Red Army was going to attack on July 6, 1941, so Hitler got ahead of them by exactly two weeks). The German attack forced the Red Army put its operational plans aside. It returned to those plans and implemented them three years later, except that since by then the situation was different, Communism occupied only Eastern Europe, not all of it. The plan to invade Germany and conquer all of Europe in the name of Communism's expansionist ideology, is likely the greatest secret of World War 2 that remains officially Top Secret. The Communist Empire kept that secret for five decades, preferring to appear peaceful and militarily incapable, even dumb, than to appear as the aggressive expansionist "Evil Empire" that it always was. And modern Russia, nationalist but no longer Communist, understandably might never officially admit that either, although key evidence slipped out of their control. Some key details : Expansionist Ideology - While Hitler's Nazi ideology publicly officially and repeatedly declared since the 1920s that its goal is nothing short of global domination by force, the Communist Soviet Union declared the goal of global conquest by force, but it started even earlier. The Soviet Red Army's official defining goal is the same. Not national defence but rather global conquest by aggressive global war to bring Communism to power everywhere. Although they were natural enemies for centuries and fought each other so many times, including in the first World War, the Communist Russia made an allegedly irrational secret deal with post-WWI Germany in 1922, even before Hitler's era, in which in return for secretly providing nothing more than training grounds and facilities for the German military to keep its shape and further develop advanced military technology and tactics in total violation of the peace treaty imposed by the western countries, Russia in return got direct access to the best and latest tactics and military technologies of its most capable past and future enemy, the German military, which was indeed the most efficient and most technologically advanced military force in the world then. The mutual strategic interest of the two enemies created a secret deal that enabled a dramatic improvement of Russian military doctrines and technology, and supported a recovery of German military power after WWI, which was later turned against the western powers, as Communism predicted and wanted. Since 1931, despite its bad economic situation, Russia increased its military industry potential to that of a super-power. Masked as public sports, it trained ten of millions of men in expensive state-paid military 'sports' like parachuting, gliding, flying, weapons training, and other 'sports'. Participation was initially voluntary, and then became mandatory. By 1935 Russia had 140,000 glider pilots, and in Dec. 1936 the government's youth newspaper called for training 150,000 aircraft pilots, all state-paid and of course quite expensive. By 1941 there were 121,000 'civilian sports'-trained pilots. The other pilots were of course trained, and then mass-trained, by the Russian Air Force. The number of flight schools in the Russian Air Force increased to 12 in 1937, to 18 in January 1940, to 28 in Sept. 1940, and to 41 in early 1941. Russia trained military and para-military pilots and paratroopers at an enormous cost and at an incredible rate which even dramatically increased in 1939 and then even further in 1940, far beyond any reasonable defensive need. In 1941 the Russians had a million trained military paratroopers, a fantastic number, suitable only for a gigantic war of aggression, not for defending Russia as plain infantry. Tens of millions were 'just' trained in the cheaper 'sport' of weapons training. By June 1941, after more than doubling the manpower of the regular military, Russia had an additional reserve military force of 29 million already trained soldiers. In August 1939, Stalin had secret negotiations with Germany and, separately, with Britain and France. On one hand, Hitler told Stalin he was going to attack Poland and needed to know whether Russia will allow it (or even participate) or will it fight against it. On the other hand, Britain and France assured Stalin that if Hitler will invade their ally Poland they will declare war against Hitler. Knowing that, and knowing that Hitler did not believe in Britain's and France's resolution to defend Poland, Stalin gladly promised his support to Hitler. It is true that due to the 'weakness' of the French and British proposals, Russia had strong reasons to choose to make the deal with Hitler as it did, but historians now have the proof that Russia made the deal with Hitler with explicit intention and knowledge that this will start a European war that will first exhaust Germany France and Britain and then the fully prepared Russia will attack Germany and will occupy all of Europe. Stalin clearly explained all that to his government in a meeting on Aug. 19, 1939, in which he told them exactly why Russia is going to sign (four days later) the deal with Hitler's Germany, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, that cleared the way for Hitler to start World War 2. Between August 1939 and June 1941, when Germany was at war in the West, Russia devoted all its resources to prepare for war with Germany. In that period the regular Russian army expanded from 2,000,000 soldiers to 5,500,000 soldiers, and many millions more were given military training in order to be called as ready reserves once the war starts. In fact, between Aug. 1939 and June 1941, the Russian army expanded and moved towards the western border from remote inland regions at such rate that the German intelligence simply could not keep track of it, and was therefore terribly wrong in its estimates of the size of the Russian force it was about to attack. The Russian military industry, that was already enormous, switched, in January 1939!, to an extreme wartime regime, and produced vast quantities of tanks, aircraft, and particularly vast stockpiles of ammunition, so much that there was a separate government minister for ammunition production beside the minister of military industry. Work hours increased. In June 1940 the entire country switched to seven days of work per week, then work hours increased too, initially to 10 hours per day, then to 12 hours per day, and since mid 1940 the penalty for any failure to provide the requested quotas or product quality, or even just being late for work, was years in prison. This wartime work regime was so extreme that later, even in the worst days of the war, there was no need to add to it, since Russia was already making its maximum war effort since before Hitler invaded. The Russian army's General Staff also worked since 1940 around the clock, preparing for war like mad, although Russia was still allegedly with excellent relations with Germany. Since Feb. 1941, under Zhukov, the Russian army General Staff and units' staffs worked 15 to 17 hours per day, seven days per week, preparing for war. The military production and mobilization effort in Russia since January 1939 was so extreme that it could not be sustained for a long time. It was a major countdown for a planned war, exactly as designed by the Russian military doctrine, which defined not only wartime tactics but also put equal emphasis on detailing the optimal path to an optimal planned war - a full scale mobilization of the nation and the industry, to be followed by a gigantic surprise attack and the occupation of the enemy countries. All resources were put into mobile aggressive military measures and units (tanks, a million paratroopers !!, tactical attack aircraft, etc), not into defensive or 'static' measures ( land mines, fortifications, anti-aircraft units, long range bombers etc.). The entire doctrine of the Russian armed forces was aggressive. Defensive tactics were not taught at all and were considered defeatist in an army that by definition was intended to conquer all other countries. Millions of maps of Germany and Romania were distributed in the Russian army. Maps of Russia were few. Hitler always intended to invade Russia and declared it, but the war against Britain forced him to delay that, but when Stalin annexed the eastern part of Romania by ultimatum, and got his army to a distance of just 120 miles from his source of oil in Ploesti, Romania, that's when Hitler realized how dangerous his position was, and that he had to move fast, so although this meant war in two fronts (Britain in the West and Russia in the East), a thing that Germany always wanted to avoid, he ordered his army to prepare to invade Russia as soon as possible, "in the first clear days of May 1941". Unexpected complication in the Balkans eventually postponed the German attack until June 22nd, 1941. In June 1941, shortly before the German invasion, Russia removed border fences and other obstacles along its western border, to enable rapid border crossing - of the the Russian army moving West, not in order to help the enemy cross into Russia. The entire NKVD border guards force evacuated the border and moved inland, replaced in their positions by regular army units. The majority of the Russian army and Air Force and enormous stockpiles of ammunition were concentrated along the border, not inland. Furthermore, the enormous piles of ammunition were plainly deployed in the fields and near the border region's train stations, exposed to the weather, not in weather-proof depots and bunkers, so they could not survive the autumn rains and the winter. This in itself has only one meaning, that Russia was going to invade Germany in the summer of 1941. This enormous amount of ammunition was placed very close to its consumers, the artillery, armor, and infantry units, and was going to be consumed soon, in the planned Russian attack. Russia even placed many new large ammunition factories, built in 1939-1941, close to the border, not inland, where their output could be quickly shipped to the border, but where they were also very vulnerable in case of an invasion into Russia. The most significant concentrations were in Poland and along the Romanian border in the South. Along the southern end of the Romanian border, near the Black Sea, and near Ploesti, were very large concentrations of mountain infantry, Marines, amphibious units, paratroops, bombers, which were far more useful to attack Romania's mountains, and oil fields, than to defend the Russian flat terrain behind them. For defensive purposes, the entire Russian military array at the southern end of the border was simply irrational, and very vulnerable to attack, but it was perfect for attacking Romania and cutting off Hitler's oil supply as fast as possible. The only doctrine in the Soviet military was that of a full scale surprise attack that comes after a hidden mobilization, and followed by deeper attacks into enemy territory. Nothing else was taught in Russian military academies. The modern Russian military historiography is full of evidence that the Russian army was preparing since 1940 for a planned aggressive war against Germany. The Russian Air Force always used long range heavy bombers. In August 1939 Stalin ordered to abandon further procurement and development of heavy bombers and shift all resources to tactical ground attack aircraft, which are more suitable for an aggressive war, in which the plan is to conquer vast enemy territories in a fast war, not destroy its cities with bombers in a long war of attrition. This is exactly like what happened in the German Air Force, for the same reasons. Britain and the US developed long range bombers - but they did not intend to conquer enemy countries. Germany, and Russia, did. Also, the date of Stalin's decision, and other similar military procurement and mobilization decisions, matches that of his his main decision to star a war to conquer Germany and the rest of Europe, the decision in Aug. 19, 1939 that opened the door for Hitler to invade Poland and conveniently start that war for Stalin. In June 1941, behind the Soviet armies on the border, in addition to the military police units that were supposed to block deserters there were also three full mobile armies of the NKVD, the Russian secret police, and of Communist party officials. Their role was to take full political control of the occupied countries and eliminate all resistance. Blocking deserters is useful for defence too, but such an enormous political-police force is useful only for a planned war of occupation. To summarize, driven by its expansionist Communist ideology, Russia (then the U.S.S.R, or Soviet Union) planned and prepared in every possible military and civilian aspect, and at an enormous scale and cost, to an aggressive war of invasion and occupation, and NOT to a war of defense. While Hitler's aggression was genuinely his own, Russia cynically used it with the intention that while Germany and the western powers will exhaust each other at war, which they did, Russia will maximize and complete its enormous preparations for war, and will in the summer of 1941 perform a gigantic surprise attack that will first cut Hitler's Romanian oil supply, then defeat Germany, and then continue to complete the occupation of all of Europe, all the way to Spain. This was the largest, longest, and deepest pre-war effort ever in history, but it was knocked out of course (yet partially implemented later, in 1944, resulting in the occupation of 'just' half of Europe) because of a combination of three factors: 1. In mid 1940, following the Russian ultimatum to Romania, Germany's ally and only source of oil, Hitler realized how urgent it became for him to strike Russia (which he always intended to do) as soon as possible and regardless of his unfinished war with Britain and lack of readiness for the Russian winter. In July 1940 the German military was ordered to prepare to invade Russia as soon as the weather will permit in May 1941. 2. Stalin was repeatedly warned by his intelligence services, military advisors, and by Britain, that the Germans are also preparing a giant surprise attack against Russia, and was advised by Zhukov and the General Staff to start the planned Russian surprise attack earlier, in May 1941, instead of waiting to complete ALL the preparations, but Stalin, relying mostly on the verified fact that the German military was not ready for Russian winter conditions, dismissed the warnings and preferred to wait just a little more t complete the preparations for the Russian surprise attack, but that was a little too late, and Hitler struck first, not prepared for winter, but still at enormous power, with the world's most effective army then. 3. The human factor of morale. When the Germans invaded, instead of fiercely fighting back, the mighty Soviet military machine collapsed and disintegrated at an incredible rate. The missing part of the Red Army's collapse It is obvious that suffering a surprise attack by millions of soldiers of the world's best army is shocking, and can result in a military collapse, in high rate of casualties, in organized and unorganized retreats, in surrenders of entire encircled units, etc. Also, the German Blitzkrieg tactic was designed to achieve mass encirclements that will result in mass surrenders of encircled enemy units. The fact that the majority of the Russian ground and air forces, even some naval bases, were deployed close to the border, deployed in the fields and forests in pre-attack concentrations instead of being dug-in, or fortified, or deployed in deep arrays of multiple lines of defense, and further the fact that very large forces and equipment were still on the railways to the front when the Germans attacked, so that they or at least their vehicles were still stuck on trains, all that can further explain the tremendous losses and chaos that the Russians suffered in the first hours, days, weeks, of the German invasion. But what Russian historiography censored for decades, is the large scale of total morale collapse of Soviet armed forces and Communist party establishments which escaped, 'disappeared', or surrendered before they even were engaged in battle. Millions, from privates to Generals, individually or as entire units, abandoned their tanks, guns, air bases, without battle, and escaped on vehicles or on foot, or simply disappeared into the nearby villages and forests. Fighting and then losing is one thing. Massive and rapid escape without a fight and massive voluntary surrender, are another, and Soviet censorship tried to hide that, by further intensifying the myth of the destructiveness of the German attack, and by further intensifying the belief that the entire red army was right on the border. There are reports of entire unit staffs which escaped without battle and were found again hundreds of kilometers to the East. There were tens of Generals who disappeared and were never located again. There are reports of tank divisions which, although they were not right on the border and were not engaged in fighting in the first day, miraculously 'lost' 100% of their tanks and other fighting equipment in the second day of fighting, without actually being engaged in battle, and then escaped hundreds of kilometers eastwards almost without losing a single truck even to technical malfunction. There are reports of entire Air Force regiments which reported that they suffered negligible or no losses in the air or on the ground at the first day, and then simply abandoned their air bases and escaped by trucks and on foot. In 1941 Russia lost millions of soldiers. Only 32% of the reported losses were the dead and wounded. Millions surrendered, many of them as fast as they could, and so many others escaped from the front, either disappeared or remained in service, but only after a distant escape and after abandoning every weapon or equipment, even rifles and light mortars, that could force them to stay and fight. The apparent reasons for this mass unwillingness to fight were: A further intensified mental shock of those who were always trained educated and taught others that attack and victory are the only possible option, and suddenly found themselves under massive surprise attack for which they never planned or prepared. Stalin, the murderous dictator, was surrounded with people who told him much too often what he wanted to hear about Russia's preparations for war. The enormous reported numbers of material production and manpower training were perhaps correct. For example the figures of vast mass-training of pilots (which, by the way, were NOT volunteers, unlike pilots anywhere else in the world), and received minimal training, in order to keep up with the enormous training quotas dictated by Stalin. But what Stalin never suspected, was the possibility that in his regime of mass terror and fear, where so many millions were imprisoned and millions others killed by the police, and where tens of millions starved for years in order to pay for the enormous cost of the vast effort to convert Russia with a period of just two decades from a mostly agricultural country to an industrial militarist super-power with gigantic military power. Stalin never suspected that under a massive attack on his brutal regime, the people, the millions of soldiers who previously suffered from the regime, millions were former political prisoners of which many were recruited from hard labor prisons directly to war front military service, will favor surrender to defending their homeland, or will have no willingness to fight immediately as they realized that since they're country is being massively attacked there's a good chance that they can escape from the war without being punished by the formidable regime. Given the possibility that for the first time in their life non-cooperation with the Communist regime will NOT be severely punished, so many favored that option, and that's something the Russian censorship could never admit. So while in all material aspects Russia was enormously prepared for war, and could therefore theoretically manage much better than it did, even under a massive surprise attack, in morale terms, the Russian people in the front (which rapidly moved East all across the long front), were generally unwilling to fight for their terrible terror regime once fear of it was lost since the regime itself was being attacked and in danger. The Russian people starts fighting seriously One of the great laws of war is Never invade Russia. ~Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery History knows no greater display of courage than that shown by the people of the Soviet Union. ~Secretary of War Henry Stimson There were heroic exceptions of very persistent and fanatic Russian fighting of course, right from the very first moments of the German surprise attack. For centuries, Russian soldiers and civilians were known for their toughness, their ability to persist in terrible conditions. That's part of Russian culture, regardless of whether it's a result of having to survive Russia's cruel weather, as some suggest, or not. The Russian border fortress in Brest, Poland, for example, with 4000 Russian soldiers, was massively attacked and encircled immediately when the Germans invaded. Despite being besieged, outnumbered 10:1, running out of food, water, ammunition, the Russian defenders fought fiercely for five weeks, while the war front moved hundreds of kilometers behind them, and later resistance of a few survivors continued underground for months. For the Germans, Brest was a very bitter first taste of the type of fierce Russian fighting they would later experience in Stalingrad and elsewhere. In the city of Smolensk, on the main road to Moscow, the advancing Germans encircled in the 3rd week of fighting a large Russian force, but unlike other encirclements, this force did not surrender. It kept fighting fiercely, counter attacked the Germans, and eventually succeeded in braking out of the encirclement in order to continue fighting. Similar persistent fighting took place in Odessa, Murmansk, and elsewhere, and especially in Leningrad, which remained besieged, terribly starved, and shelled since the 3rd month of the war, and kept fighting for over two years until the horrible siege was finally removed by the advancing Russian army. What eventually changed the attitude of the millions of Russian soldiers and made such persistent fierce fighting the norm of the Russian army everywhere, was the gradual realization that they were under an attack of unprecedented deliberate cruelty that intended to literally decimate and destroy the Russian people, as Hitler ordered his army and S.S, according to the Nazi ideology of a war of racial destruction of the German "masters race" against the Russians in the occupied territories which were treated, both civilians and captured prisoners of war, with terrible cruelty that intended to make them all die of cold and starvation. Vast numbers of Russian prisoners of war died of starvation and of exposure to the harsh weather, and so were countless civilians in the captured villages who were either mass murdered or simply stripped of their winter clothing and left to die of exposure in the snow. With time, a stream of surviving starved refugees, both civilians and escaping prisoners of war, were able to escape back to Russian held territory and tell their terrible stories of the German treatment of the population and of captured soldiers. Many did not have to say a word, it was enough to see how starved they were. Russian media and military propaganda published their stories and pictures, and many were moved from one army unit to another, to be shown and heard. This, more than anything else, ignited what the Russians still call "The Great Patriotic War". The Russians everywhere realized that even compared to the cruelty of Stalin's terror regime, the alternative of Nazi occupation was far worse, and that they are literally fighting to avoid extinction by the Nazis. Initially heroic and fanatic Russian fighting was the exception, then it intensified when the Russians were literally fighting for home and family, in the battle of Moscow, and later, as the horrible realization of the monster they're facing became known to them, the Russians fought the toughest war in their tough history, with key examples Stalingrad, Kursk, and so many other places in their giant country. That way, although Russia lost about 85% of the enormous military production potential it prepared for the invasion of Europe, although it lost before the end of 1941 a military force that was more than double the size the that German intelligence originally estimated as the entire Russian force, Russia survived, recovered its military production far beyond German reach, recruited new millions of new soldiers instead of those lost, and fought a lengthy and costly war of survival, and revenge, that destroyed Nazi Germany, and Russia, despite its enormous losses, ended World War 2 as a super-power. Stalin's Secret War Plans Why Hitler Invaded the Soviet Union When the German armed forces invaded the USSR on June 22, 1941, Berlin described the offensive as preemptive in the face of imminent Soviet aggression. The claim was generally dismissed as Nazi propaganda. Recently disclosed evidence from Soviet sources, however, suggests that Moscow's foreign policy was not governed by neutrality when Europe went to war in 1939. Challenging established social and political structures through internal subversion, armed violence and terrorism, the Soviet Union was considered an outlaw state. It advocated the overthrow of all capitalist regimes and supported anti-colonial "independence movements" in underdeveloped territories. "This will invariably provoke the ruling classes of the Great Powers against us," the Communist Party's general secretary, Josef Stalin, told its Central Committee in 1925. 1 During the 1930s, Stalin, now dictator of the USSR, observed how Germany, revitalized under Adolf Hitler's leadership, worked to revise the post-World War I structure of Europe imposed by the United States, England and France. Stalin and Hitler, therefore, were both at odds with the West. The USSR was an agrarian state, rich in natural resources, struggling with transition into an industrial power. More than half the necessary factory machinery was purchased from the United States. Germany survived economically by exporting manufactured goods and industrial equipment in exchange for raw materials. Fertile ground existed for German-Soviet cooperation. On May 3, 1939, Stalin sacked the USSR's foreign commissar, Maxim Litvinov. Having previously concluded an alliance with Czechoslovakia and France, Litvinov was identified with Moscow's anti-German foreign policy of the decade. His replacement by Stalin with Vyatsheslav Molotov was recognized as a gesture toward Germany. Only days later in Berlin, Georgi Astachov, the Soviet Union's diplomatic advisor, thanked the German Foreign Office for the respectful tenor the Reich's press had recently adopted toward the USSR. That spring, London and Paris invited Moscow to co-sign an Anglo-French guarantee to protect Poland and Romania from German aggression. The Soviets made commitment contingent upon permission from Lithuania, Poland and Romania to allow the passage of Soviet troops in the event of war. Poland refused. The protracted Soviet-Allied negotiations were conducted halfheartedly by the West; its military advisors had a negative appraisal of the Red Army. Moscow hosted an Anglo-French military mission August 12. The Soviet Union was represented by the chief of the general staff, Boris Shaposhnikov, Defense Commissar Kliment Voroshilov and the naval minister, Adm. Nikolai Kusnezov. The West sent second-rate negotiators with limited authority. The Soviets were insulted. In August, Stalin decided on an agreement with Hitler. A non-aggression pact with Germany assured the Soviet Union tangible advantages. The Soviets would recover eastern Poland, which had formerly belonged to Imperial Russia. The Germans pledged support in the USSR's claims on Bessarabia and agreed to define Eastern Europe's Baltic and Balkan states as belonging to the Soviet "sphere of interest." Germany was preparing to invade Poland in case a territorial dispute and related grievances defied peaceful settlement. England and France supported Poland. Stalin reasoned that were he to conclude a military compact with the West, the powerful coalition would probably discourage Hitler from war. A German-Soviet non-aggression pact, however, would give Hitler a free hand to invade Poland. England, as Poland's ally, would declare war on Germany, drag a reluctant France into the conflagration, and Italy would rush to Hitler's side. The Soviet formula for national security rested with aggravating the conflicting interests among the "imperialist" nations and maintaining neutrality as these states expended their resources in a prolonged struggle. Stalin had defined the premise during his March 10, 1939, speech in Moscow:Nonintervention represents the endeavor... to allow all the warmongers to sink deeply into the mire of warfare, to quietly urge them on. The result will be that they weaken and exhaust one another. Then... (we will) appear on the scene with fresh forces and step in, naturally "in the interest of peace," to dictate terms to the weakened belligerents. 2 On August 23, 1939, the German foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, was in Moscow. He and Molotov signed the historic German-Soviet non-aggression pact. The following evening, Stalin hosted prominent members of the Soviet Political Bureau in his apartment. Among the dinner guests were Molotov, Voroshilov, Lavrenti P. Beria and Nikita Khrushchev. Stalin explained, as Khrushchev later recalled, that he considered war with Germany unavoidable, but had momentarily tricked Hitler and bought time. The Soviet premier described the treaty with Germany as a game of "who outwits whom."3 He concluded that the Soviet Union held the advantage both morally and militarily. A few months later, the Soviet Foreign Office explained Stalin's decision in a telegram to its embassy in Tokyo: "The ratifying of our treaty with Germany was dictated by the need for a war in Europe." 4 On August 25, 1939, the Swiss periodical Revue de droit international published the text of a speech Stalin delivered on August 19 to a closed session of the Political Bureau in Moscow. He was quoted as follows: It must be our objective that Germany wage war long enough to exhaust England and France so much that they cannot defeat Germany alone.... Should Germany win, it will itself be so weakened that it won't be able to wage war against us for 10 years.... It's paramount for us that this war continues as long as possible, until both sides are worn out. 5 In November, Stalin responded in Pravda that the Swiss article was a "heap of lies." 6 (The Russian researcher T. S. Bushuyevoy discovered Stalin's original text in the former Soviet archives in 1994; it conformed to the Swiss version.) Inside the USSR, an intensive armaments production program was under way. During 1938, it had increased by 39 percent, compared to 13 percent in civil industry. Emphasis was placed on armor, development of artillery and aeronautics. In September 1939 the USSR defense committee contracted the construction of nine aircraft production plants, and seven more to manufacture aircraft engines. This was supplemented by the conversion to fabrication of aviation components of a number of consumer goods factories. In 1940, Soviet production of modern combat airplanes increased over 70 percent from the previous year. The ground forces experienced a parallel upgrading of weaponry. Between January 1939 and June 1941, the Red Army received over 7,000 new tanks and 82,000 artillery pieces (including mortars). On June 26, 1940, a law was enacted extending the Soviet workday from seven to eight hours, and to seven days per week. Disciplinary action for tardiness or slothfulness in the factories was imposed on the work force. These are measures normally introduced during wartime. Conscription swelled the ranks of the Red Army. A force numbering 1 million men in the spring of 1938 surpassed 5 million by June 1941. The growth was summarized by the historian Roger Reese: "There were 198 rifle divisions in 1941, compared to fewer than 30 in 1927; 31 motorized rifle divisions in 1941 and none in 1927; 61 tank divisions in 1941 and none as late as 1939." 7 The spirit imbued in the military was illuminated in the revised, 1939 edition of the Red Army's field service regulations. It stated that should war be "forced" on Soviet Russia, "We will conduct the war offensively and carry it onto enemy territory." 8 In December 1939, the U.S. military attachï¿½ in Sweden reported to the War Department in Washington his assessment of the Red Amy: This absurd propaganda poster reads: "Soldiers of the Red Army save us!" The Russian people were gullible and tended to believe communist propaganda. As a result, they fought valiantly against the invaders. The soldiers are practically all peasants or common laborers... fed with a constant stream of propaganda extolling the virtues of Communism and assuring them that they are making some sacrifices in the present in order that it may eventually triumph throughout the world. Being unbelievably simple-minded and kept in total ignorance of conditions outside Russia, many of them are actually almost fanatical in their zeal for what they have been led to believe is a holy crusade to rescue their own class from villainous oppressors. 9 The war in Europe did not develop as Stalin had predicted. In the spring of 1940, the British withdrew from the continent. The German army conquered France in June without suffering appreciable losses. The ground war was wrapping up without England and Germany becoming "sufficiently worn down." Khrushchev later described how Stalin became unusually agitated following the Franco-German cease-fire in June 1940. He cursed the French for letting themselves be beaten and the English for fleeing "as fast as their legs could carry them." 10 The Soviets seized a generous portion of Eastern Europe only days before France's surrender. In September and October 1939, the Soviet government had negotiated permission with Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to establish military bases at their Baltic ports. In June 1940, Molotov reproached the Lithuanian prime minister, Anastas Merkys, for the alleged poor security provided the Soviet garrison; a Red Army soldier had supposedly been bushwhacked. On June 14, Molotov presented Lithuania's foreign minister with an ultimatum demanding reinforcement of the Soviet military contingent to prevent further "provocation." The diminutive republic acquiesced. Similar ultimatums were presented to Latvia and Estonia. On the 21st, the Baltic states were declared Soviet republics, following sham elections. Molotov told the Lithuanian foreign minister on June 30, "Now we're convinced more than ever that the brilliant comrade Lenin was not wrong in asserting that World War II will bring us to power in Europe, just as World War I helped us to power in Russia."11 When Moscow presented its demand on June 23 to reoccupy Bessarabia, the formerly Russian eastern province of Romania, Ribbentrop pledged Germany's support. He asked only that the sovereignty of Romania's remaining territory be respected, to safeguard the Reich's economic interests. Apologists for the USSR, and they abound among historians and sociologists in democratic countries, excuse these Soviet land grabs as defensive measures. The threat of potential German aggression supposedly compelled Moscow to extend the USSR's frontiers to blunt the impetus of a German offensive. The premise ignores the fact that the Soviet operations in the Baltic and into Bessarabia occurred opposite a virtually undefended German border. Four German infantry divisions and six militia divisions protected the demarcation line shared with the Soviet Union. Two were transferred to the western front in June. Stalin possessed a splendid espionage network, which consistently forewarned him of German plans. His spies could not have failed to observe (and report) that there were no German deliberations regarding an invasion of the USSR at that time. The atmosphere in Foreign Armies East, the German general staffs section assigned to matters related to the Red Army, was described by Maj. Erich Helmdach, who was posted there in July 1940: I found genuinely peacetime conditions in the department. The air war against England generated far greater interest. There was no trace of "war preparations," except that a Soviet film, ï¿½The Breakthrough into the Mannerheim Lineï¿½, a documentary about the Soviet winter war in Finland, was screened for the general staff officers. The post-film summary by Col. (Eberhard) Kinzel was limited solely to disparaging observations on the military achievements of the Red Army and its antiquated combat ordnance.12 How little the Soviets themselves promoted the "national security" pretext is illuminated by Molotov's remarks in an address to the Supreme Soviet on August 1, 1940. Citing the USSR's successful foreign policy, he stipulated that the Soviet Union should not be content with what had been achieved. In Stalin's words, the foreign commissar proclaimed, the nation must maintain a state of mobilization to wrest further successes: "Well achieve new and even more glorious victories for the Soviet Union." 13 That summer, diplomatic relations with Germany deteriorated. When the Soviets exerted political pressure to gain control of Finland's nickel production (the Germans had contracted to purchase 75 percent of the yield), Hitler garrisoned the Finnish nickel mines at Petsamo with elite mountain troops. After the Red Army occupied Bessarabia, the Fï¿½hrer signed a treaty with Bucharest in August, pledging to protect Romania from aggression. In November 1940, Molotov traveled to Berlin to confer with Hitler and Ribbentrop. During the talks, the Soviet visitor belabored the German military presence in Finland and the Reich's guarantee to safeguard Romanian sovereignty. This, he protested, was an infringement on the Soviet Union's sphere of influence. All conciliatory arguments introduced by Hitler, Molotov resisted. The catalog of demands for Soviet preeminence in practically every region where Germany and the Soviet Union shared interests, which Molotov heaped on Ribbentrop during the final session, brought the diplomatic exchange to a fiasco. The question arises what Molotov, presenting patently unacceptable demands, expected to achieve through these negotiations. The contemporary German historian Walter Post offers this analysis: Moscow had to fear that England would either be finished off by a German amphibious operation, or, due to its military weakness and miserable financial situation, find itself ready to conclude a peaceful compromise with the Reich. The Soviet Union would then stand alone against a Germany that controlled the resources of the entire European continent. Moreover, the Soviet Union saw the danger of a cooperative effort among all the capitalist powers, including the Anglo-Saxons, against the USSR. To prevent this possibility, England had to be encouraged to continue waging war... To reinforce this hope and prevent a German landing operation against England, Moscow had to seek a conflict with Germany. With the threat of Soviet expansion toward Scandinavia and the Balkans in his rear, Hitler could not risk operation Sea Lion (the invasion plan for England). Instead, he had to transfer strong formations of his armed forces to the east to protect Germany's supply sources of nickel lumber, oil and grain. 14 In December 1940, Soviet intelligence obtained a copy of a top-secret directive drafted by the Fï¿½hrer on the 18th. It opened with the words, "The German armed forces must be prepared, even before the conclusion of the war with England, to defeat Soviet Russia in a rapid campaign." 15 The document contained general military objectives in the east and specified that preparations had to be completed by May 15, 1941 Late in 1940, the attention of Hitler and Stalin shifted to southeastern Europe. Germany was the only great power capable of protecting the Balkans from Soviet aggression. This was instrumental in Ribbentrop's persuading the governments of Hungary and Romania to join the Three Power Pact, the German-Italian alliance system, in November 1940. Bulgaria followed on March 1, 1941. Hitler's purpose was to arbitrate local border disputes and solicit permission to move an army through Romania and Bulgaria to invade Greece. Molotov bombarded the German embassy in Moscow with official protests. Germany, he scolded, had acknowledged in the August 1939 non-aggression pact that these states belonged to the Soviet sphere of interest. (The USSR's occupation of the Baltic states in June 1940 demonstrated how Moscow interpreted the classification, "sphere of interest.") A sharper confrontation developed over Yugoslavia. Though its cabinet yielded to German pressure to enter the Three Power Pact, factions within the government and the military received discreet encouragement from England, the United States and Soviet Russia. During a visit to Ankara, the British foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, was told by Yugoslavia's ambassador that Moscow had reassured him that were Yugoslavia attacked by the Germans, the USSR was ready to aid the defenders. On March 27, 1941, the pro-German Yugoslavian government was toppled by a coup. Hitler directed his general staff to prepare an invasion. The German army group poised in Bulgaria to strike Greece would simultaneously invade Yugoslavia, supported by another German force deployed in southern Germany. The new Yugoslavian government anticipated a military alliance with the USSR. Yugoslavia's ambassador in Moscow, Milan Gavrilovic, was told by Stalin, "I hope that your army can stop the Germans for a long time. You have mountains and forests, where tanks are ineffective." 16 He urged the Yugoslavians to organize guerrilla warfare. Gavrilovic was then bounced to Molotov, who explained to him he was the "victim of a misunderstanding, since it had never been intended to conclude a military alliance with Yugoslavia, or support Yugoslavia militarily." 17 Red Army formations along the western frontier were simply placed on combat alert four days after the Germans invaded Yugoslavia in April. This was calculated to force Hitler to beef up his defenses opposite the USSR and relieve pressure on the Yugoslavian army. This saber rattling by the Soviets was a rare public manifestation of the Soviet military presence in the western zone. In general, the Soviet media denied rumors of troop concentrations along the frontier. The defense committee had been secretly transferring combat divisions there since the summer of 1940. In April 1941, the Ural and Siberian military districts were ordered to release more formations. On May 13, an additional 28 divisions, nine corps headquarters and four army headquarters were relocated from the Russian interior. By June, according to recent Russian archival estimates, the Soviet armed forces had deployed 2.7 million men near the western frontier; the equivalent of 177 divisions. 18 This enormous fighting force was allocated 10,394 tanks, over 1,300 of which were the formidable types KV and T-34. The army was supported by nearly 44,000 field guns and mortars. Over 8,000 combat aircraft occupied forward airdromes. The western military districts established command posts close to the frontier. Army staffs and front administrative personnel were ordered transferred there in mid-June. One hundred Soviet divisions were positioned in eastern Poland alone. A high proportion of armored and mechanized formations deployed near Bialystok and Lvov, behind geographic bulges protruding westward along the German-Soviet demarcation line. In a 1972 book, Marshal Ivan Bagramyan, in 1941 a colonel in the Red Army, commented on the troop disposition around Lvov: We regarded it a favorable assembly area in case we had to initiate widespread offensive operations. It was no accident that two of our full strength, most combat ready mechanized corps, the Fourth and the Eighth, were concentrated there. 19 As for the Bialystok area, the Soviet Maj. Gen. Pyotr Grigorenko later offered this perspective: More than half the troops of the Western Special Military District were stationed around Bialystok and to the west, therefore in territory extending like a wedge deeply into that of the probable enemy. A troop arrangement of this kind would only have been justifiable... if these troops had been earmarked to launch a surprise attack. Otherwise, half of them would have been surrounded in a moment. 20 Here, in "reactionary" classical Cyrillic, it is written: "Whosoever shall come to us with the sword shall perish by it. Upon this stood and stands the land of Russia." That was written by St. Alexander Nevsky (1220-1263). During World War II, Stalinist Russia briefly became the most conservative country in Europe. The philosophy of the Red Army was attack oriented. The chief of staff, Georgi Zhukov, described the training at the Soviet general staff academy: Participants in the course were instructed that wars are no longer declared; the aggressor strives far more to insure all the advantages of a surprise attack... The strategy of warfare is above all anchored in the correct thesis that the aggressor can only be beaten through offensive operations. Other variables of battle, such as counterthrusts, fighting to cover retreats and operations in case of encirclement, were, with few individual exceptions, only touched upon. 21 During May 1941, Zhukov and the defense commissar, Marshal Semyon Timoshenko, prepared an operational study for Red Army deployment in case of war with Germany. It was based on an initial plan submitted to Stalin the previous September. The May document included the following recommendation: In total, Germany and its allies can deploy 240 divisions against the Soviet Union. Considering that Germany, through the arrangement of its rearward services, can keep its army readily mobilized, it could deploy ahead of us and carry out a surprise attack. To prevent this and defeat the German army, I regard it as necessary to under no circumstances relinquish the initiative to the German high command; but to deploy ahead of the enemy and then attack the Germany army right when it is forming up, has not established a front and cannot organize the combat operations of its allied forces. 22 On May 5, Stalin and assorted Soviet dignitaries attended commencement at the Frunze Military Academy in Moscow. During the following banquet, he proposed several toasts and talked volubly. An abridged transcript of Stalin's remarks that day, from Soviet archives, was ultimately published by the Russian historian Lev Besyemski in the March 1992 issue of the periodical Osteuropa. Stalin lauded the modernization of the Red Army. He rebuffed Gen. Michail Chosin, the director of the Frunze academy, for proposing a toast to the USSR's peaceful foreign policy. The dictator substituted these words: Now that we have become strong, one must go from defense over to the attack. To accomplish the defense of our country we are obliged to take the offensive.... We must reform our instruction, our propaganda, agitation, our press to pervade an attack spirit. The Red Army is a modern army, and a modern army is an offensive army. 23 The Russian archives have never released the uncensored text of Stalin's commencement speech. The deleted portions may be revealed, however, by the testimony of four Soviet officers who attended the graduation ceremony. Captured by the Germans, Maj. Ivan Yevstifeyev, Maj. Pissmeny, Maj. Gen. Andrei Naumov and Maj. Gen. Vassili Malyshkin had no contact during captivity, but their recollections of Stalin's remarks are practically identical. The witnesses testified that Stalin had described the German army's "occupation" of Bulgaria and transfer of troops to Finland as "reasons for a war against Germany." 24 Discussing the preparedness of the Red Army, Stalin heralded its intended employment: For us, the war plans are ready... In the course of the next two months we can begin the struggle against Germany. It may surprise you that I'm telling you our war plans, but it has to be. We must take this step for our protection and take revenge for Bulgaria and Finland. There is a peace treaty with Germany, but that's just an illusion, a curtain behind which we can work. 25 That same May 5, the military propaganda section received guidelines for "the tasks of political propaganda for the Red Army in the immediate future." The outline stated that "members of the Red Army must be prepared for a justifiable, offensive war." It further stipulated, "the present perception among many Red Army soldiers, commanders and political cadres that the German army... must be destroyed." 26 Ten days later, Stalin dictated a personal directive for the Red Amy: The present international situation, which is filled with unforeseeable possibilities, demands revolutionary decisiveness and constant readiness to launch a crushing advance upon the enemy... The soldiers are to be schooled in the spirit of an active hatred of the enemy and to aspire to take up the struggle against him, to be ready to defend our fatherland on the territory of the enemy and deal him a mortal blow. 27 Along the frontier, the German and Soviet field armies were massing for an imminent confrontation. German reconnaissance aircraft flew frequent sorties to monitor the Red Army. Stalin issued standing orders forbidding his troops to fire on them. The Soviet host, grossly underestimated by German military intelligence, continued to augment. "All the spare capacity of the entire national rail transport system had been taken up with this major and secret operation," observed the former Soviet staff officer Viktor Suvorov. He points out that this large Soviet force could not, as Molotov would claim, have assembled in the west for summer training exercises. The mobilized divisions could not have returned to the distant lands from whence they came. Such a move again would have absorbed the entire resources of the rail network for many months and would have resulted in economic catastrophe. 28 The nature of these formations was illuminated in Suvorov's 1990 book, Icebreaker: The basis of Soviet strategy was the "operation in depth" theory.... The shock army was to... deliver those strikes in depth. Set up purely to solve offensive tasks, these shock armies had... a considerable quantity of artillery and infantry whose purpose it was to break the enemy's defense, and one or two mechanized corps with 500 tanks each... On June 21, 1941, all the Soviet armies on the German and Romanian borders... were of shock army standard. 29 It was unfeasible to maintain such an overwhelming military presence to protect against a potential German invasion. The region lacked sufficient shelters for winter, and there was a dearth of training facilities, such as firing ranges, to maintain the army's combat preparedness. Shaposhnikov himself had stressed the necessity of committing soldiers to action shortly after deployment on the frontier; not only does their sense of readiness otherwise lapse, but such a troop buildup can only remain concealed from the potential enemy for a limited time. A wounded Russian, captured in a skirmish, is treated by a Finnish nurse in a field hospital. Soviet soldiers were told by communist political officers that they would be shot or tortured by the Finns if taken prisoner. Despite these lying warnings, many soldiers surrendered to the Finns, and were alive and unharmed when the war ended. Neither political nor military documents fixing the date for a surprise offensive against Germany are available. Soviet officers captured during the fighting testified that many anticipated the order to attack in August or September 1941. Some said that combat operations were scheduled to begin early in July. The Soviet leadership, however, faced a serious concern. Stalin received reports that the Germans were preparing to invade the Soviet Union in June. His army on the front was undergoing feverish reorganization. Units were receiving new ordinance, recruit training was under way, many formations were under-strength. Other divisions were still en route by rail. It was estimated that the army would not be combat ready before the end of August. The dilemma is illuminated by Walter Post: The rapid progress of the German deployment and the reports piling up about the Germans' intention to attack in the latter half of June confronted the Soviet command with the problem of either changing the entire war plan to the strategic defensive, or advancing its own timetable for attack... A strategic defense would have required a total revision of the troop disposition, which because of the poor rail network could not be carried out in a short time.... The Soviet command had at this late hour no other choice but to maintain poise, camouflage its own deploying of forces as much as possible and hope for enough time to complete the concentration of its troops and attack according to plan. 30 The Soviets hoped that were the German army to strike first, the initial thrust need not be decisive. "They felt the covering armies were fully sufficient to repulse an enemy attack while Soviet main forces were mobilizing and deploying to launch a counteroffensive." 31 The Red Army, as the German historian Max Klï¿½ver relates, "was in every branch schooled in attack and trained for the capability of responding to an enemy attack with an immediate counterblow." 32 The Soviet general staff, however, had failed to appreciate how quickly the German army, upon arriving on the frontier, could launch an offensive. Shaposhnikov had estimated 10 to 15 days. To the Red Army's unpleasant surprise, the German armored and motorized divisions, right after reaching the border, struck with full fury. The captive Gen. Andrei Vlasov's remarks on the subject in 1942 were summarized by a German intelligence officer: The Soviets had been forming up since the beginning of the year, which, due to the bad Soviet railroad lines, went rather slowly. Hitler judged the situation perfectly and plowed right into the Soviets while they were deploying. This is how Vlasov explains the Germans' enormous initial success. 33 Like any novel concept assailing accepted views, the premise that Hitler may have only technically been the aggressor in the German-Soviet war has encountered resistance. Among the opponents of the revisionist position is David Glantz, who introduces new evidence to defend established views. An authority on Soviet military affairs, Glantz provides a comprehensive analysis of the 1941 Red Army in his study, Stumbling Colossus. He argues that rapid expansion since 1939, among other factors, made the USSR's fighting forces unprepared to conduct a military operation in the scope of the purported preemptive offensive against Germany. Soviet commanders, as reflected at that time in their military periodicals, "demonstrated a clear Soviet appreciation of the superb German military performance... and an unmistakable realization that the Soviet military in no way matched German military standards." 34 Glantz provides evidence that troops were unfamiliar with new ordnance, service branches of the army lacked experience in coordinated operations, and the level of training among inductees was inadequate. In the 37th Tank Division, for example, "About 60 percent of the enlisted personnel had joined the army in May 1941, and none had any general or specialized training." 35 Glantz publishes a July 1941 analysis of the Soviet 15th Mechanized Corps on the first day of fighting by its acting commander, in which the officer states that personnel in the corps' motorcycle regiment had never fired a rifle.36 Stumbling Colossus also mentions that the "majority of KV and T-34 [tank] drivers had from three to five hours of service driver training." 37 Aware of the military's predicament, Glantz concludes, Stalin sought diplomatic solutions to problems with Germany. The American professor Roger Reese summarizes that expansion of the army "was pursued at a frantic if not altogether paranoid pace" since 1939, largely out of fear of Germany. The Red Army "inconsistently changed unit organization and reshuffled its leaders, creating a great deal of confusion, instability and systemic incoherence." 38 Glantz's book in particular is worthwhile for balancing the perspective of recently available information. However, related factors should also be considered. The fact that the Red Army was experiencing a difficult period of reorganization, modernization and expansion from 1939 to 1941 did not prevent Stalin from employing it as an instrument of foreign policy. The invasion of Poland and the occupation of the Baltic republics and Bessarabia delayed progress in improving the army. A 1939-40 winter war against Finland cost the troops a quarter of a million casualties and widespread demoralization. Stalin was not deterred by the disastrous impact Soviet imperialism exercised on the struggling military establishment. The question arises, did the Soviet general staff really consider the fighting forces inadequate? Why would Zhukov and Timoshenko, who overestimated German strength, prepare an operational study for invading central Europe? "There is no direct evidence that Stalin ever saw it," Glantz maintains. 39 The study was dated May 15, 1941, and addressed to Stalin. The Russian historian Col. Valeriy Danilov argues that it would be absurd to presume that the Soviet defense commissar and the chief of staff would have prepared such a document to set before Stalin without authorization. Such arbitrary conduct by officers would have represented a rebuke against Soviet policy and implied that Stalin was in error. Considering the 1937 purge of the military hierarchy, it is doubtful that staff officers would have risked antagonizing him.40 It is more plausible that the study was accomplished on his orders. The controversy will continue, at least until the former Allied powers Britain, the United States and Russia, whose governments have liberally exposed Germany's wartime records, release the relevant material in their own archives. The Austrian newspaper Die Presse of April 4, 1997 quoted the Moscow journalist Konstantin Preobrashenskiy about use of the Russian archives. "Once again, the archivists only approve access to the documents when they feel like it. It is regrettable to see how what was accessible yesterday is today closed once more." 41 Notes: 28 Suvorov, Viktor, "Who Was Planning to Attack Whom in June 1941, Hitler or Stalin?" 29 Suvorov, Viktor, ï¿½Icebreakerï¿½ 30 Post Stalin, Appeasement, and the Second World War Mark Jones The issues raised by the revisionist histories of the past 20 years will not go away and have not been settled by the revisionist histories of the past decade. The complicity of the Western Powers in Hitler's criminal adventurism is a theme argued out in my book Moscow in World War 2 (Chatto and Windus, 1987, with Cathy Porter). It is not as if the opening of certain archives has changed the story, only fleshed it out a little. Nor can there by an doubts about Stalin's own views and role. Stalin's position was not just a matter of public record, his priorities were insistently clarified in his own words and actions: thus for example Stalin began his report to the 18th Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), convened in Moscow in March 1939, not with a description of the 3rd Five Year Plan then reaching its climacteric, but with a tour d'horizon of the gloomy and threatening international scene. According to Stalin, a new imperialist war was already in its second year, 'a war waged over a huge territory stretching from Shanghai to Gibraltar, and involving over five hundred million people'. Linking the Great Depression beginning in 1931 with the 'conflicts and perturbations' which had led to war Stalin made the point that while the Western Powers were still in the grip of economic crisis, the 'aggressive countries' such as Germany, Japan and Italy were not- but only because their economies were already on a war footing. If peace were preserved, these countries would soon find themselves in a far more serious crisis as a result of the burden of arms spending. 'Unless something unforeseen occurs', those countries would soon be on a 'downward path'. The implication was clear: the new economic crisis 'was bound to lead, and is actually leading, to a further sharpening of the imperialist struggle'. It was no longer a question of competition in the markets, of commercial war, but of "a new redivision of the world, of spheres of influence and colonies, by military action". And Stalin listed the seats of conflict: In 1935 Italy attacked and seized Abyssinia. In the summer of 1936 Germany and Italy organized military intervention in Spain and in Spanish Morocco, and Italy in the south of Spain and the Balearic Islands. In 1937, having seized Manchuria, Japan invaded North and Central China, occupied Peking, Tientsin and Shanghai and began to oust her foreign competitors from the occupied zone. In the beginning of 1938 Germany seized Austria and in the autumn of 1938 the Sudeten region of Czechoslovakia. At the end of 1938 Japan seized Canton... The territorial aggrandizement of the Axis Powers attacked the foundations of the international settlement following the 1914-18 war, and which had primarily benefited the victors in that war- France, Britain and the USA. It was their global interests which were now threatened. Stalin pointed to the "clumsy game of camouflage" used by the aggressors to conceal their real intentions. They claimed the Axis, founded on the Anti-Comintern Pact, was directed solely against Soviet Russia (but where, asked Stalin, are the communist hotbeds in the mountains of Abyssinia or the wilds of Morocco?) Unfortunately, Western leaders were only too anxious to take the anti-Soviet protestations of Hitler and Mussolini at face value. "Incredibly", the West was "conniving at this redivision of the world" in which anti-Sovietism thinly veiled imperial predatoriness. The West colluded with the fascist countries, not from weakness but because the nonaggressive countries, "particularly England and France, have rejected the policy of collective security". This policy of non-intervention "means conniving at aggression... and... transforming the war into a world war... it reveals an eagerness to see Japan... embroiling herself in a war with the Soviet Union.... and Germany" too. Treason and Treachery The "bourgeois politicians" of the West fantazised about a bloody and prolonged war, at the end of which the Western Powers would "appear on the scene with fresh strength... and 'in the interests of peace' would dictate conditions to the enfeebled belligerents". Contemptuously dismissing such an outcome as "cheap and easy", Stalin went on to utter an ominous warning to the British and French, and their American backers. These countries had practised a policy of appeasement towards the expansionist ambitions of the Axis Powers, Germany, Italy and Japan. They had stood by while one country after another had been subjected to fascist aggression. Stalin did not propose to 'moralise on the policy of non- intervention, to talk of treason, treachery and so on'. It would be 'naive to preach morals to people who recognise no human morality'. But, Stalin continued, 'the big and dangerous game started by the supporters of the policy of non-intervention may end in serious fiasco for them'. This was the clearest possible warning to those who hoped to channel German aggression towards the East. The Soviet Union would not allow itself to be diplomatically isolated and left to fight single-handed against Hitler Germany and its allies. This declaration could only have the meaning that if all its attempts at creating collective security arrangements came to nothing, the USSR would not hesitate as a last resort to seek an accommodation with Germany. Thus Stalin foreshadowed the possibility of a Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact six months before events brought it into existence. The apologists of appeasement who have tended to dominate debate more recently hinge their position on a great act of denial: for it was British diplomacy above all which opened the door to Hitler's world of demons. Perfidious Albion, not Stalinist Russia, by its acts of omission and commission, led the world into war. Stalin's indictment of the collusion between the flaccid old imperialisms (France, Britain, the US) and the hungry upstarts looking for a military 'window of opportunity' points up the essential fact of interwar diplomacy: inter-imperialist rivalry had mutated into a contest with world communism. Britain, still nominal guarantor of world capitalism, and not yet under US tutelage, made of virulent anti-communism the primary engine of policy. The significance of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact is that it did serve to foil Anglo-American attempts to embroil Hitler in a private war with the USSR. Stalin's deal with Hitler saved countless Soviet lives and made possible the final victory over Hitler Germany. It also ensures that Britain too was saved. It was a deal Stalin had tried to avoid, an eleventh-hour agreement reached on the eve of War. For a decade before that, the Soviet Union sought to create a genuine collective-security system based on the League of Nations. Few acts of great power diplomacy have been the subject of such vilification, misrepresentation, distortion and slander as the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. A stream of books, articles and programmes continues to be published and broadcast about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, designed to show that pre-war fascism was actually the same thing as Soviet Communism, that Hitler and Stalin were partners in crime, that the West was virtuous and even politically virginal andï¿½above allï¿½that there was no Anglo-American collusion with, and encouragement of, the Nazis. The truth was differentï¿½but the Nazi-Soviet Pact serves as a fig-leaf to cover British and American embarrassment. It was their policy which led to the Second World War. They'd rather we forgot. Blinded by hysterical anti-communism, suffused with imperial delusions of grandeur, the British establishment in fact had only one foreign policy goal since the signing of the Versailles Treaty which ended the First World War, twenty years before. As Thorstein Veblen had said, the desire to destroy Bolshevism 'was not written into the text of the Treaty [but was] the parchment upon which that text was written.' Hitler's seemingly superhuman intelligence, his ability to wrap the canny politicians of London, Paris and Washington around his little finger, resulted from nothing more than their own willingness to be duped. Actually they had no illusions about the Nazis: British statesmen referred to Hitler as 'the little corporal' and when British Foreign Minister Lord Halifax first encountered Hitler at Berchtesgaden, he mistook the Reich Chancellor for a butler. The Nazi's star diplomat, Herr von Ribbentrop, was universally derided in London as 'Herr Brickendrop' for his gaffes such as his propensity to give Nazi salutes to the king. What fascinated the financiers and patricians of London and Washington was not the Nazis' own illusions of Nietzschean grandeur but the aroma of easy money, the sexiness of raw power, which always goes with criminality and which explains the perennial proximity of bankers to gangsters. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, was about as sexy as a workmen's social club in Barnsley. Earnest proletarian diplomats naturally cut no ice in the western corridors of power (British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain counted the Downing Street silver service, on the one occasion he felt obliged to receive Soviet ambassador Maisky, whose impassioned warnings about Hitler's intentions impressed him not at all. Chamberlain viscerally hated the Bolsheviks). These were the kinds of reasons which led London and Paris to stand idly by while the Nazis brazenly seized more territory (always in the east), grabbing Austria almost without firing a shot, although at the time Germany was weaker than either of the Western powers, rolling through Czechoslovakia and finally turning up on the Poles' doorstep. Hitler achieved his ends with astounding ease and like all gangsters planned to teach his social betters their place: but the idea of war with England still struck Hitler as odd, as an absurdity, something which grated against the proper scheme of things. England was supposed to fence German ill-gotten gains: that had been Chamberlain's role at Munich, when the Czechs were sold off. The idea that the two countries would go to war over division of the spoils was shocking, and when it happened Hitler was dismayed and piqued. He assumed it was a misunderstanding which could be solved in the usual discreet way, by private talks, perhaps involving the recently-abdicated king, talks aimed at seeing everyone right. Unfortunately for everyone the English had issued the Poles with a Guarantee, and to renege on it might be to reveal the truly parlous state of the English ancestral estates, for the empire was strung together with exactly such empty promises and gossamer guarantees. The whole house of cards might come down. Hitler hadn't thought of that; neither had Chamberlain until it was too late. The West had been ready to let Hitler have his way in everything as long as he also performed the 'historic' mission proclaimed in Mein Kampf - to destroy Bolshevism and so correct an 'error of history'. Soviet worries about international security and the oft-professed Soviet interest in sponsoring due process and legal framework in international relations rang no bells in London and Paris and even seemed laughable or incomprehensible given Lenin's bloodcurdling calls for World Revolution. What on earth were the cloth caps up to? The Olympian calm the Western powers maintained as Hitler flagrantly violated international agreements, their inaction at the time of the Anschluss with Austria, their betrayal of Czechoslovakia at Munich- all this was advance payment on Hitler's promise to head eastwards, against the Soviet Union. The history of interwar diplomacy makes baleful reading Another world war was not inevitable. It could be easily avoided if the Western Powers took seriously the need for collective security arrangements. That they did not was indicative of their bad faith. The evidence of this was manifest. The 1935 Neutrality Act may have reflected a popular current of isolationism, but the effect was to encourage the aggressors. On the day it became law, Italy invaded Ethiopia. The Act forbade the sale of arms to belligerents, but not of other commodities, including strategic raw materials. Guaranteed US non-intervention, all the Axis powers continued to trade heavily with the US, whose sales of fuel oil and other goods to Japan made possible its aggression against China and Korea. US loans and direct investment supported the growth of German war industry. By the mid-1930s the US portfolio totalled more than Reichsmarks 21 bn. General Motors, Ford, ITT, Standard Oil and many other US firms set up German subsidiaries which later supplied the Wehrmacht with more than three- quarters of its transport requirements and the Luftwaffe with engines, airframe aluminum and precision parts. US 'even-handedness' was not, of course, of much use to countries like Ethiopia. While the USA went about the business of non-intervention in its own way, Britain and France took a different route. They had to coexist with a resurgent Germany and sought to channel German aggression towards Russia. This required a more active form of 'non-intervention'. The British establishment, still suave with the emollient ease of empire, could patronise the Germans who were still inclined to be deferential: Ribbentrop confided to his diary a fantasy in which the Fï¿½hrer rode up Pall Mall with King George V in a gilded coach. Perhaps these dreams were shared by Hitler as well. The Fï¿½hrer had felt dismay more than anger when Lord Halifax mistook him for a footman at their first meeting at Berchtesgaden. Nevertheless, Hitler was able to overcome his awe sufficiently to do business. His sense of social inferiority soon led him to feel nothing but contempt for the effete English and their cobwebbed, crumbling empire. But Hitler did not want to destroy the British world of illusions, he wanted to take it over as a going concern. A Wine Merchant Makes German Foreign Policy Joachim von Ribbentrop, by trade a wine merchant, was ambassador to the Court of St James's before he became Reich Foreign Minister in 1938. He enjoyed London society and the patronage of the Astors, frequenting Cliveden where he became acquainted with former Secretary for Air the Marquis of Londonderry, an anti-Communist stalwart. They were on first name terms- 'Jo' and 'Charlie'. A Cliveden topic was the need for a rapprochement between England and Germany. Another was the problem of the Jews. Halifax, who became British Foreign Secretary in 1938, also attended the Astors' weekend parties. It was here that British policy towards central Europe developed, as applied by Neville Chamberlain when the latter became Prime Minister in May 1937. The Cliveden set took the view that, while the Soviet Union was the principal danger to the British Empire, the immediate threat to international stability lay elsewhere, in the Treaty of Versailles and its continuing consequences. The Versailles settlement had imposed particularly harsh conditions on defeated Germany and, what was worse, had created successor states to the Austro-Hungarian Empire which were viable only at the expense of German national interests, and which in any case could not serve as an effective cordon sanitaire around the Soviet Union. The rebirth of German economic power under the dynamic and providential leadership of Adolf Hitler had created a strategic vacuum in Europe given that the constraints of Versailles left Germany a political pygmy. This historical conspectus suggested an obvious programme and gave it a name-appeasement. The satisfaction of German demands would put right the recognised inequities of Versailles, remove the sources of tension and instability in Europe, and restore Germany to its rightful place. Britain's acknowledgement of Germany's dominant role in Europe made that country a potential ally and might reduce or remove German colonial pressure. Most importantly, a renewed Germany would be a decisive bulwark against Soviet communism. It would displace the locus of future instability further East, making the occasion of any future war that of purely Soviet-German relations. The Royal Navy and the Maginot Line would insulate the western powers. Chamberlain's policy was to collude with fascism. One of his first acts was to send Sir Nevile Henderson ("Our nazi ambassador to Berlin", as he became derisively known). Henderson drew up a 'Memorandum on British Policy Towards Germany'. This called for a comprehensive Anglo-German agreement which would include the demarcation of spheres of influence, world markets and raw material sources, and also colonial possessions. The whole sense of such an agreement would boil down to guaranteeing Britain her colonial possessions and preserving her great-power positions, having met Hitler's expansionist claims at the expense of other states (notably the USSR). At Halifax 's first meeting with Hitler he praised the Fï¿½hrer for having turned Germany into a 'bulwark of the West against Bolshevism' and put his imprimatur on German ambitions: 'All other questions', ran the minutes of the talks, 'could be said to relate to changes in the European order, changes that would probably take place sooner or later. Among these questions were Danzig, Austria and Czechoslovakia. England was only interested that any changes should be brought about by peaceful evolution'....... Within months Hitler moved against Austria. The Anschluss of 12 March 1938 might have posed a problem: Britain was a guarantor of Austrian independence, and the Austrian government had appealed for help. But as Sir Alexander Cadogan, permanent undersecretary at the Foreign Office and a supporter of the 'Drang nach Osten', told his diary, it would 'have been criminal to encourage Schuschnigg to resist when we couldn't have helped him. At the end of the day H. [Halifax] and I agreed our consciences were clear!' On April 22 Hitler told a secret conference of Party and military personnel the West had written off Czechoslovakia. 'Operation Green', the plan for its liquidation, was given the go-ahead. In Britain the Foreign Office drew up 'Plan Z', according to which the Prime Minister should wait until Nazi Germany had created a tense situation around Czechoslovakia before, on the pretext of "saving peace", personally meeting Hitler to negotiate that country's dismemberment. Cadogan told his diary that Czechoslovakia after all 'was not worth the spurs of a single British grenadier'. 'Operation Green' was not a success. The Czech government refused to be cowed by German troop movements on the borders or by Nazi agitation among German-speaking Czechs. Hitler could not count on the collapse of mutual assistance undertakings between Czechoslovakia, France and the Soviet Union. The Germans backed down. This evidence of the effectiveness of collective security arrangements did not discourage Chamberlain from selling out Czechoslovakia when the crisis in Czech-German relations came to a head the following September. Following Hitler's brimstone speech to the Nuremburg Party rally, which seemed to presage quick action against the recalcitrant Czechs, Chamberlain invoked 'Plan Z'. On September 15 he arrived at Hitler's Berghof estate. Apologists for Chamberlain sometimes present a picture of this English gentleman, now in his seventieth year, being outfoxed and even cowed by the ranting dictator. The reality was rather different. Chamberlain told Hitler that 'from the moment of his appointment as British Prime Minister, he had been constantly occupied with the question of Anglo-German rapprochement'. In any case, there were 'at the present time, considerably more important problems than Czechoslovakia [which] need discussing'. Hitler, who had previously confined himself to expressions of concern for the civil rights of Czechoslovak Germans, now made plain that the real issue was the surrender of the Sudetenland to the Reich. Chamberlain scarcely batted an eyelid, declaring that Britain did not have an interest in the Sudeten-German question and that in any case 'as a practical person, he had already thought of how to bring about the possible inclusion of Sudeten Germans into the Third Reich'. Chamberlain 'gave the Fï¿½hrer to understand that Czechoslovakia could not remain poised like the point of a spear threatening the German flank.' This would be true even 'after the Sudeten Germans enter the Third Reich'. Hitler was quick to agree, saying 'this would be the situation as long as the Czechoslovak state has alliances with other states which threaten Germany'. Chamberlain asked Hitler 'if the German apprehensions would be removed vis-ï¿½-vis Czechoslovakia if it were possible to change the relationship between Czechoslovakia and Russia in such a way that, on the one hand, Czechoslovakia would be free from its obligations to Russia in the event of the latter being attacked, and, on the other, Czechoslovakia, like Belgium, would be deprived of the possibility of aid from Russia or another country'. Chamberlain's search for a justification for the liquidation of Czechoslovakia did not ignore, but was based upon, that country's role as linchpin of European collective security, connecting the Soviet Union with France and, through France, Britain, in the containment of Hitler Germany. It was precisely the demolition of collective security which Chamberlain sought. On 19 September the Czech government was handed an Anglo-French statement arising out of Chamberlain's meeting with Hitler. It called for the ceding to Germany of Czech territories containing a majority of Czech-speaking citizens. The rump state would be given 'guarantees' by Britain and France providing the Czechs tore up existing military assistance treaties. The precedent was set: solid military arrangements were replaced by worthless scraps of paper. Soon the British were 'guaranteeing' the Balkan states too, not to speak of Poland. The Czech government capitulated, but not all at once. Czechoslovakia had a strong army and defensible borders. It had repeated offers of Soviet military assistance, a solution for which there was considerable popular support (there were mass solidarity demonstrations outside the Soviet embassy in Prague at the height of the crisis). The Benes-Hodza government stalled public acceptance of Hitler's terms, partly to increase its leverage with the British, but partly also to give it time to manoeuvre the Soviet Union into a repudiation of its treaty commitments to Czechoslovakia - the indispensable step if British support was to be won. The crisis dragged on until Hitler issued a final ultimatum- he would invade Czechoslovakia on October 1st, when US President Roosevelt issued an appeal to both Hitler and Benes to 'settle their dispute peacefully', an approach which put aggressor and victim on the same level. Roosevelt suggested a conference of five countries: Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Czechoslovakia, to 'solve the dispute'. Since the only country still to stand by the Czechs -the Soviet Union- was not invited, there was no doubt as to how Roosevelt expected the 'dispute' solved. The conference was duly convened for 29 September; but the package of proposals finally adopted had already been worked out- not by the British government, but by Lady Astor's Cliveden set, during a dinner party. They were aided in their work by the US ambassador to London, Joseph Kennedy, who, according to Benes, 'supported and defended Chamberlain's policy of appeasement consistently and unconditionally'. After the Munich conference completed the mutilation of Czech sovereignty, Chamberlain asked Hitler for a private meeting. It was time to collect. The price for Czechoslovakia and a free hand in the East was Hitler's agreement to conclude pacts on non-aggression and cooperation with the British and French, including German guarantees of the integrity of their colonial possessions. Chamberlain emerged with his 'piece of paper'. One month later the French also concluded a non-aggression pact with Hitler Germany. The Anglo-French appeasers had achieved an old dream: the creation of a four-power pact (with fascist Italy and Germany) whose aim was the isolation of the USSR and the ultimate satisfaction of German territorial claims at its expense. Pravda said 'the world can clearly see that behind the smokescreen of fine phrases about Chamberlain having saved the peace at Munich, an act has been committed which by its shamelessness has surpassed all that has taken place since the first imperialist war'. Chamberlain and French premier Daladier had one residual service to make to Benes, who had obligingly held up the scenery while they carried off the cast. This was to foist responsibility for Czechoslovakia's fate onto the Soviet Union. In the effrontery of this act they followed Gï¿½bbels' favourite dictum about big lies being more believable. The Soviet Union had repeatedly and insistently made known its preparedness to stand by its treaty commitments to Czechoslovakia and its general commitment as a League of Nations member. Litvinov spelled this out from the Geneva rostrum: 'our War Department', he said, 'is ready to participate in a conference with representatives of the French and Czechoslovak War Departments in order to discuss the appropriate measures.... We intend to fulfil our obligations under the pact'. But the French and British governments and their media stooges continued to fling mud at the Soviets, the more so as the real implications of the Munich sell-out began to sink in. It suited their purpose to argue that Soviet support had not been forthcoming; like Benes, they too needed to argue that there had been no alternative to capitulation. In Britain Lord Winterton, a cabinet minister, said in a speech that 'Russia did not offer to help in the Czechoslovak crisis, but only made vague promises owing to her military weakness'. This statement was never retracted, a position of intransigence in which the minister concerned was supported by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain during a hostile Parliamentary question time. Soviet concern to dispel the miasma of public suspicion generated by this calumny led Ambassador Maisky to protest personally to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax. Meeting him on 11 October 1938, while German troops were still in the process of occupying the Sudeten region acquired at Munich, Maisky told Halifax that 'the Soviet Union has never had anything to do either with the policy that led to Munich or with the Munich agreement itself [a fact known to Halifax, at any rate]...I am convinced that this agreement will have catastrophic consequences for peace and will be condemned by history'. Some of the mud stuck, as Chamberlain intended. The USSR was left with a dilemma: the more trenchantly its spokesmen criticised the West's appeasement of Hitler, the more its own perceived intransigence would predispose Hitler to solve bilateral problems by fighting rather than diplomacy (exactly the outcome sought by British). Yet to be seen supporting, even by a tacit silence, the policy of appeasing Axis aggression, was equally impossible. A Soviet-sponsored convention defining aggression had been concluded in the USSR in the summer of 1933, followed by a proposal to set up a collective security system in Europe comprising France, USSR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Belgium and some other states threatened by Nazism. The negotiations led to a Soviet -French and a Soviet-Czechoslovak treaty of mutual assistance being signed in May 1935. The USSR also worked to strengthen the League of Nations and tried to establish close co-operation with the USA and Britain, but with little success. British policy was to encourage Hitler to solve bilateral problems by fighting rather than diplomacy. This policy was covert. Appeasing Axis aggression was difficult in the face of popular opposition. In any case, the policy floundered from the start: making deals with criminals only encourages them. Thus the Nazi Hamburger Fremdenblatt remarked after Munich that 'England, with her feelings of honour, will be the first to realize that a proud and mighty nation of 80,000,000 people cannot tolerate the thought that it has been deprived of its colonial mission through a verdict imposed by violence'. So nothing was settled after all, and the 'piece of paper' Chamberlain had in his pocket had not bought peace. The British had nothing to show for the destruction of European collective security. Chamberlain's duplicitous diplomacy had not achieved even the minimal goal of satisfying Germany's immediate demands. As Pravda also commented: The British Conservative press and quarters supporting Mr Chamberlain want to make political capital by claiming that an accord with Fascist Germany and new concessions to Hitler would save Europe from war. There is no greater falsehood than this assertion. The policy of an agreement with the aggressor does not postpone but accelerates the advent of war. 'An epoch of a rampage of crude force and the mailed fist policy is setting in' wrote Ivan Maisky, an old Bolshevik and now Soviet ambassador to Britain. 'A mood of die-hard reaction reigns in Britain and power is in the hands of the most conservative circles who fear communism most of all...The USSR remains the only bright spot on this gloomy background'...... In France Soviet agents reported on a private conversation of the French Foreign Minister with some intimates, in which he bluntly said that 'sacrifices in the East are inevitable- it is essential to give an outlet to German expansionism'. At the time France was still formally a Soviet ally. A taste of the dream world inhabited by the appeasers was afforded by a speech made by British Home Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare, on the same day that Stalin spoke to the Moscow Party Congress of the 'treason and treachery' of the French and British. Calling for 'a 5-Year Plan for Europe, greater than any 5-Year Plan that this or that country has attempted in recent times' Hoare opined that 'a golden age' of rising living standards and 'incredible inventions and discoveries' was just around the corner if only 'the five men in Europe, the three dictators and the Prime Ministers for England and France worked with a singleness of purpose and a unity of action to this end- [they] might in an incredibly short space of time transform the whole history of the world...Our own Prime Minister', Hoare whimsically concluded, 'has shown his determination to work heart and soul to such an end. I cannot believe that the other leaders of Europe will not join him in the high endeavour upon which he is engaged'. Five days laterï¿½and three days after Stalin delivered his Central committee report to the 18th Party Congressï¿½Hitler's tanks rolled into Prague, and the world was able to see the real fruits of appeasement. This time even the fig leaf of legality afforded by the Munich Agreement was dispensed with; the Germans went in 'to clear out a nest of Bolsheviks'. Chamberlain in London now was obliged to give thought to the 'guarantees' with which he and Daladier had equipped the rump Czechoslovak state. He had 'worked out a plan... which is pretty bold and startling', as he told his diary. 'I have an idea it won't bring us to an acute crisis, at any rate at once'. In a characteristically peccant manoeuvre Chamberlain announced that since 'Slovakia' had declared itself 'independent', the state Britain had guaranteed no longer existed, nullifying the guarantee! Such cynicism drew howls of protest even from the Conservative benches in the House of Commons. So great was the storm of public outrage that Chamberlain was obliged to make a public denunciation of appeasement, which became a taboo word. In future, fascist self-aggrandizement was to be resisted - by the application of more 'guarantees'. Chamberlain's adventurism was now cut entirely loose from the solid ground of historical reality, and British policy entered the squalid fantasy-world of the last years of peace. Only when British troops had to swim for their lives from the beaches of Dunkerque did its catastrophic consequences become clear. Hitler used the fanatical anti-communism of Western leaders to screen his own grand design, which however was transparent enough. First he would lay hands on the resources of the small countries of Central and Eastern Europe in order to strengthen Germany's strategic positions and war machine. Afterwards, when high political quarters in London, Paris and Washington were expecting him to attack the USSR, the Nazis would turn on France. Only then, backed by the military and economic resources of Western Europe would Hitler proceed to his next objective- the conquest and colonization of the Soviet Union. By March 1939 German troops had traversed Czechoslovakia and turned up on Poland's southern borders. The depth of the abyss to which Poland's 'opera' colonels had brought the country was brought into sharp focus. For twenty years the Poles had been ceremonializing venality into reasons of state, while they tried to parlay their walk-on part into a leading role. Perhaps this is not surprising; the Poles were the paupers of history and for 200 years had done without a state at all. They now fantasized a role as the West's outermost glacis, barring the way to Asiatic communism. To Litvinov's polite suggestion that they might have a problem with the Germans and should perhaps discuss a renewal of the Polish-Soviet Pact of 1932, they said 'Soviet participation in European polities' was 'needless'. At the end of August, a week before Germany attacked it, Poland's Foreign Minister Colonel Beck was to observe that 'No kind of military treaty connects Poland with the Soviets and the Polish Government does not intend to conclude such a treaty'. They too had entered fantasy-land. When the British gave Poland one of their 'guarantees' General Sikorski issued Britain with a 'reciprocal' guarantee. Three weeks later the Polish state had once again ceased to exist and Beck and Sikorski were refugees in London where Chamberlain told them the British were not in a position to help 'at the present time'. So neither guarantee was worth much. The 'London Poles' were a footnote in history. They hoped that the USSR and Germany would destroy each other, and that the post-war Poland which would rise on the ashes of those two countries to become Europe's dominant power. Six million Poles died during the war, a higher proportion of its population than in any other country. This was the fruit of the Polish refusal to enter collective security arrangements with the Soviet Union. Through all this, the British stubbornly persisted with their vision of an Anglo-German rapprochement. When the Panzers rolled into Prague the Federation of British Industry sent a delegation to Dï¿½sseldorf to negotiate with its German counterpart. Throughout that last summer of peace, talks took place on a many trade and bilateral questions. The guarantees given by Britain and France to Poland fit into this picture of burgeoning Anglo-German relations. Chamberlain stiffened the Poles, in effect giving them the right to declare war on Germany on behalf of Britain and France. But war was the last thing he expected. The British guarantees to Poland were made with the purpose of encouraging Polish intransigence and giving Hitler reasons to swallow Poland whole. Poland was a sacrificial pawn. British policy was to direct Germany against Soviet Russia. It had been for more than twenty years. The unilateral guarantees were an alternative to a political-military understanding with the USSR which was the only country actually in a position to help Poland. Chamberlain was trying to canalise German aggression away from the Western Powers. Hitler had once again been given the green light for aggression in the East. This was how Hitler himself understood the matter: when Britain and Germany did find themselves at war a few weeks later, no-one was more surprised than the 'strategic genius' in Berlin, unless it was Neville Chamberlain. British policy had only one aim: to cajole, wheedle, guide and direct Germany against Soviet Russia Events moved swiftly; Germany renounced its Non-aggression Treaty with Poland and the 1935 Anglo-German Naval Treaty, and seized the Lithuanian port of Memel. On April 7 Mussolini occupied Albania; Britain and France responded with 'guarantees' (!) for Greece and Romania. The Soviet Union invited them to conclude a mutual assistance pact. But this was the one self-evident step which, next to Germany and the USSR becoming allies, the Western Powers most feared. They responded with a suggestion that the USSR should make a unilateral statement as follows: 'in the event of any act of aggression against any European neighbour of the Soviet Union, which resisted such an act, the assistance of the Soviet Union would be available, if desired, and would be afforded in such a manner as would be found most convenient'. This was a notion worthy of the Downing Street dreamer, who had been encouraged by his success with the Poles into thinking that the Russians too could be persuaded to tie a noose around their own necks. However the Soviet government declined the opportunity to make war on Germany at London's bidding. On the very day this Whitehall provocation was delivered, Stalin's Tokyo agent, Richard Sorge, submitted an appreciation of Anglo-German relations which concluded 'Germany's main objective. . . is to compel Britain to recognise without a war Germany's claims to hegemony in Central Europe and to yield to its colonial demands. . . on this basis Germany will be prepared to conclude a lasting peace with Britain... and to start a war with the USSR'. In such a war the Japanese, according to Sorge, would also attack the Soviet Union with its Kwantung armies (the majority of Japanese land forces). At the insistent request of the Soviet government, which continued its urgent, not to say frantic, search for allies against Hitler Germany, the British and French agreed to talks in Moscow. These talks, herd in the summer of 1939, would decide whether there would be peace or war. It depended on the British and French. The Soviet commitment to collective security was crystal clear. But time was short. Stalin had said in his Central Committee report that the USSR would not pull other people's chestnuts out of the fire. Unfortunately it became clear that the British, desperately struggling to save an empire which in any case would disappear within twenty years, were now ready to burn whole groves of chestnuts. Chamberlain had been scrupulous not to guarantee the Soviet Union's neighbouring states on the Black Sea, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. These small defenceless countries, socially riven and with extreme right-wing governments, were perfect targets for Nazi indirect aggression. In a speech to the Supreme Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov said the British action was 'almost a direct invitation to Germany to leave Poland and other countries alone for the time being and to attack instead ... states on the Soviet borders by the time-honoured nazi methods of the instigation and financing of internal revolts and then marching in on the 'invitation' of the puppet government'. It was just these countries which the British wanted the USSR to unilaterally guarantee. So, just in case Hitler couldn't be embroiled in a war with Poland, Chamberlain's reserve position was to leave open a channel between Romania and Poland which would lead straight to the Soviet borders via the Baltic states. Only a few days before Molotov's speech Germany and Italy rounded off their preparations for war with the formal consummation of their 'Pact of Steel'. Two days later the British Cabinet met to discuss the ominous international situation. The minutes of their meeting make interesting reading. Agenda items included- Russia, Anglo-German relations, Danzig and the reinforcement of troops in Egypt. The discussion focused on the question of whether or not to pursue talks with the USSR for a mutual assistance treaty. After a long and involved discussion it was decided to continue negotiations in order, as one minister observed, to strengthen the British position so further initiatives could be taken in the search for appeasement. It was agreed that negotiations with Russia could indeed result in: a more "positive" policy, namely, agreement with Germany! This was the reality behind Chamberlain's damascene conversion from appeasement. But Chamberlain, who according to a diary entry of Nevile Henderson, counted the silver spoons after receiving Soviet ambassador Maisky at 10 Downing Street, felt deep loathing for the first socialist state. And according to Alexander. Cadogan, the Prime Minister experienced 'revulsion' at the very thought of alliance with Russia. But Chamberlain, Halifax and Daladier were coming in for growing criticism. Winston Churchill, who deferred to no-one in his detestation of Soviet Russia or his romantic attachment to Empire, told the House of Commons: 'I have been quite unable to understand what is the objection to making the agreement with Russia. . . for a triple alliance between England, France and Russia. . . solely for the purpose of resisting aggression... Clearly Russia is not going to enter into agreements unless she is treated as an equal, and not only treated as an equal, but has confidence that the methods employed by the allies.. . are such as would be likely to lead to success... Without an effective Eastern front there can be no satisfactory defence of our interests in the West'....... The Soviet Government proposed that the British speed up the crucial talks by including a senior figure with plenipotentiary powers, such as Lord Halifax, in their delegation to Moscow. This was reasonable. As Lloyd George was to point out 'Lord Halifax visited Hitler and Goering. Chamberlain flew into the Fuhrer 's arms three times in succession. He went specially to Rome to embrace Mussolini, to present him with official recognition of the conquest of Abyssinia, and practically to tell him that we would not bother about his invasion of Spain'. But for the Moscow talks the Government could only find William Strang, a middle ranking civil servant. Chamberlain and Halifax 'do not want any association with Russia', concluded Lloyd George. The Moscow talks were a sham from the start. On 29 June Zhdanov denounced in Pravda, British and French stalling: out of 75 days taken for the exchange of views 16 had been spent by the Soviet Government preparing its replies and 59 days were lost due to delays and procrastination by the Western side: 'this all shows that [they] do not want a treaty with the USSR based on the principles of equality and reciprocity, despite their protestations. . . . they want us to play the part of a hired labourer. . . The English and French do not want a real treaty, a treaty acceptable to the USSR. .. they want to talk about a treaty and , gambling on the alleged intransigence of the Soviet Union for the benefit of public opinion in their own countries, make it easier for themselves to make a deal with the aggressors'. . . While the Western Powers procrastinated, the crisis over Danzig deepened. It was obvious to the general public, never mind political leaderships, that a German attack on Poland was weeks away. Not until the release of Cabinet papers 30 years later did Strang's secret instructions for the conduct of the Moscow talks come to light. He had been told that 'the draft treaty should be as short and simple in its terms as possible. . . It is realised that this may leave loopholes in the text and possibly lead to differences in the interpretation of the treaty at a later date'. In other words, Strang was told to create a swindle which the British could later disown at their leisure. Herbert von Dirksen, Reich ambassador to Britain in 1938-39, called the British tactic 'Zwillingspolitik'- a twin track diplomacy whose primary objective was to encourage Hitler to come to an agreement. Dirksen's papers were discovered after the Soviet Army passed through his estate at Grï¿½ditzberg in 1945. Among them were documents detailing the secret negotiations between Hitler and Chamberlain which continued right through the summer and to which the Moscow talks were merely a side-show. On 22 July 1939, a few days before the Moscow talks resumed, the London papers were filled with a sensational story which was to make headlines around the world. Chamberlain proposed offering Germany a loan of one billion pounds sterling (4 billion US dollars) - an enormous sum. Secret talks between Hitler and Chamberlain, who tries to bribe Germany The story was leaked by the French, who feared the British were selling them out to Germany. There was an instant clamour in the press and political circles. The UK government's embarrassment was compounded by the German response. Hitler rejected the offer 'with indignation'. Hudson's proposal for a loan supposedly linked to German disarmament was dismissed as 'the fantasy of a government which has lost its grip on reality'. Hitler denounced an 'arrogant and shameless' offer which suggested Britain thought she was dealing with a 'defeated enemy'. But Dirksen's papers revealed a much more sinister story of Anglo-German collusion designed to conceal the real, and far more substantive negotiations going on by means of a synthetic hullabaloo over Hudson's 'offer'. These negotiations had begun more than a month earlier Dirksen explained the reasons for secrecy: 'the problem which is puzzling the sponsors of these plans [i.e. Chamberlain and Halifax] most is how to start the negotiations. Public opinion is so inflamed that if plans to negotiate with Germany became public they would immediately be torpedoed'. Discussions took place between Hitler's economic adviser Wohlthat and Sir Horace Wilson, a member of Chamberlain's kitchen cabinet. The essence of Chamberlain's proposal, relayed to Wohlthat, was as follows. Wohlthat was told 'there were still three big regions in the world where Germany and England could find wide opportunities for activity: the British Empire, China and Russia. England alone could not adequately take care of her vast empire and it would be quite possible for Germany to be given a rather comprehensive share. Just as little could Japan satisfy all China economically; in Russia the situation was similar'. Wilson went on to say that 'the British government had in view the conclusion of two pacts with Germany: the first on non-aggression and the second on non-intervention' in exchange for which, Chamberlain 'would end the British "guarantee" policy and agree to an acceptable settlement of the problems (sic) in Eastern Europe'. Additionally, the British would prevail on France to abrogate her Mutual Assistance Pact with Russia and abandon all her ties in South-East Europe. It was made clear that the British 'guarantee' to Poland was nothing more than a device to achieve the main aim- a broad alliance with Hitler Germany. The British wanted a 'non-intervention pact' in order to secure a general demarcation of spheres of influence throughout the world; this would be combined with an economic agreement which amounted to an eventual coalescing of the German and British economies in a mutual exploitation of each country's colonial empires. There was discussion of the 'need to open and exploit' world markets- including China and the USSR. Just in case anything had been left out, Wilson commented that, if Hitler had any other demands, 'the Fuhrer only has to take a clean sheet of paper and list the questions he is interested in'. These talks were continued in Berlin through early August, when Britain also agreed 'to recognize East Europe as Germany's natural lebensraum (living space)'; to settle the colonial question and end 'Germany's encirclement'. 'Agreement with Germany is still Britain's dearest wish' wrote Dirksen. British efforts to woo Hitler continued into August. Sir Horace Wilson met Fritz Hesse, a Ribbentrop aide, at his Kensington town house to convey a new offer by Chamberlain to conclude a 25-year 'defensive alliance' with Germany. Hesse wanted clarification: did this mean the British would take Germany's side in a war with the Soviet Union? Wilson replied that it did. Hitler did not respond directly to the latest British overtures. His main concern was that the Soviet Union might still manage to persuade the French and British to negotiate seriously for a mutual assistance pact. His own overtures to the Soviet Government for a Non-aggression Treaty now became more insistent; and they were buttressed, of course, with the plentiful evidence of British bad faith now available to Hitler. In any case, Hitler had no worries about the likely British response to a German attack on Poland; he was now convinced, and could hardly be otherwise, that Britain would not go to war for the sake of Poland. Even if the British and French were obliged to honour their 'guarantees' to the extent of declaring war, the Reich would be in no actual danger from the West. So confident was Hitler of this that Germany's western borders were left undefended while the Wehrmacht was hurled at Poland. At the time the French could mobilise more than 100 divisions, 2000 aircraft and 3000 tanks. But this huge force remained immobilised behind the Maginot line. Faced with German intransigence and expansionism, the Western Powers writhed on the hooks of their own opportunism and adventurism. The tale of the Moscow Military Mission of the British and French allies reads more like a Feydeau face than the curtain-raiser to a war which cost so many lives. The Military Mission grew out of the Moscow talks for a collective- security pact, led by a junior Foreign Office official, Strang, in the summer of 1939. The Soviet government made plain it wanted a real bells-and-whistles treaty, not mere paper protocols. The Czechs had already seen the benefits of British guarantees, as the Poles were soon to do. As Zhdanov said, 'they want us to be their coolies', but Stalin had other ideas. So from the start the Soviet side put forward a condition that any political treaty should be supplemented with a military convention, and they should come into force at the same time and constitute 'one single whole'. The pact, if there was going to be one, had to have teeth. The Military Mission staff talks were necessary to agree on operational matters in military co-operation between the powers in time of war. These were concrete issues to do with force levels, dispositions and military strategy. That kind of thing, of course, was just what the French and British wanted to avoid at all costs. The British Mission was headed by Admiral Drax, a semi-retired naval with no experience of operational planning and known to be violently anti-Soviet. His French opposite number, General Doumenc, headed a mission as notably undistinguished and incompetent as the British. The British Board of Trade sent the mission to Russia on the slowest seaworthy boat they on Augusts 1939. While it crawled around the coast of Europe at 13 knots the officers of the missions played table tennis to pass the time. In order to avoid the talks taking a serious turn their instructions included various draft treaties which could be put to the Russians. Hammered together out of general formulas, abstract principles and self-evident platitudes, these were the raw material for what were intended to be protracted discussions. Apart from avoiding productive talks the other main task set the delegations was one of espionage. Thus the missions' instructions including questions on such matters as the calibre of Red Army leadership, the specifications of Soviet aviation fuel, Soviet naval policy in the Baltic and White Seas and so on. In the course of their voyage the Missions' senior members evolved a system of secret signals for use during the talks. If delicate issues arose on which positions needed to be coordinated, or if someone became indiscreet or compromised, the other members of the missions were to scratch, rub or blow their noses. To facilitate these manoeuvres Admiral Drax developed a terrifying cough. Doumenc was endowed with a fine aquiline nose which seemed to elongate as the talks progressed and the Western delegations became mired in self-contradiction and a mendacious frivolising of the serious issues at stake. The French and British intended to drag on the talks, for months if need be, until either Hitler was pressurised into reaching agreement with them, or until Germany attacked Poland. In such a situation, with the Wehrmacht right on Soviet borders, the USSR would presumably have the greatest difficulty in remaining outside the conflict whatever the then state of its relations with the Western Powers. But the talks took only a few days to reach a climax; the Soviet side were simply not prepared to be fobbed off by the obfuscatory tactics of the French and British. The talks broke down over the question of Soviet troops being allowed onto Polish or Romanian territory in order to make contact with the enemy. Replying to Marshal Voroshilov, Doumenc said: 'I agree with the Marshal that the concentration of Soviet troops must take place principally in the areas indicated by the Marshal, and the distribution of these troops will be made at your discretion. I think that the weak points of the Polish-Romanian front are its flanks and their limiting point. We shall speak of the left flank when we deal with the question of communications'. 'I want you to reply to my direct question', repeated Voroshilov, whose patience finally gave out when confronted with this unintelligible evasion. 'I said nothing about Soviet troop concentrations. I asked whether the British and French General Staffs envisage passage of our troops towards East Prussia or other points to fight the common enemy'. General Doumenc: 'I think that Poland and Romania will implore you, Marshal, to come to their assistance'. Voroshilov: 'And perhaps they will not. It is not evident so far'. At this point, accompanied by vigorous nose-rubbing, the decrepit Drax broke in. 'If Poland and Romania do not ask for Soviet help they will soon become German provinces, and then the USSR will decide how to act', a statement which laid bare the totality of British wishful thinking on the subject of a Soviet-German war. After this the talks were adjourned at Soviet insistence until the Franco-British Missions could get an answer to this question from their governments (they had no powers to negotiate outside their narrow remit, let alone sign an agreement). The question of allowing Soviet troops through Poland was crucial, decisive. The Red Army (self-evidently!) had to have access to the Front, if military assistance to Poland was to mean anything. But the refusal of France and Britain to put pressure on the Poles over the question of passage to the Front in the event of war, was indicative of Franco-British aims. To have taken the question seriously would entailed serious discussion of the whole framework of military collaboration between the four countries, who would then be allies bound by common treaty commitments to take definite and prearranged steps in the event of aggression. Thus the French, for example, would have had to make commitments to open an offensive front on Germany's western borders. But the British and French counted on the mindless intransigence of the Polish colonels to abort such menacing discussions. The Poles said they were defending Christian Europe against the Godless Bolsheviksï¿½and simultaneously defending themselves against Hitler! It is hard to feel sorry for them, especially because it was their fellow-countrymen who paid the price for their folly (the colonels mostly lived in quiet retirement in the London suburb of Kensington). The British goal was to embroil the Soviet Union in a war of annihilation with Nazi Germany and for the Soviet Union to begin such a war on its own territory, in other words in the most disadvantageous circumstances. For the same reason the Western Powers had refused to grant guarantees to the Baltic states against 'indirect' aggression, thus leaving the way open for Germany to sponsor the overtly fascist elements in their right wing governments into coups, resulting in these Soviet neighbours falling into German hands. And all the while the Moscow talks were still dragging on, Chamberlain orchestrated his secret talks with the Germans. As we have seen, these were aimed at turning the Non-aggression Pact which Chamberlain signed with Hitler in Munich in 1938, into a thoroughgoing collaboration with Nazi Germany in all spheres- political, economic and military. The Moscow talks for a mutual assistance treatyï¿½like the unilateral guarantees liberally distributed to East European countriesï¿½were a charade. In his talks with Hitler, Chamberlain pledged to break off the simultaneous talks with the USSR should agreement with Germany be reached. It is worth considering what such a plan would have entailed for the USSR had Chamberlain succeeded. Still engaged in its attempts to construct a European framework for collective security, the Soviet Union would have found itself completely isolated. It would have had to face single-handed a united front of capitalist countries secretly formed and directed against it, with Germany armed to the teeth as a strike force. Chamberlain's plan thus posed a deadly danger to the Soviet people. As Churchill was to point out, 'a wholly different policy was required for the safety of Russia... The Soviet government were convinced by Munich and much else that neither Britain nor France would fight till they were attacked, and would not be much good then. The gathering storm was about to break. Russia must look after herself. Germany became increasingly persistent in her own overtures to the Soviet Union. Germany too wanted a Soviet-German Non-aggression Pact, an option which the Soviets government had steadfastly resisted during its search for authentic collective security. Now Hitler sent a personal message to Stalin asking for an agreement to be concluded, and despatched Ribbentrop to Moscow for the purpose. The effective collapse of the Moscow Military talks and the obvious imminence of a German attack on Poland forced the Soviet hand. The Soviet-German Non-aggression Treaty was signed on August 24, one week before the war began. Both sides understood from the start its real meaning- the pact was a truce which suited their temporary convenience. On August 17 Britain's Washington ambassador got word from US intelligence sources that the signing of a Soviet-German Non-aggression Treaty was imminent. This was one of the possibilities most feared by Daladier and Chamberlain. It meant the collapse, at least temporarily, of their planned war between the USSR and Germany. This did not mean, as Churchill knew, that they would then be in the position of having to wage war on Hitler unaided. The British had already sent a special emissary, Baron William de Ropp, to Berlin a few days before. One of his tasks, during his discussions with Alfred Rosenberg, head of the Nazi Party's foreign policy department, was to spell out the British stand in the event of a German attack on Poland. Rosenberg was told the British would fight a defensive war, that is to say, would take no action in defence of Poland or in retaliation for Germany's attack on that country. In particular there would be no aerial bombardment of German territory- and the Germans agreed to reciprocate, a decision which held throughout the 'phoney war' period. This 'deal' struck between de Ropp and Rosenberg would leave open the possibility of quickly ending the war because, de Ropp said, 'neither the British Empire nor Germany would wish to risk their future for the sake of a state which had ceased to exist'. This discussion pointed the way to a collusion which continued throughout the first months of the war, until Hitler struck at France in May 1940. But the British had still to deal with the possibility which now loomed up of a Soviet agreement with Germany. The British now resorted to tactics disgraceful even by their own standards. So deep is the shame which still attaches to British actions at this time that official records have been doctored to conceal the truth. Regrettably, Western historians have tended to connive in the cover up. When Britain's Washington ambassador got word of Ribbentrop's impending visit to Moscow he at once sent the news to the Foreign Office. According to the official version of events, the telegram did not arrive until 22 August, a delay of four days. During this time the British had one last chance to save the peace and fend off the impending catastrophe. At this final and crucial moment their actions would be conclusively revealing about their real intentions. Five days later when the Soviet-German Treaty became a fact the Western media raised an incredible storm of synthetic anger, claiming that both Britain and France had allegedly sought an alliance with the USSR but that the latter had 'double-crossed' them. This myth, assiduously fostered by western historians, still remains ingrained in popular consciousness. It is a myth which depends crucially on the circumstantial fact of the delayed diplomatic telegram. For had the telegram arrived on 18 August the British government would have had ample time to act to forestall the collapse of the Moscow military talks. A drastic step by the British government, such as a telegram to Moscow saying that Lord Halifax or the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Ironside, were ready to come to Moscow with plenipotentiary powers to sign the treaty, could have changed the course of events drastically and within hours. Nothing stood in the way, even at this eleventh hour, of a collective security arrangement capable of ensuring peace, other than the warmongering intransigence of the British themselves. The British, of course, did not send Halifax to retrieve the stalled talks. A treaty with the Russians was no part of the schemes of the appeasers. What they actually did was to send a British intelligence officer, Sydney Cotton, on a secret mission to Germany. He was to try to persuade Hermann Goering to return with him to London to meet and negotiate face to face with Neville Chamberlain. In a last twist of perfidy, an act of actual desperation, Chamberlain wanted to buy off Hitler's proposed pact with the Soviet Union by making the Germans a still better offer. 'Agreement with Germany is still Britain's dearest wish' Gï¿½ring agreed to fly in secretly on 23 August. Hitler however was still only concerned to beat the British at their own game of setting potential enemies at each other's throats. Gï¿½ring didn't turn up; Hitler no longer had anything to fear from the British and was now only concerned to ensure Soviet non-intervention in the forthcoming attack on Poland. Only in 1971 did incontrovertible evidence appear proving that Halifax received on 18 August the Washington ambassador's telegram warning of the impending conclusion of a German-Soviet Non-aggression Treaty- that is, the day after it was sent. This revelation made it finally impossible to suggest, as several generations of historians and publicists have tried to, that it was the Soviet Union which ditched the Moscow talks and made war inevitable. But in reality the circumstantial evidence of British duplicity was undeniable from the start. The collapse of the Moscow talks meant that the last obstacle to Hitler's next move in the grand design for European and world domination had been removed. On September 1st German units crossed the Polish border. Chamberlain and Daladier made last desperate efforts to involve Mussolini in some form of 'mediation' before public opinion forced the two governments to declare war on Germany on 3 September. There now commenced what the French called 'drole de guerre', the phony war. The French army, that 'mirror of the national virtues', settled in behind its Maginot Line. The British began to organise an expeditionary force of seven divisions. Chamberlain broadcast a speech in German, in which he declared his attitude to the 'perfidy of the Fï¿½hrer' and gave a long list of Hitler's broken pledges. 'Hitler', he ended, 'has sworn to you for years that he was the mortal enemy of Bolshevism; he is now its ally. Can you wonder that his word is, for us, not worth the paper it is written on?' That at least made clear what Chamberlain thought Hitler's real error was. This speech marked the beginning of an intense propaganda campaign in Britain and France, and also in the US, to prepare public opinion not for the sacrifices and burdens entailed by real hostilities and by a real attempt to discharge British obligations to Poland and other countries ground under the Nazi jackboot- but for a very different goal. The French and British, backed by Roosevelt in the US, now began to campaign with brazen and shameless openness for a repudiation of the war against fascist Germany and for the conversion of Germany and Italy into allies in a war against the Soviet Union. A chorus arose from many and varied sources, all calling for the same thing- a war against Bolshevism, a creed which according to the Daily Telegraph is 'as immoral, as murderous, as anti-social as that of Hitler Germany'. In the words of the Methodist Recorder there should be a war for a 'new order' in Europe, a war in which 'France and Germany, Britain and perhaps Italy would have fought side by side in...comradeship.' As Lenin had urged long before, "We must explain the real situation to the people, show them that war is hatched in the greatest secrecy... We must explain to the people again and again in the most concrete way, how matters stood... and why they could not have been otherwise..." And: "examine the policy pursued prior to the war, the policy that led to and brought about the [First World] war.... [we should not forget] the question of the class character of the war; what caused that war, what classes are waging it, and what historical and historico-economic conditions gave rise to it.' Most important: To whose advantage is it?' Prefiguring the supersession of inter-imperial rivalry by an epoch of class struggle on the international plane, Lenin said: ... in the present world situation following the imperialist war, reciprocal relations between peoples and the world political system as a whole are determined by the struggle waged by a small group of imperialist nations against the Soviet movement and the Soviet states headed by Soviet Russia... This foreshadowed the form taken by imperialist rivalry during most of this century, which has characterised by the coalescing of the robbers into one hegemonic band. This is ultra-imperialism, but not the kindly, meliorative thing Kautsky foresaw, but the decadent, planet-destroying capitalism we now enjoy. Lenin's notion that inter-imperial rivalry was bound to be overlaid by conflict between the world proletariat and world capitalism, was adopted by J.V.Stalin. Speaking to a Central Committee plenum in 1925, Stalin said that in a future war "we will not be able to stand idly by. We will have to take part, but we will be the last to take part so that we may throw the decisive weight onto the scales..." How did a well - informed, ultra-cautious politician such as Josef Stalin ever allow Adolf Hitler to achieve surprise in launching his invasion of the Soviet Union? It was inconceivable in 1941 and remains so to this day. There was the carefully articulated campaign of disinformation mounted by Hitler to convince Stalin that the German divisions in Poland were not a threat to the Soviet Union. Germany troops were being prepared for the invasion of Britain, and it was easier to conceal them in eastern Europe than Germany or France. In addition Hitler knew that Stalin was desperately eager to reach a new agreement with him. Thus he carefully cultivated those hopes, always suggesting he intended to resume negotiations in the near future. This was the prospect which led Stalin in May 1941 to assume the post of chairman of the Council of Peoples Commissars. Stalin believed until the last moment that war could be avoided. He expected a new agreement would be very onerous and to guarantee its fulfilment he took the unprecedented step of assuming full formal responsibility for the Soviet government. In Berlin Otto Meissner continued inconclusive talks with Vladimir Dekanozov, the Soviet ambassador, until the eve of Barbarossa. Stalin did not merely sit in the Kremlin waiting for Hitler to make him an offer. Instead he mounted his own disinformation campaign. A number of Soviet documents (obtained by August Ponschab, the German consul in Harbin, Manchuria) were purposely leaked in an attempt to provide Hitler with accurate information concerning Soviet intentions and aspirations. None of these documents were authentic, but the information contained in them was sufficiently plausible to seem genuine at the time. The Germans were led to believe that they had accidentally stumbled on a genuine source of information illuminating Soviet policy -- in particular the manner in which the Soviet government viewed its relations with Germany. All the documents stressed Stalin's reluctance to co - operate with Britain and America in any way. They also conveyed his sincere desire to reach agreement with Germany concerning Finland, the Balkans, Turkey, and the Middle East. They specified his objectives in these areas and trade-offs he was prepared to make in return. Most of all they magnified the efforts being taken by the British Empire and the United States to reinforce the United Kingdom and suggested that if Hitler did not invade Britain in the summer of 1941 it might prove impossible thereafter. If Hitler had been open to reason, intelligence data of this sort might well have convinced him to negotiate. But Hitler clearly was not open to reason. As in 1939, he intended to have his war, and no one, least of all the hated Stalin, was going to stop him. This is what Stalin did not understand. He believed Hitler to be rational and if offered a good enough deal, willing to negotiate a settlement without resorting to war. Thus, perversely, any military precautions Stalin might take against a sudden German attack would only complicate, perhaps prevent, the opening of negotiations. Thus, as a matter of policy, not conviction, Stalin ignored all warnings that Hitler intended war, and gave the monstrous order not to fire on the Germans should they attack. Stalin was deceived, but why was he, the least trusting of all men, taken in? Clearly he was overconfident, badly served by his ideology and far out of his political depth in confronting the Nazi menace. Did the Cold War have its origins in the years prior to World War II ? These were the charges brought by the resurgent Republican Party in the United States when they turned on the Roosevelt and Truman administrations and blamed them for "the loss" of Eastern Europe. The newly emergent school of British historians (John Charmley in particular) blame Winston Churchill for "the loss" of the British Empire. If only he had cut a deal with Hitler (the always rational Hitler in whom Stalin also trusted!) he would have turned Nazi and Communist against each other while the British Empire sailed serenely into the second half of the twentieth century. Stalin got the better of everyone. Hitler, Churchill, and Roosevelt all failed equally in dealing with him. Stalin saw himself as a master politician, a superb diplomat, a true military genius able to mount fantastic military adventures on short notice. Stalin had been planning for some time, but especially after 1938, to launch a grand 'Drang nach Westen', to expand the Soviet Union and its influence as far westward as possible. It is of course hard to explain the fifteen hundred kilometre march of the Wehrmacht to Stalingrad as a Soviet Drang nach Western. Churchill and Roosevelt were only too ready to leave the fighting of the war to the Red Army. The western leaders were aware that every Soviet casualty saved a western life. There were of course more than twenty-five million Soviet casualties. What western government would have taken this burden on its shoulders? There was no core of rationality at the heart of Hitler's policies -- a rationality with which compromise was possible. Instead, there were a will to power and an unlimited appetite for blood and territory with which it was impossible to reach agreement. Roosevelt and Churchill did not make this mistake. Despite their intense anti-Bolshevism they realized that Nazi Germany was a far greater danger to their democracies and could only be crushed with the full co-operation of Soviet Russia. No one understood great power politics better than Roosevelt and Churchill, and they created the alliance which would overwhelm Nazi Germany. Although they controlled all the economic resources needed to win the war they lacked manpower and a political consensus to spill British and American blood in sufficient quantities to achieve their purpose. In the end Stalin provided all the casualties needed to win the war, not because he wanted to but because Hitler left him no other alternative. Secret tales from Vienna At the height of the Cold War, plans for an invasion had spies and soldiers on edge By Eric Margolis September 16, 2007 VIENNA -- Memories of past glories still haunt this majestic imperial capitol of the now sadly vanished Austro-Hungarian Empire. There are also fresher memories of the post-war era when the Soviets shared control of Vienna with Britain, France and the United States. A large, freshly gilded Soviet war memorial still looms over the city. The old, sinister days of spying, kidnapping and black marketeering were captured here by Carol Reed's magnificent film, The Third Man, starring Orson Wells as the charming thug, Harry Lime. My father used to produce plays with Wells, and the actor often regaled us with amusing tales about making this film in the ruins of Vienna under the baleful eyes of the KGB. Half a century later, Wells' presence still haunts Vienna. I half imagine seeing him in the twilight, dressed in a long, black great coat and fedora, slipping around a corner into the dusk. Vienna also has another fascinating secret. Back in the 1960s, at the height of the Cold War, I was studying international law at a Swiss university. A group of Swiss Army officers in mufti (civilian dress) were arrested by Austria for spying on its modest fortifications on its Czech border. Many jokes about "chocolate spies" were made at the time over this seeming trivial incident. But the Swiss, as always, were deadly serious. The Swiss officers were monitoring Austria's eastern defenses against the Soviet Warsaw Pact because their intelligence service had uncovered frightfully alarming news. State Secret This information still remains a Swiss state secret, but thanks to my contacts with the Swiss military, I can reveal it for the first time. NATO's defenses were concentrated on the North German Plain -- the hundreds of miles of flat terrain running from the Bavarian Alps up to the North Sea and supplied by the vast Belgian port complex of Antwerp. This region, and the Fulda Gap to the south, were the Warsaw Pact's expected invasion route into Western Europe. U.S., German, British, Canadian, Dutch and Belgian troops were massed there, awaiting an attack. However, the Soviet General Staff had developed a brilliant plan to outflank the bulk of NATO forces in north Germany. It was a variant of the pre-First World War German Schlieffen Plan. The Soviet version called for a major deception and pinning attacks in the north, while a mass strike force of at least 60 armored and mechanized divisions would sweep west from Czechoslovakia into neutral Austria, cross it, and then erupt into eastern Switzerland. The Red Army would have to fight its way through the Swiss fortress zone at Sargans, then drive west on an axis: Zurich-Bern-Neuchatel-Lausanne-Geneva. Bound for Paris From Geneva, the Soviet blitz would break out into France's Rhone Valley near Grenoble and Lyon, swing northwest along the Saone River and envelop Paris from the south and west. This vast enveloping attack, whose northern flank would be in large part protected by the Alps and Vosges, would come up behind NATO forces deployed much further east. A Soviet column would take Antwerp and Rotterdam, thus cutting off the main supply lines of American, British and Canadian forces, and then attack them from the rear. Had this plan worked, it would have been more successful than the 1914 Schlieffen Plan and as great a triumph as Germany's 1940 campaign against France. Like von Manstein's and Guderian's audacious attack through the Ardennes forest in May, 1940, a Soviet offensive through Austria and Switzerland would have struck the least expected spot -- NATO's underbelly. Austria lay naked, but Switzerland was ready. Its 600,000 tough soldiers prepared to fight the Red Army from their mountain fortress redoubts at Sargans, Gothard and St. Maurice in the Valais. The Swiss would have seriously delayed Soviet attacks, perhaps giving NATO time, were it fleet enough, to withdraw its northern forces eastward, and pull back troops to defend the strategic Rhone Valley. But it would have been a very, very close run thing. May 8, 2005 Soviet pride, shame Honour Russia's sacrifice but don't forget Stalin's crimes and the Allies' culpability, Eric Margolis writes PRESIDENT GEORGE W. Bush is due to attend ceremonies in Moscow tomorrow commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory over Germany in 1945. It is both right and wrong that he be there. Right, because many North Americans and British mistakenly believe their nations alone defeated National Socialist Germany. In fact, Stalin's Soviet Union, not the western democracies, played the decisive role in defeating Adolf Hitler and his European allies. While rightly honouring our own heroic veterans, it's time we also recognize and pay homage to Russia's dauntless courage, endurance and suffering. - The Soviet Union inflicted 75% of all World War II German casualties in titanic battles involving millions of men. Soviet forces killed 3 million German troops, and lost 11.3 million, with 18.3 million wounded. Twenty million Russian civilians died. - Britain lost 340,000 men, Canada 43,000, and the U.S. about 150,000 in the European Theater. The $11 billion of U.S. military aid to the U.S.S.R. helped Stalin, but was not decisive. - When Allied forces landed at Normandy, the Wehrmacht's "guts had been ripped out by the Soviets," said Winston Churchill. Had the Allies met 1940's strength and quality German troops, with an intact Luftwaffe, they would have been driven into the English Channel. However battered, the Wehrmacht fought ferociously from 1944 to '45, recalling Churchill's dictum, "You will never know war until you fight Germans." - The Soviet defeat of Japan's forces in Manchuria has been ignored. In a brilliant, Blitzkrieg campaign along a 3,000-km front on Aug. 9, 1945, Soviet Far Eastern armies crushed Japan's weakened 710,000-man Kwantung Army, killing 80,000 and capturing 594,000. So it's right to honour Russia's valiant soldiers. But it's also wrong to keep on ignoring the Soviet Union's monstrous crimes or the Allies' alliance with the tyrant who committed them. Nazi concentration camps like Buchenwald and Auschwitz are household names. But who recalls even more murderously prolific Soviet death camps like Kolyma, Vorkuta and Magadan? Stalin told Churchill he had killed 10 million farmers in the early 1930s, and hailed the butcher of 6 million Ukrainians, Commissar Lazar Kaganovich, as "our Himmler." The best current estimate of Stalin's victims is 20 million murdered before WWII, and 10 million from 1941 to '53, a total "democide" of 30 million. Hitler's toll was around 12 million after 1941. Nor did German aggression alone begin the war in Europe. German-Soviet aggression did. We forget Hitler and Stalin jointly invaded, then partitioned Poland under the notorious Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, that Moscow has never renounced. Seven million Poles died, half of them were Jews. The U.S.S.R. then went on to invade Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. In 1939, Hitler, whose major crimes still lay ahead of him, was seen by many Europeans as a hero who had pulled Germany out of economic collapse, restored national dignity and provided the main bulwark against the very real threat of communist mass murder engulfing western Europe. Yet Britain and the U.S. chose to become war partners with Stalin, by then history's worst mass killer. Churchill and particularly Franklin Roosevelt must share indirect guilt for Stalin's crimes, just as they would had they joined Hitler. This aspect of the war remains taboo. At Yalta, the left-leaning Roosevelt, besotted by "Uncle Joe" Stalin's power, delivered half of Europe to communist rule, replacing a greater tyranny for a lesser one. What should the Allies have done? In 1939, the 20th-century's leading military thinker, Maj.-Gen. J.F.C Fuller, urged Britain not to go to war over Poland, but await the inevitable war between Germany and the U.S.S.R. that would destroy them both, then liberate Europe. Otherwise, he warned, Stalin would emerge the victor. Hitler was declared "the supreme evil" and ideological war was declared. Fuller was pilloried and ignored. It's time Canada, the U.S. and Britain face their culpability in abetting Stalin. They should demand Russia come clean over Stalin's crimes and prosecute Soviet officials and police who are still alive. Bush at least took a first step by rebuking the Kremlin for its invasion of the Baltic states. Continuing to beat the drums about Nazi crimes, however horrible, while ignoring egregious communist crimes is profoundly dishonest. Too much lingering wartime propaganda still clouds our historical memory. Some other forgotten points: - Germany's September 1939 invasion of Poland did not begin WWII. It began five months earlier when Fascist Italy invaded little Albania. Or arguably in 1936 when Japan invaded China. - In the 1920s, Churchill authorized using poison gas against rebellious Kurdish tribesmen in Iraq and on India's northwest frontier. In the '30s, Italy used poison gas and concentration camps to break resistance in Libya. - As German generals Rommel and Guderian were smashing across the Meuse on May 12-15, 1940, in the epic Battle of France, Hitler remarked that his generals were more eager to march on Berlin than Paris. The failure by Britain and the U.S. to support anti-Nazi Germans in the late 1930s and again in 1944 proved a tragic mistake. - WWII was not a simple conflict between democracy and tyranny, as we are misinformed, but a clash between imperial powers, ideology and economic systems. Italy's fascism, and Germany's National Socialism, threatened not only Europe but Britain's and America's capitalist system and money-lending financial elites. In 1939, the British Empire still ruled swathes of Asia and Africa. Germany, Italy and Japan went to war against the British, French, Dutch, Belgian colonial empires and the U.S. Pacific Imperium. - No sooner were the Netherlands liberated from German occupation by Canada in 1945 than Dutch troops were sent to re-occupy the former Dutch colony, Indonesia, which had proclaimed independence. Dutch and British colonial forces massacred tens of thousands of Indonesians from 1945 to '49, acting with far more brutality than German troops did in Holland. - At war's end, 15 million ethnic Germans were driven from ancestral homes across Eastern Europe. Two to 3 million Germans were killed. Two million German women were raped by the Red Army. December 1941-March 1942 During the summer and fall of 1941 the Soviet armies retreated because they had to and not (as was claimed as long as Stalin lived) because of a masterful strategic plan. The nation suffered staggering losses, including two thirds of its prewar coal-producing areas, three fourths of its iron and manganese ore production, and a population of 35,000,000. Nevertheless, the sacrifices bought time, which the Soviet regime exploited with ruthless energy. Even while they were in full retreat, losing, destroying, or tearing down and shipping to the east entire industrial complexes, the Russians managed to recruit and equip fresh armies. As of December 1, Soviet casualties probably totaled between 4,000,000 and 5,000,000 men, but at the same time the Germans identified at or near the front 280 rifle and cavalry divisions and 44 tank or mechanized brigades. The Soviet High Command did not share Hitler's doubts concerning the strategic importance of Moscow . In the summer and fall it sacrificed entire armies and groups of armies in attempts to hold the western approaches to the capital. It would have sacrificed more in the battle for the city itself had not the earliest and coldest winter in a half century almost literally frozen the German armies in their tracks. The long delays in August, September, and October and the German loss of momentum on the northern and southern flanks in November had given the Russians time to assemble strong reserves around Moscow . Possibly, had the cold not set in, the German armies would have battled their way through that mass of men as they had through others, but victory, as Bock predicted late in November, would have been achieved by the narrowest of margins. As it was, the German offensive ground to a halt on December 5. On the morning of December 6, the West Front, commanded by Army Gen. (later Marshal) Georgi K. Zhukov, counterattacked. Its offensive in the Moscow sector was joined on the north by the left flank of the Kalinin Front under Col. Gen. (later Marshal) Ivan S. Konev, and on the south by the right flank of the Southwest Front under Marshal Semyon K. Timoshenko. The effect was devastating. Army had thrown its last reserves into the attempt to take Moscow ; it had no prepared positions, and the troops could not dig into the rock-hard ground. The German trucks and tanks were not winterized, and the troops lacked winter clothing, because according to the plan the war should have been over before winter. The generals wanted to retreat, but Hitler refused to do so. There was no place to go, he said, and once a retreat began it would become a rout. The few local withdrawals that he permitted led to such heavy losses of equipment that he became convinced that the only solution was an absolutely rigid defense. On December 18, he issued an order calling for fanatical resistance. Units were to stand firm no matter what the danger. This order marked a turning point in the German conduct of the war. On December 19, Brauchitsch resigned. His authority had been declining for months, and after December 6 Hitler had pushed him aside. He was not replaced. Influenced by a growing disdain for professional military men and by a desire to give the troops the feeling that they were backed by the fuhrer's will and guided by his genius, Hitler took over as commander in chief of the army. Before the end of the month the three army group commanders followed Brauchitsch into retirement, and several lesser generals were dismissed for having carried out unauthorized withdrawals. Under the weight of the Soviet offensive the German spearheads north and south of Moscow quickly crumbled in spite of Hitler. Gaining confidence, the Soviet High Command expanded the offensive until the whole Army Group Center front was aflame, and Army Group North was nearly as hard pressed. At the end of December, a breakthrough on the north and a deepening thrust in the southern flank brought the Germans to an astonished realization that the Russians were attempting nothing less than to encircle Army to move its front opposite Moscow back to a line running north and south 85 miles west of the capital. The withdrawal was not far enough to escape the threatening encirclement, but it shortened the front and freed troops for the flanks. At the same time winter clothing, much of it donated by German civilians, began to arrive. After mid-January and until well into February, the crisis grew. Although Army Group Center regained some control on its southern flank, for weeks it was nearly helpless against the thrust from the north and barely managed to keep open its lifeline, the road and railroad running eastward from Smolensk . On the boundary between Army Groups North and Center the front was torn open in a 160-mile gap between Rzhev and Lake Ilmen . At Demyansk, south of the lake, two German corps totaling 100,000 men were encircled and had to be supplied by air. Great as their successes were, however, the Russians lacked the military finesse to turn their opportunities to full account. The grand design, the encirclement of Army Group Center , was not executed. The Demyansk, Kholm, and other smaller pockets came into existence largely because Hitler refused his units permission to maneuver. By mid-February, the Soviet offensive had lost most of its momentum and appeared no longer to have any objective other than to gain additional ground and inflict random damage on the Germans. In the first week of the month, Army Group Center managed to anchor its front on the north around Rzhev, and in the second and third weeks fresh divisions began moving in from the west to narrow the gap to Army Group North. In March, the gradual German recovery continued until the spring mud and floods brought operations to a temporary halt. Even though the first Soviet winter offensive was militarily inconclusive, it had tremendous effects. Soviet military prestige rose, and the two-year-old myth of German invincibility was shattered. Possibly even more important, the Soviet government acquired a firmer hold on the loyalty of its people on both sides of the front. Paradoxically, Hitler did not lose and perhaps gained stature among his troops. He had again demonstrated his talent for overcoming what appeared to be impossible odds. He had told his men to stand and fight, and they had. His will and the soldiers' spirit had met the test better, the generals were forced to admit, than military science could have done. For the German Army, the most tragic consequences lay in the future, when Hitler tried to make the system of rigid defense work against better-equipped, better-trained, and better-led Soviet forces. German Summer Offensive of 1942 By the spring of 1942, Hitler had assumed direct and complete control of operations on the eastern front. He used the chief of the Army General Staff, General Halder, as his personal chief of staff. During the winter he had reduced the discretionary authority of the army group and army commanders. From his headquarters at Rastenburg (now Ketrzyn) in East Prussia he issued orders to the front by telephone and teletype. Meanwhile, Stalin, aided by members of the Politburo attached to the major commands, kept a similarly tight rein on the Soviet generals. In a directive issued on April 5, Hitler outlined his plans for the summer. The German armies would regain the initiative along the entire eastern front but, aside from possibly taking Leningrad to link their forces with the Finns, would launch a full-scale offensive only in the south, toward the Don River, Stalingrad (now Volgograd), and the Caucasus oilfields. As preliminaries to the offensive, Army Group South was to complete the conquest of the Crimea , where the Russians still held Sevastopol and had acquired a large beachhead on the Kerch during the winter, and eliminate a 60-mile-deep bridgehead around Izyum on the Donets , also a legacy of the winter fighting. The advance into the Caucasus , when it had first become a subject for concrete German planning in October 1941, had been considered an expedition to be completed in a few weeks. In April 1942, however, Hitler saw it as a decisive stroke. Not only would the Soviet oil-producing regions be cut off, but presumably by the time that had been accomplished, an even more important objective would have been attained--namely, as Hitler stated in the directive, "the final destruction of the Soviet Union's remaining human defensive strength. He assumed that the Soviet Union would sacrifice its last manpower reserves to defend the oil and, losing both, would be brought to its knees. For Hitler and for most other members of the German High Command, the war in the Soviet Union had become increasingly a game of numbers. The Germans were waiting for the time when Soviet manpower was exhausted. As long as the Russians continued to expend men at the rate they had during the previous summer, fall, and winter, it seemed not to matter much where the German Army took the offensive. The Caucasus operation, however, appeared to present an opportunity to attain four objectives simultaneously. Before it ended, the human arithmetic could be expected to turn irreversibly against the USSR . If Stalin chose not to draw the proper conclusion and remained in the war, the Soviets would be doubly handicapped by the loss of oil and so could be conquered at leisure. Germany , on the other hand, would solve its greatest economic problem, the lack of adequate oil resources, and would also be in a position to carry the war into the Middle East . The operation was to be carried out in stages. In the first phase, successive enveloping thrusts, beginning in the north on the Kursk-Voronezh line, would smash the Russian southern flank and carry the German front to the Don River . Then the attack would proceed to Stalingrad Taman Peninsula and strike into the flank of the Soviet Caucasus defenses. After the time and direction of the attack could no longer be concealed, Army Group South would be divided into Army Groups A and B. Army Group B, commanded by Bock (whose retirement had lasted only about a month), would open the offensive on the north. Later, Army Group A, under Field Marshal Wilhelm List, would attack along the line of the lower Don and into the Caucasus . As of April 30, German casualties in the campaign totaled 1,167,835. For a time during the winter, battlefront strengths had been low in some sectors, but as spring wore on, men returning from hospitals and replacements refilled the units. In the regroupment for the summer offensive, Army Group B took command of the Second, Fourth Panzer, and Sixth armies, the first two being transferred from Army Group Center . Army Group A was assigned the First Panzer, Eleventh, and Seventeenth armies. For the first time the German allies Italy , and Romania took the field in earnest, each providing an army. All three of these armies were deficient in equipment and training, and the Romanians and Hungarians would rather have fought each other than the Russians. The allied armies were expected mainly to lend substance to Hitler's claim that he was conducting a selfless "crusade against bolshevism and occasionally to provide cover on the German flanks. Encouraged by the past winter's successes, the Soviet High Command also planned to take the initiative when good weather returned. It intended to keep the Germans off balance by means of local attacks at Leningrad bend, and in the Crimea , and so to lay the groundwork for another general offensive. In April, Marshal Timoshenko's Southwest Front began preparing the Kharkov operation, which embodied two enveloping thrusts, one across the Donets north of Kharkov and the other from the Izyum bridgehead south of the city. After encircling and destroying the Germans around Kharkov , his troops were to strike southwestward to Dnepropetrovsk On May 12, the Southwest Front attacked. While the thrust north of Kharkov gained some ground initially, it was quickly stopped. The attack from the Izyum bridgehead went well the first day and then rapidly lost momentum on the second. Timoshenko apparently realized that he had encountered an overwhelming buildup of German strength. With the support of his member of the Military Council (political commissar), Nikita S. Khrushchev, he appealed to Stalin for permission to stop the offensive. Stalin refused. On May 17, a strong German armored force, which had been assembled and was ready before the Southwest Front entered the trap, struck into the Izyum bridgehead from the south. Two days later, Stalin allowed Timoshenko to turn his units around and try to extricate them, but by then it was too late. On May 25, the ring closed, and in a short time the Germans eliminated the pocket, taking approximately 240,000 prisoners. The planned Soviet summer offensive disappeared in the Kharkov debacle, and the Soviet government accelerated its diplomatic and propaganda campaigns for a second front in western Europe. The effect of the battle would have been greater if the Germans had been able to begin their own offensive immediately, but they were not ready. The Eleventh Army still had a mission to complete in the Crimea was finally taken by the Germans on July 1, after an eight-month siege. Meanwhile, at dawn on June 28, the Second and Fourth Panzer armies opened the German summer offensive. They quickly pushed their way through the inner flanks of the Bryansk and Southwest fronts and advanced eastward toward Voronezh , reaching the outskirts of the city four days later and taking it on July 6. The Fourth Panzer Army then turned southeastward along the Don to meet the Sixth Army, which had moved eastward from Kharkov on June 30. The German armies again held the upper hand, but the first two thrusts, to Voronezh and east of Kharkov , which had been planned as great encirclements on the 1941 pattern, brought in less than 100,000 prisoners. Disappointed, Hitler on July 13 replaced Bock with Field Marshal Maximilian von Weichs as commanding general of Army Group B. The Russians had abandoned the rigid defensive tactics which cost them so many men in 1941. They were still far from having mastered the mobile defense: the Bryansk and Southwest fronts were badly mangled in the retreat, but they did get the bulk of their forces across the Don. In mid-July, the Soviet High Command organized the second phase of its defense. The headquarters of the Voronezh Front took over most of the Southwest Front sector on the Don, and Timoshenko assumed command of the newly created Stalingrad Front, which was composed principally of three fresh armies, two of them established on a line south of Kletskaya across the inside of the Don bend. The South Front, opposite Army Group A, was ordered to wheel back, pivoting on Rostov , to bring its front parallel with the lower Don. Hitler had originally intended to execute a third encirclement inside the Don bend, which was to clear the entire line of the Don before the offensive was carried toward Stalingrad and into the Caucasus . On July 13, he changed his mind and ordered Army Group A, to which he attached the Fourth Panzer Army, to turn southward, cross the lower Don, and force the Russians back into a pocket around Rostov . In moving to the south, the Fourth Panzer Army passed forward of the line thrown up by the Stalingrad Front, leaving the Sixth Army to meet the two fresh Soviet armies alone. Rostov fell on July 23 without producing the expected large numbers of prisoners. On the same day, Hitler issued a directive setting forth new objectives. He transferred a Panzer corps from the Fourth Panzer Army to the Sixth Army and ordered the latter to clear the Don bend, cross the narrows between the Don and the Volga coast, and capture the oilfields at Maikop and Grozny . At the same time, the army group would have to yield the headquarters, all of the heavy artillery, and about half of the divisions of the Eleventh Army, which were being shifted to the north to take Leningrad and so prepare the way for a joint German-Finnish thrust to Belomorsk to cut the Murmansk Railroad. As he had at the same stage of the 1941 offensive, Hitler was dispersing the German effort. Army Group A was on the threshold of the Caucasus, but the distances were tremendous: 200 miles to Maikop and nearly 400 miles to Grozny. To reach Baku and Tiflis, the mountains had to be crossed. On July 29, the army group cut the last Soviet rail line into the Caucasus. Two days later, Hitler issued another directive. The Russians, he reasoned, could do nothing further to defend the Caucasus, but they could be forced to expend their last reserves defending Stalingrad and their lifeline, the Volga River. He ordered the Fourth Panzer Army to make a 180 degrees turn and advance on the city from the south. On the same day, two new Soviet armies joined the Stalingrad defense forces. The German successes continued in August, but without bringing any major objective closer to attainment. East of Leningrad, Army Group North withstood a Soviet attempt to break the siege, but as a consequence had to abandon its own plan to take the city. Army Group A seized Maikop, but found the oilfield completely destroyed. A mountain company planted the swastika flag on Mount Elbrus, the highest mountain in the Caucasus, but Soviet troops continued to hold all the passes. Two armored corps headed toward Grozny, but were slowed down and finally stopped for several weeks by gasoline shortages: the trucks making the long trip from Rostov were burning nearly as much gasoline as they could carry. The Sixth and Fourth Panzer armies closed in on Stalingrad from the west and south, but had to spread their forces thinly to cover their flanks and so lost their momentum. At the end of the month, the eastern branch of German Army intelligence concluded that the Soviet Union had lost less territory and fewer men than it had anticipated on the basis of the 1941 experience and would therefore be able to conduct another strong winter offensive. In September, it reached the dismaying conclusion that Germany, far from winning the game of numbers, was perilously close to losing it. The total German and allied strength on the eastern front, excluding Finland was 3,138,000 men. The Soviet Union had 4,255,000 men either on the front or as readily available reserves. Moreover, the Soviet pool of draftable manpower was about three times greater than that of Germany. Hitler now apparently realized that victory was slipping away from him and began looking for scapegoats. On September 9, in a minor dispute over tactics, he dismissed Field Marshal List as commanding general of Army Group A, and he also told Halder that he intended to relieve him as chief of the Army General Staff. For a time he also considered removing his most trusted military adviser, General Jodl. In one of the most unusual arrangements of the war, Hitler for two and one-half months took personal command of Army Group A, which he then ran from his forward headquarters near Vinnitsa in the western Ukraine 700 miles behind the army group front. On September 24, Gen. (later Col. Gen.) Kurt Zeitzler replaced Halder. In August, to cover the lengthening front, Army Group B had placed the Hungarian Second and Italian Eighth armies along the Don below Voronezh. By mid-September, the Sixth Army had pushed the Russians into a bridgehead at Stalingrad 9 miles long and no more than 3 to 4 miles deep, but there for the next two months the Soviet Sixty-second Army under General (later Marshal) Vasili I. Chuikov forced the Germans into a battle of attrition on a scale not seen since World War I. In early October, to gain troops for the fighting in Stalingrad, the Sixth Army turned its flank on the Don over to the Romanian Third Army. On October 14, Hitler issued an order terminating the summer operations except at Stalingrad and at several points in the Caucasus. Second Soviet Winter Offensive: November 1942-March 1943 While Army Groups A and B marched across southern European Russia to the edge of Asia, the Soviet Union raised, equipped, and trained new armies in preparation for the coming winter. During the summer the Soviet Army carried through a reorganization that did not (as Soviet historians have since claimed) place it at the pinnacle of military science, but did give it the ability to operate effectively against weakened and overextended German forces. Beginning in 1941, the Soviet staffs, aided by the military academies and other special groups, had closely studied German tactics and operating methods. They had learned much and had not been purely imitative scholars. The defensive battles of the summer of 1942 already showed a great increase in flexibility and imagination. Armor had been released from its role of infantry support, and tank armies were being created. At the higher levels commanders had emerged--Zhukov was the best example--who had not only mastered the German tactics, but had adapted them to their own forces' capabilities and limitations. The fall of 1942 also marked the culmination of a successful effort to establish a partisan movement behind the German front. Attempts in 1941 to incite partisan activity had produced only a mediocre response, but in the winter, when the whole northern half of the German front crumbled, the Soviet High Command was able to send recruiters into occupied territory and virtually draft a partisan movement. During the spring and summer the partisan detachments were drawn together into brigades and brought under tight control from the Soviet side of the front. By fall the movement was nearing its approximate maximum strength of 200,000 men, nine tenths of them operating behind Army Groups Center and North. In August, General Zhukov and Gen.eral(later Marshal) Aleksandr M. Vasilevski had assumed direction of the coordination of Stalingrad's defense as representatives of the high command. The last of the strategic commands, the Southwest Forces, had been disbanded in the spring of 1942; thereafter, when conditions required broader direction than the fronts could give, temporary higher headquarters were established under representatives of the high command. Most frequently it was Zhukov who performed this function. In the first week of October, he perfected a plan for a counterattack at Stalingrad. A massive buildup during the rest of the month and the first two weeks of November raised Soviet strength around the city to 12 armies, including a tank army, under three front headquarters. After waiting for freezing weather to create suitable conditions for overland tank movements and the Allied landings in North Africa to occupy the Germans in the west, the Russians opened their offensive at Stalingrad on November 19. The Fifth Tank Army attacked the Romanian Third Army north of the city and demolished its front in a few hours. The next day another force struck south of Stalingrad, achieving an even more spectacular success against a Romanian corps on the Fourth Panzer Army front. On November 22, the Soviet spearheads met at Kalach on the Don River, and the Sixth Army and approximately half of the German and Romanian troops of the Fourth Panzer Army (250,000 to 300,000 men in all) were encircled. Two days before, Hitler had created a new headquarters, Army Group Don, under Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, which he entrusted with the mission of rescuing the Sixth Army. Adhering to his fanatical resistance doctrine of the previous winter, he refused the request of Gen. (later Field Marshal) Friedrich Paulus, commander of the Sixth Army, to evacuate Stalingrad and break out to the west. On December 19, the Fourth Panzer Army under Army Group Don advanced to within 35 miles of the Stalingrad pocket, but Hitler again refused to permit the now badly weakened Sixth Army to break out of the encirclement. In the meantime, after smashing the Italian Eighth Army on the Don on December 16, the Russians had extended their offensive west of Stalingrad. They were clearly intending to move via Millerovo to Rostov and cut off Army Groups Don and A. Army Group A, which Hitler had placed under Col. Gen. (later Field Marshal) Ewald von Kleist on November 22, was still in the Caucasus, its left flank 350 miles from Rostov. On December 28, Manstein was forced to order the Fourth Panzer Army to withdraw south of Stalingrad. Army Group Don was fighting for its own existence and that of Army Group A. Early on the morning of January 14, 1943 , the Russians moved up the Don for the third time, this time to strike the Hungarian Second Army. The Hungarians collapsed even more quickly than the Italians and Romanians had, opening a 200-mile (320-km) gap in the German front between Voronezh and Voroshilovgrad. In another scythelike sweep the Russians turned southward to the Donets, threatening to envelop the German remnants of Army Group B and Army Group Don, which was still endeavoring to hold open Army Group A's lifeline to the west at Rostov. On January 25, the Russians struck northward once more to hit the German Second Army, which was already withdrawing from Voronezh, and in three days they encircled two of its three corps. Hitler, who for a month had vacillated and discussed counterattacks to relieve Stalingrad, finally had to draw some conclusions. On January 27, he transferred the First Panzer Army to Army Group Don. Since this army was all that could still be removed through Rostov, the rest of Army Group A had to begin withdrawing into a large beachhead on the Taman Peninsula. This maneuver immobilized 400,000 men at a time when the entire southern flank of the eastern front was being shattered. On January 31, Paulus, refusing to take the hint implicit in his promotion to the rank of field marshal the day before (no German field marshal had even been made prisoner), surrendered the troops that he still controlled in Stalingrad. A pocket around a tractor works in the northern suburbs of the city held out until February 2. On February 6, unwilling to risk another encirclement, Hitler gave Manstein permission to withdraw Army Group Don to the line of the Mius and Donets rivers, from which Army Group A had moved forward in July 1942. In nine days, Army Group Don executed the retreat to the Mius. Meanwhile, the First Panzer Army moved to the army group's left flank on the Donets. But the Soviet offensive was still moving forward at full speed. The right flank of Army Group B was forced back to Kharkov, which it lost on February 14-16. A 100-mile gap opened between the flanks of Army Groups B and Don, through which Soviet units struck southward and westward across the Donets. Six Soviet tank corps forming the Popov Group, named for its commander, Col. Gen. Markian M. Popov, moved forward to sever Army Group Don's communications lines. On February 13, it cut the Dnepropetrovsk-Stalino railroad, and by February 19 it had reached the Sinelnikovo railroad junction 20 miles east-southeast of Dnepropetrovsk and had begun to turn southward toward Zaporozhe. On February 12, Hitler had removed the headquarters of Army Group B and divided its front between Army Groups Center and Don, simultaneously redesignating the latter Army Group South. At the same time he ordered 7 divisions transferred from France and Belgium to Army Group South. A week later he ordered Army Group A to begin evacuating troops by air from the Taman Peninsula to reinforce Army Group South; 100,000 troops were transferred by the end of the first week in March. On February 18, without waiting for the arrival of the divisions from the west or the troops from Army Group A, Manstein initiated a series of maneuvers that were to produce the last German victory of the war. He ordered the headquarters of the Fourth Panzer Army to move to Dnepropetrovsk at about the center of the gap between the First Panzer Army and the southern flank of the former Army Group B. There, with at first 4 divisions, he began creating a new Fourth Panzer Army. In eight days after February 20, the Fourth and First Panzer armies joined their flanks, trapping the Popov Group between them, and the Fourth Panzer Army closed up on its left to the front west of Kharkov. At the end of the month warm weather set in, and the question then was whether to continue the advance toward Kharkov at the risk of its being halted by the approaching thaw. On March 7, the weather turned cold, and Manstein decided to proceed. The Fourth Panzer Army moved rapidly to the north, and despite knee-deep mud on all the roads reached Kharkov on March 11. Seven days later, after mopping up the Soviet divisions trapped west of Kharkov, the army carried its advance 30 miles farther north and took Belgorod. Except for several bridgeheads, in which Soviet troops held on doggedly, Army Group South had regained the line of the Donets to Belgorod. Immediately to the north the Russians held a large salient west of Kursk. Operation Citadel For the past three years the coming of spring had heralded new German triumphs. The year 1943 was different. The victory on the Donets that ended the long winter retreat had restored German morale at the front, but not even Hitler deluded himself into believing that the next summer would see the swastika flag replanted on Mount Elbrus or German outposts again looking eastward into Asia from the high bank of the Volga. In the late spring there was an ominous quiet on the eastern front. Since June 1941, German attention had centered in the east. In the early months of 1943, quite suddenly that, too, changed. Dangers which might have been overcome easily, had the Russian campaign developed according to schedule, threatened on all sides. In January 1943, United States Flying Fortresses staged the first daylight bombing attack on Germany. Thereafter bomb damage, particularly in the Ruhr, mounted alarmingly. A second Stalingrad had been in preparation in North Africa since November 1942. When the British Eighth Army broke through the Mareth Line late in March 1943, it became inevitable. That the British and Americans would follow their victory with an invasion of Italy or the Balkans was certain, and the day of the major test, the landing on the Channel coast, might come within the year. On the other hand, the failure of Hitler's fanatical resistance doctrine during the winter had produced a substantial bonus. The long retreat from the Don, Stalingrad, and the Caucasus, as well as a voluntary retrograde movement which Army Group Center executed in February and March to shorten its front, had created surplus strength on the eastern front approximately equivalent to two armies. The disastrous winter had also forced Hitler to recall to active duty his tank expert, Guderian, and to appoint him inspector general for armor. By spring Guderian, working with Albert Speer, the minister for armament and munitions, had the new Tiger and Panther tanks coming from production lines by the hundreds. If another offensive in the style of 1941 or 1942 was no longer possible, neither was Germany helpless. The most profitable strategy seemed to be to consolidate the so-called Fortress Europe and to exploit the Clausewitzian axiom that defense was the stronger form of warfare. Some of the generals proposed building an East Wall, a permanently fortified line across the USSR, but Hitler disapproved. He did, however, instruct Army Group North to plan an operation to take Leningrad and stabilize the northern flank by joining forces with the Finns. He also began reinforcing the Army of Norway to enable it to occupy Sweden if that country attempted to support Allied operations directed against northern Europe. Nevertheless, after nearly three months' hesitation, he decided that he needed one more big victory in Russia, a victory, as he put it, "that will shine like a beacon around the world." On June 12, he announced that he intended to execute Operation Citadel. Citadel, a two-pronged attack to eliminate the Soviet salient west of Kursk, had been planned in March to be executed as soon as the ground dried and while the Russians were still off balance from their defeat at Kharkov. Bad weather and various mishaps, as well as Hitler's own uncertainty, had caused repeated postponements. By the time he decided to proceed, the German forces for Citadel were at peak strength, and so, as one of the generals pointed out, were the Russians. Operation Citadel began on July 5. The Ninth Army on the north and the Fourth Panzer Army on the south struck toward Kursk across the base of the Soviet salient. For three days the attack went well, but on July 9 the Ninth Army was stopped before a heavily fortified ridgeline and stayed there four days. On July 12, the Russians, confident that they had taken the measure of the Ninth Army's offensive, launched a strong attack of their own against the front north of Orel behind the Ninth Army. The Fourth Panzer Army was then just beginning to gather momentum. On the next day, July 13, Hitler called the army group commanders to his headquarters and informed them that he had decided to halt Citadel. The situation north of Orel was precarious, and he was concerned about a Soviet threat to the Donets Basin; but his greatest source of worry was Sicily, where American and British troops had landed on July 10. The Italians, he said, were not fighting, and it was necessary to create new armies to defend Italy and the Balkans. Troops would have to be removed from the eastern front. Partly to gain troops for Italy, and partly because the offensive opened by the West Front, under Gen. (later Marshal) Vasili D. Sokolovski, and the Bryansk Front, under General Popov, had already gone too far, Hitler was forced to yield his own salient around Orel, ending the German threat to Kursk. Soviet Summer and Fall Offensives: August-November 1943 As the Russian campaign entered its third year, the world watched expectantly for the answers to two questions. Could the Germans recover from the effects of the winter battles for a second time and make another bid for victory? If not, could the Russians take the initiative without their old ally, "General Winter? Citadel answered the first question, and the Soviet Army's subsequent performance erased the last lingering doubts inherent in the second. After two years of war the Soviet Army was about to prove that it had completed its apprenticeship. It had developed tactics suited to large-scale offensive operations and had adapted them to its own limitations, which consisted primarily of a lack of initiative in the ranks and a frequent inability on the part of commanders and staffs below army levels to execute tactical maneuvers requiring precision or sensitivity to changing situations. The German Blitzkrieg technique had delivered the decisive stroke with precision, speed, and economy of effort. The Russians, on the other hand, favored a broader lateral scope and more conservative execution. They adopted the breakthrough and penetration as basic tactical maneuvers, but they preferred to achieve the decisive effect by a series of relatively shallow strokes along the breadth of the front rather than by one or several deep thrusts. Although the Russians claimed that Stalingrad had supplanted Cannae as the classic encirclement battle, they did not employ the double envelopment as frequently as the Germans had. More often they were content with a single thrust or with parallel thrusts, the objective being to force their opponent back on a broad front rather than to achieve a deep penetration along a single line of advance. On the morning of August 3, 1943 , in the sector from which the Fourth Panzer Army had launched the southern arm of the attack toward Kursk , the massed artillery of the Soviet Sixth Guards Army laid down a barrage of several hours' duration on the German 167th Infantry Division. When the artillery lifted its fire, 200 tanks roared into the German line, followed by waves of close-packed infantry. Before nightfall the German division was reduced to a few dazed survivors. Pouring through the gap, the Russians reached and took Belgorod on August 5. In another three days they had opened a 35-mile-wide gap on the right flank of the Fourth Panzer Army, giving them a clear road to the Dnieper River 100 miles to the southwest. On the same day, Manstein, the commanding general of Army Group South, informed Hitler that he lacked enough divisions to close the northern flank or to hold the long line on the Donets . He would either have to yield the Donets Basin or receive 20 divisions from somewhere else. As he had on other occasions when confronted with unpleasant choices, Hitler avoided the decision by moving in an altogether different direction. He suddenly revived the idea of an East Wall, which he had rejected earlier. On August 12, he ordered construction started on a fortified line that was to begin in the south at Melitopol, run due north to the Dnieper River near Zaporozhe, follow the Dnieper to Kiev and the Desna to Chernigov, thence take a line almost due north to the southern tip of Lake Pskov, and, running along the west shores of Lakes Peipus and Pskov, anchor on the Gulf of Finland at Narva. While it appeared that in ordering the East Wall Hitler had accepted a general retreat on the eastern front as inevitable, subsequent decisions revealed that he actually intended to establish a barrier behind which the armies could not retreat and, since no work of any kind had as yet been done on the so-called East Wall, give himself an excuse for holding out farther east. In the last two weeks of August, the Soviet High Command expanded the offensive to the south and north. Kharkov fell on August 23. To the southeast the Russians broke through on the Donets south of Izyum and on the Mius line east of Snigirevka. In the last week of the month they penetrated the Army Group Center front in three places. On August 31, Hitler gave the Sixth Army permission to retire from the Mius to the Kalmius River " if necessary. Three days later, he took a second positive step, ordering Army Group A to begin evacuating the useless beachhead which it still held on the Taman . The Sixth Army could not halt on the Kalmius. During the morning of September 6, a motorized mechanized corps and 9 Soviet rifle divisions broke through on the boundary between the Sixth and First Panzer armies. The next day a tank corps slipped through the gap, and, leaving the infantry behind, the two armored corps moved westward. By September 8, they were approaching Pavlograd, 30 miles east of the Dnieper and 100 miles behind the Sixth Army front. On that day, Hitler allowed the Sixth and First Panzer armies to start withdrawing to the line on which he had intended to build the East Wall, from Melitopol to the Dnieper fared no better. The Second Army's front on the Desna , which was to have been part of the East Wall, was riddled with Soviet bridgeheads, and on September 14 the Russians began an offensive directed at Smolensk . The next day, Hitler gave the two army groups permission to retreat to the line of the Dnieper , Sozh, and Pronya rivers. In most places the retreat was already under way, and in the last week of the month it developed into a race with the Russians for possession of the river lines. At the end of the month, as the last German troops crossed the rivers, the Russians had five bridgeheads on the Dnieper between the confluence of the Pripyat . In two and one-half months, Army Groups South and Center had been forced back for an average of 150 miles on a front 650 miles long. The Germans had lost the most valuable territory they had taken in the Soviet Union . In an effort at least to deny the Russians the fruits of those economically rich areas, Hitler had instituted a scorched-earth policy, but in the end even that satisfaction was denied him. Nearly all of the factories, power plants, mines, and railroads could be destroyed, but the Germans lacked the personnel to transport or destroy more than a fraction of the agricultural and economic goods. The Dnieper affords the strongest natural defense line in western European Russia, especially when the battle is moving from east to west. Fortified and adequately manned, the Dnieper line could have constituted an ideal defensive position, but Army Group South was so badly battered that the river provided at most a degree of natural protection and a tenuous handhold. Of the East Wall nothing was in existence; much of the proposed line had not even been surveyed. On reaching the Dnieper , the Soviet Army had attained the original objectives of its summer offensive. Ordinarily the shortening of the German front, the defensive advantages of the river, the lengthening Russian lines of communications, and the attrition of the Russian forces could have been expected to bring the two sides into temporary balance. But Hitler had sacrificed too much of his strength east of the river. In contrast, the Russians' numerical superiority had enabled them to rest and refit their units in shifts, and they reached the Dnieper with their offensive capability largely intact. Before the last German troops crossed the river, the battle for the Dnieper line had begun. In the first week of October, the whole eastern front was quiet as the Russians regrouped and brought up new forces. To underscore the victories achieved so far, they began renaming the front commands. Opposite Army Group South and the Sixth Army, which had passed to Army Group A, the Voronezh , Steppes, Southwest, and South fronts became the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Ukrainian fronts. On October 9, the Fourth Ukrainian Front launched 45 rifle divisions, five tank and motorized mechanized corps, and two cavalry corps against the Sixth Army's 13 divisions in the line between Melitopol and the Dnieper . Within three weeks it drove the Sixth Army back across the flat, dusty Nogai Steppe to the lower Dnieper . Hitler refused last-minute requests to evacuate the Seventeenth Army from the Crimea , claiming that the Russians would thereby gain airfields from which to bomb the Romanian oilfields. When the Sixth Army retreated beyond Perekop Isthmus, the Seventeenth Army was cut off, and in the first week of November Soviet troops gained beachheads on the Sivash Sea near the base of the isthmus and on the Kerch . On the south the Third Ukrainian Front threatened important iron and manganese mining areas near Krivoi Rog and Nikopol , which Hitler was determined to hold at any cost. The Russians had taken a large bridgehead at the confluence of the Pripyat and the Dnieper in September. South of it, on November 3, the First Ukrainian Front broke out of two smaller bridgeheads, and three days later it took Kiev . During the rest of the month it drove the Fourth Panzer Army back west and south of the city, threatening to demolish the entire left flank of Army Group South. To the north the Belorussian Front forced the right half of Army and North, the First and Second Baltic fronts made a deep salient in the German front. December brought some relief to the German armies, which for a few weeks regained their balance and even managed to counterattack west of Kiev . By this time the best solution for the German predicament would have been to withdraw Army Group South and the Sixth Army to the next major river, the Bug ( Southern Bug ), but Hitler would not consider it. He talked vaguely of retaking Kiev and of reopening the Crimean front. Actually, German prospects were worse than they had been in the two preceding winters. Opposing 3,000,000 German troops the Soviet Army had 5,700,000 men and an overwhelming superiority in tanks and artillery. In the summer and fall offensives the Russians had repeatedly laid down artillery barrages heavier than any since the great battles of World War I. Moreover, the German Army faced two new dangers: its manpower reserves were rapidly being exhausted, and an Anglo-American invasion in the west within the next half year was nearly certain. In November, Hitler notified the eastern front that it would have to manage on its own resources until the invasion had been defeated. The danger in the west, he said, was greater than that in Russia , and he could no longer take the responsibility for allowing the western front to be weakened for the benefit of other theaters of war. He suggested that possibly the eastern front might trade space for time, but events soon were to prove that he was constitutionally incapable of adopting this course. Offensives on the Outer Flanks In the winter of 1943-1944 the weather, as always in Russia , became the third force in the fighting, but with a difference. The hard freeze which usually set in by mid-December and lasted into March did not arrive at all that winter in the south, and in the north it was frequently broken by thaws. Rain, sleet, slush, and mud tested the endurance of men and machines. Again the Russians had the advantage. They had sufficient reserves to give their troops occasional periods to rest and dry out. Their tanks, having wider tracks, performed better in mud than did the German armor. Their American-built lend-lease trucks ran through mud that hopelessly mired the two-wheel-drive German trucks. Both sides relied heavily on the light, high-riding one-horse panje wagon, the Russian peasant's answer to mud. On Christmas Eve, the First Ukrainian Front drove two armies into the southern rim of the Fourth Panzer Army's front around Kiev, and the next day it developed a strong secondary thrust to the west. Either of these thrusts could ultimately smash the entire southern flank of the eastern front. The thrust moving southward, if it reached the Black Sea coast, would envelop Army Groups South and A between the Dnieper and Dniester rivers. The thrust moving to the west, on reaching the Carpathian Mountains, could be employed to drive the two army groups back against the Black Sea and into the Balkans. Considering the first thrust the greater danger, Manstein ordered the Fourth Panzer Army to concentrate on stopping the Soviet armies going south, but even that task was temporarily beyond the army's strength. By mid-January, the First Tank Army, spearheading the First Ukrainian Front's southern thrust, had gained 65 miles and was approaching Uman. On January 10, 1944 , the Third and Fourth Ukrainian fronts opened a two-pronged offensive against the Sixth Army. By the end of the month, mainly because Hitler rigidly insisted on holding the mines near Nikopol and Krivoi Rog, the Russians had nearly encircled the army's main force in the angle of the front east of Krivoi Rog. Not until February 19, after the army had lost nearly all of its vehicles and artillery, did Hitler give it permission to retreat to a line on the Ingulets and lower Dnieper rivers. In the two years that had elapsed since the first Soviet winter offensive, Army Group North had by comparison with the rest of the eastern front been almost stationary. It had yielded some ground on the right, but it had kept its line firmly anchored on Lake Ilmen. Below the lake the old Russian towns of Staraya Russa and Kholm had lain directly on the front since the summer of 1941. Even the breakthrough at Nevel in October 1943 was more significant as a portent of a possible Soviet drive to outflank the army group in the south than for the immediate loss of ground it entailed. South of Lake Ladoga the army group had fought three battles to keep Leningrad under siege and had held the Russians to a token gain of a few miles along the lake shore. From the Volkhov River to the Gulf of Finland the front resembled a World War I battlefield. It was a complicated lacework of trenches and shell holes, the result of two and one-half years' fighting in which gains and losses on both sides could be measured in yards. By January 1944, however, the stable front no longer reflected the actual condition of the army group, which had lost its best divisions through transfers. On January 15, the Leningrad Front launched two strong attacks, one south of the city and the other from the pocket around Oranienbaum (now Lomonosov) to the east. On the same day, the Volkhov Front struck at Novgorod north of Lake Ilmen. By the end of the fifth day of the battle, the German front was disintegrating in all three places, and on January 19 the Soviet troops completed the liberation of Leningrad. Thereafter the entire left flank of Army Group North cracked. Hitler, concerned about the effect that a more extensive retreat would have on Finland, which was already negotiating tentatively with the Soviet Union, at first ordered the army group to build a new front line on the Luga River. This attempt had no chance of success, and on February 13 he was forced to order the army group back into the Panther Line, the Narva River-Lake Peipus-Lake Pskov section of the ill-fated East Wall. The Panther Line was the only major part of the wall on which substantial work had been done, and when the army group reached it on March 1, it held. During January and February, Army Group South fought in knee-deep mud, sleet storms, and blizzards to keep its front together. The First and Fourth Panzer armies managed to halt the Soviet southward thrust northeast of Uman, but by that time the First and Second Ukrainian fronts, with Zhukov commanding as at Stalingrad, had encircled two German corps northwest of Cherkassy. Army Group South concentrated almost its entire tank strength to rescue the corps, and on the night of February 17 approximately 30,000 men, about half the number originally in the pocket, broke out. In the meantime, the left flank of Army Group South had been driven behind the 1939 Polish border nearly to Kowel (Kovel), Luck (Luts'k), and Dubno. At the end of February, Army Groups South and A held a weak but (for the first time since Christmas) almost continuous line about halfway between the Dnieper and the Bug. : March-May 1944 After mid-February, it appeared to the German High Command that the army groups on the eastern front had seen another winter through. Army Group North was retiring to a fortified line. Army Groups South and A were less well provided for, but after the breakout from the pocket near Cherkassy the Russians were not on the march anywhere, and anyone who wanted to overlook the fact that the Soviet armies had continued to move through an abnormally warm, wet winter could assume that in a matter of days--in a few weeks at most, when spring set in--the front would sink into the mud for a month or so. Field Marshal von Manstein was not so hopeful. He believed that the Russians would attempt at least to advance another 35 miles and cut the Lwow (now Lvov)-Odessa railroad behind Army Group South's left flank. The signs were plentiful that they could resume the offensive if they wished. During the fighting in January and February, the four Ukrainian fronts had at no time brought all of their strength to bear, and their reserves, instead of declining, had grown enormously. By mid-February, the Soviet High Command had shifted five of its six tank armies to the area opposite Army Group South. Three of them remained in reserve. At the end of the month the sixth tank army also appeared. The American-built trucks, the wide-tracked Soviet tanks, and the panje wagons had proved their ability to keep an offensive rolling through mud. On March 4, the First, Second, and Third Ukrainian fronts attacked. The First Ukrainian Front, the strongest of the three, struck due south from the vicinity of Shepetovka into a gap between the First and Fourth Panzer armies' flanks. The Second Ukrainian Front hit the Eighth Army's center east of Uman, and the Third Ukrainian Front drove through the center of the Sixth Army below Krivoi Rog. The Soviet offensive advanced rapidly through the mud. Except on the left against the First Ukrainian Front, the Germans usually lacked sufficient troops even to place temporary roadblocks in the Russians' way. In quick succession the Soviet spearheads crossed three potential German defense lines, the Bug, Dniester, and Prut rivers. In the last week of March, the whole First Panzer Army was encircled at Kamenets-Podolski and had to break out to the west. After gaining 165 miles on the three main thrust lines, the Soviet offensive halted in mid-April, leaving the Germans with a front which at its center was backed up against the Carpathians, and which they managed to hold only by utilizing, for the first time since Stalingrad, one Hungarian and two Romanian armies. At the height of the offensive, on March 30, Hitler had called the commanding generals of Army Groups South and A, Manstein and Kleist, to his headquarters and had dismissed them. On the eastern front, he had explained, the day of the master tacticians was past. What he needed were ruthless generals who would drive their troops to the utmost and extract the last ounce of capability for resistance. The two new-style generals whom he appointed were Field Marshal Walter Model to command Army Group South and Colonel General (later Field Marshal) Ferdinand Schï¿½rner to command Army Group A. A few days later, in a typical empty gesture, he redesignated Army Groups South and A as Army Groups North Ukraine and South Ukraine. On April 8, almost as an afterthought, the Fourth Ukrainian Front launched an attack on the Crimea. The Seventeenth Army's front on Perekop Isthmus disintegrated in two days, and by April 16 the army was forced back to a small beachhead around Sevastopol. Until early May, Hitler had insisted on holding Sevastopol--to keep Turkey neutral, he said. By then the Russians had a clear field of observation across the whole beachhead to the tip of Cape Khersonesski. During four nights, German ships from Constanta, Romania, attempted to evacuate the army, but only about half of the 65,000 men on the peninsula escaped. Meanwhile, on May 9, Sevastopol was reoccupied by the Russians. Collapse in the Center: June-August 1944 In April and May 1944, it appeared, at least to Hitler and his closest advisers, that destiny might yet be made to bow to the Fï¿½hrer's will. Everything depended on whether the invasion in the west, to which the United States and Great Britain had committed themselves at the Teheran Conference (November 28-December 1, 1943), could be defeated. A victory in the west would release the approximately 45 percent of its strength which Germany had retained there while awaiting the invasion. Hitler's luck and his ability to win against heavy odds seemed not to have deserted him completely. Despite the disastrous winter, he had succeeded in maintaining his determination not to weaken the western defenses for the sake of the east. In March, he had been forced to send several panzer divisions to the east, but by the end of April he managed to form new divisions to replace them. Thereafter he was as nearly ready as he intended to be, and the Russians helped him indirectly by giving no sign that they intended to do anything to make their allies' landing easier. German industrial output was still rising. Synthetic oil production reached its peak in April, and the Luftwaffe had about 40 percent more planes than it had possessed a year earlier. The production of tanks and weapons was sufficient to equip new divisions for the west and to replace some of the losses in the east. All in all, it seemed that Germany could await the next roll of the dice with some confidence. By mid-June, the dice had been rolled, and Germany had lost. Beginning in April and continuing through May and into June, the United States and British air forces staged bombing raids that eliminated 90 percent of the German synthetic oil production. On June 6, United States and British troops landed in Normandy, and in the next several days the strategy that Hitler had carefully nurtured since November 1943 collapsed. The powerful counterattack that he had envisioned did not materialize. Because he expected a second landing north of the Seine, he refused to take troops from the Fifteenth Army, which was closest to the Normandy beachhead, and decided instead to draw reinforcements from more remote areas. Consequently, the invaders were not driven from the beaches, and the German forces in Normandy were forced to the defensive. In the east, Hitler and the Army General Staff expected the Russians to renew their pressure against the southern flank, attempting to smash Army Group North Ukraine against the Carpathians and drive Army Group South Ukraine into the Balkans. For the center they predicted a quiet summer. To meet the expected attack against Army Group North Ukraine, they transferred a panzer corps from Army Group Center and so deprived the latter of more than 80 percent of its tanks. Army Group Center held the last major stretch of Soviet territory left in German hands: Belorussia eastward to the ancient gateway to Moscow between Vitebsk and Orsha 290 miles west of the Soviet capital. On June 22-23, the Russians attacked--not Army Group North Ukraine, as had been expected--but Army Group Center. Vasilevski was coordinating the First Baltic and Third Belorussian fronts at Vitebsk and Orsha, while Zhukov coordinated the Second and First Belorussian fronts opposite Mogilev and Bobruisk. In three days the Russians had made deep penetrations along the entire front. Hitler, who was determined not to yield any more ground in the Soviet Union, refused to allow segments of the front still standing to retreat. The Third Panzer Army on the north lost contact with Army Group North and began to drift with the Russian tide. In the center the flanks of the Fourth and Ninth armies were broken through. By the end of the month, the First Belorussian Front had trapped and was destroying two thirds of the Ninth Army around Bobruisk. Only the headquarters and one corps escaped. The commanding general of the Fourth Army had taken matters into his own hands and ordered his troops to retreat, but the army had to make its way through roadless forests and cross the Dnieper, Drut, and Berezina rivers. The Russians on its flanks were moving faster, and on July 3 they closed the army's last escape route at Minsk. In less than two weeks, Army Group Center had lost 25 of its 38 divisions. On June 28, Hitler had combined the command of Army Groups Center and North Ukraine under Field Marshal Model. He intended by this step to facilitate the transfer of divisions from Army Group North Ukraine to Army Group Center, but by that time the former was itself threatened and could not spare many troops. To gain troops the generals favored withdrawing the northward-jutting front of Army Group North from the Narva-Lake Peipus line to a short line between Daugavpils (Dvinsk) and Riga, but Hitler would not agree. He was concerned about the effect on Finland and the danger to the navy's submarine training ground in the Baltic Sea. All Model could do was to commit what reinforcements arrived, maneuver to gain the semblance of a coherent front, and wait for the Russians to lose their momentum. In July, the Soviet offensive spread to the flanks. On the north the First Baltic Front drove into the gap between Army Groups Center and North toward East Prussia and the Baltic. On its right the Second and Third Baltic fronts forced Army Group North back to the Pskov-Daugavpils line. On July 29, a spearhead of the First Baltic Front reached the Baltic west of Riga and cut off Army Group North. On the southern flank of Army Group Center the First Belorussian Front, powerfully assisted by an offensive which the First Ukrainian Front began against Army Group North Ukraine on July 13, developed a two-pronged thrust toward Brest (Brest-Litovsk). Late in the month, the First Belorussian Front carried its advance past Brest to Lublin and then turned northwestward toward Warsaw (Warszawa). The Russian point reached nearly to the Warsaw suburb of Praga on July 31. On the next day an uprising led by Tadeusz Komorowski (General Bor) broke out in Warsaw. East of the city, however, the Germans encircled and destroyed the leading Soviet tank corps, and thereafter the Russians left the Warsaw insurgents to their fate. While the First Belorussian Front devoted its attention to consolidating two bridgeheads south of Warsaw, the SS moved into the city, where after two months of savage fighting General Bor surrendered on October 2. In August, the Soviet offensive subsided. Advancing as much as 350 miles in a little more than a month, the fronts had outrun their supplies. Army Groups Center and North Ukraine had been forced back to a line on the Vistula (Visla) and Narew (Narev) rivers and the East Prussian border, and the Russians held valuable bridgeheads across both rivers. Beginning on August 16, Army Group Center launched a small counteroffensive that opened a narrow land corridor south of Riga to Army Group North. The respite was brief. On September 14, the three Baltic fronts began attacking toward Riga. When the Leningrad Front joined the offensive and on September 17 broke through at Tartu, Army Group North had to retreat to avoid being cut to pieces. At the end of the month the army group barely succeeded in escaping through the corridor south of Riga. On October 1, the First Baltic Front attacked due westward to the Baltic coast, which it reached near Memel (Klaipeda) on October 10. With that, Army Group North was cut off once more and had to withdraw into Courland (Kurland) west of Riga. It might still have broken out to the south, but Hitler insisted that it stay in Courland. He intended, he said, to open an offensive from there soon. Operations on the Southern Flank Although its front had been quiet, Army Group South Ukraine was badly weakened by mid-August 1944. It had lost 5 of its 6 armored divisions and 4 infantry divisions through transfers. The Romanians, both troops and civilians, were thinking increasingly of peace. On the morning of August 20, the Russians attacked. The Second Ukrainian Front struck southward past Iasi, and the Third Ukrainian Front pushed westward from two bridgeheads on the Dniester near Tiraspol. On August 25, they trapped the inner flanks of the Sixth and Eighth armies in an encirclement near Kishinev. On the same day, Romania, having announced its acceptance of Allied armistice terms on August 23 (the armistice was signed on September 12), declared war on Germany. The front dissolved into chaos. Some elements of the Eighth Army escaped into the Carpathians, while survivors of the Sixth Army fought their way southward between the mountains and the lower Danube River. On August 30, the Second Ukrainian Front captured the Ploesti oilfields, and the next day it entered Bucharest (Bucuresti). The Third Ukrainian Front occupied the Dobruja, and on September 8 crossed into Bulgaria, which requested an armistice (granted September 9) and declared war on Germany. The thrusts into Romania and Bulgaria automatically brought about the collapse of the German southeastern theater: the 300,000 Wehrmacht troops, organized into Army Groups E and F, who were defending the Adriatic and Aegean coasts and fighting partisans in Yugoslavia and Greece. Army Group E in Greece and Albania, after airlifting its troops from Crete and the other Greek islands, was forced to undertake a long and precarious march through the mountains of western Yugoslavia, which it did not complete until mid-November. Meanwhile, in September, the headquarters of the Eighth Army and the Sixth Army, using what troops they still retained, established fronts in the eastern Carpathians and the Transylvanian Alps. Farther to the west the Hungarian Second and Third armies formed a line on the border. In the second half of the month the Second and Third Ukrainian fronts regrouped and began turning northward for an offensive into Hungary and northeastern Yugoslavia. The Third Ukrainian Front began operations on September 28 with an attack from Bulgaria toward Belgrade (Beograd). Three days later, the Second and Fourth Ukrainian fronts, coordinated by Marshal Timoshenko, began driving across the mountains in eastern Hungary. Belgrade fell on October 20. On the same day, the Second Ukrainian Front took Debrecen, and the Germans evacuated Transylvania to escape encirclement. By the end of the month the Second Ukrainian Front was across the Tisza (Tisa) River, and the Third Ukrainian Front had turned northward from Belgrade along the east bank of the Danube, which it began crossing near Apatin. In November, both fronts launched attacks toward Budapest against stiff German resistance. (Troops from Army Groups E and F had reinforced the Sixth and Eighth armies.) The first Soviet troops reached the outer Budapest defense ring on November 8, but Soviet progress was slow for the next six weeks. Finally a thrust by both fronts, begun on December 20, completed the encirclement of Budapest on December 27. Two days later, a Soviet-sponsored provisional Hungarian government declared war on Germany. Operations on the Northern Flank Finland had gained its territorial objectives by November 1941, and after December of that year it had watched the war on the German front in the south with growing apprehension. The country was fortunate in that both Britain and the United States saw a certain amount of justice in its cause against the Soviet Union. At the Teheran Conference, President Franklin D. ROOSEVELT and Prime Minister Winston CHURCHILL had persuaded Stalin to offer the Finns a negotiated peace on terms that would leave the country independent, but after a first appraisal of the Soviet terms the Finnish government, in March 1944, had found them too onerous and rejected them. On June 9, the Russians opened an offensive on the Karelian Isthmus, and in a month they had driven the Finnish Army back nearly to the 1940 border. The Finns were fortunate again in that a somewhat less than masterful Soviet performance, their own quick recovery after initial defeats, and German aid enabled them to keep the Russians from breaking into the heart of the country. On September 2, Finland appealed for an armistice, and on September 19 it signed the Soviet peace terms, which were oppressive but did not include a military occupation. When the armistice went into effect, the German Twentieth Mountain Army still occupied Finnish Lapland north to the Arctic coast. After failing in 1941 to take Murmansk or to cut the Murmansk Railroad, it had settled down to positional warfare along the Soviet-Finnish border. Finland's removal from the war threatened to leave the army's southern flank dangling in a void. At first, Hitler wanted to swing the flank westward and hold northern Finland for the sake of the nickel mines near Petsamo, but later he decided to withdraw the entire army into the northern tip of Norway and then southward along the German-built coastal road. On September 6, the 200,000-man Twentieth Mountain Army began a four month's march across 500 miles of Arctic wilderness. In accordance with the Soviet armistice terms, the Finns attempted to disarm the Germans, but after several clashes in the south they did not interfere with the retreat (Finland formally declared war on Germany on March 3, 1945). The Russians, after failing to destroy the German corps stationed at Petsamo, halted their pursuit west of Kirkenes, Norway. Advance into the Reich: January-April, 1945 At the turn of the year 1944-1945 the eastern front, bisected by the mountains of eastern Czechoslovakia, stood in the north approximately on the line reached in August 1944. In the south it followed the Czechoslovakian border to the west of Budapest and then veered southward along the line of Lake Balaton and the Drava and Danube rivers. In the north the Russians had bridgeheads across the Narew and Vistula rivers at Rozan, Serock, and Sandomierz. In the south they had encircled Budapest and had nearly reached the last German-held oilfield at Nagykanizsa. The routes to Berlin and the Silesian industrial region lay open across the Polish plain, but Hitler hoped that he could recover some of his prestige by a victory in the south. After Christmas he had transferred the 4th SS Panzer Corps from the Warsaw front to the front near Budapest. Between January 12 and January 14, the First, Second, and Third Belorussian fronts and the First Ukrainian Front attacked. Exploiting the bridgeheads, each front achieved a complete breakthrough on the first or second day. The Second and Third Belorussian fronts went northwestward and westward against East Prussia from the line north of Warsaw. By January 26, they had driven a spearhead through to the Baltic coast east of Danzig (Gdansk), and they then began cutting up the two German armies to the northeast. The First Belorussian and First Ukrainian fronts moved westward from the front between Warsaw and the Sandomierz bridgehead toward the Oder River. After the first four days the breakthrough was so thoroughly accomplished that the Soviet armies could move in columns along the roads at speeds averaging between 20 and 25 miles a day. The First Belorussian Front bypassed Poznan on January 22, and by February 3 had drawn up to the Oder on a broad front 36 miles east of Berlin. A week earlier, the First Ukrainian Front had reached the middle Oder and established several bridgeheads. On February 8, it began attacking across the Oder north of Breslau (now Wroclaw), and by early March had cleared Silesia and had then halted on the Neisse (Lusatian Neisse) River line. On the northern flank of the First Belorussian Front the newly created German Army Group Vistula still held a long front between the lower Oder and lower Vistula in early February. In the middle of the month the Germans attacked from that front into the rear of the Russians on the Oder opposite Berlin. The attack failed, and on February 24 the First Belorussian Front turned to the north. By March 10, it had thrown one German army back against the Baltic coast near Danzig, had driven through Pomerania (Pomorze) to the sea, and had cleared the right bank of the Oder to its mouth. On the front in Hungary the Germans staged three attempts during January to relieve Budapest. The third, which began on January 18, penetrated deeply into the Soviet front but did not reach the city. On January 27, the Third Ukrainian Front counterattacked, and Budapest fell on February 13. In mid-February, Hitler transferred the Sixth Panzer Army from the Ardennes to Hungary, where he illogically insisted on attempting to regain the Danube line. The offensive began on March 6 and continued for 10 days without significant gains. On March 16, the Second and Third Ukrainian fronts struck back and in a little more than a week broke through on both sides of Lake Balaton. On March 30, the Russians crossed the border into Austria, and on April 13 they took Vienna. , Germany had been defeated. Silesia was gone, and the Ruhr was encircled. The output of tanks, artillery, and ammunition in the first quarter of 1945 was only about half the monthly average for 1944. From January through March, the Luftwaffe received between a twelfth and a twentieth of its requirements in aviation gasoline. The eastern and western fronts stood back to back with no room in which to maneuver. The war continued because Hitler was still in command, and he hoped for another "miracle of the house of Brandenburg, a collapse of the enemy coalition like that in the Seven Years' War which had rescued Frederick the Great from similarly desperate straits. On the Oder-Neisse line the Russians in April regrouped the Second Belorussian Front in the north under Marshal Konstantin K. Rokossovski, the First Belorussian Front in the center opposite Berlin under Marshal Zhukov, and the First Ukrainian Front in the south under Marshal Konev. The First Belorussian and First Ukrainian fronts opened the offensive on April 16. Konev's armies achieved a complete breakthrough on the first day. The First Belorussian Front, heading straight toward Berlin from a bridgehead at Kustrin (now Kostrzyn) on the Oder River, was not so fortunate. It required two days to break out of the bridgehead and then was stopped again on April 21 at the outskirts of Berlin. In the meantime, the First Ukrainian Front had turned two tank armies to the northwest. By nightfall on April 24 they and elements of the First Belorussian Front coming from the north had closed a ring around the city. The next day, the Soviet Fifth Guards Army made contact with the United States First Army at Torgau on the Elbe River south of Berlin, and Germany was split into two parts. Hitler had decided to remain in Berlin to the end. From his elaborate air-raid shelter he attempted to maneuver armies as he had in the old days. His first order, following the standard pattern which had failed so often in the past three years, was to hold the line and close the gaps. It was impossible to execute. On April 20, the Second Belorussian Front forced the Third Panzer Army from the Oder. By that time the Ninth Army was trapped between the flanks of the First Ukrainian and First Belorussian fronts. On April 24, Hitler ordered the Ninth Army to strike toward Berlin from the south and the Twelfth Army, facing American forces on the Elbe, to turn around and drive into the city from the west. The Twelfth Army managed to make the turn and reached Beelitz, 18 miles southwest of Berlin; there it was halted. On April 30, Hitler committed suicide, and two days later resistance ended in Berlin. In the last week of the war the German armies on the eastern front all had one objective: to escape capture by the Russians. North and west of Berlin the Third Panzer, Twenty-first, and Twelfth armies succeeded in making agreements with United States Army commands which allowed them to pass through American lines. Army Group Center's Fourth Panzer, Seventeenth, and First Panzer armies were farther east on the upper Elbe River and in Czechoslovakia. After the unconditional surrender in Reims on May 7 (a second surrender ceremony was held in Berlin on May 9), they attempted a mass escape to the west but were stopped forward of the American-Soviet demarcation line, and nearly all of them, or about 1,000,000 men, passed into Soviet captivity. Some troops of Army Groups South, E, and Courland escaped in the last days, but most fell prisoner to the Russians. All told, the Russians took about 2,000,000 prisoners in the days immediately preceding and following the surrender. In sheer material and human destructiveness the Russian campaign had no equal in World War II. The total German dead, either as battle casualties or as prisoners of war, probably numbered about 3,500,000. Soviet losses were at least twice as great and may have gone much higher without even beginning to include deaths among the civilian population resulting from German or Soviet action. That Germany lost the campaign can be attributed primarily to its being forced into a conflict of mass against mass which far outran its industrial and human resources. Unable from the first to compete with the Russians in expending human life, the Germans were eventually crushed by the weight of Soviet arms. After 1941, Soviet war materiel production quickly overtook and surpassed that of Germany. Additionally, the USSR received lend-lease aid, mostly from the United States, valued at over $11 billion. Among the more significant items were 409,526 trucks, 12,161 tanks and self-propelled guns, 14,000 airplanes, and 325,784 tons of explosives. Furthermore, the Soviet Union was able to commit more than 90 percent of its military strength against Germany, while the Germans were forced to retain a large part of theirs (35 to 45 percent in the years 1943 and 1944) in other theaters.	Afghanistan
Which author uses the pen name Barbara Vine?	The Occupation of Mexico, May 1846-July 1848 The Occupation of Mexico, May 1846-July 1848 Introduction The Mexican War (1846-1848) was the U.S. Army's first experience waging an extended conflict in a foreign land. This brief war is often overlooked by casual students of history since it occurred so close to the American Civil War and is overshadowed by the latter's sheer size and scope. Yet, the Mexican War was instrumental in shaping the geographical boundaries of the United States. At the conclusion of this conflict, the U.S. had added some one million square miles of territory, including what today are the states of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California, as well as portions of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada. This newly acquired land also became a battleground between advocates for the expansion of slavery and those who fought to prevent its spread. These sectional and political differences ripped the fabric of the union of states and eventually contributed to the start of the American Civil War, just thirteen years later. In addition, the Mexican War was a proving ground for a generation of U.S. Army leaders who as junior officers in Mexico learned the trade of war and latter applied those lessons to the Civil War. The Mexican War lasted some twenty-six months from its first engagement through the withdrawal of American troops. Fighting took place over thousands of miles, from northern Mexico to Mexico City, and across New Mexico and California. During the conflict, the U.S. Army won a series of decisive conventional battles, all of which highlighted the value of U.S. Military Academy graduates who time and again paved the way for American victories. The Mexican War still has much to teach us about projecting force, conducting operations in hostile territory with a small force that is dwarfed by the local population, urban combat, the difficulties of occupation, and the courage and perseverance of individual soldiers. The following essay is one of eight planned in this series to provide an accessible and readable account of the U.S. Army's role and achievements in the conflict. This brochure was prepared in the U.S. Army Center of Military History by Stephen A. Carney. I hope that this absorbing account, with its list of further readings, will stimulate further study and reflection. A complete list of the Center of Military History's available works is included on the Center's online catalog. The Occupation of Mexico May 1846-July 1848 The Mexican War altered the United States and its history. During eighteen months of fighting, the U.S. Army won a series of decisive battles, captured nearly half of Mexico's territory, and nearly doubled the territories of the United States. Initially, three U.S. Army forces, operating independently, accomplished remarkable feats during the conflict. One force-under Brig. Gen. Zachary Taylor-repelled initial Mexican attacks at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, north of the Rio Grande. Subsequently, Taylor's force crossed the river and advanced into northern Mexico, successfully assaulted the fortified town of Monterrey, and-although heavily outnumbered-defeated Mexico's Army of the North at Buena Vista. Concurrently, Col. (later Brig. Gen.) Stephen W Kearny led a hardened force of dragoons on an epic march of some 1,000 miles from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, across mountains and deserts to the California coast. Along the way, Kearny captured Santa Fe in what is now New Mexico and, with the help of the U.S. Navy and rebellious American immigrants, secured major portions of California. Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott directed the third and decisive campaign of the war. Scott's army made a successful amphibious landing from the Gulf of Mexico at the port of Veracruz, which was captured after a twenty-day siege. Scott then led his army into the interior of Mexico with victories at Cerro Gordo, Contreras, Churubusco, Molino del Rey, and Chapultepec, ending the campaign and ultimately the war with the seizure of Mexico City. The conflict added approximately one million square miles of land to the United States, including the important deep-water ports of coastal California, and it gave the Regular Army invaluable experience in conventional operations. Yet, the Mexican War consisted of more than a series of conventional engagements, and no formal armistice was reached until long after the capture of Mexico City. Rather, the Army had to conduct a "rolling occupation," thereby serving as administrators over the captured territory as the Army's frontline units continued to pursue conventional Mexican forces. Incidentally, by definition, "Territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army. The occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised" (as defined in U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 and 3 based on Article 42 of the Hague Convention of 1907). Thus, the Army found itself facing the more difficult mission of occupying a foreign country with a small force while battling capable and highly motivated guerrillas. The U.S. Army designated small bodies of armed Mexicans who fought an irregular war against the Americans as "guerrillas." Guerrilla, a term based on the Spanish word for small war, was initially used during Napoleon's Peninsula War, 1808-14, to describe Spanish irregulars fighting the French. Army commanders also used the Mexican term rancheros to describe guerrillas. In the current study, the terms guerrillas and irregulars are used interchangeably. Both the occupation and the insurgency reflected existing sociopolitical realities of Mexico. Indeed, the country's deep and often violent racial, ethnic, and social divisions further complicated the task of the occupying forces. Regional variations between northern and central Mexico, differences between the composition of Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott's armies and the threats they faced, and-not least the great difference in policies pursued by the two commanders meant that the U.S. Army conducted not one but two very different occupations in Mexico during 1846-48. Strategic Setting Numerous factors affect the nature and structure of occupation as a military mission. The strategic and long-term goals of any occupier will shape the occupation policy. This policy should work toward an anticipated end state, which can run the spectrum from annexation to the restoration of independence. An occupying force faces several essential duties and the possibility of collateral missions. Primary responsibilities include enforcing the terms of the instrument ending conventional hostilities, protecting occupation forces, and providing law and order for the local population. Collateral missions may include external defense, humanitarian relief and in some cases-nation-building, which can be the creation of an entirely new political and economic framework. Economic conditions, demographics, culture, and political developments all come into play and affect occupation policy. Mexico's Political and Social Situation at the Onset of Hostilities Race and ethnicity greatly affected the history and development of Mexico. The descendants of native American Indians, who had 4 inhabited the region before the arrival of the Spanish in 1519, greatly outnumbered those of European ancestry. Even before Mexico achieved its independence in 1821, Spaniards and the criollos, or Mexican-born Spaniards, made up only 20 percent of Mexico's population but controlled the country's government and economy. The remainder comprised Indians and mestizos, the latter group being of mixed European and Indian heritage. Criollo control continued after independence. Although the Mexican population was divided along cultural, economic, and racial lines, the criollos themselves were split between conservative and liberal factions. Conservatives advocated installing a strong centralized government, having Catholicism as the official state religion, and limiting voting rights to the privileged few. Liberals proposed granting additional powers to Mexico's states, defended religious toleration, and supported the expansion of voting rights. To complicate the political scene, the liberals further subdivided themselves into purist and moderate factions, each with different agendas. As a result, the government in Mexico City remained in a seemingly constant state of disarray that contributed to economic stagnation and an ever-growing national debt. At the onset of the conflict with the United States, the Mexican government was, in theory, a representative democracy. The Constitution of 1824 had created a federal system modeled on the U.S. Constitution. The Mexican federal government was composed of three branches: an executive branch with a president and vice president; a legislative branch, or general congress, comprising two houses-a senate and house of representatives; and a judicial branch with a supreme court and local circuit courts. In theory, the executive and legislative officials were elected through popular vote, but, in reality, only a small fraction of Mexico's population actually had the right to vote. In 1846, for example, less than 1 percent of Mexico City's population of some 200,000 met the property requirement necessary to vote. Even smaller portions of the population in outlying regions were able to vote. The ruling elite refused to extend suffrage to the remainder of the population and cautiously guarded its power and land holdings, which further alienated the Indians and mestizos. As a result, rebellions were common in Mexico. In 1844, for example, a revolt against the central government led by Gen. Juan Alvarez soon turned into an Indian insurrection that spread a swath of destruction across 60,000 square miles of southwestern Mexico centered on Acapulco. Although the Mexican Army mercilessly repressed such outbreaks, underlying tensions seethed close to the surface as the war flared along the Rio Grande in May 1846. 5 Click for larger image 6-7 Mexico itself comprised more than twenty separate states, although that number fluctuated over time. State and local governments were organized in the same manner as the federal government. In fact, the criollos dominated Mexico at the state (provincial) and territorial level just as they did in the national capital. The provincial governments paid homage to the federal authority in Mexico City, but political instability and the distance between the capital and many of the states enabled the provincial governments to enjoy a wide degree of autonomy. As a result, U.S. forces conducted much of their negotiations with state and local governments early in the war and had no real opportunity to deal with the central government until Scott launched his campaign against Mexico City. In sum, the country's governing bodies were unprepared to deal with either internal or external crises. American Objectives In 1845, Mexico's borders included more than one-third of the North American continent, with a population of slightly more than seven million people. North of the Rio Grande, Mexico's holdings extended from the western borders of Texas and the Arkansas River in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west (Map 1). The holdings included more than one million square miles of land in what today are the states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. The geography of this sparsely populated territory included portions of the jagged Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada, the craggy Intermountain region, and the rugged Coast Range. In addition, stretches of largely uninhabited desert contrasted with potentially valuable agricultural assets such as California's Central Valley. Those territories attracted the intense interest of many Americans, including President 7 President James K. Polk (Library of Congress) James K. Polk and his administration, which had several clearly defined goals at the onset of the Mexican War. Polk wanted to settle the disputed southern boundary between Texas and Mexico. Ever since winning independence from Mexico in 1836, the Republic of Texas had insisted that the Rio Grande constituted the border separating it from Mexico. Mexico, however, set the line some 150 miles north at the highlands between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande. When the United States accepted Texas's application for statehood in December 1845, it inherited the Texan claim. The United States also coveted Mexico's lands north of the Rio Grande to support its rapidly growing population of approximately eleven million by 1840. Looking westward to expand, the nation justified 8 its demand for land with the concept of Manifest Destiny, a belief that God willed it to control the entire North American land mass. More than the perceived will of God, however, was involved. Economics also played a central role in the concept. American explorers in California had reported deep-water ports along the west coast, valuable departure points when the United States sought to open trade between its own growing industries and lucrative markets in Asia. In an attempt to settle Texas border questions and to secure California, the U.S. government had offered several times between 1842 and 1845 to purchase both regions from Mexico. Mexico City refused all overtures because Mexican popular opinion insisted that the government preserve all of the territory that the nation had wrested from Spain. When the war officially began on 8 May 1846, President Polk had a clear set of objectives for the U.S. Army. Secretary of War William L. Marcy, writing for the president, ordered General Taylor's force of some 4,000 Regulars-or just under half of the entire U.S. Army-to seize as much territory in northeastern Mexico as possible. Meanwhile, Marcy sent Kearny's force through New Mexico and into California with instructions to cut those regions off from the central government in far-off Mexico City. Polk and Marcy believed that the Mexican government would not resist an offer to purchase the territory if U.S. military forces already controlled it. U.S. Army Organization Organized along European lines, the standing U.S. Army, designated the Regular Army, contained specialized corps of infantry, cavalry, artillery, and engineers. At the outbreak of the conflict, it numbered only 7,365 soldiers. In compliance with its missions of guarding the frontier and defending the nation's coastline, the Army had scattered its units in small posts manned by units of company size or less across the eastern seaboard and through the interior frontier. Because entire regiments rarely assembled, the force seldom practiced large-unit tactics. The core of the Army consisted of its eight infantry regiments, which consisted of ten companies each. On paper, each company possessed fifty-five men, but at the onset of the war most averaged only thirty-five. Brigades consisted of an ad hoc collection of multiple regiments, and divisions contained several brigades. Those larger formations were temporary wartime organizations. Infantrymen in the American Army enlisted for five years and received an average pay of $7 per month. Offering low wages and harsh discipline, the service attracted the poorly educated and those with few opportunities in civilian life. In 1845, 42 percent of the Army consisted 9 of foreign nationals; 50 percent were Irish and the rest were from other European nations. The cavalry of the U. S. Regular Army consisted of two light regiments trained and designated as dragoons, both organized into five squadrons of two companies each. Trained to fight mounted or dismounted, dragoons were always scarce and difficult to expand in a timely fashion. Their training and equipment were deemed too expensive in terms of time and money to justify increasing the numbers. The Army's lack of such highly mobile troops was evident throughout the conflict. The Army's artillery arm was more robust. It contained a mixture of 6-pound field artillery, as well as 12-, 18-, and 24-pound coastal defense weapons. Howitzers firing shells of 12-, 24-, and 32-pound weight added to the Army's arsenal. In Mexico, the Army would use primarily light artillery against guerrilla forces. At full strength, American light field artillery companies had three two-gun sections and came with a large number of horses to transport the guns, ammunition, and most of their crew. Some "flying" companies had all of their troops mounted. The U.S. Army also fielded a small number of highly trained engineers who served in either the Corps of Engineers or the Corps of Topographical Engineers. Members of the former specialized in bridge and fortification construction. The latter created maps, surveyed battlefield terrain, and built civil engineering projects such as roads and canals. Soldiers from the Ordnance, Subsistence, and Quartermaster Departments provided logistical support. The Ordnance Department supplied firearms and ammunition, while the Subsistence Department secured bulk food items, such as barrels of flour, salt pork, and cured beef. Both operated in the rear along the Army's lines of communication. The Quartermasters had the greatest responsibility. They supplied troops with all equipment other than weapons, such as uniforms, horses, saddles, and tents; they also arranged transportation and oversaw construction projects; and, during the Mexican War, they created and ran a series of advanced supply depots close to field operating forces that ensured a steady flow of provisions and equipment to the troops. Although its long supply trains and depots sometimes became targets for Mexican irregulars and bandits, the Quartermaster Department provided the Army with one of the most advanced logistical support operations in the world. In times of emergency, the United States called for volunteers to enlist in state-raised regiments to augment its small professional force. The use of volunteers was first established in the 1792 Militia Act. Volunteers were compelled to serve wherever the War Department required them. 10 State militia, however, could not be forced to travel beyond their home state's borders. The practice stemmed from the country's colonial history and its ideological aversion to standing armies as a threat to republican liberties, a prejudice bequeathed by European colonists and the Revolutionary War generation. When necessary, Congress gave the War Department permission to request a specific number of regiments from each state. State governors then issued calls for volunteers and named a time and place for the volunteers to gather. Once raised, the men were organized into companies, battalions, and regiments. Regiments elected their own officers, although governors sometimes selected field and staff grade officers. The president appointed all volunteer generals, who were then confirmed by Congress. After the regiments were organized, they "mustered" into federal service and came under War Department's control. They were not, however, governed by the 1806 Articles of War, the basis for the American military justice system, a situation that gave them much more autonomy than the Regular Army enjoyed. During the Mexican War, some 73,260 volunteers enlisted, although fewer than 30,000 actually served in Mexico. The U.S. forces' reliance on volunteer soldiers complicated matters. Because volunteers were taken directly from civilian life and quickly thrown into a rigid hierarchal system, many responded poorly to the regimentation of military life. At their worst, they resented superiors, disobeyed orders, balked against the undemocratic nature of military life, and proved difficult to control. They rarely understood and generally ignored basic camp sanitation, and they were generally unaccustomed to the harsh life faced by soldiers in the field. Not surprisingly, they experienced much higher death rates from disease and exposure than the Regulars. The officers of those regiments often held their rank by virtue of political appointment or through election by those who became their subordinates. This system offered no assurance that those who initially commanded possessed the ability or the training to lead. One senior Army officer concluded: "The whole volunteer system is wholly indebted for all its reputation to the regular army without which the [illegible] body of volunteers in Mexico would have been an undisciplined mob, incapable of acting in concert, while they would have incensed the people of Mexico by their depredations upon persons of property." Swept by "war fever," the men who initially rushed to join Taylor's army in northern Mexico exemplified the worst characteristics of the lot. As a group, the early volunteers were vehement racists, vocal exponents of Manifest Destiny, and eager to fight and kill Mexicans-any Mexicans. They had little patience with the hardships of camp 11 life, strict codes of discipline, hot Mexican sun, prohibitive rations, or boredom of garrison duty. Drunkenness flourished because alcohol provided an easy escape for men who found the normal day-to-day routine of soldiering far removed from their dreams of adventure and military glory. Brawls fueled by gambling, regional rivalries, and general boredom were common. Violent confrontations between the ill-trained American soldiers and Mexicans were also frequent. Volunteers who arrived later in the war knew better what to expect and proved less unruly. In addition, commanders gradually found ways to control and occupy their new soldiers, which lessened their onerous effect on the Mexican citizenry. During the final months of the conflict, most of the volunteer troops conducted themselves with greater self- restraint in camp and proved quite effective on the battlefield. Throughout the war, both Taylor and Scott also relied heavily on special companies of mounted volunteers: the Texas Rangers, who acted as the eyes and ears of the Army by conducting crucial reconnaissance, collecting intelligence, and carrying messages through Mexican lines. They also launched raids against specific targets, especially guerrilla encampments. Technically state militia and not mustered into federal service, the Texans voluntarily agreed to serve in Mexico. Their depredations on the Mexican citizenry were often excessive, however, and their behavior, along with that of other volunteers, did much to spark local Mexican resistance. U.S. Army Counterinsurgency Doctrine The U.S. Army had no official doctrine covering occupation or counterinsurgency operations in 1846. In the absence of formalized manuals, its professional soldiers instead passed on informal doctrine that was based on traditions and experiences from one generation of officers to the next through personal writings and conversations. Little of it applied directly to the situation the troops encountered during the Mexican War. For example, American forces had no experience in the control of foreign territory other than a winter's occupation of portions of Quebec Province during the American Revolution and some brief forays into Canada during the War of 1812. In 1813 during a three-day sojourn in York, the Canadian capital, American troops had looted and then set fire to large portions of the town and its harbor. This unhappy precedent, the product of poor discipline and heavy losses, possessed more relevance in 1846 than some American commanders chose to acknowledge. The volunteers' actions during the various Indian Wars also bequeathed a mixed heritage. The Second Seminole War (1835-42), 12 Texas Ranger (Library of Congress) which pitted the Army against some 1,500 Seminole and African-American warriors in the Florida Everglades provided a particularly relevant example. The Seminoles used their knowledge of the nearly impenetrable Florida swamps to conduct ambushes whenever possible. In response, the Army shunned conventional tactics, such as trying to coordinate several converging columns over virtually impassible terrain, and adopted an unconventional approach. Commanders established a series of heavily garrisoned posts to protect white settlements and to limit the Seminoles' ability to move with impunity. They also began active patrolling from those posts to find and destroy Indian villages and crops, as well as Indian war parties whenever possible. The tactics were both brutal and effective. Generals Taylor and Scott would apply similar measures during the occupation of Mexico. 13 Mexico's Guerrilla Tradition and Composition of Irregular Forces In 1846, most Americans knew little about Mexican society, culture, or history. They did not realize that guerrilla warfare formed a central part of Mexico's military tradition throughout the nineteenth century. During Mexico's War for Independence, the poorly equipped rebels often resorted to hit-and-run tactics by mounting small-unit attacks on Spanish military detachments and the long supply trains that equipped them. Expert horsemen, Mexican guerrillas usually fought while mounted. Heavily armed with rifles, pistols, lances, sabers, and daggers, they showed particular skill with lassos and preferred to rope their victims and drag them to death when possible. They mastered the local terrain and had the ability to use complex networks of paths, trails, and roads to strike the unwary and then to disappear into the countryside. Fortunately for the Americans, many guerrillas doubled as thieves who failed to differentiate among their victims and often attacked their own countrymen for personal gain. Although the general population sometimes supported them, many Mexicans tired of their attacks and occasionally worked with the Americans to stop them. The Mexicans also employed irregular cavalry units, often raised from local ranchers and commanded by regular troops. In modern military terms, those forces would be designated as partisan fighters. "Partisan" describes organized guerrilla bands fighting under Mexican regular officers or officially sanctioned by the Mexican government. The term "partisan" did not enter the U.S. Army lexicon until 1863 in General Order No. 100, which differentiated between armed prowlers, guerrillas, and partisans. The term is appropriate in the current study, however, because there was considerable partisan activity during the conflict, especially in central Mexico. Although not officially part of the Mexican Army, the partisan cavalry often operated under close supervision of the regular army. Although Generals Antonio Canales and Jose Urrea were the best- known partisan leaders in northern Mexico, the Mexican government devoted considerable attention to raising partisan forces to harass the U.S. Army on its march toward the capital. Aware that Scott's long supply line and the attitude of the civilians along this route were key to the success or failure of the American campaign, the leadership in Mexico City decided to disrupt convoys carrying ammunition and other supplies and to otherwise harass American forces. On 28 April 1847, just ten days after the Mexican defeat at Cerro Gordo, a newly installed 14 Mexican guerrilla (Colección Banco Nacional de México) president of Mexico and adviser to Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna-the enigmatic Mexican strongman-Pedro Maria Anaya, ordered the creation of a series of volunteer Light Corps to attack Scott's line of communications. Seventy-two Mexicans, most wealthy and twenty-one of them military officers on active service, received permission to raise the units. Brig. Gen. Jose Mariano Salas, a close friend of Santa Anna, played a prominent role in the effort. Terming the units "Guerrillas of Vengeance," Salas recruited volunteers by vowing that he would "attack and destroy the invaders in every manner imaginable," under the slogan "war without pity, unto death." The units in the corps were designed to target supply and replacement convoys, small parties of American troops, and stragglers. 15 They used a variety of tactics. The larger forces operated as cavalry units, which sought to engage quickly, to inflict maximum casualties, and then to disappear rapidly. The smaller units made extensive use of sharpshooters who concealed themselves in the trees and chaparral that lined the Mexican National Highway, which Scott's forces would use extensively. Imposing terrain features along most of the route's length worked to the advantage of the partisans. Operations Because of Mexico's immense size and population, the U.S. Army in reality occupied only a small area that encompassed key population centers along Mexico's lines of communication. This arrangement was necessitated by the fact that the U.S. Army never maintained more than 30,000 troops in Mexico during the entire war. The Polk administration expected this handful of soldiers-less than 0.4 percent of the total population of Mexico-to pacify some 7 million Mexicans. During the Mexican War, the United States occupied two regions of Mexico proper. Taylor and Scott occupied more than a thousand square miles of northern and central Mexico, respectively. Brig. Gen. Stephen W Kearny's troops did occupy a third area north of the Rio Grande-what today is New Mexico and California-but large numbers of Americans had already filtered into those regions and the United States did not intend to return either one to Mexican control. In addition, the areas of Mexico occupied by Kearny's troops contained only 90,465 inhabitants as of the 1842 census. Of those, a significant number were U.S. settlers. Such a small number of civilians possessed far less potential for troubling a U. S force than did the millions of their countrymen who lived to the south. In addition, the area was already closely tied to the United States economically through well-established trade routes. The situation in those areas, therefore, was markedly dissimilar to what confronted Taylor and Scott in Mexico proper, which had little indigenous support for annexation. Because there were no significant guerrilla actions against Kearny, and he quickly integrated New Mexico and California into the United States, this study will not explore his occupation. Unique circumstances and personalities produced wildly different types of occupation in Mexico. Zachary Taylor, known to his troops as "Old Rough and Ready" for his casual demeanor and willingness to share his soldiers' hardships, often neglected troop discipline. Winfield Scott, nicknamed "Old Fuss and Feathers" for his attention to detail and fondness for pompous uniforms, insisted on strict adherence to rules and regulations. 16 Taylor's Occupation of Northern Mexico Zachary Taylor's occupation of northern Mexico began on 12 May 1846 when his troops crossed the Rio Grande and took the town of Matamoros unopposed. As the war progressed, Taylor extended his holdings. First, he gained control of Camargo, some eighty miles upstream from Matamoros, and then he went southward to Monterrey and eventually to Saltillo, approximately 140 miles southwest of Camargo (Map 2). The Saltillo to Camargo line became one of the most important supply and communications routes in the north. By war's end, Taylor's forces controlled a region extending as far as Victoria to the southeast and Parras to the west. Taylor quickly achieved the purely military objectives that the Polk administration assigned him. Within four months, he won decisive battles at Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, and Monterrey, thereby forcing Mexico's Army of the North to withdraw some 400 miles south from the Rio Grande to San Luis Potosi. Taylor's occupation of northern Mexico, however, did not compel Mexico's government to sell any of the territories sought by the United States as President Polk had hoped. In fact, the situation in northern Mexico deteriorated rapidly in response to the local depredations of the volunteer troops. Until June 1846, Taylor's army consisted of Regular Army troops who enjoyed some popularity with the citizenry. Matamoros's citizens held the American force in higher esteem than they did the Mexican Army, which had abandoned all of its wounded when it retreated from the town. The U.S. Army had immediately set up hospitals to minister to the sick and wounded and had provided for the basic needs of the townspeople. The dynamic changed when volunteers moved into the area and immediately began raiding the local farms. As the boredom of garrison duty began to set in, plundering, personal assaults, rape, and other crimes against Mexicans quickly multiplied. During the first month after the volunteers arrived, some twenty murders occurred. Initially, Taylor seemed uninterested in devising diversions to occupy his men and failed to stop the attacks. As thefts, assaults, rapes, murders, and other crimes perpetrated by the volunteers mounted and Taylor failed to discipline his men, ordinary Mexican citizens began to have serious reservations about the American invasion. Taylor's lackadaisical approach to discipline produced an effect utterly unanticipated by the Polk administration, many of whose members, particularly pro-expansionists such as Secretary of the Treasury Robert J. Walker, believed that Mexicans would welcome the Americans as liberators. Instead, public opinion turned against the Americans 17 Click for larger image and began to create a climate for guerrilla bands to form in the area. Mexicans from all social backgrounds took up arms. Some of them were trained soldiers; others were average citizens bent upon retaliating against the Americans because of attacks against family members or 18 Zachary Taylor (Library of Congress) friends. Criminals joined in, and bandits and highwaymen began to flourish, looking for easy prey. As Taylor's force moved up the Rio Grande and its lines of communications extended, irregulars began to capture and kill stragglers, the sick, and the wounded who fell behind on long marches. The local populace increasingly appeared more than willing to support and shield the guerrillas. The volunteers' racism, anti-Catholcism and violence provided all the motive that locals needed to oppose the 19 American advance. Guerrilla attacks grew more frequent after the battle for Monterrey, when Brig. Gen. William J. Worth, the new military governor of the city, discontinued military patrols in the town for a short time, allowing a bloodletting to occur. Taylor appointed officers to serve as military governors of all major towns that he occupied. Each military governor had authority to make whatever rules he wished. There was no official military governing policy at the time. Observers estimated that volunteer troops killed some 100 civilians, including many who had been killed by Col. John C. Hays' 1st Texas Mounted Volunteers. A few weeks later, apparently in retaliation, Mexicans killed a lone soldier from a Texas regiment just outside Monterrey. Rangers under Capt. Mabry B. "Mustang" Gray responded by killing some twenty-four unarmed Mexican men. The event galvanized much of the population against Taylor's Army of Occupation. The boredom of occupation duty led to additional waves of violence. During November 1846, for example, a detachment from the 1st Kentucky regiment shot a young Mexican boy, apparently for sport, and Taylor again failed to bring any of the guilty soldiers to justice. The most concerted and organized irregular campaign in northern Mexico began in February 1847, during the initial phase of the battle for Buena Vista, and it lasted nearly a month. As Taylor repositioned his troops around Saltillo to contest Santa Anna's advance, the Mexican commander sent a detachment of partisan cavalry under General Urrea to sever the Monterrey-Camargo road, Taylor's line of communication to the Gulf coast. Urrea's cavalry joined forces with General Canales' force of partisan irregulars, which had been active in the region since the onset of hostilities the previous spring. Urrea was determined to strike isolated garrisons and Taylor's lightly defended supply trains. As Taylor's lines of communications had lengthened and become more difficult to defend, his supply convoys had become attractive targets for guerrillas, a vulnerability that he failed to recognize. On 22 February, Urrea's mounted guerrillas attacked a wagon train containing some 110 wagons and 300 pack mules just five miles outside the undefended hamlet of Ramos, which was some seventy-five miles northeast of Monterrey. While a portion of the attackers surrounded the train's guards posted at the front of the column, others went directly for the wagoneers. During the short skirmish, Urrea's men killed approximately fifty teamsters, drove off the survivors, forced the guards to surrender, and captured most of the supplies. The partisan commander next gathered up the undamaged wagons and mules and moved on to attack the American garrison at Marin, 20 arriving late that evening. Two companies from the 2d Ohio under the command of Lt. Col. William Irvin-some 100 men-defended the town. They held the irregular cavalry at bay until 25 February when a small relief column finally arrived. Low on supplies, the troops abandoned Marin and moved back toward Monterrey. Unknown to Irvin and his rescuers, the rest of the 2d Ohio, commanded by Col. George W. Morgan, was marching south toward Marin from Cerralvo. Along the way, they picked up some twenty-five survivors of the initial "Ramos Massacre." Arriving in Marin soon after Irvin left, Morgan ordered his men to continue south after midnight on the morning of 26 February, when a number of Urrea's lancers attacked them just outside the town. When Morgan sent a messenger to Monterrey for reinforcements, his courier came upon Irvin's column marching southward. In response, Irvin and 150 of his men turned back to join forces with Morgan, and the reinforced column reached Monterrey without further incident. In the end, Morgan and Irvin estimated they had killed some fifty partisans while suffering five wounded and one killed. Urrea's force, however, effectively closed the route between the Rio Grande and Monterrey. Defense of supply convoy (Library of Congress) 21 Finally recognizing the seriousness of the guerrilla threat, Taylor organized a column of mixed arms under Maj. Luther Giddings to run the gauntlet to Camargo. It consisted of about 250 infantrymen, a section of field artillery, and approximately 150 wagons. Giddings left Monterrey on 5 March and by midafternoon on the 7th had come within one mile of Cerralvo, a small town fifty miles southwest of Camargo. When local citizens warned him of an impending attack, he quickly parked the train and organized his men into a defensive perimeter. The initial guerrilla assault failed to break through Giddings's line but succeeded in destroying about forty wagons and killing seventeen American civilian teamsters and soldiers. Strengthened by a relief column from Camargo the following day, the Giddings column reached Camargo without further incident. Next, Taylor sent Col. Humphrey Marshall's 1st Kentucky cavalry regiment northward from Monterrey to locate the guerrilla force. Marshall soon reported that Urrea was again near Marin. In response, Taylor organized a brigade of dragoons, Capt. Braxton Bragg's battery, and Col. Jefferson Davis's 1st Mississippi Rifles and personally led it to Marin. Joining Marshall early on the morning of 16 March 1847, Taylor sent a portion of the force to guard a supply train moving out of Camargo while the rest of the force pursued Urrea. Although the Americans failed to engage the guerrilla leader, their presence in such large numbers made further organized partisan operations against U.S. supply routes in the region impossible. Subsequently, Urrea retired southward toward San Luis Potosi, allowing Taylor to reopen his supply lines to the Rio Grande. To prevent similar situations from recurring, Taylor continued to send mixed armed groups with each convoy. He also positioned additional units at various garrisons along his lines of communication and sent "Mustang" Gray's Texas Rangers to operate in the area. The Rangers hoped either to find and eliminate the guerrillas or to terrorize the local people to such an extent that they would stop supporting the irregulars. Such measures were only partially successful. On 4 April 1847, General Canales called on all Mexicans to take up arms against the Americans and threatened to execute as traitors any who refused. Guerrilla attacks increased through the summer and into the fall of 1847. A large partisan force raided the supply depot at Mier, some 180 miles northwest of Matamoros, on 7 September, carrying off some $26,000 worth of supplies. A hastily organized party of dragoons and civilian teamsters caught the irregulars, who were slowed considerably by their plunder, allowing the Americans to reclaim their supplies after killing some fifteen of the enemy. 22 By early November 1847, the guerrillas changed their tactics. The strong American presence in convoys and at various garrisons made attacking those targets less attractive. Instead, the guerrillas focused on ambushing small detachments patrolling the countryside. Outside Marin, for example, a large force of guerrillas under Marco "Mucho" Martinez engaged a detachment of dragoons commanded by 1st Lt. Reuben Campbell. This time, the dragoons fought their way through the enemy line and killed Martinez, whom Taylor had labeled "the most active of the guerrilla chiefs on this line." A few days after Martinez's death, Texas cavalrymen found and raided a guerrilla camp near Ramos, about fifty miles to the north and west of Camargo, killing two more irregulars and capturing a large number of horses and mules, as well as arms and other equipment. Those two victories helped curb the violence that had been common along the Rio Grande since the previous May. American commanders finally supplemented tactical measures with more enlightened policies to reduce violence against civilians. Bvt. Maj. Gen. John E. Wool, the military governor of Saltillo, instituted strict curfews, moved garrisons out of city centers, set up road blocks to keep soldiers away from populated areas, and threatened to discharge any unit whose members indiscriminately slaughtered Mexican livestock or plundered from the locals. Although conditions improved somewhat, violent crimes against Mexican citizens continued. In fact, Taylor himself announced that he would hold local governments responsible for U.S. Army goods destroyed in their jurisdiction and would lay "heavy contributions ... upon the inhabitants," a punitive policy that was effective. Taylor and Wool also decided to organize Mexican police forces into a lightly armed constabulary that was responsible for particular regions. Raised from local citizens, the units were to "ferret out and bring to the nearest American military post for punishment ..." any guerrillas or their supporters. Although the units' actions against Comanche Indian raiders along the Rio Grande enhanced their local popularity, the units had little effect on guerrilla operations. Frustrated in September 1847, Taylor granted General Wool the authority to try any Mexicans "who commit murder and other grave offences on the persons or property ..." of the American Army of Occupation. Based on a similar order that General Scott had issued in central Mexico, the measure governed military tribunals in the area under the general's jurisdiction and essentially placed the region under military law. In December, Secretary of War Marcy reinforced the harsh measures by directing that local authorities turn guerrillas over to the Americans. 23 John E. Wool (National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution) If they failed, then the Army had the authority to hold entire towns responsible for any violence that took place in surrounding areas. Any Mexicans who provided material support to guerrillas would not only pay fines but also forfeit all personal possessions. The measures worked. Within a few months, Wool collected more than $8,000 in fines, as well 24 as livestock and other personal property. By the end of 1847, attacks in northern Mexico had dropped off considerably. Wool took command of Taylor's army on 26 November 1847 when the latter returned to the United States. Shortly thereafter, Wool issued a scathing proclamation in which he stated that the war had been conducted "with great forbearance and moderation." Even so, he said, "Our civilians and soldiers have been murdered and their bodies mutilated in cold blood." As a result, anyone who "pays tribute to Canales or to any other person in command of bandits, or guerrilla parties ... will be punished with utmost severity." Wool's final report in 1848 credited the decrease in guerrilla attacks to three basic policies. First, holding local leaders personally responsible for guerrilla activity in their jurisdictions curbed high-level support for the irregulars. Second, making localities financially accountable for U.S. government property lost in attacks made local citizens hesitant to harbor attackers. Finally, Wool contended, the use of native police forces helped forge bonds between the Army of Occupation and the local populace and allowed the Americans to collect intelligence that they would never have found otherwise. Others, however, place more emphasis on the large number of troops on security duty, their offensive operations against the partisans, and the measures taken to at least separate the volunteer troops from the civilian population. Scott's Occupation of Central Mexico While Taylor struggled with Mexican resistance in the north after the battle at Buena Vista, Scott launched his central Mexico campaign (Map 3). In February 1847, leading elements of his invasion force seized the Gulf port town of Tampico for use as a staging point. Scott's occupation effort began at that point and ended with the American withdrawal in July 1848. By then, Scott's area of control extended some 280 miles from the port of Veracruz to Mexico City and straddled Mexico's National Highway-roughly the same route that the Spanish conquistadores had followed on their march to the Aztec capital in 1519. One of the few paved routes in Mexico, the road allowed heavy wagons to move up and down its length with ease. From the initial planning stage in October 1846, Scott's campaign had objectives far different from those of Taylor's northern mission. By the time Scott had outlined his plans for the invasion of central Mexico, Taylor's presence in northern Mexico had clearly failed to compel the Mexicans to cede California or any of the other territory coveted by U.S. leaders. As a result, Scott intended to carry the war to 25 Click for larger image 26-27 the heart of Mexico, capturing the nation's capital. This, he and the Polk administration reasoned, would force Mexico to accept U.S. terms. The strategy, although well conceived and necessary to bring the war to a successful conclusion, was fraught with danger. Operating in Mexico's most populated territories, Scott's army would rarely number more than 10,000 troops at the leading edge of his advance during the entire campaign. For much of the time, Santa Anna's army outnumbered Scott's by nearly three to one. The Americans would be hard-pressed to deal with the Mexican military, let alone any civil uprisings or partisan attacks similar to those besetting Taylor. Scott understood from the beginning that he would have to secure the loyalty and respect of the local citizens or fail in his mission. 26 Scott owned an extensive personal library including works on the history of Napoleon's occupation of Spain from 1808 to 1814. In particular, Sir William Francis Patrick Napier's three-volume History of the Peninsular War guided his planning for his future campaign. Mining French experience for insights, he was struck by the rancorous conduct of the French troops toward the Spanish population and the failure of harsh French occupational measures to quash the growing uprising there. As provocations multiplied on both sides, the fighting escalated out of control. The French responded by setting fire to entire villages, shooting civilians en masse, destroying churches, and even executing priests. The locals retaliated in kind. Although the Spanish irregulars operated without any centralized command and control structure, individual 27 bands of guerrillas managed to isolate various French commands and wreaked havoc on their lines of communications. By the time an allied force under Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, compelled the French to withdraw from Spain in 1813, Napoleon's force had seen some 300,000 men killed and wounded, compared with Napoleon's preoccupation estimate of approximately 12,000 casualties. In fact, Scott saw Wellesley's stress on strict discipline-insisting his soldiers respect personal property and meet the basic needs of Spanish civilians-as the proper model for operating in a potentially hostile land. In light of his studies, Scott wrote his General Order No. 20, commonly known as the Martial Law Order, even before he left for Mexico. Issued at Tampico on 19 February 1847, it made rape, murder, assault, robbery, desecration of churches, disruption of religious services, and destruction of private property court-martial offenses not only for all Mexicans and all U.S. Army soldiers but also for all American civilians in Mexico. Scott closed the gap by making everyone-whether soldier, civilian, or Mexican citizen subject to the U.S. Army's jurisprudence. All accused offenders would be tried before a court made up of officers appointed by the commanding general. Scott administered his tribunals, or commissions, in much the same way as modern courts-martial. He appointed one Regular Army officer to preside over the proceedings as judge advocate of the court. Nine other officers, usually from volunteer regiments, made up the jury. Another officer prosecuted the case, while an officer from the accused's unit served as a defender. A Regular officer defended civilians, both American and Mexican. Commissions heard one case or multiple cases over an extended period, sometimes lasting for weeks. The tribunals had the authority to determine innocence or guilt and to levy punishment, which included the lash, hard labor in ball and chain, imprisonment, branding, and even death. The commanding general-and sometimes the War Department-had to approve the most severe sentences. The system was hardly foolproof. In one notorious case, a volunteer from the 1st Pennsylvania Regiment stood trial for theft. The accused solider had used the stolen goods, including a watch and a gold crucifix, to ensure that his compatriots would support his alibi. He had also bribed the defending officer to prevent him from exposing the deception. In the end, the soldier went free. Scott's order closed an obvious loophole that had existed in the 1806 Articles of War, which had previously prescribed the conduct of U.S. soldiers in wartime. Because the authors of that code had never imagined that the United States would fight a war in foreign territory, they failed to extend its jurisdiction beyond America's borders or to 28 make provisions for crimes against civilians. The shortcoming had, for all practical purposes, given American volunteers and civilians such as teamsters and camp followers immunity from punishment under the Articles. Under the 1806 Articles, they would be put on trial either in local Mexican civil courts or in civilian courts in the United States. Even the Regulars were exempt from the Articles while in foreign territory, although they were still held to the U.S. Army's own strict code of conduct. In reality, Scott aimed General Order No. 20 at the volunteers. Alarmed, both Secretary of War Marcy and Attorney General Nathan Clifford argued against its harsh provisions, fearing that the volunteers and their families might be enraged and turn to Congress for relief. In the end, however, neither man forbade issuance of the proclamation. As for the Regulars, both Scott and Taylor held them to strict standards throughout the war. Even petty theft was punishable by thirty lashes with rawhide. Indeed, many Regulars noted the injustice of volunteers literally getting away with murder while they faced extremely harsh punishments for comparatively minor crimes. This inequity contributed to some of the tension and animosity that existed between volunteer and Regular soldiers. General Scott's policies underwent their first test immediately after the surrender of Veracruz on 27 March 1847. At that time, Scott reissued General Order 20, declared martial law, and arranged for the centralized distribution of food to the city's population, which had suffered serious privation during the siege. Another public proclamation stated that the U.S. Army was a friend to the Mexican people and that it would do away with the abuses that the Mexican government had inflicted on its people. From this enlightened beginning, Scott's occupation campaign differed markedly from Taylor's. By insisting on strict discipline, Scott preempted many of Taylor's problems with volunteers. When a military commission found two soldiers guilty of stealing from a local store, for example, the Army imprisoned both in the town's dungeon. When another commission found Isaac Kirk, a "free man of color" working for the Army, guilty of rape and theft, the Army hanged him. Scott quickly issued a proclamation on 11 April 1847 declaring that the capital punishment proved the Army would protect the Mexican people. Those examples and others like them had their effect. Scott reported a few weeks later that after the imposition of these sentences, "... such offenses by American soldiers abated in central Mexico." Scott also assured merchants that the Army would protect their goods. As a result, local markets reopened for business quickly. In 29 addition, the general saw to the organization of indigenous work crews to clear the streets of debris and accumulated garbage. The citizens not only aided in removing visible signs of the war left from the siege but also were paid a high salary, which was meant to improve the local economy by infusing it with money. The program garnered considerable popular support for the occupation. Scott repeatedly made the case to civic leaders and to the general population that if the Mexican people cooperated with his forces, the war would end more quickly and with less devastation. Such policies convinced Veracruz's inhabitants to accept American occupation with little noticeable resistance. Life returned to normal in the town, and Scott wrote Secretary of War Marcy that the people "are beginning to be assured of protection, and to be cheerful." Unlike the Polk administration, Scott understood and honored local mores. When Marcy suggested that he raze San Juan de Ulua, the culturally important castle in Veracruz, for example, Scott refused on grounds that the destruction of such an important site would only sow anger and resentment. Scott knew that successful guerrilla campaigns, like those in Spain against the French, required an environment hostile to the occupiers. He used discipline, good public relations, and an understanding of the local culture to keep that from happening. To win the war in the shortest possible time, Scott planned to abandon many of his resources and to march boldly into Mexico's interior to seize the country's capital in a single daring stroke. He also understood that he could accomplish the task with fewer than 10,000 frontline troops only if the Mexicans who lived along the Veracruz-Mexico City corridor provided goods and food and declined to rise up en masse against his forces. Consequently, Scott insisted that his officers pay in full and at a premium price all provisions his army gathered from Mexicans. He also ordered, "The people, moreover, must be conciliated, soothed, or well treated by every officer and man of this army, and by all its followers." Public opinion had to be favorable, or at least neutral, toward the Americans. Thus, as in Veracruz, he maintained strict discipline throughout the ensuing campaign to Mexico City and insisted on severe punishments for transgressors. When a soldier in the 8th Infantry killed a Mexican woman at Jalapa, a military tribunal ordered him hanged. The military similarly executed two civilian teamsters in the town for murdering a local boy. Because of his astute observations and careful planning, Scott faced a type of guerrilla different from the one that opposed Taylor. Rather than facing an angry population such as the one supporting various irregular forces in the north, U.S. forces in central Mexico were beset 30 by the Light Corps, highly trained and motivated volunteers fighting in formal partisan military units with the explicit consent of the Mexican government. After their official creation on 27 April 1847, Light Corps units were operating in the Veracruz-Mexico City corridor by mid-May 1847. They soon became such a menace that Maj. Gen. John A. Quitman, a leading southern Democrat and a staunch supporter of President Polk, required 1,500 men to escort him from Veracruz to his new command with Scott's main force. Raising this force delayed Quitman's departure from the coast for several weeks. The number of attacks on Americans climbed steadily during the summer and fall of 1847. The first actions focused on small groups of soldiers. In one instance on 2 May 1847, guerrillas rode down two soldiers, "lassoed" them "around their necks and dragged on the ground," and then speared their battered bodies. Scott responded with Capt. Samuel Walker's mounted Texas Rangers, ruthless fighters outfitted with Colt six-shot revolvers. Walker's men engaged the guerrillas outside of La Hoya and Las Vigas, two towns about seventy miles northwest of Veracruz, killing some fifty Mexican irregulars. Travel on the National Highway, nevertheless, became increasingly dangerous. In June, Lt. Col. Ethan Allen Hitchcock, Winfield Scott's inspector general and later his chief of intelligence, began using Mexican criminals liberated from prisons as couriers to slip through the guerrilla- infested corridor to the coast. His first messenger, a convicted highway robber named Manuel Dominguez, assured him that other prisoners hostile to Santa Anna and the government would eagerly support such missions. Believing that such a group could provide valuable intelligence services, Hitchcock proposed recruiting a "Spy Company" made up entirely of Mexicans. Scott eagerly endorsed the plan, and Hitchcock raised a 100-man force under Dominguez's command that included many former prisoners. The company gathered information, provided messengers, and acted as guides and translators. Some of its most valuable intelligence came from its members who infiltrated Mexico City as "market people from Chalco ... selling apples, onions, etc." From those missions, the spies gave Hitchcock detailed reports about the situation in the city and its defenses. Scott also instructed them to capture or kill guerrilla leaders whenever possible. As a result, the company captured Mexican Generals Antonio Gaona and Anastasio Torrejon during operations near Puebla. Overall, the Spy Company performed effectively, easily slipping undetected through Light Corps positions along the Veracruz-Mexico City road. Concerned, Santa Anna himself offered all of the spies a 31 Samuel Walker (Library of Congress) "pardon for all past crimes" and "a reward adequate to any service they may render to the Republic." Scott also had other sources of human intelligence. Records detail that his command spent some $26,622-or more than $520,000 in 2004 dollars-in payments for information-gathering efforts. Of that, Hitchcock paid $3,959 directly to the Spy Company as salaries. The rest 32 Ethan Allen Hitchcock (Library of Congress) went to informants, deserters, Mexican officers, and even one of Santa Anna's servants. As the Americans rushed to create an intelligence apparatus, the partisans made American supply trains a continual target. A convoy under the command of Lt. Col. James S. McIntosh, for example, left Veracruz on 4 June 1847 with nearly 700 infantrymen and approximately 33 128 wagons. During the next two weeks, the Light Corps attacked it on three separate occasions. The first came on 6 June, as it approached Cerro Gordo. McIntosh halted the convoy and called for reinforcements after losing twenty-five men who were wounded and killed along with twenty-four wagons that were destroyed. A relief column under Brig. Gen. George Cadwalader with 500 men reached the besieged unit on 11 June. Reinforced, the Americans started to move forward again only to find the Puente Nacional, or National Bridge, occupied by partisans. Located some thirty-five miles northwest of Veracruz, the bridge spanned a wide valley with imposing terrain on both its sides, creating a perfect bottleneck for the convoy. Only after McIntosh and Cadwaladar fought a series of fierce actions against Light Corps positions around the bridge, losing thirty-two dead and wounded, was the convoy able to continue. Pushing on, it next came under assault on 21 and 22 June when an estimated 700 men attacked it at La Hoya. Again, Cadwalader and McIntosh's troops eventually battled their way through. The Mexican Spy Company later located additional guerrillas preparing to ambush the column yet again, but Captain Walker's Rangers rushed out of their garrison at Perote, a nearby town, and managed to disperse the irregulars. The column reached Scott's main force a few days later. After the heavy resistance faced by McIntosh, Scott decided to use larger and more heavily armed convoys. Brig. Gen. Franklin Pierce, a future president of the United States, departed Veracruz in early July 1847 with 2,500 troops, 100 wagons, and 700 mules. Some 1,400 Mexican irregulars met the supply train at the National Bridge, however, and forced Pierce to retreat to Veracruz after losing thirty men. Reinforced with artillery and additional forces, Pierce eventually reached Scott's force at Puebla without further incident. Another column carrying much-needed supplies departed Veracruz on 6 August 1847, guarded by some 1,000 men under Maj. Folliott T. Lally. Again, the irregulars attacked, and Lally lost 105 men as he fought his way through the resistance. The commander at Veracruz sent three companies to assist, but enemy action forced even that relief column to return to Veracruz after it lost all but one supply wagon in yet another fight at the National Bridge. In the end, Lally managed to push through the enemy's positions and to reach Scott's army a few days later. The next supply train set out from Veracruz in September 1847. Maj. William B. Taliaferro reported that his force faced daily attacks and lost several men in each one. Even at night, Light Corps partisans harassed the Americans with heavy fire, but, in the end, Taliaferro broke through and reached Scott. 34 Because the Light Corps specialized in killing stragglers and other men separated from their units and in assaulting small detachments on foraging or reconnaissance missions, American commanders increasingly sought to keep their forces concentrated. On 30 April 1847, warning that "stragglers, on marches, will certainly be murdered or captured," Scott's orders required officers of every company on the march to call roll at every halt and when in camp to take the roll at least three times a day. While his force rested at Puebla to await reinforcements, Scott also made it a punishable offense to enter the town alone. He instructed soldiers to travel in groups of six or more, to be armed at all times, and to leave camp only if accompanied by a noncommissioned officer. Such orders reflected an additional threat. Men from the Light Corps continually worked their way into American garrisons at night, killing individual soldiers. In the seaport garrison at Villahermosa, Commodore Matthew C. Perry, U.S. Navy, explained that "Mexican troops infiltrated the town every night to pick off Americans; this was the kind of fighting they liked and they were good at it." Attempts to prevent the attacks proved unsuccessful because "dispersing Mexicans" seemed "no more effective than chasing hungry deer out of a vegetable garden. They always drifted back, to take pot shots at `gringos."' Col. Thomas Claiborne, commander of the garrison housed in the fortress Perote, reported that "the guerrillas were swarming everywhere under vigorous leaders, so that for safety the drawbridge was drawn up every night." Scott's capture of Mexico City on 14 September 1847 did not end his woes. While the Mexican regulars fled, average citizens and criminals who had been released from prisons as the Americans entered the city began using stones, muskets, and whatever other weapons were available to oppose the U.S. Army's advance. The irregular urban combat quickly turned vicious. The U.S. Army responded with close- range artillery fire against any building that housed guerrillas. Although such tactics ended widespread resistance, the partisans instead focused their attacks on individual and small groups of soldiers. Meanwhile, the Light Corps continued to restrict the flow of supplies, mail, money, and reinforcements to Scott. Shortly after pacifying Mexico City in mid-September, Scott turned his mind to the problem posed by the increasingly bold partisans. First, he enlarged the garrison at Puebla to some 2,200 men and constructed four new posts along his line of communications at Perote, Puente Nacional, Rio Frio, and San Juan. Completed by November, each post contained about 750 soldiers. Their commanders were required to send strong patrols into the countryside to find and engage irregular forces. Finally, Scott 35 Scott entering Mexico City (Library of Congress) decided that all convoys would travel with at least 1,300-man escorts. Thus, by December, he had diverted more than 4,000 soldiers, or nearly 26 percent of the 24,500 American troops in central Mexico, to secure his supply lines. Scott also created a special antiguerrilla brigade and placed it under the command of Brig. Gen. Joseph Lane, a veteran of the fighting at Buena Vista. Lane's combined-arms force of 1,800 men included Walker's Rangers, as well as additional mounted units and light artillery, stressing mobility to better locate and engage Mexican Light Corps units. The brigade patrolled the Mexican National Highway and attempted to gather intelligence from the local population, either through cooperation or intimidation. Although not numerous enough to secure the entire length of the Veracruz-Mexico City corridor, the brigade did succeed in carrying the war to the partisans and their supporters. Lane's brigade was most successful in an engagement with a large Light Corps unit led by Gen. Joaquin Rea on the evening of 18 October 1847 outside the town of Atlixco. Lane posted his available artillery on a hill overlooking the town and initiated a 45-minute cannonade into the irregular positions. After the bombardment, he ordered his force into Atlixco. The operation destroyed a significant portion of the Light Corps force with Mexican casualties totaling 219 wounded and 319 killed. 36 Although Rea escaped with some of his men and several artillery pieces, his original unit was largely destroyed. Lane reported that he declared Atlixco a guerrilla base and that "so much terror has been impressed upon them, at thus having the war brought to their own homes, that I am inclined to believe they will give us no more trouble." In the fight, Lane used his mobility to find and engage the enemy and his combined-arms team to inflict maximum damage on the Light Corps unit. Unfortunately, Lane's unit became most infamous for a brief engagement that followed an incident at Huamantla, a few miles from the town of Puebla, on 9 October 1847. When Captain Walker of the Texas Rangers fell mortally wounded in the skirmish, Lane ordered his men to "avenge the death of the gallant Walker." Lt. William D. Wilkins reported that, in response, the troops pillaged liquor stores and quickly became drunk. "Old women and young girls were stripped of their clothes and many others suffered still greater outrages." Lane's troops murdered dozens of Mexicans, raped scores of women, and burned many homes. For the only time, Scott's troops lost all control. Lane escaped punishment in part because news that Santa Anna had stepped down as commander of the Mexican Army after the engagement at Huamantla overshadowed the American rampage. In Washington, however, many would have applauded such an incident. Angered by the Mexican partisans' successes, the Polk administration ordered Scott to destroy the Light Corps' "haunts and places of rendezvous," a directive that eventually led the U.S. forces into a scorched-earth policy. Although Scott had his doubts about such tactics, he realized the necessity of denying the guerrillas sanctuary and thus applied "the torch" as historian Justin Smith commented "with much liberality, on suspicion, and sometimes on general principles, to huts and villages; and in the end a black swath of destruction, leagues in width, marked the route" from Veracruz to Mexico City. When such extreme measures failed to stop the Light Corps' attacks, Scott issued a forceful proclamation on 12 December 1847, declaring that "No quarters will be given to known murderers or robbers whether called guerrillas or rancheros & whether serving under Mexican commission or not. They are equally pests to unguarded Mexicans, foreigners, and small parties of Americans, and ought to be exterminated." Once again, such measures failed to diminish the Light Corps' effect on Scott's line of supply. On 4 January 1848, a force of some 400 irregulars attacked a supply convoy near Santa Fe, in the state of Veracruz, and carried away 250 pack mules and goods. On 5 January, the irregulars attacked another convoy at Paso de Ovejas. Col. Dixon Miles, the convoy commander, requested reinforcements of at least 400 37 infantrymen plus artillery. Eventually, his column ran the gauntlet and reached Mexico City. Scott's efforts to secure his rear line of communication enjoyed mixed results. In general, his work to calm and pacify the general population generally succeeded. Millions of Mexican civilians living in the Veracruz-Mexico City corridor went ahead with their lives as usual, and there was little of the spontaneous resistance to the U.S. occupation that had characterized events in northern Mexico. Nevertheless, the successes of the mounted Light Corps partisans cannot be denied and had a deleterious effect on the U.S. Army's freedom of action. Scott's Stabilization Campaign Scott's success against the regular Mexican Army had unexpected consequences. Its demise eliminated one of the primary elements holding Mexican society together. Without fear of reprisal, peasants across the country rose up in revolt. Between 1846 and 1848, some thirty-five separate outbreaks occurred across Mexico. In each case, the rebels targeted wealthy, landed elites and symbols of the nation's federal authority. A large revolt on the Yucatan peninsula in early 1848 pitted some 30,000 Indians against wealthy white landowners and merchants living in the region. The governor of the state issued an urgent plea for help, saying that the peasants were waging a "war of extermination against the white race." Here and elsewhere, the unrest took a high toll in both human and economic terms. The state of unrest caused the U.S. Army two problems. First, the revolts steadily grew in size, frequency, and violence, thereby threatening to engulf U.S. forces. If the peasant revolts that swept through Veracruz targeted Scott's army, as well as the upper-class Mexicans, all could be lost. Second, without a strong central government in place, no peace treaty with Mexico would be possible and thus no legal guarantee for the territorial acquisition that the United States desired. As President Polk explained about Mexico, "Both politically and commercially, we have the deepest interest in her [Mexico's] regeneration and prosperity. Indeed, it is impossible that, with any just regard to our own safety, we can ever become indifferent to her fate." The Mexican elites recognized the necessity of reaching some sort of peace accord before they could rebuild their army, the prerequisite ensuring their hold on power. The central government, in exile since Scott occupied the capital, thus faced a conundrum. It confronted a two-front war, one with the United States and the other with the rebellion, the former gradually appearing as the lesser of two evils. The 38 northern aggressor desired territory, while the ruling elite feared that the Mexican people wanted nothing less than a race war that would lead to the destruction of the elite or elimination of its power and privilege. In the end, although the rebellion caused the Americans concern, it and some twenty-two months of warfare and occupation persuaded Mexico's political leaders to end their resistance and to pursue peace. As a result, the two sides agreed to terms on 2 February 1848 in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Although it took several months for both governments to ratify, the accord met most American demands. Mexico recognized U.S. sovereignty in Texas, with its southern border resting on the Rio Grande, and agreed to cede Upper California and New Mexico, the region that eventually became the states of Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah, as well as portions of Colorado, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Wyoming. In return, the United States promised to pay Mexico $15 million in gold and to assume responsibility for all outstanding claims that American citizens had against Mexico. In short, the war with Mexico and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo largely defined the current western borders of the United States, making a country that stretched from coast to coast. While the two nations carried out their respective ratification processes, they concluded a truce on 6 March 1848. This often-overlooked document not only confirmed that all hostilities had ceased but also included a stabilization plan to rebuild the Mexican government. One important part of the agreement read, "If any body of armed men be assembled in any part of the Mexican Republic with a view of committing hostilities not authorized by either government, it shall be the duty of either or both of the contracting parties to oppose and disperse such body; without considering those who compose it." In effect, the United States promised to support the existing Mexican government against any internal rebellions, while Mexico agreed to disband any guerrillas still operating against U.S. forces. The measure benefited the American Army more than the Mexican government, as Light Corps units raised and directed by the federal government almost immediately ceased troubling Scott's forces. The agreement accomplished what the American military could not do by force of arms alone end guerrilla attacks in the Veracruz-Mexico City corridor. Elsewhere, Mexican rebels of all stripes simply avoided the U.S. military and concentrated their efforts in areas outside of U.S. control. The stabilization plan also provided that the United States would supply modern weapons to the Mexican government to aid in the reconstitution of the federal army. In the first delivery alone, the Mexicans 39 received 5,125 muskets, 762,400 cartridges, 208 carbines, and 30,000 carbine cartridges from local American supply depots. The U.S. Army sold the munitions at a greatly reduced price, less than half of their market value. More important than the sheer numbers was the quality of the equipment. The American weapons were of the latest pattern and much more accurate than those that the Mexican Army had previously possessed. At the battle of Palo Alto, for example, a large number of the Mexican small arms had been outdated and unserviceable British Brown Bess muskets. Finally, in an effort to stabilize the Mexican economy, the Americans allowed Mexican merchants to join their convoys between Veracruz and Mexico City and to sell their wares to the Army. That corridor had long served as a key commercial route, and thus the U.S. presence expanded trade and provided a great, albeit temporary, boost to the region's economy. The U.S. Army also escorted Mexican traders who carried precious metals from the mining regions in northern Mexico to the Rio Grande and eventually to the Gulf coast. The U.S. Army and the Problems of Occupation Although U.S. forces won every conventional battle, a multitude of issues arose to threaten the occupation once it began. Logistical difficulties in particular proved a major factor. The simple movement of the materiel deep into Mexico over rough roads took significant planning. Army Quartermasters partially alleviated their difficulties by creating a series of forward supply depots in the southern United States along the Gulf coast and up the Rio Grande. Those depots permitted the Quartermasters to pre-position equipment and supplies and to forward them far more quickly to critical points in the theater of operations. However, a general shortage of transport-whether steamships to move supplies up the Rio Grande, wagons to traverse level areas with established roads, or pack mules to caravan through mountainous regions-prevented many goods from reaching the troops in a timely manner. As a result, American forces had to acquire much of their supplies directly from local Mexican sources, often by purchasing them at premium prices. As supply lines lengthened, the effort to guard those routes became difficult and required increased numbers of troops. Early in the conflict, Taylor had paid little attention to convoy security. Because of that, Mexican guerrillas scored several impressive victories against lightly armed supply trains and managed to carry away tons of supplies, money, and mail. In the end, both Taylor and Scott were forced to 40 divert a significant number of frontline units to accompany convoys and garrison their lines of communication. Rather than adopt a district form of organization with command elements in specific regions, both Taylor and Scott simply positioned troops at individual posts. Scott assigned particular brigades or divisions to patrol specific portions of his line of supply or to conduct convoy escort duty. Taylor, as usual far more disorganized, committed regiments to garrison and escort duty in an ad hoc manner. In both cases, the increased escorts and garrisons eventually decreased the amount of materiel lost, but their presence never prevented the guerrillas from attacking. Individual couriers who moved alone to carry messages and important orders to far-flung units often fared worse. Mexican guerrillas and bandits consistently targeted them. In one famous incident, guerrillas ambushed and killed a messenger carrying a note to Taylor detailing the amphibious assault on Veracruz and the shift of American military forces to central Mexico. The guerrillas promptly conveyed the letter to Santa Anna, who responded immediately by attacking Taylor's reduced army at Buena Vista after which he planned to rapidly turn south and defend Veracruz against Scott. Fortunately for the Americans, Taylor's force held the field against Santa Anna at Buena Vista, inflicting heavy casualties, although the Mexican general managed to escape and organize an army to face Scott during the Mexico City campaign. Religion also played a crucial role in the occupation. The concept that America had a God-given Manifest Destiny served as a powerful justification for the conflict. Yet, the idea itself contained strong anti-Catholic views that undisciplined volunteers easily acted out in Mexico, sometimes making the Catholic Church and its property their targets. Although the enlisted ranks of the Regular Army itself included many Catholics, Protestants made up the bulk of the volunteers. In fact, many officials in the Polk administration and the Army feared that such conduct would lead to an all-out religious war. For example, when volunteers stabled their horses inside the Shrine of San Francisco in Monterrey, the local population was incensed. Concerned, Polk approached several Catholic bishops in the United States, requesting that they attach chaplains to the Army in Mexico to allay fears that the Americans intended to destroy the Catholic Church. Two priests accompanied Taylor's force through mid-1847, although bandits murdered one and the second left because of ill health. General Scott reacted differently. Instead of assigning priests to his columns, he ordered that the troops respect all Catholic priests and church property. When one drunken soldier beat a church worker, a military tribunal sentenced him to twelve lashes and hard labor in a ball 41 and chain for the duration of the war. The message quickly spread to the rank and file, Regular and volunteer alike. Scott himself regularly attended Catholic mass whenever possible. To further his image as a friend to the Mexican Catholics, Scott took one final step by promising that the U.S. Army would protect all church property. In contrast, Santa Anna and Mexican President Valentin Gomez Farias attempted to fund the resistance effort by confiscating and selling church assets, a practice that outraged religious Mexicans. After occupying the capital, Scott curried favor with conservative criollos by strictly prohibiting the sale of any church property without his consent, allaying many fears that the Americans intended the church's destruction. Although Scott's conduct calmed the Mexicans, many American volunteers, nevertheless, resented his favoritism toward the church, a policy that may have damaged his postwar popularity at home. Analysis Two distinct zones of occupation were led by two different commanders during the conflict. One was in northern Mexico under Zachary Taylor, and the other was in central Mexico and was led by Winfield Scott. In both regions, the Army's occupation policies had successes and failures. Many shortcomings could be traced to the use of poorly disciplined volunteers serving under bad officers. In addition, the Army also discovered that its force structure, although well suited to fighting conventional battles, was often inappropriate for conducting counterinsurgency missions. Taylor's occupation in northern Mexico began easily enough. However, he failed to institute any formal policies to keep his own troops or Mexicans who opposed the occupation in check until the last few months of the conflict. In the interim, his loose control over everyone in his zone of influence led to disorganization and violence, which could not be overcome solely by harsh, oppressive measures. Indeed, often such responses were counterproductive, fueling continued dissent. Scott, however, insisted on strict discipline and a code of conduct before his troops ever set foot in Mexico and enforced such procedures throughout the campaign. His military tribunals, which held all of his troops-whether Regulars or volunteers-to the same code of conduct, limited senseless violence against Mexicans and created an environment in which the local population felt secure with the American presence. Clearly, the behavior of the American volunteers sparked local Mexican guerrillas. Both Regulars and volunteers themselves pointed to the senseless violence perpetrated by America's volunteer troops. 42 Some were criminals in civilian life who continued their lawless ways in Mexico; others, particularly the Texans, had a long history of violence in their relations with Mexicans. Many were racist and anti-Catholic, reflecting the society from which they were drawn, and almost all were simply overcome with the unfamiliar rigors of military life and the boredom of garrison duty. Their collective actions played a significant role in creating guerrilla fighters and an atmosphere that encouraged the average Mexican to support the irregulars, especially in northern Mexico. Because of the differences between Taylor and Scott in their occupation policies, the Mexican guerrillas in the two regions differed in many ways. In northern Mexico, highway robbers, bandits, and persons bent on revenge perpetrated many of the assaults on individual and small groups of American soldiers. Taylor's inability or unwillingness to control his volunteers fueled those types of attacks. Not until relatively late in the occupation did he and Wool rein in their unruly troops. Belatedly, they created tribunals to try both soldiers and Mexican citizens and took steps to impose various punitive measures aimed at destroying popular support for guerrilla fighters. During the Buena Vista campaign, the Americans in northern Mexico also faced structured and organized partisans. Those irregulars focused their attacks on supply trains and small garrisons. Initially, Taylor did little to make convoy security a priority, but after guerrillas closed the Camargo-Monterrey supply corridor, he began to divert more and more of his frontline troops to guard duty. Eventually, the presence of so many American troops guarding the supply lines made it too dangerous for large groups of guerrillas to operate in the region. The mission, however, limited the ability of Taylor's forces to pursue any further offensive operations. Scott's case differed. Individual guerrillas certainly took the opportunity to prey on lone American soldiers in central Mexico, but the general's close control of his volunteers allayed many problems in the region. For the most part, his forces faced highly organized partisans fighting under the commanders of various Light Corps units. The semiconventional forces focused on disrupting Scott's lines of communication. Responding quickly, Scott provided escorts for all American wagons moving along the Veracruz-Mexico City corridor, organized special brigades to hunt down irregulars, created a series of garrisons at key points along the Mexican National Highway, and endorsed the creation of the Mexican Spy Company. Again, the drain on the Army's troop resources was considerable. Even with those measures, however, he found it impossible to stop all the attacks. 43 The Americans found that their force structure, while well adapted to winning the conventional war in Mexico, fell short of meeting the demands of the irregular conflict that raged in occupied areas of the country. Specifically, the lack of mounted units prevented American commanders from actively seeking out and engaging guerrillas. Lack of mobility forced the U.S. Army to take a defensive role and to react to irregular attacks whenever they occurred. Even then, lack of mobility prevented its troops from responding in time. American columns had to remain on the roads, unable to decisively engage the fast-moving guerrillas, who blended with the local population. Time and again, large American forces arrived too late to catch the elusive, mounted guerrillas. Even the few mounted U.S. Army regiments available enjoyed only sporadic success. Out of frustration, some soldiers in those units often attacked innocent Mexicans. Mexican responses to the occupation varied in effectiveness. In the north, individual guerrillas often carried out attacks to avenge American atrocities without any sense of planning or strategic purpose. Although the attacks created a bloody war of retribution in areas where they occurred, they did little to challenge American authority. When Generals Taylor and Wool brought their troops under discipline and provided the Mexicans with a sense of security, the violence diminished and the number of attacks decreased significantly. The northern resistance did score a significant success, however, when it used large groups of partisans fighting under trained military leaders during the battle of Buena Vista. Those organized forces cut Taylor's access to his vital supply line on the Rio Grande. Not until the Americans committed thousands of troops to the Camargo-Monterrey corridor were they able to compel the Mexicans to retreat. In the south, Light Corps units proved extremely successful in disrupting Scott's otherwise nearly flawless thrust toward Mexico City. The officially sanctioned, well-led, and well-trained forces endangered all American attempts to move along the National Highway and scored a number of limited victories. Even as Scott devoted more attention and troops to defeating the Light Corps, his lack of cavalry and his inability to force the irregulars into a decisive engagement frustrated his plan. Yet, even with all of their successes, the Light Corps did not alter the outcome of the war. Lessons learned in the occupation of Mexico also had long-lasting effects on America's military establishment. It most certainly provided valuable experience for junior U.S. Army officers and enlisted men experience they would find invaluable thirteen years later when the American Civil War began. For example, young officers such as Ulysses 44 S. Grant came to realize how crucial a robust intelligence collection network was to Scott's success in the Mexico City campaign. Grant used this lesson to good effect throughout the Civil War, particularly during the Vicksburg campaign. In addition, Scott's General Order No. 20 has influenced generations of military thinkers. In the American Civil War, War Department General Order No. 100, dated 24 April 1863, was based in large part on Scott's order. That document, in turn, would provide the basic framework for the first Geneva Convention in 1864, as well as later conventions. Although the numbers of killed and wounded in the major battles are relatively certain, it is much more difficult to calculate absolute numbers of men serving, or who died of other causes, because record- keeping in the mid-1800s was imprecise at best. The statistics in the 1846-47 reports by the Secretary of War, however, make it possible to approximate the figures. During the conflict, 78,718 American servicemen served in the theater. From the start of the conflict through January 1848, 1,556 soldiers were killed and another 4,152 were wounded during the conflict's major battles. Also, from January 1848 until the final withdrawal of American personnel, the Army also lost approximately 4,500 additional men from a variety of causes, including combat, disease, and desertions. The available statistics cannot account for the fate of some 2,800 men. This evidence strongly suggests that guerrillas and other irregular forces were responsible for many of those losses. Any concrete proof, however, will be impossible to locate. Extant primary sources written by American officers tend to minimize or even completely ignore irregular forces. Estimating the number of civilians, primarily wagon teamsters, killed during the conflict is completely outside the realm of possibility because no agency kept track of their presence. But we do know that guerrillas killed large numbers of civilians during specific time periods. In late February 1847 alone, partisans operating on the Carmargo-Monterrey corridor killed some 65 civilian teamsters. In the end, though, disease and accidental death proved far more deadly, killing approximately 11,550 troops. Neither American victories in the field, nor Taylor's mismanaged efforts in the north, nor Scott's well-organized occupation in the heart of the country was the lone compelling reason that Mexico made peace. Internal Mexican political and social discontent and fear of widespread peasant uprisings helped convince members of the nation's political elite that further resistance threatened their survival. A combination of twenty-two months of conflict, occupation, and civil strife finally allowed the Polk administration to achieve all of its war aims. 45 Further Readings ------. Bauer, K. Jack. The Mexican War, 1846-1848. New York: Macmillan, 1974. ------. Foos, Paul. A Strong, Offhand, Killing Affair: Soldiers and Social Conflict During the Mexican-American War. ......Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. ------. Levinson, Irving. Wars within Wars: Mexican Guerrillas, Domestic Elites, and the United States of America, ......1846-1848. Forth Worth, TX: Texas Christian University Press, 2005. ------. Smith, Justin H. The War with Mexico. New York: Macmillan, 1919. ------. Winders, Richard B. Mr. Polk's Army: The American Military Experience in the Mexican War. College Station, ......TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1997.	i don't know
In the game of Bingo, ‘Tickle Me’ represents which number?	Bingo Number-calling Nicknames 35.. Jump and jive - Flirty wives 36.. Three dozen - Perfect (as in 36-24-36) - Yardstick... he wishes! (USA) 37.. A flea in heaven - More than eleven 38.. Christmas cake 39.. Those famous steps - All the steps - Jack Benny 40.. Two score - Life begins at - Blind 40 - Naughty 40 - Mary (USA) 41.. Life�s begun - Time for fun 42.. That famous street in Manhattan - Whinny the Poo 43.. Down on your knees 44.. Droopy drawers - All the fours - Open two doors - Magnum (USA) 45.. Halfway house - Halfway there - Cowboy's friend - Colt (USA) 46.. Up to tricks 48.. Four dozen 49.. PC (Police Constable) - Copper - Nick nick - Rise and shine 50.. Bulls eye - Bung hole - Blind 50 - Half a century - Snow White's number (five-oh - five-oh..) - Hawaii five O, Hawaii (USA) 51.. I love my mum - Tweak of the thumb - The Highland Div[ision] - President's salute 52.. Weeks in a year - The Lowland Div[ision] - Danny La Rue - Pack 'o cards - Pickup (USA) 53.. Stuck in the tree - The Welsh Div[ision] - The joker 54.. Clean the floor - House of bamboo (famous song) 55.. Snakes alive - All the fives - Double nickels - Give us fives - Bunch of fives 56.. Was she worth it? 57.. Heinz varieties - All the beans (Heinz 57 varieties of canned beans) 58.. Make them wait - Choo choo Thomas 59.. Brighton line (engine 59 or it took 59 mins to go from London to Brighton) 60.. Three score - Blind 60 - Five dozen 61.. Bakers bun 62.. Tickety boo - Turn on the screw 63.. Tickle me - Home ball (USA) 64.. The Beatles number - Red raw 65.. Old age pension - Stop work (retirement age) 66.. Clickety click - All the sixes - Quack quack (USA) 67.. Made in heaven - Argumentative number 68.. Saving grace - Check your weight 69.. The same both ways - Your place or mine? - Any way up - Either way up - Any way round - Meal for two - The French connection - Yum yum - Happy meal (USA) 70.. Three score and ten - Blind 70 - Big O (USA) 71.. Bang on the drum - Lucky one 72.. A crutch and a duck - Six dozen - Par for the course (golf) - Lucky two 73.. Crutch with a flea - Queen B - Under the tree - Lucky three 74.. Candy store - Grandmamma of Bingo - Lucky four 75.. Strive and strive - Big Daddy - Granddaddy of Bingo - Lucky five 76.. Trombones - Seven 'n' six - was she worth it? - Lucky six 77.. Sunset strip - All the sevens - Two little crutches - The double hockey stick - Lucky seven 78.. Heavens gate - Lucky eight 79.. One more time - Lucky nine 80.. Gandhi's breakfast - Blind 80 - Eight and blank - There you go matey 81.. Fat lady and a little wee - Stop and run - Corner shot 82.. Fat lady with a duck - Straight on through 83.. Fat lady with a flea - Time for tea - Ethel's Ear 84.. Seven dozen 87.. Fat lady with a crutch - Torquay in Devon 88.. Two fat ladies - Wobbly wobbly - All the eights 89.. Nearly there - All but one 90.. Top of the shop - Top of the house - Blind 90 - As far as we go - End of the line Explanations of some nicknames: 1 Kelly's eye: In reference to the one-eyed Australian bushranger gangster Ned Kelly. (Note: apparently this explanation is incorrect. A viewer from Australia sent this message: "Ned Kelly didn't have one eye! He didn't even lose an eye in the shoot out at Glenrowan. And when he was wearing his helmet, you couldn't even see his eyes through the slot." But another Australian viewer sent this explanation: "The reason for "Kellys eye" may have been referring to Ned Kelly's helmet, which had one large slot for his eyes that looked like one eye.") 2 One little duck: The shape looks a bit like a swan. 3 One little flea: Looks a bit like a flea. 7 One little crutch: Looks like a crutch. 8 One fat lady: Resembles the two halves of a large lady. 9 Doctor's orders: A pill known as Number 9 was a laxative given out by army doctors in Britain. Apparently in the second world war in Britain doctors wrote on sick notes a 9 pm curfew, thus if patients were found out of their homes after that time they were violating their sick note. (Provided by a visitor) The curfew story's not true. In the Great War, however, there was such a thing as a "number nine" pill, that was freely prescribed for virtually everything. (Provided by another visitor) 10 Downing street: UK Prime Minister's address, 10 Downing Street. 12 Royal salute: As in, a 21-gun salute for a Royal birthday or other celebration. 13 Bakers Dozen: Bakers in olden times used to make one extra piece of bread/cookie etc to the dozen ordered by a customer so they could do a taste test before it was sold to the customer, hence the phrase. 17 Dancing queen: From the Abba song of the same name. Over-ripe: Opposite of tender; 14 and 17 straddle 16 which is sweet! 23 Lord's My Shepherd: From Psalm 23. 26 Bed and breakfast: Traditionally the cost of a nights' lodgings was 2 shillings sixpence, or two and six. 26 Half a crown: Equivalent to 2'6d. Or two and six. 39 The famous steps; all the steps: From the 1935 Hitchcock film 59 The Brighton Line: The London-Brighton service was no. 59. 65 Old age pension: 'Pension' age in the UK is at the age of 65. 76 Seven 'n' six - was she worth it?: The price of the marrige licence, seven shillings and six pence. A marriage license may have been 7/6 (37.5p in new money) once upon a time, but 7/6 was more recently the cost of a "short time" with a lady of negotiable affection.... (Provided by a visitor) 78 Heavens gate: it rhymes: heaven-seven, gate-eight. 80 Gandhi's breakfast: in reference to Ghandi�s famous peace protest, in which he abstained from food - Imagine him sitting crosslegged with a big empty plate in front of him, looking from above. Another suggested explanation: ate (8) nothing (0). 81 Corner shot: Generally used in Military clubs tambola aka housie in India; origin unknown. 83 Ethel's Ear: Fat lady beside ear-shaped three. (Above explanations are courtesy of visitors' feedback and bbc.co.uk ) Bingo Rules . Glossary . * Nicknames . Tips . Strategy . Patterns . Books . Links . Extras Great gambling information site Use the "Main Menu" on the top right margin to explore this site. This is a comprehensive gambling information site with advice on winning, how to gamble, Betting systems , gambling articles, world land-based casinos directory, bingo halls directory, casino reviews (reviewed and rated), the best Online casinos , free online games, and lots of gamblers information and resources. Topics covered include game rules, how to play, how to win, betting strategies, gambling tips, glossary, on: Blackjack, Roulette (showing Table layouts of American, European and French roulettes and also the fast-play Roulite version), Poker classic and variants including Texas hold'em and Let-it-ride , Craps (dice game), Jackpot slots, Videopoker, Video games, Baccarat, Keno, Lotto/Lottery, Powerball, Bingo, Sports betting, Horse and Greyhound racing (including racetracks, race programs and results), and new gambling games. This is the gambling website with lots of information and resources as well as helpful advice and frequent updates thanks to your helpful feedback.	63
The song ‘Lambeth Walk’ is from which musical?	Bingo Number Names History And Meanings Part 3: Calls 46 - 90 - Bingo History - Playing Bingo 48. Four dozen 49. Rise and Shine, PC 49, Copper, Nick-Nick. ‘PC 49’ is taken from the popular radio show that was broadcast by the BBC from 1947 to 1953: ‘Incidents in the career of Police Constable Archibald Berkeley-Willoughby’. This call, unlike the call for 22, ‘PC Parker’ has evolved over time to become ‘Copper’, and later to borrow the working class comedian Jim Davidson’s catch phrase ‘Nick Nick’ (c.1977). 50. Blind fifty. Bull’s Eye (on a dart board). 51. The Highland Div[ision], Tweak of the Thumb, I Love My Mum. The 51st Highland Division was a first line division of the territorial force, formed in 1908. They saw continuous front-line action during the First World War. [ 1 ] The other two calls here are rhymes. 52. The Lowland Div[ision], Danny La Rue, Weeks of the Year. The 52nd were a Territorial Army division and saw action in the first and second world wars. Danny La Rue became famous in the early 1960s as a glamorous drag artist and entertainer, especially on the BBC television programme ‘The Good Old Days’. 53. The Welsh Div[ision], Stuck in the Tree. The 53rd were a Territorial Army division and saw action in the First and Second World Wars. 54. Clean the Floor. A simple rhyme. 55. All the fives, Snakes Alive. Snakes Alive was a phrase used in American comic strips of the inter-war and immediate post-war era, including in Little Orphan Annie. 56. Five and Six. 57. Heinz Varieties, All the Beans, Heinz. Heinz canned products have been available in Britain throughout the twentieth century. The ‘Heinz 57 Varieties’ slogan was first used in 1896. The origin of the slogan was an advertisement for ‘21 styles of shoes’. Henry John Heinz thought he could adopt a similar slogan but that his own products were varieties. The number 57 does not relate to the number of products made by the company, which was greater than 57 even in 1896, but rather to the significance of the 5 and 7 to Henry Heinz and his wife. [ 2 ] 58. Make them Wait. A simple rhyme. 59. The Brighton Line. This call also survives, although seemingly only in the south of England. It was heard in Folkestone and Margate during July 2002. The call has Royal Navy origins: The LBSG fare from Portsmouth to London was 5/9. 60. Blind sixty, Three Score. 61. Baker’s Bun. A simple rhyme. 62. Turn of the Screw, Tickety-boo, To Waterloo. ‘To Waterloo’ is a Royal Navy call; the LSW fare from Portsmouth to London was 6/2. Tickety-boo is army slang for something being satisfactory, and was first recorded in 1939. [ 3 ] ‘Turn of the Screw’ was a popular novella first published in 1898. 63. Tickle Me. A simple rhyme. 64. Red Raw, When I’m Sixty-Four, The Beatles Number. Red Raw is one of the many rhyming calls with no particular origin; the other two calls have origins in the 1960s, with the song ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ released by The Beatles in 1967. 65. Old Age Pension, Stop Work. The Contributory Pensions Act (1925) introduced a 10s per week pension for manual workers and those earning up to £250 per year. 66. Clickety-click, All the sixes, Clickety Click This is onomatopoeic – sounding like sixty six and has become shorthand for bingo, and was used in the famous Monty Python sketch that parodied ideas of Britishness. In the sketch Russian and Chinese characters famously confused cricket with the clickety-click used in bingo; the characters assumed that all the British played both cricket and bingo; the joke lies in the failure to understand the class distinctions that ran through the various games of cricket, bridge and bingo. 67. Made in Heaven. A simple rhyme. 68. Saving Grace. This could be linked to the hymn Amazing Grace: it seems unlikely to be linked to the novel of that title as it was published in 1981 and was not a huge popular success. Although the novel was adapted as a film and had some success it does not seem the most likely source for the call which appears in sources from the 1950s. 69. Whichever way you look at it (see number six), Meal for Two, Your place or mine? ‘Meal for Two’ appears to refer to the introduction of Chinese takeaway meals in Britain, where orders were often placed simply using the numbers on the menu boards. ‘Your place or mine’ has sexual connotations. ‘Whichever way you look at it’ refers to the fact that the numbers appear the same both ways up. 70. Three Score and Ten. A numerical call, a score is 20, so 3 score and 10 = 70. 71. Bang on a Drum. A simple rhyme. 72. Par for the Course. A surprisingly middle-class entrant into the calls, referring to the game of golf; although of course in popular idiom the phase is used in response to ‘how are you?’ to mean that you are ‘OK’ and it may have moved into bingo from this route rather than from golf. 73. Queen Bee. A simple rhyme. 75. Strive & Strive, Big Daddy, On the Skive. Big Daddy was a professional wrestler, (Shirley Crabtree 1930-1997) who had a popular following amongst women as well as men; however, the link to the number 75 is not clear. However, the call might also come from the states where the numbers used are 1-75, rather than 1-90 as in the UK, making 75 the highest number, although in the States this number is more commonly called Granddaddy of Bingo. The other calls for this number are simple rhymes. 76. Was she worth it? Was she? Trombones. ‘Was she worth it?’ This call again relates to pre-decimal coinage and is still in use. The phrase has been reputed as having one of two meanings; either the cost of a good night out with a girl (cinema, fish and chip supper and bed and breakfast) or the cost of a marriage licence. 77. Sunset Strip, All the sevens. ‘77 Sunset Strip’ was an American detective show, made between 1958 and 1964 by Warner Brothers. It was broadcast in the UK in the early 1960s as prime time entertainment on ATV, following ‘Saturday Night at the London Palladium’ in 1962 and 1963. 78. Heaven’s Gate. Another call linked to rail travel, express trains would go ‘straight on through’ smaller stations. 83. Time for Tea. 84. Seven Dozen 85. Staying Alive. This was a hit song for the Bee Gees (1977), from the film Saturday Night Fever. 86. Between the Sticks. This phrase is borrowed from football terminology for goalkeepers. 87. Torquay in Devon. A simple rhyme. 88. Two Fat Ladies, Connaught Rangers, All the Eights. The Connaught Rangers are the 88th Regiment of Foot, while ‘Two Fat Ladies’ is a visual pun, borrowed from bingo for a popular BBC television-cooking programme featuring Clarissa Dickson Wright and Jennifer Paterson first broadcast in 1997. 89. Nearly There. 90. Top of the house, As Far as We Go, End of the Line. The significance of the railways in the lives of the player, both in the military and civilians after the war is clear. Five calls use railway terms, or in the case of ‘As far as we go', bus and rail. Conclusions. Although calls have now largely disappeared, especially from commercial cash bingo, even the modern, automated game still starts with the traditional, ‘Eyes Down’; a signal for silence to descend over the players, while games run at amusement arcades and for charity often make use of the traditional calls, considering them to be central to providing a traditional game of bingo. Despite the declining use of bingo calls, started by the birth of commercial bingo and the push towards a faster, more mechanised game, what emerges is a story of a language that has evolved over time to reflect popular culture, and that has kept many calls dating back to the British origins of the game, as a gambling activity of the military or a seaside and fairground amusement. The oldest surviving calls date back to the Edwardian music hall and the stars, songs and catchphrases most popular with the working classes, including Vesta Tilly (thirty - Burlington Bertie, c1900) the comedian Charles Austin (forty-nine - PC Parker c1910) and sentimental ballads such as ‘Sweet Sixteen’ (c1898), but recorded many times before the Second World War, were fertile sources of language transfer. The calls collected in this research included many military references, especially to the regimental nicknames of regiments that fought in both World Wars, as well as calls that relate to the cost of train travel between London and Plymouth, references to Naval personnel going on leave. Military games shared a common language with civilian games to a large extent, with the military calls that relate to regiments long since amalgamated still used in games played in ex-servicemen’s clubs. Other calls still in use link closely to pre-decimal coinage. For example seventy-six has the call ‘Was she worth it?’ This is attributed either to the cost of a marriage licence, or a night out followed by bed and breakfast. It is certainly the case that creativity in the use of language is enhanced rather than dimmed by bingo calls, yet they also serve another purpose. By the memorability of the phrases, through the use of techniques such as ellipsis and concision, the lexicography of bingo demonstrates that what researchers describe as the restricted language code of the working classes is a code that allows for cultural transmission across generations. The thinking public do not generally consider that bingo is a game worthy of serious consideration, yet the language of bingo, the phrases and terminology, have become popular clichés, entering the consciousness of the thinking public in a way that much that represents working class culture has not.	i don't know
Lopburi, Phichit and Ang Thong are provinces in which Asian country?	Lopburi Province - iSnare Free Encyclopedia Lopburi Province Lopburi City Gate, from old to new city Seal Lopburi ( Thai : ลพบุรี, rtgs : Lop Buri, pronounced [lóp bū.rīː] ) is a province in the central region of Thailand . The province is subdivided into 11 administrative districts, and Mueang Lopburi District is the capital. With over 750,000 people, the province is Thailand's 37th largest area and 38th most populous. There are six neighboring provinces, Phetchabun , Nakhon Sawan , Phranakhon Si Ayutthaya , Saraburi , Nakhon Ratchasima , Chaiyaphum , Singburi , and Nakhon Sawan . Lopburi is a significant province historically, where many historical structures, artifacts, and prehistoric settlements have been discovered. In the past, Lopburi was called by the name ‘ Lavo , that is, the kingdom had been ruled by an absolute monarch . Contents 7 External links History Known as Lavo during much of its history, Lopburi probably dates to prehistoric times. [1] The name Lavo originated in the Dvaravati period (6th–11th century CE). The conquering Khmer would build many impressive temples in the city during its rule. Lopburi may even have liberated itself for a time, as it sent independent embassies to China in 1115 and 1155. In 1289 it sent another embassy to China, but soon became part of the Thai kingdom of Sukhothai and later Ayutthaya . During the Ayutthaya period, King Ramathibodi I sent Phra Ramesuan (later King Ramesuan) as the Uparaja to reign in Lopburi. In 1665 King Narai the Great ordered a new palace built on the east bank of the Lopburi River and made Lopburi the second capital of the country, as Ayutthaya was threatened by the Dutch . After King Narai died, the city was almost abandoned and fell into ruin. In 1856 King Mongkut of the Chakri dynasty ordered King Narai's palace to be renovated. The city finally regained its importance in 1938, when Field Marshal Plaek Phibunsongkhram chose Lopburi to be the largest military base in Thailand. Geography Lopburi is on the east side of the Chao Phraya River valley, between the Lopburi River and Pa Sak Rivers. Thirty percent of the area of the province, including most of Tha Wung district , the southwestern parts of Mueang Lopburi and Ban Mi districts are a very low alluvial plain . The other 70 percent is mixed plains and hills, with the Phetchabun Mountains forming the eastern boundary of the province towards the Khorat Plateau . Symbols The provincial seal shows Vishnu in front of the Khmer temple Phra Prang Sam Yod . [2] The escutcheon of Lopburi shows Phra Narai and in the background Phra Prang Sam Yod, the "Sanctuary with the Three Towers". It refers to King Narai who in 1664 fortified the city to be used as an alternative capital when Ayutthaya was threatened by a Dutch naval blockade. [3] The provincial tree as well as the provincial flower is the bullet wood . [4] The slogan of the province is National treasures of King Narai's palace and Phra Kan Shrine, famous Prang Sam Yot, city of Din So Phong Marl, well-known Pa Sak Cholasit Dam and golden land of King Narai the Great. Administrative divisions The province is subdivided into 11 districts ( amphoe ). The districts are further subdivided into 124 sub-districts ( tambon ) and 1,110 villages ( muban ).	Thailand
The unification of the crowns of Aragon and Castile laid the basis of which modern-day European country?	Ang Thong travel guide - Wikitravel 10 Get out Ang Thong (อ่างทอง) is a city in the Chao Phraya Basin region of Thailand , and the Capital of the Province of this name. Ang Thong means "Golden Bowl" in Thai. The city and surrounding area is noted for its huge Buddha (98 metres tall), courageous heroes, court dolls, famous wickerwork, drum-making region, and double reclining Buddha. Understand[ edit ] Ang Thong, a province, which is luxurious of native handicraft like, molded court dolls, firebrick, and wickerwork. It is also the origination of "Li Ke", the native folk song, hometown of Nai Dok and Nai Thongkaeo, the two heroes during Bang Rachan Battle. Ang Thong is also abundant with more than 200 clean, magnificent, and interesting temples, most appropriate for Thai chronological study. Ang Thong, originally known as Mueang Wiset Chai Chan, is located on the Noi River and the low-lying land of Chao Phraya River. It was an essential frontier outpost of Ayutthaya when fighting with the Burmese. As appeared in several parts of Ayutthaya chronicles, especially, prior to the defeat of Ayutthaya in 1767, the Burmese encamped at Mueang Wiset Chai Chan to attack Ayutthaya causing "Bang Rachan Battle", a noted event recorded in Thai history. Later during the Thonburi era, Mueang Wiset Chai Chan was moved to a new site on the left bank of the Chao Phraya River at Ban Bangkaeo and was named "Ang Thong" since its location was a fertile basin similar to a water and rice bowl of the country. Ang Thong is a small province located at the lower part of central Thailand as large as 968 square kilometers. Topographically, almost all of the Ang Thong area is low plain with two important rivers crossing the province, i.e. Noi River and Chao Phraya River. Ang Thong is administratively divided into 7 districts: Amphoe Mueang Ang Thong, Amphoe Wiset Chai Chan, Amphoe Sawaeng Ha, Amphoe Pa Mok, Amphoe Pho Thong, Amphoe Chaiyo, and Amphoe Samko. Borders are Sing Buri to the north, Ayutthaya to the south, Ayutthaya and Lop Buri to the east and Suphan Buri to the west. By car[ edit ] There are many routes from Bangkok. Three options are: Take the Phahonyothin Highway (Highway No. 32) from Bangkok and turn onto the Asian Highway, passing Amphoe Bang Pa-in, Amphoe Bang Pahan in Ayuttaya and then Ang Thong. Total distance is about 105 kilometers. Take the new road and cross Somdet Phra Pinklao Bridge until you reach Talingchan. Then turn onto Highway No. 340, passing Nonthaburi, Pathum Thani, Ayutthaya, Suphan Buri, until you reach Ang Thong. Total distance is about 150 kilometers. Take the Bangkok-Pathum Thani Highway, passing Amphoe Pak Kret. Then take Highway No. 3111, passing Amphoe Bang Sai, Amphoe Sena, and Ayutthaya. Then take Highway No. 3263 and follow by Highway No. 309, entering Amphoe Pa Mok until you reach Ang Thong. Total distance is about 140 kilometers. There are very few buses from anywhere now, only non aircon buses from surrounding districts. A minibus from Suphanburi will cost you B40, and drop you at the bus station. From Lopburi a minibus goes every 30 minutes and costs B50. Get around[ edit ] The only in town transport noticed was the usual motorcycle taxis, with the occasional tuk-tuk to be found in the market (very close to the city centre roundabout). But, the city centre is easily walked around. As you come from BKK, you cross the river and some 400 metres later arrive at the city centre roundabout. Directly across the roundabout, a little to the right is the bus station. About 100 metres to the left of the roundabout is the entrance to the huge market. A further 200 metres along this road on the right is the Ang Thong Hotel. (this is the road to Suphanburi.) See[ edit ][ add listing ] Wat Muang (วัดม่วง). Means Purple Temple. It is located 10Km towards Suphanburi on the main road to there, and is on the left hand side. As you come to it you will see this gigantic Buddha statue a couple of hundred metres from the road. It is very interesting, with a mix of Thai Buddhism, as well as Chinese Buddhism, and a good deal of the Hindu religion. Many Thai Temples include the Hindu religion since Theraveda Buddhism seems to have a great deal of this within it. In addition to the gigantic Buddha statue, inside the Temple which is quite beautiful, you will see numerous small statues, many of which include Ganesha and other Hindu images. Outside there are other areas containing statues- one of these has groups of both Chinese and Hindu statues. There are also historical statues, in particular, the wars between Burma and Thailand and these are quite graphic, and are within a large area. In addition also are statues of souls suffering in hell for their misdeeds, different groups of these, and a display of a judge judjing two rather distressed souls, with a scribe either side writing down the proceedings. A potential executioner is there also. Regrettably, everything is written in Thai - including the description of who these miscreants are, and the evil they have done as well as the punishment they are undergoing. Totally fascinating, whatever your personal belief, and a good way to understand some of the culture. Well worth a couple of hours of your time. To get here, take a Suphanburi minibus from the bus terminal and tell the driver where you want to get off. Will cost you B20. To return, cross the road from where you got off, and flag down a returning minibus. Eat[ edit ][ add listing ] Street Eats These are close to the centre of town, particularly near the market. From the Ang Thong Hotel, cross the road and go left. You will see three entrances to the market over some 200 metres.There are street eats in each. The third one has the greatest range. All have tables and chairs so you sit out back and eat. Everything is in Thai, but there are only a couple of stalls which do spicy food, and these are salad dishes (Tom Yam). For breakfast, there is a stall even further along from these - turn into the main shopping road and at the next market entrance on your right, there is a stall a little way along on your left. They serve Joke Moo Sai Kai(rice porridge with added egg). Well worth eating and costs B20. For your tea and coffee, there is a stall to the left of the Ang Thong Hotel a short distance away. Also to the right of the Ang Thong Hotel, about 100metres, is a good restaurant, which is particularly good with fish. Everything is written in Thai, so you must bluff your way through. Fried mixed veg with pork, and a large bottle of Chang beer was B120. Sleep[ edit ][ add listing ] ANG THONG HOTEL - โรงแรมอ่างทอง. Is close to the bus station, some 300 metres to the right and on the same side of the road. If coming from BKK, it is about two hundred metres on the left from the city roundabout away from the direction of BKK. The hotel name is written in Thai only. It appears to be about the only hotel in town, and is rather worn, but clean. It appears to have been renovated outside, but is not inside at all. Room with aircon, TV, hot water and bar fridge is B400. As at June 2016, there was no hot water in the shower in the morning. Fan rooms also available cheaper. There was a restaurant near reception but it is now closed. Across the road to the left about 100 metres, is the city market, where everything conceivable is sold! Get out[ edit ] To Suphanburi , Lopburi or Bangkok - minibuses are regular and relatively cheap.	i don't know
Prathiba Patil was the first woman President of which country?	19th December 1934: Pratibha Patil, first woman president, was born 19th December 1934: Pratibha Patil, first woman president of India, was born Pratibha Devisingh Patil, the 12th President of India and the first woman to hold the office, was born on December 19, 1934, at Nadgaon village in Maharashtra’s Jalgaon district. After completing her basic education, she secured a Master’s degree in Political Science and Economics from Jalgaon and a law degree from Mumbai. She practiced law at the Jalgaon District Court. She married Devisingh Ransingh Shekhawat on July 7, 1965. Patil was elected to the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly on a Congress ticket in 1962 and consistently won the state elections between 1967 and 1985. She became a Rajya Sabha member in 1985 and was elected to the Lok Sabha in the 1991 general elections from Amravati onstituency. On November 8, 2004, Patil became the Governor of Rajasthan, the first woman to occupy the post. Three years later she emerged as a compromise candidate for President and her name was announced by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance on June 14, 2007. She won the election that was held on July 19. Her challenger was the then Vice President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, backed by the opposition National Democratic Alliance. According to a BBC profile, Patil “was by no means a unanimous choice for the role”. But her long association with the Gandhi family made the “low-profile governor” of Rajasthan the “favoured presidential candidate of Sonia Gandhi”. Patil defeated Shekhawat by a margin of over 3 lakh votes, securing nearly 66 per cent of the total votes cast. The Hindu wrote: “Reflecting the UPA-Left’s national spread…Patil made her presence felt in every State, whereas…Shekhawat drew a blank inWest Bengal, Kerala, Tripura and Mizoram. He secured healthy margins inGujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.” She was sworn in as President on July 25, 2007. In an article on the newly-elected President Outlook magazine wrote: “Pratibha Patil not only has to be a ‘people's president’ — she needs to come up to the expectations of the women of this country. For instance, her women critics — ranging from the fashionably vitriolic Shobha De to the volubly feminist Madhu Kishwar — have dismissed her elevation out of hand, saying that her becoming president will not materially change the condition of women in the country.” When asked about her decision to keep her maiden name after she got married, Patil said: “I had contested elections [in Maharashtra] before I got married — people knew me as Pratibha Patil. So I kept the name. People accepted it — my husband accepted it.” The Hindu’s N. Ram wrote 17 months into her Presidency:…Pratibha Devisingh Patil…is a quiet-spoken head of state. A lawyer by training, she has brought to her job decades of political, legislative, and administrative experience, inMaharashtra and elsewhere. She clearly believes in playing it by the book. Understanding her role sensitively, she has observed the constitutional restraints to the point of being non-obtrusive, in contrast (in this last respect) to her charismatic predecessor [A.P.J. Abdul Kalam].” When her term ended in 2012, opinions were mixed about how she had fared as President. Praveen Swami wrote in The Hindu: “President Patil’s term in office has been remarkably free of the kinds of friction that erupted during the tenures of some past Presidents — controversies that, on occasion, led Rashtrapati Bhavan towards collision with the political executive…President Patil has also quietly used her office to focus attention on the crisis in India's countryside — a crisis that has claimed thousands of lives in Maharashtra, a State that she has decades-old ties of kinship and social engagement with. In her time in office, she has often spoken publicly on the need for change in India's agrarian policies…” On the other hand the journalist Sunetra Choudhury believed that Patil had “lived up to all the criticism that was thrown by her critics”. Choudhury described her as “just another loyalist Congressperson who did exactly what her government asked her to do”. In her last Republic Day speech as President, Patil told the nation that there seemed to be a tendency in the country to doubt almost everything. “Do we not have faith in our own people’s strengths and in our institutions? Can we afford distrust amongst ourselves?” the President said. “Nations are built through great patience and sacrifices. Concordand not discord is the way forward for a country as large as India . . . Negativity and rejection cannot be the path for a vibrant country that is moving to seek its destiny.” Also on this day:	India
Rarotonga is the most populous island of which group of islands?	India elects first female president - World news - South and Central Asia \| NBC News India elects first female president Pratibha Patil, 74, was expected to defeat incumbent vice president Below: Advertise Prakash Singh / AFP - Getty Images Newly elected Indian President Pratibha Patil stands outside her home in New Delhi, India on Saturday after learning of her victory. updated 7/21/2007 11:11:30 AM ET 2007-07-21T15:11:30 + - NEW DELHI — India elected Pratibha Patil as the country’s first female president Saturday in a vote seen as a victory for the hundreds of millions of Indian women who contend with widespread discrimination. Patil received 65.82 percent of the votes cast by national lawmakers and state legislators, said Election Commission head P.D.T. Achary. She had been widely expected to win. Patil, the 72-year-old candidate of the governing Congress party and its political allies, defeated incumbent Vice President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, the candidate of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party. “I am grateful to the people of India, to all the men and women of India,” Patil said in a brief statement to reporters. “This is a victory of the principles of which our Indian people uphold,” she said flashing the victory sign to her supporters. Her candidacy was dogged by unprecedented mudslinging from the moment it was agreed upon by coalition members, marring the usually genteel process of presidential elections. Hundreds of delighted Congress supporters danced in the streets as the results were announced, banging drums and setting off firecrackers outside her home in New Delhi and in her hometown in the state of Maharashtra. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi — the head of the Congress party — were among the first to visit her home to congratulate her. She will be sworn in for a five-year term as India’s 13th president on July 25. Advertise The election of a woman to the largely ceremonial post continues an Indian tradition using the presidency to bolster disadvantaged communities. Hindu-majority India has had three Muslim presidents, including incumbent A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, since winning independence from Britain in 1947. It has also had a president from the minority Sikh community, and Kalam’s predecessor, K. R. Narayanan, came from the bottom of the society’s complex social hierarchy. Other Indian women in power positions While India has had several women in positions of power — most notably Indira Gandhi, who was elected to the more powerful position of prime minister in 1966, and her daughter-in-law, Sonia Gandhi— many women still face rampant discrimination. Many Indian families regard daughters as a liability due to a tradition requiring a bride’s family to pay a groom’s family a large dowry of cash and gifts. As a consequence their education is often neglected, and many don’t get adequate medical treatment when ill. International groups estimate that some 10 million female fetuses have been aborted in the country over the last two decades. It was not clear how much impact Patil will have as president. Opponents derided her nomination, saying she lacked the national stature for the job and her only qualification was her unswerving loyalty to the powerful Gandhi family. Her emergence onto the national stage also highlighted several scandals involving family members, two of who are under investigation by police. And her comments ahead of the election calling on Indian women to abandon wearing headscarves was roundly denounced by Muslim leaders and by historians — who disputed her assertion that women only started wearing them in India to save themselves from 16th century Muslim invaders. The nomination of Patil also surprised many, given her lack of national recognition despite more than four decades in politics. Patil was a lawyer before she joined politics and became a member of the state legislature in 1962. She was appointed a minister several times in the Maharashtra state government between 1962 and 1985. In the following decade, she served as a member of Indian Parliament. Her most recent post was as governor of the northern state of Rajasthan. © 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.	i don't know
British author Vyvyan Holland was the son of which writer and poet?	Learn and talk about Vyvyan Holland, Alumni of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, British Army personnel of World War I, English male writers, English people of Irish descent Biography[ edit ] Vyvyan Wilde in 1891 aged 5 After Wilde was convicted of the charge of "gross indecency" and imprisoned, Constance changed her surname, and those of their sons, to Holland. [1] She took the boys to Switzerland and then enrolled them in an English-speaking school in Germany. Vyvyan was unhappy there. Because of this, but also to improve security, Vyvyan was moved to a Jesuit school in Monaco . He converted to Catholicism there and subsequently attended Stonyhurst College , also run by Jesuits. However, his brother Cyril remained at the school in Germany. [2] After Constance's death in 1898 her relatives sought legal counsel to prevent Oscar Wilde from seeing his sons again. Vyvyan studied law at Trinity Hall in the University of Cambridge from 1905, but tired of his studies and left Cambridge in 1907. [3] On 20 July 1909 he accompanied his father's friend Robert Ross to witness the reburial of his father's remains from Bagneux Cemetery to Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Holland resumed his study of law at the age of 22, and was called to the Bar of England and Wales by the Inner Temple in 1912. He then began to write poems and short stories. [4] Holland's first wife was Violet Craigie, whom he married in 1913. At the start of the First World War in 1914 he was first commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the Interpreters Corps, but later transferred into 114 Battery, XXV Bde Royal Field Artillery . He was demobilised on 27 July 1919 and was awarded an OBE . His brother Cyril had been killed by a German sniper on 9 May 1915, during the Battle of Festubert . Holland went on to become an author and translator. At the beginning of the Second World War he was offered a position as a translator and editor for the BBC , a post he held for six years. In September 1943 he married his second wife, Dorothy Thelma Helen Besant. [5] In 1947 he and Thelma left for Australia and New Zealand, where Mrs Holland had been invited to give lectures on fashionable dress in 19th-century Australia. [4] The couple lived in Melbourne from 1948 to 1952. Their only child, Merlin Holland , became a publisher, a dealer in glass and ceramics, and a writer who edited and published several works about his grandfather. Vyvyan Holland died in London in 1967 aged 80. Original courtesy of Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vyvyan_Holland — Please support Wikipedia. This page uses Creative Commons Licensed content from Wikipedia . A portion of the proceeds from advertising on Digplanet goes to supporting Wikipedia. We're sorry, but there's no news about "Vyvyan Holland" right now. Limit to books that you can completely read online Include partial books (book previews) Oops, we seem to be having trouble contacting Twitter Support Wikipedia A portion of the proceeds from advertising on Digplanet goes to supporting Wikipedia. Please add your support for Wikipedia! Searchlight Group Digplanet also receives support from Searchlight Group. Visit Searchlight Copyright © 2009-2016 Digparty. All rights reserved.	Oscar Wilde
The 2005 film ‘Wolf Creek’ is set in which country?	Oscar Wilde :: English Language Poet :: English Poetry Statue of Oscar Wilde in Dublin's Merrion Square (Archbishop Ryan Park). Birth and early life Oscar Wilde was the second son born into an Anglo-Irish family, at 21 Westland Row, Dublin, to Sir William Wilde and his wife Jane Francesca Elgee. Jane was a successful writer and an Irish nationalist, known also as 'Speranza', while Sir William was Ireland's leading ear and eye surgeon, and wrote books on archaeology and folklore. He was a renowned philanthropist, and his dispensary for the care of the city's poor, in Lincoln Place at the rear of Trinity College, Dublin, was the forerunner of the Dublin Eye and Ear Hospital, now located at Adelaide Road. In June 1855, the family moved to 1 Merrion Square in a fashionable residential area, where Wilde's sister, Isola, was born in 1856. Here, Lady Wilde held a regular Saturday afternoon salon with guests including Sheridan le Fanu, Samuel Lever, George Petrie, Isaac Butt and Samuel Ferguson. Oscar was educated at home up to the age of nine. He attended Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, Fermanagh from 1864 to 1871, spending the summer months with his family in rural Waterford, Wexford and at Sir William's family home in Mayo. Here the Wilde brothers played with the old George Moore. After leaving Portora, Wilde studied classics at Trinity College, Dublin, from 1871 to 1874. He was an outstanding student, and won the Berkeley Gold Medal, the highest award available to classics students at Trinity. He was granted a scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he continued his studies from 1874 to 1878 and where he became a part of the Aesthetic movement, one of its tenets being to make an art of life. While at Magdalen, he won the 1878 Newdigate Prize for his poem Ravenna, which he read out at Encaenia; he failed, though, to win the Chancellor's English Essay Prize for an essay that would be published posthumously as The Rise of Historical Criticism (1909). In November 1878, he graduated with a double first in classical moderations and literae humaniores, or 'greats'. Marriage and family After graduating from Magdalen, Wilde returned to Dublin, where he met and fell in love with Florence Balcombe. She in turn became engaged to Bram Stoker. On hearing of her engagement, Wilde wrote to her stating his intention to leave Ireland permanently. He left in 1878 and was to return to his native country only twice, for brief visits. The next six years were spent in London, Paris and the United States, where he travelled to deliver lectures. Wilde's address in the 1881 British Census is given as 1 Tite Street, London. The head of the household is listed as Frank Miles with whom Wilde shared rooms at this address. In London, he met Constance Lloyd, daughter of wealthy Queen's Counsel Horace Lloyd. She was visiting Dublin in 1884, when Oscar was in the city to give lectures at the Gaiety Theatre. He proposed to her and they married on May 29, 1884 in Paddington, London. Constance's allowance of £250 allowed the Wildes to live in relative luxury. The couple had two sons, Cyril (1885) and Vyvyan (1886). After Oscar's downfall, Constance took the surname Holland for herself and the boys. She died in 1898 following spinal surgery and was buried in Staglieno Cemetery in Genoa, Italy. Cyril was killed in France in World War I. Vyvyan survived the war and went on to become an author and translator. He published his memoirs in 1954. Vyvyan's son, Merlin Holland, has edited and published several works about his grandfather. Oscar Wilde's niece, Dolly Wilde, was involved in a lengthy lesbian affair with writer Natalie Clifford Barney. Aestheticism Keller cartoon from the Wasp of San Francisco depicting Wilde on the occasion of his visit there in 1882. While at Magdalen College, Wilde became particularly well known for his role in the aesthetic and decadent movements. He began wearing his hair long and openly scorning so-called "manly" sports, and began decorating his rooms with peacock feathers, lilies, sunflowers, blue china and other objets d'art. Legends persist that his behaviour cost him a dunking in the River Cherwell in addition to having his rooms (which still survive as student accommodation at his old college) trashed, but the cult spread among certain segments of society to such an extent that languishing attitudes, "too-too" costumes and aestheticism generally became a recognised pose. Publications such as the Springfield Republican commented on Wilde's behaviour during his visit to Boston in order to give lectures on aesthetiscism, suggesting that Wilde's conduct was more of a bid for notoriety rather than a devotion to beauty and the aesthetic. Wilde's mode of dress also came under attack by critics such as Higginson, who wrote in his paper Unmanly Manhood, at his general concern that Wildes' effeminacy would influence the behaviour of men and women, arguing that his poetry "eclipses masculine ideals [..that..] under such influence men would become effeminate dandies'. He also scrutinises the link that Oscar Wildes' writing, personal image and homosexuality may have, resulting in calling his work and lifestyle 'Immoral'. Wilde was deeply impressed by the English writers John Ruskin and Walter Pater, who argued for the central importance of art in life. He later commented ironically on this view when he wrote, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, "All art is quite useless", a statement meant to be read literally, as it was in keeping with the doctrine of Art for art's sake, coined by the philosopher Victor Cousin, promoted by Theophile Gautier and brought into prominence by James McNeill Whistler. The aesthetic movement, represented by the school of William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, had a permanent influence on English decorative art. As the leading aesthete in Britain, Wilde became one of the most prominent personalities of his day. Though he was sometimes ridiculed for them, his paradoxes and witty sayings were quoted on all sides. Aestheticism in general was caricatured in Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta Patience (1881). While Patience was a success in New York it was not known how much the aesthetic movement had penetrated the rest of America. So Richard D'Oyly Carte invited Wilde for a lecture tour of North America. D'Oyly Carte felt this tour would "prime the pump" for the tour of Patience, making sure that the ticket-buying public was aware of one of the movement's charming personalities. This was duly arranged, Wilde arriving on 3 January 1882, aboard the SS Arizona. Wilde is reputed to have told a customs officer "I have nothing to declare except my genius", although there is no contemporary evidence for the remark. In 1879 Wilde started to teach Aesthetic values in London. In 1882 he went on a lecture tour in the United States and Canada. He was torn apart by no small number of critics — The Wasp, a San Francisco newspaper, published a cartoon ridiculing Wilde and Aestheticism — but he was also surprisingly well received in such rough-and-tumble settings as the mining town of Leadville, Colorado. [1] On his return to the United Kingdom, he worked as a reviewer for the Pall Mall Gazette in the years 1887-1889. Afterwards he became the editor of Woman's World. Politically, Wilde endorsed an anarchistic brand of socialism, expounding his beliefs in the text "The Soul of Man under Socialism". Wilde's sexuality Robert Ross at twenty-four Though Wilde's sexual orientation has variously been considered bisexual, homosexual, and paederastic, Wilde himself felt he belonged to a culture of male love inspired by the Greek paederastic tradition.[1] In describing his own sexual identity, Wilde used the term Socratic.[2] He may have had significant sexual relationships with (in chronological order) Frank Miles, Constance Lloyd (Wilde's wife), Robert Baldwin Ross, and Lord Alfred Douglas ("Bosie"). Wilde also had numerous sexual encounters with working-class male youths, who were often rent boys. Biographers generally believe Wilde was introduced to homosexuality in 1885 (the year after his wedding) by the 17-year-old Robert Baldwin Ross. Neil McKenna's biography The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde (2003) theorises that Wilde was aware of his homosexuality much earlier, from the moment of his first kiss with another boy at the age of 16. According to McKenna, after arriving at Oxford in 1874, Wilde tentatively explored his sexuality, discovering that he could feel passionate romantic love for "fair, slim" choirboys, but was more sexually drawn towards the swarthy young rough trade. By the late 1870s, Wilde was already preoccupied with the philosophy of same-sex love, and had befriended a group of Uranian (pederastic) poets and homosexual law reformers, becoming acquainted with the work of gay-rights pioneer Karl-Heinrich Ulrichs. Wilde also met Walt Whitman in America in 1882, writing to a friend that there was "no doubt" about the great American poet's sexual orientation — "I have the kiss of Walt Whitman still on my lips," he boasted. He even lived with the society painter Frank Miles, who was a few years his senior and may have been his lover. However, writes McKenna, he was at one time unhappy with the direction of his sexual and romantic desires, and, hoping that marriage would cure him, he married Constance Lloyd in 1884. McKenna's account has been criticized by some reviewers who find it too speculative, although not necessarily implausible.[2] Regardless of whether or not Wilde was still naïve when he first met Ross, Ross did play an important role in the development of Wilde's understanding of his own sexuality. Ross was aware of Wilde's poems before they met, and indeed had been beaten for reading them. He was also unmoved by the Victorian prohibition against homosexuality. By Richard Ellmann's account, Ross, "...so young and yet so knowing, was determined to seduce Wilde." Later, Ross boasted to Lord Alfred Douglas that he was "the first boy Oscar ever had" and there seems to have been much jealousy between them. Soon, Wilde entered a world of regular sex with youths such as servants and newsboys, in their mid to late teens, whom he would meet in homosexual bars or brothels. In Wilde's words, the relations were akin to "feasting with panthers", and he revelled in the risk: "the danger was half the excitement." In his public writings, Wilde's first celebration of romantic love between men and boys can be found in The Portrait of Mr. W. H. (1889), in which he propounds a theory that Shakespeare's sonnets were written out of the poet's love of Elizabethan boy actor "Willie Hughes". In the early summer of 1891 he was introduced by the poet Lionel Johnson to the twenty-two-year-old Lord Alfred Douglas, an undergraduate at Oxford at the time. An intimate friendship immediately sprang up between the two, but it was not initially sexual, nor did the sexuality progress far when it did eventually take place. According to Douglas, speaking in his old age, for the first six months their relations remained on a purely intellectual and emotional level. Despite the fact that "from the second time he saw me, when he gave me a copy of Dorian Gray which I took with me to Oxford he made overtures to me. It was not till I had known him for at least six months and after I had seen him over and over again and he had twice stayed with me in Oxford, that I gave in to him. I did with him and allowed him to do just what was done among boys at Winchester and Oxford . Sodomy never took place between us, nor was it attempted or dreamed of. Wilde treated me as an older one does a younger one at school." After Wilde realized that Douglas only consented in order to please him, as his instincts drew him not to men but to younger boys, Wilde permanently ceased his physical attentions.[3] For a few years they lived together more or less openly in a number of locations. Wilde and some within his upper-class social group also began to speak about homosexual law reform, and their commitment to "The Cause" was formalised by the founding of a highly secretive organisation called the Order of Chaeronea, of which Wilde was a member. A homosexual novel, Teleny or The Reverse of the Medal, written at about the same time and clandestinely published in 1893, has been attributed to Oscar Wilde, but was probably, in fact, a combined effort by a number of Wilde's friends, which Wilde edited. Wilde also periodically contributed to the Uranian literary journal The Chameleon. Lord Alfred's first mentor had been his cosmopolitan and effeminate grandfather Alfred Montgomery. His older brother Francis Douglas, Viscount Drumlanrig also had a (possibly homosexual) association with the Prime Minister Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, which ended on Francis's death in a shooting accident, a possible suicide. Lord Alfred's father John Sholto Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry came to believe his sons had been corrupted by older homosexuals, or as he phrased it in a letter, "Snob Queers like Rosebery".[4] As he had attempted to do with Rosebery, Queensberry confronted Wilde and Lord Alfred on several occasions, but each time Wilde was able to mollify him. Divorced and spending wildly, Queensberry was known for his outspoken views and the boxing roughs who often accompanied him. He abhorred his younger son and plagued the boy with threats to cut him off if he did not stop idling his life away. Queensberry was determined to end the friendship with Wilde. Wilde was in full flow of rehearsal when Bosie returned from a diplomatic posting to Cairo, around the time Queensberry visited Wilde at his Tite Street home. He angrily pushed past Wilde's servant and entered the ground floor study, shouting obscenities and asking Wilde about his divorce (rumours were rife). Wilde became incensed, but it is said he calmly told his manservant that Queensberry was the most infamous brute in London, and that he was not to be shown into the house ever again. Despite the presence of a bodyguard, Wilde forced Queensberry to leave in no uncertain terms. On the opening night of The Importance of Being Earnest Queensberry further planned to insult and socially embarrass Wilde by throwing a bouquet of turnips. Wilde was tipped off, and Queensberry was barred from entering the theatre. Wilde took legal advice against him, and wished to prosecute, but Wilde's friends refused to give evidence against the Marquess and hence the case was dropped. Wilde and Bosie left London for a vacation in Monte Carlo and while away, on February 18, 1895, the Marquess left his calling card at Wilde's family Club.[5] Trial, imprisonment, and transfer to Reading Gaol The Marquess of Queensberry's calling card with the offending inscription Wilde made a complaint of criminal libel against Lord Alfred Douglas's father, the ninth Marquess of Queensberry, for leaving him a calling card at his club. The offending card read For Oscar Wilde, posing Somdomite (sic). The Marquess was arrested and later freed on bail. The libel trial became a cause célèbre as salacious details of Wilde's private life with Alfred Taylor and Lord Alfred Douglas began to appear in the press. A team of detectives, with the help of the actor Charles Brookfield, had directed Queensberry's lawyers (led by Edward Carson QC) to the world of the Victorian underground. Here Wilde's association with blackmailers and rent boys, cross dressers and homosexual brothels was recorded, and various persons involved were interviewed, some being coerced to appear as witnesses.[6] The libel trial opened on April 3 among scenes of near hysteria both in the press and the public galleries. After a shaky start, Wilde regained some ground when defending his art from attacks of perversion. The Picture of Dorian Gray came under fierce moral criticism, but Wilde fended it off with his usual charm and confidence on artistic matters. Some of his personal letters to Lord Alfred were examined, their wording challenged as inappropriate and evidence of immoral relations. Queensberry's legal team proposed that the libel was published for the public good, but it was only when the prosecution moved on to sexual matters that Wilde noticeably baulked. He was challenged on the reason given for not kissing a young servant; Wilde had replied, "He was a particularly plain boy--unfortunately ugly--I pitied him for it."[7] The defendant's lawyers pressed him on the point. Wilde hesitated, complaining of Carson's insults and attempts to unnerve him. It was the beginning of the end. The prosecution eventually dropped the case. The defence threat to bring rent boys to the stand to testify to Wilde's corruption and influence over Queensberry's son effectively crippled the case. After Wilde left the court a warrant for his arrest was applied for and later served on him at the Cadogan Hotel, Knightsbridge. That moment was immortalised by Sir John Betjeman's poem. He was arrested for "gross indecency" under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 In British legislation of the time, this term implied 'homosexual acts not amounting to buggery', according to the scholar H. Montgomery Hyde.[8]. After his arrest Wilde sent Robert Ross to his home in Tite Street with orders to remove certain items. Ross broke into the bedroom and rescued some of Wilde's belongings. Wilde was then imprisoned on remand at Holloway where he received daily visits from Lord Alfred Douglas. Events moved quickly and his prosecution opened on April 26, 1895. Wilde had already begged Douglas to leave London for Paris, but Douglas complained bitterly, even wanting to take the stand; however, he was pressed to go and soon fled to the Hotel du Monde. Ross and many others also left England during this time. When under cross examination Wilde did not speak directly for same-sex love, but he nevertheless defended Douglas's poem about it eloquently: Charles Gill (pros.): What is, "the love that dares not speak its name?" Wilde: "The love that dares not speak its name" in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art, like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as "the love that dares not speak its name," and on that account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an older and a younger man, when the older man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it, and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it." This trial ended with the jury unable to reach a verdict. As a result, Wilde's counsel, Sir Edward Clark, was finally able to agree bail. Wilde was freed from Holloway and went into hiding at the house of Ernest and Ada Leverson, both firm friends of his. The Reverend Stuart Hedlam put up most of the £5,000 bail,[9] having disagreed with Wilde's heinous treatment by the press and the courts. Edward Carson, it was said, asked for the service to let up on Wilde.[10] His request was denied. If the Crown was seen to give up at that point, it would have appeared that there was one rule for some and not others, and outrage would have followed. The final trial was presided over by Mr. Justice [Sir Alfred] Wills. On May 25, 1895 Wilde was convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to two years' hard labour. His conviction angered some observers, one of whom demanded, in a published letter, "Why does not the Crown prosecute every boy at a public or private school or half the men in the Universities?" in reference to the presumed pederastic proclivities of English upper class men.[11] He was imprisoned first in Pentonville and then in Wandsworth prison in London, and finally transferred in November to Reading Prison, some 30 miles west of London. Wilde knew the town of Reading from happier times when boating on the Thames and also from visits to the Palmer family, including a tour of the famous Huntley & Palmers biscuit factory quite close to the prison. Now known as prisoner C. 3.3, (which described the fact that he was in block C, floor three, cell three) he was not, at first, even allowed paper and pen to write with, but a later governor was more amenable to reforms. Wilde was championed by the reformer Lord Haldane who had helped transfer him and allow him the penned catharsis he needed. During his time in prison, Wilde wrote a 50,000 word letter to Douglas, which he was not allowed to send while still a prisoner, but which he was allowed to take with him at the end of his sentence. On his release, he gave the manuscript to Ross, who may or may not have carried out Wilde's instructions to send a copy to Douglas who, in turn, denied having received it. Ross published a much expurgated version of the letter (about a third of it) in 1905 (four years after Wilde's death) with the title De Profundis, expanding it slightly for an edition of Wilde's collected works in 1908, and then donated it to the British Museum on the understanding that it would not be made public until 1960. In 1949, Wilde's son Vyvyan Holland published it again, including parts formerly omitted, but relying on a faulty typescript bequeathed to him by Ross. Its complete and correct publication did not take place until 1962, in The Letters of Oscar Wilde. Release and death Wilde's tomb, sculpted by Sir Jacob Epstein, in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris Prison was unkind to Wilde's health and after he was released on May 19, 1897 he spent his last three years penniless, in self-imposed exile from society and artistic circles. He went under the assumed name of Sebastian Melmoth, after the famously "penetrated" Saint Sebastian and the devilish central character of Wilde's great-uncle Charles Robert Maturin's gothic novel Melmoth the Wanderer. Nevertheless, Wilde lost no time in returning to his previous pleasures. According to Douglas, Ross "dragged [him] back to homosexual practices" during the summer of 1897, which they spent together in Berneval. After his release, he also wrote the famous poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol. Wilde spent his last years in the Hôtel d'Alsace, now known as L'Hôtel, in Paris, where he was notorious and uninhibited about enjoying the pleasures he had been denied in England. Again according to Douglas, "he was hand in glove with all the little boys on the Boulevard. He never attempted to conceal it." In a letter to Ross, Wilde laments, "Today I bade good-bye, with tears and one kiss, to the beautiful Greek boy. he is the nicest boy you ever introduced to me."[12] Just a month before his death he is quoted as saying, "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or other of us has got to go." Wilde died of cerebral meningitis on November 30, 1900. Different opinions are given on the cause of the meningitis; Richard Ellmann claimed it was syphilitic; Merlin Holland, Wilde's grandson, thought this to be a misconception, noting that Wilde's meningitis followed a surgical intervention, perhaps a mastoidectomy; Wilde's physicians, Dr. Paul Cleiss and A'Court Tucker, reported that the condition stemmed from an old suppuration of the right ear (une ancienne suppuration de l'oreille droite d'ailleurs en traitement depuis plusieurs années) and did not allude to syphilis. Most modern scholars and doctors agree that syphilis was unlikely to have been the cause of his death. On his deathbed he was received into the Roman Catholic church. Robert Ross, in his letter to More Adey dated 14 December 1900, states "He was conscious that people were in the room, and raised his hand when I asked him whether he understood. He pressed our hands. I then sent in search of a priest, and after great difficulty found Father Cuthbert Dunne. who came with me at once and administered Baptism and Extreme Unction. - Oscar could not take the Eucharist".[13] Wilde was buried in the Cimetière de Bagneux outside Paris but was later moved to Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. His tomb in Père Lachaise was designed by sculptor Sir Jacob Epstein, at the request of Robert Ross, who also asked for a small compartment to be made for his own ashes. Ross's ashes were transferred to the tomb in 1950. The numerous spots on it are lipstick traces from admirers. The modernist angel depicted as a relief on the tomb was originally complete with male genitals. They were broken off as obscene and kept as a paperweight by a succession of Père Lachaise Cemetery keepers. Their current whereabouts are unknown. In the summer of 2000, intermedia artist Leon Johnson performed a 40 minute ceremony entitled Re-membering Wilde in which a commissioned silver prosthesis was installed to replace the vandalised genitals.[14] The manuscripts of Oscar Wilde Main article: The Manuscripts of Oscar Wilde The manuscripts of A Florentine Tragedy and an essay on Shakespeare's sonnets were the objects that Ross had taken from Wilde's Tite Street house in 1895 at his request. In 1904, a five-act tragedy, The Duchess of Padua, written by Wilde about 1883 for Mary Anderson but not acted by her, was published in German (Die Herzogin von Padua, translated by Max Meyerfeld) in Berlin. The original transcript of the libel trial turned up when the British Library put out a call for all things Wilde to celebrate the centenary of his death. Wilde's grandson published it under the title of 'Irish Peacock & Scarlet Marquis' in 2003. Biographies Oscar Wilde's house in Tite Street, Chelsea After Wilde's death, his friend Frank Harris wrote a biography, Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confessions. Of his other close friends, Robert Sherard, Robert Ross, Charles Ricketts and Lord Alfred Douglas variously published biographies, reminiscences or correspondence. An account of the argument between Frank Harris, Lord Alfred Douglas and Oscar Wilde as to the advisability of Wilde's prosecuting Queensberry can be found in the preface to George Bernard Shaw's play The Dark Lady of the Sonnets. In 1946, Hesketh Pearson published The Life of Oscar Wilde (Methuen), containing materials derived from conversations with Bernard Shaw, George Alexander, Herbert Beerbohm Tree and many others who had known or worked with Wilde. This is a lively read, although inevitably somewhat dated in its approach. It gives a particularly vivid impression of what Wilde's conversation must have been like. In 1954 Vyvyan Holland published his memoir Son of Oscar Wilde. It was revised and updated by Merlin Holland in 1999. In 1955 Sewell Stokes wrote a novel, Beyond His Means, based on the life of Oscar Wilde. In 1975 H. Montgomery Hyde published Oscar Wilde: A Biography. In 1983 Peter Ackroyd published The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde, a novel in the form of a pretended memoir. In 1987 literary biographer Richard Ellmann published his detailed work Oscar Wilde. In 1997 Merlin Holland published a book entitled The Wilde Album. This rather small volume contained many pictures and other Wilde memorabilia, much of which had not been published before. It includes 27 pictures taken by the portrait photographer Napoleon Sarony, one of which is at the beginning of this article. 1999 saw the publication of Oscar Wilde on Stage and Screen written by Robert Tanitch. This book is a comprehensive record of Wilde's life and work as presented on stage and screen from 1880 until 1999. It includes cast lists and snippets of reviews. In 2000 Columbia University professor Barbara Belford published the biography, "Oscar Wilde: A Certain Genius." 2003 saw the publication of the first complete account of Wilde's sexual and emotional life in The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde by Neil McKenna (Century/Random House). 2005 saw the publication of The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde, by literary biographer Joseph Pearce. It explores the Catholic sensibility in his art, his interior suffering and dissatisfaction, and his lifelong fascination with the Catholic Church, which led to his deathbed conversion. Biographical films, television series and stage plays The play Oscar Wilde (1936), written by Leslie and Sewell Stokes, based on the life of Wilde, included Frank Harris as a character. Starring Robert Morley, the play opened at the Gate Theatre in London in 1936, and two years later was staged in New York where its success launched the career of Morley as a stage actor. Two films of his life were released in 1960. The first to be released was Oscar Wilde starring Robert Morley and based on the Stokes brothers' play mentioned above. Then came The Trials of Oscar Wilde starring Peter Finch. At the time homosexuality was still a criminal offence in the UK and both films were rather cagey in touching on the subject without being explicit. In 1960, Irish actor Micheál MacLiammóir began performing a one-man show called The Importance of Being Oscar. The show was heavily influenced by Brechtian theory and contained many poems and samples of Wilde's writing. The play was a success and MacLiammoir toured it with success everywhere he went. It was published in 1963. In the summer of 1977 Vincent Price began performing the one-man play Diversions and Delights. Written by John Gay and directed by Joe Hardy, the premise of the play is that an aging Oscar Wilde, in order to earn some much-needed money, gave a lecture on his life in a Parisian theatre on November 28, 1899 (just a year before his death). The play was a success everywhere it was performed, except for its New York City run. It was revived in 1990 in London with Donald Sinden in the role. In 1978 London Weekend Television produced a television series about the life of Lillie Langtry entitled Lillie. In it Peter Egan played Oscar. The bulk of his scenes portrayed their close friendship up to and including their tours of America in 1882. Thereafter, he was in a few more scenes leading up to his trials in 1895. Michael Gambon portrayed Wilde on British Television in 1983 in the three-part BBC series Oscar concentrating on the trial and prison term. 1988 saw Nickolas Grace playing Wilde in Ken Russell's film Salome's Last Dance. In 1989 Terry Eagleton premiered his play St. Oscar. Eagleton agrees that only one line in the entire play is taken directly from Wilde, while the rest of the dialogue is his own fancy. The play is also influenced by Brechtian theory. A fuller look at his life, without any of the restrictions of the 1960 films, is Wilde (1997) starring Stephen Fry. Fry, an acknowledged Wilde scholar, also appeared as Wilde in the short-lived American television series Ned Blessing (1993). Moises Kaufman's 1997 play Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde uses real quotes and transcripts of Wilde's three trials. Wilde appears as a supporting character in Tom Stoppard's 1997 play The Invention of Love and is referenced extensively in Stoppard's 1974 play Travesties. David Hare's 1998 play The Judas Kiss portrays Wilde as a manly homosexual Christ figure. The main character in the Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty musical A Man of No Importance identifies himself with Oscar Wilde, and Wilde appears to him several times. Actor/playwright Jade Esteban Estrada portrayed Wilde in the solo musical comedy ICONS: The Lesbian and Gay History of the World, Vol. 1 in 2002. Oscar: in October 2004, a stage musical by Mike Read about Oscar Wilde, closed after just one night at the Shaw Theatre in Euston after a severe critical mauling. A play was made in Argentina called "The importance of being Oscar Wilde" produced by Pepito Cibrian Oscar Wilde in modern popular culture Wilde is an iconic figure in modern popular culture, both as a wit and as an archetype of gay identity. Such references to him include a Monty Python skit called "Oscar Wilde and Friends,"[15] anachronistic inclusion in Todd Haynes' 1998 film Velvet Goldmine (where Wilde's persona is presented as a precursor to glam rock); Dorian, Will Self's 2004 reworking of Wilde's novel, set in 1981; and Melmoth, Dave Sim's comic book, which retells the story of Wilde's final months with the names and places slightly altered to fit the world of Cerebus the Aardvark. Many songs have alluded to Wilde or his works, including The Smiths' "Cemetry Gates" and British singer / songwriter James Blunt's "Tears and Rain" (which mentions Dorian Gray). The Libertines sing about how nice it would be to be "Dorian Gray, just for a day" in their song "Narcissist" on their 2004 LP. There is also a mention of Dorian Gray and "A picture in gray..." in the song "The Ocean" by U2 from their debut album Boy. "The Long Voyage" from French producer Hector Zazou's 1994 album Chansons des mers froides, on which Suzanne Vega and John Cale recite lyrics based on Wilde's poem "Silhouettes". "Resist", by Canadian rock group Rush, was inspired by Wilde.[citation needed] Given his brilliance of phrasing, his ability to twist common axioms, and his biographical flourishes, Wilde continues to provide material for venues such as Uncyclopedia, a parody of Wikipedia.[16] Oscar Wilde's image is currently used as the logo of the International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival. Bibliography The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898) Plays Vera; or, The Nihilists (1880) The Duchess of Padua (1883) Salomé (French version) (1893, first performed in Paris 1896) Lady Windermere's Fan (1892) A Woman of No Importance (1893) Salomé: A Tragedy in One Act: Translated from the French of Oscar Wilde by Lord Alfred Douglas with illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley (1894) An Ideal Husband (1895) (text) The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) (text) La Sainte Courtisane and A Florentine Tragedy Fragmentary. First published 1908 in Methuen's Collected Works (Dates are dates of first performance, which approximate better with the probable date of composition than dates of publication.) Prose List of people on stamps of Ireland William Andrews Clark Memorial Library Notes ^ "We know that Wilde engaged in sexual acts with males, loved obsessively at least one male, cultivated a style of male-male intimacy and of Aesthetic transgression, thought of himself as in a tradition fostered by Greek pederastic love, expressed guilt for his same-sex acts/desires." John Maynard, "Sexuality and Love," in A Companion to Victorian Poetry, Ed. Richard Cronin et al. ^ Rictor Norton, A Critique of Social Constructionism and Postmodern Queer Theory, "A False 'Birth'," 1 June 2002 <http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/social15.htm> ^ H. Montgomery Hyde, The Love That Dared not Speak its Name; p.144 ^ Richard Ellman 'Oscar Wilde' Pullitzer prize winning biography ^ Irish Peacock & Scarlet Marquis, Merlin Holland ^ Richard Ellman 'Oscar Wilde' Pulitzer prize winning biography. ^ Irish Peacock & Scarlet Marquis, Merlin Holland ^ H. Montgomery Hyde, The Love That Dared not Speak its Name; p.5 ^ Trials Of Oscar Wilde - Introduction by Sir Travers Humphrey QC ^ Richard Ellman, Oscar Wilde pg 435. Carson Approached Frank Lockwood (QC) and asked 'Can we not let up on the fellow now? ^ H. Montgomery Hyde, The Love That Dared Not Speak Its Name, p.170; Boston: Little, Brown, 1970 ^ H. Montgomery Hyde, op.cit. p.152 ^ Holland, A. and Rupert Hart-Davis (2000): The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde. pp. 1219-1220, New York: Henry Holt and Co. ISBN 0805059156 ^ (RE)membering Wilde, retrieved on 2007-01-12 ^ "Oscar Wilde and Friends" on YouTube ^ Wilde:Main Page (Wiki). Uncyclopedia. Retrieved on 2007-05-25. The Oscar Wilde Society Information concerning Wilde's conversion to Catholicism Transcript of Oscar Wilde's trials Statue of Oscar Wilde and Eduard Vilde in Tartu (second largest city in Estonia) William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, home to the most comprehensive Oscar Wilde collection in the world. Reading Between the Lines Ragged Edge Magazine article by Louise Norlie, Treatment of Disability in The Birthday of the Infanta Prison Reform Oscar Wilde and his letters to the Daily Chronicle; Prison reform and De Profundis Michael Matthew Kaylor, Secreted Desires: The Major Uranians: Hopkins, Pater and Wilde (2006), a 500-page scholarly volume that situates Wilde among the Victorian writers of Uranian poetry and prose (the author has made this volume available in a free, open-access, PDF version). Oscar Wilde, Knitting Circle article. Includes information about Maggi Hambling's Wilde statue in London, and the controversy that has attended it. Online texts	i don't know
Neville Chamberlain was British Prime Minister during the reign of which monarch?	Neville Chamberlain \| Military Wiki \| Fandom powered by Wikia Unitarian [1] Signature Arthur Neville Chamberlain FRS [2] (18 March 1869 – 9 November 1940) was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940. Chamberlain is best known for his appeasement foreign policy, and in particular for his signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, conceding the German-populated Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Germany . However when Adolf Hitler continued his aggression by invading Poland , Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939, and Chamberlain led Britain through the first eight months of World War II . After working in business and local government and after a short spell as Director of National Service in 1916 and 1917, Chamberlain followed his father, Joseph Chamberlain , and older half-brother, Austen Chamberlain , in becoming a member of parliament in the 1918 general election at age 49. He declined a junior ministerial position, remaining a backbencher until 1922. He was rapidly promoted in 1923 to Minister of Health and then Chancellor of the Exchequer. After a short Labour-led government, he returned as Minister of Health, introducing a range of reform measures from 1924 to 1929. He was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in the National Government in 1931. When Stanley Baldwin retired in May 1937, Chamberlain took his place as Prime Minister. His premiership was dominated by the question of policy toward the increasingly aggressive Germany, and his actions at Munich were widely popular among Britons at the time. When Hitler continued his aggression, Chamberlain pledged Britain to defend Poland's independence if the latter were attacked, an alliance that brought Britain into war when Germany attacked Poland in 1939. Chamberlain resigned the premiership on 10 May 1940 after the Allies were forced to retreat from Norway , as he believed a government supported by all parties was essential, and the Labour and Liberal parties would not join a government headed by him. He was succeeded by Winston Churchill but remained very well regarded in Parliament, especially among Conservatives. Before ill health forced him to resign he was an important member of Churchill's War Cabinet , heading it in the new premier's absence. Chamberlain died of cancer six months after leaving the premiership. Chamberlain's reputation remains controversial among historians, with the initial high regard for him being entirely eroded by books such as Guilty Men , published in July 1940, which blamed Chamberlain and his associates for the Munich accord and for allegedly failing to prepare the country for war. Most historians in the generation following Chamberlain's death held similar views, led by Churchill in The Gathering Storm . Some recent historians have taken a more favourable perspective of Chamberlain and his policies citing government papers released under the Thirty Year Rule . Contents Mason College, now the University of Birmingham Chamberlain was born on 18 March 1869 in a house called Southbourne in the Edgbaston district of Birmingham. [3] He was the only son of the second marriage of Joseph Chamberlain who later became Mayor of Birmingham and a Cabinet minister. Joseph Chamberlain had had another son, Austen Chamberlain , by his first marriage. [4] Neville Chamberlain was educated at Rugby School. [5] Joseph Chamberlain then sent Neville to Mason College (the future University of Birmingham). [6] Neville Chamberlain had little interest in his studies there, and in 1889 his father apprenticed him to a firm of accountants. [7] Within six months he became a salaried employee. [8] In an effort to recoup diminished family fortunes Joseph Chamberlain sent his younger son to establish a sisal plantation on Andros Island in the Bahamas. [9] Neville Chamberlain spent six years there but the plantation was a failure, and Joseph Chamberlain lost £50,000. [lower-alpha 1] [10] On his return to England Neville Chamberlain entered business purchasing (with assistance from his family) Hoskins & Company, a manufacturer of metal ship berths. [11] Chamberlain served as managing director of Hoskins for 17 years during which time the company prospered. [12] He also involved himself in civic activities in Birmingham. In 1906, as Governor of Birmingham's General Hospital, and along with "no more than fifteen" other dignitaries, Chamberlain became a founding member of the national United Hospitals Committee of the British Medical Association . [13] [14] In 1910 he fell in love with Anne Cole , a distant relative by marriage, and the following year married her. [15] The two had a son and a daughter. [15] Entry into politics Edit Chamberlain initially showed little interest in politics though his father and half-brother were in Parliament. During the "Khaki election" of 1900 he made speeches in support of Joseph Chamberlain's Liberal Unionists . The Liberal Unionists were allied with the Conservatives and later merged with them [16] under the name "Unionist Party", which in 1925 became known as the "Conservative and Unionist Party". In 1911 Neville Chamberlain successfully stood as a Liberal Unionist for Birmingham City Council for the All Saints' Ward, [17] located within his father's parliamentary constituency. [18] Chamberlain was made chairman of the Town Planning Committee. [19] Under Chamberlain's direction Birmingham soon adopted one of the first town planning schemes in Britain. The start of war in 1914 prevented implementation of his plans. [20] In 1915, Chamberlain became Lord Mayor of Birmingham. Apart from his father Joseph, five of Chamberlain's uncles had also attained the chief Birmingham civic dignity: they were Joseph's brother Richard Chamberlain, William and George Kenrick, Charles Beale , who had been four times Lord Mayor and Sir Thomas Martineau . As a Lord Mayor in wartime, Chamberlain had a huge burden of work and he insisted that his councillors and officials work equally hard. [21] He halved the Lord Mayor's expense allowance and cut back on the number of civic functions expected of the incumbent. [22] In 1915 Chamberlain was appointed member of the Central Control Board on liquor traffic. [23] In December 1916 the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George , offered Chamberlain the new position of Director of National Service with responsibility for co-ordinating conscription and ensuring that essential war industries were able to function with sufficient workforces. [24] However, his tenure was marked by conflict with Lloyd George and in August 1917, having received little support from the Prime Minister, Chamberlain resigned. [25] The relationship between Chamberlain and Lloyd George would be one thenceforth of hatred. [26] Chamberlain decided to stand for the House of Commons, [27] and was adopted as Unionist candidate for Birmingham Ladywood. [28] After the war ended, a general election was called almost immediately. [28] He was elected with almost 70% of the vote and a majority of 6,833. [29] At age 49 he is still the oldest Parliamentary debutant to later become Prime Minister. [30] MP and Minister (1919–1937) Main article: Rise of Neville Chamberlain Chamberlain threw himself into Parliamentary work, begrudging the times when he was unable to attend debates and spending much time on committee work. He was chairman of the national Unhealthy Areas Committee (1919–21) [31] and in that role, had visited the slums of London, Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool and Cardiff. [32] Consequently, in March 1920 he was offered a junior post at the Ministry of Health by Bonar Law on behalf of the Prime Minister, but was unwilling to serve under Lloyd George. [33] Chamberlain was offered no further posts during Lloyd George's premiership. When Bonar Law resigned as party leader Austen Chamberlain took his place as head of the Unionists in Parliament. [34] Unionist leaders were willing to fight the 1922 election in coalition with the Liberals, but on 19 October Unionist MPs held a meeting at which they voted to leave the Coalition. Lloyd George resigned, as did Austen Chamberlain, and Bonar Law was recalled from retirement to lead the Unionists as Prime Minister. [35] Many high-ranking Unionists refused to serve under Bonar Law to the benefit of Chamberlain who rose over the course of ten months from backbencher to Chancellor of the Exchequer. [36] Bonar Law initially appointed Chamberlain Postmaster General [37] and Chamberlain was sworn of the Privy Council. [38] When Sir Arthur Griffith-Boscawen , the Minister of Health, lost his seat in the 1922 general election and failed to win a by-election in March 1923, Bonar Law offered the position within the Cabinet to Chamberlain. [39] Two months later, Bonar Law was diagnosed with advanced, terminal throat cancer. He immediately resigned, and was replaced by Chancellor of the Exchequer Stanley Baldwin . In August 1923, Baldwin promoted Chamberlain to the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer. [40] Chamberlain served only five months in the office before the Conservatives were defeated in the 1923 general election. Ramsay MacDonald became the first Labour Prime Minister, but the Labour government fell within months necessitating another general election. Chamberlain narrowly defeated Labour candidate Oswald Mosley (who later led the British Union of Fascists ). [41] Believing he would lose if he stood again in Ladywood, Chamberlain arranged to be adopted for Birmingham Edgbaston, the district of the city where he was born and which was a much safer seat which he would hold for the rest of his life. [42] The Unionists won the election, but Chamberlain declined to serve again as Chancellor preferring his former position as Minister of Health. [43] Within two weeks of his appointment as Minister of Health Chamberlain presented the Cabinet with an agenda containing 25 pieces of legislation he hoped to see enacted. Before he left office in 1929, 21 of the 25 bills had passed into law. [44] Chamberlain sought the abolition of the elected Poor Law Boards of Guardians which administered relief—and which in some areas were responsible for rates . Many of the Boards were controlled by Labour, and such Boards had defied the government by distributing relief funds to the able-bodied unemployed. [45] In 1929 Chamberlain initiated legislation to abolish the Poor Law boards entirely. Chamberlain spoke in the Commons for two and a half hours on the second reading of the Bill, and when he concluded he was applauded by all parties. The Bill passed into law. [46] Though Chamberlain struck a conciliatory note during the 1926 General Strike , in general he had poor relations with the Labour opposition. Future Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee complained that Chamberlain "always treated us like dirt", and Chamberlain in April 1927 wrote: "More and more do I feel an utter contempt for their lamentable stupidity." [47] His poor relations with the Labour Party later played a major part in his downfall as Prime Minister. [48] Opposition and second term as Chancellor Edit Baldwin called a general election for 30 May 1929 which resulted in a hung parliament , with Labour holding the most seats. Baldwin and his government resigned and Labour leader Ramsay MacDonald (1866-1937) took office. [49] In 1931, the MacDonald government faced a serious crisis, as the May Report revealed that the budget was unbalanced, with an expected shortfall of £120 million. On 24 August 1931 the Labour government resigned and MacDonald formed a National Government supported by most Conservative MPs. [50] Chamberlain once again returned to the Ministry of Health. [51] After the 1931 general election, in which supporters of the National Government (mostly the Conservatives) won an overwhelming victory, MacDonald designated Chamberlain as Chancellor. [52] Chamberlain proposed a 10% tariff on foreign goods and lower or no tariffs on goods from the colonies and the Dominions. Joseph Chamberlain had advocated a similar policy, " Imperial Preference ". [53] On 4 February 1932 Neville Chamberlain laid his bill before the House of Commons. [54] Chamberlain concluded his address by noting the appropriateness of his seeking to enact his father's proposal. At the end of the speech, Sir Austen Chamberlain walked down from the backbenches and shook his brother's hand. [55] The Import Duties Act 1932 passed Parliament easily. [56] Chamberlain presented his first budget in April 1932. He maintained the severe budget cuts that had been agreed to at the inception of the National Government. [57] Interest on the war debt had been a major cost in each budget. Chamberlain was able to reduce the interest rate on most of Britain's war debt from 5% to 3.5%. Between 1932 and 1938, Chamberlain halved the percentage of the budget devoted to payment of interest on the war debt. [58] Chamberlain hoped that a cancellation of the war debt owed to the United States could be negotiated. In June 1933, Britain hosted the World Monetary and Economic Conference . The Conference came to nothing. US President Franklin Roosevelt sent word that he would not consider any war debt cancellation. [58] By 1934, Chamberlain was able to declare a budget surplus and restore many of the cuts in unemployment compensation and civil servant salaries he had made after taking office. He told the Commons "We have now finished the story of "Bleak House" and are sitting down this afternoon to enjoy the first chapter of "Great Expectations"." [55] The Unemployed Assistance Board (established by the Unemployment Act 1934 ) was largely Chamberlain's creation and he wished to see the issue of unemployment assistance removed from party political argument. [59] Moreover, Chamberlain "saw the importance of 'providing some interest in life for the large numbers of men never likely to get work', and out of this realisation was to come the responsibility of the U.A.B. for the "welfare", not merely the maintenance, of the unemployed". [60] Defence spending had been heavily cut in Chamberlain's early budgets. [61] By 1935, faced with a resurgent Germany under Hitler's leadership (see German re-armament ), he was convinced of the need for rearmament. [62] Chamberlain especially urged the strengthening of the Royal Air Force , realising that Britain's traditional bulwark, the English Channel, was no defence against air power. [63] In 1935, MacDonald stood down as Prime Minister, while Baldwin became Prime Minister for the third time. [64] In the 1935 general election the Conservative-dominated National Government lost 90 seats from the massive majority of 1931, but still retained an overwhelming majority of 255 in the House of Commons. During the campaign, deputy Labour leader Arthur Greenwood had attacked Chamberlain for spending money on rearmament stating that the rearmament policy was "the merest scaremongering; disgraceful in a statesman of Mr. Chamberlain's responsible position, to suggest that more millions of money needed to be spent on armaments". [65] Chamberlain is believed to have had a significant role in the 1936 Edward VIII abdication crisis . In common with the rest of the Cabinet, except Duff Cooper , he agreed with Baldwin that the King should abdicate if he married Mrs Ernest Simpson and on 6 December he and Baldwin both stressed the King should make his decision before Christmas; by one account, he believed that the uncertainty was "hurting the Christmas trade". [66] The King eventually abdicated on the 10th, four days after the meeting. Soon after the Abdication Baldwin announced that he would remain until shortly after the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth . On 28 May, two weeks after the Coronation, Baldwin resigned, advising the King to send for Chamberlain. [67] Sir Austen did not live to see his brother's final "climb ... to the top of the greasy pole", [lower-alpha 2] having died two months earlier. [68] Premiership (1937–1940) Further information: Fourth National Ministry and Chamberlain War Ministry Upon his accession Chamberlain considered calling a general election, but with three and a half years remaining in the then current Parliament's term decided to wait. At age 68, he was the second-eldest person in the 20th century (behind Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman ) to become Prime Minister for the first time, [69] and was widely seen as a caretaker who would lead the Conservative Party until the next election, and then step down in favour of a younger man, with Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden a likely candidate. From the start of Chamberlain's premiership a number of would-be successors were rumoured to be jockeying for position. [70] Chamberlain had disliked what he considered to be an overly sentimental attitude by both Baldwin and MacDonald on Cabinet appointments and reshuffles. Although he had worked closely with the President of the Board of Trade , Walter Runciman over the tariff issue, Chamberlain dismissed him from his post, offering Runciman the token position of Lord Privy Seal which an angry Runciman declined. Runciman, a member of the Liberal National Party, was thought by Chamberlain to be lazy. [69] Soon after taking office, Chamberlain instructed his ministers to prepare two-year policy programmes. These reports were to be integrated with the intent of co-ordinating the passage of legislation through the current Parliament, the term of which was to expire in November 1940. [71] At the time of his succession Chamberlain's personality was not well known to the public, though he had made annual budget broadcasts for six years, which, according to Chamberlain biographer Robert Self, appeared relaxed and modern, showing an ability to speak directly to the camera. [69] Chamberlain had few friends among his parliamentary colleagues. An attempt by his Parliamentary Private Secretary , Lord Dunglass (later Prime Minister himself as Alec Douglas-Home ) to bring him to the Smoking Room in the Commons to socialise with his colleagues, ended in embarrassing silence. [72] Chamberlain compensated for these shortcomings by devising the most sophisticated press management system employed by a Prime Minister up to that time, with officials at Number 10 led by his chief of press George Steward , convincing members of the press that they were colleagues sharing power and insider knowledge, and should espouse the government line. [73] Domestic policy Edit Chamberlain saw his elevation to the premiership as the final glory in a career as a domestic reformer, not realising that he would be remembered for foreign policy decisions. [74] One reason he sought the settlement of European issues was in the hope it would allow him to concentrate on domestic affairs. [75] Soon after attaining the premiership Chamberlain obtained passage of the Factories Act 1937. This act was aimed at bettering working conditions in factories and placed limits on the working hours of women and children. [76] In 1938, Parliament enacted the Coal Act 1938 , which allowed for nationalisation of coal deposits. Another major piece of legislation passed that year was the Holidays with Pay Act . [76] Though the act only recommended that employers give workers a week off with pay, the Act caused the great expansion of holiday camps and other leisure accommodation for the working classes. [77] The Housing Act of 1938 provided subsidies aimed at encouraging slum clearance, and maintained rent control . [76] Chamberlain's plans for the reform of local government were shelved because of the outbreak of war in 1939. Likewise, the proposal to raise the school-leaving age to 15, scheduled for implementation on 1 September 1939, could not go into effect. [78] Relations with Ireland Edit When Chamberlain became Prime Minister relations between the United Kingdom and the Irish Free State had been strained since the 1932 accession of the new Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Éamon de Valera. The Anglo-Irish Trade War , sparked by the withholding of money that Ireland had agreed to pay the United Kingdom, had caused economic losses on both sides, and the two nations were anxious for a settlement. The de Valera government also sought to remove the remaining ties between Ireland and the UK, such as ending the King's status as Irish Head of State. Chamberlain, as Chancellor had taken a hard-line stance against concessions to the Irish, but having been persuaded that the strained ties were having effects on relations with other Dominions he sought a settlement with Ireland. [79] Talks had been suspended under Baldwin in 1936 but resumed in November 1937. De Valera sought not only to alter the constitutional status of Ireland, but to overturn other aspects of the Anglo-Irish Treaty , most notably the issue of partition , as well as obtaining full control of the three " Treaty Ports " which had remained in British control. Britain, on the other hand, wished to retain the Treaty Ports, at least in time of war and to obtain the money that Ireland had agreed to pay. [79] The Irish proved very tough negotiators, so much so that Chamberlain complained that one of de Valera's offers had "presented United Kingdom ministers with a three-leafed shamrock, none of the leaves of which had any advantages for the UK". [79] With the talks facing deadlock, Chamberlain made the Irish a final offer in March 1938 which acceded to many Irish positions though he was confident that he had "only given up the small things", and the agreements were signed on 25 April 1938. [79] The issue of partition was not resolved, but the Irish agreed to pay £10 million to the British. There was no provision in the treaties for British access to the Treaty Ports in time of war, but Chamberlain accepted de Valera's oral assurance that in the event of war the British would have access. [79] The agreements were attacked by Conservative backbencher Winston Churchill in Parliament for surrendering the Treaty Ports which Churchill described as the "sentinel towers of the Western Approaches". [79] When war came, de Valera denied Britain access to the Treaty Ports under Irish neutrality. [79] Churchill railed against these treaties in The Gathering Storm , stating that he "never saw the House of Commons more completely misled" and that "members were made to feel very differently about it when our existence hung in the balance during the Battle of the Atlantic ". [80] Chamberlain, however, believed that the Treaty Ports were unusable if Ireland was hostile and deemed their loss worthwhile to assure friendly relations with Dublin. [78] European policy Edit Chamberlain sought to conciliate Germany and make the Nazi state a partner in a stable Europe. [81] He believed Germany could be satisfied by the restoration of some of her colonies, and during the Rhineland crisis of March 1936 he had stated that "if we were in sight of an all-round settlement the British government ought to consider the question [of restoration of colonies]". [82] The new Prime Minister's attempts to secure such a settlement were frustrated because Germany was in no hurry to talk to Britain. Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath was supposed to visit Britain in July 1937 but cancelled his visit. [81] Lord Halifax , the Lord President of the Council visited Germany privately in November and met with Hitler and other German officials. Both Chamberlain and British Ambassador to Germany Nevile Henderson pronounced the visit a success. [83] Foreign Office officials complained that the Halifax visit made it appear Britain was too eager for talks, and Foreign Secretary Eden felt that he had been bypassed. [84] Chamberlain also bypassed Eden while the Foreign Secretary was on holiday by opening direct talks with Italy, an international pariah for its invasion and conquest of Ethiopia . [85] At a Cabinet meeting on 8 September 1937, Chamberlain indicated that he saw "the lessening of the tension between this country and Italy as a very valuable contribution toward the pacification and appeasement of Europe" which would "weaken the Rome–Berlin axis". [86] The Prime Minister also set up a private line of communication with the Italian "Duce" Benito Mussolini through the Italian Ambassador, Count Dino Grandi . [87] In February 1938 Hitler began to press the Austrian government to accept "Anschluss" or union between Germany and Austria. Chamberlain believed that it was essential to cement relations with Italy in the hope that an Anglo–Italian alliance would forestall Hitler from imposing his rule over Austria. Eden, however, believed Chamberlain was being too hasty in talking with Italy and holding out the prospect of "de jure" recognition of Italy's conquest of Ethiopia. Chamberlain concluded that Eden would have to accept his policy, or resign. [88] The Cabinet heard both men out but unanimously decided for Chamberlain. Despite efforts by other Cabinet members to prevent it, Eden resigned from office. [89] In later years, Eden tried to portray his resignation as a stand against appeasement (Churchill described him in The Second World War as "one strong young figure standing up against long, dismal, drawling tides of drift and surrender") [90] but many ministers [89] and MPs believed there was no issue at stake worth resignation. [91] Chamberlain appointed Lord Halifax as Foreign Secretary in Eden's place. [91] Road to Munich (March 1938 – September 1938) Edit In March 1938 Austria became a part of Germany in the "Anschluß". Though the beleaguered Austrians requested help from Britain none was forthcoming. [92] Britain did send Berlin a strong note of protest. [93] In addressing the Cabinet shortly after German forces crossed the border, Chamberlain placed blame on both Germany and Austria. [92] Chamberlain noted, It is perfectly evident now that force is the only argument Germany understands and that "collective security" cannot offer any prospect of preventing such events until it can show a visible force of overwhelming strength backed by the determination to use it. ... Heaven knows I don't want to get back to alliances but if Germany continues to behave as she has done lately she may drive us to it. [92] On 14 March, the day after the "Anschluß", Chamberlain addressed the House of Commons and strongly condemned the methods used by the Germans in the takeover of Austria. Chamberlain's address met with the approval of the House. [93] With Austria absorbed by Germany, attention turned to Hitler's obvious next target, the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. With three million ethnic Germans, the Sudetenland represented the largest German population outside the "Reich". [94] Hitler began to call for the union of the region with Germany. [95] Britain had no military obligations toward Czechoslovakia, [96] but France and Czechoslovakia had a mutual assistance pact. [92] After the fall of Austria, the Cabinet's Foreign Policy Committee considered seeking a "grand alliance" to thwart Germany, or alternatively, an assurance to France of assistance if the French went to war. Instead, the committee chose to advocate that Czechoslovakia be urged to make the best terms it could with Germany. [97] The full Cabinet agreed with the committee's recommendation influenced by a report from the chiefs of staff stating that there was little that Britain could do to help the Czechs in the event of a German invasion. [97] Chamberlain reported to an amenable House that he was unwilling to limit his government's discretion by giving commitments. [98] Britain and Italy signed an agreement in April 1938. In exchange for "de jure" recognition of Italy's Ethiopian conquest, Italy agreed to withdraw some Italian "volunteers" from the Nationalist (pro-Franco) side of the Spanish Civil War . The Nationalists by now strongly had the upper hand in this war and completed their victory the following year. [99] Later that month the new French Prime Minister, Édouard Daladier , came to London for talks with Chamberlain, and agreed to follow the British position on Czechoslovakia. [100] In May, Czech border guards shot two Sudeten German farmers who were attempting to cross the border into Czechoslovakia without stopping for border controls. This incident caused unrest among the Sudeten Germans, and Germany was then said to be moving troops to the border. In response to the report, Prague moved troops to the German border. Halifax sent a note to Germany warning that if France intervened in the crisis on Czechoslovakia's behalf, Britain might support France. Tensions calmed, and Chamberlain and Halifax were applauded for their "masterly" handling of the crisis. [92] Though not known at the time, it later became clear that Germany had had no plans for a May invasion of Czechoslovakia. [92] Nonetheless, the Chamberlain government received strong and almost unanimous support from the British press. [101] Negotiations between the Czech government and the Sudeten Germans dragged on through mid-1938. [102] They achieved little result with Sudeten leader Konrad Henlein under private instructions from Hitler not to reach an agreement. On 3 August, Walter Runciman (by now Lord Runciman) travelled to Prague as a mediator sent by the British government. [103] Over the next two weeks, Runciman met separately with Henlein, the Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš and other leaders, but made no progress. [104] On 30 August Chamberlain met with his Cabinet and Ambassador Henderson and secured their backing—with only First Lord of the Admiralty Duff Cooper dissenting against Chamberlain's policy to pressure Czechoslovakia into making concessions on the ground that Britain was then in no position to back up any threat to go to war. [105] Chamberlain realised that Hitler would likely signal his intentions in his 12 September speech at the annual Nuremberg Rally , and so Chamberlain discussed with his advisers how to respond if war seemed likely. In consultation with his close adviser Sir Horace Wilson , Chamberlain set out "Plan Z". If war seemed inevitable, Chamberlain would fly to Germany to negotiate directly with Hitler. [106] September 1938: Munich Edit Lord Runciman continued his work attempting to pressure the Czechoslovak government into concessions. On 7 September there was an altercation involving Sudeten members of the Czechoslovak parliament in the North-Moravian city of Mährisch-Ostrau . The Germans made considerable propaganda of the incident though the Prague government attempted to conciliate them by dismissing Czech police who had been involved. As the tempest grew Runciman concluded that there was no point in attempting further negotiations until after Hitler's speech. The mission would never resume. [107] Chamberlain (centre, hat and umbrella in hands) walks with German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop (right) as the Prime Minister leaves for home after the Berchtesgaden meeting, 16 September 1938. On the left is Alexander von Dörnberg . The final days before Hitler's speech on the last day of the Rally were spent amidst tremendous tension as Britain, France, and Czechoslovakia all partially mobilised their troops. Thousands gathered outside 10 Downing Street on the night of Hitler's speech in Nuremberg. At last the Führer addressed his wildly enthusiastic followers: The condition of the Sudeten Germans is indescribable. It is sought to annihilate them. As human beings they are oppressed and scandalously treated in an intolerable fashion ... The depriving of these people of their rights must come to an end. ... I have stated that the "Reich" would not tolerate any further oppression of these three and a half million Germans, and I would ask the statesmen of foreign countries to be convinced that this is no mere form of words. [108] The following morning, 13 September, Chamberlain and the Cabinet were informed by secret service sources that all German embassies had been told that Germany would invade Czechoslovakia on 25 September. [109] Convinced that the French would not fight (Daladier was privately proposing a three-Power summit to settle the Sudeten question). That evening Chamberlain decided to implement "Plan Z" and sent a message to Hitler that he was willing to come to Germany to negotiate. Hitler accepted and Chamberlain flew to Germany on the morning of 15 September; this was the first time, excepting a short jaunt at an industrial fair, that Chamberlain had ever flown. Chamberlain flew to Munich and then journeyed by rail to Hitler's retreat at Berchtesgaden. [110] The face to face meeting lasted about three hours. Hitler demanded the annexation of the Sudetenland, and through questioning him, Chamberlain was able to obtain assurances that Hitler had no designs on the remainder of Czechoslovakia or on the areas in Eastern Europe which had German minorities. After the meeting Chamberlain returned to London believing that he had obtained a breathing space during which agreement could be reached and the peace preserved. [111] Under the proposals made at Berchtesgaden the Sudetenland would be annexed by Germany if a plebiscite in the Sudetenland favoured it. Czechoslovakia would receive international guarantees of its independence which would replace existing treaty obligations—principally the French pledge to the Czechoslovaks. [112] The French agreed to the requirements. Under considerable pressure the Czechoslovaks also agreed, causing the Czechoslovak government to fall. [113] Chamberlain (left) and Hitler leave the Bad Godesberg meeting, 23 September 1938. Chamberlain flew back to Germany, meeting Hitler in Bad Godesberg on 22 September. [114] Hitler brushed aside the proposals of the previous meeting, stating "that won't do any more". [114] Hitler demanded immediate occupation of the Sudetenland and that German territorial claims in Poland and Hungary be addressed. Chamberlain objected strenuously telling Hitler that he had worked to bring the French and Czechoslovaks into line with Germany's demands, so much so that he had been accused of giving in to dictators and had been booed on his departure that morning. Hitler was unmoved. [114] That evening, Chamberlain told Lord Halifax that the "meeting with Herr Hitler had been most unsatisfactory". [115] The following day, Hitler kept Chamberlain waiting until mid-afternoon when he sent a five-page letter, in German, outlining the demands he had spoken of orally the previous day. Chamberlain replied by offering to act as an intermediary with the Czechoslovaks, and suggested that Hitler put his demands in a memorandum which could be circulated to the French and Czechoslovaks. [116] The leaders met again late on the evening of 23 September—a meeting which stretched into the early morning hours. Hitler demanded that fleeing Czechs in the zones to be occupied take nothing with them. He extended his deadline for occupation of the Sudetenland to 1 October—the date he had long before secretly set for the invasion of Czechoslovakia. The meeting ended amicably with Chamberlain confiding to Hitler his hopes they would be able to work out other problems in Europe in the same spirit. Hitler hinted that the Sudetenland fulfilled his territorial ambitions in Europe. Chamberlain flew back to London, stating "It is up to the Czechs now." [117] Munich conference Edit Hitler's proposals met with resistance not only from the French and Czechoslovaks, but also from some members of Chamberlain's cabinet. With no agreement in sight war seemed inevitable. [118] The Prime Minister issued a press statement calling on Germany to abandon the threat of force in exchange for British help in obtaining the concessions it sought. [119] On the evening of 27 September, Chamberlain addressed the nation by radio, and after thanking those who wrote to him, stated: How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing. It seems still more impossible that a quarrel that has already been settled in principle should be the subject of war. [120] On 28 September, he called on Hitler to invite him to Germany again to seek a solution through a summit involving the British, French, Germans, and Italians. [121] Hitler replied favourably and word of this response came to Chamberlain as he was winding up a speech in the House of Commons which sat in gloomy anticipation of war, Chamberlain informed the House of this in his speech. [122] The response was a passionate demonstration with members cheering Chamberlain wildly. Even diplomats in the galleries applauded. Lord Dunglass later commented, "There were a lot of appeasers" in Parliament that day" [122] On the morning of 29 September Chamberlain left Heston Aerodrome (to the east of today's Heathrow Airport ) for his third and final visit to Germany as Prime Minister. [123] On arrival in Munich the British delegation was taken directly to the " Führerbau " where Daladier, Mussolini and Hitler soon arrived. The four leaders and their translators held an informal meeting with Hitler stating that he intended to invade Czechoslovakia on 1 October. Mussolini distributed a proposal similar to Hitler's Bad Godesberg terms. In fact, the proposal had been drafted by German officials and transmitted to Rome the previous day. The draft was debated by the four leaders and Chamberlain raised the question of compensation for the Czechoslovak government and citizens which Hitler refused to consider. [124] From left to right, Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini and Italian Foreign Minister Count Ciano as they prepare to sign the Munich Agreement The leaders were joined by advisers after lunch and hours were spent on long discussions of each clause of the Italian draft agreement. Late that evening the British and French left for their hotels on the grounds that they had to seek advice from their respective capitals. Meanwhile, the Germans and Italians enjoyed the feast which Hitler had intended for all the participants. During this break Chamberlain adviser Sir Horace Wilson met with the Czechoslovaks informing them of the draft agreement and enquiring which districts particularly were important to them. [125] The Munich Conference resumed about 10 p.m. and was mostly in the hands of a small drafting committee. At 1:30 a.m. the Munich Agreement was ready for signing, though a signing ceremony was delayed when Hitler discovered that the ornate inkwell on his desk was empty. [126] Chamberlain and Daladier returned to their hotel and informed the Czechoslovaks of the agreement. The two Prime Ministers urged quick acceptance by the Czechoslovaks of the agreement since the evacuation by the Czechs was to begin the following day. At 12:30 pm the Czechoslovak government in Prague objected to the decision but agreed to its terms. [127] Aftermath and reception Neville Chamberlain speaks to the crowd upon arrival at Heston Aerodrome, 30 September 1938. Problems playing this file? Prior to leaving the "Führerbau" Chamberlain requested a private conference with Hitler which the German leader agreed to, and the two met at Hitler's apartment in the city later that morning. Chamberlain urged restraint in the implementation of the agreement and requested that the Germans not bomb Prague if the Czechs resisted to which Hitler seemed agreeable. Chamberlain took from his pocket a paper headed "Anglo–German Agreement", which contained three paragraphs including a statement that the two nations considered the Munich Agreement "symbolic of the desire of our two people never to go to war again". According to Chamberlain, Hitler interjected "Ja! Ja!" ("Yes! Yes!") as the Prime Minister read it. [128] The two men signed the paper then and there. When, later that day, German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop remonstrated with Hitler for signing it, the "Führer" replied, "Oh, don't take it so seriously. That piece of paper is of no further significance whatever." [129] Chamberlain, on the other hand, when he returned to his hotel for lunch patted his breast pocket and said, "I've got it!" [130] Word leaked as to the outcome of the meetings before Chamberlain's return causing delight among many in London, though causing gloom amongst Churchill and his adherents. [131] Chamberlain returned to London in triumph. Large crowds mobbed Heston where he was met by the Lord Chamberlain , the Earl of Clarendon , who gave him a letter from King George VI assuring him of the Empire's lasting gratitude and urging him to come straight to Buckingham Palace to report. [132] The streets were so packed with cheering people that it took Chamberlain an hour and a half to journey the nine miles from Heston to the Palace. After reporting to the King, Chamberlain and his wife appeared on the Palace balcony with the King and his wife, Queen Elizabeth. He then went to Downing Street where both the street and the front hall of Number 10 were packed. [133] As he headed upstairs to address the crowd from a first-floor window someone called to him, "Neville, go up to the window and say 'peace for our time'." [lower-alpha 3] Chamberlain turned around and responded, "No, I don't do that sort of thing." [133] Nevertheless, Chamberlain recalled the words of his predecessor, Benjamin Disraeli and his return from the Congress of Berlin [lower-alpha 4] in his statement to the crowd: My good friends, this is the second time there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time . We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Now I recommend you go home, and sleep quietly in your beds. [133] King George issued a statement to his people, "After the magnificent efforts of the Prime Minister in the cause of peace it is my fervent hope that a new era of friendship and prosperity may be dawning among the peoples of the world." [134] When the King met with Duff Cooper , who resigned as First Lord of the Admiralty over the Munich Agreement, he told Cooper that he respected people who had the courage of their convictions, but could not agree with him. [134] He wrote to his mother, Queen Mary, that "the Prime Minister was delighted with the results of his mission, as are we all". [135] The dowager queen responded to her son with anger against those who spoke against the Prime Minister: "He brought home peace, why can't they be grateful?" [134] Most newspapers supported Chamberlain uncritically, and he received thousands of gifts, from a silver dinner service to many of his trademark umbrellas. [136] The Commons discussed the Munich Agreement on 3 October. Though Cooper opened by setting forth the reasons for his resignation [137] and Churchill spoke harshly against the pact, no Conservative voted against the government. Only between 20 and 30 abstained, including Churchill, Eden, Cooper and Harold Macmillan . [138] Churchill told the Commons, "England has been offered a choice between war and shame. She has chosen shame, and will get war." [139] Path to war (October 1938 – August 1939) Edit In the aftermath of Munich, Chamberlain pursued a course of cautious rearmament. He told the Cabinet in early October, "[I]t would be madness for the country to stop rearming until we were convinced that other countries would act in the same way. For the time being, therefore, we should relax no particle of effort until our deficiencies had been made good." [140] However, later in October, he resisted calls to put industry on a war footing, convinced that such an action would show Hitler that the Prime Minister had decided to abandon Munich. [140] Chamberlain hoped that the understanding he had signed with Hitler at Munich would lead toward a general settlement of European disputes. However, Hitler expressed no public interest in following up on the accord. [141] Having considered a general election immediately following Munich [142] Chamberlain instead reshuffled his Cabinet . [143] By the end of the year, however, public concerns caused Chamberlain to conclude that "to get rid of this uneasy and disgruntled House of Commons by a General Election" would be "suicidal". [144] Despite Hitler's relative quietness as the "Reich" absorbed the Sudetenland, foreign policy concerns continued to preoccupy Chamberlain. He made trips to Paris and Rome hoping to persuade the French to hasten their rearmament and to persuade Mussolini to be a positive influence on Hitler. [145] However, several of his Cabinet members, led by the Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax, began to draw away from the appeasement policy. Halifax was now convinced that Munich, though "better than a European war", had been "a horrid business and humiliating". [146] Public revulsion over the pogrom of Kristallnacht on 9 November made any attempt at a "rapprochement" with Hitler unacceptable, though Chamberlain did not abandon his hopes. [147] Still hoping for reconciliation with Germany, Chamberlain made a major speech at Birmingham on 28 January in which he expressed his desire for international peace, and had an advance copy sent to Hitler at Berchtesgaden. Hitler seemed to respond; in his " Reichstag " speech on 30 January he stated that he wanted a "long peace". [148] Chamberlain was confident that improvements in British defence since Munich would bring the dictator to the bargaining table. [148] This belief was reinforced by a German official's conciliatory speech welcoming Ambassador Henderson back to Berlin after an absence for medical treatment in Britain. Chamberlain responded with a speech in Blackburn on 22 February hoping that the nations would resolve their differences through trade, and was gratified when his comments were printed in German newspapers. [149] With matters appearing to improve Chamberlain's rule over the House of Commons was firm and he was convinced the government would "romp home" in a late-1939 election. [150] On 15 March, Germany invaded the Czech provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, including Prague. Though Chamberlain's initial parliamentary response was, according to biographer Nick Smart, "feeble", within 48 hours he had spoken more forcefully against the German aggression. [151] In 17 March speech given at Birmingham, Chamberlain warned that "no greater mistake could be made than to suppose that because it believes war to be a senseless and cruel thing the nation has so lost its fibre that it will not take part to the utmost of its power in resisting such a challenge if it were ever made". [152] The Prime Minister questioned whether the invasion of Czechoslovakia was "the end of an old adventure, or the beginning of a new" and whether it was "a step in the direction of an attempt to dominate the world by force". [153] The Colonial Secretary, Malcolm MacDonald stated, "whereas the Prime Minister was once a strong advocate of peace, he has now definitely swung around to the war point of view". [154] This speech was met with widespread approval in Britain and recruitment for the armed services increased considerably. [155] Chamberlain sought to build an interlocking series of defence pacts among the remaining European countries as a means of deterring Hitler from war. [156] He sought an agreement among Britain, France, the USSR and Poland whereby the first three would go to the assistance of Poland if her independence were threatened, but Polish mistrust of the Soviet Union caused those negotiations to fail. [156] Instead, on 31 March, Chamberlain informed an approving House of Commons of British and French guarantees that they would lend Poland all possible aid in the event of any action which threatened Polish independence. [157] In the ensuing debate Eden stated that the nation was now united behind the government. [158] Even Churchill and Lloyd George praised Chamberlain's government for issuing the guarantee to Poland. [159] The Prime Minister took other steps to deter Hitler from aggression. He doubled the size of the Territorial Army , created a Ministry of Supply to expedite the provision of equipment to the armed forces, and instituted peacetime conscription. [160] The Italian invasion of Albania on 7 April led to guarantees being given to Greece and Romania. [161] Chamberlain was reluctant to seek military alliance with the Soviet Union, distrusting Joseph Stalin ideologically and feeling that there was little to gain given the massive purges that recently had taken place in the Red Army . However, much of his Cabinet favoured such an alliance, and when Poland withdrew her objection to Anglo–Soviet alliance Chamberlain had little choice but to proceed. The talks with Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, to which Britain sent only a low-level delegation, dragged on over several months and eventually foundered on 14 August when Poland and Romania refused to allow Soviet troops to be stationed on their territories. A week after the failure of these talks the Soviet Union and Germany signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which committed the countries to non-aggression toward each other. [162] A secret agreement divided up Poland in the event of war. [163] Chamberlain had disregarded rumours of a Soviet-German "rapprochement", and was dismissive of the publicly announced pact stating that it in no way affected British obligations toward Poland. [164] Nevertheless, on 23 August Chamberlain had Henderson deliver a letter to Hitler telling him that Britain was fully prepared to live up to its obligations to Poland. [165] Hitler instructed his generals to prepare for an invasion of Poland , telling them, "Our enemies are small worms. I saw them at Munich." [164] War leader (1939–1940) Neville Chamberlain announces war with Germany, 3 September 1939. Problems playing this file? Germany invaded Poland in the early morning hours of 1 September 1939. The British Cabinet met late that morning and issued a warning to Germany that unless it withdrew from Polish territory Britain would carry out its obligations to Poland. When the House of Commons met at 6:00 p.m., Chamberlain and Labour deputy leader Arthur Greenwood (deputising for the sick Clement Attlee) entered the chamber to loud cheers. Chamberlain spoke emotionally, laying the blame for the conflict on Hitler. [166] No formal declaration of war was immediately made. French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet stated that France could do nothing until its parliament met on the evening of 2 September. In fact, Bonnet was trying to rally support for a Munich-style summit proposed by the Italians to be held on 5 September. The British Cabinet, however, demanded that Hitler be given an ultimatum at once, and if troops were not withdrawn by the end of 2 September, that war be declared forthwith. Chamberlain and Halifax were convinced by Bonnet's pleas from Paris that France needed more time for mobilisation and evacuation, and postponed the expiration of the ultimatum (which had in fact not yet been served). [167] The House of Commons received Chamberlain's lengthy statement which made no mention of an ultimatum, badly. Greenwood rose to "speak for the working classes". Conservative backbencher Leo Amery urged Greenwood to "Speak for England, Arthur", implying that the Prime Minister was not so speaking. [168] Chamberlain replied that telephone difficulties were making it hard to communicate with Paris and tried to dispel fears that the French were weakening. He had little success; too many members knew of Bonnet's efforts. National Labour MP and diarist Harold Nicolson later wrote, "In those few minutes he flung away his reputation." [169] The seeming delay gave rise to fears Chamberlain would again seek a settlement with Hitler. [170] Chamberlain's last peacetime Cabinet met at 11:30 that night, with a thunderstorm raging outside, and determined that the ultimatum would be presented in Berlin at nine o'clock the following morning—to expire two hours later prior to the House of Commons convening at noon. [169] At 11:15 a.m., Chamberlain addressed the nation by radio stating that the United Kingdom was at war with Germany: This morning, the British ambassador in Berlin, handed the German government, the final note, stating that unless we heard from them, by 11 o'clock, that they were prepared at once, to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now, that no such undertaking has been received, and as a consequence, this country is now at war with Germany. We have a clear conscience; we have done all that any country could do to establish peace. The situation in which no word given by Germany's ruler could be trusted, and no people or country could feel itself safe had become intolerable ... Now may God bless you all. May He defend the right. It is the evil things we shall be fighting against—brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression, and persecution—and against them I am certain that the right will prevail. [171] That afternoon Chamberlain addressed the House of Commons' first Sunday session in over 120 years. He spoke to a quiet House in a statement which even opponents termed "restrained and therefore effective": Everything that I have worked for, everything that I have hoped for, everything that I have believed in during my public life has crashed into ruins. There is only one thing left for me to do: that is devote what strength and power I have to forwarding the victory of the cause for which we have sacrificed so much. [172] "Phoney War" Edit First page of a letter from Churchill to Chamberlain, 1 October 1939 Chamberlain instituted a War Cabinet and invited the Labour and Liberal parties to join his government which they declined. [172] He restored Churchill to the Cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty with a seat in the War Cabinet. Chamberlain also gave Eden a government post. The new First Lord proved to be a difficult Cabinet colleague, deluging the Prime Minister with a sea of lengthy memos. Chamberlain castigated Churchill for sending so many memos as unnecessary when the two met in War Cabinet every day. [173] Chamberlain suspected, correctly as it proved after the war, that "these letters are for the purpose of quotation in the Book that he will write hereafter". [174] Chamberlain was also able to deter some of Churchill's more extreme plans, such as Operation Catherine , which would have sent several heavily armoured ships into the Baltic Sea with little support and no air cover as a means of stopping shipments of iron ore to Germany. [175] With the naval war the only significant front involving the British in the early months of the war, the First Lord's obvious desire to wage a ruthless, victorious war established him as a leader-in-waiting in the public consciousness and among parliamentary colleagues. [176] With little land action in the west, the initial months of the war were dubbed the "Bore War", later renamed the " Phoney War " by journalists. [177] Chamberlain, in common with most Allied officials and generals, felt the war could be won relatively quickly by keeping economic pressure on Germany through a blockade while continuing rearmament. [178] Chamberlain was reluctant to go too far in altering the British economy. The government submitted an emergency war budget about which Chamberlain stated, "the only thing that matters is to win the war, though we may go bankrupt in the process". [179] However, actual government expenditures rose by little more than the rate of inflation between September 1939 and March 1940. [179] Despite these difficulties, Chamberlain still enjoyed approval ratings as high as 68% [180] and almost 60% in April 1940. [181] Downfall Edit In early 1940 the Allies approved a naval campaign that was devised to seize the northern part of Norway, a neutral country, including the key port of Narvik, and possibly also to seize the iron mines at Gällivare in northern Sweden from which Germany obtained much of its iron ore. [182] Since the Baltic freezes in winters the iron ore was sent by ship south from Narvik during warmer times of the year. The Allies planned to begin by mining Norwegian waters , thus provoking a German reaction in Norway, and then the Allies planned to occupy much of the country. Unforeseen by the Allies, however, Germany had itself planned to occupy Norway, and on 9 April German troops occupied Denmark and began an invasion of Norway . German troops quickly overran much of the country. [183] The Allies sent troops to Norway who met with little success, and on 26 April the War Cabinet ordered a withdrawal. [183] The Prime Minister's opponents decided to turn the adjournment debate for the Whitsun recess into a challenge to Chamberlain who soon heard about the plan. After initial anger, Chamberlain determined to fight. [184] What became known as the " Norway debate " opened on 7 May, and lasted for two days. The initial speeches, including Chamberlain's, were nondescript, but Admiral Sir Roger Keyes , member for Portsmouth North, in full uniform, delivered a withering attack on the conduct of the Norway campaign, though he excluded Churchill from criticism. Leo Amery then delivered a speech which he concluded by echoing Oliver Cromwell 's words on dissolving the Long Parliament: "You have sat here too long for any good you are doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!" [185] When Labour announced that they would call for a division of the House of Commons, Chamberlain called upon his "friends—and I still have some friends in this House—to support the Government tonight". [186] Though the use of the word "friends" was a conventional term to refer to party colleagues, and, according to biographer Robert Self, many MPs took it that way, it was an "error of judgment" for Chamberlain to refer to party loyalty "when the gravity of the war situation required national unity". [187] Lloyd George joined the attackers and Churchill concluded the debate with a vigorous speech in support of the government. [187] When the division took place, the government, which had a normal majority of over 200, prevailed by only 81, with 38 MPs in receipt of the government whip voting against it, with between 20 and 25 abstaining. [188] Chamberlain spent much of 9 May in meetings with his Cabinet colleagues. Many Conservative MPs, even those who had voted against the government, indicated on 9 May and in the days following that they did not wish Chamberlain to depart but rather would seek to reconstruct his government. [189] However, Chamberlain decided that he would resign unless the Labour Party was willing to join his government, and so he met with Attlee later that day. Attlee was unwilling but did agree to consult his National Executive then meeting in Bournemouth. Chamberlain favoured Halifax as the next Prime Minister, but Halifax proved reluctant to press his own claims, and Churchill emerged as the choice. The following day Germany invaded the Low Countries and Chamberlain considered remaining in office. However, Attlee confirmed that Labour would not serve under Chamberlain though it was willing to serve under someone else. Chamberlain went to Buckingham Palace to resign and advise the King to send for Churchill. [190] Churchill later expressed gratitude to Chamberlain for not advising the King to send for Halifax who would have commanded the support of most government MPs. [191] In a resignation broadcast that evening, Chamberlain told the nation, Neville Chamberlain speaks to the nation following his resignation as Prime Minister, 10 May 1940. Problems playing this file? For the hour has now come when we are to be put to the test, as the innocent people of Holland, Belgium, and France are being tested already. And you and I must rally behind our new leader, and with our united strength, and with unshakable courage fight, and work until this wild beast, which has sprung out of his lair upon us, has been finally disarmed and overthrown. [192] Queen Elizabeth told Chamberlain that her daughter, Princess Elizabeth wept as she heard the broadcast. [190] Churchill wrote to express his gratitude for Chamberlain's willingness to stand by him in the nation's hour of need, and Lord Baldwin, the only living former Prime Minister besides Chamberlain and Lloyd George, wrote, "You have passed through fire since we were talking together only a fortnight ago, and you have come out pure gold." [193] Lord President of the Council and death Edit In a departure from usual practice, Chamberlain did not issue any resignation Honours list . [194] With Chamberlain remaining leader of the Conservative Party, and with many MPs still supporting him and distrusting the new Prime Minister, Churchill refrained from any purge of Chamberlain loyalists. [195] Churchill wished Chamberlain to return to the Exchequer, which he declined, convinced that accepting would lead to difficulties with the Labour Party. Instead, he accepted the post of Lord President of the Council with a seat in the shrunken five-member War Cabinet. [196] When Chamberlain entered the House of Commons on 13 May 1940, for the first time since his resignation, "MPs lost their heads, they shouted, they cheered, they waved their order papers, and his reception was a regular ovation." [196] However, Churchill was received coolly by the House. [196] Some of Churchill's great speeches to the House, such as " We shall fight on the beaches ", met with only half-hearted enthusiasm there. [197] His fall from power left Chamberlain deeply depressed, writing, "Few men can have known such a reversal of fortune in so short a time." [198] He especially regretted the loss of Chequers as "a place where I have been so happy", though after a farewell visit there by the Chamberlains on 19 June, he wrote "I am content now that I have done that, and shall put Chequers out of my mind." [199] As Lord President he assumed vast responsibilities over domestic issues and chaired the War Cabinet during Churchill's many absences. [199] Attlee later remembered him as "free from any of the rancour he might have felt against us. He worked very hard and well: a good chairman, a good committeeman, always very businesslike". [200] As chairman of the Lord President's Committee , he exerted great influence over the wartime economy. [201] When Axis feelers for peace reached the War Cabinet on 26 May 1940, with the Low Countries conquered and France tottering, Halifax urged following up and seeing if the actual offer was worthwhile. The battle over the course of action within the War Cabinet lasted three days, and Chamberlain's statement on the final day that there was unlikely to be an acceptable offer and that the feelers should not be pursued at that time helped persuade the War Cabinet to reject negotiations. [202] David Lloyd George , Prime Minister 1916–1922, whose contempt for Chamberlain was reciprocated Twice in May 1940 Churchill broached the subject of bringing Lloyd George into the government. Each time Chamberlain indicated that due to their longtime antipathy he immediately would retire if Lloyd George were appointed a minister. Churchill did not appoint Lloyd George but brought up the subject with Chamberlain again early in June. This time, Chamberlain agreed to Lloyd George's appointment provided Lloyd George gave a personal assurance to put aside the feud. However, Lloyd George declined to serve in Churchill's government. [203] Chamberlain worked to bring his Conservative Party in line behind Churchill, working with the Chief Whip , David Margesson , to overcome members' suspicions and dislikes of the Prime Minister. On 4 July, Churchill entered the Chamber to a great cheer from Conservative MPs orchestrated by the two, and the Prime Minister was almost overcome with emotion at the first cheer he had received from his own party's benches since May. [197] Churchill returned the loyalty refusing to consider Labour and Liberal attempts to expel Chamberlain from the government. [201] When criticisms of Chamberlain appeared in the press, and when the former Prime Minister learned that Labour intended to use an upcoming secret session of Parliament as a platform to attack him, Chamberlain told Churchill that he could only defend himself by attacking Labour. The Prime Minister intervened with the Labour Party and the press, and the criticism ceased, according to Chamberlain, "like turning off a tap". [204] In July 1940, a polemic entitled Guilty Men was released by "Cato"—a pseudonym for three journalists (including future Labour leader Michael Foot ). It attacked the record of the National Government, alleging that it had failed to prepare adequately for war. It called for the removal of Chamberlain and other ministers who had allegedly contributed to the British disasters of the early part of the war. The short book sold more than 200,000 copies, many of which were passed from hand to hand, and which went into twenty-seven editions in the first few months despite not being carried by several major bookshops. [205] According to historian David Dutton, "its impact upon Chamberlain's reputation, both among the general public and within the academic world, was profound indeed". [206] Chamberlain had long enjoyed excellent health, except for occasional attacks of gout, [62] but by July 1940, he was in almost constant pain. He sought treatment, and later that month entered hospital for surgery. Surgeons discovered that he was suffering from terminal bowel cancer , but they concealed it from him instead telling him that he would not require further surgery. [207] Chamberlain resumed work in mid-August. He returned to his office on 9 September. However renewed pain, compounded by the night-time bombing of London which forced him to go to an air raid shelter and denied him rest, sapped his energy, and he left London for the last time on 19 September returning to Highfield Park in Heckfield . [208] He offered his resignation to Churchill on 22 September, which the Prime Minister initially was reluctant to accept. However, as both men realised that Chamberlain would never return to work, Churchill finally allowed him to resign. The Prime Minister asked if Chamberlain would accept the highest order of British chivalry, the Order of the Garter , of which his brother had been a member. Chamberlain refused stating that he would "prefer to die plain 'Mr. Chamberlain' like my father before me, unadorned by any title". [209] In the short time remaining to him, Chamberlain was angered by the "short, cold & for the most part depreciatory" press comments on his retirement, according to him written "without the slightest sign of sympathy for the man or even any comprehension that there may be a human tragedy in the background". [209] However, the King and Queen drove down from Windsor to visit the dying man on 14 October. [210] He received hundreds of sympathetic letters from friends and supporters. He wrote to John Simon , who had served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in Chamberlain's government: [I]t was the hope of doing something to improve the conditions of life for the poorer people that brought me at past middle life into politics, and it is some satisfaction to me that I was able to carry out some part of my ambition even though its permanency may be challenged by the destruction of war. For the rest I regret nothing that I have done & I can see nothing undone that I ought to have done. I am therefore content to accept the fate that has so suddenly overtaken me. [210] Chamberlain died of bowel cancer on 9 November 1940 at the age of 71. His funeral service took place at Westminster Abbey (due to wartime security concerns, the date and time were not widely publicised), and his ashes were interred there next to those of Andrew Bonar Law . [211] Churchill eulogised Chamberlain in the House of Commons three days after his death: Whatever else history may or may not say about these terrible, tremendous years, we can be sure that Neville Chamberlain acted with perfect sincerity according to his lights and strove to the utmost of his capacity and authority, which were powerful, to save the world from the awful, devastating struggle in which we are now engaged. This alone will stand him in good stead as far as what is called the verdict of history is concerned. [212] Though some Chamberlain supporters found Churchill's oratory to be faint praise of the late Prime Minister, [213] Churchill added less publicly, "Whatever shall I do without poor Neville? I was relying on him to look after the Home Front for me." [214] Amongst the others who paid tribute to Chamberlain in the Commons and in the House of Lords on 12 November were Lord Halifax, Attlee, and the Liberal Party leader and Air Minister, Sir Archibald Sinclair . Lloyd George, the only former Prime Minister remaining in the Commons, had been expected to speak, but absented himself from the proceedings. [215] Ever close to his family, the executors of Chamberlain's will were his cousins, Wilfred Byng Kenrick and Sir Wilfrid Martineau ; both of whom, like Chamberlain, were Lord Mayor of Birmingham. [216] Legacy and reputation Blue plaque honouring Neville Chamberlain, Edgbaston, Birmingham A few days before his death, Neville Chamberlain wrote, So far as my personal reputation is concerned, I am not in the least disturbed about it. The letters which I am still receiving in such vast quantities so unanimously dwell on the same point, namely without Munich the war would have been lost and the Empire destroyed in 1938 ... I do not feel the opposite view ... has a chance of survival. Even if nothing further were to be published giving the true inside story of the past two years I should not fear the historian's verdict. [217] Guilty Men was not the only Second World War tract that damaged Chamberlain's reputation. We Were Not All Wrong, published in 1941, took a similar tack to Guilty Men, arguing that Liberal and Labour MPs, and a small number of Conservatives, had fought against Chamberlain's appeasement policies. The author Liberal MP Geoffrey Mander had voted against conscription in 1939. [218] Another polemic against Conservative policies was Why Not Trust the Tories (1944, written by "Gracchus", who later proved to be future Labour minister Aneurin Bevan ), which castigated the Conservatives for the foreign policy decisions of Baldwin and Chamberlain. Though a few Conservatives offered their own versions of events, most notably MP Quintin Hogg in his 1945 The Left was Never Right , by the end of the war, there was a very strong public belief that Chamberlain was culpable for serious diplomatic and military misjudgments that had nearly caused Britain's defeat. [219] Chamberlain's reputation was devastated by these attacks from the left. In 1948, with the publication of The Gathering Storm, the first volume of Churchill's six-volume set, The Second World War , Chamberlain sustained an even more serious assault from the right. While Churchill stated privately, "this is not history, this is my case", his series was still hugely influential. [220] Churchill depicted Chamberlain as well-meaning but weak, blind to the threat posed by Hitler, and oblivious to the fact that (according to Churchill) Hitler could have been removed from power by a grand coalition of European states. Churchill suggested that the year's delay between Munich and war worsened Britain's position, and criticised Chamberlain for both peacetime and wartime decisions. [221] In the years following the publication of Churchill's books, few historians questioned his judgment. [222] Anne Chamberlain , the former premier's widow, suggested that Churchill's work was filled with matters that "are not real misstatements that could easily be corrected, but wholesale omissions and assumptions that certain things are now recognised as facts which actually have no such position". [223] Many of Chamberlain's family letters and his extensive personal papers were bequeathed by his family in 1974 to the Birmingham University Archives. [224] [225] [226] [20] During the war, the Chamberlain family had commissioned historian Keith Feiling to produce an official biography, and gave him access to Chamberlain's private diaries and papers. [227] While Feiling had the right of access to official papers as the official biographer of a recently deceased person, he may not have been aware of the provision, and the Cabinet Secretary denied his requests for access. [228] Though Feiling produced what historian David Dutton described in 2001 as "the most impressive and persuasive single-volume biography" of Chamberlain (completed during the war and published in 1946), he could not repair the damage already done to Chamberlain's reputation. [227] Conservative MP Iain Macleod 's 1961 biography of Chamberlain was the first major biography of a revisionist school of thought on Chamberlain. The same year, A.J.P. Taylor , in his The Origins of the Second World War , found that Chamberlain had adequately rearmed Britain for defence (though a rearmament designed to defeat Germany would have taken massive additional resources) and described Munich as "a triumph for all that was best and most enlightened in British life ... [and] for those who had courageously denounced the harshness and short-sightedness of Versailles". [229] The adoption of the Thirty Year Rule in 1967 made available many of the papers of the Chamberlain government over the subsequent three years, helping to explain why Chamberlain acted as he did. [230] The resultant works greatly fuelled the revisionist school, although they also included books that strongly criticised Chamberlain, such as Keith Middlemas 's 1972 Diplomacy of Illusion (which portrayed Chamberlain as a seasoned politician with strategic blindness when it came to Germany). Released papers indicated that, contrary to claims made in Guilty Men, Chamberlain had neither ignored the advice of the Foreign Office nor had he disregarded and run roughshod over his Cabinet. [231] Other released papers showed that Chamberlain had considered seeking a grand coalition amongst European governments like that later advocated by Churchill, but had rejected it on the ground that the division of Europe into two camps would make war more, not less likely. [232] They also showed that Chamberlain had been advised that the Dominions, pursuing independent foreign policies under the Statute of Westminster , had indicated that Chamberlain could not depend on their help in the event of a Continental war. [233] The Chiefs of Staff report, which indicated that Britain could not forcibly prevent Germany from conquering Czechoslovakia, was first publicly known at this time. [234] In reaction against the revisionist school of thought regarding Chamberlain a post-revisionist school emerged beginning in the 1990s, using the released papers to justify the initial conclusions of Guilty Men. Oxford historian R. A. C. Parker argued that Chamberlain could have forged a close alliance with France after the Anschluß, in early 1938, and begun a policy of containment of Germany under the auspices of the League of Nations. While many revisionist writers had suggested that Chamberlain had had few or no choices in his actions, Parker argued that Chamberlain and his colleagues had chosen appeasement over other viable policies. [235] In his two volumes, Chamberlain and Appeasement (1993) and Churchill and Appeasement (2000), Parker stated that Chamberlain, due to his "powerful, obstinate personality" and his skill in debate, caused Britain to embrace appeasement instead of effective deterrence. [236] Parker also suggested that had Churchill held high office in the second half of the 1930s Churchill would have built a series of alliances which would have deterred Hitler, and perhaps would have caused Hitler's domestic opponents to procure his removal. [236] Dutton observes that Chamberlain's reputation, for good or ill, will probably always be closely tied to evaluation of his policy toward Germany: Whatever else may be said of Chamberlain's public life his reputation will in the last resort depend upon assessments of this moment [Munich] and this policy [appeasement]. This was the case when he left office in 1940 and it remains so sixty years later. To expect otherwise is rather like hoping that Pontius Pilate will one day be judged as a successful provincial administrator of the Roman Empire. [237] Honours Edit Explanatory notes ↑ Joseph Chamberlain's loss is equivalent to £29.1 million if measured as per capita gross domestic product; £4.2 million if measured as an RPI equivalent. See MeasuringWorth . ↑ A well-known quotation by Disraeli, see Meynell 1903 , p. 155 . Chamberlain would later allude to Disraeli in stating he had brought for the second time "peace with honour" from Germany to Downing Street after the Munich Conference . ↑ "Peace in our time", a common misquotation, is a quotation from the Book of Common Prayer, and can be found as a misquotation in The New York Times as early as 2 October 1938. Faber 2008 , pp. 5–7. ↑ Disraeli (or more properly Lord Beaconsfield) had stated "Lord Salisbury and I have brought you peace—but a peace, I hope, with honour." See Keyes 2006 , p. 160 . Citations Halsall, Paul, ed (August 1997). "Modern History Sourcebook: The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, 1939." . Internet Modern History Sourcebook. Fordham University. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1939pact.html . Retrieved 22 October 2009. Keane, Michael (2005). Dictionary of Modern Strategy and Tactics. Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-59114-429-8 . Keyes, Ralph (2006). The Quote Verifier: Who Said What, Where, and When. Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-312-34004-9 . Macklin, Graham (2006). Chamberlain. Haus Books. ISBN 978-1-904950-62-2 . Meynell, Wilfrid (1903). Benjamin Disraeli: an unconventional biography. 1. Hutchinson & Co. Self, Robert (2006). Neville Chamberlain: A Biography. Ashgate. ISBN 978-0-7546-5615-9 . Smart, Nick (1999). The National Government. St Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-22329-8 . Smart, Nick (2010). Neville Chamberlain. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-45865-8 . Taylor, A. J. P. (1965). English History, 1914–1945. Oxford University Press. Online sources Edit Aster, Sidney (1997). "Guilty Man: the Case of Neville Chamberlain". In Finney, Patrick. The Origins of the Second World War. Edward Arnold. pp. 62–77. ISBN 978-0-340-67640-0 . Aster, Sidney (September 2002). "Viorel Virgil Tilea and the Origins of the Second World War: An Essay in Closure". pp. 153–74. Digital object identifier: 10.1080/714000341 . Bond, Brian (1983). "The Continental Commitment in British Strategy in the 1930s". In Mommsen, Wolfgang; Kettenacker, Lothar. The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement. George Allen & Unwin. pp. 197–207. ISBN 978-0-04-940068-9 . Crozier, Andrew (1988). Appeasement and Germany's Last Bid for Colonies. Macmillan Press. ISBN 978-0-312-01546-6 . Gilbert, Martin (1966). The Roots of Appeasement. New American Library. Goldstein, Erik (1999). "Neville Chamberlain, The British Official Mind and the Munich Crisis". In Mommsen, Wolfgang; Kettenacker, Lothar. The Munich Crisis 1938: Prelude to World War II. Frank Cass. pp. 276–92. ISBN 978-0-7146-8056-9 . Greenwood, Sean (1999). "The Phantom Crisis: Danzig, 1939". In Martel, Gordon. The Origins of the Second World War Reconsidered: A.J.P. Taylor and the Historians. Routledge. pp. 225–46. ISBN 978-0-415-16325-5 . Kennedy, Paul ; Imlay, Talbot (1999). "Appeasement". In Martel, Gordon. The Origins of the Second World War Reconsidered: A.J.P. Taylor and the Historians. Routledge. pp. 116–34. ISBN 978-0-415-16325-5 . Loades, David, ed. Reader's Guide to British History (2003) 1: 244-45; historiography McDonough, Frank (1998). Neville Chamberlain, Appeasement and the British Road to War. Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-4832-6 . McDonough, Frank (2001). Hitler, Chamberlain and Appeasement. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-00048-2 . Stewart, Graham (2000). Burying Caesar: Churchill, Chamberlain, and the Battle for the Tory Party (revised ed.). Phoenix. ISBN 978-0-7538-1060-6 . Strang, Bruce (1996). "Once More unto the Breach: Britain's Guarantee to Poland, March 1939". pp. 721–52. Digital object identifier: 10.1177/002200949603100406 . Watt, D.C. (1989). How War Came: The Immediate Origins of the Second World War, 1938–1939. Heinemann. ISBN 978-0-394-57916-0 . Weinberg, Gerhard (2010). Hitler's Foreign Policy, 1933–1939: The Road to World War II. Enigma Books. ISBN 978-1-929631-91-9 . Wheeler-Bennett, John (1948). Munich: Prologue to Tragedy. Duell, Sloan and Pearce. 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Lightning McQueen, Doc Hudson and Fillmore are all characters in which 2006 animated Disney film?	Neville Chamberlain Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain Prime Minister Send to Kindle Neville Chamberlain Prime Minister 1938-1940 Domestically focussed and out of his depth internationally? Son of a Political family, Conservative Politician and Prime Minister, was Neville Chamberlain a politician out of his depth in international affairs? Was he just hopelessly naive about Hitler’s Germany and too embroiled in domestic agendas and the desire for social change and improvement after the depression of the 1930s to handle the run-up to war? Is it just too easy to focus the blame on Chamberlain; would it really have made a difference to the ultimate outcome if Britain under his leadership had taken a different political position with Hitler? Why has any of his good work been obscured? Can we really damn a Prime Minister for wanting peace and appeasement, and a desire not to enter Britain into a war it could perhaps avoid knowing it was still paying and recovering from the last one? Part 1 of a short series tackling a Prime Minister who is generally seen as a failure on the basis of a critical point in time in the buildup to World War II. We seek to broaden the context and get a little insight into whether the criticism is deserved and warranted by taking a look at his political inheritance from his experienced father and brother, his deeds before the critical point in time in 1938-1939. Its not enough to just recite key dates and events, we need to see if there is more to be understood here to better balance the books in his favour or just confirm the soundbites that have cast this premier as a failure from most British perspectives. Part 1 Political Family Roots and Beginnings This first part focuses on the background of his politically active family, in particular his experienced father and brother. Their regional, international and national political perspectives and experience should surely have given Neville Chamberlain a great grounding whether he agreed or disagreed with their viewpoints. What could he have gleaned from their political legacy, given the brother’s could and most probably did share insights and views on their shared political lives. It was only in the last two months before Neville Chamberlain became PM that he was without his brother’s experience and shared insights in Parliament. It doesn’t seem to add-up why would this Prime Minister be so naive? Is the popular view accurate or tainted and blurred by the years in between. It also seems just too convenient for the British people to be able to (and be too good at) laying blame on a single man’s doorstep for ultimately a national error. Where were the rest of the cabinet and why would he not listen to the voices that cried out? Born Arthur Neville Chamberlain, the son of a political family with a brother, like Churchill warning of the threat of the Nazis from 1933. Chamberlain was born during the reign of Victoria in 1869 and sadly died from Cancer within a year of the outbreak of WW2 in 1940. He had been born into a political family led by his father Joseph Chamberlain (1836-1914) Screw-manufacturing Industrialist and Birmingham Politician and his half brother, Nobel Peace Prize Winner. Sir Austen Chamberlain (1863-1937.) Whilst becoming Prime Minister quite late at 78 did the political background and legacy of knowledge of his father and elder brother influence, inform and direct Neville’s career? To find out we need to understand how that background might have influenced the Chamberlain as domestic politician and also in respect of foreign affairs and the key decision he would make in the period 1938-1939 before the commencement of WW2. Joseph Chamberlain Father of Neville, Industrialist Mayor of Birmingham MP and Liberal Unionist Joseph Banks was Unionist and ardent campaigner on the Irish Question. He cut his political teeth cleaning up the slums of Birmingham. Father Joseph Chamberlain Manufacturing Industrialist with a political focus based on Birmingham where as Mayor he transformed the city from an industrial slum to a model municipal area. Known as a dynamic and radical reformer who ate, slept and drank politics. He became a Liberal MP in 1876, he resigned over Irish Home Rule when Gladstone converted his policy, he led the Liberal Unionists including his elder son Austin was a committed imperialist and expansionist. He was the Colonial Secretary largely responsible for British policy towards the Boer War. He cared little for party politics other than as an instrument of achieving his overall avowed objectives. He believed in Imperial Preference and wanted to abandon Free Trade, launching a campaign for Tariff Reform in 1903. This was politically important because it led him to resign from government, split the Conservatives and led to the landslide Liberal Victory of 1906, which would in turn lead to the People’s Budget Crisis of 1909 and the Parliament Act of 1911 . It is also a considerable backstory to the career of his 2nd son Neville Chamberlain. But first what of his eldest son Austin? Chamberlain’s brother Austen was winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Conservative and Unionist Politician His brother Austin was a Conservative and Unionist politician, educated at Rugby and Cambridge University. He entered Parliament in 1892 as a Liberal Unionist under his father’s leadership. He was groomed to be his father’s political heir and was respected in his own right winning the Nobel Prize for Peace for his involvement in the Locarno Treaty. The Locarno Treaty aimed to guarantee French security and German frontiers. Locarno failed to inhibit Hitler from reoccupying the Rhineland in 1936 but from 1933 Austin was consistent in his his warnings about the threat of the Nazis to Europe and was one of just a few to do so. He pursued his father’s belief in and campaigned for Tariff Reform, after his father’s retirement. He was in conflict with and not really of, the old traditional Conservatives, he made a bid for the leadership to succeed balfour but withdrew due to inadequate support leaving the path clear for Bonar Law as the compromise candidate. He served in the WW1 Coalition governments under Asquith and Lloyd George, supporting the Liberal Prime Minister during the Conservative Backbencher revolt of 1922 which destroyed the coalition. Appointed Foreign Secretary under Baldwin in 1924 he negotiated the Locarno Treaty. He would also hold a brief appointment as 1st Lord of the Admiralty under McDonald in 1931 but subequently worked from the back benches in a long dignified parliamentary career but never really fulfilled the ambitions for high office that his father had groomed him for. A lengthy introduction to Neville Chamberlain’s father and brother perhaps but it goes some way to explain a level of expectation and deep experience of the family into which Neville was born. How would he measure up to such expectations and what contrasting differences would that career reveal and would they be significant in his impact on and contribution to the development of Britain and its history in the 20th century? Neville Chamberlain and Domestic Politics before 1938-1939 Neville was the only son by his father’s second marriage, he was also educated at Rugby but then attended Mason College (future Birmingham University.) He pursued some accountancy skills, and tried to help revive family fortunes with a plantation in the Bahamas that failed. He subsequently invested, with family help in Hoshkins and Company who made metal ship berths with some financial success. He was not an avid political animal but became involved in Birmingham’s civic life including as governor of the Birmingham Hospital and other local entities. He became Lord Mayor of Birmingham in 1915 with the outbreak of WW1 in a highly industrial area his workload was significant. By 1916 LLoyd George had appointed him as Director of Conscription but he had difficulties and conflict with Lloyd George and had resigned after little if no support form his Prime Minister in 1917. Their dislike for one another was noted and never recovered and bordered on contempt for one another. Neville finally decided to seek election at the General Election at the end of WW1 and was elected with more than 70% of the vote, a first-time MP at 49, quite late to then seek and attain the Premiership. He would be in and out of government including as Chancellor as governments rose and fell with some frequency but he was most at home as Minister for Health and with an agenda of 25 pieces of legislation by the time he left office in 1929 had managed to see 21 of the 25 passed into law. This had included the abolition of the Poor Law Board of Guardians which had been politically abused by Labour to administer relief to able-bodied unemployed for which it was not intended. During this period as well as his prior enmity with Lloyd George he displayed thinly displayed contempt for the anything and anyone Labour based. His inability for forge cross party alliances would be his undoing as Prime Minister in the years to come. 1931 returns after MacDonald fails to hold a majority as Minister of Health MacDonald appoints Chamberlain as Chancellor who then implements a form of his father’s Imperial preference of lower or no tariffs for the empire and its dominions and 10% from other overseas destinations for imports, the Import Duties Act 1932 came into being with his brother Austen still on the back benches, he passed by him and shook his hand on the conclusion and successful passing of the Bill into law. 1932-1933-1934 he made further progress and sought tor educe the burden of War debt from WW1 to the United States. He made progress on the Unemployment Act trying to take the politics out of unemployment and to enshrine certain rights and responsibilities to a generation who might never get work. 1935 he was realising with alarm the rise of Germany and the need to fund rearmament but facing opposition in his calls for such funding. By 1936 the Abdication Crisis was mounting and it is understood that Chamberlain was closely involved with Baldwin on discussing the call for the King to go, if he was determined to marry Wallis Simpson. Within 4 days of the meeting with the King all was decided, the King would abdicate. Chamberlain is said to have believed that the unsettled climate was hurting domestic trade and unrest in the country. Baldwin the current Prime Minister during the Abdication had announced he would resign just after the Coronation of George VI following the abdication of Edward VIII (Duke of Windsor) and he did so leaving the way clear for the King on his recommendation to call for Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister. By 1937 Chamberlain almost by default was Prime Minister, it was certainly not by popular acclaim, so how would he make the most of this political opportunity as the storm clouds were gathering force across and around Europe? Finally a Chamberlain as Prime Minister, his brother Austen and his father would not see him attain the premiership and how would he direct his leadership now the top job was in his hands at such a difficult time? Chamberlain was 68, with a little over 3 years to run for the current parliament, he decided against calling an election and to simply continue in office. He sought to remove sentimentalism from cabinet and official appointments but also failed to canvass and bring broad support with him from the wider political base. He was not a leader of men but an effective administrator seeking policy and legislative plans for the rest of the term from all his ministers. He sought to overcome his lack of personal and parliamentary support by running an early effective press machine run by Alec Douglas-Home, himself a future Prime Minister He wanted to focus on domestic affairs, unfortunately his premiership would be all but forgotten for those, obscured as they would be with the Foreign Policy failures he would be severely criticised over, for generations to come. Domestically he sought to improved conditions with the Factories Act 1937, Holidays with Pay Act 1938, Housing Act 1938, Coal Act (Nationalisation) provisions and more but he had little if any focus on the international perspective and the foreign policy that would shortly become so critical. Was Chamberlain too domestically engrossed? British Foreign Policy needed to be addressed. Chamberlain and his brother in particular had both identified and cited the need to gear-up and be aware of and ready for the threat of Hitler’s Germany from the early 1930’s but we should not forget this was also on the tail-end of a massive depression of the early 1930’s there were a huge number of concerns at home as well as abroad that needed addressing. The issue was what was Chamberlain doing about the Foreign Policy elements? In the 2nd part of this series we will explore what happened in respect of Chamberlain and Appeasement, was he a didactic voice that would not heed the advice of others, or just a man desperate to at least try to avoid huge loss of life and a repeat of the disasterous human and financial loss that might result from all out conflict with Hitler?	i don't know
The volcano Irazu is in which Central American country?	Few sites compare to the majestic Irazú Volcano National Park - Go Visit Costa Rica Few sites compare to the majestic Irazú Volcano National Park Sponsored Links Travelers with an eye for ecological diversity and unique landscapes have long traveled to Costa Rica to marvel at its golden Caribbean shores, its lush tropical rain forests and it's epic and impressive volcanoes - and few volcanoes have as grand a presence as the eponymous volcano of Irazú Volcano National Park . View Photos Irazú Still Active Irazú is an enormous and still active volcano located in the central expanse of the Central American country a short car or bus ride from the cities of Cartago and San Jose . The mountainous volcano has been dubbed El Coloso (The Colossus) by the locals, due to its historical role in numerous catastrophes. Notable among these is the nearly three years of eruptions that occurred during a visit from former President John F. Kennedy in 1963. Allegedly the eruptions began on the day President Kennedy arrived for a state visit and showered ash and molten rock on neighboring cities, clogged the air with smoke and wrought serious damage on the surrounding area until 1965. Nowadays the volcano is more passive and, as a result, Irazú Volcano National Park has developed into a popular tourist destination for both local and international tourists interested in the unique geographical anomalies that have resulted from this volcanic activity. Of these, the most interesting and beautiful may be the Diego de la Haya lake. Located in one of Irazú Volcano National Park's massive craters, Diego de la Haya is a bright green volcanic lake named after the former Governor of Cartago, Diego de la Haya Fernández. Irazú Volcano National Park Travelers will find much to do in the park than just the volcano. Irazú Volcano National Park features a wealth of hiking and biking trails that will allow tourists to explore the beautiful and untamed natural beauty of the region. Trees within the surrounding forests have grown tall and strong thanks to the mineral-rich soil near the volcano, though the closer one gets to the tree lines, more gnarled and burnt the plants become until active craters still bustling with steam and fumaroles are all that can be seen. While Irazú Volcano National Park may lack some of the biodiversity of Costa Rica's other national parks, there are some unique creatures specific to the regions surrounding the famous volcano. Bird species in particular have adapted to volcano life, with the Volcano Junco (a relative of the common American sparrow) and the Volcano Hummingbird both making their homes in the forests surrounding Irazú volcano. Top Hotel Picks in Costa Rica Sign Up for Javi's Newsletter The Best of Costa Rica Go Visit Costa Rica's	Costa Rica
Which actress played Bathsheba Everdene in the 1967 film ‘Far From the Madding Crowd’?	List of Central America Volcanoes by Country By Kirsten Hubbard Updated March 22, 2016. There are many things that travelers love about Central America. It is paradise for nature lovers because of all of its lakes, forests, beaches and rivers. However one of the main reasons why people come to this part of the world are its volcanoes. The isthmus's location along the Ring of Fire has resulted in tons of volcanic activity. This has been happening for thousands and thousands of years and continues to this day. Most of those volcanoes are dormant, but there is still a good number of them that are still active and provide amazing shows from a safe distance. All nature lovers will love taking a hike on them. The mos adventurous ones can even climb up a few of the active ones. Each of the volcanoes is also a unique opportunity to run into local wildlife and to enjoy the amazing views of the surrounding mountain ranges and towns. That's why volcano tours are so popular in the region. If you keep scrolling down you will find the names of all of all of the Central American volcanoes and discover which ones are active. List of Volcanoes in Central America by Country: Central America Volcanoes. Guate 360, www.guate360.com Guatemala has the highest amount of volcanoes in the region with thirty seven spread along its territory. Acatenango Tajumulco - The highest in Centra America Tecuamburro continue reading below our video Tipping Etiquette Around the World There are fifteen volcanoes spread all over Costa Rica for you to explore. Arenal - Active You will find twenty one volcanoes scattered along Nicaragua. Apoyeque El Salvador might be one of the tiniest countries of the region but it is home to twenty volcanoes. Apaneca Range There are three volcanoes in Panama. Baru There are only four volcanoes in Honduras. Yojoa	i don't know
What is the name of the three-eyed fish in the US animated television series ‘The Simpsons’?	The Simpsons Cartoon Studio \| Simpsons Wiki \| Fandom powered by Wikia The Simpsons Cartoon Studio Share The Simpsons Cartoon Studio The Simpsons Cartoon Studio is a computer program based on the animated television series The Simpsons that was released for PC and Mac computers in 1996 by Fox Interactive. It allows users to create their own Simpsons cartoons, using characters, sounds, music, and locations from the show. The cast members of The Simpsons provided their voices for the program. The Simpsons Cartoon Studio has received generally positive reviews, although there has been some criticism too. The game was based on the Felix the Cat's Cartoon Toolbox. Released: June 1, 1996 [ show ] Gameplay The Simpsons Cartoon Studio is a design program for creating cartoons using characters, sounds, music, and locations from the American animated television series The Simpsons. To create a cartoon, one first selects a background, then inserts characters, props, and special effects, and after that adds dialog, sound effects, and music. The program allows users to send the finished cartoons to friends through email or save it onto a hard drive or a floppy disk. There are seventeen characters, fifty special effects, two-hundred-and-seventy props, and thirty-five backgrounds in The Simpsons Cartoon Studio, with thousands of individual cels hand-drawn by actual The Simpsons cartoonists. Every character has a set of actions; for example, Homer can crawl, ride on a tube, and run away screaming, while Bart can run, trip over, cycle, ride his skateboard, and paint graffiti with spray-paint. Backgrounds featured range from the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant to Bart's room. There are props include tables, furnitures, and it even includes animals like Santa's Little Helper , Snowball II and Blinky . Development The Simpsons Cartoon Studio was released for PC and Mac computers in the middle of 1996. It was developed and published by Fox Interactive, and uses an improved version of the interface from Felix the Cat's Cartoon Toolbox that was developed by Big Top Productions. The dialogs featured in the program were provided by the actual cast members of The Simpsons. Receptions Critics gave The Simpsons Cartoon Studio generally favorable reviews, and it received a lot of hype in the United States around the time it was released. A reviewer for The Palm Beach Post wrote that it is not very easy to create the cartoons: "Layering characters, props, sound effects and dialogue into seamless animation is no small task, and you'll invest a good chunk of time with this CD-ROM before you're ready to premiere your own Simpsons episodes. But if you're fan enough to go the distance, this is a remarkably versatile program that turns out great-looking cartoons." Similarly, Jane Clifford of The San Diego Union-Tribune called it "quite a challenging product" which produces cartoons that "really look professional." Benjamin Svetkey of Entertainment Weekly gave it a B+ rating, commenting that the cartoons created "can be entertaining, but they're hampered by a failing common to the make-your-own-movie genre: Since Cartoon Studio has a limited number of voice clips ('Ay, caramba!', 'Mmm... donuts', and about 50 variations on 'Bart!'), your plot choices are restricted to the usual pranks, pratfalls, and catchphrases. Still, as Homer would say, The Simpsons Cartoon Studio is more 'Woohoo!' than 'D'oh!'." Wired's Erika Milvy commented that "Fox's Simpsons Cartoon Studio may be more the '90s answer to Colorforms than a finely tuned animation resource, but dang if it isn't fun to watch Smithers and Mr. Burns hula across the monitor as a three-eyed fish swims by," and added that "for the anally inclined, there's certainly a way to have these cartoons make more sense. But I prefer to toss rhyme and reason out the window." Joseph Szadkowski of The Washington Times wrote that "For the amount of complicated computer stuff going on — frame by frame editing, character motion, voice overlays — even the most computer-illiterate individual should be able to figure this out. The Simpsons Cartoon Studio is a very fun, relatively inexpensive jaunt into the mind of Mr. Groening." Mike Langberg of Knight Ridder was less positive, writing in his review that "At first glance, the CD-ROM provides a lot of raw material. There are 350 brief animations, running two or three seconds each, showing 17 characters from the show in numerous poses. The CD-ROM delivery, unfortunately, falls flat[...]." He explained that "Simpsons Cartoon Studio is awkward to operate and limited in what it can accomplish, producing animated sequences that are jerky and out of sync. The CD-ROM comes with 15 cartoons created by the developers, running from 10 seconds to 55 seconds. None flow smoothly or tell funny stories. There's no reason to expect the rest of us will do any better." Similarly, Nancy Malitz of The Detroit News wrote that "you move the characters around and invent the scenarios, but in the end you might feel your creativity wasn't heavily challenged. The whole deal is essentially a cut-and-paste operation. You can't create characters of your own, and the kind of automatic synchronization of sounds with movement that you see in a simple product like Video Jam isn't available, so things look sort of choppy no matter how hard you try." Features	Blinky
A ‘Yarborough’ is a hand in which card game?	The Simpsons Called It: Three Eyed Fish Caught Outside a Nuclear Power Plant The Simpsons Called It: Three Eyed Fish Caught Outside a Nuclear Power Plant Fishermen in Córdoba, Argentina caught a three-eyed wolf fish in a reservoir fed by a local nuclear power plant, which will surely hinder the plant's owner's attempt to run for local office. Advertisement The fishermen say their discovery, which actually bears no resemblance to Blinky the three-eyed fish from The Simpsons, has begun to worry local residents who live near the reactor. And instead of feasting on their catch, and presumably gaining superpowers from its probable high levels of radiation, the men have decided to let it be tested to see if the mutation was actually a result of it being exposed to the water from the nuclear plant. After that they plan to have it embalmed for posterity, or sell it to Fox as a promotional item for their long running, and eerily prophetic, animated series. [ Infobae via Geekologie ] Gear from Kinja Deals	i don't know
What kind of performer is an ecdysiast?	What does ecdysiast mean? definition and meaning (Free English Language Dictionary) Gypsy Rose Lee ; Lee ; Rose Louise Hovick (United States striptease artist who became famous on Broadway in the 1930s (1914-1970)) Learn English with... Proverbs of the week "Eat when you're hungry, and drink when you're dry." (English proverb) "Any new saint-to-be has his miracles to make" (Breton proverb) "No one knows a son better than the father." (Chinese proverb) "An idle man is up to no good." (Corsican proverb) ECDYSIAST: related words searches	Striptease
Who wrote the music for the American musical ‘West Side Story’?	Appleton Pin Up Girl: Interview with Kim Khaos Exotic Ecdysiast Interview with Kim Khaos Exotic Ecdysiast Photo: Kim Khaos by Mark Liddell Photography. Featuring Grace robe, tear away set To add another installment of burlesque costume goodness I would like to introduce you all to burlesque performer Kim Khaos. Blue tear away bra for Innocence Bliss Kim Khaos is a shimmy shakin', heartbreakin' bump n grinder based in Glasgow. Her performance style is heavily influenced by the golden era of burlesque and has a strong exotica flavour. Kim is also an accomplished sideshow performer specialising in glass performances, earning her the tag line 'The Glass Girl of Glasgow'. In addition to her performance skills, Kim launched her costuming business Exotic Ecdysiast in February 2016. Her costumes have travelled all around the world, from London and Paris to New Orleans and India. Her costumes have a very distinctive look and have been styled and inspired around vintage burlesque wear. Exotic Ecdysiast by Kim Khaos provides traditional and vintage style burlesque costume to the modern age! I have interviewed Kim about her business and here is what she had to say… What is your background in garment construction and/or design and/or ornamentation? How long have you been costuming for? I started my business Exotic Ecdysiast in February of this year, but I have been making my own costumes and taking commissions from performers in the local area since I started performing in 2012 How did you become involved in burlesque/stage costuming? I quickly realised when I started performing that my sewing skills would be very useful within the industry! I've always loved making things, so burlesque gave me a fantastic opportunity to make all kinds of accessories for myself and others. What are some of the challenges of burlesque/stage costuming? Molly Teaser in pink bespoke tear away set and panel skirt. Making burlesque costumes is a lot more involved than any other kind of stage wear, partly due to the fastenings and fit. Every piece needs to fit perfectly and be able to come off as easily as it comes on, so there's a lot of extra thought that needs to go into the construction and shaping of each piece. Describe some of your favourite projects? I recently made a nude illusion full costume for a lovely client, and it was one of those rare occasions where everything just came together really quickly and easily! The end result was just beautiful - really delicate and exactly as we had both envisaged it - a real joy to work on. Which performers can we see wearing some of your work? Since EE launched I have made pieces for: Innocence Bliss, The Death Do Us Part Danger Show, Ruby Trix, Babette Bijou, Luna TikTok, Peachy Malone, Molly Teaser, Volcanic Ash and Cara Delahoyde (Cirque le Soir) Who would you love to make a costume for? I would love to make a costume for Trixie Little! She is one of my absolute favourite performers and her costumes are always so clever and inventive. Have you always had a design in your head that you would like to fulfil? This changes almost daily! I can never switch my brain off, so sometimes just seeing a piece of trim or a specific colour can set my mind racing! At the moment, I'm pretty fixated on making one of my Grace robes in a rich maroon velvet trimmed with black coque feathers - I'll let myself make it once I've gotten to the bottom of my never ending to-make list! Photo: Kim Khaos by Mark Liddell Photography. Featuring nude illusion set What aspect of costume making do you enjoy the most? I enjoy working with my clients to design and create their ideal costume pieces - sometimes this can be challenging (getting certain kinds of trims and fabrics in the UK can be tricky!), but it's always worth it in the end when the pieces are sent off to happy customers! If a new performer was looking to get a costume commissioned/constructed, what should they consider? Definitely consider how to use costume to make your act pop! For example: lots of fringing on a bra can add serious impact to a shimmy/bump n grind style act. Another thing I would suggest is investing in multi-use pieces - costuming can get really costly, especially when you're just getting started, so I would say investing in a really beautiful and well fitted set that you can use for a couple of acts while you're finding your feet will serve you well. What difference would a new performer find from off the rack to commissioned pieces? Commissioned pieces will more often than not fit a lot better than off the rack pieces, which makes a huge difference to the overall look of a costume/act. My most popular item (embellished tear away bra/thong set) is made to measure for every customer, because especially with the bras, if the sizing is wrong for the wearer, it can totally destroy the look of the costume, and more than anything, it's just really uncomfortable to wear! Peachy Malone wearing purple Grace robe. Photo by Red Bairn Photography All costumiers tend to have a style of costume/way of making or presenting their work. Can you describe what you think makes an obvious Exotic Ecdysiast piece? Sparkle and swish! Two of my favourite elements to work with in my designs - I love making the big swooshy Grace gowns, just due to the drama a twirl can create; and making rhinestone encrusted sets brings me so much happiness! Who doesn't love a sparkly showgirl? Do you do courses at all from pastie making, general repairs, how to embellish/crystal, etc or do you save you skills for your own work? I am in talks with the wonderful folk at the Glasgow Festival of Burlesque at the moment about potentially running an embellishment workshop at the festival in November - I'm still working everything out, but details will be published on their website once we've got everything confirmed - I'm really excited about sharing the sparkle love! What would you consider important performer must have items? First and foremost, a good pair of strong fishnet tights (my preferred brand are Capezio), matching lingerie that makes you feel unstoppably fabulous and a gorgeous pair of pasties/tassels. Nothing can stop you with that kind of kit! Sassy La Showdoll in robe embellished by Exotic Ecdysiast How long on average does it take to make a costume? It entirely depends on what the client has asked for - I tend to say most pieces take around two weeks to make, but entire costumes can take up to a month if there are multiple layers to be made and trims arriving from all around the world! What are you most asked for/popular items? Gowns and tear away sets, definitely! I've added a new option to my Etsy store to incorporate alternative designs and colours for the sets, because I was getting multiple custom orders for different colours! How should a performer care for their costumes? Gently handwashing anything embellished is a must! Delicate rhinestoned knickers don't like the washing machine. Gowns and dresses, I would recommend getting dry cleaned just to be on the safe side. As long as you look after your costumes, they'll look after you! What would you like to experience in your creativity and/or your business in the near future? I would love to continue to grow and start taking stalls at shows and events outside of Glasgow and showcasing my work to the wider burlesque community. I recently shot a look book of my basic staple pieces with the wonderful Mark Liddell Photography and I'm in the process of getting them printed to showcase my work. What are your long term plans for Exotic Ecdysiast business? Cara Delahoyde wearing crystal tear away set Long term plans include expanding my whole range on Etsy and branching out into creating some different styles of pieces. I am also looking into getting stocked in some physical locations within Glasgow too, which would be amazing! I would like to thank Kim for her time with this interview. For more about Kim be sure to check her out via the below:	i don't know
The Hajj is a pilgrimage to which city?	HAJJ IS THE PILGRIMAGE TO CITY MAKKAH – bestumrahpackages WordPress.com HAJJ IS THE PILGRIMAGE TO CITY MAKKAH The Hajj (pilgrimage to city Makkah) is the 5th of the basic Muslim practices and institutions well-known as the 5 pillars of Islam. Pilgrimage is made to the Holy Kaaba, found in the holy city of Makkah in Saudi Arabia, the ‘House of ALLAH Almighty,’ whose sanctity rests in that the Hazrat Ibraheem (AS) built it for the worship of ALLAH Almighty. ALLAH Almighty rewarded him by attributing the House to himself, in essence honouring it, and by making it the devotional epicentre which all Muslims face when offering the namaz or prayers. The rites and the rituals of pilgrimage are performed today exactly as did by Hazrat Ibraheem (AS) and after him by Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). Pilgrimage is viewed as a particularly praiseworthy activity. Pilgrimage serves as a penance, the ultimate pardon for sins, devotion, and extreme spirituality. The pilgrimage to Makkah, the most holy city in Islam, is required of all financially and physically able Muslims once in their life. The pilgrimage rite starts a few months after Holy Ramadan, in the month last month of Zil-Hajj on the 8th day, and ends on the 13th day. Makkah is the center towards which the Muslims meet once a year, meet and revive in themselves the faith that all Muslims are equivalent and deserve the sympathy and love of others, irrespective of their race or racial origin. Therefore the pilgrimage unites the Muslims of the globe into one international fraternity. More than 2 million persons perform the Hajj each year, and the rite serves as a unifying power in Islam by bringing Muslims of diverse backgrounds together in worship. In few Muslim societies, once a Muslim has made the pilgrimage, he is often labelled with the title ‘hajji’; this, though, is a cultural, rather than religious custom. Finally, the Hajj is a manifestation of the faith in the oneness of ALLAH Almighty, all the pilgrims worship and obey the orders and commands of the One ALLAH Almighty. At certain stations on the caravan routes to Makkah, or when the pilgrim passes the nearest point to those stations, the pilgrim enters the state of purity well-known as ihram. In this state, the particular ‘normal’ actions of the day and night become prohibited and impermissible for the pilgrims, such as clipping the fingernails, covering the head, and wearing normal garments in regards to men. Males remove their daily wears and don the garments particular to this state of ihram, 2 white seamless sheets that are wrapped around the body in a prescribed way. All this increases the sanctity and reverence of the pilgrimage, the city of Makkah, and month of Zil-Hijjah. After entering into the state of ihram, the pilgrim proceeds to Makkah and awaits the start of the Hajj. kaabahtours.co.uk is one of the authorized Hajj and Umrah travel agent based in UK offers a range of Affordable Saudi Umrah Visa from UK. Share this:	Mecca
RSM is the international vehicle regristration for which republic?	BBC - Religions - Islam: Hajj: pilgrimage to Mecca Women must not cover their faces, even if they would do so in their home country. Men may not wear clothes with stitching. Bathing is allowed but scented soaps are frowned upon. Umra The Hajj is a real pilgrimage - a journey, with rites and rituals to be done along the way. You begin at a place just outside Mecca called the Miqat, or entry station to the Hajj. There you bathe, put on the Ihram (the special white clothes), make the intention for Umra and begin reciting the Talbiya Du'a (prayer). Here I am at Your service, O Allah, here I am at your service! You have no partner. Here I am at your service. All praise and blessings belong to you. All dominion is yours and You have no partner. Talbiya Du'a Then you go to the Masjid al Haram and walk around the Ka'ba seven times repeating du'as and prayers. This is called the Tawaf. Afterwards you should sip some Zam Zam water. Zam Zam water is water from the Zam Zam well, the sacred well which opened in the desert to save Hajira and Is'mail from dying of thirst. Next you go to the walkway between the hills of Safa and Marwa and walk back and forth between them seven times. This completes the Umra portion of the Hajj rituals and some of the Ihram restrictions are relaxed. Hajj Now make your intention for the Hajj and put on the Ihram garments again. Travel to Mina on the 8th of Dhul Hijjah (a date in the Islamic calendar) and remain there until Fajr (dawn) next morning. Then you travel to the valley of Arafat and stand in the open praising Allah. The heat of Arabia at midday provides a hint as to what the Day of Judgement will be like. At the end of the day, travel to Muzdalifa for the night. Gather together 49 or 70 small stones together to use the next day. One of the pillars of Jamraat © In the morning you return to Mina and throw the stones at pillars called Jamraat. These represent the devil. Then a sacrifice called a Qurbani should be made in which a lamb or sheep is slaughtered and the meat distributed among the poor. After this, men's heads are shaved and women cut a lock of their hair. Then return to Mecca and make a Tawaf (this is the ritual of walking around the Ka'aba seven times). Then it's back to Mina for 3 or 4 days, stoning the pillars each day. Finally do a farewell Tawaf in Masjid-al Haram on the twelfth day of the month of Dhul Hijjah, ask Allah's forgiveness, make du'a and the Hajj is finished. Many people then go to the Prophet's Mosque in Medina, but this is optional. A man who has completed the Hajj is called a Hajji, a woman who has completed it is called a Hajjah. At the end of the Hajj, Muslims from all over the world celebrate the holiday known as the Eid ul Adha or Festival of the sacrifice. This festival commemorates the obedience of the Prophet Ibrahim when he was ordered to sacrifice his son Is'mail. Ibrahim proved his love and devotion to Allah by showing his willingness to kill his beloved son if Allah wished it. In the end Ibrahim did not have to kill his son as Allah gave him a ram to sacrifice instead.	i don't know
Shaun the Sheep first appeared in which 1995 UK animated television film?	Shaun the Sheep aims to expand his flock with a big-screen adventure \| Film \| The Guardian Shaun the Sheep aims to expand his flock with a big-screen adventure Aardman Animations teams ups with French broadcasting giant StudioCanal to give Nick Park's creation his own movie Shaun the Sheep is the creation of Wallace and Gromit's Nick Park Friday 26 April 2013 07.40 EDT First published on Friday 26 April 2013 07.40 EDT Close This article is 3 years old Shaun the Sheep, the animated character created by Wallace and Gromit's Nick Park, is to get his own movie, it was announced today . Shaun first appeared in A Close Shave, the third Wallace and Gromit film from 1995 that went on to win the Oscar for best animated short. He then became the central character in a CBBC TV series that was first broadcast in 2007. The film's plot is described as an "epic adventure" in which "Shaun, Bitzer and the flock have to go to the big city to rescue [the Farmer]". The UK's Aardman Animations, which has created all the Wallace and Gromit films as well as more recent work such as Arthur Christmas and The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists , is teaming up with the French-owned powerhouse StudioCanal to make the film. It will be directed by Richard Starzak (aka Goleszowski), creative director on the Shaun the Sheep TV series for the last five years, and Mark Burton, co-writer of Curse of the Were-Rabbit . David Sproxton, Aardman's executive chairman and a producer on The Pirates! said: "Shaun and his friends have a massive global following and we are very excited about being able to put them into a bigger adventure for the big screen." Olivier Courson, StudioCanal's CEO, said: "Shaun is a character you love at first sight whatever your age. We are really happy to work with Aardman; it's such a talented team."	A Close Shave
Which infamous monk was murdered in Petrograd (St Petersburg) in 1916?	Shaun the Sheep Movie (U)** - The News Shaun the Sheep Movie (U)** Shaun and his fluffy friends head off to the city for adventure 13:44 Friday 06 February 2015 Have your say Bristol-based Aardman Studios works its stop-motion animated magic on a colourful big screen adventure for the mischievous sheep, who first appeared in Wallace and Gromit’s 1995 escapade A Close Shave and has been baad to the bone in a self-titled CBBC series since 2007. Drawing loving inspiration from other Aardman films including Chicken Run, Shaun The Sheep Movie is a shear delight, melding slapstick and subtler humour to appeal to young fans and their wranglers. Directors Mark Burton and Richard Starzack shepherd this boisterous romp through various twists and turns at a breathless pace. Stop-motion visuals burst with colour and action sequences are orchestrated with mind-boggling technical precision. As usual, Shaun is at the centre of the madcap action. The flock grows tired of the daily routine on Mossy Bottom Farm under the watchful eye of Bitzer the sheepdog. So the animals hoodwink the Farmer into taking a well-deserved day off so they can do the same. Unfortunately, this cunning plan goes awry and the Farmer ends up with a nasty bout of memory loss after a high-speed journey to The Big City inside a runaway caravan. Off the hoof, Shaun and his fleecy friends board the 62 bus from Mossy Bottom to the metropolis, determined to bring their beloved master back home. Unfortunately, they attract the attention of a nasty animal containment officer called Trumper, who doesn’t want any farmyard escapees on the lamb on his patch. Aided by an orphan dog named Slip, the sheep disguise themselves as humans to pull the wool over the eyes of unsuspecting residents of The Big City and track down the Farmer. Back at Mossy Bottom, The Naughty Pigs run amok in the farmhouse, oblivious to the hare-brained antics of the other four-legged residents. With half-term grazing on the horizon, Shaun The Sheep Movie will have families flocking in droves to local cinemas. There are some lovely interludes here like Shaun’s temporary incarceration in an animal shelter, which also houses a psychotic cat from the same litter as Hannibal Lecter and a dog with BARK and BITE tattooed on its knuckles. As with other Aardman offerings, the animators’ imprints are occasionally visible in the expressive clay protagonists, which is part of the film’s undeniable charm. Ewe won’t be disappointed.	i don't know
Which poet and garden designer was dubbed ‘The Bard of Twickenham’?	Project MUSE - “A Relic from the Cave of Pope”: Drawings of the Grotto in an Extra-Illustrated Plan of Mr. Pope’s Garden in the Huntington Library “A Relic from the Cave of Pope”: Drawings of the Grotto in an Extra-Illustrated Plan of Mr. Pope’s Garden in the Huntington Library J. Vanessa Lyon (bio) abstract Alexander Pope’s Twickenham grotto was one of the most famous in England. The poet continuously renovated and expanded his “sacred cave” from 1725 until his death in 1744. But while the grotto’s picturesque Thames-side exterior was widely reproduced in prints and paintings throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, only a handful of images depicting the site’s fictively ruinous interior are known today. This essay proposes an addition to the visual culture of Popeiana in the form of six previously unpublished period drawings. The images are examined in light of their proto-gothic qualities as well as the Catholic poet’s pastoral retirement, artistic connections, and possible Jacobite leanings. keywords eighteenth-century landscape design, architectural drawings, gothicism and neoclassicism, Jonathan Richardson, William Kent an intriguing set of what appear to be eighteenth-century drawings of the grotto of Alexander Pope promises to enrich our understanding of the appearance and allure of this ingenious feature of the poet’s Twickenham villa and garden. Unsigned and, to my knowledge, published here for the first time, five of the six careful but confidently executed drawings ( figs. 1 – 6 ) depict individual, cave-like structures, while the sixth shows double doors in an elaborate surround surmounted by a large urn. Although the drawings primarily depict the faces of the dark, rough-hewn interiors to which they provide variable degrees of visual access, none of the sheets is labeled, nor are the entrances explicitly rendered as individual components of a larger architectural project. Nonetheless, due to their structural differences and stylistic similarities, one might sensibly assume that the drawings are first thoughts or preliminary sketches undertaken of or for the same site. From this perspective it is possible to read them not so much as variations on a theme (or practically speaking, multiple potential design [End Page 441] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Unattributed drawing bound in Huntington Library, 106623, an extra-illustrated copy of John Serle, Plan of Mr. Pope’s Garden (London, 1745). Click for larger view Unattributed drawing bound in Huntington Library, 106623. [End Page 442] Unattributed drawing bound in Huntington Library, 106623. Click for larger view Unattributed drawing bound in Huntington Library, 106623. [End Page 443] schemes proposed for the same single location) as independent if interrelated architectural solutions for various parts of a larger, decidedly eclectic, whole. Despite the drawings’ anonymous status, there are good reasons to surmise that they are rare interior views of Pope’s grotto either as it was or as he envisioned it could be during some stage of its re/construction from 1725 to 1744. Click for larger view Figure 5. Unattributed drawing bound in Huntington Library, 106623. The six unattributed drawings are bound in the Huntington Library’s extra-illustrated copy of the Plan of Mr. Pope’s Garden (1745), written and illustrated by the poet’s longtime gardener, John Serle. The book’s binding dates from the late nineteenth century. 1 But the “extra” elements added to Serle’s text suggest a keen interest in some lesser-known features of Pope’s famously artful garden and his grotto in particular. An avid collector of extra-illustrated books, Henry E. Huntington acquired Serle’s Plan at the highly publicized 1911–12 sale of the library of Robert Hoe. The American bibliophile’s famed collection of exceedingly rare, largely English books and manuscripts also included the Gutenberg Bible on vellum, for which Huntington paid $50,000—at [End Page 444] Click for larger view Unattributed drawing bound in Huntington Library, 106623. [End Page 445] the time, the record price for a book. 2 Remarkably, the Huntington’s extra-illustrated Serle contains (in addition to the aforementioned original drawings and several late eighteenth-century prints of the grotto’s exterior) a letter in sepia ink penned by Pope to his friend, the artist and theorist Jonathan Richardson. 3 In view of their placement in so personalized and unusual a version of Serle’s book, itself a compendium of panegyrical grotto-related poems, the Huntington drawings warrant consideration as a valuable addition to the visual culture of Popeiana. A further, less circumstantial, reason to examine the drawings in this context is that several sheets appear to represent architectural elements and aesthetic concerns associated with Pope’s “subterraneous way and grotto” by the eighteenth-century visitors who had viewed it. 4 As we shall see, written and/or schematic accounts of the garden and grotto are not difficult to come by; for his part, Pope mentions his “shadowy cave” not infrequently in his correspondence. Indeed, around 1740, five years prior to the publication of Serle’s geological survey of the grotto’s gem-encrusted internal chambers ( fig. 7 ), Pope had drawn his own annotated diagrams ( figs. 8 , 9 ), some of which were reproduced later in the century. 5 A revised and updated plan reflecting changes made to the grotto by its subsequent owners would appear as late as 1797 ( fig. 10 ). Etched and engraved drawings showing the idyllic “Twittenham” landscape surrounding Pope’s modest but assertively Palladian villa were more popular still. Prints of this kind invariably provide an unobstructed Thames-side view of the arched mouth of the grotto visible beneath the villa’s columned portico (see, for example, fig. 11 ). Scores of these appealing little scenes were presumably reproduced to perpetuate what Maynard Mack has described as “something like a Pope-and-Twickenham legend in the first sixty-odd years after his death.” 6 But the legend-making had commenced in earnest while the poet was still alive. In 1743, a year before Pope’s death, for example, Robert Dodsley composed a wistfully forward-looking poem that all but “prophesies the sanctification of the grotto as a shrine of Pope”: 7 [End Page 446] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 7. Plan of grotto included in John Serle’s Plan of Mr. Pope’s Garden (1745). Huntington Library, 106623. [End Page 447] View full resolution Figure 8. Alexander Pope, plan of the Twickenham grotto, in a letter from William Oliver to William Borlase dated January 1740. Courtesy of the Morrab Library, Penzance, Cornwall. [End Page 448] View full resolution Figure 9. Alexander Pope, plan of the grotto, dated December 1740. Reproduced in Robert Carruthers, The Life of Alexander Pope (1857). Widener Library, Harvard University. [End Page 449] View full resolution Figure 10. Samuel Lewis, Plan of the Grotto, reflecting Stanhope’s changes after Pope’s death, measured in 1785, later engraved for Edward Ironside, The History and Antiquities of Twickenham (1797), plate 4. Bound in Serle’s extra-illustrated Plan of Mr. Pope’s Garden, Huntington Library, 106623. [End Page 450] View full resolution Figure 11. A View of the Late Celebrated Mr. Pope’s House, drawn by Augustin Heckel (fl. 1690–1770), engraved by James Mason (1710–1780). Bound in Serle’s extra-illustrated Plan of Mr. Pope’s Garden, Huntington Library, 106623. [End Page 451] Then (for the Muse that distant Day can see)On Thames’s Bank the Stranger shall arrive,With curious Wish thy sacred Grott to see,Thy sacred grott shall with thy name survive. 8 For a time at least, Dodsley was correct, since the grotto soon assumed the status of a pilgrimage site for Pope’s devotees and especially, it seems, his Catholic coreligionists. The overgrown and ruinous yet conspicuously classical forms represented in the Huntington drawings resonate, both in style and subject matter, with what might be termed Pope’s “Augustan-gothicism.” 9 Yet no attempt has been made to establish relationships between the drawings and the specific areas of the grotto they may depict. My primary aim here is therefore to situate the six drawings in relation to contemporary literary and visual descriptions of the grotto, a calculatedly gloomy and irregular warren of caves constructed beneath the poet’s staid and orderly house. While this essay proposes certain aesthetic connections between often fantastical, inchoate, and unapologetically atmospheric images and texts, it is also concerned with the religio-political implications of Pope’s grottifying impulse, which I interpret as a manifestation of his “Catholic tastes.” If, as Morris Brownell has observed, “Pope’s grotto was perhaps the most famous of the eighteenth century,” it is doubly surprising that so few images recording its elaborate and painstakingly designed interior have survived. 10 Excluding the six additions proposed here, fewer than a dozen original drawings and prints are generally accepted as period representations. The possibility that the Huntington drawings might increase by more than half the number of extant original eighteenth-century depictions of the grotto itself is therefore an exciting one. Popery in Twickenham: Villa, Garden, Grotto In 1719, with gentrification clearly in mind, Pope undertook an ambitious building project on five newly leased acres along the Thames. With the help of a fellow Catholic, the Tory architect James Gibbs, his idea was to demolish or renovate a trio of existing workers’ cottages in order to build for himself an imposing, fashionably Italianate house and landscaped garden. 11 In his attempt to make the most of an enviably located yet far-from-extensive property, Pope conceived of a grotto that would serve utilitarian as well as aesthetic purposes. On the one hand, the grotto was designed to solve a logistical problem: Pope’s villa was separated from the grassy mounts, forests, and trees at the rear of the estate by the King’s Highway from London to Hampton Court. The passage under the house would thus provide a conduit through which visitors could access one of England’s newest and most original pleasure gardens without needing to cross the [End Page 452] road overhead. On the other hand, the variously shaped caves carved out of his reconstituted cellars were envisioned as more than simply an impressive tunnel, for Pope would labor to alter and perfect both the appearance and the visitor’s experience of his grotto for nearly two decades, from the first stage of its completion until his death. In an article published in the Huntington Library Quarterly in 1949, Frederick Barcher complained that, while at least the basic structure of Pope’s grotto was still in existence, it was “almost forgotten, and is mentioned by scholars and critics only in passing.” 12 Thanks in part to Barcher’s groundbreaking study, which relates Pope’s creation to the humanistic Renaissance tradition of garden grottos and encomiastic pastoral verse, this is far from true today. In addition to Anthony Beckles Willson—Twickenham’s perspicuous local historian—John Dixon Hunt, Morris Brownell, Maynard Mack, Peter Martin, and Mavis Batey are among the scholars who have since elucidated the meaning and importance of Pope’s grotto within the context of his verse as well as his aesthetic affinities as a virtuoso designer who was to become “one of England’s foremost gardening authorities in the first half of the century.” 13 In studies by these and other literary and garden historians, the grotto’s planned irregularity has often been aligned with Pope’s antiquarian and/or archaeological poetics. The polymath poet–architect–landscape designer of Brownell’s incisive studies, for example, begins building the grotto as a classical nymphaeum and ends up endeavoring to achieve a “careful reconstruction of a mine or quarry modeled on a cave in the tin mines of Cornwall” as an amateur geologist. 14 Less focused on the grotto’s materiality, Maynard Mack argued, somewhat differently, that the grotto was to its creator as much a “monument of art” as a paean to retirement. Placed in the eremitic tradition of cavernous retreats inhabited by bookish recluses and cultural outsiders, the grotto becomes an emblem of desired seclusion and imposed exclusion alike. As Mack observes: “[i]t was evidence in its way of what a Roman Catholic, not to mention a hunchbacked, poet in Pope’s society must undergo.” 15 Indeed, Pope’s productive period as an author and gardener exactly corresponds with the tumultuous political situation that arose with the sudden death of the last Stuart monarch, Queen Anne. When the Hanoverian George I acceded to the throne in August 1715, the late queen’s exiled Catholic half-brother, the so-called Old Pretender, had long been recognized as James III by Louis XIV as well as the pope. Perhaps inevitably, given the heightened political rivalry between Whigs and Tories, the same year saw the uprising known as the ’15, the first of two disastrous attempts (the second rebellion would occur in 1745) by Stuart loyalists known as Jacobites to return the banished Pretender to the British throne. 16 An Englishman who shared cultural allegiances and regional ties with prominent Jacobites, high Anglican Tories, and nonjurors, Pope found that his religious [End Page 453] identity placed him in a politically perilous position. Catholics of Pope’s time were, in fact, forbidden to live within ten miles of London. As Howard Erskine-Hill has shown, the poet and his aging mother had sold their house at Binfield in anticipation of legislation passed in 1716, when commissioners were appointed “to inquire of the estates of certain traitors, and of Popish recusants, and of estates given to superstitious uses,” with the result that numerous houses owned by known Catholics were confiscated by the Crown “for the use of the public.” 17 Forced, in effect, out of London society, Pope chose to build his house in an attractive suburban hamlet to which others retired by choice rather than necessity. The villa’s Twickenham location afforded him a welcome opportunity to pursue his interests in landscape design, however, and it is in the realm of gardening that Pope’s own prophetic exploration of the picturesque took root. 18 He was of course alive to the fertile tension between nature and artifice, also a formal conceit in Renaissance gardens. He expresses the need for a judicious balance of the two in the Epistle to Burlington (1731): To build, to plant, whatever you intend,To rear the column, or the arch to bend,To swell the terrace, or to sink the grot;In all, let Nature never be forgot. Stand-alone grottos were not uncommon in sixteenth-century Italian and German gardens, nor, in the following century, were they unusual in the English countryside. An underground network of decorated catacombs built beneath his house, Pope’s grotto joined the ranks of classicizing seventeenth-century grottos at celebrated manor houses such as Wilton and Woburn Abbey. 19 Yet as John Dixon Hunt argues in an early exploration of the subject, Pope’s decidedly updated and singular take on the grotto can be understood as a precocious example of the highly personalized and meditative “expressive garden” that was to become so popular later in the century. 20 Catholic Tastes: Apocryphal Aesthetics and Closet Piety Following Dixon Hunt’s lead in assigning Romantic qualities to the Twickenham property, more recent studies have interpreted the grotto and garden as evidence of Pope’s idiosyncratic, cross-cultural, and “avant garde”—or at the very least, wide-ranging—tastes. 21 For these scholars, Pope’s meticulously planned and ornamented [End Page 454] caverns are scarcely recognizable as the “frivolous and childish” amusements described by an unimpressed Dr. Johnson in his Life of Pope (1781). Elsewhere in his biography, Johnson retrospectively alludes to Pope’s dark tastes as decidedly foreign. “A grotto is not often the wish or pleasure of an Englishman,” he writes, “who has more frequent need to solicit than exclude the sun.” 22 Unlike that architect of English gothicism, Horace Walpole, for whom medieval “gloomth” was a quality to be cultivated, Johnson thought the shadowy recesses and unreadable spaces of Pope’s caves had little to endear them to the well-ordered mind. 23 Dr. Johnson’s own arguably Jacobite sympathies and religious tolerance failed to temper his distaste for a site esteemed by Walpole for its exquisite juxtaposition of gothic shade and distant daylight. 24 As an admirer of Pope’s literary works, Johnson was able to write off the grotto as a “negligent indulgence” and an anomalous one at that. But others, Pope’s Whig detractors in particular, saw it as material proof of his inherently superstitious Catholicism and foreign frivolity. Even the poet’s widely respected classical erudition was suspect to those who supposed Roman Catholic virtuosi to be unpatriotically devoted to a “minute study of the past, which symbiotically sustained an affection for the hereditary line of rulers.” 25 Indeed, well before Johnson’s time, Pope’s unrequited love, the Whiggish Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, had openly derided the grotto’s theatrical fossils and mirrors as “emblems of tinsel rhyme and trifling sense” unappealingly en closed in “perpetual fog.” 26 In the same parodic poem, “The Court of Dulness” (1729), Montagu mocks the man-made, shrine-like nature of Pope’s creation, allusively referring to the grotto “plac’d beneath a muddy road” as a “sacred cave” gaudily adorned with “Shells of small expence.” While Montagu’s attack operates on many critical levels: aesthetic, political, and, inevitably, personal, its anti-Catholic bent should not be overlooked. The emblems, inexpensive shells, and “fragrant odors” Montagu associates with Pope’s hideaway are surely meant to conjure up sites of Catholic pilgrimage and liturgy if not the infamous priest holes and hidden altars not uncommonly found in the houses of Pope’s Catholic familiars such as Martha (Patty) Blount. 27 Pope’s longtime friend and the recipient of some of his most detailed, rhapsodic (and Romantic) garden [End Page 455] descriptions, Blount lived with her sister, Teresa, at Mapledurham, near Reading. Pope was a frequent visitor to the estate, whose gardens, with Blount’s guidance, he helped design. Rebuilt in 1588, the Blount family seat was not only a well-known recusant stronghold but also in Pope’s time “a central point of contact with the world of fashionable young Catholics.” 28 In fact, one of Mapledurham’s most curious architectural features is a Thames-facing gable studded with light-catching oyster shells. In Elizabethan times this shell decoration served to identify the Blounts as loyal Catholics and their home as a safe house for fugitive priests. Though they are often downplayed by Pope’s interpreters, the grotto displays as many, if not more, straightforward examples of Catholic iconography. Pope boldly employed a range of outward symbols that would have made his inward faith explicit and undeniable. In one of the front rooms, for example, a life-size alabaster statue of St. James wearing his attribute, the pilgrim’s scallop shell, may partake in Maple-durham’s Marian and maritime imagery. 29 For his name alone, James was an obvious choice. But there is a further Jacobean valence to his identity; as “Santiago,” James was patron saint of Spain, from whom the Jacobites had received military support in the form of a farcical—and unsuccessful—“mini-invasion” of Scotland in 1719. In addition to the resoundingly Catholic presence of a saint’s statue, Pope signaled his loyalty to the exiled Stuarts more emblematically, on an incised rock at the grotto’s entrance. Positioned above a stonework arma Christi comprising the crown of thorns and Christ’s five wounds, an inscription reads “JR 1696.” Maynard Mack believed these initials and date referred to the first crucial, and failed, Jacobite uprising when “James Rex,” disappointed by a botched assassination plot against William III, “turned his attention increasingly away from the world and toward religious retreat,” much as Pope would or could do under the aegis of his grotto. 30 While the dismissive appraisals of Montagu and Johnson are far from representative, suggestions that the grotto was somehow at odds with the more public, literary tastes of its builder were not uncommon in the eighteenth century. Yet what had appeared to some as an irreconcilable lapse in the authoritative judgment of the English Homer may be better understood as proof of Pope’s dualistic aesthetics. By this reading the grotto is not only a reification of Janus-faced Augustan/gothic extremes but also a kind of synthesis of these two ostensibly antithetical historical styles. Dixon Hunt has argued for a similar understanding of William Kent’s multiplicity, though for him the designer’s diverse modes—that is, “Grecian,” “gothic,” and “Chinese”—are unproblematically unintegrated and characteristically full of “exuberant fun.” 31 Notably, Kent’s eclecticism is of a purely artistic rather than ideological or, certainly, [End Page 456] confessional bent. By contrast, Pope’s more satirical, if not phlegmatic, outlook may have been dictated by and enacted through his unorthodox though unyielding Catholicism. His tastes may thus reflect his desire both to downplay and make manifest the complex confessional identity he so stubbornly, or faithfully, refused to reject. This despite being deprived throughout his life of rights of residence, religious education, worship, and professional employment. 32 Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 12. William Kent, Grotto of Calypso, headpiece to book 5 of the quarto edition of Pope’s translation of the Odyssey. Huntington Library, 140355. Viewed in their historical setting, Pope’s villa and grotto proclaim a hybrid aesthetic akin to the composite figures who appear in drawings and prints associated with his literary works and landscape designs (see, for example, fig. 12 , the headpiece designed by Kent for book 5 of Pope’s quarto of the Odyssey). As Mack and others have noted, Kent’s ornamental engraving cleverly portrays sea creatures in a crude masonry grotto, presumably Calypso’s cave, whose arches give way to watery views. Not unlike these paradoxical bodies, which begin with a human torso and terminate in a serpentine fishtail, Pope’s taste is founded on a veiled coincidence, rather than a commensuration, of opposites. In this respect, the gleaming classical façade of the poet’s villa belied the shadowy spectacle in his basement. The Grotto Observed: Descriptions and Extant Drawings The six drawings illustrated here are shown in the order in which they are bound in the Huntington’s extra-illustrated Serle, beginning with the pen-and-ink rendering of a double-arched rustic ruin and concluding with a pencil sketch showing a massive pair of double doors. While the placement of the drawings in the book suggests a kind of progression—possibly from the arched entrance off the river to the garden “exit,” it is not possible to read them this way in a strict sense. In any case, although guests might commonly approach the house from the Thames, their visit might conclude with a tour of the garden, which would necessitate a return through the passages beneath the [End Page 457] house. The grotto’s structure is clearest in Samuel Lewis’s late eighteenth-century view ( fig. 13 ), which portrays the tripartite, arched entrance within a shallow “porch.” In Lewis’s print, the amorphous contours of vaulted rock doorways encroach on the tidily paved floor of a deeply recessed corridor intermittently lit by skylight-like windows in unseen rooms off the main passageway. The statues seem to have been added after Pope’s death. 33 While Pope’s own diagrams of 1740, made before ( fig. 8 ) and after ( fig. 9 ) he substantially expanded the grotto, are difficult to imagine in three dimensions, the earlier and less detailed drawing includes some evocative annotations. “Darker,” “obscure,” and “archd,” Pope writes on either side of the narrowed corridor that allows for the “steep descent” to the grotto from the garden. The squarish room in the center of the drawing he labels: “Arched and Gloomy here.” Two stacked X marks placed between small boxes representing square piers at the room’s riverside entrance are duplicated in the left margin with the explanation: “not Pillars but left rough to support ye arches.” Pope’s simple sketches, however, provide little sense of what the grotto actually looked like as one passed through it. 34 Not surprisingly, given Pope’s imaginative powers, it is the notes and questions accompanying the drawing—for example, “Quaere what proper for a natural roof?”—that furnish the most useful indications of the grotto’s architectural structure and, of equal importance, the unmistakably psychological effect the site was meant to have on visitors. 35 With the aim of locating the Huntington drawings in the realm of the grotto, it will therefore be useful to revisit some of the more detailed accounts, both written and visual, left by those who had actually experienced it. Discovered by Maynard Mack, the most enumerative description of Pope’s garden as a whole was composed in 1747 for the readers of the Newcastle General Magazine, where it was published in 1748, just four years after Pope’s death. 36 This domestic travelogue is invaluable for the information it contains about the appearance and layout of the property from the vantage of someone who also appreciated Pope’s literary works. Moreover, since it was intended as a guide—and would have served well as a supplement to Serle’s then-recent Plan of Mr. Pope’s Garden—the Magazine’s “Epistolary Description” attests, as scholars have noted, to the posthumous popularity of Pope’s villa as a tourist destination. Anonymously published, the Newcastle “letter” [End Page 458] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 13. Samuel Lewis, Pope’s Grotto, late eighteenth century. Bound in an extra-illustrated copy of Serle’s Plan of Mr. Pope’s Garden, Huntington Library, 106623. [End Page 459] praises the grotto in anticipatorily Romantic language. The visitor encounters an “elegant Retreat of a Poet strongly inspired with the Love of Nature and Retirement,” the poignant appeal of which was undoubtedly enhanced by its temporary abandonment and neglect following the poet’s death. The Newcastle correspondent’s enthusiasm for the grotto is palpable from the start. “As we approach’d it,” he—or she—says, “I could not help being agitated, with a kind of glowing Ardour, flutt’ring at my Heart.” 37 This effusion might even be read as a play on the flaming heart emblem of the Jesuits, beloved by the metaphysical Catholic poet, Richard Crashaw. 38 The tour commences “at the Bottom of the Plan, where the lingring Thames glides softly by,” moving subsequently across the lawn to and through what was, in fact, largely an aboveground tunnel. “The Grotto is an irregular Vault and Passage,” the author writes: open at both Extremities, and further illuminated by two Windows to the Front: In passing it along, we are presented with many Openings and Cells, which owe their Forms to a Diversity of Pillars and Jambs, ranged after no set Order or Rule, but aptly favouring the particular Designs of the Place: They seem as roughly hew’d out of Rocks and Beds of mineral Strata, discovering in the Fissures and angular Breaches, Variety of Flints, Spar, Ores, Shells, & c. 39 The author’s description of numerous “cells” with entrances apparently framed by rustic stone doorways makes it possible to approach the Huntington drawings as representations of these rough-hewn “openings.” While it is admittedly difficult to reconcile the Newcastle visitor’s summary account with a specific drawing in the extra-illustrated Serle, the presence of multiple entrances fashioned out of Cornish rocks and minerals aligns with the Huntington artist’s obvious intention to depict various stone façades composed of basic architectural elements such as jambs and pillars yet following no coherent style or established classical order. All six drawings thus share certain stylistic qualities and architectural details with the Newcastle description. They are also relatively consistent with the handful of extant period sketches and prints of the grotto. There are two important pen-and-ink sketches of the grotto’s interior, and one of its garden-side entrance, by William Kent. [End Page 460] Yet is not possible to state with certainty when these oft-published drawings were made. It remains to be firmly established whether they were executed before or after the grotto’s expansion, or indeed, if they were taken “from life” or the artist’s imagination. For example, in Kent’s Alexander Pope in his Grotto ( fig. 14 ), the grotto’s architecture appears repetitively classical. Far from the “diversity of pillars” observed by the Newcastle visitor in 1747, Kent depicts an arcaded space where uniform vaults spring from regularly spaced, rusticated Tuscan columns similar to those at Giulio Romano’s Palazzo del Te. 40 A second drawing ( fig. 15 ), attributed to Kent—about which more will be said—also shows a pensive Pope seated in what may be the central “cave” following its reconstruction. 41 Pope’s taste for mannerist masonry and arched doorways fitted with giant keystones is demonstrated in Kent’s best-known drawing of the Twickenham property ( fig. 16 ), which focuses on the entrance from the garden rather than the grotto’s interior. In the background of this whimsical scene, Kent has sketched the urn-topped garden seats and quirky “Shell Temple” situated just beyond the grotto’s garden-side exit. The folly-like structure made of shells seems to have been loosely inspired by Roman tempietti and Roman Catholic shrines alike. Despite its top-heavy profile and awkwardly splayed legs, the Shell Temple was described by the Newcastle visitor (employing an appropriately Kentian Anglo-Italian vocabulary) as a “Rotundo, or kind of Temple, entirely compos’d of Shells, and consisting wholly of a Cupola, or Dome, supported upon rustick Columns” 42 —insufficiently so in its first incarnation, since Pope had been forced to reconstruct the Shell Temple anew in 1735, a year after the earlier version collapsed under its own weight. 43 As Serle’s Plan makes clear, however, Pope’s grotto should be understood as a component of his garden rather than of his villa—that is, as an artificial space constructed, or imaginatively unearthed, in accordance with its creator’s pictorial principles of landscape design. Described by one admirer as a “communication” 44 between the garden and house, the grotto was essentially an enfilade of earthen chambers the (mock) antique appearance of which was heightened through a “Gothick” aesthetic of irregular, non-finito stonework and would-be ruin. 45 [End Page 461] Click for larger view William Kent, Alexander Pope in His Grotto, ca. 1725–30. © Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of Chatsworth Settlement Trustees. Arch Typologies: Framing Catholic Nostalgia Kent’s drawings of the grotto’s interior suggest that its governing feature was the Roman arch, an architectural form that had much to recommend it as a visual metonymy of the Catholic Church. Like Pope, many elite English Catholics and/or Jacobite sympathizers were, not coincidentally, enthusiasts of Palladianism and admirers in particular of Inigo Jones, the style’s greatest English exponent under the Stuarts. Already in his own time, Jones was criticized for introducing architectural popery to Great Britain in the garlanded classical arcades of Whitehall Banqueting House. Whitehall was completed under the patronage of King James in 1622 and further “Catholicized” under Charles I with the addition of Peter Paul Rubens’s nine Venetian-style ceiling canvases around 1636. Like his longtime benefactor Richard Boyle, Lord Burlington, Pope admired Jones and Palladio immensely; on display in the villa at the time of his death were plaster busts of both men, likely taken from originals by Michael Rysbrack found at Burlington’s Palladian Chiswick House. 46 From his knowledge of ancient and contemporary Rome and his study of Palladio and Jones, Pope may have developed what became something of a fixation on the arch as a picturesque framing device. Brownell recounts an anecdote that centers on a 1734 exchange between Pope and Joseph Spence while the two stood before the [End Page 462] Click for larger view William Kent, Pope in His Grotto, ca. 1725–30. © Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of Chatsworth Settlement Trustees. [End Page 463] triumphal arch at the physic garden next to Magdalen College in Oxford. An artist’s rendering of the gate as it appeared in Pope’s time can be seen in the engraved frontis-piece ( fig. 17 ) of Abel Evans’s Vertumnus, An Epistle to Mr. Jacob Bobart, Botany Professor to the University of Oxford, and Keeper of the Physick-Garden (1713). 47 Taking in a view of the garden through its vermiculated stone gate, Pope is said to have remarked: “All gardening is landscape painting. Just like a landscape hung up.” 48 Pope’s laconic appraisal aptly conveys his quite literal conception of the picturesque garden at the time. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 16. William Kent, The Shell Temple in Pope’s Garden at Twickenham, ca. 1725–30. © Trustees of the British Museum,1872,1109.878. Most relevant to our purposes, however, is his unspoken desire that the garden—as a picture plainly composed of nature—be enclosed or structured by an architectural frame, importantly in this case an arch designed by Inigo Jones’s master mason, Nicholas Stone. Finished in 1632, Stone’s gate was commissioned by the garden’s founder, Henry Danvers, Earl of Danby, who can be seen splendidly attired in his recently acquired garter robes in Van Dyck’s Hermitage portrait from the late 1630s. The Danvers–Stone connection is largely unremarked upon. But it was almost certainly significant to Pope that the Caroline gate that inspired his sense of the picturesque had been redecorated in his own lifetime (1694/95) with a bust of Danvers bracketed by full-length statues of Charles I and II. 49 (Pope might also have been aware that Stone, together with Isaac de Caus, may have played a role in designing a [End Page 464] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 17. Brobart before the gate to the physic garden, frontispiece to Abel Evans’s Vertumnus, An Epistle to Mr. Jacob Bobart, Botany Professor to the University of Oxford, and Keeper of the Physick-Garden (1713). Huntington Library, 123394. [End Page 465] no-longer-extant grotto in the basement of Inigo Jones’s Whitehall Palace Banqueting House in 1623/24.) 50 As Neil Guthrie has observed, “whether political, religious, or cultural: it is clear that the partisans of the later Stuarts consciously borrowed from the productions of the earlier age.” 51 Undoubtedly, the addition of the Stuart statues during the reign of William and Mary has Jacobite implications; given Pope’s habit of referring to his diminutive Palladian “palace” in Twickenham as “Little Whitehall,” it is also interesting to note that the Oxford physic garden, like Pope’s own, occupied exactly five acres. 52 If Pope’s pictorialism was shaped by historical events and cultural memory as well as modern aesthetics, the arch provided a formal conceit through which to establish his perspective in terms both metaphysical and material. It was, in other words, an architectural type with a typological purchase. In his classic study, Murray Pittock has identified analogous rhetorical performances of this kind in pre-figurative Jacobite “typological history,” which, he notes, “takes a mythic or remote historical era, and glorifies it either to lament its passing or praise its return.” 53 The Augustan/Roman golden age served this end for nostalgic Catholics and Jacobites seeking a renovatio of Stuart customs and culture. As Pittock writes, “the [Glorious] Revolution broke the image of kingship restored at the Restoration, but another restoration would come.” 54 The seventeenth-century gate Pope admired at Oxford had expressed this much in architecture by framing an English garden within an arch whose creator had derived its form from the iconic Roman arches of Titus and Constantine in Rome. For nostalgic Catholics and/or Jacobites, then, the triumphal arch might symbolize Rome not only as the seat of papal power but also as the model of apostolic succession that served as a hopeful analogy for the broken but longed-for hereditary succession of Stuart monarchs. Indeed, for much of Pope’s lifetime Rome was home to the court of the exiled Stuart pretenders James Francis Edward Stuart and his son Charles Edward Stuart, popularly known as “Bonnie Prince Charlie.” The Huntington Drawings in Context Having surveyed some of the cultural, political, and aesthetic realities by which Pope’s grotto and, arguably, its depiction may have been influenced, it is now possible to consider the Huntington sheets in a site-specific context. The first drawing ( fig. 1 ), in pen and ink, gives a frontal view of a crude stone structure surmounted by a simple pediment composed of irregular blocks and stone globes. Beneath the pediment are two arched openings, the asymmetry of which seems engineered to suggest that one side was partially blocked or walled up after having fallen into disrepair. The sides or walls of the structure are not shown, and its bipartite format does not resemble the grotto’s [End Page 466] triple-arch front, though it may conform to the jagged interior cell “mouths” depicted in contemporary plans. That the edifice is more than an architectural elevation or pattern-book façade is clearly implied by dense passages of crosshatching delineating a dark, though shallow, interior partially illumined by a strong light source, perhaps a lamp, almost directly overhead. In this sketch the distinctive roughness of each stone block is conveyed through networks of jittery sepia lines that play across its surface. Though complete, the drawing is economical, even austere. The artist’s rendering of space is nonetheless believably naturalistic—especially the inky trapezoidal void indicating the absence of a piece of the stone pediment. It is this conspicuous, near-black passage that draws the gaze to a rectangular block that projects into the viewer’s space, casting a shadow on the cornice below. This larger, prominently central block is treated somewhat differently than the others. Although the markings on its face are purposely unintelligible, their verticality and quasi-regularity may be the artist’s way of mimicking the appearance of incised letters. In addition to the Jacobean cipher of 1696 mentioned above, shallow carvings and inscriptions from various sources were made on several stone surfaces and monuments in Pope’s garden. As was well known, a plaque on the grotto’s garden-side opening displayed an inscription from Horace, Secretum iter, et fallentis semita vitae, which the Newcastle visitor translates as: A hid Recess, where Life’s revolving Day,In sweet Delusion gently steals away. 55 John Serle reproduces these lines in the Plan of Mr. Pope’s Garden immediately before describing the presence at the grotto’s entrance of “various sorts of Stones thrown promiscuously together, in an imitation of an old Ruine; some full of Holes, others like Honey-combs.” 56 Additional materials found throughout the grotto and repeatedly mentioned by Serle are petrified wood and “moss in various shapes”—the latter possibly along the lines of the softly draping, seemingly organic material that appears (in the first drawing) to have emerged from crevices between the double-arched structure’s pediment and face. A very different kind of space is portrayed in the next drawing ( fig. 2 ). Also executed in pen and ink, this sketch describes a structure resembling a temple, made of rustic columns with glacial bands. The building’s tent-like roof is formed of irregular stone slabs; its ceiling appears to be lined with stalactites and other jagged mineral deposits. Of the six Huntington drawings, this one may be the most easily linked to a room in the grotto that is known to have existed in Pope’s time, namely, the high-ceilinged chamber described by Pope in his first diagram as “arched,” “gloomy,” and “seven foot high.” [End Page 467] From a physical standpoint, the setting Pope inhabits in Kent’s view of the retiring poet in his grotto ( fig. 15 ) shares several similarities with the site shown in the Huntington sketch. Yet the two artists clearly have different goals; where Kent portrays a dimly lit cloister appropriate to the legend of Pope as a solitary, bachelor genius, the Huntington artist appears more concerned with documenting (or imagining) the architectural grammar of a specific place. Yet despite its uninhabited and timeless character, the anonymous artist’s document is no less successful than Kent’s shadowy meditation in conveying both the stylistic particulars of the rocky room and its mysterious and deceptively ancient character. In both drawings, a rough arch frames an open interior of rusticated columns. The room’s polygonal shape—easily discernible in the Huntington sketch—and central location are indicated in Pope’s second, post-renovation, diagram of December 1740 ( fig. 9 ). But the room’s configuration is also suggested in Kent’s moodier drawing, where corner-less, arcaded walls and what could be read as the starkly lit parapet or column of an otherwise occluded arch near the lower right corner seem to indicate the room’s open, multi-sided nature. Loosely heaped with stones, saplings, and living mosses, the peaked roof of the poet’s cave conforms to his reiterated desire to make his grotto “the best imitation of nature.” 57 Perhaps it was the ahistorical and otherworldly effect of a manufactured marvel, as artificial as it was deferential to the “machinery” of the natural world, that prompted Kent to populate the upper register of his drawing with thick-bodied, winged insects. One of these creatures resembles a dragonfly, while another appears to have a human, or animal, face. Although the addition of the fantastic insects has been viewed as a visual non sequitur, the doodles of a distracted artist, the drawings invite an iconological interpretation. Until at least the mid-eighteenth century, dragonfly imagery was politically meaningful in England on a figurative level. The insect was in fact a Jacobite device. Often paired with James III’s symbolic blackbird, the dragonfly, a subversive play on England’s patron saint, stood for his “usurper” enemy, King George. 58 Given the dragonfly’s symbolic meaning, the group of flying insects in Kent’s drawing might be read as the ever-present buzz and bite of less broadminded Whigs and the House of Hanover, whose religious intolerance had forced many English Catholics underground. Elsewhere, of course, anthropomorphic and mixed bodies often occur in designs by Kent, who enlivened everything from frames and chairs to silver candelabra with avian talons and slithering scales. For evidence of the designer’s hybrid aesthetics, one need only look to the mass of mythological, cloud-embedded nudes at the base of the rainbow—formally, another framing arch—in the aforementioned drawing of Pope’s shell temple ( fig. 16 ). The presence of allegorical figures, some with fishtails, in so detailed a rendition of an actual place at an actual time is unexpectedly baroque in conception. In a witty pictorial enactment of seeing and being seen, Kent depicts Pope with a spyglass in hand; like the drawing’s beholder, the poet takes in the [End Page 468] prospect he himself has created. 59 It is nonetheless unclear if Kent and Pope, approached by the poet’s beloved Great Dane, Bounce, are themselves party to the mythological theophany Kent has shown. The next two drawings are not readily identifiable as specific sites in Pope’s grotto. Importantly, however, they demonstrate the same tripartite arch structure on which the complex as a whole seems to be founded. In the third drawing ( fig. 3 )—strongly delineated in sepia ink and stylistically similar to the previous two—the artist uses the same hatching technique to suggest a lightless interior behind the unfinished rock façade. A short curtain of moss has again been permitted to overtake this arch, which is topped with rock slabs and sparse vegetation. Here, the pediment is interrupted by a diagonal fragment of pillar made to look as if it has toppled onto the arched doorway. Pope may be referring to this unfinished or decrepit style when he describes components in the grotto as “not of a regular Architecture, but like supporters left in a Quarry.” 60 The book’s fourth drawing ( fig. 4 ), outlined in brown ink beneath a wash of blacks and soft grays, is more painterly and gestural in tone. It, too, presents a three-part structure with a dark interior. In this case, however, the artist seems less interested in the rough surfaces of each rock than the elegant asymmetry of the edifice in its entirety. We find this arch, like the others, in a state of picturesque decay; massive stone fragments partially obscure the opening at right and the lintel, or frieze, above the door is clearly in pieces. Yet perhaps the most striking feature of this structure is the bull’s-eye “window” on the roof. I have found no mention of this detail in the documentary evidence. However, as a conceptual play on the neat geometry of circles and spheres within an otherwise irregular environment, the oeil-de-boeuf agrees well with the Kentian rooftop globes in the first drawing, a common feature of his architectural designs. The window’s circular shape also provides a visual rhyme with an round interior “lamp,” described by Pope as “an orbicular figure of thin alabaster” in an early account of the grotto and included in both of Kent’s drawings of the poet at work in his cave. 61 In the fifth drawing ( fig. 5 ), the artist combines the formal framework of a single stonework arch with an interior view in which a spatially intermediate tripartite arch gives onto the cavernous space beyond. One is tempted to read this monochromatic pen and ink wash image, with its now-familiar rendition of a large, arched doorway flanked by smaller uneven windows, as one of the darkened interiors indicated behind the facades depicted in the previous drawings. Based on the relative size and shape of [End Page 469] the doors and windows, however, it is not possible to connect this particular interior to the exteriors discussed above. If this drawing has a purpose distinct from that of its predecessors, it may therefore be to give a sense of Pope’s successful creation of perspective views in the grotto. The poet’s fascination with this most Italian of compositional strategies has been noted by Brownell, who also observes that “schemes of beautification are merely incidental to the potential of [the] ruins to afford a picturesque prospect.” 62 The view in the present drawing may be of the grotto’s central room, outfitted after the 1740 expansion with “Stalactites above, and Spars and Cornish Diamonds on the Edges.” 63 (As such, it would be the same room where Kent shows Pope, the space labeled 3 in Serle’s diagram of 1745, fig. 7 .) If, in fact, this is the largest of the grotto’s rooms, one could enter it through the second, three-part arched doorway and proceed toward the amorphous dark spot in the center-right of the image, which could indicate a distant opening or doorway. This lower and smaller archway would lead to the narrow passage out to the garden, labeled as 2 in Serle’s diagram. Kent suggests the entrance to the same barrel-vaulted corridor in the form of an arch lightly sketched in the area directly behind the seated Pope. More intriguing still is the possibility that the circular “hole” in the Huntington drawing’s roof may actually represent a reflective surface such as the “mirror in the ceiling” noted by Lewis in his 1785 plan ( fig. 10 ). 64 By all accounts, a distant glimpse of pastoral greenery furnished an endpoint toward which, beckoned by the receding corridor, a visitor made leisurely progress through the grotto, from the river to the garden. “This sylvan arcade,” writes the Newcastle visitor, “together with the passage of the Grotto, makes a sort of continued Tube, thro’ which a small Expanse of the Thames is beheld as in a Perspective.” 65 But the grotto afforded other, less regimented, kinds of views as well. In one of its chambers Pope had famously concocted a camera obscura. Given that the grotto had rough and mineral-strewn walls, the logistics of incorporating this image-making technique are difficult to imagine. In essence it seems Pope’s “grotto-camera,” as Brownell calls it, could become a dark room where colorful images of boats skimming past on the Thames were magnificently reproduced inside. Although in theory these projected images would have appeared upside down on the walls, they were presumably reoriented for the viewer in fragments of mirror strewn about the room. Pope furnishes an extraordinary description of his optical gymnastics in a letter to Edward Blount of 1725: When you shut the doors of the Grotto, it becomes on the instant, from a luminous Room, a Camera obscura; on the Walls of which the objects of the River, Hills, Woods, and Boats, are forming a moving Picture in their visible Radiations. 66 [End Page 470] Pope’s production of a scenario where like-minded people assemble in a dark room to watch “moving pictures” is eerily clairvoyant. On a more basic level, it may also help identify the site depicted in the final Huntington drawing. Although the last image ( fig. 6 ) to be discussed here is executed in charcoal, it is likely by the same hand as the preceding sketches, with which it shares the artist’s feathery flora, tidy parallel lines, and assuredly notational architectural details. In this drawing a pair of large, simply paneled doors is framed by an elaborate, surprisingly tall, and ornamental surround. Like the columns, piers, and pilasters throughout the grotto, and the drawings, the doors’ jambs are heavily rusticated, with thick bands of glacial or lava-like carved stone. As in the first drawing, the façade is adorned with stone globes at either end. Here, however, a pediment potentially designed for an exterior location receives a monumental urn centered beneath a strapwork headpiece for which it becomes the pendant jewel. We know that Kent designed urns for Pope’s garden, some of which were moved to the Blount’s Mapledurham gardens after the poet’s death. The two urns ( fig. 18 ) illustrated in an engraving from the period may have been designed as accompaniments to the obelisk erected by Pope in honor of his mother and given pride of place in the garden at the end of the tunnel’s lengthy vista. Beside or behind the imposing double doorway, the Huntington artist has added tree-like forms. Yet, as we have come to expect, little besides a few heavy charcoal lines at ground level and the intimation of a light source from the upper left gives any indication of depth or dimensionality beyond the structure’s face. Combined with the stone globes, however, the classical profile of the urn in the Huntington drawing is consonant with Kent’s artistic vernacular. The entrance depicted is thus imbued with Kent’s playfully bombastic idiom—or more accurately, perhaps, with the idiosyncratic aesthetic the designer had learned at least in part from his friend and collaborator, Pope. To ask the obvious question: might these be the doors to which Pope refers in his description of the camera obscura? Regrettably, there is little textual evidence to support a conclusion one way or the other. On the visual side, however, an undated anonymous drawing of the grotto’s “undercroft” ( fig. 19 ) may shed light on the actual or proposed location of the double doors in the Huntington drawing. Willson argues that the undercroft sketch on the reverse of Kent’s more finished drawing of Pope in his grotto is either a proposal for construction from around 1732 or for an alteration at the time of the 1740 expansion. 67 The sketch leaves out (or leaves off before) the two flanking windows shown almost without exception in views of the arched riverside entrance to the grotto beneath the villa’s portico. Nevertheless, when examined closely, the drawing appears to show two large doors within the vestibule, or porch, that appears to be situated behind the arch. It may even be possible to view the loosely sketched, squared-off pediment with its surrounding squiggles (and the artist’s right-side marginalia of desirably rocky voussoirs) as a very suggestive version of the Huntington artist’s elaborate doorway and framing foliage. [End Page 471] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 18. J. Vardy after William Kent, Designs for Two Urns, from William Kent, Some Designs of Mr. Inigo Jones and Mr. Wm. Kent (London, 1744). Huntington Library, 384111. Prints and drawings from the 1740s and beyond tend not to provide much visual information about the grotto’s porch, to which statues were added and removed at various junctures (see, for example, fig. 13 ). The lack of detail may simply be a function of drawing the villa from a distance, either from a boat in the river or a spot on the other side. Where exactly Pope’s darkroom might have been located is difficult to say. But if we can take his word for it, one thing is certain: as early as 1725 the grotto was equipped with doors substantial enough to block out the light so that the spectacular effects of the camera obscura could be properly observed by those admitted to see the show. [End Page 472] Click for larger view William Kent (?), plan drawn on the reverse of figure 14 . © Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of Chatsworth Settlement Trustees. Conclusion Their consistent and aesthetically of-the-moment architectural vocabulary—Kentian ornament, tripartite arches, and the prevalence of crudely irregular blocks and rusticated columns—strengthens the argument that the Huntington drawings depict different sites within and without Pope’s celebrated grotto. As I hope to have shown, the façades and portals represented seem to accord well with the kinds of ruinous classical archways and cells Pope included, or wanted to include, in the grotto at some phase of his ongoing remodeling project. However, it must also be acknowledged that neither the wide range of often-poetical eighteenth-century descriptions nor the small number of period sketches and prints of the grotto's interior offer unassailable corroboration of this visual evidence. Nor, I submit, should we ask them to. Pope and the admirers of his gardens were not especially interested in providing objective, or what we might think of today as journalistic, accounts of the grotto. Consider a characteristic passage from the Newcastle visitor, who lingers—in a notably pre-Burkean manner—at the phenomenological level of sublime optical and theatrical effects: 68 [End Page 473] Cast your eyes upward, and you half shudder to see Cataracts of Water precipitating over your Head, from impending Stones and Rocks, while Saliant Sprouts rise in rapid Streams at your Feet: Around, you are equally surprized with flowing Rivulets and rolling Waters, that rush over airey Precipices, and break amongst Heaps of ideal Flints and Spar. Thus, by a fine Taste and a happy Management of Nature you are presented with an undistinguishable Mixture of Realities and Imagery. 69 That reality should be indistinguishable from imagery is, as we have seen, an ontological claim advanced visually in Kent’s fantastical rendering of the Shell Temple. Yet while Kent’s drawings self-consciously blur hierarchical academic boundaries between pictorial genres such as allegory, landscape, and portraiture, they are nonetheless generally regarded as in some sense historically accurate. With their familiar architectural elements, fairy-like insects, and mythological deities, Kent’s drawings of Pope’s rocky retreat are wonderfully lively and detailed—but they make no pretense to absolute facticity. Indeed, trained as a painter and happily influenced by Continental art over the course of almost ten years in Italy (1709–19), Kent directly appropriates a figure from one of the most famous Italian Renaissance frescoes for his portrayal of Pope in situ. As far as I know, heretofore unnoticed in Kent’s larger grotto drawing ( fig. 15 ) is his casting of Pope in the guise of the figure of Heraclitus from Raphael’s School of Athens ( fig. 20 ), of which an engraved version by Francesco Aquila was published in 1722. 70 Anticipating Dürer’s famous allegorical print, the body language of Raphael’s brooding thinker describes him as not only contemplative but also melancholic (the figure is now conventionally viewed as a historiated portrait of Michelangelo). The philosophical opposite of cheerful—and Kent-like—Democritus, Heraclitus was known for his commitment to introspection as well as his pessimism. 71 Like Raphael’s ancient philosopher, Pope sits cross-legged at a plinth in Kent’s drawing. 72 Resting his chin on his closed left hand, he leans over a makeshift desk as if in mid-thought. Kent’s citation of Raphael’s Vatican fresco was especially fitting, for a connoisseurial Pope had assessed the conceptual strengths of the Italian artist’s Battle of Constantine in relation to the School of Athens in the “Postscript” to his Odyssey. In Raphael’s painted tableau vivant of Greek philosophy, Pope writes, “there is all the silence, tranquility and composure” [End Page 474] the subject requires. 73 Even in what may be imagined representations of the cave-like retreat Pope himself praised as “Awful as Plato’s grove,” it is possible to discern formal allusions to Raphael’s homage to the classical tradition. Like the grotto, the Renaissance fresco is composed of a tunnel-like series of arches through which one catches sight of the open sky. Likewise, Kent’s pseudo-classical cavern echoes Raphael’s coffered atrium, albeit in a grotesque key. Click for larger view Figure 20. Francesco Aquila after Raphael, The School of Athens, 1722. © Trustees of the British Museum, 1925,0605.9. It is this grotesque aesthetic, the Romantic and proto-gothic yet distinctly Georgian quality of the Huntington drawings, that best signals their relatedness to Pope’s ambit. Although at this stage, suggestions as to artistic attribution are purely speculative, I will conclude with a few observations. From a technical standpoint, the sharp treatment of architectural details in the sepia ink and wash drawings is at times close in feeling and execution to Kent’s sketches in the same medium. With respect to draftsmanship, however, the Huntington drawings are inarguably more effortless and competent than Kent’s, with which they nonetheless share the period’s typically calligraphic, often formulaic treatment of trees and other natural elements. The artist’s decontextualized, frontal presentation of unpopulated architectural sites bears a similarity to popular garden and architectural pattern books of the time, for example, Batty [End Page 475] Langley’s best seller, New Principles of Gardening, published in 1728. Although in Langley’s book, “Views of Ruins, after the old Roman manner” ( fig. 21 ) are presented for their supposedly classicizing and sobering effect on garden design, the incipient strains of overgrown, gothic decay are clearly discernible. While Pope himself was a dedicated sketcher and amateur painter, he was far less accomplished than his teachers Kent, Jervas, and Richardson and cannot, I think, be reckoned as the author of such attractive drawings. It is Richardson, as mentioned earlier, to whom the letter bound with the drawings is addressed. And while the letter, also in sepia ink, makes no mention of the grotto, it does mention Twickenham. Pope was evidently quite devoted to the senior Richardson, to whom he writes: I hope you shall be to be found in ten days or thereabouts in Town or at Twitnam; pray send me a line whither to meet me at my return a week or a little more from this time that we may pass a few friendly philosophical hours together. 74 Pope’s close friend in the 1730s, Richardson is not an unsuitable candidate for the authorship of the Huntington images. A sensitive and capable portraitist and an astute, widely respected collector of drawings, he often made numerous sketches of his subjects and produced several painted and engraved likenesses of Pope. Not unrelatedly, Richardson had devoted some seventy pages to Raphael’s Vatican Stanze in his Account of Some of the Statues, Bas-Reliefs, Drawings, and Pictures in Italy, &c., with Remarks (1722). 75 Lamenting the condition of the Roman frescoes (based on his son’s meticulous reports), Richardson bemoaned the Vatican’s “want of Harmony,” “Disadvantageous Positions,” and “Darkness,” which owed “not a Little to the Gothic Old-fashion’d Place, and That Heighten’d by its being Uninhabited, and Unfrequented, which together with the Rest spreads a sort of Melancholy Air throughout.” 76 Richardson’s description of the Vatican Stanze may have thus become an unwitting prescription for Pope’s grotto. On a technical level, the close, even hatching and hard, heavy outlines in the Huntington drawings are stylistically consonant with some of Richardson’s bust-length portrait studies in pen and chalk. But as far as I know, he produced no architectural images of this type. It is delightful to imagine the passing of Pope’s longed-for “philosophical hours” with Richardson amid the trickling rivulets and dappled light of the grotto’s shell- and mirror-filled rooms, but whether or not Richardson took such an occasion to portray the ruins of Pope’s sacred cave must for now remain a mystery. [End Page 476] Click for larger view J. Vanessa Lyon j. vanessa lyon is an assistant professor of art history at Grinnell College, where she teaches early modern art. This essay is part of a larger study that argues for the constitutive role of Jacobite and anti-Catholic visual culture in eighteenth-century British gothicism. I am grateful for support and assistance received during the course of this project from the Huntington Library, especially from Sara Austin and Curator of Early Printed Books Stephen Tabor; The Attingham Trust; The Lewis Walpole Library; and Grinnell College. My thanks as well to Jenny Anger, Cynthia Roman, and Sarah Harris of the Radnor House School in Twickenham. [End Page 477] Footnotes 1. For a concise history of the phenomenon of extra-illustrated, or “grangerized,” books, see Robert Wark, “The Gentle Pastime of Extra-illustrating Books,” Huntington Library Quarterly 56 (1993): 151–65. 2. On the Hoe auctions, see “The Coming Sale of Part II of the Robert Hoe Library,” The Lotus Magazine 3, no. 2 (November 1911): 35–43; “End of the Great Hoe Library Sale Approaching,” The Lotus Magazine 4, no. 1 (October 1912): 5–11. 3. For Pope’s reverently affectionate letter to Richardson of August 22, 1735, see George Sherburn, The Correspondence of Alexander Pope, 5 vols. (Oxford, 1956), 3:485–86; henceforward Correspondence. See also Carol Gibson-Wood, Jonathan Richardson: Art Theorist of the English Enlightenment (New Haven, Conn., and London, 2000), 82. In addition to the images discussed here, the Huntington’s edition of Serle’s book contains a sheet of four charcoal drawings (two on each side) that seem to depict funerary sculpture and a crypt or crypts. The possibility that these, too, represent some portion of the grotto, while tantalizing, is more difficult to support based on extant accounts. I hope to investigate these drawings further in a future discussion of the significance of Pope’s grotto in British Catholic culture and gothic aesthetics after his death. 4. The oft-quoted but somewhat structurally inaccurate descriptor “subterraneous” appears in Pope’s letter to Edward Blount of June 2, 1725. See Correspondence, 1:296–97. 5. The two drawings are reproduced in Maynard Mack, The Garden and the City: Retirement and Politics in the Later Poetry of Pope, 1731–1743 (Toronto, 1969), 58–59.	Alexander Pope
Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman play husband and wife in which 1979 film?	William Kent: Designing Georgian Britain (under Italian influence) \| ACIS William Kent: Designing Georgian Britain (under Italian influence) Sally Grant New York Chiswick House with statue of Palladio © Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth Anyone heading to London in the next couple of months or so may want to check out the current exhibition being held at the V&A, William Kent: Designing Georgian Britain . While the title itself doesn’t convey any obvious Italian links, like so many others who made the Grand Tour during the eighteenth century, Kent was very much influenced by the art and culture of Italy. This is especially thought-provoking here as the organisers present Kent, who was a painter, designer, and architect, as integral to the development of a style of art that reflected the ideals of a new, Georgian, British nation. (The exhibition is one of a number of events this year that celebrate the 300th year anniversary of the Hanoverian accession to the throne in 1714.) View at Tivoli © Victoria and Albert Museum, London Inspired by the artworks he had studied on his travels in Italy and during his ten-year stay in Rome, on Kent’s return to England in 1719 he created an aesthetic that appealed to many of the important political and cultural figures of the day. These were British gentlemen who had themselves travelled in Italy as young Grand Tourists and who looked to its classical and Renaissance past as a means of expressing a contemporary learned and civilising ideal. Lord Burlington, who was instrumental in the establishment of the Neo-Palladian architectural style, was Kent’s most influential and supportive patron. So successfully and, by all reports, charmingly did Kent champion Italian models in the creation of this new style of British design that he was also known as “the Signor” or “Kentino”. Royal barge © RIBA Library Drawings Collection The exhibition was co-organised by the Bard Graduate Center in New York City where it was initially installed until February of this year. In addition to visiting the exhibition I was able to attend a couple of linked events organised by the BGC, including a symposium that re-examined the work of Kent, and a lecture by the American landscape architect Laurie Olin regarding Kent’s garden design. The influence of Italy can be seen throughout the artist’s work and the examples chosen for the exhibition convey the scope of his output, which included paintings, drawings, book illustration (Alexander Pope’s translation of the Odyssey being one prominent example), as well as designs for buildings, furniture, decorative objects, a royal barge, and gardens. The exedra, Chiswick Kent’s name is of course inextricably tied to the English landscape style of garden design and he was indeed one of its founding fathers. Yet in reconsidering Kent, some of the speakers at the BGC events emphasised that he should not be thought of as the lone genius in this development and that the landscape garden did not just spring unheralded from a decidedly English conception of nature. That was the impression that Horace Walpole gave in the later eighteenth century when he declared of Kent: “He leaped the fence and saw that all nature was a garden.” In recent years, garden historians have suggested a more comprehensive understanding of the puzzle that is the origins of the English landscape style. The villas and gardens of Italy are a part of that puzzle. In his lecture, Laurie Olin examined this link, drawing attention to similarities between the gardens Kent designed for the British landed gentry and Italian, particularly Roman, villas. Olin argued that during his ten years in Rome, Kent was able to experience these spaces directly. Not only did he borrow artistic motifs from the Italian garden for his English designs (as can be seen in the accompanying images to this post), but he also specified plantings, such as cedars of Lebanon, which would have recalled another time and place to the contemporary British country house visitor. Alexander Pope’s garden at Twickenham © The Trustees of the British Museum As Olin himself pointed out, he is not the only scholar to focus on the influence of Italy in the development of the English landscape garden, citing Georgina Masson and Susan Lang in this regard. Indeed Lang and the prominent garden historian John Dixon Hunt have raised the possibility that Kent was likewise influenced by the Italian theatre. This subject also calls for a gratifying reference to a colleague in Australia, for the Melbourne-based art historian Katrina Grant (no relation!), has further examined the connection between Roman theatrical scenography and Kent’s landscape designs. Her essay , in Roma Britannica: Art Patronage and Cultural Exchange in Eighteenth-Century Rome, suggests that rather than recreating a painting in three dimensions, as is often stated of Kent’s approach to the garden, his landscapes functioned analogously to stage sets that depended on the physical interaction of actors to enliven the scene. As an example, Grant draws attention to Kent’s drawing, View of the Shell Temple in Alexander Pope’s Garden, Twickenham. On the left of the work the presence of an illusory mythological scene within the representation of an actual garden implies that experience of the physical space could prompt creative imaginings and interactions. It is heartening to see this focus on the experiential aspect of the garden, a relatively recent development in the field of garden and landscape studies, and it parallels my own research approach to the eighteenth-century Veneto villa. Landscape at Chiswick © Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth And speaking of experiencing the country estate directly, an advantage of seeing the Kent exhibition in London rather than New York of course is that the visitor is then closer to a number of properties to which it refers. The V&A provides a handy map to those in the south of England. These include Chiswick House, one of the most handsome Neo-Palladian villas in Britain, which was designed by Lord Burlington with Kent’s assistance. In addition to the gardens of Chiswick House, those of Stowe in Buckingham and, particularly, those of Rousham House in Oxfordshire provide the opportunity of visiting the English landscapes of Kent and of discovering their Italian influences by oneself. Rousham is still owned by the Dormer family, descendants of General James Dormer who commissioned Kent, and it allows for a glimpse into a still-private world. While we must be thankful for all that the National Trust does to preserve the historic buildings of the UK, and I can’t be the only one who would not wish to return the days of Downton Abbey (where, as much as I would have wished to deliver the caustic wit of Maggie Smith’s Dowager Countess of Grantham, I fear that I would almost certainly have been a scullery or chamber maid), there is a nostalgic appeal for places that appear to take you back, unmediated, to times past. That seems to be the case at Rousham where, to cite Patrick Taylor in The Oxford Companion to the Garden: “[there is] no trace of the heritage industry – visitors have the impression of being in a private estate. There is no pressure, indeed no possibility, to buy postcards or cream teas. To wander in its finely cared-for 12 hectares/30 acres is one of the most marvellous pleasures that any garden can offer. Horace Walpole thought that Rousham was ‘the most engaging of all Kent’s works. It is Kentissimo.’” Share this:	i don't know
Roman Numerals CD represent which number?	CD in Roman Numerals \| InRomanNumerals.com CD in Roman Numerals The Roman Numerals CD represents 400 Decimal Number People find this page searching for: what does CD mean in roman numerals	four hundred
During which month of the year does the Summer Solstice occur in the Northern Hemisphere?	Units: Roman and "Arabic" Numerals Using the Dictionary Roman and "Arabic" Numerals The use of Roman numerals has been mathematically obsolete for more than 1100 years. Nonetheless, the Roman symbols for numbers continue to be used in a variety of ways, most of them rather stereotyped: to mark the hours on clock faces, to number pages in the prefaces of books, to express copyright dates, and to count items in a series (such as the Super Bowls of U.S. professional football). The form of Roman numeration used today was established during the Middle Ages in Western Europe. It is derived from the systems actually used in Roman times, but with certain improvements. The basic Roman numerals as used today are: I = 1 M = 1000 The symbols are repeated to form larger numbers, and when different symbols are combined, the larger unit precedes the smaller. Thus VIII represents 8, CLXXX is 180, and MMDCCXXV is 2725. The Romans usually wrote IIII for 4 and XXXX for 40. The number 949 was DCCCCXXXXVIIII. To shorten the length of such numbers a "subtraction rule" was sometimes used in Roman times and was commonly used in medieval times. The "subtraction rule" allows the use of six compound symbols in which a smaller unit precedes the larger: IV = 4 CM = 900 Using these symbols, 949 is written more compactly as CMXLIX. (Other "subtracted" symbols are not allowed. Thus 99 must be written XCIX, not IC.) The use of subtracted symbols was never mandatory, so IIII and IV can be used interchangeably for 4. Actually, the symbols D (500) and M (1000) were originally written using a vertical stroke with surrounding arcs; these arcs can only be approximated on this page by using parentheses. D appeared as I ) and M as ( I ). This system allowed powers of ten larger than 1000 to be written by increasing the number of arcs: 10 000 was written (( I )) and 100 000 was written ((( I ))). The Romans had no word for 1 000 000 and rarely considered numbers of that size or larger. In late Roman and medieval times, after D and M were adopted as the symbols for 500 and 1000, a custom arose of writing a bar over a number to multiply that number by 1000. Thus 10 000 became X with a bar over it and 100 000 became C with a bar over it. These "overbarred" symbols are almost never seen today. In Roman times, only the capital letters were used for number symbols. Later, after lower case letters came into use, Roman numbers were often written in lower case. Thus "vi" means 6 and "cxxii" means 122. Sometimes cases were even mixed, as in "Mcxl" for 1140. Furthermore, the lower case letter "j" was sometimes used in place of "i". A common custom was to write "j" for the last in a series of one's, as in "xiij" for 13. Roman numerals continued in use in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, and they remained in general use for centuries after our modern number system became available. As we see, their use in certain applications continues even today. The modern system of numeration is based on place value, with the same symbol, such as 4, taking on different meaning (4, 40, 400, etc.) depending on its location within the representation of the number. Place value notation was used long ago in Babylonian cuneiform numerals, but our modern decimal place value system was invented by Hindu mathematicians in India, probably by the sixth century and perhaps even earlier. The modern numerals 1, 2, 3, ..., are sometimes called "Arabic" numerals in the West because they were introduced to Europeans by Arab merchants. The key figure was the great Persian mathematician Muhammed ibn-Musa al-Khwarizmi, who taught at Baghdad sometime between 800 and 850. He wrote a book on the Hindu number system known today only in a later Latin translation as De numero indorum, "On the Hindu numbers." Subsequently he wrote a longer and very influential work, Al-jabr w'al muqabalah, known in Europe as Algebra, which included all the techniques of arithmetic still taught in schools today. The author's name, Latinized as "Algorismus," is the root of the English word "algorithm". The Hindu-Arabic numeration system was known in Europe by 1000, but at first it didn't make much of a dent in the use of Roman numerals. During the 1100's the "Arabic" numerals were a topic of great interest among European scholars, and several translations of the Algebra appeared. In 1202, Leonardo of Pisa (ca. 1180-1250) published a famous book Liber abaci explaining and popularizing the Hindu-Arabic system, the use of the zero, the horizontal fraction bar, and the various algorithms of the Algebra. (Leonardo is better known today by his patronymic Fibonacci, "son of Bonaccio.") Thereafter modern numerals and the standard operations of arithmetic were commonly used by scholars, but Roman numerals continued to be used for many purposes, including finance and bookkeeping, for many centuries to come. Incidentally, the numerals 0123456789 are more properly known as European digits. The numerals actually used in Arabic script, the true Arabic numerals, are of different forms; see Islamicity.com for a more complete discussion . References Roman Numeral Year Dates , a Conversion Guide, by Christopher Hardy: guide to various practices that have been used in the past in writing Roman numerals. Greek Numeration , by Alan J. Cain, illustrates how Roman numeration is parallel in many ways to the Attic Greek notation. Roman Numerals, Roman Numeration System , by Gérard P. Michon, has an advanced discussion of how large numbers were represented in the Roman system. Return to the Dictionary Contents page . You are welcome to email the author ([email protected]) with comments and suggestions. All material in this folder is copyright &COPY; 2004 by Russ Rowlett and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Permission is granted for personal use and for use by individual teachers in conducting their own classes. All other rights reserved. You are welcome to make links to this page, but please do not copy the contents of any page in this folder to another site. The material at this site will be updated from time to time. March 14, 2001; latest update July 14, 2004.	i don't know

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