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York

City in North Yorkshire, England

York is a cathedral city in North Yorkshire, England, with Roman origins, sited at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss. It is the historic county town of Yorkshire. The city has many historic buildings and other structures, such as a minster, castle, and city walls. It is the largest settlement and the administrative centre of the wider City of York district. The city was founded under the name of Eboracum in 71 AD. It then became the capital of the Roman province of Britannia Inferior, and later of the kingdoms of Deira, Northumbria, and Scandinavian York. In the Middle Ages, it became the northern England ecclesiastical province's centre, and grew as a wool-trading centre. In the 19th century, it became a major railway network hub and confectionery manufacturing centre. During the Second World War, part of the Baedeker Blitz bombed the city; it was less affected by the war than other northern cities, with several historic buildings being gutted and restored up to the 1960s. The city is one of 15 in England to have a lord mayor, and one of three to have "The Right Honourable" title affixed, the others being London's and Bristol's. Historic governance of the city was as a county corporate, not included in the county's riding system. The city has since been covered by a municipal borough, county borough, and since 1996 a non-metropolitan district (the City of York), which also includes surrounding villages and rural areas, and the town of Haxby. The current district's local council is responsible for providing all local services and facilities throughout this area. York's city proper area had a population of 141,685 at the 2021 UK census. The wider district had a population of 198,100. According to 2021 census data, the wider district has a population of 202,800, a 2.4% increase compared to the 2011 census. ## Toponymy The name York (Old Norse: Jórvík) is derived from the Brittonic name Eburākon (Latinised as Eboracum or Eburacum), a combination of eburos "yew tree" (compare with Welsh efwr and Breton evor, both meaning "alder buckthorn", and Old Irish ibar, Irish iobhar, iubhar, and iúr, and Scottish Gaelic iubhar) and a suffix of appurtenance \*-āko(n), meaning "belonging to", or "place of" (compare Welsh -og). Put together, these old words meant "place of the yew trees". (In Welsh, efrog; in Old Irish, iubrach; in Irish Gaelic, iúrach; and in Scottish Gaelic, iùbhrach). The city is called Eabhraig in Scottish Gaelic and Eabhrac in Irish—names derived from the Latin word Eboracum. A proposed alternative meaning is "the settlement of (a man named) Eburos", a Celtic personal name spelled variously in different documents as Eβουρος, Eburus and Eburius: when combined with the Celtic possessive suffix \*-āko(n), the word could be used to denote the property of a man with this name. The name Eboracum became the Anglian Eoforwic in the 7th century: a compound of Eofor-, from the old name, and -wic, meaning "village", probably by conflation of the element Ebor- with a Germanic root \*eburaz ('boar'); by the 7th century, the Old English for 'boar' had become eofor. When the Danish army conquered the city in 866, it was renamed Jórvík. The Old French and Norman name of the city following the Norman Conquest was recorded as Everwic (modern Norman Évèroui) in works such as Wace's Roman de Rou. Jórvík, meanwhile, gradually reduced to York in the centuries after the Conquest, moving from the Middle English Yerk in the 14th century through Yourke in the 16th century to Yarke in the 17th century. The form York was first recorded in the 13th century. Many company and place names, such as the Ebor race meeting, refer to the Latinised Brittonic, Roman name. The 12th‐century chronicler Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his fictional account of the prehistoric kings of Britain, Historia Regum Britanniae, suggests the name derives from that of a pre-Roman city founded by the legendary king Ebraucus. The Archbishop of York uses Ebor as his surname in his signature. ## History ### Early history Archaeological evidence suggests that Mesolithic people settled in the region of York between 8000 and 7000 BC, although it is not known whether their settlements were permanent or temporary. By the time of the Roman conquest of Britain, the area was occupied by a tribe known to the Romans as the Brigantes. The Brigantian tribal area initially became a Roman client state, but later its leaders became more hostile and the Roman Ninth Legion was sent north of the Humber into Brigantian territory. The city was founded in 71 AD, when the Ninth Legion conquered the Brigantes and constructed a wooden military fortress on flat ground above the River Ouse close to its confluence with the River Foss. The fortress, whose walls were rebuilt in stone by the VI legion based there subsequent to the IX legion, covered an area of 50 acres (20 ha) and was inhabited by 6,000 legionary soldiers. The site of the principia (HQ) of the fortress lies under the foundations of York Minster, and excavations in the undercroft have revealed part of the Roman structure and columns. The Emperors Hadrian, Septimius Severus, and Constantius I all held court in York during their various campaigns. During his stay 207–211 AD, the Emperor Severus proclaimed York capital of the province of Britannia Inferior, and it is likely that it was he who granted York the privileges of a 'colonia' or city. Constantius I died in 306 AD during his stay in York, and his son Constantine the Great was proclaimed Emperor by the troops based in the fortress. In 314 AD a bishop from York attended the Council at Arles to represent Christians from the province. While the Roman colonia and fortress were on high ground, by 400 AD the town was victim to occasional flooding from the Rivers Ouse and Foss, and the population reduced. York declined in the post-Roman era, and was taken and settled by the Angles in the 5th century. Reclamation of parts of the town was initiated in the 7th century under King Edwin of Northumbria, and York became his chief city. The first wooden minster church was built in York for the baptism of Edwin in 627, according to the Venerable Bede. Edwin ordered the small wooden church be rebuilt in stone; however, he was killed in 633, and the task of completing the stone minster fell to his successor Oswald. In the following century, Alcuin of York came to the cathedral school of York. He had a long career as a teacher and scholar, first at the school at York now known as St Peter's School, founded in 627 AD, and later as Charlemagne's leading advisor on ecclesiastical and educational affairs. In 866, Northumbria was in the midst of internecine struggles when the Vikings raided and captured York. As a thriving Anglo-Saxon metropolis and prosperous economic hub, York was a clear target for the Vikings. Led by Ivar the Boneless and Halfdan, Scandinavian forces attacked the town on All Saints' Day. Launching the assault on a holy day proved an effective tactical move – most of York's leaders were in the cathedral, leaving the town vulnerable to attack and unprepared for battle. After it was conquered, the city was renamed from the Saxon Eoforwic to Jorvik. It became the capital of Viking territory in Britain, and at its peak boasted more than 10,000 inhabitants. This was a population second only to London within Great Britain. Jorvik proved an important economic and trade centre for the Vikings. Norse coinage was created at the Jorvik mint, while archaeologists have found evidence of a variety of craft workshops around the town's central Coppergate area. These demonstrate that textile production, metalwork, carving, glasswork and jewellery-making were all practised in Jorvik. Materials from as far afield as the Persian Gulf have also been discovered, suggesting that the town was part of an international trading network. Under Viking rule the city became a major river port, part of the extensive Viking trading routes throughout northern Europe. The last ruler of an independent Jórvík, Eric Bloodaxe, was driven from the city in 954 AD by King Eadred in his successful attempt to complete the unification of England. ### After the conquest In 1068, two years after the Norman conquest of England, the people of York rebelled. Initially they succeeded, but upon the arrival of William the Conqueror the rebellion was put down. William at once built a wooden fortress on a motte. In 1069, after another rebellion, the king built another timbered castle across the River Ouse. These were destroyed in 1069 and rebuilt by William about the time of his ravaging Northumbria in what is called the "Harrying of the North" where he destroyed everything from York to Durham. The remains of the rebuilt castles, now in stone, are visible on either side of the River Ouse. The first stone minster church was badly damaged by fire in the uprising, and the Normans built a minster on a new site. Around the year 1080, Archbishop Thomas started building the cathedral that in time became the current Minster. In the 12th century York started to prosper. In 1190, York Castle was the site of an infamous massacre of its Jewish inhabitants, in which at least 150 were murdered, although some authorities put the figure as high as 500. The city, through its location on the River Ouse and its proximity to the Great North Road, became a major trading centre. King John granted the city's first charter in 1212, confirming trading rights in England and Europe. During the later Middle Ages, York merchants imported wine from France, cloth, wax, canvas, and oats from the Low Countries, timber and furs from the Baltic and exported grain to Gascony and grain and wool to the Low Countries. York became a major cloth manufacturing and trading centre. Edward I further stimulated the city's economy by using the city as a base for his war in Scotland. The city was the location of significant unrest during the so-called Peasants' Revolt in 1381. The city acquired an increasing degree of autonomy from central government including the privileges granted by a charter of Richard II in 1396. ### 16th to 18th centuries The city underwent a period of economic decline during Tudor times. Under King Henry VIII, the Dissolution of the Monasteries saw the end of York's many monastic houses, including several orders of friars, the hospitals of St Nicholas and of St Leonard, the largest such institution in the north of England. This led to the Pilgrimage of Grace, an uprising of northern Catholics in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire opposed to religious reform. Henry VIII restored his authority by establishing the Council of the North in York in the dissolved St Mary's Abbey. The city became a trading and service centre during this period. Anne of Denmark came to York with her children Prince Henry and Princess Elizabeth on 11 June 1603. The Mayor gave her a tour and offered her spiced wine, but she preferred beer. Guy Fawkes, who was born and educated in York, was a member of a group of Roman Catholic restorationists that planned the Gunpowder Plot. Its aim was to displace Protestant rule by blowing up the Houses of Parliament while King James I, the entire Protestant, and even most of the Catholic aristocracy and nobility were inside. In 1644, during the Civil War, the Parliamentarians besieged York, and many medieval houses outside the city walls were lost. The barbican at Walmgate Bar was undermined and explosives laid, but the plot was discovered. On the arrival of Prince Rupert, with an army of 15,000 men, the siege was lifted. The Parliamentarians retreated some 6 miles (10 km) from York with Rupert in pursuit, before turning on his army and soundly defeating it at the Battle of Marston Moor. Of Rupert's 15,000 troops, 4,000 were killed and 1,500 captured. The siege was renewed and the city surrendered to Sir Thomas Fairfax on 15 July. Following the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, and the removal of the garrison from York in 1688, the city was dominated by the gentry and merchants, although the clergy were still important. Competition from Leeds and Hull, together with silting of the River Ouse, resulted in York losing its pre-eminent position as a trading centre, but its role as the social and cultural centre for wealthy northerners was rising. York's many elegant townhouses, such as the Lord Mayor's Mansion House and Fairfax House date from this period, as do the Assembly Rooms, the Theatre Royal, and the racecourse. ### Modern history The railway promoter George Hudson was responsible for bringing the railway to York in 1839. Although Hudson's career as a railway entrepreneur ended in disgrace and bankruptcy, his promotion of York over Leeds, and of his own railway company (the York and North Midland Railway), helped establish York as a major railway centre by the late 19th century. The introduction of the railways established engineering in the city. At the turn of the 20th century, the railway accommodated the headquarters and works of the North Eastern Railway, which employed more than 5,500 people. The railway was instrumental in the expansion of Rowntree's Cocoa Works. It was founded in 1862 by Henry Isaac Rowntree, who was joined in 1869 by his brother the philanthropist Joseph. Another chocolate manufacturer, Terry's of York, was a major employer. By 1900, the railways and confectionery had become the city's two major industries. York was a centre of early photography, as described by Hugh Murray in his 1986 book Photographs and Photographers of York: The Early Years, 1844–79. Photographers who had studios in York included William Hayes, William Pumphrey, and Augustus Mahalski who operated on Davygate and Low Petergate in the 19th century, having come to England as a refugee after serving as a Polish lancer in the Austro-Hungarian war. In 1942, the city was bombed during the Second World War (part of the Baedeker Blitz) by the German Luftwaffe and 92 people were killed and hundreds injured. Buildings damaged in the raid included the Railway Station, Rowntree's Factory, Poppleton Road Primary School, St Martin-le-Grand Church, the Bar Convent and the Guildhall which was left in total disrepair until 1960. With the emergence of tourism, the historic core of York became one of the city's major assets, and in 1968 it was designated a conservation area. The existing tourist attractions were supplemented by the establishment of the National Railway Museum in York in 1975, the Jorvik Viking Centre in 1984 and the York Dungeon in 1986. The opening of the University of York in 1963 added to the prosperity of the city. In March 2012, York's Chocolate Story opened. York was voted European Tourism City of the Year by European Cities Marketing in June 2007, beating 130 other European cities to gain first place, surpassing Gothenburg in Sweden (second) and Valencia in Spain (third). York was also voted safest place to visit in the 2010 Condé Nast Traveller Readers' Choice Awards. In 2018, The Sunday Times deemed York to be its overall 'Best Place to Live' in Britain, highlighting the city's "perfect mix of heritage and hi-tech" and as a "mini-metropolis with cool cafes, destination restaurants, innovative companies – plus the fastest internet in Britain". The result was confirmed in a YouGov survey, reported in August 2018, with 92% of respondents saying that they liked the city, more than any of 56 other British cities. ## Governance ### Local The City of York is governed by the City of York Council. It is a unitary authority that operates on a leader and cabinet style of governance, having the powers of a non-metropolitan county and district council combined. It provides a full range of local government services including Council Tax billing, libraries, social services, processing planning applications, waste collection and disposal, and it is a local education authority. The city council consists of 47 councillors representing 21 wards, with one, two or three per ward serving four-year terms. Its headquarters are at the Guildhall and West Offices in the city centre. York is divided into 21 administrative wards: Acomb, Bishopthorpe, Clifton, Copmanthorpe, Dringhouses and Woodthorpe, Fishergate, Fulford and Heslington, Guildhall, Haxby and Wigginton, Heworth, Heworth Without, Holgate, Hull Road, Huntington and New Earswick, Micklegate, Osbaldwick and Derwent, Rawcliffe and Clifton Without, Rural West York, Strensall, Westfield, and Wheldrake. The members of the cabinet, led by the Council Leader, makes decisions on their portfolio areas individually. Following the Local Government Act 2000, the Council Leader commands the confidence of the city council; the leader of the largest political group and head of the City of York Council. The Leader of the council and the cabinet (consisting of all the executive councillors) are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the city council. The current Council Leader, Liberal Democrats' Cllr Keith Aspden, was appointed on 22 May 2019, following the 2019 City of York Council election. York's first citizen and civic head is the Lord Mayor, who is the chairman of the City of York Council. The appointment is made by the city council each year in May, at the same time appointing the Sheriff, the city's other civic head. The offices of Lord Mayor and Sheriff are purely ceremonial. The Lord Mayor carries out civic and ceremonial duties in addition to chairing full council meetings. The incumbent Lord Mayor since 26 May 2022 is Councillor David Carr, and the Sheriff is Suzie Mercer. York Youth Council consists of several young people who negotiate with the councillors to get better facilities for York's young people, and who also elect York's Member of Youth Parliament. As a result of the 2019 City of York Council election the Conservative Party was reduced to two seats. The Liberal Democrats had 21 councillors. The Labour Party had 17 councillors and the Green Party had four with three Independents. Due to no overall control, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party agreed to form a coalition on 14 May 2019. York is the traditional county town of Yorkshire, and therefore did not form part of any of its three historic ridings, or divisions. Its Mayor has had the status of Lord Mayor since 1370. York is an ancient borough, and was reformed by the Municipal Corporations Act 1835 to form a municipal borough. It gained the status of a county borough in 1889, under the Local Government Act 1888, and existed so until 1974, when, under the Local Government Act 1972, it became a non-metropolitan district in the county of North Yorkshire, whilst retaining its Lord Mayor and its Sheriff. As a result of 1990s UK local government reform, York regained unitary status and saw a substantial alteration in its borders, taking in parts of Selby and Harrogate districts, and about half the population of the Ryedale district. The new boundary was imposed after central government rejected the former city council's own proposal. ### Parliament From 1997 to 2010, the central part of the district was covered by the City of York constituency, while the remainder was split between the constituencies of Ryedale, Selby, and Vale of York. These constituencies were represented by Hugh Bayley, John Greenway, John Grogan, and Anne McIntosh respectively. Following their review in 2003 of parliamentary representation in North Yorkshire, the Boundary Commission for England recommended the creation of two new seats for the City of York, in time for the general election in 2010. These are York Central, which covers the inner urban area, and is entirely surrounded by the York Outer constituency. ### Ceremonial York is within the ceremonial county of North Yorkshire and, until 1974, was within the jurisdiction of the Lord Lieutenant of the County of York, West Riding and the County of The City of York. The city does retain the right to appoint its own Sheriff. The holder of the Royal dukedom of York has no responsibilities either ceremonially or administratively as regards to the city. ## Geography ### Location York lies in the Vale of York, a flat area of fertile arable land bordered by the Pennines, the North York Moors and the Yorkshire Wolds. The city was built at the confluence of the Rivers Ouse and Foss on a terminal moraine left by the last ice age. During Roman times, the land surrounding the Ouse and Foss was marshy, making the site easy to defend. The city is prone to flooding from the River Ouse, and has an extensive network of flood defences with walls along the river, and a liftable barrier across the Foss where it joins the Ouse at the "Blue Bridge". In October and November 2000, York experienced the worst flooding in 375 years; more than 300 homes were flooded. In December 2015 the flooding was more extensive and caused major disruption. The extreme impact led to a personal visit by Prime Minister David Cameron. Much land in and around the city is on flood plains too flood-prone for development other than agriculture. The ings are flood meadows along the Ouse, while the strays are open common grassland in various locations around the city. ### Climate York has a temperate climate (Cfb) with four distinct seasons. As with the rest of the Vale of York, the city's climate is drier and warmer than the rest of the Yorkshire and the Humber region. Owing to its lowland location, York is prone to frosts, fog, and cold winds during winter, spring, and very early summer. Snow can fall in winter from December onwards to as late as April but quickly melts. As with much of the British Isles, the weather is changeable. York experiences most sunshine from May to July, an average of six hours per day. With its inland location, summers are often warmer than the Yorkshire coast with temperatures of 27 °C or more. Extremes recorded at the University of York campus between 1998 and 2010 include a highest temperature of 34.5 °C (94.1 °F) and a lowest temperature of −16.3 °C (2.7 °F) on 6 December 2010. The most rainfall in one day was 88.4 millimetres (3.5 in). ### Green belt York's urbanised areas are surrounded by a green belt that restricts development in the rural areas and parts of surrounding villages, to preserve the setting and historic character of the city. The green belt surrounds nearly all of the city and its outer villages, extending out into North Yorkshire. ## Demography The York urban area (built-up area) had a population of 153,717 at the time of the 2011 UK census, compared with 137,505 in 2001. The population of the City of York (Local Authority) was 198,051 and its ethnic composition was 94.3% White, 1.2% Mixed, 3.4% Asian and 0.6% Black. York's elderly population (those 65 and over) was 16.9%, however only 13.2% were listed as retired. Also at the time of the 2001 UK census, the City of York had a total population of 181,094 of whom 93,957 were female and 87,137 were male. Of the 76,920 households in York, 36.0% were married couples living together, 31.3% were one-person households, 8.7% were co-habiting couples and 8.0% were lone parents. The figures for lone parent households were below the national average of 9.5%, and the percentage of married couples was also close to the national average of 36.5%; the proportion of one person households was slightly higher than the national average of 30.1%. In 2001, the population density was 4,368/km² (11,310/sq mi). Of those aged 16–74 in York, 24.6% had no academic qualifications, a little lower than 28.9% in all of England. Of York's residents, 5.1% were born outside the United Kingdom, significantly lower than the national average of 9.2%. White British form 95% of the population; the largest single minority group was recorded as Asian, at 1.9% of the population. The number of theft-from-a-vehicle offences and theft of a vehicle per 1,000 of the population was 8.8 and 2.7, compared to the English national average of 6.9 and 2.7 respectively. The number of sexual offences was 0.9, in line with the national average. The national average of violence against another person was 16.2 compared to the York average of 17.5. The figures for crime statistics were all recorded during the 2006–07 financial year. The city's estimated population in 2019 was 210,620. ### Population change ### Ethnicity ### Religion Percentages in York following non-Christian religion were below England's national average. Classified as having "No Religion" is higher than the national average. Christianity has the largest religious following in York, 59.5% residents reported as Christian in the 2011 census. York has multiple churches, most present churches in York are from the medieval period. St William's College behind the Minster, and Bedern Hall, off Goodramgate, are former dwelling places of the canons of the York Minster. There are 33 active Anglican churches in York, which is home to the Archbishop of York and York Minster, the Mother Church and administrative centre of the northern province of the Church of England and the Diocese of York. York is in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Middlesbrough, has eight Roman Catholic churches and a number of different Catholic religious orders. Leaders of different Christian denominations work together across the city, forming a network of churches known as One Voice York. Other Christian denominations active in York include the Religious Society of Friends who have three meeting houses, Methodists (the York Circuit of The Methodist Church York and Hull District), and Unitarians. St Columba's United Reformed Church in Priory Street, originally built for the Presbyterians, dates from 1879. York's only Mosque is located in the Layerthorpe area, and the city also has a UK Islamic Mission centre. Various Buddhist traditions are represented in the city and around York. There is also an active Jewish community. ## Economy ### Overview A July 2020 report by Council stated that York is worth "£5.2 billion to the UK economy ... with 9,000 businesses and 110,000 people employed across the city". According to Make It York, the city benefits from features that include a well-educated workforce, "excellent transport links to both national and international markets, pronounced strengths in a range of high value sectors, a pioneering digital infrastructure, outstanding business support networks ...". York's economy is based on the service industry, which in 2000 was responsible for 88.7% of employment in the city. Statistics based on 2019 data indicated that tourism was worth over £765 million to the city, supported 24,000 jobs and attracted 8.4 million visitors each year.The Employment Rate in 2018 was 78.8%. The private sector accounted for 77,000 jobs in 2019 while 34,500 jobs were in the public sector. The service industries include public sector employment, health, education, finance, information technology (IT) and tourism that accounted for 10.7% of employment as of 2016. Tourism has become an important element of the economy, with the city offering a wealth of historic attractions, of which York Minster is the most prominent, and a variety of cultural activities. As a holiday destination York was the 6th most visited English city by UK residents (2014–16) and the 13th most visited by overseas visitors (2016). A 2014 report, based on 2012 data, stated that the city receives 6.9 million visitors annually; they contribute £564 million to the economy and support over 19,000 jobs. In the 2017 Condé Nast Traveller survey of readers, York rated 12th among The 15 Best Cities in the UK for visitors. In a 2020 Condé Nast Traveller report, York rated as the sixth best among ten "urban destinations [in the UK] that scored the highest marks when it comes to ... nightlife, restaurants, and friendliness". Unemployment in York was low at 4.2% in 2008 compared to the United Kingdom national average of 5.3%. The biggest employer in York is the City of York Council, with over 7,500 employees. Employers with more than 2,000 staff include Aviva (formerly Norwich Union Life), Network Rail, Northern Trains, York Hospitals NHS Trust and the University of York. Other major employers include BT Group, CPP Group, Nestlé, NFU Mutual and a number of railway companies. A 2007 report stated that the economic position at that time very different from the 1950s, when its prosperity was based on chocolate manufacturing and the railways. This position continued until the early 1980s when 30% of the workforce were employed by just five employers and 75% of manufacturing jobs were in four companies. Most industry around the railway has gone, including the York Carriage Works, which at its height in the 1880s employed 5,500 people, but closed in the mid-1990s. York is the headquarters of the confectionery manufacturer Nestlé York (formerly Nestlé Rowntrees) and home to the KitKat and eponymous Yorkie bar chocolate brands. Terry's chocolate factory, makers of the Chocolate Orange, was located in the city; but it closed on 30 September 2005, when production was moved by its owners, Kraft Foods, to Poland. The historic factory building is situated next to the Knavesmire racecourse. On 20 September 2006, Nestlé announced that it would cut 645 jobs at the Rowntree's chocolate factory in York. This came after a number of other job losses in the city at Aviva, British Sugar, and Terry's chocolate factory. Despite this, the employment situation in York remained fairly buoyant until the effects of the late 2000s recession began to be felt. Since the closure of the carriage works, the site has been developed into offices. York's economy has been developing in the areas of science, technology and the creative industries. The city became a founding National Science City with the creation of a science park near the University of York. Between 1998 and 2008 York gained 80 new technology companies and 2,800 new jobs in the sector. ### Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic was confirmed to have reached England after cases were discovered in York on 31 January 2020. The pandemic caused an economic slowdown because of restrictions imposed on businesses and on travel in the UK; by January 2021, many cities were in their third lockdown and the country's unemployment rate had reached its highest level in over four years. The retail, hospitality, and tourism sectors were especially hard hit in York. In August 2020, the campaign "Make It York" and the city council embarked on a six-month tourism marketing plan "to reenergise the city while building resident and visitor confidence". A report in June 2020 stated that unemployment had risen 114% over the previous year because of restrictions imposed as a result of the pandemic. In addition to high unemployment during lockdown periods, one analysis by the York and North Yorkshire Local Enterprise Partnership predicted in August 2020 that "as many as 13,835 jobs in York will be lost in the scenario considered most likely, taking the city's unemployment rate to 14.5%". Some critics claimed that part of the problem was caused by "over-reliance on the booming tourism industry at the expense of a long-term economic plan". Other analyses suggested that "York is well-placed for the high street to recover and evolve from the pandemic if new businesses focus on creating an attraction or experience rather than traditional retail". The North Yorkshire Local Enterprise Partnership also "predicted a significant rise in staycation trips to York in 2021". ## Public services Under the requirements of the Municipal Corporations Act 1835, York City Council appointed a watch committee which established a police force and appointed a chief constable. On 1 June 1968 the York City, East Riding of Yorkshire, and North Riding of Yorkshire police forces were amalgamated to form the York and North East Yorkshire Police. Since 1974, Home Office policing in York has been provided by the North Yorkshire Police. The force's central headquarters for policing York and nearby Selby are in Fulford. Statutory emergency fire and rescue service is provided by the North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service, based in Northallerton. The city's first hospital, York County Hospital, opened in 1740 in Monkgate funded by public subscription. It closed in 1976 when it was replaced by York Hospital, which opened the same year and gained Foundation status in April 2007. It has 524 adult inpatient beds and 127 special purpose beds providing general healthcare and some specialist inpatient, daycase, and outpatient services. It is also known as York District Hospital and YDH. The Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust was formed on 1 July 2006 bringing together South Yorkshire Ambulance Service, West Yorkshire Metropolitan Ambulance Service and the North and East Yorkshire parts of Tees, East and North Yorkshire Ambulance Service to provide patient transport. Other forms of health care are provided for locally by clinics and surgeries. Since 1998 waste management has been co-ordinated via the York and North Yorkshire Waste Partnership. York's distribution network operator for electricity is CE Electric UK; there are no power stations in the city. Yorkshire Water, which has a local water extraction plant on the River Derwent at Elvington, manages York's drinking and waste water. The city has a magistrates' court, and venues for the Crown Court and the County Court. York Crown Court was designed by the architect John Carr, and built next to the then prison (including execution area). Between 1773 and 1777, the Grand Jury House was replaced by John Carr's elegant Court House for the Assizes of the whole county. The Female Prison was built opposite and mirrors the court building positioned around a circular lawn which became known as the "Eye of the Ridings", or the "Eye of York". 1776 saw the last recorded instance of a wife hanged and burnt for poisoning her husband. Horse theft was a capital offence. The culprits of lesser crimes were brought to court by the city constables and would face a fine. The corporation employed a "common informer" whose task was to bring criminals to justice. The former prison is now the Castle Museum but still contains the cells. ## Transport ### Water York's location on the River Ouse, and in the centre of the Vale of York, means that it has always had a significant position in the nation's transport system. The city grew up as a river port at the confluence of the Ouse and the Foss. The Ouse was originally a tidal river, accessible to seagoing ships of the time. Today, both of these rivers remain navigable, although the Foss is only navigable for a short distance above the confluence. A lock at Naburn on the Ouse to the south of York means that the river in York is no longer tidal. Until the end of the 20th century, the Ouse was used by barges to carry freight between York and the port of Hull. The last significant such traffic was the supply of newsprint to the local newspaper's Foss-side print works, which continued until 1997. Today, navigation is almost exclusively leisure-oriented. ### Roads Like most cities founded by the Romans, York is well served by long-distance trunk roads. The city lies at the intersection of the A19 road from Doncaster to Tyneside, the A59 road from Liverpool to York, the A64 road from Leeds to Scarborough and the A1079 road from York to Hull. The A64 road provides the principal link to the motorway network, linking York to both the A1(M) and the M1 motorways at a distance of about 10 miles (15 km) from the city. The trans-Pennine M62 motorway is less than 20 miles (30 km) away providing links to Manchester and Liverpool. The city is surrounded on all sides by an outer ring road, at a distance of some 3 miles (5 km) from the centre of the city, which allows through traffic to by-pass the city. The street plan of the historic core of the city dates from medieval times and is not suitable for modern traffic. As a consequence, many of the routes inside the city walls are designated as car-free during business hours or restrict traffic entirely. To alleviate this situation, six bus-based park and ride sites operate in York. The sites are located towards the edge of the urban area, with easy access from the ring road and allow out of town visitors to complete their journey into the city centre by bus. Public transport within the city is largely bus-based. First York operates the majority of the city's local bus services, as well as the York park and ride services. York was the location of the first implementation of FirstGroup's experimental and controversial FTR bus concept, which sought to confer the advantages of a modern tramway system at a lower cost. The service was withdrawn following an election manifesto pledge by the Labour Group at the 2011 local government election. Transdev York also operates a large number of local bus services. Open-top tourist and sightseeing buses are operated by Transdev York, on behalf of City Sightseeing and York Pullman on behalf of Golden Tours. Rural services, linking local towns and villages with York, are provided by a number of companies with Transdev York & Country, East Yorkshire and Reliance Motor Services operating most of them. Longer-distance bus services are provided by a number of operators, including Arriva Yorkshire services to Selby, East Yorkshire services to Hull, Beverley, Market Weighton and Pocklington, and Transdev York & Country services to Boroughbridge, Knaresborough, Harrogate, Castle Howard and Malton. Yorkshire Coastliner links Leeds & York with Scarborough, Malton, Pickering and Whitby. ### Railway York has been a major railway centre since the first line arrived in 1839, at the beginning of the railway age. For many years, the city hosted the headquarters and works of the North Eastern Railway. ### Air The closest international airports are Leeds Bradford at 30 miles (48 km), Teesside 47 miles (76 km), Doncaster Sheffield 49 miles (79 km), Humberside 54 miles (87 km). Further afield are Manchester 84 miles (135 km) and Newcastle 95 miles (153 km). Manchester Airport – with connections to Europe, North America, Africa and Asia – has direct rail links by TransPennine Express with its namesake station. By road its accessible by the A64 to the M60 via the A1(M) motorway, M1 and M62. Teesside Airport has one connection via Darlington and Eaglescliffe with a limited service with a bus from its station to the airport. By road, it is accessible by the A19 north to the A67. Newcastle Airport has one connection via Newcastle with the metro to Newcastle Airport, it is accessible by the A1(M) north to the A1 then the A696. Leeds Bradford and Humberside have no direct station with buses from the nearest stations. Leeds Bradford serves most major European and North African airports, as well as Pakistan and New York City. Humberside is accessible by the A1079 to the A15 via the A63; Leeds Bradford by the A59 to the A658 via the A661. York has an airfield at the former RAF Elvington, 7 miles (11 km) south-east of the city centre, which is the home of the Yorkshire Air Museum and used for private aviation. In 2003, plans were drafted to expand the site for business aviation or a full commercial service. Former RAF Church Fenton is also near the city and private, it is now called Leeds East. ## Education ### Museums and libraries York Castle, a complex of buildings ranging from the medieval Clifford's Tower to the 20th-century entrance to the York Castle Museum (formerly a prison) has had a chequered history. As well as the Castle Museum, the city contains numerous other museums and historic buildings such as the Yorkshire Museum and its Museum Gardens, Jorvik Viking Centre, York Art Gallery, Merchant Adventurers' Hall, the reconstructed medieval house Barley Hall (owned by the York Archaeological Trust), the 18th-century Fairfax House, the Mansion House (the historic home of the Lord Mayor) and the so-called Treasurer's House (owned by the National Trust). The National Railway Museum is situated just beyond the station, and is home to a vast range of transport material and the largest collection of railway locomotives in the world. Included in this collection are the world's fastest steam locomotive LNER Class A4 4468 Mallard and the world-famous LNER Class A3 4472 Flying Scotsman, which has been overhauled in the Museum. Although noted for its Medieval history, visitors can also gain an understanding of the Cold War through visiting the York Cold War Bunker, former headquarters of No 20 Group of the Royal Observer Corps. The city's first subscription library opened in 1794. The first free public library, the York Library, was built on Clifford Street in 1893, to mark Queen Victoria's jubilee. A new building was erected on Museum Street in 1927, and this is still the library today; it was extended in 1934 and 1938. ### Higher and further education The University of York's main campus is on the southern edge of the city at Heslington. The Department of Archaeology and the graduate Centres for Eighteenth Century Studies and Medieval Studies are located in the historic King's Manor in the city centre. It was York's only institution with university status until 2006, when the more centrally located York St John University, formerly an autonomous college of the University of Leeds, attained full university status. The city formerly hosted a branch of the University of Law before it moved to Leeds. The University of York also has a medical school, Hull York Medical School. The city has two major further education institutions. York College is an amalgamation of York Technical College and York Sixth Form College. Students there study a very wide range of academic and vocational courses, and range from school leavers and sixth formers to people training to make career moves. Askham Bryan College offers further education courses, foundation and honours degrees, specialising in more vocational subjects such as horticulture, agriculture, animal management and even golf course management. ### Secondary and primary education There are 70 local council schools with over 24,000 pupils in the City of York Council area. The City of York Council manages most primary and secondary schools within the city. Primary schools cover education from ages 5–11, with some offering early years education from age 3. From 11 to 16 education is provided by 10 secondary schools, four of which offer additional education up to the age of 18. In 2007 Oaklands Sports College and Lowfield Comprehensive School merged to become one school known as York High School. There is one "outstanding" Roman Catholic secondary school in the city, All Saints School, which was founded in 1665, the school is split-site meaning that the education of lower years (years 7–9) happens on the Lower Site attached to the oldest running convent in the country, Bar Convent. And the upper years including sixth form are taught on the Upper Site which is on Mill Mount, the former site of Mill Mount County Grammar School for Girls. The Sixth form is the largest sixth form in the city. As a school it plays an essential role in York's Catholic community being the only secondary institution dedicated to the denomination. It was the first Catholic school in the country to admit girls for education in the 1660s. York also has several private schools. St Peter's School was founded in 627. The scholar Alcuin, who went on to serve Charlemagne, taught there. It was also the school attended by Guy Fawkes. Two schools have Quaker origins: Bootham School is co-educational and The Mount School is all-girls. Another all-girls school is Queen Margaret's School, which was established under the Woodard Foundation. ## Culture The city is part of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network as a city of Media Arts. An unsuccessful 2010 bid by York city council and a number of heritage organisations to make a UNESCO World Heritage Site indirectly led to the city making a successful bid for its title. ### Theatre The Theatre Royal, which was established in 1744, produces an annual pantomime which attracts loyal audiences from around the country. The theatre's veteran star, Berwick Kaler, often played the dame, before he retired from acting in the pantomime in 2019, and officially parted ways with the theatre after the so-called "Panto Wars". The Theatre Royal continues to produce an annual pantomime without Kaler, who came out of retirement in 2021 to star in a new panto at The Grand Opera House. Both the Grand Opera House and Joseph Rowntree Theatre also offer a variety of productions. The city is home to the Riding Lights Theatre Company, which as well as operating a busy national touring department, also operates a busy youth theatre and educational departments. York is also home to a number of amateur dramatic groups. The Department of Theatre, Film and Television and Student Societies of the University of York put on public drama performances. The York Mystery Plays are performed in public at intervals, using texts based on the original medieval plays of this type that were performed by the guilds – often with specific connections to the subject matter of each play. (For instance the Shipwrights' Play is the Building of Noah's Ark and the fish-sellers and mariners the Landing of Noah's Ark). The York Cycle of Mystery Plays or Pageants is the most complete in England. Originally performed from wagons at various locations around the city from the 14th century until 1570, they were revived in 1951 during the Festival of Britain, when York was one of the cities with a regional festival. They became part of the York City Festival every three years and later four years. They were mostly produced in a temporary open-air theatre within the ruins of St Mary's Abbey, using some professional but mostly amateur actors. Lead actors have included Christopher Timothy and Robson Green (in the role of Christ) and Dame Judi Dench as a school girl, in 1951, 1954 and 1957. (She remains a Patron of the plays). The cycle was presented in the Theatre Royal in 1992 and 1996, within York Minster in 2000 and in 2002, 2006 and 2010 by Guild groups from wagons in the squares, in the Dean's Park, or at the Eye of York. They go around the streets, recreating the original productions. In 2012, the York Mystery Plays were performed between 2 and 27 August at St Mary's Abbey in the York Museum Gardens. ### Music The Academy of St Olave's, a chamber orchestra which gives concerts in St Olave's Church, Marygate, is one of the music groups that perform regularly in York. A former church, St Margaret's, Walmgate, is the National Centre for Early Music, which hosts concerts, broadcasts, competitions and events including the York Early Music Festival. Students, staff and visiting artists of York St John University music department regularly perform lunchtime concerts in the university chapel. The staff and students of the University of York also perform in the city. ### Food and drink Each September since 1997, York has held an annual Festival of Food and Drink. The aim of the festival is to spotlight food culture in York and North Yorkshire by promoting local food production. The Festival attracts up to 150,000 visitors over 10 days from all over the country. The Assize of Ale is an annual event in the city where people in medieval costume take part in a pub crawl to raise money for local charities. It has its origins in the 13th century, when an Assize of Bread and Ale was used to regulate the quality of goods. The current version was resurrected in 1990/91 by the then Sheriff of York, Peter Brown, and is led by the Guild of Scriveners.The Knavesmire, home of York Racecourse, plays host to Yorkshire's largest beer festival every September run by York CAMRA – York Beer & Cider Festival. It is housed in a marquee opposite the grandstand of the racecourse in the enclosure and in 2016 offered over 450 real ales and over 100 ciders. A product claimed to be local is York ham, a mild-flavoured ham with delicate pink colouring. It is traditionally served with Madeira Sauce. The ham has been described as a lightly smoked, dry-cured ham that is saltier but milder in flavour than other European dry-cured hams. Folklore has it that the oak construction for York Minster provided the sawdust for smoking the ham. A likely apocryphal story attributes Robert Burrow Atkinson's butchery shop, in Blossom Street, to be the birthplace of the original "York Ham", or at least to have made it famous. ## Attractions ### Architecture York Minster, a large Gothic cathedral, dominates the city. York's centre is enclosed by the city's medieval walls, which are a popular walk. These defences are the most complete in England. They have the only walls set on high ramparts and they retain all their principal gateways. They incorporate part of the walls of the Roman fortress and some Norman and medieval work, as well as 19th- and 20th-century renovations. The entire circuit is approximately 2.5 miles (4 km), and encloses an area of 263 acres (106 ha). The north-east section includes a part where walls never existed, because the Norman moat of York Castle, formed by damming the River Foss, also created a lake which acted as a city defence. This lake was later called the King's Fishpond, as the rights to fish belonged to the Crown. A feature of central York is the Snickelways, narrow pedestrian routes, many of which led towards the former market-places in Pavement and St Sampson's Square. The Shambles is a narrow medieval street, lined with shops, boutiques and tea rooms. Its unusual name comes from an old English term for an open-air slaughterhouse or meat market. Most of these premises were once butchers' shops, and the hooks from which carcasses were hung and the shelves on which meat was laid out can still be seen outside some of them. The street also contains the Shrine of Margaret Clitherow, although it is not located in the house where she lived. Goodramgate has many medieval houses including the early-14th‐century Lady Row built to finance a Chantry, at the edge of the churchyard of Holy Trinity church. ### Pubs In June 2015 York CAMRA listed 101 pubs on its map of the city centre, some of which are hundreds of years old. These include the Golden Fleece, Ye Olde Starre Inne, noted for its sign which has spanned the street since 1733, and The Kings Arms, often photographed during floods. On 18 June 2016, York CAMRA undertook a "Beer Census" and found 328 unique real ales being served in over 200 pubs in York, reinforcing the city's reputation as a top UK beer destination. ### Tea Rooms In the centre of York, in St Helen's Square, there is the York branch of Bettys Café Tea Rooms. Bettys' founder, Frederick Belmont, travelled on the maiden voyage of the Queen Mary in 1936. He was so impressed by the splendour of the ship that he employed the Queen Mary's designers and craftsmen to turn a dilapidated furniture store in York into an elegant café in St Helen's Square. A few years after Bettys opened in York war broke out, and the basement 'Bettys Bar' became a favourite haunt of the thousands of airmen stationed around York. 'Bettys Mirror', on which many of them engraved their signatures with a diamond pen, remains on display today as a tribute to them. ## Media The York area is served by a local newspaper, The Press (known as the Evening Press until April 2006), The York Advertiser newspaper (based at The Press on Walmgate), and four local radio stations: BBC Radio York, YorkMix Radio, YO1 Radio and Jorvik Radio. A local commercial radio station, Minster FM, broadcast until 2020 when it was replaced by Greatest Hits Radio York and North Yorkshire. Another digital news and radio website is YorkMix run by former print journalists, that incorporates Local News; What's On; Food & Drink; Things To Do and Business sections with articles written by residents and local journalists. In August 2016 YorkMix was nominated in two categories in the O2 Media Awards for Yorkshire and The Humber. Local news and television programmes are provided by BBC Yorkshire and BBC North East and Cumbria on BBC One and ITV Yorkshire and ITV Tyne Tees on ITV. Television signals come from Emley Moor or Bilsdale transmitters. On 27 November 2013, Ofcom awarded the 12-year local TV licence for the York area to a consortium entitled The York Channel, with the channel due to be on air in spring 2015. This service is now on air as That's TV North Yorkshire. York St John University has a Film and Television Production department with links to many major industrial partners. The department hosts an annual festival of student work and a showcase of other regional films. The University of York has its own television station York Student Television (YSTV) and two campus newspapers Nouse and York Vision. Its radio station URY is the longest running legal independent radio station in the UK, and was voted Student Radio Station of the Year 2020 at the Student Radio Awards. ## Sport ### Football codes The city's association football team is York City who are competing in the as of the 2023–24 season. York have played as high as the old Second Division but are best known for their 'giant killing' status in cup competitions, having reached the FA Cup semi-final in 1955 and beaten Manchester United 3–0 during the 1995–96 League Cup. Their matches are played at the York Community Stadium as of 2021, having previously played at Bootham Crescent since 1932. The most notable footballers to come from York in recent years are Lucy Staniforth, Under-20 World Cup winning captain Lewis Cook and former England manager Steve McClaren. York also has a strong rugby league history. York FC, later known as York Wasps, formed in 1868, were one of the oldest rugby league clubs in the country but the effects of a move to the out of town Huntington Stadium, poor results and falling attendances led to their bankruptcy in 2002. The supporters formed a new club, York City Knights, who played at the same stadium until 2015 when they moved to Bootham Crescent. In 2021, they moved to York Community Stadium. In 2022, the club was renamed York RLFC and as of 2023 the men's team (York Knights) play in The Championship and the women's team (York Valkyrie) play in the Super League. There are three amateur rugby league teams in York; New Earswick All Blacks (in New Earswick), York Acorn and Heworth. York International 9s was an annual rugby league nines tournament which took place in York between 2002 and 2009. Amateur side York Lokomotive compete in the Rugby League Conference. Rugby union has been played in York since the 1860s, with multiple teams currently playing within the city. York RUFC was formed in 1928, and amalgamated with the York Cricket Club in 1966. The teams' home ground is at York sports ground at Clifton Park. The men's 1st team play in North 1 East, with the women's team in RFUW Women's NC1 North East championship. York Railway Institute (RI) RUFC home ground is at the York RI sports club on newlane, York. The men's team currently compete in Yorkshire Division 4 South East (Yorkshire 4), and the ladies team play in the RFUW Women's NC1 North East championship. Based at the York site of chocolate and confectionery maker Nestle Rowntree's, Nestle Rowntree RUFC was founded originally in 1894 and re-founded in 1954. They currently play their home games at York St. John University Sports Field and they compete in Yorkshire Division 4 South East (Yorkshire 4). ### Racing York Racecourse was established in 1731 and from 1990 has been awarded Northern Racecourse of the Year for 17 years running. This major horseracing venue is located on the Knavesmire and sees thousands flocking to the city every year for the 15 race meetings. The Knavesmire Racecourse also hosted Royal Ascot in 2005. In August racing takes place over the four-day Ebor Festival that includes the Ebor Handicap dating from 1843. On 6 July 2014, York hosted the start of Stage 2 of the 2014 Tour de France. Starting the Départ Fictif from York Racecourse, the riders travelled through the city centre to the Départ Actuel on the A59 just beyond the junction with the Outer Ring Road heading towards Knaresborough. In 2015, the inaugural Tour de Yorkshire was held as a legacy event to build on the popularity of the previous year, with the Day 2 stage finishing in York. Motorbike speedway once took place at York. The track in the Burnholme Estate was completed in 1930 and a demonstration event staged. In 1931 the track staged team and open events and the York team took part in the National Trophy. ### Other An open rowing club York City Rowing Club is located underneath Lendal Bridge. The rowing clubs of The University of York, York St John University Rowing Club and Leeds University Boat Club as well as York City RC use the Ouse for training. There are two sailing clubs close to York, both of which sail dinghies on the River Ouse. The York RI (Railway Institute) Sailing Club has a club house and boat park on the outskirts of Bishopthorpe, a village3 miles (4.8 km) to the south of York. The Yorkshire Ouse Sailing Club has a club house in the village of Naburn,5 miles (8.0 km) south of York. York hosts the UK Snooker Championship, which is the second biggest ranking tournament in the sport, at the York Barbican. ## Garrison York Garrison is a garrison of the British army, which administers a number of units based in and around the city of York. The garrison's current units are: - York Station - Imphal Barracks - Headquarters, 1st (United Kingdom) Division - 2 Signal Regiment, Royal Corps of Signals - 12 Military Intelligence Company, 1 Military Intelligence Battalion - 1 Investigation Company, Special Investigation Branch Regiment - Kohima Troop, 50 (Northern) Signal Squadron, 37 Signal Regiment - 3 Army Education Centre, Educational and Training Services Branch - Worsley Barracks - Helmand Company, 4th Battalion, Royal Yorkshire Regiment - York Detachment, Leeds University Officers' Training Corps - Yeomanry Barracks - A (Yorkshire Yeomanry) Squadron, Queen's Own Yeomanry - Strensall Station - Queen Elizabeth Barracks - Headquarters, 2nd Medical Brigade - 34 Field Hospital, Royal Army Medical Corps - Headquarters, Army Training Unit (North) - 4th Infantry Brigade Cadet Training Team - 1st (United Kingdom) Division Operational Shooting Training Team - Towthorpe Lines - Army Medical Services Training Centre ## International relations ### Twin towns – sister cities York is twinned with: - Dijon, Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, France, since 1953 - Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, since 1957 - Nanjing, Jiangsu, China, since 2016 In 2016 York became sister cities with the Chinese city of Nanjing, in line with an agreement signed by the Lord Mayor of York, focusing on building links in tourism, education, science, technology and culture. On 22 October 2014 it announced the first 'temporal twinning' with Jórvík, the Viking city on the site of York from 866 to 1066. In 2017 York became UK's first human rights city, which formalised the city's aim to use human rights in decision making. ## Freedom of the City The following people and military units have received the Freedom of the City of York. ### Individuals - John Kendal: 1482. - John Moore: 29 September 1687. - Cosmo Gordon Lang: 1928. - HRH Princess Royal: 1952. - Edna Annie Crichton: 1955. - Prince Andrew, Duke of York: 23 February 1987 (revoked by a Unanimous vote of the City of York Council on 27 April 2022). - Sarah, Duchess of York: 23 February 1987. - Katharine, Duchess of Kent: April 1989. - John Barry: 2002. - Dame Judi Dench: 13 July 2002. - Berwick Kaler: 2003. - Professor Sir Ronald Cooke: 2006. - Neal Guppy: 2010. ### Military units - The Royal Dragoon Guards: 24 April 1999. - 2 Signals Regiment: January 2001. - A Squadron The Queen's Own Yeomanry: 3 December 2009. - RAF Linton on Ouse: 19 September 2010. - The Queen's Gurkha Signals: 8 September 2015. ## See also - Big Blue Ocean Cleanup - CityConnect WIFI - The Evelyn collection of pictures of York from the early 20th century - List of people from York - Southlands Methodist Church - White Rose Theatre - York Festival of Ideas - York Shakespeare Project - Goddards House and Garden - Rollits LLP - Rowntree Park ## Explanatory notes There was no census in 1941: figures are from National Register. United Kingdom and Isle of Man. Statistics of Population on 29 September 1939 by Sex, Age, and Marital Condition. There is a discrepancy of 37 between Office for National Statistics figures (quoted before) and those on the Vision of Britain website (quoted here).

Jeffrey Spender

Fictional character in The X-Files

FBI Special agent Jeffrey Frank Spender is a fictional character in the American Fox television series The X-Files, a science fiction show about a government conspiracy to hide or deny the truth of alien existence. Spender (along with his partner, Diana Fowley) was in control of the X-Files office after Fox Mulder's and Dana Scully's forced leaves in "The Beginning". The X-Files office is concerned with cases with particularly mysterious or possibly supernatural circumstances that were left unsolved and shelved by the FBI. Portrayed by Canadian actor Chris Owens, Spender was a recurring character during the fifth and sixth seasons, before returning for the ninth season of The X-Files in a guest role. He returned for the eleventh season of the show. Federal Bureau of Investigation Special agent Spender made his first appearance in the fifth season 1998 episode "Patient X". During his earlier appearances in the series, because of Mulder's belief in extraterrestrial life, Spender acted unfriendly towards him. But when re-appearing in the ninth season, Spender had moved on to respect and agree with Mulder's beliefs, which is proven to him in "Two Fathers", when he sees and helps to kill an alien rebel. ## Character arc Spender was a skeptic who was assigned to The X-Files after Fox Mulder's forced leave. Spender is the son of the "Cigarette Smoking Man", and the "Cigarette Smoking Man's" ex-wife, multiple abductee Cassandra Spender. Heavily involved in the Syndicate at that time, the "Cigarette Smoking Man" abandoned the family when Spender was 12 years old. Subsequently, his mother was driven insane by what she claims were multiple alien abductions. Shortly after Samantha Mulder was abducted and then returned, Jeffrey and Samantha were raised together by his father in California. Spender met Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully in 1998. The same year, the "Cigarette Smoking Man" began sending him letters; however Spender returned them unopened. After his father set fire to The X-Files in "The End", Spender with Agent Diana Fowley start working on the X-Files. Spender got orders from the "Cigarette Smoking Man" to push and eventually get Mulder and Scully fired from the FBI, which he eventually does in "Two Fathers". Later on he reinstates Mulder and Scully to The X-Files but is shot in the head and apparently killed by his father in "One Son". Three years later it is revealed in "William", that he survived the gunshot, but was subjected to horribly disfiguring experiments at the hand of his father. Posing as Mulder, he infiltrated Scully's house, and injected William with a magnetite substance to seemingly "cure" the baby of his telekinetic powers. The motivation or repercussions of his actions are never fully explained. He testified for the defense during Mulder's murder trial in "The Truth". He also revealed during the trial that Teena Mulder was having an affair with the "Cigarette Smoking Man", and that he and Fox Mulder are half-brothers. A DNA test conducted on a disfigured Spender in the episode "William" initially led agents Scully, Doggett and Reyes to believe he was Mulder thus lending further credence to Spender's claim that both he and Mulder are the children of the "Cigarette Smoking Man". He reappears in "My Struggle III," having received reconstructive surgery. He warns Mulder and Scully that government agents are seeking out William. ## Conceptual history ### Creation and early development Chris Owens had previously portrayed the Cigarette Smoking Man in the episodes, "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man" and "Demons", he had portrayed The Great Mutato in "The Post-Modern Prometheus" on the show before being cast as Spender. Owens had also landed a guest role on The X-Files spin-off Millennium. Chris Carter and David Duchovny were so pleased with his portrayal of The Great Mutato that he was picked for the role, without making an audition. Most of the crew members reacted positively to the selection. When creating the character of Spender, Carter had no long term plans for Owens involvement, meaning that Spender's involvement wouldn't differ much from different previous recurring characters of the show. Michal Suchanek made a small cameo appearance in "The Red and the Black" as a young version of Spender. However, as the fifth season's production period entered its final months, rumors began to circulate – especially among the production crew members in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada – about the future of the series, particularly concerning whether the show would be moving to Los Angeles, California for the sixth season and whether the new recurring character of Jeffrey Spender was planned (in case David Duchovny cut back his commitment to the series) to become a replacement for Duchovny's character of Fox Mulder – either as a part-time or full-fledged substitute. Other, contradictory rumors that Owens heard were that either he or Duchovny would appear in only eight episodes of the sixth season and that his casting as Spender was a sign that the series would either be leaving Vancouver or staying there. According to the actor himself, he always knew that Duchovny would not be leaving the series but only discovered that The X-Files would indeed be moving to Los Angeles when the official announcement was made. According to Owens, he first learned of Spender's seeming demise in "One Son" via the usual way – when Chris Carter phoned the actor to discuss his latest script – and, upon Carter telling him that Jeffrey Spender would make an heroic exit from the series' story arc, Owens questioned himself about this news as he was slightly unable to believe that he was leaving the series so soon. Apparently, the news of Spender's departure from the series was confirmed for him shortly thereafter, however, when he received the episode's script. When it came time to film Spender's final scene in "One Son", actor William B. Davis became upset, saying that he didn't want to shoot Owens and adding that he enjoyed working with the actor. On the other hand, Davis had no trouble with slapping Owens, in a scene of "Two Fathers" in which Spender is twice hit by the Cigarette Smoking Man. ### Later development in Season 9 Three years after Spender had been written out of the series and actor Chris Owens had moved to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Owens received an unexpected phone call from David Duchovny, who said that The X-Files' production crew was filming the series' finale as well as another episode late in the season, and that he wanted to bring Spender back for these two episodes. Duchovny reassured Owens that Spender's survival of the shooting years earlier could be explained away via the plot device of an alien injection but mentioned that the experience would not be fun for Owens, as he would be "under all that shit"; Owens did not realize what Duchovny meant until he got to the studio and saw the makeup for Spender's disfigured appearance, a sight that shocked Owens. ## Reception Entertainment Weekly writer Ken Tucker called Chris Owens portrayal of Spender "gloriously stiff-necked". Lon Grahnke from The Chicago Sun-Times responded positively to the character, calling Spender "devious". Shortly after the premiere of "Terms of Endearment", Owens started to notice "strange reactions" from people on the street. He assumed their odd expressions were those of "annoyance" with his character because of his actions. One day, one particularly aggravated fan of the series actually shook his finger at Owens and called him a "Paper shredder!".

Polikarpov VIT-1

Soviet Polikarpov prototype fighter

The Polikarpov VIT-1 (Russian: Vozdooshny Istrebitel' Tahnkov— Flying Tank Destroyer) was a Soviet twin-engined multi-purpose aircraft developed before World War II. One prototype was built in 1937, with an extremely heavy armament for ground attack duties. That was the only example built as it was decided to revise the design with more powerful engines as the VIT-2. ## Development The Polikarpov design bureau (OKB) was ordered, in 1936, to begin development of a fast twin-engined aircraft that could be used for ground attack duties and as a heavy fighter. It delivered the ground attack version the following year for evaluation, although it could be modified as necessary for other roles. The VIT-1 was reasonably successful, but it was decided to give it more powerful engines and modify its structure. The improved aircraft was designated as the VIT-2. The VIT-1 was a low-winged, twin-engined aircraft with a mixed structure. The monocoque fuselage was made in halves of 'shpon', molded birch plywood. The wing and tail structures were built from a mix of steel tubes and duralumin with a duralumin skin. The VIT-1 had the first metal-skinned control surfaces in the USSR. The main legs of the conventional landing gear retracted aft into the engine nacelles, but the tailwheel was fixed. The nose was extensively glazed to give the bombardier/navigator good visibility and he was armed with a 20 mm (0.79 in) ShVAK cannon with 10° of vertical travel. The rear gunner/radio operator sat behind the pilot in a manually operated turret armed with a 7.62 mm (0.300 in) ShKAS machine gun. Two 37 mm (1.5 in) Shpitalnyi Sh-37 cannon were mounted in the wing roots with very prominent barrels. Up to 600 kg (1,300 lb) of bombs could be carried internally in the fuselage or a pair of 500 kg (1,100 lb) FAB-500 bombs could be carried under the wings. It used a pair of 716 kW (960 hp) Klimov M-103 inline engines driving 3-bladed propellers. ## Specifications ## See also

Scorpion-class ironclad

British class of ironclad warships

The two Scorpion-class ironclads, HMS Scorpion and HMS Wivern, were ironclad warships ordered by the Confederate States Navy in 1862 and seized in 1863 by the British to prevent their delivery. This would have violated the Foreign Enlistment Act, which forbade British subjects to build or arm any ships for governments at war with governments friendly to Great Britain. The Scorpion class were masted turret ships, each with two gun turrets that were designed to mount a pair of heavy muzzle-loading guns. They were purchased for service in the Royal Navy in 1864 and served briefly with the Channel Fleet before they became guard ships at Bermuda and Hong Kong. Scorpion was sold in 1903 and sank under tow to be scrapped, while Wivern was sold for scrap in 1922. ## Design and description In March 1862, a contract was placed with Laird & Son Co. by Captain James D. Bulloch, a naval agent for the Confederate States of America, for two double-turreted warships designed for ramming attacks at a cost of £93,750 each, exclusive of armament and ammunition. They were intended, together with other warships, to break the Federal blockade of Confederate coastal cities and to hold some Northern cities for ransom. The ships had a length between perpendiculars of 224 feet 6 inches (68.4 m), a beam of 42 feet 4 inches (12.9 m), and a draught of 17 feet (5.2 m) at deep load. They displaced 2,751 long tons (2,795 t). The hull was divided by 12 watertight bulkheads and the ships had a double bottom beneath the engine and boiler rooms. Their crew consisted of 152 officers and men. The gun turrets, designed by Captain Coles of the Royal Navy, sat on circular turntables that were built on an iron radial platform with arms that rested on beveled wheels 18 inches (457 mm) in diameter. Each turret required a crew of 18 men to rotate them via a system of rack and pinion gears; one minute was required for a full 360° rotation. They could be rotated from inside the turret as well from outside. In emergencies the turret could be turned by a block and tackle as well as use of handspikes. A leather flap extended around the bottom of the turret and over the gap between the turret and the deck to reduce any water leakage through the gap. Like most contemporary ironclads they were fitted with a forged iron ram. The ships had 6 feet (1.8 m) of freeboard that could be increased by 5-foot (1.5 m) hinged bulwarks abreast the turrets. In service the ships proved to be buoyant and seaworthy although they rolled heavily which meant that their decks were often awash. Their flat bottom and small rudder, however, caused steering problems before the wind. Because of their seaworthiness and powerful guns they have been judged superior to any monitor built by the United States Navy. ### Propulsion The Scorpion-class ships had two horizontal direct acting steam engines, built by Lairds, driving a single three-bladed, 14-foot (4.3 m) propeller. Their engines were powered by four tubular boilers at a working pressure of 20 psi (138 kPa; 1 kgf/cm²). The engines produced a total of 1,450 indicated horsepower (1,080 kW) which gave the ships a maximum speed of 10.5 knots (19.4 km/h; 12.1 mph). Wivern reached a maximum speed just over 11 knots (20 km/h; 13 mph) during her sea trials on 4 October 1865. The ships carried 336 long tons (341 t) of coal, enough to steam 1,210 nautical miles (2,240 km; 1,390 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph). The ships were barque-rigged with three masts. Scorpion had conventional shrouds to anchor the masts in place, but Wivern was the first ship to have tripod masts to reduce interference with the firing arcs of the gun turrets. The funnel was made semi-retractable to reduce wind resistance while under sail. ### Armament No ordnance had been ordered by the Confederates before the ships were seized in 1863, but in British service they mounted a pair of 9-inch rifled muzzle-loading guns in each turret. The shell of the 9-inch (229 mm) gun weighed 254 pounds (115.2 kg) while the gun itself weighed 12 long tons (12 t). The gun fired its shell at a muzzle velocity of 1,420 ft/s (430 m/s) and was credited with the ability to penetrate a nominal 11.3 inches (290 mm) of wrought iron armour at 100 yards (91 m). The guns could fire both solid shot and explosive shells. According to Parkes, going from full depression to full elevation supposedly took one hour in smooth water and with an even keel! ### Armour The Scorpion-class ships had a complete waterline belt of wrought iron that was 4.5 inches (114 mm) thick amidships and thinned to 3 inches (76 mm) at the bow and 2.5 inches (64 mm) at the stern. It completely covered the hull from the upper deck to 3 feet 3 inches (0.99 m) below the waterline. The armour protection of the polygonal turrets was quite elaborate. The inside of the turret was lined with .5 inches (12.7 mm) of iron boiler plate to which T-shaped beams were bolted. The space between the beams was filled with 10 inches (254 mm) of teak. This was covered by an iron lattice .75 inches (19.1 mm) thick that was covered in turn by 8 inches (203 mm) of teak. The 5.5-inch (140 mm) iron plates were bolted to the outside using bolts that ran through to the interior iron "skin". The area around the gun ports was reinforced by 4.5-inch plates to give a total thickness of 10 inches. The turret roof consisted of T-shaped beams covered by 1-inch (25 mm) iron plates. Holes in the roof were provided for ventilation and for the gun captain to use to aim the turret. ## Construction In his letter of 29 October 1862, Confederate Navy Secretary Stephen Mallory named yard number 294 as North Carolina and number 295 as Mississippi. In January 1863 the Foreign Secretary, Lord Russell, notified Bulloch, who had purchased the ships in his own name, that the ships would be prevented from sailing if they were doing so to form part of the fleet of a nation currently at war. Bulloch therefore transferred ownership to some French bankers in June 1863, nominally on behalf of the Egyptian government, with the intention of transferring them to the Confederate flag once they were at sea. The Khedive was attempting to acquire warships, so this was superficially plausible. North Carolina, later HMS Scorpion, was given the cover name of El Toussan and Mississippi, later HMS Wivern, received the name of El Monnassir. Lord Russel, prompted by the protests of the U.S. Ambassador, Charles F. Adams queried the Egyptian government directly and confirmed that this was merely a subterfuge to disguise the true ownership of the vessels. The Admiralty was prompted to send a guard ship, HMS Majestic, to watch over the newly launched El Toussan after Lairds had made a request to begin sea trials in September. The Liverpool Collector of Customs was instructed not to let the ship leave her graving dock under any circumstances and the Surveyor of Customs finally seized the ships on 9 October. The legality of this seizure was seriously disputed, but the British government had already been somewhat embarrassed by the activities of Alabama, a ship also built by Laird Son & Co and operated as a commerce raider by the Confederate Navy. In order to overshadow discussions as to the legality of their action, the British government purchased the ships on 8 August 1864 for £25,000 in excess of the contract price. ## Service Both ships were assigned to the Channel Fleet upon commissioning in 1865. Scorpion was refitted in 1867 with a flying bridge that connected the forecastle to the poop, above the tops of the turrets, and her sailing rig was reduced to a fore-and-aft rig. The ship recommissioned in 1868 for another tour with the Channel Fleet. She arrived in Bermuda in November 1869 where she became the local guard ship. In 1873 a proposal was made to remove her poop and forecastle, masts and deck fitting to convert her to a harbour defence monitor with all-around fire, but this was deemed too expensive and the project was abandoned in 1878. At some point during her service in Bermuda her rigging was removed and she was reduced to simple pole masts. The ship was fitted with searchlights and quick-firing guns in 1890. Scorpion was sunk as a target in 1901; she was raised in 1902 and sold in February 1903 for £736. She sank while under tow to Boston, Massachusetts. Wivern burst one of her 9-inch guns in 1867, but none of the 13 people in the turret was injured. She was given the same sort of refit as her sister ship in Devonport beginning in August 1868. The ship became the guard ship at Hull from January through October 1870 and was then placed in reserve from 1870 until 1880. That year she was sent to Hong Kong where she became the harbour defence ship. Wivern became a distilling ship in 1898 and was sold in May 1922 for scrap.

Rose O'Neill

American illustrator (1874–1944)

Rose Cecil O'Neill (June 25, 1874 – April 6, 1944) was an American cartoonist, illustrator, artist, and writer. She rose to fame for her creation of the popular comic strip characters, Kewpies, in 1909, and was also the first published female cartoonist in the United States. The daughter of a book salesman and a homemaker, O'Neill was raised in rural Nebraska. She exhibited interest in the arts at an early age, and sought a career as an illustrator in New York City. Her Kewpie cartoons, which made their debut in a 1909 issue of Ladies' Home Journal, were later manufactured as bisque dolls in 1912 by J. D. Kestner, a German toy company, followed by composition material and celluloid versions. The dolls were wildly popular in the early twentieth century, and are considered to be one of the first mass-marketed toys in the United States. O'Neill also wrote several novels and books of poetry, and was active in the women's suffrage movement. She was for a time the highest-paid female illustrator in the world upon the success of the Kewpie dolls. O'Neill has been inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. In 2022 at San Diego Comic Con, Rose O'Neill was inducted into the Eisner Awards Hall of Fame as a Comic Pioneer. ## Early life O'Neill was born on June 25, 1874, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the daughter of William Patrick, an Irish immigrant, and Alice Asenath "Meemie" Smith O'Neill. She had two younger sisters, Lee and Callista, and three younger brothers: Hugh, James, and Clarence. The family moved to rural Nebraska while O'Neill was young. From early childhood, she expressed significant interest in the arts, immersing herself in drawing, painting, and sculpture. At thirteen, she entered a children's drawing competition sponsored by the Omaha Herald and won first prize for her drawing, titled "Temptation Leading to an Abyss". Within two years, O'Neill was providing illustrations for the local Omaha publications Excelsior and The Great Divide as well as other periodicals, having secured this work with help from the editor at the Omaha World-Herald and the Art Director from Everybody Magazine who had judged the competition. The income helped support her family, which her father had struggled to support as a bookseller. O'Neill attended the Sacred Heart Convent school in Omaha. ## Career ### Move to New York To market her skills to a broader audience, O'Neill moved to New York in 1893; she stopped in Chicago en route to visit the World Columbian Exposition. The nuns accompanied her to various publishers to sell work from her portfolio of sixty drawings. She was able to sell her drawings to numerous publishing houses and began taking orders for more. A four-panel comic strip by O'Neill were featured in a September 19, 1896, issue of Truth magazine, making her the first American woman to publish a comic strip. While O'Neill was living in New York, her father made a homestead claim on a small tract of land in the Ozarks wilderness of southern Missouri. The tract had a "dog-trot" cabin with two log cabins (one was used for eating and the other for sleeping) and a breezeway between. A year later when O'Neill visited the land, it had become known as "Bonniebrook". During this time O'Neill was experiencing considerable success, having joined the staff of Puck, an American humor magazine, where she was the only female on staff. In 1909, she began work drawing advertisements for Jell-O, and contributed illustrations to Harper's and Life magazines. ### Early illustrations In 1892, while in Omaha, O'Neill met a young Virginian named Gray Latham, whom she married in 1896. He visited O'Neill in New York City, and continued writing to her when she went to Missouri to see her family. After Latham's father went to Mexico to make films, he went to Bonniebrook in 1896. Concerned with the welfare of her family, O'Neill sent much of her paycheck home. In the following years O'Neill became unhappy with Latham, as he liked "living large" and gambling, and was known as a playboy. O'Neill found that Latham, with his very expensive tastes, had spent her paychecks on himself. O'Neill then moved to Taney County, Missouri, where she filed for divorce in 1901, returning to Bonniebrook. Latham died the same year, and some sources state that O'Neill was widowed. In late 1901, O'Neill began receiving anonymous letters and gifts in the mail. She learned that they were sent by Harry Leon Wilson, an assistant editor at Puck. O'Neill and Wilson became romantically involved soon after, and married in 1902. After a honeymoon in Colorado, they moved to Bonniebrook, where they lived for the next several winters. During the first three years Wilson wrote two novels, The Lions of the Lord (1903) and The Boss of Little Arcady (1905), both of which O'Neill drew illustrations for. One of Wilson's later novels, Ruggles of Red Gap, became popular and was made into several motion pictures, including a silent movie, a "talkie" starring Charles Laughton, and then a remake called Fancy Pants starring Lucille Ball and Bob Hope. The couple divorced in 1907. In 1904, O'Neill published her first novel, The Loves of Edwy, which she also illustrated. A review published by Book News in 1905 considered O'Neill's illustrations to "possess a rare breadth of sympathy with and understanding of humanity". ### Kewpies and breakthrough As educational opportunities were made available in the 19th century, women artists became part of professional enterprises, and some founded their own art associations. Artwork made by women was considered to be inferior, and to help overcome that stereotype women became, according to art historian Laura Prieto, "increasingly vocal and confident" in promoting women's work. Many women artists, including O'Neill, could be characterized as examples of the educated, modern, and independent "New Woman," a form of gender identity that emerged at the time. According to Prieto, artists "played crucial roles in representing the New Woman, both by drawing images of the icon and exemplifying this emerging type through their own lives". In the late 19th century and early 20th century, about 88% of the subscribers of 11,000 magazines and periodicals were women. As women entered the artist community, publishers hired women to create illustrations that depicted the world from a woman's perspective. Other successful illustrators were Jennie Augusta Brownscombe, Jessie Willcox Smith, Elizabeth Shippen Green, and Violet Oakley. It was amid the New Woman and burgeoning suffragist movements that, in 1908, O'Neill began to concentrate on producing original artwork, and it was during this period that she created the whimsical Kewpie characters for which she became known. Their name, "Kewpie", derives from Cupid, the Roman god of love. According to O'Neill, she became obsessed with the idea of the cherubic characters, to the point that she had dreams about them: "I thought about the Kewpies so much that I had a dream about them where they were all doing acrobatic pranks on the coverlet of my bed. One sat in my hand." She described them as "a sort of little round fairy whose one idea is to teach people to be merry and kind at the same time". The Kewpie characters made their debut in comic strip form in 1909 in an issue of Ladies' Home Journal. Further publications of the Kewpie comics in Woman's Home Companion and Good Housekeeping helped the cartoon grow in popularity rapidly. In 1913, German doll manufacturer Kestner & Co. began making Kewpie dolls. The dolls were immediately successful, and more companies were licensed to produce them in order to meet demand. O'Neill repeatedly visited Germany supervise the doll manufacturers. As O'Neill rose to fame, she garnered a public reputation as a bohemian, and became an ardent women's rights advocate. The success of the Kewpies amassed her a fortune of \$1.4 million, with which she purchased properties including Bonniebrook, an apartment in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village, Castle Carabas in Connecticut, and Villa Narcissus (bought from Charles Caryl Coleman) on the Isle of Capri, Italy. At the height of the Kewpie success, O'Neill was the highest-paid female illustrator in the world. O'Neill was well known in New York City's artistic circles, and through her association, she was the inspiration for the song "Rose of Washington Square". ### Paris and later career O'Neill continued working, even at her wealthiest, exploring many different types of art. She learned sculpture at the hand of Auguste Rodin and had several exhibitions of sculptures and paintings in Paris and the United States. These works were more experimental in nature, and largely influenced by dreams and mythology. O'Neill spent 1921 to 1926 living in Paris. While there, she was elected to the Société Coloniale des Artistes Français in 1921, and had exhibitions of her sculptures at the Galerie Devambez in Paris and the Wildenstein Galleries in New York in 1921 and 1922, respectively. In 1927, O'Neill returned to the United States, and by 1937 was living at Bonniebrook permanently. By the 1940s, she had lost the majority of her money and properties, partly through extravagant spending, as well as the cost of fully supporting her family, her entourage of "artistic" hangers-on, and her first husband. The Great Depression also hurt O'Neill's fortune. During that period, O'Neill was dismayed to find that her work was no longer in demand. After thirty years of popularity, the Kewpie character phenomenon had faded, and photography was replacing illustration as a commercial vehicle. O'Neill experimented with crafting a new doll, eventually creating Little Ho Ho, which was a laughing baby Buddha. However, before plans could be finalized for production of the new little figure, the factory burned to the ground. ## Personal life O'Neill became a prominent personality in the Branson, Missouri, community, donating her time and pieces of artwork to the School of the Ozarks at Point Lookout, Missouri, and remaining active in the local art community. On April 6, 1944, O'Neill died of heart failure resulting from paralysis at the home of her nephew in Springfield, Missouri. She is interred in the family cemetery at Bonniebrook Homestead, next to her mother and several family members. Bonniebrook Homestead was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997.

1937 Atlantic hurricane season

Hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean

The 1937 Atlantic hurricane season was a below-average hurricane season, featuring eleven tropical storms; of these, four became hurricanes. One hurricane reached major hurricane intensity, equivalent to a Category 3 or higher on the modern Saffir–Simpson scale. The United States Weather Bureau defined the season as officially lasting from June 16 to October 16. Tropical cyclones that did not approach populated areas or shipping lanes, especially if they were relatively weak and of short duration, may have remained undetected. Because technologies such as satellite monitoring were not available until the 1960s, historical data on tropical cyclones from this period are often not reliable. As a result of a reanalysis project which analyzed the season in 2012, a tropical storm and a hurricane were added to the Atlantic hurricane database (HURDAT). The official intensities and tracks of all storms were also revised by the reanalysis. The year's first storm formed on July 29 in the Gulf of Mexico, and the final system, a hurricane, dissipated over open ocean on October 21. Most of the season's storms arose from the subtropics. Nova Scotia was a focus for storm activity with four storms reaching the Canadian province as extratropical cyclones. Two of these were the remnants of hurricanes; the first inflicted \$1.5 million in damage on the apple crop in the Annapolis Valley, and the second tore up four breakwaters and sank or grounded several ships. The year's deadliest tropical cyclone was a tropical storm that struck Florida at the end of August. A squall associated with the storm caused the sinking of the SS Tarpon, killing 18 people. A short-lived tropical storm in October caused the wettest 48-hour period in the history of New Orleans, Louisiana, with 16.65 in (423 mm) of rainfall, causing the city's most destructive flood since the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. A tropical storm striking parts of the U.S. Gulf Coast caused two deaths, but otherwise did minor damage. The season's strongest storm was estimated to have produced maximum sustained winds of 125 mph (201 km/h)and remained over the more central longitudes of the Atlantic. The season's activity was reflected with an accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) rating of 66 units, below the 1931–1943 average of 91.2. ACE is a metric used to express the energy used by a tropical cyclone during its lifetime. Therefore, a storm with a longer duration will have high values of ACE. It is only calculated at six-hour increments in which specific tropical and subtropical systems are either at or above sustained wind speeds of 39 mph (63 km/h), which is the threshold for tropical storm intensity. Thus, tropical depressions are not included here. ## Timeline ## Systems ### Tropical Storm One In late July, a stationary front was draped across the northeastern Gulf of Mexico. An area of rotation developed along this decaying boundary, developing into the season's first tropical depression around 00:00 UTC on July 29 while located about 225 miles (362 km) southwest of Tampa, Florida. The incipient cyclone moved steadily northeast and intensified into a tropical storm twelve hours later. It reached an initial peak of 65 mph (105 km/h) while in the Gulf of Mexico, making landfall at that intensity near Palm Harbor, Florida, at 22:00 UTC on July 29. The system initially weakened while crossing the state and emerging into the Atlantic, but surface observations along the North Carolina coastline supported peak winds around 70 mph (110 km/h) as the storm accelerated northeast; it is possible the cyclone possessed hurricane-force winds offshore. By 00:00 UTC on August 1, the system transitioned into an extratropical cyclone as an occluded front became attached to the circulation. It made landfall in Nova Scotia late on August 1 and curved northwest, dissipating over northern New Brunswick the next day. In Tampa, Florida, five-minute sustained winds reached 51 mph (82 km/h), blowing down trees, utility poles, and electric wires. Clearwater, Florida documented 8.88 in (226 mm) of rainfall in a 24-hour period, the heaviest rains measured in connection with the passing tropical storm. Some roads were washed out in Clearwater and minor losses of fruit were documented in surrounding Pinellas County. Farther north, gusts at Hatteras, North Carolina peaked at 65 mph (105 km/h). Telephone and power service was disrupted in Halifax, Nova Scotia as the storm's remnants produced 35-mph (55 km/h) winds in the city. Three boats moored there were destroyed. ### Tropical Storm Two On August 1, a weak trough was identified north of the Greater Antilles. It developed into a tropical depression by 18:00 UTC on August 2 while positioned just southwest of Long Island, Bahamas; further intensification into a tropical storm occurred over Current Island 24 hours later. The system curved around the western periphery of an area of high pressure, attaining peak winds of 65 mph (105 km/h) based on data from ships that intersected the cyclone. Unlike the previous cyclone, this tropical storm never transitioned into an extratropical cyclone, instead weakening to a tropical depression around 00:00 UTC on August 9 and dissipating east of Nova Scotia twelve hours later. ### Tropical Storm Three A tropical depression was first noted about 50 miles (80 km) east of Barbuda around 12:00 UTC on August 24, though it may have formed earlier beyond the coverage of available weather observations. It intensified into a tropical storm twelve hours but remained weak for several days after as it weaved through the Bahamas. The storm began to strengthen on August 28, a trend that continued over the next 48 hours. It struck the coastline near Daytona Beach, Florida, around 14:00 UTC on August 30 with winds of 70 mph (110 km/h). However, based on damage reports, it is feasible the cyclone was of hurricane intensity. The tropical storm moved northwest across the Southeastern United States, weakening to a tropical depression over southern Alabama early on September 1. It degenerated into a trough over northern Arkansas by 18:00 UTC the next day. The tropical storm caused widespread damage to electric and telecommunication wires in Florida, along the coast and as far as 100 mi (160 km) inland in Lake City. Gusts of 50–60 mph (80–97 km/h) impacted the coast between New Smyrna and St. Augustine. At Savannah Beach, Georgia, the bulkhead and boardwalks were damaged by strong winds. Flooding rains from the system washed out roads and bridges in the state's northwestern counties. One squall associated with the tropical cyclone sank the SS Tarpon 40 mi (64 km) off Pensacola, drowning 18 of the 31 persons on board. Vessels and planes were dispatcher by the United States Coast Guard to search for and rescue survivors. Survivors remained at sea for up to 30 hours before being rescued. Rainfall totals of at least 3 in (76 mm) spread as far west as eastern Mississippi, with a maximum rainfall of 13.8 in (350 mm) observed in Vernon, Florida. Heavy rains in southeastern Alabama caused the Pea and Choctawhatchee rivers to flood, inflicting roughly \$62,500 in damage to adjacent property and crops. ### Hurricane Four A strong tropical wave, originating near Cabo Verde around September 4, developed into a tropical storm by 00:00 UTC on September 9 while positioned about 480 miles (770 km) east-northeast of Barbuda. It intensified into the season's first hurricane within 24 hours, further maturing to Category 2 intensity with winds of 100 mph (160 km/h) by 06:00 UTC on September 12. The small hurricane moved steadily northwest throughout its lifespan, passing east of Bermuda before weakening to a tropical storm late the next day. It acquired well-defined frontal boundaries by 06:00 UTC on September 14, marking the system's transition into an extratropical cyclone. It made landfall in Nova Scotia and either elongated into a trough or merged with a frontal system over far eastern Canada twelve hours later. In Nova Scotia, 600,000 barrels of apples were lost in Annapolis Valley, totaling \$1.5 million in damage to that crop. Homes, barns, and other buildings suffered structural damage. Wharves and a large boat were severely damaged in Shelburne, and a schooner that ran ashore in Lockeport suffered heavy damage as well. In New Brunswick, additional homes and barns were damaged. ### Tropical Storm Five As part of the Atlantic hurricane reanalysis project, a previously unidentified tropical cyclone was discovered in 2012. Similar to the evolution of the season's first tropical cyclone, an area of low pressure formed along a dissipating frontal boundary early on September 10. It developed into a tropical storm by 06:00 UTC that day while located roughly 75 miles (121 km) south-southwest of Bermuda. The storm moved northwest over the next day, making a close approach to the Northeastern United States before veering to the northeast. It reached peak winds of 70 mph (110 km/h) around 18:00 UTC on September 11, when the structure of the system more resembled a subtropical cyclone than a strictly tropical one. It transitioned into an extratropical cyclone six hours later, striking Nova Scotia before becoming absorbed into the larger circulation of a non-tropical entity around 06:00 UTC on September 12. ### Hurricane Six A tropical storm was first identified about 355 miles (571 km) east of Barbuda around 06:00 UTC on September 13, although it may have existed previously. The system executed a gradual curve toward the north while intensifying, becoming a hurricane early on September 14. It reached its peak intensity as a Category 3 hurricane with winds of 125 mph (201 km/h) by 06:00 UTC the next morning. It temporarily veered east but then resumed a northward motion, remaining a potent hurricane for several days. Extratropical transition occurred by 18:00 UTC on September 19 when an occluded front became attached to the storm. It turned northeast and ultimately opened up into a sharp trough over the far northern Atlantic late on September 20. ### Tropical Storm Seven A tropical storm formed over the Bay of Campeche by 12:00 UTC on September 16, embarking on a steady northeastward course. Ship reports indicate that the cyclone reached peak winds of 60 mph (97 km/h) on September 18, but that it weakened to 45 mph (72 km/h) while making landfall near Port Eads, Louisiana, at 18:00 UTC the next day. The system turned toward the east thereafter, making a second landfall near Apalachicola, Florida, with winds of 40 mph (64 km/h) at 16:00 UTC on September 20. It briefly emerged into the far northeastern Gulf of Mexico before striking the Big Bend region of Florida as a tropical depression. The depression dissipated near Jacksonville, Florida, around 18:00 UTC on September 21. Damage in Florida was generally minor since winds on land were limited to around 30 mph (48 km/h). Some small boats in St. Marks broke from their moorings and sustained slight damage. A portion of Highway 6 between Wewahitchka and White City. Two people drowned after their canoe capsized in rough seas generated by the storm near Everglades City. ### Hurricane Eight A tropical wave likely emerged from the western coast of Africa around September 14. It developed into a tropical cyclone at some point of the next few days, with a specific date unclear in the absence of surface observations. At 06:00 UTC on September 20, a hurricane was conclusively identified about halfway between Cabo Verde and the Leeward Islands. It gained strength on a general northwest heading, intensifying into a Category 2 hurricane and attaining peak winds of 100 mph (160 km/h) from September 24–25. Slight weakening occurred as the system passed well north of Bermuda. It transitioned into an extratropical cyclone by 06:00 UTC on September 26 and struck Nova Scotia before turning northeast across Newfoundland and into the northern Atlantic. The extratropical cyclone was last noted over Iceland at 12:00 UTC on September 28, after which time it likely merged with another non-tropical low. The extratropical cyclone heavily impacted Nova Scotia, where vessels were pushed ashore, fishing gear was damaged, and trees were uprooted. In Liverpool, a boat launch and accompanying racing ships and other boats were destroyed. Three breakwaters were heavily damaged on Devils Island, in Brookland, and in Yarmouth, the second costing \$80,000 to replace. A fourth breakwater at Western Head was washed away. One marine dredge was destroyed at Cape Negro and another was sunk somewhere between Lunenburg and Shelburne. Three scows en route to New Brunswick were also capsized in that area. In Port Bickerton, fishing stages, wharves, lobster traps, and nets were destroyed. A fish factory was also demolished in Halifax. ### Tropical Storm Nine At 06:00 UTC on September 26, a tropical depression formed just north of Cuba. It intensified into a tropical storm by 18:00 UTC the following day based on reports from two ships. After attaining peak winds of 45 mph (72 km/h), the cyclone quickly transitioned to an extratropical cyclone by 12:00 UTC on September 28 as multiple fronts became intertwined with the circulation. The extratropical cyclone continued to parallel the U.S. East Coast, eventually making landfall in Newfoundland early on September 30. It strengthened into a hurricane-force low on October 1 but ultimately dissipated two days later as it merged with another cyclone and became increasingly elongated. ### Tropical Storm Ten In late September, a tropical wave moved westward across the Caribbean. An initial area of low pressure formed over the northwestern portion of the region on September 29, but this feature dissipated within two days. A new low formed and organized into a tropical storm around 00:00 UTC on October 2 while positioned about 425 miles (684 km) south of Mobile, Alabama. It reached peak winds of 45 mph (72 km/h) after six hours, with steady weakening thereafter as the storm moved west-northwest and then north. The system made two landfalls in central Louisiana near the Atchafalaya Basin between 12:00–14:00 UTC on October 3, both with winds of 40 mph (64 km/h). The system continued to degrade once inland, dissipating after 06:00 UTC on October 4 over southeastern Arkansas. The tropical storm caused the wettest 48-hour period in New Orleans's history, with 16.65 in (423 mm) of rainfall recorded as the storm made landfall; the maximum 24-hour rainfall total of 13.59 in (0.345 m) nearly broke the city's record for maximum daily rainfall. City streets were submerged under as much as 3 ft (0.91 m) of water. Blue laws were suspended for half a day to allow grocery store food supplies to reach stranded areas. Damage was estimated at several thousands of dollars and the flooding was considered the city's most severe since the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. Crops around the city sustained considerable damage. At Belle Chasse, Louisiana, the 15.40 in (391 mm) of rain recorded in 24 hours set the state record for the highest 24-hour rainfall in October. The strongest recorded winds from the tropical cyclone occurred at Port Eads, Louisiana, where a 33-mph (53 km/h) wind gust was documented as the system was developing on October 2. ### Hurricane Eleven Similar to Tropical Storm Five, a new tropical cyclone that was not recognized in real time was found to have existed over the northern Atlantic. From October 16–17, a cold front moved eastward across the basin. An area of low pressure formed along the southern end of the dissipating boundary, initially harboring characteristics of an extratropical cyclone. This low became more symmetric while also intensifying, transitioning into a hurricane by 00:00 UTC on October 19 while located roughly 715 miles (1,151 km) southeast of Newfoundland. The system attained peak winds of 80 mph (130 km/h) within six hours and weakened shortly thereafter while moving west-northwest. It fell to tropical storm intensity by early on October 20; by 00:00 UTC the next day, there were no further indications of the storm. It either dissipated or was absorbed by a front encroaching from the west. ### Other storms In addition to the eleven known tropical cyclones of at least tropical storm strength, the Atlantic hurricane reanalysis project also identified five tropical depressions. However, their marginal intensities precluded their addition to the official Atlantic hurricane track database (HURDAT). The first of these lasted from August 1–4 over the central Atlantic without affecting land, ultimately degenerating into a tropical wave. A second tropical depression developed in the Gulf of Mexico and passed near New Orleans, Louisiana, on August 29. A nearly stationary tropical depression developed in the southwestern Caribbean Sea on September 29 and dissipated two days later; it may have been absorbed by Tropical Storm Ten. This system was originally included in HURDAT as a tropical storm, but was found to have winds of only 30 mph (48 km/h) by the reanalysis. On October 8, a northward-moving tropical depression spawned from a tropical wave well east of the Lesser Antilles, eventually transitioning into an extratropical system on October 14. The season's final tropical cyclone was a nearly stationary tropical depression that persisted in the central Caribbean Sea between October 25–29. The reanalysis project also examined eleven other disturbances from 1937 for possible tropical or subtropical cyclone characteristics, including a low-pressure system that split from a front over the open Atlantic on January 1. ## Season effects The table below includes the duration, names, landfall(s), denoted in parentheses, damage, and death totals of all tropical cyclones in the 1937 Atlantic hurricane season. The damage and deaths associated with a tropical cyclone include both its effects as a tropical cyclone as well as its progenitor and remnants. ## See also - 1937 Pacific hurricane season - 1937 Pacific typhoon season - 1900–1950 South-West Indian Ocean cyclone seasons - 1930s Australian region cyclone seasons

Tropical Storm Becky (1970)

Atlantic tropical storm in 1970

Tropical Storm Becky was the second tropical cyclone and named storm of the 1970 Atlantic hurricane season. Becky formed from a tropical depression that was designated on July 19. The next day it organized over the Yucatán Channel and became Tropical Storm Becky. Initially thought to have attained minimal hurricane status, Becky reached peak winds of 65 mph (100 km/h), but the storm began to deteriorate shortly thereafter. The storm made landfall on the Florida Panhandle on July 22, and rapidly weakened over land. Overall, damage was related to heavy rainfall that caused flooding in Tallahassee, Florida; 104 families suffered flood-related losses. About \$500,000 (1970 USD) in damage was attributed to the storm. Further north, the heavy rainfall swelled rivers. Becky may have been partially responsible for spawning tornadoes that destroyed or damaged several houses. ## Meteorological history On July 16, 1970, a large disturbance separated from the Intertropical Convergence Zone near Panama. The broad area of convection dominated the region between Swan Island and western Cuba by July 18. Some sources state that the area of convection was joined by a low-level vortex that entered the area, eventually forming a depression. Others believe that the origins of Becky can be tracked back to a tropical wave that moved off the coast of Africa on July 9. A tropical depression formed on July 19, 1970. As the depression moved through the Yucatán Channel, the convective cloud system became better organized. On July 20, in light of data from a Reconnaissance Aircraft flight, the depression was upgraded to Tropical Storm Becky. The storm moved roughly northward under the influence of the Bermuda High to the east and a low-pressure area over Mexico. Reports from a Reconnaissance flight indicated that Becky was disorganized, with a minimum barometric pressure of 1,008 mbar (29.8 inHg). Although a fairly strong low-level circulation developed, there was insufficient warming of the center to produce a significant drop in barometric pressure at the surface. Late on July 20, a ship reported a minimum pressure of about 1,003 mbar (29.6 inHg), and another ship reported sustained winds of 65 mph (100 km/h), which would be Becky's peak intensity. A Reconnaissance flight and weather radars suggested the development of an eye feature, and initially it was believed that the storm attained minimal hurricane status. Later it was later confirmed that Becky remained a tropical storm, and the previously forming eye failed to persist. On July 21, the storm deteriorated in organization as it continued northward. The lack of banding features indicated that by early on July 22, Becky was barely a tropical storm. The storm made landfall near Port St. Joe, Florida shortly thereafter, and weakened rapidly as it moved inland; as a rainstorm, it progressed northward into the Midwestern United States and completely dissipated over Michigan. ## Preparations Offshore, Shell Oil removed some workers and equipment from offshore platforms. A hurricane warning was issued from Fort Walton, Florida to Port St. Joe, Florida. Similarly, a gale warning was posted for coastal areas of Alabama and Florida. A hurricane watch was issued for locations in Mississippi and Louisiana. On July 22, a tornado watch was posted for northern Florida. Tornado warnings were also issued, and a flash flood watch was declared for parts of western North Carolina. Gale warnings were posted from Panama City, Florida to St. Marks, Florida, with the expectation of winds to 50 mph (80 km/h). Heavy rainfall of up to 8 inches (200 mm) was predicted, and tides of 2 to 4 feet (0.61 to 1.22 m) forecast. Isolated tornadoes were possible as the storm made landfall. Thousands of residents were evacuated from the Panhandle of Florida, including Santa Rosa Island and Destin, as well as other low-lying locations. Some residents evacuated to storm shelters that were set up in various cities along the coast. A store in Destin reported increased sales in hurricane-related supplies such as canned goods and flashlights. Florida Governor Claude Kirk ordered health units and law enforcement to operate on emergency alert. Small craft in the northeastern Gulf of Mexico were advised to remain in port until the high seas subsided. ## Impact Upon making landfall, a barometric pressure of 1007 mb accompanied the storm. Along the coast of the Panhandle, gale-force winds and tides of 3 feet (0.91 m) above-normal were reported. Tallahassee, Florida received 8 inches (0.20 m) of rainfall; due to the heavy precipitation, serious flooding occurred. At Anna Marie Island in Florida, heavy rainfall and squalls accompanied by winds of 56 miles per hour (90 km/h) were reported. In South Carolina, heavy precipitation led to rivers approaching flood stage. Locally heavy rainfall caused rivers to rise in North Carolina, though they remained below flood stage. Along the Cape Fear River, a boat ramp was washed out. Farther towards the north in Georgia and Alabama, the rainfall helped to relieve persistent drought conditions. According to the Red Cross, 104 families in the Tallahassee region suffered flood-related losses, and two injuries were reported. There, winds gusted to 44 miles per hour (71 km/h). Flood waters were knee-deep around a county courthouse at Crawfordville, Florida. In low-lying areas, flooding damaged homes, and to the southwest of Tallahassee, 4 feet (1.2 m) of water forced the evacuation of 15 homes by rowboat. Over 100 cars were stranded in the flooding. As precautionary measures, a few secondary roads were closed in the region. Damage from Becky in the state totaled \$500,000 (1970 USD), mostly in Leon and Wakulla counties. Two injuries were reported. Several tornadoes were reported. Near Panacea, Florida, a tornado destroyed a house and damaged two others. Another tornado in Emanuel County, Georgia killed one person and demolished two homes. However, due to the conditions that spawned the tornadoes, they are not directly attributed to Becky. ## See also - List of Florida hurricanes - List of wettest tropical cyclones in the United States

Yip Pin Xiu

Singaporean Paralympic swimmer

Yip Pin Xiu PJG PLY (Chinese: 叶品秀; pinyin: Yè Pǐnxìu; born 10 January 1992) is a Singaporean backstroke swimmer. She is a five-time Paralympic gold medallist and 5 time World Champion, with two world records in the 50 m backstroke S2 and the 100 m backstroke S2. Yip is Singapore's most decorated Paralympian. Most recently during the Para Swimming World Series Australia 2023, Yip clinched the gold medal in the Women's 100m backstroke multi-class event. She later also bagged her second gold medal in the Women's 50m backstroke on the final day of the competition. She has Charcot-Marie-Tooth syndrome and competes in the S2 category for the physically impaired. Since 2005, she has won medals in international competitions such as the World Wheelchair and Amputee Games, Japan Paralympic Swimming Championships and International German Paralympic Swimming Championships. At the 2008 Summer Paralympics, she won a gold medal in the 50 metres backstroke and a silver medal in the 50 metres freestyle, setting world records in both events. At the 2016 Summer Paralympics, she won a gold medal in the 100 metres S2 backstroke, setting a world record for that event, and another for her 50 m split. In 2009, she was named "Young Woman Achiever of the Year" by local magazine Her World. In honour of her feats at the Paralympic Games, she was conferred the Pingat Jasa Gemilang (Meritorious Service Medal) during the National Day Awards ceremony in 2016. More recently, Yip was crowned Sportswoman of the Year (swimming) at the Singapore Disability Sports Awards 2022. This was her third time earning this honour, having won the same award in 2019 and 2021. Her achievements have contributed to the widespread recognition of disabled athletes in the Singaporean public sphere. ## Early life and education Yip Pin Xiu was born on 10 January 1992, being the youngest of three children in her family. At birth, Yip was not born with atrophy of her limbs. Her symptoms only appeared when she was two years old. Due to her aunt witnessing her unable to extend and rotate her ankles, her family brought her to a doctor and she initially diagnosed it as muscular dystrophy. When Yip was five, she started swimming to improve her health and strengthen her muscles; nevertheless, by the age of thirteen, she had lost her ability to walk and had to use a wheelchair. As a student, Yip first studied in Ai Tong Primary School and Bendemeer Secondary School, before she graduated from Republic Polytechnic as back-up valedictorian and, as of 2017, Yip graduated from Singapore Management University with a Bachelor of Social Science. ## Swimming career ### Early years Yip started swimming competitively when she was twelve years old. After losing her ability to kick, Yip switched from the front crawl to the backstroke and was reclassified from the S5 to the S2 category (lower numbers indicate more severe disabilities). Her previous coach was former Singaporean Olympic swimmer Ang Peng Siong, while fellow Paralympic swimmer Theresa Goh is her close friend and role model. Besides swimming, Yip has participated in events to raise awareness of disabled sports, such as the Interschool Swimming Meets and Sengkang Primary School Track and Field Meet 2007. After successes in national championships, Yip participated in the Asia Paralympics Swimming Championship 2005, winning two gold medals. Her first international competition was the World Wheelchair and Amputee Games 2005, where she won two gold medals and a bronze. She then received four gold medals at the DSE Long Course Swimming Championships in 2006. In 2007, she won three gold medals at the Japan Paralympic Swimming Championships and four gold medals at the World Wheelchair and Amputee Games. ### 2008 Asian Paralympics At the 4th ASEAN Para Games, Yip finished first in the women's 150 metres individual medley, clocking 4 minutes 56.34 seconds. She set a world record time of 1 minute 00.80 seconds in the 50 metres backstroke at the US Paralympic swimming trials. The 22nd International German Paralympic Swimming Championships saw her set a world record of 2 minutes 10.09 seconds in the 100 metres backstroke heats; in the finals, she was awarded the gold medal with a time of 2 minutes 08.09 seconds, bettering her own world record. ### 2008 Summer Paralympics Yip started her 2008 Summer Paralympic Games campaign by breaking another world record, clocking 57.04 seconds in the women's 50 metres freestyle heats. However, she was narrowly beaten by Mexican swimmer Patricia Valle in the finals, clinching a silver medal with a time of 57.43 seconds. In the women's 50 metres backstroke heats, she posted a time of 57.92 seconds, taking two seconds off her own world record. She then swam the women's 50 metres backstroke finals in a time of 58.75 seconds to win the gold medal. After she returned to Singapore, the president conferred Yip a state medal, the Meritorious Service Medal. The success of Yip and Laurentia Tan, who won two bronze medals in equestrian events, sparked public debate about the treatment and recognition of disabled athletes in Singapore. Letters to The Straits Times criticised the poor coverage of the Paralympics. Many Singaporeans also commented about the disparity of the cash awards handed out by the government: S\$1,000,000 for an Olympic gold and S\$100,000 for a Paralympic gold. When the issues were raised in Parliament, MCYS parliamentary secretary Teo Ser Luck promised to study plans to give disabled athletes greater support and to include them in sporting programmes such as Project 0812, a training programme for top Singaporean sportspeople. Two months later, the cash rewards for Paralympic medals were doubled and funding for the Singapore National Paralympic Council was increased. ### 2015 Asian Paralympics At the 8th ASEAN Para Games in 2015, she was the torch lighter with Tay Wei Ming and Gan Kai Hong Aloysius. ### 2016 Summer Paralympics Yip participated in the 2016 Summer Paralympics. On 10 September 2016, Yip swam in the finals of the 100 m backstroke, S2 class; her time of 2:07.09 was a new S2 world record, earning her a Paralympic gold medal. Her 59.38 split for the first 50 m of the race was also a new S2 world record; in both cases she overwrote her own world leading times. Her medal was Singapore's first at the 2016 Summer Paralympics. On 16 September, Yip won her (and Singapore's) second gold medal of the 2016 Games, this time in the 50 m backstroke finals, S2 class with a time of 1:00.33. ### 2018 Asian Paralympics Yip also participated in the 2018 Asian Para Games, and won one gold medal and two bronze medals in total. On 8 October, she won her first gold medal for the 50 m backstroke, S1-4 class, and on 9 October, her first bronze medal for the 100 m freestyle, S1-4 class event. On 12 October, she won her second bronze medal on the 50 m freestyle, S1-4 class event with a time of 1:04.68, behind Peng Qiuping of China and Gabidullina Zulfiya of Kazakhstan, with times of 43.48s and 45.51s, respectively. ### 2020 Summer Paralympics Yip participated in the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics. She won two gold medals, the women's 100m backstroke S2 and the women's 50m backstroke S2. Her current coach is ex-Olympian and current Nominated Member of Parliament, Mark Chay. ## Political career On 17 September 2018, Yip became a Nominated Member of Parliament (NMP) to the Singapore Parliament. Her term began on 22 September 2018, before she sworn into Parliament on 1 October 2018. Her term lasted approximately two years, serving until 23 June 2020. ## Post swimming career Yip is currently serving on the Athlete Committee of the World Anti-Doping Agency as of 1 January 2022. ## Personal life In February 2022, Yip was awarded the President's Award for Inspiring Achievement; the first person to have been awarded this category in recognition of her contributions to sports and community work. ## Honours - Pingat Jasa Gemilang (Meritorious Service Medal) ## See also - Singapore at the Paralympics

Crystal Palace F.C.

Association football club in London, England

Crystal Palace Football Club, commonly referred to as Palace, is a professional football club based in Selhurst in the Borough of Croydon, South London, England, which competes in the Premier League, the highest level of English football. Although formally created as a professional outfit in 1905 at the Crystal Palace Exhibition building, the club claim their foundation date to be as far back as 1861, after a disputed lineage was found to an amateur Crystal Palace football team who first played on a cricket pitch inside the Palace grounds. The club used the FA Cup Final stadium situated inside the grounds of the Palace for their home games between 1905 and 1915, when they were forced to leave due to the outbreak of the First World War. In 1924, they moved to their current home at Selhurst Park. The amateur club became one of the original founder members of the Football Association in 1863, and competed in the first ever FA Cup competition in 1871–72, but disappeared from historical records around 1876. Crystal Palace returned to existence as a professional outfit in 1905, initially playing in the Southern League. They joined the Football League in 1920, and have overall mainly competed in the top two tiers of English football. Since 1964, Palace have only dropped below the second tier once, for three seasons between 1974 and 1977. During their period in the top flight in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the club achieved their highest ever league finish of third place in the old First Division, now known as the Premier League, in the 1990–91 season. Palace were unfortunate to miss out on qualification for the UEFA Cup at the end of that season due to the limited number of European places available to English clubs after the lifting of the UEFA ban caused by the Heysel Stadium disaster. It was also during this period that Palace reached the 1990 FA Cup Final losing to Manchester United after a replay, and they became founder members of the Premier League in 1992. Following their relegation from the Premier League in 1998, Palace went into decline after suffering financial problems which resulted in the club going into administration twice in 1999 and 2010, but they recovered and returned to the Premier League in 2013 where they have remained ever since, and reached another FA Cup final in 2016, again finishing runners-up to Manchester United. The club's kit colours were claret and blue until 1973, when they changed to the red and blue vertical stripes worn today. Palace have a long-standing and fierce rivalry with Brighton & Hove Albion, and also share strong rivalries with fellow South London clubs Millwall and Charlton Athletic. ## History ### The Exhibition Palace and original amateur club (1854–1905) In 1854, the Crystal Palace Exhibition building had been relocated from Hyde Park, London and rebuilt in an area of South London next to Sydenham Hill. This area was renamed Crystal Palace which included the Crystal Palace Park that surrounded the site where various sports facilities were built. The Crystal Palace Company who owned the exhibition building founded the Crystal Palace Club in 1857 to play cricket before turning their attention to football. It had been lobbied by existing members of the cricket club to provide a continuation of sporting activities during the winter months. The company formed an amateur Crystal Palace football club in 1861. Many of its original players were members of the cricket club, and they shared the same pitch within the Crystal Palace Park. The amateur club became one of the original founder members of the Football Association in 1863, and competed in the first ever FA Cup competition in 1871–72, reaching the semi-finals where they lost to the Royal Engineers. They played in the FA Cup over the next four seasons, but disappeared from historical records after a match against Barnes F.C. on 18 December 1875. In 1895, the Football Association found a new permanent venue for the FA Cup Final at the sports stadium situated inside the Palace grounds. Some years later the Crystal Palace Company, who were reliant on tourist activity for their income, sought fresh attractions for the venue, and decided to form a new professional football club to play at the stadium. The owners wanted a club to play there and tap into the vast crowd potential of the area. ### Birth of the professional club and playing at the FA Cup Final venue (1905–1920) The professional Crystal Palace football club was formed on 10 September 1905 under the guidance of Aston Villa assistant secretary Edmund Goodman. The club applied for election to the Football League, but were rejected and instead found itself in the Southern League Second Division for the 1905–06 season. Palace were successful in their inaugural season achieving promotion to the Southern League First Division, crowned as champions. They also played in the mid-week United League, finishing runners-up to Watford, and it was in this competition that the club played their first match, winning 3–0 away to New Brompton. Palace remained in the Southern League up until 1914, their one highlight the 1907 shock First Round victory over Newcastle United in the FA Cup. The outbreak of the First World War led to the Admiralty requisitioning the Crystal Palace and its grounds, which meant the club was forced to leave and they moved to the home of nearby West Norwood F.C. at Herne Hill Velodrome. Three years later they moved again to the Nest following the demise of Croydon Common F.C. #### 1913 attempted FA Cup Final bombing The Palace stadium was almost destroyed in an attempted terrorist bombing of the 1913 FA Cup Final, when the suffragettes of the Women's Social and Political Union, plotted to blow up the stands. This was part of the suffragette bombing and arson campaign, in which the suffragettes carried out a series of politically motivated bombing and arson attacks nationwide, as part of their campaign for women's suffrage. ### Into the Football League (1920–1958) The club became founder members of the new Football League Third Division in the 1920–21 season, finishing as champions and gaining promotion to the Second Division. This achievement meant they joined Preston North End, Small Heath, Liverpool, and Bury as the only clubs at that time to have won a championship in their first season as a league club. Palace then moved to a new stadium Selhurst Park in 1924, where the club still play their home games today. The opening fixture at Selhurst Park was against The Wednesday, with Palace losing 0–1 in front of a crowd of 25,000. Finishing in twenty-first position, the club were relegated to the Third Division South. Before the Second World War, Palace made good efforts at promotion, mostly finishing in the top half of the table and were runners-up on three occasions. During the war years, the Football League was suspended, and the club won two Wartime Leagues. After the war, Palace were less successful in the league, their highest position being seventh, and conversely on three occasions the club had to apply for re-election. ### Historic Real Madrid visit and promotion to the top flight (1958–1973) The club remained in the Third Division South up until the end of the 1957–58 season, after which the league was restructured with clubs in the bottom half of the Third Division South merging with those in the bottom half of the Third Division North to form a new Fourth Division. Palace had finished fourteenth – just below the cut – and therefore found itself in the basement of English football. Their stay was only brief. Palace chairman Arthur Wait appointed the ex-Tottenham manager Arthur Rowe in April 1960, and his exciting style of football was a joy to watch for the Palace fans. The 1960–61 season saw Palace gain promotion and they also achieved distinction in 1962 when they played the great Real Madrid team of that era in an historic friendly match. This was the first time that the Spanish giants had ever played a match in London and was only two weeks before they were due to play Benfica in the European Cup final. A full strength Madrid team beat Palace 4–3. Although Rowe resigned due to health reasons towards the end of 1962, the promotion proved a turning point in the club's history. Dick Graham and then Bert Head guided Palace to successive promotions in 1963–64 and 1968–69, taking the club through the Second Division and into the heights of the First Division. Palace stayed in the top flight from 1969 until 1973, and achieved some memorable results, arguably the best was a 5–0 home win against Manchester United in the 1972–73 season. Arthur Wait stepped down as chairman during that season and was replaced by Raymond Bloye who appointed Malcolm Allison as manager in March 1973, with Bert Head moving upstairs to become general manager. Unfortunately the managerial change came too late to save the club from relegation back to the Second Division. ### Bouncing between the divisions (1973–1984) After the disappointment of relegation, worse was to follow for the club. Under the management of Allison, Palace were immediately relegated again and found themselves back in Division Three for the 1974–75 season. It was also under Allison that the club changed its nickname from "The Glaziers" to "The Eagles", and ended its association with claret and blue kit colours by changing to the red and blue vertical stripes worn today. Palace enjoyed a run to the semi-finals of the 1975–76 FA Cup, beating Leeds and Chelsea along the way, but lost 0–2 in the semi-final at Stamford Bridge to the eventual winners, Southampton. Allison resigned at the end of the 1975–76 season after failing to get the club out of the third tier, and it was under Terry Venables' management that Palace moved back up to the top flight with promotions in 1976–77 and 1978–79; the latter saw the club crowned as Division Two champions. That team from 1979 was dubbed the "Team of the Eighties", because it included a number of very talented young players who had emerged from the youth team which won the FA Youth Cup in 1976–77 and 1977–78, and they were briefly top of the whole Football League in the early part of the 1979–80 season. However, financial difficulties suffered by the club caused the break-up of that group of players, and this ultimately led to Palace being unable to maintain its position in the top flight. Palace were relegated from the First Division in 1980–81, coinciding with Ron Noades's takeover of the club. They struggled back in the second tier, and Noades even appointed the ex-Brighton manager Alan Mullery, which was very unpopular with the Palace fans. ### Steve Coppell years (1984–1993) On 4 June 1984, former Manchester United and England player Steve Coppell who had recently retired from the game due to injury was appointed as manager, and he rebuilt the club steadily over the next few years which resulted in the Eagles achieving promotion back to the top flight via the play-offs in 1988–89. Palace followed this up by reaching the 1990 FA Cup Final, drawing 3–3 with Manchester United after extra-time in the first match but losing the replay 0–1. The club were able to build on this success and the 1990–91 season saw them achieve their highest ever league finish of third place in the top flight. Palace were unfortunate to miss out on a European place at the end of that season partly due to the UEFA ban on English clubs caused by the Heysel Stadium disaster. Though by that time the ban had been lifted, it resulted in England being unranked in the UEFA coefficient rankings used that season, which meant the English top flight was only entitled to one European place in the UEFA Cup, and this went to the runners-up Liverpool. The club also returned to Wembley and won the Full Members Cup beating Everton 4–1 after extra-time in the final. During the following season star striker Ian Wright left the club to join Arsenal. Palace finished tenth, allowing the club to become a founding member of the Premier League in 1992–93. The club sold Mark Bright to Sheffield Wednesday, but failed to rebuild the squad adequately, and they struggled to score goals throughout the season. Palace were relegated with a total of 49 points, which is still a Premier League record for the highest number of points for a relegated club. Coppell resigned and Alan Smith, his assistant at the club, took over as manager. ### The yo-yo years (1993–1998) Alan Smith's first season as manager saw Palace win the First Division title and gain promotion back to the Premier League. Their stay on this occasion proved both eventful and controversial. On 25 January 1995, Palace played Manchester United at Selhurst Park in which United forward Eric Cantona was sent off. He was taunted by Palace fan Matthew Simmons, and retaliated with a flying kick. Cantona was sentenced to two weeks in jail, reduced to 120 hours community service on appeal. Simmons was immediately banned from Selhurst Park, and later found guilty on two charges of threatening Cantona. More was to follow in March, when Palace striker Chris Armstrong was suspended by the FA for failing a drugs test. On the field, Smith guided the club to the semi-finals of both the FA Cup and the League Cup, but league form was inconsistent and Palace once again found themselves relegated, finishing fourth from bottom as the Premier League was reduced from 22 to 20 clubs. Smith left the club and Steve Coppell returned as technical director in the summer of 1995, and through a combination of the first-team coaching of Ray Lewington and latterly Dave Bassett's managership, Palace reached the play-offs. They lost the 1996 First Division play-off final in dramatic fashion when Steve Claridge scored in the last minute of extra-time for Leicester City to win 2–1. The following season saw Coppell take charge as first-team manager when Bassett departed for Nottingham Forest in early 1997. The club reached the play-offs for the second year running and this time achieved promotion back to the Premier League, when they defeated Sheffield United 1–0 in the final at Wembley. This stay in the Premier League was no more successful than the previous two, and in true yo-yo club fashion Palace were relegated back to the First Division at the end of the 1997–98 season. The club also had a new owner when recruitment tycoon Mark Goldberg completed his takeover in June 1998. ### Financial crisis (1998–2010) Terry Venables returned to Palace for a second spell as manager and the club competed in European competition during the summer when they played in the UEFA Intertoto Cup. Palace then went into administration in 1999, when owner Mark Goldberg was unable to sustain his financial backing of the club. Venables left and Steve Coppell took over again as manager. The club emerged from administration under the ownership of Simon Jordan, and Coppell was replaced as manager by Alan Smith for a second time. Palace were almost relegated to the third tier in Jordan's first season, in 2000–01. Smith was sacked in April and long-serving coach Steve Kember took over as caretaker manager and he managed to win the two remaining fixtures that would guarantee Palace survival, with Dougie Freedman scoring the winner in the 87th minute on the final day of the season, securing a 1–0 victory over Stockport County. Former Manchester United captain Steve Bruce was appointed manager for the 2001–02 season. A good start to the season gave Palace hope for a promotion challenge, but Bruce attempted to walk out on the club after just four months in charge following an approach from Birmingham City to become their new manager. After a short spell on gardening leave, Bruce was eventually allowed to join Birmingham, and was succeeded by Trevor Francis, who had been his predecessor at the West Midlands club. Under Francis, Palace finished mid-table for two successive seasons, but he was then sacked, and replaced by Steve Kember, who became permanent manager. The club won their opening three games of the 2003–04 season under Kember, which put them at the top of the table, but he was sacked in November after a terrible loss of form saw Palace slip towards the relegation zone. Former Palace striker Iain Dowie was appointed manager and guided the club to the play-off final, securing promotion with a 1–0 victory over West Ham. Again Palace could not maintain their place in the top tier and were relegated on the last day of the season after drawing at local rivals Charlton Athletic. Following that relegation, Simon Jordan was unable to put the club on a sound financial footing over the next few years, and in January 2010, Palace were once again placed in administration, this time by a creditor. Due to the Football League's regulations, the club were deducted ten points, and the administrators were forced to sell key players including Victor Moses and José Fonte. Neil Warnock had also departed as manager in the early part of 2010. He had been appointed in 2007, replacing the former Palace favourite Peter Taylor who had a brief spell as manager. Paul Hart took over as caretaker manager for the final weeks of the season. Survival in the Championship was only secured on the final day of the season after a memorable 2–2 draw at Sheffield Wednesday, which was itself relegated as a result. During the close of that season, CPFC 2010, a consortium consisting of several wealthy fans, successfully negotiated the purchase of the club. They were led by Steve Parish, the vocal representative for the consortium of four that also included Stephen Browett, Jeremy Hosking and Martin Long. Crucially, the consortium also secured the freehold of Selhurst Park, and paid tribute to a fans' campaign which helped pressure Lloyds Bank into selling the ground back to the club. ### Established back in the Premier League (2010–present) The CPFC 2010 consortium swiftly installed George Burley as the new Palace manager. However a poor start to the following season saw the club hovering around the bottom of the table by December. On 1 January 2011, after a 0–3 defeat to Millwall, Burley was sacked and his assistant Dougie Freedman named caretaker manager. Just over a week later Freedman was appointed manager on a full-time basis. Palace moved up the table and by securing a 1–1 draw at Hull City on 30 April, the club was safe from relegation with one game of the season left. After another year and a half as manager, Freedman departed to manage Bolton Wanderers on 23 October 2012. In November 2012, Ian Holloway became the new Palace manager. He guided the club back to the Premier League after an eight-year absence by defeating Watford 1–0 in the Championship play-off final at the new Wembley, but resigned in October 2013. Following a brief spell under Tony Pulis, and an unsuccessful second tenure for Neil Warnock, former Palace player Alan Pardew was confirmed as the new manager in January 2015. In his first full season, Pardew led the club to the 2016 FA Cup Final, their first for 26 years. Palace met Manchester United who they had lost to in the 1990 final, and the Eagles suffered disappointment again losing 1–2 after extra-time. In December 2016, Pardew was sacked and replaced by Sam Allardyce, who kept the club in the Premier League, but resigned unexpectedly at the end of the season. On 26 June 2017, Palace appointed Frank de Boer as their first ever permanent foreign manager. He was dismissed after only 77 days in charge, with the club having lost their first four league games at the start of the 2017–18 season while failing to score in any of them. Former England manager Roy Hodgson was appointed as the club's new manager the next day. Palace finished in eleventh-place in the Premier League in Hodgson's first season, twelfth in the 2018–19 season and fourteenth the following season. On 18 May 2021, the club announced Hodgson would be leaving at the end of the 2020–21 season, upon the expiration of his contract, having achieved a second consecutive fourteenth-place finish in his last season at the club. On 4 July 2021, Palace appointed the former Arsenal captain Patrick Vieira as their new manager on a three-year contract. Despite guiding the club to an FA Cup semi-final and a twelfth-place league finish in his first season, Vieira was sacked the following season on 17 March 2023, after a dismal winless run of 12 games left the club three points above the relegation zone. On 21 March, Hodgson was re-appointed Palace manager until the end of the season. He guided the club to safety, finishing comfortably in eleventh-place at the end of the 2022–23 season. On 3 July 2023, Hodgson was appointed permanent manager for a second time. ## Colours and crest The original amateur club wore blue and white hooped shirts with blue shorts, although there were variations on this, it is thought their first ever kit in 1861 was light blue and white halves. When the professional Crystal Palace club was created in 1905, its choice of colours were originally claret and blue shirts paired with white shorts and socks tending to be claret. This was a result of the important role in the club's formation played by Edmund Goodman, an Aston Villa employee who later became Palace manager. The club kept to this formula fairly consistently until 1938, when they decided to abandon the claret and blue and adopt white shirts and black shorts with matching socks. They returned to claret and blue from 1949 to 1954, but in 1955 the club reverted to white and black, using claret and blue trim. There were variations on this theme until 1963, when the club adopted the away strip of yellow shirts as its home colours. In 1964, the club changed to an all-white strip modelled on Real Madrid whom Palace had played recently in a friendly, before they returned to claret and blue jerseys with white shorts in 1966. The club continued with variations on this theme up until Malcolm Allison's arrival as manager in 1973. Allison overhauled the club's image, adopting red and blue vertical stripes for colours and kit, inspired by FC Barcelona. Palace have played in variations of red and blue ever since, bar the centenary season of 2005 which saw them wear a version of their 1971–72 claret, blue and white kit. The club was relatively late in establishing a crest. Although the initials were embroidered onto the shirt from the 1935–36 season, a crest featuring the façade of The Crystal Palace did not appear until 1955. This crest disappeared from the shirt in 1964, and the team's name appeared embroidered on shirts between 1967 and 1972. A round badge was then adopted in 1972, with the club's initials and nickname the "Glaziers" before Allison changed this too. The club's nickname became the "Eagles", inspired by Portuguese club Benfica, with the badge showing the image of an eagle holding a ball. This emblem remained until 1987 when the club married the eagle with the Crystal Palace façade, and although updated in 1996 and again in 2012, the crest retains these features. In June 2022, the club changed the year of its crest from 1905 to 1861, reflecting when the original Crystal Palace Football Club was established. From mid-2010 to 2020, the club made use of an American bald eagle, called Kayla, as the club mascot, with the bird flying from one end of the stadium to the other at every home game. The bird died in June 2020. ### Kit manufacturers and sponsors Since 2022, Crystal Palace's kit has been manufactured by Macron. Previous manufacturers include Umbro (1975–77), Admiral (1977–80, 1987–88, 2003–04), Adidas (1980–83, 1996–99), Hummel (1984–87), Bukta (1988–92), Ribero (1992–94), Nutmeg (1994–96), TFG Sports (1999–2001) Le Coq Sportif (2001–03), Diadora (2004–07), Erreà (2007–09), Nike (2009–12), Avec (2012–14), Macron (2014–18, 2022–present), Puma (2018–22). The club's shirts are currently sponsored by cinch, and have previously been sponsored by Red Rose (1983–84), Top Score (1985–86), AVR (1986–87), Andrew Copeland (1987–88), Fly Virgin (1988–91), Tulip Computers (1991–93), TDK (1993–99), Churchill Insurance (2000–06), GAC Logistics (2006–14), Neteller (2014–15), Mansion.com (2015–17), ManBetX (2017–20), W88 (2020–22) and Cinch (2022-present). The club signed its first sleeve sponsor with All Football, a Chinese football-based social media application, in 2017. In 2023, Crystal Palace and Kaiyun sports announced their joint partnership for the company to become the club's official new sleeve sponsor. ## Stadium In 1905, the Crystal Palace Company who owned the FA Cup Final venue situated inside the grounds of The Crystal Palace, wanted a professional club to play there and tap into the vast crowd potential of the area. They formed a new professional Crystal Palace football club to play at the stadium. When the First World War broke out, the Palace and grounds were seized by the armed forces, and in 1915 the club were forced to move by the Admiralty. They found a temporary base at the Herne Hill Velodrome. Although other clubs had offered the use of their ground to Palace, the club felt it best to remain as close to their natural catchment area as possible. When Croydon Common F.C. were wound up in 1917, the club took over their old stadium located at the Nest, but in 1919 they began the purchase of the land on which they would eventually build Selhurst Park, their current home. The renowned stadium architect Archibald Leitch was employed to draw up plans, and the construction of Selhurst Park was completed in time for the 1924–25 season. The stadium remained relatively unchanged, with only the introduction of floodlights and some maintenance improvements until 1969, when the Arthur Wait Stand was built. The Main Stand became all-seater in 1979 and more work followed in the early 1980s when the Whitehorse Lane End was redeveloped to allow for a Sainsbury's supermarket, club offices and a club shop. The Arthur Wait Stand became all-seater in 1990, and in 1994 the Holmesdale Terrace was replaced with a new two tier stand. Selhurst Park's record attendance was set in 1979, with an official total of 51,482. After all the redevelopments to the ground and safety requirements due to the Taylor Report, the ground's current capacity is 25,486. In 2011, proposals were put forward to move the club back to their original home at the Crystal Palace National Stadium, but after the club gained promotion to the Premier League in 2013, there has been a renewed focus on redeveloping Selhurst Park into a 40,000 seater stadium. Revised plans for a new 13,500-seater Main Stand (extending overall stadium capacity to 34,000) were approved at a Croydon Council meeting on 19 April 2018. ## Supporters Crystal Palace have a fan base predominantly from the local area which draws on South London, Kent, and Surrey. Their original home at The Crystal Palace was on the boundary with Kent, while Selhurst Park was within Surrey's borders until the London Government Act 1963 saw Greater London encompass Croydon. The club's passionate support at home games emanates from the Holmesdale Road Stand, in which the ultras group the Holmesdale Fanatics have been based since 2005. The fans have established at least two other supporters groups. The Palace Independent Supporters' Association was set up to raise supporter concerns with the club, while the Crystal Palace Supporters' Trust was originally established to enable fans to purchase the club during the administration of 2000 and remains in existence today. A number of fanzines have been produced by the supporters over the years. Eagle Eye was launched in 1987 and ran until 1994, with a number of contributors producing the replacement Palace Echo in 1995, which ran until 2007. The Eastern Eagles, So Glad You're Mine and One More Point were also published by fans in the 1990s. When One More Point ceased publication, Five Year Plan was launched in its place, and maintains an online presence. Supporters also engage in debate on two internet forums, The BBS and Holmesdale.net which the club use as channels to communicate with the fans. Because Crystal Palace are a London club, they compete against a number of other local clubs for the attention of supporters, but it does have a recognisably large catchment area of 900,000. When the new owners took control in 2010, they sought the fans' input into future decisions. They consulted on a new badge design, and when their chosen designs were rejected, the club instead opted for a design based on a fans' idea from an internet forum. The club have strengthened their ties with the local community, and through the Crystal Palace F.C. Foundation, they work with the local London Boroughs of Croydon, Bromley and Sutton to provide sports and educational programmes which they also hope will continue to develop their supporter and geographical base. The Foundation's work was recognised by the Football League in August 2009 with their Silver Standard Community Scheme Award. The club also enjoys a sizeable celebrity support. Kevin Day and Jo Brand host an annual comedy night for Comic Relief and the Palace Academy, and fellow comedians Eddie Izzard and Mark Steel are also staunch Palace fans. The actor Neil Morrissey developed Palace Ale, a beer on sale in the ground, while fellow actor Bill Nighy is patron of the Crystal Palace Children's Charity (CPSCC). Radio DJ David Jensen is chairman of the Crystal Palace Vice Presidents Club, and acted as spokesman for the CPFC 2010 consortium during their takeover bid for the club. Actor, writer and producer John Salthouse was on the books of Palace as a player from 1968 to 1970 under the name of John Lewis, and was also a mascot for the club as a child. He incorporated the club into his role as Tony in Abigail's Party. The television presenter Susanna Reid revealed her love of Palace while taking part in Strictly Come Dancing, and visited Selhurst Park for inspiration. ### Rivalries Due to their location in the capital, Crystal Palace are involved in a number of local derbies, mostly across South London. They enjoy rivalries with both Millwall and former tenants Charlton Athletic. The club have a long-standing and fierce rivalry with Brighton & Hove Albion which developed after Palace's relegation to the Third Division in 1974, reaching its height when the two teams were drawn together in the first round of the 1976–77 FA Cup. The tie went to two replays, but the second replay ended in controversy after referee Ron Challis ordered a successful Brighton penalty to be retaken because of Palace player encroachment. The retake was saved, Palace won the tie 1–0 and a fierce rivalry was born. ## Ownership The Crystal Palace Company formed both the amateur and professional clubs. The first chairman of the professional Crystal Palace club was Sydney Bourne who was found by club secretary Edmund Goodman after he had examined records of FA Cup Final ticket purchasers. Goodman noted his name as one that had bought a number of tickets every year, and so met with Bourne and found him very agreeable to the idea of the new club. Bourne was invited onto the board of directors and elected chairman at the club's first ever meeting. He remained chairman until his death in 1930. After Bourne's death, there were a number of short-term chairmanship appointments: Louis Bellatti (1930–1935), R.S. Flew (1935), Carey Burnett (1935–36), E.T. Truett (1936–1939), before Percy Harper's reign (1939–1950). Local builder Arthur Wait established a consortium of seven other businessmen to purchase the club in 1949, and took over from Harper in 1950, initially rotating the chairmanship. In 1958, Wait became the permanent chairman, lasting until 1972 when Raymond Bloye took over. Bloye's ownership lasted until 26 January 1981, when property developer Ron Noades and his consortium took control of the club. Noades eventually sold the club to Mark Goldberg on 5 June 1998, becoming the second-longest serving Palace chairman behind Sydney Bourne. However, Noades did maintain ownership of Selhurst Park, leasing it to the club to use. Goldberg's tenure of the club was not a success and Palace entered administration in March 1999. Although the fans established a group called the Crystal Palace Supporters' Trust in a bid to gain control of the club, millionaire and lifelong fan Simon Jordan negotiated a deal with creditors and the administrator, and a new company, CPFC 2000 took control. This company entered administration in January 2010, and it was not until June of that year that a takeover was completed by a consortium of four wealthy fans known as CPFC 2010. CPFC 2010 was established by a consortium of four businessmen, Steve Parish, Martin Long, Stephen Browett and Jeremy Hosking, with each owning a 25% share of the company. The four successfully negotiated a takeover with the administrator Brendan Guilfoyle from the P&A Partnership and a company voluntary arrangement was formally accepted by company creditors on 20 August 2010. The consortium also purchased back Selhurst Park from Lloyds Bank after a demonstration by fans put pressure on the bank to agree terms. In December 2015, American investors Josh Harris and David Blitzer each bought a 18% stake in the club as general partners, investing a total of £50 million with Parish remaining as chairman. In August 2021, another American investor, John Textor, bought a 40% stake in the club worth £87.5 million. ## Statistics and records Jim Cannon holds the record for the most Crystal Palace appearances in all competitions, having played 660 first-team matches between 1973 and 1988. The defender also holds the record for the most league appearances, making 571. Striker Peter Simpson holds the record for the most goals scored in a season, 54 in the 1930–31 season in Division Three (South) and is also the top scorer over a career – 165 goals between 1929 and 1935. Goalkeeper Wayne Hennessey holds the club record for most international caps. Crystal Palace were inaugural champions of the newly formed Third Division in 1920–21, which was also their first ever season in the Football League and so became one of only a small group of clubs to have achieved the feat of winning a Football League Division at the first time of asking. Their average league attendance of 19,092 in the 1960–61 season and the attendance of 37,774 for the Good Friday game at Selhurst Park between Palace and Millwall the same season are Fourth Division attendance records. Palace's official record home attendance is 51,482 for a Second Division match against Burnley on 11 May 1979. The club's biggest victory margin in the league was the 9–0 home win against Barrow in the Fourth Division in 1959, while their heaviest defeat in the league was by the same scoreline away to Liverpool in the First Division in 1989. The highest transfer fee received for a Crystal Palace player is £50 million, from Manchester United for Aaron Wan-Bissaka in June 2019, while the highest transfer fee paid by the club to date was for Christian Benteke from Liverpool in August 2016, for £32 million. The club's highest ever league finish so far is third place in the old Football League First Division, which is now called the Premier League, achieved in the 1990–91 season. Palace hold the record for the most points for a relegated Premier League club with 49 (although that was in a 42-game season in 1992–93). They are also the only club ever to be relegated from the Premier League, even though they finished fourth from bottom, as it had been decided at the end of the 1994–95 season, that the bottom four clubs would be relegated in order to accommodate the league being reduced from 22 to 20 clubs for the 1995–96 season; Palace's points total that season of 45 is also the second-highest points total in Premier League history for a relegated club. Palace hold the record for the most Play-off final wins (4) resulting in promotion to the top flight. Each of these play-off final wins occurred at a different location: Selhurst Park in 1989 (the first leg of the two-legged final was played at Ewood Park in Blackburn), old Wembley Stadium in 1997, Millennium Stadium in Cardiff in 2004, and new Wembley in 2013. ## Players ### First-team squad ### Out on loan ### Youth academy ## Notable former players Players with over 100 appearances for Crystal Palace can be found here All past (and present) players who are the subjects of Wikipedia articles can be found here ### Crystal Palace "Centenary XI" To celebrate the professional Crystal Palace F.C.'s centenary in 2005, the Palace fans were asked to vote for a "Centenary XI" from a shortlist of ten players per position provided by the club. - Nigel Martyn (1989–96) - Paul Hinshelwood (1974–83) - Chris Coleman (1991–95) - Jim Cannon (1972–88) - Kenny Sansom (1975–80) - John Salako (1986–95) - Geoff Thomas (1987–93) - Andy Gray (1984–87,1989–92) - Attilio Lombardo (1997–99) - Andrew Johnson (2002–06, 2014) - Ian Wright (1985–91) ## Coaching staff ## Managers Statistics are complete up to and including the match played 3 September 2023. Not including caretaker managers. All competitive matches are counted. ## Honours and achievements ### League - English first tier (currently the Premier League) - Highest finish: 3rd place, 1990–91 - English second tier (currently the EFL Championship) - Champions (2): 1978–79, 1993–94 - Runners-up (1): 1968–69 - Play-off winners (4) (record): 1988–89, 1996–97, 2003–04, 2012–13 - Play-off runners-up (1): 1995–96 - English third tier (currently EFL League One) - Champions (1): 1920–21 - Runners-up (4): 1928–29 (South), 1930–31 (South), 1938–39 (South), 1963–64 - English fourth tier (currently EFL League Two) - Runners-up (1): 1960–61 ### Cups - FA Cup - Runners-up (2): 1989–90, 2015–16 - Full Members Cup - Winners (1): 1990–91 ### Wartime - Football League South - Champions (1): 1940–41 - Football League South 'D' Division - Champions (1): 1939–40 ### Regional - Southern Football League Division One - Runners-up (1): 1913–14 - Southern Football League Division Two - Champions (1): 1905–06 - United League - Champions (1): 1906–07 - Runners-up (1): 1905–06 - Southern Professional Floodlit Cup - Runners-up (1): 1958–59 - London Challenge Cup - Winners (3): 1912–13, 1913–14, 1920–21 - Runners-up (6): 1919–20, 1921–22, 1922–23, 1931–32, 1937–38, 1946–47 - Surrey Senior Cup - Winners (3): 1996–97, 2000–01, 2001–02 - Kent Senior Shield - Winners (1): 1911–12 - Runners-up (1): 1912–13 ## In popular culture In the 1999 Michael Winterbottom film Wonderland, the scenes of the character Dan and his son at a football match were filmed at Selhurst Park during Crystal Palace's 1–1 draw against Birmingham City on 6 February 1999. In the Mike Leigh play Abigail's Party, the character Tony mentions that he used to play professionally for Crystal Palace but it "didn't work out", something actor John Salthouse brought to the character in rehearsals based on his own life. Salthouse also incorporated the club into the children's television series he wrote, Hero to Zero, in which the father of the main character once played for Palace reserves. In the first series of Only Fools and Horses, a Crystal Palace scarf could be seen on the coat rack, placed there by producer Ray Butt, even though Rodney's middle name was Charlton, as Del revealed on Rodney's wedding day: their mother was a fan of "Athletic" not "Heston". Headmaster Keith Blackwell, who played Palace mascot "Pete the Eagle" in the late nineties, fronted a series of Coca-Cola advertisements in 1996. Blackwell spoke about his role and the embarrassment it brought to his family, and clips of him in costume were used in the campaign. The 2008 episode of The IT Crowd, "Are We Not Men?", used Selhurst Park to film the crowd scenes. The Apple TV series Ted Lasso filmed its stadium scenes at Selhurst Park. After the Dave Clark Five performed "Glad All Over" at Selhurst Park in 1968, the song became synonymous with the club, and the Palace fans sing it at every match. Crystal Palace F.C. was the subject of an Amazon Prime Video five-part series released in 2021 called When Eagles Dare, which documented the club's 2012–13 season when they achieved promotion to the top flight via the Championship play-offs. ## Crystal Palace Women Crystal Palace F.C. (Women) is a women's football club founded in 1992, which is affiliated to the men's club. They currently compete in the FA Women's Championship and play their home games at Hayes Lane, Bromley, London. ## Crystals cheerleaders The "Crystals" or "Crystal Girls" are the official cheerleading squad of Crystal Palace F.C. which is the only club in English football that has NFL-style cheerleaders. They were established in 2010 and perform before each home match and during half-time. The squad also perform at charity events as ambassadors for the club as well as mentoring girls and young women throughout the UK.

Grévy's zebra

Species of zebra

Grévy's zebra (Equus grevyi), also known as the imperial zebra, is the largest living wild equid and the most threatened of the three species of zebra, the other two being the plains zebra and the mountain zebra. Named after Jules Grévy, it is found in parts of Kenya and Ethiopia. Superficially, Grévy's zebras' physical features can help to identify it from the other zebra species; their overall appearance is slightly closer to that of a mule, compared to the more "equine" (horse) appearance of the plains and mountain zebras. Compared to other zebra species, Grévy's are the tallest; they have mule-like, larger ears, and have the tightest stripes of all zebras. They have distinctively erect manes, and more slender snouts. The Grévy's zebra live in semi-arid savanna, where they feed on grasses, legumes, and browse, such as acacia; they can survive up to five days without water. They differ from the other zebra species in that they do not live in a harem, and they maintain few long-lasting social bonds. Stallion territoriality and mother–foal relationships form the basis of the social system of the Grévy's zebra. Despite a handful of zoos and animal parks around the world having had successful captive-breeding programs, in its native home this zebra is listed by the IUCN as endangered. Its population has declined from 15,000 to 2,000 since the 1970s. In 2016, the population was reported to be "stable"; however, as of 2020, the wild numbers are still estimated at only around 2,250 animals, in part due to anthrax outbreaks in eastern Africa. ## Taxonomy and naming The Grévy's zebra was first described by French naturalist Émile Oustalet in 1882. He named it after Jules Grévy, then president of France, who, in the 1880s, was given one by the government of Abyssinia. Traditionally, this species was classified in the subgenus Dolichohippus with plains zebra and mountain zebra in Hippotigris. Groves and Bell (2004) place all three species in the subgenus Hippotigris. Fossils of zebra-like equids have been found throughout Africa and Asia in the Pliocene and Pleistocene deposits. Notable examples include E. sanmeniensis from China, E. cautleyi from India, E. valeriani from central Asia and E. oldowayensis from East Africa. The latter, in particular is very similar to the Grévy's zebra and may have been its ancestor. The modern Grévy's zebra arose in the Middle Pleistocene. Zebras appear to be a monophyletic lineage and recent (2013) phylogenies have placed Grévy's zebra in a sister taxon with the plains zebra. In areas where Grévy's zebras are sympatric with plains zebras, the two may gather in same herds and fertile hybrids do occur. ## Description The Grévy's zebra is the largest of all wild equines. It is 2.5–2.75 m (8.2–9.0 ft) in head-body with a 55–75 cm (22–30 in) tail, and stands 1.45–1.6 m (4.8–5.2 ft) high at the withers. These zebras weigh 350–450 kg (770–990 lb). Grévy's zebra differs from the other two zebras in its more primitive characteristics. It is particularly mule-like in appearance; the head is large, long, and narrow with elongated nostril openings; the ears are very large, rounded, and conical and the neck is short but thick. The zebra's muzzle is ash-grey to black in colour with the lips having whiskers. The mane is tall and erect; juveniles have a mane that extends to the length of the back and shortens as they reach adulthood. As with all zebra species, the Grévy's zebra's pelage has a black and white striping pattern. The stripes are narrow and close-set, being broader on the neck, and they extend to the hooves. The belly and the area around the base of the tail lack stripes and are just white in color, which is unique to the Grévy's zebra. Foals are born with brown and white striping, with the brown stripes darkening as they grow older. ## Range and ecology The Grévy's zebra largely inhabits northern Kenya, with some isolated populations in Ethiopia. It was extirpated from Somalia and Djibouti and its status in South Sudan is uncertain. It lives in Acacia-Commiphora bushlands and barren plains. Ecologically, this species is intermediate between the arid-living African wild ass and the water-dependent plains zebra. Lactating mares and non-territorial stallions use areas with green, short grass and medium, dense bush more often than non-lactating mares and territorial stallions. Grévy's zebras rely on grasses, legumes, and browse for nutrition. They commonly browse when grasses are not plentiful. Their hindgut fermentation digestive system allows them to subsist on diets of lower nutritional quality than that necessary for ruminant herbivores. Grevy's zebras can survive up to a week without water, but will drink daily when it is plentiful. They often migrate to better watered highlands during the dry season. Mares require significantly more water when they are lactating. During droughts, the zebras will dig water holes and defend them. The Grévy's zebra's main predator is the lion, but adults can be hunted by spotted hyenas. African hunting dogs, cheetahs and leopards almost never attack adults, even in desperate times, but sometimes prey on young animals, although mares are fiercely protective of their young. In addition, they are susceptible to various gastro-intestinal parasites, notably of the genus Trichostrongylus. ## Behaviour and life history Adult stallions mostly live in territories during the wet seasons but some may stay in them year round if there's enough water left. Stallions that are unable to establish territories are free-ranging and are known as bachelors. Mares, young and non-territorial stallions wander through large home ranges. The mares will wander from territory to territory preferring the ones with the highest-quality food and water sources. Up to nine stallions may compete for a mare outside of a territory. Territorial stallions will tolerate other stallions who wander in their territory. However, when an oestrous mare is present the territorial stallion keeps other stallions at bay. Non-territorial stallions might avoid territorial ones because of harassment. When mares are not around, a territorial stallion will seek the company of other stallions. The stallion shows his dominance with an arched neck and a high-stepping gait and the least dominant stallions submit by extending their tail, lowering their heads and nuzzling their superior's chest or groin. Zebras produce numerous sounds and vocalisations. When alarmed, they produce deep, hoarse grunts. Whistles and squeals are also made when alarmed, during fights, when scared or in pain. Snorts may be produced when scared or as a warning. A stallion will bray in defense of his territory, when driving mares, or keeping other stallions at bay. Barks may be made during copulation and distressed foals will squeal. The call of the Grévy's zebra has been described as "something like a hippo's grunt combined with a donkey's wheeze". To get rid of flies or parasites, they roll in dust, water or mud or, in the case of flies, they twitch their skin. They also rub against trees, rocks and other objects to get rid of irritations such as itchy skin, hair or parasites. Although Grévy's zebras do not perform mutual grooming, they do sometimes rub against a conspecific. ### Reproduction Grévy's zebras can mate and give birth year round, but most mating takes place in the early rainy seasons and births mostly take place in August or September after the long rains. An oestrous mare may visit as many as four territories a day and will mate with the stallions in them. Among territorial stallions, the most dominant ones control territories near water sources, which mostly attract mares with dependant foals, while more subordinate stallions control territories away from water with greater amounts of vegetation, which mostly attract mares without dependant foals. The resident stallions of territories will try to subdue the entering mares with dominance rituals and then continue with courtship and copulation. Grévy's zebra stallions have large testicles and can ejaculate a large amount of semen to replace the sperm of other males. This is a useful adaptation for a species whose mares mate polyandrously. Bachelors or outside territorial stallions sometimes "sneak" copulation of mares in another stallion's territory. While mare associations with individual stallions are brief and mating is promiscuous, mares who have just given birth will reside with one stallion for long periods and mate exclusively with that stallion. Lactating females are harassed by stallions more often than non-lactating ones and thus associating with one male and his territory provides an advantage as he will guard against other males. Gestation of the Grévy's zebra normally lasts 390 days, with a single foal being born. A new-born zebra will follow anything that moves, so new mothers prevent other mares from approaching their foals while imprinting their own striping pattern, scent and vocalisation on them. Mares with young foals may gather into small groups. Mares may leave their foals in "kindergartens" while searching for water. The foals will not hide, so they can be vulnerable to predators. However, kindergartens tend to be protected by an adult, usually a territorial stallion. A mare with a foal stays with one dominant territorial stallion who has exclusive mating rights to her. While the foal may not be his, the stallion will look after it to ensure that the mare stays in his territory. To adapt to a semi-arid environment, Grévy's zebra foals have longer nursing intervals and wait until they are three months old before they start drinking water. Although offspring become less dependent on their mothers after half a year, associations with them continue for up to three years. ## Relationship with humans The Grévy's zebra was known to the Europeans in antiquity and was used by the Romans in circuses. It was subsequently forgotten in the Western world for a thousand years. In the seventeenth century, the king of Shoa (now central Ethiopia) exported two zebras; one to the Sultan of Turkey and another to the Dutch governor of Jakarta. A century later, in 1882, the government of Abyssinia sent one to French president Jules Grévy. It was at that time that the animal was recognised as its own species and named in Grévy's honour. ### Status and conservation The Grévy's zebra is considered endangered. Its population was estimated to be 15,000 in the 1970s and by the early 21st century the population was lower than 3,500, a 75% decline. In 2008 it was estimated that there are less than 2,500 Grévy's zebras still living in the wild, further declining to fewer than 2,000 mature individuals in 2016. Nonetheless, the Grévy's zebra population trend was considered stable as of 2016. There are also an estimated 600 Grévy's zebras in captivity. Captive herds have been known to thrive, like at White Oak Conservation in Yulee, Florida, United States, where more than 70 foals have been born. There, research is underway in partnership with the Conservation Centers for Species Survival on semen collection and freezing and on artificial insemination. The Grévy's zebra is legally protected in Ethiopia. In Kenya, it is protected by the hunting ban of 1977. In the past, Grévy's zebras were threatened mainly by hunting for their skins which fetched a high price on the world market. However, hunting has declined and the main threat to the zebra is habitat loss and competition with livestock. Cattle gather around watering holes and the Grévy's zebras are fenced from those areas. Community-based conservation efforts have shown to be the most effective in preserving Grévy's zebras and their habitat. Less than 0.5% of the range of the Grévy's zebra is in protected areas. In Ethiopia, the protected areas include Aledeghi Wildlife Reserve, Yabelo Wildlife Sanctuary, Borana National Park, and Chelbi Sanctuary. In Kenya, important protected areas include the Buffalo Springs, Samburu and Shaba National Reserves and the private and community land wildlife conservancies in Isiolo, Samburu and the Laikipia Plateau. The mesquite plant was introduced into Ethiopia around 1997 and is endangering the zebra's food supply. An invasive species, it is replacing the two grass species, Cenchrus ciliaris and Chrysopogon plumulosus, which the zebras eat for most of their food.

2013 World Snooker Championship

Snooker tournament, held 2013

The 2013 World Snooker Championship (officially the 2013 Betfair World Snooker Championship) was a professional snooker tournament that took place from 20 April to 6 May 2013 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. It was the 37th consecutive year the Crucible had hosted the World Snooker Championship; the 2013 event was the last ranking tournament of the 2012–13 snooker season. Sports betting company Betfair sponsored the event for the first time. Despite not having played a competitive match all season, defending champion Ronnie O'Sullivan did not lose one session in the tournament and defeated Barry Hawkins 18–12 in the final to become a five-time World Champion, joining Steve Davis and Stephen Hendry as the only players to have successfully defended their titles at the Crucible. O'Sullivan broke Hendry's record of 127 career centuries at the Crucible, finishing the tournament with 131, and also became the first player to make six century breaks in a World Championship final. Of the 55 century breaks made during the event, Neil Robertson made the highest , a 143, in his first-round loss to Robert Milkins. ## Overview The World Snooker Championship is an annual cue sport tournament and the official professional world championship of the game of snooker. Since 1977, the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield has hosted the event. During the tournament, 32 professional players compete in one-on-one snooker matches in a single elimination format, each of which is played over several . The event's 32-player lineup is selected using the snooker world rankings and a pre-tournament qualification round. English player Ronnie O'Sullivan won the previous year's championship by defeating fellow countryman Ali Carter in the final 18–11. The winner of the 2013 event earned prize money of £250,000, from a pool of £1,111,000. Sports betting company Betfair sponsored the event for the first time in 2013. ### Format The 2013 World Snooker Championship was held between 20 April and 6 May 2013 in Sheffield, England. It was the last of 11 rankings events in the 2012–13 snooker season on the World Snooker Tour. The tournament featured a 32-player main draw that took place at the Crucible Theatre and a 92-player qualifying draw that was played on 6 and 11 April 2015 at the English Institute of Sport. This was the 45th successive world championship to be contested using the knockout format after reverting from a challenge match system in the 1960s. Ordinarily the top-16 players in the world rankings automatically qualified for the main draw as seeded players. Despite not playing a competitive event since the last world championship, Ronnie O'Sullivan was seeded first overall as the defending champion; the remaining 15 seeds were allocated using the latest world rankings, which were released after the China Open, the penultimate event of the season. The number of frames needed to win a match increased with each round of the main draw, starting with best-of-19-frames matches in the first round and ending with the final, which was played as a best-of-35-frames match. ### Prize fund The event had a prize fund of £1,111,000, of which the winner received £250,000. A breakdown of prize money for 2013 is shown below: - Winner: £250,000 - Runner-up: £125,000 - Semi-final: £52,000 - Quarter-final: £24,050 - Last 16: £16,000 - Last 32: £12,000 - Last 48: £8,200 - Last 64: £4,600 - Non-televised highest break: £1,000 - Televised highest break: £10,000 - Total: £1,111,000 ## Tournament summary ### First round The first round was played between 20 and 25 April 2013; matches were held as the best-of-19 frames over two . Players Jack Lisowski, Michael White, Ben Woollaston, Dechawat Poomjaeng, Matthew Selt and Sam Baird made their debuts at the main stages of the event. Poomjaeng was only the third player from Thailand, after James Wattana and Tai Pichit, to reach the event. Two of the debuting players progressed to the second round; Michael White advanced by defeating two-time champion Mark Williams 10–6, while Dechawat Poomjaeng advanced by beating Stephen Maguire 10–9. Four Chinese players—a record for the event—had played in the 2012 competition but Ding Junhui was the only Chinese player to appear in 2013. Ding defeated Alan McManus 10–5 to reach the second round. Peter Ebdon was playing in his 22nd consecutive World Championship, equalling the number of consecutive appearances made by Steve Davis and putting him third for consecutive appearances behind Stephen Hendry on 27 and O'Sullivan on 26. In a repeat of the final of the 2006 event, Ebdon faced Graeme Dott; the match overran and was played over three sessions. Dott was ahead 8–6 after the second session and eventually won 10–6. The match lasted for more than seven hours; Ebdon had a high break of 37. Dott criticised Ebdon for his perceived slow play and called for a rule to limit the time a player could spend over a shot. The ending of the match between defending champion Ronnie O'Sullivan and Marcus Campbell was not aired on the BBC, which instead broadcast a repeat episode of the 1970s sitcom Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em. The match was also unavailable on the BBC Red Button service, leading to viewers expressing their anger on social networks. The CEO of World Snooker Barry Hearn, apologised to fans on Twitter and wrote a formal letter of complaint to the BBC. O'Sullivan won the match 10–4; he had not played a competitive match since winning the title the year before. O'Sullivan said he wanted to "take some time off" and had refused to sign the player's contract for the following season. Robert Milkins defeated the 2010 champion Neil Robertson 8–10. Robertson made the highest break of the event—a 143 in frame six—and led 5–2 but Milkins tied the match at 8–8 before winning the next two frames. In other matches, four-time champion John Higgins lost 6–10 to Mark Davis whilst former finalist Matthew Stevens lost 7–10 to qualifier Marco Fu. ### Second round The second round was played between 25 and 30 April as the best of 25 frames over three sessions. Shaun Murphy defeated Graeme Dott 13–11 after leading 6–2 after the first session. Dott's elimination meant there were no Scottish players in the last eight for the first time since 1988. Michael White reached his first ranking event quarter-final by defeating Poomjaeng 13–3 after two of the three scheduled sessions. In the fourth frame, Poomjaeng used the to bridge over the but missed a on three occasions and forfeited the frame. O'Sullivan became the first defending champion since Murphy in 2006 to reach the quarter-finals when he defeated Ali Carter, his opponent in the 2008 and 2012 World Championship finals, 13–8. Ricky Walden, in his first world championship second-round appearance, defeated Robert Milkins 13–11. Milkins trailed 3–9 but recovered to 10–11 and 11–12 but Walden won the frame he needed for victory. Barry Hawkins also reached his first Crucible quarter-final after defeating world number one Mark Selby 13–10. ### Quarter-finals The quarter-finals were played on 31 April and 1 May as best-of-25 frames matches over three sessions. In his match against Stuart Bingham, O'Sullivan won 11 of the first 12 frames and won the match 13–4 in the first frame of the third session. Judd Trump trailed 3–8 against Shaun Murphy but tied the score at 12–12 to force a . The final frame lasted 53 minutes and was won by Trump. Ricky Walden defeated Michael White 13–6 and Hawkins defeated Ding Junhui 13–7, eliminating the two remaining non-English competitors from the tournament. Walden reached the semi-finals of the World Championship on his third attempt, despite not having previously won a match in his earlier appearances in the main stages of the event in 2009 and 2011. ### Semi-finals The semi-finals were played between 2 and 4 May 2013 over four sessions as the best-of-33 frames. This was the third semi-finals round in the modern history of snooker in which all of the players were English. O'Sullivan played Judd Trump in the first semi-final; in the 23rd frame, O'Sullivan received a reprimand from referee Michaela Tabb for allegedly making an obscene gesture with his cue. A World Snooker spokesman later stated eyewitnesses had also observed O'Sullivan making an inappropriate gesture but it was not captured on camera. O'Sullivan defeated Trump 17–11 and became the first defending champion to reach the final since Ken Doherty in 1998. In the other semi-final, Barry Hawkins trailed Ricky Walden 8–12 but won nine of the next eleven frames to win 17–14. ### Final The 2013 final between Ronnie O'Sullivan and Barry Hawkins was played on 5 and 6 May as the best-of-35 frames over four sessions and officiated by Jan Verhaas. O'Sullivan led 5–3 after the first session; Hawkins drew level at 7–7 but O'Sullivan won the last three frames of the day to take a 10–7 overnight lead. O'Sullivan's break of 103 in the 15th frame was his 128th century break at the Crucible Theatre, breaking Stephen Hendry's record of 127 Crucible centuries, and he extended the record to 131 century breaks. O'Sullivan won the third session by five frames to three to lead 15–10. O'Sullivan went on to win the final 18–12 to take his fifth world title and become the first defending champion to retain his title since Hendry in 1996 and the first player to score six century breaks in a world championship final. Eight century breaks were scored in the final, equalling the record set in the 2002 final between Hendry and Peter Ebdon. At the age of 37, O'Sullivan became the oldest World Snooker Champion since 45-year-old Ray Reardon in 1978. This was O'Sullivan's fifth world championship but he did not rule out a similar season away from the tour, saying; "I had my year out and enjoyed my year out. I intend to play in some small events. Come December or January I'll have a better idea of what I'm going to do." As world champion, O'Sullivan was awarded a wild card place at the 2014 Masters, which he also won. ## Main draw Shown below are the results for each round. The numbers in parentheses beside some of the players are their seeding ranks (each championship has 16 seeds and 16 qualifiers). The draw for the first round took place on 15 April 2013, one day after the qualifying, and was broadcast live by Talksport at 1:30 pm BST. ## Qualifying ### Preliminary qualifying Four preliminary qualifying rounds for the tournament were for invited amateur players and members not on the Main Tour; they took place on 4 and 5 April 2013 at the World Snooker Academy in Sheffield. Names in bold denote match winners. Round 1 Round 2 Round 3 Round 4 ### Main qualifying The first three qualifying rounds for the tournament took place between 6 and 11 April 2013 at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield,. The final round of qualifying took place between 13 and 14 April 2013 at the same venue. ## Century breaks ### Main stage centuries A total of 55 century breaks were made during the main stage of the World Championship. Neil Robertson, the player who compiled the highest break of the tournament, received a made of gold. - 143 – Neil Robertson - 142, 127, 118, 117, 112, 109, 104 – Judd Trump - 140, 119, 113, 106, 105, 104 – Ricky Walden - 133, 133, 125, 124, 113, 111, 106, 106, 105, 104, 103, 102, 100 – Ronnie O'Sullivan - 133, 127, 114, 104, 100 – Barry Hawkins - 131, 129, 114, 107, 104, 103 – Ding Junhui - 128, 128, 112, 112, 106 – Shaun Murphy - 117 – Marco Fu - 111, 106 – Stuart Bingham - 106, 104 – Robert Milkins - 106 – Ali Carter - 103 – Mark Selby - 102, 101, 100 – Michael White - 100 – Graeme Dott - 100 – Jack Lisowski ### Qualifying stage centuries A total of 63 century breaks were made during the qualifying stage of the World Championship: - 142, 133, 113, 104 – Sam Baird - 140, 122, 117, 100 – Yu Delu - 139 – Ryan Day - 138, 117, 100 – Ben Woollaston - 138, 103 – Matthew Selt - 137 – Robin Hull - 136, 120, 104 – Michael White - 131, 128, 114, 100 – Jack Lisowski - 131, 102 – Patrick Wallace - 131 – Dominic Dale - 130 – Jimmy White - 129 – Thepchaiya Un-Nooh - 128 – Ken Doherty - 128 – Joe Perry - 124 – Michael Wasley - 123, 121 – Mike Dunn - 122 – Anthony Hamilton - 117, 113, 101, 100 – Kurt Maflin - 115, 103 – Mark Davis - 115 – Justin Astley - 114, 105, 102 – Liam Highfield - 114, 101 – Tony Drago - 112, 100 – Joel Walker - 110, 109 – Mark King - 108 – Marco Fu - 106 – Thanawat Thirapongpaiboon - 105, 100 – Joe Swail - 105 – Craig Steadman - 103 – Alfie Burden - 103 – Barry Pinches - 103 – Daniel Wells - 103 – Liang Wenbo - 102 – Dave Gilbert - 102 – Alan McManus - 102 – Paul Wykes - 100 – Pankaj Advani - 100 – Cao Yupeng

Afternoon

Time of the day between noon and evening

Afternoon is the time after noon ending at 5p.m. It is the time when the sun is descending from its peak in the sky to somewhat before its terminus at the horizon in the west. In human life, it occupies roughly the latter half of the standard work and school day. In literal terms, it refers to a time specifically after noon. The equivalent of Earth's afternoon on another planet would refer to the time the principal star of that planetary system would be in descent from its prime meridian, as seen from the planet's surface. ## Terminology Afternoon is often defined as the period between noon and evening. If this definition is adopted, the specific range of time varies in one direction: noon is defined as the time when the sun reaching its highest point in the sky, but the boundary between afternoon and evening has no standard definition. However, before a period of transition from the 12th to 14th centuries, noon instead referred to 3:00 pm. Possible explanations include shifting times for prayers and midday meals, along which one concept of noon was defined—and so afternoon would have referred to a narrower timeframe. The word afternoon, which derives from after and noon, has been attested from about the year 1300; Middle English contained both afternoon and the synonym aftermete. The standard phrasing was at afternoon in the 15th and 16th centuries, but has shifted to in the afternoon since then. In American English dialects, the word evening is sometimes used to encompass all times between noon and midnight. The Irish language contains four different words to mark time intervals from late afternoon to nightfall; this period is considered mystical. Metaphorically, the word afternoon refers to a relatively late period in the expanse of time or in one's life. ## Events Afternoon is a time when the sun is descending from its daytime peak. During the afternoon, the sun moves from roughly the center of the sky to deep in the west. In late afternoon, sunlight is particularly bright and glaring, because the sun is at a low angle in the sky. The standard working time in most industrialized countries goes from the morning to the late afternoon or evening — archetypally, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm — so the latter part of this time takes place in the afternoon. Schools usually let their students out around 3:00 pm during the mid afternoon. In Denmark, afternoon is considered between 1:00 and 5:00 pm. ## Effects on life ### Hormones In diurnal animals, it is typical for blood levels of the hormone cortisol—which is used to increase blood sugar, aid metabolism and is also produced in response to stress—to be most stable in the afternoon after decreasing throughout the morning. However, cortisol levels are also the most reactive to environmental changes unrelated to sleep and daylight during the afternoon. As a result, this time of day is considered optimal for researchers studying stress and hormone levels. Plants generally have their highest photosynthetic levels of the day at noon and in the early afternoon, owing to the sun's high angle in the sky. The large proliferation of maize crops across Earth has caused tiny, harmless fluctuations in the normal pattern of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, since these crops photosynthesize large amounts of carbon dioxide during these times and this process sharply drops down during the late afternoon and evening. ### Body temperature In humans, body temperature is typically highest during the mid to late afternoon. However, human athletes being tested for physical vigor on exercise machines showed no statistically significant difference after lunch. Owners of factory farms are advised to use buildings with an east–west (as opposed to north–south) orientation to house their livestock, because an east–west orientation generally means thicker walls on the east and west to accommodate the sun's acute angle and intense glare during late afternoon. When these animals are too hot, they are more likely to become belligerent and unproductive. ### Alertness The afternoon, especially the early afternoon, is associated with a dip in a variety of areas of human cognitive and productive functioning. Notably, motor vehicle accidents occur more frequently in the early afternoon, when drivers presumably have recently finished lunch. A study of motor accidents in Sweden between 1987 and 1991 found that the time around 5:00 pm had by far the most accidents: around 1,600 at 5:00 pm, compared to around 1,000 each at 4:00 pm and 6:00 pm. This trend may have been influenced by the afternoon rush hour, but the morning rush hour showed a much smaller increase. In Finland, accidents in the agriculture industry are most common in the afternoon, specifically Monday afternoons in September. One psychology professor studying circadian rhythms found that his students performed somewhat worse on exams in the afternoon than in the morning, but even worse in the evening. Neither of these differences, however, was statistically significant. Four studies carried out in 1997 found that subjects who were given tests on differentiating traffic signs had longer reaction times when tested at 3:00 pm and 6:00 pm than at 9:00 am and 12:00 pm. These trends are held across all four studies and for both complex and abstract questions. However, one UK-based researcher failed to find any difference in exam performance on over 300,000 A-level exam papers sat in either the morning or afternoon. Human productivity routinely decreases in the afternoon. Power plants have shown significant reductions in productivity in the afternoon compared to the morning, the largest differences occurring on Saturdays and the smallest on Mondays. One 1950s study covering two female factory workers for six months found that their productivity was 13 percent lower in the afternoon, the least productive time being their last hour at work. It was summarized that the differences came from personal breaks and unproductive activities at the workplace. Another, larger study found that afternoon declines in productivity were greater during longer work shifts. It is important to note, however, that not all humans share identical circadian rhythms. One study across Italy and Spain had students fill out a questionnaire, then ranked them on a "morningness–eveningness" scale. The results were a fairly standard bell curve. Levels of alertness over the course of the day had a significant correlation with scores on the questionnaire. All categories of participants—evening types, morning types, and intermediate types—had high levels of alertness from roughly 2:00 pm to 8:00 pm, but outside this window their alertness levels corresponded to their scores. ## See also - Morning - Sunset - Twilight - 12-hour clock - Night owl (person)

Oregon Ducks track and field

Intercollegiate track and field team of for the University of Oregon

The Oregon Ducks track and field program is the intercollegiate track and field team for the University of Oregon located in the U.S. state of Oregon. The team competes at the NCAA Division I level and is a member of the Pac-12 Conference. The team participates in indoor and outdoor track and field as well as cross country. Known as the Ducks, Oregon's first track and field team was fielded in 1895. The team holds its home meets at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon. Jerry Schumacher is the current head coach and since the program's inception in 1895, there have only been eight permanent head coaches. The Ducks claim 32 NCAA National Championships among the three disciplines. Due to its rich heritage, the home of the Ducks is popularly dubbed as Tracktown, USA. Four of the head coaches in Oregon's history have been inducted into the USTFCCCA Hall of Fame. Several people involved with the program have developed innovative coaching strategies and helped restructure amateur athletics. Alumni of the program have continued to the Olympics and professional ranks while some others have founded athletic corporations like Nike and SPARQ. Oregon's track and field history has been documented in two major motion films Without Limits and Prefontaine as well as the books Bowerman and the Men of Oregon and Pre: The Story of America's Greatest Running Legend. Former coaches and alumni have also written a number of books on running instruction for both top end athletes and hobbyists. ## History ### Early history The first track team was established in 1895 with head coach Joseph Wetherbee. The coach remained for only one year and the following four coaches, William O'Trine, J.C. Higgins, C.A. Redmond, and William Ray, also remained for extremely short durations. With such sporadic coaching changes, the Oregon track and field team struggled with inconsistencies, although the university did win six of seven meets in 1895. ### Under Coach Bill Hayward The modern era of Oregon track and field began in 1903. The Webfoots (as they were called at the time) lost a track meet to Albany College (now Lewis & Clark College). Oregon promptly asked Albany's coach, Bill Hayward, to come to Eugene as track coach for the following season. Hayward's career at Oregon was long and illustrious, lasting 44 years. His athletes included nine Olympians and produced five world records. By 1919, his standing at Oregon was such that when a new stadium was constructed for the football, it was named Hayward Field for him. Two years later, a track was added and track meets were transferred there from nearby Kincaid Field. ### Under Coach Bill Bowerman Bill Bowerman's involvement with Oregon dated to his student days in the 1930s. He initially played football when he arrived in Eugene Coach Bill Hayward, who Bowerman credits with teaching him how to run, convinced Bowerman to run track. Bowerman graduated from Oregon in 1934 with a degree in business. After his service in World War II, Bowerman was hired by Oregon to replace the retiring Hayward after John Warren's single year as interim head coach. Though Bowerman's title was head coach, he considered himself more of a teacher than a coach. He stressed schoolwork over athletics and urged his pupils to apply the values they learned participating in track and field to everyday life. During his time at Oregon, he brought four NCAA team championships to the university and coached 33 Olympians as well as 24 individual NCAA champions. He coached some of the world's best distance runners including Steve Prefontaine. Bowerman retired from coaching in 1972. While at Oregon, he also coached the USA Track and Field team and helped bring the U.S. Olympic Trials to Hayward Field for the first time. In 2009, The Bowerman Award was created in coach Bowerman's name and administered by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association. The award is given annually as the highest honor for the best collegiate track and field athlete of the year, one each for men and for women. #### Steve Prefontaine Steve Prefontaine arrived on campus in 1969 and immediately, head coach Bowerman and assistant coach Bill Dellinger had their hands full to rein in the rebellious new athlete. The bold running style of Prefontaine, front-running, was a strategy that altered the pace of the sport. At one point, Prefontaine held every American distance record above the 2,000 meters and was thought of by many to be one of the greatest American runners in history. Prefontaine had never lost a race longer than a mile during his collegiate career and won a total of seven NCAA championships in track and field and cross country. He raced in the 5000m at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, placing fourth in the race. He died in an automobile accident in Eugene in 1975, at the peak of his career. His accomplishments were not confined to the track. He was deeply resentful toward the treatment given toward amateur athletes. He had frequently butted heads with the Amateur Athletic Union, calling the AAU a corrupt organization. His opinions played a major role in the passing of the Amateur Sports Act of 1978, legislation providing legal protection to amateur athletes. Prefontaine, coupled with Frank Shorter's success running the marathon, is often credited with playing a role in the running boom in America in the 1970s. His legacy lives on in two movies documenting his life, Without Limits and Prefontaine, as well as the Prefontaine Classic, an annual track meet held at Hayward Field in his honor. #### Nike Another one of Bowerman's pupils, Phil Knight, partnered with Bowerman and revolutionized the sport with the formation of the shoe company giant, Nike. Knight graduated from the University of Oregon in 1959 and went on to Stanford University for graduate school. There, he developed the idea to import Japanese running shoes to the American market. After earning his MBA from Stanford, he returned to the University of Oregon where he and Bowerman struck a handshake deal in 1964, each with a \$500 investment into a company called Blue Ribbon Sports to import Japanese running shoes. In the late 1960s, Bowerman's pursuit of lighter shoes for his athletes led him to develop a sole by pouring rubber into his wife's waffle iron, inventing the modern running shoe. After Knight decided to rename the company Nike and develop its own shoes, Bowerman's invention became the prototype for the company. The shoe made its debut in the 1972 Olympic Trials at Hayward Field with Steve Prefontaine as one of the early endorsers. Although Bowerman retired from coaching in 1972, he remained on Nike's board until 1999. In that time, Nike exploded into a multibillion-dollar company. ### Under Coaches Bill Dellinger and Tom Heinonen Like his predecessor, Bill Dellinger's involvement with the University of Oregon began before his coaching career. He lettered in track at the university, graduating in 1956 and won a Bronze medal in the 1964 Summer Olympics. After his athletic career, he joined Bowerman's staff in 1967 as an assistant coach where he helped coach Steve Prefontaine. He took over as head coach in 1973 after Bowerman's retirement. With Dellinger at the helm, Oregon's Cross Country team brought home four NCAA national championships and the track and field team brought home one NCAA national championship. He retired in 1998. The Bill Dellinger Invitational is an annual cross country race held by the University of Oregon in honor of the coach. Hired as a physical education graduate student in 1975, Tom Heinonen, was promoted to the head coach for the women's cross country and track and field team in 1977. Prior to Heinonen, no other full-time head coach at Oregon had exclusively coached the women's disciplines. He was a strong advocate for women's sports and was a force in making the Oregon Twilight Meet a co-ed event. Women's cross country and track and field blossomed under Heinonen's leadership. He led the women's team to win its first three NCAA team championships and coached 14 NCAA individual champions. He produced 134 All-Americans and his athletes made 17 appearances in the Olympics. He retired in 2003, after which the University of Oregon Athletic Department decided to combine the men's and women's programs under one head coach. ### Under Coach Vin Lananna In 2005, Vin Lananna was hired to become the track and field head coach, replacing Martin Smith who resigned after the previous season. Lananna was already a decorated head coach from Stanford with five NCAA national championships under his belt. At Oregon, he led seven teams to win NCAA national championships, including the first indoor national championships in school history. He also attracted the Olympic Trials, the NCAA Track and Field Championships, and the USA Track and Field Championships to Eugene for multiple years. Just prior to the 2012 season, Robert Johnson was promoted to the head coaching position as Lananna moved to an administrative position with the program. ### Under Coach Robert Johnson Robert Johnson was Vin Lanana's first hire, originally to lead throws, hurdles, and sprints, then in 2009, was named the associate head coach for women's track. The University of Oregon was historically known for its rich tradition in distance running but had never been known for sprinting. Robert Johnson drastically transformed this during his tenure. By 2011, the year before Johnson took over as head coach, every women's sprint school record for distances still actively run, for both outdoor and indoor track and field, had been broken. The women's indoor program won its first NCAA title in 2010 and by 2017, had won seven of the previous eight indoor national championships. In the 2017 indoor national championship, the sprinters excelled as the women's program set a record for points scored at 84, exceeding the previous record set by Texas by 13 points. The sprinters were so dominant that despite Deajah Stevens's lane violation in the 200m prelims erasing a collegiate record time run in the final, the points accrued from Oregon women's sprinters alone would have been only two points shy of runner up Georgia's entire points total. Several months later, the Oregon's women's program entered the NCAA Outdoor National Championship meet as favorites to win the title. Despite losing a key runner to injury, a disqualification in the 4 × 100 m, and adversity during the meet, the Oregon women's team was able to edge out the Georgia Bulldogs's strong field events team in the final 4 × 400 m event. Since the women's team won the cross country championship and the indoor championship in the same academic year, the outdoor title gave the women's team a triple crown, the first time any NCAA women's track and field team has accomplished this feat. In 2021, allegations surfaced of body shaming within the program, resulting in unhealthy disorders among several athletes. Johnson defended the use of certain technologies such as DEXA scans, that monitor bone density and body fat, saying they take human bias out of the equation. In 2022, a few weeks before the World Athletics Championships, held at Hayward Field, it was announced that the University of Oregon would not renew Johnson's contract, but there were no specific reasons given for doing so. Not long after, the university announced the hire of the Bowerman Track Club coach, Jerry Schumacher, as the next head coach. ## Impact on running The people involved in the Oregon track and field program have led changes that benefited professional athletes and coaches, as well as running enthusiasts. Bill Bowerman experimented with many coaching techniques during his time as a head coach at the University of Oregon and instilled many of his principles from his days as a Major in the US Army. For example, Bowerman pioneered in using film as a method of teaching technique to his athletes. With Bowerman's meticulous attention to details, he made other discoveries with regards to coaching track. The training schedules he developed for his athletes ran counter to many other coaches' principles at the time. He believed that each individual athlete was different and tailored different workout routines to different athletes. He also scaled his workouts up and down, giving some of his athletes rest on certain days for recovery time. This attention to detail also led him to become obsessed with experimentation of reducing the weight of his athletes' apparel and increasing the traction of their shoes which eventually led to the creation of the apparel company Nike. Moreover, Bowerman considered himself more of a teacher than a coach and stressed schoolwork as well as mentoring his athletes with regards to life. Tom Heinonen, the former head coach of the Oregon women's track and field program was a strong advocate of female athletics at a time when female athletics were largely an afterthought. Steve Prefontaine was vehemently outspoken against the Amateur Athletic Union. Kenny Moore, a former University of Oregon student who ran track under Bowerman, was one of the speakers at the President's Commission on Olympic Sports, a series of hearings regarding amateur sports. These efforts along with those from other amateur athletes eventually culminated in the passage of the Amateur Sports Act of 1978. Bowerman and his athletes' philosophy and stories were documented by Kenny Moore. Moore wrote the book Bowerman and the Men of Oregon and practiced journalism, most notably for Sports Illustrated. He also was the screenwriter with Robert Towne for Without Limits, a movie that told the story of Prefontaine and Bowerman. In addition, he was also an actor in Personal Best, a movie with track and field as one of the central themes. Bowerman himself wrote several books on the sport of running including High Performance Training for Track and Field which details coaching instruction for high level competition. He also wrote a book with a cardiologist called Jogging, which detailed the medical benefits of jogging, to which many credited its exploding popularity. Bowerman's successor, Bill Dellinger, also authored a number of books regarding running, including Competitive Runner's Training Book, The Running Experience and Winning Running. The program's coaching extended beyond just within the program itself. Bowerman had his athletes mentor the community and continued to be active in the sport after his retirement. He was also a coach for the US Olympic team in 1972 and an assistant coach in 1968 US Olympic Team. Bill Dellinger coached the distance runners in the 1984 Olympic Games. After Dellinger retired from the University of Oregon, he continued to coach running on a consulting basis despite suffering through a stroke. Tom Heinonen remained a running coach after his retirement at the volunteer level for the University of Oregon Running Club. Matt Centrowitz, another University of Oregon alumnus and father of Matthew, took the American University track and field program to prominence since the rebirth of the program in 1999. Alumnus Alberto Salazar became a noted marathon coach after his running days under the employ of Nike. Salazar used controversial coaching tactics like tweaking runners' natural running form, but had coached many athletes to the apex of their careers. He launched an experimental training program called the Nike Oregon Project financed by Nike with the purpose of integrating African runners' training conditions into American training mixed with modern technology. He also discovered similarities in running posture between sprinters and top level distance runners, two disciplines previously thought to be exceedingly different. Instilling some of these methods into American runners, he was able to coach Kara Goucher to a third-place finish in the Boston Marathon in 2009, an event that East Africans typically dominate. Mo Farah and alumnus Galen Rupp were training partners under Salazar and finished first and second respectively in the 2012 Summer Olympics in the 10k. Rupp was the first American to medal in the 10k since Billy Mills in 1964 and the first medalist not born in Africa since 1988. Also running for Salazar and the Oregon Project, alumnus Matthew Centrowitz Jr. won a gold medal in the 2016 Summer Olympics, the first American to win gold in the 1,500m since Mel Sheppard in 1908, ending a 108-year drought. Similar to his collegiate coaches, Salazar wrote a pair of books about distance running. Alberto Salazar was handed a lifetime ban from the sport in July 2021 over allegations of sexual and physical abuse, which Salazar denies. There was no criminal trial over these allegations, nor was he criminally charged. ## Venues The early teams ran at Kincaid Field, constructed in 1902 as an athletic field. In 1919, Hayward Field was constructed for football events and two years later, a track was installed around the field as the track and field team moved in. Kincaid field was torn down in 1922. Autzen Stadium was opened in 1967 and the football team moved out of Hayward Field. At that point, Hayward Field became exclusively a track and field stadium. The venue had undergone significant upgrades since then including the Bowerman Building in 1992, the Powell Plaza in 2005, an indoor facilities upgrade in 2006, and new equipment in 2007. Hayward Field has been host to numerous national track and field events such as the U.S. Olympic Trials, NCAA Championships, and the USA Track and Field Championships. No other venue has hosted more NCAA Championships and no other venue had held three consecutive U.S. Olympic Trials. Many have attested to the magical aura of Hayward field, citing many personal bests run at the venue. Credit often goes to the regular attendance of knowledgeable track and field fans for the phenomenon. In 2015, Eugene was selected to host the 2021 World Athletics Championships at Hayward Field. This was the first time that the prestigious track and field event was held in the United States, since the inception of the biannual event in 1983. Following the announcement of hosting the World Championships, plans began to renovate Hayward Field to meet the specifications of the IAAF. In a highly controversial decision, Hayward Field was completely redesigned, including knocking down the iconic east grandstand. In spring of 2020, the Hayward Field renovations were complete and several meets took place, including the NCAA Track and Field Championships. Although the new stadium was constructed for the 2021 World Championships, the event was postponed to 2022 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The new Hayward Field, funded by Phil and Penny Knight along with over 50 other donors, expanded the seating capacity from 10,500 to 12,650, although temporary seating was expandable to almost 25,000. A glass and wood canopy circles the stadium and the seats were designed to be as close to the track as possible. A tower on the northeast corner evokes an Olympic torch, clad with the images of five Oregon track legends Bill Bowerman, Steve Prefontaine, Raevyn Rogers, Ashton Eaton, and Otis Davis. ## Rivalries The traditional rival of the Oregon Ducks is the Oregon State Beavers, called the Civil War. This fierce rivalry extended to the track and field programs, where for a period, they met twice a year. However, due to budgetary concerns, Oregon State University dropped the track and field program in 1988 and the rivalry ended. Their women's program was reinstated in 2004, but since they do not have a men's program, the rivalry has not yet been renewed. The UCLA Bruins became an Oregon rival in track and field as the two powerhouse programs battled each other in a series of dual meets. Oregon's program was ranked in the top 3 nationally in dual meets by Track & Field News thirteen times between 1970 and 1996 and was ranked No. 1 three times. The UCLA squad achieved a No. 1 ranking from the same publication eleven times within the same time frame. In 1966, the two programs met head to head for the first time. The Bruins displayed their dominance at the dual meet and won nine straight against the Ducks. Oregon head coach Bill Bowerman in 1971 called the Bruins team the best dual meet team in the country. It wasn't until 1978 that Oregon earned its first victory in the series, which ended UCLA's 34 dual meet winning streak. Oregon won the next three meets and the series ended in 1985 with a UCLA win. The dual meet event was fading out of favor in collegiate track and field and the Oregon-UCLA dual meet was discontinued with UCLA holding the advantage over the Ducks 10–4. In 1994, the Pepsi Team Invitational which included Oregon, UCLA and Washington was scored as a dual meet, which UCLA won. In 2008, the dual meet series between the two schools restarted and Oregon won the first three meets. Although the location of the meet had alternated between Eugene and Los Angeles between 1966 and 1976, subsequent meets have been held at Hayward Field in Oregon until 2011 where the two teams battled to a tie at UCLA. The dual meet was discontinued in 2012 due to scheduling difficulties in an Olympic year and had not been renewed since. ## Head coaches Prior to Bill Hayward in 1904, four coaches led the Oregon track and field teams for just one year including Joseph W. Wetherbee (1895), J.C. Higgins (1897), C.A. Redmond (1902), and William Ray (1903). John Warren was the interim head coach in 1948 before Bill Bowerman took over for Bill Hayward. In a similar fashion to the men's team, three head coaches led the women's team on a part-time basis including Lois Youngen (1972), Ron Brinkert (1973–1974), and Rob Ritson (1975–1976) before Tom Heinonen arrived to provide consistency at the helm. The following coaches are a chronology of Oregon track and field head coaches that served for terms greater than two years: Notes: - Also coached on the US Olympic Team - Only coached the women's track and field and cross country team - Member of the USTFCCCA Hall of Fame ## Notable athletes The track and field program over the years has created dozens of NCAA individual champions and hundreds of All Americans. Alumni have gone on to medal in the Olympics, win big city marathons, and win national championships at the professional level. Some of the most famed players from the program emerged from distance running. Steve Prefontaine held numerous American distance running records and never lost a collegiate distance running match. Alberto Salazar won three consecutive New York Marathons and added a Boston Marathon victory to the list. Alumni have also had illustrious coaching careers. Bill Bowerman and Bill Dellinger both became Oregon coaches. Alberto Salazar and Terrence Mahon became distance running coaches after their running days. Others have found success related to track and field but not directly in the sport. Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight both co-founded Nike. Tinker Hatfield ran track at Oregon while studying architecture and later became a famous shoe designer for Nike. Rudy Chapa, a distance runner, founded SPARQ, an athletic equipment company. There have been several members of the track and field team that lettered in other sports, particularly football. Mel Renfro is primarily known for being inducted into the Professional Football Hall of Fame but he also achieved a world record in the 440 yard relay in 1962 while running in the track and field program for Oregon. Jordan Kent, a former professional football player, was a rare three sport letterman in track, basketball, and football. The 2010 Doak Walker Award winner, LaMichael James, ran track during the football offseason. One of the first multi-sport athletes with the Oregon Ducks was the former head coach Bill Bowerman, who played football and ran track under Bill Hayward in both sports. ### Olympians Since Oregon's first Olympian, Dan Kelly, who finished second place in the broad jump of the 1908 Summer Olympics, at least one athlete from the University of Oregon has participated in each of the Summer Olympics since. This includes the 1980 Summer Olympics which the United States boycotted, when Chris Braithwaite competed for Trinidad, his native country. Out of the scores of Olympians who attended the University of Oregon, the following have received medals: ### World Athletics Championships athletes In the inaugural World Athletics Championships in 1983, Joaquim Cruz won a bronze medal in the 800 meters. Aside from a relay medal by Camara Jones in 1995, there have been no Ducks that medaled until 2011, after which a plurality of Ducks medaled in each subsequent meet. In 2022, the World Athletics Championship, delayed by a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, was hosted at Hayward Field, the first time the meet was held on American soil. The Oregon track and field team members and alumni sent 15 athletes to the meet, but only two athletes, Jenna Prandini and Kemba Nelson, received medals, both in the Women's 4x100m event, although Devon Allen, one of the favorites to medal was disqualified in the 110-meter hurdles in a highly controversial incident where he started 0.099 seconds after the gun, just shy of the allowable 0.1 seconds of the reaction time. The following are World Athletics Championships participants from the Oregon track and field team that have earned medals: ### World record and world best holders The following athletes from Oregon have achieved world records: † Indicates tie World best, but not an official world record since the IAAF did not keep a record of this event at the time the event occurred Although an official world record, faster times were recorded outside of the period the IAAF logged world records in this event ### Bowerman Award winners The Bowerman Award is the highest collegiate track and field honor annually bestowed on the best collegiate track and field athlete for each of the men's and women's. The award is named after the University of Oregon track coach Bill Bowerman and designed by Oregon track athlete Tinker Hatfield, who ran under coach Bowerman. The first year of the award was 2009, when Oregon distance runner Galen Rupp won the inaugural award on the men's side. ### Other athletes

Boadicea-class cruiser

Class of British scout cruisers

The Boadicea-class cruiser was a pair of scout cruisers built for the Royal Navy in the first decade of the 20th century. They were the first class of this type to be fitted with steam turbine machinery. Upon completion in 1909–10, the sister ships served as flotilla leaders for destroyer flotillas of the First Fleet until 1913 when they were assigned to battleship squadrons. When the First World War began in August 1914, they remained with their squadrons as the First Fleet was incorporated into the Grand Fleet, although they changed squadrons over the course of the war. Both ships were present during the Battle of Jutland in mid-1916, but neither fired a shot. They were converted into minelayers the following year and both ships laid minefields in early 1918 in addition to other missions. The sisters were reduced to reserve in 1919 and sold for scrap in 1921 and 1926. ## Design Like the earlier scout cruisers, the Boadicea class was designed to provide destroyer flotillas with a command ship, theoretically offering the ability to scout ahead of the group and locate targets for the smaller ships to attack. They were enlarged and more powerfully armed versions of the earlier ships, fitted with steam turbines. Curiously, they were no faster than the older ships and equally unsuccessful in their intended role as they lacked the speed of the destroyers they were supposed to escort. Displacing 3,350 long tons (3,400 t), the ships had an overall length of 405 feet (123.4 m), a beam of 41 feet 6 inches (12.6 m) and a deep draught of 14 feet (4.3 m). They were powered by two sets of Parsons steam turbines, each driving two shafts. The turbines produced a total of 18,000 indicated horsepower (13,000 kW), using steam produced by 12 Yarrow boilers that burned both fuel oil and coal, and gave a maximum speed of 25 knots (46 km/h; 29 mph). They carried a maximum of 780 long tons (790 t) of coal and 189 long tons (192 t) of fuel oil that gave them a range of 4,260 nautical miles (7,890 km; 4,900 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph). Her crew consisted of 317 officers and enlisted men. The main armament of the Boadicea class consisted of six breech-loading (BL) four-inch (102 mm) Mk VII guns. The forward pair of guns were mounted side by side on a platform on the forecastle, the middle pair were amidships, one on each broadside, and the two remaining guns were on the centreline of the quarterdeck, one ahead of the other. The guns fired their 31-pound (14 kg) shells to a range of about 11,400 yards (10,400 m). Her secondary armament was four quick-firing (QF) three-pounder 47 mm (1.9 in) Vickers Mk I guns and two submerged 21-inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes. During the war, four additional four-inch guns were added amidships to increase her firepower. A QF three-inch 20 cwt anti-aircraft gun was also added. In 1918 it was replaced by a four-inch gun. As scout cruisers, the ships were only lightly protected to maximise their speed. They had a curved protective deck that was 1 inch (25 mm) thick on the slope and 0.5 inches (13 mm) on the flat. Their conning tower was protected by 4 inches of armour. ## Ships ## Service Both Boadicea and Bellona began their careers with destroyer flotillas of the First Fleet, Boadicea as senior officers' ship for the 1st Destroyer Flotilla and Bellona with the 2nd Destroyer Flotilla. The former was transferred to the 3rd Destroyer Flotilla in mid-1912 and the sisters were transferred to the 2nd and the 1st Battle Squadrons, respectively, of the First Fleet in 1913. Both ships were assigned to positions at the rear of their squadrons and did not fire their guns during the Battle of Jutland on 31 May – 1 June 1916. The sisters remained with their squadrons until 1917 when they were converted into minelayers, Bellona in May and Boadicea in October, Bellona replacing her sister in the 2nd Battle Squadron that month. After her conversion, Boadicea was assigned to the 4th Battle Squadron in January 1918 and neither ship was reassigned before the end of the war. They laid mines at the entrance to the Kattegat on the nights of 18/19 and 24/25 February 1918 and both made several other sorties to lay their mines before the end of the war. They were placed in reserve after the war and taken out of service in 1920. Bellona was quickly sold for scrap in 1921, but Boadicea was not sold until 1926.

Moses Malone

American basketball player (1955–2015)

Moses Eugene Malone Sr. (March 23, 1955 – September 13, 2015) was an American professional basketball player who played in both the American Basketball Association (ABA) and the National Basketball Association (NBA) from 1974 through 1995. A center, he was named the NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) three times, was a 12-time NBA All-Star and an eight-time All-NBA Team selection. Malone led the Philadelphia 76ers to an NBA championship in 1983, winning both the league and Finals MVP. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility in 2001. Widely regarded as one of the greatest players in the sport's history, Malone is also seen as one of the most underrated NBA players. Malone began his professional career out of high school after he was selected in the third round of the 1974 ABA draft by the Utah Stars. He was named an ABA All-Star as a rookie and played two seasons in the league until it merged with the NBA in 1976. He landed in the NBA with the Buffalo Braves, who traded him after two games to the Houston Rockets. Malone became a five-time All-Star in six seasons with the Rockets. After leading the NBA in rebounding in 1979, he was named league MVP for the first time. He led the Rockets to the NBA Finals in 1981, and won his second MVP award in 1982. Traded to Philadelphia the following season, he repeated as MVP and led the 76ers to the 1983 championship. In his first of two stints with Philadelphia, he was an All-Star in each of his four seasons. Following another trade, Malone was an All-Star in his only two seasons with the then Washington Bullets (today's Wizards). He signed as a free agent with the Atlanta Hawks, earning his 12th straight and final NBA All-Star selection in his first season. In his later years, he played with the Milwaukee Bucks before returning to the 76ers and completing his career with the San Antonio Spurs. Malone was a tireless and physical player who led the NBA in rebounding six times, including a then-record five straight seasons (1981–1985). Nicknamed the "Chairman of the Boards" for his rebounding prowess, he finished his career as the all-time leader in offensive rebounds after leading both the ABA and NBA in the category a combined nine times. Combining his ABA and NBA statistics, Malone ranks ninth all-time in career points (29,580) and third in total rebounds (17,834). He was named to the ABA All-Time Team along with the NBA's 50th and 75th anniversary teams. ## Early life Malone was born in Petersburg, Virginia. He was an only child, raised primarily by his mother, Mary, who had dropped out of school after finishing the fifth grade. When Malone was two years old, Mary forced her husband to move out of their home due to his alcohol use. Malone's father then moved to Texas. Malone attended Petersburg High School, where he played basketball for the school's Crimson Wave. The team went undefeated in his final two years, winning 50 games and back-to-back Virginia state championships. Malone signed a letter of intent to play college basketball for the University of Maryland under head coach Lefty Driesell. ## ABA career ### Utah Stars (1974–1975) After the Utah Stars of the American Basketball Association (ABA) selected him in the third round of the 1974 ABA Draft, Malone decided to become a professional, becoming the first player in modern professional basketball to enter directly from high school. He began his professional career with Utah in the 1974–75 season after signing a five-year contract worth \$1 million. At and a somewhat skinny 215 pounds (98 kg) at the time, Malone began his pro career playing at forward until he bulked up enough to handle the rigors at center. As a rookie, he was named an ABA All-Star and earned ABA All-Rookie honors. In the 1975 ABA Playoffs, Malone averaged 22.7 points, 17.5 rebounds, and 1.5 blocks per game during a first round loss to the Denver Nuggets. ### Spirits of St. Louis (1975–1976) The Stars folded 16 games into the 1975–76 season, and Malone was sold to the ABA's Spirits of St. Louis to help pay down the Stars' debts, alongside Utah Teammates Ron Boone, Randy Denton, and Steve Green. He played for the Spirits for the remainder of the 1975–76 season, and they did not make the playoffs and finished with a 35-49 record. In two seasons in the ABA, Malone averaged 17.2 points and 12.9 rebounds per game. ## NBA career ### Buffalo Braves (1976) The ABA–NBA merger occurred after the 1975–76 season, but the Spirits of St. Louis were not among the ABA teams chosen to join the NBA. Malone had already been selected by the NBA's New Orleans Jazz in a December 1975 pre-merger draft for ABA players of undergraduate age. However, the NBA let them place Malone into the 1976 ABA Dispersal Draft pool in exchange for the return of their first-round draft pick in 1977, which they used to trade for Gail Goodrich. In the 1976 dispersal draft, held for the remaining ABA players, Malone was selected by the Portland Trail Blazers with the fifth overall pick. The Blazers, who had also acquired power forward Maurice Lucas in the draft, chose Malone for trading purposes. With a frontline of Lucas, Bill Walton and Lloyd Neal, Portland figured Malone would see little action. They traded him to the Buffalo Braves prior to the first game of the 1976–77 season for a first-round draft choice in the 1978 NBA draft and \$232,000. Malone played in two games with Buffalo. Because they could not meet Malone's demands for playing time, they then traded him to the Houston Rockets in exchange for first-round draft picks in the 1977 and 1978 drafts. ### Houston Rockets (1976–1982) #### 1976–77 season With the Houston Rockets, Malone played forward opposite Rudy Tomjanovich. He appeared in 82 games overall for both Buffalo and Houston and finished the season averaging 13.2 points per game (ppg) with 13.1 rebounds per game (rpg), ranking third in rpg. Malone set a then-NBA record with 437 offensive rebounds in a season, going on to surpass the mark two years later. Malone also blocked 2.21 shots per game, the seventh-most in the league. In the second game of the Eastern Conference Semifinals against the Washington Bullets, Malone recorded 15 offensive rebounds in the overtime win, setting an NBA playoff record. The Rockets reached the Eastern Conference Finals, where they lost 4–2 to the Philadelphia 76ers, his future team. #### 1977–78 season: First All-Star selection During his second season in the NBA, Malone was diagnosed with a stress fracture in his right foot, which caused him to miss the final 23 games. Despite the time missed to injury, Malone led the NBA with 380 total offensive rebounds and finished second with 15.0 rpg. His scoring improved to 19.4 ppg, and he made his first appearance in an NBA All-Star Game in 1978. #### 1978–79 season: First MVP award During the 1978–79 season, Malone emerged as one of the top centers in the league after gaining 15 pounds (6.8 kg) in the offseason. He averaged 24.8 points with a career-best .540 shooting percentage and established another career high with a league-leading 17.6 rpg while winning the NBA Most Valuable Player Award. He again led the league in offensive rebounds, setting an all-time single-season record with 587 offensive rebounds. He was voted to the All-NBA First Team and the All-Defensive Second Team. He was also voted by fans to start for the East at center in the 1979 NBA All-Star Game. On February 9, he grabbed a career-high 37 rebounds versus the New Orleans Jazz. Although the Rockets qualified for the playoffs, they were eliminated by the Atlanta Hawks in a first-round sweep. Malone averaged 24.5 points and 20.5 rebounds in the two games. #### 1979–80 season In 1979–80, Malone averaged 25.8 points, fifth-best in the NBA, and 14.5 rebounds, second-best in the league. He was named an All-Star for a third straight season and was also named to the All-NBA Second Team. In the opening round of the playoffs, Houston defeated the San Antonio Spurs in a best-of-three series. Malone registered 37 points and 20 rebounds in the deciding third game, leading the Rockets to a 141–120 victory. In the conference semifinals, the Rockets lost in a sweep to the Boston Celtics. #### 1980–81 season: First NBA Finals appearance In the 1980–81 season, Malone led the league with 14.8 rpg in 80 games and was again an All-Star as well as a member of the All-NBA Second Team. He finished second in scoring (28.8) to Adrian Dantley (30.7). On March 11, Malone scored 51 points against the Golden State Warriors. That postseason, Malone advanced the Rockets to the 1981 NBA Finals, by scoring 36 points and grabbing 11 rebounds in a decisive Game 5 Western Conference Finals win over the Kansas City Kings. In the finals, despite Malone averaging 22.3 points, 15.7 rebounds, and 2.2 blocks a game, he and the Rockets lost in six games to the Boston Celtics. #### 1981–82 season: Second MVP award In their first season in the Midwest Division, Houston and the Kansas City Kings tied for second place with identical 40–42 records. During the 1981-82 NBA season, Malone averaged 31.1 points with 14.7 rebounds and won his second MVP award. He repeated as the NBA leader in rebounds and was the runner-up for the league's scoring title to George Gervin (32.3). He was also the league leader in offensive rebounds (558) and minutes played (3,398, 42.0 per game). At the end of the season Malone earned his second placement on the All-NBA First Team. He set a career-high in scoring average and also set a single-game career-high with 53 points on February 2 against the San Diego Clippers. Nine days later, on February 11 against the Seattle SuperSonics, Malone eclipsed his own league record with 21 offensive rebounds. In Malone's last season in Houston the Rockets followed their NBA Finals appearance in 1981 with a first-round exit in the 1982 playoffs. Though he averaged 24.0 points with 17.0 rebounds, Seattle defeated Houston 2–1. ### Philadelphia 76ers (1982–1986) #### 1982–83 season: Championship season and Finals MVP Malone became a restricted free agent after the 1981–82 season. He signed an offer sheet of six-years for \$13.2 million with the Philadelphia 76ers on September 2, 1982. The 76ers were coming off a 4–2 loss in the Finals to the Los Angeles Lakers, whose center, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, outplayed their big-man duo of Darryl Dawkins and Caldwell Jones. The Rockets franchise was sold, and the new owners decided that Malone's \$2 million annual salary did not fit their plans. Houston matched the offer and agreed to trade Malone to the 76ers for Jones and their first-round pick in the 1983 NBA draft on September 15. With Julius Erving, Maurice Cheeks, Andrew Toney, and Bobby Jones, the Sixers ran away from the league en route to the NBA championship. Malone was named the league MVP for the second straight year, becoming the only NBA player ever to win the award in consecutive seasons with two different teams, a feat matched only by Barry Bonds (1992–1993) in the four major American sports leagues. That year, Malone averaged 15.3 rebounds per game, which led the league for the third consecutive year, and also averaged 24.5 points, which was fifth-best in the NBA. He was an All-Star for the sixth consecutive season and earned first-team honors on both the All-NBA and All-Defensive teams. The 76ers lost only one game in the postseason as they won the league championship, defeating the Lakers in a 4–0 sweep in the 1983 NBA Finals. In 13 playoff games, Malone averaged 26.0 points with 15.8 rebounds. He was named the Finals MVP, having outrebounded Abdul-Jabbar 72–30 in the series. It was also around this time that Malone began to tutor Hakeem Olajuwon, passing on the torch to the future Rockets superstar. His head coach Billy Cunningham said, "Let's not make believe. The difference from last year was Moses." Before the playoffs began, Malone predicted in Southern vernacular that Philadelphia would go "fo, fo, fo", envisioning a four-game sweep in each of the playoffs' three rounds, playing the minimum 12 games. His prediction (and its formulation) became famous: The New York Times called it "an enduring quotation" and "an unforgettable line," and Comcast SportsNet called it "one of the greatest rallying cries ever uttered." As it transpired, the Sixers only lost one playoff game (Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals to the Milwaukee Bucks) en route to making Malone a world champion for the first time, sweeping the Knicks in the first round and the Lakers in the finals. This led to the inside of that year's championship ring being inscribed "fo' fi' fo (four, five, four)." The 76ers' 12–1 cruise through the 1983 playoffs was, at the time, the most dominant playoff run in NBA history. #### 1983–84 season In the 1983–84 season Malone led the league in rebounding with 13.4 rpg. He was limited to 71 games that season due to ankle injuries, his lowest since the 1977–78 season. Malone scored 22.7 ppg in his second season with Philadelphia and was named to the All-NBA Second Team. Malone was selected again for the All-Star Game but he was unable to play because of an ankle injury. During the season he averaged 21.4 points with 13.8 rebounds in five games in the playoffs, but Philadelphia lost in a first-round upset against the New Jersey Nets. #### 1984–85 season The Sixers selected Charles Barkley in the 1984 NBA draft. When he reported to training camp at 300 pounds (140 kg), Malone began to mentor him, encouraging him to get in better shape. Barkley got down to 255 pounds (116 kg) and made the NBA All-Rookie Team. In the 1984–85 season, Malone recorded 13.1 rpg, leading the NBA in rebounding for a record-setting fifth straight season (since surpassed by Dennis Rodman with seven consecutive seasons). He was voted by a fan ballot to the All-Star team for the eighth time and finished the season with 24.6 ppg, which ranked ninth-best in the league. He received his fourth All-NBA First Team honor and finished third in the NBA Most Valuable Player Award balloting; the award was won by Larry Bird. Malone scored his 15,000th NBA point on November 28, and grabbed his 10,000th NBA rebound on March 29. He scored 51 points against the Detroit Pistons on November 14. The 76ers reached the Eastern Conference Finals in 1985 but were defeated 4–1 by the Celtics. #### 1985–86 season Malone's 1985–86 season ended when he suffered an orbital fracture in his right eye in a March 28 game against the Bucks. Despite hopes that he might return during the playoffs, he was ruled out for the postseason. In the Eastern Conference Semifinals, Philadelphia lost 4–3 to the Bucks. Malone averaged 23.8 points with 11.8 rebounds in 74 appearances that season. He ranked seventh in the league in scoring and fourth in rebounding, ending his five-season streak as the NBA rebounding champion. Malone was named an All-Star, but he was not named to the All-NBA Team, the first time he was not selected since 1978. ### Washington Bullets (1986–1988) Shortly after the 1985–86 season, Philadelphia traded Malone, Terry Catledge, and two first-round draft picks to the Washington Bullets in exchange for Jeff Ruland and Clifford T. Robinson. Malone bounced back from an injury-shortened 1985–86 campaign, averaging 24.1 points with 11.3 rebounds. He was named to his 10th consecutive All-Star Game and again was named to the All-NBA Second Team. Malone was the only player to finish in the top 10 in both ppg and rpg; he placed ninth in both categories. Malone scored his 20,000th NBA point on April 12 against the Detroit Pistons. He scored 50 points versus the New Jersey Nets on April 8, joining Earl Monroe (56) and Phil Chenier (52) as the only Bullets players ever to score 50 points in a game. Washington appeared in the postseason but was swept by the Pistons in the first round. Malone averaged 20.7 points and 12.7 rebounds in the series. In his 12th NBA season, Malone ranked eighth in the NBA in rebounding (11.2) and 19th in scoring (20.3). Malone was named to his 11th consecutive All-Star Game in 1988. Malone scored in double figures in 76 of 79 games and recorded 55 double-doubles for the year. The Bullets reached the 1988 NBA Playoffs, but lost to Detroit 3–2 in their first-round series. Malone averaged 18.6 points with 11.2 rebounds in the series. ### Atlanta Hawks (1988–1991) #### 1988–89 season: Final All-Star selection Before the 1988–89 season, Malone agreed to a three-year deal to play with the Atlanta Hawks. The Hawks, featuring Dominique Wilkins, had won at least 50 games in the prior three seasons, and believed the free-agent center was a missing piece to a potential championship team. During the season, Malone averaged 20.2 points with 11.8 rebounds, becoming the first and only player in professional history to average 20 points and 10 rebounds for four different teams. He was voted by a fan ballot to the 1989 NBA All-Star Game, which was his 12th straight and final appearance. Malone reached double figures in points in 75 of his 81 games and recorded double figures in rebounds 55 times. On February 4, 1989, he scored a season-high 37 points against the Phoenix Suns. The Hawks were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs by Milwaukee. In the series, Malone scored 21.0 ppg and had 12.0 rpg. #### 1989–90 season The following season, Malone finished with 18.9 ppg and 10.0 rpg, ending a string of 11 consecutive 20–10 campaigns. Malone led the NBA with 364 offensive rebounds and tied for eighth in rpg. In Mike Fratello's final year as head coach, Atlanta finished with a 41–41 record, failing to qualify for the playoffs. Malone began the 1990–91 season as the Hawks' starting center, but after 15 games, Atlanta's new coach, Bob Weiss, made Jon Koncak the starter and Malone his backup for the final 67 contests. #### 1990–91 season Coming off the bench for the first time in his career, Malone averaged 10.6 points with 8.1 rebounds in 23.3 minutes per game while starting just 18 of 82 games played during the 1990–91 season—all career lows at that point. On November 3, against the Indiana Pacers, Malone became the NBA career leader in free throws made with 7,695, besting the previous record set by Oscar Robertson. On November 21, against the Bucks, Malone scored his 25,000th career point. On March 15, he recorded his 15,000th career rebound against the Dallas Mavericks. Malone surpassed Wilt Chamberlain's mark of consecutive games without fouling out with his 1,046th straight game against the Detroit Pistons on April 19. The Hawks returned to the playoffs but were eliminated in the first round by Detroit, 3–2. In the series, Malone averaged just 4.2 points with 6.2 rebounds. ### Milwaukee Bucks (1991–1993) A free agent after the 1990–91 season, Malone signed a two-year contract with the Milwaukee Bucks. Malone was reported to earn \$1.6 million in the first season and \$2 million for the second season. Malone once again started at center during the 1991–92 season, averaging 15.6 points with 9.1 rebounds while playing in all 82 games. He led the Bucks in rebounding and finished second on the team in scoring. He scored a season-high 30 points twice and grabbed 19 rebounds against the Seattle SuperSonics on March 27. Milwaukee finished with a 31–51 record, tied for last place of the Central Division with the Charlotte Hornets. After one practice in training camp in October 1992, Malone was sidelined due to a herniated disc in his back. After trying to play through the pain, he decided to have surgery in November. Recovery from the surgery caused Malone to miss the majority of the 1992–93 season. He returned to the Bucks on March 27, appearing in 11 games during the remainder of the season. Struggling with the younger players on their roster, the Bucks finished 28–54 and last in the Central Division. ### Return to Philadelphia (1993–1994) The Philadelphia 76ers signed Malone as a free agent in August, so that he could serve as a backup and mentor to 7-foot-6-inch (2.29 m) rookie Shawn Bradley. Malone appeared in 55 games as a reserve for the 76ers, averaging 5.3 points with 4.1 rebounds. ### San Antonio Spurs (1994–1995) In 1994, Malone signed with the San Antonio Spurs, where he was used as a back-up center to David Robinson. The 1994–95 NBA season was his last in the NBA, and at that time, he was the only remaining active former ABA player. During the final game of his NBA career, against the Charlotte Hornets, he hit a buzzer-beating three-point shot from the opposing free throw line, 74 feet (23 m) away from the basket. He played 17 games for the Spurs. ## Player profile Malone stood 6 feet 10 inches (2.08 m) and weighed 260 pounds (120 kg). Described as "relentless" and "a force on the boards like no other," he pounded his opponents into submission with ferocious effort and physical play. Nicknamed "Chairman of the Boards" for his rebounding prowess, he was notable for rebounding and scoring off his own misses, possessing the strength, quickness, and zeal to recover the ball before his opponents. This led to some contending he intentionally missed shots to pad his rebounding statistics. He was not a very good passer. When Carroll Dawson, an assistant coach with the Rockets, suggested that Malone needed to improve his passing, he replied, "They ain't paying me to pass." He finished his career with the most combined ABA and NBA offensive rebounds (7,382), 35 percent over runner-up Artis Gilmore. Nine times he led his respective league in offensive rebounds, and five other times he finished in the top three. He also holds NBA records for the most offensive rebounds in a career (6,731), season (587), and game (21). Malone was a 13-time All-Star, and earned eight All-NBA selections, ranking ninth all-time with 29,580 points, and third with 17,834 rebounds. He is one of three players to exceed 28,000 points and 17,000 rebounds. He also ranks second all-time in free throws made (9,018) and attempted (11,864). Malone is one of just eight players who have been named NBA MVP three or more times. He led the league in rebounds six times, including five straight from 1980 through 1985. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility in 2001. The Rockets retired his No. 24 jersey in 1998, and the 76ers retired his No. 2 on February 8, 2019. In addition to retiring Malone's jersey number, the 76ers also unveiled a statue in front of the team's training facility in Camden, New Jersey. In 2022, to commemorate the NBA's 75th Anniversary The Athletic ranked their top 75 players of all time, and named Malone as the 18th greatest player in NBA history. ## Awards and honors - 1983 NBA champion - 1983 NBA Finals MVP - 3× NBA MVP - 13× All-Star (1 ABA, 12 NBA) - Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame (class of 2001) - No. 2 retired by the Philadelphia 76ers - No. 24 retired by the Houston Rockets - NBA 50th Anniversary Team (1996) - NBA 75th Anniversary Team (2021) ## Personal life Malone and his wife, Alfreda Gill, had two sons, Moses Eugene Jr. and Michael Malone. Alfreda sued for divorce in September 1991, on the grounds of irreconcilable differences, cruelty, and adultery. She got a restraining order in June 1992, ordering Malone to refrain from contact with her during the course of the lawsuit. At that time, Malone denied allegations that he abused his wife or threatened to kill her. The divorce was granted in October 1992. In January 1993, Malone was arrested driving in Galveston, Texas, across Galveston Bay from his former wife's home, for having violated a peace bond Alfreda had obtained. Her affidavit for its issuance alleged that Malone had stalked her, illegally entered her home in League City, Texas, damaged her property and threatened to kill her. Malone posted bail and was released. Malone dated Leah Nash, whom he had met in 2006, though they did not marry nor live together. They had a son, Micah Francois Malone, who was six years old at the time of Malone's death. ### Death Malone died in his sleep from heart disease at the age of 60, on the morning of September 13, 2015, at a hotel in Norfolk, Virginia. He had been scheduled to play in a charity golf tournament that day and was found unresponsive in his room when he did not appear for breakfast or answer his phone. Malone had previously complained of an irregular heartbeat and was reported to have been wearing a heart monitor when he died. ## NBA career statistics ### Regular season \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\| \| style="text-align:left;"\|Utah (ABA) \| 83 \|\| \|\| 38.6 \|\| .571 \|\| .000 \|\| .635 \|\| 14.6 \|\| 1.0 \|\| 1.0 \|\| 1.5 \|\| 18.8 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\| \| style="text-align:left;"\|St. Louis (ABA) \| 43 \|\| \|\| 27.2 \|\| .512 \|\| .000 \|\| .612 \|\| 9.6 \|\| 1.3 \|\| .6 \|\| .7 \|\| 14.3 \|- \| style="text-align:left";\|1976–77 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Buffalo \| 2 \|\| \|\| 3.0 \|\| \|\| \|\| \|\| .5 \|\| .0 \|\| .0 \|\| .0 \|\| .0 \|- \| style="text-align:left";\|1976–77 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Houston \| 80 \|\| \|\| 31.3 \|\| .480 \|\| \|\| .693 \|\| 13.4 \|\| 1.1 \|\| .8\|\| 2.3 \|\| 13.5 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|1977–78 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Houston \| 59 \|\| \|\| 35.7 \|\| .499 \|\| \|\| .718 \|\| 15.0 \|\| .5 \|\| .8 \|\| 1.3 \|\| 19.4 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|1978–79 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Houston \| style="background:#cfecec;"\|82\* \|\| \|\| style="background:#cfecec;"\|41.3\* \|\| .540 \|\| \|\| .739 \|\| style="background:#cfecec;"\|17.6\* \|\| 1.8 \|\| 1.0 \|\| 1.5 \|\| 24.8 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|1979–80 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Houston \| style="background:#cfecec;"\|82\* \|\| \|\| 38.3 \|\| .502 \|\| .000 \|\| .719 \|\| 14.5 \|\| 1.8 \|\| 1.0 \|\| 1.3 \|\| 25.8 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|1980–81 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Houston \| 80 \|\| \|\| 40.6 \|\| .522 \|\| .333 \|\| .757 \|\| style="background:#cfecec;"\|14.8\* \|\| 1.8 \|\| 1.0 \|\| 1.9 \|\| 27.8 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|1981–82 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Houston \| 81 \|\| 81 \|\| style="background:#cfecec;"\|42.0\* \|\| .519 \|\| .000 \|\| .762 \|\| style="background:#cfecec;"\|14.7\* \|\| 1.8 \|\| .9 \|\| 1.5 \|\| 31.1 \|- \| style="text-align:left; background:#afe6ba;"\|1982–83† \| style="text-align:left;"\|Philadelphia \| 78 \|\| 78 \|\| 37.5 \|\| .501 \|\| .000 \|\| .761 \|\| style="background:#cfecec;"\|15.3\* \|\| 1.3 \|\| 1.1 \|\| 2.0\|\| 24.5 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|1983–84 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Philadelphia \| 71 \|\| 71 \|\| 36.8 \|\| .483 \|\| .000 \|\| .750 \|\| style="background:#cfecec;"\|13.4\* \|\| 1.4 \|\| 1.0 \|\| 1.5 \|\| 22.7 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|1984–85 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Philadelphia \| 79 \|\| 79 \|\| 37.4 \|\| .469 \|\| .000 \|\| .815 \|\| style="background:#cfecec;"\|13.1\* \|\| 1.6 \|\| .8 \|\| 1.6 \|\| 24.6 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|1985–86 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Philadelphia \| 74 \|\| 74 \|\| 36.6 \|\| .458 \|\| .000 \|\| .787 \|\| 11.8 \|\| 1.2 \|\| .9 \|\| 1.0 \|\| 23.8 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|1986–87 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Washington \| 73 \|\| 70 \|\| 34.1 \|\| .454 \|\| .000 \|\| .824 \|\| 11.3 \|\| 1.6 \|\| .8\|\| 1.3 \|\| 24.1 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|1987–88 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Washington \| 79 \|\| 78 \|\| 34.1 \|\| .487 \|\| .286 \|\| .788 \|\| 11.2 \|\| 1.4 \|\| .7 \|\| .9 \|\| 20.3 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|1988–89 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Atlanta \| 81 \|\| 80 \|\| 35.5 \|\| .491 \|\| .000 \|\| .789 \|\| 11.8 \|\| 1.4 \|\| 1.0 \|\| 1.2 \|\| 20.2 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|1989–90 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Atlanta \| 81 \|\| 81 \|\| 33.8 \|\| .480 \|\| .111 \|\| .781 \|\| 10.0 \|\| 1.6 \|\| .6 \|\| 1.0 \|\| 18.9 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|1990–91 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Atlanta \| style="background:#cfecec;"\|82\* \|\| 15 \|\| 23.3 \|\| .468 \|\| .000 \|\| .831 \|\| 8.1 \|\| .8 \|\| .4 \|\| .9 \|\| 10.6 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|1991–92 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Milwaukee \| 82 \|\| 77 \|\| 30.6 \|\| .474 \|\| .375 \|\| .786 \|\| 9.1 \|\| 1.1 \|\| .9 \|\| .8 \|\| 15.6 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|1992–93 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Milwaukee \| 11 \|\| 0 \|\| 9.5 \|\| .310 \|\| \|\| .774 \|\| 4.2 \|\| .6 \|\| .1 \|\| .7 \|\| 4.5 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|1993–94 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Philadelphia \| 55 \|\| 0 \|\| 11.2 \|\| .440 \|\| .000 \|\| .769 \|\| 4.1 \|\| .6 \|\| .2 \|\| .3 \|\| 5.3 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|1994–95 \| style="text-align:left;"\|San Antonio \| 17 \|\| 0 \|\| 8.8 \|\| .371 \|\| .500 \|\| .688 \|\| 2.7 \|\| .4 \|\| .1 \|\| .2 \|\| 2.9 \|- class="sortbottom" \| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"\|Career \| 1,455 \|\| 784 \|\| 34.0 \|\| .495 \|\| .096 \|\| .760 \|\| 12.3 \|\| 1.3 \|\| .8 \|\| 1.3 \|\| 20.3 ### Playoffs \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|1975 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Utah (ABA) \| 6 \|\| \|\| 39.2 \|\| .638 \|\| \|\| .667 \|\| 17.5 \|\| 1.5 \|\| .0 \|\| 1.5 \|\| 22.7 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|1977 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Houston \| 12 \|\| \|\| 43.2 \|\| .500 \|\| \|\| .692 \|\| 16.9 \|\| .6 \|\| 1.1 \|\| 1.8 \|\| 18.8 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|1979 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Houston \| 2 \|\| \|\| 39.0 \|\| .528 \|\| \|\| .722 \|\| 20.5 \|\| 1.0 \|\| .5 \|\| 4.0 \|\| 24.5 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|1980 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Houston \| 7 \|\| \|\| 39.3 \|\| .536 \|\| .000 \|\| .767 \|\|13.9 \|\| 1.0 \|\| .6 \|\| 2.3 \|\| 25.9 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|1981 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Houston \| 21 \|\| \|\|45.5 \|\| .479 \|\| .000 \|\| .712 \|\| 14.5 \|\| 1.7 \|\| .6 \|\| 1.6 \|\| 26.8 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|1982 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Houston \| 3 \|\| \|\| 45.3 \|\| .433 \|\| \|\| .933 \|\|17.0 \|\| 3.3 \|\| .7 \|\| .7 \|\| 24.0 \|- \| style="text-align:left; background:#afe6ba;"\|1983† \| style="text-align:left;"\|Philadelphia \| 13 \|\| \|\| 40.3 \|\| .536 \|\| .000 \|\| .717 \|\| 15.8 \|\| 1.5 \|\| 1.5 \|\| 1.9 \|\| 26.0 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|1984 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Philadelphia \| 5 \|\| \|\| 42.4 \|\| .458 \|\| \|\| .969 \|\| 13.8 \|\| 1.4 \|\| .6 \|\| 2.2 \|\| 21.4 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|1985 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Philadelphia \| 13 \|\| 13 \|\| 38.8 \|\| .425 \|\| .000 \|\| .796 \|\| 10.6 \|\| 1.8 \|\| 1.3 \|\| 1.7 \|\| 20.2 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|1987 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Washington \| 3 \|\| 3 \|\| 38.0 \|\| .447 \|\| \|\| .952 \|\| 12.7 \|\| 1.7 \|\| .0 \|\| 1.0 \|\| 20.7 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|1988 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Washington \| 5 \|\| 5 \|\| 39.6 \|\| .462 \|\| .000 \|\| .825 \|\| 11.2 \|\| 1.4 \|\| .6 \|\| .8 \|\| 18.6 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|1989 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Atlanta \| 5 \|\| 5 \|\| 39.4 \|\| .500 \|\| 1.000 \|\| .784 \|\| 12.0 \|\| 1.8 \|\| 1.4 \|\| .8 \|\| 21.0 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\|1991 \| style="text-align:left;"\|Atlanta \| 5 \|\| 0 \|\| 16.8 \|\| .200 \|\| \|\| .929 \|\| 6.2 \|\| .6 \|\| .4 \|\| .2 \|\| 4.2 \|- class="sortbottom" \| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"\|Career \| 100 \|\| 26 \|\| 40.3 \|\| .487 \|\| .143 \|\| .756 \|\| 14.0 \|\| 1.5 \|\| .8 \|\| 1.6 \|\| 22.1 ## See also - List of National Basketball Association career games played leaders - List of National Basketball Association career scoring leaders - List of National Basketball Association career rebounding leaders - List of National Basketball Association career blocks leaders - List of National Basketball Association career turnovers leaders - List of National Basketball Association career free throw scoring leaders - List of National Basketball Association career minutes played leaders - List of National Basketball Association annual rebounding leaders - List of National Basketball Association players with most rebounds in a game - List of National Basketball Association annual minutes leaders - List of National Basketball Association seasons played leaders

Jonah ibn Janah

Jewish rabbi, physician, and grammarian

Jonah ibn Janah or ibn Janach, born Abu al-Walīd Marwān ibn Janāḥ ( Arabic: أبو الوليد مروان بن جناح, or Marwan ibn Ganaḥ Hebrew: ר׳ יוֺנָה אִבְּן גַּ֗נָאח), (c. 990 – c. 1055), was a Jewish rabbi, physician and Hebrew grammarian active in Al-Andalus, or Islamic Spain. Born in Córdoba, ibn Janah was mentored there by Isaac ibn Gikatilla and Isaac ibn Mar Saul, before he moved around 1012, due to the sacking of the city. He then settled in Zaragoza, where he wrote Kitab al-Mustalhaq, which expanded on the research of Judah ben David Hayyuj and led to a series of controversial exchanges with Samuel ibn Naghrillah that remained unresolved during their lifetimes. His magnum opus, Kitab al-Anqih, contained both the first complete grammar for Hebrew and a dictionary of Classical Hebrew, and is considered "the most influential Hebrew grammar for centuries" and a foundational text in Hebrew scholarship. Ibn Janah is considered a very influential scholar in the field of Hebrew grammar; his works and theories were popular and cited by Hebrew scholars in Europe and the Middle East. His second seminal work of no less importance was a book entitled Kitāb al-Talḫīṣ ("Book of the Commentary" [variant: "The Abridged Book"]), being the oldest monograph on the nomenclature of simple drugs. ## Name The name in which he is known in Hebrew, Jonah ("dove", also spelled Yonah) was based on his Arabic patronymic ibn Janah ("the winged", also spelled ibn Janach). His Arabic personal name was Marwan, with the kunyah Abu al-Walid. Latin sources, including Avraham ibn Ezra referred to him as "Rabbi Marinus", a Latinization of his Arabic name Marwan. ## Early life There is little information on his family or early life, mostly known from biographical details found in his writings. He was born in Córdoba, in modern-day Spain and then-capital of the Umayyad Caliphate of Córdoba between 985 and 990. He studied in the nearby Lucena; his teachers there included Isaac ibn Gikatilla and Isaac ibn Mar Saul. His education included the languages of Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic, the exegesis of the Bible and the Quran, as well as rabbinic literature. Ibn Mar Saul was a master of poetry and ibn Janah attempted to write some Hebrew poetry himself, but was not very successful at it. Ibn Gikatilla was an expert in both Hebrew and Arabic grammar, and under his tutelage ibn Janah became fluent in Arabic, familiar with Arabic literature and "acquired an easy and graceful" Arabic writing style. Arabic became his language of choice for most of his writings. Ibn Janah also mentioned Judah ben David Hayyuj as one of his major influences, but he was unlikely to have met him, because Hayyuj was active in Córdoba and died before ibn Janah returned there. Around 1012, he returned to Córdoba, where he studied and practiced medicine. By this time, Al-Andalus or the Islamic Iberia was in a period of instability and civil war, known as the Fitna of al-Andalus. Córdoba was besieged and sacked by Berber rebels, who committed atrocities on its citizens, including the Jews. The caliphate of Córdoba soon disintegrated into small states known as the taifas. Ibn Janah and many other Jews were forced to leave the capital. He moved to the Upper March region of Al-Andalus, and – after a period of wandering there – settled in Zaragoza. He had at least one son. ## Career in Zaragoza He remained in Zaragoza until the end of his life, where he practiced medicine and wrote books. He wrote at least one medical book, Kitāb al-Taḫlīṣ (Arabic for "Book of the Commentary"), on formulae and measures of medical remedies, which for decades was thought to be lost, but recently discovered. Today, the only extant manuscript of this work is preserved in the Süleymaniye Library in Istanbul, Turkey (MS Aya Sofia 3603, fols. 1v–90v). Ibn Janah became known as a successful physician, often called by the epithet "the physician", and was mentioned by the 13th-century Syrian physician Ibn Abi Usaibia in his collection of biographies, Lives of the Physicians. Aside from his work in medicine, he also worked on the field of Hebrew grammar and philology, joining other scholars in Zaragoza including Solomon ibn Gabirol. ### Kitab al-Mustalhaq Ibn Janah was deeply influenced by the works of Judah ben David Hayyuj. Earlier Hebrew grammarians, such as Menahem ben Saruq and the Saadia Gaon, had believed that Hebrew words could have letter roots of any length. Hayyuj argued that this was not the case, and Hebrew roots are consistently triliteral. In his work, Kitab al-Mustalhaq ("Book of Criticism", variously translated as the "Book of Annexation"), or what is also known as Sefer HaHasagh in Hebrew, Ibn Janah strongly supported Hayyuj's work, but proposed some improvements. Among others, he added 54 roots to Hayyuj's 467, filled some gaps and clarified some ambiguities in his theories. A follow-up of this work was written by Ibn Janah, entitled Kitāb al-Taswi'a ("Book of Reprobation"), which he composed as a response to critics of his previous work. ### Dispute with Hayyuj's supporters In Kitab al-Mustalbag, ibn Janah praised Hayyuj's works and acknowledged them as the source for most of his knowledge on Hebrew grammar. He intended for this work to be uncontroversial, and to be an extension to the works of Hayyuj, whom he deeply admired. However, the work caused offense among Hayyuj's supporters. They considered Hayyuj the greatest authority of all times, worthy of taqlid or unquestioning conformity. They were offended when ibn Janah, a relatively junior scholar at the time, leveled a criticism on their master and found his works incomplete. One of the disciples of Hayyuj was Samuel ibn Naghrillah, the vizier of the Taifa of Granada, a Muslim state which emerged in the city after the fall of Córdoba. Ibn Janah subsequently wrote the brief Risalat al-Tanbih ("Letter of Admonition"), which defended his views, as well as Risalat al-Taqrib wa l-Tashil ("Letter of Approximation and Facilitation"), which sought to clarify Hayyuj's work for beginners. While visiting his friend, Abu Sulaiman ibn Taraka, he met a stranger from Granada who enumerated various attacks on ibn Janah's views. Ibn Janah wrote Kitab al-Taswi'a ("Book of Reprobation") to counter the arguments. Ibn Naghrilla then wrote Rasail al-rifaq ("Letters from Friends"), attacking ibn Janah, who then responded by writing Kitab al-Tashwir ("Book of Confusion"). Further pamphlets were exchanged between the two, which were later of great benefit to Hebrew grammarians. The pamphlets were in Arabic and were never translated into Hebrew. The debates were unresolved during their lifetimes. Many were lost, but some were reprinted and translated into French. ### Kitab al-Anqih Towards the end of his life, ibn Janah wrote what is considered his magnum opus, the Kitab al-Anqih ("Book of Minute Research"), known in Hebrew as Sefer HaDikduk. The book is divided into two sections: Kitab al-Luma ("Book of Many-Colored Flower-Beds"), or Sefer HaRikmah, which covered Hebrew grammar, and Kitab al-Usul ("Book of Roots"), or Sefer HaShorashim, a dictionary of Classical Hebrew words arranged by root. Ibn Janah's treatises on grammar greatly influenced men of later generations, among whom was Tanhum of Jerusalem (1220–1291), who cites Ibn Janah in his Judeo-Arabic lexicon, al-Murshid al-kāfī. #### Kitab al-Luma Kitab al-Luma (the Book of Variegated Flower-beds) was the first complete Hebrew grammar ever produced. During his time, works of Arabic grammar and Quranic exegesis had a large influence among Hebrew grammarians. In this work, Ibn Janah drew from the Arabic grammatical works of Sibawayh, Al-Mubarrad and others, both referencing them and directly copying from them. The book consisted of 54 chapters, inspired by how Arabic grammars were organized. By using similarities between the two Semitic languages, he adapted existing rules and theories of the Arabic language and used them for Hebrew. These introductions allowed the Bible to be analyzed by criteria similar to those used by Quranic scholars of the time. Ibn Janah also introduced the concept of lexical substitution in interpreting Classical Hebrew. This concept, in which the meaning of a word in the Bible was substituted by a closely associated word, proved to be controversial. Twelfth-century biblical commentator Abraham ibn Ezra strongly opposed it and called it "madness" close to heresy. #### Kitab al-Usul Kitab al-Usul (The Book of Roots), the dictionary, was arranged into 22 chapters—one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The dictionary included more than 2,000 roots, nearly all of them triliteral. Less than five percent of the roots have more than three letters, and they were added as appendix in each chapter. Definitions for the words were derived from the Talmud, Tanakh or other classical Jewish works, as well as similar Arabic and Aramaic words. This approach was controversial and new in Hebrew scholarship. Ibn Janah defended his method by pointing to precedents in the Talmud as well as previous works by Jewish writers in Babylonia and North Africa, which all used examples from other languages to define Hebrew words. ## Legacy Ibn Janah died in approximately 1055, his works quickly became popular among Hebrew scholars in Spain. They were initially inaccessible in other parts of Europe, which did not read Arabic. However, in late twelfth century, Spanish-Jewish scholars in Italy and southern France spread Ibn Janah's work there and to the rest of Europe. Ibn Janah's main work, Kitab al-Anqih, was translated into Hebrew by Judah ben Saul ibn Tibbon in 1214. This translation as well as others spread ibn Janah's methods and fame outside the Arabic-speaking Jews. He was subsequently cited by Hebrew scholars and exegetes in the Iberian peninsula, the Middle East and southern France. In 1875 Kitab al-Usul was published in English as "The Book of Hebrew Roots", and a second printing with some corrections occurred in 1968. It was republished in Hebrew in 1876. His work, research and methodology are considered deeply important. The Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World (EJIW) describes him as "one of the best-known, most influential, closely followed, and highly praised scholars" of Hebrew. Professor of Judaic Studies Michael L. Satlow writes that Kitab al-Anqih is "fundamental to the study of Hebrew grammar"; Sephardic Studies Professor Zion Zohar calls it "the most influential Hebrew grammar for centuries", and an example of where "medieval Judeo-Arabic literary culture reached its apogee". Writer David Tene "s" on Kitab al-Luna, calling it "the first complete description of Biblical Hebrew, and no similar work - comparable in scope, depth and precision - was written until modern times...[it was] the high point of linguistic thought in all [medieval grammatical] history". The EJIW described Kitab al-Usul as "the basis of all other medieval Hebrew dictionaries". The Jewish Encyclopedia, however, notes "serious gaps" in Kitab al-Tankih, because it does not discuss vowels and accents, and because it omits explaining Hayyuj's works on which it is based on. The Encyclopædia Britannica calls him "perhaps the most important medieval Hebrew grammarian and lexicographer" and says that his works "clarif[ied] the meaning of many words" and contained the "origin of various corrections by modern textual critics".

Shawn Lonsdale

American activist (1969–2008)

Shawn Lonsdale (May 21, 1969 – February 16, 2008) was a videographer and prominent critic of the Church of Scientology. He resided in Clearwater, Florida, and regularly videotaped members of Scientology coming and going from church activities in Clearwater. Lonsdale had initially intended to do a photography project on homeless people in Clearwater, but after an experience at a City Council meeting, he began to research Scientology. Lonsdale got into an argument with a Scientologist at the City Council meeting, and the Scientologist followed him home and the next day Lonsdale observed a van waiting for two hours outside his home. After researching the Church of Scientology on critical websites, he decided to expose information about the organization. He established a website, and filmed video footage of Scientologists going about activities in Clearwater, and aired edited footage on a local Public-access television cable TV station. After getting into a physical altercation with a Scientologist while filming, the Scientologist was arrested and charged with misdemeanor battery, but was later released and the charges were dropped. The Church of Scientology hired private investigators and discovered a criminal record on Lonsdale, and this was subsequently publicized by a Scientologist on fliers and on a website. Lonsdale was subpoenaed by the Church of Scientology in 2006, and they accused him of being affiliated with the Lisa McPherson Trust, a group critical of Scientology which was restricted in where it could protest in Clearwater. In 2007, Lonsdale appeared on the BBC Panorama program Scientology and Me and was interviewed by journalist John Sweeney. Later in the program, Sweeney lost his temper and shouted at a Scientology representative when he was accused of giving Lonsdale a "soft interview". Lonsdale died suddenly on February 16, 2008, and a Clearwater police spokeswoman stated that the death appears to be due to suicide. ## Critic of Scientology Lonsdale, never a Scientologist himself, became critical of the Church of Scientology in mid-2006, and often stood outside in downtown Clearwater near Scientology's spiritual headquarters wearing a sandwich board sign that read "Cult Watch". Lonsdale became interested in Scientology after getting into a fight with a Scientologist over redevelopment issues while at a City Council meeting. After the Scientologist followed Lonsdale's car home and Lonsdale noticed a van parked in front of his home for two hours the following day, he began to research the background of Scientology on anti-Scientology sites on the Internet and in the library. He taped hours of footage of Scientology staffers, security guards, and verbal confrontations with Scientologists, and edited clips into a pseudo-documentary which aired on local public-access television. Lonsdale dropped fliers outside downtown businesses and picked through trash from a Scientology-owned business and posted documents online. He parked outside a Scientology cafeteria with posters in his car window which stated that key Scientology texts were available for free on the Internet: "OT I-VIII for free at xenu.net." On July 8, 2006, Lonsdale got into a physical altercation with a Scientologist while filming the Church of Scientology in Clearwater. A spokeswoman for the Church of Scientology told Bay News 9 that Lonsdale had been harassing their staff members, and that the fight was not related to the church. Lonsdale stated "Basically, I'm filming a pseudo-documentary for one of our free-access Pinellas web channels," and said that while filming a Scientologist came out of a coffee shop and yelled that Lonsdale was a religious bigot. Lonsdale stated "I picked up the camera again and started filming him ... He went right for my face and my head, backed me up into a pole to which I had no other choice but to defend myself." The Scientologist was arrested by Clearwater police and charged with battery, but the State Attorney's Office of Florida decided not to pursue charges. After the incident the Clearwater police Deputy Chief viewed a videotape of the altercation, and concluded that Lonsdale was the victim and that his police officers made the right decision in arresting the Scientologist. After viewing the videotape, the Assistant State Attorney stated "it is just not going to be a prosecutable case," and said that the video shows "pretty much mutual aggression" between Lonsdale and the Scientologist. The Assistant State Attorney stated that the video showed aggression on both sides, and that Lonsdale's criticism of Scientology on the internet made the case "unprosecutable". Lonsdale's attorney Luke Lirot stated "It is another example of the State Attorney's Office's historical reluctance to tangle with Scientology." Scientology spokeswoman Pat Harney said that church members had been told to avoid Lonsdale, and told the St. Petersburg Times that Scientologists had complained to police that they felt Lonsdale was stalking them. The police did not charge Lonsdale, stating that he had the right to take photos and video in public places. ### Response by Church of Scientology The Church of Scientology responded to Lonsdale's activities by hiring a private investigator to investigate him. The private investigator discovered that Lonsdale had two misdemeanor convictions for lewd and lascivious conduct dating back to 1999 and 2000, both related to public sex with men. In mid-July 2006, Posters with a mug shot of Lonsdale appeared in store windows warning that he had been arrested for sex crimes and was dangerous. The Church of Scientology told Bay News 9 that it did not hand out the fliers, but that they came from an organization calling the "Cleveland Street Safety League". The St. Petersburg Times reported that the man behind the "Cleveland Street Safety League" is "a longtime Scientologist known for confronting critics". The Scientologist behind the Cleveland Street Safety League created a website about Lonsdale and posted his arrest record and comments Lonsdale had made on a swinger site, and also called Lonsdale's family in New England claiming that Lonsdale needed mental help. Lonsdale's employer and landlord received phone calls from Scientology representatives who claimed that he was a religious bigot and dangerous. Lonsdale was subpoenaed by the Church of Scientology for a deposition in the fall of 2006, and the Church claimed that he belonged to an anti-Scientology group which had previously been barred from protesting in certain areas in downtown Clearwater, the Lisa McPherson Trust. Luke Lirot, the lawyer who defended Lonsdale in the matter, told the St. Petersburg Times: "I found him to be quite affable and truly a very intelligent man ... I certainly hope that a very thorough investigation is conducted." In his deposition, Lonsdale stated he was unemployed and began to educate himself about Scientology while working on a photography project on homeless people in Clearwater. After reading more about Scientology, he decided to shed light on the organization and irritate Scientologists. Of the claims Scientology made that Lonsdale was affiliated with the Lisa McPherson Trust, Lirot commented: "It was obvious to everybody he had nothing to do with the trust, and the trust had been disbanded and dissolved many years prior ... They just wanted to try to come up with a way to preclude him from exercising his right to picket in downtown Clearwater, and they were unsuccessful in doing that." ## Scientology and Me In May 2007, Lonsdale appeared on BBC's Panorama program in a piece titled "Scientology and Me", and was interviewed about his experiences as a critic of Scientology by journalist John Sweeney. When Sweeney asked Lonsdale why the Church of Scientology was publicizing derogatory things about him, Lonsdale replied: "They are trying to embarrass me. They try to paint you as crazy, so that no one will listen to you." During their interview, Tommy Davis arrived, opened a folder, and began to read out loud Lonsdale's criminal record. Later in the program, Sweeney was accused by Scientologist Tommy Davis of giving "convicted sexual pervert Shawn Lonsdale" a "soft interview". Sweeney lost his temper and began yelling at Davis, with both men shouting at each other back and forth. A Scientology-produced video of the incident was uploaded to YouTube and viewed over 856,000 times. ## Death In 2007, Lonsdale let his Scientology critique website lapse, and posted less frequently on his blogs and anti-Scientology message boards and chat forums. Spokeswoman Pat Harney stated that the Church had not heard from Lonsdale for months before his death. Former Scientologist Randy Payne told the St. Petersburg Times that Lonsdale "found it impossible" to make a living while spending the majority of his time as a critic of Scientology. Payne stated that in December 2007 Lonsdale had found steady work, and had planned to go back to school in order to get a private investigator's license. Clearwater police discovered Lonsdale's body after they were alerted by neighbors and found a garden hose connecting the exhaust pipe of Lonsdale's car with one of the windows of his home. Clearwater police spokeswoman Elizabeth Daly-Watts stated that there were no signs of foul play involved, and that police found what they believed to be a suicide note. Daly-Watts said that "It does appear to be a suicide." Police officially ruled Lonsdale's death as suicide on May 2, 2008. Scientology spokeswoman Pat Harney called Lonsdale's apparent suicide "awful" and stated "It's just unfortunate anybody feels they have to go to that length ... I wouldn't wish that on anybody." Jerald Rowlett, a fellow Scientology critic and friend from Michigan, told The Tampa Tribune: "In many ways Shawn was a hero to me ... He had a hard life and a history he knew Scientology would use to hurt him. And yet he still felt strongly enough to try to inform the public about the actions of Scientology." On March 1, 2008, John Sweeney remembered Lonsdale and spoke about him on the BBC Radio 4 program, From Our Own Correspondent. Sweeney stated: "Clearwater got that little bit more creepy recently, with the death - the police are treating it as suicide - of Shawn. When alive a Scientology spokesman said of him: 'He has no redeeming value to anyone, anywhere.' Well, he was a bit of a hero to me ... I for one mourn the loss - of a brave and singular American".

Lorena Hickok

20th-century American journalist

Lorena Alice "Hick" Hickok (March 7, 1893 – May 1, 1968) was a pioneering American journalist and long-term romantic interest of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. After an unhappy and unsettled childhood, Hickok found success as a reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune and the Associated Press (AP), becoming America's best-known female reporter by 1932. After covering Franklin D. Roosevelt's first presidential campaign, Hickok struck up a close relationship with the soon-to-be First Lady, and travelled with her extensively. The nature of their relationship has been widely debated, especially after 3000 of their mutual letters were discovered, confirming physical intimacy (Hickok was known to be a lesbian). The closeness of their relationship compromised Hickok's objectivity, leading her to resign from the AP and work as chief investigator for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA). She later promoted the 1939 New York World's Fair, and then served as executive secretary of the Women's Division of the Democratic National Committee, living mostly at the White House, where Hickok had a conjoining room with the First Lady. Hickok was the author of several books. ## Early life and career Lorena Alice Hickok was born on March 7, 1893, in East Troy, Wisconsin, the daughter of Addison J. Hickok (1860–1932), a dairy farmer who specialized in making butter, and Anna Hickok (née Anna Adelia Wiate, d. 1906). She had two sisters, Ruby Adelsa (later Ruby Claff, 1896–1971) and Myrtle. Her childhood was hard; her father was an alcoholic and was not consistently employed. When Lorena was 10 years old, the family moved to Bowdle, South Dakota, where in 1906, when Lorena was 13 years old, her mother, Anna, died of a stroke. In 1908, two years after his wife's passing, Addison married Emma Flashman, a divorcee who had worked as a housekeeper for the family after Anna's passing. Lorena's relationship with Addison was not a good one, he having been abusive and neglectful towards her, and he did not come to her defense when Emma forced her out of the family home. Having lost support from her father, 14-year-old Lorena worked variously as a housekeeper for an Irish family, in a boarding house infested with mice, in a rooming house for railroad workers on the edge of town, and in a farm kitchen. During her time at the rooming house, Hickok was forced to barricade her door with a chair so that male visitors to the house wouldn't be able to enter her room while she slept. She saw her father one more time in her life, when she was 15 years old, while on a train. Addison had no polite words for his eldest daughter, but the experience was a liberating one for the girl, who left the train with the realization that she was now an adult and her father could no longer strike her. Hickok made her way to Gettysburg, South Dakota, where she met and worked for a kind, elderly lady named Mrs. Dodd, who helped her to learn how to be an adult, teaching the teenager basic skills such as how to wash her hair. Under Dodd's influence, Hickok decided to return to Bowdle to go to school. In exchange for room and board, she started working for a wealthy family, the Bicketts. The living situation was not a good one for Hickok, as the wife demanded she devote all her free time to keeping house, which came at the expense of schoolwork. She left the Bicketts to live with the O'Malleys, who owned a saloon and were viewed with disdain. Unlike the Bickett family, Hickok found friendship with the couple, particularly the wife, who was somewhat of an outcast in Bowdle, not only for her family's source of income, but also for wearing makeup and wigs and drinking alcohol. Hickok was ultimately able to find some stability within her family in 1909, when she left South Dakota to meet Ella Ellis, a cousin whom she called Aunt Ella, in Chicago, Illinois. Prior to her departure, Mrs. O'Malley paid for her train fare and dressed her for the occasion. From there on, Hickock went on to graduate from high school in Battle Creek, Michigan, and she enrolled at Lawrence College in Appleton, Wisconsin, but dropped out. Unable to fit in at college, Hickok found work covering train arrivals and departures and wrote personal interest stories at The Battle Creek Evening News for \$7 a week. In an attempt to follow in the footsteps of her role model, novelist and former reporter Edna Ferber, she joined the Milwaukee Sentinel as its society editor and then moved on to the city beat, where she developed a talent as an interviewer. She interviewed celebrities, including actress Lillian Russell, pianist Ignacy Paderewski, and opera singers Nellie Melba and Geraldine Farrar, gaining a wide audience. She also became close friends with diva Ernestine Schumann-Heink. Hickok moved to Minneapolis to work for the Minneapolis Tribune. She enrolled at the University of Minnesota, but left when she was forced to live in a women's dormitory. She stayed with the Tribune, where she was given opportunities unusual for a female reporter. She had a byline and was the paper's chief reporter, covering politics and sports and preparing editorials. During her tenure with the paper, she also covered the football team, becoming one of the first female reporters to be assigned a sports beat. In 1923, she won an award from the Associated Press for writing the best feature story of the month, a piece on President Warren G. Harding's funeral train. During her years in Minneapolis, Hickok lived with a society reporter named Ella Morse, with whom she had an eight-year relationship. In 1926, Hickok was diagnosed with diabetes, and Morse persuaded her take a year's leave from the newspaper so the pair could travel to San Francisco and Hickok could write a novel. At the beginning of the leave, however, Morse unexpectedly eloped with an ex-boyfriend, leaving Hickok devastated. Unable to face a return to Minneapolis, Hickok moved to New York, landing a job with the New York Daily Mirror. After working for The Mirror for about a year, Hickok obtained a job with the Associated Press in 1928, where she became one of the wire service's top correspondents. Unusually for the time, she was assigned hard-news stories, which female journalists rarely were allowed to cover. Instead, they were assigned soft-news stories, which were thought to be more feminine. Her November 1928 story on the sinking of the SS Vestris was published in The New York Times under her own byline, the first woman's byline to appear in the paper. She also reported on the Lindbergh kidnapping and other national events. By 1932, she had become the nation's best-known female reporter. Hickok called herself by this time "the top gal reporter in the country". ## Early relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt Hickok first met Roosevelt in 1928 when assigned to interview her by the AP. In 1932, Hickok convinced her editors to allow her to cover Eleanor Roosevelt during her husband's presidential campaign and for the four-month period between his election and inauguration. When the mother of Franklin's secretary, Missy LeHand, died, Eleanor invited Hickok to accompany her to Potsdam, New York for the funeral. The women spent the long train ride talking, beginning a long friendship. During the 1932 election, Hickok always submitted her stories about Eleanor Roosevelt to the subject first for her approval or to Louis Howe, the campaign adviser to Franklin Roosevelt, becoming by the end of the election an unofficial press attaché for Eleanor. By Franklin's inauguration on March 4, 1933, Hickok had become Eleanor's closest friend. The two made trips together to Albany and Washington, D.C., and spent nearly every day in each other's company. Hickok joined the Roosevelts every Sunday night for dinner, while on other nights Eleanor joined Hickok at the theater or opera, or at dinners alone at Hickok's apartment. For the inauguration, Eleanor wore a sapphire ring Hickok had given her. That same day, Hickok interviewed Roosevelt in a White House bathroom, her first official interview as First Lady. By this time, Hickok was deeply in love with Roosevelt and finding it increasingly difficult to provide objective reporting. In addition, Hickok's job kept her largely in New York, while Eleanor was in Washington. Both women were troubled by the separation, professing their love by telephone and letter; Roosevelt put a picture of Hickok up in her study, which she told Hickok she kissed every night and every morning. During this period, Roosevelt wrote daily ten- to fifteen-page letters to "Hick", who was planning to write a biography of the First Lady. The nature of Hickok and Roosevelt's relationship has been a subject of dispute among historians. Roosevelt was close friends with several lesbian couples, such as Nancy Cook and Marion Dickerman, and Esther Lape and Elizabeth Fisher Read, suggesting that she understood lesbianism; Marie Souvestre, Roosevelt's childhood teacher and a great influence on her later thinking, was also a lesbian. Hickok biographer Doris Faber published some of Roosevelt and Hickok's correspondence in 1980, but concluded that the lovestruck phrasing was simply an "unusually belated schoolgirl crush" and warned historians not to be misled. Researcher Leila J. Rupp criticized Faber's argument, calling her book "a case study in homophobia" and arguing that Faber unwittingly presented "page after page of evidence that delineates the growth and development of a love affair between the two women". In 1992, Roosevelt biographer Blanche Wiesen Cook argued that the relationship was in fact romantic, generating national attention. Biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin summarized the letters between Hickok and Roosevelt thus: > Hick longed to kiss the soft spot at the corner of Eleanor's mouth; Eleanor yearned to hold Hick close; Hick despaired at being away from Eleanor; Eleanor wished she could lie down beside Hick and take her in her arms. Day after day, month after month, the tone in the letters on both sides remains fervent and loving. Goodwin concluded, however, that "whether Hick and Eleanor went beyond kisses and hugs" cannot be known for certain, and that the important issue is the impact the close relationship had on both women's lives. A 2011 essay by Russell Baker reviewing two new Roosevelt biographies in the New York Times Review of Books stated, "That the Hickok relationship was indeed erotic now seems beyond dispute considering what is known about the letters they exchanged." ## In the Roosevelt administration Early in the Roosevelt administration, Hickok is credited with pushing Eleanor to write her own newspaper column, "My Day", and to hold weekly press conferences specifically for female journalists. Hickok found it difficult to objectively cover the Roosevelts herself, however, and once suppressed a story at Eleanor's request. The declining quality of her reporting soon caused her to receive a pay cut. Despite her worries about leaving the career on which she had built her identity, Hickok quit the AP at Eleanor's urging in mid-1933. Eleanor then helped Hickok obtain the position as a Chief Investigator for Harry Hopkins' Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), where she conducted fact-finding missions. In June 1933, she resigned from the Associated Press and then spent the next month on vacation with Eleanor Roosevelt in New England and in the Atlantic provinces of Canada. In July 1933, Hopkins told Hickok: "What I want to you is to go around the country and look this thing over. I don't want statistics from you. I don't want the social worker angle. I just want your own reaction, as an ordinary citizen". Hickok traveled in a car that Eleanor had brought her which she named Bluette, heading first for the coal-mining districts of western Pennsylvania to enter the region of Appalachia. From West Virginia, she reported about the lives of the coal miners: "Some of them have been starving for eight years. I was told there are children in West Virginia who never tasted milk! I visited one group of 45 blacklisted miners and their families who had been living in tents two years...Most of the women you see in the camps are going without shoes or stockings...It's fairly common to see children entirely naked". She reported that the most common causes of death in West Virginia were tuberculosis, asthma, typhoid, diphtheria, pellagra, and malnutrition. Many people in West Virginia where she reported "had been living for days on green corn and string beans—and precious little of that. At the Continental Hotel in Pineville, I was told that five babies up one of those creeks had died of starvation in the last ten days...Dysentery is so common that nobody says much about it." About the people of Appalachia, Hickok wrote that they were patriotic, religious and of "pure Anglo-Saxon stock", and she found them "curiously appealing". At the same time she criticized them for their apathy observing that they were willing to accept their fate as what God had intended for them. In the summer of 1933, she reported that 62 percent of people in the eastern counties of Kentucky were living on federal relief while another 150,000 people depended upon relief payments from the state government to feed their families. On 12 August 1933, the Commonwealth of Kentucky stopped relief payments because of a lack of funds, leading people going to the relief offices to find them closed and then wandering away silently. Hickok wrote: "I cannot for the life of me understand why they don't go down and raid the Blue Grass country". From Iowa, she wrote to Hopkins in October 1933 that the Depression "is 10 or 12 years old out here" and Sioux City was a "hotbed of the Reds". The same month she wrote from Minnesota that the farmers were growing unhappy with President Roosevelt as one farm leader told her: "We were promised a New Deal...Instead, we have the same old stacked deck". In a letter to Eleanor from North Dakota she stated: "These plains are beautiful. But, oh, the terrible, crushing drabness of life here. And the suffering, for both people and animals...Most of the farm buildings haven't been painted in God only knows how long...If I had to live here, I think I'd just quietly call it a day and commit suicide....The people up here are in a daze. A sort of nameless dread hangs over the place". In Morton County, North Dakota, Hickok left a church and found several farmers huddled around her car, trying to stay warm from the car's engine's heat on a cold winter day. One farm wife Hickok met had 10 children and was pregnant with her 11th child, saying she wished she had some contraceptives as she and her husband could not afford such a large family. Hickok wrote: "The plight of the livestock is pitiable...Half-starved horses have dropped in the harness right on the road job...They've even harvested Russian thistle to feed to their horses and cattle. Russian thistle, for your information, is a thistle plant with shallow roots that dries up in the fall and is blown across the plains like rolls of barbed wire. The effect on the digestive apparatus of an animal...would be, I should imagine, much the same as though it had eaten barbed wire". She called South Dakota "the Siberia of the United States. A more hopeless place I never saw. Half the people—particularly the farmers—are scared to death...The rest of the people are apathetic". In South Dakota, she found several farm wives serving Russian thistle soup to their children. Out on the South Dakota plains, she visited "...what had once been a house. No repairs have made in years. The kitchen floor was all patched up with pieces of tin...Great patches of plaster had fallen from the walls. Newspapers had been stuffed in the cracks about the windows. And in that house two small boys...were running about without a stitch on save some ragged overalls. No shoes or stockings. Their feet were purple with cold". She reported some of the normally conservative farmers of South Dakota were blaming capitalism for their plight and were turning towards Communism as Communist meetings on the Great Plains were well attended. Hickok also noted the Farm Holiday Association that called for the end of banks foreclosing on farms was growing popular on the Great Plains. When one bank foreclosed on a South Dakota farm and asked the county sheriff to evict the farmer and his family, she saw the "Family Holiday crowd" disarm the sheriff's deputies at gunpoint and "ended up tearing off the sheriff's clothes and beating him quite badly". But at the same time, she noted that for all the fury and violence of the Farm Holiday movement that the prevailing mood was still apathy, writing: "I was told in Bismarck that in the country I visited this afternoon I would find a good deal of unrest—'farm holiday' spirit. I can't say that I did. They seemed almost too patient for me". In December 1933, Eleanor wrote her: "Mr. Hopkins said today that your reports would be the best history of the Depression in future years". In December 1933, Hickok went on a two-month tour of the American South, where she was horrified by the poverty, malnutrition, and lack of education that she encountered. Hickok found life in the South even worse than on the Great Plains, which she previously found to be very "depressing". In January 1934, she reported that she had seen in rural Georgia "half-starved Whites and Blacks struggle in competition for less to eat than my dog gets at home, for the privilege of living in huts that are infinitely less comfortable than his kennel...If there is a school system in the state, it simply isn't functioning. It can't. The children just can't go to school, hundreds of them because they haven't the clothes. The illiterate parents of hundreds of others don't send them. As a result you've got the picture of hundreds of boys and girls in their teens down here in some of these rural areas who can't read or write. I'm not exaggerating...Why, some of them can barely talk!". In Savannah, a relief director told her: "Any Nigger who gets over \$8 a week is a spoiled Nigger, that's all...The Negroes regard the President as the Messiah, and think that they'll all be getting \$12 a week for the rest of their lives". In Florida, she wrote that she found seasonal farm workers on the citrus farms living in "peonage" while the hotels on the coasts were "comfortably filled". The citrus farmers of Florida had she wrote "got the world licked...for being mean-spirited, selfish and irresponsible". In February 1934, she reported from North Carolina about sharecropping: "The truth is that the rural South never has progressed beyond slave labor...When their slaves were taken away, they proceeded to establish a system of peonage that was as close to slavery as it possibly could be and included Whites as well as Blacks." From the textile mill towns of the Carolinas, Hickok wrote about the "blocks and blocks of shabby, tumbledown little houses" inhibited by the "lintheads" as the textile workers called themselves who were not normally paid cash, but rather company scrip which could only be used to purchase food at company stores . She urged Eleanor to visit a tent city of homeless ex-miners in Morgantown, West Virginia, an experience that led Eleanor to found the federal housing project of Arthurdale, West Virginia. In March 1934, Hickok accompanied Eleanor on a fact-finding trip to the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, reporting afterward to Hopkins that the island's poverty was too severe for FERA to usefully intervene. One of her most important conclusions was the Great Depression did not just plunge a prosperous nation into poverty, but rather that there was an "old poverty". Hickok reported that even before 1929 there were about 40 million Americans which included virtually the entire non-white population, almost the entire rural population and most of the old who were already living in poverty, and all the Depression had done was merely make things worse for people who were already struggling. Hopkins praised her for discovering "a volume of chronic poverty, unsuspected except by a few students and by those who always experienced it". In the town of Calais, Maine she found that most of the unemployed were Catholic French-Canadians while the relief workers were WASPs. Owing to religious and ethnic prejudices, Hickok reported "the people on relief in that town are subjected to a treatment that is almost medieval in its stinginess and stupidity". From Tennessee, she reported that she found relief workers "whose approach to the relief problem is so typical of the old line social worker, supported by private philanthropy and looking down his—only usually it was her—nose at God's patient poor, that it made me gag a little". In Texas, she visited an "intake" facility (where people applying for relief were assessed) and wrote: "Mr. Hopkins, did you ever spend a couple of hours sitting in an intake? Intake is about the nearest thing to Hell that I know anything about. The smell alone—I'd recognize it anywhere. And take that on top of the psychological effect of having to be there at all. God!" Hickok reported many of the people applying for relief were full of guilt and shame. The ethos of the "American Dream" had been so deeply engraved into the minds of so many Americans that those who found themselves without a job tended to blame themselves, feeling that their unemployment was due to some personal flaw that had condemned them to be failures in a society where in theory anyone would be successful with the right attitude. Such feelings were especially common with those who had formerly had white collar jobs as Hickok found them "dumb with misery" as they faced unemployment. In New Orleans, a newspaper editor told Hickok "The whole white collar class are taking an awful beating. They're whipped, that's all. And it's bad". One unemployed engineer told her "I had to murder my pride" before applying for relief. In Alabama, a lumberman told her "It took me a month [to apply for relief]. I used to go down there every day or so and walk past the place again and again. I just couldn't make myself go in". One 28-year-old laid-off teacher in Texas, fired as she was the most junior teacher, dejectedly told her: "If I can't make a living, I'm just no good, I guess". The mayor of Toledo, Ohio told Hickok: "I have seen thousands of these defeated, discouraged, hopeless men and women, cringing and fawning as they come to ask for public aid. It is a spectacle of national degeneration". During her time with FERA, Hickok developed a dislike of reporters. In one report to Hopkins in 1934, she wrote, "Believe me, the next state administrator who lets out any publicity on me is going to get his head cracked". In February 1934, Time called her "a rotund lady with a husky voice, a peremptory manner, baggy clothes", a description that wounded Hickok. In a letter to Hopkins' secretary, she asked, "Why the Hell CAN'T they leave me alone?" Following the incident, Hickok and Roosevelt redoubled their efforts to keep their relationship out of the spotlight; on one occasion, Roosevelt wrote to her, "We must must be careful this summer & keep it out of the papers when we are off together." In April 1934, a Texas businessman told her that the solution to America's problems was fascism as he maintained democracy was doomed. Hickok told Hopkins that "Honestly, after nearly a year of travelling about this country, I'm almost forced to agree with him. If I were 20 years younger and weighed 75 pounds less, I think I'd start out to be Joan of Arc of the Fascist movement in the United States...I've been out on this trip now for a little more than two weeks. In all that time I've hardly met a single person who seemed confident and cheerful. Relief loads are mounting. They can't see any improvement...Nobody seems to think any more that the thing [the New Deal] is going to WORK". From the Imperial Valley in California, she reported that the wealthy landowners were "simply hysterical" about the prospect of the Communists organizing the masses of the unemployed to lead a revolution. She wrote to Hopkins, "It looks as through we're in this relief business for a long, long time...The majority of those over 45 probably will NEVER get their jobs back". As Roosevelt became more active as first lady, however, she had less time for Hickok. Hickok grew angry and jealous at perceived slights, and demanded more time alone, which Roosevelt was unable to give; at other times, she attempted unsuccessfully to separate herself from Roosevelt. Though the pair remained friends throughout their lives, they continued to grow apart in the years that followed. In 1937, Roosevelt wrote to Hickok that "I never meant to hurt you in any way, but that is no excuse having done it...I am pulling back from all my contacts now...Such cruelty & stupidity is unpardonable when you reach my age." After an incident with her diabetes while traveling, Hickok resigned her FERA post for health reasons in late 1936. ## World's Fair On the advice of Roosevelt's secretary, Malvina Thompson, Hickok then sought work in New York with public relations man and politician Grover Whalen. Shortly after Franklin Roosevelt's 1936 re-election, Hickok was hired by Whalen to do publicity for the 1939 New York World's Fair. Opportunities for female employees of the Fair were limited, and she found the work unrewarding compared to her reporting days. Hickok primarily worked on promoting the fair to young people, including arranging class trips. Because Hickok rented both a country home and an apartment, she often faced financial problems despite her good salary during these years, and Roosevelt occasionally sent her small gifts of money. ## Democratic National Committee With help from Roosevelt, Hickok became the executive secretary of the Women's Division of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in February 1940, doing groundwork for the 1940 election. Taking to the road again, she wrote Roosevelt, "This job is such fun, dear ... It's the nearest thing to newspaper work I've found since I left the A.P." From early January 1941 until shortly after FDR's fourth inauguration in 1945, she lived at the White House. During her time there, Hickok's nominal address was at the Mayflower Hotel in DC, where she met most people. Also during this time, she formed an intense friendship with Marion Janet Harron, a United States Tax Court judge who was ten years younger than she and almost the only person to visit her at the White House. When Hickok's diabetes worsened in 1945, she was forced to leave her position with the DNC. Two years later, Roosevelt found her a position with the New York State Democratic Committee. When Hickok's health continued to decline, she moved to Hyde Park to be closer to Roosevelt. She lived in a cottage on the Roosevelt estate, where she died in 1968. She is buried at Rhinebeck Cemetery in Rhinebeck, New York. ## Personal life Hickok's interest in women began when she was young and over the course of her life, she had several long-term relationships with women. Some of her lovers ultimately married men or were married to men at the time they were with Hickok. Her most notable relationship was with Eleanor Roosevelt. After Roosevelt's husband won the presidency, Hickok lived in the White House. It is believed she had an affair with Mrs. Roosevelt. The relationship ended when Roosevelt traveled to Geneva to work on drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and took interest in her male doctor, Swiss physician David Gurewitsch. Hickok had diabetes, which eventually led to her death. She used the condition to avoid social situations, claiming it made it difficult for her to dine with others, but Hickok had always enjoyed her own company or that of her dogs, Prinz and Mr. Choate. Hickok relied on her sister, Ruby Claff, a nurse, to help her during her ill health, as she had not only diabetes but blindness and arthritis in her later years. Hickok died at the age of 75. She was cremated and, for two decades, her ashes sat in an urn in a funeral home before being buried in an unmarked grave. A marker was finally placed on the site on May 10, 2000, describing her as "Hick" and an "A.P. (Associated Press) reporter, an author, an activist, and friend of E.R. (Eleanor Roosevelt)." ## Legacy Late in life, Hickok wrote several books. She co-authored Ladies of Courage with Eleanor Roosevelt in 1954. This was followed by The Story of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1956), The Story of Helen Keller (1958), The Story of Eleanor Roosevelt (1959), and several more. Hickok willed her personal papers to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, part of the US National Archives. Her donation was contained in eighteen filing boxes that, according to the provisions of her will, were to be sealed until ten years after her death. In early May 1978, Doris Faber, as part of research for a projected short biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, became perhaps the first person outside the National Archives to open these boxes, and was astounded to discover that they contained 2,336 letters from Roosevelt to Hickok, and 1,024 letters from Hickok to Roosevelt. Most of them dated to the 1930s, but the correspondence continued up to Roosevelt's 1962 death. Hickok's papers remain at the FDR Library and Museum, where they are available to the public. Based on these letters, Terry Baum and Pat Bond wrote the play, Hick: A Love Story, the Romance of Lorena Hickok and Eleanor Roosevelt. In 2018, the novelist Amy Bloom published White Houses: A Novel about the relationship between Eleanor Roosevelt and Hickok. In an interview, Bloom stated what she wanted to examine: "...could it be like to be madly in love with someone who is married to your political hero? Lorena was, like Eleanor, not just a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat; she was a big FDR fan, which means her hero and friend was also her rival." Though the book was a novel, Bloom argued that many aspects of it such as Franklin Roosevelt approving of Eleanor's relationship with Hickok were based on fact as she argued: "There's no way that she was employed without Franklin's OK. And he obviously knew that she was in the White House in a bedroom adjoining his wife. I think to myself, You know, if my spouse had a lover in my house, even if it was a big house, I'm pretty sure I would notice. I'd assume the same was true for Franklin...And it was clear to me from Franklin's correspondence with other friends of Eleanor's, who were lesbian couples, that he was...I mean, he had, for a man of his background and personality, a sort of genial condescension, but also a lot of warmth and affection. I didn't think he would be threatened by Lorena." However, Bloom admitted that other aspects of her novel such as Hickok working in a circus were entirely of her own invention."

HMS Lord Clive

World War I British monitor

HMS Lord Clive was the lead ship of her class of eight monitors built for the Royal Navy during World War I. Their primary armament was taken from obsolete pre-dreadnought battleships. The ship spent the war in the English Channel bombarding German positions along the Belgian coast as part of the Dover Patrol, often serving as a flagship. She participated in the failed First Ostend Raid in 1918, bombarding the defending coastal artillery as the British attempted to block the Bruges–Ostend Canal. Lord Clive was one of two ships in the class fitted with a single 18-inch (457 mm) gun in 1918, but she only fired four rounds from it in combat before the end of the war in November. The ship conducted gunnery trials after the war and was sold for scrap in 1927. ## Design All of the British monitors built during the war were intended to bombard land targets. To this end the Lord Clive class were given a heavy armament modified to increase its range and a shallow draught to allow them to work inshore as necessary. As the Royal Navy did not expect the ships to engage in naval combat, speed was very much not a priority. Lord Clive had an overall length of 335 feet 6 inches (102.3 m), a beam of 87 feet 2 inches (26.6 m) including the torpedo bulge, 57 feet (17.4 m) without, and a draught of 9 feet 11 inches (3.02 m) at deep load. She displaced 5,850 long tons (5,940 t) at deep load and her crew numbered 12 officers and 182 ratings. The ship was powered by a pair of four-cylinder Harland & Wolff triple-expansion steam engines, each driving one propeller shaft using steam provided by two water-tube boilers. The engines were designed to produce a total of 2,310 indicated horsepower (1,720 kW) which was intended to give her a maximum speed of 10 knots (18.5 km/h; 11.5 mph). On her sea trials Lord Clive only made 8.02 knots (14.9 km/h; 9.2 mph) because her designers were unfamiliar with the proper way to contour her hull to maximise her propeller efficiency; the ship reached 7 knots (13.0 km/h; 8.1 mph) in service as she was more heavily loaded. The monitor carried 356 long tons (362 t) of coal which gave her a range of 1,100 nautical miles (2,000 km; 1,300 mi) at 6.5 knots (12.0 km/h; 7.5 mph). ### Armament, fire control, and armour The Lord Clives mounted two BL 12-inch (305 mm) Mk VIII guns in a single hydraulically powered gun turret which came from the Majestic-class predreadnought battleships; Lord Clive received hers from Magnificent. To suit their new role as long-range bombardment weapons, the turrets were modified to increase the maximum elevation of the guns from 13.5° to 30°. Their secondary armament consisted of a pair of quick-firing (QF) 12-pounder (3 in (76 mm)) guns on low-angle mounts. Anti-aircraft defence was provided by a single Vickers QF 3-pounder (47 mm (1.9 in)) Mk I gun and a QF 2-pounder (40 mm (1.6 in)) Mk I gun. The spotting top on the tripod mast between the turret and the funnel housed a rangefinder that fed data to the director on the roof of the spotting top. The director's crew would calculate the amount of traverse and elevation needed to hit the target and transmit that information to the turret for the guns to follow. The Lord Clive-class ships were protected against gunfire by a sloping waterline belt amidships of 6-inch (152 mm) Krupp cemented armour (KCA) that was closed off at its ends by transverse bulkheads of equal thicknesses to form the ships' central armoured citadel. The 2-inch-thick (51 mm) upper deck of high-tensile steel served as the roof of the citadel and the forecastle deck above it consisted of 1-inch (25 mm) plates of high-tensile steel. For protection against torpedoes, the ships were fitted with bulges 15 feet (4.6 m) deep. The turret taken from Magnificent retained its original armour, viz. 10.5-inch-thick (270 mm) faces and 5.5-inch (140 mm) sides with a 2-inch roof, all of Harvey armour. Its original circular barbettes was replaced by a new one formed from a dozen plates of 8-inch (203 mm) KCA. The ships were also fitted with a cast-steel conning tower just forward of the barbette that had 6-inch sides and a roof 2.5 inches (64 mm) thick. ### Wartime modifications A pair of QF 6-inch guns with 200 rounds per gun were added in early 1916 abreast the funnel when it was realized that the two 12-pounder guns were not powerful enough to defend the ship from German destroyers. Two coal bunkers were turned into magazines for them, reducing the range to approximately 960 nmi (1,780 km; 1,100 mi), and increasing the crew in size to 215, necessitating plating in the sides of much of the upper deck to provide quarters. These guns were later exchanged for longer-ranged 6-inch Mk VII guns. By 1918 they had been replaced in their turn by four BL 4-inch (102 mm) Mk IX guns abreast the bridge. The 12-pounder guns were replaced, probably in 1917, by QF 3-inch (76 mm) Mk I anti-aircraft guns. The biggest change was the addition of a BL 18-inch (457 mm) Mk I gun in an enormous gun shield mounted abaft the engine room, fixed over the starboard side. The gun itself could traverse 20°, but the gun shield was fixed. The entire mount weighed 384 long tons (390 t), but the total weight of the ammunition, equipment and supports nearly doubled this again. This weight so far aft promised to increase the draught at the stern enough that the after inboard compartments of the torpedo bulge, which were normally free-flooding, were closed up, but the ship's draught increased to 8 ft 6 in (2.59 m) forward and 13 ft 2 in (4.01 m) aft. This corresponded to a displacement of 6,850 long tons (6,960 t), even after removal of the armored conning tower in compensation. The gun was hydraulically worked, but the ammunition parties had to use muscle power. The shells were stowed below deck and had to be moved by overhead rail to the hatch in the deck behind the gun to be lifted up and loaded. The cordite propellant charges were kept in eighteen steam-heated storage tanks mounted on the forecastle deck abaft the funnel and moved to the gun on a bogie mounted on rails, two one-sixth charges at a time, reducing the rate of fire to about one round every 3–4 minutes. The interior of the ship was extensively modified to accommodate the larger crew of 278 officers and men, storage and handling gear for the sixty 18-inch shells, and to support the weight of the gun mount. Other changes included the transfer of the radio room down into the hold, the addition of a new gyrocompass, enlarging the bridge and rearranging the existing magazines and storage spaces. A pair of additional two-pounder AA guns were also installed on top of the gun shield. ## Construction and career Lord Clive, named after Major-General Lord Robert Clive, the first British Governor of the Bengal Presidency, has been the only ship of her name to serve in the Royal Navy. She was laid down with the name M.6 on 9 January 1915 at Harland & Wolff's Berth no. 3 in its shipyard in Belfast, Northern Ireland, as yard number 478 and was renamed Lord Clive on 8 March. The ship was launched on 10 June and completed on 10 July at an estimated cost of about £260,000. After Lord Clive finished working up she was sent to the Thames Estuary on 9 August 1915 to practice bombardment techniques with her sister ships Sir John Moore and Prince Rupert. A replica had been laid out there of some of the principal features of the Belgian coast near Zeebrugge and the ships practised their manoeuvring and spotting arrangements. Two tripods were dropped in the sea, housing observers which could triangulate the fall of shot and signal corrections to the monitors. One problem was that the modified 12-inch gun mounts broke down quite a bit, as they had not been designed to fire at angles up to 30° and many of their components were quite elderly. The ships were judged ready and a bombardment was planned on 21 August. This had to be postponed for a day because of bad weather, but Lord Clive, her sisters and their supporting armada of ten destroyers, nine minesweepers, the seaplane carrier Riviera, four ships to handle the observation tripods, and no less than fifty drifters to handle the explosive anti-submarine nets laid to protect the monitors, sailed to a position about 10 miles (16 km) off Zeebrugge during the night of 22–23 August. Lord Clive anchored and opened fire at 05:36 on the locks of the Zeebrugge Canal that led to the German naval base at Bruges, Belgium. She fired 31 shells at the locks over an hour and a half before switching targets to a nearby factory which received eleven rounds. Vice-Admiral Reginald Bacon ordered the ships to cease-fire after two hours, cancelling the plans to bombard Ostend as well since both Sir John Moore and Prince Rupert had been suffering significant problems with their turrets. The bombardment was ineffectual; two barges were sunk, but the locks were not hit. The British judged this a good first try and planned for a bombardment of Ostend once Sir John Moore and Prince Rupert had been repaired. The operation had to be postponed for weather several times, but the 77-ship fleet, reinforced by the General Craufurd and the small M15-class monitor M25, was in position on the morning of 7 September. Visibility was excellent everywhere but over the target which was covered by a haze, and Bacon, using Lord Clive as his flagship, ordered a withdrawal. German submarines and aircraft attacked as they were leaving, but the monitors took no damage. The monitors returned in the afternoon when the haze cleared and Lord Clive opened fire at 15:30 with a ranging shot on the Ostende lighthouse. The newly emplaced Tirpitz Battery of four long-range 283 mm (11 in) guns started to return fire and soon began to near-miss Lord Clive. She steamed out to sea to open up the range, but her speed was so slow that the Germans had no difficulties compensating for the additional range and she was hit four times in quick succession about 15:50. One shell hit on the port bulge aft, another alongside the bulge forward, one on the bow and another, that failed to explode, on the starboard two-pounder gun, knocking the gun down to the quarterdeck. Only fourteen rounds were fired by the monitors before Bacon ordered them to retire, one of which set part of the dockyard on fire. Another attempt was made on 19 September where the newly arrived monitor Marshal Ney attempted to suppress the four guns of the Tirpitz Battery with her 15-inch (380 mm) guns, while Lord Clive and Sir John Moore bombarded Ostend from positions thought to be outside the traversing limits of the German battery. This proved not to be the case and the monitors only managed a few rounds before they had to withdraw. On the 25th Lord Clive and several other monitors bombarded German positions at Westende as part of a deception operation to suggest that the Allies were launching an attack in that sector. During the remainder of September and October, she occasionally fired on German coastal batteries. During one of these later shoots the ship's left gun burst when a shell prematurely detonated inside the barrel. ### 1916 During December 1915 and January 1916, Lord Clive was stationed in the Thames Estuary as a propaganda exercise to shoot down approaching German Zeppelins with shrapnel shells fired by her main guns, but the Zeppelins never came within range. Rear-Admiral (Contre-amiral) Charles de Marliave hoisted his flag aboard the ship and assumed command of a division of monitors as they bombarded German batteries at Westende on 26 January using the newly developed air-spotting techniques, but she only fired about eleven rounds during the half-hour bombardment. This was the last bombardment for the next seven months as the monitors were used to support British light forces and the Dover Barrage, the complex of minefields and nets in the Channel. Lord Clive was refitted during this period with a pair of six-inch guns to enhance her armament against German ships. This came in handy on 8 June when she, along with other monitors and destroyers, rebuffed an attempt by a dozen German ships to clear the nets and sweep the minefields. Lord Clive participated in a deception operation on 8 July when she, as well as French 240-millimetre (9.4 in) guns, fired blanks to cover the fire of the brand-new 12-inch Dominion Battery at Adinkerke as it targeted the Tirpitz Battery. The ship was fitted with a dummy second funnel to make the Germans think that she was a new monitor. The idea was to deceive the Germans as to the true origin of the shells landing around the battery, but the Germans were not totally deceived and retaliated against the French guns. After inspecting the Dominion Battery on 13 August, King Albert I of Belgium and his family visited the monitor. Lord Clive and all of the other monitors of the Dover Patrol simulated preparations for an amphibious landing during the later stages of the Battle of the Somme by firing on German positions at Westende between 8 and 15 September 1916. She fired only 74 rounds during this period as the smaller monitors spent a considerable amount of time acting as offshore aiming marks for the three larger 15-inch (380 mm) monitors. This was the last bombardment of 1916 as the monitors reverted to their role of supporting the Dover Barrage and patrolling between Calais and The Downs. Lord Clive was given a refit in the Trafalgar dry dock at Southampton during October–November. ### 1917–1918 The monitor was nearby when a small group of German torpedo boats bombarded Dunkirk, France, during the night of 23/24 April 1917, and attempted to engage them in the darkness. She fired several rounds from her six-inch guns to little effect. Lord Clive was intended to be used during the Great Landing, a plan to land troops between Westende and Middelkerke to exploit the anticipated Allied gains made during the Battle of Passchendaele in July and pocket German troops between the landing and the advancing troops. The troops were to be landed via three enormous 2,500-long-ton (2,500 t) pontoons, each of which could carry a brigade of infantry, an artillery battery and three tanks. Each of the pontoons was lashed in position between two monitors and Lord Clive, together with Sir John Moore, was modified in March 1917 to handle one of them. The ship and her sisters rehearsed their role up until mid-July when the battle began, but the Allies could not make the ten-mile (16 km) advance necessary to launch the operation. Field Marshal Haig refused to support Bacon's proposal for a more modest landing in the Nieuport-Middelkerke area in September, so the operation was cancelled on 2 October. Lord Clive was drydocked at Plymouth in October and resumed patrols in the Channel before she was taken in hand between 5 December 1917 and 6 April 1918 for modifications to mount the spare 18-inch gun from the large light cruiser Furious, although the gun and mount themselves would not be delivered until 7 September. She bombarded the Tirpitz and Aachen Batteries at Ostend, along with three other monitors, which fired fifty rounds between them during the abortive first attempt to block the Bruges–Ostend Canal that led to the naval base at Bruges on the night of 11 April. The ship supported the Inshore Squadron making the landing attempt during the First Ostend Raid on 23 April with about fifty rounds of 12-inch and some 6-inch shells. Lord Clive relieved the monitor Roberts as guardship at Yarmouth for five weeks while the latter was refitted. She arrived at Portsmouth on 16 August to have her 18-inch gun fitted. The monitor began operational trials with her new gun on 13 October. She fired one round on 14 October at the bridge at Snaeskerke during the morning, but received no spotting. The ship fired another three rounds later in the day but had to cease fire to avoid hitting friendly advancing troops. ### Peacetime Lord Clive was paid off almost immediately after the end of the war and laid up at Immingham. She was towed to Portsmouth in September 1920 to conduct trials with a triple 15-inch gun mount. The Royal Navy had no experience with firing three-gun salvoes from a single turret and wanted to investigate interference between the guns. Her 18-inch gun was removed, along with her secondary armament, and the three guns were installed on the 18-inch mount, covered only by a canvas screen. She recommissioned on 15 December, but she was not ready to conduct the trials until 1 February 1921 at Shoeburyness Range. They revealed no serious problems and she was paid off in August 1921 in Portsmouth. Lord Clive remained there until sold for scrap on 10 October 1927 for £13,500.

2nd and 6th Missouri Infantry Regiment (Consolidated)

Infantry regiment in the Confederate States Army

The 2nd and 6th Missouri Infantry Regiment (Consolidated) was an infantry regiment that served in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. The regiment was formed on October 6, 1863, when the 2nd Missouri Infantry Regiment and the 6th Missouri Infantry Regiment were consolidated. The regiment first saw major action in the 1864 Atlanta campaign, fighting in the battles of Kennesaw Mountain and Peachtree Creek, the Siege of Atlanta, and several smaller actions. After the Confederates retreated from Atlanta, the regiment was part of a force that made an unsuccessful attack against a Union garrison during the Battle of Allatoona on October 5. The regiment then followed General John Bell Hood's Confederate Army of Tennessee into Tennessee, where it charged the Union works at the Battle of Franklin on November 30. At Franklin, the regiment suffered over 60 percent casualties, including the loss of many company commanders. After Franklin, the regiment was detached from the rest of the army to build fortifications, missing the Battle of Nashville. In March 1865, the regiment was transferred to Mobile, Alabama. On April 9, 1865, the regiment was captured at the Battle of Fort Blakely; the survivors of the regiment were paroled at Jackson, Mississippi in May after the Army of Tennessee surrendered. ## Organization The 2nd Missouri Infantry Regiment and 6th Missouri Infantry Regiment had suffered heavy losses in the early stages of the American Civil War. The two regiments had been captured when the Confederate States Army surrendered Vicksburg, Mississippi on July 4, 1863. After the men of the two regiments were paroled and officially exchanged, the units were consolidated on October 6, 1863, forming a new regiment known as the 2nd and 6th Missouri Infantry Regiment (Consolidated). Colonel Peter C. Flournoy, formerly of the 2nd Missouri Infantry, commanded the new regiment. Thomas M. Carter was the consolidated unit's first lieutenant colonel, and William F. Carter was the first major. As of the consolidation date, the regiment contained ten companies. Companies A, E–G, and I contained men from the 2nd Missouri Infantry and Companies B–D, H, and K contained men from the 6th Missouri Infantry. ## Service history ### Atlanta campaign and Allatoona After the consolidation, the regiment was stationed at Demopolis, Alabama, where it was issued new uniforms and weapons. The 2nd and 6th Missouri Infantry, along with the rest of the First Missouri Brigade, transferred to Meridian, Mississippi on October 19, 1863. In January 1864, the brigade returned to Alabama, but was sent back to Meridian on February 5 due to the threat posed by the Union forces of Major General William T. Sherman. Later, the unit was sent back to Alabama, where it remained until the start of the Atlanta campaign in May. At the beginning of the Atlanta campaign, the regiment mustered 560 men, making it the largest unit in its brigade. On June 18, the First Missouri Brigade was engaged in a small action in the vicinity of the Lattimer House. After this action, the brigade then fell back to Kennesaw Mountain. On June 27, the First Missouri Brigade, commanded by Brigadier General Francis M. Cockrell, defended a portion of the Confederate line at a point known as Pigeon Hill. Union skirmishers hit the Confederate line at around 8:00 a.m., followed by more Union troops. The Confederate skirmish line held for some point, but Union pressure drove in the left flank of the line. The right flank of the skirmish line was later ordered to fall back, suffering heavy losses in the retreat. Union troops then charged Cockrell's main line, but were replused. Flournoy is reported to have fought with the Confederate skirmish line. Despite having won the battle, Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston ordered a retreat from Kennesaw Mountain. On July 3 and 4, the 2nd and 6th Missouri Infantry saw light action near Smyrna, Georgia; several men of the regiment were killed in the actions. The First Missouri Brigade was present at the Battle of Peachtree Creek on July 20. While Major General Samuel Gibbs French, commanding the division the 2nd and 6th Missouri Infantry was in, reported that only skirmishers of his division were engaged, a lieutenant in the 3rd and 5th Missouri Infantry Regiment (Consolidated) wrote that the First Missouri Brigade was subject to "hot and heavy" fire for five hours during the battle. After Peachtree Creek, the regiment fell back to Atlanta, Georgia. The 2nd and 6th Missouri Infantry was left to defend the Atlanta fortifications during the July 28 Battle of Ezra Church, and missed a bloody Confederate defeat. During the Siege of Atlanta, the 2nd and 6th Missouri Infantry and the rest of the First Missouri Brigade defended a portion of the northwestern edge of the city. The regiment saw action throughout the siege, until the Confederates abandoned the city. At that point, the regiment transferred to Lovejoy's Station, Georgia. The Confederate positions at Lovejoy's Station were rather weak and were subjected to enfilade fire from Union artillery. While stationed at Lovejoy's Station, some of the men of the 2nd and 6th Missouri Infantry were engaged in a small action on September 6. Over the course of the entire Atlanta campaign, the regiment reported 196 casualties. In October, General John Bell Hood, commander of the Army of Tennessee, sent French's division against a Union outpost at Allatoona, Georgia. At the Battle of Allatoona on October 5, the 2nd and 6th Missouri Infantry was aligned on the left of the First Missouri Brigade. The Confederate charge hit the Union line hard, but the main Union position was not taken.. The First Missouri Brigade charged the Union works at least four times. Eventually, Union reinforcements threatened to cut French's line of retreat, and the Confederates fell back from the field. The 2nd and 6th Missouri Infantry lost 91 men at Allatoona. ### Franklin and Fort Blakely After Allatoona, the regiment moved into Tennessee along with Hood's army. The regiment then fought at the Battle of Franklin on November 30. The 2nd and 6th Missouri Infantry was on the left of the brigade's line during the charge. Once the charge hit the Union line, a portion of the brigade was crowded behind Major General John C. Brown's division as the Confederate attacked a farm owned by the Carter family. Some of the Union troops had been placed forward of the main Union line, and these troops were driven back. However, once the Confederates got close to the main Union line, heavy fire met the attackers. Company G of the regiment saw 21 of its 30 members killed or wounded. The regiment's flag was captured during the fight. Cockrell was taken out of the fight with multiple wounds. Franklin cost the 2nd and 6th Missouri Infantry 164 men, which was over 60 percent of the unit's strength. Eight company commanders were among the Franklin casualties. After Franklin, the regiment advanced to the Nashville, Tennessee area on December 2. On December 10, the regiment was detached to the Duck River to build fortifications. The regiment did not rejoin the rest of the Army of Tennessee until January 1865, missing the Battle of Nashville. After spending the winter in Mississippi, the regiment was transferred to Mobile, Alabama in late March, where the regiment was part of the garrison of Fort Blakely. At the Battle of Fort Blakely on April 9, the 2nd and 6th Missouri Infantry was holding a position known as Redoubt Four. Despite a spirited defense by the Confederates, the position was quickly overrun. Cockrell and 2nd and 6th Missouri Infantry surrendered in the works. The survivors of the regiment were sent to Ship Island, Mississippi for some time before being transferred to Jackson, Mississippi, where the men were paroled in May. The rest of the Army of Tennessee had surrendered on April 26. ## See also - List of Missouri Confederate Civil War units

NWA World Historic Middleweight Championship

Professional wrestling championship

The NWA World Historic Middleweight Championship (Campeonato Mundial Historico de Peso Medio de la NWA in Spanish) is a professional wrestling championship promoted by Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL). The title, being a professional wrestling championship, is not won legitimately: it is instead won via a scripted ending to a wrestling match. The official definition of the middleweight weight class in Mexico is between 82 kg (181 lb) and 87 kg (192 lb), but is not always strictly enforced. For example, previous NWA World Historic Middleweight Champion Último Guerrero is billed as weighing 95 kg (209 lb). Místico is the current champion, he is the eighth champion overall and he is in his first reign. For over 62 years CMLL controlled the NWA World Middleweight Championship, even after leaving the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) in the late 1980s. Up until 2010 the NWA more or less ignored CMLL's use of the championship, but in March 2010 Blue Demon Jr., the president of the newly formed NWA Mexico, sent letters to CMLL, demanding that they stop promoting the NWA-branded championships since they were not part of the organization. NWA Mexico had previously tried to reclaim the three NWA-branded championships promoted by CMLL, but was ignored by CMLL. Finally, on August 12, 2010, CMLL debuted the new NWA World Historic Middleweight Championship belt and named Averno, the final CMLL-recognized NWA World Middleweight Champion, as the inaugural champion. ## Background In 1933 the Mexican National Middleweight Championship was introduced as Yaqui Joe won it in a tournament. The same year Salvador Lutteroth founded Empresa Mexicana de Lucha Libre (EMLL; "Mexican Wrestling Enterprise") and would later be allowed to host matches for the Mexican National Middleweight Championship although they did not have exclusive rights to the championship. In either late-1938 or early-1939 Lutteroth and EMLL declared that Gus Kallio, due to holding the National Wrestling Association World Middleweight Championship was also recognized as the World Middleweight Champion in Mexico. On February 19, 1939 Kallio lost the championship to EMLL wrestler Octavio Gaona, to create EMLL's main championship for the middleweight division. In 1952 EMLL joined the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) and the middleweight championship was rebranded as the NWA World Middleweight Championship from that point forward. In 1989 EMLL left the NWA because the promoters did not want to deal with the internal politics of the NWA at the time. While they left the NWA they kept promoting the NWA World Middleweight Championship as well as the NWA World Light Heavyweight Championship and the NWA World Welterweight Championship that they had controlled for years. In 1991. EMLL changed their name to "Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre" (CMLL; "World Wrestling Council") and began to introduce a number of CMLL branded championships. On December 18, 1991, Blue Panther won the CMLL World Middleweight Championship in a tournament, giving CMLL control of three different middleweight championships at the time. In 1992, then-CMLL promoter Antonio Peña left CMLL along with a number of CMLL wrestlers, and founded rival promotion Asistencia Asesoría y Administración, later known simply as AAA. One of the wrestlers that left CMLL was Octagón, who was the reigning Mexican National Middleweight Champion. The Mexico City Boxing and Wrestling Commission granted AAA the rights to promote the Mexican National Middleweight Championship from that point on. On December 4, 1993, Corazón de León won the NWA World Middleweight Championship on a CMLL show and then took the title with him when he began working in Japan. On November 8, 1994, Último Dragón won the championship and for the next 10 years the title was promoted primarily in Japan. On September 3, 2004, Averno defeated Zumbido to win the vacant championship, bringing it back under CMLL's control. In March 2010, Blue Demon Jr., the president of the newly formed NWA Mexico, reached out to CMLL, demanding that they stop promoting the NWA-branded championships since they were not part of the NWA. While the NWA had previously tried to reclaim the three NWA-branded championships promoted by CMLL, those requests were ignored by CMLL. The promotion did not directly respond to the latest request either; instead the then-NWA Welterweight Champion, Mephisto, commented on the situation, simply stating that the titles belonged to CMLL. Finally, on August 12, 2010, CMLL announced that they were replacing the NWA World Middleweight Championship with the CMLL World Historic Middleweight Championship and named Averno, the final CMLL-recognized NWA World Middleweight Champion, as the inaugural champion. When Averno made his first appearance with the championship it had been rebranded as the "NWA World Historic Middleweight Championship" (Campeonato Mundial Historico de Peso Medio de la NWA in Spanish). ## Reigns Místico is the current NWA World Historic Middleweight Champion, having defeated the previous champion, Ultimo Guerrero, on August 21, 2018 in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. Caristico is the eighth overall champion, with no wrestler holding the championship more than once so far. The championship has not been declared vacant since its creation in 2010 and has been defended in both Mexico and in Japan. Volador Jr. was the shortest reigning champion, holding the title for 45 days in early 2012, while La Sombra currently holds the record for the longest reign, 953 days or over two-and-a-half years. When La Sombra defeated Dragón Rojo Jr. to win the championship during the Fantastica Mania 2013 show in Bunkyo, Tokyo, it marked the first time the championship changed hands outside of Mexico. With his victory on August 31, 2015, Último Guerrero became the oldest wrestler to win the championship, being 43 years, 183 days old, while La Sombra was the youngest wrestler to win the championship, 23 years, 78 days old. At an official weight of 79 kg (174 lb) Averno is the lightest wrestler to hold the championship, while Último Guerrero, at 93 kg (205 lb), is the heaviest champion. ## Rules The championship, being a professional wrestling championship, is not won legitimately: it is instead won via a scripted ending to a wrestling match. The official definition of the middleweight weight class in Mexico is between 82 kg (181 lb) and 87 kg (192 lb), but is not always strictly enforced. For example, the previous NWA World Historic Middleweight Champion Último Guerrero is billed as weighing 93 kg (205 lb), significantly above the official weight limit. All championship matches held in Mexico take place under best two-out-of-three-falls rules, while championship matches held in Japan normally conform to the one fall rule that is customary in Japanese wrestling. ## Title history

23rd Street (Manhattan)

West-east street in Manhattan, New York

23rd Street is a broad thoroughfare in the New York City borough of Manhattan, one of the major two-way, east-west streets in the borough's grid. As with Manhattan's other "crosstown" streets, it is divided into its east and west sections at Fifth Avenue. The street runs from Avenue C and FDR Drive in the east to Eleventh Avenue in the west. 23rd Street was created under the Commissioners' Plan of 1811. The street hosts several famous hotels, including the Fifth Avenue Hotel and Hotel Chelsea, as well as many theaters. Several skyscrapers are located on 23rd Street, including the Flatiron Building, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower, and One Madison. ## Description As with other numbered streets in Manhattan, Fifth Avenue separates West and East 23rd Street. This intersection occurs in Madison Square, near Madison Square Park, both of which are part of the Flatiron District. West of Sixth Avenue, West 23rd Street passes through Chelsea. East of Lexington Avenue, East 23rd Street runs along the southern boundary of Kips Bay and the northern boundaries of Gramercy and Peter Cooper Village. Since 1999, an area north of 23rd Street around the park has been referred to as NoMad. ### West 23rd Street West 23rd Street, which runs through the heart of Chelsea, contains many art galleries and several theaters. For much of the late 19th century and early 20th century its western end was the site of the Pavonia Ferry at Pier 63, just north of the current Chelsea Piers. In 1907, a small lot of land on the north side of 23rd Street, between Twelfth and Eleventh Avenues, was acquired by the Commissioner of Docks and Ferries. The land was transferred to the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation in 1915, becoming a public park called the Thomas F. Smith Park, later the Chelsea Waterside Park. In 2000, the westernmost block of 23rd Street was demolished as part of a reorganization of traffic patterns and an expansion of the park. The expanded 2.5-acre (1.0 ha) park contains a dog run, children's playground, basketball court, and soccer green. Just west of Tenth Avenue, the street passes under the High Line, a 1.45-mile (2.33 km) elevated linear park built on the structure of the former West Side Line railroad. The High Line contains both a staircase and an elevator entrance from 23rd Street. On the north side of 23rd Street, just west of the High Line, is "HL23", a residential building that hangs over the narrow linear park. London Terrace is located across Tenth Avenue, occupying the full block to Ninth Avenue between 23rd and 24th Streets. The Hotel Chelsea, New York City's first co-op apartment complex, was built at 222 West 23rd Street in 1883. The Emunah Israel synagogue, built in the 1860s as a Presbyterian church, is located a few doors to the west at 236 West 23rd. The block of 23rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues is part of the Ladies' Mile Historic District. Designated a New York City landmark in May 1989, it is an irregularly-shaped district consisting of 440 buildings on 28 blocks and parts of blocks, from roughly 15th Street to 24th Street and from Park Avenue South to west of Sixth Avenue. ### East 23rd Street East 23rd Street, which runs between Fifth Avenue and the East River (FDR Drive), is one of the main thoroughfares of Gramercy Park. The 22-story Flatiron Building is located on the south side of East 23rd Street at the street's intersection with Fifth Avenue and Broadway, occupying the triangular parcel bounded by these two avenues and 22nd Street. The origin of the term "23 skidoo" is said to be from wind gusts caused by the building's triangular shape or hot air from a shaft through which immense volumes of air escaped, producing gusts that supposedly lifted women's skirts. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (MetLife), headquartered at 1 Madison Avenue at East 23rd Street, played a significant role in shaping the character of development along East 23rd Street in the early 20th century, constructing six buildings successively along the street and around the block to the corner of 24th. The tallest of these is the 700-foot (210 m) Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower, built in 1909 at the intersection of 24th Street and Madison Avenue. The tower, with its ornate clocktower faces, was one of Manhattan's first skyscrapers. For four years, until the construction of the Woolworth Building in 1913, it was the tallest building in the world. It also owned a building across the street, which was the location of the 23rd Street Fire that killed 12 firemen. A new apartment building, the current Madison Green, was announced for the site in the 1970s, but the building itself was not constructed until 1982. Another skyscraper on the street, the sixty-story, 618-foot-tall (188 m) One Madison, was built in 2013. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch bought One Madison's top four floors for \$57 million. The Woman's Press Club of New York City was located at 126 East 23rd Street. It existed from 1889 to 1980 as an organization for female journalists and authors. A large hospital run by the Veterans Health Administration, the Manhattan Campus of the VA NY Harbor Healthcare System, is located at 423 East 23rd Street, near the northeast corner of the intersection with First Avenue. Near 23rd Street's eastern end is the Asser Levy Public Baths. Built at the beginning of the 20th century, the baths were named after Asser Levy, one of the city's first Jewish settlers. In 1980, the baths were added to the National Register of Historic Places. Stuyvesant Cove Park is located across FDR Drive, along the East River coast. Stretching south to 18th Street, the 2-acre (0.81 ha) public space is built on the site of a concrete plant and parking lot. The street ends at the New York Skyports Seaplane Base, which opened in 1962. The seaplane base, which is part of a marina, also contains a parking lot whose entrance and exit is located at the eastern end of 23rd Street. On the south side of East 23rd between First Avenue and Avenue C, Peter Cooper Village was one of MetLife's experiments in middle-income community building until it was bought by Tishman Speyer. Peter Cooper Village was a sister project to MetLife's Stuyvesant Town, which was built across 20th Street to the south. ## History 23rd Street was designated in the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, which established the Manhattan street grid, as one of 15 east-west streets that would be 100 feet (30 m) in width, as opposed to minor side streets that were designated as 60 feet (18 m) in width. The plan also reserved the 240 acres (97 ha) of land bounded by 23rd Street, Third Avenue, 33rd Street and Seventh Avenue as the "Grand Parade", an area upon which development was prohibited. Instead, the area was to be used as an open space for military training, as well as an assembly point in the event the city was invaded. At the time, some thought that the Grand Parade might become a "central park" for the city, but the grounds were gradually reduced over the course of time. By 1847, the open area was 7 acres (2.8 ha), comprising the land of the current Madison Square Park. ### Transport infrastructure By the middle of the 19th century, there was a railroad, the Hudson (later West Side) Line, running from the current Hudson Yards area between 30th and 32nd Streets south to Chambers Street. At the time, the city prohibited steam locomotives from operating below 30th Street because of the risk of the train's steam boiler exploding, so passengers from points north were forced to switch to horse-drawn trains. The horse-drawn line's stops were located at 23rd, 14th, Christopher and Chambers Streets. The West Side Line caused so many accidents between freight trains and other traffic that the nickname "Death Avenue" was given to Tenth and Eleventh Avenues. In 1929 the city, the state, and New York Central agreed on the West Side Improvement Project, a 13-mile (21 km) project that eliminated 105 street-level railroad crossings and cost more than US\$150 million (about US\$ today). A viaduct, the High Line, replaced the street-level tracks and was dedicated on June 29, 1934. The growth of interstate trucking during the 1950s led to a drop in rail traffic throughout the United States, and the viaduct was effectively abandoned in 1980. The Twenty-third Street Railway, a street railway originally operated as horse cars and later electric traction, was chartered on January 29, 1872. In 1893, the Twenty-third Street Railway was leased to the Houston, West Street and Pavonia Ferry Railroad, which in turn was consolidated into the Metropolitan Street Railway on December 12, 1893. The Metropolitan Street Railway was leased by the Interurban Street Railway on April 1, 1902, and the latter went bankrupt six years later. The Metropolitan Street Railway separated on July 31, 1908, becoming the 23rd Street crosstown bus route. Originally called the M18-15 and then the M26, the route was renamed the M23 in 1989. During the 1870s, the Sixth Avenue Elevated was built, significantly increasing the number of customers who shopped at stores along the route. Elevated lines with stations on 23rd Street were also constructed along Ninth Avenue in 1867, Third Avenue in 1878, and Second Avenue in 1880. By the middle of the 20th century, they were all demolished. Several New York City Subway stations now serve 23rd Street (see ). In 1869, Pavonia Ferry opened a terminal on the shore of the Hudson River at Pier 63, which aligned with the western end of 23rd Street. The ferries traveled to Jersey City, located opposite Manhattan. By the beginning of the 20th century ferries were already aging and deteriorating under heavy use, and in 1942 the terminal itself was demolished. In the late 1980s, boat enthusiast John Krevey converted an old railroad barge on the Hudson River to a floating jetty called Pier 63. A restaurant was opened on the pier. The lightship Frying Pan and the fire vessel John J. Harvey were also originally moored to Pier 63, with both listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 2007, the barge was moved to Pier 66 on 26th Street. ### Historical architecture On January 1, 1825, the New York House of Refuge, a jail for juvenile delinquents, opened on Broadway between 22nd and 23rd Streets. The jail housed prisoners up to 16 years old who were serving long jail sentences, including boys who were being imprisoned until at least age 21 and girls until at least age 18. During the first 10 years, the jail held 1,120 prisoners. In 1854, the prison moved to Randall's Island in the East River. A collection of four-story houses called London Terrace was built on the block bounded by 23rd Street, 24th Streets, Ninth Avenue, and Tenth Avenue in 1845. London Terrace was rebuilt in 1930, with the houses being replaced with 14 apartment buildings that each had sixteen to eighteen floors. The new complex had a total of 1,670 apartments, housing 5,000 total residents. At the time of construction it was the largest residential complex in the city. In 1857, the merchant Amos Eno bought a land parcel at the intersection with Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street. He built the luxury Fifth Avenue Hotel on this site by 1859. The six-story-high structure, which was designed to accommodate 800 guests, became the largest hotel in the world at that time. The hotel served as the headquarters of the Republican Party and was used by Presidents Ulysses S. Grant and Chester A. Arthur. When the Prince of Wales, Edward VII, visited the hotel in 1860, the commercial appeal of the adjacent neighborhood was greatly increased. The area bounded by 14th and 23rd Streets between Sixth Avenue and Broadway was soon dubbed Ladies' Mile. In 1908, the hotel was demolished and replaced by the Toy Center. By about 1860, Irish immigrants had displaced African-Americans living in Five Points, the latter of whom later resettled all over Manhattan. A thousand African-Americans eventually settled in an area bordered by 23rd Street on the south, 40th Street on the north, and Sixth Avenue on the east. The National Academy of Design building opened in 1863 at the intersection of 23rd Street and Fourth (now Park) Avenue. The building was designed by Peter Bonnett Wight in a style evocative of Doge's Palace in Venice. However, by the beginning of the 20th century, it had been demolished and replaced with the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower. In 1878, the Stern Brothers department store opened between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. The building, designed by Henry Fernbach, was massive by contemporary standards, standing seven stories high and measuring 200 feet (61 m) wide. It became one of the largest cast-iron structures in New York City. A second notable hotel on the street, the Hotel Chelsea, was built between 1883 and 1885, with the first portions opening in 1884. It was New York's tallest building until 1902. Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen lived in the Hotel Chelsea from August 1978. The building has been a designated New York City landmark since 1966, and on the National Register of Historic Places since 1977. The emergence of many new hotels after the American Civil War contributed to the increase of prostitution in the area. By 1876, there were so many brothels in the area bounded by 23rd and 57th Streets, between Fifth and Seventh Avenues, that New York City Police Department captain Alexander S. Williams nicknamed this strip of land "Tenderloin". Referring to the increased number of bribes he would receive for police protection of both legitimate and illegitimate businesses there – especially the many brothels – Williams said, "I've been having chuck steak ever since I've been on the force, and now I'm going to have a bit of tenderloin." ### Theaters There were several Broadway and Off-Broadway theaters being built along West 23rd Street beginning in the late 19th century. By the turn of the century, the street contained a "Theater Row", which was a prominent fixture in American theater. 23rd Street remained New York's main theater strip until the Empire Theatre opened on Broadway some twenty blocks uptown, ushering in a new era of theater. In 1868, Pike's Opera House (later the Grand Opera House) was built at Eighth Avenue and 23rd Street for several million dollars. The film company RKO Pictures converted the building into a movie theater in 1938. By 1960, it was demolished to make room for the Penn South residential complex. Booth's Theatre was opened in 1869 at the intersection with Sixth Avenue. It was sold in 1881 for half the cost of its construction, becoming a dry-goods store. In 1888, the entrepreneur Frederick Freeman Proctor opened a theater between Sixth and Seventh Avenues. Proctor used innovations such as electric lighting and phonographs in his "continuous daily vaudeville" theater. In 1907, the theater was converted to an RKO cinema, and 30 years later, it was destroyed in a fire. During the late 19th century, Bryant's Minstrels also performed a minstrel show in Proctor's Theatre. Modern theaters include the Chelsea Bow Tie Cinemas, on the south side of West 23rd between Seventh and Eighth Avenues; the SVA Theatre, operated by the School of Visual Arts on the north side of West 23rd one block west; and the Cell Theatre, across the street from the SVA Theatre. ### Educational institutions In 1849, James Renwick Jr. constructed the Free Academy Building for the City College of New York, following a statewide referendum two years prior that had allowed the construction of the school. The Gothic Revival building was located at the intersection of Lexington Avenue and 23rd Street. The building was demolished in 1928. Baruch College, an institution within the City University of New York system, was a successor to the Free Academy. Founded by businessman and City College alumnus Bernard Baruch, the campus includes the Lawrence and Eris Field Building at the southeast corner of Lexington Avenue and 23rd Street in Gramercy. The 16-story building, opened in 1929, is the oldest structure that is part of Baruch College. The New York Public Library contains two branches on the different portions of 23rd Street: the Muhlenberg branch on West 23rd Street and Seventh Avenue, and the Epiphany branch on East 23rd Street west of Second Avenue. The Epiphany branch, which is located in Gramercy/Kips Bay, opened in 1887 and moved to its current location, a Carnegie library on 23rd Street, in 1907. It was renovated from 1982 to 1984. The Muhlenberg branch, also a Carnegie library, opened in Chelsea in 1906 and was renovated in 2000. ### Incidents On October 17, 1966, the street was the location of New York's deadliest fire until the September 11 attacks, in terms of firefighters killed. The "23rd Street Fire", as it came to be called, began in a cellar at 7 East 22nd Street and soon spread to the basement of 6 East 23rd Street, a five-story commercial building that housed a drugstore at street level. Twelve firefighters were killed; two chiefs, two lieutenants, and six firefighters plunged into the flaming cellar, while two more firefighters were killed by the blast of flame and heat on the first floor. The site is now the location of Madison Green, a 31-story apartment building. On September 17, 2016, several bombs detonated in New York and New Jersey. One of these was a pressure cooker bomb that exploded on West 23rd Street between Sixth Avenue and Seventh Avenue, injuring 31 people. A New Jersey resident, Ahmed Khan Rahimi, was later detained in connection with the bombings. ## Economy 23rd Street was historically one of the city's fashion hubs, and the street still contains many clothing stores. There are also several major retailers with stores located on the street, such as Best Buy and The Home Depot. Restaurants, cafes, fast-food outlets and other eating establishments on 23rd Street are mostly oriented toward office workers, and many of these establishments provide catering services. These restaurants offer cuisine from a variety of cultures, including Thai, Italian, Spanish and French cuisine. 23rd Street contains some upper-class areas with expensive real estate. One 2,500-square-foot (230 m²) office space between Park and Lexington Avenues was leased for \$240,000 per year in March 2017, while a 1,000-square-foot (93 m²) apartment three blocks east was being sold for \$1 million. In July 2015, a four-bedroom penthouse apartment sold for \$6.44 million. ## Transportation ### Subway Every New York City Subway line that crosses 23rd Street has a local station there: - 23rd Street on the BMT Broadway Line serving the - 23rd Street on the IND Eighth Avenue Line serving the - 23rd Street on the IND Sixth Avenue Line serving the - 23rd Street on the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line serving the - 23rd Street on the IRT Lexington Avenue Line serving the There is also a PATH station at 23rd Street and Sixth Avenue. In the past, every former IRT elevated line had a station at 23rd Street, most of which were local stations: - 23rd Street on the IRT Second Avenue Line - 23rd Street on the IRT Third Avenue Line which served local and express trains - 23rd Street on the IRT Sixth Avenue Line - 23rd Street on the IRT Ninth Avenue Line ### Bus MTA New York City Transit's M23 route runs the length of 23rd Street. In 2003, the Straphangers Campaign listed the M23 as one of the slowest in the city, winning its "Pokey Award" for going at an average speed of 3.7 miles per hour (6.0 km/h). In 2016 it was converted to a Select Bus Service route, with bus rapid transit components such as exclusive bus lanes and all-door bus boarding, to speed up service. 23rd Street at Madison Avenue is a large hub for express buses. The and some buses terminate here. In addition, the buses run through here. ## See also - List of numbered streets in Manhattan

Arthur Cumming (Royal Navy officer)

Royal Navy admiral

Admiral Sir Arthur Cumming KCB (6 May 1817 – 17 February 1893) was an officer of the Royal Navy. He was born in Nancy, France to Sir Henry John Cumming, a general in the British Army and received naval education at the Royal Naval College in Portsmouth. Cumming served as a midshipman in the Mediterranean and North America before being promoted to lieutenant in 1840 for his actions in the Syrian War. He remained with the Mediterranean Fleet until appointed to HMS Frolic, a sloop stationed in South America. Whilst detached from Frolic and in command of a small pinnace on 6 September 1843 Cumming and seven men boarded a Portuguese slave ship, subdued her 27-man crew and brought her back to Rio de Janeiro. He had expected to be promoted for his efforts, but was overlooked and resented the decision for the rest of his life. Cumming spent some time in the Navy's Experimental Squadron before being promoted commander on 9 November 1846. Cumming's first command was HMS Rattler, stationed off West Africa, during which he captured another slave ship. He saw active service against the Russians during the Crimean War, captaining the frigate HMS Gorgon and being promoted to post-captain on 19 April 1854. Subsequently, Cumming was transferred to HMS Conflict and, in company with HMS Amphion, was able to capture the Baltic Sea port of Libau without firing a shot. Towards the end of the war he took command of the ironclad floating battery HMS Glatton but arrived in the Black Sea after the peace had been agreed. He returned to the UK in time for Glatton to take part in Queen Victoria's 1856 Fleet Review. Cumming was appointed captain of the frigate HMS Emerald on 14 May 1859 and remained with the ship until the end of her Royal Navy career on 7 November 1863. Emerald served in the Channel Fleet, the Baltic Sea and Admiralty propeller trials. She also made several trips to the Americas including "one of the quickest passages on record" to Bermuda in 1860. After her decommissioning Cumming was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath, served aboard HMS Victory and Duke of Wellington and in the Packet Service. Cumming achieved flag rank on 27 February 1870 when he was promoted to rear-admiral. He served for a while as a port admiral before becoming the Naval Commander-in-Chief of the East Indies in 1872, remaining there until 1875. Cumming continued to receive promotions, becoming vice-admiral in 1876 and admiral in 1880, but retired from the Navy in 1880. In retirement he lived at Foston Hall, near Derby. Cumming was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath as part of Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee celebrations on 21 June 1887 and died in London on 17 February 1893. ## Early life Arthur Cumming was born at Nancy in France on 6 May 1817, his father was General Sir Henry Cumming. Arthur was entered into the Royal Naval College at Portsmouth in January 1831, passing the course and being discharged on 8 August 1832. His first ship was the sloop HMS Rover on which he served in the Mediterranean (presumably as a midshipman), also serving on the Lisbon and North American Stations. In 1837, Cumming passed his examinations to become eligible for the position of lieutenant and was promoted to the rank of mate on 4 April. By early 1840, Cumming was stationed at HMS Excellent, a navy stone frigate in Portsmouth that housed the gunnery school. ## Syrian War On 14 March 1840 Cumming was appointed mate on the frigate HMS Cyclops (commanded by Horatio Thomas Austin), part of Commodore Charles John Napier's squadron sent to intervene for Britain in the Syrian War, and reached the ship in April. The war had begun when Mehemet Ali, Pasha of Egypt, attempted to claim independence from the Ottoman Empire. Ali invaded Syria and took control of the Ottoman Fleet forcing young Sultan Abdülmecid I to request help from the European powers. Great Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia agreed to assist and issued an ultimatum to Ali demanding his withdrawal from Ottoman possessions (Arabia, Crete and Syria) in return for being made hereditary Viceroy of Egypt. Cyclops was detached from patrolling to carry the ultimatum into Alexandria on 9 August 1840. The ultimatum was refused and the European allies intervened, the naval side of the war becoming the responsibility of Britain and Austria. Cyclops played an active role; arriving at Beirut on 7 September 1840 to fire shells in support of the landing of Ottoman troops, attempting to capture the fort at Gebail on 11 September, landing marines and further troops at Jouna on 12 September and capturing Batroun on 15 September. On 25 September Cyclops arrived at Sidon, the main Egyptian southern division supplies depot, alongside HMS Thunderer, Gorgon, Wasp, Stromboli, Hydra, SMS Guerriera (Austrian) and Gulfideh (Ottoman). The ships proceeded to bombard the citadel and surrounding fort on 26 September before a force of 500 Ottoman troops were landed. The 2,700 strong defending force continued to resist so the bombardment was resumed and reinforcements of 750 British Marines and 100 Austrian troops landed, alongside some British sailors. The fort was overrun and the entire garrison captured, Cumming being mentioned in despatches for his bravery during the action. The Admiralty rewarded him with promotion to the rank of lieutenant, dated just two days after the action. Cyclops remained in the theatre until leaving for Malta in October and saw action at Tsour, the Syrian War continued into November. Cumming transferred to HMS Princess Charlotte, a first-rate ship of the line commanded by Arthur Fanshawe and flagship of Robert Stopford, Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet, on 28 November 1840. By January 1841 Cumming had transferred again, being appointed lieutenant in HMS Britannia. Britannia, commanded by Michael Seymour, was another first-rate and the new flagship of the Mediterranean Fleet, John Ommanney having succeeded Stopford as Commander-in-Chief. Cumming's next posting was again within the Mediterranean Fleet, serving under Houston Stewart from 19 June 1841 to 23 May 1842 on the 74-gun third-rate HMS Benbow. ## South America On 5 November 1842 Cumming was appointed to the newly built 16-gun sloop HMS Frolic, under the command of William Alexander Willis. Frolic was posted to South America and on 6 September 1843 Cumming was cruising off Santos, São Paulo, in command of the ship's pinnace, when he encountered the large brigantine Portuguese slaver Vincedora in company with two other slaving vessels. The British slave trade had been outlawed by the Slave Trade Act 1807 and the Royal Navy viewed all slavers as pirates, liable to be arrested and their ships confiscated. Cumming positioned the pinnace to cut off the Vincedora'''s retreat but the brigantine made to ram the boat. At the last moment, perhaps wary of intentionally killing a Royal Navy officer and his men, the Vincedora changed course. Shortly afterwards Cumming was able to shoot the brigantine's captain. With their captain killed the crew were thrown into confusion and Cumming was able to board the vessel, followed by a marine and six sailors – all that could fit on the deck at the time. Cumming and his men were able to drive the 27-strong and fully armed crew below and lock them beneath the hatches. He got the rest of the pinnace's crew aboard and ordered the Portuguese crew shackled to the anchor cable. The other two slavers could have changed the course of events if they chose to get involved but instead made their escape. The Vincedora displaced just 55 tons but was found to be carrying 338 slaves, having left Africa with 450. The ships set sail for Rio de Janeiro, arriving there on 10 September when the slaves were transferred to the hulk Crescent under the supervision of Sir Thomas Paisley. Paisley said that he had "never witnessed anything so shocking", particularly as most of the slaves were suffering from emaciation and sores and others were infected by smallpox and had to be quarantined aboard the Vincedora. The slaves included parentless children, babies and a harem of women for the brigantine's crew. Although the slaves continued to die over the next month, most recovered to be set free. The event was recorded in the memoirs of Sir Astley Cooper Key. Cumming hoped that he would be promoted to commander as a result of the action given the unusual circumstances and danger involved. However the event was reported to London merely as the commonplace capture of a slaver and hence merited no reward, a fact that Cumming resented for the rest of his life. Instead all he received was a period of quarantine, followed by an attack of smallpox and a long convalescence in England. Cumming remained nominally with Frolic until 21 October 1843. ## Experimental Squadron Cumming was posted to the brig HMS Espiegle on 2 October 1844, serving under Captain Thomas Pickering Thompson in the East Indies until 27 March 1845. The next day he was appointed to HMS Caledonia, a first-rate commanded by Alexander Milne that served as the flagship of his father Admiral Sir David Milne who was the Commander-in-Chief, Plymouth. On 29 April Cumming transferred to the first-rate HMS Queen, under the command of Baldwin Wake Walker and the flagship of John West in Devonport. Cumming was transferred again on 13 July 1845 to the second-rate HMS Albion, captained by Nicholas Lockyer and remained aboard until 30 November 1846. Albion, alongside Cumming's previous ships Caledonia and Queen and other vessels, was part of the 1845 Experimental Squadron. Cumming sailed on the first trial of 1845 that lasted from 15 July to 20 September and was supervised by Rear Admiral Hyde Parker. The trial was part of a series that attempted to compare new methods of ship building with traditional ones. Cumming at last received promotion to Commander on 9 November 1846. His first command was HMS Rattler, a 12-gun sloop that had been the first warship powered by a steam engine and screw propeller, that he captained from 12 February 1849 to 15 April 1851 on the west coast of Africa. Whilst in command of Rattler Cumming captured the Brazilian slave brigantine Alepide on 30 October 1849. In 1853 Cumming married Adelaide Stuart with whom he had at least one child. ## Crimean War Cumming saw active service against the Russians during the Crimean War. On 25 February 1854 he received command of the frigate HMS Gorgon, being promoted to post-captain on 19 April. Cumming was transferred to command HMS Conflict on 9 May 1854 and served aboard her in the Baltic Sea until 6 February 1855. In company with HMS Amphion, under the command of Captain Astley Cooper Key, the Conflict sailed into Libau on 17 May 1854. The harbour contained eight Russian merchant vessels and was defended by a force of 4–500 soldiers with 2–3 cannon. Cumming went ashore under a flag of truce to meet with the town's governor and demand the handing over of the merchant ships within three hours. The governor refused to comply but the Russian troops left the town shortly afterwards and the governor stated that, whilst he could not order them out of the harbour, Cumming and Key would be permitted to enter the harbour to take them. They proceeded to do so, finding themselves in control of the entire town of 10,000 inhabitants with just 110 men, and took out the eight merchant vessels without firing a shot. The ships were sent with prize crews to the Prussian port of Memel. Cumming and Conflict also saw service at the port of Riga in this period and from 15 April to 22 May were responsible for boarding 19 vessels. Cumming returned to England in 1855 and on 22 May was appointed to HMS Glatton, an ironclad floating battery with orders to sail her to the Black Sea. He carried out these orders but arrived after the end of the war and returned Glatton to the United Kingdom by Spring 1856. He remained captain of the battery until 3 May 1856 and commanded her during the 23 April 1856 Fleet Review, where Glatton was one of four floating batteries that were the first ironclad ships to appear at any fleet review. ## HMS Emerald Cumming was appointed captain of the 51-gun frigate HMS Emerald on her commissioning at Sheerness on 14 May 1859 and remained with the ship until the end of her Royal Navy career on 7 November 1863. The vessel was initially part of the Channel Fleet and as part of her duties visited Plymouth, Spithead, Torbay, Cork and Devonport. Cumming was reunited with his old commander, Rear-Admiral Sir Alexander Milne, when Emerald became his temporary flagship on 19 January 1860 in order to carry him to the West Indies where he was to replace Vice Admiral Sir Houston Stewart, another former shipmate, as Commander-in-Chief on the North America and West Indies Station. Emerald left Devonport on 18 February and arrived at Bermuda 19 days and 6 hours later, completing "one of the quickest passages on record" at the time. The feat is all the more impressive for the fact that Cumming relied almost entirely on sail power, engaging the steam engines only when he was within 500 nautical miles (930 km) of her destination. Whilst in Bermuda Emerald ran aground and tore her coppering, the first of several times she was damaged in her career. Cumming and Emerald returned to Plymouth on 4 July 1860 and was heading to Keyham steam-yard on 10 July when she ran aground on a beach at Hamoaze whilst trying to avoid a merchant brig under tow, this and the Bermuda grounding were found to have damaged 60 feet (18 m) of her coppering. Cumming was next ordered to Alderney, in the Channel Islands to transport a replacement Royal Artillery garrison. On the return journey on 28 August the ship ran aground once more, whilst in the charge of a Trinity House pilot, necessitating more repairs. In September Cumming sailed to Antwerp to provide a British presence and salute to Queen Victoria who was passing through the port. Cumming made another trip to South America in April 1861 when he carried Rear-Admiral Richard Laird Warren in Emerald to his new appointment as Commander-in-Chief of the Brazil Station, returning with Rear-Admiral Sir Henry Keppel. On his return Cumming was again ordered to America, transporting guns, shot and stores to the West India Squadron, but was hit by storms off Newfoundland and forced to turn back to Plymouth. Once again Emerald was damaged, losing three boats, damaging rigging and equipment and being said to leak "like a sieve". This necessitated another period of repair in Keyham, before Cumming set out for Brazil once more, this time encountering storms in the Bay of Biscay and again being damaged and repaired in dock. Emerald saw service in the Baltic and participated in propeller trials for the Admiralty but was decommissioned in 1863 and sold in 1869. Cumming was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath on 13 May 1867. In November of that year he became part of the Royal Navy's Packet Service and served in that role as an additional captain in HMS Victory, under the command of Captains Frederick Beauchamp Paget Seymour and George Le Geyt Bowyear. During this time Victory served as the flagship of the Port Admiral of Portsmouth and Cumming transferred to HMS Duke of Wellington when she became the flagship on 2 March 1869. Cumming remained on the Duke of Wellington, on harbour service duties, until 26 February 1870. ## Admiral Cumming's service aboard the Duke of Wellington ended with his promotion to rear-admiral on 27 February 1870. He served for a while as a port admiral before being appointed, on 14 February 1872, Commander-in-Chief, East Indies. There he was involved in suppressing the slave trade around Zanzibar (see Kenya Army#History). He remained in the East Indies until March 1875 and was promoted to vice-admiral on 22 March 1876. Cumming's promotion to admiral came on 9 January 1880 and he retired from the service on 6 April 1882. After retirement, he lived mainly at Foston Hall, near Derby. Cumming was a keen patron of his former shipmates including Surgeon William Loney, who had served aboard Emerald, which Cumming had captained, and Glasgow'', part of his East Indies squadron. In 1877, Cumming wrote to Vice-Admiral Beauchamp Seymour, 1st Baron Alcester, Commander-in-Chief of the Channel Squadron, and Lord Gillford, Lord Commissioner of the Admiralty, to recommend Loney for promotion. Cumming was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath as part of Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee celebrations on 21 June 1887. Cumming became an early victim of identity theft on 27 March 1888 when a man impersonating him stole goods worth 100,000 francs (equivalent to approximately £ in current terms) from a Nice jewellery shop. The thief had identified himself to the shop's owner, Mr Boxta, as "Admiral Sir Arthur Cumming" and presented a card in that name with Cumming's coat of arms printed on it. Having made a small purchase the thief requested that Boxta bring a large quantity of diamond rings, bracelets and a necklace to his rooms so that he could choose a present for his wife. Boxta was reassured by the high status neighbourhood and a pile of Bank of England notes that the thief showed him and allowed the thief to take the jewellery to an adjacent room from which he was able to escape. The thief was never caught. Sir Arthur Cumming died in London on 17 February 1893. He was survived by his wife and is buried in Brookwood Cemetery, Surrey. ## See also

A Toast to Men

Pop song recorded by Willa Ford and Lady May

"A Toast to Men" is a song by American singer Willa Ford featuring Lady May. A pop track, Toby Gad, who wrote it with Ford and Rhonda Robinson, produced it. Ford's record label Lava approached Gad for the collaboration after he was struggling to replicate his success in Europe in the US. Ford wrote the song based on a chant she heard at a sorority party. The title and chorus feature a profane word, which attracted media attention. Ford said she wanted to revolutionize pop music by using the word "fuck", and was surprised her label chose it as a single because of its explicit content. Lava released "A Toast to Men" in 2003 as the lead single from Ford's second studio album, SexySexObsessive, which was canceled following issues within the record company. A music video and an extended play (EP) of remixes were released to promote the single. Gay.com included the song on a 2003 sampler album, and it was featured in the 2004 film Barbershop 2: Back in Business. "A Toast to Men" received positive reviews, and some critics praised its feminist message. Although the song's explicit lyrics attracted controversy, it was popular on radio and television. The song peaked at number 45 on the Hot Singles Sales Billboard chart and number 11 on the Dance Singles Sales Billboard chart. After SexySexObsessive was canceled, Ford ended her music career and transitioned into acting and interior design. ## Production and composition Following the release of her debut studio album Willa Was Here in 2001, Willa Ford took two years to develop new music. She wrote "A Toast to Men" with Lady May and the song's producer Toby Gad. Ford and Lady May are credited under their legal names Amanda Williford and Rhonda Robinson, respectively. Although Gad was a successful producer in Europe, he had difficulty finding work in the US. He collaborated with Ford at the suggestion of her record label Lava and met her manager David Sonenberg, who would later become his "exclusive manager". Tom Coyne was the mastering engineer for the track. "A Toast to Men" is a three-minute, 12-second pop song. The Gannett News Service's Elysa Gardner wrote the single had hip hop and dancehall elements. The song includes verses by Lady May, credited as the featured artist. Ford developed the chorus, "Here’s to the men we love / Here’s to the men who love us / Fuck the men, let’s drink to us", after hearing her friends chant it at a sorority party. In a 2003 interview with Rolling Stone, Ford described the lyrics as being about "a bunch of chicks dancing and getting it on in a no-boys-allowed situation". She said she purposefully used profanity to reflect an ongoing "revolution" in how pop music was perceived by the public, explaining: "I wanted it to be sexy and fierce and be OK to say the word 'fuck'." ## Release and promotion In 2003, Lava released "A Toast to Men" as a digital download and a promotional CD. The single shortens Lady May's name to May. An edited version of the song without the intro was issued in October 2003, and an extended play (EP) containing four remixes was made available the following month. A music video was released to promote the track further, which Billboard'''s Chuck Taylor praised as "saucy (but graciously playful", writing it "adds fuel to the flamboyant raunch" of the song. Gay.com included "A Toast to Men" on their 2003 sampler album Gay.com Winter 2003 CD, which they gave as a gift to new subscribers of the website. The song featured in the 2004 film Barbershop 2: Back in Business. "A Toast To Men" was intended as the lead single from Ford's second studio album Sexysexobsessive, which was scheduled for a 2004 release. Ford was surprised by this choice, believing Lava would not promote something "that racy". Although an edited version was sent to radio, Chuck Taylor said it did little to "hide the pre-dominant hook". The lyrics attracted controversy, and journalists compared it to Eamon's 2003 single "Fuck It (I Don't Want You Back)" since both use "fuck" in their titles. Radio personalities were uncertain how to introduce the songs on air without violating Federal Communications Commission guidelines against the use of profanity. Despite this, "A Toast to Men" was popular on radio and television. In a 2004 Orlando Weekly interview, Ford said "A Toast to Men" was meant to only be "this club thing"; however, its popularity on radio resulted in it being promoted as a different, more radio-friendly single. "A Toast to Men" peaked at number 45 on the December 6, 2003, on the Hot Singles Sales Billboard chart, and it reached number 11 on the Dance Singles Sales Billboard chart at the same time. Paper's Michael Love Michael said the song, along with Ford's 2001 single "Did Ya' Understand That", were not as successful as her debut single "I Wanna Be Bad" (2001). Sexysexobsessive was canceled following "record company turnovers and takeovers"; in a 2017 Billboard interview, Ford said she was put in a "no man’s land", and attributed these record label issues to her decision to leave the music industry. Afterward, she pursued a career in acting in the mid-2000s, before becoming an interior designer and opening a Los Angeles design firm in 2013. Although Ford talked about music in 2017 and considered touring gay clubs, in 2019 interviews, she said she was not interested in recording new music. ## Critical reception "A Toast to Men" received a positive response from critics. A Maxim contributor praised the single for showing that Ford was "still a hellcat". While interviewing Ford for AskMen, the writer said she had "decided to hit hard again" by releasing the song as her follow-up to Willa Was Here. In Orlando Weekly, Billy Manes enjoyed the "Fuck the Men" part of the title, and described the song as a "mildly trashy rewrite of the recent, angstier Aguilera". In a mixed review, Chuck Taylor described "A Toast to Men" as a "cheap thrill", criticizing its intention to shock the listener as too overt. However, he commended Ford as "one savvy vixen", and praised "the musical vision behind the vamp". In a 2012 Complex article, Tara Aquino and Julian Patterson considered Lady May's featured appearances on other artists' songs, including "A Toast to Men", as a sign that the momentum built from her 2002 single "Round Up" was diminishing. Some publications praised "A Toast to Men" for its feminist message. Rolling Stone'''s Gill Kaufman wrote that Ford "transforms a salty sorority chant into a female-empowerment anthem". Michael Love Michael associated the single with feminism because the lyrics focus on "romantic and sexual agency". He commended Ford for "flipping the script for what young women in the pop mainstream could say and how they were expected to behave", writing her objectification of men separated her from other female pop singers. ## Track listings ## Credits and personnel Credits adapted from Tidal. - Willa Ford – writer - Lady May – writer - Toby Gad – producer - Tom Coyne – mastering engineer ## Charts

Chimes at Midnight

1965 film by Orson Welles

Falstaff (Chimes at Midnight) (Spanish: Campanadas a medianoche) is a 1966 period comedy-drama film directed by and starring Orson Welles. The Spanish–Swiss co-production was released in the United States as Chimes at Midnight and in most of Europe as Falstaff. The film's plot centres on William Shakespeare's recurring character Sir John Falstaff and the father–son relationship he has with Prince Hal, who must choose between loyalty to his father, King Henry IV, and Falstaff. Welles said that the core of the film's story was "the betrayal of friendship." It stars Welles as Falstaff, Keith Baxter as Prince Hal, John Gielgud as Henry IV, Jeanne Moreau as Doll Tearsheet and Margaret Rutherford as Mistress Quickly. The script contains text from five of Shakespeare's plays; primarily Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry IV, Part 2, but also Richard II, Henry V, and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Ralph Richardson's narration is taken from the works of chronicler Raphael Holinshed. Welles had previously produced a Broadway stage adaptation of nine Shakespeare plays called Five Kings in 1939. In 1960, he revived this project in Ireland as Chimes at Midnight, which was his final on-stage performance. Neither of these plays was successful, but Welles considered portraying Falstaff to be his life's ambition and turned the project into a film. In order to get initial financing, Welles lied to producer Emiliano Piedra about intending to make a version of Treasure Island, and keeping the film funded during its production was a constant struggle. Welles shot Chimes at Midnight throughout Spain between 1964 and 1965; it premiered at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival, winning two awards there. Initially dismissed by most film critics, Chimes at Midnight is now regarded as one of Welles' highest achievements, and Welles himself called it his best work. Welles felt a strong connection to the character of Falstaff and called him "Shakespeare's greatest creation". Some film scholars and Welles' collaborators have made comparisons between Falstaff and Welles, while others see a resemblance between Falstaff and Welles' father. Disputes over the ownership of Chimes at Midnight made it difficult to view the film legally until recently. It was released in the UK on DVD and Blu-ray in 2015. A new restoration by Janus Films and The Criterion Collection was screened at the Film Forum in New York January 1–12, 2016. The Criterion Collection released the film on Blu-ray and DVD on August 30, 2016. ## Plot Sir John Falstaff and Justice Shallow walk through the snow, then to a warm fire inside Justice Shallow's home in Gloucestershire, as the two reminisce. King Henry IV of England has succeeded Richard II, whom he has killed. Richard II's true heir, Edmund Mortimer, is a prisoner in Wales, and Mortimer's cousins (the Percys) Northumberland, Worcester, and Northumberland's son Hotspur demand that Henry rescue Mortimer. The king refuses, and thus Mortimer's cousins, the Percys, begin to plot Henry's overthrow. To wit, Northumberland, his son Henry Percy (called "Hotspur") and Worcester. To Henry's great dissatisfaction, his son Prince Hal spends most of his time at the Boar's Head Tavern, drinking and carousing with prostitutes, thieves and other criminals under Falstaff's patriarchal influence. Falstaff insists that he and Hal should think of themselves as gentlemen, but Hal warns Falstaff that he will one day reject both this lifestyle and Falstaff. The next morning Hal, Falstaff, Bardolph, Peto, and Poins disguise themselves in Gadshill to prepare to rob a group of traveling pilgrims. After Falstaff, Bardolph, and Peto rob the pilgrims, Hal and Poins jump out in disguises and take the stolen treasure from Falstaff as a joke. Back at the Boar's Head Tavern, Falstaff begins to tell Hal and Poins with increasing exaggeration the story of how the money was stolen from him. Hal and Poins poke holes in Falstaff's tale until they reveal their joke to the entire group. In celebration of the newly recovered stolen treasure, Falstaff and Hal take turns impersonating Henry, with a cooking pot crown and vocal impressions. Falstaff's Henry chastises Hal for spending his time with common criminals, but names Sir John Falstaff as his one virtuous friend. Hal's Henry calls Falstaff a "misleader of youth". Hal visits the King at the castle and Henry scolds him for his criminal and unethical life-style. Henry warns Hal about Hotspur's growing army and its threat to his crown. Hal passionately vows to his unimpressed father that he will defend Henry and redeem his good name. The King's army, including Falstaff, parades through the streets and off to war. Before the battle, Henry meets with Worcester and offers to forgive all of Hotspur's men of treason if they surrender immediately. Hal vows to personally kill Hotspur. Worcester returns to his camp and lies to Hotspur, telling him that Henry intends to execute all traitors. The two armies meet in the Battle of Shrewsbury, but Falstaff hides in shrubs for most of the conflict. After a long and bloody fight, the King's men win the battle, after which Hotspur and Hal meet alone and duel; as Falstaff watches, Hal kills Hotspur. Henry sentences Worcester to death and takes his men as prisoners. Falstaff brings Hotspur's body to Henry, claiming that he killed Hotspur; Henry does not believe Falstaff, instead looking disapprovingly at Hal and the ignoble company he keeps. The narrator explains that all of Henry IV's rebellious enemies had been killed by 1408, but that Henry's health has begun to deteriorate. At the castle, Henry becomes upset when told that Hal is once again spending time with Falstaff, and collapses. Hal visits the castle and discovers that Henry is sicker than he had realized. Hal vows to Henry to be a good and noble king. Henry finally has faith in Hal and advises him on how to be a king. Henry dies and Hal tells his men that he is now King Henry V. Falstaff, Shallow and Silence sit in front of a warm fire, continuing from the first scene of the film. They receive news of Henry IV's death and that Hal's coronation will be held that morning. Falstaff becomes ecstatic and goes directly to the castle, thinking that he will become a great and powerful nobleman under King Henry V. At the coronation, Falstaff cannot contain his excitement and interrupts the entire ceremony, announcing himself to Hal. Hal turns his back on Falstaff and proclaims that he is now finished with his former lifestyle. As Falstaff looks up at Hal with a mixture of pride and despair, the new king banishes Falstaff. The coronation continues into the castle as Falstaff walks away, stating that he will be sent for that evening. That night, Falstaff dies at the Boar's Head Tavern, and his friends mourn him, saying that he died of a broken heart. Hal went on to become a good and noble king. ## Cast - Orson Welles as Sir John Falstaff, a knight and father-figure to Prince Hal - Keith Baxter as Prince Hal, the Prince of Wales and the heir to the throne of England - John Gielgud as King Henry IV, the King of England - Margaret Rutherford as Mistress Quickly, hostess of the Boar's Head Tavern - Jeanne Moreau as Doll Tearsheet, a prostitute - Alan Webb as Justice Shallow, a country justice and old friend of Falstaff - Walter Chiari as Justice Silence, a country justice - Michael Aldridge as Pistol, a friend of Falstaff - Tony Beckley as Ned Poins, a friend of Falstaff and Hal - Charles Farrell as Bardolph, a friend of Falstaff and Hal - Patrick Bedford as Nym, a friend of Falstaff and Hal - José Nieto as Earl of Northumberland, an Earl in rebellion against the King, and cousin of Edmund Mortimer - Keith Pyott as the Lord Chief Justice - Fernando Rey as Earl of Worcester, Northumberland's brother, and cousin of Edmund Mortimer - Norman Rodway as Henry Percy, called Hotspur, Northumberland's son, and second cousin of Edmund Mortimer - Marina Vlady as Kate Percy, Hotspur's wife - Andrew Faulds as Earl of Westmorland, an Earl loyal to the King - Jeremy Rowe as Prince John, Henry IV's second son - Beatrice Welles as Falstaff's Page, a servant (Also played by Bruno Yasoni after Beatrice could not finish filming) - Fernando Hilbeck - Andrés Mejuto - Julio Peña - Ralph Richardson as The Narrator (voice) - Ingrid Pitt as Courtesan (uncredited) ## Original stage productions Welles' inspiration for Chimes at Midnight began in 1930 when he was a student at the Todd School for Boys in Woodstock, Illinois. Welles tried to stage a three-and-a-half-hour combination of several of Shakespeare's historical plays called The Winter of Our Discontent in which he played Richard III. School officials forced him to make cuts to the production. Chimes at Midnight originated in 1939 as a stage play called Five Kings, which Welles wrote and partially staged. It was an ambitious adaptation of several Shakespeare plays that chronicled the stories of Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI and Richard III. Its sources were Richard II, Henry IV, Part 1, Henry IV, Part 2, Henry V, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Henry VI, Part 1, Henry VI, Part 2, Henry VI, Part 3 and Richard III—sometimes collectively called the "War of the Roses cycle". The grouping of Henry IV, Part 1, Henry IV, Part 2 and Henry V are often referred to as the Henriad. ### Five Kings (1939) Five Kings was announced as part of the newly revived Mercury Theatre's second season in 1938. John Houseman had secured a partnership with the prestigious Theatre Guild to produce the play for US\$40,000, with an initial tour of Baltimore, Boston, Washington D.C. and Philadelphia before debuting on Broadway. Welles' intended to stage only the first part of the play—which was primarily taken from Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 and Henry V—during the tour while simultaneously rehearsing Part Two and finally debuting the full production on Broadway. Houseman stated that the play's aim was "to combine the immediate quality of the Elizabethan with all the devices and techniques possible in the modern theatre." The cast included Welles as Falstaff, Burgess Meredith as Prince Hal, John Emery as Hotspur, Morris Ankrum as Henry IV and Robert Speaight as the Narrator. The play's music was composed by Aaron Copland. Welles commissioned an elaborate revolving set to be built, but it was not completed during the five weeks allotted to rehearsals. Welles avoided attending the rehearsals or finishing the play's final script and instead often went out drinking and socializing with co-star Meredith, with the result that only specific scenes or fragments of the play were ever rehearsed. The Baltimore performance was eventually dropped and at the first dress rehearsal in Boston, it was discovered that the play was over five and a half hours long and contained 46 scenes. Welles cut 14 scenes and shortened others, which caused the built-in timer for the revolving set to move out of synchronization. Five Kings, Part 1 premiered at the Colonial Theatre in Boston on February 27, 1939, and was a disaster. Critics were either scathing or apologetic, and only the play's battle scenes received praise. By the end of the Boston run, the Theatre Guild was on the verge of dropping the production, and canceled the D.C. engagement. Welles then edited the show to three and a half hours. The play closed after only a few performances in Philadelphia, and the Theatre Guild terminated its contract with the Mercury Theater. Photographs of the play's rehearsals show similarities to Chimes at Midnight, including the Boar's Head Tavern set and the character blocking of the "chimes at midnight" scene with Falstaff, Shallow and Silence. ### Chimes at Midnight (1960) Welles returned to the project in 1960, with performances in Belfast and Dublin. This version, now retitled Chimes at Midnight, was produced by Welles' old friend Hilton Edwards through his Dublin-based company Gate Theatre. The cast included Welles as Falstaff, Keith Baxter as Prince Hal, Hilton Edwards as the Narrator, Reginald Jarman as Henry IV and Alexis Kanner as Hotspur. At one point, Welles and Edwards wanted Micheál Mac Liammóir to replace Jarman as Henry IV, but Mac Liammóir would only accept the role of Prince Hal. Hilton Edwards was officially credited as director, but Welles is usually acknowledged as the actual director and was often the director throughout rehearsals. Welles' alleged biological son Michael Lindsay-Hogg also worked on the play as an actor and as Edwards's personal assistant. Welles' opinion of Falstaff had intensified since first playing the part, and his new version of the play focused more upon the relationship between Falstaff and Prince Hal than on the historical story of Hal's defeat of Hotspur. Most of the scenes from Henry V used in the first version before were removed. Welles intended to perform the play in Belfast, Dublin and London before filming it in Yugoslavia. Rehearsals for the play began in Russell Square, London, with a read-through. After a week of rehearsing, Welles left to secure further funding and Edwards directed the play, working on blocking and lighting. Welles returned a week before the premiere without having learned a line. The cast had their technical rehearsal the night before opening. which lasted until 8 a.m. the next morning. They never had a dress rehearsal or even a run-through and had never seen Welles without the book or in costume. After premiering at the Grand Opera House in Belfast on February 13, 1960, and receiving a good review from a Variety correspondent, it moved to the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin. For two nights Orson did a one-man show, starting with readings of J.M Synge, Riders to the Sea, Moby Dick and the works of Isak Dinesen. The 2nd half was a TV show with questions from the audience. Afterwards it was revealed that the TV cameras were fake, just to attract an audience. Welles continued to adjust the play throughout its short production, and at one point moved Mistress Quickly's speech about Falstaff's death to the very beginning of the play. Welles finally abandoned the entire project in late March 1960, when his friend Laurence Olivier offered him the chance to direct him in Eugène Ionesco's play Rhinoceros on London's West End. According to Keith Baxter, Welles ended the play's run because he was bored with it, and at one point told Baxter "This is only a rehearsal for the movie, Keith, and I'll never make it unless you play Hal in that too." Five years later, Baxter and Welles' youngest daughter, Beatrice Welles, who played Falstaff's page, were the only cast members from the play to appear in the film. Chimes at Midnight was Welles' final performance in a theatrical play. ## Production ### Preproduction In 1964, Welles met and befriended Spanish film producer Emiliano Piedra, who wanted to work with him. Piedra did not think a Shakespearean film was marketable enough and proposed that Welles make a version of Treasure Island instead. Welles agreed to this on condition that he could simultaneously make Chimes at Midnight, and Piedra agreed not knowing that Welles had no intention of making Treasure Island. Although some B-roll footage of the Alicante departing from port was shot early in the production, no scenes from Treasure Island were ever shot or even scripted. Welles got away with this trick throughout preproduction by building sets that could be used in both films, such as Mistress Quickly's Boar's Head Tavern, which would double as the Admiral Benbow Inn. Welles also cast each actor in both films, casting himself as Long John Silver, Baxter as Dr. Livesey, Beckley as Israel Hands and Gielgud as Squire Trelawney. Ironically, Welles would eventually play Long John Silver in the unrelated 1972 film version of Treasure Island. Welles said that the Boar's Head Tavern was the only full set built for the film, and the other sets were simply dressed or decorated on location. Welles stated that he designed, painted and blow-torched the set, and designed all of the film's costumes. Early in pre-production Welles was approached by Anthony Perkins to play Prince Hal, but Welles had already promised the role to Keith Baxter. Hilton Edwards was initially cast as Justice Silence, but was replaced after he became ill. The title Chimes at Midnight derives from Henry IV, Part 2, where in response to Justice Shallow's reminiscing of their long-past school days, Falstaff states: "We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow". Welles scholar Bridget Gellert Lyons said that the film's title, "which is given further resonance by the repeated intoning of bells throughout the film, is associated for the audience with sadness and mortality more than youthful carousal." ### Filming The film was shot in Spain from September 1964 until April 1965, with a break in filming from late December until late February. Welles' limitations on the film included a budget of \$800,000 and actors Jeanne Moreau and John Gielgud being available for five and ten days respectively, while Margaret Rutherford was available for only four weeks. Welles later joked that during one scene that included seven principal characters, none of the actors was available and stand-ins were used for over-the-shoulder shots of all seven characters. Filming began in Colmenar and included all of John Gielgud's scenes. Welles then traveled to Cardona, where the Royal Court scenes and Marina Vlady's scenes were shot, and to Madrid's Casa de Campo Park, where the Gadshill robbery scene was filmed. Madrid was also the location of the Boar's Head Tavern set, where Welles shot Moreau's and Rutherford's scenes. The production then traveled to Pedraza for some outdoor street scenes, and then to Soria to shoot in the snow for the opening shots. After shooting some scenes with Justice Shallow and Justice Silence in the Basque country, Welles returned to Madrid in December to film the battle scenes in Casa de Campo Park for ten days. The exploitation filmmaker Jesús "Jess" Franco worked as an assistant director for the film. He is not listed in the credits because he and Orson Welles had a falling out. By late December, Welles had run out of money and the film was put on hold while he searched for additional funding. However, some small scenes were shot during the break. Welles later said that he had rejected offers for funding that were conditional upon filming in color. Welles eventually secured funding from Harry Saltzman and production officially resumed in late February with most of Keith Baxter's longer speeches and the Coronation scene in Madrid. Between March and April, Welles finished the film with filler shots, close-ups, the final rejection scene and most of Falstaff's speeches. According to Keith Baxter, Welles had stage fright and delayed all of his scenes until the very end of filming, except for scenes that included other actors. Welles was timid about shooting his love scene with Moreau, and used a double whenever possible. Other filming locations included the Chateau Calatañazor, Puerta de San Vincente, the Soria Cathedral and the city of Ávila. Welles was harsh with his crew members and according to actor Andrew Faulds, "he spoke in five different languages to them and was pretty offensive—very demanding. I suppose he'd worked out that if you bullied actors, you didn't get the best from them whereas, to hell with the technicians. They had to do as they were told, and pretty quick." A scene depicting the assassination of King Richard II, originally intended to open the film, was cut. ### Post-production Keith Baxter said that the film's soundtrack was post-dubbed months after filming was completed, and that actors Fernando Rey and Marina Vlady were dubbed by different actors because of their heavy accents. Baxter also stated that he, Welles and Michael Aldridge recorded voices for several characters in post-production. Mistress Quickly's speech after Falstaff's death, which was disrupted by the audible hum of a power generator, used the original version of the soundtrack because Welles liked Margaret Rutherford's performance enough to keep it. The score was composed by Angelo Francesco Lavagnino, who had worked with Welles on Othello; it is notable for its prominent use of actual medieval monophonic dance tunes (and some later “early music,” such as several of Antony Holborne's Elizabethan consort pieces) at a time when this was anything but common. The score was recorded in an Italian studio, which paid Lavagnino for his work on the film in exchange for the rights to the music, and later released a soundtrack album in Italy and the UK. During the editing, Welles showed a rough cut to the visiting head of the Cannes Film Festival, who immediately wanted to include the film in the festival, and Welles had to finish the editing more quickly than he preferred. ## Style ### Cinematography Welles had originally wanted the entire film to use high-contrast cinematography, resembling engravings of the Middle Ages; only the opening title sequence uses this technique. The film's most famous sequence is the Battle of Shrewsbury; only about 180 extras were available and Welles used editing techniques to give the appearance of armies of thousands. Welles filmed all of the battle scenes in long takes, but cut the shots into fragments to create the effect that he wanted. It took ten days to shoot the scenes and six weeks to edit what became a six-minute sequence. In filming the sequence, Welles often used hand-held cameras, wide-angle lenses, slow motion and speed up shots, static shots, swish pans and constant rapid movement of the characters to create a kinetic and chaotic atmosphere. Anderegg has said that "in the end, both armies have become one huge, awkward, disintegrating war machine, a grotesque robot whose power source slowly begins to fail and finally comes to a frozen halt. Verbal rhetoric—language itself—seems, for the moment, both irrelevant and obscene." The Battle of Shrewsbury sequence has often been called an anti-war statement by film critics and likened to contemporary films like Dr. Strangelove and Culloden. Shakespearean scholar Daniel Seltzer said that "the social consciousness of the movie is as alert as Shakespeare's, and thematically pertinent in Shakespearean terms too ... the footage of the Battle of Shrewsbury itself must be some of the finest, truest, ugliest scenes of warfare ever shot and edited for a movie." Welles scholar James Naremore said that "the underlying eroticism of the chivalric code ... is exposed in all its cruel perversity." Tony Howard wrote that Welles used Shakespeare's historical plays "to denounce modern political hypocrisy and militarism." ### Sound Due to budgetary constraints, both the on-set and post-production sound was poorly recorded. Anderegg wrote that this, in combination with Welles' fast-paced camera movements and editing, makes the Shakespearean dialogue more difficult to understand. Many scenes are shot in long takes or with character's backs facing the camera, most likely for practical purposes when actors were not present, creating more sound problems. "In effect," Anderegg writes, "Welles generates a constant tension between what we see and what we hear, a tension that points to the ambiguous status of language in its relation to action." During the Battle of Shrewsbury sequence, Welles used a complex and layered soundtrack that included the sounds of swords and armor clanking, soldiers grunting and screaming, bones breaking, boots in the mud and the film's musical score to add to the chaos of the scene. ### Interpretation of Shakespeare Welles' adaptation of five Shakespeare plays was not a chronological transcription of the original texts. Shakespearean scholar Kenneth S. Rothwell said that Welles "goes beyond mere tinkering with Shakespeare's scenes; [he] massively reworks, transposes, revises and deletes, indeed reconstructs them." These changes included taking lines of dialogue from one play and inserting them into scenes from another. Specific changes include a scene near the end of the film in which Hal pardons an imprisoned street rabble-rouser just before his expedition to invade France; Welles slightly altered this scene from Henry V, Act 2, Scene 2. In the film it is stated that this man is Falstaff, and that the incident he is pardoning is Falstaff's disturbance of Hal's coronation. Although both the pardoned prisoner and Falstaff are said to drink wine, Shakespeare does not imply that the pardoned prisoner is Falstaff. In both Chimes at Midnight and in Henry V, this scene is followed by Falstaff's death. The film contains no true soliloquies, since characters are never alone and do not speak directly to the audience during their speeches. Henry IV is usually shown standing or sitting with very little action involved—this, says Anderegg, makes it appear that he speaks only to himself even when others are present. Gielgud was known for his classical interpretation of Shakespeare, and his performance consists almost entirely of words, which are unable to defeat either Northumberland's rebels or Hal's wild behavior. Throughout the film, Falstaff, Hal, and Hotspur imitate Gielgud, mocking the words of Henry IV. ## Reception ### Critical response Chimes at Midnight premiered to a positive audience reception at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival. However, after New York Times critic Bosley Crowther's unfavorable advance review, American distributor Harry Saltzman decided to give the film little publicity and minimal distribution when it was released in the U.S. the next year. Critical reception on its first release was mostly negative; the film was not regarded as one of Welles' best until years later. Crowther criticized the film's poor audio track and called it "a confusing patchwork of scenes and characters ... designed to give major exposure to Jack Falstaff." Welles' performance, he said, was "a dissolute, bumbling street-corner Santa Claus." Penelope Houston called it "a film which seems to turn its back on brilliance." A Time review also criticized Welles, stating that "[he] is probably the first actor in the history of the theater to appear too fat for the role ... he takes command of scenes less with spoken English than with body English", but that he is "never entirely bad." Judith Crist praised the film as "stark, simple, concentrating on word and performance, serv[ing] as a reminder of where the substance of the play lies." Pauline Kael also criticized the poor sound, but gave a favorable review overall, singling out the film's casting and calling Welles' performance "very rich, very full." She said the Battle of Shrewsbury sequence was "unlike any battle scene done on the screen before." Cahiers du Cinéma critic Serge Daney also praised both the film and Welles' ability to make great films on the subject of power. Welles was disappointed with the film's reception, complaining that "almost nobody has seen it in America, and that drives me nuts." ### Legacy Welles held Chimes at Midnight in high regard. "It's my favorite picture, yes," he told interviewer Leslie Megahey in a 1982 interview for BBC Arena: > If I wanted to get into heaven on the basis of one movie, that's the one I would offer up. I think it's because it is to me the least flawed; let me put it that way. It is the most successful for what I tried to do. I succeeded more completely in my view with that than with anything else. He also considered it to be his most personal film, along with The Magnificent Ambersons. Many critics, including Peter Bogdanovich and Jonathan Rosenbaum, also consider Chimes at Midnight to be Welles' finest work. Several years after its initial release, film critic Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote that Chimes at Midnight "may be the greatest Shakespearean film ever made, bar none." Joseph McBride has called it "Welles' masterpiece, the fullest, most completely realized expression of everything he had been working towards since Citizen Kane." In 2006, Roger Ebert praised the film as "a magnificent film, clearly among Welles' greatest work." The Battle of Shrewsbury sequence has been particularly admired, and inspired later movies, including Braveheart and Saving Private Ryan. Film critics have compared it to the Odessa Steps sequence in Battleship Potemkin and the Battle on the Ice sequence in Alexander Nevsky, both directed by Sergei Eisenstein. Kenneth Branagh's Henry V used Welles' Battle of Shrewsbury sequence as an inspiration for the Battle of Agincourt, and depicted Prince Hal's rejection of Falstaff in a way that was more influenced by Chimes at Midnight than from more traditional interpretations of the scene. In 1988, director Patrick Garland staged a version of Chimes at Midnight starring Simon Callow as Falstaff at the Chichester Festival Theatre. Michael Anderegg said that Chimes at Midnight's use of wide angle lenses, low-key lighting and costumes, and its focus on the relationship between Falstaff and Prince Hal influenced My Own Private Idaho—Gus Van Sant's 1991 loose adaptation of Henry IV Parts 1 and 2. In 2011, Bonham's Auction House sold a large archive of Welles' material that had once belonged to the film's executive producer Alessandro Tasca di Cuto. Most of the material was from Chimes at Midnight, and included Welles' original art-work, photographs and memoranda. This collection was later donated to the University of Michigan for scholarly study. In 2012, for the British Film Institute's Sight and Sound poll, 11 film critics and two directors voted Chimes at Midnight one of the 10 greatest films of all time, including McBride and Todd McCarthy. Spanish writer and director of the Film Library of Catalonia Esteve Riambau published a book about the film called The Things We've Seen: Welles and Falstaff in 2015. ### Awards At the 1966 Cannes Film Festival, Chimes at Midnight was screened in competition for the Palme d'Or and won the Technical Grand Prize (tied). Welles was nominated for a BAFTA award for Best Foreign Actor in 1968 In Spain, the film won the Citizens Writers Circle Award for Best Film in 1966. ### Home media Because of legal disputes over the rights, Chimes at Midnight has been released only twice on VHS video in the United States, neither of which is currently available. Harry Saltzman's widow Adriana Saltzman, the families of producers Emiliano Piedra and Angel Escolano and the estate of Orson Welles—maintained by Beatrice Welles— among others have all claimed ownership of the film. For many years the only available source was a region-free DVD from Brazil. Mr Bongo Records screened a restored version in the UK at Picturehouse Cinemas on August 1, 2011. In February 2015, the film was screened at the Sedona International Film Festival. Beatrice Welles attended and announced that "a major DVD/Blu-ray label is interested in restoring and releasing Chimes at Midnight." The pristine 35mm print was discovered by Distribpix Inc., who said it was "in such great condition that it is begging for a full 4k scan restoration." The film had a European release on DVD and Blu-ray on June 29, 2015. ### 2016 restoration Janus Films released a restored version of the film on D.C.P. that premiered on January 1, 2016, at Film Forum in New York City January 1–12, 2016 and Cinefamily in Los Angeles. This restored version is not derived from the Distribpix print. Peter Becker, Criterion's president, said that the release is the product of more than 20 years of effort: "There is no film we have waited longer for or worked harder to free up, and none we are prouder to present", he said. Criterion released this restoration on DVD and Blu-ray on August 30, 2016. ## Welles and Falstaff ### Welles' views on Sir John Falstaff Welles considered Falstaff to be "Shakespeare's greatest creation" and said that the role was "the most difficult part I ever played in my life." Keith Baxter believed that making the film was Welles' life's ambition. Before the 1939 Boston premiere of Five Kings, Welles told journalists "I will play him as a tragic figure. I hope, of course, he will be funny to the audience, just as he was funny to those around him. But his humor and wit were aroused merely by the fact that he wanted to please the prince. Falstaff, however, had the potential of greatness in him." Reviews for the 1939 play mention Welles' choice to downplay the traditional comedic elements of Falstaff in his performance. This reverence for the character increased over the years and by the time Welles made Chimes at Midnight, his focus was entirely on the relationships between Falstaff, Hal and Henry IV. He believed that the core of the story was "the betrayal of friendship." Welles called Hal's rejection of Falstaff "one of the greatest scenes ever written, so the movie is really a preparation for it. Everything prepares for it." Throughout the film, Hal repeatedly turns his back on Falstaff, foreshadowing the film's ending. > The film was not intended as a lament for Falstaff, but for the death of Merrie England. Merrie England as a conception, a myth which has been very real to the English-speaking world, and is to some extent expressed in other countries of the Medieval epoch: the age of chivalry, of simplicity, of Maytime and all that. It is more than Falstaff who is dying. It's the old England dying and betrayed. \~Orson Welles Many film theorists and Welles biographers have written about the recurrent theme of the "Lost Eden" in Welles' work and of characters who are nostalgic for an idealized past, which Welles called "the central theme in Western culture." Welles told Peter Bogdanovich that "even if the good old days never existed, the fact that we can conceive of such a world is, in fact, an affirmation of the human spirit." Film scholar Beverle Houston argued that this nostalgia made Welles' depiction of Falstaff infantile and called his performance a "[p]ower baby ... an eating, sucking, foetus-like creature." Welles also called Falstaff "the greatest conception of a good man, the most completely good man, in all of drama", and said that "the closer I thought I was getting to Falstaff the less funny he seemed to me. When I played him before in the theater, he seemed more witty than comical. And in bringing him to the screen, I found him only occasionally, and only deliberately, a clown." ### Welles' personal connections to Sir John Falstaff Keith Baxter compared Welles to Falstaff, since they were both perpetually short of money, often lied and cheated people to get what they needed and were always merry and fun loving. Film scholar Jack Jorgens also compared Welles to Falstaff, stating that "to a man who directed and starred in a masterpiece and has since staggered through three decades of underfinanced, hurried, flawed films, scores of bit parts, narrations, and interviews which debased his talent, dozens of projects which died for want of persistence and financing, the story of a fat, aging jester exiled from his audience and no longer able to triumph over impossible obstacles with wit and torrential imagination might well seem tragic." When Joss Ackland played Falstaff on the stage in 1982, he said that he was more inspired by Welles than by Welles' performance as Falstaff, stating that "like Falstaff, I believe he could have achieved so much, but it was frittered away." Kenneth S. Rothwell has called Hal's rejection of Falstaff allegorical to Hollywood's rejection of Welles. Welles had become deeply depressed in the late 1950s after the disappointment of making Touch of Evil, his intended Hollywood come-back. Welles' biographer Simon Callow has compared Falstaff to Welles' father Richard Head Welles, stating that like Falstaff, Welles' father was "a drunkard, a trickster, a braggart, a womanizer, a gentleman and a charmer—and he is rejected by the person he loves the most." Welles' father was an alcoholic and womanizer who would often take a teenage Welles along with him when he was indulging in his vices. Welles observed his father much like Falstaff is observed by Hal and depends on his young protégé to bail him out of trouble. The love triangle between Prince Hal and his two father figures, Henry IV and Falstaff, is also similar to Welles' relationships with his father and the two men who became surrogate fathers to him: family friend Dr. Maurice Bernstein and Todd School for Boys headmaster Roger Hill. Both of Welles' surrogate fathers disapproved of Richard Welles' life-style and negative influence on Welles. When the younger Welles turned fifteen, he took the advice of Roger Hill and told his father that he would not see him again until he cleaned up his act and stopped drinking; Welles' father died shortly afterwards, alone and lonely, and Welles always blamed himself for his father's death, stating, "I always thought I killed him." Welles' alleged biological son Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who was born out of wedlock to Welles and actress Geraldine Fitzgerald, first met Welles when he was 15 and later worked on the 1960 stage play Chimes at Midnight. This was the only significant amount of time that the two spent together and afterwards Lindsay-Hogg only saw Welles sporadically. Like Welles, Lindsay-Hogg had two surrogate fathers in addition to his biological father. In the late 1950s when she was sixteen years old, Welles' eldest daughter Christopher Welles Feder cut off all ties with Welles under pressure from her mother, who disapproved of Welles' influence on her. Welles and Feder later reconnected but their relationship never fully recovered. Welles' youngest daughter Beatrice, who resembled her father as a young boy, appears in the film version of Chimes at Midnight. ## See also

Education in Medieval Scotland

Overview of education in Medieval Scotland

Education in Medieval Scotland includes all forms of education within the modern borders of Scotland, between the departure of the Romans from Britain in the fifth century, until the establishment of the Renaissance late fifteenth century and early sixteenth century. Few sources on Scottish education survived the Medieval era. In the early Middle Ages, Scotland was an oral society, with verbal rather than literary education. Though there are indications of a Gaelic education system similar to that of Ireland, few details are known. The establishment of Christianity from the sixth century brought Latin to Scotland as a scholarly and written language. Monasteries served as major repositories of knowledge and education, often running schools. In the High Middle Ages, new sources of education arose, such as song and grammar schools designed to train priests with emphases on music and Latin grammar, respectively. The number and size of these schools expanded rapidly after the 1380s. By the end of the Middle Ages, all the main burghs and some small towns had grammar schools. Educational provision was probably much weaker in rural areas, but there were petty or reading schools in rural areas, providing an elementary education. There was also the development of private tuition in the families of lords and wealthy burghers that sometimes developed into "household schools". Girls of noble families were taught in nunneries and by the end of the fifteenth century Edinburgh also had schools for girls. There is documentary evidence for about 100 schools of these different kinds before the Reformation. The Education Act 1496 decreed that all sons of barons and freeholders of substance should attend grammar schools to learn "perfyct Latyne". All this resulted in an increase in literacy, with perhaps 60 per cent of the nobility being literate by the end of the period. Those who wished to attend university had to travel to England or the continent, and just over 1,000 students have been identified as doing so between the twelfth century and 1410. Major intellectual figures produced by Scotland with this system included John Duns Scotus, Walter Wardlaw, William de Tredbrum, Laurence de Lindores and John Mair. This situation was transformed by the founding of St John's College, St Andrews (1418). St Salvator's College was added to St. Andrews in 1450, followed by foundations at Glasgow in 1451 and King's College, Aberdeen in 1495. Initially, these institutions were designed for the training of clerics, but they would increasingly be used by laymen who began to challenge the clerical monopoly of administrative posts in government and law. They provided only basic degrees and those wanting to study for the more advanced degrees, which were common amongst European scholars, needed to go to universities in other countries. In this period, Scottish universities largely had a Latin curriculum, designed for the clergy and civil and canon lawyers. Towards the end of the fifteenth century, a humanist influence and the teaching of Greek was becoming more evident. ## Gaelic education and monasteries In the early Middle Ages, Scotland was overwhelmingly an oral society and education was verbal rather than literary. Fuller sources for Ireland of the same period suggest that there were filidh, who acted as poets, musicians and historians, often attached to the court of a lord or king, and who passed on their knowledge in Gaelic to the next generation. After the "de-gallicisation" of the Scottish court from the twelfth century, a less highly regarded order of bards took over these functions and they would continue to act in a similar role in the Highlands and Islands into the eighteenth century. They often trained in bardic schools, of which a few, such as the one run by the MacMhuirich dynasty, who were bards to the Lord of the Isles, existed in Scotland and a larger number in Ireland, until they were suppressed from the seventeenth century. Much of their work was never written down and what survives was only recorded from the sixteenth century. Evidence of formal schooling is largely only preserved in place names. The establishment of Christianity from the sixth century brought Latin to Scotland as a scholarly and written language. Monasteries served as major repositories of knowledge and education, often running schools and providing a small, educated and overwhelmingly male, elite, who were essential to create and read documents in a largely illiterate society. Literary life revolved around the contemplation of texts and the copying of manuscripts. Libraries were of great importance to monastic communities. The one at Iona may have been exceptional, but it demonstrates that the monks were part of the mainstream of European Christian culture. ## Schools In the High Middle Ages, new sources of education arose. Choir and grammar schools were designed to train priests, with an emphasis respectively on music and Latin grammar. The reorganisation of the church that began in the reign of David I (1124–53) gave the church a clearer diocesan and parochial structure, meaning that the seats of sheriffdoms, such as Perth, received schools that were usually under monastic patrons. Early examples of grammar schools include the High School of Glasgow in 1124 and the High School of Dundee in 1239. These were usually attached to cathedrals or a collegiate church. The newly created diocesan chancellors may have had authority over cathedral schools and schoolmasters within their diocese. The new religious orders that became a major feature of Scottish monastic life in this period also brought new educational possibilities and the need to train larger numbers of monks. Benedictine and Augustinian foundations probably had almonry schools, charity schools using funds from the almoner to provide a type of bursary to educate young boys, who might enter the priesthood. At the Cluniac Paisley Abbey, secular chaplains were employed as schoolmasters. Some monasteries, including the Cistercian abbey at Kinloss, Sweetheart Abbey and Beauly, opened their doors to a wider range of students to teach the sons of gentlemen. St Andrews, which was both the seat of a bishop and the site of a major Augustinian foundation, had both a grammar school, under the archdeacon, and a song school, under the priory. The foundation of over 100 collegiate churches of secular priests between 1450 and the Reformation would have necessitated the training of large numbers of choristers. Sometimes, as at Lochwinnoch, they were taught both music and grammar. Dominican friars were noted for their educational achievements and were usually located in urban centres, probably teaching grammar, as at Glasgow and Ayr. The number and size of these schools seems to have expanded rapidly from the 1380s. By the end of the Middle Ages, grammar schools could be found in all the main burghs and some small towns. Educational provision was probably much weaker in rural areas, but there were petty or reading schools that provided an elementary education. There was also the development of private tuition in the families of lords and wealthy burghers. Sometimes these developed into "household schools", that may also have catered to neighbours and kin, as well as the sons of the laird's household, which is known to have happened at Huntly. All these schools were almost exclusively aimed at boys. Girls of noble families were taught in nunneries such as Elcho, Aberdour and Haddington. By the end of the fifteenth century Edinburgh also had schools for girls, sometimes described as "sewing schools", whose name probably indicates one of their major functions. Although reading may also have been taught in these schools, the students were probably taught by lay women or nuns. There is documentary evidence for about 100 schools of these different kinds before the Reformation. Most of the schoolmasters of these schools were clergy, and also acted as chaplains of religious foundations, hospitals or private chaplains of noblemen to supplement their merge incomes. To some extent, all education was controlled by different branches of the church, but towards the end of the period there was an increasing lay interest. This sometimes resulted in conflict, as between the burgh of Aberdeen and the cathedral chancellor, when the former appointed a lay graduate as schoolmaster in 1538, and when a married man was appointed to the similar post in Perth. Education began to widen beyond the training of the clergy, particularly as lay lawyers began to emerge as a profession, with a humanist emphasis on educating the future ruling class for their duties. The growing humanist-inspired emphasis on education cumulated with the passing of the Education Act 1496, thought to have been steered through parliament by the Keeper of the Privy Seal William Elphinstone, Bishop of Aberdeen, which decreed that all sons of barons and freeholders of substance should attend grammar schools to learn "perfyct Latyne". All this resulted in an increase in literacy, which was largely concentrated among a male and wealthy elite, with perhaps 60 per cent of the nobility being literate by the end of the period. ## Universities From the end of the eleventh century, universities had been founded across Europe, developing as semi-autonomous centres of learning, often teaching theology, mathematics, law and medicine. Until the fifteenth century, those Scots who wished to attend university had to travel to England, to Oxford or Cambridge, or to the Continent. Just over 1,000 students have been identified as doing so between the twelfth century and 1410. Among the destinations Paris was the most important, but also Cologne, Orléans, Wittenberg, Louvain and Vienna. Among these travelling scholars, the most important intellectual figure was John Duns Scotus (c. 1266–1308), who studied at Oxford, Cambridge and Paris. He probably died at Cologne in 1308, after becoming a major influence on late medieval religious thought. After the outbreak of the Wars of Independence (1296–1357), with occasional exceptions under safe conduct, English universities were closed to Scots and continental universities became more significant. Some Scottish scholars became teachers in continental universities. At Paris, this included John de Rait (died c. 1355) and Walter Wardlaw (died c. 1387) in the 1340s and 1350s, William de Tredbrum in the 1380s and Laurence de Lindores (1372–1437) in the early 1500s. The continued movement to other universities produced a school of Scottish nominalists at Paris in the early sixteenth century, of which John Mair (1467–1550) was a member. He had probably studied at a Scottish grammar school and then Cambridge, before moving to Paris where he matriculated in 1493. This situation was transformed by the founding of St John's College, St Andrews in 1418. Henry Wardlaw, bishop of St. Andrews, petitioned the anti-Pope Benedict XIII during the later stages of the Great Western Schism, when Scotland was one of his few remaining supporters. Wardlaw argued that Scottish scholars in other universities were being persecuted for their loyalty to the anti-Pope. St Salvator's College was added to St. Andrews in 1450. The other great bishoprics followed, with the University of Glasgow being founded in 1451 and the King's College, Aberdeen in 1495. Both were also papal foundations, by Nicholas V and Alexander VI respectively. St Leonard's College was added at St. Andrews in 1511. St. Andrews was deliberately modelled on Paris, and although Glasgow adopted the statues of the University of Bologna, there, like Aberdeen, there was an increasing Parisian influence, partly because all its early regents had been educated in Paris. Initially, these institutions were designed for the training of clerics, but they would increasingly be used by laymen who began to challenge the clerical monopoly of administrative posts in government and law. They provided only basic degrees. Those wanting to study for the more advanced degrees that were common amongst European scholars still needed to go to universities in other countries. As a result, Scottish scholars continued to visit the Continent and returned to English universities after they reopened to Scots in the late fifteenth century. By the fifteenth century, beginning in northern Italy, universities had become strongly influenced by humanist thinking. This put an emphasis on classical authors, questioning some of the accepted certainties of established thinking and manifesting itself in the teaching of new subjects, particularly through the medium of the Greek language. However, in this period, Scottish universities largely had a Latin curriculum, designed for the clergy, civil and common lawyers. They did not teach the Greek that was fundamental to the new humanist scholarship, focusing on metaphysics and putting a largely unquestioning faith in the works of Aristotle, whose authority would be challenged in the Renaissance. Towards the end of the fifteenth century, a humanist influence was becoming more evident. A major figure was Archibald Whitelaw, a teacher at St. Andrews and Cologne who later became a tutor to the young James III and served as royal secretary from 1462 to 1493. By 1497, the humanist and historian Hector Boece, born in Dundee and who had studied at Paris, returned to become the first principal at the new university of Aberdeen. In 1518 Mair returned to Scotland to become Principal of the University of Glasgow. He transferred to St. Andrews in 1523 and in 1533 he was made Provost of St Salvator's College. While in Scotland his students included John Knox and George Buchanan. These international contacts helped integrate Scotland into a wider European scholarly world and would be one of the most important ways in which the new ideas of Humanism were brought into Scottish intellectual life in the sixteenth century.

The Haunting of Amphipolis

"The Haunting of Amphipolis" is the second episode of the sixth season of the American fantasy television series Xena: Warrior Princess, and the 114th episode overall. The episode was written by Edithe Swenson and Joel Metzger, and directed by Garth Maxwell; it first aired on October 9, 2000. The series, set in Ancient Greece, focuses on Xena (Lucy Lawless), a ruthless warrior seeking redemption for her past actions. Throughout her adventures, she is accompanied by her best friend Gabrielle (Renee O'Connor), who assists her in recognizing and pursuing the greater good. In the episode, Xena, her daughter Eve (Adrienne Wilkinson), and Gabrielle travel to visit Xena's mother Cyrene (Darien Takle) in Amphipolis, which they realize has become a ghost town. While investigating, Xena discovers Cyrene was accused of being a witch after she started to hear voices and was burned at the stake. The trio also realize Xena's childhood home is haunted and that the demon Mephistopheles (Anthony Ray Parker) is responsible for the current situation in Amphipolis. "The Haunting of Amphipolis" was originally written by an unnamed writer who was replaced by Metzger because the dialogue he wrote was unsuitable. When Metzger was hired, the writing staff requested numerous changes to the original script, which featured a murdered man and his daughter. The changes included the addition of Mephistopheles as the main antagonist. According to Metzger, besides focusing on the haunting of Xena's childhood home, the final product bears no resemblance to the original script. Many of the scenes in this episode required the use of special effects and CGI. A scene involving Gabrielle being dragged underwater by ghouls was filmed using only practical effects and stunt performers. Upon airing, the episode received positive reviews from critics who praised its horror elements and dark tone. Multiple scenes involving Gabrielle's demonic encounters, and Eve being confronted by illusions of her victims were also commended. ## Plot Looking down from the heavens, archangels Michael and Raphael discuss Xena's difficult destiny as she arrives at Amphipolis with Gabrielle and Eve to visit Xena's mother, Cyrene. When they arrive, the trio realize Amphipolis has become a ghost town. In Cyrene's tavern, Eve sees Cyrene's spirit and tells Xena her mother is dead. Xena goes to the mausoleum where she finds Cyrene's sarcophagus, which contains charred remains. While eating, Eve tells Gabrielle that she feels something terrible is about to occur. Gabrielle's food becomes instantly infested with maggots. Maggots then begin to emerge from Gabrielle's hands and her flesh rots. When Eve prays to Eli to cast out the evil presence, the maggots disappear and Gabrielle's hands are restored. Later, Gabrielle is grabbed by numerous hands and lands in a pool of water filled with ghouls. Hearing her screams, Xena and Eve save her. Eve tells Xena and Gabrielle the demon Mephistopheles is preparing for war, that the tavern is his exit from Hell, and that Eve's presence there is deliberate. Mephistopheles possesses Gabrielle as she takes a shower. He tells Xena he has kidnapped Cyrene's soul and will not release it unless Eve's blood is spilled because the blood of the Messenger of Eli is necessary for him to escape Hell. Xena refuses and Eve exorcises him. Mephistopheles then torments Eve, reminding her of her bloody past before her redemption. He also joins Xena and Gabrielle's bodies every time they touch. Once Eve separates them, Xena uses the pinch—a skill that allows her to stop blood from flowing—on herself. She visits the spirit realm to defeat Mephistopheles, who tells her whoever kills him must assume his reign over Hell. After Gabrielle revives Xena, Eve says she is ready to sacrifice herself to stop Mephistopheles. Xena decides to fight him instead, so Eve cuts her palm and spills a few drops of blood. Mephistopheles emerges from a Hellmouth and battles Xena until she kills him. This releases Cyrene's soul, who tells Xena she will always be in her heart. While pondering the consequences of Mephistopheles' death, the trio notice the Hellmouth is starting to release steam. ## Production ### Development and writing The 44-minute, 23-second episode was written by Edithe Swenson and Joel Metzger, and was directed by Garth Maxwell. According to Metzger, the episode was originally written by an unnamed writer whom he replaced because the producers felt the original writer had not "captured the Xena voices at all". After handing in his first draft of the episode, Metzger—who was a freelancer— was offered a job on the writing staff. The idea of featuring an episode about a haunting at Xena's childhood home came from the writing staff. The original plot of the episode featured a murdered man who had a daughter. At the request of the staff, Metzer added Mephistopheles as the main villain. He added the subplot about Xena's mother being trapped in Hell to make the story "closer to home and [ensure] Xena had a personal stake in it". By the end of the final draft, most of the original plot and scenes had been changed, with only the core concept of Xena's house being haunted remaining. ### Filming and effects According to Maxwell, the episode is "built around" the use of numerous special effects. He described the experience of directing this episode as challenging, because "things move at their own slightly slower pace". The scene in which Gabrielle is dragged underwater by ghouls does not include any special effects; it was filmed inside a glass water tank on a closed set, enclosed by a curtain for lightning and filming purposes. Inside the water, prop skeletons and "slimy" pieces of fabric were inserted alongside O'Connor and stunt performers portraying the ghouls. The water inside the tank was placed at a level that allowed the actors to stand with their heads above the water, but also allowed the stunt performers to drag O'Connor underwater. The cameras were placed close to the dry side of the glass tank. The water inside the tank was warm to ensure O'Connor and the stunt performers would not get sick. Due to its lack of special effects, Maxwell said this scene was filmed in a very relaxed and spontaneous way. According to O'Connor, the scene in which Xena and Gabrielle have their arms and legs joined by Mephistopheles, she and Lucy Lawless had a stocking net placed over their arms and the rest was computer-generated. O'Connor described this scene as difficult to film because of the height difference between her and Lawless, and as "quite hilarious" and enjoyable to film. ## Broadcast and release "The Haunting of Amphipolis" was first broadcast on syndication on October 9, 2000. During its original broadcast, the episode received an average audience (AA) Nielsen rating of 2.9. It was the fourth-most-watched syndicated action drama of the week, behind Andromeda, The X-Files, and ER. This marked a drop in viewership from the previous episode, "Coming Home", which earned a rating of 3.3. The episode was first released for home media use on VHS in the United Kingdom as part of a three-episode collection with "Coming Home" and "Heart of Darkness". It was released on DVD as part of the sixth season on March 8, 2005. "The Haunting of Amphipolis" has also been made available on various streaming video on demand services, including Amazon Video, iTunes, and Hulu. ## Reception Michelle Erica Green, writer for TrekNation, said "The Haunting of Amphipolis" would have made "an excellent Halloween episode" due to its content. She described it as a highly effective, horror-themed episode, praising Eve's encounter with one of her victims and the dragging of Gabrielle underwater by ghouls. Green also considered many scenes in the episode to "pack real power", including those in which Xena hallucinates about her mother blaming her for her brother's death and Eve is confronted by the spirits of children she had killed. Xenaville gave the episode 8/10 stars, describing it as a "very enjoyable and fast paced adventure", giving praise to the use of special effects, the flashback sequences, and Eve's encounters with her victims and Livia. In the book Killing Off the Lesbians: A Symbolic Annihilation on Film and Television, writers Liz Millward, Janice G. Dodd, and Irene Fubara-Manuel single out this episode—specifically, Xena almost replacing Mephistopheles as the ruler of Hell—as one of many examples in the sixth season displaying the show darkening in tone.

Stanley Browne (RNZAF officer)

New Zealander flying ace

Stanley Franklin Browne, (29 October 1919 – 15 January 2011) was a New Zealand flying ace of the Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) during the Second World War. He was officially credited with at least five aerial victories. Born in Wellington, Browne was a university student when he joined the RNZAF in March 1941. Once his flight training in New Zealand was completed, he proceeded to the United Kingdom to serve with the Royal Air Force. He was posted to No. 485 Squadron in early 1942 but was shot down later in the year over German-occupied France. With the help of the French Resistance he avoided the Germans and made his way to the south of France. He was caught when crossing the border into Vichy France and was interned for several weeks. He escaped captivity and eventually got back to the United Kingdom. He was transferred to the Middle East where he ferried aircraft before being posted to No. 93 Squadron. He flew Supermarine Spitfires in the Tunisian campaign and in the Allied invasion of Sicily, shooting down a number of German aircraft before being rested in December 1943. After a spell on instructing duties he returned to operational flying with No. 485 Squadron during the final stages of the war in Europe. He briefly commanded the squadron before it was disbanded in August 1945. Returning to civilian life after the war, he resumed his university studies, becoming a chemist. He briefly served in the New Zealand Territorial Air Force and later became a farmer and then a teacher. He died in 2011, aged 91, at Tauranga. ## Early life Stanley Franklin Browne was born on 29 October 1919 in Wellington, New Zealand. He was educated at Wellington Boys' College and went on to study medicine at Victoria University. In 1940, he applied to join the Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) and was accepted. ## Second World War Browne formally entered the RNZAF on 23 March 1941 and commenced his training. Once this was complete, he was sent to the United Kingdom to serve with the Royal Air Force (RAF). He was posted to No. 485 Squadron as a sergeant in December. His new unit, equipped with the Supermarine Spitfire fighter, was based at Kenley and composed largely of New Zealand flying personnel. ### Channel Front Weather conditions meant there was little operational flying over the winter of 1941 and into early 1942 but the pace of operations soon picked up and the squadron began to regularly fly to German-occupied France, escorting bombers or carrying out sweeps to draw out the Luftwaffe. On 29 April, King George VI visited Kenley to observe the squadron while it was on an operation. Browne was the last pilot to land. He overshot slightly on his landing and required the services of a tractor to turn his Spitfire around before he could taxi to the dispersal area and meet the King. On 31 May, No. 485 Squadron was taking part in a large sweep mounted by the RAF over northern France when it was intercepted by several Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighters. He had become separated from his section leader, Johnny Checketts, and had to try to evade several pursuing Fw 190s. Despite being able to make it into low cloud, his Spitfire was damaged by cannon fire from the Fw 190s and he bailed out. He landed near Abbeville but with the help of local villagers, was able to evade Germans searching for him. He was sheltered at Amiens until false travel documentation was prepared for him by the French Resistance and, with another downed pilot, travelled south by rail where in mid-June they arrived at the border with Vichy France. However, as they crossed the border, the two were detected by the Vichy police and detained. Browne had taken photographs of military installations during his transit south but, fearing being treated as a spy, was able to destroy the negatives before they could be found. He was taken to Fort de la Revere, between Nice and Monte Carlo, where he met up with another pilot of No. 485 Squadron who had also been shot down on 31 May, Garry Barnett. Browne escaped from Fort de la Revere in the first week of September as part of a breakout made by 50 prisoners. They had knocked down a wall in the shower block to gain access to the exterior of the prison. Although most of the escapees were captured within a few hours, Browne managed to get to Nice. Here, with the help of the Maquis, he linked up again with Barnett, who had made his own escape two weeks before Browne. They boarded a fishing boat, which already carried several other escapees, at a beach and sailed out to the Mediterranean where it was intercepted by a destroyer of the Royal Navy. The escapees were taken off and transported to Gibraltar where after an interrogation to confirm their identities, they were returned to the United Kingdom. Arriving on 9 October, Browne and Barnett rejoined No. 485 Squadron. They were the first two of what would be six pilots from the squadron to manage a return to the unit after having bailed out over enemy territory. Browne was commissioned a pilot officer soon afterwards but on account of his spying activities while evading the Germans in France, it was deemed too risky for him to return to operations with No. 485 Squadron. He was transferred to another theatre of operations, North Africa. He was dispatched to Gibraltar, and until March 1943 ferried aircraft from there to Algiers. He was then posted to No. 93 Squadron. ### North Africa and Sicily At the time, his new unit was engaged in the Tunisian campaign, flying Spitfire Mk Vs from Souk-el-Khemis Airfield on fighter sweeps, bomber escort duties and Rhubarb missions. On 3 April, he damaged a Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter near Sedjenane and then, two days later, shot down a Bf 109 over Tunis. He damaged another Bf 109 on 18 April. A week later, he destroyed another Bf 109 over Medjez el Bab. Once the fighting in North Africa ended, No. 93 Squadron shifted to Malta, flying from Hal Far in support of the Allied invasion of Sicily. It flew patrols over the invasion beaches and on 10 July, Browne destroyed a Junkers Ju 88 medium bomber. He destroyed another Ju 88 the next day over the coast but his Spitfire was damaged by friendly fire, the anti-aircraft guns of the battleship HMS Warspite firing on him. He bailed out over Sicily, becoming one of the first pilots to land on the island following the invasion. He was returned to Malta the next day. On 13 July, while patrolling around the Augusta area, Browne and another pilot shared in the destruction of a Bf 109, without firing a shot at it. The duo had driven the German fighter close to the ground and it flew into a valley, where it crashed into the side while evading the pursuing Spitfires. Browne was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) in September for "gallantry and devotion to duty in the execution of air operations". He shot down a Bf 109 on 15 October, north of the Volturno River. At the end of the year he was taken off operations for a rest. ### Return to Northern Europe Posted to Catfoss to attend the Central Gunnery School there, Browne then proceeded to No. 61 Operational Training Unit as an instructor, teaching gunnery and bombing skills. After a course at the Fighter Leaders' School at Milfield, he was posted back to No. 485 Squadron, his old unit. It was operating Spitfire Mk IXs from France, flying as part of the 2nd Tactical Air Force and engaged in low-level operations, supporting the Allied ground forces as they advanced across France, into Belgium and then the Netherlands. This work was not without risk; on 5 January 1945, he damaged his Spitfire by flying too low and coming into contact with treetops. In February, the squadron returned to the United Kingdom and were based at RAF Predannack in Cornwall where Hawker Typhoons were flown in preparation for a planned conversion to the similar Hawker Tempest. However, the change in aircraft never happened due to a shortage of Tempests, and the squadron went back to Europe after two months and reequipped with Spitfire Mk XVIs at Twente, in Holland. Now one of the squadrons of No. 132 Wing, it flew mainly reconnaissance missions and also targeted transportation infrastructure. The squadron rarely encountered the Luftwaffe. By this time, Browne was a flight lieutenant and commander of the squadron's 'A' Flight. The squadron was based at Fassberg, in Germany, when the war in Europe ended. It would remain there on occupation duties, engaging in the odd ceremonial flypast for visiting dignitaries. In July, Browne was promoted acting squadron leader and given command of the unit. He led the squadron in its last flight on 24 August, flying from Fassberg to Lasham, before it was disbanded two days later. Browne was awarded a Bar to his DFC in September and, returning to New Zealand, his service in the RNZAF officially ended on 26 January 1946. Having flown on over 250 operations, he was credited with the destruction of five enemy aircraft with a share in another destroyed, and two damaged. ## Later life Following his return to New Zealand, Browne resumed his tertiary studies and became a chemical scientist. He also joined the New Zealand Territorial Air Force in December 1948, flying with No. 3 (Canterbury) Squadron as one of its flight commanders, before going onto the reserve of pilots in November 1951, where he remained for four years. He later turned to farming in Taumarunui, in the central North Island. The final years of his working life were spent as a teacher of the sciences at a high school in Taumarunui. In 1990, Browne participated in the making of a This Is Your Life television show, in honour of his fellow pilot at No. 485 Squadron, Johnny Checketts. Browne died on 15 January 2011 in Tauranga. He was cremated and his remains interred at the city's Pyes Pa cemetery.

Mia Khalifa (song)

2018 single by iLoveFriday

"Mia Khalifa" (originally titled "Mia Khalifa (Diss)", also known as "Hit or Miss", and sometimes stylized as MiA KHALiFA) is a song by American hip hop group iLoveFriday (stylized as iLOVEFRiDAY). The duo of Atlanta-based rappers Aqsa Malik (also known as Smoke Hijabi) and Xeno Carr self-released the song on February 12, 2018, which was later re-released by Records Co and Columbia Records on December 14, 2018. It was included on their second EP, Mood (2019). The song was produced by Carr. The song is a diss track targeting Mia Khalifa, a Lebanese-American Internet celebrity and former pornographic actress. The decision to write a song dissing Khalifa arose over a misunderstanding. A faked screenshot, intended as a joke, seemed to show Khalifa criticizing Malik for smoking while wearing a hijab in a music video. iLoveFriday and their fans took the apparent hypocrisy seriously. Khalifa has posted a comment on a TikTok post on June 28, 2020, from Khalifa's official account miakhalifa stating that "This... is my nightmares. God, this was global, I couldn't escape it." Critics have praised the song for its unconventional catchiness, but it has also been criticized as off-key and misogynistic. Months after its release, "Mia Khalifa" achieved unexpected viral success on social media, especially among TikTok users. The best-known portion is Malik's verse, which opens with a line that became an Internet meme: "Hit or miss, I guess they never miss, huh?" ## Background and release The music video for iLoveFriday's 2017 song "Hate Me" showed Malik, a Pakistani-American woman, smoking a blunt while wearing a hijab, a type of veil worn by some Muslim women and traditionally used to maintain Islamic standards of modesty. The song and video were modest successes and gained traction within some online meme-centric communities. By January 2018, an Instagram account posted a screenshot of a fake tweet, attributed to Mia Khalifa, that criticized Malik and the "Hate Me" video. The fake tweet said: > "She's so disrespectful to all Muslim women and gives us a bad image 🤦‍♀️🧕🏾💣." Not only was the tweet fake, but Khalifa is actually not Muslim and never has been. She was raised in the Catholic Church in Lebanon but is non-practicing. Although the screenshot was a joke, Malik said that she believed it was real when she first saw it and was shocked by the statement's apparent hypocrisy, given Khalifa's notoriety for appearing in a pornographic video performing sex acts while wearing a hijab. Malik said in an interview that smoking in a hijab is "not nearly as bad" as what Khalifa had done in a hijab. Many of iLoveFriday's fans also took the screenshot to be authentic and reacted with anger toward Khalifa. There has been some skepticism about whether the group members themselves realized the screenshot was a joke. Regardless, iLoveFriday recorded "Mia Khalifa" in response to their fans' demand for a diss track. The song was self-released on February 12, 2018. The music video for "Mia Khalifa" was released on March 4, 2018. The video was reportedly viewed about 5 million times in the months before it became a viral meme. The song was later re-released by Records Co and Columbia Records on December 14, 2018. In early 2019, the original video was briefly removed due to a copyright infringement claim from Romanian artist Livia Fălcaru, as multiple pieces of her original art appear in the video without her permission. On September 27, 2019, "Mia Khalifa" was released as the first track on Mood, iLoveFriday's second EP. ## Music The song was produced by Xeno Carr. Malik's verse has been described as the highlight of the song with its distinctive, catchy delivery. According to college newspaper Minnesota Daily, "the song itself rose to notoriety not because of its associations with Mia Khalifa, but rather due to a bizarrely catchy rap bridge." The opening lines have been the most frequently quoted and reused in memes: > "Hit or miss, I guess they never miss, huh? / You got a boyfriend, I bet he doesn't kiss ya / He gon find another girl and he won't miss ya / He gon skrrt and hit the dab like Wiz Khalifa." The song itself is sometimes known as "Hit or Miss" because of the lines. At Pitchfork, Duncan Cooper said the verse captured Malik "at her absolute brattiest". Cooper emphasized her delivery of the phrase "kiss yaaaa!", noting the quality of an "almost Midwestern whine" in her voice despite her Atlanta origins, and wrote that "her melodies are straight and piercing, catchy to an obnoxious degree." The song also uses sound effects from the arcade game Street Fighter II, including the Capcom logo jingle and the "Fight!" announcer clip. ## Reception A panel of reviewers at Vice roundly condemned the song, calling it "upsettingly misogynistic in a really specific and sick way" and "really off-key and shitty sounding." According to Vice's panel, iLoveFriday should issue "a formal apology" to Khalifa. An article in the college newspaper KentWired expressed similar feelings, further accusing the song of "pettiness" and criticizing the bland production and Malik's "grating voice". Bhad Bhabie—an American rapper and Internet celebrity, perhaps best known for saying "Catch me outside, how about that?" on Dr. Phil—criticized the song as inappropriate for children who were likely to be exposed to it through social media. When asked whether she thought the Internet has a negative effect on children's psychological maturity, Bhad Bhabie replied: > "Yes. It's not even their fault. Sometimes I'm around kids scrolling through TikTok or whatever and that iLoveFriday 'Mia Khalifa' song will pop up and I'll be like, 'Stop listening to that! No!' This girl listening is like seven, she doesn't understand what this song means." In an interview with Anthony Padilla, Khalifa stated that she was hurt by the song and that as a result, she became terrified of going on TikTok and being shamed. According to Reed Kavner at the site Tubefilter, "it's worth reiterating that [Khalifa] was an innocent bystander in all of this. She was the subject of a diss track after doing absolutely nothing. Today, she has 2.3 million Twitter followers and a YouTube channel with her boyfriend celebrity chef Robert Sandberg. None of this will affect her at all." ## Viral success ### "Mia Khalifa" and TikTok memes TikTok is a social media video app owned by the Chinese tech company ByteDance. Formed from a merger with the app Musical.ly in 2018, TikTok allows users to post short videos and use audio clips from its database, generally to make lip sync videos. Some of the audio in the database is officially licensed by the copyright holders, but users can also upload an audio clip on their own, at which point the clip becomes available to other users. TikTok is particularly popular among Generation Z, defined as those born after the mid 90s and before the early 2010s. The app has been compared to the defunct Vine. "Mia Khalifa" became ubiquitous on TikTok in late 2018 and early 2019. The song became so popular, and was so closely identified with the app itself, that it spawned a call and response meme called the "#hitormiss challenge" or "#TikTokTest". To participate in the challenge, TikTok users would wander into public areas like big-box stores or schools and holler the phrase "hit or miss", hoping to elicit a response from a stranger who might complete the line by calling out "I guess they never miss, huh?" The premise of the meme was that the phrase had become so well known among TikTok users that it could serve as a sort of secret handshake or dogwhistle to find other users in the real world. The song demonstrated how social media, and TikTok in particular, function as important platforms for listeners to discover new music. In this capacity, it has been identified as a predecessor to Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road", another song by a previously unknown and unsigned artist that found viral success through TikTok. While other songs reached comparable levels of popularity on the app around the same time—including, for example, Ariana Grande's "Thank U, Next"—"Mia Khalifa" was different because its success was completely spontaneous. Grande was already a mainstream artist with major promotion and an established following, while iLoveFriday had minimal promotion and their song's unconventional style did not seem, on its face, calibrated to have broad appeal. The 15-second "hit or miss" snippet from "Mia Khalifa" was first uploaded to TikTok by a high-school age girl from South Dakota named Cheyanne Hays. Then, a British TikTok user named Georgia Twinn made a highly popular video using the same clip, drawing greater attention to the song. In October 2018, American cosplayer Haley Craig (known online as 'NyanNyanCosplay' or 'Kat') lip-synced the song while cosplaying as the character Nico Yazawa from the Japanese multimedia franchise Love Live! Kat's video was likely the catalyst that inspired the viral phenomenon around the song. The video spread to YouTube, where PewDiePie—already the most popular individual YouTuber—reused her clip several times in his own videos. English cosplayer Belle Delphine, who has been noted for popularizing the e-girl aesthetic online, also uploaded a notable video of her lip-syncing and dancing along to the song. The Daily Dot wrote that "Delphine's brilliant pink hair and coy personality quickly made the video a hit." ### Popularity based on metrics Near the end of October 2018, there were more than 1.3 million different videos on TikTok using the same sample; by December, there were more than 2.5 million. By February 2019, at least 4 million different "Mia Khalifa" videos had been uploaded to TikTok, the original music video had been viewed more than 50 million times, and snippets from the song had been played in videos across YouTube approximately 200 million times. The song also reached the number one position on Spotify's Global Viral 50 chart, a ranking of the most-streamed independent songs on the platform, and it consistently charted near the top position for several months. As of June 2020, TikTok videos which include "Mia Khalifa" have been viewed over 865 million times in total. Videos tagged with the \#hitormisschallenge hashtag had collectively accumulated 93.7 million views as of April 2019. By May, videos tagged with \#hitormiss had reached a total of 250 million views. Newspaper columnist Calum Marsh noted the existence of an hour-long compilation of dances to "Mia Khalifa" from TikTok. The song's lyrics were the 18th most-read on the site Genius in the first half of 2019, ranking ahead of "I Don't Care" by Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber, and "Wish You Were Gay" by Billie Eilish. ### Compensation According to an estimate made by a Pitchfork writer, iLoveFriday probably netted \$150,000 worth of royalty payments from YouTube views. The group's manager, Terrance Rowe, did not confirm that figure but laughed, suggesting that the estimate was close or perhaps too low. Despite their song's breakthrough success on TikTok, iLoveFriday had not initially licensed it for use on the app and never received compensation from the company for the song. However, by early 2019 they had worked out a deal with TikTok granting free use of the song in exchange for promotion of their future music. Rowe justified the group's decision by emphasizing that the opportunity for exposure would be more valuable in the long run than demanding compensation for past views. TikTok has been criticized for its royalties-payment structure. Citing iLoveFriday's situation, Cody Atkinson of Australian BMA Magazine said TikTok's payment seemed to be worse than streaming services or even busking. Brett Gurewitz of the Los Angeles-based punk rock band Bad Religion criticized the company and said the situation was like "what we saw with Chuck Berry getting a Cadillac instead of royalties." ## See also - List of viral music videos - Islam and hip hop in the United States - Misogyny in rap music - Slut-shaming

The Life (advertisement)

2009 American video game commercial

The Life, also known as We Are ODST, is a television and cinema advertisement launched in 2009 by Microsoft to promote the first-person shooter Halo 3: ODST in the United States. The 150-second piece follows a young soldier through enlistment, training, and battle as an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper (ODST), analogous to a paratrooper that drops from space to a battlefield. The Life was created by advertising agency T.A.G., an offshoot of McCann Erickson. Production of the commercial itself was handled by production company Morton/Jankel/Zander (MJZ). It was directed by Rupert Sanders, and post-production was conducted by Asylum. It was filmed in Hungary, just outside Budapest in a coal mine and abandoned factories to give the sequence an "Eastern Bloc" aesthetic. The commercial and its associated campaign proved hugely successful; on the week of its launch, Halo 3: ODST became the top-selling game for the Xbox 360 worldwide, and over 2.5 million copies were sold within the first few weeks of release. The Life went on to win a number of honours from the advertising and entertainment industries, including two Clio Awards, a London International Advertising Award and several honours from the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, the most prestigious awards ceremony in the advertising industry. ## Sequence The Life opens to a military funeral of an ODST. Rows of candles arranged along the floor burn as a bagpiper plays a dirge. The assembled mourners, a mix of military personnel and civilians, attend as the casket's red ODST flag is removed, revealing the name of the deceased. A young man looks on as the cloth is ceremonially folded and passed to a woman among the mourners. A song in Welsh begins to play as the attending officer orders a gun salute in Hungarian. The camera cuts to another scene; the young man, Tarkov, is having his head shaved in the first of a montage of scenes depicting Tarkov undergoing recruit training. Again, the camera cuts ahead. Tarkov is in a one-man "drop pod", known in universe as the Single Occupant Exoatmospheric Insertion Vehicle (SOEIV), entering the atmosphere of an alien planet, onto a battlefield. He emerges under fire alongside several other soldiers, moving over corpses and through plasma fire until a Covenant Brute knocks him aside, sending his helmet flying and scarring Tarkov's face. Tarkov unholsters and fires his M6S (silenced M-6 magnum) sidearm at the Brute to no avail. However, he is saved when a falling alien aircraft crashes into the Brute, killing it. The film jumps ahead again; Tarkov is now a veteran soldier, and oversees a memorial service for one of his fallen comrades amidst burning ruins with a recruit that bears a resemblance to a younger Tarkov. Soon, sounds of gunfire draws him and his team back to the fight, closing with the lines "We are ODST" which transitions again into "Halo 3: ODST". ## Production ### Background In 1999, Microsoft made the decision to consolidate its marketing efforts with a single advertising agency, after several years of partnership with different agencies for each of its product line. They entertained pitches from each of the agencies on their roster, and ultimately assigned the global account to McCann Erickson. McCann was assigned the task of promoting what would become the killer app of the Xbox, the video game Halo: Combat Evolved. The launch campaign was hugely successful, selling over five million copies of the game worldwide. The success of Halo: Combat Evolved led to a series of sequels and tie-in merchandise including books and action figures. In 2007, McCann launched a multi-platform global advertising campaign titled Believe, that included six minutes of live-action sequences called Landfall, to promote the latest game in the Halo series, Halo 3. Landfall was directed by Neill Blomkamp who also agreed to direct a full length Halo film, but it was cancelled due to funding disagreements. Believe proved a critical and financial hit. Over £84 million of sales were made on the first day of release alone, the highest-grossing opening sale of an entertainment product at the time. Believe received dozens of awards from the advertising community, including eight Clio Awards, Best in Show at the ANDY Awards, and two Grand Prix (for Film and Integrated campaigns) at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, the most prestigious awards ceremony in the advertising industry. According to the Gunn Report, Believe was the second-most-awarded integrated advertising campaign of 2008, behind Earth Hour for the World Wide Fund for Nature. In 2012, due to the success of Landfall and The Life, Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn was created to broaden the audience of Halo 4. Released initially as five 15-minute episodes online, it was later released as a ninety-minute extended cut on DVD and Blu-ray. Microsoft considers it the "next step" between advertising material and a full-length film, and Frank O'Connor, development director for the Halo franchise, has said that a film will be made "when the time is right". Live action shorts were also used in the advertisement of Halo: Reach focusing on the Spartan supersoldiers of the Halo universe. Two shorts, The Birth of a Spartan and Deliver Hope were made, again to appeal to customers who were unfamiliar with the series. ### Filming In early 2009, McCann received a brief to create a new campaign for the latest entrant into the Halo series, a first-person shooter called Halo 3: ODST. It would be the first game in the franchise not to feature the series' protagonist, the Master Chief. McCann returned with a pitch for a campaign in the same vein as Believe, aiming to humanize the soldiers featured in the Halo universe. The project was greenlit, and McCann brought back several collaborators from Believe to handle this new campaign, now given the working title of The Life. Director Rupert Sanders, known for his work with production company MJZ on campaigns such as Lava for Guinness and Great Return for Nike, Inc., was given five weeks to produce the commercial, with three days set aside for filming. Several locations were scouted for shooting, with an eye towards an "Eastern Bloc" aesthetic. These included several areas around Chernobyl, Ukraine. However, the tight schedule precluded using locations too distant from one another for different scenes and, in the end, three spots outside of Budapest, Hungary were settled upon: the cooling tower of an active nuclear power station was dressed to act as the backdrop to the opening funeral scene; an open-pit coal mine served as the setting for the battle scenes, and an abandoned aluminum factory was used to stage the closing funeral scene. Sanders drew inspiration for the shooting style and aesthetic of the commercial from a variety of sources, including news footage from journalists embedded with military forces in Afghanistan, and Russian feature films such as Stalker and Come and See. To keep the details within the commercial consistent with established Halo canon, the creators of the Halo series, Bungie, provided Sanders with information on aspects ranging from appropriate fur color and rank insignia for the Brute, to the armor and weaponry of the ODST soldiers. ### Post-production With filming complete, MJZ contacted post-production company Asylum to begin work on the substantial visual effects component of The Life. The team, led by Visual Effects Supervisor Robert Moggach, tripled in size as the scale of the work required became apparent, given the deadline of three weeks. Work on the opening funeral scene was relatively easy, requiring the creation of only minor elements such as additional tombstones in the foreground and color correction on the actors. The same was true for the training sequence, where only minimal tracking work and compositing of matte backgrounds was required. The bulk of the visual effects work was in the battle sequence. This ranged from simple work such as wire removal to the creation of dynamic lighting and reflections from visors and armor, to particle effects for the background smoke and dust, plasma weapon fire and alterations to some of the filmed explosions to lend them the appearance given to plasma explosions within the Halo games. The entire background was a 3D projection of matte paintings and dramatic skies. While the Brute was partially animatronic, substantial adjustments such as scaling to almost twice the size and the enhancement of fine muscle movements of the creature were made. Other elements, such as the Banshee aircraft and the drop-pods, were created entirely through the use of CGI. Software used by Asylum FX included Flame and Nuke for compositing, Maya for animation, RenderMan and Mantra for rendering, SynthEyes for tracking, Silhouette Pro for rotoscoping work. ### Music The Life was scored by Gareth Williams, a composer for Human Worldwide. The music, an arrangement of Light of Aidan's "Lament", was created specifically for the ad, and featured a wide variety of instruments. Percussive elements included military snare drums, a hand drum, Samoan log drums and stones tapped against one another. These were joined by a Great Highland Bagpipe and traditional string orchestration such as a double bass and cello. Vocals were provided by Kathy Fisher who, despite not being a native speaker of the language, sang the Welsh lyrics provided by Williams. The song was later expanded by Williams and used in the original soundtrack for King Arthur: Legend of the Sword under the title "Politics and The Life". ## Release and reception The Life premiered online as a 90-second cut on September 4, 2009, on both the social networking website MySpace and news and review website IGN. This was followed by its first appearance on U.S. national television as a 150-second spot three days later, during a commercial break in Spike's airing of the World War II miniseries Band of Brothers. Additional 90-second spaces were purchased on a variety of television networks, including Adult Swim, Comedy Central, ESPN, FX, G4, History, and Spike. The Life was made available for download through Xbox Live on September 8, and continued to air on television through the release of Halo 3: ODST on September 22, 2009 and into the Christmas period. The launch was accompanied by print advertisements and a new interactive website featuring a making-of documentary for The Life, interviews with the director and other crew members, and an unaired scene cut from the ending of the commercial, as well as interactive elements exploring features of the game itself, such as an "evaluation" application offering profiles on several of the game's characters. Upon its release on September 22, Halo 3: ODST immediately became the best-selling title for the Xbox 360 worldwide. Within two weeks, over 2.5 million copies had been sold. The Life went on to win a number of awards from the advertising and television industries, including honors from the Visual Effects Society Awards, the ANDY Awards, the London International Advertising Awards, and the Clio Awards. The Life received several nominations at the 57th Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, the most prestigious awards ceremony in the advertising community, going on to win Gold for Cinematography, Silver for Direction, and a Bronze in the Film category.

Constructible number

Number constructible via compass and straightedge

In geometry and algebra, a real number $r$ is constructible if and only if, given a line segment of unit length, a line segment of length $|r|$ can be constructed with compass and straightedge in a finite number of steps. Equivalently, $r$ is constructible if and only if there is a closed-form expression for $r$ using only integers and the operations for addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and square roots. The geometric definition of constructible numbers motivates a corresponding definition of constructible points, which can again be described either geometrically or algebraically. A point is constructible if it can be produced as one of the points of a compass and straight edge construction (an endpoint of a line segment or crossing point of two lines or circles), starting from a given unit length segment. Alternatively and equivalently, taking the two endpoints of the given segment to be the points (0, 0) and (1, 0) of a Cartesian coordinate system, a point is constructible if and only if its Cartesian coordinates are both constructible numbers. Constructible numbers and points have also been called ruler and compass numbers and ruler and compass points, to distinguish them from numbers and points that may be constructed using other processes. The set of constructible numbers forms a field: applying any of the four basic arithmetic operations to members of this set produces another constructible number. This field is a field extension of the rational numbers and in turn is contained in the field of algebraic numbers. It is the Euclidean closure of the rational numbers, the smallest field extension of the rationals that includes the square roots of all of its positive numbers. The proof of the equivalence between the algebraic and geometric definitions of constructible numbers has the effect of transforming geometric questions about compass and straightedge constructions into algebra, including several famous problems from ancient Greek mathematics. The algebraic formulation of these questions led to proofs that their solutions are not constructible, after the geometric formulation of the same problems previously defied centuries of attack. ## Geometric definitions ### Geometrically constructible points Let $O$ and $A$ be two given distinct points in the Euclidean plane, and define $S$ to be the set of points that can be constructed with compass and straightedge starting with $O$ and $A$. Then the points of $S$ are called constructible points. $O$ and $A$ are, by definition, elements of $S$. To more precisely describe the remaining elements of $S$, make the following two definitions: - a line segment whose endpoints are in $S$ is called a constructed segment, and - a circle whose center is in $S$ and which passes through a point of $S$ (alternatively, whose radius is the distance between some pair of distinct points of $S$) is called a constructed circle. Then, the points of $S$, besides $O$ and $A$ are: - the intersection of two non-parallel constructed segments, or lines through constructed segments, - the intersection points of a constructed circle and a constructed segment, or line through a constructed segment, or - the intersection points of two distinct constructed circles. As an example, the midpoint of constructed segment $OA$ is a constructible point. One construction for it is to construct two circles with $OA$ as radius, and the line through the two crossing points of these two circles. Then the midpoint of segment $OA$ is the point where this segment is crossed by the constructed line. ### Geometrically constructible numbers The starting information for the geometric formulation can be used to define a Cartesian coordinate system in which the point $O$ is associated to the origin having coordinates $(0,0)$ and in which the point $A$ is associated with the coordinates $(1, 0)$. The points of $S$ may now be used to link the geometry and algebra by defining a constructible number to be a coordinate of a constructible point. Equivalent definitions are that a constructible number is the $x$-coordinate of a constructible point $(x,0)$ or the length of a constructible line segment. In one direction of this equivalence, if a constructible point has coordinates $(x,y)$, then the point $(x,0)$ can be constructed as its perpendicular projection onto the $x$-axis, and the segment from the origin to this point has length $x$. In the reverse direction, if $x$ is the length of a constructible line segment, then intersecting the $x$-axis with a circle centered at $O$ with radius $x$ gives the point $(x,0)$. It follows from this equivalence that every point whose Cartesian coordinates are geometrically constructible numbers is itself a geometrically constructible point. For, when $x$ and $y$ are geometrically constructible numbers, point $(x,y)$ can be constructed as the intersection of lines through $(x,0)$ and $(0,y)$, perpendicular to the coordinate axes. ## Algebraic definitions ### Algebraically constructible numbers The algebraically constructible real numbers are the subset of the real numbers that can be described by formulas that combine integers using the operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, multiplicative inverse, and square roots of positive numbers. Even more simply, at the expense of making these formulas longer, the integers in these formulas can be restricted to be only 0 and 1. For instance, the square root of 2 is constructible, because it can be described by the formulas $\sqrt2$ or $\sqrt{1+1}$. Analogously, the algebraically constructible complex numbers are the subset of complex numbers that have formulas of the same type, using a more general version of the square root that is not restricted to positive numbers but can instead take arbitrary complex numbers as its argument, and produces the principal square root of its argument. Alternatively, the same system of complex numbers may be defined as the complex numbers whose real and imaginary parts are both constructible real numbers. For instance, the complex number $i$ has the formulas $\sqrt{-1}$ or $\sqrt{0-1}$, and its real and imaginary parts are the constructible numbers 0 and 1 respectively. These two definitions of the constructible complex numbers are equivalent. In one direction, if $q=x+iy$ is a complex number whose real part $x$ and imaginary part $y$ are both constructible real numbers, then replacing $x$ and $y$ by their formulas within the larger formula $x+y\sqrt{-1}$ produces a formula for $q$ as a complex number. In the other direction, any formula for an algebraically constructible complex number can be transformed into formulas for its real and imaginary parts, by recursively expanding each operation in the formula into operations on the real and imaginary parts of its arguments, using the expansions - $(a+ib)\pm (c+id)=(a \pm c)+i(b \pm d)$ - $(a+ib)(c+id)=(ac-bd) + i(ad+bc)$ - $\frac{1}{a+ib}=\frac{a}{a^2+b^2} + i \frac{-b}{a^2+b^2}$ - $\sqrt{a+ib} = \frac{(a+r)\sqrt{r}}{s} + i\frac{b\sqrt{r}}{s}$, where $r=\sqrt{a^2+b^2{}_{\!}}$ and $s=\sqrt{(a+r)^2+b^2}$. ### Algebraically constructible points The algebraically constructible points may be defined as the points whose two real Cartesian coordinates are both algebraically constructible real numbers. Alternatively, they may be defined as the points in the complex plane given by algebraically constructible complex numbers. By the equivalence between the two definitions for algebraically constructible complex numbers, these two definitions of algebraically constructible points are also equivalent. ## Equivalence of algebraic and geometric definitions If $a$ and $b$ are the non-zero lengths of geometrically constructed segments then elementary compass and straightedge constructions can be used to obtain constructed segments of lengths $a+b$, $|a-b|$, $ab$, and $a/b$. The latter two can be done with a construction based on the intercept theorem. A slightly less elementary construction using these tools is based on the geometric mean theorem and will construct a segment of length $\sqrt{a}$ from a constructed segment of length $a$. It follows that every algebraically constructible number is geometrically constructible, by using these techniques to translate a formula for the number into a construction for the number. In the other direction, a set of geometric objects may be specified by algebraically constructible real numbers: coordinates for points, slope and $y$-intercept for lines, and center and radius for circles. It is possible (but tedious) to develop formulas in terms of these values, using only arithmetic and square roots, for each additional object that might be added in a single step of a compass-and-straightedge construction. It follows from these formulas that every geometrically constructible number is algebraically constructible. ## Algebraic properties The definition of algebraically constructible numbers includes the sum, difference, product, and multiplicative inverse of any of these numbers, the same operations that define a field in abstract algebra. Thus, the constructible numbers (defined in any of the above ways) form a field. More specifically, the constructible real numbers form a Euclidean field, an ordered field containing a square root of each of its positive elements. Examining the properties of this field and its subfields leads to necessary conditions on a number to be constructible, that can be used to show that specific numbers arising in classical geometric construction problems are not constructible. It is convenient to consider, in place of the whole field of constructible numbers, the subfield $\mathbb{Q}(\gamma)$ generated by any given constructible number $\gamma$, and to use the algebraic construction of $\gamma$ to decompose this field. If $\gamma$ is a constructible real number, then the values occurring within a formula constructing it can be used to produce a finite sequence of real numbers $\alpha_1,\dots, a_n=\gamma$ such that, for each $i$, $\mathbb{Q}(\alpha_1,\dots,a_i)$ is an extension of $\mathbb{Q}(\alpha_1,\dots,a_{i-1})$ of degree 2. Using slightly different terminology, a real number is constructible if and only if it lies in a field at the top of a finite tower of real quadratic extensions, $\mathbb{Q} = K_0 \subseteq K_1 \subseteq \dots \subseteq K_n,$ starting with the rational field $\mathbb{Q}$ where $\gamma$ is in $K_n$ and for all $0< j\le n$, $[K_j:K_{j-1}]=2$. It follows from this decomposition that the degree of the field extension $[\mathbb{Q}(\gamma):\mathbb{Q}]$ is $2^r$, where $r$ counts the number of quadratic extension steps. Analogously to the real case, a complex number is constructible if and only if it lies in a field at the top of a finite tower of complex quadratic extensions. More precisely, $\gamma$ is constructible if and only if there exists a tower of fields $\mathbb{Q} = F_0 \subseteq F_1 \subseteq \dots \subseteq F_n,$ where $\gamma$ is in $F_n$, and for all $0<j\le n$, $[F_j:F_{j-1}]= 2$. The difference between this characterization and that of the real constructible numbers is only that the fields in this tower are not restricted to being real. Consequently, if a complex number $\gamma$ is constructible, then $[\mathbb{Q}(\gamma):\mathbb{Q}]$ is a power of two. However, this necessary condition is not sufficient: there exist field extensions whose degree is a power of two that cannot be factored into a sequence of quadratic extensions. The fields that can be generated in this way from towers of quadratic extensions of $\mathbb{Q}$ are called iterated quadratic extensions of $\mathbb{Q}$. The fields of real and complex constructible numbers are the unions of all real or complex iterated quadratic extensions of $\mathbb{Q}$. ## Trigonometric numbers Trigonometric numbers are the cosines or sines of angles that are rational multiples of $\pi$. These numbers are always algebraic, but they may not be constructible. The cosine or sine of the angle $2\pi/n$ is constructible only for certain special numbers $n$: - The powers of two - The Fermat primes, prime numbers that are one plus a power of two - The products of powers of two and distinct Fermat primes. Thus, for example, $\cos(\pi/15)$ is constructible because 15 is the product of two Fermat primes, 3 and 5. ## Impossible constructions The ancient Greeks thought that certain problems of straightedge and compass construction they could not solve were simply obstinate, not unsolvable. However, the non-constructibility of certain numbers proves that these constructions are logically impossible to perform. (The problems themselves, however, are solvable using methods that go beyond the constraint of working only with straightedge and compass, and the Greeks knew how to solve them in this way. One such example is Archimedes' Neusis construction solution of the problem of Angle trisection.) In particular, the algebraic formulation of constructible numbers leads to a proof of the impossibility of the following construction problems: Doubling the cube The problem of doubling the unit square is solved by the construction of another square on the diagonal of the first one, with side length $\sqrt2$ and area $2$. Analogously, the problem of doubling the cube asks for the construction of the length $\sqrt[3]{2}$ of the side of a cube with volume $2$. It is not constructible, because the minimal polynomial of this length, $x^3-2$, has degree 3 over $\Q$. As a cubic polynomial whose only real root is irrational, this polynomial must be irreducible, because if it had a quadratic real root then the quadratic conjugate would provide a second real root. Angle trisection In this problem, from a given angle $\theta$, one should construct an angle $\theta/3$. Algebraically, angles can be represented by their trigonometric functions, such as their sines or cosines, which give the Cartesian coordinates of the endpoint of a line segment forming the given angle with the initial segment. Thus, an angle $\theta$ is constructible when $x=\cos\theta$ is a constructible number, and the problem of trisecting the angle can be formulated as one of constructing $\cos(\tfrac{1}{3}\arccos x)$. For example, the angle $\theta=\pi/3=60^\circ$ of an equilateral triangle can be constructed by compass and straightedge, with $x=\cos\theta=\tfrac12$. However, its trisection $\theta/3=\pi/9=20^\circ$ cannot be constructed, because $\cos\pi/9$ has minimal polynomial $8x^3-6x-1$ of degree 3 over $\Q$. Because this specific instance of the trisection problem cannot be solved by compass and straightedge, the general problem also cannot be solved. Squaring the circle A square with area $\pi$, the same area as a unit circle, would have side length $\sqrt\pi$, a transcendental number. Therefore, this square and its side length are not constructible, because it is not algebraic over $\Q$. Regular polygons If a regular $n$-gon is constructed with its center at the origin, the angles between the segments from the center to consecutive vertices are $2\pi/n$. The polygon can be constructed only when the cosine of this angle is a trigonometric number. Thus, for instance, a 15-gon is constructible, but the regular heptagon is not constructible, because 7 is prime but not a Fermat prime. For a more direct proof of its non-constructibility, represent the vertices of a regular heptagon as the complex roots of the polynomial $x^7-1$. Removing the factor $x-1$, dividing by $x^3$, and substituting $y=x+1/x$ gives the simpler polynomial $y^3+y^2-2y-1$, an irreducible cubic with three real roots, each two times the real part of a complex-number vertex. Its roots are not constructible, so the heptagon is also not constructible. Alhazen's problem If two points and a circular mirror are given, where on the circle does one of the given points see the reflected image of the other? Geometrically, the lines from each given point to the point of reflection meet the circle at equal angles and in equal-length chords. However, it is impossible to construct a point of reflection using a compass and straightedge. In particular, for a unit circle with the two points $(\tfrac16,\tfrac16)$ and $(-\tfrac12,\tfrac12)$ inside it, the solution has coordinates forming roots of an irreducible degree-four polynomial $x^4-2x^3+4x^2+2x-1$. Although its degree is a power of two, the splitting field of this polynomial has degree divisible by three, so it does not come from an iterated quadratic extension and Alhazen's problem has no compass and straightedge solution. ## History The birth of the concept of constructible numbers is inextricably linked with the history of the three impossible compass and straightedge constructions: doubling the cube, trisecting an angle, and squaring the circle. The restriction of using only compass and straightedge in geometric constructions is often credited to Plato due to a passage in Plutarch. According to Plutarch, Plato gave the duplication of the cube (Delian) problem to Eudoxus and Archytas and Menaechmus, who solved the problem using mechanical means, earning a rebuke from Plato for not solving the problem using pure geometry. However, this attribution is challenged, due, in part, to the existence of another version of the story (attributed to Eratosthenes by Eutocius of Ascalon) that says that all three found solutions but they were too abstract to be of practical value. Proclus, citing Eudemus of Rhodes, credited Oenopides (circa 450 BCE) with two ruler and compass constructions, leading some authors to hypothesize that Oenopides originated the restriction. The restriction to compass and straightedge is essential to the impossibility of the classic construction problems. Angle trisection, for instance, can be done in many ways, several known to the ancient Greeks. The Quadratrix of Hippias of Elis, the conics of Menaechmus, or the marked straightedge (neusis) construction of Archimedes have all been used, as has a more modern approach via paper folding. Although not one of the classic three construction problems, the problem of constructing regular polygons with straightedge and compass is often treated alongside them. The Greeks knew how to construct regular $n$-gons with $n=2^h$ (for any integer $h\ge 2$), 3, 5, or the product of any two or three of these numbers, but other regular $n$-gons eluded them. In 1796 Carl Friedrich Gauss, then an eighteen-year-old student, announced in a newspaper that he had constructed a regular 17-gon with straightedge and compass. Gauss's treatment was algebraic rather than geometric; in fact, he did not actually construct the polygon, but rather showed that the cosine of a central angle was a constructible number. The argument was generalized in his 1801 book Disquisitiones Arithmeticae giving the sufficient condition for the construction of a regular $n$-gon. Gauss claimed, but did not prove, that the condition was also necessary and several authors, notably Felix Klein, attributed this part of the proof to him as well. Alhazen's problem is also not one of the classic three problems, but despite being named after Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), a medieval Islamic mathematician, it already appear's in Ptolemy's work on optics from the second century. `proved algebraically that the problems of doubling the cube and trisecting the angle` are impossible to solve if one uses only compass and straightedge. In the same paper he also solved the problem of determining which regular polygons are constructible: a regular polygon is constructible if and only if the number of its sides is the product of a power of two and any number of distinct Fermat primes (i.e., the sufficient conditions given by Gauss are also necessary). An attempted proof of the impossibility of squaring the circle was given by James Gregory in Vera Circuli et Hyperbolae Quadratura (The True Squaring of the Circle and of the Hyperbola) in 1667. Although his proof was faulty, it was the first paper to attempt to solve the problem using algebraic properties of π. It was not until 1882 that Ferdinand von Lindemann rigorously proved its impossibility, by extending the work of Charles Hermite and proving that π is a transcendental number. Alhazen's problem was not proved impossible to solve by compass and straightedge until the work of . The study of constructible numbers, per se, was initiated by René Descartes in La Géométrie, an appendix to his book Discourse on the Method published in 1637. Descartes associated numbers to geometrical line segments in order to display the power of his philosophical method by solving an ancient straightedge and compass construction problem put forth by Pappus. ## See also - Computable number - Definable real number

Lily van Java

1928 film

Lilly van Java (Lily of Java), also known as Melatie van Java (Jasmine of Java), is a 1928 film from the Dutch East Indies directed by Nelson Wong. Initially meant to be produced by South Sea Film and shot by an American director, the film – which follows a woman told to marry a man she does not love – was ultimately completed by Wong's Halimoen Film. Details on its cast and performance are contradictory, although the film is recognised as the first of a long series of ethnic Chinese-produced films in the country. It is likely a lost film. ## Premise The young daughter of a rich man, already in a loving relationship, is forced to marry someone she does not love. ## Production The first two films produced in the Dutch East Indies, Loetoeng Kasaroeng (1926) and Eulis Atjih (1927), were made by the Dutch filmmakers L. Heuveldorp and G. Kruger, respectively. Ethnic Chinese businessmen, capitalising on the success of films produced in Shanghai, China, established two production houses, one in Batavia (modern day Jakarta) and the other in Surabaya. South Sea Film, the production house in Batavia established by Liem Goan Lian and Tjan Tjoen Lian, was advertised as the first Chinese filmmaking cooperative in the country. Its first script was for Lily van Java; which the company had to pass through the Film Commissie (national censorship bureau) for fear of violating traditional values. According to JB Kristanto's Katalog Film Indonesia (Indonesian Film Catalogue), an American named Len Ross was initially booked to direct the film; Ross was reportedly in the country to film a work entitled Java for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and shot several scenes in mid-1928. The cast was ethnic Chinese, and the female stars – Lie Lian Hwa and Lie Bo Tan – were reportedly daughters of the Surabayan gangster Lie Bauw Kie and trained in silat; other cast members included Kwee Tiang An and Yah Kwee Pang. However, after Ross withdrew the script was put on hold. Nelson Wong, who had formerly been booked with his brothers Joshua and Othniel to record a film for Tio Tek Djien, approached David Wong (no relation), a high-ranking General Motors employee in Batavia, for funding. With this the Wong Brother's Halimoen Film was able to finish the film. Some sources indicate that the same cast was used, while others suggest that the leading role was taken by a student from Shanghai named Lily Oey. The silent film was shot in black and white; its intertitles were bilingual, written in both Malay and Chinese. The American film historian Richard Abel writes that the film's technical quality, like all other local productions of the time, was poor and unable to compete with imported works, and the Indonesian film scholar Misbach Yusa Biran writes that the shots were considered blurry even at the time. ## Release and reception Lily van Java was released in 1928. Its success is disputed. The reporter Leopold Gan wrote that the film was highly successful, to the point that after several years copies were worn through from overplaying. However, Joshua Wong later recalled in an interview that the film had been a failure; David Wong is reported to have avowed to no longer fund any films after Lily van Java. Lacking a backer, the Wong Brothers went on hiatus. Lily van Java continues to be recorded as the first Chinese-produced film of the area. Although the Wongs went on hiatus, other ethnic Chinese became involved in film. Several Chinese owned start-ups are recorded from 1929 on, including Nancing Film with Resia Boroboedoer (1928) and Tan's Film with Njai Dasima (1929). By the early 1930s Chinese-owned businesses were the dominating force in the country's film industry. The film is likely a lost film. The American visual anthropologist Karl G. Heider writes that all Indonesian films from before 1950 are lost. However, JB Kristanto's Katalog Film Indonesia (Indonesian Film Catalogue) records several as having survived at Sinematek Indonesia's archives, and Biran writes that several Japanese propaganda films have survived at the Netherlands Government Information Service.

Sitric Cáech

Norse King of Dublin and King of York

Sitric Cáech or Sihtric Cáech or Sigtrygg Gále, (Old Norse: Sigtryggr , Old English: Sihtric, died 927) was a Hiberno-Scandinavian Viking leader who ruled Dublin and then Viking Northumbria in the early 10th century. He was a grandson of Ímar and a member of the Uí Ímair. Sitric was most probably among those Vikings expelled from Dublin in 902, whereafter he may have ruled territory in the eastern Danelaw in England. In 917, he and his kinsman Ragnall ua Ímair sailed separate fleets to Ireland where they won several battles against local kings. Sitric successfully recaptured Dublin and established himself as king, while Ragnall returned to England to become King of Northumbria. In 919, Sitric won a victory at the Battle of Islandbridge over a coalition of local Irish kings who aimed to expel the Uí Ímair from Ireland. Six Irish kings were killed in the battle, including Niall Glúndub, overking of the Northern Uí Néill and High King of Ireland. In 920 Sitric left Dublin for Northumbria, with his kinsman Gofraid ua Ímair succeeding him as king in Dublin. That same year Sitric led a raid on Davenport, Cheshire, perhaps as an act of defiance against Edward the Elder, King of the Anglo-Saxons. In 921 Ragnall ua Ímair died, with Sitric succeeding him as King of Northumbria. Though there are no written accounts of conflict, numismatic evidence suggests there was a Viking reconquest of a large part of Mercia in the following few years. An agreement of some sort between the Vikings of Northumbria and the Anglo-Saxons was achieved in 926 when Sitric married a sister of Æthelstan, perhaps Edith of Polesworth. Sitric also converted to Christianity, though this did not last long and he soon reverted to paganism. He died in 927 and was succeeded by his kinsman Gofraid ua Ímair. Sitric's son Gofraid later reigned as king of Dublin, his son Aralt (Harald) as king of Limerick, and his son Amlaíb Cuarán as king of both Dublin and Northumbria. ## Background The ruling Vikings of Dublin were expelled from the city in 902 by a joint force led by Máel Finnia mac Flannacán, overking of Brega and Cerball mac Muirecáin, overking of Leinster. Those Vikings that survived the capture of the city split into different groups; some went to France, some to England, and some to Wales. Archaeological evidence suggests Dublin remained occupied in the years immediately following this expulsion, perhaps indicating only the ruling elite were forced to leave. However, Viking raids on Irish settlements continued, and in 914, a large Viking fleet travelled to Waterford. The arrival of this fleet marked the re-establishment of Viking rule over parts of Ireland, and was followed by more Vikings settling in Limerick the following year. The main historical sources for this period are the Norse sagas and the Irish annals. Some of the annals, such as the Annals of Ulster, are believed to be contemporary accounts, whereas the sagas were written down at dates much later than the events they describe and are considered far less reliable. A few of the annals such as the Fragmentary Annals of Ireland and the Annals of the Four Masters were also compiled at later dates, in part from more contemporary material and in part from fragments of sagas. According to Downham, "apart from these additions [of saga fragments], Irish chronicles are considered by scholars to be largely accurate records, albeit partisan in their presentation of events". ## Biography Sitric is presumed to have left Dublin with the rest of the ruling Vikings in 902. Coins dating from the period bearing the legend "Sitric Comes" (Earl Sitric), and the mintmark "Sceldfor" (Shelford), have been found as part of the Cuerdale Hoard, perhaps indicating that he ruled territory in the eastern Danelaw during his exile from Ireland. The Anglo-Saxons conquered all of the Danelaw south of the Humber by 918, but there is no mention of Earl Sitric in English sources, suggesting he was no longer ruling there at the time. The earliest mention of Sitric in the Irish Annals is in 917 when he and Ragnall, another grandson of Ímar, are described as leading their fleets to Ireland. Sitric sailed his fleet to Cenn Fuait in Leinster, and Ragnall sailed his fleet to Waterford. Niall Glúndub, overking of the Northern Uí Néill, saw these Vikings as a threat, and he marched an army south to repel them. The Vikings fought against the men of the Uí Néill at Mag Femen in County Tipperary and claimed victory, though only through timely reinforcement by Ragnall and his army. This was followed by another at the Battle of Confey (also known as the Battle of Cenn Fuait), against Augaire mac Ailella, overking of Leinster, who died in the battle. Augaire's death marked the end of effective opposition to the Vikings' return to Ireland. Sitric led his men on a triumphant return to Dublin, where he established himself as king, while Ragnall returned to England and soon became King of Northumbria. According to Downham, the departure of Ragnall and his contingent of warriors may have emboldened Niall Glúndub to try to expel the Uí Ímair from Ireland once again. In 919 Niall led a coalition of northern Irish kings south to Dublin. The forces of Sitric and Niall met near Islandbridge in modern-day County Dublin (dated 14 September by the Annals of Ulster). The resulting Battle of Islandbridge was an overwhelming victory for Sitric and his forces, with Niall falling in battle alongside one of his kinsmen. Five other kings, and a kinsman of the ruler of the Southern Uí Néill, also died fighting against Sitric's army. In 920 the Annals of Ulster report that Sitric left Dublin "through the power of God". Sitric travelled to Northumbria where he assumed the kingship of Northumbria, succeeding his kinsman Ragnall who died the following year. Sitric was followed as King of Dublin by his brother or cousin Gofraid ua Ímair. In 920 Ragnall had submitted to Edward the Elder, King of the Anglo-Saxons. That same year, following his departure from Dublin, Sitric led a raid in Davenport, Cheshire, in violation of the terms of submission agreed between Ragnall and Edward. Smyth has suggested that this was an act of defiance by Sitric, indicating to Edward that he would not submit to him like Ragnall. Neither the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle nor Æthelweard's Chronicon makes mention of Sitric in the years 921–924, between his installation as King of Northumbria and the death of Edward the Elder. However, there are coins in existence which were minted at Lincoln during the period that bear Sitric's name. These are an important piece of evidence since they suggest Sitric ruled a large area south of the Humber, a claim contradicted by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle which says that all the 'Danes' in Mercia (i.e., south of the Humber) submitted to Edward in 918. These coins might indicate Viking reconquest of a large area in the years 921–924, which if it did happen went unremarked upon by the Chronicle. Edward's control of Mercia likely stretched the kingdom's resources to breaking point, allowing Sitric to exploit the ill-will towards Edward that existed among the populace there, with Edward being unable to effectively oppose Sitric. Downham suggests that the silence of the Chronicle might be due to Edward's failing power in the latter years of his reign, and its tendency to only record successes and not failures. His death in 924 is not recorded by a number of important Frankish, Welsh and Irish annals, suggesting a fall in importance and standing from the zenith of his power in 920. Edward the Elder's successor, Æthelstan, met with Sitric at Tamworth in 926. The Chronicle does not mention the reason for the meeting, but it reports that an unnamed sister of Æthelstan was married to Sitric. Several years previously, in 918, Æthelstan's predecessor had used a royal marriage to bring Mercia under Wessex control. According to Smyth, the fact the marriage between Sitric and Æthelstan's sister occurred at the old Mercian royal centre at Tamworth reinforces the suggestion that this marriage was supposed to perform a function similar to the one in 918. The agreement reached at Tamworth seems to have necessitated Sitric's conversion to Christianity, though he soon reverted to paganism. Sitric died the following year and was succeeded by his kinsman Gofraid ua Ímair. The Annals of Ulster describe his death: > Sitric, grandson of Ímar, king of the dark foreigners and the fair foreigners, died at an immature age. ## Family In the annals Sitric is sometimes identified by the use of one of his epithets, or by the use of "ua Ímair", meaning "grandson of Ímar", but never with a patronymic. As such, it is not possible to identify which of the three known sons of Ímar (Bárid, Sichfrith or Sitriuc) – if any – was the father of Sitric. One possible reason for the lack of a patronym might be that Sitric was the child of a son of Ímar who never ruled Dublin, or who spent most of his time outside Ireland, thus making Sitric's legitimacy to rule Dublin dependent on the identity of his grandfather, not his father. Another possibility is that Sitric was a grandson of Ímar through a daughter, again with his right to rule dependent on his grandfather. Sitric's kinsmen Ímar, Ragnall, Amlaíb and Gofraid are the other known grandsons of Ímar identified by the use of "ua Ímair". All except for Amlaíb ruled as either King of Dublin or King of Northumbria at one time or another. The Annals of Clonmacnoise mention two sons of Sitric, Auisle and Sichfrith, falling at the Battle of Brunanburh in 937. Another son, Aralt, ruled as King of Limerick for an unknown length of time until his death in battle in 940. Sitric's son Amlaíb Cuarán (d. 981) reigned twice each as King of Dublin and King of Northumbria, and may have been the basis of the Middle English romance character Havelok the Dane. Gofraid (d. 951) may have been another son though his father is only named as "Sitric", leaving his relationship to Sitric ua Ímair unclear. Orkneyinga saga tells that a daughter of Sitric named Gytha was married to Olaf Tryggvason, King of Norway. According to Hudson, this is unlikely to be correct, since the marriage is said to have occurred sixty-three years after Sitric's death. It is much more likely that Gytha was actually a granddaughter of Sitric through his son Amlaíb Cuarán. Sitric married an unnamed sister of Æthelstan in 926. Historians generally describe her as Æthelstan's only full sister, but Maggie Bailey points out that this rests on the late testimony of William of Malmesbury, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle makes no such distinction when recording her marriage to Sitric. William did not know her name, but traditions first recorded at Bury St Edmunds in the early twelfth century identify her as Saint Edith of Polesworth. The truth of his identification is debated, but regardless of her name it is likely that she entered a nunnery in widowhood. According to some late sources, such as the chronicler John of Wallingford, Amlaíb Cuarán was the son of Sitric and this West Saxon princess. ### Family tree ## In popular culture Sigtrygg appears as a character in The Saxon Stories, a series of historical novels by Bernard Cornwell. In the books he is portrayed as the brother of Ragnall ua Ímair, and he marries Stiorra, the daughter of the book's protagonist, Uhtred of Bebbanburg.

Bad Guy (Billie Eilish song)

2019 single by Billie Eilish

"Bad Guy" is a song by the American singer-songwriter Billie Eilish and the fifth single from her first studio album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? (2019). It was released on March 29, 2019, by Darkroom and Interscope Records. The song was described by media as electropop, dance-pop, trap-pop with minimalist instrumentation. In the lyrics, Eilish taunts someone for being a bad guy while suggesting that she is more resilient than he is. Eilish wrote "Bad Guy" with her brother and the producer Finneas O'Connell. Another version of the song, a collaboration with the Canadian singer Justin Bieber, was released on July 11, 2019. Upon release, "Bad Guy" received mostly positive reviews. It topped the US Billboard Hot 100 and 16 other international charts including in the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, peaking at number two on the UK Singles Chart. In the US, it ended the record-breaking 19-week run of "Old Town Road" by Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus. "Bad Guy" has received several certifications, including a tenfold platinum award from the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) and a Diamond certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The song received several awards, including Record and Song of the Year at the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards. Dave Meyers directed the music video, which depicts Eilish involved in several activities such as wild dancing, suffering a nosebleed and sitting on the back of a man doing push-ups. Reviewers noted the video for its camp elements and eccentric imagery. ## Background and release Eilish released her first studio album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, on March 29, 2019. "Bad Guy" was simultaneously issued as the record's fifth single. The song was co-written by Eilish and her brother Finneas O'Connell, with the latter also produced the track and Eilish providing additional production. It was mastered by John Greenham and mixed by Rob Kinelski, both of whom also served as studio personnel. In August 2019, the single was made available for pre-order on cassette and scheduled to ship in October; selected cassettes were signed by Eilish. Additionally, a flexi disc was similarly released for pre-order to ship in the following 4–6 weeks. Each of the two releases came with a digital single delivered via email for US customers. ## Composition and lyrical interpretation "Bad Guy" is divided into two halves; the first is fast at 135 beats per minute (BPM) and the latter is slow at 60 BPM. The song is played in the key of G minor following a chord progression of Gm-Cm-D7, while Eilish's vocals span a range of F₃ to C₆. The track was called electropop, dance-pop, "pop-trap", and "nu-goth pop" in media articles; it features a minimalist production consisting of synth bass, a kick drum, amplified finger snaps and 808 bass. Furthermore, the single's hook utilizes a synthesizer riff, which has been described as both "goofy carnival" and "cartoony". iHeartMedia referred to "Bad Guy" as an alternative rock song. In an interview with Rolling Stone, the utilization of a Sydney pedestrian traffic light sound in the song was revealed; it originates from a phone recording made by Eilish in February 2017. Vanity Fair's Louie XIV labeled it "dance music through a fun house mirror". Alongside humorous cadences, Eilish uses several tongue-in-cheek lyrics. "Bad Guy" was inspired by Selena Gomez's "Everything Is Not What It Seems" (2007), the theme song for the teen sitcom Wizards of Waverly Place, alongside Laura Shigihara's video game music theme for Plants vs. Zombies (2009). In the lyrics, Eilish taunts a lover for being a bad guy; as the song progresses she suggests she is tougher than him, singing in a "nonchalant, self-effacing murmur". According to reviewers, the song also discusses themes such as misandry, gloating, sarcasm and naughtiness. During the track's half-spoken chorus, the singer elaborates on her relationship with fellow men and women, rejecting their expectations of her; "I'm that bad type / Make your mama sad type / Make your girlfriend mad type / Might seduce your dad type / I'm the bad guy, duh". Other lyrics include: "My mommy likes to sing along with me / But she won't sing this song / If she reads all the lyrics / She'll pity the men I know". Analyzing the lyrics of "Bad Guy", Caitlin White of Uproxx wrote that they see "a woman's teenage voice boast of its power, assert her sexual dominance, and use men as playthings instead of sing about being used as one by them". She continued; "'Bad Guy' positions a young female pop star in a role that's usually reserved for men working in rock or hip hop". AJ Longabaugh of V likened the lyrics to the later work of Amy Winehouse. ## Critical reception Upon its release, "Bad Guy" received mainly positive reviews, with several critics praising its lyrics. White of Uproxx likened the song to material released by the White Stripes, writing, "It's the kind of song that builds power as it unfolds, an anthem imbued with casual fearlessness". Labeling "Bad Guy" as a "low-key banger", Stereogum's Chris DeVille drew comparisons between the song and the work of Lorde and Fiona Apple. Writing for PopBuzz, Sam Prance said "Bad Guy" is "iconic" and dubbed the "duh" lyric as "already one of the standout musical moments of 2019". He continued; "It's the perfect anthem for anyone who likes to get in touch with their dark side". Vanity Fair's Louie XIV included the track in the magazine's list of "9 Songs From 2019 That Might Predict the Future of Pop", writing; "Billie has remade the look of pop success: ironic, self-aware, intimate, DIY, and paying little mind to dated standards for teen-pop idol-dom". Suzy Exposito of Rolling Stone said Eilish recalled DC Comics' character Harley Quinn during the song, "playing a comic book villain in a voice that suggests Lorde's rascal kid sister". In a negative review, Pitchforks Stacey Anderson criticized Eilish for "bragging about statutory rape" and said she found the song "stale". Billboard included "Bad Guy" in their list of 100 songs that defined the 2010s. In 2021, it was listed at number 178 on Rolling Stone's Top 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list. ## Commercial performance Upon the release of When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, "Bad Guy" debuted at number seven on the US Billboard Hot 100 on the week ending April 13, 2019, as Eilish's first top ten entry on the chart. It later occupied number two for a total of nine weeks, before ultimately reaching number one on the week ending August 24, 2019. "Bad Guy" ended the record-breaking 19-week run of "Old Town Road" by Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus. At 17, she further became the first artist born in the 2000s to achieve this feat and the youngest since then-16-year-old Lorde topped the ranking with "Royals" in 2013. Internationally, "Bad Guy" reached number one in Australia, Canada, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, New Zealand, Norway, and Russia. The song has been awarded multiple certifications, including a tenfold platinum award from the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) and a Diamond one from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). becoming the first song from an female artist born this century to go Diamond in the US "Bad Guy" was the best-performing global single of 2019 with combined sales and track-equivalent streams of 19.5 million units according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). By 2022, "Bad Guy" was streamed over 2 billion times worldwide through Spotify, her first song to do so. ## Music videos A music video for "Bad Guy" was directed by Dave Meyers and was uploaded to Eilish's official YouTube channel on March 29, 2019. Additionally, Eilish released a vertical video on August 15, 2019. The video begins with a yellow backdrop while the opening track "!!!!!!!" from When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? plays. Eilish discusses taking out her Invisalign dental brace before laughing. She eventually kicks her way through a wall while wearing a yellow sweatshirt and sweatpants, and hands her dental brace to a man, Eric Lutz, on her right. Scenes showing Eilish dancing wildly are interspersed with her feeding pigeons, getting a nosebleed while wearing a white outfit in a blue room with a clock, pouring milk and cereal into a suited man's mouth against the backdrop of a red desert, riding on a miniature car with a gang of men on tricycles, wearing snorkel gear while men's heads float in plastic bags above her, and sitting on a wall in front of a group of overweight men who flex their bellies to the beat. The video ends sinisterly with Billie in a dark, red room, sitting on the back of a man who does push-ups. One comment to the clip on YouTube posted by Seth Everman, reading "I'm the bald guy", became the most-liked on the platform, gathering over three million likes and also surpassed one billion views in November 2020, which made Google celebrate the milestone created an 'Infinite Bad Guy' interactive site that allowed users to switch between over 15,000 different covers of the song available on YouTube. The video was positively received by music critics. Uproxx's White called the use of "!!!!!!!" at its beginning "effective". James Rettig of Stereogum noticed elements of camp although he acknowledged the video was "still being emotionally sincere and vulnerable. This one features a lot of weirdo imagery ... in a way that's both goofy and genuinely unsettling". Chloe Gilke, writing for Uproxx, said the video takes several of the song's lyrics literally and that it is "awash in primary colors and black and white, Eilish's bold aesthetic". Rolling Stone's Jon Blistein noticed "a series of strange, grotesque and weirdly hilarious sequences", while Zoe Phillips of The Michigan Daily pointed out "strange dances, from a backward Exorcist-style crawl to a squatting sidestep to an energetic roll". Upon its release, the video was accused of "blatantly" plagiarizing photographs by Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari of Toiletpaper magazine. The video received significant attention online and was the subject of several memes. Melissa McCarthy parodied it on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in May 2019. On the January 16, 2020 episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the show parodied the song as "Bond Guy", which references No Time to Die, where Eilish would provide the theme for the movie. ## Live performances and other usage Eilish has promoted "Bad Guy" through a number of live performances. On May 7, 2019, she sang it on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and on May 26 on BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend. The singer also performed the track at Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on April 20, and at Glastonbury Festival on June 30. "Bad Guy" was included on the setlist of Eilish's When We All Fall Asleep Tour (2019). It was also performed at Pukkelpop in August of the same year. On September 29, 2019, Eilish performed the song on Saturday Night Live; her routine was compared to Lionel Richie's "Dancing on the Ceiling" (1986) music video. She further sang "Bad Guy" on her Where Do We Go? World Tour (2020), and Happier Than Ever, The World Tour (2022). In June 2019, Bastille covered "Bad Guy" at BBC's Maida Vale Studios as part of a medley that also included Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" (2009), Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood" (2015), Dick Dale's "Misirlou" (1962) and their own "Bad Decisions" (2019). For their reinterpretation, Bastille added guitars and backup singers, and changed the song's lyrical plot by modifying the original line "I'm the bad guy" to "You're the bad guy". The track was also covered by Two Door Cinema Club on Radio 1's Live Lounge the same month, by Alexandra Stan on Virgin Radio Romania in July, as well as by multiple musicians in December during a live radio broadcast of Live From Here at the Town Hall. A ska punk cover of the song was made by ska band the Interrupters and used in the second season of the Netflix original series The Umbrella Academy. In April 2019, Team Blake Shelton's Kendra Checketts covered "Bad Guy" on the Live Playoff round of the sixteenth season of The Voice. In May 2020, Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante and Suicidal Tendencies bassist Ra Diaz covered the song virtually during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Alessia Cara also covered the song on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon as part of her Eilish impersonation. "Bad Guy" was used for an advertisement for clothing manufacturer Calvin Klein's "My Truth" campaign, as well as commercials for Kia Seltos. It was included on the chart compilation album Now That's What I Call Music 103, and was used during the end credits of the 2019 superhero horror film Brightburn. It is also featured on the 2019 dance rhythm game, Just Dance 2020, and in the trailers for the 2019 film Bombshell, 2020 video game Cyberpunk 2077, and 2022 animated movie The Bad Guys. The song was further used in the 2021 movies Sing 2 and Back to the Outback. Among other parodies, one titled "Dad Guy" released by FunkTurkey on YouTube in August 2019, went viral. It replaces the original lyrics with jokes about fatherhood. A piano cover of "Bad Guy" by composer Ramin Djawadi was featured in the third episode of the fourth season of Westworld. ## Justin Bieber version ### Background and composition On July 9, 2019, Eilish used her Instagram to dismiss rumours about a second studio album, hinting at the upcoming release of a secret project. Her brother Finneas O'Connell retweeted a tweet Justin Bieber had written the day before saying "Remix", leading to speculation. The remix version of "Bad Guy" was released on July 11, 2019, via Darkroom and Interscope Records. Prior to its premiere, the lyrics of the song were posted on Genius alongside its expected release date, labels and writers. Accompanying the release of the remix is cover artwork showing a photograph of a young Eilish—a fan of Bieber's—surrounded by his posters. Halle Kiefer of Vulture compared Eilish's look to that of JoJo Siwa. The remix has identical credits to the original "Bad Guy" with the addition of Bieber and Jason Boyd as songwriters and composers. On the song, Bieber performs autotuned and rap-inspired vocals. His runs are added to the intro, following which he joins on the second verse, flaunting his "icy" wealth. He sings lyrics including: "I got more ice than, than the snow", "Cause I don't sleep, please don't wake me" and "It ain't political", adding the ad libitum "skrrt!". Bieber continues; "Yeah, I'm a bad guy/Ain't no holdin’ back guy/Come off like a mad guy/Always got your back guy/Yeah I'm the real type/Keep you full of thrills type/Show you what it feels like/Got an open invite", before chanting "I'm the bad guy". He growls into the second half of the song. ### Reception and accolades Music critics gave mixed reviews of the remix upon its release, mostly commenting on Bieber's appearance. Lake Schatz of Consequence of Sound wrote that Bieber's contribution failed to make a "huge" impact. Billboard's Andrew Unterberger wrote; "Bieber's clearly having fun with his guest verse and ad-libs – the remix's high point might come with his mid-verse "skrrt!" exclamation – but he never seems to totally find his way into the song's manic-spooky energy". Stereogum editor Chris DeVille considered Bieber's vocals "entirely out of place," concluding that "he basically ruins a great song." An editor of BreatheHeavy said the remix is "something no one asked for, but it'll certainly breathe new life into it". Callie Ahlgrim of Insider wrote; "Bieber takes some of the edge off of Eilish's brooding 'Bad Guy,' but not in a bad way. His sickly sweet voice glides over the thumping beat, creating an interesting and irresistible contrast". Jem Aswad of Variety likened the singer's vocal delivery to that of Justin Timberlake. The remix attained minor success on its own, but contributed to the original's rise to number one on the Billboard Hot 100. It received a nomination in the Best Remix category at the 2020 iHeartRadio Music Awards. ## Credits and personnel Credits adapted from the liner notes of When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, and Tidal. - Billie Eilish – vocals, songwriting, additional production - Finneas O'Connell – production, songwriting - John Greenham – mastering engineering, studio personnel - Rob Kinelski – mixing, studio personnel Justin Bieber version additional personnel''' - Justin Bieber – vocals, songwriting - Jason Boyd – songwriting ## Charts ### Weekly charts ### Monthly charts ### Year-end charts ### Decade-end charts ## Certifications ## Release history ## See also - List of best-selling singles in Australia - List of number-one singles of 2019 (Australia) - List of Canadian Hot 100 number-one singles of 2019 - List of number-one singles of 2019 (Finland) - List of number-one singles from the 2010s (New Zealand) - List of number-one songs in Norway - List of Billboard'' Hot 100 number-one singles of 2019

Wizards & Warriors

Wizards & Warriors, titled Densetsu no Kishi Elrond (伝説の騎士エルロンド, Legendary Knight Elrond) in Japan, is an action platform video game developed by Rare and published by Acclaim Entertainment and Jaleco for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was released in North America in December 1987, and in Europe on January 7, 1990. The player controls Kuros, "Knight Warrior of the Books of Excalibur", as he sets out in the Kingdom of Elrond to defeat the evil wizard Malkil. Malkil holds the princess of Elrond captive in Castle IronSpire, deep within the forests of Elrond. The player fights through forests, tunnels, and caves, while collecting keys, treasure, weapons, and magic items. It is Rare's second NES game, after Slalom (1987). In the months surrounding its North American and European releases, Wizards & Warriors was featured in several video game magazines, including Nintendo Fun Club News, Nintendo Power, and VideoGames & Computer Entertainment. It was praised for its graphics, sound, difficulty, and arcade-style gameplay. In 2010, Retro Gamer called it "a unique experience for NES gamers in 1987" that was "technically well ahead of other games for the console at the time", but attributed its relatively low difficulty to allowing unlimited continues without penalty. Wizards & Warriors was followed by three sequels: Ironsword: Wizards & Warriors II (1989), Wizards & Warriors X: The Fortress of Fear (1990), and Wizards & Warriors III: Kuros: Visions of Power (1992). ## Gameplay Wizards & Warriors is a platform game in which players control Kuros through the forests of Elrond to Castle IronSpire, where he must defeat Malkil and rescue the princess. Starting in the Elrond forest, players explore the trees to find items and to reach the caves and tunnels. There, various magical items and treasure are collected, and then caves filled with ice and lava are explored. Players fight through a second set of forests, and arrive at Castle IronSpire. It consists of a series of mazes in which players must use keys to open doors and possibly rescue other damsels. At the end lies the final confrontation with the wizard Malkil. Players use the control pad to move horizontally and to crouch. Kuros can attack enemies by using his Brightsword or with other weapons and magic. He can attack enemies while in the air or while standing by holding the sword in position. The objective of the game is to collect the various weapons, magic, gems, and treasure to overcome the enemies and other obstacles and hazards. Gems are required to bribe the creature who guards the entrance to the next level. At the end of each level is a boss creature that has been empowered by Malkil's black magic. Bosses have an "Enemy's Black Magic Power" meter that shows how difficult the boss is, how many hits are required to defeat it, and what type of weaponry needs to be used. Kuros has a life meter that decreases as time passes and when he sustains damage from enemies. Players loses a life when Kuros's life meter runs out, but keep all items. The game ends when all three lives have been lost, but may continue; upon continuing, all items remain, but the score is reset to zero. Kuros's life meter is replenished by collecting pieces of meat scattered throughout the levels. Helpful items are inside acorns, torches, and treasure chests. Chests and doors are color-coded and require a key of matching color. Some weapons and magic items are replaced upon collecting a new item. Items include the following: "Boots of Force" that can kick open chests and doors; magical potions that temporarily grant Kuros invulnerability, extra speed, or extra jumping ability; gems to help bribe the end-of-level guardian; a shield to protect from enemy attacks; the "Potion of Levitation" that allows Kuros to float upward; the "Dagger of Throwing" and the "Battle Axe of Agor" that are thrown at enemies and return like a boomerang; the "Feather of Feather Fall" that slows Kuros's falling speed; the "Wand of Wonder" and "Staff of Power" that shoot out balls of ice and fire, respectively; the "Cloak of Darkness" that makes Kuros invisible to enemies; the "Boots of Lava Walk" that allows Kuros to walk on the lava; "Exploding Eggs" that destroys all on-screen enemies; "Alarm Clocks" that stop all enemies for a brief period; knife and axe upgrades; and a "horn" (trumpet) to reveal hidden doors to gem caves. Score increases include coins, orbs, chalices, entire hoards of treasure, and rescuing the damsels. ## Plot Wizards & Warriors pits the hero Kuros, the "Knight Warrior of the Books of Excalibur", against the main antagonist, the evil wizard Malkil. He was considered one of the greatest wizards in the land, such that Merlin was one of his students. However, the aging Malkil has gone mad, using his magic for evil, and has captured the princess as prisoner in Castle IronSpire, deep within the forests of Elrond. The brave knight Kuros, is summoned to venture through the forests of Elrond. He is armed with the legendary Brightsword, a sword that is powerful enough to beat demons, insects, undead, and the other creatures under Malkil's spell. With the sword, he ventures out through the forests of Elrond and the various caves and tunnels and to Castle IronSpire, to defeat Malkil and rescue the princess. ## Development Wizards & Warriors was developed by the UK-based Rare for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was released by Acclaim in North America in December 1987; and in Europe on January 7, 1990. It was released in Japan by Jaleco with the title Densetsu no Kishi Elrond (伝説の騎士エルロンド, Legendary Knight Elrond) on July 15, 1988. It is Rare's second NES release, after Slalom. The soundtrack was composed by video game composer David Wise. ## Reception Wizards & Warriors was reviewed in Nintendo Fun Club News, the precursor to Nintendo Power. Nintendo Power called it the best game for the NES Advantage controller, allowing concentration on strategic gameplay. In 1989, it nominated the game for "Best Graphics & Sound" and Kuros for "Best Character" in its "Nintendo Power Awards '88", but it did not win in either category. VideoGames & Computer Entertainment lauded the game's challenge, the need for problem solving to use various items to defeat some enemies and make progress, the need to find hidden rooms for items, the high difficulty being offset by continues, the "excellent graphics and sound", and the arcade-style gameplay. Power Play praised the graphics, sound, and extras, but criticized its "stale gameplay". Arnie Katz reviewed the game for Computer Gaming World, stating that "Wizards & Warriors refutes the claim that all video games are unrestrained target shoots. This engaging and well-programmed action quest offers a satisfying, well-rounded gaming experience." In a retrospective of the entire Wizards & Warriors series, UK-based magazine Retro Gamer gave a positive review of the first game, saying that "Kuros's first adventure was a unique experience for NES gamers in 1987, and technically well ahead of other games for the console at the time." The review said that the platform game emphasizes hunting treasure and items, and that most gamers disliked the relatively easy difficulty level due to unlimited continues. According to the retrospective, in 1988, Rare showed Wizards & Warriors to Zippo Games, who was touring Rare and its NES library. Rare asked Zippo to develop a sequel, which became Ironsword: Wizards & Warriors II. In another retrospective at Rare's 25th anniversary, GamePro called the game "unique at the time" due to unlimited continues. Wizards & Warriors has received scant coverage from modern video gaming websites. GamesRadar named the opening theme "Game music of the day", noting that the theme "suggests, from the moment you turn on the game, that knights, wizards, goblins and who knows what else are about to collide in a battle so epic it's destined for a Frazetta painting". JC Fletcher from Joystiq called the game "a simple action-platformer about a guy in thick armor who kicks open treasure chests in order to bribe knights". He notes the variety of good and bad items such as the "Staff of Power" which inflicts much damage to enemies and conversely the "Cloak of Darkness", which he says "makes Kuros invisible to you but not to enemies". He said that the game has an arcade feel, with unlimited continues, a high-score list, name entry for high scores, and good music. Houston Press's Jef Rouner lauded the game's music and animation, and noted its high difficulty level, especially during boss battles. IGN put Wizards & Warriors at \#56 on its "Top 100 NES Games" list, and reviewer Sam Claiborn said that the game was inspired by Dungeons & Dragons style of RPGs, and added action platforming elements. Seanbaby criticized the game for items that did not work as intended, including the "Cloak of Darkness" and the "Boots of Lava Walk". ## Other media Wizards & Warriors was published as a standalone handheld game by Acclaim in September 1989, in a series of handheld ports including WWF WrestleMania Challenge, Knight Rider, 1943: The Battle of Midway, and Rocky. Kuros and Malkil were featured – along with the title characters from Kwirk and BigFoot, Tyrone from Arch Rivals, and characters from NARC – in the 1990 animated series The Power Team, part of the video game reviewing show Video Power. Malkil is in an episode of Captain N: The Game Master called "Nightmare on Mother Brain's Street" where the game world is referred to as Excalibur and not Elrond. Wizards & Warriors is one of the eight NES games novelized for the Worlds of Power series, written by the series' creator Seth Godin, with the pseudonym "F. X. Nine".

Isaac Parsons (American military officer)

American confederate military officer

Isaac Parsons (January 7, 1814 – April 24, 1862) was an American planter, politician, and military officer in the U.S. state of Virginia (now West Virginia). Parsons served as a Justice of the Peace of Hampshire County's District 3 from 1852 to 1853. He later served as a member of the Virginia House of Delegates representing Hampshire County from 1854 until 1857. Parsons was the grandson of Virginia House Delegate Isaac Parsons (1752–1796), the great-grandson of Colonial Virginia military officer William Foreman (died 1777), and the grandfather of First Lady of West Virginia, Edna Brady Cornwell (1868–1958). Parsons inherited his family's Wappocomo plantation north of Romney. In 1855, fugitive slave Jacob Green escaped from Parsons' Wappocomo plantation to Pennsylvania along with several other slaves. Parsons and his nephews went north to pursue the escapees, resulting in the arrest of his nephew, James "Zip" Parsons III (1831–1893). The arrest and trial of Parsons' nephew caused a dispute between the states of Virginia and Pennsylvania over the latter's refusal to execute the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Following the trial, a dispute ensued between Parsons and Charles James Faulkner over legal fees in 1857. At the time of the dispute, Faulkner was a member of the United States House of Representatives from Virginia's 8th congressional district. Parsons declared that Faulkner had originally offered his legal services at no cost during his nephew's trial. Following the onset of the American Civil War, Parsons served on Hampshire County's "committee for safety". Parsons received permission to raise an independent company of mounted infantry to provide defense along the border. He served as a military officer in the Huckleberry Rangers and Company K of the 13th Virginia Volunteer Infantry Regiment in the Confederate States Army. Parsons died of natural causes following a skirmish with Union Army cavalry at Grassy Lick Run in 1862. ## Early life and family Isaac Parsons was born on January 7, 1814, in Hampshire County, West Virginia (now West Virginia). He was the third son of James Gregg Parsons (1773–1847) and his wife Mary Catherine Casey Parsons (1773–1846). The Parsons family was a prominent American family whose ancestors had arrived to the Thirteen Colonies from England in 1635, and relocated to Hampshire County around 1740. Parsons' paternal grandfather, of which he is a likely namesake, Isaac Parsons (1752–1796) served as a member of the Virginia House of Delegates representing Hampshire County from 1789 until his death in 1796; and operated a public ferry across the South Branch Potomac River. Through his mother, Parsons was a great-grandson of Colonial Virginia military officer William Foreman (died 1777). Parsons was raised through childhood to adulthood on his family's Wappocomo plantation north of Romney. ## Wappocomo Following the death of James Gregg Parsons on January 25, 1847, his last will and testament dated November 7, 1846, and probated February 22, 1847, devised Lot Number 21 including Wappocomo (referred to in the will as the "Casey tract") to his son Colonel Isaac Parsons (1814–1862). Parsons' brother James "Big Jim" Parsons, Jr. (1798–1858), inherited the Collins tract (Lot Number 20) and his other brother David C. Parsons (1803–1860) inherited Lot Number 13. Parsons and his brothers also inherited the nearby "Jake Sugar Rum tract, the McGuire tract, and five town lots in Romney". Parsons eventually acquired Wappocomo plantation outright, and in 1861 he undertook a two-story stone expansion to the main house at Wappocomo. The ballroom in the upper story of this addition served as the scene of many events and parties. ## Political career Following the ratification of the 1851 Constitution of Virginia, Parsons was elected to serve as a justice of the peace for Hampshire County's District 3 in 1852 and 1853. Parsons served in this office alongside David Gibson, T. M. Davis, and Joseph C. Pancake. Parsons served as a member of the Virginia House of Delegates representing Hampshire County from 1854 until 1857. Parsons represented Hampshire County, which was a multi-member electoral district, in the following sessions of the Virginia House of Delegates: the 1854 session alongside Jesse Lupton; the 1855 session alongside Jesse Lupton; the 1856 session alongside Asa Hiett; and the 1857 session alongside Asa Hiett. Prior to the American Civil War, Parsons was an ardent proponent of Virginia's secession and the passage of an Ordinance of Secession. ## Jacob Green affair In August 1855, Jacob Green, a slave owned by Parsons, escaped from Wappocomo farm with four other slaves from neighboring plantations. In October of that year, Green returned to Parsons' plantation in Romney, and persuaded four or five slaves from neighboring farms owned by Parsons family relatives to escape with him to Pennsylvania. A party of eight to ten men, including Parsons and two of his nephews, James "Zip" Parsons III (1831–1893) and a Mr. Stump, went north in pursuit of the escapees. In the course of the pursuit, they captured two of Stump's escaped slaves, who were sent back to Hampshire County. James Parsons III was the son of Parsons' brother James "Big Jim" Parsons, Jr. (1798–1858), and his wife Elizabeth Miller Parsons. With information obtained from the two recaptured slaves, Parsons went to Johnstown, James Parsons III to Hollidaysburg, and Stump to Altoona, where they hoped to intercept Green as he headed west on the Allegheny Portage Railroad and Main Line Canal toward Pittsburgh. James Parsons III intercepted Green at Hollidaysburg, but local abolitionists thwarted his attempt to capture Green, and he was arrested and arraigned for kidnapping. Upon learning of the arrest of his nephew, Parsons sought the assistance of Charles James Faulkner, a prominent Martinsburg lawyer and United States House Representative from Virginia's 8th congressional district, and of James Murray Mason, a United States Senator from Virginia. Faulkner and Mason both offered their legal services for James Parsons III's defense. The Virginia General Assembly pledged its support to Parsons and to Virginia's slaveowners in defending their constitutional rights and to protect them from prosecution. Virginia Governor Henry A. Wise appointed John Randolph Tucker to attend Parsons' trial as a "special commissioner" of Virginia. The dispute between Virginia and Pennsylvania escalated, and on January 31, 1856, an article published in the New York Herald read "Threatened Civil War between Virginia and Pennsylvania". Parsons, Faulkner, and Tucker traveled to Hollidaysburg for James Parsons III's trial. Faulkner provided for Parsons' legal defense, leading to his acquittal as having acted legally under the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. In September 1856, Faulkner billed Parsons \$150 for his legal services. Parsons disputed the charge. In a series of articles in the Virginia Argus and Hampshire Advertiser, he declared that Faulkner had originally offered his services at no cost; that he had been lauded publicly for his generosity in doing so without ever denying that he had been working pro bono; and that he was practicing "duplicity and deception" in trying to win a reputation in his district through "specious acts of munificence". James Parsons III and his brother William Miller Parsons (born 1835) were later proprietors of the Virginia Argus and Hampshire Advertiser. In a series of articles published in the May 14 and 21, 1857, issues of the Virginia Argus, Parsons chronicled the 1855 arrest of his nephew for attempting to capture his fugitive slave and the resulting dispute between the Parsons family and Faulkner over legal fees in 1857. ## American Civil War Following the onset of the American Civil War, Parsons began serving on Hampshire County's "committee for safety". Parsons served on the "committee for safety" alongside James D. Armstrong, John M. Pancake, David Gibson, Dr. S. R. Lupton, John C. Heiskell, J. W. Marshall, W. A. Vance, R. K. Sheetz, Angus William McDonald, James Sheetz, John T. Pierce, James W. Albin, Charles Blue, Robert Hook, R. B. Sherrard, G. W. Gore, George William Washington, and John Johnson. The "committee for safety" continued to meet until May 29, 1861. Parsons, Pancake, and Armstrong were permitted by the Hampshire County Court to execute bonds for and on behalf of the county to raise money to fund "war purposes". On May 18, 1861, the Hampshire Guards and the Frontier Riflemen convened in front of the Hampshire County Courthouse in Romney before departing to fight in defense of the Confederate States of America. Parsons and a dozen of his men led the wagon train conveying these volunteers to Green Spring on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad mainline, where Parsons and the volunteers departed by train to Harpers Ferry. Parsons traveled to Richmond, where he received permission to raise an independent company of mounted infantry to provide defense along the border. Parsons set about enrolling volunteers, and within a short period of time, he enlisted approximately 30 men. Following its organization, the company became known as the Huckleberry Rangers of the Confederate States Army's 13th Virginia Volunteer Infantry Regiment. The following personnel were elected to serve in leadership positions within the company: Parsons as its captain in command; John Blue, first lieutenant; and his son Isaac Parsons, Jr., second lieutenant. Parsons and his company utilized flintlock muskets, which they had retrieved from the loft of the courthouse, and additional sabres and flintlock horse pistols which had last been used during the American Revolutionary War. Parsons provided Lt. Blue with a Minié ball rifle reportedly seized from John Brown at Harpers Ferry. Parsons again traveled to Richmond with a supply of cattle, and returned to his company's camp on the North River in Hampshire County around November 15, 1861. Upon his return, Parsons was anxious to learn about the condition of his family and property at Wappocomo and needed an additional change of clothing and a blanket. Accompanied by Lt. Blue and Adam Parrish, Parsons traveled west along the Northwestern Turnpike to around Pleasant Dale, where they set about traversing a series of roads and paths until nighttime when they reached Sugar Hollow 2 miles (3.2 km) north of Romney. Parsons stayed behind in the hollow while Lt. Blue and Parrish started out for Wappocomo to retrieve a set of Parsons' clothes. Lt. Blue and Parrish approached Wappocomo with the knowledge that Union Army forces kept a guard at the main house there day and night. Lt. Blue circled around to the rear of the mansion at Wappocomo and knocked on the window of his uncle, Garrett W. Blue, who was residing with Parsons' family. Blue warned his nephew about the Union Army soldiers possibly stationed on the home's front porch, and he subsequently fetched Parsons' daughter Kate, who provided Lt. Blue with a parcel for her father. Lt. Blue and Parrish returned to Sugar Hollow where Parsons was awaiting them, and Parsons set about locating pine from which to make torches to light their way out of the hollow. Parsons carried with him a small hatchet, and he began splitting pine in the darkness to fashion a torch. Parsons accidentally struck himself in the knee with his hatchet, and Lt. Blue applied a handkerchief to the wound to stop its bleeding. The three men traveled through the dark and rain to the nearby home of Frank Carter, where they ate and dried their clothes by the fire. The following morning, the three men mounted their horses and traveled to Rev. Harris' home, where Parsons and Lt. Blue parted with Parrish. Parsons and Lt. Blue continued east over Town Hill and reached George Thompson's residence on the Little Cacapon River, which had risen due to the previous night's rainfall. Parsons and Lt. Blue remained with Thompson for two days until the Little Cacapon River subsided, and traveled to Blue's Gap, where they set up camp. There, Lt. Blue received orders from Col. Angus William McDonald to carry out an expedition to Romney for General Stonewall Jackson to ascertain the number of Union Army infantry, cavalry, and artillery present in and around the town. Lt. Blue departed for Romney with Parsons' son Isaac Parsons, Jr., and W. V. Parsons accompanying him. Throughout 1861, Parsons "gratuitously" provided Confederate soldiers with food at his table and horses from his stables at his Wappocomo plantation. In 1862, Parsons had part of his family moved from their Wappocomo residence to Shull's Gap on the Lost River in Hardy County. Romney physician Dr. Lupton and his wife were also residing with Parsons' family at Shull's Gap. In March, Union Army forces were no closer to Romney than Green Spring, which allowed Parsons and his wife Susan Blue Parsons to return to their home at Wappocomo with their younger children. Parsons' eldest daughters Kate and Sallie stayed behind with his son Isaac Parsons, Jr., who had arrived from New Market, and a Mrs. Dawson and Dr. Lupton and his wife. On March 24, 1862, Parsons' eldest child and daughter Kate died. Despite recovering from illness, Lt. Blue carried the news of Kate's death and met Parsons halfway to Romney. Parsons instructed Lt. Blue to proceed on to Romney where he delivered the news to his wife Susan. The Parsons no longer felt safe in Romney, and returned to Shull's Gap. Parsons and Lt. Blue traveled to Harrisonburg, where they remained for a few days, and decided to return to Hampshire County. Lt. Blue traveled to his family's residence 4 miles (6.4 km) north of Romney, and Parsons to his residence at Wappocomo plantation. Lt. Blue was subsequently captured by Union Army forces and held at the Wirgman Building, from which he later escaped. Parsons, his sons, and other Confederate soldiers encountered Union Army cavalry along Grassy Lick Run south of Romney on April 24, 1862. Parsons carried a double-barreled shotgun, and proceeded to fire his weapon at the Union forces at close range. As Parsons made his escape from the Union Army forces, he saw his son fired upon as he ran across the road, and supposed he had been killed. He traveled to the home of a Mr. Hott, and told him of the news of his son's possible death. Parsons became pale and was helped down from his horse by Hott's sons, so he would not fall. According to Hott, Parsons died moments later. Parsons' body was transferred to Wappocomo for burial in the Parsons family burial ground. Union Army forces assumed Parsons had died in the skirmish along Grassy Lick Run, and claimed the right to examine his body to search for wounds which would serve as sufficient cause to destroy his property. Professor Nelson, a Presbyterian minister and instructor at the Potomac Academy, was a friend of the Parsons family, and denied Union Army officials access to Parsons' body. As a compromise, Professor Nelson allowed Union Army officers to be present in the room while Parsons' corpse was examined. No wounds were found on Parsons' body, and his remains were interred in the Parsons family burial ground at Indian Mound Cemetery. On April 26, 1862, acting Quartermaster Lt. F. H. Morse completed the death certificate for Parsons although the circumstances of Parsons' death were not recorded. Captain William Firey of Company B, 1st Maryland Cavalry and Captain C. W. Shearer of Company B, 3rd Maryland Infantry, Potomac Home Brigade were present for the examination of Parsons' body and attested there was "no evidence of gun-shot wounds or any other violence on him". Witnesses present at the examination were William Vance and George William Washington. Parsons drafted his own will and testament, and it was proved without issue, and later cited in the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia case French v. French (1877). His wife Susan Blue Parsons died on October 2, 1889 and was interred alongside Parsons at Indian Mound Cemetery. In her Parsons' Family History and Record (1913), Parsons' relative and family genealogist Virginia Parsons MacCabe said of Parsons: "he was broad minded and conservative, gifted with good common sense and judgment, his honesty and integrity was unimpeachable." ## Personal life Parsons married Susan Blue (1817–1889) on May 18, 1836. Susan Blue was born in Hampshire County on January 9, 1817, and was the daughter of Uriah Blue, Jr., and his wife M. Elizabeth Donaldson Blue. Parsons and his wife Susan had nine children consisting of four sons and five daughters. Through his daughter Sarah Louise, Parsons was the grandfather of Edna Brady Cornwell (1868–1960), who served as First Lady of West Virginia from 1917 until 1921 during her husband John J. Cornwell's (1867–1953) term as Governor of West Virginia.

Grammy Award for Best Concept Music Video

American music award

The Grammy Award for Best Concept Music Video was an award that was presented to recording artists at the 30th Grammy Awards in 1988, and the 31st Grammy Awards in 1989, for quality, concept music videos. The Grammy Awards (Grammys) is an annual ceremony that was established in 1958 and was originally called the Gramophone Awards; awards are presented by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to "honor artistic achievement, technical proficiency and overall excellence in the recording industry, without regard to album sales or chart position". Beginning in 1982, the academy began to honor quality music videos with the Video of the Year category, which was discontinued with the establishment of the MTV Video Music Awards in 1984 and was replaced with two awards; Best Video, Short Form and Best Video Album. Criteria changes for the 1988 and 1989 ceremonies resulted in the Best Concept Music Video award being presented alongside the award for Best Performance Music Video. Best Concept Music Video award recipients were the English rock band Genesis for "Land of Confusion" and the American singer "Weird Al" Yankovic for "Fat". The academy returned to the previous format in 1990, though the categories are now known as Best Short Form Music Video and Best Long Form Music Video. ## Background The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences began to honor quality music videos with the Grammy Award for Video of the Year category in 1982. The first two award recipients were former member of The Monkees Michael Nesmith for the hour-long video Elephant Parts (also known as Michael Nesmith in Elephant Parts) and Olivia Newton-John for Olivia Physical. The Video of the Year category was discontinued in 1984 when MTV established the MTV Video Music Awards whose top award is also presented for Video of the Year. For the 26th Grammy Awards the academy replaced the category with awards for Best Video, Short Form, and Best Video Album. For the awards held in 1988 and 1989, the criteria changed and awards for the categories Best Concept Music Video, and Best Performance Music Video were presented. The academy returned to the previous format in 1990, though the categories were renamed Best Music Video, Short Form, and Best Music Video, Long Form. In 1998, the categories were retitled Best Short Form Music Video, and Best Long Form Music Video, respectively. ## Recipients For the 30th Grammy Awards (1988), Best Concept Music Video nominees included David Bowie for "Day-In Day-Out", Kate Bush for The Whole Story, the English rock band Genesis for "Land Of Confusion", David Lee Roth for David Lee Roth, and Janet Jackson for Control – The Videos Part II . The music video for Bowie's "Day-In Day-Out", directed by Julien Temple, included "offending" scenes such as a man urinating on Ronald Reagan's Hollywood Walk of Fame star, which was edited out for television broadcast. Bush's "imaginative" video sampler accompanies her greatest hits album of the same name and includes music videos for songs throughout her career to that point. The music video for "Land of Confusion", a song included on the band's 1986 album Invisible Touch, contained Spitting Image puppets of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and other notable individuals. David Lee Roth's self-titled video consisted of promotional clips created for his debut solo EP Crazy from the Heat and album Eat 'Em and Smile. Jackson's video collection, which was certified gold in the United States, contained six promotional videos recorded for singles from her album Control. Awards were presented to members of Genesis (Tony Banks, Phil Collins, and Mike Rutherford) as the performing artists, Jim Yukich and John Lloyd as the video directors, and Jon Blair as the video producer. Nominees for the 31st Grammy Awards were the Hampton String Quartet for "Get a Job", George Harrison for "When We Was Fab", the American rock band Talking Heads for Storytelling Giant, "Weird Al" Yankovic for "Fat", and Neil Young for "This Note's for You". "Get a Job", a song recorded originally by the American group The Silhouettes, appears on the Hampton String Quartet's album What If Mozart Wrote "Roll Over Beethoven", a collection of 1950s R&B and pop music songs performed in the styles of Beethoven, Debussy, Mozart, and other composers. "When We Was Fab", a song from the album Cloud Nine, is constructed from quotations written when The Beatles were at the height of their fame and features Harrison playing a sitar. The music video shows Elton John dressed as a walrus, a reference to the 1967 song "I Am the Walrus". Storytelling Giants is a collection of Talking Heads' music videos and additional material linking them together. Two of the nominated music videos had connections to Michael Jackson; "Fat" is a parody of Jackson's song "Bad", and the video for "This Note's for You" depicts a Jackson look-alike's hair catching fire; a parody of an incident that occurred during a shoot for a Pepsi television advertisement in 1984. In the "Fat" video, Yankovic becomes a "grossly overweight guy" through the use of cosmetics and special effects, and leads a group of overweight people on a parade. The award was presented to Yankovic as the performing artist, along with Jay Levey as the video director and Susan Zwerman as the video producer. ## See also - Latin Grammy Award for Best Long Form Music Video - Latin Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video - List of awards and nominations received by Genesis - List of songs by "Weird Al" Yankovic

Winifred Hoernlé

South African anthropologist and social reformer

Agnes Winifred Hoernlé née Tucker (6 December 1885–17 March 1960) was a South African anthropologist, widely recognized as the "mother of social anthropology in South Africa". Beyond her scientific work, she is remembered for her social activism and staunch disapproval of Apartheid based on white supremacy. Born in 1885 in the Cape Colony, as an infant she moved with her family to Johannesburg, where she completed her secondary education. After earning an undergraduate degree in 1906 from South African College, she studied abroad at Newnham College, Cambridge, Leipzig University, the University of Bonn, and the Sorbonne. Returning to South Africa in 1912, she undertook anthropological research among the Khoekhoe people, until she married in 1914. After settling with her husband in Boston from 1914 to 1920, Hoernlé returned to South Africa to resume her research. She partnered with Alfred Radcliffe-Brown in a collaborative effort to establish social anthropology as an academic discipline. In 1926, embarking on an academic career, she established both a library and an ethnological museum to facilitate her students' learning. Introducing innovative teaching ideals, she encouraged her students to evaluate social change, as well as the roles of women in society. On her retirement from teaching in 1937, she spent the rest of her life focusing on social reforms. Hoernlé's anthropological studies and teaching had informed her world view, leading her to become an opponent of separatist Apartheid policies. She argued in reports submitted to the government that all cultures which were part of the greater single society of South Africa had intrinsic value and that no race was superior. She espoused protection of fundamental principles such as equal opportunity without conditions of race and colour, supporting freedom of conscience and expression and the rule of law for all Africans. In her lifetime, Hoernlé was honoured with numerous awards for her academic work and her social reform programmes. She received an honorary Doctor of Laws in 1945, which recognized both aspects of her career. She is remembered for training most of the leading South African anthropologists of her era and for laying the foundations for the development of social anthropology in South Africa. ## Early life Agnes Winifred Tucker was born on 6 December 1885 in Kimberley in the Cape Colony of the British Empire to Sarah Agnes (née Bottomley) and William Kidger Tucker. She was the second child in a family of eight children. Soon after her birth, attracted by the Witwatersrand gold discoveries, her father relocated the family to Johannesburg, South Africa, where he worked as a surveyor and miner. He later became mayor of Johannesburg and a federal Senator of Transvaal. Tucker was a sickly child and suffered from diphtheria, measles, and pneumonia, which left her with a life-long susceptibility to bronchitis. Her father, who supported women's education, kept her supplied with books to read when she was confined. ### Education Tucker attended Fanny Buckland School but at the beginning of the Second Boer War was evacuated with her family to East London. When they returned to South Africa in 1900, she studied at the Wesleyan High School for Girls in Grahamstown, matriculating in 1902. Hoping to become a teacher, with encouragement from her father, Tucker enrolled the following year at Cape Town's South African College (later the University of Cape Town), studying classics, French and philosophy. A "star student", she won prizes in both English and philosophy and in 1906 became the first and only woman to serve on the student council. As a spinal nerve condition impacted her ability to write, her work was typed with the assistance of an amanuensis, and she was given extra time to write her bachelor's examinations, which she passed with honours. Influenced by her philosophy professor, Thomas Loveday, Tucker decided to continue her studies at Cambridge. Before she left South Africa, she met Reinhold Friedrich Alfred Hoernlé, who had been appointed professor of philosophy at South African College in 1908. Upon receipt of the Porter Scholarship, which provided her with a three-year funding of £150 annually, she enrolled in Newnham College in 1908. Studying anthropology and philosophy under Alfred Cort Haddon and W. H. R. Rivers, she attended lectures by James George Frazer and Alfred Radcliffe-Brown and worked in Charles Samuel Myers' laboratory. As there was no diploma available for anthropology at that time at Cambridge, Tucker did not sit for exams when she finished her studies in 1910. Moving to Leipzig University in 1911, she studied under Wilhelm Wundt and then with his student and structural psychologist, Oswald Külpe, at the University of Bonn. In 1912, she completed her education in Paris at the Sorbonne under Émile Durkheim, founder of the academic discipline of sociology. ## Career ### Fieldwork and domestic life (1912–1922) Returning to South Africa in 1912, Tucker applied to replace "Alfred" Hoernlé as philosophy chair at the South African College. Though he had moved to Durham University, the selection committee at the College asked Alfred to explain to Tucker that she was unsuitable because of her gender. Rekindling their acquaintance, the two became correspondents. When she turned down the selection committee's offer of an unpaid lectureship, she was awarded the college's Croll Scholarship to enable research among the Khoekhoe people. She made two expeditions, one to Richtersveld and the other to Berseba between 1912 and 1913, taking notes on the Nama and San people along the Orange and Kuiseb Rivers. She encountered many difficulties travelling from place to place in a horse-drawn wagon. She found it even more difficult to gain consent for her to measure the limbs of her subjects, test them for colour perception, or compile general cultural information. Though her field work was supposed to last for three years, in 1913 Tucker accepted a proposal of marriage from Alfred, resigned her scholarship, and joined him in England in 1914. The couple married in Oxford and in April 1914, moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where Alfred had taken a post as a philosophy professor and chair at Harvard University. Their only child, Alwin, was born in 1915 and Hoernlé spent most of her time in the United States in domestic pursuits, although she did contribute an article "Certain Rites of Transition and Conception of !Nau among the Hottentots" to the journal Harvard African Studies in 1918. The work represented the first time that Van Gennep's model on rites of passage had been applied to ethnographic data in southern Africa. As the severe winters in Boston caused Hoernlé repeated bronchial problems, in October 1920 she returned to Johannesburg where she lived with her parents, while Alfred remained in Boston for two more years. In 1921, Hoernlé became a founding member of the publication committee of the journal Bantu Studies, becoming the only woman to serve on the editorial board until the 1930s. While planning an expedition to South West Africa for December 1922, the month before her departure, she met Radcliffe-Brown, who encouraged her to abandon physical examination of her subjects and focus on collecting data relating to kinship. The trip was sponsored by the government and was intended to provide evidence of the need to establish segregated land reserves for the rural Nama people. South Africa had recently acquired the League of Nations mandate to govern the former German colony, after German losses in World War I and five years of military rule. Instead of evaluating rural environments, Hoernlé's report focused on urban Nama and their grievances over taxation by authorities and missionaries in the shift of government. Dismissing her report as irrelevant, the government implemented land reserves as an official policy in 1923. ### University faculty (1923–1937) In 1921, the University of Cape Town had hired Radcliffe-Brown as the first full professor of social anthropology at any British university throughout the Empire. He and Hoernlé carried out extensive correspondence regarding the formation of the new academic field of study and how it should be structured as a scientific discipline in South Africa. In 1922, Alfred was offered a post as head of the philosophy department at the University of the Witwatersrand. As an inducement to secure him, the university offered to hire his wife as a researcher and develop a social anthropology department. Hired in 1923, Hoernlé and Radcliffe-Brown's correspondence confirms that they were working until 1924 on several joint papers, covering ancestry and marriage rites, cattle, joking relationships, kinship terms, and sacrificial rituals. Radcliffe-Brown's decision to accept a position at the University of Sydney as head of the social anthropology department in 1925, led Hoernlé to abandon her field research in favour of teaching. Hoernlé was appointed as a lecturer in January 1926 at the University of the Witwatersrand. As early as 1912, she had given lectures arguing that primitive or indigenous people had the same mental capacity as more sophisticated members of society, that their cultures should be examined with empathy and consideration of their perspective, and that social organization played a major role in indicating which societies survived and which societies failed. Her teaching style was "stimulating and thorough", and she inspired her students, "among the first in the field" to research cultural contacts and the problems associated with social change. She taught her students that traditional cultures were not separately operated and contained societies, but instead part of the greater single society of South Africa. Her views and those of her students who followed her lead were increasingly at odds with Afrikaner anthropologists and the later apartheid government, who accepted a static, primitivist model of traditional cultures. Hoernlé challenged her students with innovative theories which laid the groundwork for development of the field of social anthropology. She encouraged them to observe and preserve social and cultural aspects of women's lives. Dora Earthy, a missionary in Mozambique, wrote a unique monograph focused solely on Valenge women, but other students incorporated information on female rituals within the family into their works, including initiation rites and those associated with marriage and conjugal relations. Their studies caused her students to compare the lives of indigenous women with the restrictions placed on Western women, and they discovered African women did not typically have the same social curtailments. In addition to her focus on building an anthropological department, to facilitate her students' studies, Hoernlé created a library and an archaeological specimen and cultural museum. To provide them with a thorough grounding, she sent her best students to the London School of Economics to study ethnographic field work methods and functionalism with Bronisław Malinowski. As an external examiner on anthropological theses, Hoernlé came in contact with Isaac Schapera in 1925. He used her early research in his thesis and upon his graduation, they worked together to promote social anthropology grounded in field work. She took a leave and went to study with Malinowski herself in 1929. While she was away, Schapera taught Hoernlé's classes and from her return in 1930, they collaborated on the Inter-University African Studies Committee. In their work, they shaped the committee in developing a national project to further ethnographic studies through adequate funding and cooperation among scholars throughout the continent. Hoernlé was promoted to senior lecturer in 1934. Under her guidance, pioneering urban anthropological studies were undertaken in South Africa and first published in 1935. That year, Bantu Studies dedicated their September 1935 issue as a "homage to Winifred Hoernlé" and she was granted the unusual distinction of being "made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute". She resigned from her post in 1937 to care for her and Alfred's ageing parents. ### Social activism (1932–1960) During her time at university in Cape Town, Hoernlé (Tucker at the time) had begun developing a liberal attitude towards race relations. Unlike her father, she believed that educated Africans should be able to vote. In her field work, she developed empathy for the people she was studying, especially in urban communities. Thanks to her fluency in Afrikaans, English, and German, she was able to communicate more intimately with her subjects. By 1932, when she joined the Committee of the Johannesburg Child Welfare Society, Hoernlé had developed not only a commitment to justice, but a sense of responsibility for social service. She served as president in 1938 and 1939 of the National Women's Organisation and upon her husband's death in 1943, became president of the South African Institute of Race Relations for two years, serving subsequent terms from 1948 to 1950 and from 1953 to 1954. Rapid industrialization and urbanization in the 1930s and 1940s challenged the existing systems of legal jurisdiction in South Africa, which had formerly allowed rural people to indirectly govern themselves. As people moved in large numbers to urban areas to work in factories, security became a major issue, as did fear of crime. Several commissions — the Elliot Commission (1943), the Fagan Commission (1946), and the Sauer Commission (1947) — each attempted to deal with crime, laws regulating mobile populations, and potential threats to the communities. During this period, Hoernlé became a vocal advocate of liberal universalism. In 1945, she was appointed as one of the founding members of the Penal and Prisons Reform Commission. The commission became an important sounding board for conceptualising ideas about race in a reform-minded platform incorporating paternalistic models of governance. It later became the Penal Reform League of South Africa, on which Hoernlé served as president for many years. Hoernlé was one of the most prominent activists of the period in social welfare campaigns, stressing the need for collaboration between African, Indian and white women. She helped to establish clinics for mothers, she improved educational facilities and welfare services for children, and she worked on penal reform. Concerned for the depressed conditions in Indian communities, she opened the first schools for Indian girls and chaired the Committee of the Indian Social Welfare Association. In 1949, Hoernlé was given an honorary Doctorate of Laws from the University of the Witwatersrand in recognition of her contributions to academics and social welfare. That year, the National Welfare Board appointed her as a member and her contributions to the Landsdown Penal Reform Commission Report were presented. They would be one "of the most important sections of the Commission's Report". In 1952, Hoernlé was honoured by the International Council for Child Welfare with their Medal of Merit and was recognized for her service to Africa with a medal from the Royal African Society. After the Bantu Education Act was enacted in 1953, she worked to reform its repressive language and argued that educational systems which did not take into consideration social customs practiced within communities estranged students from their communities. In 1955, the journal Race Relations of the South African Institute of Race Relations published a special issue to commemorate her 70th birthday. ## Racial views and "Christian Trusteeship" In 1923, Hoernlé wrote that to be successful in implementing change and European-style administration among traditional populations, officials needed "a sound knowledge of the outlook and beliefs of the natives". She recognized that because the mechanisms of power in South Africa favoured white society, white culture was dominant. In her 1948 article, Alternatives to Apartheid, Hoernlé argued that any solution implemented to control racial relations must protect fundamental principles such as equal opportunity without conditions of race and colour, freedom of conscience and expression, and in accordance with the rule of law. While she acknowledged that traditional societies and western civilization might each have reasons to protect their culture and racial purity, Hoernlé maintained that no race was superior and each should mutually respect the other, guaranteeing to protect fundamental principles. She stated that if assimilation was unlikely, implementation of Apartheid required granting sovereign independence to traditional societies. By implementing such a plan, she reasoned societies could develop separate but equal institutions and customs which allowed each group to govern themselves and share the fundamental tenets of citizenship. However, Hoernlé reiterated that the test of commitment to basic rights was to recognize that they applied to people who had previously followed different traditions, but were now members of a society that had such principles. She argued that failure to recognize that they were all one society and attempting to create separate but equal facilities would damage the economy, as well as humanity. Her seemingly contradictory approaches recognized that the situation was complex and might require employing various methods and policies in a period of "Christian Trusteeship" in order to reach solutions that supported the ethical beliefs of the society and provided stewardship to indigenous members who were part of that society. Along with other academics, many of whom were her former students, she was in favour of assimilation of all races into one society. In 1952, amid political unrest and pressure from black activists, Hoernlé joined 21 other white liberals in issuing a statement calling on the government to support equal rights and equal opportunities for "educated, politically conscious non-Europeans". ## Death and legacy Hoernlé died on 17 March 1960 in Johannesburg. After her death, her contributions were obscured by scholars who claimed her scholarship was directed by Radcliffe-Brown and her social involvement was an extension of her husband's work. Letters from Radcliffe-Brown make it clear that Hoernlé's work was original scholarship and though she and Alfred were both liberals, her ideas on social reforms differed from his and predated her relationship with him. According to Robert Gordon, professor of anthropology at the University of Vermont, "she was the first trained female social anthropologist in the world". The historian Andrew Bank, of the University of the Western Cape has referred to her as the central figure in the development of social anthropology in South Africa in the interwar period, as she introduced a collaborative "series of methodological innovations that led to the creation of a professional, scientific, and... field-based ethnographic tradition". Coupled with her influence on the students she taught and mentored, including Max Gluckman, Ellen Hellmann, Eileen Krige, Hilda Kuper, Audrey Richards, and Monica Wilson, she shaped the field of social anthropology in South Africa. She has often been called the "Mother of Social Anthropology in South Africa", as most of the leading South African anthropologists of her era trained with her. Her tenure marked a shift in the make-up of scientists studying social anthropology from a male-dominated field to one where women were in the forefront. ## Selected works ## Note

Zarqa River

Jordanian river near Amman, tributary of the lower Jordan River

The Zarqa River (Arabic: نهر الزرقاء, Nahr az-Zarqāʾ, lit. "the River of the Blue [City]") or Jabbok River (Hebrew: נַחַל יַבּוֹק Nahal Yabōq) is the second largest tributary of the lower Jordan River, after the Yarmouk River. It is the third largest river in the region by annual discharge and its watershed encompasses the most densely populated areas east of the Jordan River. It rises in springs near Amman, and flows through a deep and broad valley into the Jordan, at an elevation 1,090 metres (3,580 ft) lower. At its spring lays 'Ain Ghazal (Arabic: عين غزال), a major archaeological site that dates back to the Neolithic. Archaeological finds along the course of the river indicate the area was rich in flora and fauna in the past. The river is heavily polluted and its restoration is one of the top priorities for the Jordanian Ministry of the Environment. Geologically, the Zarqa River is about 30 million years old. It is well known for its amber deposits that date back to the Hauterivian era of the Early Cretaceous, 135 million years ago. A remarkable flora and fauna was reported from this amber reflecting tropical paleoenvironmental conditions prevailing during the time of resin deposition. ## Name The Arabic name, Nahr az-Zarqa' (نهر الزرقاء) means "the blue river", where nahr means river and zarqa''' (زرقاء) means blue. ## Biblical Jabbok The Zarqa River is identified with the biblical river Jabbok. Biblical Jacob crossed the Jabbok on his way to Canaan, after leaving Harran. It leads west into the Sukkot Valley, from where one crosses over the Jordan and can easily reach Shechem, as Jacob eventually did. The biblical cities of Zaretan and Adam are also at the mouth of the valley. The river is first mentioned in the Book of Genesis in connection with the meeting of Jacob and Esau, and with the struggle of Jacob with the angel. It was the boundary separating the territory of Reuben and Gad from that of Ammon, the latter being described as lying along the Jabbok. The territory of Sihon is described as extending "from Arnon unto Jabbok" (Numbers 21:24), and it was reclaimed later by the King of Ammon. Eusebius places the river between Gerasa and Philadelphia. ## Geography and hydrography ### Course The headwaters of the Zarqa begin just northeast of Amman, rising from a spring named Ain Ghazal ("Gazelle spring"). The river flows to the north before heading west. Rising on the eastern side of the mountains of Gilead, it runs a course of about 105 kilometers (65 mi) in a wild and deep ravine before flowing into the Jordan River between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea, at a point 1,090 meters (3,576 ft) below its origin. At its higher reaches, the river banks are mostly steep and canyon-like. Near Ain Ghazal, two tributary wadis join the river, and it opens up into a shallow basin. It forms the border between the Jordanian administrative regions of Irbid and Balqa Governorate. ### Water flow, catchment area, use The river is perennial, but with a very low base flow of about 2 million to 3 million cubic meters per month during the summer months, and as much as 5–million to 8 million cubic meters per month during the rainy winter months. This makes it the second largest tributary of the lower Jordan River, after the Yarmouk River, and the third largest river in the region by annual discharge. Irregular floods after rain storms may increase the flow to as much as 54 million cubic meters. The median annual flow is 63.3 million cubic meters. The total basin area is 3,900 km² (1,500 sq mi) the largest in Jordan. A small dam, Al-Rwyha dam, near the village of Dayr Alla, marks the end of the upstream portion of the river, where it is natural and fast-flowing with very clear water. There is very little agriculture along the banks of the river in this region, which are very rocky. Downstream from this dam, the water level is very low, and the river banks are intensively used for agriculture, as well as grazing by sheep and goats The King Talal Dam was built across the lower Zarqa in 1970, and created a reservoir with a capacity of 55 million cubic meters, and increased in 1987 to 86 million cubic meters. When built, it was expected that the reservoir would supply water for municipal use in the Amman region. However, the current levels of pollution in the lake make the water unfit for human consumption, and it is used for irrigation only. ### Bridges The new Jerash Bridge crosses the Zarqa upstream of King Talal reservoir, on the road from Amman to Jerash. The bridge is the site of a gauging station where flow measurements are continuously taken. In the city of Zarqa, several bridges, vehicular and pedestrian, cross the river. The earliest of these was built by the Chechen founders of the city. Current bridges include the Zawahreh Bridge, a vehicular bridge connecting Baha' al-Din Street with al-Zuhur Street and another connecting Baha' al-Din Street with King Talal Street. Two pedestrian bridges connect al-Zuhur Street and Baha' al-Din Street, and Wasfi al-Tal Street and Petra Street. ## Natural history The geological origins of the Zarqa river are about 30 million years old, when the Jordan Rift Valley was formed. A ripple effect of its formation was the creation of side-wadis. The Zarqa river carved into the western edge of one of these side wadis. The earliest exposed formations in the area date from the Triassic and early Jurassic periods, and have been named Zerqa and Kurnub formations. The rock formations are marine sediments, remnants of the prehistoric Tethys Sea, which used to cover the area running roughly east–west, halfway across the present Dead Sea. Along the Zarqa, crystalline limestone alternating with shale was found. The next layer is a 20-30 meter high layer of gypsum, argillaceous marly lime, shales and iron-rich stone and sandstone. This layer is rich in fossils. ### Flora Archaeological finds of charcoaled remains indicate that poplar and tamarix used to grow along the banks of the Zarqa, with forests of wild oak growing on the hillsides. Today, tamarix thickets are still widespread in the floodplains, and the banks are cultivated with fruit orchards and vegetable fields. Along the course of Zarqa River, water is pumped directly and used to irrigate crops of leafy vegetables such as parsley, spinach, cabbage, cauliflower and lettuce, as well as potatoes. Olive trees are also found along the river's banks. Tulips grow on many hillsides of the river, while in the springs area and the watercourse, water vegetation is found. Natural pine forests grow in the King Talal Dam area. Along the upstream banks, where the river runs wild, one finds the common reed, oleander and Typha species. Since the waters of the Zarqa are highly contaminated, with high levels of organic matter and various chemical compounds (especially detergents and dyes), the use of Zarqa water for irrigation has significantly altered the biodiversity of the natural flora, and caused the disappearance of the majority of fresh water species. ### Fauna In prehistoric times, the area was rich with fauna, and 45 distinct animal species have been identified, half of them wild animals. Domesticated goats were the most common, and gazelles were the most frequently occurring wild animal species. Today, the area is still home to a diverse population of birds and mammals, and some of the breeding species found do not breed anywhere else in Jordan. Among the bird species found are the European roller, desert lark, Dead Sea sparrow, desert finch and blue-cheeked bee-eater. The King Talal dam has created a lake which is a habitat for migratory waterfowl and various fish species. Notable birds found in the lake area include the little bittern, cattle egrets, grey herons, white storks, common teal and Eurasian coot. The lake's waters sustain fish, some of which are indigenous species and some are introduced species. The most common are tilapia. Migratory birds also winter in the man-made pools which make up the Kherbit Al-Samra Sewage Treatment Plant, located in a broad depression close to Wadi Dhulayl, the main tributary of the Zarqa River. As many as 6,000 white storks have been spotted roosting there. Mammals found in the area include the common otter (Lutra lutra), and the Persian squirrel (Sciurus anomalus''). The otter is considered a threatened species. ## History The Zarqa valley was an important passageway connecting the Eastern Desert with the Jordan Valley. ### Prehistory 'Ain Ghazal, the origin of the spring the feeds the Zarqa river, is a major archaeological site, dating back to the Neolithic period. It was continuously occupied for more than two thousand years, and the earliest finds date to 7200 BCE. 'Ain Ghazal is one of the earliest known human settlements with evidence of domesticated animals. With a population of around 3,000 at its height, it was also one of the largest prehistoric population centers in the Near East, with about five time the population of neighboring Jericho. ### Iron Age During a 1982 survey of the Zarqa Valley, a number of Early Iron Age sites were discovered, concentrated along the banks of the Zerqa and its tributaries. One of them, Tulul adh-Dhahab, is under further research now. It features two neighboring tells which are commonly identified with the ancient Israelite cities of Mahanaim and Penuel, mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. ### Hellenistic Jerash Wadi Jarash, a northern tributary of the Zarqa River, flows through the modern city of Jerash. Inhabited since the Bronze Age, Jerash became an important center during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, when it was known as Gerasa, home to noted mathematician Nicomachus. The ruins of the city are well preserved and have been extensively excavated. ### Modern town of Zarqa Zarqa, Jordan's second largest city, is built on the banks of the Zarqa River, and is the largest settlement along its course. The town of Zarqa was founded in 1902 by Chechen immigrants. Its population grew rapidly with an influx of Palestinian refugees who fled the West Bank during the Six-Day War. ## Environmental concerns The Zarqa river is highly polluted. In many areas, raw sewage flows untreated directly into the river through dry riverbeds (wadis), contaminating it and creating a stench which has been a cause of numerous complaints, particularly during the summer months. Though sewage treatment stations have been built in a couple of locations (including Ain Ghazal and Khirbet As Samra), these stations often receive more water than they can handle. Such overflow occurs during winter floods, as well as during summer months when the population increases with the return of migrant workers to Amman. During overflow, untreated water runs directly to the Zarqa river. As a result, the Zarqa's water is brownish colored, often with dense foam due to large amounts of organic matter. Other sources of pollutants are the illegal dumping of industrial waste, including those from textile factories, and batteries and oils from garages. The river's watershed encompasses the most densely populated areas east of the Jordan River, and it flows through an industrialized area that is home to more than 52% of Jordan's industrial plants, including the Jordan Petroleum Refinery Company. During the summer months, treated domestic and industrial waste-water compose nearly all of the flow, and substantially degrade the water quality. Coupled with over-extraction of water from the underground aquifer and the naturally low base flow of the Zarqa, this has created a major problem, described as one of Jordan's "environmental black spots". and has made rehabilitation of the Zarqa a top priority for the Jordanian Ministry of the Environment. The restoration project is estimated to cost \$30 million. ## See also - Arnon River - Yarmouk River

Magnus Olsen

Norwegian philologist

Magnus Bernhard Olsen (28 November 1878 – 16 January 1963) was a Norwegian philologist who specialized in Old Norse studies. Born and raised in Arendal, Olsen received his degrees in philology at Royal Frederick University in Kristiania, where he became a protége of Sophus Bugge. After Bugge's death, Olsen succeeded him in 1908 as Professor of Old Norwegian and Icelandic Literature at Royal Frederick University. In this capacity, Olsen taught generations of Norwegian academics and teachers. His field of research centered on runology and Old Norse toponymy. Olsen was particularly interested in using evidence from runes and toponymy for the study of Old Norse religion. Olsen published a number of works on these subjects, which have been highly influential. He also edited a number of works, including the journal Maal og Minne, which he founded. During the German occupation of Norway in World War II, Olsen served as dean at his university and was involved with the Norwegian resistance movement. In his later years, Olsen's research centered on the Eddas and Skaldic poetry, on which he authored a number of influential works. He is widely considered the foremost Norwegian philologist of his time. ## Early life and education Magnus Olsen was born in Arendal, Norway on 28 November 1878, the son of merchant Ole Christian Olsen (1834–1887) and Therese Evine Olsen (1843–1926). He grew up in Arendal, where he gained his examen artium in 1896. Olsen subsequently studied philology at Royal Frederick University in Kristiania, where he took courses in Latin, Greek, German and Norwegian. From 1899, Olsen worked as a teaching assistant at Royal Frederick University. He came under the influence of the archaeologist and toponymist Oluf Rygh, and particularly the philologist Sophus Bugge. Bugge was widely considered Norway's greatest philologist at the time, but was in the process of losing his eyesight, and Olsen served as his assistant since 1902. By this time, Bugge was preparing him to become his successor at the University. Olsen received his cand.philol. degree at the head of his class in 1903. ## Early career Upon graduating, Olsen was employed as a researcher at his university, where he became involved in the teaching of students. In 1905–1906 he was in Copenhagen working on the publication of a critical edition of the Vǫlsunga saga and Ragnars saga loðbrókar. After Bugge's death, Olsen succeeded him in 1908 as Professor of Old Norwegian and Icelandic Literature at Royal Frederick University. He saw philology as the key to understanding life in the past, particularly the Viking Age. Olsen became widely regarded as the foremost Norwegian philologist of his time. He advocated an interdisciplinary approach to this subject. His main fields of interest were Old Norse literature, runology, and toponymy. Olsen was known for the boldness of this interpretations, and believed, like his mentor Bugge, that making an interpretation rooted in sound methodology was better than making no interpretation at all. At the University, he was considered a brilliant teacher but a feared examiner. He saw teaching and research as the best way he could serve his fatherland. Olsen ensured that students of high ability had their works published, and that a fund was established to make help students from poor families gain a university education. He supervised the education of generations of Norwegian academics and teachers, and together with scholars such as Carl Marstrander, Olsen developed Royal Frederick University into one the world's leading institutions on Germanic philology. Among the students who took courses under Olsen was Lee M. Hollander. In 1909, Olsen founded the journal Maal og Minne, which he personally edited for forty years. The first issue included his inaugural lecture on the Skírnismál, in which he presented parallels between Njörðr of Norse mythology and Nerthus mentioned by Tacitus. Olsen married Gjertrud Mathilde Kjær, daughter of university librarian Albert Kjær [no] (1852–1941) and Johanne Marie Torp (1863–1948), on 28 June 1912. In 1911, he became a corresponding member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities. From 1914 to 1956, Olsen was the editor of Bidrag til nordisk filologi. Between 1910 and 1924, he authored three volumes of the monumental Norske Gaardnavne, which examined the toponymy of Norwegian farms. The third volume was authored together with Just Knud Qvigstad. Olsen eventually assumed responsibility for the publication of this series, and had assisted its prior publisher Oluf Rygh. Two of his best known publications are Hedenske kultminder i norske stedsnavne (1915) and Ættegård og helligdom (1926), which used toponymic evidence to examine Old Norse religion; these pioneering works made significant contributions to its scholarship. Notably, the evidence presented by Olsen showed that the Norse gods were venerated not only as creatures from another world, but as powers intertwined with the environment of the people. His Ættegård og helligdom was eventually translated into English and published under the title Farms and Fanes of Ancient Norway (1928). Gabriel Turville-Petre mentions Olsen along with Georges Dumézil and Jan de Vries as one of the most influential scholars on Old Norse religion. Olsen's research on Scandinavian place names were instrumental in restoring confidence in Icelandic literature as a useful source of information on Old Norse religion. Olsen's research on runology was significant. He succeeded Bugge as the publisher of Norges innskrifter med de ældre runer volumes (Norwegian Runic Inscriptions in the Older Runes), which examined Elder Futhark inscriptions in Norway. By 1924, it had been published in five volumes. Between 1941 and 1960, he published his subsequent Norges innskrifter med de yngre runer (Norwegian Inscriptions in the younger Runes) in five volumes. This work examined Younger Futhark inscriptions in Norway. Vols. 3–5 were published in cooperation with Aslak Liestøl [no]. Olsen was convinced that runes were not merely used as an instrument for communication, but were also believed to have magical purposes. ## World War II During the German occupation of Norway in World War II, Olsen distinguished himself as a fierce opponent of Nazism, and was close to the resistance movement at the University. He was among the professors at the University of Oslo who on 15 May 1941 issued a public denunciation of the crimes of Josef Terboven against the Norwegian people. Upon the arrest of Francis Bull by the German authorities, Olsen replaced him as acting dean at the University of Oslo. On 15 October 1943, he was arrested by the German occupation authorities and interned at Bredtveit internment camp. He was however quickly released, and continued his involvement with the resistance. ## Later career Olsen retired from his professorship upon reaching the age limit in 1948, but continued to research and write. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of St. Olav in 1945. He was also a recipient of the Grand Knight's Cross of the Order of the Falcon and the Knight of the Order of the Polar Star, and a recipient of honorary doctorates from several universities. Olsen was a member of a large number of scholarly societies, including the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (1904) and the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters, and a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities. During his last years, Olsen made important contributions to the field of Eddaic studies. His Edda- og skaldekvad. Forarbeider til kommentar, published in seven volumes between 1960 and 1964, examined the Eddas and Skaldic poetry. It contributed to the development of a relative chronology for these works. Throughout his career, he authored hundreds of scholarly books and articles. He died in Oslo, Norway on 16 January 1963. ## Selected publications

Salt

Mineral used as food ingredient, composed primarily of sodium chloride

In common usage, salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl). When used in food, especially at table in ground form in dispensers, it is more formally called table salt. In the form of a natural crystalline mineral, salt is also known as rock salt or halite. Salt is essential for life in general, and saltiness is one of the basic human tastes. Salt is one of the oldest and most ubiquitous food seasonings, and is known to uniformly improve the taste perception of food, including otherwise unpalatable food. Salting, brining, and pickling are also ancient and important methods of food preservation. Some of the earliest evidence of salt processing dates to around 6000 BC, when people living in the area of present-day Romania boiled spring water to extract salts; a salt works in China dates to approximately the same period. Salt was also prized by the ancient Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Hittites, Egyptians, and Indians. Salt became an important article of trade and was transported by boat across the Mediterranean Sea, along specially built salt roads, and across the Sahara on camel caravans. The scarcity and universal need for salt have led nations to go to war over it and use it to raise tax revenues. Salt is used in religious ceremonies and has other cultural and traditional significance. Salt is processed from salt mines, and by the evaporation of seawater (sea salt) and mineral-rich spring water in shallow pools. The greatest single use for salt (sodium chloride) is as a feedstock for the production of chemicals. It is used to produce caustic soda and chlorine; it is also used in the manufacturing processes of polyvinyl chloride, plastics, paper pulp and many other products. Of the annual global production of around three hundred million tonnes of salt, only a small percentage is used for human consumption. Other uses include water conditioning processes, de-icing highways, and agricultural use. Edible salt is sold in forms such as sea salt and table salt, which latter usually contains an anti-caking agent and may be iodised to prevent iodine deficiency. As well as its use in cooking and at the table, salt is present in many processed foods. Sodium is an essential nutrient for human health via its role as an electrolyte and osmotic solute. However, excessive salt consumption may increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases, such as hypertension, in children and adults. Such health effects of salt have long been studied. Accordingly, numerous world health associations and experts in developed countries recommend reducing consumption of popular salty foods. The World Health Organization recommends that adults consume less than 2,000 mg of sodium, equivalent to 5 grams of salt, per day. ## History All through history, the availability of salt has been pivotal to civilization. What is now thought to have been the first city in Europe is Solnitsata, in Bulgaria, which was a salt mine, providing the area now known as the Balkans with salt since 5400 BC. Even the name Solnitsata means "salt works". While people have used canning and artificial refrigeration to preserve food for the last hundred years or so, salt has been the best-known food preservative, especially for meat, for many thousands of years. A very ancient salt-works operation has been discovered at the Poiana Slatinei archaeological site next to a salt spring in Lunca, Neamț County, Romania. Evidence indicates that Neolithic people of the Precucuteni Culture were boiling the salt-laden spring water through the process of briquetage to extract the salt as far back as 6050 BC. The salt extracted from this operation may have had a direct correlation to the rapid growth of this society's population soon after its initial production began. The harvest of salt from the surface of Xiechi Lake near Yuncheng in Shanxi, China, dates back to at least 6000 BC, making it one of the oldest verifiable saltworks. There is more salt in animal tissues, such as meat, blood, and milk, than in plant tissues. Nomads who subsist on their flocks and herds do not eat salt with their food, but agriculturalists, feeding mainly on cereals and vegetable matter, need to supplement their diet with salt. With the spread of civilization, salt became one of the world's main trading commodities. It was of high value to the ancient Hebrews, the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Hittites and other peoples of antiquity. In the Middle East, salt was used to ceremonially seal an agreement, and the ancient Hebrews made a "covenant of salt" with God and sprinkled salt on their offerings to show their trust in him. An ancient practice in time of war was salting the earth: scattering salt around in a defeated city to prevent plant growth. The Bible tells the story of King Abimelech who was ordered by God to do this at Shechem, and various texts claim that the Roman general Scipio Aemilianus Africanus ploughed over and sowed the city of Carthage with salt after it was defeated in the Third Punic War (146 BC). Salt may have been used for barter in connection with the obsidian trade in Anatolia in the Neolithic Era. Salt was included among funeral offerings found in ancient Egyptian tombs from the third millennium BC, as were salted birds, and salt fish. From about 2800 BC, the Egyptians began exporting salt fish to the Phoenicians in return for Lebanon cedar, glass, and the dye Tyrian purple; the Phoenicians traded Egyptian salted fish and salt from North Africa throughout their Mediterranean trade empire. Herodotus described salt trading routes across Libya back in the 5th century BC. In the early years of the Roman Empire, roads were built for the transportation of salt from the salt imported at Ostia to the capital. In Africa, salt was used as currency south of the Sahara, and slabs of rock salt were used as coins in Abyssinia. The Tuareg have traditionally maintained routes across the Sahara especially for the transportation of salt by Azalai (salt caravans). The caravans still cross the desert from southern Niger to Bilma, although much of the trade now takes place by truck. Each camel takes two bales of fodder and two of trade goods northwards and returns laden with salt pillars and dates. In Gabon, before the arrival of Europeans, the coast people carried on a remunerative trade with those of the interior by the medium of sea salt. This was gradually displaced by the salt that Europeans brought in sacks, so that the coast natives lost their previous profits; as of the late 1950s, sea salt was still the currency best appreciated in the interior. Salzburg, Hallstatt, and Hallein lie within 17 km (11 mi) of each other on the river Salzach in central Austria in an area with extensive salt deposits. Salzach literally means "salt river" and Salzburg "salt castle", both taking their names from the German word Salz meaning salt. Hallstatt was the site of the world's first salt mine. The town gave its name to the Hallstatt culture that began mining for salt in the area in about 800 BC. Around 400 BC, the townsfolk, who had previously used pickaxes and shovels, began open pan salt making. During the first millennium BC, Celtic communities grew rich trading salt and salted meat to Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome in exchange for wine and other luxuries. The word salary comes from the Latin word for salt. The reason for this is unknown; a persistent modern claim that the Roman Legions were sometimes paid in salt is baseless. The word salad literally means "salted", and comes from the ancient Roman practice of salting leaf vegetables. Wars have been fought over salt. Venice fought and won a war with Genoa over the product, and it played an important part in the American Revolution. Cities on overland trade routes grew rich by levying duties, and towns like Liverpool flourished on the export of salt extracted from the salt mines of Cheshire. Various governments have at different times imposed salt taxes on their peoples. The voyages of Christopher Columbus are said to have been financed from salt production in southern Spain, and the oppressive salt tax in France was one of the causes of the French Revolution. After being repealed, this tax was reimposed by Napoleon when he became emperor to pay for his foreign wars, and was not finally abolished until 1946. In 1930, Mahatma Gandhi led a crowd of 100,000 protestors on the "Dandi March" or "Salt Satyagraha", during which they made their own salt from the sea as a demonstration of their opposition to the colonial salt tax. This act of civil disobedience inspired numerous Indians and transformed the Indian independence movement from an elitist one with little popular support into a national struggle. ## Physical properties Salt is mostly sodium chloride (NaCl). Sea salt and mined salt may contain trace elements. Mined salt is often refined. Salt crystals are translucent and cubic in shape; they normally appear white but impurities may give them a blue or purple tinge. When dissolved in water sodium chloride separates into Na⁺ and Cl⁻ ions, and the solubility is 359 grams per litre. From cold solutions, salt crystallises as the dihydrate NaCl·2H₂O. Solutions of sodium chloride have very different properties from those of pure water; the freezing point is −21.12 °C (−6.02 °F) for 23.31 wt% of salt, and the boiling point of saturated salt solution is around 108.7 °C (227.7 °F). ## Edible salt Salt is essential to the health of humans and other animals, and it is one of the five basic taste sensations. Salt is used in many cuisines, and it is often found in salt shakers on diners' eating tables for their personal use on food. Salt is also an ingredient in many manufactured foodstuffs. Table salt is a refined salt containing about 97 to 99 percent sodium chloride. Usually, anticaking agents such as sodium aluminosilicate or magnesium carbonate are added to make it free-flowing. Iodized salt, containing potassium iodide, is widely available. Some people put a desiccant, such as a few grains of uncooked rice or a saltine cracker, in their salt shakers to absorb extra moisture and help break up salt clumps that may otherwise form. ### Fortified table salt Some table salt sold for consumption contains additives that address a variety of health concerns, especially in the developing world. The identities and amounts of additives vary from country to country. Iodine is an important micronutrient for humans, and a deficiency of the element can cause lowered production of thyroxine (hypothyroidism) and enlargement of the thyroid gland (endemic goitre) in adults or cretinism in children. Iodized salt has been used to correct these conditions since 1924 and consists of table salt mixed with a minute amount of potassium iodide, sodium iodide, or sodium iodate. A small amount of dextrose may also be added to stabilize the iodine. Iodine deficiency affects about two billion people around the world and is the leading preventable cause of intellectual disabilities. Iodized table salt has significantly reduced disorders of iodine deficiency in countries where it is used. The amount of iodine and the specific iodine compound added to salt varies. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommends 150 micrograms of iodine per day for both men and women. US iodized salt contains 46–77 ppm (parts per million), whereas in the UK the recommended iodine content of iodized salt is 10–22 ppm. Sodium ferrocyanide, also known as yellow prussiate of soda, is sometimes added to salt as an anticaking agent. Such anticaking agents have been added since at least 1911 when magnesium carbonate was first added to salt to make it flow more freely. The safety of sodium ferrocyanide as a food additive was found to be provisionally acceptable by the Committee on Toxicity in 1988. Other anticaking agents sometimes used include tricalcium phosphate, calcium or magnesium carbonates, fatty acid salts (acid salts), magnesium oxide, silicon dioxide, calcium silicate, sodium aluminosilicate and calcium aluminosilicate. Both the European Union and the United States Food and Drug Administration permitted the use of aluminium in the latter two compounds. In "doubly fortified salt", both iodide and iron salts are added. The latter alleviates iron deficiency anaemia, which interferes with the mental development of an estimated 40% of infants in the developing world. A typical iron source is ferrous fumarate. Another additive, especially important for pregnant women, is folic acid (vitamin B₉), which gives the table salt a yellow color. Folic acid helps prevent neural tube defects and anaemia, which affect young mothers, especially in developing countries. A lack of fluoride in the diet is the cause of a greatly increased incidence of dental caries. Fluoride salts can be added to table salt with the goal of reducing tooth decay, especially in countries that have not benefited from fluoridated toothpastes and fluoridated water. The practice is more common in some European countries where water fluoridation is not carried out. In France, 35% of the table salt sold contains added sodium fluoride. ### Other kinds Unrefined sea salt contains small amounts of magnesium and calcium halides and sulfates, traces of algal products, salt-resistant bacteria and sediment particles. The calcium and magnesium salts confer a faintly bitter overtone, and they make unrefined sea salt hygroscopic (i.e., it gradually absorbs moisture from air if stored uncovered). Algal products contribute a mildly "fishy" or "sea-air" odour, the latter from organobromine compounds. Sediments, the proportion of which varies with the source, give the salt a dull grey appearance. Since taste and aroma compounds are often detectable by humans in minute concentrations, sea salt may have a more complex flavor than pure sodium chloride when sprinkled on top of food. When salt is added during cooking however, these flavors would likely be overwhelmed by those of the food ingredients. The refined salt industry cites scientific studies saying that raw sea and rock salts do not contain enough iodine salts to prevent iodine deficiency diseases. Salts have diverse mineralities depending on their source, giving each one a unique flavour. Fleur de sel, a natural sea salt from the surface of evaporating brine in salt pans, has a distinctive flavour varying with its source. In traditional Korean cuisine, so-called "bamboo salt" is prepared by roasting salt in a bamboo container plugged with mud at both ends. This product absorbs minerals from the bamboo and the mud, and has been claimed to increase the anticlastogenic and antimutagenic properties of doenjang (a fermented bean paste). Kosher or kitchen salt has a larger grain size than table salt and is used in cooking. It can be useful for brining, bread or pretzel making and as a scrubbing agent when combined with oil. Pickling salt is made of ultra-fine grains to speed dissolving to make brine. ### Salt in food Salt is present in most foods, but in naturally occurring foodstuffs such as meats, vegetables and fruit, it is present in very small quantities. It is often added to processed foods (such as canned foods and especially salted foods, pickled foods, and snack foods or other convenience foods), where it functions as both a preservative and a flavoring. Dairy salt is used in the preparation of butter and cheese products. As a flavoring, salt enhances the taste of other foods by suppressing the bitterness of those foods making them more palatable and relatively sweeter. Before the advent of electrically powered refrigeration, salting was one of the main methods of food preservation. Thus, herring contains 67 mg sodium per 100 g, while kipper, its preserved form, contains 990 mg. Similarly, pork typically contains 63 mg while bacon contains 1,480 mg, and potatoes contain 7 mg but potato crisps 800 mg per 100 g. Salt is also used extensively in cooking as a flavoring, and cooking techniques such as with salt crusts and brining. The main sources of salt in the Western diet, apart from direct use of sodium chloride, are bread and cereal products, meat products and milk and dairy products. In many East Asian cultures, salt is not traditionally used as a condiment. In its place, condiments such as soy sauce, fish sauce and oyster sauce tend to have a high sodium content and fill a similar role to table salt in western cultures. They are most often used for cooking rather than as table condiments. ### Biology of salt taste Human salt taste is detected by sodium taste receptors present in taste bud cells on the tongue. Human sensory taste testing studies have shown that proteolyzed forms of epithelial sodium channel (ENaC) function as the human salt taste receptor. ### Sodium consumption and health Table salt is made up of just under 40% sodium by weight, so a 6 g serving (1 teaspoon) contains about 2,400 mg of sodium. Sodium serves a vital purpose in the human body: via its role as an electrolyte, it helps nerves and muscles to function correctly, and it is one factor involved in the osmotic regulation of water content in body organs (fluid balance). Most of the sodium in the Western diet comes from salt. The habitual salt intake in many Western countries is about 10 g per day, and it is higher than that in many countries in Eastern Europe and Asia. The high level of sodium in many processed foods has a major impact on the total amount consumed. In the United States, 75% of the sodium eaten comes from processed and restaurant foods, 11% from cooking and table use and the rest from what is found naturally in foodstuffs. Because consuming too much sodium increases risk of cardiovascular diseases, health organizations generally recommend that people reduce their dietary intake of salt. High sodium intake is associated with a greater risk of stroke, total cardiovascular disease and kidney disease. A reduction in sodium intake by 1,000 mg per day may reduce cardiovascular disease by about 30 percent. In adults and children with no acute illness, a decrease in the intake of sodium from the typical high levels reduces blood pressure. A low sodium diet results in a greater improvement in blood pressure in people with hypertension. The World Health Organization recommends that adults should consume less than 2,000 mg of sodium (which is contained in 5 g of salt) per day. Guidelines by the United States recommend that people with hypertension, African Americans, and middle-aged and older adults should limit consumption to no more than 1,500 mg of sodium per day and meet the potassium recommendation of 4,700 mg/day with a healthy diet of fruits and vegetables. While reduction of sodium intake to less than 2,300 mg per day is recommended by developed countries, one review recommended that sodium intake be reduced to at least 1,200 mg (contained in 3 g of salt) per day, as a further reduction in salt intake the greater the fall in systolic blood pressure for all age groups and ethnicities. Another review indicated that there is inconsistent/insufficient evidence to conclude that reducing sodium intake to lower than 2,300 mg per day is either beneficial or harmful. Evidence shows a more complicated relationship between salt and cardiovascular disease. "Mortality caused by levels of salt the association between sodium consumption and cardiovascular disease or mortality is U-shaped, with increased risk at both high and low sodium intake." The findings showed that increased mortality from excessive salt intake was primarily associated with individuals with hypertension. The levels of increased mortality among those with restricted salt intake appeared to be similar regardless of blood pressure. This evidence shows that while those with hypertension should primarily focus on reducing sodium to recommended levels, all groups should seek to maintain a healthy level of sodium intake of between 4 and 5 grams (equivalent to 10-13 g salt) a day. One of the two most prominent dietary risks for disability in the world are diets high in sodium. ## Non-dietary uses Only a small percentage of the salt manufactured in the world is used in food. The remainder is used in agriculture, water treatment, chemical production, de-icing, and other industrial use cases. Sodium chloride is one of the largest volume inorganic raw materials. It is a feedstock in the production of caustic soda and chlorine. These are used in the manufacture of PVC, paper pulp and many other inorganic and organic compounds. Salt is also used as a flux in the production of aluminium. For this purpose, a layer of melted salt floats on top of the molten metal and removes iron and other metal contaminants. It is also used in the manufacture of soaps and glycerine, where it is used to saponify fats. As an emulsifier, salt is used in the manufacture of synthetic rubber, and another use is in the firing of pottery, when salt added to the furnace vaporises before condensing onto the surface of the ceramic material, forming a strong glaze. When drilling through loose materials such as sand or gravel, salt may be added to the drilling fluid to provide a stable "wall" to prevent the hole collapsing. There are many other processes in which salt is involved. These include its use as a mordant in textile dying, to regenerate resins in water softening, for the tanning of hides, the preservation of meat and fish and the canning of meat and vegetables. ## Production Food-grade salt accounts for only a small part of salt production in industrialized countries (7% in Europe), although worldwide, food uses account for 17.5% of total production. In 2018, total world production of salt was 300 million tonnes, the top six producers being China (68 million), the United States (42 million), India (29 million), Germany (13 million), Canada (13 million) and Australia (12 million). The manufacture of salt is one of the oldest chemical industries. A major source of salt is seawater, which has a salinity of approximately 3.5%. This means that there are about 35 g (1.2 oz) of dissolved salts, predominantly sodium (Na⁺ ) and chloride (Cl⁻ ) ions, per kilogram (2.2 lbs) of water. The world's oceans are a virtually inexhaustible source of salt, and this abundance of supply means that reserves have not been calculated. The evaporation of seawater is the production method of choice in marine countries with high evaporation and low precipitation rates. Salt evaporation ponds are filled from the ocean and salt crystals can be harvested as the water dries up. Sometimes these ponds have vivid colours, as some species of algae and other micro-organisms thrive in conditions of high salinity. Elsewhere, salt is extracted from the vast sedimentary deposits which have been laid down over the millennia from the evaporation of seas and lakes. These sources are either mined directly, producing rock salt, or are extracted by pumping water into the deposit. In either case, the salt may be purified by mechanical evaporation of brine. Traditionally, purification was achieved in shallow open pans that were heated to accelerate evaporation. Vacuum-based methods are also employed. The raw salt is refined by treatment with chemicals that precipitate most impurities (largely magnesium and calcium salts). Multiple stages of evaporation are then applied. Some salt is produced using the Alberger process, which involves vacuum pan evaporation combined with the seeding of the solution with cubic crystals, and produces a grainy-type flake. The Ayoreo, an indigenous group from the Paraguayan Chaco, obtain their salt from the ash produced by burning the timber of the Indian salt tree (Maytenus vitis-idaea) and other trees. One of the largest salt mining operations in the world is at the Khewra Salt Mine in Pakistan. The mine has nineteen storeys, eleven of which are underground, and 400 km (250 mi) of passages. The salt is dug out by the room and pillar method, where about half the material is left in place to support the upper levels. Extraction of Himalayan salt is expected to last 350 years at the present rate of extraction of around 385,000 tons per annum. ## In religion Salt has long held an important place in religion and culture. At the time of Brahmanic sacrifices, in Hittite rituals and during festivals held by Semites and Greeks at the time of the new moon, salt was thrown into a fire where it produced crackling noises. The ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans invoked their gods with offerings of salt and water and some people think this to be the origin of Holy Water in the Christian faith. In Aztec mythology, Huixtocihuatl was a fertility goddess who presided over salt and salt water. Salt is considered to be a very auspicious substance in Hinduism and is used in particular religious ceremonies like house-warmings and weddings. In Jainism, devotees lay an offering of raw rice with a pinch of salt before a deity to signify their devotion and salt is sprinkled on a person's cremated remains before the ashes are buried. Salt is believed to ward off evil spirits in Mahayana Buddhist tradition, and when returning home from a funeral, a pinch of salt is thrown over the left shoulder as this prevents evil spirits from entering the house. In Shinto, Shio (塩, lit. "salt") is used for ritual purification of locations and people (harae, specifically shubatsu), and small piles of salt are placed in dishes by the entrance of establishments for the twofold purposes of warding off evil and attracting patrons. In the Hebrew Bible, there are thirty-five verses which mention salt. One of these mentions Lot's wife, who was turned into a pillar of salt when she looked back at the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:26) as they were destroyed. When the judge Abimelech destroyed the city of Shechem, he is said to have "sown salt on it," probably as a curse on anyone who would re-inhabit it (Judges 9:45). The Book of Job contains the first mention of salt as a condiment. "Can that which is unsavoury be eaten without salt? or is there any taste in the white of an egg?" (Job 6:6). In the New Testament, six verses mention salt. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus referred to his followers as the "salt of the earth". The apostle Paul also encouraged Christians to "let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt" (Colossians 4:6). Salt is mandatory in the rite of the Tridentine Mass. Salt is used in the third item (which includes an Exorcism) of the Celtic Consecration (cf. Gallican Rite) that is employed in the consecration of a church. Salt may be added to the water "where it is customary" in the Roman Catholic rite of Holy water. In Judaism, it is recommended to have either a salty bread or to add salt to the bread if this bread is unsalted when doing Kiddush for Shabbat. It is customary to spread some salt over the bread or to dip the bread in a little salt when passing the bread around the table after the Kiddush. To preserve the covenant between their people and God, Jews dip the Sabbath bread in salt. In Wicca, salt is symbolic of the element Earth. It is also believed to cleanse an area of harmful or negative energies. A dish of salt and a dish of water are almost always present on an altar, and salt is used in a wide variety of rituals and ceremonies.

U.S. Route 163

Highway in Arizona and Utah

U.S. Route 163 (also U.S. Highway 163, US 163) is a 64-mile (103 km) U.S. Highway that runs from US 160 northward to US 191 in the U.S. states of Arizona and Utah. The southernmost 44 miles (71 km) of its length are within the Navajo Nation. The highway forms part of the Trail of the Ancients, a National Scenic Byway. The highway cuts through the heart of Monument Valley and has been featured in numerous movies and commercials. The highway was designated in 1970, replacing Arizona State Route 464 and Utah State Route 47 as well as a portion of the old alignment of US 160 in Utah. In 1981, US 191 was routed over the northern section of US 163, effectively truncating the northern terminus to Bluff, Utah, from Crescent Junction. The state of Utah briefly had plans for a different routing of US 163 north of Bluff. These plans were rejected, resulting in discrepancies between the signed route and the official designation by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials that were not resolved until 2008. The route number does not follow the numbering convention for U.S. Highways, as the number 163 would normally be used for a spur of US 63; however, these two highways have never connected. ## Route description ### Arizona The southern terminus of US 163 is at a junction with US 160 south of Kayenta in Navajo County and Navajo Nation. The road continues to the south of this junction as Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Route 591. US 163 heads north from US 160 to the west of the Kayenta Airport as it passes through the town of Kayenta. The highway curves toward the northeast in Kayenta before it curves back toward the north. As it continues north, the highway goes through an s-curve, resulting in a northeasterly heading. US 163 continues this heading as it heads toward Monument Valley and crosses into Utah. The state of Arizona has designated an 18-mile (29 km) stretch of the highway, from approximately 5 miles (8 km) north of the US 160 junction to the Utah border, as a scenic route. ### Utah The Utah portion of the highway begins in Monument Valley, in San Juan County. Just after it enters Utah, the highway junctions with the Monument Valley Visitors center. The highway proceeds northeast until the town of Mexican Hat where the highway both crosses the San Juan River and exits the Navajo Nation. From Mexican Hat, the highway travels east crossing the Comb Ridge toward its terminus in Bluff. A significant portion of the Utah portion of the route north of the Navajo Nation is inside the boundaries of the Bears Ears National Monument. Formerly, the route continued along what is now signed US 191 to I-70, however the portion north of Bluff was not signed after the creation of US 191 and was formally removed in 2008. The length of US 163 in Utah has been designated the Bluff to Monument Valley Scenic Byway by the Utah State Legislature and forms part of the Trail of the Ancients National Scenic Byway. All highways in Utah are codified in law; US 163 is defined at Utah Code §72-4-122(3). While Monument Valley and US 163 have been featured in numerous western movies, a specific view area near Utah mile marker 13 has recently been given the nickname Forrest Gump hill, as a location from the movie Forrest Gump. It has become common for fans of the film to re-create the scene where the title character ends a cross country jogging along this point on US 163. ## History The modern routing of US 163 in Utah was initially designated as State Route 47, in 1910. SR 47 extended to Monticello at a junction with then U.S. Route 160. In Arizona, the road appeared on maps as early as 1935, but it was an unimproved dirt road. The Arizona portion was added to the state highway system in 1960 when it was designated as State Route 464. In 1970, US 163 was designated along SR 464 in Arizona and SR 47 in Utah as part of a re-alignment of U.S. highways in the Four Corners region. With the re-alignment, US 160 was re-routed into Arizona instead of Utah. US 163 also absorbed the former route of US 160 to its former terminus at Interstate 70 at Crescent Junction. In 1981, AASHTO approved a new iteration of U.S. Route 191 that absorbed much of the alignment of US 163. Utah truncated US 163 at Bluff. The truncation was made without approval from AASHTO, as the AASHTO logs placed the northern terminus of US 163 at I-70 at Crescent Junction. The state of Utah signed a joint intent with the Navajo Nation and San Juan County in 1986 to construct a new highway to connect Bluff with Montezuma Creek. Businesses in Monument Valley asked the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) to request extensions of US 163 and US 666 using this new road. The proposal would have US 163 run from Cedar City to US 160 near Cortez, Colorado along the routes of State Route 14, U.S. Route 89, Arizona State Route 98, U.S. Route 160, the current US 163, the new road from Bluff to Montezuma Creek, and Colorado State Highway 41. The proposal for US 666 would extend to Richfield via upgrades to State Route 95 and State Route 24. UDOT submitted the proposal for US 666 to AASHTO, which was rejected. AASHTO cited that the route was not direct, and SR-24 was not built to U.S. Highway standards. UDOT did not pursue the extension of US 163, even though the Utah state legislature had approved the new road from Bluff to Montezuma creek as route 163. With this extension, the Utah definition of US 163 conflicted with the AASHTO definition. UDOT resolved this discrepancy by signing the extended portion as State Route 163. In 2004, the plan to extend US 163 was abandoned, and the extension was renumbered SR-162 to "make the state route numbers run synonymous with the U.S. route designation." Although the state changed the definition of US 163 back to match the national definition in 2004, the portion north of Bluff remained unsigned. In October 2008, UDOT requested and obtained approval to truncate US 163 to the junction with US 191 resolving the discrepancy. The highway corridor became controversial in 2016 with the designation of Bears Ears National Monument. The area near where US 163 crosses the Comb Ridge was included in some versions of the monument proposal, but excluded as a concession to local concerns in other versions. The proclamation signed by President Obama in 2016 did not include the Comb Ridge area, however, was included with subsequent boundary changes by succeeding presidents. ## Junction list ## See also - List of appearances of Monument Valley in the media - US 163 is visible in several movies etc. filmed in Monument Valley

Lady Gaga Live at Roseland Ballroom

2014 residency show

Lady Gaga Live at Roseland Ballroom was the first concert residency by American singer Lady Gaga. Performed at the Roseland Ballroom in Manhattan, New York, the residency began on March 28 and concluded on April 7, 2014, after completing seven shows. It was the final event hosted by the venue after it was announced that it was being closed down and being replaced with a 42-story skyscraper. Gaga revealed that Roseland was the only venue in New York City that she had never played, although she had visited there previously to watch shows. A poster announcing the event was released, showing an old image of Gaga taken before the time she became successful as a recording artist. As an homage to the venue, the stage was decorated with roses. The multi-leveled set-up consisted of New York City fire escape routes. Other parts of the stage had a ladder reaching the mezzanine floors and a replica of an F train carriage. Gaga's wardrobe was also rose themed, with leotards, hats and jackets, and instruments adorned with red roses. The main set list for the residency encompassed songs from The Fame, The Fame Monster, Born This Way, and Artpop. Some tracks were performed in acoustic versions. The residency received positive reviews from music critics. Reviewers were impressed by Gaga's vocals, the choreography, and the overall presentation of the residency. The shows were sold out with ticket prices being above the average costs of tickets at the venue. Billboard revealed that the seven dates had sold a total of 24,532 tickets while grossing a total of \$1.5 million. Two performances from the residency were transmitted on the Late Show with David Letterman, while MTV and Logo TV collaborated to show the behind-the-scenes logistics for the residency. The final show on April 7, 2014 was live-streamed by Verizon Communications. ## Background and announcement The Roseland Ballroom opened in its first Manhattan location at 51st Street in 1919, after moving from Philadelphia. It moved to its current location at 52nd Street in 1956, as a converted skating rink. The venue began as a hall for ballroom dancing and orchestra groups, but later shifted its focus through various eras of popular music, including disco, grunge, and EDM. While the Roseland Ballroom has seen performances from a both up-and-coming bands and established acts, rumors have been circulating since 1996 about the venue's demise, after owner Albert Ginsberg filed plans to tear down its low-rise, three-story structure and replace it with a 59-story high-rise. It was announced on October 19, 2013 that the Roseland Ballroom would be closing in April 2014, after over 50 years of operation at its current location. On November 19, 2013, it was revealed that Gaga would perform the final shows there with an intimate, four-night residency on March 28, March 30, March 31, and April 2, 2014. Tickets went on sale through Ticketmaster on November 25; tickets were priced at \$50 for the floor and \$200 for the mezzanine. Members of Gaga's fan club were able to register for first access to tickets starting on November 19. Users were selected at random to receive invitations and codes to purchase tickets on November 21. Citi card members also had access to the pre-sale starting November 22. According to Gaga, playing at the Roseland Ballroom was always a personal dream. She explained to John Seabrook of The New Yorker that "It's basically the only room in the city I haven't played." As a young girl, she could not afford tickets, but she did manage to win free tickets to a Franz Ferdinand show during her senior year of high school. Gaga recalled that she fell in the mosh pit during the show and got her nose broken, making her parents forbid her from visiting Roseland again. After the singer's career took off with the release of debut album, The Fame (2008), she bypassed playing the venue. Gaga revealed the official poster for the residency on March 18, 2014. It features an image of her taken by a stranger in 2008 in the Lower East Side of New York City. According to Gaga: "We found him and used that same photo for my Roseland poster." The poster also includes a quote from her taken when the photograph was taken, that reads: "I'm Lady Gaga. A singer/songwriter. You're going to know me one day." ## Development and inspiration Thematically, both the stage set up and the wardrobe consisted of many roses and was an homage to the venue and the name "Roseland". Starting from arriving to the concert hall in a nude bodysuit and mask, embellished with red roses, the outfits worn on the stage included Gaga's characteristic attire from her previous live performances. One dress consisted of purple-colored hot pants, fishnets, and a mask, all covered with purple roses, along with a metallic purple jacket. Photographer Terry Richardson took photos of the backstage activities which revealed that a second purple jacket was also worn by Gaga and it was bejeweled and emblazoned with the word "Gaga" on the rear side. The instruments used by the singer, such as a keyboard, was also decked similarly with red roses. Another dress included shoulder spikes reminiscent of the singer's attire during her first studio album era, coupled with a hat made of black roses. A green colored wig was also worn by Gaga which she had introduced during the Artpop era. Gaga's vocal coach Don Lawrence, who began working with her when she was 13, assisted her before each show, either by being present there or through phone. Gaga practiced her vocal warm-ups one hour prior to the start of each show. The stage was created to embody the New York City fire escapes making it multi-leveled and comparable to the self-titled album cover by rock band Grateful Dead. It had a large red curtain to hide it from the audience and was similarly decked with roses. A rose-draped ladder was placed at the left side of the stage which helped Gaga climb the mezzanine floors. A catwalk was constructed behind the stage, which was lined with more roses, and her dancers performed on them. A piano was placed in front of a window representing Gaga's old apartment in New York City. The Lower East Side of New York was represented by the replica of a F train carriage on the auxiliary platform of Roseland named as the "Artpop Zone", decked with neon lights and spelling out "176 Stanton Street", Gaga's old address. A confetti cannon was also kept for the performance of "Applause" and the giant disco ball of the venue was used. ## Concert synopsis The main set list for the residency included songs from The Fame, The Fame Monster, Born This Way, and Artpop. The show began with Gaga appearing on top of the platforms and danced towards her piano to perform an acoustic version of "Born This Way", before proceeding to dance on the rafters with her backup troupe to "Black Jesus + Amen Fashion" in her purple leotard and jacket. A costume change ensued and Gaga performed "Monster" wearing a crimson leather body suit and roses atop her head. She played the rose-adorned keytar and gradually segued into "Bad Romance". Middle of the performance, she ran to the left of the stage to climb a ladder to the mezannine floors, where she sang the final chorus and "Sexxx Dreams" followed with energetic dance moves. Gaga moved towards the F train stage on the right, and sang the piano ballads "Dope" and "You and I", interspersed with monologues about the venue, her beginnings as a singer in New York and addictions. The third costume change took place with the performance of "Just Dance", where she wore yellow hot pants and metallic chest plates, while being accompanied by her full troupe of nine dancers. An intermediate break was introduced with Gaga playing another keytar. "Poker Face" followed, being played by Gaga on the piano. The song was rearranged to include lyrics about the venue and New York. "Artpop" was then played as an interlude. The final song of the set was "Applause", where Gaga wore another costume, this time the purple bikini and jacket. Towards the end of the performance, confetti rained on the audience and after a brief interlude Gaga appeared in a white jumpsuit for an encore of "G.U.Y." The singer showed provocative dance moves while straddling her backup performers, and executed choreography similar to the song's music video. The show ended with Gaga and her troupe taking a bow to the audience and thanking Roseland. ## Critical reception Andrew Hammp of Billboard called the residency "electrifying" though he felt that "If SXSW served as a statement about how brands should fund artists' creative expression, Gaga's Roseland residency was about giving the people what they wanted. ... . [The] night ended rather abruptly after almost exactly 60 minutes". A writer for The Courier called the show "short but sweet" and praised her for never showing "signs of slowing down" throughout the show. James Montgomery of MTV News praised the overall show, calling it "heavy on the hits, sublimely sexual, suitably sentimental—both for her glory days and the iconic venue she's closing with this seven-night stand—and ridiculous in all the right ways". He noted that the abrupt ending of the show was compensated by Gaga's dancing and singing, which in turn helped counteract the negative press she had been receiving since the release of Artpop. Glenn Gamboa from Newsday called the show "fierce" and "brainy", saying that the singer "fired up" from the moment she took the stage, displaying an avant-garde artistic sensibility. Jon Caramanica of The New York Times called the show part of the "Supernova" phase of her career and explained, > Gaga grounds this sort of spectacle with her voice. She is still a fearsome singer when she chooses to be, which is to say rarely on records but often in concert ... What she gave the faithful was easy to digest: largely bulletproof pop, swinging back and forth between brooding, panting torch songs delivered at top volume and grand-scale 1980s-style digital rock with a nightclub twist. Adam Markovitz from Entertainment Weekly declared that if the "Roseland show is any indication, Gaga's not going anywhere anytime soon", in spite of the overall negative reception towards her campaigns for Artpop. He welcomed the absence of any art-related things in the show and commended the focus on music, Gaga's vocals and abilities as an entertainer. Markovitz also complimented Gaga's rapport with the audience members and rated the performances of "Just Dance" and "Bad Romance" as highlights. Markos Papadatos from Digital Journal website declared Gaga as a "pop muse" for the performances. He complimented the choice of songs in the set list calling them "eclectic" and felt they "displayed different sides to her craft". He noticed that the singer's vocal abilities were particularly prominent during the acoustic performances on piano. Caryn Ganz from Rolling Stone observed that the compact space of Roseland did not allow for much choreography, but felt Gaga's performance was "magical", especially during "You and I". Hilary Hughes from USA Today also noticed Gaga's vocal range, especially during the acoustic interpretation of "Dope" and "Just Dance". Hughes concluded by saying that the simplest moments of the performances were the ones featuring toned down versions of her singles like "Born This Way" and "Poker Face", rather than the extravagant choreography during "Bad Romance" and "G.U.Y." Hardeep Phull from New York Post appreciated the stage setup and the homage to old New York industrial setting and gave positive feedback for Gaga's choice to be an entertainer with the performances of "You and I", "Just Dance", and "Applause". Jordan Runtagh from VH1 applauded Gaga's camaraderie with her fans, also noting that "the abundance of movie cameras reminded us that this was a special moment, one that will go down in history. And not just because these are the last performances at this storied venue. It's something more." Runtagh believed that the performances solidified Gaga as a respectable entertainer and would generate further interest for the upcoming ArtRave: The Artpop Ball tour. Amanda Holpuch from The Guardian complimented Gaga's vocals and her outfits, but felt that the show lacked "something outrageous" from the singer. She added that the most surprising incident of the night was when Gaga climbed a ladder to reach the mezzanine floors and sing from there. ## Commercial reception and broadcasts Jesse Lawrence from Forbes reported that the first and last shows at the venue were completely sold out, making it the two most expensive shows for Gaga's economically secondary market. The average ticket price for the secondary market (\$375.89) as well as the final show (\$195.80) were all above the average cost of \$186.40, with the price dropping as the shows drew nearer. Since Roseland was an admission only venue, costlier tickets were kept for the "Artpop Zone" since it had better views and seating arrangement, as well as a post-show meet and greet with Gaga. In April 2014, Jesse Lawrence from Forbes reported that following Gaga's performance at Roseland Ballroom, the tour ticket prices for her ArtRave: The Artpop Ball tour in the secondary markets went up by 5.3%, with major increase being visible at Philips Arena of Atlanta. Tickets at Madison Square Garden rose up to \$338.81, which was 42.6% higher than the average price. Other locations were ticket prices saw an increase were MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, TD Garden Arena in Boston and United Center in Chicago. In June 2014, Billboard revealed that the seven dates had sold a total of 24,532 tickets while grossing a total of \$1.5 million. It ranked at number 41 on the list. On April 2, 2014, Gaga appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman along with guest Bill Murray. After the interview, the singer invited the whole audience to come and watch the show with her; the performances of "G.U.Y." and "Dope" were presented during the broadcast. MTV and Logo TV collaborated to air various aspects of the preparation for the Roseland shows on April 4. The behind-the-scenes program would air throughout the day on both channels, including the regular programming on partner channels like MTV Hits. Sway Calloway, an interviewer working with MTV News, had access to the background logistics of the show including rehearsals. They also visited Gaga's old apartment, and looked at some of the art collection sent to the singer by her fans. The programs were streamed on MTV's website as well as Gaga's artist page, and the various social media channels owned by Logo. The final performance at Roseland on April 7, 2014, was live streamed for those not able to see the show. Verizon Communications had announced that the event would be streamed from 9 pm EST at the website GetMoreGaga.com. Gaga herself announced the news in a video posted on her Twitter account. ## Set list The following set list is representative of the show's opening night on March 28, 2014. 1. "Born This Way" 2. "Black Jesus + Amen Fashion" 3. "Monster" 4. "Bad Romance" 5. "Sexxx Dreams" 6. "Dope" 7. "You and I" 8. "Just Dance" 9. "Poker Face" 10. "Applause" Encore 1. \<li value="11\>"G.U.Y." ## Shows

1946 Australian National Airways DC-3 crash

Accident in Hobart

On Sunday 10 March 1946 a Douglas DC-3 aircraft departed from Hobart, Tasmania for a flight to Melbourne. The aircraft crashed into the sea with both engines operating less than 2 minutes after takeoff. All twenty-five people on board the aircraft died. It was Australia's worst civil aviation accident at the time. An investigation panel was promptly established to investigate the accident. The panel was unable to conclusively establish the cause but it decided the most likely cause was that the automatic pilot was inadvertently engaged shortly after takeoff while the gyroscope was caged. The Department of Civil Aviation took action to ensure that operation of the automatic pilot on-off control on Douglas DC-3 aircraft was made distinctive from operation of any other control in the cockpit, and that instructions were issued impressing on pilots that gyroscopes should be un-caged prior to takeoff. An inquiry chaired by a Supreme Court judge closely examined three different theories but found there was insufficient evidence to determine any one of them as the cause. This inquiry discovered that the captain of the aircraft was diabetic and had kept it secret from both his employer and the Department of Civil Aviation. The judge considered the captain's diabetes and self-administration of insulin probably contributed significantly to the accident but he stopped short of making this his official conclusion. In his report, the judge recommended modification of the lever actuating the automatic pilot. The inquiry uncovered four irregularities in the regulation of civil aviation in Australia and the judge made four recommendations to deal with these irregularities. ## The flight The Australian National Airways aircraft registered VH-AET arrived at Cambridge aerodrome at 8:15 pm local time, about four hours late. The return flight to Essendon Airport was scheduled to depart at 4:50 pm, but did not do so until 8:50 pm. On board were 21 passengers, 3 pilots and an air hostess. Douglas DC-3 (and C-47) aircraft were normally crewed by two pilots but on 10 March the cockpit of VH-AET was occupied by a third person, a supernumerary pilot who was making his first flights with the airline. The weight of the aircraft was about 900 pounds (410 kg) below the maximum authorised weight. The takeoff was into a light southerly wind towards Frederick Henry Bay and the sea. Observers at the aerodrome reported that the takeoff was normal, and both engines were operating perfectly. Witnesses in the vicinity of Seven-Mile Beach estimated that the aircraft reached a height of a little above 400 ft (120 m) before turning left slightly and descending steeply. The aircraft cleared the land and crashed into Frederick Henry Bay about 300 yards (270 m) beyond the water's edge and a mile (1.6 km) from the western end of Seven-Mile Beach. After takeoff it flew for less than 2 minutes and covered a distance of only 2.9 nautical miles (5.4 kilometres). ## Recovery ### Wreckage On learning of the crash at nearby Seven-Mile Beach employees of Australian National Airways raced from Cambridge aerodrome to lend assistance. About 11:15 pm the rear fuselage came to the surface a short distance off-shore. Donald Butler, one of the employees, feared the air hostess might still be trapped in her seat in the rear of the fuselage. He took a length of rope, swam out to the floating piece of structure, attached the rope to the tailwheel and then swam back to the beach. A motor lorry was used to drag the rear fuselage ashore but there was no-one inside. The right tailplane, elevator and trim tab were almost undamaged. The elevator trim tab was still set appropriately for a shallow climb after take-off. The wreckage was in about 18 ft (5.5 m) of water. A diving pontoon was towed to the site by Royal Australian Navy ship HMAS Huon. Diver Glen Thorne found pieces of wreckage scattered over a wide area of the sea bed. The aircraft had disintegrated and there were few recognisable pieces of structure. Key parts of the wreckage were eventually recovered from the sea bed by Thorne working from the pontoon. ### Bodies About 4 hours after the crash the mutilated body of a woman was washed onto Seven-Mile Beach. Fifteen minutes later the body of a man was washed ashore. It was later identified as the body of the captain. At intervals until 6:30 am another 5 bodies were washed ashore. The next day, another 3 bodies were recovered. The bodies were badly mutilated and either naked or clad only in vestiges of underclothing, indicating the severity of the impact with the water. One body was missing a leg. A head, severed from its body, was recovered in the vicinity. The bodies of 21 of the 25 people on board were eventually recovered from the beaches around Frederick Henry Bay. The remaining 4 bodies were never found. One body was found on the beach at Sandford, about 5 miles from the site of the crash. The body of the supernumerary pilot was not identified until 19 days after the accident. Two years after the accident, a human thigh-bone was found on Seven-Mile Beach. Police believed the bone came from one of the bodies never recovered. ## Investigation The director-general of Civil Aviation promptly established a panel to investigate the accident. The panel was chaired by John Watkins, Superintendent of Airworthiness & Aeronautical Engineering. After examining the wreckage recovered from the sea bed the panel was satisfied both engines were operating at high power at the time of impact and there was no pre-existing structural or mechanical defect that would explain the crash. The panel arranged for the witnesses at Seven Mile Beach to observe a series of flights by a de Havilland Dragonfly taking off from Cambridge aerodrome, and to identify which flight best represented what they saw on the night of the crash. This exercise established that VH-AET reached a maximum height of about 425 feet (130 m). The panel members were satisfied that, after take-off, VH-AET achieved a normal climb of about 325 feet per minute (1.6 m/s) and a gradient of about 13⁄4% before suddenly commencing a descent of about 171⁄2%. Calculations showed that the aircraft's descent reached about 4,000 feet per minute (20 m/s) and its speed about 160 mph (260 km/h) before it struck the water. The panel contemplated 25 possible causes of the accident. In its interim report to the Director-General on 20 March 1946 the panel reduced these possible causes to 3: ### Automatic pilot The control box for the automatic pilot was recovered from the wreckage. The control knob for its gyroscope was in the caged position and the CAGED warning flag was in view even though the control box carried a placard stating the gyro must be uncaged before takeoff. The automatic pilot's speed valve unit was also recovered; it showed that the three valves were open in positions indicating the unit was operating at the time of the crash. The investigation panel proposed that the automatic pilot might have been engaged at a height of about 400 ft (120 m) causing the aircraft to descend swiftly into the sea. Engagement could have occurred inadvertently when one of the pilots intended to select fuel cross-feed ON. The operating levers for fuel cross-feed and automatic pilot were the same shape, the same height above the cockpit floor, and about 12 inches (300 mm) apart on the cockpit control console. No-one on the ground at Cambridge aerodrome saw the pilot who occupied the co-pilot seat prior to takeoff. The panel proposed that the captain may have asked the supernumerary pilot to occupy the co-pilot seat during the flight to Essendon Airport. The supernumerary pilot was on his third flight with the company and had no prior experience flying the C-47 or DC-3. The panel considered that if the supernumerary pilot had occupied the co-pilot seat, and if the captain had called for fuel cross-feed to be turned ON to deal with a fuel pressure problem in one engine, it was possible the supernumerary pilot's lack of familiarity with the DC-3 cockpit caused him to inadvertently engage the automatic pilot. The panel used a DC-3 aircraft with a cockpit identical to that of VH-AET to carry out four flight tests with the gyroscope caged. When the automatic pilot was engaged the control wheel moved forward so strongly it was torn from the pilot's hands, and regaining control required use of both hands and significant force. Initial tests showed that when the pilot was unprepared, up to 600 ft (180 m) could be lost before he identified the problem and disengaged the automatic pilot. On the fourth test the pilot restricted the height loss to 300 ft (91 m). The panel considered the most likely explanation of the accident was inadvertent engagement of the automatic pilot with the gyroscope caged. ### Others - Bird strike – A fortnight after the accident the mutilated body of a large bird was found on Seven-Mile Beach. It was considered the bird, which had a wingspan of about 6 ft (1.8 m), may have struck the aircraft cockpit, distracting or incapacitating the pilots. Alternatively, the bird could have struck the aircraft's pitot tube, damaging it and causing inaccuracy in the airspeed indicator. - Pilot illness – The investigation panel considered the pilot may have collapsed suddenly. The panel used a DC-3 aircraft to carry out tests in which one of the pilots simulated falling forward onto the aircraft controls. They found it difficult to fall forward sufficiently to exert a significant force on the elevator control, and the other pilot had no difficulty keeping the aircraft in a climbing attitude. ### Report The investigation panel's report to the Director-General made recommendations including: 1. operation of the automatic pilot on-off control on Australian-registered DC-3 aircraft should be made distinctive from operation of any other control in the cockpit. 2. instructions should be issued impressing on pilots that gyroscopes should be un-caged prior to takeoff. 3. the practice of using passenger-carrying flights to give experience to pilots under instruction should be reviewed urgently. ## Inquiry On 24 April 1946 the Minister for Civil Aviation, Arthur Drakeford, appointed Mr Justice Simpson of the Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory to conduct an inquiry into the accident. Counsel assisting the inquiry was to be Henry Winneke. Justice Simpson examined the evidence in detail, including the evidence put forward in support of the 3 most likely causes identified by the investigation panel. He eventually found there was insufficient evidence to consider any of the theories proved. Justice Simpson's report of the findings of his inquiry was made public by the Minister on 11 June 1946. Simpson said he was satisfied the accident was not caused by failure of any part of the aircraft's structure, its engines or its controls; or failure to remove any of the flight-control clamps prior to takeoff. ### Automatic pilot John Watkins, chairman of the investigation panel, told the inquiry the evidence supporting the theory that inadvertent engagement of the automatic pilot caused the accident was that its control box was recovered from the wreckage and its gyroscope was still caged. The speed valve unit was also recovered and it indicated the automatic pilot was operating at the time of impact. Inadvertent engagement of the automatic pilot with the gyroscope caged could explain a sudden descent by a DC-3. Watkins also said the panel's report to the Director-General made several recommendations and they were already being actioned. These included one recommendation that operation of the automatic pilot on-off control on Australian-registered DC-3 aircraft should be made distinctive from operation of any other control in the cockpit. The Flight Superintendent of Australian National Airways, Captain P.T.L. Taylor, told the inquiry he did not believe the accident could have been caused by inadvertent engagement of the automatic pilot. He said if that happened, the pilot could dis-engage it before losing 50 ft (15 m) in altitude. The Chief Technical Adviser of Australian National Airways, Thomas Lawrence, told the inquiry he did not think there was any evidence to indicate the automatic pilot was engaged at the time of the accident. He thought the crash was the result of a combination of factors. ### Bird-strike Michael Sharland, honorary ornithologist to the Tasmanian Museum, told the Inquiry he had been shown the mutilated remains of a dead bird and had identified it as a gannet, a fishing bird known to dive on its prey from heights from 50 ft to 500 ft. He was unable to say how the bird had died but said its injuries suggested it had been in a collision with a heavy, fast-moving body. Captain P.T.L. Taylor said he thought a bird-strike on the aircraft's pitot tube could have caused the crash. Justice Simpson rejected the bird-strike theory, saying the descent of the aircraft was caused by forward-movement of the control column in the cockpit. He was unable to state what caused this movement of the control column. ### Medical The inquiry discovered that the chief-pilot of the aircraft, Captain Thomas Spence, was diabetic and had been discharged from the RAAF in September 1941 as medically unfit. In early 1942 he applied for a commercial pilot licence but did not declare his diabetes. In a medical examination for the purpose of obtaining the licence, and at all subsequent examinations, Spence had shown no sign of diabetes. A specialist in diabetes told the Inquiry it was almost impossible to detect diabetes in a person who wished to withhold it. The inquiry also received evidence that a friend had asked Spence about his diabetes in relation to his employment as a pilot. Spence had asked his friend to keep it quiet so his employment would not be jeopardised. The senior route captain for Australian National Airways, Captain Douglas Way, told the inquiry he was unaware Spence was treating himself with insulin. Captain Way said he knew Spence had been discharged from the RAAF as medically unfit but Spence had told him it was a minor complaint discovered when he was in Canada and when he returned to Australia he found himself cured. At a medical examination in October 1943 for renewal of his commercial pilot licence Spence told the examiner he had been in hospital with influenza and a carbuncle. The examiner did not inquire further on the matter. Investigations with Brisbane Hospital for the purpose of informing Justice Simpson revealed that Spence's hospitalisation was for diabetic pre-coma. Justice Simpson agreed that Spence had misled many people. Spence was scheduled to have a medical examination on 11 March and it was considered plausible that he may have taken extra insulin to prepare himself for the examination. An overdose of insulin, or irregular doses, can distort the senses and cause the muscles to be unco-ordinated. Counsel assisting the Inquiry, Henry Winneke, advocated that the cause of the accident was Spence's diabetes. Justice Simpson was critical of the Director-General's investigation panel for considering 25 possible causes of the accident but failing to consider that the department's negligence in licensing a diabetic pilot might have been the root cause of the accident. After the inquiry had received all available information related to Spence's diabetes, Justice Simpson said the insulin reaction of the pilot might have had a considerable bearing on the accident. In Justice Simpson's report to the Governor-General he wrote that he could see much to support the theory that the most likely cause was Spence's actions in the cockpit while he was adversely affected by insulin. However, in his report he didn't determine that the accident had been caused by Spence's medical condition because there was insufficient evidence to completely prove the theory. ### Irregularities During the court of inquiry Justice Simpson became aware of four irregularities and listed them in his report. 1. When Thomas Spence had applied for a commercial pilot licence the RAAF Director-General of Medical Services had been acting as assessor for the Department of Civil Aviation. The Director-General had neglected to check Spence's RAAF medical history. 2. A medical examiner had failed to check Spence's statement that his recent hospitalisation was due to influenza. The truth was that Spence had been suffering a serious diabetic condition. 3. VH-AET was approved to carry 24 persons. On 10 March 1946 the aircraft took off with 25 persons on board – a full complement of 21 passengers, an air hostess and 3 pilots instead of the usual 2. 4. No flare path had been lit to illuminate the runway for takeoff and any unexpected return to the aerodrome for landing. ### Recommendations Justice Simpson made five recommendations: 1. The practice of allowing pilots under instruction to gain experience in the cockpit of aircraft carrying passengers should be reviewed. 2. The levers that actuate the automatic pilot and the fuel cross-feed should be modified so they have a different appearance. 3. A regulation should be made to prohibit taking off at night without a flare path or other runway lighting system; and it should be compulsory for the flare path to remain lit until there is no longer a possibility the aircraft might return to the airport to land. 4. Ground engineers completing daily inspections should keep copies of their inspection records. 5. Medical examinations for issue or renewal of pilot licences should be made by doctors chosen, and paid for, by the Department of Civil Aviation. ## Coronial inquest The Tasmania Coroner, Mr Sorell, investigated the deaths of the 21 people whose bodies had been recovered. He determined that the causes of their deaths were multiple fractures and injuries but he was unable to say how or in what manner they met their deaths. ## Flight crew The captain was Thomas Spence, aged 30. He had about 3,500 hours flying experience and had been a captain of Douglas DC-3 aircraft for a year. He joined Australian National Airways in June 1942. The co-pilot was David Collum, aged 21. He had about 1,400 hours flying experience, mostly with Australian National Airways. The supernumerary pilot was Austin Gibson, aged 37. He had about 2,500 hours flying experience in the RAAF; half of this as a flying instructor. He had over 1,000 hours in command of twin-engine Anson, Oxford, Hudson and Beaufort aircraft but no experience on the Douglas C-47 or DC-3. ## Aircraft The aircraft was constructed in 1942 as a Douglas C-47-DL transport aircraft with a Douglas serial number 6013. It was assigned the US military serial number 41-18652 and in 1943 was delivered to the US Army Air Force in Brisbane. In November 1944, it was sold to the Commonwealth of Australia. Twelve C-47s were purchased by the Commonwealth of Australia and hired out under charter to aviation companies, six to Australian National Airways. The aircraft was registered VH-AET by the Commonwealth and hired out to Australian National Airways on 20 December 1944. Australian National Airways converted it to the civil aircraft configuration about a year before the crash. VH-AET flew for 7,477 hours. ## See also - 1948 Australian National Airways DC-3 crash – Accident in New South Wales - 1949 MacRobertson Miller Aviation DC-3 crash – Accident in Perth, Western Australia - List of disasters in Australia by death toll - List of accidents and incidents involving commercial aircraft - List of accidents and incidents involving airliners by location

Ímar

9th-century Viking king of Dublin

Ímar (Old Norse: Ívarr ; died c. 873), synonymous with Ivar the Boneless, was a powerful Viking leader in Ireland and Scotland in the mid-late ninth century. He was the progenitor of the Uí Ímair dynasty, who would go on to dominate the Irish Sea region for several centuries. He was the son of the king of Lochlann, identified in the non-contemporary Fragmentary Annals of Ireland as Gofraid. The Fragmentary Annals name Auisle and Amlaíb Conung as his brothers. Another Viking leader, Halfdan Ragnarsson, is considered by some scholars to be another brother. The Irish Annals title Amlaíb, Ímar and Auisle "kings of the foreigners". Modern scholars use the title "Kings of Dublin" after the Viking settlement which formed the base of their power. Some scholars consider Ímar to be identical to Ivar the Boneless, a Viking commander of the Great Heathen Army named in contemporary English sources who also appears in the Icelandic sagas as the eldest son of the legendary Viking Ragnar Lodbrok by third wife Aslaug. During the late 850s and early 860s Ímar was involved in a protracted conflict with Máel Sechnaill, overking of the Southern Uí Néill and the most powerful ruler in Ireland. The cause of the conflict is uncertain, but it may have been sparked by competition for control of Munster and its resources. Ímar allied successively with Cerball, King of Osraige and Áed Findliath, overking of the Northern Uí Néill against Máel Sechnaill. Máel Sechnaill died in 862 and his lands were split, effectively ending the conflict. Following this Ímar and his kin warred with several Irish leaders in an attempt to expand their kingdom's influence. Ímar disappears from the historical record in Ireland between the years 864 and 870; this is consistent with Ímar being identical to Ivar the Boneless - Ivar was active in England between these two dates and he is not mentioned by English sources after 870. In 870 the annals record that Dumbarton Rock, the chief fortress of the kingdom of Strathclyde, was successfully captured by Ímar and Amlaíb following a four-month-long siege. Ímar died in 873 and is given the title "King of the Norsemen of all Ireland and Britain" in contemporary annals. The Fragmentary Annals record that Ímar's father also died that year, and it is believed that at that time their combined territory encompassed Dublin, the Isle of Man, the Western Isles, Orkney, and large parts of the northern and western Scottish coast including Argyll, Caithness and Sutherland. ## Background Norse contact with Scotland predates the first written records in the 8th century, although the nature and frequency of these contacts is unknown. Excavations on the island of Unst in Shetland indicate that Scandinavian settlers had reached there perhaps as early as the mid-7th century and from 793 onwards repeated raids by Vikings on the British Isles are recorded. "All the islands of Britain" were devastated in 794 with Iona being sacked in 802 and 806. The Frankish Annales Bertiniani may record the conquest of the Inner Hebrides by Vikings in 847. Scholarly interpretations of the period "have led to widely divergent reconstructions of Viking Age Scotland", especially in the early period, and Barrett has identified several competing theories, none of which he regards as proven. Donnchadh Ó Corráin notes: "when and how the Vikings conquered and occupied the Isles is unknown, perhaps unknowable". The earliest recorded Viking raids in Ireland occurred in 795. Over time, these raids increased in intensity, and they overwintered in Ireland for the first time in 840–841. In 841 a longphort was constructed at Áth Cliath (Irish for hurdled ford), a site which would later develop into the city of Dublin. Longphorts were also established at other sites around Ireland, some of which developed into larger Viking settlements over time. The Viking population in Ireland was boosted in 851 with the arrival of a large group known as "dark foreigners" – a contentious term used to refer to the newly arrived Vikings, as opposed to the "fair foreigners", i.e., the Viking population which was resident prior to this influx. A kingdom in Viking Scotland was established by the mid ninth-century, and it exerted control over some of the Vikings in Ireland. By 853 a separate kingdom of Dublin had been set up which claimed control over all the Vikings in Ireland. The main historical sources for this period are the Norse sagas and the Irish annals. Some of the annals, such as the Annals of Ulster, are believed to be contemporary accounts, whereas the sagas were written down at dates much later than the events they describe and are considered far less reliable. A few of the annals, such as the Fragmentary Annals of Ireland and the Annals of the Four Masters, were also compiled at later dates, in part from more contemporary material and in part from fragments of sagas. According to Downham, "apart from these additions [of saga fragments], Irish chronicles are considered by scholars to be largely accurate records, albeit partisan in their presentation of events". ## Biography ### Arrival in Ireland Ímar is first mentioned in contemporary Irish annals in 857, four years after his brother Amlaíb Conung is recorded as arriving in Ireland. The later Fragmentary Annals of Ireland suggest Ímar may have come to Ireland shortly after his brother: > Also in this year, i.e., the sixth year of the reign of Máel Sechlainn, Amlaíb Conung, son of the king of Lochlann, came to Ireland, and he brought with him a proclamation of many tributes and taxes from his father, and he departed suddenly. Then his younger brother Ímar came after him to levy the same tribute. Ímar and Amlaíb were joined in Ireland by another brother, Auisle, sometime before 863. From this date onwards the three brothers are described as "kings of the foreigners" by the annals, but in modern texts they are usually labelled as kings of Dublin, after the Viking settlement which was the base of their power. Lochlann, originally Laithlinn or Lothlend, the land where Ímar's father was king, is often identified with Norway, but it is not universally accepted that it had such a meaning in early times. Several historians have proposed instead that in early times, and certainly as late as the Battle of Clontarf in 1014, Lochlann refers to the Norse and Norse-Gael lands in the Hebrides, the Isle of Man, the Northern Isles and parts of mainland Scotland. Whatever the original sense, by the twelfth century, when Magnus Barefoot undertook his expedition to the West, it had come to mean Norway. ### War with Máel Sechnaill The first mention of Ímar in Irish annals in 857 concerns a war fought between Ímar and Amlaíb Conung against Máel Sechnaill, overking of the Southern Uí Néill, and a group of Vikings sometimes known as the Norse-Irish. Máel Sechnaill was the most powerful king in Ireland at the time and his lands lay close to the Viking settlement of Dublin. The fighting began in the previous year: "Great warfare between the heathens and Mael Sechnaill, supported by Norse-Irish" is reported by the Annals of Ulster. The fighting was focused on Munster; Máel Sechnaill sought to increase his influence over the kings there. He took hostages from the province in 854, 856 and 858, and the power of the over-kings had been weakened in 856 by a Viking raid on the royal centre at Lough Cend, when Gormán son of Lonán, a relative of Munster's over-king, was killed alongside a great many others. This weakness likely drew the gaze of both Máel Sechnaill and the Vikings, and their competition for Munster's resources may have been the cause of the war. Early battles seem to have gone the way of the Vikings: Ímar and Amlaíb "inflicted a rout on Caitill the Fair and his Norse-Irish in the lands of Munster". Although there is no certain evidence to suggest that this Caitill is the same person as the Ketill Flatnose of later sagas, Anderson and Crawford have suggested that they are the same person. In 858 Ímar, allied with Cerball, King of Ossory, routed a force of Norse-Irish at Araid Tíre (east of Lough Derg and the Shannon in modern-day County Tipperary). Ossory was a small kingdom wedged between the larger realms of Munster and Leinster. At the beginning of his reign in the 840s, Cerball's allegiance was pledged to the over-king of Munster, but as that kingdom grew weaker Ossory's strategic location allowed opportunities for his advancement. Cerball had previously fought against the Vikings, but he allied with them to challenge the supremacy of Máel Sechnaill and his Norse-Irish allies. The following year Amlaíb, Ímar and Cerball conducted a raid on Máel Sechnaill's heartlands in Meath, and in consequence a royal conference was held at Rathugh (modern-day County Westmeath). Following this meeting Cerball shed his allegiance to the Vikings and formally submitted to Máel Sechnaill in order to "make peace and amity between the men of Ireland". With their ally turned against them, Ímar and Amlaíb sought a new alliance with Áed Findliath, overking of the Northern Uí Néill, and rival of Máel Sechnaill. In 860 Máel Sechnaill and Cerball led a large army of men from Munster, Leinster, Connacht and the Southern Uí Néill into the lands of Áed Findliath near Armagh. While the southern forces were encamped there, Áed launched a night attack, killing some of the southern men, but his forces took many casualties and were forced to retreat. In retaliation for this invasion Amlaíb and Áed led raids into Meath in 861 and 862, but they were driven off both times. According to the Fragmentary Annals this alliance had been cemented by a political marriage: > Áed son of Niall and his son-in-law Amlaíb (Áed's daughter was Amlaíb's wife) went with great armies of Irish and Norwegians to the plain of Mide, and they plundered it and killed many freemen. In later years, alliance between the Northern Uí Néill and the Vikings of Dublin became a regular occurrence: the Northern and Southern Uí Néill were frequent competitors for supremacy in Ireland, and the uneasy neighbourhood between Dublin and the Southern Uí Néill made the Vikings natural allies for the Northerners. ### Later life Máel Sechnaill died in 862, and his territory in Meath was split between two rulers, Lorcán mac Cathail and Conchobar mac Donnchada. Ímar and Amlaíb, now joined in Ireland by their younger brother Auisle, sought to make use of this change to extend their influence in the lands of the Southern Uí Néill. In 863 the three brothers raided Brega in alliance with Lorcán, and the following year Amlaíb drowned Conchobar at Clonard Abbey. Muirecán mac Diarmata, overking of the Uí Dúnchada, was killed by Vikings in 863, probably by Ímar and his kin trying to expand into Leinster. Beginning around 864 the three brothers halted their campaigns of conquest in Ireland, and instead campaigned in Britain. Ímar disappears from the Irish Annals in 864, and does not reappear until 870. Downham concludes he is identical to Ivar the Boneless, a Viking leader who was active in England during this period as a commander of the Great Heathen Army. According to O Croinin "Ímar has been identified with Ívarr Beinlausi (the boneless), son of Ragnar Lodbrok, but the matter is controversial". The reappearance of Ímar in Irish annals in 870 is marked by a raid undertaken by him and Amlaíb. They laid siege to Dumbarton Rock, the chief fortress of the Kingdom of Strathclyde, and captured it following a four-month siege. The pair returned to Dublin in 871 with 200 ships and they "brought with them in captivity a great prey of Angles, Britons and Picts". According to the Fragmentary Annals Amlaíb returned to Lochlann that year to aid their father in a war, leaving Ímar to rule alone (Auisle had died in 867). The Pictish Chronicle claims Amlaíb died around 874 during a protracted campaign against Constantine I in Scotland. The Fragmentary Annals record the death of Ímar's father, Gofraid, in 873. The final mention of Ímar in contemporary annals is also in 873 when his death is reported. In these reports he is titled "king of the Norsemen of all Ireland and Britain". According to Ó Corrain the evidence suggests that by his death Ímar's kingdom (including the territory formerly ruled by his father) included Man, the Western Isles, Argyll, Caithness, Sutherland, Orkney, and parts of the coastline of Ross and Cromarty and Inverness. ## Origins ### Ivar the Boneless In 865 the Great Heathen Army landed in England and one of its leaders is identified by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as "Ingvar". Later Norse tradition records Ingvar under the name of Ivar the Boneless, and calls him a son of the legendary Ragnar Lodbrok. It is generally accepted that Ivar the Boneless and Ingvar are one and the same, though the epithet "the Boneless" is not recorded until the twelfth century and its origins are obscure. Moreover, some suppose Ivar the Boneless to be identical to Ímar, though there is no scholarly consensus one way or another. Woolf supports the connection between these two "Ivars" and writes of the Great Heathen Army that invaded East Anglia in 865 that "it is now generally agreed that they arrived in Britain directly from Ireland where Ívarr, the senior partner by 865, had been active for at least a decade". Ó Corrain argues that the "evidence in favour of the identification of Ímar and Inguar consists of three points: the identity of the names, the absence of any mention of Ímar in the Irish annals between 864 and the Irish account of the siege of Dumbarton in 870, and the subsequent close connections between the dynasties of Dublin and York". Forte, Oram, and Pedersen note that Ivar is not mentioned in any English source after 870, when Ímar reappears in the Irish annals. Ó Corrain also offers argument against the identification of Ímar and Ingvar/Ivar: "To take but one example, if Ivarr of Dublin is identical with Inguar, how are we to give any credence to Smyth's reconstruction of Brompton (p. 229) which shows Ivarr in East Anglia in 871 when we know from contemporary Irish sources that Ivarr of Dublin was besieging Dumbarton for four months in 870 and returned to Ireland in early 871 with the takings?... Taken all together, the genuine material on Inguar in contemporary English sources is slight". He also states "there is nothing new in the suggestion that Ímar of Dublin and Igwar/Ingwar/Iuuar of English history are identical. It has frequently been put forward....and has equally frequently been rejected or treated as a mere possibility". Downham concludes "while medieval writers seem to have been as interested as modern historians about Ívarr’s origins, it is perhaps wiser to accept that we do not know what these really were". ### Dark and fair foreigners In the Irish annals the terms Dubgaill (dark foreigners), and Finngaill (fair foreigners), are used to refer to rival groups of Vikings. The exact meaning of these terms is subject to debate, but historically the most popular interpretation has been that Dubgaill refers to Danes and Finngaill refers to Norwegians. From 917 onwards the descendants of Ímar are described as leaders of the Dubgaill. Ímar himself is not identified explicitly by the annals with the Dubgaill, but Albann, a figure considered by some to be Ímar's brother, is called "lord of the 'Dark Foreigners'". However, the interpretation of "dark" Danes and "fair" Norwegians has recently been challenged. Dumville has suggested that Dubgaill and Finngaill do not refer to any cultural difference but instead distinguish between "old" and "new" Vikings, with the group arriving with Ímar being the "new" or "dark" Vikings, and the preexisting group being the "old" or "fair" Vikings. Downham agrees and goes a step further, suggesting that Dubgaill was applied "to followers the king of Laithlind (who had become a recurrent phenomenon for the chroniclers) as a convenient way of distinguishing them from the vikings who were already in Ireland". ### Ynglings Smyth has suggested that Amlaíb can be identified with Olaf Geirstad-Alf, King of Vestfold, who was the son of Gudrød the Hunter and half-brother of Halfdan the Black, though speculation of this nature has not received much support. Ó Corrain states that there is "no good historical or linguistic evidence to link Lothlend/Laithlind with Norway, and none to link the dynasty of Dublin to the shadowy history of the Ynglings of Vestfold". ## Family Ímar's father is identified as Gofraid by the Fragmentary Annals; an entry dated c. 871–872 gives a partial genealogy for Ímar, naming him "Ímar son of Gofraid son of Ragnall son of Gofraid Conung son of Gofraid". Ó Corrain states that this reference to Ímar's genealogical ascent is a "construct without historical value" likely with political reasoning. Highly likely to be identical to Ivar the Boneless, his father therefore would have been Ragnar Lothbrok. Nonetheless, he accepts the possibility of Ímar's father being Gofraid (also Goffridh or Gothfraid), stating "it is likely that the father of ... Ímar (Ívarr) is Gofraid (Guðrøðr) and that he is a historical person and dynastic ancestor". Amlaíb Conung came to Ireland first in 853, with Ímar following in or before 857, and Auisle following in or before 863. The three are identified as "kings of the foreigners" by the Annals of Ulster in 863, and as brothers by the Fragmentary Annals: > The king had three sons: Amlaíb, Ímar, and Óisle. Óisle was the least of them in age, but he was the greatest in valor, for he outshone the Irish in casting javelins and in strength with spears. He outshone the Norwegians in strength with swords and in shooting arrows. His brothers loathed him greatly, and Amlaíb the most; the causes of the hatred are not told because of their length. The Annals of Ulster say that Auisle was killed in 867 by "kinsmen in parricide". The Fragmentary Annals state explicitly that Amlaíb and Ímar planned their brother's death, though no motive is given. Although the three are not identified as brothers in any contemporary annals, the recurrence of their names among their descendants strongly suggests a familial connection. Some scholars identify Halfdan Ragnarsson as another brother. This identification is contingent upon Ímar being identical to Ivar the Boneless: Halfdan and Ivar are named as brothers in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. According to the Annals of Ulster Amlaíb's son Oistin was slain in battle by "Albann" in 875. This figure is generally agreed to be Halfdan. If that is correct, then it may explain the reason for the conflict: it was a dynastic squabble for control of the kingdom. One potential problem is that according to Norse tradition Ivar and Halfdan were the sons of Ragnar Lodbrok, whereas Ímar and Amlaíb are named as sons of Gofraid in the Fragmentary Annals. However, the historicity of Ragnar is uncertain and the identification of Ragnar as the father of Ivar and Halfdan is not to be relied upon. Three figures later named by the annals are identifiable as sons of Ímar. These are Bárid (d. 881), Sichfrith (d. 888), and Sitriuc (d. 896), all three of whom reigned as King of Dublin. Five individuals are titled "ua Ímair" in the annals, a term usually understood to mean "grandson of Ímar". These are Sitric Cáech, Ímar, Ragnall, Amlaíb, and Gofraid. All except for Amlaíb ruled as either King of Dublin or King of Viking Northumbria at one time or another. These five are never given a patronymic in the annals, so it is not possible to identify which of the three known sons of Ímar - if any - was their father. One possible reason for the lack of a patronym might be that they were children of a son of Ímar who never ruled Dublin, or who spent most of his time outside Ireland, thus making their legitimacy to rule dependent on the identity of their grandfather, not their father. Another possibility is that they were grandsons of Ímar through a daughter, again with their right to rule dependent on their grandfather. Another grandson, Uathmarán, is directly identifiable as the son of Bárid. Ímar and his descendants are collectively titled the Uí Ímair - translated as "descendants of Ímar". Later members of this dynasty include multiple kings of Dublin, Northumbria and the Isles. Downham states "[Ímar's] descendants dominated the major seaports of Ireland and challenged the power of kings in Britain during the later ninth and tenth centuries". Viking power in Ireland was severely weakened by the Battle of Clontarf in 1014, and although Ímar's descendants maintained influence in and around the Irish sea region they did not have the strength they had had previously. The Crovan dynasty, rulers of Mann and the Isles, likely descended from Ímar through his great-grandson Amlaíb Cuarán. Woolf, among others, has suggested that Somerled, King of the Isles, and progenitor of Clan Donald and Clan MacDougall, descended from Ímar and the Crovan dynasty, though perhaps only through the female line. ### Family tree

Te Lo Agradezco, Pero No

"Te Lo Agradezco, Pero No" (English: "Thank you, but no") is a song recorded by Spanish singer Alejandro Sanz and Colombian singer Shakira, for Sanz's eighth studio album El Tren de los Momentos (2006). It was released as the second single from the record in December 2006 by Warner Music Latina. The track was written by Sanz, while production was handled by him along with Lulo Pérez. "Te Lo Agradezco, Pero No" is the second duet recorded by the two singers, following "La Tortura" for Shakira's album Fijación Oral Vol. 1 (2005). The song came about after she approached Sanz, telling him that she wanted to collaborate on something different from her own material. Upon its release, "Te Lo Agradezco, Pero No" was perceived as an album highlight by several music critics. It earned the duo multiple awards and nominations, including Song of the Year at the 2007 Premios Oye!. Commercially, the single was successful in Venezuela and on the American Latin music charts, where it topped the Billboard Hot Latin Songs and Latin Pop Airplay charts. A music video for the song, directed by Jaume de Laiguana, was filmed in Brooklyn and released on 11 January 2007. It is a continuation of the clip for Sanz's "A la Primera Persona" and it features the duo dancing together towards the end. Sanz performed the song live during his El Tren De Los Momentos Tour (2007–08). ## Background and release "Te Lo Agradezco, Pero No" was written by Alejandro Sanz for his album El Tren de los Momentos (2006). He also handled the song's production together with Lulo Pérez. Shakira, a close friend of Sanz, was the one who approached him in order to sing on his album, asking of him to make sure that she sounds "nothing like she does on her own". "Te Lo Agradezco, Pero No" marks the second time Sanz and Shakira collaborated after "La Tortura", included on the latter's Fijación Oral, Vol. 1 (2005). Sanz stated, "I hadn't dared ask her if she wanted to do something with me, because it was a little like, 'I sing with you, now sing with me'. Plus, we didn't want it to be 'La Tortura 2' because we're very considerate of each other. She's the one who came and said, 'Hey, I want to sing'." He concluded the interview by saying that with the collaborations, he managed to expand his artistry by experimenting with new styles. An extended play (EP) featuring several remixes of the song was released on 6 March 2007. Two of them — one done by Luny Tunes and the other one dubbed "Benztown Mixdown" — were included on the re-release of Sanz's album in 2007, El Tren de los Momentos: Edición Especial. "Te Lo Agradezco, Pero No" was also part of his compilation album Colección Definitiva (2011). ## Reception and accolades In a review of El Tren de los Momentos, Jason Birchmeier of AllMusic pointed out "Te Lo Agradezco, Pero No" as a highlight on the album. In another article, he described the song as a "passionate duet". Chuck Arnold, Ralph Novak and Monique Jessen, writing for People magazine, also pointed out the track as one of the best on the record, adding that the duo managed to "again bring the tropical heat" with it. A writer of Billboard noted that instead of only trading vocals on the song, the singers delivered "full duet lines". David Saavedra, a critic of the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, found elements of Latin flamenco in "Te Lo Agradezco, Pero No" and noted how it was a proof of Sanz's departure from his early-career material. The single won an Oye! award in Mexico for Song of the Year in 2007. It was also nominated in the category The Perfect Combo at the 2007 Premios Juventud. At the 16th Annual ASCAP Latin Music Awards held on 16 May 2008, "Te Lo Agradezco Pero No" was recognized as the Pop/Ballad of the Year. The recording further was nominated in the category for Best Vocal Duet or Collaboration at the 2008 Latin Billboard Music Awards, but lost to "Pegao" (2006) by Wisin & Yandel. "Te Lo Agradezco, Pero No" was included at number seven on the list of 15 Best Duets by Shakira published by E! Online Latino in 2016. On the US Billboard Hot Latin Songs chart, "Te Lo Agradezco, Pero No" debuted at number 22 for the chart issue dated 10 February 2007. It entered the top ten of the chart two weeks later and ascended to the top in its fifth charting week on 10 March 2007 replacing "Manda una Señal" by Maná, spending a total of 14 weeks on the chart. It further managed to top the Latin Pop Airplay chart, and peaked at the fourth position on the Tropical Songs chart. At the end of 2007, "Te Lo Agradezco, Pero No" was ranked as the 36th best-selling Latin song in the United States. The song attained similar success on the Record Report charts in Venezuela, where it topped the Top Latino chart and climbed to the fourth position on the Pop Rock chart. In 2007, the single was certified Platinum by Productores de Música de España (PROMUSICAE) for shipment of 40,000 copies in Spain; its ringtone was also certified Gold in the country. ## Music video A music video for "Te Lo Agradezco, Pero No" directed by Jaume de Laiguana was filmed in Brooklyn in 2006. It was released on 11 January 2007, acting as a continuation for the clip of Sanz's previous single "A la Primera Persona" (2006). However, in "Te Lo Agradezco, Pero No", the roles of Sanz and his love interest change and he clarifies that "there are no promises that are worthy after everything is finished". By Shakira's request, this was the first video where Sanz is performing choreography. A making-of clip about the music video was included on the DVD of El Tren de los Momentos: Edición Especial (2007). The music video for "Te Lo Agradezco, Pero No" was also featured on Sanz's compilation album Colección Definitiva (2011). The visual was well-received and was nominated in the category for Video of the Year at the Los Premios MTV Latinoamérica 2007 held on 18 October 2007. ## Live performances "Te Lo Agradezco, Pero No" was part of the set list of Sanz's seventh El Tren De Los Momentos Tour (2007–08) which visited countries in North and South America and Europe. A live performance of the song, filmed on 23 March 2007 in Argentina, was included on his third live album El Tren de los Momentos: En Vivo Desde Buenos Aires (2007). The video was also uploaded to Sanz's official YouTube account on 15 February 2010. The song was further performed live during the Premios Oye! 2007 held on 24 August in Veracruz, Mexico, while another appearance followed at a humanitarian concert organized by the ALAS Foundation in May 2008. ## Track listing and formats \*; Benelux/Mexican/US single 1. "Te Lo Agradezco, Pero No" (Album Version) – 4:34 \*; Spain CD single/Maxi single 1. "Te Lo Agradezco, Pero No" (Album Version) – 4:34 2. "Te Lo Agradezco, Pero No" (Luny Tunes & Tainy Remix) – 3:07 3. "Te Lo Agradezco, Pero No" (Soft Reggaeton) – 4:01 4. "Te Lo Agradezco, Pero No" (Beach Club Mix by Roger Sanchez) – 8:26 \*; European CD/Maxi Single 1. "Te Lo Agradezco, Pero No" (Benz town Mixdown by Petter Hoff) 2. "Te Lo Agradezco, Pero No" (Luny Tunes & Tainy Remix) – 3:07 3. "Te Lo Agradezco, Pero No" (Soft Reggaeton by Carlos Jean) – 4:01 4. "Te Lo Agradezco, Pero No" (Album Version) – 4:34 ## Charts ### Weekly charts ### Year-end charts ## Certifications ## See also - List of number-one Billboard Hot Latin Pop Airplay of 2006 - List of number-one Billboard Hot Latin Songs of 2007

The Race Against Time

1988 adventure video game

The Race Against Time is a 1988 adventure video game designed by the Oliver Twins, and developed and published by Codemasters. The player controls Sudanese runner Omar Khalifa, who has to venture to six continents to light torch bowls and raise flags to begin the 1988 Sport Aid, a sport-themed charity organization. A tie-in to the Sport Aid charity, all proceeds were donated to the campaign. The game was released for the Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, and ZX Spectrum platforms. The Race Against Time received a polarized reception from video game critics. The game had been expected to raise £1 million, but instead became a commercial failure, and Codemasters later expressed regret for their association with Sport Aid. After its release, the game had to be recalled because of Codemasters' unauthorized usage of an image of Jesse Owens on the packaging; it was replaced with a picture of Carl Lewis. ## Gameplay In The Race Against Time, the player controls Sudanese runner Omar Khalifa, who was the torch runner for the 1986 Sport Aid campaign. The goal of the game is to raise a flag and light a torch bowl in six continents over five in-game hours, beginning in Sudan. In side-scrolling game screens, the player runs past landmarks such as Buckingham Palace, the Sydney Opera House and Mount Rushmore. The player travels between screens by using airplanes or transporter arrows. Each continent contains unique environmental hazards to avoid, such as falling bricks and collapsing bridges. Water and rain are also hazards as they can extinguish the torch and end the game. Letting the time run out would also cause the game to end, requiring hourglasses to be collected to increase the amount of time left. Obstacles blocking the journey can be resolved using items picked up, including a spanner and sandbag. Lighting all the flames and raising the flags opens up the final destination to the United Nations in New York City, beginning the 1988 Sport Aid. ## Development The Race Against Time was designed by the Oliver Twins, Andrew and Philip Oliver, and was developed and published by Codemasters. Codemasters contacted the Sport Aid charity, volunteering the twins to be the designers. They wrote the game using the same game engine for their Dizzy series. Gameplay was first shown on the television programme Get Fresh, on 7 May 1988. Peter Gabriel's 1980 single "Games Without Frontiers" was included in the game's soundtrack. The game was released in April 1988 for the Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, and ZX Spectrum computers. The original packaging of The Race Against Time had an image of American athlete Jesse Owens on its front cover. However, after the game had been released, Owens’ estate objected. Codemasters had neglected to obtain permission from the family to use Owens' likeness, and they declined to grant permission retroactively. Therefore, Codemasters was forced to recall all of the copies of the game that had already been produced, and to change promotional materials. The company replaced the image of Owens with one of Carl Lewis, who had offered the use of his likeness for free. ACE magazine would later call the game's botched release one of the biggest marketing disasters of 1988. ## Reception Upon its release, The Race Against Time received a polarized reception by video game critics reviewing the versions on all three platforms. Paul Boughton recommended the game in Computer and Video Games, calling it a "decent arcade adventure for a decent price". Rachael MacDonald from Your Sinclair was also positive, calling it a "more than competent arcade adventure", as well as noting that the proceeds would go to charity. Sinclair User reviewed the gameplay and animation negatively, criticizing the running animation as "unconvincing" and calling the background art "dreadful". Zzap!64 reviewed the Commodore 64 version, describing it as "abysmal" and criticizing the controls for being too awkward. Commodore User gave the Commodore version an overall rating of 5/10, calling the game "nothing special". The game was a commercial flop. Sport Aid had predicted it would raise £1 million for the charity. it instead sold 25,000 copies. In December 1988, Codemasters expressed regret for having been associated with Sport Aid. This announcement came after the disclosure that Sport Aid Limited was £2 million in debt.

Big Painting No. 6

1965 painting by Roy Lichtenstein

Big Painting No. 6 (sometimes Big Painting or Big Painting VI) is a 1965 oil and Magna on canvas painting by Roy Lichtenstein. Measuring 235 cm × 330 cm (92.5 in × 129 in), it is part of the Brushstrokes series of artworks that includes several paintings and sculptures whose subject is the actions made with a house-painter's brush. It set a record auction price for a painting by a living American artist when it sold for \$75,000 in 1970. The painting is in the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen collection. As with all of his Brushstrokes works, it is in part a satirical response to the gestural painting of Abstract Expressionism. Like most of Lichtenstein's Ben-Day dots works it is a depiction of mechanical reproduction via painterly technique. In this case, the satire comes from the depiction of the graphical depiction of the spontaneous painting motion in painstaking painterly detail. ## History In early 1970, Andy Warhol established the record auction price for a painting by a living American artist with a \$60,000 (US\$ in dollars) sale of Big Campbell's Soup Can with Torn Label (Vegetable Beef) (1962), which is part of the Campbell's Soup Cans series, in a sale at Parke-Bernet, the preeminent American auction house of the day (later acquired by Sotheby's). This record was broken in November 1970 by Lichtenstein's Big Painting No. 6 with an auction sale for \$75,000 (US\$ in dollars) to German art dealer Rudolf Zwirner. The source for the entire Brushstrokes series was Charlton Comics' Strange Suspense Stories 72 (October 1964) by Dick Giordano. Big Painting No. 6 is in the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen collection in Düsseldorf. ## Description This painting has a Ben-Day dots background with four layered vigorous brushstrokes atop them in white, yellow, green, and red. The focal point is the topmost central red brushstroke that depicts dripping paint. The black contours contribute a dynamic effect to the two-dimensional work. The subject of the painting is the process of Abstract Expressionist painting via sweeping brushstrokes and drips, but the result of Lichtenstein's simplification that uses a Ben-Day dots background is a representation of the mechanical/industrial color printing reproduction. Big Painting No. 6 is depicts imitations of what could be typical Abstract Expressionist brushstrokes on an extremely large scale. Since it is depicted as a reproduction of an imitation the painting is two steps removed from an original. While each Abstract Expressionist brushstroke is an instantaneous effort, the satire includes the fact that Lichtenstein took a great deal of time to achieve the complicated reproduction. ## Reception Big Painting No. 6. is a prime example of his works that both turned a mundane household task into a planned artistic operation and made a time-consuming task appear as if it was produced mechanically in an instant. The painting is regarded as an example of his subtle humor expressed as "gestural swathes rendered in commercial harshness as a parody of action painting." According to Robert Rosenblum, by confronting the state of the art world, Lichtenstein reinforces its vitality: "...the vocabulary of Abstract Expressionism, attacked implicitly in Lichtenstein's earlier work, now becomes the explicit subject. With disarming paradox, the impulsive, athletic smears and spatterings of the 1950s are here impersonally hardened and industrialized by being seen through Lichtenstein's lens of commercial imagery. The results are not only witty in their use of art to comment about art, but even revive, most ironically, the pictorial energy and boldness of the style being parodied." He uses overlapping forms rather than a single form or distinct adjacent forms, which seems to create a more dynamic feel to the shallow space. However, since Lichtenstein does not uses shading or contrast, the monochromatic strokes with just bold black outlines are void of certain elements of depth. Big Painting No. 6 and Yellow and Green Brushstrokes go one step further in terms of canvas size and dynamic activity that was presented earlier in Little Big Painting. Big Painting No. 6 is the result of producing "...whiplash, abstract expressionist works with his quasi-mechanical means..." Lichtenstein's form of Abstract Expressionism uses a "quasi-mechanical" method to conform "the spontaneous, loaded brushstroke to his own comic-strip and Ben Day formula". One critic considers that Lichtenstein has converted the wide dripping brush strokes into a tidy work representing mass production. ## See also - 1965 in art

Every Sunday

Every Sunday (sometimes incorrectly listed as Every Sunday Afternoon or Opera vs. Jazz) is a 1936 American musical short film about two adolescent girls and their efforts to save a public concert series, which was being threatened by poor attendance. Directed by Felix E. Feist, the film served as a screen test for, and is the first significant screen appearance of, two adolescent actresses who soon became stars, Judy Garland and Deanna Durbin. Although only lightly reviewed at the time of its release, the film has garnered a generally positive reputation among Garland biographers. ## Plot Small town friends Edna (Deanna Durbin) and Judy (Judy Garland) are upset. Edna's grandfather and his orchestra, who play free Sunday concerts at a local park, have been fired by the town council because the concerts are poorly attended. The girls hit upon the idea of singing at the concerts and set about promoting the next concert. The following Sunday Edna and Judy join Granddad on the bandstand. Edna's operatic style and Judy's swing bring crowds running from all over the park. The event is a huge success and Granddad's concerts are saved. ## Production Deanna Durbin and Judy Garland were both under contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer but the studio had not put them to work in films. With their contracts coming up for renewal, feelings among studio executives were that the studio didn't need two girl singers. Every Sunday would serve as an extended screen test to decide which girl's contract would be renewed. Durbin recorded the aria Il Bacio for the film. Composers Con Conrad and Herb Magidson wrote a specialty number for Garland, "The Americana." Following the screening of the short for MGM executives, opinion was divided on whether Garland or Durbin should be retained. Finally, Louis B. Mayer, upon his return from a European trip, decreed that both girls should be kept. However, Durbin's contract option had expired by then. She was signed by Universal Studios, where her first picture, Three Smart Girls (1936), was so successful that it saved Universal from bankruptcy. ## Critical reception As a short film that served as a programmer, Every Sunday received scant critical attention upon its release. Durbin's hometown newspaper, the Winnipeg Free Press, did praise the film, lamenting that it was "all too short" and citing Garland as a "girl singer of distinction." Garland biographers, when discussing the film in any detail, are generally complimentary both to the film and to Garland. "Unpretentious and fascinating...Every Sunday gives us a marvelous glimpse of Judy's talent in an unrefined state" is a typical comment, with the film "reveal[ing] how accomplished a performer Judy Garland already was at fourteen." Durbin does not fare quite as well. Although described by one biographer as appearing "relaxed" and "happy" on film others dismiss her "diffidence" and call her "stiff."

Parliament of Singapore

Legislature of Singapore

The Parliament of Singapore is the unicameral legislature of the Republic of Singapore, which governs the country alongside the president of Singapore. Largely based upon the Westminster system, the Parliament is made up of Members of Parliament (MPs) who are elected, as well as Non-constituency Members of Parliament (NCMPs) and Nominated Members of Parliament (NMPs) who are appointed. Following the 2020 general election, 93 (currently 87) MPs and two NCMPs from three political parties were elected to the 14th Parliament. Throughout the sitting of Parliament, nine NMPs are usually appointed by the president on a biennial basis. The Speaker of Parliament has overall charge of the administration of Parliament and its secretariat, and presides over parliamentary sittings. The Leader of the House is an MP appointed by the prime minister to arrange government business and the legislative programme of Parliament, while the Leader of the Opposition (LO) is the MP who leads the largest political party not in the government. Some of Parliament's work is carried out by select committees made up of small numbers of MPs. Standing select committees are permanently constituted to fulfil certain duties, and ad hoc select committees are established from time to time to deal with matters such studying the details of bills. In addition, selected backbenchers of the governing People's Action Party (PAP), the current largest political party in Parliament, sit on Government Parliamentary Committees (GPCs) that examine the policies, programmes and proposed legislation of government ministries. The main functions of Parliament are lawmaking, controlling the nation's finances, and ensuring ministerial accountability. Parliament convenes when it is in session. The first session of a particular Parliament commences when Parliament meets after being formed following a general election. A session ends when Parliament is prorogued (temporarily suspended) or dissolved. The maximum term of each Parliament is five years, after which Parliament automatically dissolves. A general election must then be held within three months. The quorum for a parliamentary sitting is one quarter of the total number of MPs, not including the speaker. An MP begins a debate by moving a motion and delivering an opening speech explaining the reasons for the motion. The speaker (or chairman, if Parliament is in committee) then puts the motion in the form of a question, following which other MPs may debate the motion. After that, the mover may exercise a right of reply. When the debate is closed, the speaker puts the question on the motion to the House and calls for a vote. Voting is generally done verbally, and whether the motion is carried depends on the speaker's personal assessment of whether more MPs have voted for than against the motion. MPs' votes are only formally counted if an MP claims a division. Parliament first convened at the Old Parliament House between 1955 and 1999, before moving into the current Parliament House on 6 September 1999. ## Terminology The term Parliament is used in a number of different senses. First, it refers to the institution made up of a group of people (Members of Parliament or MPs) who are elected to discuss matters of state. Secondly, it can mean each group of MPs voted into office following a general election. In this sense, the First Parliament of the independent Republic of Singapore sat from 8 December 1965 to 8 February 1968. The current Parliament, which started on 24 August 2020, is the fourteenth. Parliament is sometimes used loosely to refer to Parliament House, which is the seat of the Parliament of Singapore. ## History On 6 February 1819, Sultan Hussein Shah and the Temenggung of Johor, Abdul Rahman Sri Maharajah, entered into an agreement with Sir Stamford Raffles for the British East India Company to establish a "factory" or trading post on the island of Singapore. Raffles, who was Lieutenant-Governor of Bencoolen (now Bengkulu, Indonesia), placed Singapore under Bencoolen's jurisdiction. As Bencoolen was itself a factory subordinate to the Bengal Presidency in British India, only the Governor-General in Council in Bengal was authorised to enact laws for Singapore. On 24 June 1824, Singapore was removed from Bencoolen's control and, together with Malacca, formally transferred to the East India Company. This made them subordinate to Fort William in Calcutta (now Kolkata), the capital of the Bengal Presidency. By a treaty of 19 November 1824, the Sultan and Temenggung of Johor ceded Singapore to the East India Company. In 1826, the company constituted Malacca, Prince of Wales Island (now Penang) and Singapore into the Presidency of the Straits Settlements with Penang as the capital. The general power to make laws for the Straits Settlements remained with the Supreme Government in India and the Parliament of the United Kingdom; Penang's legislative power was limited to making rules and regulations relating to duties and taxes that the Settlements was empowered to levy. On 20 June 1830, as a cost-cutting measure, the Straits Settlements ceased to be a separate presidency and were placed under the Bengal Presidency's control by the East India Company. In 1833, the Government of India Act passed by the British Parliament created a local government for the whole of India made up of the Governor-General and his counsellors. They were collectively known as Governor-General of India in Council and had the sole power to pass laws for the Straits Settlements. However, India's slow response to problems in the Settlements such as the ineffective court system and the lack of Straits representation in the Indian legislative council prompted merchants and other prominent people to call for the Settlements to be governed directly by the Colonial Office in London. Finally, on 1 April 1867, the Straits Settlements were separated from the Government of India and became a Crown colony. Under letters patent dated 4 February 1867, the Straits Settlements were granted a colonial constitution in the usual form. The Governor of the Straits Settlements ruled with the help of an executive council and a legislative council. The executive council was made up of the governor, the commanding officer of the troops in the Straits, and six senior officials—including the colonial secretary, lieutenant-governor of Penang, attorney-general and colonial engineer. The legislative council, in which legislative authority was vested, consisted of the executive council and the chief justice—together known as the official members, and four unofficial members nominated by the governor. As the unofficial members were outnumbered by the official members, they and the governor—who had a casting vote, had effective control of the council. Legislation was generally initiated by the governor, and they had the power to assent to or veto bills. During legislative debates, official members were required to support the governor, but the unofficials could speak and vote as they wished. In 1924, the system was changed such that two unofficial members of the legislative council were nominated by the governor to sit on the Executive Council. In addition, the number of members of the legislative council was increased to 26, with equal numbers of officials and unofficials. The governor retained his casting vote. The Penang and European chambers of commerce each nominated one unofficial, while the governor nominated the others on an ethnic basis: five Europeans, including one each from Penang and Malacca, three Chinese British subjects, one Malay, one Indian and one Eurasian. This system remained in place until Singapore fell to the Japanese in 1942 during World War II. Following the Second World War, the Straits Settlements were disbanded and Singapore became a Crown colony in its own right. The reconstituted Legislative Council consisted of four ex officio members from the Executive Council, seven official members, between two and four unofficial members, and nine elected members. The governor continued to hold a veto and certain reserved powers over legislation. As there was a majority of official members in the council, the constitution was criticised for not allowing locals to play an effective role in public affairs. Governor Franklin Charles Gimson therefore formed a Reconstitution Committee that proposed, among other things, recommended that the council should be made up of four ex officio members; five officials; four nominated unofficials; three representatives nominated by the Singapore Chamber of Commerce, Chinese Chamber of Commerce and the Indian Chamber of Commerce to represent the European, Chinese and Indian economic interests; and six members to be elected by universal suffrage. For the first time, non-officials held a majority in the legislature. A new constitution embodying these arrangements came into force on 1 March 1948 and Singapore's first democratic elections were held on 20 March that year. Three out of the six elected seats were won by the Progressive Party. In 1951, three more elected seats were created in the council. In February 1954, the Rendel Constitutional Commission under the chairmanship of Sir George William Rendel, which had been appointed to comprehensively review the constitution of the Colony of Singapore, rendered its report. Among other things, it recommended that the Legislative Council be transformed into a legislative assembly of 32 members made up of three ex officio official members holding ministerial posts, four nominated unofficial members, and 25 elected unofficial members. In addition, a Council of Ministers would be created, composed of the three ex officio members and six elected members appointed by the Governor on the recommendation of the Leader of the House, who would be the leader of the largest political party or coalition of parties having majority support in the legislature. The recommendation was implemented in 1955. In the general election held that year, the Labour Front took a majority of the seats in the Assembly, and David Marshall became the first Chief Minister of Singapore. Major problems with the Rendel Constitution were that the powers of the chief minister and ministers were ill-defined, and that the official members retained control of the finance, administration, and internal security and law portfolios. This led to confrontation between Marshall, who saw himself as a prime minister governing the country, and the governor Sir John Fearns Nicoll, who felt that important decisions and policies should remain with himself and the officials. In 1956, members of the Legislative Assembly held constitutional talks with the Colonial Office in London. The talks broke down as Marshall did not agree to the British Government's proposal for the casting vote on a proposed Defence Council to be held by the British High Commissioner to Singapore, who would only exercise it in an emergency. Marshall resigned as chief minister in June 1956, and was replaced by Lim Yew Hock. The following year, Lim led another delegation to the United Kingdom for further talks on self-governance. This time, agreement was reached on the composition of an Internal Security Council. Other constitutional arrangements were swiftly settled in 1958, and on 1 August the United Kingdom Parliament passed the State of Singapore Act 1958 (6 & 7 Eliz. 2. c. 59 (UK)), granting the colony full internal self-government. Under Singapore's new constitution, which came into force on 3 June 1959, the Legislative Assembly consisted of 51 elected members and the governor was replaced by the Yang di-Pertuan Negara, who had power to appoint the prime minister who most likely to command the authority of the Legislative Assembly, and other ministers of the Cabinet on the prime minister's advice. During the 1959 general election, the People's Action Party (PAP) swept to power with 43 out of the 51 seats in the Assembly, and Lee Kuan Yew became the first Prime Minister of Singapore. In 1963, Singapore gained independence from Britain through a merger with Malaysia. In the federal legislature, Singapore was allocated 15 out of 127 seats. Under its new State Constitution, Singapore kept its own executive government and legislative assembly. However, with effect from 9 August 1965, Singapore left Malaysia and became a fully independent republic. On separation from Malaysia, the Singapore Government retained its legislative powers, and the Parliament of Malaysia gave up all power to make laws for Singapore. Similarly, the Republic of Singapore Independence Act 1965, passed on 22 December 1965 and made retrospective to 9 August, declared that the legislative powers of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong and Parliament of Malaysia ceased and vested in the president and the Parliament of Singapore respectively. ## Composition ### Members of Parliament The Parliament of Singapore is unicameral – all Members of Parliament (MPs) make up a single chamber, and there is no senate or upper house. At present, the effect of the Constitution of Singapore and other legislation is that there can be a maximum of 105 MPs. Ninety-three are elected by the people while up to 12 Non-constituency Members of Parliament (NCMPs) and up to nine Nominated Members of Parliament (NMPs) may be appointed. After the 2020 general election, 93 MPs were elected and two NCMPs were appointed (or, in the terms of the Parliamentary Elections Act, declared elected) to Parliament. Unlike many legislatures in the world, any legislator who is a Member of Parliament in Singapore (representing either the party in Government or in Opposition) and does not possess a portfolio within the executive Cabinet, is free to hold a full-time occupation in the private sector as well as holding executive, advisory and directorship positions within private-sector companies and non-government organisations. In Singapore, Non-Cabinet MPs are commonly employed in the private sector or even may run their own private business as an entrepreneur. Rules regarding conflict of interest within Parliament, are not defined by Parliamentary codes of conduct but instead the political parties internally define the code of conduct for their representatives within Parliament. Notably, PAP internal rules stipulate that party MPs “should not use their political position to champion the interests of the companies or lobby the Government”. In essence, PAP party rules clearly define that an MP "must not exploit” his public position for either his or her own personal interest or the benefit of his or her own employer. #### Elected Members As of the 2020 general election, for the purpose of parliamentary elections, Singapore was divided into 31 electoral divisions (also known as constituencies). The names and boundaries of the divisions are specified by the Prime Minister by notification in the Government Gazette. Fourteen of these divisions are Single Member Constituencies (SMCs) and 17 are Group Representation Constituencies (GRCs). GRCs were introduced in 1991 for the purpose of ensuring representation of the Malay, Indian and other minority communities in Parliament. In a GRC, all the candidates must either be members of the same political party or independent candidates standing as a group, and at least one of the candidates must be a person belonging to the Malay, Indian or some other minority community. The president, at Cabinet's direction, declares the electoral divisions that are to be GRCs; the number of candidates (not less than three but not more than six) to stand for Parliament in each GRC; and whether the minority candidates in each GRC are to be from the Malay, Indian, or other minority communities. At all times there must be at least eight divisions that are not GRCs, and the number of Members of Parliament (MPs) to be returned by all GRCs cannot be less than a quarter of the total number of MPs to be returned at a general election. Each electoral division returns one MP, or if it is a GRC the number of MPs designated for the constituency by the president, to serve in Parliament. A GRC can have a minimum of three and a maximum of six MPs. In other words, a successful voter's single vote in an SMC sends to Parliament one MP, and in a GRC sends a slate of between three and six MPs depending on how many have been designated for that GRC. At present, SMCs return to Parliament 14 MPs and GRCs 79 MPs. All elected MPs are selected on a simple plurality voting ("first past the post") basis. A person is not permitted to be an MP for more than one constituency at the same time. In the last general election in 2020, the incumbent People's Action Party (PAP) won 83 of the 93 seats, but lost Hougang SMC, Aljunied GRC, and the newly created Sengkang GRC to the Workers' Party of Singapore (WP). This was the first time more than one GRC had been won by an opposition party. With the Workers' Party securing ten elected seats in Parliament, this was the best opposition parliamentary result since the nation's independence. Out of the current 93 elected MPs, 26 (about 27.96%) are female. This was an increase from the figure of about 22.47% for the 13th Parliament (before the resignation of Halimah Yacob), in which 20 of the 89 elected MPs were women. #### Appointed Members ##### Non-constituency Members of Parliament Non-constituency Members of Parliament (NCMPs) were introduced in 1984 to ensure the representation in Parliament of a minimum number of MPs from a political party or parties not forming the Government. The number of NCMPs in Parliament is 12 less the number of opposition MPs elected. To be eligible to become an NCMP, a candidate must have polled not less than 15% of the total number of valid votes in the electoral division contested by him or her. The unelected opposition candidate who receives the highest percentage of votes is entitled to be declared the first NCMP, followed by other opposition candidates in descending order according to the percentages of votes polled by them. If any candidates have an equal percentage of votes and the number of such candidates exceeds the number of NCMPs to be declared elected, the NCMPs are determined as follows: - If all the candidates are from the same group of candidates nominated in a GRC, the Returning Officer overseeing the election in the relevant electoral division will inform the group of the number of candidates in the group to be declared elected as NCMPs. The members of the group must determine among themselves who shall be elected and inform the Returning Officer within seven days. - In other cases, or if the Returning Officer is not notified of a decision by the group of candidates referred to in the preceding paragraph, the Returning Officer will determine the NCMPs to be deemed elected by drawing lots. Following the 2020 general election, since ten opposition MPs were elected to Parliament, the law provides for up to two NCMPs to be declared elected. The seats were taken up by Hazel Poa and Leong Mun Wai of the Progress Singapore Party, who were part of the team that contested in West Coast GRC in the election and were the best performing opposition candidates that did not win in their constituency. ##### Nominated Members of Parliament In 1990, the Constitution was amended to provide for the appointment of up to nine Nominated Members of Parliament (NMPs) to Parliament. The change was prompted by the impression that the existing two Opposition MPs had not adequately expressed significant alternative views held outside Parliament, and that the scheme would allow the Government to take advantage of the expertise of Singaporeans who were not able or prepared to take part in elections and look after constituencies. Formerly, within six months after Parliament first met after any general election, it had to decide whether there would be any NMPs during the term of that Parliament. With effect from 1 July 2010, such a decision became unnecessary as NMPs were made a permanent feature in Parliament. A special select committee of Parliament chaired by the Speaker of Parliament is established, and invites the general public to submit names of persons who may be considered for nomination by the Committee. From these names, the special select committee then nominates not more than nine persons for appointment by the president as NMPs. The persons to be nominated must have rendered distinguished public service, or have brought honour to Singapore, or have distinguished themselves in the field of arts and letters, culture, the sciences, business, industry, the professions, social or community service or the labour movement; and in making any nomination, the special select committee must have regard to the need for NMPs to reflect as wide a range of independent and non-partisan views as possible. Subject to rules on the tenure of MPs in general, NMPs serve for a term of two and a half years. The first two NMPs sworn in on 20 December 1990 were cardiologist Professor Maurice Choo and company executive Leong Chee Whye. NMPs can participate in all parliamentary debates, but cannot vote on any motion relating to: - bills to amend the Constitution; - Supply Bills, Supplementary Supply Bills or Final Supply Bills, which authorize the spending of public funds by the Government; - Money Bills, which deal with various finance-related matters; - votes of no confidence in the Government; and - removal of the president from office. #### Qualifications Persons are qualified to be elected or appointed as Members of Parliament if: 1. they are Singapore citizens; 2. they are 21 years of age or above on the day of nomination for election; 3. their names appear in a current register of electors; 4. they are resident in Singapore at the date of nomination and have been so resident for an aggregate period of not less than ten years before that date; 5. they are able, with a degree of proficiency sufficient to enable them to take an active part in Parliamentary proceedings, to speak and, unless incapacitated by blindness or some other physical cause, to read and write at least one of the following languages: English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil; and 6. they are not otherwise disqualified from being MPs under Article 45 of the Constitution. Article 45 provides that persons are not qualified to be MPs if: 1. they are and have been found or declared to be of unsound mind; 2. they are undischarged bankrupts; 3. they hold offices of profit; 4. having been nominated for election to Parliament or the office of President or having acted as election agent to a person so nominated, they have failed to lodge any return of election expenses required by law within the time and in the manner required; 5. they have been convicted of an offence by a court of law in Singapore or Malaysia and sentenced to imprisonment for a term of not less than one year or to a fine of not less than S\$2,000 and have not received a free pardon; 6. they have voluntarily acquired the citizenship of, or exercised rights of citizenship in, a foreign country or has made a declaration of allegiance to a foreign country; or 7. they are disqualified under any law relating to offences in connection with elections to Parliament or the office of President by reason of having been convicted of such an offence or having in proceedings relating to such an election been proved guilty of an act constituting such an offence. A person's disqualification for having failed to properly lodge a return of election expenses or having been convicted of an offence may be removed by the president. If the president has not done so, the disqualification ceases at the end of five years from the date when the return was required to be lodged or, as the case may be, the date when the person convicted was released from custody or the date when the fine was imposed. In addition, a person is not disqualified for acquiring or exercising rights of foreign citizenship or declared allegiance to a foreign country before becoming a Singapore citizen. #### Tenure of office If an MP becomes subject to any disqualification specified in paragraph 1, 2, 5 or 7 above and it is open to the Member to appeal against the decision, the Member immediately ceases to be entitled to sit or vote in Parliament or any committee of it. However, members are not required to vacate the seat until the end of 180 days beginning with the date of the adjudication, declaration or conviction, as the case may be. After that period, the MP must vacate the seat if subject to one of the previously mentioned disqualifications. Otherwise, the MP is entitled to resume sitting or voting in Parliament immediately after ceasing to be disqualified. The above rules do not operate to extend the term of service of an NMP beyond two and a half years. MPs also cease to hold office when Parliament is dissolved, or before that if their seats become vacant for one of the following reasons: 1. if they cease to be Singapore citizens; 2. if they cease to be members of, or are expelled or resign from, the political parties they stood for in the election; 3. if they resign their seats by writing to the Speaker; 4. if they have been absent without the Speaker's permission from all sittings of Parliament or any Parliamentary committee to which they have been appointed for two consecutive months in which the sittings are held; 5. if they become subject to any of the disqualifications in Article 45; 6. if Parliament exercises its power of expulsion on them; or 7. if, being NMPs, their terms of service expire. NMPs must vacate their Parliamentary seats if they stand as candidates for any political party in an election or if they are elected as MPs for any constituencies. A person whose seat in Parliament has become vacant may, if qualified, again be elected or appointed as a Member of Parliament from time to time. Any person who sits or votes in Parliament, knowing or having reasonable ground for knowing they are not entitled to do so, is liable to a penalty not exceeding \$200 for each day that they sit or vote. #### Decisions on disqualification questions Any question whether any MP has vacated a seat, or, in the case of a person elected as Speaker or Deputy Speaker from among non-MPs, ceases to be a citizen of Singapore or becomes subject to any of the disqualifications specified in Article 45, is to be determined by Parliament, the decision of which on the matter is final. This does not mean that an MP retains his or her Parliamentary seat despite being under some disqualification until Parliament has made a formal decision on the matter. On 10 November 1986, the MP for Anson, Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam of the Workers' Party of Singapore, lost an appeal against a conviction for making a false statement in a declaration and was sentenced to one month's imprisonment and a fine of \$5,000. Further applications and appeals in the criminal proceedings to the High Court, Court of Appeal and the Privy Council (then Singapore's highest court) were dismissed. On 9 December, the Speaker of Parliament made a statement in the House that Jeyaretnam had ceased to be an MP with effect from 10 November by virtue of having been convicted of an offence and sentenced to a fine of not less than \$2,000. Jeyaretnam did not object to the statement at the time. Under Article 45(2) of the Constitution, he was disqualified to be an MP until five years had elapsed from the date the fine was imposed. Jeyaretnam subsequently applied to court for a declaration that, among other things, he had not ceased to be an MP in 1986 and that the Speaker's statement had been ineffective because Parliament itself had not determined that he had vacated his seat. On 9 July 1990, the High Court ruled that Jeyaretnam had ceased to be an MP by operation of law and that no separate determination by Parliament had been necessary. #### Remuneration and pensions MPs receive a monthly allowance, a non-pensionable annual allowance (commonly known as the 13th month pay), and an annual variable component that is paid in July and December each year. The monthly allowance is 56% of the salary of an Administrative Service officer at the SR9 grade – the entry grade for Singapore's top civil servants – which is itself benchmarked at the salary of the 15th person aged 32 years from six professions: banking, law, engineering, accountancy, multinational companies and local manufacturers. In 1995, the monthly allowance was S\$8,375 (\$100,500 per year). The allowance was revised in 2000 to \$11,900 (\$142,800 per year). In 2007, it was announced that civil service salaries had lagged behind those in the private sector and required revision. MPs' salaries were therefore increased in phases. In 2007, the monthly allowance was revised to \$13,200, raising the annual sum to \$158,400. A gross domestic product (GDP) bonus payable to civil servants was also extended to MPs to link their annual remuneration to the state of the economy. They would receive no bonus if GDP growth was 2% or less, one month's bonus if the GDP grew at 5%, and up to two months' bonus if the GDP growth reached or exceeded 8%. MPs' allowances to engage legislative and secretarial assistants were also increased from \$1,000 to \$1,300 and from \$350 to \$500 respectively. With effect from January 2008, each MP received another increase of his or her allowance package to \$13,710 a month, bringing it to \$225,000 per year. Subsequently, in 2012, MP's allowances were reduced to \$192,500 per annum. Persons who have reached the age of 50 years and retired as MPs and who have served in this capacity for not less than nine years may be granted a pension for the rest of their lives. The annual amount payable is 1⁄30 of the person's highest annual salary for every completed year of service and 1⁄360 for every uncompleted year, up to a ceiling of two-thirds of the Member's annual salary. No person has an absolute right to compensation for past services or to any pension or gratuity, and the president may reduce or withhold pensions and gratuities upon an MP's conviction for corruption. ### Speaker of Parliament The Speaker has overall charge of the administration of Parliament and its secretariat. His or her official role is to preside over parliamentary sittings, moderating debates and making decisions based on the Standing Orders of Parliament for the proper conduct of parliamentary business. The Speaker does not participate in debates, but can abstain or vote for or against a motion if entitled to do so by virtue of being an MP. The Speaker also acts as the representative of Parliament in its external relations, welcoming visiting dignitaries and representing Parliament at national events and overseas visits. The Speaker must be elected when Parliament first meets after any general election, before it proceeds to deal with any other business. Similarly, whenever the office of Speaker is vacant for some reason other than a dissolution of Parliament, no business must be transacted other than the election of a person to fill that office. The Speaker may be elected from among the MPs who are not Ministers or Parliamentary Secretaries, but even a person who is not an MP can be chosen. Nonetheless, a candidate who is not an MP must possess the qualifications to stand for election as an MP. The Speaker's salary may not be reduced while he is in office. The Speaker may at any time resign by writing to the Clerk of Parliament. The Speaker must vacate the office - when Parliament first meets after a general election; - in the case of a Speaker who is also an MP, if he ceases to be an MP for a reason other than a dissolution of Parliament, or is appointed to be a Minister or a Parliamentary Secretary; or - in the case of a Speaker elected from among persons who are not MPs, ceases to be a Singapore citizen or becomes subject to any of the disqualifications stated in Article 45. Parliament shall from time to time elect two Deputy Speakers. Whenever the office of a Deputy Speaker is vacant for a reason other than a dissolution of Parliament, Parliament shall, as soon as is convenient, elect another person to that office. As with the Speaker, a Deputy Speaker may be elected either from among the MPs who are neither Ministers nor Parliamentary Secretaries or from among persons who are not MPs, but those in the latter category must have the qualifications to be elected an MP. Deputy Speakers may resign their office in the same way as the Speaker, and must vacate their office in the same circumstances. If there is no one holding the office of Speaker, or if the Speaker is absent from a sitting of Parliament or is otherwise unable to perform the functions conferred by the Constitution, these functions may be performed by a Deputy Speaker. If there is no Deputy Speaker or the Deputy Speaker is absent or unable to perform the functions, they may be carried out by some other person elected by Parliament for the purpose. The Speaker of Parliament was Tan Chuan-Jin, who was last appointed Minister for Social and Family Development, with effect from 11 September 2017. On 17 July 2023, Jessica Tan became Acting Speaker of the Parliament of Singapore while the new speaker is nominated at the next parliament sitting on 2 August 2023. This came after Tan Chuan-Jin resigned as Speaker following revelations of an extramarital affair. At the open of the parliament sitting on 2 August 2023, Seah Kian Peng was appointed and sworn in as the 11th Speaker of Singapore. ### Leader of the House The Leader of the House is an MP appointed by the Prime Minister to arrange government business and the legislative programme of Parliament. The leader initiates motions concerning the business of the House during sittings, such as actions to be taken on procedural matters and extending sitting times. The current Leader of the House is Indranee Rajah who has assumed this office on 14 August 2020. She is assisted by Deputy Leader Zaqy Mohammed. ### Leader of the Opposition In parliamentary systems of government on the Westminster model, the Leader of the Opposition is the MP who is the leader of the largest opposition party able and prepared to assume office if the Government resigns. This political party often forms a Shadow Cabinet, the members of which serve as opposition spokespersons on key areas of government. This is taken into consideration by the Speaker when seats in Parliament are allocated, and during a debate the MP is often given the privilege of being one of the first non-Government MPs to speak. Singapore presently does not have a shadow cabinet in Parliament as the People's Action Party (PAP) has held an overwhelming majority of the seats in the House since it came to power in 1959. However, at the 1991 general election four opposition politicians were elected to Parliament: Chiam See Tong, Cheo Chai Chen and Ling How Doong from the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP), and Low Thia Khiang from the Workers' Party of Singapore (WP). On 6 January 1992 during a Parliamentary debate on the election of the Speaker of Parliament, the Leader of the House Wong Kan Seng said that he proposed to treat Chiam, then the SDP's secretary-general, as the "unofficial Leader of the Opposition" and that the House should give him "due courtesy and precedence among Opposition MPs". He likened the situation to that in the Legislative Assembly of Singapore in 1955 when the PAP won three out of four contested seats, and Lee Kuan Yew was de facto Leader of the Opposition. After Chiam was replaced by Ling as secretary-general of the SDP in 1993, the latter was referred to as the unofficial Leader of the Opposition. In the 2006 general election, Chiam and Low retained their seats, and Sylvia Lim from the WP was appointed an NCMP. The prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, referred to Low, who is the WP's secretary-general, as Leader of the Opposition during a debate in the House on 13 November 2006. However, following the 2011 general election, Low announced he would not be accepting the title. He said: "Either you have a leader of the opposition, or you do not have it. There's no need to have an unofficial leader of the opposition." He also noted that the title appeared "derogatory" to him because it implied that "you only qualify as unofficial". Pritam Singh took over as the Leader of Opposition upon being elected as WP's new secretary-general on 8 April 2018. Following the 2020 general election, at which the Workers' Party won ten seats, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said that party leader Pritam Singh would be designated as the official Leader of the Opposition and "will be provided with appropriate staff support and resources to perform his duties". ### Party whip The primary role of a party whip in Parliament is to enforce party discipline and ensure that sufficient numbers of MPs from his or her political parties attend sittings of the House and vote along party lines. Party whips in Singapore play a lesser role than their counterparts in the United Kingdom, as party discipline in Singapore is very strict and almost every parliamentary vote is based on the official position of the political parties (almost every parliamentary bill passed into law, was voted in favour by all People's Action Party Members of Parliament). However, rarely from time to time (there have only been 5 instances in the past), a whip may "lift the whip" and allow MPs to vote according to their consciences through a conscience vote: - In July 2017, the whip was lifted by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong during the parliamentary debate which arose from the acrimonious public dispute between himself and his two younger siblings (Lee Hsien Yang and Lee Wei Ling) over their late father and the former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s 38 Oxley Road bungalow (No parliamentary vote was taken regarding the matter). - In March 2009, the whip was lifted for PAP MPs during debates on amendments to the Human Organ Transplant Act that would permit financial compensation to be paid to organ donors. - In November 2010, the whip was lifted during the Parliamentary vote on the changes to the Maintenance of Parents Act, most notably the changes included the mandatory attendance of mediation sessions for both parents and children locked in disputes. - In 1969, the whip was first lifted when the Abortion Bill was heatedly debated for three days in April, subsequently the bill was deferred to obtain public feedback. In December 1969, the bill was presented again to the Parliament whereby the Abortion Bill was passed and Parliament voted to legalise abortion (32 MPs voted for the bill, 10 MPs voted against the bill, 1 MP abstained, 15 MPs were absent from the vote). - In four separate times (1992, 1997, 2002, 2006), the whip was lifted during debates for the Nominated Member of Parliament Scheme. In 1997 and in 2002, former PAP MP Tan Cheng Bock voted against party line. In 2006, despite the whip being lifted for government MPs, the only MPs who voted against the NMP bill tabled were opposition MPs Low Thia Khiang, Chiam See Tong and Sylvia Lim. A whip also schedules the MPs that will speak for each item of Parliamentary business. The present government whip is Janil Puthucheary, assisted by deputy government whip, Sim Ann. The party whip for the Workers' Party is Pritam Singh, and the deputy party whip is Sylvia Lim. ## Committees ### Select committees A select committee is a committee made up of a small number of MPs appointed to deal with particular areas or issues. Standing select committees (that is, permanently constituted committees) are either chaired by the Speaker of Parliament or an MP appointed to the position, and its members are usually up to seven MPs appointed by Parliament in a manner that ensures that, so far as is possible, the balance between the Government benches and the Opposition benches in Parliament is reflected in the Committee. Parliament may also appoint ad hoc select committees to deal with other matters, such as to study the details of bills that are before Parliament. In addition, if Parliament resolves that NMPs will be appointed during its term, a special select committee on nominations for appointment as NMP is established to consider suggestions for nominees submitted by members of the public. A standing select committee continues for the duration of a Parliament unless Parliament otherwise provides, while other select committees last until they have presented their final reports. A prorogation of Parliament (see below) does not cause the business and proceedings before select committees to lapse; these are proceeded with in the next session of the same Parliament. ### Government Parliamentary Committees Government Parliamentary Committees (GPCs) were established by the governing People's Action Party (PAP) in 1987. GPCs are Party organs, and were not set up because they are required by any provision of the Constitution or constitutional convention. Each GPC examines the policies, programmes and proposed legislation of a particular government ministry, provides the ministry with feedback and suggestions, and is consulted by the ministry on issues of public interest. The members of GPCs are PAP backbenchers, and each GPC is backed by a resource panel that members of the public are invited to join. When GPCs were introduced, Goh Chok Tong, then-First Deputy Prime Minister, said that the three main reasons for establishing GPCs were to increase the participation of MPs in policymaking, to give the public a say in government policies through sitting on resource panels, and to strengthen democratic institutions in the country. It was envisaged that GPC members would act as a sort of proxy opposition in Parliament, challenging the views of Cabinet members. However, in the 1991 general election the PAP lost four seats to opposition parties and suffered a 2.2% drop in popular votes compared to the 1988 election. Goh, who had become Prime Minister in 1990, said in a post-election press conference that GPCs would be abolished as the increased number of Opposition MPs meant they were no longer needed. The PAP would return to the old system of having internal party committees meeting in private. A few weeks later, he said that GPCs would continue to exist, but their members would no longer take an adversarial stance in Parliament. As of 24 August 2020 there are 12 GPCs dealing with the following matters: ## Parliament Secretariat The administration of Parliament is managed by its secretariat. Among other things, the secretariat organizes the business of Parliament and its committees, managing tasks such as the simultaneous interpretation of debates in the House and the preparation of Hansard (the official reports of Parliamentary debates). The secretariat also assists with the work of the Presidential Council for Minority Rights and the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly(AIPA). The Clerk of Parliament is the chief executive of the secretariat. As of 2009, the clerk is Ms. Ng Sheau Jiuan. She is the principal adviser to the House on parliamentary procedures and practices. When Parliament is sitting, she is stationed at the Clerk's Table below the Speaker's chair, and reads the orders of the day. The clerk is appointed by the president after consultation with the Speaker and the Public Service Commission. She is supported by a deputy clerk, principal assistant clerks and assistant clerks. The independence of the clerk and her staff are protected to some extent by the Constitution. The clerk can only be removed from office on the grounds of inability to discharge the functions of the office (whether arising from an infirmity of body or mind or any other cause) or for misbehaviour, and a parliamentary resolution that has received the affirmative votes of not less than two-thirds of all MPs is required. Further, the staff of Parliament are not eligible for promotion or transfer to any other office in the public service without the Speaker's consent. ## Serjeant-at-Arms The Serjeant-at-Arms is the officer of Parliament who has the duty of maintaining order in the precincts of the House. For instance, if the conduct of any MP is grossly disorderly during a sitting of Parliament, the Speaker or a committee chairman may order him or her to withdraw immediately from Parliament for the rest of the day's sitting, and the Speaker or chairman may instruct the Serjeant to enforce the order. The Speaker may also direct an MP to withdraw when Parliament has voted to suspend him or her for committing the offence of disregarding the authority of the chair or of persistently and wilfully obstructing the business of Parliament. If the MP refuses to obey this direction despite having been summoned several times to do so by the Serjeant acting under the Speaker's orders, the Serjeant may use force to compel the MP's obedience to the direction. The Serjeant-at-Arms is also the custodian of the Mace of Parliament, and bears the Mace into and out of the chamber of the House – the room where Parliamentary debates take place – during sittings (see below). ## Functions ### Lawmaking The legislative power of Singapore is vested in the Legislature of Singapore, which consists of the president and Parliament. One of the Legislature's major functions is lawmaking. As Singapore is an independent and sovereign republic, Parliament has plenary power to pass laws regulating the rights and liabilities of persons in the country and elsewhere. The power of the Legislature to make laws is exercised by Parliament passing bills and the president assenting to them. The president's role in the exercise of legislative power is nominal. He may address Parliament and may send messages to it, and must assent to most bills, which then become law. A bill is a draft law. In Singapore, most bills are government bills; they are introduced in Parliament by ministers on behalf of the Cabinet. However, any MP can introduce a bill. A bill introduced by an MP who is not a minister is known as a private member's bill. Because the Government currently holds a majority of the seats in Parliament, a private member's bill will not be passed unless it gains the Government's support. Three private members' bills have been introduced since 1965. The first was the Roman Catholic Archbishop Bill, a private bill that was introduced by P. Selvadurai and Chiang Hai Ding in 1974 and passed the following year. The first public law that originated from a private member's bill is the Maintenance of Parents Act, which entitles parents at least 60 years old and unable to maintain themselves adequately to apply to a tribunal for their children to be ordered to pay maintenance to them. The bill was introduced on 23 May 1994 by Walter Woon, who was then an NMP, and eventually passed on 2 November 1995. In that year, the first woman NMP, Dr. Kanwaljit Soin, also introduced a Family Violence Bill but it did not pass. #### Passage of bills through Parliament All bills must go through three readings in Parliament and receive the president's assent to become an Act of Parliament. The first reading is a mere formality, during which a bill is introduced without a debate. The bill is considered as having been read after the MP introducing it has read aloud its long title and laid a copy of it on the Table of the House, and the Clerk of Parliament has read out its short title. Copies of the bill are then distributed to MPs, and it is published in the Government Gazette for the public's information. The bill is then scheduled for its second reading. During the second reading, MPs debate the general principles of the bill. If Parliament opposes the bill, it may vote to reject it. If the bill goes through its second reading, it proceeds to the committee stage where the details of the drafting of the proposed law are examined. Where a bill is relatively uncontroversial, it is referred to a committee of the whole Parliament; in other words, all the MPs present at the sitting form a committee and discuss the bill clause by clause. At this stage, MPs who support the bill in principle but do not agree with certain clauses can propose amendments to those clauses. Bills that are more controversial, or for which it is desired to obtain views from interested groups or the public, are often referred to a select committee. This is a committee made up of MPs who invite interested persons to submit representations on a bill. Public hearings to hear submissions on the bill may also be held. Where the Speaker of Parliament is of the opinion that a bill appears to prejudicially affect individual rights or interests (such a bill is known as a hybrid bill) it must be referred to a select committee, and the committee must hear any affected party who has presented a petition to Parliament. The select committee then reports its findings, together with any suggested amendments to the bill, to Parliament. Following the committee stage, the bill goes through its third reading. During this stage the principles behind the bill can no longer be questioned, and only minor amendments will be allowed. The bill is then voted upon. In most cases, a simple majority of all the MPs present and voting is all that is needed for the bill to be approved. However, bills seeking to amend the Constitution must be carried by a special majority: not less than two-thirds of all MPs on the second and third readings. A minister may lay on the Table of the House a certificate of urgency that the president has signed for a proposed bill or a bill that has already been introduced. Once this is done, provided that copies of the bill are provided to MPs, the bill may be proceeded with throughout all its stages until it has been read the third time. #### Scrutiny of bills by the Presidential Council for Minority Rights Most bills passed by Parliament are scrutinized by a non-elected advisory body called the Presidential Council for Minority Rights (PCMR), which reports to the Speaker of Parliament whether there is any clause in a bill that contains a "differentiating measure", that is, one which discriminates against any racial or religious community. When the council makes a favourable report or no report within 30 days of the bill being sent to it (in which case the bill is conclusively presumed not to contain any differentiating measures), the bill is presented to the President for assent. If the PCMR submits an adverse report, Parliament can either make amendments to the bill and resubmit it to the council for approval, or decide to present the bill for the president's assent nonetheless provided that a Parliamentary motion for such action has been passed by at least two-thirds of all MPs. The PCMR has not rendered any adverse reports since it was set up in 1970. Three types of bills need not be submitted to the PCMR: - Money Bills. - Bills certified by the Prime Minister as affecting the defence or security of Singapore or that relate to public safety, peace, or good order in Singapore. - Bills that the Prime Minister certifies as so urgent that it is not in the public interest to delay enactment. #### Assent to bills by the President Before a bill officially becomes law, the president must assent to it. The president exercises this constitutional function in accordance with Cabinet's advice and does not act in his personal discretion; thus, except in certain instances described below, he may not refuse to assent to bills that have been validly passed by Parliament. The words of enactment in Singapore statutes are: "Be it enacted by the President with the advice and consent of the Parliament of Singapore, as follows:". The president may act in his discretion in withholding assent to any of the following types of bills passed by Parliament: 1. A bill seeking to amend the Constitution that provides, directly or indirectly, for the circumvention or curtailment of the discretionary powers conferred upon the president by the Constitution. 2. A bill not seeking to amend the Constitution that provides, directly or indirectly, for the circumvention or curtailment of the discretionary powers conferred upon the president by the Constitution. 3. A bill that provides, directly or indirectly, for varying, changing or increasing the powers of the Central Provident Fund Board to invest the moneys belonging to the Central Provident Fund. 4. A bill providing, directly or indirectly, for the borrowing of money, the giving of any guarantee or the raising of any loan by the Government if, in the opinion of the president, the bill is likely to draw on the reserves of the Government which were not accumulated by the Government during its current term of office. 5. A Supply Bill, Supplementary Supply Bill or Final Supply Bill (see below) for any financial year if, in the president's opinion, the estimates of revenue and expenditure for that year, the supplementary estimates or the statement of excess, as the case may be, are likely to lead to a drawing on the reserves which were not accumulated by the Government during its current term of office. As regards a bill mentioned in paragraph 1, the president, acting in accordance with the advice of the Cabinet, may refer to a Constitutional Tribunal the question of whether the bill circumvents or curtails the discretionary powers conferred on him or her by the Constitution. If the Tribunal is of the opinion that the bill does not have this effect, the president is deemed to have assented to the bill on the day after the day when the Tribunal's opinion is pronounced in open court. On the other hand, if the Tribunal feels that the bill does have the circumventing or curtailing effect, and the president either has withheld or withholds his assent to the bill, the Prime Minister may direct that the bill be submitted to the electors for a national referendum. In that case, the bill will only become law if it is supported by not less than two-thirds of the total number of votes cast at the referendum. If 30 days have expired after a bill has been presented to the President for assent and he or she has neither signified the withholding of assent nor referred the Bill to a Constitutional Tribunal, the bill is deemed to have been assented to on the day following the expiry of the 30-day period. The procedure is similar for a bill mentioned in paragraph 2, except that if the Constitutional Tribunal rules that the bill has a circumventing or curtailing effect, the Prime Minister has no power to put the bill to a referendum. This ensures that changes to the president's discretionary powers can only be made by way of constitutional amendments and not ordinary statutes. If the president withholds his assent to any Supply Bill, Supplementary Supply Bill or Final Supply Bill referred to in paragraph 5 contrary to the recommendation of the Council of Presidential Advisers, Parliament may by resolution passed by not less than two-thirds of the total number of elected MPs overrule the decision of the president. If Parliament does not do so within 30 days of the withholding of assent, it may authorize expenditure or supplementary expenditure, from the Consolidated Fund and Development Fund during the relevant financial year, provided that: - where the president withholds his assent to a Supply Bill, the expenditure so authorized for any service or purpose for that financial year cannot exceed the total amount appropriated for that service or purpose in the preceding financial year; or - where the president withholds his assent to a Supplementary Supply Bill or Final Supply Bill, the expenditure so authorized for any service or purpose shall not exceed the amount necessary to replace an amount advanced from any Contingencies Fund under Article 148C(1) of the Constitution for that service or purpose. If 30 days have passed after a Supply Bill, Supplementary Supply Bill or Final Supply Bill has been presented to the President for assent and her or she has not signified the withholding of assent, the president is deemed to have assented to the bill on the day immediately following the expiration of the 30-day period. Upon receiving presidential assent, a bill becomes law and is known as an Act of Parliament. However, the Act only comes into force on the date of its publication in the Government Gazette, or on such other date that is stipulated by the Act or another law, or a notification made under a law. ### Financial control All revenues of Singapore that are not allocated to specific purposes by law are paid into a Consolidated Fund. In addition, there exists a Development Fund, which is used for purposes relating to matters such as: 1. the construction, improvement, extension, enlargement and replacement of buildings and works and the provision, acquisition, improvement and replacement of other capital assets (including vehicles, vessels, aircraft, rolling-stock, machinery, instruments and equipment) required in respect of or in connection with the economic development or general welfare of Singapore; 2. the acquisition of land and the use of any invention; 3. the carrying of on any survey, research or investigation before the undertaking of any purpose referred to in paragraph 1, or the formation of any plan or scheme for the development, improvement, conservation or exploitation of the resources of Singapore; and 4. capital contributions for investment by way of capital injection in any statutory corporation. The Government may only withdraw money from the Consolidated Fund and Development Fund if authorized by a Supply law, Supplementary Supply law or Final Supply law passed by Parliament. In this way, Parliament exerts a degree of financial control over the Government as the latter's budget must be approved each year following a debate in the House. However, at present it is virtually certain that the Government's budgets will be approved as it holds a majority of seats in Parliament, and MPs are required by party discipline to vote according to the party line. The annual budget approval process begins with the Minister for Finance presenting a Budget Statement in Parliament. This usually takes place in late February or early March before the start of the financial year on 1 April. The Budget Statement assesses the performance of Singapore's economy in the previous year and provides information about the Government's financial policy for the coming financial year, including details about tax changes or incentives to be introduced. The Budget Book is presented together with the Budget Statement. This sets out estimates of how each Government ministry proposes to use the public funds allocated to it in the budget in the next financial year. Following the Minister's budget speech, Parliament stands adjourned for not less than seven clear days. When Parliament resumes sitting, two days are allotted for a debate on the Budget Statement, after which Parliament votes on a motion to approve the Government's financial policy as set out in the Statement. Parliament then constitutes itself as the Committee of Supply and debates the estimates of expenditure. During the debates, MPs are entitled to question Ministers on their ministries' policies after giving notice of their intention to move amendments to reduce by token sums of S\$100 the total amounts provisionally allocated to particular heads of expenditure. The Committee of Supply debates usually last between seven and ten days, and upon their conclusion a Supply Bill is passed. The enacted law is called a Supply Act. If the Government wishes to spend public money in addition to what was provided for in the budget, it must submit supplementary estimates to Parliament for approval. If the financial year has not yet ended, such supplementary estimates are passed in the form of a Supplementary Supply Act. As soon as possible after the end of each financial year, the Minister for Finance must introduce into Parliament a Final Supply Bill containing any sums which have not yet been included in any Supply Bill. This is enacted by Parliament as a Final Supply Act. ### Ministerial accountability A crucial reason why governmental powers are separated among three branches of government – the Executive, Legislature and Judiciary – is so that the exercise of power by one branch may be checked by the other two branches. In addition to approving the Government's expenditure of public funds, Parliament exercises a check over the Cabinet through the power of MPs to question the Prime Minister and other Ministers regarding the Government's policies and decisions. MPs may put questions to Ministers relating to affairs within their official functions, or bills, motions or other public matters connected with the business of Parliament for which they are responsible. Questions may also be put to other MPs relating to matters that they are responsible for. However, this is a weak check when most of the MPs are members of the political party in power, as they are constrained by party discipline to adhere to the policies it espouses. Unless a question is urgent and relates to a matter of public importance or to the arrangement of public business and the Speaker's permission has been obtained to ask it, to pose a question an MP must give not later than seven clear days' written notice before the sitting day on which the answer is required. An MP may ask up to five questions at any one time, not more than three of which may be for oral answer. Detailed rules govern the contents of questions. For instance, questions must not contain statements which the MP is not prepared to substantiate; or arguments, inferences, opinions, imputations, epithets or tendentious, ironical or offensive expressions; and a question must not be asked to obtain an expression of opinion, the solution of an abstract legal case or the answer to a hypothetical proposition. MPs' questions requiring oral answers are raised during Question Time, which is usually one and a half hours from the commencement of each Parliamentary sitting. Written answers are sent to the MP and to the Clerk of Parliament, who circulates the answer to all MPs and arranges for it to be printed in Hansard. ## Parliamentary procedure Parliament regulates and ensure the orderly conduct of its own proceedings and the dispatch of business through the Standing Orders of Parliament, which it is entitled to make, amend and revoke. If there is any matter not provided for by the Standing Orders, or any question relating to the interpretation or application of any Standing Order, the Speaker of Parliament decides how it should be dealt with. He/she may have regard to the practice of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, but is not bound to follow it. ### Sessions Parliament convenes when it is in session. The first session of a particular Parliament commences when Parliament meets after being formed following a general election. Each year there must be at least one session, and not more than six months must intervene between the last sitting of Parliament in any session and the first sitting in the next session. Each Parliament generally has two sessions, although the Seventh Parliament had three sessions: 9 January 1989 to 2 April 1990, 7 June 1990 to 29 January 1991, and 22 February to 14 August 1991. A session usually opens with an address by the president drafted by the Cabinet, which sets out the Government's agenda for the session. A Parliamentary session concludes in one of two ways. First, the president, on Cabinet's advice, may prorogue Parliament by proclamation in the Government Gazette. Prorogation has the effect of suspending the sitting of Parliament, but MPs retain their seats and it is not necessary for an election to be held. The period between sessions is called a recess. All pending proceedings on a draft law that has already been introduced in Parliament at this point will not lapse but will be carried over to the new session. However, all pending questions and motions submitted by MPs at the time of prorogation will lapse and have to be refiled in the new session of Parliament. Secondly, a session terminates when Parliament is dissolved. A dissolution puts an end to a particular Parliament, and all unfinished business is expunged. Dissolution occurs in the following circumstances: - When five years have elapsed from the date of its first sitting, Parliament is automatically dissolved. The first sitting of the 14th Parliament took place on 24 August 2020, and thus it will be automatically dissolved on 24 August 2025 unless it is dissolved earlier by one of methods stated below. - If at any time the office of prime minister is vacant, the president may wait a reasonable period to see if there is any other MP likely to command the confidence of a majority of MPs, and who may therefore be appointed prime minister. If there is no such person, the president must dissolve Parliament by proclamation in the Gazette. - The president may also dissolve Parliament by proclamation if advised by the prime minister to do so, although he/she is not obliged to so act unless he/she is satisfied that the prime minister commands the confidence of a majority of MPs. The president will usually be asked to dissolve Parliament in this manner if the prime minister wishes to call a general election. The president is not permitted to dissolve Parliament following the giving of a notice of motion in Parliament proposing an inquiry into his conduct unless (1) a resolution is not passed pursuant to the notice of motion; (2) where a resolution has been passed, the tribunal appointed to inquire into the allegations against the president determines that he/she has not become permanently incapable of discharging the functions of his office or that he/she is not guilty of any other allegations; (3) following a tribunal report that is unfavourable to the president, parliament does not successfully pass a resolution for the president's removal from office; or (4) Parliament by resolution requests him/her to dissolve Parliament. A general election must be held within three months after every dissolution of Parliament. The Prime Minister and other Ministers who make up the Cabinet do not vacate their offices upon a dissolution of Parliament, but continue in their posts until the first sitting of the next Parliament following a general election. ### Sittings #### Speaker's procession and the Mace Unless otherwise notified by the Speaker, a Parliamentary sitting begins at 1:30 pm. It begins with the Speaker's procession, during which the Serjeant-at-Arms enters the chamber of the House bearing the Mace of Parliament on his right shoulder ahead of the Speaker, the Clerk of Parliament, and the Clerk's assistants. Members of Parliament rise in their places upon the entry of the Speaker and bow to him, and he reciprocates. The mace is an ornamented staff that represents the Speaker's authority and is the Serjeant's emblem of office. When Parliament's predecessor, the Legislative Assembly, acquired the Mace in 1958, the Speaker, Sir George Oehlers, invited members to "accept that the Mace is an essential part of the equipment of this Assembly and that this Assembly cannot, in future, be considered to be properly constituted unless the Mace be first brought into the House and laid on the Table". The Mace is placed on the Table of the House, which is a table in the centre of the debating chamber between the front benches. There are two sets of brackets on the Table, and when the Speaker is in his chair the Mace is placed on the upper brackets. The Mace is removed to the lower brackets when the House sits as a committee, and is not brought into the chamber when the president addresses Parliament. #### Debates The quorum for a Parliamentary sitting is one quarter of the total number of MPs, not including the Speaker or someone presiding on his behalf. If any MP contends that there are insufficient MPs attending to form a quorum, the Speaker waits two minutes, then conducts a count of the MPs. If there is still no quorum, he must adjourn Parliament without putting any question. MPs must occupy the seats in the debating chamber allocated to them by the Speaker. The front benches (those nearest the Table of the House) on the Speaker's right are occupied by Government Ministers, and those on the left by Opposition MPs or by backbenchers. MPs may use any one of the four official languages of Singapore – Malay, English, Mandarin or Tamil – during debates and discussions. Simultaneous oral interpretation of speeches in Malay, Mandarin and Tamil into English and vice versa is provided by the Parliament Secretariat's Language Service Department. At an ordinary sitting, the order of business in Parliament is as follows: 1. Announcements by the Speaker. 2. Tributes. 3. Obituary speeches. 4. Presentation of papers. 5. Petitions. 6. Questions to Ministers and other MPs. 7. Ministerial statements. 8. Requests for leave to move the adjournment of Parliament on matters of urgent public importance. 9. Personal explanations. 10. Introduction of Government Bills. 11. Business motions moved by Ministers. 12. Motions for leave to bring in bills by private Members. 13. Motions, with or without notice, complaining of a breach of privilege or affecting the powers and privileges of Parliament or relating to a report of the Committee of Privileges. 14. Public business. Each debate in Parliament begins with a motion, which is a formal proposal that a certain course of action be taken by the House. The MP who moves a motion has not more than one hour for his or her opening speech explaining the reasons for the motion, but Parliament may vote to extend this time by 15 minutes. The Speaker (or chairman, if Parliament is in committee) then proposes the motion in the form of a question, following which other MPs may debate the motion. MPs who wish to speak must rise in their places and catch the eye of the Speaker. They may speak only if called upon by the Speaker. MPs must speak from the rostrum unless they are front benchers, in which case they may speak at the Table of the House if they wish. Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries may speak for up to one hour, while other MPs may speak for up to 30 minutes (15 minutes if addressing a Committee of the whole Parliament). In general, MPs may only speak once to any question, though they may be heard again to clarify their speeches if misunderstood or to seek a clarification of another MP's speech. If they do so, they are not allowed to introduce new matters. After MPs have spoken, the mover may exercise a right of reply for up to one hour; again, Parliament may grant an extension of up to 15 minutes. During debates, MPs must direct their observations to the Chair of the House occupied by the Speaker or a committee chairman, and not directly to another Member; the phrase "Madam Speaker" or "Mr. Speaker, Sir" is often used for this purpose. Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries are addressed by the offices held by them (for example, "the Honourable Minister for Trade and Industry"), while other MPs are referred to by the constituencies they represent ("the Honourable Member for Holland–Bukit Timah GRC") or by their names. The use of the honorific "the Honourable" is not required by the Standing Orders of Parliament, but during a 1988 parliamentary debate the Leader of the House, Wong Kan Seng, said it would be polite for MPs to refer to their colleagues using the terms "Mr.", "Honourable Mr." or "Honourable Minister" depending on their choice. MPs must confine their observations to the subject being discussed and may not talk about irrelevant matters, and will be ruled out of order if they use offensive and insulting language about other MPs. They are also not permitted to impute improper motives to other MPs, or to refer to the conduct or character of any MP or public servant other than that person's conduct as an MP or public servant. There are restrictions on discussing the conduct of the president or a Judge or Judicial Commissioner of the Supreme Court; and referring to matters that are sub judice (pending before a court), though when a bill is being considered such cases can be discussed in a way that does not prejudice the parties to the case. To bring a debate to a close, an MP may move "that the question be now put". The debate ends if the motion is carried (that is, a majority of MPs vote to support the motion). The Speaker then puts the question on the original motion to the House and calls for a vote. To determine whether this motion is carried, the Speaker will "collect the voices" by saying, "As many as are of that opinion say 'Aye'", and MPs supporting the motion will respond "Aye". The Speaker then says "To the contrary say 'No'", and MPs opposing the motion will say "No". Following this, the Speaker assesses the number of votes and says, "I think the Ayes (or Noes) have it". At this point, an MP may challenge the Speaker's decision by claiming a division. If at least five other MPs rise in their places to support the challenge, the Speaker will direct that the division bells be rung for at least a minute. After that, the Speaker orders the Serjeant-at-Arms to lock the doors of the chamber. The Speaker then puts the question a second time. If a division is again claimed, the Speaker asks each MP to vote "Aye" or "No", or to indicate that he or she is abstaining from voting. MPs must vote in the same way as they did when voices were taken collectively. Votes and abstentions are recorded using an electronic system. If it appears that a quorum is not present, the division is invalid and the matter is postponed till the next sitting. Otherwise, the Speaker states the numbers of MPs voting "Aye" and "No" and declares the results of the division. The Serjeant then unlocks the doors. A Minister may make a statement in Parliament on a matter of public importance. MPs are allowed to seek clarification on the statement but no debate is allowed on it. #### Suspension and adjournment If Parliament decides, a sitting may be suspended at any time after 3:15 p.m., and if so suspended resumes at 3:45 p.m. The Speaker may also direct that the sitting be suspended at other times. At 7:00 p.m. the "moment of interruption" is reached. At that point, the proceedings on any business being considered are interrupted and deferred, together with the remaining items of business that have not yet been dealt with, to the next sitting day unless the MPs in charge of the items of business name alternative sitting days for the deferred business to be taken up again. When proceedings have been interrupted or if all items of business have been completed, a Minister must move "That Parliament do now adjourn". Upon that motion, a debate may take place during which any matter that Cabinet is responsible for may be raised by an MP who has obtained the right to raise such a matter for 20 minutes. Each sitting day, only one MP is allotted the right to raise a matter on the motion for the adjournment of Parliament. An MP can ask for leave to move the adjournment of Parliament for the purpose of discussing a definite matter of urgent public importance. If the MP obtains the general assent of Parliament or at least eight MPs rise in their places to support the motion, the motion stands adjourned until 5:30 pm on the same day. At that time, any proceedings on which Parliament is engaged are suspended so that the urgent matter may be raised. Proceedings on the motion for adjournment may continue until the moment of interruption, whereupon if they have not been completed the motion lapses. The postponed proceedings are resumed either on the disposal or the lapse of the motion for adjournment. Not more than one such motion for adjournment may be made at any one sitting. ### Broadcasting of parliamentary proceedings Key parliamentary proceedings such as the opening of Parliament and the annual budget statement are broadcast live on both free-to-air TV and online. Parliamentary highlights are hosted by Mediacorp's subsidiary CNA through a microsite for six months. Complaints brought by CNA for copyright infringement in relation to a video of parliamentary proceedings hosted on The Online Citizen's Facebook page, resulted in the video being taken down. The Government subsequently clarified that it owns the copyright in such videos. ## Privileges, immunities and powers of Parliament The Constitution provides that the Legislature may by law determine and regulate the privileges, immunities or powers of Parliament. The first such law was enacted in 1962 prior to Singapore's independence by the Legislative Assembly. The current version of that statute is the Parliament (Privileges, Immunities and Powers) Act. In general, the privileges, immunities and powers of Parliament and of the Speaker, MPs and committees of Parliament are the same as those of the United Kingdom House of Commons and of its Speaker, Members or committees at the establishment of the Republic of Singapore on 9 August 1965. Such privileges, immunities and powers have effect even though they are not expressly prescribed by the Act, and are required to be judicially noticed in all courts. ### Privileges and immunities The Act provides that there shall be freedom of speech and debate and proceedings in Parliament, and such freedom of speech and debate and proceedings is not liable to be impeached or questioned in any court, commission of inquiry, committee of inquiry, tribunal or any other place whatsoever out of Parliament. MPs are not liable to the following: - Any civil or criminal proceedings, arrest, imprisonment or damages because of any matter or thing which he or she may have brought before Parliament or a committee by petition, bill, resolution, motion or otherwise, or may have said in Parliament or in committee. - To be required to serve as an assessor on any tribunal. - To be compelled to attend as a witness in any court or tribunal or at any commission of inquiry or committee of inquiry or before any similar authority empowered to summon witnesses, while they are in attendance on Parliament or any committee. - Arrest, detention or molestation in respect of any matter which may be the subject of any civil proceedings while proceeding to, or in attendance at, or returning from, any sitting of Parliament or any committee, except for a contravention of the Act itself. No civil or criminal process (official notice of legal proceedings) may be served or executed on any person in Parliament or in its precincts while Parliament is sitting, or in any room in Parliament while a committee is sitting in it, except for a contravention of the Act. No person is liable to any civil or criminal proceedings, arrest, imprisonment or damages by reason of any act done under the authority of Parliament or the Speaker and within its or his or her legal powers or under any warrant issued by virtue of those powers. Thus, defamation proceedings cannot be brought against a member of the public on the basis of statements in a written representation sent by him to a select committee of Parliament in response to an invitation that the Clerk of Parliament has issued. Reports, papers or journals that are published by order or under the authority of Parliament are absolutely privileged. If civil or criminal proceedings (for instance, for defamation or sedition) are brought against a person or his or her employee for the publication, the person may give the court a certificate from the Speaker or Clerk of Parliament stating that the documents were published by order of Parliament or under its authority. The court must then immediately stay the proceedings. Further, in any civil or criminal proceedings started for printing or publishing any extract from or abstract of any document published under Parliament's authority, the court must grant judgment in favour of the defendant or accused if satisfied that the extract or abstract was printed or published bona fide and without malice. ### Powers #### Powers with regard to MPs If an MP acts dishonourably, abuses a privilege or behaves contemptuously, Parliament may: - commit him or her to prison for a term not extending beyond the current session of Parliament; - impose a fine not exceeding \$50,000; - suspend him or her from the service of Parliament for the remainder of the current session of Parliament or any part of it; and - direct that he or she be reprimanded or admonished in his or her place by the Speaker. It is for Parliament alone to determine what actions constitute an abuse of privilege and contempt, and the procedure for reaching a decision. On 19 March and 30 July 1986 the Leader of the House objected in Parliament to Opposition MP J.B. Jeyaretnam's allegations that the executive had interfered with the judiciary. The complaints were considered by the Committee of Privileges in September. While the hearing was in progress, Jeyaretnam wrote five newsletters about the proceedings of the Committee and sent them to residents of his constituency. On 9 October, the Leader of the House made a written complaint regarding the newsletters' contents to the Speaker of Parliament, which the Committee also considered. On 27 January 1987 Parliament accepted the Committee's reports on the complaints and found Jeyaretnam guilty of abusing the privileges of Parliament by alleging executive interference in the judiciary, and of contempt of the Committee and Parliament by publishing the newsletters. Fines totalling \$26,000 were imposed. Upon Jeyaretnam's refusal to pay the fines, civil suits to recover them were brought against him by the Attorney-General acting on the Government's behalf. Jeyaretnam challenged the suits on the grounds that the Committee had been wrong in law in finding him guilty of contempt, that Parliament could not lawfully punish him by imposing fines, and that natural justice had been breached as he had not been given an opportunity to be heard. However, he failed in his appeals to the High Court and the Court of Appeal, both courts holding that the determinations made by Parliament could not be challenged in court. Where an MP has been found guilty of abuse of privilege in respect of anything said in Parliament by him or her, Parliament may order a suspension from privileges and immunities relating to liability to civil proceedings. #### Powers with regard to officers of Parliament and strangers Parliament may exclude any officer of Parliament or stranger (that is, a person who is neither an MP nor an officer of Parliament) from any Parliamentary sitting, and regulate the admission of strangers to any sitting. If a stranger commits a contempt, Parliament may: - commit him or her to prison for a term not extending beyond the current session of Parliament; - impose a fine not exceeding \$50,000; - exclude him or her from Parliament and its precincts for the remainder of the current session of Parliament or for any part of it; and - direct that he or she be reprimanded or admonished by the Speaker at the Bar of the House. The Bar of the House is a barrier in the debating chamber that only MPs are allowed to pass through during sittings. #### Other powers Parliament and any committee of Parliament may also exercise the following powers: - It may order any person to attend before Parliament or before a committee, and to produce any paper, book, record or document in the possession or under the control of that person. - It may require that any facts, matters and things relating to a subject of inquiry be verified or otherwise ascertained by the oral examination of witnesses; and cause the witnesses to be examined upon oath or affirmation. ## List of sessions of Parliament ## Parliament House Between 1954 and 1999, Singapore's legislature met at what is now called the Old Parliament House. The building was originally a private mansion designed in the Palladian style by George Drumgoole Coleman and completed in June 1827 for a merchant, John Argyle Maxwell. Instead of living in it, Maxwell leased it to the Government for use as Singapore's first courthouse. The building was eventually sold to Governor George Bonham and the East India Company in October 1842. It served as a courthouse up to 1865, and again from 1875 until 1939, when the courts moved to a purpose-built Supreme Court Building on St. Andrew's Road. The building fell into disrepair and was used as a government storehouse during and after World War II. In 1953, Governor John Nicoll decided that the building should be renovated for use as a legislative chamber. Renamed Assembly House, it was declared officially open on 9 July 1954, and the existing Legislative Council had its first meeting there on 20 July. It was then occupied from 1955 by the newly formed Legislative Assembly of Singapore, and was renamed Parliament House when Singapore became fully independent in 1965. In 1988 the building's debating chamber was extensively renovated to increase the number of seats in it to 90. However, as further extensions were not feasible without causing MPs discomfort and disrupting the chamber's configuration, plans were approved in 1992 for a new Parliament building to be constructed. The present Parliament House, on a part of High Street that was renamed Parliament Place, was completed in July 1999. It was officially inaugurated on 6 September 1999 with a special sitting that began in the Old Parliament House, continued with legislators walking from the old building to the new one, and concluded in the new Parliament House. Three items from the old chamber were brought over: the Mace of Parliament, the Table of the House, and the Speaker's chair. The building formerly occupied by Parliament reopened in March 2004 as a performance venue called the Arts House at the Old Parliament, and the street it is on was renamed Old Parliament Lane. ## See also - Cabinet of Singapore - Government of Singapore - Politics of Singapore - President of Singapore ## Explanatory notes

Russian ironclad Ne Tron Menia

Russian ironclad

The Russian ironclad Ne Tron Menia (Russian: Не тронь меня) was the second of the three Pervenets-class broadside ironclads built for the Imperial Russian Navy during the mid-1860s. She joined the Baltic Fleet upon completion and never left Russian waters. Beginning in 1870 the ship was assigned to the Gunnery Training Detachment and was frequently rearmed. Ne Tron Menia was placed in reserve and hulked a decade later. In 1905 the ship was disarmed and she was sold in 1908. After the end of the Russian Civil War, she was acquired by the Soviets before being sold to a factory in 1925. The ship was sunk in the Siege of Leningrad during World War II and was scrapped after she was salvaged in 1950. ## Design and description The Pervenents-class ironclads were designed as Coastal defence ships to protect the approaches to Saint Petersburg and were referred to as "self-propelled armored floating batteries". As such, a heavy armament and protection were the most important factors in their design. Ne Tron Menia means Touch Me Not and refers to the Biblical verse, John 20:17. Ne Tron Menia was 220 feet (67.1 m) long overall, with a beam of 53 feet (16.2 m) and a designed draft of 14 feet 6 inches (4.4 m). She displaced 3,340 long tons (3,390 t) and her iron hull had a pronounced tumblehome. She was fitted with large rams at bow and stern; the stern ram also serving to protect her rudder and propeller. The ship did not steer well and had "an unpredictable habit of suddenly lurching to one side or another", probably as a result of poor water flow to the rudder. Ne Tron Menia required six men to man her wheel and her total crew numbered 459 officers and enlisted men. She received the refurbished engine from the steam ship of the line Konstantin as a cost-cutting measure, originally intended for her sister Pervenets. This was probably a direct-acting steam engine and was built by the British firm of Humphrys & Tennant. Steam was provided by four rectangular fire-tube boilers. During sea trials on 18 July 1865, the engine produced a total of 1,200 indicated horsepower (890 kW) and gave the ship a maximum speed of 7.75–8 knots (14.35–14.82 km/h; 8.92–9.21 mph). She carried a maximum of 500 long tons (510 t) of coal, but her endurance is unknown. Ne Tron Menia was schooner-rigged with three iron masts. Under a combination of sail and steam the ship could reach a speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph) Ne Tron Menia was completed with seventeen 8-inch (203 mm) rifled guns. Fifteen were mounted on the broadside on the main deck and two guns were placed in pivot mounts on the upper deck to serve as chase guns. One of the main deck guns was removed and a 7.72-inch (196 mm) 60-pounder smoothbore gun was added on the upper deck in 1868. Unlike Pervenets, the ship's tumblehome of 27°, intended to deflect shells, began above the waterline so the narrow vertical strake of wrought iron armor at the waterline was increased to a thickness of 5.5 inches (140 mm) in compensation for its reduced protective abilities. The rest of the ship's side was protected with 4.5 inches of armor that reduced to 4 inches (102 mm) beginning 30 feet (9.1 m) from the ship's ends. It backed by 10 inches (254 mm) of teak and extended 4 feet (1.2 m) below the waterline. The ship's hull was divided by six watertight transverse and two longitudinal bulkheads for protection against underwater damage. The open-topped conning tower was also protected by 4.5 inches of armor. ## Construction and service Ne Tron Menia, Touch Me Not (from the biblical Latin phrase Noli me tangere which appears in John 20:17), was ordered on 31 May 1862 when a contract was signed with the British shipbuilder Charles Mitchell. The total price of the ship was 923,500 rubles. The state-owned Galerniy Island Shipyard in Saint Petersburg was leased to Mitchell and the Naval Ministry agreed to upgrade the facilities to handle iron-hulled, ironclad warships. The construction of a new slipway large enough to handle the ship delayed the start of construction until 30 January 1863 and the delay allowed the design to be modified to handle larger and more powerful eight-inch rifles about to enter service. These guns required more room to operate than the older, ineffectual smoothbore guns, so the main deck was slightly widened by raising the point at which the hull's tumblehome began. Based on the experiences with her sister, bilge keels 12 inches (305 mm) deep and 20 feet (6.1 m) were fitted to reduce the ship's rolling. Ne Tron Menia was not formally laid down until 1 December 1863 and she was launched on 23 June 1864. The ship entered service on 18 July 1865 with the Baltic Fleet. She collided with the armored frigate Petropavlovsk in July 1869, and was frequently assigned to the Gunnery Training Detachment after 1870. As part of this formation, Ne Tron Menia was frequently rearmed to train officers and men on some of the latest guns to enter service. In 1880 she mounted a dozen 8-inch on her gun deck. On her upper deck, sometimes mounted on platforms that extended over her bulwarks, were a 9-inch (229 mm) mortar, a 3.42-inch (87 mm) four-pounder, four-barreled gun, a 1.75-inch (44 mm) Engstrem gun, and a 1-inch (25 mm) Palmcrantz auto-cannon. The mortar was removed in 1881 as it strained the ship's structure. To alleviate the cramped conditions of the steersmen, the ship's wheel was transferred from the gun deck to a platform that spanned her bulwarks in front of the mizzenmast in 1871. The conning tower was removed 1876–77 and new boilers were installed. These increased the engine's power to 1,700 indicated horsepower (1,300 kW) and Ne Tron Menia reached 8.5 knots on sea trials. In 1883, she rammed the Norwegian ship Heiden in 1882 and the ship was placed in reserve three years later. She was reclassified as a coast defense ironclad on 13 February 1892 and was hulked on 23 March 1895. Ne Tron Menia served with the Mine School at Kronstadt before she was disarmed on 15 September 1905 and stricken from the Navy List on 11 October. Turned over to the Port of Kronstadt for disposal, she was sold on 8 September 1908 to be used as a barge. Ne Tron Menia was acquired by the Soviets after the Russian Civil War and then sold to the Leningrad Metal Works on 24 June 1925. During World War II, she was sunk in the Neva River. She was raised in 1950 and subsequently scrapped. ## See also - List of ironclads of Russia

Revenue stamps of Malta

Revenue stamps of Malta were first issued in 1899, when the islands were a British colony. From that year to 1912, all revenue issues were postage stamps overprinted accordingly, that was either done locally or by De La Rue in London. Postage stamps also became valid for fiscal use in 1913, so no new revenues were issued until 1926–30, when a series of key type stamps depicting King George V were issued. These exist unappropriated for use as general-duty revenues, or with additional inscriptions indicating a specific use; Applications, Contracts, Registers or Stocks & Shares. The only other revenues after this series were £1 stamps depicting George VI and Elizabeth II. Postage stamps remained valid for fiscal use until at least the 1980s. Malta also used impressed duty stamps from the 1920s until these were replaced by pre-printed revenues in the 1970s. The latter were discontinued in the early 1990s. Malta also had specific stamps for Workmen's Compensation (1929–56), passport fees (1933–72), National Insurance (1956–78) and Airport Charge (1975–88). Excise stamps have been used to pay the tax on cigarettes since the 1930s, the tax on spirits since the 2000s, and the tax on wine since 2015. Excise imprints were also used on cinema, theatre and football match tickets from around the 1950s to the 1980s. ## General-duty revenues Malta's first revenue stamps were issued on 9 August 1899, and this issue consisted of the 1⁄2d, 1d, 4d, 1/- and 5/- values from the 1885–86 postage definitive issue depicting Queen Victoria locally overprinted Revenue at the Government Printing Office in Valletta. A number of overprint varieties, including double and inverted overprints, are known on this issue. On 17 November 1899, four values from the same set were issued overprinted REVENUE (in capitals) by De La Rue in London, and eight further values from the contemporary definitives depicting Queen Victoria or pictorial scenes were issued with this overprint in 1902. In around 1904, a 3d postage stamp depicting King Edward VII was issued with a local Revenue overprint. From 1904 to 1912, some of the contemporary definitives depicting King Edward VII or pictorial scenes were also issued overprinted REVENUE by De La Rue, with the overprint being identical to that used on the 1899–1902 issue. In 1913, postage stamps became valid for fiscal use, so the issue of separate revenue stamps became unnecessary. Postage stamps remained valid for fiscal use until 1926, when a law was passed limiting their use for postal purposes only. A new series of revenues depicting the Mackennal portrait of King George V was issued between 1926 and 1930. This issue consisted of eleven values ranging from 1⁄2d to £5, with some values being issued in more than one colour. These stamps were designed as key types, having a tablet at the bottom. The general-duty revenues were unappropriated (with the tablet left blank); for issues appropriated for a particular use see the "Key types" section below. In 1928, postage stamps became valid for fiscal use once again, and the lower values of the 1926 revenue issue were withdrawn. However, the £1 and £5 values remained in use since there were no postage stamps of those denominations. In 1941, a £1 revenue with the same design as the 1926–30 series but bearing the portrait of King George VI was issued. This stamp was issued with a different perforation in 1948, and in 1954 a similar stamp with the portrait of Queen Elizabeth II was issued. Postage stamps remained valid for fiscal use until the 1980s. ### Impressed and pre-printed revenues Malta used impressed duty stamps from at least 1922 to 1973. A total of five issues are known, and all have a design bearing a Maltese cross together with a Tudor crown during the colonial era, or a mural crown after independence. All are embossed in vermilion ink. The impressed revenues were replaced by pre-printed revenues on cheques, which were used between the mid-1970s and the early 1990s. These have a circular design inscribed STAMP DUTY and depict a Maltese cross. They can be found in several denominations, colours and sizes. ## Specific types ### Key types The general-duty revenues issued from 1926 onwards were designed as key types, having a tablet at the bottom where an additional inscription could be printed to indicate a specific use. In 1926, stamps appropriated with inscriptions for Applications, Contracts, Registers and Stocks & Shares were issued. The Applications issue consisted of a single 3d value, while the Registers issue had a single 1⁄2d stamp. The Contracts issue consisted of twelve stamps ranging from 1⁄2d to £5, while the Stocks & Shares issue had eight values from 3d to £5. The lower values of the key types were withdrawn in 1928, but the pound values remained in use until the 1950s. ### Workmen's Compensation and National Insurance The Workmen's Compensation Ordinance (WCO) was an insurance that covered injuries and other accidents at work, and it was introduced on 29 April 1929. From that year to 1941, Workmen's Compensation (Maltese: Kumpens lill-Ħaddiem) stamps denominated 1d were issued with the colour being changed annually in order to prevent fraud (although some colours were reissued in different years). The issue for 1938–39 was locally overprinted with the years of validity. The law was revised in 1943, resulting in a change in procedure and the need for 2d stamps. Between 1943 and 1946, old stocks of postage stamps and earlier WCO stamps were issued with provisional surcharges. These were followed by a new issue between 1944 and 1956 in the same design as the previous stamps, but denominated 2d and once again in various colours. The WCO scheme was superseded by the National Insurance (NI) Act on 28 April 1956. Therefore, National Insurance (Maltese: Sigurtà Nazzjonali) stamps were required and old stocks of WCO issues were surcharged with new values. Between 1956 and 1966, a new set was issued, similar to the WCO types but with new inscriptions, values and colours. This issue incorporated a crown above the value, and after Malta achieved independence, a new design was issued omitting the crown. The latter series was issued between 1966 and 1971. Various provisional surcharges also exist on both sets. When the Maltese pound was adopted in 1972, new values were possibly issued but have never been recorded. Three decimal overprints are, however, known to exist. A new decimal design was introduced in around 1976. National Insurance stamps were withdrawn in 1978, after which NI contributions were paid directly to the Inland Revenue Department. ### Passport Malta's first passport stamps were issued in 1933, and they were inscribed FEE PAID and PASSPORT. The design was printed in deep green, with the value in black. Reprints and additional values to this issue continued until 1967. A new design inscribed FEE PAID was issued in 1969, and these were printed in colours ranging from purple to brown, with the value in black. Only four values from this issue are known to exist, although it is likely that more values were issued. Passport stamps were withdrawn upon the adoption of the Maltese lira in 1972. ### Excise #### Cigarettes and alcohol Malta has used excise stamps to pay for the tax on cigarettes since at least the 1930s. Early issues consisted of long strips which depicted the British coat of arms and were inscribed EXCISE DUTY in English and DAZJU in Maltese. A smaller design was issued for imported cigarettes. Long strips with a plain design without any ornamentation were introduced in the 1950s, while designs depicting a mural crown and a Maltese cross were issued after independence in 1964. In 1972–73, smaller designs depicting the post-independence coat of arms and denominated in the Maltese lira were issued. This design remained in use from the 1970s to the 1990s, with changes in the coats of arms in 1975 and 1988. A new series with a similar design but with the inscriptions altered to SISA in Maltese and EXCISE in English was introduced in around 1995. Specific types for imported cigarettes were also issued between the 1970s and the 1990s or 2000s. In around 2006, stamps inscribed EXCISE DUTY PAID and printed on silver foil incorporating a security hologram were introduced, and these exist in two designs. In 2017, similar stamps inscribed MT EXCISE were introduced. Excise duty stamps to pay the tax on alcohol have been in use since 2006. Issues to pay the tax on spirits are printed on silver foil, with designs similar to those used on cigarettes, and they exist inscribed either EXCISE DUTY PAID or MT EXCISE. The excise duty on wine was introduced in 2015, and the first issue was inscribed EXCISE TAX STAMP and printed on gold foil. Later that year, paper strips and circular labels inscribed MT EXCISE were issued, and they are still in use as of 2017. #### Entertainment tax From the 1950s to the 1980s, cinema, theatre and football match tickets had an excise imprint indicating that a form of entertainment tax had been paid. From around 1953 to the late 1960s, the imprints were inscribed EXCISE REVENUE and had a crown in the centre, the design being based on the adhesive excise revenues used in the UK. This was replaced by a design inscribed INLAND REVENUE and depicting a mural crown in the early 1970s. After Malta became a republic in 1974, designs depicting the new coat of arms were introduced, and they remained in use until at least 1985. ### Airport Charge On 1 July 1975, a Lm1 stamp depicting an aeroplane tail and a Maltese cross was issued to pay the Airport Charge (Maltese: Ħlas ta' l-Ajruport), a type of an airport improvement fee. This stamp replaced a series of Passenger Service Charge labels which had been in use since the 1960s or earlier. A Lm2 value with an identical design was issued on 24 March 1988. ## See also - Postage stamps and postal history of Malta - Designers of Maltese stamps

Eli Todd

American psychiatrist

Dr. Eli Todd (July 22, 1769 – November 17, 1833) was a pioneer in the treatment of the mentally ill. His efforts in the medical field of mental care and smallpox treatment had a significant impact on not only the residents of his town, Farmington, Connecticut, but contributed to the establishment of high standards for the rest of the newly formed nation. ## Early life Eli Todd was born in 1769 in New Haven, Connecticut. He had two sisters, named Polly and Eunice. His mother was Mary Rowe, and his father, a New Haven merchant, died in 1776, a few months before his 7th birthday. He was then sent to live with his great uncle, Reverend Dr. Todd, who resided in East Guilford, in the same state. He remained with Reverend Dr. Todd until he was ten, when he was then under the care and instruction of Reverend Dr. Goodrich, of Durham, Connecticut, during which time he was introduced to the practice of medicine. He began to attend Yale College at the age of fourteen in 1783, and graduated with honors at the age of eighteen in 1787. His graduation was a significant milestone in his medical career. He studied medicine as an apprentice under Dr. Ebenezer Beardsley of New Haven, and began his own medical practice in Farmington at the age of 21. He soon became the favorite practitioner of the wealthy class in the community. He used gentle treatment methods as opposed to the harsh remedies commonly used at that time. Todd was 23 years old when he established Hospital Rock on Rattlesnake Mountain. He helped found the Hartford County and Connecticut Medical Societies, and was later a member of the Conversation Club. He also founded the Society of Medical Friends in Farmington, where doctors from around Connecticut could share treatments and discuss opinions. ## Accomplishments ### Hospital Rock In 1791, working with Dr. Theodore Wadsworth, Todd gained permission to start a hospital near the present-day Farmington/Plainville border for smallpox inoculation. The facility, commonly called Hospital Rock, is found deep in the second-growth hardwood forest of Rattlesnake Mountain in Connecticut and was used from 1792-1794. Though the building is no longer present, the nearby rock ledge upon which patients would socialize remains. It was this rock that lent the facility its name. At this location, they could also receive mail and various packages. The actual rock has been marked with over 100 distinct carvings, 66 of which are the full names of contemporary patients. Other carvings include initials, names, and dates. Prior to widespread vaccination, the treatment at Hospital Rock was extremely important. Hospital Rock was no longer needed when the smallpox vaccination was available and eventually faded away into the woods. ### Contributions to mental health care Todd was a pioneer doctor in the field of psychiatry. At the time, treatment of the mentally ill was typically inhumane: “A mentally ill patient was locked up in an insane asylum with little or no care and treated as if they were a criminal”. Prior to 1800, it was common for people deemed mad to be locked away and forgotten about. Some individuals, such as Todd and Dorothea Dix wanted more humane care for the mentally ill as they were appalled at the treatment of such people. The Connecticut Retreat for the Insane was built in 1823, and was opened to admissions in 1824. Eli Todd was its first director. It was often referred to as the Hartford Retreat for the Insane, and is now known as The Institute of Living. The Hartford Retreat for the Insane cost \$12,000 to build and could serve up to 40 patients at a time. “It cost \$3.00 a week for a state resident and \$4.00 a week for an out of state resident”. ### Alcoholism treatment and theory The widespread consumption of alcohol was recognized as a problem by Dr. Eli Todd in 1812. In a conversation with Edward Hooker on March 30, 1812, he stated that there was no single solution to alcoholism. “He advised a 3-pronged attack that was as follows: there should be an association of respectable men who would make it unfashionable to take ardent spirits; work houses of ‘idle, drinking persons’ after their third conviction for drunkenness; and heavy taxes on imported and domestic liquor”. Dr. Eli Todd also viewed alcohol as the “prominent evil of the day”. On February 22, 1842, the Washington Society of Farmington was formed. They practiced total abstinence, and employed social pressure for temperance in Farmington. By 1847, 569 people were part of this society. This was a step forward as part of Dr. Eli Todd’s attack against alcoholism. ## Personal life After graduating Yale at the age of 18, Todd had a two-year apprenticeship in Farmington, Connecticut. After finishing his apprenticeship, he spent the next 25 years serving as Farmington's resident doctor, retiring in 1815. He often consulted with farmers to help them with the productivity of their produce. Todd concluded that “the return to social and political stability during the first years of independence was undoubtedly eased by the availability of unlimited land to the west”. He was not a very good businessman and although his fame grew statewide, his wealth never swelled to match until he became director of the Connecticut Retreat. In 1796, shortly after starting his work in Farmington, he married Rachel Hills. In the same year, his half-brother Michael died at sea. In 1797, his sister Polly died of spotted fever. His mother died in 1806. In 1811, Rachel's brother Reuben died, and Todd and his wife adopted his two daughters Theresa and Jennet. Rachel died in 1825, and Todd subsequently married her younger sister, Catherine. She would outlive him by 33 years, dying herself in 1866. His sister Eunice died by suicide after a long history of depression and the death of her son. Todd received a letter from Eunice's husband in August 1829, which told of her death. Todd had thought he had cured her, multiple times, but she still had episodes, and when she had to attend to a large farm in empty Vermont alone, she was pushed over the edge. This began his theory that mental retardation (insanity at the time) was a disease and had a cause and possibly a cure. This began his revolutionary treatments, and what made the government give so much money for the mental hospital to be built. ## References and notes

Warrior-class ironclad

Class of ironclads of the Royal Navy

The Warrior-class ironclads were a class of two warships built for the Royal Navy between 1859 and 1862, the first ocean-going ironclads with iron hulls ever constructed. The ships were designed as armoured frigates in response to an invasion scare sparked by the launch of the French ironclad Gloire and her three sisters in 1858. They were initially armed with a mix of rifled breech-loading and muzzle-loading smoothbore guns, but the Armstrong breech-loading guns proved unreliable and were ultimately withdrawn from service. The ships spent their first commission with the Channel Fleet before being rearmed with new rifled muzzle-loading guns in the late 1860s. Warrior rejoined the Channel Fleet after her refit while Black Prince joined the 1st Class Reserve and joined the fleet during its annual manoeuvres. The two ships exchanged roles after another refit in the mid-1870s. Both ships spent most of the last two decades of the 19th century in reserve. Warrior was hulked in 1902 and survived to be restored in 1979 as a museum ship. Black Prince became a training ship in 1896 and was hulked in 1910 before being sold for scrap in 1923. ## Design and description The Warrior-class ships have been described as revolutionary, but in truth they were more evolutionary than not as everything except their wrought iron armour had been in use by ocean-going ships for years. The naval architect and historian David K. Brown commented, "What made [Warrior] truly novel was the way in which these individual aspects were blended together, making her the biggest and most powerful warship in the world." They were designed in response to Gloire, which started an invasion scare in Britain, but they had a very different concept of operation to the French ship which was meant as a replacement for wooden ships of the line. They were designed by Chief Constructor of the Navy Isaac Watts as 40-gun armoured frigates largely based on the fine lines of the large frigate Mersey. Warrior and her sister Black Prince were not intended to stand in the line of battle as the Admiralty was uncertain about their ability to withstand concentrated fire from wooden two and three-deck ships of the line. Rather they were designed to be fast enough to force battle on a fleeing enemy and to control the range at which a battle was fought for their own advantage. ### General characteristics The Warrior-class ships were 380 feet 2 inches (115.9 m) long between perpendiculars and 420 feet (128.0 m) long overall. This was 44 feet (13.4 m) longer than the Mersey, the longest wooden-hulled ship in the Royal Navy. They had a beam of 58 feet 4 inches (17.8 m) and a draught of 26 feet 10 inches (8.2 m). The ships displaced 9,137 long tons (9,284 t). The hull was subdivided by watertight transverse bulkheads into 92 compartments and had a double bottom underneath the engine and boiler rooms. Two bilge keels were fitted (the first used by the Royal Navy), which significantly reduced the roll of the ships. Because of their length the ships proved to be very sluggish while manoeuvring, as Warrior proved when she collided with Royal Oak in 1868. The Warrior-class ships trimmed down by the bow, not least because they were fitted with a 40-long-ton (41 t) iron knee placed at the bow to give it a traditionally pleasing shape. This also prevented the ships from ramming any other ships. The bowsprit was shortened after completion in an effort to reduce the trim, but it was not noticeably successful. ### Propulsion The Warrior-class ships had one 2-cylinder trunk steam engine made by John Penn and Sons driving a single 24-foot-6-inch (7.5 m) propeller. Ten rectangular boilers provided steam to the engine at a working pressure of 20 psi (138 kPa; 1 kgf/cm²). The engine produced a total of 5,267 indicated horsepower (3,928 kW) and was the most powerful thus far built for a warship. On sea trials in October 1861 Warrior had a maximum speed around 14.3 knots (26.5 km/h; 16.5 mph); Black Prince was about a half knot slower. The ships carried 800 long tons (810 t) of coal, enough to steam 2,100 nautical miles (3,900 km; 2,400 mi) at 11 knots (20 km/h; 13 mph). The ironclads were ship rigged and had a sail area of 48,400 square feet (4,497 m²). The lower masts were made of wood, but the other masts were iron. Warrior made 13 knots (24 km/h; 15 mph) under sail, but Black Prince could only do 11 knots (20 km/h; 13 mph). Under both sail and steam Warrior once logged 17.5 knots (32.4 km/h; 20.1 mph). Both funnels were semi-retractable to reduce wind resistance while under sail alone. The ships' propellers could be hoisted up into the stern of the ship to reduce drag while under sail. They were the largest hoistable propellers ever made and required about 600 men to be raised. ### Armament The armament of the Warrior-class ships was intended to be 40 smoothbore, muzzle-loading 68-pounder guns, 19 on each side on the main deck and one each fore and aft as chase guns on the upper deck. This was modified during construction to ten rifled 110-pounder breech-loading guns, twenty-six 68-pounders, and four rifled breech-loading 40-pounder guns as saluting guns. The 40-pounder guns were to have been replaced by 70-pounder guns, but these failed their tests and were never issued. Both breech-loading guns were new designs from Armstrong and much was hoped for them. Four of the 110-pounder guns were installed on the main deck amidships and the other two became chase guns; all of the 68-pounder guns were mounted on the main deck. Firing tests carried out in September 1861 against an armoured target, however, proved that the 110-pounder was inferior to the 68-pounder smoothbore gun in armour penetration and repeated incidents of breech explosions during the Battles for Shimonoseki and the Bombardment of Kagoshima in 1863–1864 forestalled plans to completely equip the ships with the 110-pounder gun. The 7.9-inch (201 mm) solid shot of the 68-pounder gun weighed approximately 68 pounds (30.8 kg) while the gun itself weighed 10,640 pounds (4,826.2 kg). The gun had a muzzle velocity of 1,579 ft/s (481 m/s) and had a range of 3,200 yards (2,900 m) at an elevation of 12°. The 7-inch (178 mm) shell of the 110-pounder Armstrong breech-loader weighed 107–110 pounds (48.5–49.9 kg). It had a muzzle velocity of 1,150 ft/s (350 m/s) and, at an elevation of 11.25°, a maximum range of 4,000 yards (3,700 m). The shell of the 40-pounder breech-loading gun was 4.75 inches (121 mm) in diameter and weighed 40 pounds (18.1 kg). The gun had a maximum range of 3,800 yards (3,500 m) at a muzzle velocity of 1,150 ft/s (350 m/s). The 110-pounder gun weighed 9,520 pounds (4,318.2 kg) while the 40-pounder weighed 3,584 pounds (1,625.7 kg). In 1863–1864 the 40-pounder guns were replaced by a heavier version with the same ballistics. All of the guns could fire both solid shot and explosive shells. Both ships were rearmed during their 1867–1868 refit with a mix of 7- and 8-inch (203 mm) rifled muzzle-loading guns. Warrior received twenty-eight 7-inch and four 8-inch guns while Black Prince received four fewer 7-inch guns. Both ships received four 20-pounder breech-loading guns for use as saluting guns. The shell of the 15-calibre 8-inch gun weighed 175 pounds (79.4 kg) while the gun itself weighed 9 long tons (9.1 t). It had a muzzle velocity of 1,410 ft/s (430 m/s) and was credited with the ability to penetrate a nominal 9.6 inches (244 mm) of wrought iron armour at the muzzle. The 16-calibre 7-inch gun weighed 6.5 long tons (6.6 t) and fired a 112-pound (50.8 kg) shell. It was credited with the nominal ability to penetrate 7.7-inch (196 mm) armour. ### Armour The Warrior-class ships had a wrought-iron armour belt, 4.5 inches (114 mm) thick, that covered 213 feet (64.9 m) amidships. The armour extended 16 feet (4.9 m) above the waterline and 6 feet (1.8 m) below it. 4.5-inch transverse bulkheads protected the guns on the main deck. The armour was backed by 16 inches (410 mm) of teak. The ends of the ship were left entirely unprotected which meant that the steering gear was very vulnerable. ## Construction The gun ports of the Warrior-class ships were built 46 inches (1.2 m) wide, which allowed the 68-pounders to traverse 52°. While the ships were being built the directing bar was developed which consisted of an iron bar that fastened to a pivot bolt in the sill of the gun port. After the gun carriages were modified, this allowed them to pivot much closer to the gun port than had previously been possible and meant that the gun ports could be narrowed to a width of 24 inches (0.6 m) while retaining the same arc of fire. The gun ports were narrowed to the new width by 7 inches (178 mm) of wrought iron. Another delay was the modification of the armour plates with tongue and groove joints to lock the plates together and increase their resistance to armour-piercing shells. All together these modifications delayed the completion of Warrior by a year past her contract completion date. ## Service HMS Warrior joined the Channel Fleet in July 1862 and was placed in ordinary from 1864 to 1867, during which time she was refitted. The ship rejoined the Channel Fleet in 1867 and towed a floating drydock to Bermuda in 1869 with her sister Black Prince. Warrior was placed in ordinary again from 1872 to 1875 and was modified with a poop deck. She was recommissioned into the 1st Class Reserve in 1875 and made periodic training cruises until 1883. The ship was formally reclassified as an armoured frigate in 1884, but was disarmed and mastless. Warrior was hulked as a depot ship in Portsmouth Harbor in 1902 and renamed Vernon III in 1904 when she became part of HMS Vernon, the Royal Navy's Torpedo School. The ship regained her original name in 1923 and was converted once more into an oil pipeline pier in 1927. Warrior was towed to Pembroke Dock in 1929 and was renamed C77 in 1942 to release her name for the new aircraft carrier HMS Warrior. In 1979 C77 was moved to Hartlepool and was restored as HMS Warrior (1860) as the Fleet Headquarters in Northwood, London had assumed the name of HMS Warrior in the early 1960s. The ironclad can now be seen near HMS Victory at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. Black Prince capsized while in dock at Greenock, damaging her masts. She arrived in Spithead in November 1861 with only jury-rigged fore and mizzenmasts. The ship was assigned to the Channel Fleet upon her completion and in 1867–68 she was rearmed and then assigned to the 1st Class Reserve. She was refitted in 1874 and given a poop deck, and rejoined the Channel Fleet in 1875 as the flagship of Rear Admiral Sir John Dalrymple-Hay, second in command of the fleet. Black Prince was placed in reserve in 1878 in Devonport until she was converted to a training ship in 1896 in Queenstown, Ireland and renamed Emerald in 1903. The ship was hulked and renamed Impregnable III in 1910 when she was assigned to the training school HMS Impregnable before she was sold for scrap on 21 March 1923.

1963 Atlantic hurricane season

Hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean

The 1963 Atlantic hurricane season featured one of the deadliest tropical cyclones on record in the Atlantic basin: Hurricane Flora. The season officially began on June 15, and lasted until November 15. These dates conventionally delimit the period of each year when most tropical cyclones form in the Atlantic basin. It was a slightly below average season in terms of tropical storms, with a total of ten nameable storms. The first system, an unnamed tropical storm, developed over the Bahamas on June 1. In late July, Hurricane Arlene, developed between Cape Verde and the Lesser Antilles. The storm later impacted Bermuda, where strong winds resulted in about \$300,000 (1963 USD) in damage. Other storms such as hurricanes Beulah and Debra, as well as an unnamed tropical storm, did not impact land. During the month of September, Tropical Storm Cindy caused wind damage and flooding in Texas, leaving three deaths and approximately \$12.5 million in damage. Hurricane Edith passed through the Lesser Antilles and the eastern Greater Antilles, causing 10 deaths and about \$43 million in damage, most of which occurred on Martinique. The most significant storm of the season was Hurricane Flora, which peaked as a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir–Simpson hurricane wind scale. Drifting slowly and executing a cyclonic loop, Flora dropped very heavy rainfall in the Greater Antilles, including over 100 in (2,500 mm) in Cuba. Extreme flooding ensued, leaving behind at least 7,193 fatalities and about \$773.4 million in damage. Flora is thus listed among the deadliest Atlantic hurricanes on record. In October, Hurricane Ginny moved erratically offshore the Southeastern United States, though eventually, the extratropical remnants struck Nova Scotia. Ginny caused at least three deaths and \$400,000 in damage in the United States alone. The final cyclone, Tropical Storm Helena, caused five deaths and over \$500,000 in damage on Guadeloupe. Overall, the storms in this season caused at least 7,214 deaths and about \$833.8 million in damage. ## Season summary The 1963 hurricane season officially began on June 15 and ended on November 15. It was an average season with ten tropical storms, slightly above the 1950–2000 average of 9.6 named storms. Seven of these reached hurricane status, which is above the 1950–2000 average of 5.9. Furthermore, three storms reached major hurricane status, which is Category 3 or higher on the Saffir–Simpson hurricane wind scale. Early in the season, activity was suppressed by an abnormally intense trough offshore the East Coast of the United States as well as strong westerly winds. Later, tropical cyclone formation occurred more often after a portion of the trough weakened and easterly flow increased across much of the Atlantic. The tropical cyclones of the 1963 Atlantic hurricane season collectively caused at least 7,214 deaths and \$833.8 million in damage. Tropical cyclogenesis began early, an unnamed tropical storm developing on June 1. However, activity ceased for nearly two months, before Arlene formed on July 31. Another system formed in August, Hurricane Beulah. September was much more active, with Cindy, Debra, an unnumbered tropical depression. Edith, and Flora all developing in that month. Flora was the most intense tropical cyclone of the season, peaking as a Category 4 hurricane with winds of 150 mph (240 km/h) and a minimum barometric pressure of 933 mbar (27.55 inHg). There were two other system in October, Hurricane Ginny and Tropical Storm Helena; the latter dissipated on October 30. The season's activity was reflected with an above average accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) rating of 113. ACE is, broadly speaking, a measure of the power of the hurricane multiplied by the length of time it existed, so storms that last a long time, as well as particularly strong hurricanes, have high ACEs. It is only calculated for full advisories on tropical systems at or exceeding 39 mph (63 km/h), which is the threshold for tropical storm strength. ## Systems ### Tropical Storm One Toward the end of May, a tropical disturbance moved northward from Panama toward the western Caribbean Sea. On May 31, a trough moved across eastern Cuba. On June 1, a tropical depression developed over the western Bahamas. Initially, the depression could have been a subtropical cyclone, due to an upper-level low located over the circulation. The depression moved to the northeast and later to the north, strengthening into a tropical storm on June 2. A day later, the storm attained peak winds of 60 mph (95 km/h); on the same day, the storm made landfall just west of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. By June 4, the storm weakened to a tropical depression as it continued northwestward through Virginia, Maryland, and finally Pennsylvania, where the depression degenerated into a trough. The disturbance dropped heavy rainfall across Cuba, reaching 7.50 in (191 mm) in Santiago de Cuba. The storm produced gusty winds along the eastern United States coast, from North Carolina through Maryland. Winds reached 40 mph (65 km/h) in Ocean City, Maryland and 39 mph (64 km/h) in Norfolk, Virginia. The latter city recorded 6.87 in (174 mm) of rainfall in a 24-hour period, setting a daily rainfall record for the location. Heavy rainfall reached as far north as Washington, D.C. ### Hurricane Arlene A tropical wave developed into a tropical depression at 18:00 UTC on July 31 while located about halfway between the Lesser Antilles and Cape Verde. It headed west, becoming Tropical Storm Arlene on August 2. Shortly thereafter, Arlene turned to the northeast and bypassed the Lesser Antilles. Around 00:00 UTC on August 5, Arlene weakened back to a tropical depression. Based on ship data and reconnaissance aircraft flights being unable to locate a circulation, Arlene degenerated into a trough about 24 hours later. Observations from ships indicated that the system became a tropical depression again early on August 7. Several hours later, Arlene became a tropical storm again. While curving to the northeast on August 8, the cyclone intensified into a hurricane. Arlene intensified further on August 9 and was a strong Category 2 hurricane by the time it struck Bermuda with winds of 110 mph (175 km/h) at 15:30 UTC. Shortly thereafter, the system became a Category 3 hurricane and peaked with winds of 115 mph (185 km/h). Arlene weakened and lost tropical characteristics as it continued northeastward, becoming extratropical early on August 11 about 300 mi (485 km) southeast of Cape Race, Newfoundland. The extratropical remnants turned east-southeastward and persisted for a few days, until dissipating just north of Madeira on August 14. Several hurricane warnings and watches were issued for the Leeward Islands; however, no damage was reported on any of the islands. The storm had its greatest impact on Bermuda, where high winds and near-record rainfall of 6.05 in (154 mm) downed trees, power lines, and caused flooding. Damages across the island amounted to \$300,000. ### Hurricane Beulah A tropical wave emerged into the Atlantic from the west coast of Africa on August 11. The system organized into a tropical depression early on August 20 about 540 mi (870 km) northeast of Cayenne, French Guiana. On August 21, the depression intensified into Tropical Storm Beulah while moving to the northwest. Later that day, the first reconnaissance aircraft flight into the storm observed winds of 52 mph (84 km/h). Based on another reconnaissance flight on August 22 observing a barometric pressure of 977 mbar (28.9 inHg), Beulah intensified into a hurricane around 18:00 UTC. The storm intensified into a Category 3 hurricane by early on August 24, at which time Beulah attained its peak intensity with maximum sustained winds of 120 mph (195 km/h) and a minimum barometric pressure of 958 mbar (28.29 inHg). Radar imagery depicted an elliptical eye with a diameter of 20 to 30 mi (32 to 48 km). Early on August 25, Beulah weakened significantly due to unfavorable conditions caused by an anticyclone to its south, falling to Category 1 intensity. After leveling off to sustained winds of 80 mph (130 km/h) several hours later, Beulah maintained this intensity for the next few days. Early on August 26, the hurricane turned northeastward under the influence of an upper-level trough offshore the East Coast of the United States. At 00:00 UTC on August 28, the hurricane transitioned into an extratropical cyclone about 235 mi (380 km) east-southeast of Cape Race, Newfoundland. The extratropical low eventually turned eastward towards western Europe. The remnants then moved erratically, striking Ireland, the United Kingdom twice, and France before entering the North Sea. On September 8, the remnants finally dissipated north of Jan Mayen. ### Hurricane Four As early as September 8, ships north of Puerto Rico reported a weak circulation. Drifting northward, the system developed tropical depression by 12:00 UTC on September 9, while situated about 355 mi (570 km) northeast of Turks and Caicos Islands. The cyclone was subtropical in nature, fueled by both latent heat and instability from contrasting cool and warm air masses. While passing Bermuda later on September 10, sustained wind speeds of 25 mph (40 km/h) and decrease in barometric pressure were observed. The system moved east-northeastward and strengthened into a tropical storm late on September 10. The cyclone intensified further and reached hurricane status early on September 12, peaking with maximum sustained winds of 80 mph (130 km/h) and a minimum barometric pressure of 990 mbar (29.23 inHg). Around that time, the Freiburg observed winds of 78 mph (126 km/h). Thereafter, the system weakened to a tropical storm about 24 hours later and accelerated to the northeast ahead of a cold front. Around 12:00 UTC on September 14, the storm was absorbed by a large extratropical cyclone while located about 725 mi (1,167 km) north-northwest of Corvo Island in the Azores. ### Tropical Storm Cindy In mid-September, a trough of low pressure was situated in the Gulf of Mexico. The system developed into Tropical Storm Cindy at 12:00 UTC on September 16, while located about 210 mi (340 km) south of Cameron, Louisiana. Cindy strengthened while moving north-northwestward. Around that time, the storm attained its peak intensity with maximum winds of 65 mph (100 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 996 mbar (29.41 inHg). Around 14:00 UTC on September 17, Cindy made landfall near High Island, Texas, at that intensity. After landfall, Cindy weakened to a tropical depression within about 22 hours. Turning southwest, the depression dissipated near Alice, Texas, at 00:00 UTC on September 20. In southwestern Louisiana, over 15 in (380 mm) of rain fell in some areas. Rice crops were flooded, causing about \$360,000 in damage. However, the precipitation was described as more beneficial than detrimental. Along the coast, tides inundated roads leading to Cameron and Holly Beach. A man drowned offshore Cameron while evacuating from an oil rig. The storm brought flooding to the southeastern Texas, particularly in and around Port Arthur. Two people drowned in the Port Acres area. Water entered 4,000 homes across Jefferson, Newton, and Orange counties. In Oklahoma, flooding in Guthrie prompted 300 residents to flee their homes; water intruded into 25 businesses and 35 homes. Overall, Cindy caused about \$12.5 million in damage, of which \$11.7 million stemmed from property damage. ### Hurricane Debra On September 19, a westward moving tropical wave became a tropical depression about 900 mi (1,400 km) east of the southwesternmost islands of Cape Verde. The depression moved northwestward and strengthened into Tropical Storm Debra early the next day. Despite the system's intensity at the time, a reconnaissance aircraft flight observed a radar eye on September 20. On the next day, Debra curved northward and intensified into a hurricane around 18:00 UTC. The cyclone peaked with maximum sustained winds of 75 mph (120 km/h) and a minimum barometric pressure of 999 mbar (29.50 inHg). Debra soon began weakening and fell to tropical storm status late on September 22. The system continued weakening and dissipated late on September 24, while located about halfway between Bermuda and Flores Island in the Azores. ### September tropical depression A tropical wave or trough of low-pressure developed into a tropical depression over the Bay of Campeche on September 23. The depression remained nearly stationary due to a frontal boundary over the northern Gulf of Mexico. On September 26, the depression struck the west coast of the Yucatán Peninsula and re-emerged into the Bay of Campeche on the following day. Ships near the area reported barometric pressures of less than 1,005 mbar (29.7 inHg) but not gale-force winds. It is unknown if the depression remained a tropical cyclone beyond September 27, though it may have become a subtropical cyclone on September 28. The remnants of the depression became extratropical and moved rapidly northeastward, crossing Florida on September 29 and then dissipating offshore the Northeastern United States by October 1. ### Hurricane Edith An Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) disturbance developed into a tropical depression while east of the Windward Islands on September 23. The depression strengthened into Tropical Storm Edith early the next day. Several hours later, Edith intensified into a hurricane. Around 00:00 UTC on September 25, the cyclone became a Category 2 hurricane just north of Barbados and peaked with winds of 100 mph (155 km/h). Seven hours later, Edith struck Saint Lucia at the same intensity. The storm traversed the eastern Caribbean Sea and weakened to a tropical storm early on September 26. Edith then turned northwestward and briefly became a hurricane again, but weakened to a tropical storm before making landfall near La Romana, Dominican Republic, at 10:00 UTC the next day. Interaction with land and an upper-level trough caused Edith to weaken considerably before it emerged into the Atlantic on September 28. Several hours later, Edith struck Providenciales in the Turks and Caicos Islands as a tropical storm. The storm weakened to a tropical depression and became extratropical just east of the Bahamas on September 29. The extratropical low was soon absorbed by an extratropical system developing offshore the East Coast of the United States. In Martinique, a wind gust of 127 mph (204 km/h) was observed at Le Lamentin Airport; tides about 8 ft (2.4 m) above normal and heavy rainfall impacted the island. Throughout the island, about 6,000 homes were demolished and 13,000 other were severely impacted. Agriculture suffered significantly, with bananas and other food crops destroyed, while sugar cane experienced significant damage. Winds up to 80 mph (130 km/h) caused significant damage on Dominica and strong winds on Saint Lucia ruined about half of the island's banana crop. In Puerto Rico, the storm brought heavy rainfall to the southwest corner of the island and abnormally high tides to the south coast. Several beach front properties were badly damaged, particularly in the Salinas municipality. Overall, Edith caused 10 deaths, all on Martinique, and approximately \$46.6 million in damage. ### Hurricane Flora A tropical wave developed into a tropical depression well east of the Lesser Antilles at 12:00 UTC on September 28. About 24 hours later, the depression strengthened into Tropical Storm Flora. The cyclone intensified into a Category 1 hurricane early on September 29 and became a Category 2 hurricane before striking Tobago several hours later. Flora continued west-northwestward into the Caribbean and intensified into a Category 3 hurricane early on October 2 and became a Category 4 about 24 hours later. At 18:00 UTC on October 3, Flora peaked with winds of 150 mph (240 km/h). Early the next day, the hurricane made landfall in southwestern Haiti at the same intensity. Flora re-emerged into the Caribbean several hours later as a Category 3 hurricane. Late on October 4, the cyclone made landfall near San Antonio del Sur, Cuba, with winds of 120 mph (195 km/h). A ridge to the north caused Flora to stall and move erratically over eastern Cuba for four days. Flora weakened slowly over land, falling to a Category 1 hurricane on October 5, but re-strengthened into a Category 2 after briefly emerging into the Gulf of Guacanayabo. Flora weakened to a tropical storm late on October 7, about 24 hours before emerging into the Atlantic. However, Flora quickly re-strengthened into a Category 2 hurricane and pass through the southeastern Bahamas early on October 9. Thereafter, Flora continued northeastward and gradually weakened, falling to Category 1 intensity on October 11. Flora gradually lost convection and became extratropical on October 12 while located 270 mi (430 km) east-southeast of Cape Race, Newfoundland. The extratropical remnants continued north-northeastward until a larger extratropical cyclone absorbed it offshore Greenland on October 17. In Trinidad and Tobago, abnormally high tides capsized six ships in Scarborough harbor, while strong winds caused severe effects to coconut, banana, and cocoa plantations, with 50% of the coconut trees destroyed and 11% severely damaged. About 2,750 houses were destroyed, while 3,500 others were impacted. The hurricane killed 24 people and resulted in \$30.1 million damage. Six additional drowning fatalities occurred in Grenada. The slow movement of the storm resulted in record rainfall totals for the Greater Antilles. In Dominican Republic, over 3,800 sq mi (9,800 km²) of land was flooded. Bridges and roads were significantly damaged, with many roads left unpassable for several months. The hurricane caused about \$60 million in damage and over 400 deaths. In Haiti, flash floods washed out large sections of several towns, while mudslides buried some entire cities. In most areas, crops were entirely destroyed. Additionally, the combination of rough waves and strong winds destroyed three entire communities. About 3,500 people were confirmed dead and damage ranged from \$125 million to \$180 million. In Cuba, the storm dropped 100.39 in (2,550 mm) of rainfall at Santiago de Cuba. Nearly all crops in southeastern Cuba were affected by strong winds and flooding. Many citizens were left stranded at the tops of their houses. Several entire houses were swept away by the flooding, and many roads and bridges were destroyed, resulting in major disruptions to communications. Throughout the country, the hurricane destroyed as many as 30,000 dwellings. Flora left at least 1,750 fatalities and \$500 million in damage in Cuba. In Jamaica, the storm produced up to 60 in (1,500 mm) of precipitation at Spring Hill. Flora was attributed to 11 deaths and about \$11.9 million in damage on the island. In the Bahamas, the storm left damage to crops, property, and roads that exceeded \$1.5 million in damage, while one person drowned. Overall, Hurricane Flora caused at least 7,193 deaths and over \$783.4 million in damage. ### Hurricane Ginny Late on October 17, a tropical depression formed near Turks and Caicos from the interaction of a trough and a tropical wave, although the system was not very tropical due to cold air. The depression intensified into Tropical Storm Ginny early on October 19. The next day, Ginny attained hurricane status, and approached North Carolina before looping to the southwest due to a ridge over New England. By October 22, Ginny crossed the Gulf Stream and intensified, developing an eye. Ahead of an advancing trough, Ginny turned sharply northward and later northeastward, paralleling the coast of the Southeastern United States. For eight days, the storm was within 250 mi (400 km) of the United States coastline. Moving farther offshore, Ginny gradually intensified and peaked with maximum sustained winds of 110 mph (175 km/h) late on October 28. Later that day, Ginny made landfall in Yarmouth County, Nova Scotia, shortly before becoming extratropical. Its remnants dissipated on October 30 over the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. Early in its existence, Ginny dropped heavy rainfall across the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas. In Florida and Georgia, Ginny produced above normal tides that caused minor damage and beach erosion. Rainfall was beneficial in South Carolina, and in North Carolina, high tides caused minor flooding and destroyed one house. In Massachusetts, wind gusts reached 76 mph (122 km/h) in Nantucket, and 1,000 homes lost power in Chatham. Ginny was the latest hurricane on record to affect Maine during a calendar year. During its passage, the storm brought an influx of cold air that produced up to 4 ft (1.2 m) of snow in northern Maine, killing two people. Offshore, many boats were damaged or ripped from their moorings; one person died from a heart attack while trying to rescue his boat. Damage from Ginny in the United States was estimated at \$400,000. In Canada, high winds downed trees and caused power outages, leaving the entirety of Prince Edward Island without power. ### Tropical Storm Helena A tropical wave accompanied by a large area of convection moved westward in late October. On October 25, the wave spawned a tropical depression, based on ship and reconnaissance flights reports of southwest winds and heavy rainfall. Although poorly defined, the system gradually intensified and became Tropical Storm Helena. Late on October 26, Helena entered the Caribbean after passing between Dominica and Guadeloupe. The storm reached peak winds of 50 mph (85 km/h) on October 27. Its slow, erratic movement and failure to intensify further was due to a weak trough across the region. Early on October 28, Helena struck Antigua at the same intensity. Around this time, the storm developed an intense rainband that produced winds of 58 mph (93 km/h), as measured by reconnaissance aircraft between Dominica and Guadeloupe. However, Helena re-emerged into the Atlantic and weakened to a tropical depression on October 29 and dissipated on the following day. The threat of Helena prompted the San Juan Weather Bureau to issue a hurricane watch and later gale warnings for portions of the Lesser Antilles. On the Guadeloupe, the storm left 500 people homeless, killed 5 people, and seriously injured 14 others. Several boats were heavily damaged or sank. Damage was estimated at \$500,000. ## Storm names The following names were used for named storms (tropical storms and hurricanes) that formed in the North Atlantic in 1963. Storms were named Ginny and Helena for the first time in 1963. Names that were not assigned are marked in . ### Retirement The name Flora was later retired and replaced by Fern. ## Season effects The following table lists all of the storms that have formed in the 1963 Atlantic hurricane season. It includes their duration, names, landfall(s) (in parentheses), damages, and death totals. Deaths in parentheses are additional and indirect (an example of an indirect death would be a traffic accident), but were still related to that storm. Damage and deaths include totals while the storm was extratropical, a wave, or a low, and all of the damage figures are in 1963 USD. ## See also - 1963 Pacific hurricane season - 1963 Pacific typhoon season - 1963 North Indian Ocean cyclone season - Australian region cyclone seasons: 1962–63 1963–64 - South Pacific cyclone seasons: 1962–63 1963–64 - South-West Indian Ocean cyclone seasons: 1962–63 1963–64

New Age

Range of new religious beliefs and practices

New Age is a range of spiritual or religious practices and beliefs which rapidly grew in Western society during the early 1970s. Its highly eclectic and unsystematic structure makes a precise definition difficult. Although many scholars consider it a religious movement, its adherents typically see it as spiritual or as unifying Mind-Body-Spirit, and rarely use the term New Age themselves. Scholars often call it the New Age movement, although others contest this term and suggest it is better seen as a milieu or zeitgeist. As a form of Western esotericism, the New Age drew heavily upon esoteric traditions such as the occultism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including the work of Emanuel Swedenborg and Franz Mesmer, as well as Spiritualism, New Thought, and Theosophy. More immediately, it arose from mid-twentieth century influences such as the UFO religions of the 1950s, the counterculture of the 1960s, and the Human Potential Movement. Its exact origins remain contested, but it became a major movement in the 1970s, at which time it was centered largely in the United Kingdom. It expanded widely in the 1980s and 1990s, in particular in the United States. By the start of the 21st century, the term New Age was increasingly rejected within this milieu, with some scholars arguing that the New Age phenomenon had ended. Despite its eclectic nature, the New Age has several main currents. Theologically, the New Age typically accepts a holistic form of divinity that pervades the universe, including human beings themselves, leading to a strong emphasis on the spiritual authority of the self. This is accompanied by a common belief in a variety of semi-divine non-human entities, such as angels and masters, with whom humans can communicate, particularly by channeling through a human intermediary. Typically viewing history as divided into spiritual ages, a common New Age belief is in a forgotten age of great technological advancement and spiritual wisdom, declining into periods of increasing violence and spiritual degeneracy, which will now be remedied by the emergence of an Age of Aquarius, from which the milieu gets its name. There is also a strong focus on healing, particularly using forms of alternative medicine, and an emphasis on unifying science with spirituality. The dedication of New Agers varied considerably, from those who adopted a number of New Age ideas and practices to those who fully embraced and dedicated their lives to it. The New Age has generated criticism from Christians as well as modern Pagan and Indigenous communities. From the 1990s onward, the New Age became the subject of research by academic scholars of religious studies. ## Definitions The New Age phenomenon has proved difficult to define, with much scholarly disagreement as to its scope. The scholars Steven J. Sutcliffe and Ingvild Sælid Gilhus have even suggested that it remains "among the most disputed of categories in the study of religion". The scholar of religion Paul Heelas characterised the New Age as "an eclectic hotch-potch of beliefs, practices, and ways of life" that can be identified as a singular phenomenon through their use of "the same (or very similar) lingua franca to do with the human (and planetary) condition and how it can be transformed." Similarly, the historian of religion Olav Hammer termed it "a common denominator for a variety of quite divergent contemporary popular practices and beliefs" that have emerged since the late 1970s and are "largely united by historical links, a shared discourse and an air de famille". According to Hammer, this New Age was a "fluid and fuzzy cultic milieu". The sociologist of religion Michael York described the New Age as "an umbrella term that includes a great variety of groups and identities" that are united by their "expectation of a major and universal change being primarily founded on the individual and collective development of human potential." The scholar of religion Wouter Hanegraaff adopted a different approach by asserting that "New Age" was "a label attached indiscriminately to whatever seems to fit it" and that as a result it "means very different things to different people". He thus argued against the idea that the New Age could be considered "a unified ideology or Weltanschauung", although he believed that it could be considered a "more or less unified 'movement'." Other scholars have suggested that the New Age is too diverse to be a singular movement. The scholar of religion George D. Chryssides called it "a counter-cultural Zeitgeist", while the sociologist of religion Steven Bruce suggested that New Age was a milieu; Heelas and scholar of religion Linda Woodhead called it the "holistic milieu". There is no central authority within the New Age phenomenon that can determine what counts as New Age and what does not. Many of those groups and individuals who could analytically be categorised as part of the New Age reject the term New Age in reference to themselves. Some even express active hostility to the term. Rather than terming themselves New Agers, those involved in this milieu commonly describe themselves as spiritual "seekers", and some self-identify as a member of a different religious group, such as Christianity, Judaism, or Buddhism. In 2003 Sutcliffe observed that the use of the term New Age was "optional, episodic and declining overall", adding that among the very few individuals who did use it, they usually did so with qualification, for instance by placing it in quotation marks. Other academics, such as Sara MacKian, have argued that the sheer diversity of the New Age renders the term too problematic for scholars to use. MacKian proposed "everyday spirituality" as an alternate term. While acknowledging that New Age was a problematic term, the scholar of religion James R. Lewis stated that it remained a useful etic category for scholars to use because "There exists no comparable term which covers all aspects of the movement." Similarly, Chryssides argued that the fact that "New Age" is a "theoretical concept" does not "undermine its usefulness or employability"; he drew comparisons with "Hinduism", a similar "Western etic piece of vocabulary" that scholars of religion used despite its problems. ### Religion, spirituality, and esotericism In discussing the New Age, academics have varyingly referred to "New Age spirituality" and "New Age religion". Those involved in the New Age rarely consider it to be "religion"—negatively associating that term solely with organized religion—and instead describe their practices as "spirituality". Religious studies scholars, however, have repeatedly referred to the New Age milieu as a "religion". York described the New Age as a new religious movement (NRM). Conversely, both Heelas and Sutcliffe rejected this categorisation; Heelas believed that while elements of the New Age represented NRMs, this did not apply to every New Age group. Similarly, Chryssides stated that the New Age could not be seen as "a religion" in itself. The New Age is also a form of Western esotericism. Hanegraaff regarded the New Age as a form of "popular culture criticism", in that it represented a reaction against the dominant Western values of Judeo-Christian religion and rationalism, adding that "New Age religion formulates such criticism not at random, but falls back on" the ideas of earlier Western esoteric groups. The New Age has also been identified by various scholars of religion as part of the cultic milieu. This concept, developed by the sociologist Colin Campbell, refers to a social network of marginalised ideas. Through their shared marginalisation within a given society, these disparate ideas interact and create new syntheses. Hammer identified much of the New Age as corresponding to the concept of "folk religions" in that it seeks to deal with existential questions regarding subjects like death and disease in "an unsystematic fashion, often through a process of bricolage from already available narratives and rituals". York also heuristically divides the New Age into three broad trends. The first, the social camp, represents groups that primarily seek to bring about social change, while the second, the occult camp, instead focus on contact with spirit entities and channeling. York's third group, the spiritual camp, represents a middle ground between these two camps that focuses largely on individual development. ### Terminology The term new age, along with related terms like new era and new world, long predate the emergence of the New Age movement, and have widely been used to assert that a better way of life for humanity is dawning. It occurs commonly, for instance, in political contexts; the Great Seal of the United States, designed in 1782, proclaims a "new order of ages", while in the 1980s the Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev proclaimed that "all mankind is entering a new age". The term has also appeared within Western esoteric schools of thought, having a scattered use from the mid-nineteenth century onward. In 1864 the American Swedenborgian Warren Felt Evans published The New Age and its Message, while in 1907 Alfred Orage and Holbrook Jackson began editing a weekly journal of Christian liberalism and socialism titled The New Age. The concept of a coming "new age" that would be inaugurated by the return to Earth of Jesus Christ was a theme in the poetry of Wellesley Tudor Pole (1884–1968) and of Johanna Brandt (1876–1964), and then also appeared in the work of the British-born American Theosophist Alice Bailey (1880–1949), featuring prominently in such titles as Discipleship in the New Age (1944) and Education in the New Age (1954). Carl Jung frequently wrote of the "new aeon/aion," denoting the shift from the "Platonic month" of Pisces to that of Aquarius. Between the 1930s and 1960s a small number of groups and individuals became preoccupied with the concept of a coming "New Age" and prominently used the term accordingly. The term had thus become a recurring motif in the esoteric spirituality milieu. Sutcliffe, therefore, expressed the view that while the term New Age had originally been an "apocalyptic emblem", it would only be later that it became "a tag or codeword for a 'spiritual' idiom". ## History ### Antecedents According to scholar Nevill Drury, the New Age has a "tangible history", although Hanegraaff expressed the view that most New Agers were "surprisingly ignorant about the actual historical roots of their beliefs". Similarly, Hammer thought that "source amnesia" was a "building block of a New Age worldview", with New Agers typically adopting ideas with no awareness of where those ideas originated. As a form of Western esotericism, the New Age has antecedents that stretch back to southern Europe in Late Antiquity. Following the Age of Enlightenment in 18th century Europe, new esoteric ideas developed in response to the development of scientific rationality. Scholars call this new esoteric trend occultism, and this occultism was a key factor in the development of the worldview from which the New Age emerged. One of the earliest influences on the New Age was the Swedish 18th century Christian mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, who professed the ability to communicate with angels, demons, and spirits. Swedenborg's attempt to unite science and religion and his prediction of a coming era in particular have been cited as ways that he prefigured the New Age. Another early influence was the late 18th and early 19th century German physician and hypnotist Franz Mesmer, who claimed the existence of a force known as "animal magnetism" running through the human body. The establishment of Spiritualism, an occult religion influenced by both Swedenborgianism and Mesmerism, in the U.S. during the 1840s has also been identified as a precursor to the New Age, in particular through its rejection of established Christianity, its claims to representing a scientific approach to religion, and its emphasis on channeling spirit entities. A further major influence on the New Age was the Theosophical Society, an occult group co-founded by the Russian Helena Blavatsky in the late 19th century. In her books Isis Unveiled (1877) and The Secret Doctrine (1888), Blavatsky claimed that her Society was conveying the essence of all world religions, and it thus emphasized a focus on comparative religion. Serving as a partial bridge between Theosophical ideas and those of the New Age was the American esotericist Edgar Cayce, who founded the Association for Research and Enlightenment. Another partial bridge was the Danish mystic Martinus who is popular in Scandinavia. Another influence was New Thought, which developed in late nineteenth century New England as a Christian-oriented healing movement before spreading throughout the United States. Another prominent influence was the psychologist Carl Jung. Drury also identified as an important influence upon the New Age the Indian Swami Vivekananda, an adherent of the philosophy of Vedanta who first brought Hinduism to the West in the late 19th century. Hanegraaff believed that the New Age's direct antecedents could be found in the UFO religions of the 1950s, which he termed a "proto-New Age movement". Many of these new religious movements had strong apocalyptic beliefs regarding a coming new age, which they typically asserted would be brought about by contact with extraterrestrials. Examples of such groups included the Aetherius Society, founded in the UK in 1955, and the Heralds of the New Age, established in New Zealand in 1956. ### 1960s From a historical perspective, the New Age phenomenon is most associated with the counterculture of the 1960s. According to author Andrew Grant Jackson, George Harrison's adoption of Hindu philosophy and Indian instrumentation in his songs with the Beatles in the mid-1960s, together with the band's highly publicised study of Transcendental Meditation, "truly kick-started" the Human Potential Movement that subsequently became New Age. Although not common throughout the counterculture, usage of the terms New Age and Age of Aquarius—used in reference to a coming era—were found within it, for instance appearing on adverts for the Woodstock festival of 1969, and in the lyrics of "Aquarius", the opening song of the 1967 musical Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical. This decade also witnessed the emergence of a variety of new religious movements and newly established religions in the United States, creating a spiritual milieu from which the New Age drew upon; these included the San Francisco Zen Center, Transcendental Meditation, Soka Gakkai, the Inner Peace Movement, the Church of All Worlds, and the Church of Satan. Although there had been an established interest in Asian religious ideas in the U.S. from at least the eighteenth-century, many of these new developments were variants of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sufism, which had been imported to the West from Asia following the U.S. government's decision to rescind the Asian Exclusion Act in 1965. In 1962 the Esalen Institute was established in Big Sur, California. Esalen and similar personal growth centers had developed links to humanistic psychology, and from this, the human potential movement emerged and strongly influenced the New Age. In Britain, a number of small religious groups that came to be identified as the "light" movement had begun declaring the existence of a coming new age, influenced strongly by the Theosophical ideas of Blavatsky and Bailey. The most prominent of these groups was the Findhorn Foundation, which founded the Findhorn Ecovillage in the Scottish area of Findhorn, Moray in 1962. Although its founders were from an older generation, Findhorn attracted increasing numbers of countercultural baby boomers during the 1960s, to the extent that its population had grown sixfold to c. 120 residents by 1972. In October 1965, the co-founder of Findhorn Foundation, Peter Caddy, a former member of the occult Rosicrucian Order Crotona Fellowship, attended a meeting of various prominent figures within Britain's esoteric milieu; advertised as "The Significance of the Group in the New Age", it was held at Attingham Park over the course of a weekend. All of these groups created the backdrop from which the New Age movement emerged. As James R. Lewis and J. Gordon Melton point out, the New Age phenomenon represents "a synthesis of many different preexisting movements and strands of thought". Nevertheless, York asserted that while the New Age bore many similarities with both earlier forms of Western esotericism and Asian religion, it remained "distinct from its predecessors in its own self-consciousness as a new way of thinking". ### Emergence and development: c. 1970–2000 By the early 1970s, use of the term New Age was increasingly common within the cultic milieu. This was because—according to Sutcliffe—the "emblem" of the "New Age" had been passed from the "subcultural pioneers" in groups like Findhorn to the wider array of "countercultural baby boomers" between c. 1967 and 1974. He noted that as this happened, the meaning of the term New Age changed; whereas it had once referred specifically to a coming era, at this point it came to be used in a wider sense to refer to a variety of spiritual activities and practices. In the latter part of the 1970s, the New Age expanded to cover a wide variety of alternative spiritual and religious beliefs and practices, not all of which explicitly held to the belief in the Age of Aquarius, but were nevertheless widely recognised as broadly similar in their search for "alternatives" to mainstream society. In doing so, the "New Age" became a banner under which to bring together the wider "cultic milieu" of American society. The counterculture of the 1960s had rapidly declined by the start of the 1970s, in large part due to the collapse of the commune movement, but it would be many former members of the counter-culture and hippie subculture who subsequently became early adherents of the New Age movement. The exact origins of the New Age movement remain an issue of debate; Melton asserted that it emerged in the early 1970s, whereas Hanegraaff instead traced its emergence to the latter 1970s, adding that it then entered its full development in the 1980s. This early form of the movement was based largely in Britain and exhibited a strong influence from Theosophy and Anthroposophy. Hanegraaff termed this early core of the movement the New Age sensu stricto, or "New Age in the strict sense". Hanegraaff terms the broader development the New Age sensu lato, or "New Age in the wider sense". Stores that came to be known as "New Age shops" opened up, selling related books, magazines, jewellery, and crystals, and they were typified by the playing of New Age music and the smell of incense.This probably influenced several thousand small metaphysical book- and gift-stores that increasingly defined themselves as "New Age bookstores", while New Age titles came to be increasingly available from mainstream bookstores and then websites like Amazon.com. Not everyone who came to be associated with the New Age phenomenon openly embraced the term New Age, although it was popularised in books like David Spangler's 1977 work Revelation: The Birth of a New Age and Mark Satin's 1979 book New Age Politics: Healing Self and Society. Marilyn Ferguson's 1982 book The Aquarian Conspiracy has also been regarded as a landmark work in the development of the New Age, promoting the idea that a new era was emerging. Other terms that were employed synonymously with New Age in this milieu included "Green", "Holistic", "Alternative", and "Spiritual". 1971 witnessed the foundation of est by Werner H. Erhard, a transformational training course that became a prominent part of the early movement. Melton suggested that the 1970s witnessed the growth of a relationship between the New Age movement and the older New Thought movement, as evidenced by the widespread use of Helen Schucman's A Course in Miracles (1975), New Age music, and crystal healing in New Thought churches. Some figures in the New Thought movement were skeptical, challenging the compatibility of New Age and New Thought perspectives. During these decades, Findhorn had become a site of pilgrimage for many New Agers, and greatly expanded in size as people joined the community, with workshops and conferences being held there that brought together New Age thinkers from across the world. Several key events occurred, which raised public awareness of the New Age subculture: publication of Linda Goodman's best-selling astrology books Sun Signs (1968) and Love Signs (1978); the release of Shirley MacLaine's book Out on a Limb (1983), later adapted into a television mini-series with the same name (1987); and the "Harmonic Convergence" planetary alignment on August 16 and 17, 1987, organized by José Argüelles in Sedona, Arizona. The Convergence attracted more people to the movement than any other single event. Heelas suggested that the movement was influenced by the "enterprise culture" encouraged by the U.S. and U.K. governments during the 1980s onward, with its emphasis on initiative and self-reliance resonating with any New Age ideas. The claims of channelers Jane Roberts (Seth Material), Helen Schucman (A Course in Miracles), J. Z. Knight (Ramtha), Neale Donald Walsch (Conversations with God) (note that Walsch denies being a "channeler" and his books make it obvious that he is not one, though the text emerged through a dialogue with a deeper part of himself in a process comparable to automatic writing) contributed to the movement's growth. The first significant exponent of the New Age movement in the U.S. has been cited as Ram Dass. Core works in the propagating of New Age ideas included Jane Roberts's Seth series, published from 1972 onward, Helen Schucman's 1975 publication A Course in Miracles, and James Redfield's 1993 work The Celestine Prophecy. A number of these books became best sellers, such as the Seth book series which quickly sold over a million copies. Supplementing these books were videos, audiotapes, compact discs and websites. The development of the internet in particular further popularized New Age ideas and made them more widely accessible. New Age ideas influenced the development of rave culture in the late 1980s and 1990s. In Britain during the 1980s, the term New Age Travellers came into use, although York characterised this term as "a misnomer created by the media". These New Age Travellers had little to do with the New Age as the term was used more widely, with scholar of religion Daren Kemp observing that "New Age spirituality is not an essential part of New Age Traveller culture, although there are similarities between the two worldviews". The term New Age came to be used increasingly widely by the popular media in the 1990s. ### Decline or transformation: 1990–present By the late 1980s, some publishers dropped the term New Age as a marketing device. In 1994, the scholar of religion Gordon J. Melton presented a conference paper in which he argued that, given that he knew of nobody describing their practices as "New Age" anymore, the New Age had died. In 2001, Hammer observed that the term New Age had increasingly been rejected as either pejorative or meaningless by individuals within the Western cultic milieu. He also noted that within this milieu it was not being replaced by any alternative and that as such a sense of collective identity was being lost. Other scholars disagreed with Melton's idea; in 2004 Daren Kemp stated that "New Age is still very much alive". Hammer himself stated that "the New Age movement may be on the wane, but the wider New Age religiosity... shows no sign of disappearing". MacKian suggested that the New Age "movement" had been replaced by a wider "New Age sentiment" which had come to pervade "the socio-cultural landscape" of Western countries. Its diffusion into the mainstream may have been influenced by the adoption of New Age concepts by high-profile figures: U.S. First Lady Nancy Reagan consulted an astrologer, British Princess Diana visited spirit mediums, and Norwegian Princess Märtha Louise established a school devoted to communicating with angels. New Age shops continued to operate, although many have been remarketed as "Mind, Body, Spirit". In 2015, the scholar of religion Hugh Urban argued that New Age spirituality is growing in the United States and can be expected to become more visible: "According to many recent surveys of religious affiliation, the 'spiritual but not religious' category is one of the fastest-growing trends in American culture, so the New Age attitude of spiritual individualism and eclecticism may well be an increasingly visible one in the decades to come". Australian scholar Paul J. Farrelly, in his 2017 doctoral dissertation at Australian National University, argued that, while the term New Age may become less popular in the West, it is actually booming in Taiwan, where it is regarded as something comparatively new and is being exported from Taiwan to the Mainland China, where it is more or less tolerated by the authorities. ## Beliefs and practices ### Eclecticism and self-spirituality The New Age places strong emphasis on the idea that the individual and their own experiences are the primary source of authority on spiritual matters. It exhibits what Heelas termed "unmediated individualism", and reflects a world-view that is "radically democratic". It places an emphasis on the freedom and autonomy of the individual. This emphasis has led to ethical disagreements; some New Agers believe helping others is beneficial, although another view is that doing so encourages dependency and conflicts with a reliance on the self. Nevertheless, within the New Age, there are differences in the role accorded to voices of authority outside of the self. Hammer stated that "a belief in the existence of a core or true Self" is a "recurring theme" in New Age texts. The concept of "personal growth" is also greatly emphasised among New Agers, while Heelas noted that "for participants spirituality is life-itself". New Age religiosity is typified by its eclecticism. Generally believing that there is no one true way to pursue spirituality, New Agers develop their own worldview "by combining bits and pieces to form their own individual mix", seeking what Drury called "a spirituality without borders or confining dogmas". The anthropologist David J. Hess noted that in his experience, a common attitude among New Agers was that "any alternative spiritual path is good because it is spiritual and alternative". This approach that has generated a common jibe that New Age represents "supermarket spirituality". York suggested that this eclecticism stemmed from the New Age's origins within late modern capitalism, with New Agers subscribing to a belief in a free market of spiritual ideas as a parallel to a free market in economics. As part of its eclecticism, the New Age draws ideas from many different cultural and spiritual traditions from across the world, often legitimising this approach by reference to "a very vague claim" about underlying global unity. Certain societies are more usually chosen over others; examples include the ancient Celts, ancient Egyptians, the Essenes, Atlanteans, and ancient extraterrestrials. As noted by Hammer: "to put it bluntly, no significant spokespersons within the New Age community claim to represent ancient Albanian wisdom, simply because beliefs regarding ancient Albanians are not part of our cultural stereotypes". According to Hess, these ancient or foreign societies represent an exotic "Other" for New Agers, who are predominantly white Westerners. ### Theology, cosmogony, and cosmology A belief in divinity is integral to New Age ideas, although understandings of this divinity vary. New Age theology exhibits an inclusive and universalistic approach that accepts all personal perspectives on the divine as equally valid. This intentional vagueness as to the nature of divinity also reflects the New Age idea that divinity cannot be comprehended by the human mind or language. New Age literature nevertheless displays recurring traits in its depiction of the divine: the first is the idea that it is holistic, thus frequently being described with such terms as an "Ocean of Oneness", "Infinite Spirit", "Primal Stream", "One Essence", and "Universal Principle". A second trait is the characterisation of divinity as "Mind", "Consciousness", and "Intelligence", while a third is the description of divinity as a form of "energy". A fourth trait is the characterisation of divinity as a "life force", the essence of which is creativity, while a fifth is the concept that divinity consists of love. Most New Age groups believe in an Ultimate Source from which all things originate, which is usually conflated with the divine. Various creation myths have been articulated in New Age publications outlining how this Ultimate Source created the universe and everything in it. In contrast, some New Agers emphasize the idea of a universal inter-relatedness that is not always emanating from a single source. The New Age worldview emphasises holism and the idea that everything in existence is intricately connected as part of a single whole, in doing so rejecting both the dualism of the Christian division of matter and spirit and the reductionism of Cartesian science. A number of New Agers have linked this holistic interpretation of the universe to the Gaia hypothesis of James Lovelock. The idea of holistic divinity results in a common New Age belief that humans themselves are divine in essence, a concept described using such terms as "droplet of divinity", "inner Godhead", and "divine self". Influenced by Theosophical and Anthroposophical ideas regarding 'subtle bodies', a common New Age idea holds to the existence of a "Higher Self" that is a part of the human but connects with the divine essence of the universe, and which can advise the human mind through intuition. Cosmogonical creation stories are common in New Age sources, with these accounts reflecting the movement's holistic framework by describing an original, primal oneness from which all things in the universe emanated. An additional common theme is that human souls—once living in a spiritual world—then descended into a world of matter. The New Age movement typically views the material universe as a meaningful illusion, which humans should try to use constructively rather than focus on escaping into other spiritual realms. This physical world is hence seen as "a domain for learning and growth" after which the human soul might pass on to higher levels of existence. There is thus a widespread belief that reality is engaged in an ongoing process of evolution; rather than Darwinian evolution, this is typically seen as either a teleological evolution which assumes a process headed to a specific goal or an open-ended, creative evolution. ### Spirit and channeling MacKian argued that a central, but often overlooked, element of the phenomenon was an emphasis on "spirit", and in particular participants' desire for a relationship with spirit. Many practitioners in her UK-focused study described themselves as "workers for spirit", expressing the desire to help people learn about spirit. They understood various material signs as marking the presence of spirit, for instance, the unexpected appearance of a feather. New Agers often call upon this spirit to assist them in everyday situations, for instance, to ease the traffic flow on their way to work. New Age literature often refers to benevolent non-human spirit-beings who are interested in humanity's spiritual development; these are variously referred to as angels, guardian angels, personal guides, masters, teachers, and contacts. New Age angelology is nevertheless unsystematic, reflecting the idiosyncrasies of individual authors. The figure of Jesus Christ is often mentioned within New Age literature as a mediating principle between divinity and humanity, as well as an exemplar of a spiritually advanced human being. Although not present in every New Age group, a core belief within the milieu is in channeling. This is the idea that humans beings, sometimes (although not always) in a state of trance, can act "as a channel of information from sources other than their normal selves". These sources are varyingly described as being God, gods and goddesses, ascended masters, spirit guides, extraterrestrials, angels, devas, historical figures, the collective unconscious, elementals, or nature spirits. Hanegraaff described channeling as a form of "articulated revelation", and identified four forms: trance channeling, automatisms, clairaudient channeling, and open channeling. Prominent examples of New Age channeling include Jane Roberts' claims that she was contacted by an entity called Seth, and Helen Schucman's claims to have channeled Jesus Christ. The academic Suzanne Riordan examined a variety of these New Age channeled messages, noting that they typically "echoed each other in tone and content", offering an analysis of the human condition and giving instructions or advice for how humanity can discover its true destiny. For many New Agers, these channeled messages rival the scriptures of the main world religions as sources of spiritual authority, although often New Agers describe historical religious revelations as forms of "channeling" as well, thus attempting to legitimate and authenticate their own contemporary practices. Although the concept of channeling from discarnate spirit entities has links to Spiritualism and psychical research, the New Age does not feature Spiritualism's emphasis on proving the existence of life after death, nor psychical research's focus of testing mediums for consistency. ### Astrological cycles and the Age of Aquarius New Age thought typically envisions the world as developing through cosmological cycles that can be identified astrologically. It adopts this concept from Theosophy, although often presents it in a looser and more eclectic way than is found in Theosophical teaching. New Age literature often claims that humanity once lived in an age of spiritual wisdom. In the writings of New Agers like Edgar Cayce, the ancient period of spiritual wisdom is associated with concepts of supremely-advanced societies living on lost continents such as Atlantis, Lemuria, and Mu, as well as the idea that ancient societies like those of Ancient Egypt were far more technologically advanced than modern scholarship accepts. New Age literature often posits that the ancient period of spiritual wisdom gave way to an age of spiritual decline, sometimes termed the Age of Pisces. Although characterised as being a negative period for humanity, New Age literature views the Age of Pisces as an important learning experience for the species. Hanegraaff stated that New Age perceptions of history were "extremely sketchy" in their use of description, reflecting little interest in historiography and conflating history with myth. He also noted that they were highly ethnocentric in placing Western civilization at the centre of historical development. A common belief among the New Age is that humanity has entered, or is coming to enter, a new period known as the Age of Aquarius, which Melton has characterised as a "New Age of love, joy, peace, abundance, and harmony[...] the Golden Age heretofore only dreamed about." In accepting this belief in a coming new age, the milieu has been described as "highly positive, celebratory, [and] utopian", and has also been cited as an apocalyptic movement. Opinions about the nature of the coming Age of Aquarius differ among New Agers. There are for instance differences in belief about its commencement; New Age author David Spangler claimed that it began in 1967, others placed its beginning with the Harmonic Convergence of 1987, author José Argüelles predicted its start in 2012, and some believe that it will not begin until several centuries into the third millennium. There are also differences in how this new age is envisioned. Those adhering to what Hanegraaff termed the "moderate" perspective believed that it would be marked by an improvement to current society, which affected both New Age concerns—through the convergence of science and mysticism and the global embrace of alternative medicine—to more general concerns, including an end to violence, crime and war, a healthier environment, and international co-operation. Other New Agers adopt a fully utopian vision, believing that the world will be wholly transformed into an "Age of Light", with humans evolving into totally spiritual beings and experiencing unlimited love, bliss, and happiness. Rather than conceiving of the Age of Aquarius as an indefinite period, many believe that it would last for around two thousand years before being replaced by a further age. There are various beliefs within the milieu as to how this new age will come about, but most emphasise the idea that it will be established through human agency; others assert that it will be established with the aid of non-human forces such as spirits or extraterrestrials. Ferguson, for instance, claimed that there was a vanguard of humans known as the "Aquarian conspiracy" who were helping to bring the Age of Aquarius forth through their actions. Participants in the New Age typically express the view that their own spiritual actions are helping to bring about the Age of Aquarius, with writers like Ferguson and Argüelles presenting themselves as prophets ushering forth this future era. ### Healing and alternative medicine Another recurring element of New Age is an emphasis on healing and alternative medicine. The general New Age ethos is that health is the natural state for the human being and that illness is a disruption of that natural balance. Hence, New Age therapies seek to heal "illness" as a general concept that includes physical, mental, and spiritual aspects; in doing so it critiques mainstream Western medicine for simply attempting to cure disease, and thus has an affinity with most forms of traditional medicine. Its focus of self-spirituality has led to the emphasis of self-healing, although also present are ideas on healing both others and the Earth itself. The healing elements of the movement are difficult to classify given that a variety of terms are used, with some New Age authors using different terms to refer to the same trends, while others use the same term to refer to different things. However, Hanegraaff developed a set of categories into which the forms of New Age healing could be roughly categorised. The first of these was the Human Potential Movement, which argues that contemporary Western society suppresses much human potential, and accordingly professes to offer a path through which individuals can access those parts of themselves that they have alienated and suppressed, thus enabling them to reach their full potential and live a meaningful life. Hanegraaff described transpersonal psychology as the "theoretical wing" of this Human Potential Movement; in contrast to other schools of psychological thought, transpersonal psychology takes religious and mystical experiences seriously by exploring the uses of altered states of consciousness. Closely connected to this is the shamanic consciousness current, which argues that the shaman was a specialist in altered states of consciousness and seeks to adopt and imitate traditional shamanic techniques as a form of personal healing and growth. Hanegraaff identified the second main healing current in the New Age movement as being holistic health. This emerged in the 1970s out of the free clinic movement of the 1960s, and has various connections with the Human Potential Movement. It emphasises the idea that the human individual is a holistic, interdependent relationship between mind, body, and spirit, and that healing is a process in which an individual becomes whole by integrating with the powers of the universe. A very wide array of methods are utilised within the holistic health movement, with some of the most common including acupuncture, reiki, biofeedback, chiropractic, yoga, applied kinesiology, homeopathy, aromatherapy, iridology, massage and other forms of bodywork, meditation and visualisation, nutritional therapy, psychic healing, herbal medicine, healing using crystals, metals, music, chromotherapy, and reincarnation therapy. Although the use of crystal healing has become a particularly prominent visual trope within the New Age, this practice was not common in esotericism prior to their adoption in the New Age milieu. The mainstreaming of the Holistic Health movement in the UK is discussed by Maria Tighe. The inter-relation of holistic health with the New Age movement is illustrated in Jenny Butler's ethnographic description of "Angel therapy" in Ireland. ### New Age science According to Drury, the New Age attempts to create "a worldview that includes both science and spirituality", while Hess noted how New Agers have "a penchant for bringing together the technical and the spiritual, the scientific and the religious". Although New Agers typically reject rationalism, the scientific method, and the academic establishment, they employ terminology and concepts borrowed from science and particularly from the New Physics. Moreover, a number of prominent influences on New Age, such as David Bohm and Ilya Prigogine, had backgrounds as professional scientists. Hanegraaff identified "New Age science" as a form of Naturphilosophie. In this, the milieu is interested in developing unified world views to discover the nature of the divine and establish a scientific basis for religious belief. Figures in the New Age movement—most notably Fritjof Capra in his The Tao of Physics (1975) and Gary Zukav in The Dancing Wu Li Masters (1979)—have drawn parallels between theories in the New Physics and traditional forms of mysticism, thus arguing that ancient religious ideas are now being proven by contemporary science. Many New Agers have adopted James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis that the Earth acts akin to a single living organism, although have expanded this idea to include the idea that the Earth has consciousness and intelligence. Despite New Agers' appeals to science, most of the academic and scientific establishments dismiss "New Age science" as pseudo-science, or at best existing in part on the fringes of genuine scientific research. This is an attitude also shared by many active in the field of parapsychology. In turn, New Agers often accuse the scientific establishment of pursuing a dogmatic and outmoded approach to scientific enquiry, believing that their own understandings of the universe will replace those of the academic establishment in a paradigm shift. ### Ethics and afterlife There is no ethical cohesion within the New Age phenomenon, although Hanegraaff argued that the central ethical tenet of the New Age is to cultivate one's own divine potential. Given that the movement's holistic interpretation of the universe prohibits a belief in a dualistic good and evil, negative events that happen are interpreted not as the result of evil but as lessons designed to teach an individual and enable them to advance spiritually. It rejects the Christian emphasis on sin and guilt, believing that these generate fear and thus negativity, which then hinder spiritual evolution. It also typically criticises the blaming and judging of others for their actions, believing that if an individual adopts these negative attitudes it harms their own spiritual evolution. Instead, the movement emphasizes positive thinking, although beliefs regarding the power behind such thoughts vary within New Age literature. Common New Age examples of how to generate such positive thinking include the repeated recitation of mantras and statements carrying positive messages, and the visualisation of a white light. According to Hanegraaff, the question of death and afterlife is not a "pressing problem requiring an answer" in the New Age. A belief in reincarnation is very common, where it is often viewed as being part of an individual's progressive spiritual evolution toward realisation of their own divinity. In New Age literature, the reality of reincarnation is usually treated as self-evident, with no explanation as to why practitioners embrace this afterlife belief over others, although New Agers endorse it in the belief that it ensures cosmic justice. Many New Agers believe in karma, treating it as a law of cause and effect that assures cosmic balance, although in some cases they stress that it is not a system that enforces punishment for past actions. In much New Age literature on reincarnation, it is claimed that part of the human soul, that which carries the personality, perishes with the death of the body, while the Higher Self—that which connects with divinity—survives in order to be reborn into another body. It is believed that the Higher Self chooses the body and circumstances into which it will be born, in order to use it as a vessel through which to learn new lessons and thus advance its own spiritual evolution. Prominent New Age writers like Shakti Gawain and Louise Hay therefore express the view that humans are responsible for the events that happen to them during their life, an idea that many New Agers regard as empowering. At times, past life regression are employed within the New Age in order to reveal a Higher Soul's previous incarnations, usually with an explicit healing purpose. Some practitioners espouse the idea of a "soul group" or "soul family", a group of connected souls who reincarnate together as family of friendship units. Rather than reincarnation, another afterlife belief found among New Agers holds that an individual's soul returns to a "universal energy" on bodily death. ## Demographics In the mid-1990s, the New Age was found primarily in the United States and Canada, Western Europe, and Australia and New Zealand. The fact that most individuals engaging in New Age activity do not describe themselves as "New Agers" renders it difficult to determine the total number of practitioners. Heelas highlighted the range of attempts to establish the number of New Age participants in the U.S. during this period, noting that estimates ranged from 20,000 to 6 million; he believed that the higher ranges of these estimates were greatly inflated by, for instance, an erroneous assumption that all Americans who believed in reincarnation were part of the New Age. He nevertheless suggested that over 10 million people in the U.S. had had some contact with New Age practices or ideas. Between 2000 and 2002, Heelas and Woodhead conducted research into the New Age in the English town of Kendal, Cumbria; they found 600 people actively attended New Age activities on a weekly basis, representing 1.6% of the town's population. From this, they extrapolated that around 900,000 Britons regularly took part in New Age activities. In 2006, Heelas stated that New Age practices had grown to such an extent that they were "increasingly rivaling the sway of Christianity in Western settings". Sociological investigation indicates that certain sectors of society are more likely to engage in New Age practices than others. In the United States, the first people to embrace the New Age belonged to the baby boomer generation, those born between 1946 and 1964. Sutcliffe noted that although most influential New Age figureheads were male, approximately two-thirds of its participants were female. Heelas and Woodhead's Kendal Project found that of those regularly attending New Age activities in the town, 80% were female, while 78% of those running such activities were female. They attributed this female dominance to "deeply entrenched cultural values and divisions of labour" in Western society, according to which women were accorded greater responsibility for the well-being of others, thus making New Age practices more attractive to them. They suggested that men were less attracted to New Age activities because they were hampered by a "masculinist ideal of autonomy and self-sufficiency" which discouraged them from seeking the assistance of others for their inner development. The majority of New Agers are from the middle and upper-middle classes of Western society. Heelas and Woodhead found that of the active Kendal New Agers, 57% had a university or college degree. Their Kendal Project also determined that 73% of active New Agers were aged over 45, and 55% were aged between 40 and 59; it also determined that many got involved while middle-aged. Comparatively few were either young or elderly. Heelas and Woodhead suggested that the dominance of middle-aged people, particularly women, was because at this stage of life they had greater time to devote to their own inner development, with their time previously having been dominated by raising children. They also suggested that middle-aged people were experiencing more age-related ailments than the young, and thus more keen to pursue New Age activities to improve their health. Heelas added that within the baby boomers, the movement had nevertheless attracted a diverse clientele. He typified the typical New Ager as someone who was well-educated yet disenchanted with mainstream society, thus arguing that the movement catered to those who believe that modernity is in crisis. He suggested that the movement appealed to many former practitioners of the 1960s counter-culture because while they came to feel that they were unable to change society, they were nonetheless interested in changing the self. He believed that many individuals had been "culturally primed for what the New Age has to offer", with the New Age attracting "expressive" people who were already comfortable with the ideals and outlooks of the movement's self-spirituality focus. It could be particularly appealing because the New Age suited the needs of the individual, whereas traditional religious options that are available primarily catered for the needs of a community. He believed that although the adoption of New Age beliefs and practices by some fitted the model of religious conversion, others who adopted some of its practices could not easily be considered to have converted to the religion. Sutcliffe described the "typical" participant in the New Age milieu as being "a religious individualist, mixing and matching cultural resources in an animated spiritual quest". The degree to which individuals are involved in the New Age varies. Heelas argued that those involved could be divided into three broad groups; the first comprised those who were completely dedicated to it and its ideals, often working in professions that furthered those goals. The second consisted of "serious part-timers" who worked in unrelated fields but who nevertheless spent much of their free time involved in movement activities. The third was that of "casual part-timers" who occasionally involved themselves in New Age activities but for whom the movement was not a central aspect of their life. MacKian instead suggested that involvement could be seen as being layered like an onion; at the core are "consultative" practitioners who devote their life to New Age practices, around that are "serious" practitioners who still invest considerable effort into New Age activities, and on the periphery are "non-practitioner consumers", individuals affected by the general dissemination of New Age ideas but who do not devote themselves more fully to them. Many New Age practices have filtered into wider Western society, with a 2000 poll, for instance, revealing that 39% of the UK population had tried alternative therapies. In 1995, Kyle stated that on the whole, New Agers in the United States preferred the values of the Democratic Party over those of the Republican Party. He added that most New Agers "soundly rejected" the agenda of former Republican President Ronald Reagan. ### Social communities MacKian suggested that this phenomenon was "an inherently social mode of spirituality", one which cultivated a sense of belonging among its participants and encouraged relations both with other humans and with non-human, otherworldly spirit entities. MacKian suggested that these communities "may look very different" from those of traditional religious groups. Online connections were one of the ways that interested individuals met new contacts and established networks. ## Commercial aspects Some New Agers advocate living in a simple and sustainable manner to reduce humanity's impact on the natural resources of Earth; and they shun consumerism. The New Age movement has been centered around rebuilding a sense of community to counter social disintegration; this has been attempted through the formation of intentional communities, where individuals come together to live and work in a communal lifestyle. New Age centres have been set up in various parts of the world, representing an institutionalised form of the movement. Notable examples include the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, Holly Hock Farm near to Vancouver, the Wrekin Trust in West Malvern, Worcestershire, and the Skyros Centre in Skyros. Criticising mainstream Western education as counterproductive to the ethos of the movement, many New Age groups have established their own schools for the education of children, although in other cases such groups have sought to introduce New Age spiritual techniques into pre-existing establishments. Bruce argued that in seeking to "denying the validity of externally imposed controls and privileging the divine within", the New Age sought to dismantle pre-existing social order, but that it failed to present anything adequate in its place. Heelas, however, cautioned that Bruce had arrived at this conclusion based on "flimsy evidence", and Aldred argued that only a minority of New Agers participate in community-focused activities; instead, she claimed, the majority of New Agers participate mainly through the purchase of books and products targeted at the New Age market, positioning New Age as a primarily consumerist and commercial movement. ### Fairs and festivals New Age spirituality has led to a wide array of literature on the subject and an active niche market, with books, music, crafts, and services in alternative medicine available at New Age stores, fairs, and festivals. New Age fairs—sometimes known as "Mind, Body, Spirit fairs", "psychic fairs", or "alternative health fairs"—are spaces in which a variety of goods and services are displayed by different vendors, including forms of alternative medicine and esoteric practices such as palmistry or tarot card reading. A prominent example is the Mind Body Spirit Festival, held annually in the United Kingdom, at which—the religious studies scholar Christopher Partridge noted—one could encounter "a wide range of beliefs and practices from crystal healing to ... Kirlian photography to psychic art, from angels to past-life therapy, from Theosophy to UFO religion, and from New Age music to the vegetarianism of Suma Chign Hai." Similar festivals are held across Europe and in Australia and the United States. ### Approaches to financial prosperity and business A number of New Age proponents have emphasised the use of spiritual techniques as a tool for attaining financial prosperity, thus moving the movement away from its counter-cultural origins. Commenting on this "New Age capitalism", Hess observed that it was largely small-scale and entrepreneurial, focused around small companies run by members of the petty bourgeoisie, rather than being dominated by large scale multinational corporations. The links between New Age and commercial products have resulted in the accusation that New Age itself is little more than a manifestation of consumerism. This idea is generally rejected by New Age participants, who often reject any link between their practices and consumerist activities. Embracing this attitude, various books have been published espousing such an ethos, established New Age centres have held spiritual retreats and classes aimed specifically at business people, and New Age groups have developed specialised training for businesses. During the 1980s, many prominent U.S. corporations—among them IBM, AT&T, and General Motors—embraced New Age seminars, hoping that they could increase productivity and efficiency among their workforce, although in several cases this resulted in employees bringing legal action against their employers, claiming that such seminars had infringed on their religious beliefs or damaged their psychological health. However, the use of spiritual techniques as a method for attaining profit has been an issue of major dispute within the wider New Age movement, with prominent New Agers such as Spangler and Matthew Fox criticising what they see as trends within the community that are narcissistic and lack a social conscience. In particular, the movement's commercial elements have caused problems given that they often conflict with its general economically egalitarian ethos; as York highlighted, "a tension exists in New Age between socialistic egalitarianism and capitalistic private enterprise". Given that it encourages individuals to choose spiritual practices on the grounds of personal preference and thus encourages them to behave as a consumer, the New Age has been considered to be well suited to modern society. ### Music The term "new-age music" is applied, sometimes in a derogative manner, to forms of ambient music, a genre that developed in the 1960s and was popularised in the 1970s, particularly with the work of Brian Eno. The genre's relaxing nature resulted in it becoming popular within New Age circles, with some forms of the genre having a specifically New Age orientation. Studies have determined that new-age music can be an effective component of stress management. The style began in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the works of free-form jazz groups recording on the ECM label; such as Oregon, the Paul Winter Consort, and other pre-ambient bands; as well as ambient music performer Brian Eno, classical avant-garde musician Daniel Kobialka, and the psychoacoustic environments recordings of Irv Teibel. In the early 1970s, it was mostly instrumental with both acoustic and electronic styles. New-age music evolved to include a wide range of styles from electronic space music using synthesizers and acoustic instrumentals using Native American flutes and drums, singing bowls, Australian didgeridoos and world music sounds to spiritual chanting from other cultures. ## Politics While many commentators have focused on the spiritual and cultural aspects of the New Age movement, it also has a political component. The New Age political movement became visible in the 1970s, peaked in the 1980s, and continued into the 1990s. The sociologist of religion Steven Bruce noted that the New Age provides ideas on how to deal with "our socio-psychological problems". Scholar of religion James R. Lewis observed that, despite the common caricature of New Agers as narcissistic, "significant numbers" of them were "trying to make the planet a better place on which to live," and scholar J. Gordon Melton's New Age Encyclopedia (1990) included an entry called "New Age politics". Some New Agers have entered the political system in an attempt to advocate for the societal transformation that the New Age promotes. ### Ideas Although New Age activists have been motivated by New Age concepts like holism, interconnectedness, monism, and environmentalism, their political ideas are diverse, ranging from far-right and conservative through to liberal, socialist, and libertarian. Accordingly, Kyle stated that "New Age politics is difficult to describe and categorize. The standard political labels—left or right, liberal or conservative—miss the mark." MacKian suggested that the New Age operated as a form of "world-realigning infrapolitics" that undermines the disenchantment of modern Western society. The extent to which New Age spokespeople mix religion and politics varies. New Agers are often critical of the established political order, regarding it as "fragmented, unjust, hierarchical, patriarchal, and obsolete". The New Ager Mark Satin for instance spoke of "New Age politics" as a politically radical "third force" that was "neither left nor right". He believed that in contrast to the conventional political focus on the "institutional and economic symptoms" of society's problems, his "New Age politics" would focus on "psychocultural roots" of these issues. Ferguson regarded New Age politics as "a kind of Radical Centre", one that was "not neutral, not middle-of-the-road, but a view of the whole road." Fritjof Capra argued that Western societies have become sclerotic because of their adherence to an outdated and mechanistic view of reality, which he calls the Newtonian/Cartesian paradigm. In Capra's view, the West needs to develop an organic and ecological "systems view" of reality in order to successfully address its social and political issues. Corinne McLaughlin argued that politics need not connote endless power struggles, that a new "spiritual politics" could attempt to synthesize opposing views on issues into higher levels of understanding. Many New Agers advocate globalisation and localisation, but reject nationalism and the role of the nation-state. Some New Age spokespeople have called for greater decentralisation and global unity, but are vague about how this might be achieved; others call for a global, centralised government. Satin for example argued for a move away from the nation-state and towards self-governing regions that, through improved global communication networks, would help engender world unity. Benjamin Creme conversely argued that "the Christ," a great Avatar, Maitreya, the World Teacher, expected by all the major religions as their "Awaited One," would return to the world and establish a strong, centralised global government in the form of the United Nations; this would be politically re-organised along a spiritual hierarchy. Kyle observed that New Agers often speak favourably of democracy and citizens' involvement in policy making but are critical of representative democracy and majority rule, thus displaying elitist ideas to their thinking. ### Groups Scholars have noted several New Age political groups. Self-Determination: A Personal/Political Network, lauded by Ferguson and Satin, was described at length by sociology of religion scholar Steven Tipton. Founded in 1975 by California state legislator John Vasconcellos and others, it encouraged Californians to engage in personal growth work and political activities at the same time, especially at the grassroots level. Hanegraaff noted another California-based group, the Institute of Noetic Sciences, headed by the author Willis Harman. It advocated a change in consciousness—in "basic underlying assumptions"—in order to come to grips with global crises. Kyle said that the New York City-based Planetary Citizens organization, headed by United Nations consultant and Earth at Omega author Donald Keys, sought to implement New Age political ideas. Scholar J. Gordon Melton and colleagues focused on the New World Alliance, a Washington, DC-based organization founded in 1979 by Mark Satin and others. According to Melton et al., the Alliance tried to combine left- and right-wing ideas as well as personal growth work and political activities. Group decision-making was facilitated by short periods of silence. Sponsors of the Alliance's national political newsletter included Willis Harman and John Vasconcellos. Scholar James R. Lewis counted "Green politics" as one of the New Age's more visible activities. One academic book claims that the U.S. Green Party movement began as an initiative of a handful of activists including Charlene Spretnak, co-author of a "'new age' interpretation" of the German Green movement (Capra and Spretnak's Green Politics), and Mark Satin, author of New Age Politics. Another academic publication says Spretnak and Satin largely co-drafted the U.S. Greens' founding document, the "Ten Key Values" statement. ### In the 21st century While the term New Age may have fallen out of favor, scholar George Chryssides notes that the New Age by whatever name is "still alive and active" in the 21st century. In the realm of politics, New Ager Mark Satin's book Radical Middle (2004) reached out to mainstream liberals. York (2005) identified "key New Age spokespeople" including William Bloom, Satish Kumar, and Starhawk who were emphasizing a link between spirituality and environmental consciousness. Former Esalen Institute staffer Stephen Dinan's Sacred America, Sacred World (2016) prompted a long interview of Dinan in Psychology Today, which called the book a "manifesto for our country's evolution that is both political and deeply spiritual". In 2013 longtime New Age author Marianne Williamson launched a campaign for a seat in the United States House of Representatives, telling The New York Times that her type of spirituality was what American politics needed. "America has swerved from its ethical center", she said. Running as an independent in west Los Angeles, she finished fourth in her district's open primary election with 13% of the vote. In early 2019, Williamson announced her candidacy for the Democratic Party nomination for president of the United States in the 2020 United States presidential election. A 5,300-word article about her presidential campaign in The Washington Post said she had "plans to fix America with love. Tough love". In January 2020 she withdrew her bid for the nomination. ## Reception ### Popular media Mainstream periodicals tended to be less than sympathetic; sociologist Paul Ray and psychologist Sherry Anderson discussed in their 2000 book The Cultural Creatives, what they called the media's "zest for attacking" New Age ideas, and offered the example of a 1996 Lance Morrow essay in Time magazine. Nearly a decade earlier, Time had run a long cover story critical of New Age culture; the cover featured a headshot of a famous actress beside the headline, "Om.... THE NEW AGE starring Shirley MacLaine, faith healers, channelers, space travelers, and crystals galore". The story itself, by former Saturday Evening Post editor Otto Friedrich, was sub-titled, "A Strange Mix of Spirituality and Superstition Is Sweeping Across the Country". In 1988, the magazine The New Republic ran a four-page critique of New Age culture and politics by a journalist Richard Blow entitled simply, "Moronic Convergence". Some New Agers and New Age sympathizers responded to such criticisms. For example, sympathizers Ray and Anderson said that much of it was an attempt to "stereotype" the movement for idealistic and spiritual change, and to cut back on its popularity. New Age theoretician David Spangler tried to distance himself from what he called the "New Age glamour" of crystals, talk-show channelers, and other easily commercialized phenomena, and sought to underscore his commitment to the New Age as a vision of genuine social transformation. ### Academia Initially, academic interest in the New Age was minimal. The earliest academic studies of the New Age phenomenon were performed by specialists in the study of new religious movements such as Robert Ellwood. This research was often scanty because many scholars regarded the New Age as an insignificant cultural fad. Having been influenced by the U.S. anti-cult movement, much of it was also largely negative and critical of New Age groups. The "first truly scholarly study" of the phenomenon was an edited volume put together by James R. Lewis and J. Gordon Melton in 1992. From that point on, the number of published academic studies steadily increased. In 1994, Christoph Bochinger published his study of the New Age in Germany, "New Age" und moderne Religion. This was followed by Michael York's sociological study in 1995 and Richard Kyle's U.S.-focused work in 1995. In 1996, Paul Heelas published a sociological study of the movement in Britain, being the first to discuss its relationship with business. That same year, Wouter Hanegraaff published New Age Religion and Western Culture, a historical analysis of New Age texts; Hammer later described it as having "a well-deserved reputation as the standard reference work on the New Age". Most of these early studies were based on a textual analysis of New Age publications, rather than on an ethnographic analysis of its practitioners. Sutcliffe and Gilhus argued that 'New Age studies' could be seen as having experienced two waves; in the first, scholars focused on "macro-level analyses of the content and boundaries" of the "movement", while the second wave featured "more variegated and contextualized studies of particular beliefs and practices". Sutcliffe and Gilhus have also expressed concern that, as of 2013, 'New Age studies' has yet to formulate a set of research questions scholars can pursue. The New Age has proved a challenge for scholars of religion operating under more formative models of what "religion" is. By 2006, Heelas noted that the New Age was so vast and diverse that no scholar of the subject could hope to keep up with all of it. ### Christian perspectives Mainstream Christianity has typically rejected the ideas of the New Age; Christian critiques often emphasise that the New Age places the human individual before God. Most published criticism of the New Age has been produced by Christians, particularly those on the religion's fundamentalist wing. In the United States, the New Age became a major concern of evangelical Christian groups in the 1980s, an attitude that influenced British evangelical groups. During that decade, evangelical writers such as Constance Cumbey, Dave Hunt, Gary North, and Douglas Groothuis published books criticising the New Age; a number propagated conspiracy theories regarding its origin and purpose. The most successful such publication was Frank E. Peretti's 1986 novel This Present Darkness, which sold over a million copies; it depicted the New Age as being in league with feminism and secular education as part of a conspiracy to overthrow Christianity. Official responses to the New Age have been produced by major Christian organisations like the Roman Catholic Church, Church of England, and Methodist Church. The Roman Catholic Church published A Christian reflection on the New Age in 2003, following a six-year study; the 90-page document criticizes New Age practices such as yoga, meditation, feng shui, and crystal healing. According to the Vatican, euphoric states attained through New Age practices should not be confused with prayer or viewed as signs of God's presence. Cardinal Paul Poupard, then-president of the Pontifical Council for culture, said the "New Age is a misleading answer to the oldest hopes of man". Monsignor Michael Fitzgerald, then-president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, stated at the Vatican conference on the document: the "Church avoids any concept that is close to those of the New Age". There are also other Christian groups that have adopted a more positive view of the New Age, among them the Christaquarians, and Christians Awakening to a New Awareness, all of which believe that New Age ideas can enhance a person's Christian faith. ### Contemporary Pagan perspectives There is academic debate about the connection between the New Age and Modern Paganism, sometimes termed "Neo-paganism". The two phenomena have often been confused and conflated, particularly in Christian critiques. Religious studies scholar Sarah Pike asserted that there was a "significant overlap" between the two religious movements, while Aidan A. Kelly stated that Paganism "parallels the New Age movement in some ways, differs sharply from it in others, and overlaps it in some minor ways". Other scholars have identified them as distinct phenomena that share overlap and commonalities. Hanegraaff suggested that whereas various forms of contemporary Paganism were not part of the New Age movement—particularly those that pre-dated the movement—other Pagan religions and practices could be identified as New Age. Partridge portrayed both Paganism and the New Age as different streams of occulture (occult culture) that merge at points. Various differences between the two movements have been highlighted; the New Age movement focuses on an improved future, whereas the focus of Paganism is on the pre-Christian past. Similarly, the New Age movement typically propounds a universalist message that sees all religions as fundamentally the same, whereas Paganism stresses the difference between monotheistic religions and those embracing a polytheistic or animistic theology. While the New Age emphasises a light-centred image, Paganism acknowledges both light and dark, life and death, and recognises the savage side of the natural world. Many Pagans have sought to distance themselves from the New Age movement, even using "New Age" as an insult within their community, while conversely many involved in the New Age have expressed criticism of Paganism for emphasizing the material world over the spiritual. Many Pagans have expressed criticism of the high fees charged by New Age teachers, something not typically present in the Pagan movement, with some Pagans pronouncing the word "newage" to rhyme with "sewage". ### Non-Western and Indigenous criticism New Age often adopts spiritual ideas and practices from other, particularly non-Western cultures. According to York, these may include "Hawaiian Kahuna magic, Australian Aboriginal dream-working, South American Amerindian ayahuasca and San Pedro ceremonies, Hindu Ayurveda and yoga, Chinese Feng Shui, Qi Gong, and Tai Chi." The New Age has been accused of cultural imperialism, misappropriating the sacred ceremonies, and exploitation of the intellectual and cultural property of Indigenous peoples. Indigenous American spiritual leaders, such as Elders councils of the Lakota, Cheyenne, Navajo, Creek, Hopi, Chippewa, and Haudenosaunee have denounced New Age misappropriation of their sacred ceremonies and other intellectual property, stating that "[t]he value of these instructions and ceremonies [when led by unauthorized people] are questionable, maybe meaningless, and hurtful to the individual carrying false messages". Traditional leaders of the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota peoples have reached consensus to reject "the expropriation of [their] ceremonial ways by non-Indians". They see the New Age movement as either not fully understanding, deliberately trivializing, or distorting their way of life, and strongly disapprove of all such "plastic medicine people" who are appropriating their spiritual ways. Indigenous leaders have spoken out against individuals from within their own communities who may go out into the world to become a "white man's shaman," and any "who are prostituting our spiritual ways for their own selfish gain, with no regard for the spiritual well-being of the people as a whole". The terms "plastic shaman" and "plastic medicine person" have been used to describe an outsider who identifies or promotes themselves as a shaman, holy person, or other traditional spiritual leader, yet has no genuine connection to the traditions or cultures they claim to represent. ### Political writers and activists Toward the end of the 20th century, some social and political analysts and activists were arguing that the New Age political perspective had something to offer mainstream society. In 1987, some political scientists launched the "Section on Ecological and Transformational Politics" of the American Political Science Association, and an academic book prepared by three of them stated that the "transformational politics" concept was meant to subsume such terms as new age and new paradigm. In 1991, scholar of cultural studies Andrew Ross suggested that New Age political ideas—however muddled and naïve—could help progressives construct an appealing alternative to both atomistic individualism and self-denying collectivism. In 2005, British researcher Stuart Rose urged scholars of alternative religions to pay more attention to the New Age's interest in such topics as "new socio-political thinking" and "New Economics", topics Rose discussed in his book Transforming the World: Bringing the New Age Into Focus, issued by a European academic publisher. Other political thinkers and activists saw New Age politics less positively. On the political right, author George Weigel argued that New Age politics was just a retooled and pastel-colored version of leftism. Conservative evangelical writer Douglas Groothuis, discussed by scholars Hexham and Kemp, warned that New Age politics could lead to an oppressive world government. On the left, scholars argued that New Age politics was an oxymoron: that personal growth has little or nothing to do with political change. One political scientist said New Age politics fails to recognize the reality of economic and political power. Another academic, Dana L. Cloud, wrote a lengthy critique of New Age politics as a political ideology; she faulted it for not being opposed to the capitalist system, or to liberal individualism. A criticism of New Age often made by leftists is that its focus on individualism deflects participants from engaging in socio-political activism. This perspective regards New Age as a manifestation of consumerism that promotes elitism and indulgence by allowing wealthier people to affirm their socio-economic status through consuming New Age products and therapies. New Agers who do engage in socio-political activism have also been criticized. Journalist Harvey Wasserman suggested that New Age activists were too averse to social conflict to be effective politically. Melton et al. found that New Age activists' commitment to the often frustrating process of consensus decision-making led to "extended meetings and minimal results", and a pair of futurists concluded that one once-promising New Age activist group had been both "too visionary and too vague" to last. ## See also - Advaita Vedanta - Agni Yoga - Higher consciousness - Higher self - Hippies - Hypnosis - Mantras - Mindfulness - New Age communities - New religious movement - Nonviolent resistance - Paradigm shift - Peace movement - Philosophy of happiness - Post-scarcity economy - Post Christianity - Reincarnation - Rerikhism - Social theory - Spiritual evolution - Spiritual practices

First Ostend Raid

1918 British military attack on German-held port in Belgium

The First Ostend Raid (part of Operation ZO) was the first of two attacks by the Royal Navy on the German-held port of Ostend during the late spring of 1918 during the First World War. Ostend was attacked in conjunction with the neighbouring harbour of Zeebrugge on 23 April in order to block the vital strategic port of Bruges, situated 6 mi (5.2 nmi; 9.7 km) inland and ideally sited to conduct raiding operations on the British coastline and shipping lanes. Bruges and its satellite ports were a vital part of the German plans in their war on Allied commerce (Handelskrieg) because Bruges was close to the troopship lanes across the English Channel and allowed much quicker access to the Western Approaches for the U-boat fleet than their bases in Germany. The plan of attack was for the British raiding force to sink two obsolete cruisers in the canal mouth at Ostend and three at Zeebrugge, thus preventing raiding ships leaving Bruges. The Ostend canal was the smaller and narrower of the two channels giving access to Bruges and so was considered a secondary target behind the Zeebrugge Raid. Consequently, fewer resources were provided to the force assaulting Ostend. While the attack at Zeebrugge garnered some limited success, the assault on Ostend was a complete failure. The German marines who defended the port had taken careful preparations and drove the British assault ships astray, forcing the abortion of the operation at the final stage. Three weeks after the failure of the operation, a second attack was launched which proved more successful in sinking a blockship at the entrance to the canal but ultimately did not close off Bruges completely. Further plans to attack Ostend came to nothing during the summer of 1918, and the threat from Bruges would not be finally stopped until the last days of the war, when the town was liberated by Allied land forces. ## Bruges Bruges had been captured by the advancing German divisions during the Race for the Sea and had been rapidly identified as an important strategic asset by the German Navy. Bruges was situated 6 mi (5.2 nmi; 9.7 km) inland at the centre of a network of canals which emptied into the sea at the small coastal towns of Zeebrugge and Ostend. This land barrier protected Bruges from bombardment by land or sea by all but the very largest calibre artillery and also secured it against raiding parties from the Royal Navy. Capitalising on the natural advantages of the port, the German Navy constructed extensive training and repair facilities at Bruges, equipped to provide support for several flotillas of destroyers, torpedo boats and U-boats. By 1916, these raiding forces were causing serious concern in the Admiralty as the proximity of Bruges to the British coast, to the troopship lanes across the English Channel and for the U-boats, to the Western Approaches; the heaviest shipping lanes in the World at the time. In the late spring of 1915, Admiral Reginald Bacon had attempted without success to destroy the lock gates at Ostend with monitors. This effort failed, and Bruges became increasingly important in the Atlantic Campaign, which reached its height in 1917. By early 1918, the Admiralty was seeking ever more radical solutions to the problems raised by unrestricted submarine warfare, including instructing the "Allied Naval and Marine Forces" department to plan attacks on U-boat bases in Belgium. The "Allied Naval and Marine Forces" was a newly formed department created with the purpose of conducting raids and operations along the coastline of German-held territory. The organisation was able to command extensive resources from both the Royal and French navies and was commanded by Admiral Roger Keyes and his deputy, Commodore Hubert Lynes. Keyes, Lynes and their staff began planning methods of neutralising Bruges in late 1917 and by April 1918 were ready to put their plans into operation. ## Planning To block Bruges, Keyes and Lynes decided to conduct two raids on the ports through which Bruges had access to the sea. Zeebrugge was to be attacked by a large force consisting of three blockships and numerous supporting warships. Ostend was faced by a similar but smaller force under immediate command of Lynes. The plan was for two obsolete cruisers—HMS Sirius and Brilliant—to be expended in blocking the canal which emptied at Ostend. These ships would be stripped to essential fittings and their lower holds and ballast filled with rubble and concrete. This would make them ideal barriers to access if sunk in the correct channel at the correct angle. When the weather was right, the force would cross the English Channel in darkness and attack shortly after midnight to coincide with the Zeebrugge Raid a few miles up the coast. By co-ordinating their operations, the assault forces would stretch the German defenders and hopefully gain the element of surprise. Covering the Inshore Squadron would be heavy bombardment from an offshore squadron of monitors and destroyers as well as artillery support from Royal Marine artillery near Ypres in Allied-held Flanders. Closer support would be offered by several flotillas of motor launches, small torpedo boats and Coastal Motor Boats which would lay smoke screens to obscure the advancing blockships as well as evacuate the crews of the cruisers after they had blocked the channel. ### British order of battle #### Offshore Squadron - Lord Clive-class monitors with 12 in (300 mm) guns: - HMS Marshal Soult, Lord Clive, Prince Eugene and General Crauford - M15 class monitors with 7.5 in (190 mm) guns: - HMS M24, M26, M21 - Destroyers: - HMS Mentor, Lightfoot and Zubian - French Navy Mécanicien Principal Lestin, Enseigne Roux and Bouclier - Light craft: - 4 torpedo boats, 4 French motor launches #### Inshore Squadron - Blockships: - HMS Sirius, Brilliant - Destroyers: - HMS Swift, Faulknor (destroyer leader), Matchless, Mastiff, Afridi, Tempest, Tetrarch - Light craft: - 18 Motor Launches, 8 Coastal Motor Boats Artillery support was also provided by Royal Marine heavy artillery in Allied-held Flanders. The force was covered in the English Channel by seven light cruisers and 16 destroyers, none of which saw action. ## Attack on Ostend The assaults on Zeebrugge and Ostend were launched on 23 April, after being twice delayed by poor weather. The Ostend force arrived off the port shortly before midnight and made final preparations; the monitors took up position offshore and the small craft moved forward to begin laying smoke. Covering the approach, the monitors opened fire on German shore defences, including the 11-inch (280 mm) guns of the powerful "Tirpitz" battery. As a long-range artillery duel developed, the cruisers began their advance towards the harbour mouth, searching for the marker buoys which indicated the correct passage through the diverse sandbanks which made navigation difficult along the Belgian coast. It was at this stage that the attack began to go seriously wrong. Strong winds blowing off the land swept the smoke screen into the face of the advancing cruisers, blinding their commanders who attempted to navigate by dead reckoning. The same wind disclosed the Inshore Squadron to the German defenders who immediately opened up a withering fire on the blockships. With their volunteer crews suffering heavy casualties, the commanders increased speed despite the poor visibility and continued groping through the narrow channels inshore, searching for the Stroom Bank buoy which directed shipping into the canal. Commander Alfred Godsal led the assault in HMS Brilliant and it was he who stumbled into the most effective German counter-measure first. As Brilliant staggered through the murk, the lookout spotted the buoy ahead and Godsal headed directly for it, coming under even heavier fire as he did so. Passing the navigation marker at speed, the cruiser was suddenly brought to a halt with a juddering lurch, throwing men to the decks and sticking fast in deep mud well outside the harbour mouth. Before warnings could be relayed to the Sirius following up close behind, she too passed the buoy and her captain Lieutenant-Commander Henry Hardy was shocked to see Brilliant dead ahead. With no time to manoeuvre, Sirius ploughed into the port quarter of Brilliant, the blockships settling into the mud in a tangle of wreckage. Artillery and long-range machine gun fire continued to riddle the wrecks and the combined crews were ordered to evacuate as the officers set the scuttling charges which would sink the blockships in their current, useless locations. As men scrambled down the side of the cruisers into Coastal Motor Boats which would relay them to the Offshore Squadron, destroyers moved closer to Ostend to cover the retreat and the monitors continued their heavy fire. Godsal was the last to leave, picked up by launch ML276 commanded by Lieutenant Rowley Bourke. With the main assault a complete failure, the blockading forces returned to Dover and Dunkirk to assess the disaster. When the forces had reassembled and the commanders conferred, the full facts of the failed operation were revealed. The German commander of Ostend had been better prepared than his counterpart at Zeebrugge and had recognised that without the navigation buoy no night attack on Ostend could be successful without a strong familiarity with the port, which none of the British navigators possessed. However, rather than simply remove the buoy, the German commander had ordered it moved 2,400 yd (2,200 m) east of the canal mouth into the centre of a wide expanse of sandbanks, acting as a fatal decoy for any assault force. ## Aftermath The assault at Zeebrugge a few miles away from Ostend was more successful and the blocking of the major channel did cause some consternation amongst the German forces in Bruges. The larger raiders could no longer leave the port, but smaller ships, including most submarines, were still able to traverse via Ostend. In addition, within hours a narrow channel had also been carved through Zeebrugge too, although British intelligence did not realise this for several weeks. The defeat at Ostend did not entirely dampen the exuberant British media and public reaction to Zeebrugge, but in the Admiralty and particularly in the Allied Naval and Marine Forces the failure to completely neutralise Bruges rankled. A second operation (Operation VS) was planned for 10 May using the cruiser HMS Vindictive and proved more successful, but ultimately it also failed to completely close off Bruges. A third planned operation was never conducted as it rapidly became clear that the new channel carved at Zeebrugge was enough to allow access for U-boats, thus calling for an even larger double assault, which would stretch the resources of the Allied Naval and Marine Forces too far. British losses in the three futile attempts to close Bruges cost over 600 casualties and the loss of several ships but Bruges would remain an active raiding base for the German Navy until October 1918.

Typhoon Pamela (1976)

Pacific typhoon in 1976

Typhoon Pamela was a powerful typhoon that struck the U.S. territory of Guam in May 1976, causing about \$500 million in damage (USD). The sixth named storm and third typhoon of the 1976 Pacific typhoon season, Pamela developed on May 14 from a trough in the Federated States of Micronesia in the area of the Nomoi Islands. It executed a counterclockwise loop and slowly intensified, bringing heavy rains to the islands in the region. Ten people died on Chuuk due to a landslide. After beginning a steady northwest motion toward Guam, Pamela attained its peak winds of 240 km/h (150 mph). On May 21, the large eye of the typhoon crossed Guam, producing typhoon-force winds (greater than 118 km/h or 73 mph) for a period of 18 hours. An estimated 80% of the buildings on the island were damaged to some degree, including 3,300 houses that were destroyed. Pamela's slow motion produced 856 mm (33.7 in) of rainfall, making May 1976 the wettest month on record in Guam. Despite the high damage, well-executed warnings kept the death toll to only one. After affecting the island, the typhoon weakened and turned northeastward, passing near Iwo Jima before becoming an extratropical cyclone. ## Meteorological history The origins of Typhoon Pamela were from a tropical disturbance that persisted in the eastern end of the equatorial trough on May 13. At the time, it was located about 425 km (264 mi) north of Chuuk in the Federated States of Micronesia. The disturbance was initially difficult to locate as it tracked generally to the south and southwest, a motion caused by a southward-moving tropical upper tropospheric trough. On May 14, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) indicated that the system developed into a tropical cyclone. That same day, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) followed suit and classified it as Tropical Depression 06W. The next day, aircraft reconnaissance data from the 54th Weather Reconnaissance Squadron indicated that the depression intensified into Tropical Storm Pamela. It was able to intensify after the trough receded northward, developing outflow. The storm turned to the south and east, gradually executing a counterclockwise loop through the FSM. This was due to a building ridge between Pamela and Typhoon Olga to its west. On May 16, observations from Satawan in the Caroline Islands indicated that Pamela attained typhoon status, which is a tropical cyclone with maximum sustained winds of at least 118 km/h (73 mph). This was confirmed the next day by aircraft observations. Upon attaining typhoon status, Pamela was a small tropical cyclone with a central dense overcast spanning 280 km (170 mi) in diameter. After completing its counterclockwise loop, the typhoon began a slow motion to the northwest, once the ridge to its west diminished. On May 18, it passed within 95 km (59 mi) of Chuuk, and around that time Pamela developed a circular eye about 18 km (11 mi) in diameter. The typhoon steadily intensified as it began a more steady northwest movement due to a ridge to its east, and on May 19 Pamela attained peak winds of 240 km/h (150 mph) about 485 km (301 mi) southeast of Guam. At that time, it had gusts to 295 km/h (183 mph). Typhoon Pamela maintained peak intensity for about 18 hours, during which time a reconnaissance plane reported an atmospheric pressure of 921 millibars (27.2 inHg) at the surface; the aircraft also reported concentric eyewalls. The JMA estimated the minimum pressure was slightly lower at 920 millibars (27 inHg). A trough passing to its north caused the typhoon to turn more to the north-northwest. Around 0400 UTC on May 21, the eyewall of Pamela struck southeastern Guam with winds of about 220 km/h (140 mph). Over a three-hour period, the 37 km (23 mi) wide eye crossed the island. After leaving the island, Pamela continued steadily northwestward for two days while maintaining its intensity. On May 23, it turned to the north and northeast due to a break in the subtropical ridge. The typhoon passed 28 km (17 mi) east of Iwo Jima with winds of 140 km/h (87 mph). As Pamela accelerated over cooler waters and into an area of higher wind shear, it rapidly weakened and was downgraded to a tropical storm on May 25. The next day, the storm became extratropical, which lasted until June 1 before dissipating over the Bering Sea. ## Preparations and impact Pamela first presented a threat to Guam on May 16 when it first attained typhoon status. All subsequent forecasts anticipated the typhoon would pass within 185 km (115 mi). In response to Pamela's approach, Guam was placed under Typhoon Condition of Readiness III (TCCOR 3) on May 18. This was upgraded to TCCOR II on later that day, and TCCOR I the next day. The Navy and Air Force evacuated assets. Before the typhoon's arrival, officials advised residents to store water prior to the storm's arrival. About 2,100 people in vulnerable wooden homes were evacuated to storm shelters set up in schools and public offices. ### Chuuk islands While passing between the Losap and Namoluk atolls in the Mortlock Islands, Pamela produced winds of over 102 km/h (63 mph). Different communities experienced differing levels of damage from the storm. The islands of Etal, Namoluk, and Kutu received the most damage as storm waves submerged these islands for over 15 to 18 hours. Across these islands, the typhoon left heavy crop and reef damage. Islands such as Satawan and Lukunor received more moderate damage from the storm. No deaths were reported in the Morlock Islands. From May 17 to 18, at the Weather Service on Chuuk, Pamela dumped 14.59 in (371 mm) of rain. The rains resulted in mudslide that killed 10 people on Moen, many of whom lived in a single buried house; several people were also injured. Winds reached 91 km/h (56 km/h). ### Mariana Islands The typhoon produced tropical-storm force gusts and 10 in (250 mm) of rain on Saipan. The impact there was minor. While slowly crossing Guam, Pamela produced winds of over 185 km/h (115 mph) across the entire island over a six-hour period, causing widespread heavy damage. Typhoon-force winds were reported for 18 hours, and tropical storm-force winds were reported for 30 hours. As the eye was crossing the island, the winds rapidly vacillated between gusts of 150 km/h (93 mph) to calmness in the span of a few minutes; this created a large pressure gradient that caused additional damage. The typhoon dropped a total of 856 mm (33.7 in) of rainfall, including 690 mm (27 in) in a 24-hour period, on the island. This contributed to May 1976 being Guam's wettest month on record. In Apra Harbor, ten ships or tugs were sunk, as were numerous smaller vessels. One of the ships that survived in the harbor was the cutter Basswood of the Coast Guard, which recorded a wind gust of 220 km/h (140 mph). Pamela's damage prevented regular flights in and out of the island. The typhoon left extensive damage to military and civilian properties on the island, estimated at \$500 million (1976 USD). Trees were also uprooted throughout the island. Although Pamela was not as strong as Typhoon Karen in 1962, it proved more costly due to its slow movement. Concrete buildings largely survived the storm, but power lines and wooden structures were devastated. The typhoon cut off all public utilities on the island as well as Guam's two radio stations. The American Red Cross estimated that Pamela destroyed 3,300 houses and significantly damaged another 3,200. Government officials preliminarily estimated that 80% of the buildings were damaged to some degree, of which half were destroyed. Overall, 14,000 families sustained damage during the storm. About 300 people on the island were injured, and although the Red Cross reported three fatalities, the JTWC reported only one death in Guam in the year-end report. The low death total was attributed to timely warnings and forecasts. ## Aftermath The disruption on Guam was significant enough that the JTWC's backup location at Yokota Air Base in Japan assumed forecasting and warning responsibilities for five days starting on May 20. The cleanup and recovery took months, assisted by military personnel. During the aftermath, food shortages resulted in long lines for aid at Andersen Air Force Base. Due to Pamela as well as the occurrence of other disasters in 1976, the American Red Cross went into debt, after providing about \$10 million in assistance to 16,000 families. The agency set up 29 shelters for 2,600 people. On May 22, a day after the typhoon struck the island, U.S. President Gerald Ford declared Guam a major disaster area. In September 1976, the United States Senate passed a bill that included aid for the storm victims. Ultimately, the U.S. government provided \$200 million in aid and reconstruction funding in the two years following the typhoon's passage. This included about \$80 million to repair Guam's military facilities, which took several years to complete. Following the typhoon's passage and through the 1980s, the island's wooden homes underwent the process of being replaced by safer concrete homes. ## See also - Other systems of the same name - Typhoon Isa (1997) - Typhoon Francisco (2013)

Gusen concentration camp

Nazi concentration camp complex in Upper Austria (1940–1945)

Gusen was a subcamp of Mauthausen concentration camp operated by the SS (Schutzstaffel) between the villages of Sankt Georgen an der Gusen and Langestein in the Reichsgau Ostmark (currently Perg District, Upper Austria). Primarily populated by Polish prisoners, there were also large numbers of Spanish Republicans, Soviet citizens, and Italians. Initially, prisoners worked in nearby quarries, producing granite which was sold by the SS company DEST. Conditions were worse than at the Mauthausen main camp due to the camp's purpose of extermination through labor of real and perceived enemies of Nazi Germany. The life expectancy of prisoners was as short as six months, and at least 35,000 people died there from forced labor, starvation, and mass executions. From 1943, the camp was an important center of armaments production for Messerschmitt and Steyr-Daimler-Puch. In order to expand armaments production, the camp was redesignated Gusen I, and additional camps, Gusen II and Gusen III, were built. Prisoners were forced to construct vast underground factories, the main one being the Bergkristall [de; es], intended for the production of Messerschmitt 262 jet fighter aircraft. Nearly a thousand fuselages were produced there by the war's end. The camp was liberated by the United States 11th Armored Division early in the morning of 5 May, 1945. During the chaos of liberation, a number of former kapos were killed. After the war, some SS personnel and kapos were tried for their crimes, although most went unpunished. The site was redeveloped into a privately owned village, although there is a small museum run by the Austrian government. ## Background Following World War I, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was broken up. Most Austrians wanted a union with Germany, but the Allied victors forbade a plebiscite from being held and forced the new country to change its name from "Republic of German-Austria" to "Republic of Austria". On 13 March 1938, Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany in the Anschluss; German forces were greeted by enthusiastic crowds. Immediately afterwards, a reign of terror began against anti-Nazis, Jews, and Austrians mistaken for Jews. The Gestapo established an office in Vienna two days later. Hundreds were arrested and deported to Dachau concentration camp. The site of Mauthausen concentration camp was chosen in May 1938 by an SS delegation including Theodor Eicke and Oswald Pohl. Along with Flossenbürg concentration camp, its purpose was to quarry granite for Nazi architectural projects. The location was chosen for the quarries around the villages of Mauthausen and Sankt Georgen an der Gusen, leased by the SS enterprise DEST. The concentration camp, located 20 kilometres (12 mi) from Linz, was officially established in August. By the end of next month, prisoners from Dachau had finished the barracks for prisoners and the SS. The quarry near Gusen was on land leased and later purchased from the Poschacher [de] firm. It is likely that the SS had already been planning to build a concentration camp because the deal for the Gusen quarry was made in May 1938, before that of the Mauthausen quarry. ## Establishment The first and largest subcamp of Mauthausen, Gusen began in December 1939 with a work detail of 10 or 12 German and Austrian prisoners who were assigned to build barracks adjacent to the Gusen quarry, just 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) from Mauthausen. The camp was built to increase the productivity of workers at the quarry just north of the site, who otherwise had to walk from the Mauthausen main camp and back again, reducing their productive hours. Of all the quarries near Mauthausen, Gusen produced most of the architectural quality granite; it also produced freestone, paving stone, and gravel which was sold by DEST. By January, the number of prisoners on the detail had increased to 400 and it included Polish prisoners from March. The prisoners were not given coats or gloves, and were not allowed to access the fires lit by kapos and SS guards. About 1,800 Mauthausen prisoners died between December and April, many of them while working on the construction details at Gusen. The camp was officially opened on 25 May 1940, when the first prisoners and guards moved in. The camp was directly adjacent to the road between Sankt Georgen an der Gusen and nearby Langenstein; former prisoners recalled Austrian children passing by on the way to school. Until the camp wall was completed, passerby had a full view of what was happening in the camp. ## Conditions Mauthausen and Gusen were the only concentration camps rated by the SS as Category III, the highest rating, and conditions in Gusen were even worse than at the main camp. In 1940 and 1941, the average life expectancy was six months, and the average weight of prisoners in 1940–1942 was 40 kilograms (88 lb). In late 1941, a typhus epidemic broke out, which resulted in the mass killing of ill prisoners. The main purpose of the camp was extermination through labor of real and perceived political enemies of the Reich, rather than exploitation of their economic potential through slave labor, so mortality rates were higher than at most concentration camps. One group of prisoners would die, but the number was maintained due to transports of incoming prisoners. Thus, the number of prisoners was maintained at around 6,000 to 7,000 until 1943 despite the high death rate. Work in the quarries, which was specifically intended to cause the death of prisoners, continued until the end of the war despite the opening of war production. Prisoners faced starvation rations, forced labor, and beatings by guards and kapos, while being denied basic sanitary facilities. The camp for prisoner accommodations was a rectangle, which covered 180 by 400 metres (590 ft × 1,310 ft) and had 32 prisoner barracks, was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. Its intended capacity of 4,000 to 5,000 prisoners was soon exceeded. Twice a day, prisoners were counted at the roll-call plaza at the eastern end of the camp. Growth of the camp was fueled by the Gusen, Kastenhof, and Pierbauer quarries, whose stone was in demand throughout Austria. ## SS command Commandants of Gusen reported directly to Mauthausen commandant SS-Obersturmbannführer Franz Ziereis. The first commandant was Anton Streitwieser, who was dismissed in May 1940 for running an unauthorized pig farm and feeding the pigs with rations siphoned from the supply intended for prisoners. From 25 May 1940 to October 1942 or January 1943, the SS commandant was SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Chmielewski, who had been a member of the SS since 1932 and the camp SS since 1935. His Rapportführer (Report Supervisor) was Anton Streitwieser [de] and Kurt Kirchner was the labor service leader. Often drunk, he personally beat, kicked, whipped, and killed prisoners; he had considerable autonomy in running the camp and ensured that life was characterized by violence and sadism. During Chmielewski's rule, one half of prisoners died. From October 1942 until the end of the war, SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer Friedrich August Seidler was the commandant. Seidler preferred "Prussian-style" brutality instead of his predecessor's indiscriminate style. Until 1943, Gusen was run more as a branch of the main camp than as a subcamp, although it had separate administrative departments, such as Political Department. Initially, the watchtowers, equipped with machine guns and searchlights, were made of wood; later they were replaced by granite. In addition to the barbed-wire fence, an additional stone wall 2 metres (6 ft 7 in) high was built around it in 1941; patrols of guards went between the barriers. A third fence, of barbed wire, was added to encircle the entire camp complex, including external factories and quarries. The SS had a separate complex for its own barracks, located outside of the prisoner camp. In February 1940, there were about 600 SS guards (one for each ten prisoners). This later increased to 2,000, and 3,000 by 1944. They belonged to four Camp SS companies, part of SS-Totenkopfsturmbann Mauthausen. In early 1945, many were drafted into the Kampfgruppe Oberdonau and were replaced by Viennese firemen, former Wehrmacht personnel, and Volkssturm militiamen. Nazi human experimentation took place at Gusen, including surgical and tuberculosis experiments. SS physician Helmuth Vetter, who arrived in 1944, conducted the tuberculosis experiments by injecting the lungs of healthy prisoners with phlegmonic pus. The victims were then forced to run until they collapsed, at which point they were killed by benzene injection to the lungs, which prolonged death. Most of the prisoner functionaries, especially block leaders, were German criminal prisoners who were initially picked by Chmielewski. Some kapos were notorious for their brutality, including Wolf, a German who executed prisoners by hanging and stamped on the bodies, and the Spaniards Asturias, Félix Domingo, Indalecio González González, Losa, Tomás, and a man called "el Negro". The Austrian kapo Rudolf Fiegl participated in gassing inmates. On Sundays, football teams played on the Appellplatz for SS amusement. Participants were rewarded with extra rations. In 1942, a Nazi camp brothel opened at the camp in order to reduce the number of prisoner functionaries who were tempted to coerce young male inmates into sex. At the brothel ten women, all considered "Aryan", were coerced into offering sex in exchange for a false promise of their freedom. Most of them were drafted into a women's Waffen-SS unit in March 1945. ## Execution Some prisoners, no longer capable of hard labor, were sent from Mauthausen to Gusen in order to be killed. At Gusen, the SS forced arriving prisoners to run in order to test their fitness. Those unable to perform the task sufficiently well were immediately killed, a fate that befell 3,000 of the first 10,000 prisoners sent to Gusen. Because they were never registered, these prisoners were not included in the official death statistics. After two Polish prisoners, Victor Lukawski and Franc Kapacki, escaped on 13 August 1940, the eight hundred prisoners in their work detail had to run carrying rocks and were beaten by SS guards. Later, they had to stand at attention all night without food. Fourteen Polish prisoners died and so did Lukawski and Kapacki, who were beaten to death a few days later after being caught. Construction on the Gusen crematorium, a double-muffle model built by Topf and Sons, began in December 1940. In use from late 1941, the crematorium was under the command of SS-Oberscharführer Karl Wassner. Either Chmielewski or SS-Hauptscharführer Heinz Jentsch [pl] invented a new execution method called Totbaden (death baths). Prisoners unable to work and others the SS wanted to kill were forced to stand under cold showers until they died, which could take twenty minutes to two hours. The drains were blocked and those who tried to avoid the water were drowned. Afterward, falsified causes of death were entered into the official record. This execution method was used only at Gusen, and was considered inefficient by SS actuaries. During winter, prisoners were stripped naked and forced to stand outside of Block 32 at night in groups of 150. Typically, half would die before morning and the rest would die the next day. During the final months of the war, an improvised gas chamber was devised at Gusen in a crudely converted barracks. The number of prisoners who were murdered there is estimated at 800 or more than 1,000. Previously, on 26 March 1942, around 100 Soviet prisoners of war were gassed in Block 16 with Zyklon B. Other prisoners were transported to Mauthausen to be gassed, or murdered in the gas van between Mauthausen and Gusen. From early 1942, sick prisoners were selected at Gusen to be murdered in the gas chamber at Hartheim Euthanasia Center; the total number of victims from Gusen is estimated to be 1,100. In April 1945, 800 prisoners were beaten to death in Gusen II and transported to Gusen I for cremation. According to the official records, 27,842 people died at Gusen. The actual number is believed to be at least 35,000 or more than 37,000. More than 10,000 of these deaths are believed to have occurred in 1945. ## Prisoners For most of its history (except 1940 and 1943), there were more prisoners in Gusen than in the main camp. Until 1944, its prisoners were inscribed in the register of the main camp. Gusen was initially designated as a "reeducation camp" for Polish members of the intelligentsia. The first transport of Polish prisoners arrived the same day that the camp officially opened. By the end of 1940, eight thousand Poles had been transported to the subcamp—largely from Dachau and Sachsenhausen—and 1,500 had already died. The first transport of Republican veterans of the Spanish Civil War arrived on 24 January 1941, and the 3,846 Spaniards made up most of the arrivals in the first half of 1941. Despite being targeted for excessive punishment by the SS guards—sixty percent died by the end of 1941, mostly in the quarries—the Spanish prisoners gained a reputation for solidarity. Of the more than 4,200 who passed through the camp, only 444 Spaniards were still alive by 1944. In mid-1941, when Aktion T4 personnel arrived at the camp, most of the prisoners were Poles and Spaniards. Those unable to work were selected for death by T4 staff. In 1941 many Dutch Jews were deported to Mauthausen. None survived. Many Soviet prisoners of war were also deported to Gusen in late 1941 and 1942. Until 1943, by which point 90% had died, they were housed and registered separately from other prisoners. Yugoslavs, Soviet civilians, and a handful of French prisoners (under the Nacht und Nebel decree) arrived from 1942. In September 1943, the first Italian prisoners arrived at the camp, where they faced a very high mortality rate. Some Allied aircrew shot down nearby were also imprisoned at the camp. Gusen II, established in 1944, had mostly Soviet and Italian prisoners. The SS encouraged animosity between prisoners of different nationalities. There were no significant resistance groups in Gusen. In 1945, some German and Austrian criminal prisoners were freed by volunteering for the Waffen-SS. ## Aircraft production From 1943, the purpose of the camp was switched from quarrying to armaments production in vast underground factories, to protect the industrial output from Allied bombing. Work on the tunnels was begun by the Kellerbau Kommando at the original Gusen camp, which had a high mortality rate. The tunnels at Gusen were initially used for the production of Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter aircraft. The work took on new urgency after the bombing of the Messerschmitt plant in Regensburg on 17 August 1943. Afterwards, 35 per cent of fighter production derived from Gusen and Flossenbürg. By July 1944, 4,000 Gusen prisoners were working on aircraft production, and 77 trainloads of aircraft parts were exported each month. Other prisoners produced rifles, machine guns, and airplane motors for Steyr-Daimler-Puch AG in 16 large warehouses northeast of the original Gusen camp. In the tunnels, prisoners were supervised by Messerschmitt employees (engineers, foremen and skilled workers) who were forbidden to discuss the project with anyone on pain of death. In January 1944, engineer Karl Fiebinger's plans called for 50,000 square metres (540,000 sq ft) of underground floor space in the Bergkristall [de; es] tunnels (also known as B8 and "Esche 2"), equivalent to 12 acres (4.9 ha), stretching for 22 kilometres (14 mi); the entrance was 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) northwest of the camp. The space was to serve as an underground factory for Messerschmitt 262 jet fighter aircraft, sufficient to produce 1,250 fuselages per month along with the entire slat production necessary. Work began on the tunnels in March 1945 and was never completed. Nevertheless, aircraft production began in early 1945 and before 1 May, 987 fuselages were built. Most of the manufacturing work, including quality control, was done by prisoners, employed by Messerschmitt via the SS company DEST. During air raids, Austrian civilians were ordered into the tunnels and were separated from the prisoners only by a wooden partition. Prisoners who worked on arms production needed skills to be effective at their jobs and were therefore less replaceable. Constructing and expanding the tunnels, and speed of construction was valued much higher than prisoners' lives, which had "disastrous" consequences for the prisoners. At first, prisoners had to walk to the Bergkristall, but later a purpose-built railway transported 100 prisoners per cattle car. Prisoners worked for a week in the day shift, and the next week in the night shift. They had to spend up to 14 hours a day in transit or in the tunnels, where the dust was so thick that they had to use headlamps to use pneumatic drills. They were quickly worn out by the dust and lack of oxygen such that 100 died in the tunnels each day. ## Subcamps In 1944, two subcamps of Gusen opened and the main camp was redesignated "Gusen I". Gusen II, which opened on 9 March, was close to the main camp, separated only by a potato field, and also located on the St. Georgen road. Its prisoners—a planned 10,000—were dedicated to arms construction at the Bergkristall; others worked for Steyr-Daimler-Puch. At Gusen II, many of the personnel were Luftwaffe guards, numbering 2,000 by the war's end. One of the main commandos, Bergkristall-Fertigung, worked for the Luftwaffe while the other, Bergkristall-Bau, for the SS. By the end of 1944, there were 12,000 prisoners at Gusen II. Gusen III was 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) north, near Lungitz; its 260 prisoners worked in a nearby brick factory and in manufacturing parts for Messerschmitt, in barracks rather than tunnels. Some also worked on a project to connect Lungitz to St. Georgen by tunnel. According to testimony, conditions at Gusen III were even worse than the other two subcamps. Both subcamps were under the command of SS-Obersturmführer Max Pausch [pl]. Despite the efforts of a dedicated counter-intelligence unit, reports of aircraft production at Gusen II were received by United States intelligence from the Austrian resistance on 3 December 1944. ## Liberation In late January 1944, there were 7,312 prisoners, which increased to 24,250 in all three subcamps at the end of 1944 and decreased to 20,487 by 4 May 1945. About 4,000 Warsaw Uprising prisoners were sent to Gusen in late 1944 and additional inmates arrived due to the evacuation of concentration camps in early 1945 as Allied armies approached. By the end of March, there were about 24,000 prisoners in the three Gusen camps. In April, additional prisoners were transferred to Gusen from subcamps closer to the front line. Many prisoners had become Muselmänner (emaciated), many suffered from typhus, dysentery, tuberculosis, or pneumonia, and some lacked clothes. Overcrowding meant that there were three people to a bunk, and conditions were even worse in Block 31, where those suffering from dysentery were thrown on the floor and denied food. In April 1945, Ziereis contemplated murdering the 40,000 prisoners at Gusen by trapping them in the tunnels and detonating them with dynamite. He passed the order on to Seidler and an ammunition depot was set up nearby by 28 April. Two of the five entrances of the Sandkeller tunnels at Gusen I were walled off and explosives placed at the entrances of the Kellerbau and Bergkristal tunnels. This "murderous brainstorming", in the words of historian Daniel Blatman, was never carried out due to the collapse of Nazi authority. Individual SS members began to desert in large numbers on the night of 2–3 May. More SS left the camp in groups on 3 May 1945, with the pretext of fighting the Soviet army, although most, in fact, hid in the surrounding woods and hills. Over the next day, the prisoners gradually realized that they were free; able-bodied prisoners left the camp. Most of the SS had left by the time elements of the United States 11th Armored Division arrived in the early morning of 5 May. Staff Sergeant Albert J. Kosiek, in charge of a platoon in the 41st Cavalry Squadron, was ordered to investigate a suspected enemy strongpoint near Mauthausen, and to check the bridge near Gusen which was intended to be used by American tanks. He first reached Gusen III, where the newly recruited guards, formerly firemen from Vienna, were very willing to surrender. Only two American soldiers were left behind to escort them to the American brigade's headquarters. North of St. Georgen, Kosiek encountered a Red Cross representative who told him that there was a concentration camp at Mauthausen and 400 SS who wanted to surrender. Because he did not have enough men to accept the SS surrender, Kosiek tested the bridge and bypassed Gusen II and Gusen I on the way to Mauthausen. Over the next twenty-four hours, the remaining SS burned all documents relating to the Messerschmitt 262 in the Gusen crematorium. Kosiek accepted the surrender of the 800 SS at Gusen while returning to headquarters the next day. More American forces arrived at Gusen later the same day. They found a situation of complete chaos, as prisoners killed each other with weapons abandoned by the fleeing SS. Many of the sickest prisoners had been sealed in barracks without food or water; when the American soldiers opened them it was rare to find more than one or two still alive. A group of kapos responsible for atrocities barricaded themselves in Block 32. Some committed suicide while others were torn apart by the mob. ## Aftermath Following the liberation, some former kapos were killed by surviving inmates. Although German-speaking prisoners who had angered the numerically dominant Poles were at most risk of lynching, most prisoners were more interested in obtaining food than revenge, and most kapos escaped unmolested and were never held to account for their crimes. Russian and Polish prisoners attacked each other and had to be forcibly separated. In the next several weeks, local Austrians lived in fear of renegade SS, bands of maurading kapos, and former prisoners. On 8 May, Nazi Party members were ordered to bury the dead in the potato field between Gusen I and II while local citizens were forced to watch. On 27 July 1945, American troops retreated from the area according to the Yalta Agreement, taking with them all the unfinished aircraft from the tunnels. The remaining prisoners who were too weak to move were put in the charge of the Soviet occupation forces. At least 16 former guards and kapos were convicted during the Mauthausen Trial at Dachau. Former kapo Rudolf Fiegl was convicted, sentenced to death, and hanged for gassing prisoners, as was the SS doctor Vetter. Chmielewski escaped the first trial and lived in Austria under false papers. In 1956 he was recognized and arrested. Following a 1961 trial in which he was convicted of 282 murders, he was sentenced to life in prison. Jentsch, involved in the "death baths", was arrested in West Germany, tried in Hagen in 1967, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison. More than 70 criminal investigations were opened by West German prosecutors. The former site of Gusen I and II was redeveloped into a village and most of the concentration camp buildings were demolished. As of 2017, the Poschacher quarry adjacent to Gusen I was still in use, the former Bergkristall tunnels are privately owned and not open to the public, as is the entrance to Gusen I. The memorial at Gusen, privately built, was acquired by the government in 1997 which has since maintained it and also built a small museum nearby in 2004. In the 2010s, local municipalities around Mauthausen and Gusen set up a Bewußtseinsregion ("consciousness region") in order to promote preservation and restoration of the sites. In 2013, two archaeologists conducted rescue archaeology at the former Gusen crematorium. In late 2019 and early 2020, the Polish government suggested that the Gusen village should be bought and additional efforts made to commemorate the victims of the camp. In January 2020, the Austrian government announced that it was setting aside EU€2 million (USD\$2.2 million) to that end.

2018 Masters (snooker)

Professional non-ranking snooker tournament, Jan 2018

The 2018 Masters (officially the 2018 Dafabet Masters) was a professional non-ranking snooker tournament that took place between 14 and 21 January 2018 in London, England, and the second Triple Crown event of the 2017–18 snooker season. It was the 44th staging of the Masters, and was broadcast in Europe by the BBC and Eurosport. The event saw two first-time Triple Crown finalists. Mark Allen won his first, defeating Kyren Wilson 10–7 in the final. Defending champion Ronnie O'Sullivan lost 1–6 in the quarter-finals to the eventual champion, Allen. It was O'Sullivan's first defeat at the Masters since 2015. ## Tournament summary The 2018 Dafabet Masters saw the sixteen highest ranked players in the snooker world rankings compete, with no qualification round. Defending champion Ronnie O'Sullivan was the number one seed, with remaining places being allocated to players based on the world rankings after the 2017 UK Championship. With Stuart Bingham, ranked 12th, suspended for betting breaches, Liang Wenbo, ranked 17th, was invited in his stead. Luca Brecel and Anthony McGill made their Masters debuts at the event. A notable absentee was former Masters champion Neil Robertson, who had participated in every Masters tournament since 2006, but had failed to be ranked high enough in time for the event, at rank 20; Robertson would return to the event the following season. As in previous years, the top eight seeds were allocated fixed positions in the draw. The other eight players were positioned by drawing lots during the final of the 2017 UK Championship. ### First round Sixteen players took part in the first round of the competition, which was played between 14 and 17 January 2018. Defending champion and top seed, Ronnie O'Sullivan, whitewashed ninth seed Marco Fu 6–0, making three centuries during the match. In the first four frames, O'Sullivan scored a total of 477 points without reply while Fu gained only five points due to a foul. Mark Williams won a match at the Masters for the first time in five years, recovering from 3–5 behind to beat World Champion and World number one, Mark Selby, 6–5. Playing in his first Masters tournament in eight years, the other Welsh player in the draw, Ryan Day, came from 0–3 down to beat World number four and former champion, Ding Junhui, 6–4. Shaun Murphy defeated Ali Carter 6–4. Murphy was leading 4–0 before Carter won the next four frames to level the match, but Murphy survived the comeback and won two more frames for victory. Former World Championship finalist, Judd Trump, defeated Liang Wenbo by a score of 6–4 in the first round. Mark Allen safely reached the second round by defeating Masters debutant Luca Brecel 6–3. Kyren Wilson secured his first victory in a Masters match after having lost in the first round of his Masters debut the previous year. He defeated former Masters finalist, Barry Hawkins, 6–4 in the first round of this edition of the tournament. Former champion, John Higgins, won the first two frames in his tie against Anthony McGill, before McGill took the next four (including a match-high of 122 in frame 4) to lead 4–2. Higgins, however, won the next four frames to win the match 6–4. ### Quarter-finals The quarter-finals were played on 18 and 19 January 2018. Defending champion Ronnie O'Sullivan was knocked out of the tournament by Mark Allen, who won their quarter-final match 6–1. Having suffered his first loss at the Masters since 2015, O'Sullivan claimed afterwards that he had been feeling ill before the match and was "glad" to be out of the competition. He also revealed, however, that he had not been feeling well during his whitewash of Marco Fu in the first round. After the match, Allen mentioned the negative crowd reaction, saying that his playing style had been affected by some of O'Sullivan's fans. John Higgins defeated Ryan Day in the second quarter-final, with another 6–1 scoreline. Higgins made a break of 83 in the opening frame, Day won frame 2, then Higgins took the next five frames with breaks of 61, 63, 65, 80 and 113 to win the match. Kyren Wilson defeated Mark Williams, again 6–1, in the third quarter-final match. Wilson took the first four frames, Williams won the fifth, then Wilson took frames 6 and 7 with two century breaks to win the match. In the last of the quarter-finals, Judd Trump defeated Shaun Murphy 6–4. Trump made four 50+ breaks in the first six frames and built up a lead of 4–2, before Murphy took the next two frames to tie the match 4–4. Trump then won the next two frames, with breaks of 111 and 113, to win the match. Play was briefly interrupted when a wasp landed on the table during the match. Afterwards, Murphy admitted that he had been concerned, saying he was "terrified of wasps, who isn't?" ### Semi-finals The semi-finals took place on 20 January 2018, the penultimate day of the event. In the first semi-final, Kyren Wilson defeated Judd Trump 6–5 to reach his first Triple Crown final. Trump started the match with a lead of 3–1, and later 5–2, owing to breaks of 83, 96 and 69. Wilson took both of the next two frames, and then made a break of 107 in the tenth frame to tie 5–5, forcing a decider. Trump was the first of the two players to make progress in the final frame, but lost position after a break of 23, leaving Wilson in amongst the balls; Wilson then made an "outstanding" break of 72 to win the match. In the second semi-final, Mark Allen dispatched another former multiple World and Masters Champion, John Higgins, 6–3. After making breaks of 63 and 90, Allen took a 3–1 lead at the mid-session interval. Higgins created a break of 131 in the fifth frame (his 700th competitive century break), but Allen won the next two frames to lead 5–2. In frame 8, Higgins scored the second century of the match to trail 3–5, before Allen won the match in the ninth frame to reach his first Masters final. Post-match, Higgins admitted that his tactical play was "very poor". ### Final The final took place on 21 January 2018, over two sessions, in a best-of-19-frames match. This was the first time since 1995 that two first-time finalists had met in the Masters final; neither Mark Allen (8) nor Kyren Wilson (13) had ever previously reached the final of a Masters tournament. Allen defeated Wilson 10–7 to win the title. This was Allen's first major title in his fourteen years as a professional. The two players ended the first session tied at 4–4, and shared the first two frames of the second session to tie the match again at 5–5. Allen made a break of 73 in the eleventh frame to lead 6–5; he then took a two-frame lead with a break of 119 in frame 12, and also won frame 13 to lead 8–5. Wilson won the next two frames to reduce his deficit to a single frame, at 7–8. Allen took frames 16 and 17, with breaks of 69 and 71 respectively, to win the tournament. After the match, Wilson cried on receiving his runners-up medal. He commented: "I just made things a bit too easy for Mark, you can't do that to a player of Mark's class, he's too good and he'll punish you. That's what he did tonight." ## Prize fund The event received identical prize money to that of the previous year, with £200,000 for the winner, and £600,000 overall. The highest break prize of £10,000 was won by Liang Wenbo, for a break of 139. The breakdown of prize money is shown below: - Winner: £200,000 - Runner-up: £90,000 - Semi-finals: £50,000 - Quarter-finals: £25,000 - Last 16: £12,500 - Highest break: £10,000 - Total: £600,000 ## Main draw ### Final ## Century breaks The event saw a total of 28 century breaks throughout the tournament, with Liang Wenbo completing the highest tournament break of 139. - 139, 116 – Liang Wenbo - 135, 120, 119, 115 – Mark Allen - 135 – Mark Williams - 131, 127, 113 – John Higgins - 131, 120 – Barry Hawkins - 125, 115, 105 – Ryan Day - 122 – Anthony McGill - 121, 120, 112 – Ronnie O'Sullivan - 119 – Shaun Murphy - 113, 111 – Judd Trump - 111, 100 – Ding Junhui - 110 – Ali Carter - 109, 107, 106 – Kyren Wilson ## Coverage The tournament was broadcast live in the United Kingdom by BBC Sport, as well as on Eurosport in Europe. Worldwide, the event was covered by China Central Television and Superstars Online in China, and Sky Sports in New Zealand. NowTV presented the event in Hong Kong with additional commentary. ### Aftermath The Masters was followed by the 2018 German Masters, which was won by Mark Williams. Masters winner Mark Allen was defeated in the first round, losing 4–5 to Matthew Selt. At the following year's event, the 2019 Masters, both finalists would lose in the first round: Mark Allen 5–6 to Luca Brecel, and Kyren Wilson 2–6 to Judd Trump.

Meteorological history of Hurricane Georges

The meteorological history of Hurricane Georges spanned seventeen days from September 15 to October 1, 1998. Hurricane Georges began as a tropical wave that moved off the coast of Africa during mid-September 1998. Tracking westward, the wave spawned an area of low pressure two days later, which quickly strengthened into a tropical depression. On September 16, the depression was upgraded to Tropical Storm Georges, and to Hurricane Georges the next day. Over the next few days, an eye developed and deep Atmospheric convection persisted around it. Strong outflow and warm sea surface temperatures allowed the storm to intensify as it tracked towards the west-northwest. The storm reached its peak intensity on September 20 with winds of 155 mph (250 km/h), just below Category 5 status on the Saffir–Simpson hurricane scale, and a barometric pressure of 937 mbar (hPa; 27.67 inHg). Over the following five days, the hurricane tracked through the Greater Antilles, making five landfalls, four as a Category 3 hurricane and one as a Category 1. Shortly after entering the Caribbean, the Georges weakened slightly; however, shortly before crossing Puerto Rico, the storm re-attained major hurricane status. After weakening slightly once more, the storm rapidly organized near the Dominican Republic. A well-defined eye formed and outflow re-established, allowing the storm to reach an intensity of 120 mph (195 km/h) just prior to landfall. During its passage of Hispaniola the circulation was severely disrupted, but Georges maintained hurricane-intensity. On September 23, the storm made landfall in southeastern Cuba as a minimal hurricane. By September 25, Georges entered the Gulf of Mexico and intensified into a Category 2 hurricane. The storm re-organized over the gulf, with the eye fully reforming and deep convection persisting around the center of circulation. By September 27, Georges reached an intensity of 110 mph (175 km/h). Several hours prior to landfall the next day, the hurricane weakened slightly and tracked inland near Biloxi, Mississippi with winds of 105 mph (170 km/h). Upon landfall, the hurricane's forward motion slowed, executing a brief clockwise loop before maintaining an eastward drift. Gradually weakening, the hurricane was only a tropical depression by the afternoon of September 29. Two days later, Georges fully dissipated near the Atlantic coast of Florida. ## Formation and intensification Late on September 13, 1998, a tropical wave exited the west coast of Africa. The following day the system featured a large area of organized deep convection and the dvorak technique was initiated. By September 15, ships within the vicinity of the wave reported that a surface circulation had developed and by 1200 UTC, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) estimated that a tropical depression, the seventh of the season, while situated about 345 miles (555 kilometres) south-southwest of the Cape Verde Islands. The depression tracked roughly due west in response to a mid-level ridge, building westward, to the north of the cyclone. Throughout the day, banding features developed around the system and deep convection consolidated around the center of circulation. Roughly 24 hours after being declared a depression, the NHC upgraded the system to a tropical storm and gave it the name Georges. For the following ten days, Georges maintained a general west-northwest track for ten days due to a persistent mid to upper-level tropospheric ridge. Gradual intensification took place as the system developed strong outflow and warm sea surface temperatures aided in fueling further development. Easterly wind shear caused disruption of the storms' outflow; however, the center, previously surrounded by two deep areas of convection, was situated underneath one area of thunderstorm activity. By the late morning hours of September 17, an eyewall developed within the circulation, indicating that Georges was nearing hurricane-status. ## Peak intensity and Lesser Antilles Later on September 17, a banding-eye feature appeared on satellite imagery, leading the NHC to upgrade Georges into a hurricane at 1800 UTC that day. The next day, an anticyclone began to develop over the hurricane, enhancing the storms' outflow. Several hours later, Georges attained Category 2 status as sustained winds around the eye increased to 100 mph (160 km/h). Ahead of the storm, the NHC reported that there were no factors inhibiting further intensification and anticipated Georges to strengthen into a Category 4 hurricane before reaching the Lesser Antilles. A concentric eyewall began to develop late on September 18, briefly stalling the strengthening of the storm. This resulted from an eyewall replacement cycle that led to the formation of a larger eye. On September 19 and 20, Georges underwent a period of rapid intensification, in which winds increased by 45 mph (70 km/h) in a 24-hour span. At the end of this phase, Georges attained its peak intensity with winds of 155 mph (250 km/h) and a barometric pressure of 937 mbar (hPa; 27.67 inHg), just below Category 5 status. At the time of peak intensity, a Hurricane Hunter mission into the storm recorded flight-level winds up to 168 mph (270 km/h) while dropsondes measured surface winds up to 175 mph (280 km/h). One of the readings from a dropsonde, that was disregarded, recorded winds of 191 mph (307 km/h) in the lower-levels of the eyewall. This reading was disregarded by the hurricane hunters as it seemed too high and not representative of the actual intensity of Georges. The hurricane hunters also noted a large increase in the radius of tropical storm-force winds, prompting the issuance of tropical storm warnings in the Lesser Antilles. Around the time of peak intensity, the eye of Georges was roughly 35 mi (55 km) in diameter. Shortly after attaining peak intensity on September 20, Georges began to weaken, as upper-level vertical wind shear caused the eye to become cloud-filled and was no longer visible on satellite imagery. Convection associated with the storm also became less symmetric in nature. In spite of these factors, Georges remained a major hurricane through September 21. Continued weakening took place as the shear restricted a portion of the hurricane's outflow. At 0430 UTC on September 21, Georges made its initial landfall on Antigua with winds of 115 mph (185 km/h). Several hours later, the storm passed directly over St. Kitts. Shortly after passing over the island, the storm weakened to Category 2 status and winds decreased to 110 mph (175 km/h). ## Caribbean islands As the storm approached Puerto Rico late on September 21, the wind shear began to relent, allowing Georges to re-organize; however, its outflow was unable to fully redevelop due to its proximity to land. Around 2200 UTC, the storm reattained Category 3 intensity and made landfall in Puerto Rico with winds of 115 mph (185 km/h) before weakening again. Hours later, the storm entered the Mona Passage and began to once again reorganize. As Georges approached the Dominican Republic, it unexpectedly developed a well-defined eye and began to intensify, attaining winds of 120 mph (195 km/h); satellite imagery suggested that Georges re-attained Category 4 intensity. It made landfall on the Dominican Republic at 1230 UTC on September 22 as a Category 3 hurricane. Hispaniola's mountainous terrain was a large factor in the expected weakening of the storm; however, by six hours after landfall, the storm's eye maintained its structure, outflow remained strong, and banding features were still organized. By September 23, however, the center became ill-defined and hurricane hunters were unable to fly into the storm until it moved back over water. The hurricane's core was severely disrupted by the 10,000 ft (3,000 m) mountains of Hispaniola. Although Georges was exceptionally disorganized, it retained minimal hurricane intensity throughout its passage of the island. Later on September 23, the storm entered the Windward Passage, maintaining a broad circulation with well-defined banding and an eye-like feature. Little change occurred during the day; the storm made its fifth landfall near Guantanamo Bay, Cuba with winds of 75 mph (120 km/h). The storm began to take a more northwesterly track in response to a mid- to upper-level high-pressure area to the northeast and a mid- to upper-level low over the Yucatán Peninsula. Throughout its passage across Cuba, Georges maintained a well-defined outflow pattern despite having an ill-defined center. By September 24, the storm moved over water north of Cuba, and the eyewall quickly began to redevelop. ## Gulf of Mexico and dissipation As the hurricane neared the Florida Keys on September 25, its eye reformed and became more pronounced on satellite imagery. The reorganization led to an increase in intensity, and at about 1530 UTC, Georges made landfall near Key West with winds of 105 mph (170 km/h). The hurricane's forward motion shifted to west-northwest, and forecast models indicated that Georges would re-attain Category 3 status before making landfall along the northern Gulf Coast. The slow motion of the storm led to an erratic track, mainly caused by westward wobbles of the eye. Vertical wind shear was estimated at up to 35 mph (55 km/h), restricting outflow within the hurricane and confining the most intense convection to the eastern side of the circulation. Between September 26 and 27, the storm continued to slow while turning northwestward. Its wind field became asymmetric during the afternoon of September 26, with hurricane-force winds present only in the eastern side. Later in the day, winds around the center increased to 110 mph (175 km/h), just short of major hurricane status. The possibility of rapid intensification at the time was low. The central barometric pressure continued to decrease through September 28, bottoming out at 961 mbar (hPa; 28.38 inHg). By that time, the storm had become visible on New Orleans, Louisiana, radar imagery, which depicted an incomplete eyewall. The storm continued to slow as it neared its final landfall, and winds around the eyewall slightly decreased. Around 1130 UTC, Georges made landfall near Biloxi, Mississippi with winds of 105 mph (170 km/h). Several hours after moving ashore, Georges weakened to Category 1 status and became quasi-stationary. The storm's slow movement led to extreme amounts of rainfall throughout the southeastern United States, peaking at 38.46 in (977 mm) in Munson, Florida. By September 29, Georges had weakened to a tropical storm and completed a small counter-clockwise loop over southern Mississippi. Subsequently, the storm began tracking west-northwestward at a faster pace. Around 1200 UTC, Georges weakened to a tropical depression, and the NHC issued their final advisory on the system. At this time, the Hydrometeorological Prediction Center (HPC) initiated public advisories. The depression maintained a well-defined circulation as it tracked close to the Gulf of Mexico; however, the center of circulation remained inland. Large quantities of tropical moisture fed the storm, allowing it to produce torrential rainfall. By September 30, the low-level circulation began to detach from the upper-level circulation. The HPC issued their final advisory on the depression early on October 1 as it neared the Atlantic Ocean, and it fully dissipated several hours later. ## See also - Hurricane Georges - 1998 Atlantic hurricane season

Benjamin Lee Whorf

American linguist (1897-1941)

Benjamin Lee Whorf (/hwɔːrf/; April 24, 1897 – July 26, 1941) was an American linguist and fire prevention engineer who is famous for proposing the "Sapir–Whorf hypothesis." He believed that the structures of different languages shape how their speakers perceive and conceptualize the world. Whorf saw this idea, named after him and his mentor Edward Sapir, as having implications similar to Einstein's principle of physical relativity. However, the concept originated from 19th-century philosophy and thinkers like Wilhelm von Humboldt and Wilhelm Wundt. Whorf initially pursued chemical engineering but developed an interest in linguistics, particularly Biblical Hebrew and indigenous Mesoamerican languages. His groundbreaking work on the Nahuatl language earned him recognition, and he received a grant to study it further in Mexico. He presented influential papers on Nahuatl upon his return. Whorf later studied linguistics with Edward Sapir at Yale University while working as a fire prevention engineer. During his time at Yale, Whorf worked on describing the Hopi language and made notable claims about its perception of time. He also conducted research on the Uto-Aztecan languages, publishing influential papers. In 1938, he substituted for Sapir, teaching a seminar on American Indian linguistics. Whorf's contributions extended beyond linguistic relativity; he wrote a grammar sketch of Hopi, studied Nahuatl dialects, proposed a deciphering of Maya hieroglyphic writing, and contributed to Uto-Aztecan reconstruction. After Whorf's death from cancer in 1941, his linguist friends curated his manuscripts and promoted his ideas regarding language, culture, and cognition. However, in the 1960s, his views fell out of favor due to criticisms claiming his ideas were untestable and poorly formulated. In recent decades, interest in Whorf's work has resurged, with scholars reevaluating his ideas and engaging in a more in-depth understanding of his theories. The field of linguistic relativity remains an active area of research in psycholinguistics and linguistic anthropology, generating ongoing debates between relativism and universalism. Whorf's contributions to linguistics, such as the allophone and the cryptotype, have been widely accepted. ## Biography ### Early life The son of Harry Church Whorf and Sarah Edna Lee Whorf, Benjamin Lee Whorf was born on April 24, 1897, in Winthrop, Massachusetts. Harry Church Whorf was an artist, intellectual, and designer – first working as a commercial artist and later as a dramatist. Whorf had two younger brothers, John and Richard, who both went on to become notable artists. John became an internationally renowned painter and illustrator; Richard was an actor in films such as Yankee Doodle Dandy and later an Emmy-nominated television director of such shows as The Beverly Hillbillies. Whorf was the intellectual of the three and started conducting chemical experiments with his father's photographic equipment at a young age. He was also an avid reader, interested in botany, astrology, and Middle American prehistory. He read William H. Prescott's Conquest of Mexico several times. At the age of 17, he began keeping a copious diary in which he recorded his thoughts and dreams. ### Career in fire prevention Whorf graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1918 with a degree in chemical engineering where his academic performance was of average quality. In 1920, he married Celia Inez Peckham, who became the mother of his three children, Raymond Ben, Robert Peckham and Celia Lee. Around the same time he began work as a fire prevention engineer (an inspector) for the Hartford Fire Insurance Company. He was particularly good at the job and was highly commended by his employers. His job required him to travel to production facilities throughout New England to be inspected. One anecdote describes him arriving at a chemical plant in which he was denied access by the director because he would not allow anyone to see the production procedure which was a trade secret. Having been told what the plant produced, Whorf wrote a chemical formula on a piece of paper, saying to the director: "I think this is what you're doing". The surprised director asked Whorf how he knew about the secret procedure, and he simply answered: "You couldn't do it in any other way." Whorf helped to attract new customers to the Fire Insurance Company; they favored his thorough inspections and recommendations. Another famous anecdote from his job was used by Whorf to argue that language use affects habitual behavior. Whorf described a workplace in which full gasoline drums were stored in one room and empty ones in another; he said that because of flammable vapor the "empty" drums were more dangerous than those that were full, although workers handled them less carefully to the point that they smoked in the room with "empty" drums, but not in the room with full ones. Whorf argued that by habitually speaking of the vapor-filled drums as empty and by extension as inert, the workers were oblivious to the risk posed by smoking near the "empty drums". ### Early interest in religion and language Whorf was a spiritual man throughout his lifetime although what religion he followed has been the subject of debate. As a young man, he produced a manuscript titled "Why I have discarded evolution", causing some scholars to describe him as a devout Methodist, who was impressed with fundamentalism, and perhaps supportive of creationism. However, throughout his life Whorf's main religious interest was theosophy, a nonsectarian organization based on Buddhist and Hindu teachings that promotes the view of the world as an interconnected whole and the unity and brotherhood of humankind "without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or color". Some scholars have argued that the conflict between spiritual and scientific inclinations has been a driving force in Whorf's intellectual development, particularly in the attraction by ideas of linguistic relativity. Whorf said that "of all groups of people with whom I have come in contact, Theosophical people seem the most capable of becoming excited about ideas—new ideas." Around 1924, Whorf first became interested in linguistics. Originally, he analyzed Biblical texts, seeking to uncover hidden layers of meaning. Inspired by the esoteric work La langue hebraïque restituée by Antoine Fabre d'Olivet, he began a semantic and grammatical analysis of Biblical Hebrew. Whorf's early manuscripts on Hebrew and Maya have been described as exhibiting a considerable degree of mysticism, as he sought to uncover esoteric meanings of glyphs and letters. ### Early studies in Mesoamerican linguistics Whorf studied Biblical linguistics mainly at the Watkinson Library (now Hartford Public Library). This library had an extensive collection of materials about Native American linguistics and folklore, originally collected by James Hammond Trumbull. It was at the Watkinson library that Whorf became friends with the young boy, John B. Carroll, who later went on to study psychology under B. F. Skinner, and who in 1956 edited and published a selection of Whorf's essays as Language, Thought and Reality . The collection rekindled Whorf's interest in Mesoamerican antiquity. He began studying the Nahuatl language in 1925, and later, beginning in 1928, he studied the collections of Maya hieroglyphic texts. Quickly becoming conversant with the materials, he began a scholarly dialog with Mesoamericanists such as Alfred Tozzer, the Maya archaeologist at Harvard University, and Herbert Spinden of the Brooklyn Museum. In 1928, he first presented a paper at the International Congress of Americanists in which he presented his translation of a Nahuatl document held at the Peabody Museum at Harvard. He also began to study the comparative linguistics of the Uto-Aztecan language family, which Edward Sapir had recently demonstrated to be a linguistic family. In addition to Nahuatl, Whorf studied the Piman and Tepecano languages, while in close correspondence with linguist J. Alden Mason. ### Field studies in Mexico Because of the promise shown by his work on Uto-Aztecan, Tozzer and Spinden advised Whorf to apply for a grant with the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) to support his research. Whorf considered using the money to travel to Mexico to procure Aztec manuscripts for the Watkinson library, but Tozzer suggested he spend the time in Mexico documenting modern Nahuatl dialects. In his application Whorf proposed to establish the oligosynthetic nature of the Nahuatl language. Before leaving Whorf presented the paper "Stem series in Maya" at the Linguistic Society of America conference, in which he argued that in the Mayan languages syllables carry symbolic content. The SSRC awarded Whorf the grant and in 1930 he traveled to Mexico City, where Professor Robert H. Barlow put him in contact with several speakers of Nahuatl to serve as his informants. The outcome of the trip to Mexico was Whorf's sketch of Milpa Alta Nahuatl, published only after his death, and an article on a series of Aztec pictograms found at the Tepozteco monument at Tepoztlán, Morelos in which he noted similarities in form and meaning between Aztec and Maya day signs. ### At Yale Although Whorf had been entirely an autodidact in linguistic theory and field methodology up to this point, he had already made a name for himself in Mesoamerican linguistics. Whorf had met Sapir, the leading US linguist of the day, at professional conferences, and in 1931 Sapir came to Yale from the University of Chicago to take a position as Professor of Anthropology. Alfred Tozzer sent Sapir a copy of Whorf's paper on "Nahuatl tones and saltillo". Sapir replied stating that it "should by all means be published"; however, it was not until 1993 that it was prepared for publication by Lyle Campbell and Frances Karttunen. Whorf took Sapir's first course at Yale on "American Indian Linguistics". He enrolled in a program of graduate studies, nominally working towards a PhD in linguistics, but he never actually attempted to obtain a degree, satisfying himself with participating in the intellectual community around Sapir. At Yale, Whorf joined the circle of Sapir's students that included such luminaries as Morris Swadesh, Mary Haas, Harry Hoijer, G. L. Trager and Charles F. Voegelin. Whorf took on a central role among Sapir's students and was well respected. Sapir had a profound influence on Whorf's thinking. Sapir's earliest writings had espoused views of the relation between thought and language stemming from the Humboldtian tradition he acquired through Franz Boas, which regarded language as the historical embodiment of volksgeist, or ethnic world view. But Sapir had since become influenced by a current of logical positivism, such as that of Bertrand Russell and the early Ludwig Wittgenstein, particularly through Ogden and Richards' The Meaning of Meaning, from which he adopted the view that natural language potentially obscures, rather than facilitates, the mind to perceive and describe the world as it really is. In this view, proper perception could only be accomplished through formal logics. During his stay at Yale, Whorf acquired this current of thought partly from Sapir and partly through his own readings of Russell and Ogden and Richards. As Whorf became more influenced by positivist science he also distanced himself from some approaches to language and meaning that he saw as lacking in rigor and insight. One of these was Polish philosopher Alfred Korzybski's General semantics, which was espoused in the US by Stuart Chase. Chase admired Whorf's work and frequently sought out a reluctant Whorf, who considered Chase to be "utterly incompetent by training and background to handle such a subject." Ironically, Chase would later write the foreword for Carroll's collection of Whorf's writings. #### Work on Hopi and descriptive linguistics Sapir also encouraged Whorf to continue his work on the historical and descriptive linguistics of Uto-Aztecan. Whorf published several articles on that topic in this period, some of them with G. L. Trager, who had become his close friend. Whorf took a special interest in the Hopi language and started working with Ernest Naquayouma, a speaker of Hopi from Toreva village living in Manhattan, New York. Whorf credited Naquayouma as the source of most of his information on the Hopi language, although in 1938 he took a short field trip to the village of Mishongnovi, on the Second Mesa of the Hopi Reservation in Arizona. In 1936, Whorf was appointed honorary research fellow in anthropology at Yale, and he was invited by Franz Boas to serve on the committee of the Society of American Linguistics (later Linguistic Society of America). In 1937, Yale awarded him the Sterling Fellowship. He was a lecturer in anthropology from 1937 through 1938, replacing Sapir, who was gravely ill. Whorf gave graduate level lectures on "Problems of American Indian Linguistics". In 1938 with Trager's assistance he elaborated a report on the progress of linguistic research at the department of anthropology at Yale. The report includes some of Whorf's influential contributions to linguistic theory, such as the concept of the allophone and of covert grammatical categories. has argued, that in this report Whorf's linguistic theories exist in a condensed form, and that it was mainly through this report that Whorf exerted influence on the discipline of descriptive linguistics. #### Final years In late 1938, Whorf's own health declined. After an operation for cancer, he fell into an unproductive period. He was also deeply affected by Sapir's death in early 1939. It was in the writings of his last two years that he laid out the research program of linguistic relativity. His 1939 memorial article for Sapir, "The Relation of Habitual Thought And Behavior to Language", in particular has been taken to be Whorf's definitive statement of the issue, and is his most frequently quoted piece. In his last year Whorf also published three articles in the MIT Technology Review titled "Science and Linguistics", "Linguistics as an Exact Science" and "Language and Logic". He was also invited to contribute an article to a theosophical journal, Theosophist, published in Madras, India, for which he wrote "Language, Mind and Reality". In these final pieces, he offered a critique of Western science in which he suggested that non-European languages often referred to physical phenomena in ways that more directly reflected aspects of reality than many European languages, and that science ought to pay attention to the effects of linguistic categorization in its efforts to describe the physical world. He particularly criticized the Indo-European languages for promoting a mistaken essentialist world view, which had been disproved by advances in the sciences, whereas he suggested that other languages dedicated more attention to processes and dynamics rather than stable essences. Whorf argued that paying attention to how other physical phenomena are described in the study of linguistics could make valuable contributions to science by pointing out the ways in which certain assumptions about reality are implicit in the structure of language itself, and how language guides the attention of speakers towards certain phenomena in the world which risk becoming overemphasized while leaving other phenomena at risk of being overlooked. ## Posthumous reception and legacy At Whorf's death, his friend G. L. Trager was appointed as curator of his unpublished manuscripts. Some of them were published in the years after his death by another of Whorf's friends, Harry Hoijer. In the decade following, Trager and particularly Hoijer did much to popularize Whorf's ideas about linguistic relativity, and it was Hoijer who coined the term "Sapir–Whorf hypothesis" at a 1954 conference. Trager then published an article titled "The systematization of the Whorf hypothesis", which contributed to the idea that Whorf had proposed a hypothesis that should be the basis for a program of empirical research. Hoijer also published studies of Indigenous languages and cultures of the American South West in which Whorf found correspondences between cultural patterns and linguistic ones. The term, even though technically a misnomer, went on to become the most widely known label for Whorf's ideas. According to John A. Lucy, "Whorf's work in linguistics was and still is recognized as being of superb professional quality by linguists". ### Universalism and anti-Whorfianism Whorf's work began to fall out of favor less than a decade after his death, and he was subjected to severe criticism from scholars of language, culture and psychology. In 1953 and 1954, psychologists Roger Brown and Eric Lenneberg criticized Whorf for his reliance on anecdotal evidence, formulating a hypothesis to scientifically test his ideas, which they limited to an examination of a causal relation between grammatical or lexical structure and cognition or perception. Whorf himself did not advocate a straight causality between language and thought; instead he wrote that "Language and culture had grown up together"; that both were mutually shaped by the other. Hence, has argued that because the aim of the formulation of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis was to test simple causation, it failed to test Whorf's ideas from the outset. Focusing on color terminology, with easily discernible differences between perception and vocabulary, Brown and Lenneberg published in 1954 a study of Zuni color terms that slightly support a weak effect of semantic categorization of color terms on color perception. In doing so they began a line of empirical studies that investigated the principle of linguistic relativity. Empirical testing of the Whorfian hypothesis declined in the 1960s to 1980s as Noam Chomsky began to redefine linguistics and much of psychology in formal universalist terms. Several studies from that period refuted Whorf's hypothesis, demonstrating that linguistic diversity is a surface veneer that masks underlying universal cognitive principles. Many studies were highly critical and disparaging in their language, ridiculing Whorf's analyses and examples or his lack of an academic degree. Throughout the 1980s, most mentions of Whorf or of the Sapir–Whorf hypotheses continued to be disparaging, and led to a widespread view that Whorf's ideas had been proven wrong. Because Whorf was treated so severely in the scholarship during those decades, he has been described as "one of the prime whipping boys of introductory texts to linguistics". With the advent of cognitive linguistics and psycholinguistics in the late 1980s, some linguists sought to rehabilitate Whorf's reputation, as scholarship began to question whether earlier critiques of Whorf were justified. By the 1960s, analytical philosophers also became aware of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, and philosophers such as Max Black and Donald Davidson published scathing critiques of Whorf's strong relativist viewpoints. Black characterized Whorf's ideas about metaphysics as demonstrating "amateurish crudity". According to Black and Davidson, Whorf's viewpoint and the concept of linguistic relativity meant that translation between languages with different conceptual schemes would be impossible. Recent assessments such as those by Leavitt and Lee, however, consider Black and Davidson's interpretation to be based on an inaccurate characterization of Whorf's viewpoint, and even rather absurd given the time he spent trying to translate between different conceptual schemes. In their view, the critiques are based on a lack of familiarity with Whorf's writings; according to these recent Whorf scholars a more accurate description of his viewpoint is that he thought translation to be possible, but only through careful attention to the subtle differences between conceptual schemes. Eric Lenneberg, Noam Chomsky, and Steven Pinker have also criticized Whorf for failing to be sufficiently clear in his formulation of how language influences thought, and for failing to provide real evidence to support his assumptions. Generally Whorf's arguments took the form of examples that were anecdotal or speculative, and functioned as attempts to show how "exotic" grammatical traits were connected to what were considered equally exotic worlds of thought. Even Whorf's defenders admitted that his writing style was often convoluted and couched in neologisms – attributed to his awareness of language use, and his reluctance to use terminology that might have pre-existing connotations. argues that Whorf was mesmerized by the foreignness of indigenous languages, and exaggerated and idealized them. According to Lakoff, Whorf's tendency to exoticize data must be judged in the historical context: Whorf and the other Boasians wrote at a time in which racism and jingoism were predominant, and when it was unthinkable to many that "savages" had redeeming qualities, or that their languages were comparable in complexity to those of Europe. For this alone Lakoff argues, Whorf can be considered to be "Not just a pioneer in linguistics, but a pioneer as a human being". Today many followers of universalist schools of thought continue to oppose the idea of linguistic relativity, seeing it as unsound or even ridiculous. For example, Steven Pinker argues in his book The Language Instinct that thought exists prior to language and independently of it, a view also espoused by philosophers of language such as Jerry Fodor, John Locke and Plato. In this interpretation, language is inconsequential to human thought because humans do not think in "natural" language, i.e. any language used for communication. Rather, we think in a meta-language that precedes natural language, which Pinker following Fodor calls "mentalese." Pinker attacks what he calls "Whorf's radical position", declaring, "the more you examine Whorf's arguments, the less sense they make." Scholars of a more "relativist" bent such as John A. Lucy and Stephen C. Levinson have criticized Pinker for misrepresenting Whorf's views and arguing against strawmen. ### Resurgence of Whorfianism Linguistic relativity studies have experienced a resurgence since the 1990s, and a series of favorable experimental results have brought Whorfianism back into favor, especially in cultural psychology and linguistic anthropology. The first study directing positive attention towards Whorf's relativist position was George Lakoff's "Women, Fire and Dangerous Things", in which he argued that Whorf had been on the right track in his focus on differences in grammatical and lexical categories as a source of differences in conceptualization. In 1992 psychologist John A. Lucy published two books on the topic, one analyzing the intellectual genealogy of the hypothesis, arguing that previous studies had failed to appreciate the subtleties of Whorf's thinking; they had been unable to formulate a research agenda that would actually test Whorf's claims. Lucy proposed a new research design so that the hypothesis of linguistic relativity could be tested empirically, and to avoid the pitfalls of earlier studies which Lucy claimed had tended to presuppose the universality of the categories they were studying. His second book was an empirical study of the relation between grammatical categories and cognition in the Yucatec Maya language of Mexico. In 1996 Penny Lee's reappraisal of Whorf's writings was published, reinstating Whorf as a serious and capable thinker. Lee argued that previous explorations of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis had largely ignored Whorf's actual writings, and consequently asked questions very unlike those Whorf had asked. Also in that year a volume, "Rethinking Linguistic Relativity" edited by John J. Gumperz and Stephen C. Levinson gathered a range of researchers working in psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology to bring renewed attention to the issue of how Whorf's theories could be updated, and a subsequent review of the new direction of the linguistic relativity paradigm cemented the development. Since then considerable empirical research into linguistic relativity has been carried out, especially at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics with scholarship motivating two edited volumes of linguistic relativity studies, and in American Institutions by scholars such as Lera Boroditsky and Dedre Gentner. In turn universalist scholars frequently dismiss as "dull" or "boring", positive findings of influence of linguistic categories on thought or behavior, which are often subtle rather than spectacular, suggesting that Whorf's excitement about linguistic relativity had promised more spectacular findings than it was able to provide. Whorf's views have been compared to those of philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and the late Ludwig Wittgenstein, both of whom considered language to have important bearing on thought and reasoning. His hypotheses have also been compared to the views of psychologists such as Lev Vygotsky, whose social constructivism considers the cognitive development of children to be mediated by the social use of language. Vygotsky shared Whorf's interest in gestalt psychology, and he also read Sapir's works. Others have seen similarities between Whorf's work and the ideas of literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, who read Whorf and whose approach to textual meaning was similarly holistic and relativistic. Whorf's ideas have also been interpreted as a radical critique of positivist science. ## Work ### Linguistic relativity Whorf is best known as the main proponent of what he called the principle of linguistic relativity, but which is often known as "the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis", named for him and Edward Sapir. Whorf never stated the principle in the form of a hypothesis, and the idea that linguistic categories influence perception and cognition was shared by many other scholars before him. But because Whorf, in his articles, gave specific examples of how he saw the grammatical categories of specific languages related to conceptual and behavioral patterns, he pointed towards an empirical research program that has been taken up by subsequent scholars, and which is often called "Sapir–Whorf studies". #### Sources of influence on Whorf's thinking Whorf and Sapir both drew explicitly on Albert Einstein's principle of general relativity; hence linguistic relativity refers to the concept of grammatical and semantic categories of a specific language providing a frame of reference as a medium through which observations are made. Following an original observation by Boas, Sapir demonstrated that speakers of a given language perceive sounds that are acoustically different as the same, if the sound comes from the underlying phoneme and does not contribute to changes in semantic meaning. Furthermore, speakers of languages are attentive to sounds, particularly if the same two sounds come from different phonemes. Such differentiation is an example of how various observational frames of reference leads to different patterns of attention and perception. Whorf was also influenced by gestalt psychology, believing that languages require their speakers to describe the same events as different gestalt constructions, which he called "isolates from experience". An example is how the action of cleaning a gun is different in English and Shawnee: English focuses on the instrumental relation between two objects and the purpose of the action (removing dirt); whereas the Shawnee language focuses on the movement—using an arm to create a dry space in a hole. The event described is the same, but the attention in terms of figure and ground are different. #### Degree of influence of language on thought If read superficially, some of Whorf's statements lend themselves to the interpretation that he supported linguistic determinism. For example, in an often-quoted passage Whorf writes: > We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscope flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds—and this means largely by the linguistic systems of our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way—an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is of course, an implicit and unstated one, but its terms are absolutely obligatory; we cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organization and classification of data that the agreement decrees. We are thus introduced to a new principle of relativity, which holds that all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can in some way be calibrated. The statements about the obligatory nature of the terms of language have been taken to suggest that Whorf meant that language completely determined the scope of possible conceptualizations. However neo-Whorfians argue that here Whorf is writing about the terms in which we speak of the world, not the terms in which we think of it. Whorf noted that to communicate thoughts and experiences with members of a speech community speakers must use the linguistic categories of their shared language, which requires moulding experiences into the shape of language to speak them—a process called "thinking for speaking". This interpretation is supported by Whorf's subsequent statement that "No individual is free to describe nature with absolute impartiality, but is constrained by certain modes of interpretation even when he thinks himself most free". Similarly the statement that observers are led to different pictures of the universe has been understood as an argument that different conceptualizations are incommensurable making translation between different conceptual and linguistic systems impossible. Neo-Whorfians argue this to be a misreading since throughout his work one of his main points was that such systems could be "calibrated" and thereby be made commensurable, but only when we become aware of the differences in conceptual schemes through linguistic analysis. #### Hopi time Whorf's study of Hopi time has been the most widely discussed and criticized example of linguistic relativity. In his analysis he argues that there is a relation between how the Hopi people conceptualize time, how they speak of temporal relations, and the grammar of the Hopi language. Whorf's most elaborate argument for the existence of linguistic relativity was based on what he saw as a fundamental difference in the understanding of time as a conceptual category among the Hopi. He argued that the Hopi language, in contrast to English and other SAE languages, does not treat the flow of time as a sequence of distinct countable instances, like "three days" or "five years", but rather as a single process. Because of this difference, the language lacks nouns that refer to units of time. He proposed that the Hopi view of time was fundamental in all aspects of their culture and furthermore explained certain patterns of behavior. In his 1939 memorial essay to Sapir he wrote that "... the Hopi language is seen to contain no words, grammatical forms, construction or expressions that refer directly to what we call 'time', or to past, present, or future..." Linguist Ekkehart Malotki challenged Whorf's analyses of Hopi temporal expressions and concepts with numerous examples how the Hopi language refers to time. Malotki argues that in the Hopi language the system of tenses consists of future and non-future and that the single difference between the three-tense system of European languages and the Hopi system, is that the latter combines past and present to form a single category. Malotki's critique was widely cited as the final piece of evidence in refuting Whorf's ideas and his concept of linguistic relativity while other scholars defended the analysis of Hopi, arguing that Whorf's claim was not that Hopi lacked words or categories to describe temporality, but that the Hopi concept of time is altogether different from that of English speakers. Whorf described the Hopi categories of tense, noting that time is not divided into past, present and future, as is common in European languages, but rather a single tense refers to both present and past while another refers to events that have not yet happened and may or may not happen in the future. He also described a large array of stems that he called "tensors" which describes aspects of temporality, but without referring to countable units of time as in English and most European languages. ### Contributions to linguistic theory Whorf's distinction between "overt" (phenotypical) and "covert" (cryptotypical) grammatical categories has become widely influential in linguistics and anthropology. British linguist Michael Halliday wrote about Whorf's notion of the "cryptotype", and the conception of "how grammar models reality", that it would "eventually turn out to be among the major contributions of twentieth century linguistics". Furthermore, Whorf introduced the concept of the allophone, a word that describes positional phonetic variants of a single superordinate phoneme; in doing so he placed a cornerstone in consolidating early phoneme theory. The term was popularized by G. L. Trager and Bernard Bloch in a 1941 paper on English phonology and went on to become part of standard usage within the American structuralist tradition. Whorf considered allophones to be another example of linguistic relativity. The principle of allophony describes how acoustically different sounds can be treated as reflections of a single phoneme in a language. This sometimes makes the different sound appear similar to native speakers of the language, even to the point that they are unable to distinguish them auditorily without special training. Whorf wrote that: "[allophones] are also relativistic. Objectively, acoustically, and physiologically the allophones of [a] phoneme may be extremely unlike, hence the impossibility of determining what is what. You always have to keep the observer in the picture. What linguistic pattern makes like is like, and what it makes unlike is unlike".(Whorf, 1940) Central to Whorf's inquiries was the approach later described as metalinguistics by G. L. Trager, who in 1950 published four of Whorf's essays as "Four articles on Metalinguistics". Whorf was crucially interested in the ways in which speakers come to be aware of the language that they use, and become able to describe and analyze language using language itself to do so. Whorf saw that the ability to arrive at progressively more accurate descriptions of the world hinged partly on the ability to construct a metalanguage to describe how language affects experience, and thus to have the ability to calibrate different conceptual schemes. Whorf's endeavors have since been taken up in the development of the study of metalinguistics and metalinguistic awareness, first by Michael Silverstein who published a radical and influential rereading of Whorf in 1979 and subsequently in the field of linguistic anthropology. ### Studies of Uto-Aztecan languages Whorf conducted important work on the Uto-Aztecan languages, which Sapir had conclusively demonstrated as a valid language family in 1915. Working first on Nahuatl, Tepecano, Tohono O'odham he established familiarity with the language group before he met Sapir in 1928. During Whorf's time at Yale he published several articles on Uto-Aztecan linguistics, such as "Notes on the Tübatulabal language". In 1935 he published "The Comparative Linguistics of Uto-Aztecan", and a review of Kroeber's survey of Uto-Aztecan linguistics. Whorf's work served to further cement the foundations of the comparative Uto-Aztecan studies. The first Native American language Whorf studied was the Uto-Aztecan language Nahuatl which he studied first from colonial grammars and documents, and later became the subject of his first field work experience in 1930. Based on his studies of Classical Nahuatl Whorf argued that Nahuatl was an oligosynthetic language, a typological category that he invented. In Mexico working with native speakers, he studied the dialects of Milpa Alta and Tepoztlán. His grammar sketch of the Milpa Alta dialect of Nahuatl was not published during his lifetime, but it was published posthumously by Harry Hoijer and became quite influential and used as the basic description of "Modern Nahuatl" by many scholars. The description of the dialect is quite condensed and in some places difficult to understand because of Whorf's propensity of inventing his own unique terminology for grammatical concepts, but the work has generally been considered to be technically advanced. He also produced an analysis of the prosody of these dialects which he related to the history of the glottal stop and vowel length in Nahuan languages. This work was prepared for publication by Lyle Campbell and Frances Karttunen in 1993, who also considered it a valuable description of the two endangered dialects, and the only one of its kind to include detailed phonetic analysis of supra-segmental phenomena. In Uto-Aztecan linguistics one of Whorf's achievements was to determine the reason the Nahuatl language has the phoneme , not found in the other languages of the family. The existence of in Nahuatl had puzzled previous linguists and caused Sapir to reconstruct a phoneme for proto-Uto-Aztecan based only on evidence from Aztecan. In a 1937 paper published in the journal American Anthropologist, Whorf argued that the phoneme resulted from some of the Nahuan or Aztecan languages having undergone a sound change from the original \* to in the position before \*. This sound law is known as "Whorf's law", considered valid although a more detailed understanding of the precise conditions under which it took place has since been developed. Also in 1937, Whorf and his friend G. L. Trager, published a paper in which they elaborated on the Azteco-Tanoan language family, proposed originally by Sapir as a family comprising the Uto-Aztecan and the Kiowa-Tanoan languages—(the Tewa and Kiowa languages). ### Maya epigraphy In a series of published and unpublished studies in the 1930s, Whorf argued that Mayan writing was to some extent phonetic. While his work on deciphering the Maya script gained some support from Alfred Tozzer at Harvard, the main authority on Ancient Maya culture, J. E. S. Thompson, strongly rejected Whorf's ideas, saying that Mayan writing lacked a phonetic component and is therefore impossible to decipher based on a linguistic analysis. Whorf argued that it was exactly the reluctance to apply linguistic analysis of Maya languages that had held the decipherment back. Whorf sought for cues to phonetic values within the elements of the specific signs, and never realized that the system was logo-syllabic. Although Whorf's approach to understanding the Maya script is now known to have been misguided, his central claim that the script was phonetic and should be deciphered as such was vindicated by Yuri Knorozov's syllabic decipherment of Mayan writing in the 1950s.

Magic in Middle-earth

Use of magic in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fiction

Magic in Middle-earth is the use of supernatural power in J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional Middle-earth. Tolkien distinguishes ordinary magic from witchcraft, the latter always deceptive, stating that either type could be used for good or evil. Several of the races of Middle-earth are inherently able to work magic, from the godlike Ainur (including Wizards and Balrogs, both being members of the angelic race of Maiar) and the immortal Elves to Dragons and to some extent also Dwarves. Men and Hobbits could not directly work magic, but could make use of more or less magical artefacts made by others, such as Númenorean swords (made by Men with Elvish blood) and the Phial of Galadriel given to Frodo. Some of the magical artefacts were of great power, including the Palantíri or Stones of Seeing, but by far the most powerful was the One Ring, made by the Dark Lord Sauron and embodying much of his former power. Scholars have written that Tolkien felt the need for a magical cosmology to counter modernity's war against mystery and magic. In the sense that magic is the use of power to dominate other people, it is evil, and associated in Tolkien's mind with technology. The opposite of that is enchantment, something that Frodo experiences in the Elvish realms of Rivendell and Lothlórien, both preserved by the power of the Three Elvish Rings. That too can be a trap, as the Elves are obliged to let their Rings and their realms fade, just as the Fellowship of the Ring have to let the One Ring go, its addictive power corrupting the wearer's mind to evil. ## Appearances Middle-earth is described both as being quite natural, with the ordinary features of Earth's rivers, mountains and plains, trees and plants under the sky, and supernatural, with magical powers shared by many of its races of beings from Wizards to Dwarves, and a variety of magical artefacts from rings to impenetrable walls. ### By race The various races of Middle-earth had differing powers: ### By artefact Magical power is wielded through different artefacts: ## Analysis ### A magical cosmology The scholar and critic Patrick Curry argued that Tolkien felt the need for a magical cosmology combining polytheism and animism with Christian values like compassion and humility, to counter modernity's "war against mystery and magic". He believed that Tolkien considered magic as something negative, associated with modern science and machinery, as in his essay On Fairy-Stories: a means of "power ... [and] domination of things and wills" that corrupts those who use it, for example, trapping the wizard Saruman in his desire for ultimate knowledge and order. Such magic contrasts with the enchantment of Tolkien's fictional elvish lands, which he saw as a form of pure art and an appreciation of the wonders of the world. ### Two kinds of magic In an unsent draft of a letter in 1954, Tolkien distinguished two kinds of magic with the Greek words μαγεία (mageia "ordinary magic") and γοητεία (goeteia, "witchcraft"). - Mageia involves the use of some mechanism, like speaking the proper words at a magic door, such as the Doors of Durin, to make it open. Sauron used it to create the dark cloud that covered Mordor and Gondor before the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. - Goeteia influences perception and will. The Elves used it to create artistic beauty without effort and without deception. Sauron used it to dominate the wills of his subjects. Tolkien stated that these could not be acquired by studying ancient lore or books of spells, but that they were "inherent power not possessed or attainable by Men as such". He however qualified this by writing "But the Númenóreans used "spells" in making swords?" alongside the end of the letter explaining these points. He further explained that both Mageia and Goeteia could be used for good and bad purposes, but neither was inherently good or bad in itself. In his view, using them to control free will was the most extreme kind of evil. ### Enchantment Curry states that enchantment is "the paradigmatic experience, property and concern of the Elves", as seen both in Rivendell when Frodo listens to the Elves' singing in the Hall of Fire, and even more strongly in Lothlórien: > Frodo stood awhile still lost in wonder. It seemed to him that he had stepped through a high window that looked on a vanished world. A light was upon it for which his language had no name.... He saw no colour but those he knew, gold and white and blue and green, but they were fresh and poignant, as if he had at that moment first perceived them... On the land of Lórien there was no stain. Curry cites what he calls Max Weber's crucial insight, namely that "The unity of the primitive image of the world, in which everything was concrete magic [his italics], has tended to split into rational cognition and mastery of nature, on the one hand, and into 'mystic' experiences, on the other". In his view, enchantment heals the split, seen in Platonic, Christian, and Cartesian philosophy, between subjectivity and objectivity. In the Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger's view, the attractive enchantment of the Elves might then seem entirely perfect; but she argues that this is not so. In her 2001 book A Question of Time, she writes that in Middle-earth, as in human life, any attempt to hold on to enchantment is doomed; the Elves are put to the test of letting Lórien's timeless beauty go, just as the members of the Fellowship of the Ring are put to the test of letting the Ring go. In Curry's view, this explains why the magical power of the three Elvish Rings too must fade when the One Ring is destroyed. ### Deceptive in use A palantír could not be made to create false images, even by Sauron, but he could use one to selectively display truthful images to create a false impression in the viewer's mind. In each of the four uses of a stone in The Lord of the Rings, a true image is shown, but the viewer draws a false conclusion from the facts. This applies even to Sauron, when he sees Pippin in Saruman's stone and assumes that Pippin has the One Ring, and that Saruman has therefore captured it. Similarly, Denethor is deceived by Sauron, who drives Denethor to suicide by truthfully showing him the Black Fleet approaching Gondor, without telling him that the ships are crewed by Aragorn's men. The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey suggests that Tolkien's message is that one should not try to double-guess the future through any device, but should trust in providence and make one's own mind up, bravely facing one's duty in each situation. ### Addiction to power The One Ring offers power to its wearer, and progressively corrupts the wearer's mind to evil; the effect is strongly addictive. Shippey applied Lord Acton's 1887 statement that "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men" to it, noting that this was a distinctively modern thought: contemporary authors such as George Orwell with Animal Farm (1945), William Golding with Lord of the Flies (1954), and T. H. White with The Once and Future King (1958) similarly wrote about the corrupting effects of power. ### Wish-fulfilment Shippey writes that there is a "streak of 'wish-fulfilment'" in the account of "The Scouring of the Shire". Merry returns from Rohan with a magic horn, brought from the North by Eorl the Young, founder of Rohan, from the dragon-hoard of Scatha the Worm. The horn, he explains, is "a magic one, though only modestly so": blowing it brings joy to his friends in arms, fear to his enemies, and it awakens the Hobbits to purify the Shire of Saruman's ruffians. Shippey suggests that Tolkien wished to do the same for England, and notes that with his novels he at least succeeded in bringing joy. The historian Caitlin Vaughn Carlos writes that Sam Gamgee's exclamation "This is worse than Mordor! ... It comes home to you, they say; because it is home, and you remember it before it was ruined" encapsulates the impulse to nostalgia.

One South Broad

A 28-story 472-foot (144 m) office tower in Center City, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States

One South Broad, also known as the Lincoln-Liberty Building or PNB Building, is a 28-story 472-foot (144 m) office tower in Center City, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. The art deco tower, designed by architect John Torrey Windrim as an annex for Wanamaker's department store, was completed in 1932. Wanamaker's Men's Store opened in the first seven floors of the building, which is located a block from Wanamaker's main store, and was intended to rival European department stores with its size and selection. In 1952, the Philadelphia National Bank (PNB) bought the building and converted it into offices and banking space. Until 2014, the building's bell tower was decorated on all four sides with PNB's initials in stainless steel 16 feet (4.9 m) tall. Wells Fargo is the main tenant, occupying almost half the building. The former banking space at street level was converted to retail and restaurant space in 2000. Containing 465,000 square feet (43,000 m²) of space, One South Broad features a three-story gallery lobby that connects to the Widener Building, adjacent to the south. The 24th and 25th floors originally featured a luxurious penthouse designed for Rodman Wanamaker and his wife ; it was converted to office use in 2000 by independent advertising agency Red Tettemer O'Connell + Partners. The tower houses the 17-ton Founder's Bell, one of the largest in the world, a memorial to John Wanamaker by his son Rodman; listed on the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places by the Philadelphia Historical Commission, the bell is rung hourly, except for Sundays. ## History In the late 1920s, numerous high-rises were being built in Center City Philadelphia. Among the businesses constructing their own skyscrapers was Wanamaker's department store. Under direction of Wanamaker President William L. Nevin, Wanamaker's decided to expand its Philadelphia store by constructing a new building that would contain a store catering to the "Philadelphia gentleman". Nevin directed Wanamaker's to buy property on South Broad Street across the street from Philadelphia City Hall. The land was the site of two late-19th-century 13-story high-rises. On the corner of Broad and Penn Square stood the Lincoln Building, originally called the Betz Building. South of that stood the Liberty Building on the corner of Broad and Chestnut Streets. Both buildings were demolished in 1926 to make way for the Lincoln-Liberty Building. The Lincoln-Liberty Building, completed in 1932, was intended to partly house a large men's department store and offices. The building's cornerstone was set on October 1, 1932, with a ceremony attended by William L. Nevin and Wanamaker executives from New York City, Paris and London. The Wanamaker Men's Store opened on October 12, 1932, with four Wanamaker buglers blowing a reveille and the ringing of the building's Founder's Bell. Opening during the Great Depression, Nevin said the new building was a sign of the store's faith that the economy would improve. Intended to rival European department stores in size and selection, the men's store ordered US\$2 million worth of merchandise and was the largest store of its kind in the world. As early as 1939 there were rumors the men's store would close, but Wanamaker's would not close the store unless a replacement tenant would agree to rent the space. When a new tenant was ready to take the store's place in the 1950s, the men's store was relocated to the Wanamaker Building down the street. In the early 1950s, the Philadelphia National Bank (PNB) needed to expand into a larger space than it currently occupied. On November 3, 1952, the bank bought the Lincoln-Liberty Building for US\$8.75 million. PNB president Frederic A. Potts said, "The purchase of this building will enable the Philadelphia National Bank more adequately and efficiently to support the large-scale industrial and commercial expansion under way in this city." The bank spent millions of dollars modernizing the building and converting the former department store floors to banking space. Among the changes was the addition of a sign with the bank's initials in 1955. The bank officially opened in what was now called the PNB Building on January 16, 1956. The opening included turning on a rooftop weather indicator and celebration of the 250th anniversary of Benjamin Franklin's birth. The building was owned by the PNB, and later its parent company CoreStates, until it was sold to the JPMorgan Strategic Property Fund in 1996 for almost US\$28.5 million. In 1998 the building's second-largest tenant, law firm Drinker Biddle & Reath, left for One Logan Square. The resulting vacancy prompted the owners to renovate the building, renamed One South Broad, at a cost of US\$10 million. Renovations included modernizing the elevators, security and safety systems and converting the lower floors to retail and restaurant space. The renovations took eighteen months and One South Broad was officially rededicated on May 3, 2000. In April 2003 JPMorgan sold One South Broad to real-estate investor David Werner for US\$48 million. Ninety-percent occupied in 2003, One Broad Street's largest tenant was Wachovia. Wachovia had gained office space in the tower after merging with First Union Corporation, which had merged with CoreStates in 1998. In 2006 Wachovia re-negotiated its lease, which was set to expire in 2010. After looking at other potential space in Center City, Wachovia made a deal to stay in One South Broad and three nearby properties, the Witherspoon Building, Wells Fargo Building, and the neighboring Widener Building, until the 2020s. ## Architecture One South Broad is a 28-story 472 feet (144 m) art deco office tower on south Broad Street in Center City Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Designed by architect John Torrey Windrim, the skyscraper contains 465,000 square feet (43,000 m²) of space. One South Broad originally had an ornate lower facade with a lot of detail and fluting that was removed in the 1950s renovation. Philadelphia National Bank's renovations included the addition of granite black slabs on the street level facade. These were removed in the 2000 renovation and replaced with imported Italian granite to better match the skyscraper's original architecture. The 2000 renovation also created a new entrance on the building's Broad Street front, which leads to a three-story gallery lobby. The lobby was expanded by demolishing a wall and connecting it to the lobby of the neighboring Widener Building. Containing 9,000 square feet (840 m²) each, the 24th and 25th floors were used as a penthouse apartment for Rodman Wanamaker, consisting of five bedrooms, six baths, and outdoor terraces. The rooms featured hardwood floors, marble fireplaces, and detailed cast-plaster crown molding. Originally the penthouse apartment was to be for Rodman Wanamaker and his wife but Wanamaker died in 1928 before the building was completed. Rodman Wanamaker's wife lived there only briefly, as she did not like the ringing bell in the tower overhead. The penthouse floors were converted to office use in 2000 by creative agency Red Tettemer + Partners. The firm Agoos/Lovera Architects modernized the basic office space on the 24th floor while preserving the ornate molding and materials that decorate the rest of the former penthouse space. The Philadelphia National Bank's initials adorned the top of the building, surrounding the top of the structure's bell tower, until 2014. The letters, which were made of 16 feet (4.9 m) stainless steel, each weighed 3,000 pounds (1,400 kg). Until the 1970s, PNB used the sign to forecast weather by lighting the letters in red to indicate a warming trend, or green to predict the opposite. Wachovia considered removing the PNB sign in 2003 to replace it with its own signage, but, in response, some Philadelphians expressed nostalgia for the name of the former Philadelphia institution and hoped the sign would stay. The Philadelphia Historical Commission stated that the sign was not an integral part of the building's design or as significant to the city as the nearby PSFS Building's sign. On August 17, 2014, three of the PNB letters were removed from the building by helicopter, and the remaining nine were removed the following November 16. ### Founder's Bell Within the bell tower is the 17-ton (34,776 lbs) Founder's Bell. The bell was cast in 1925 under a commission by Rodman Wanamaker to honor his father John Wanamaker, founder of the department store empire, and the sesquicentennial. Cast by Gillett & Johnston in Croydon, England, the bell is 9 feet 6 inches (2.90 m) at the rim and 7 feet 9 inches (2.36 m) high and is one of the largest bells in the world. The bell was brought in 1926 by the Cunard liner Ascania to New York City, from which it was conveyed to Philadelphia by rail. The bell was carried on a flatcar and had clearance of only 2 inches (5.1 cm) in some of the tunnels the train passed through. Tuned to a low D bass clef, the bell's original home was the Wanamaker Building, a block from One South Broad. It hung 325 feet (99 m) above the street in a specially built tower on the building's roof. Hung on December 23, 1926, the bell was first rung on New Year's Eve of that year. The bell is rung every hour, except on Sundays. The bell was originally intended to swing in the tower on top of One South Broad, but the swinging of the bell shook the building . A hammer driven by a 230-volt electric motor was later installed and currently rings the bell. The ringing of the bell, which can be heard for 25 miles (40 km), is often mistakenly assumed to come from City Hall's clock tower across the street. Philadelphia Orchestra conductor Leopold Stokowski wrote in 1962 that the bell had "one of the finest sounds I have heard anywhere in America, Europe or Russia". In June 2000 the Founder's Bell was added to the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places by the Philadelphia Historical Commission. ## Tenants The Wanamaker's Men's Store occupied the first seven floors of the skyscraper until 1952 when the Philadelphia National Bank moved into the building. Over the years PNB became CoreStates, First Union Corp, Wachovia and finally Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo, which bought Wachovia in 2008, is One Broad Street's main tenant, occupying about half the building. Other tenants include various law firms, advertising firm Nitrogen US, public relations firm Tonic Life Communications, consulting company Electronic Ink, and the advertising agency Red Tettemer O'Connell + Partners. Past tenants have included Sylvania Electric Products, law firm Drinker Biddle & Reath, and advertising and public relations firm Earle Palmer Brown. The street-level space was converted into a bank once PNB bought the building. The bank branch closed in the 1990s and was converted into two roughly 8,000 square feet (740 m²) areas intended for retail or restaurant use. A McCormick & Schmick's restaurant opened in the Broad-Street–Penn-Square corner in 2001. In late 2002, the Broad and Chestnut Streets corner was occupied by a Borders bookstore, which moved into the two-story-plus-mezzanine 27,000 square feet (2,500 m²) space after vacating the 1727 Walnut Street location it had occupied since 1990. Borders closed its store in 2011. A three-story Walgreens presently occupies the site (2014) and areas of the exceptionally beautiful Wanamaker Men's Store plasterwork ceiling are visible at the upper stories. ## See also - List of tallest buildings in Philadelphia

Ed Jovanovski

Canadian ice hockey player

Edward Jovanovski (born June 26, 1976) is a Canadian former professional ice hockey defenceman. He was born in Windsor, Ontario, and is of Macedonian descent. Jovanovski played major junior ice hockey for two seasons with the Windsor Spitfires of the Ontario Hockey League (OHL), earning First All-Star, Second All-Star and All-Rookie Team honours. He was then selected first overall in the 1994 NHL Entry Draft by the Florida Panthers. During his rookie NHL season, he earned All-Rookie Team honours and helped the Panthers advance to the Stanley Cup Finals, where they lost to the Colorado Avalanche. After three-and-a-half seasons in Florida, Jovanovski was traded to the Vancouver Canucks in a seven-player deal involving Pavel Bure. During his tenure with Vancouver, he was awarded the Babe Pratt Trophy as the team's best defenceman three consecutive years. He also led the club's defencemen in scoring four consecutive years. In July 2006, Jovanovski became an unrestricted free agent and signed with the Phoenix Coyotes. He led the team's defencemen in scoring during his first three years with the club. Jovanovski returned to the Florida Panthers for three seasons, before retiring in 2015. Nicknamed "JovoCop", Jovanovski was known as a two-way defenceman, recording three 40-point and one 50-point season in the NHL. Internationally, Jovanovski played for the Canadian national team. A one-time Winter Olympian, he won a gold medal at the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City. At the under-20 level, he won gold at the 1995 World Junior Championship. He went on to play in four World Championships, winning silver in 2005 and 2008. He represented Canada at the 2004 World Cup, playing in one game due to injury in the championship-winning tournament. ## Playing career ### Major junior (1993–95) As a youth, Jovanovski played in the 1990 Quebec International Pee-Wee Hockey Tournament with a minor ice hockey team from Windsor. After playing bantam and Junior B in his hometown of Windsor, Jovanovski joined the Ontario Hockey League (OHL) with the Windsor Spitfires. In his rookie season with the Spitfires, Jovanovski led all team defencemen in scoring, with 50 points in 62 games. In addition to being voted as the Emms Division's top bodychecker by League coaches, he was named to the OHL's All-Rookie and Second All-Star Teams. That off-season, Jovanovski was selected first overall by the Florida Panthers in the 1994 NHL Entry Draft. He admitted to being surprised at the top selection, as he had not been ranked first at any point in his draft-eligible season. Czech prospect Radek Bonk was ranked first overall by the NHL Central Scouting Bureau, but Panthers President Bill Torrey preferred to select a defenceman over a forward. Following the Draft, the 1994–95 NHL season was suspended for three-and-a-half months due to a labour dispute between NHL players and owners. Consequently, Jovanovski remained in junior for the beginning of the 1994–95 OHL season. When NHL was set to resume play in January 1995, it was speculated that the Panthers might sign Jovanovski and call him up to the NHL. However, then-Panthers General Manager Bryan Murray announced that Jovanovski would remain with Windsor, citing that he would likely not receive much playing time with the club. He averaged approximately 40 minutes per game with Windsor that season, scoring 23 goals and 65 points over 50 contests. He also added nine points in nine playoff games before Windsor was eliminated. Jovanovski was named to the OHL First All-Star Team. ### Florida Panthers (1995–1999) Following his second major junior season, Jovanovski signed a four-year, \$5.7 million contract with the Panthers in June 1995. Playing with the club during the subsequent pre-season, he broke his right hand during a fight with Hartford Whalers forward Brendan Shanahan. The injury caused him to miss the first 11 games of the season. After recovering, he scored his first career NHL goal against the Whalers on December 2, 1995, a game-winner in a 5–3 victory. He finished his rookie season with 10 goals and 21 points over 70 games. During the regular season, he was encouraged by Panthers management to play more conservatively than he was used to in the OHL, focusing on defensive positioning. Ranking fourth in the Eastern Conference going into the 1996 playoffs, Jovanovski helped the Panthers advance to the Stanley Cup Finals. He scored his first career Stanley Cup playoff goal in Game 2 of the first round against Boston Bruins goaltender Craig Billington. Facing the Colorado Avalanche in the Finals, the Panthers were defeated in four-straight games. Jovanovski contributed a goal and nine points in 22 post-season games. It would be his only Stanley Cup Finals appearance. In the off-season, he was named to the NHL All-Rookie Team. He was also nominated for the Calder Memorial Trophy as the League's rookie of the year, alongside Chicago Blackhawks forward Éric Dazé and Ottawa Senators forward Daniel Alfredsson, who ultimately won the award. On November 23, 1996, Jovanovski received a three-game suspension from the NHL without pay. In a game against the Dallas Stars the previous night, he illegally left the penalty box ready to fight any opposing players during a break in play. Later in the season, he suffered a knee injury during a game against the Edmonton Oilers in January 1997, sidelining him for several weeks. The following month, he was involved in an on-ice altercation with San Jose Sharks forward Bernie Nicholls, resulting in a two-game suspension and the maximum \$1,000 fine for Nicholls for intent to injure. The accumulated injuries and suspensions caused Jovanovski to miss 21 games in his second NHL season. He scored seven goals and 23 points over 61 contests. In 1997–98, Jovanovski appeared in 81 games, recording nine goals and 23 points. With his contract set to expire following the 1998–99 season, Jovanovski was beginning to be seen as a disappointment in Florida, failing to improve on his successful rookie year. ### Vancouver Canucks (1999–2006) On January 17, 1999, after three-and-a-half seasons with the Panthers, Jovanovski was traded in a seven-player deal to the Vancouver Canucks. He was sent with Dave Gagner, Mike Brown, Kevin Weekes and a first-round draft pick in 2000 (Nathan Smith) in exchange for Pavel Bure, Bret Hedican, Brad Ference and a third-round pick in 2000 (Robert Fried). Joining the Canucks in the midst of a rebuilding period for the franchise, Jovanovski quickly established himself as a top defenceman in Vancouver's lineup. His ability to join the rush as a defenceman complemented the Canucks' up-tempo style of play. A month following his trade, Jovanovski suffered a broken foot while blocking a shot in a game against the New Jersey Devils on February 9, 1999. Later in the season, he was involved in an altercation with Montreal Canadiens forward Shayne Corson. After being high-sticked in the face by Corson, the two players were sent off the ice, at which point Corson entered the Canucks' dressing room to verbally confront Jovanovski. According to Corson, the feud stemmed from comments Jovanovski had said about his family. As a result of entering the Canucks' dressing room, the Canadiens forward was later suspended five games by the NHL, in addition to one game for the high-sticking infraction. In 31 games with the Canucks that season, Jovanovski recorded two goals and 11 points. Combined with his games played with the Panthers, he totalled 27 points in 72 games. In his first full season with Vancouver, Jovanovski tallied five goals and 26 points (first among team defencemen) over 75 games. He also ranked second among team defencemen in average ice time per game, behind only Mattias Öhlund. The following season, in 2000–01, he led all team defencemen with 12 goals and 47 points over 79 games. He was then named to his first of three consecutive NHL All-Star Games in 2001. At the end of the season, he also earned his first of three consecutive Babe Pratt Trophies, awarded annually to the Canucks' fan-voted best defenceman. Jovanovski's offensive emergence helped the Canucks return to the playoffs after a six-year absence. It also marked Jovanovski's first playoff season since 1997. In 2001–02, Jovanovski scored a career-high 17 goals, ranking second amongst all NHL defencemen. His 48 points ranked sixth among NHL defencemen and was his highest total as a Canuck. The Canucks finished as the eighth seed in the Western Conference for the second consecutive season, and were eliminated by the Detroit Red Wings in the opening round of the 2002 playoffs. Jovanovski contributed a goal and five points in six post-season games. Midway through the following season, he was re-signed by the Canucks to a three-year contract extension on January 27, 2003. The day after signing, he injured his foot, sidelining him for 14 games. Despite his season being shortened by injury, he recorded a career-high 40 assists to go with six goals in 2002–03. His 46 points ranked tenth overall in the League amongst defencemen, and it marked the fourth consecutive year he led Canucks defencemen in scoring. Jovanovski added eight points in 14 post-season games before the Canucks were eliminated in the second round by the Minnesota Wild. His seven goals led all League defencemen in playoff scoring. Midway through the 2003–04 season, Jovanovski suffered a third-degree shoulder separation during a game against the Nashville Predators on January 25, 2004. Colliding with opposing forward Martin Erat, he fell to ice and slid into the rink boards. He returned late in the season to help the Canucks secure the Northwest Division title. In 56 games, he scored seven goals and 23 points. Adding four assists in seven 2004 playoff games, the Canucks were defeated in the first round by the Calgary Flames. Due to the NHL lockout, as well as rib and knee injuries sustained during the 2004 World Cup, Jovanovski was inactive during the 2004–05 season. When the NHL resumed play in 2005–06, Jovanovski was on pace for a career year, but his season was interrupted by groin, foot and abdominal injuries. He finished with 33 points in 44 games for a career-high 0.75 points-per-game average. The Canucks suffered from Jovanovski missing the final 27 games of the season and did not qualify for the 2006 playoffs. Following the 2005–06 season, Jovanovski did not receive a contract offer from the Canucks, subsequently becoming an unrestricted free agent. The decision to let him go was influenced by the re-signings of Daniel and Henrik Sedin, as well as the acquisition of goaltender Roberto Luongo, leaving no room on the team's salary cap to retain Jovanovski. ### Phoenix Coyotes (2006–2011) On July 1, 2006, Jovanovski joined the Phoenix Coyotes, signing a five-year, \$32.5 million contract. Having received a contract offer from the Panthers, he was speculated to return to Florida, where he spent his summers. He cited being coached by Wayne Gretzky as a strong factor for choosing Phoenix. Jovanovski was named to his fourth NHL All-Star Game in the subsequent season, but continued to be plagued with injuries. He missed the last 22 games of the 2006–07 regular season with an abdominal injury, limiting him to 29 points (first among Coyotes defencemen) in 54 games. The Coyotes finished last in the Western Conference with 31 wins and 67 points. In 2007–08, Jovanovski recorded a career-high 51 points (12 goals and 39 assists), which tied for tenth among League defencemen and led all Coyotes defencemen. It was also the second-highest total for a defenceman in Coyotes history after Oleg Tverdovsky's 55-point year in 1996–97. Jovanovski's career season included a one-game suspension on December 1, 2007, for a hit to the head of Minnesota Wild forward Marián Gáborík. Jovanovski also appeared in his second consecutive All-Star Game in 2008. The team continued to struggle, however, as they ranked 12th in the West, eight points out of a 2008 playoff spot. The following season, Jovanovski's offensive production dipped to 36 points in 82 games. Although it was his lowest total since his third season with the Panthers in 1997–98 (not including seasons with major injuries), he still led all Coyotes defencemen in scoring for the third consecutive year. On a team basis, he missed the playoffs with Phoenix for the third-straight year, as they finished 13th in the West. Early in the 2009–10 season, Jovanovski missed ten games with a lower-body injury in November and December 2009. Shortly after returning to the Coyotes lineup, he was suspended for two games by the NHL for a hit to the head of Minnesota Wild forward Andrew Ebbett with his forearm on December 7, 2009. The following month, he received another two-game suspension for elbowing New York Islanders rookie forward John Tavares in the head. Over 66 games during the season, he notched 10 goals and 34 points. He was overtaken as the team's top-scoring defenceman by Keith Yandle, who had scored 41 points. While the season was marked with an uncertain future for the Coyotes from a business perspective, as the franchise had filed for bankruptcy in May 2009 and was taken over by the NHL, the team performed well and recorded their best season in history. With 50 wins and 107 points (a 28-point improval from the previous season), they finished with the third best record in the West and came within five points of a Pacific Division and Conference title, trailing only the San Jose Sharks. Facing the Detroit Red Wings in the opening round, the Coyotes were eliminated in seven games. Jovanovski had one goal and no assists in his first NHL playoffs since 2004. In the first month of the 2010–11 season, Jovanovski was chosen to serve in place of the suspended Shane Doan as team captain from October 21 to 25, 2010. Over a week later, he recorded his first career NHL hat-trick in a 4–3 win against the Nashville Predators on November 3. He scored all three goals against goaltender Pekka Rinne, becoming the first Coyotes defenceman to score a hat-trick in team history. On December 26, he became the 256th player in NHL history to play 1,000 career games, reaching the feat against the Dallas Stars. Jovanovski struggled with injuries throughout the season, missing time on six occasions. His most serious injury was an orbital bone fracture after his face collided with an opposing player's helmet in a game against the Atlanta Thrashers on February 17, 2011. After missing 20 games with the injury, he returned in April for the last three games of the regular season and the playoffs. In Jovanovski's limited time in the season, he recorded 14 points over 50 games. The Coyotes ranked sixth in the West, drawing the Red Wings in the first round for the second consecutive year. Jovanovski recorded one assist in the post-season as the Coyotes were eliminated in four games. ### Return to Florida (2011–2014) Jovanovski signed a four-year, \$16.5 million contract to return to the Florida Panthers on July 1, 2011. He played a large role in helping reshape the franchise's rebuilding and drive to make the playoffs. Panthers coach Kevin Dineen named Jovanovski captain for the 2012–13 but it would prove to be a very frustrating season for him and the team. A nagging hip injury kept him on the sidelines and limited him to just six games before a season ending surgery shut him down with the team sitting in last place. After a ten-month recovery, Jovanovski returned to the ice in January 2014 and played 36 games for Florida. He had intended to play out the final year of his contract and retire but the Panthers had different plans and on June 29, 2014, he was placed on unconditional waivers for the purpose of a buyout. Florida's General Manager at the time, Dave Tallon, made it clear that buying out his captain was a tough call to make. "“We sincerely thank Ed for his seven years of service and dedication to the Florida Panthers and the South Florida community,” said Tallon. “He is a true professional in every sense and is well respected throughout the league for the way he handles himself both on and off the ice. This was not an easy decision and we wish him success and happiness in his future endeavors.” Jovanovski remained inactive in the NHL during the 2014–15 season and on December 28, 2015, he announced his retirement from the NHL. ## International play Jovanovski competed for Canada's under-20 team at the 1995 World Junior Championships, held in Alberta. Scoring two goals in seven games, he helped Canada go undefeated to win gold. Following his NHL rookie season, he was named as a reserve to the Canadian men's team for the 1996 World Cup. The youngest player on the roster, he played in one exhibition game against Russia, a 4–4 tie, but did not appear in any main tournament games as Canada lost in the final to the United States. Two years later, Jovanovski competed at the 1998 World Championships in Switzerland; he was the second-youngest named to the Canadian squad. He scored two goals and an assist over six games as Canada failed to qualify past the crossover round. He made his second World Championships appearance at the 2000 tournament in Russia. He scored a goal and an assist over nine games. Canada lost the semifinal, however, 2–1 to the Czech Republic, then lost the bronze medal game 2–1 to Finland. In December 2001, Jovanovski was chosen to Canada's Olympic team for the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City. Playing the United States in the gold medal game, Jovanovski earned an assist on the game-winning goal, backhanding a saucer pass from the opposition's blueline to Joe Sakic on a five-on-three power play advantage. Canada went on to win the gold medal, 5–2. Jovanovski had three points, all assists, in total. Prior to the 2004–05 NHL lockout, Jovanovski played for Canada at the 2004 World Cup. He suffered a cracked rib and a second degree sprain on his medial collateral ligament (MCL) during the first game against the United States, sidelining him for the rest of the tournament. He was replaced by San Jose Sharks defenceman Scott Hannan in the lineup. Canada went on to win the championship over Finland in the final. The following year, he competed at the 2005 World Championships in Austria. In the semi-final, Jovanovski scored the game-winning goal against Russia in a 4–3 win. Advancing to the gold medal game, Canada lost 3–0 to the Czech Republic, thus earning silver. He finished the tournament with a goal and two assists over nine games. Later that year, he was named to his second Canadian Olympic team for the 2006 Games in Turin, but was not able to play due to a lower abdominal injury. Making his fourth World Championships appearance in 2008, Jovanovski earned a second-straight silver medal. He recorded one assist over nine games as Canada lost in the gold medal game by a 5–4 score in overtime to Russia. ## Playing style Jovanovski is known as a two-way defenceman. Able to contribute offensively, he is an adept puck-carrier and joins plays deep in the opposing team's zone. He plays defence physically, bodychecking opponents primarily with his shoulder. In both aspects of his game, he is considered to play with a high level of risk, taking the chance of being out of position in favour of a good scoring chance or a hit. ## Personal life Jovanovski was born in Windsor, Ontario, to Kostadin and Lilja Jovanovski. His parents immigrated to Canada in 1973 from Macedonia. Coming from an athletic family, Kostadin was a semi-professional soccer player in Yugoslavia. Jovanovski speaks English, French and some Macedonian. Jovanovski followed after his father and played organized soccer growing up. He did not start playing hockey until age 11, when his older brother, Denny, joined a team. During his junior career, Jovanovski and two other Windsor Spitfire teammates were charged with sexually assaulting a 24-year-old woman in February 1995. After a pre-trial hearing in June, the Crown attorney dropped the charges in August due to a lack of convincing evidence. Beginning his NHL career with the Florida Panthers, he owned a condominium in Boca Raton, Florida. He met his wife, Kirstin, in Florida and retained a residence in Boca Raton, where he spent his summers. Jovanovski and Kirstin had their first child, daughter Kylie Everett, on August 25, 1998. Three years later, Kyra was born on April 24, 2001, while her twin sister died in utero. Kirstin was later pregnant with twins a second time and gave birth to son Cole and daughter Coco on May 25, 2006, in Florida. In 2005, Jovanovski was featured in a documentary aired on multicultural network Omni Television. Entitled The Late Bloomer: Ed Jovanovski, it explored his career, family tragedy and attachments to his Macedonian heritage. ## Career statistics ### Regular season and playoffs ### International ## Awards ### OHL ### NHL ### Vancouver Canucks ## See also - List of NHL players with 1000 games played

Underwurlde

1984 video game

Underwurlde is a 1984 action-adventure platform video game in the Sabreman series by Ultimate Play the Game for the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64. The player controls the adventurer Sabreman as he jumps between platforms in a castle and its caverns to find an escape past the exit guardians. Underwurlde features about 600 flip screen areas. Unlike other games of its time, Sabreman is not injured when touched by enemies and is instead knocked backwards. Underwurlde is the second game in the series, between Sabre Wulf and Knight Lore, and released shortly before the latter for the ZX Spectrum in late 1984. Another developer, Firebird, ported the game to the Commodore 64 the next year. Reviewers recommended the original ZX Spectrum Underwurlde release. They noted its expansive game world and appreciated the parts where Sabreman travelled by bubble. Later critics commented on the game's frustrating difficulty. While the Commodore 64 version was similar to the original, reviews were mixed—one critic thought the title had aged poorly in the year between releases. Your Sinclair placed Underwurlde within its top 20 for the ZX Spectrum, though their readers put it near the bottom of their top 100. The game was later included in Rare's 2015 Xbox One retrospective compilation, Rare Replay. ## Gameplay Underwurlde is a platform game viewed from a side-angle perspective. The player controls Sabreman, a pith-helmeted adventurer, as he jumps between platforms in a castle and its caverns to find a way to escape past the exit guardians. Sabreman must use a specific weapon—knife, dagger, and torch—that corresponds to each guardian. The player uses the keyboard's QWERTY keys to progress through a series of flip screens in which the player's character reaches the boundary of the viewable area on the screen to flip to another area, with 597 screens in all. While Sabreman begins in a castle adorned with clocks, birds, and baskets, the character must also descend down into caverns through several successive vertical screens. Sabreman automatically attaches a rope to the ceiling when the player controls him off of a ledge. The player can then swing Sabreman side to side to jump to another ledge. At the bottom of a cavern, Sabreman can ride a bubble to the top. As a change from earlier games by the developer, Sabreman is invulnerable to enemies and is instead knocked back in a bounce by their touch. However, Sabreman will fall to his death if knocked off a precipice. The player starts with seven lives and few extras can be found throughout the game. Blue gemstone power-ups turn Sabreman invincible to falls from any height for a limited amount of time. Enemies include harpies and gargoyles, who can be killed by Sabreman's weapon. After passing the first guardian, eagles appear and can pick up and drop Sabreman. Underwurlde has three possible endings, and each was designed to correspond to the plots of the three planned sequels in the Sabreman series. The player receives a score calculated by the number of objects acquired, enemies defeated, and percentage of rooms visited. The game also supports keyboard and joystick control, and as with other games from the developer, the instructions packaged with Underwurlde were cryptic, and left the player to figure out the controls and sequence on their own. The Commodore 64 version of the game is similar to the original in appearance and gameplay. ## Development Little is known about the development processes of Ultimate Play the Game, which was known for its avoidance of media spotlight. Its founders, brothers Tim and Chris Stamper, were infamously taciturn both to preserve their time and to let their games speak for themselves. Though as the Sabreman series became popular, their silence contributed to the series' mystique. The main criticism of Underwurlde's predecessor and the first game in the Sabreman series, Sabre Wulf, was its similarity to an earlier game by the Stamper brothers, as both were depicted in a top-down view as action-adventure games. While Retro Gamer wrote that the sequel, Underwurlde, resolved this criticism by instead using a side view as a platform game, The Stamper brothers claimed to have finished their third Sabreman title, the epochal Knight Lore, in advance of both of its predecessors, although more recent analysis of the code used in the games has suggested this may have been an exaggeration as the routines found in Knight Lore are far more optimised. The Stampers primarily developed for the ZX Spectrum home computer and outsourced the work of converting their games to work on other types of computers to external developers more familiar with the hardware architecture of other platforms. For instance, Firebird released the Commodore 64 releases of Sabre Wulf and Underwurlde. The game was released shortly before Knight Lore for the ZX Spectrum near the 1984 holiday season, and the Commodore 64 version was released a year later. ## Reception Reviewers recommended the original ZX Spectrum Underwurlde release. Critics noted the game world's size and appreciated the parts where Sabreman travelled by bubble. Retro Gamer described the game's near 600 flip screens as "colossal". At the time of its release, Computer and Video Games said it was likely the most expansive world on the platform. Later reviews noted the game's exceptional difficulty. Crash magazine recommended the game as "A Crash Smash". ZX Spectrum magazine Crash considered Underwurlde to be "excellent" and Ultimate's best game. Each of the magazine's three reviewers appreciated different features of Sabreman's navigation within the game, but mainly liked riding volcanic bubbles and being carried by birds. Another reviewer compared Sabreman's jump to that of Bugaboo (The Flea) and added that the game's single difficulty level was adequately balanced. All three Crash critics noted that the QWERT keyboard controller mapping worked well in this game, though it was awkward in others. They also praised Underwurlde's detailed graphics and sound. One reviewer additionally noticed that the game lacked a score leaderboard, but surmised that this was a trade-off for the game's expansive world. Unlike Crash, Computer and Video Games did not like the controls, which was the reviewer's main criticism of the game. Another ZX Spectrum reviewer, Chris Bourne (Sinclair User), said that the game was fast, colourful, and akin to a "vertical Atic Atac". Commodore 64 magazine Zzap!64 reviewers were mixed. Jaz Rignall said it was among the best arcade adventures on the Commodore 64 since it had the right balance of frustration and addiction to keep him playing the ZX Spectrum version for weeks. Gary Penn, however, considered the game average when it first released for the ZX Spectrum and thought that the port of the year-old game had out-of-date sounds, out-of-tune title music, and was overall not among the Commodore 64's best adventure games. Gary Liddon thought that the Commodore 64 version appeared "crude" compared to other releases for the platform, though perhaps par for the ZX Spectrum. The magazine noted the difficulty of traversing the vertical caverns and found the eagles annoying, especially when they dropped Sabreman to his death. Zzap!64 critics felt that the game presented well, but was less accessible, overpriced for its age, and poorly animated. Ultimately, they considered the game better than the developer's previous two 1985 releases, but not as good as it could have been. The Computer and Video Games review of the Commodore 64 release judged otherwise: that the version was up to the developer's standards and worth the yearlong wait. The magazine praised Firebird's work on the port. ## Legacy In the early 1990s, Your Sinclair rated the game within the top fifth of their top 100 ZX Spectrum games. The magazine said that Underwurlde was the most simultaneously loved and hated game of its era—though Sabreman's invulnerability to direct damage was novel, Your Sinclair also recalled the game's "stratospheric level of frustration". Their readers, however, ranked the game near the bottom of their top 100 games for the platform. Underwurlde was later included in the 2015 Xbox One retrospective compilation Rare Replay, wherein critics rated it among the worst of the 30 titles by Ultimate Play the Game and its successor, Rare. Kyle Hilliard (Game Informer) wrote that Ultimate's early games, such as Underwurlde, fared the worst in the package, though he was glad they were included. "By today's standards," began New Zealand newspaper The Nelson Mail, "the likes of ... Underwurlde are so clunky and archaic that they are almost laughably impenetrable; strange relics from a bygone era that serve only to illustrate how far the industry has progressed."

Main Ridge, Tobago

Main mountainous ridge on the island of Tobago

Main Ridge is the main mountainous ridge on the island of Tobago, Trinidad and Tobago. It is a 29-kilometre (18 mi) chain of hills which runs from southwest to northeast between the Caribbean Sea and the Southern Tobago fault system and reaches a maximum height of 572 m (1,877 ft). The Main Ridge Forest Reserve, which was legally established in 1776, is one of the oldest protected areas in the world. It is a popular site for birdwatching and ecotourism. Main Ridge provides important habitat for native plants and animals, including several species endemic to Tobago. ## History The Treaty of Paris in 1763 ended Tobago's status as a neutral territory and made it a British colony. The Treaty of Aix-la-Chappelle in 1748 had designated Tobago neutral territory and left it in the hands of its remaining indigenous population, but the return to British control led to a rapid conversion of the island to a plantation economy. Under the direction of the Board of Trade, the island was surveyed, divided into 100–500-acre (40–202 ha) plots, and sold to planters. The upper portions of the Main Ridge were reserved as "Woods for the Protection of the Rains" and thus remained uncleared and uncultivated. The decision to preserve forests to maintain rainfall was driven by the efforts of Soame Jenyns, a commissioner of the Board of Trade and Member of Parliament. Jenyns was convinced of the importance of forests for preserving rainfall through the work of Stephen Hales on plant physiology and transpiration. It took Jenyns eleven years to convince the British Parliament of the importance of the endeavour, but on 13 April 1776, Parliament passed an ordinance establishing the reserve "for the purpose of attracting frequent showers of rain upon which the fertility of lands in these climates doth entirely depend". This action produced one of the oldest protected areas in the world geared towards conservation and has been described as "the first act in the modern environmental movement". Beginning in 1904, the rain reserve was combined with adjacent Crown lands and proclaimed the Main Ridge Forest Reserve. ## Geography Main Ridge forms the mountainous backbone of the island of Tobago, which is the smaller and more northern of the two main islands that make up the southern Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago. The chain of hills is 29 km (18 mi) long and runs from the southwest to the northeast, roughly parallel to the orientation of the island. Main Ridge reaches an elevation of 572 metres (1,877 ft) above sea level at Centre Hill, but lacks any well-defined peaks. To the northwest it is bounded by the Caribbean Sea and by the Southern Tobago fault system to the southeast. Rainfall averages about 2,800 millimetres (110 in) per year. Most streams run along oblique-slip faults with a northwest orientation. Major streams draining the Main Ridge include the Coffee, Hillsborough, Goldsborough, and Queens Rivers. Streams which drain to the northwest are short and steep, while those which drain to the southeast are longer, with better-developed courses. Waterfalls, including the Argylle Waterfall (Tobago's highest) occur at major transitions between rock types. The northeastern slopes are steeper than the southwestern ones and are among the most landslide-prone parts of the island. ## Geology Main Ridge is primarily underlain by the North Coast Schist Group (NCSG), which occupies the northern third of the island of Tobago. The island of Tobago is the main exposed portion of the Tobago terrane, a fragment of crustal material lying between the Caribbean and South American Plates. The rocks of the NCSG are metavolcanic; the underlying igneous rock was laid down during the Late Jurassic or Early Cretaceous. They underwent metamorphosis prior to the mid Cretaceous, when additional volcanic intrusion formed the rocks of the Tobago Volcanic Group. A combination of uplift, erosion, and faulting during the late Mesozoic and Paleogene led to the elevated horst block separated from the half graben of the southern lowlands by the Southern Tobago fault system. ## Vegetation and ecology Main Ridge is dominated by lower montane rain forest (according to John Stanley Beard's classification of the vegetation of Tobago). In Tobago, these forests are characterised by an emergent canopy of Licania biglandulosa and Byrsonima spicata, with the palm Euterpe broadwayi more common on exposed ridges and summits. Moist lowland forest dominates the lower-lying portions of the Main Ridge. The forests experienced limited human disturbance prior to the 1940s, but were badly damaged by Hurricane Flora in 1963. Sixteen mammalian species including the nine-banded armadillo, the crab-eating raccoon and the red-rumped agouti, 210 species of birds, 24 snakes and 16 lizards have been recorded from the area. The ichthyofauna is limited - only four of Tobago's 13 freshwater fish species are found in its rivers and streams. The spotted algae-eating goby, Sicydium punctatum, is the most widespread fish species in the area, while the jumping guabine, Anablepsoides hartii, is found at the highest elevations and is the only fish species upstream of several waterfalls. Aquatic invertebrates include the decapods Atya innocous, Eudaniela garmani, Macrobrachium faustinum, and the introduced gastropod Melanoides tuberculata. ### Conservation The Main Ridge Forest Reserve, a 3,937-hectare (9,730-acre) forest reserve, is one of the oldest protected areas in the world. The Trinidad and Tobago government submitted the Main Ridge Forest Reserve as a tentative listing for a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2011. The area is managed by the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, a department of the Tobago House of Assembly. It has been identified as one of seven Important Bird Areas in Trinidad and Tobago by BirdLife International. The Main Ridge Forest Reserve plays an important role in the protection of native biodiversity, particularly endemic plant species. The Main Ridge and the Northern Range (in northern Trinidad) are the areas in the country which support the largest numbers of globally rare plant species. A gap analysis of endemic vascular plants of Trinidad and Tobago identified 15 endemic plant species in the area; species distribution modelling suggested that the reserve included suitable habitat for another nine plant endemic species. Main Ridge provides critical habitat for three endemic amphibians, Pristimantis turpinorum (Turpin's frog), Mannophryne olmonae (Bloody Bay tree frog) and Pristimantis charlottevillensis (Charlotteville Rain Frog), which are endemic to northeastern Tobago and for the coral snake mimic Erythrolamprus pseudoreginae. The white-tailed sabrewing (Campylopterus ensipennis) is endemic to northeastern Venezuela and the Main Ridge; after Hurricane Flora in 1963 the hummingbird was thought to be extirpated from Tobago, but was rediscovered in 1974. Plant species endemic to Tobago which have been recorded from Main Ridge include Odontonema brevipes, Duguetia tobagensis, Phyllanthus acacioides, Besleria seitzii, Cybianthus pittieri, Pilea tobagensis, and Justicia tobagensis. ### Ecotourism Main Ridge is an important ecotourism destination and birdwatching site. The site has a visitor centre and a network of nine trails which allow access to the site. Additional trails were constructed to reduce pressure on the most popular trail, Gilpin Trace, which is prone to over-use. The Main Ridge Forest Reserve was named the World's Leading Ecotourism Destination by the World Travel Awards from 2003 to 2006 and the World's Leading Green Destination in 2007 and 2009. ### Threats Forests on the Main Ridge were damaged by Hurricane Flora in 1963, and its forests continue to be susceptible to hurricane damage. Given the small size of the area, fires started in surrounding agricultural lands can penetrate deep into the hills. Commercial and subsistence hunting and overuse for tourism pose threats to biodiversity, while the chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis poses a threat to endemic amphibians.

Réunion National Park

French national park in Réunion

Réunion National Park (French: Parc national de La Réunion) is a National Park of France located on the island of Réunion, an overseas department in the western Indian Ocean. Established on 5 March 2007, the park protects the endemic ecosystems of Les Hauts, Réunion's mountainous interior, and covers around 42% of the island. Notable endemic species include the Réunion cuckooshrike and the Reunion Island day gecko. Plans for a park date back to 1985, and in a public survey in 2004, the communes of Réunion approved the creation of a national park. It officially came into existence in 2007. The park's volcanic landscape, including the Piton de la Fournaise, an active volcano, was designated a World Heritage Site in 2010, under the name "Pitons, cirques and remparts of Reunion Island" for its imposing rugged terrain and exceptional biodiversity. The park's mission, other than preserving landscape and biodiversity, is to share knowledge and welcome visitors, and to work together with local communes. It is a popular destination for hiking and mountaineering. Controversies have emerged over economic development in the park, notably the exploitation of geothermal power. In 2016, the Regional Council of Réunion had plans to downgrade the national park to a regional nature park to ease tourism development. This was contested by the park authorities and opposition politicians. ## History Proposals to create a park were first raised beginning in 1985. The Réunion Environmental Charter and the Regional Development Plan formally established the principle that a park should be created in Les Hauts, the mountainous interior of the island. The French Ministry of the Environment was officially consulted for the creation of a national park. Between 2000 and 2003, a consultation process was launched, in which the state, the region, the département, and the association of mayors agreed on a protocol and established a steering committee. 27 of 29 institutions endorsed the plan of establishing a national park, and on 29 March 2003, the French Prime Minister signed a decree acknowledging the project. Debates and negotiations on the limits and objectives of the future national park intensified. Between August and September 2004, the plan was the subject of a public survey, organised by the prefect in the 24 communes of the island. The communes responded positively to the project, adding some recommendations. The park officially came into existence on 5 March 2007 through a decree taken after advice by the Council of State. In April 2007, the Administration Council took office; between 2007 and 2009, personnel were employed and installations made on the site. In 2008, work began to set up the charter of the national park. On 1 August 2010, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee acknowledged the value of the natural sites within Réunion National Park, and included the "Pitons, cirques and remparts of Réunion Island" in its World Heritage list. ## Mission In its charter, the national park identifies four main objectives: First, to preserve the diversity of landscapes and accompany their evolution. Second, to inverse the loss of biodiversity. Third, to preserve and add value to the culture of the highlands and ensure the transmission of its values. Fourth, to foster economic development for the highland. ## Geography The core of Réunion National Park covers 1,053.84 km² (406.89 sq mi) in the interior of the island, corresponding to 42% of its surface and extending over the land of 23 communes. This core area also includes some inhabited and cultivated land. Adjacent to the core is an area of voluntary commitment (aire d'adhésion, buffer zone) covering 876.96 km² (338.60 sq mi) and touching all 24 communes on the island. Altogether, the park extends over more than 75% of the island. The island of Réunion is volcanic in origin and sits over a hotspot. Two volcanoes form its backbone: The Piton des Neiges, over 3,000 m (9,800 ft) high, and the still active Piton de la Fournaise. Four major areas form the heart of the national park, listed as World Heritage site: - ' forest at Saint-Philippe, including some of the best-preserved remains of low-altitude tropical forest, termed '; - the Cirque de Cilaos with the Pain de Sucre and La chapelle rock formations, in the narrow gorge of the Bras Rouge River, and 100,000-year-old accessible magma chamber; - the Cirque de Salazie with the '', a 1,356 m (4,449 ft) high dominant massif; - La Grande Chaloupe between Saint-Denis and La Possession, one of the last remainders of the semi-evergreen forest once common in the west of the island, preserved and restored here. ## Wildlife Réunion shares a common natural history with the other Mascarene Islands, Mauritius and Rodrigues. All three islands were uninhabited before the 1600s. Human arrival led to massive extinction and introduced species, such as giant land snails in Réunion, which threatened native habitats and species. Less than 25% of Réunion is thought to be covered with original vegetation according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), mostly restricted to higher altitudes. The forests of Réunion and the other two islands have been classified as the "Mascarene forests" ecoregion by the WWF, with a conservation status of "endangered". Conservation International includes Réunion in the "Madagascar and Indian Ocean Islands" biodiversity hotspot, a priority area for conservation. Nearly as many exotic plants as native ones, 830, have become naturalised on the island, and 50 are considered invasive, threatening native flora and habitats. The isolation of the island and its diversity of habitats and microclimates have favoured the diversification of a highly endemic flora: Of the 850 known native plant species, 230 are endemic, and half of those are endangered. This native flora is found at various altitudes. The rough topography of the park has also allowed for the allopatric speciation of many bird species, such as Barau's petrel, the Réunion harrier, the Réunion cuckooshrike, and the Réunion grey white-eye, as well as genetic differentiation within those species. In total, 18 bird species are found at Réunion, half of which are endemic. At least 22 bird species have already gone extinct since human colonisation. A major threat to the bird fauna are introduced cats and rats. Of mammals, the Mauritian flying fox recolonised the Réunion after going extinct from the island. Notable butterfly species include Papilio phorbanta and Salamis augustina, and an endemic reptile is the Reunion Island day gecko. ## Gallery ## Tourism The national park constitutes one of Réunion's major attractions. Its mountains are a popular destination for hiking and mountaineering; there are more than 900 km (560 mi) of marked trails, crossing such different landscapes as rain forests, sugar cane plantations and volcanic fields. They include three long-distance trails approved by the French Hiking Federation, with mountain lodges along the trail. More than 400,000 people each year visit the Piton de la Fournaise volcano, for which a discovery trail has been established. The park's visitor's centre, Maison du parc at La Plaine-des-Palmistes, was inaugurated on 21 August 2014 by French President François Hollande. ## Management The park is governed by an administrative council (Conseil d'administration, CA) composed of 88 members, the majority of them local representatives. It is elected for 6-year terms. A 15-member executive committee (Bureau) was established during the first administrative council's term and acts on its behalf. A scientific council (Conseil scientifique, CS), with 18 members from various disciplines and 11 outside experts, advises the administrative council and the park's director. Further, there is an economic, social, and cultural council (Conseil économique, social et culturel, CESC) composed of public figures and representatives from local institutions and associations. The park's regulations, notably regarding the core of the area, are stated in its charter. ## Controversies Since the national park's creation, debates have arisen on its management and the impacts on the population of the upland. Inhabitants of the area, which live in small hamlets, so called îlets, criticized management for not respecting their history and traditions, and cited farming activities banned on several occasions. Park officials maintained that every activity was possible under certain conditions. The volcanic setting holds potential for renewable energy production from geothermal power. However, this conflicts with the national park's vocation of preserving the natural and cultural landscape. As of 2016, pilot studies were carried out for two 5 MW geothermal power plants, at the foot of the Piton des neiges and on the Plaine des Sables, on which a project had already been considered and later abandoned. Both sites fall in the aire d'adhésion'' outside the park's core area, but proposals have also been made for sites within the World Heritage site boundary. In February 2016, the conservative majority in the Regional Council of Réunion with president Didier Robert announced plans to transform the national park into a regional nature park. Too restrictive rules, which hindered tourism development, was cited as a motive. A regional nature park, unlike a national park, functions on the basis of mutual agreements and has no power to establish its own regulations. Park officials and opposition politicians rejected the plan, saying it would threaten the island's biodiversity, the World Heritage listing, and critical access to state funding. It would be the first case of a national park in France being downgraded. In September 2016, the national park's director, Marylène Hoarau, announced her withdrawal upon pressure from Ségolène Royal, head of the Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy. This led the park's president, Daniel Gonthier, to suspect political interference; Hoarau had criticised Robert for launching a call for proposals on the future of the park. In an interview, Robert denied involvement in Hoarau's departure and criticised the minister for her decision.

Vix pervenit

1745 encyclical by Pope Benedict XIV

Vix pervenit is an encyclical, promulgated by Pope Benedict XIV on November 1, 1745, which condemned the practice of charging interest on loans as usury. Because the encyclical was addressed to the bishops of Italy, it is generally not considered ex cathedra. The Holy Office applied the encyclical to the whole of the Roman Catholic Church on July 29, 1836, during the reign of Pope Gregory XVI. The encyclical codified church teachings which date back to early ecumenical councils, at a time when scholastic philosophy (which did not regard money as a productive input) was increasingly coming into conflict with capitalism. ## Historical context Medieval Christian interest payment theology began with the First Council of Nicaea (325), which forbade clergy from engaging in usury. Later ecumenical councils applied this regulation to the laity. Lateran III decreed that persons who accepted interest on loans could receive neither the sacraments nor Christian burial. Pope Clement V made the belief in the right to usury heresy in 1311, and abolished all secular legislation in the Papal States which allowed it. Pope Sixtus V condemned the practice of charging interest as "detestable to God and man, damned by the sacred canons and contrary to Christian charity". Theological historian John Noonan argues that "the doctrine [of usury] was enunciated by popes, expressed by three ecumenical councils, proclaimed by bishops, and taught unanimously by theologians". However, the 16th-century Fifth Lateran Council gave explicit permission for interest-taking in some situations, showing the matter was never really clear-cut: > (...) We declare and define, with the approval of the Sacred Council, that the above-mentioned credit organisations (Mounts of Piety), established by states and hitherto approved and confirmed by the authority of the Apostolic See, do not introduce any kind of evil or provide any incentive to sin if they receive, in addition to the capital, a moderate sum for their expenses and by way of compensation, provided it is intended exclusively to defray the expenses of those employed and of other things pertaining (as mentioned) to the upkeep of the organizations, and provided that no profit is made therefrom. They ought not, indeed, to be condemned in any way. Rather, such a type of lending is meritorious and should be praised and approved. It certainly should not be considered as usurious; (...) ## Content of the encyclical ### Title As is usual practice with encyclicals, the text derived its title from the Latin opening words, which translate into English as "It has hardly reached [...]". The opening sentence refers to a debate, held in Italy at the time, about the validity of interest-bearing loan contracts, which had reached the Pontiff's ears. ### Doctrine The encyclical states: > The nature of the sin called usury has its proper place and origin in a loan contract. This financial contract between consenting parties demands, by its very nature, that one return to another only as much as he has received. The sin rests on the fact that sometimes the creditor desires more than he has given. Therefore he contends some gain is owed him beyond that which he loaned, but any gain which exceeds the amount he gave is illicit and usurious. The prohibition was unequivocal, rejecting even "moderate or small" rates of interest. The prohibition on usury did not extend only to loan contracts but also condemned those who "falsely and rashly persuade themselves" that "other just contracts exist, for which it is permissible to receive a moderate amount of interest. Should any one think like this, he will oppose not only the judgment of the Catholic Church on usury, but also common human sense and natural reason". ### Extrinsic interest The encyclical, however, did allow extrinsic interest to be charged, stating that "legitimate reasons arise to demand something over and above the amount due on the contract" as long as those reasons are "not at all intrinsic to the contract". The Holy Office would later expand upon these extrinsic justifications for interest in 1780 and 1784 to include "compensation" for the hazards and delays of repayment. ## Effects of the encyclical ### 18th and 19th century The encyclical was published one year after an influential and controversial three-volume defense of usury by Francesco Scipione. Months after the publication of Vix pervenit, Maffei published a second, almost identical edition of his treatise-which contained the full text of the encyclical and a dedication to Benedict XIV, his friend-with the imprimatur of the Catholic Church. Papal historian John Pollard argues that the encyclical's prohibition on usury contributed to the dependence of the Holy See upon Jewish bankers like James de Rothschild. The text of the encyclical was destroyed in several countries. In France, the ban on usury persisted until the French Revolution of 1789, the same year in which Turgot's Mémoire sur les prets d'argent, a defense of usury, was allowed to be published. Pope Leo XIII's Rerum novarum (1891) laments that usury is "still practiced by covetous and grasping men". By the 19th century, the debate over lending within the Catholic Church disappeared, as the provision of credit had become viewed as political economy issue rather than a theological one. In 1830, following the widespread acceptance of the Napoleonic code, which allowed interest, throughout Europe, with the approval of Pope Pius VIII, the Inquisition of Rome, distinguished the doctrine of usury from the practice of usury, decreeing that confessors should no longer disturb the latter. ### Current status According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, circa 1912, "The Holy See admits practically the lawfulness of interest on loans, even for ecclesiastical property, though it has not promulgated any doctrinal decree on the subject". W. Hohoff in Die Bedeutung der Marxschen Kapitalkritik argues that "the Church has never admitted the justice of interest whether on money or on capital, but has merely tolerated the institution, just as under the Old Dispensation, God tolerated polygamy and divorce". The Code of Canon Law promulgated in 1917, allowed those responsible for the church's financial affairs at the parish and diocesan levels to invest in interest-bearing securities "for the legal rate of interest (unless it is evident that the legal rate is exorbitant), or even for a higher rate, provided that there be a just and proportionate reason". A specialist in Catholic social doctrine, Miller A., argues, circa 1994, that "the words 'bank' and 'banking' are almost nonexistent in the documents of modern Catholic social teaching. Perhaps because the medieval teaching was never formally retracted that money was unproductive and therefore money lending at interest was therefore immoral, yet the church itself became an active investor.... Or perhaps it was because the church was deeply involved in financial matters at the highest levels that it was in no position to criticise". Writing for This Rock magazine, David Palm argued with a more holistic approach, taking into account Mosaic Law, the teaching of Jesus, the above-mentioned Fifth Lateran Council, development of economic sciences and especially the development of the practical economy since the Industrial Revolution, that the old economic mentality, expressed in Vix Pervenit, simply fails to capture the entire complexity of the modern world. The Fifth Lateran Council (1515) defined usury as follow: "For, that is the real meaning of usury: when, from its use, a thing which produces nothing is applied to the acquiring of gain and profit without any work, any expense or any risk". According to Palm, the sin of usury as defined by the Fifth Lateran Council dogmatically still exists in the Catholic Church, but the nature of financial transaction has changed compared to the time of the Fifth Lateran Council: "A loan that was usurious at one point in history, due to the unfruitfulness of money, is not usurious later, when the development of competitive markets has changed the nature of money itself". No other papal solemn pronouncement than Vix pervenit touches the subject of usury, although in a 1999 speech John Paul II qualified usury as a "grave social plague". ## See also - List of encyclicals of Pope Benedict XIV

Action of 24 March 1811

Minor naval engagement during the Napoleonic Wars

The action of 24 March 1811 was a minor naval engagement of the Napoleonic Wars, fought as part of the Royal Navy blockade of the French English Channel ports. By 1811, Royal Navy control of the French coast was so entrenched that French ships were unable to travel safely even in French territorial waters. In late 1810, French frigates Elisa and Amazone sailed from Le Havre to join with a larger squadron at Cherbourg-en-Cotentin, but were intercepted by a British frigate squadron and forced to shelter at Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue. There they came under sustained attack and Elisa was destroyed, Amazone successfully slipping back to Le Havre under cover of darkness. To prevent Amazone from escaping once more, the British blockade squadron was reinforced. On the evening of 23 March 1811, Amazone left Le Havre once more, sailing west towards Cherbourg through the night. Escaping the ships watching Le Havre, Amazone was sighted at dawn on 24 March weathering Cape Barfleur by ship of the line HMS Berwick, which pursued the French frigate into a bay 1 nautical mile (1.9 km) west of the Phare de Gatteville lighthouse. There Berwick, reinforced by a squadron of smaller ships, attacked Amazone but was unable to approach through the rocks and shoals of the coast. Plans were made overnight to attack the frigate with ship's boats, but on the following day the French Captain Bernard-Louis Rosseau set his ship on fire to prevent its capture. ## Action By the autumn of 1810 the Napoleonic Wars had lasted for seven years and the French Navy, over the course of the conflict, had been successively driven from the Atlantic until every French port was watched by a Royal Navy close blockade, ready to attack any French ship which emerged from harbour. In 1809, the main French fleet at Brest had attempted to break out into open water, only to be driven back and defeated at the Battle of Basque Roads. Much of the French effort at sea subsequently fell on commerce raiders, including privateers and frigate squadrons, often operating from smaller harbours such as those on the Northern coast of France in the English Channel. The two principal raiding ports were Cherbourg and Le Havre in Normandy, each of which maintained squadrons. In 1810, Cherbourg's anchorage held two ships of the line and a large, newly built frigate Iphigénie, while the frigates Elisa and Amazone were stationed at Le Havre. Both ports were watched closely by a blockade squadron detached from the Channel Fleet, including ships of the line off Cherbourg and two frigates, HMS Diana and HMS Niobe, off Le Havre. On 12 November 1810 Elisa and Amazone attempted to break out of Le Havre and join with the squadron at Cherbourg, slipping past the blockade in the darkness. Spotted in the early hours of 13 November, the frigates managed to anchor at the well-defended harbour of Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue, where on 15 November they were attacked by the combined blockade forces from Cherbourg and Le Havre. Although the attack was beaten back, Elisa was too badly damaged to continue the mission and on 27 November Amazone successfully returned to Le Havre without encountering the British forces. Elisa was subsequently driven onshore and destroyed by the British squadron. ### Amazone's journey Amazone, commanded by Captain Bernard-Louis Rosseau, attempted to sail to Cherbourg again on 23 March 1811. On this occasion Rosseau successfully evaded the blockade of Le Havre and by dawn on 24 March was weathering the point of Cape Barfleur. As the frigate passed the Phare de Gatteville lighthouse, only a few miles from her destination, she was spotted by a British ship of the line recently sailed from the British fleet anchorage at St Helens, the 74-gun HMS Berwick under Captain James Macnamara, then sailing approximately 12 nautical miles (22 km) offshore. Macnamara took Berwick in pursuit, seeking to cut off Rosseau's advance, and the French captain managed to evade Berwick by taking shelter in a small bay 1 nautical mile (1.9 km) west of the lighthouse. Navigation through the rocks of the bay had been difficult, and as she entered the bay Amazone's rudder had been torn away, rendering the ship unmanoeuverable. With Amazone trapped, Macnamara called up the rest of the Cherbourg squadron, the frigate HMS Amelia under Captain Frederick Paul Irby and the brig-sloops HMS Goshawk under Commander James Lilburn and HMS Hawk under Commander Henry Bourchier. This force was required to remain a substantial distance offshore as the rocky coastline posed a considerable danger to the British ships. Macnamara's plan was to wait for high tide and then bring the squadron closer inshore to bombard the French frigate into surrender. As they waited, the squadron was joined by Niobe from the Le Havre under Captain John Wentworth Loring. At 16:00 the tides were optimal for the attack and Niobe, Amelia and Berwick sailed into the bay. However, Rosseau had situated Amazone in a strong position, protected from close attack by rocks and shoals and in consequence the British ships could only fire as they wore around, resulting in scattered and inaccurate fire. As they advanced, the British ships came under fire from Amazone, which killed one sailor on Berwick and killed one and wounded another on Amelia, while the British fire had no effect on the French ship. At 18:00, Macnamara withdrew his ships from the bay, all three vessels having suffered considerable damage to their rigging and sails from Amazone's shot. ### Aftermath Macnamara considered plans to use ship's boats to attack Amazone directly, but resolved to attempt to enter the bay again on the morning of 25 March. As dawn broke however it became apparent that Rosseau had abandoned his damaged ship with his crew, setting the frigate on fire as he departed. By the end of the day Amazone had been burnt to the waterline and destroyed. Macnamara's squadron returned to their blockade duties off Cherbourg. The remaining frigate in the region, Iphigénie, did eventually succeed in breaking out of Cherbourg, but was intercepted and captured in the Atlantic during a raiding mission in January 1814.

Off the Air (TV series)

American psychedelic anthology television series

Off the Air is an American psychedelic anthology television series created by Dave Hughes for Adult Swim. The series is presented without explanation or narration as a showcase of surreal footage arranged around a single loose theme (expressed in the episode title) and blended without pause into a single continuous presentation. The series premiered on Adult Swim on January 1, 2011, 4:00 am New Year's Day. Hughes is a former employee of MTV Animation who first pitched it to Mike Lazzo at Adult Swim after producing a video mixtape for the network's 2010 Carnival Tour event. As a result of its 4 a.m. graveyard slot and small selection of episodes, the series remains relatively unknown on the network, but has been received positively and dubbed a cult phenomenon by critics and Adult Swim itself. The series has aired 42 episodes and 3 specials over the course of 11 seasons, including two episodes, "Technology" (by Wham City) and "Paradise" (by Ghosting.tv), that Adult Swim announced on October 13, 2017, would air in late 2017. On December 31, 2019, Dave Hughes tweeted that the episode "Patterns" was the "last [one] for now", indicating that the series has been put on hiatus until further notice. On June 9, 2020, the show came back with season 10. On October 12, 2021, the show came back with season 11. On July 4, 2022, the show came back with season 12. ## Synopsis The series is presented without explanation or narration as a showcase of surreal footage—animations, short films, music videos, viral videos, film, and television clips, stock footage and morphing psychedelic imagery—arranged around a single loose theme (expressed in the episode title) and blended without pause into a single continuous presentation. ## Production Series creator Dave Hughes first started working for Adult Swim in 2003 after an eight-year stint with MTV Animation, where he had edited series such as Beavis and Butt-head and Celebrity Deathmatch. Hughes, who saw Adult Swim "slipping away from its more experimental roots" as it got popular, had the concept for Off the Air in mind before, but never thought he would be the one to make it. While living in New York, 120 Minutes, Concrete TV, Liquid Television and Night Flight were among some of the experimental programming that exposed him "to a whole new world of ideas, music and people that I just didn't see anywhere else on television." Hughes first pitched the series to the network through Mike Lazzo at Adult Swim sometime after late 2009, after producing a video mixtape that would be projected behind musical performers for the network's 2010 Carnival Tour event. He compiled footage for the mixtape using the Prelinger Archives, as well as various online sources, and applied visual effects to them "until you didn't quite know what you were looking at." He originally imagined for it to exist as a "bizarre collection" of Internet and archival footage intertwined with clips from Adult Swim shows, "set to good music." He ultimately had to omit the latter material, however, as the network would still have to acquire licenses for their own series in derivative works. He found that once they were gone, "the show really opened up." In putting an episode together, Hughes seeks clips "with some kind of truth or integrity to them", opting for both viral videos in addition to ones with fewer view counts. Tracking down licensees for clips proves to be the most difficult aspect of the process, he stated, with co-producers Cody DeMatteis and Alan Steadman assisting him in pursuit of material hard to obtain. When asked if getting consent for other's work posed a challenge, Hughes noted it to be helpful working under the "Adult Swim banner", with only a few artists responding with reluctance. He wrote that each piece of the episode is treated with protection, not "trying to exploit anyone or make fun of anything or anybody." Each episode is edited using Final Cut Pro, along with Adobe Photoshop and Adobe After Effects for further manipulation (often employing data-moshing techniques). Hughes observed a large portion of producing episodes to stem from "finding the right music to go with the visuals, or vice versa", and found transitions to "really help keep it moving." Likewise, Hughes digressed from Liquid Television's use of longer segments in order to make the series a "larger event rather than a series of smaller events", and found visual effects and transitions to be "a huge part" of his theory in making an episode. Starting in Season 7, the series began airing episodes produced by guest curators. A compilation of videos that were once considered to be featured in the first season had been published on the network's official blog. These videos, extending into its second season as well as hosting various other supplemental material, have since been published onto Network Awesome. A compilation of material from the first season and additional shorts was given a theatrical release at Cinefamily on August 25, 2012, which Hughes attended. In 2018, Hughes started Smalls, a complementary series on Adult Swim's website featuring original shorts from the artists featured on Off the Air as well as new talent. Hughes has said he intended for the series to include "more traditional shorts, [with] a little more character and a little more comedy," as opposed to the more abstract material on Off the Air. The series includes both weekly online short films and full 11-minute shorts for the network proper, the latter of which air under the title Adult Swim Smalls Presents. The shorts and TV episodes also air on the Off the Air marathon stream on the network's website. Beginning in 2022, episodes of Smalls were added to HBO Max, with some also premiering there. ## Broadcast and reception Its first episode, "Animals", premiered on Adult Swim on New Year's Day 2011 at 4 a.m.; it was broadcast twice in a row, back-to-back. Episodes have continued to air in this time slot—considered a graveyard slot in broadcast programming—and as a result of this and its small selection of episodes, the series remains relatively unknown on the network. However, Austin McManus of Juxtapoz noted word of mouth to be "gradually spreading" about it. He and the network also described the show as a cult phenomenon. Three specials have been produced: "Dan Deacon: U.S.A.", broadcast July 6, 2013, consists of surreal footage of American landscapes, with music from the last four tracks of the album America by Dan Deacon. A second special—the second-season episode "Nightmares" played in literal reverse—aired after Halloween night on November 1, 2014. The third special is a music video of Deacon's song "When I Was Done Dying" from his album Gliss Riffer animated by nine directors featured previously in Off the Air, that broadcast March 24, 2015. It has received positive critical reception, with McManus conducting an eight-page interview and profile of Hughes in appreciation of the series. The magazine had previously published a special issue centered on the network and its shows in July 2012, but overlooked Off the Air, presenting an "opportunity to shed a little insight and background on an extraordinary unique show." Speaking from the first time he watched it, McManus praised it for not being "your typical try-too-hard-to-be-weird production." In Adweek, Sam Thielman ranked it second place out of 18 other programs on the network. He tied it with the network's parody infomercial specials and wrote that it was "in the same category as King Star King among things that are so cool and strange that they look like they should probably be part of a video installation in an art gallery somewhere." For Neon Tommy, Jeremy Fuster called it "a dark, unspeakable corner of television where no light can reach and only the sleepless and drug-addled dare to venture." Amanda McCorquodale of the Miami New Times joked that, for artists featured on the show, "nothing compares to the prestige of sharing a network with Tim & Eric and Brak, right?" Ultimately, she saw it as the "already bizarre network's foray into out-there visual experimentation." Writing for The Fader, Matthew Trammell regarded it as "when things get really interesting." PQ Ribber of The Overnightscape Underground dubbed the series a "modern version" of Liquid Television and called it "really kinda spiffy, and trippy, and cool." Casper Kelly sought inspiration from the show during the production of his short film for the network, Too Many Cooks. Ratings-wise, several episodes have surpassed one million views according to Nielsen Media Research. Hughes added that he follows the series' ratings when it occurs to him, but does not receive further analytics. He found it to trend on Twitter during the weeks of its airing, and likes viewing user's statuses regarding it. In particular, he enjoys reactions from people who wake up to it after falling asleep to the network, and judged from the online response that its audience would be "pretty young, late teens, early 20s" and "strangely positive and engaged." The network has broadcast praise of the show written by viewers in the form of bumpers, often hinting at further episodes being produced. Episodes have been distributed to sites like YouTube, while a continuous online stream of the show was launched by the network on September 5, 2014. On December 19, 2014, the show's Facebook page announced that additional exclusive material will be added to the livestream. ## Episodes ## Explanatory notes

Mediterranean tropical-like cyclone

Hurricane-like storms in the Mediterranean Sea

Mediterranean tropical-like cyclones, often referred to as Mediterranean cyclones or Mediterranean hurricanes, and informally as medicanes, are meteorological phenomena occasionally observed over the Mediterranean Sea. On a few rare occasions, some storms have been observed reaching the strength of a Category 1 hurricane, on the Saffir–Simpson scale, and one storm has been recorded reaching Category 2 intensity. The main societal hazard posed by medicanes is not usually from destructive winds, but through life-threatening torrential rains and flash floods. The occurrence of medicanes has been described as not particularly rare. Tropical-like systems were first identified in the Mediterranean basin in the 1980s, when widespread satellite coverage showing tropical-looking low pressures which formed a cyclonic eye in the center were identified. Due to the dry nature of the Mediterranean region, the formation of tropical, subtropical cyclones and tropical-like cyclones are infrequent and also hard to detect, in particular with the reanalysis of past data. Depending on the search algorithms used, different long-term surveys of satellite era and pre-satellite era data came up with 67 tropical-like cyclones of tropical storm intensity or higher between 1947 and 2014, and around 100 recorded tropical-like storms between 1947 and 2011. More consensus exists about the long term temporal and spatial distribution of tropical-like cyclones: they form predominantly over the western and central Mediterranean Sea while the area east of Crete is almost devoid of tropical-like cyclones. The development of tropical-like cyclones can occur year-round, with activity historically peaking between the months of September and January, while the counts for the summer months of June and July are the lowest, being within the peak dry season of the Mediterranean with stable air. ## Meteorological classification and history Historically, the term tropical-like cyclone was coined in the 1980s to unofficially distinguish tropical cyclones developing outside the tropics (like in the Mediterranean Basin) from those developing inside the tropics. The term tropical-like was in no way meant to indicate a hybrid cyclone exhibiting characteristics not usually seen in "true" tropical cyclones. In their matured stages, Mediterranean tropical cyclones show no difference from other tropical storms. And only tropical storms are known to develop into hurricanes. Mediterranean hurricanes or medicanes are therefore not different from hurricanes elsewhere. Mediterranean tropical-like cyclones are not considered to be formally classified tropical cyclones and their region of formation is not officially monitored by any agency with meteorological tasks. However, the NOAA subsidiary Satellite Analysis Branch released information related to a medicane in November 2011 while it was active, which they dubbed as "Tropical Storm 01M", though they ceased services in the Mediterranean on 16 December 2011 for undisclosed reasons. However, in 2015, the NOAA resumed services in the Mediterranean region; by 2016, the NOAA was issuing advisories on a new tropical system, Tropical Storm 90M. Since 2005, ESTOFEX has been issuing bulletins that can include tropical-like cyclones, among others. No agency with meteorological tasks, however, is officially responsible for monitoring the formation and development of medicanes, as well as for their naming. Despite all this, the whole Mediterranean Sea lies within the Greek area of responsibility with the Hellenic National Meteorological Service (HNMS) as the governing agency, while France's Météo-France serves as a "preparation service" for the western part of the Mediterranean as well. As the only official agency covering the whole Mediterranean Sea, HNMS publications are of particular interest for the classification of medicanes. HNMS calls the meteorological phenomenon Mediterranean tropical-like Hurricane in its annual bulletin and – by also using the respective portmanteau word medicane– makes the term medicane quasi-official. In a joint article with the Laboratory of Climatology and Atmospheric Environment of the University of Athens, the Hellenic National Meteorological Service outlines conditions to consider a cyclone over the Mediterranean Sea a Medicane: > The criteria applied in order to identify medicanes concern the detailed structure, the size and the lifetime of the systems using Meteosat satellite images in the infrared channel. They must have a continuous cloud cover and symmetric shape around a clearly visible cyclone eye. In the same article, a survey of 37 medicanes revealed that medicanes could have a well-defined cyclone eye at estimated maximum sustained winds between 47 and 180 km/h (29 and 112 mph; 25 and 97 kn), with the lower end being exceptionally low for warm core cyclones. Medicanes can indeed develop well-defined eyes at such low maximum sustained winds of around 48 km/h (30 mph; 26 kn) as could be seen for a 22 October 2015 medicane near the Albanian coast. This is much lower than the lower threshold for eye development in tropical systems in the Atlantic Ocean which seems to be close to 80 km/h (50 mph; 43 kn), well below hurricane-force winds. Several notable and damaging medicanes are known to have occurred. In September 1969, a North African Mediterranean tropical cyclone produced flooding that killed nearly 600 individuals, left 250,000 homeless, and crippled local economies. A medicane in September 1996 that developed in the Balearic Islands region spawned six tornadoes, and inundated parts of the islands. Several medicanes have also been subject to extensive study, such as those of January 1982, January 1995, September 2006, November 2011, and November 2014. The January 1995 storm is one of the best-studied Mediterranean tropical cyclones, with its close resemblance to tropical cyclones elsewhere and availability of observations. The medicane of September 2006, meanwhile, is well-studied, due to the availability of existing observations and data. Given the low profile of HNMS in forecasting and classifying tropical-like systems in the Mediterranean, a proper classification system for Mediterranean tropical-like cyclones does not exist. The HNMS criterion of a cyclonic eye for considering a system a medicane is usually valid for a system at peak strength, often only hours before landfall, which is not suitable at least for forecasts and warnings. Unofficially, Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD, the German meteorological service) proposed a system to forecast and classify tropical-like cyclones based on the NHC classification for the northern Atlantic Ocean. To account for the broader wind field and the larger radius of maximum winds of tropical-like systems in the Mediterranean (see the section Development and characteristics below), DWD is suggesting a lower threshold of 112 km/h (70 mph; 60 kn) for the use of the term medicane in the Mediterranean instead of 119 km/h (74 mph; 64 kn) as suggested by the Saffir–Simpson scale for Atlantic hurricanes. The DWD proposal and also US-based forecasts (NHC, NOAA, NRL etc.) use one-minute sustained winds while European-based forecasts use ten-minute sustained winds which makes a difference of roughly 14% in measurements. The distinction is also of direct practical use (for example for a comparison of NOAA bulletins with EUMETSAT, ESTOFEX and HNMS bulletins). To account for the difference, the DWD proposal is shown below for both one-minute and deduced ten-minute sustained winds (see tropical cyclone scales for conversions): Another proposal uses roughly the same scale but suggests to use the term medicane for tropical storm force cyclones and major medicane for hurricane force cyclones. Both proposals would fit the observation, that half of the 37 cyclones surveyed by HNMS with a clearly observable hurricane-like eye, as the major criterion for assigning the medicane status, showed maximum sustained winds between 76–110 km/h (47–68 mph; 41–59 kn), while another quarter of the medicanes peaked at lower wind speeds. ## Climatology A majority of Mediterranean tropical cyclones (tropical cyclogenesis) form over two separate regions. The first, more conducive for development than the other, encompasses an area of the western Mediterranean bordered by the Balearic Islands, southern France, and the shorelines of the islands of Corsica and Sardinia. The second identified region of development, in the Ionian Sea between Sicily and Greece and stretching south to Libya, is less favorable for tropical cyclogenesis. An additional two regions, in the Aegean and Adriatic seas, produce fewer medicanes, while activity is minimal in the Levantine region. The geographical distribution of Mediterranean tropical-like cyclones is markedly different from that of other cyclones, with the formation of regular cyclones centering on the Pyrenees and Atlas mountain ranges, the Gulf of Genoa, and the island of Cyprus in the Ionian Sea. Although meteorological factors are most advantageous in the Adriatic and Aegean seas, the closed nature of the region's geography, bordered by land, allows little time for further evolution. The geography of mountain ranges bordering the Mediterranean are conducive for severe weather and thunderstorms, with the sloped nature of mountainous regions permitting the development of convective activity. Although the geography of the Mediterranean region, as well as its dry air, typically prevent the formation of tropical cyclones, when certain meteorological circumstances arise, difficulties influenced by the region's geography are overcome. The occurrence of tropical cyclones in the Mediterranean Sea is generally extremely rare, with an average of 1.57 forming annually and merely 99 recorded occurrences of tropical-like storms discovered between 1948 and 2011 in a modern study, with no definitive trend in activity in that period. Few medicanes form during the summer season, though activity typically rises in autumn, peaks in January, and gradually decreases from February to May. In the western Mediterranean region of development, approximately 0.75 such systems form each year, compared with 0.32 in the Ionian Sea region. However, on very rare occasions, similar tropical-like storms may also develop in the Black Sea. Studies have evaluated that global warming can result in higher observed intensities of tropical cyclones as a result of deviations in the surface energy flux and atmospheric composition, which both heavily influence the development of medicanes as well. In tropical and subtropical areas, sea surface temperatures (SSTs) rose 0.2 °C (0.36 °F) within a 50-year period, and in the North Atlantic and Northwestern Pacific tropical cyclone basins, the potential destructiveness and energy of storms nearly doubled within the same duration, evidencing a clear correlation between global warming and tropical cyclone intensities. Within a similarly recent 20-year period, SSTs in the Mediterranean Sea increased by 0.6 to 1 °C (1.1 to 1.8 °F), though no observable increase in medicane activity has been noted, as of 2013. In 2006, a computer-driven atmospheric model evaluated the future frequency of Mediterranean cyclones between 2071 and 2100, projecting a decrease in autumn, winter, and spring cyclonic activity coinciding with a dramatic increase in formation near Cyprus, with both scenarios attributed to elevated temperatures as a result of global warming. In another study, researchers found that more tropical-like storms in the Mediterranean could reach Category 1 strength by the end of the 21st century, with most of the stronger storms appearing in the autumn, though the models indicated that some storms could potentially reach Category 2 intensity. Other studies, however, have been inconclusive, forecasting both increases and decreases in duration, number, and intensity. Three independent studies, using different methodologies and data, evaluated that while medicane activity would likely decline with a rate depending on the climate scenario considered, a higher percentage of those that formed would be of greater strength. ## Development and characteristics The development of tropical or subtropical cyclones in the Mediterranean Sea can usually only occur under somewhat unusual circumstances. Low wind shear and atmospheric instability induced by incursions of cold air are often required. A majority of medicanes are also accompanied by upper-level troughs, providing energy required for intensifying atmospheric convection—thunderstorms—and heavy precipitation. The baroclinic properties of the Mediterranean region, with high temperature gradients, also provides necessary instability for the formation of tropical cyclones. Another factor, rising cool air, provides necessary moisture as well. Warm sea surface temperatures (SSTs) are mostly unnecessary, however, as most medicanes' energy are derived from warmer air temperatures. When these favorable circumstances coincide, the genesis of warm-core Mediterranean tropical cyclones, often from within existing cut-off cold-core lows, is possible in a conducive environment for formation. Factors required for the formation of medicanes are somewhat different from that normally expected of tropical cyclones; known to emerge over regions with sea surface temperatures (SSTs) below 26 °C (79 °F), Mediterranean tropical cyclones often require incursions of colder air to induce atmospheric instability. A majority of medicanes develop above regions of the Mediterranean with SSTs of 15 to 26 °C (59 to 79 °F), with the upper bound only found in the southernmost reaches of the sea. Despite the low sea surface temperatures, the instability incited by cold atmospheric air within a baroclinic zone—regions with high differences in temperature and pressure—permits the formation of medicanes, in contrast with tropical areas lacking high baroclinity, where raised SSTs are needed. While significant deviations in air temperature have been noted around the time of Mediterranean tropical cyclones' formation, few anomalies in sea surface temperature coincide with their development, indicating that the formation of medicanes is primarily controlled by higher air temperatures, not by anomalous SSTs. Similar to tropical cyclones, minimal wind shear—difference in wind speed and direction over a region—as well as abundant moisture and vorticity encourages the genesis of tropical cyclone-like systems in the Mediterranean Sea. Due to the confined character of the Mediterranean and the limited capability of heat fluxes—in the case of medicanes, air—sea heat transfer—tropical cyclones with a diameter larger than 300 km (190 mi) cannot exist within the Mediterranean. Despite being a relatively baroclinic area with high temperature gradients, the primary energy source utilized by Mediterranean tropical cyclones is derived from underlying heat sources generated by the presence of convection—thunderstorm activity—in a humid environment, similar to tropical cyclones elsewhere outside the Mediterranean Sea. In comparison with other tropical cyclone basins, the Mediterranean Sea generally presents a difficult environment for development; although the potential energy necessary for development is not abnormally large, its atmosphere is characterized by its lack of moisture, impeding potential formation. The full development of a medicane often necessitates the formation of a large-scale baroclinic disturbance, transitioning late in its life cycle into a tropical cyclone-like system, nearly always under the influence of a deep, cut-off, cold-core low within the middle-to-upper troposphere, frequently resulting from abnormalities in a wide-spreading Rossby wave—massive meanders of upper-atmospheric winds. The development of medicanes often results from the vertical shift of air in the troposphere as well, resulting in a decrease in its temperature coinciding with an increase in relative humidity, creating an environment more conducive for tropical cyclone formation. This, in turn, leads to in an increase in potential energy, producing heat-induced air-sea instability. Moist air prevents the occurrence of convective downdrafts—the vertically downward movement of air—which often hinder the inception of tropical cyclones, and in such a scenario, wind shear remains minimal; overall, cold-core cut-off lows serve well for the later formation of compact surface flux-influenced warm-core lows such as medicanes. The regular genesis of cold-core upper-level lows and the infrequency of Mediterranean tropical cyclones, however, indicate that additional unusual circumstances are involved the emergence of the latter. Elevated sea surface temperatures, contrasting with cold atmospheric air, encourage atmospheric instability, especially within the troposphere. In general, most medicanes maintain a radius of 70 to 200 km (40 to 120 mi), last between 12 hours and 5 days, travel between 700 and 3,000 km (430 and 1,860 mi), develop an eye for less than 72 hours, and feature wind speeds of up to 144 km/h (89 mph; 78 kn); in addition, a majority are characterized on satellite imagery as asymmetric systems with a distinct round eye encircled by atmospheric convection. Weak rotation, similar to that in most tropical cyclones, is usually noted in a medicane's early stages, increasing with intensity; medicanes, however, often have less time to intensify, remaining weaker than most North Atlantic hurricanes and only persisting for the duration of a few days. The theoretical maximum potential intensity of medicanes is equivalent to the lowest classification on the Saffir–Simpson hurricane wind scale, a Category 1 hurricane. While the entire lifetime of a cyclone may encompass several days, most will only retain tropical characteristics for less than 24 hours. Circumstances sometimes permit the formation of smaller-scale medicanes, although the required conditions differ even from those needed by other medicanes. The development of abnormally small tropical cyclones in the Mediterranean usually requires upper-level atmospheric cyclones inducing cyclogenesis in the lower atmosphere, leading to the formation of warm-core lows, encouraged by favorable moisture, heat, and other environmental circumstances. Mediterranean cyclones have been compared with polar lows—cyclonic storms which typically develop in the far regions of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres—for their similarly small size and heat-related instability; however, while medicanes nearly always feature warm-core lows, polar lows are primarily cold-core. The prolonged life of medicanes and similarity to polar lows is caused primarily by origins as synoptic-scale surface lows and heat-related instability. Heavy precipitation and convection within a developing Mediterranean tropical cyclone are usually incited by the approach of an upper-level trough—an elongated area of low air pressures—bringing downstream cold air, encircling an existing low-pressure system. After this occurs, however, a considerable reduction in rainfall rates occurs despite further organization, coinciding with a decrease in previously high lightning activity as well. Although troughs will often accompany medicanes along their track, separation eventually occurs, usually in the later part of a Mediterranean tropical cyclone's life cycle. At the same time, moist air, saturated and cooled while rising into the atmosphere, then encounters the medicane, permitting further development and evolution into a tropical cyclone. Many of these characteristics are also evident in polar lows, except for the warm core characteristic. ## Notable medicanes and impacts ### 22–27 Sep 1969 An unusually severe Mediterranean tropical cyclone developed on 23 September 1969 southeast of Malta, producing severe flooding. Steep pressure and temperature gradients above the Atlas mountain range were evident on 19 September, a result of cool sea air attempting to penetrate inland; south of the mountains, a lee depression—a low-pressure area in a mountainous region—developed. Under the influence of mountainous terrain, the low initially meandered northeastward. Following the entry of cool sea air, however, it recurved to the southeast before transitioning into a Saharan depression associated with a distinct cold front by 22 September. Along the front's path, desert air moved northward while cold air drifted in the opposite direction, and in northern Libya, warm arid air clashed with the cooler levant of the Mediterranean. The organization of the disturbance improved slightly further before emerging into the Mediterranean Sea on 23 September, upon which the system experienced immediate cyclogenesis, rapidly intensifying while southeast of Malta as a cold-core cut-off low, and acquiring tropical characteristics. In western Africa, meanwhile, several disturbances converged toward Mauritania and Algeria, while the medicane recurved southwestward back toward the coast, losing its closed circulation and later dissipating. The cyclone produced severe flooding throughout regions of northern Africa. Malta received upward of 123 mm (4.8 in) of rainfall on 23 September, Sfax measured 45 mm (1.8 in) on 24 September, Tizi Ouzou collected 55 mm (2.2 in) on 25 September, Gafsa received 79 mm (3.1 in) and Constantine measured 46 mm (1.8 in) on 26 September, Cap Bengut collected 43 mm (1.7 in) on 27 September, and Biskra received 122 mm (4.8 in) on 28 September. In Malta, a 20000-ton tanker struck a reef and split in two, while in Gafsa, Tunisia, the cyclone flooded phosphate mines, leaving over 25,000 miners unemployed and costing the government over £2 million per week. Thousands of camels and snakes, drowned by flood waters, were swept out to sea, and massive Roman bridges, which withstood all floods since the fall of the Roman Empire, collapsed. In all, the floods in Tunisia and Algeria killed almost 600 individuals, left 250,000 homeless, and severely damaged regional economies. Due to communication problems, however, flood relief funds and television appeals were not set up until nearly a month later. ### Leucosia (24–27 Jan 1982) The unusual Mediterranean tropical storm of January 1982, dubbed Leucosia, was first detected in waters north of Libya. The storm likely reached the Atlas mountain range as a low-pressure area by 23 January 1982, reinforced by an elongated, slowly-drifting trough above the Iberian Peninsula. Eventually, a closed circulation center developed by 1310 UTC, over parts of the Mediterranean with sea surface temperatures (SSTs) of approximately 16 °C (61 °F) and air temperature of 12 °C (54 °F). A hook-shaped cloud developed within the system shortly thereafter, rotating as it elongated into a 150 km (93 mi)-long comma-shaped apparatus. After looping around Sicily, it drifted eastward between the island and Peloponnese, recurving on its track again, exhibiting clearly curved spiral banding before shrinking slightly. The cyclone reached its peak intensity at 1800 UTC on the following day, maintaining an atmospheric pressure of 992 mbar (29.3 inHg), and was succeeded by a period of gradual weakening, with the system's pressure eventually rising to 1,009 mbar (29.8 inHg). The system slightly reintensified, however, for a six-hour period on 26 January. Ship reports indicated winds of 93 km/h (58 mph; 50 kn) were present in the cyclone at the time, tropical storm-force winds on the Saffir–Simpson hurricane wind scale, likely near the eyewall of the cyclone, which features the highest winds in a tropical cyclone. The Global Weather Center's Cyclone Weather Center of the United States Air Force (USAF) initiated "Mediterranean Cyclone Advisories" on the cyclone at six-hour intervals starting at 1800 UTC on 27 January, until 0600 UTC on the following day. Convection was most intense in the eastern sector of the cyclone as it drifted east-northeastward. On infrared satellite imagery, the eye itself was 58.5 km (36.4 mi) in diameter, contracting to just 28 kilometres (17 mi) one day prior to making landfall. The cyclone passed by Malta, Italy, and Greece before dissipating several days later, in the extreme eastern Mediterranean. Observations related to the cyclone, however, were inadequate, and although the system maintained numerous tropical characteristics, it is possible it was merely a compact but powerful extratropical cyclone exhibiting a clear eye, spiral banding, towering cumulonimbi, and high surface winds along the eyewall. ### 27 Sep – 2 October 1983 On 27 September 1983, a medicane was observed at sea between Tunisia and Sicily, looping around Sardinia and Corsica, coming ashore twice on the islands, before making landfall at Tunis early on 2 October and dissipating. The development of the system was not encouraged by baroclinic instability; rather, convection was incited by abnormally high sea surface temperatures (SSTs) at the time of its formation. It also featured a definitive eye, tall cumulonimbus clouds, intense sustained winds, and a warm core. For most of its duration, it maintained a diameter of 200 to 300 km (120 to 190 mi), though it shrank just before landfall on Ajaccio to a diameter of 100 km (62 mi). ### Celeno (14–17 Jan 1995) Among numerous documented medicanes, the cyclone of January 1995, which was dubbed Celeno, is generally considered to be the best-documented instance in the 20th century. The storm emerged from the Libyan coast and moved toward the Ionian shoreline of Greece on 13 January as a compact low-pressure area. The medicane maintained winds reaching up to 108 km/h (67 mph; 58 kn) as it traversed the Ionian Sea, while the German research ship Meteor recorded winds of 135 km/h (84 mph; 73 kn). Upon the low's approach near Greece, it began to envelop an area of atmospheric convection; meanwhile, in the middle troposphere, a trough extended from Russia to the Mediterranean, bringing with it extremely cold temperatures. Two low-pressure areas were present along the path of the trough, with one situated above Ukraine and the other above the central Mediterranean, likely associated with a low-level cyclone over western Greece. Upon weakening and dissipation on 14 January, a second low, the system which would evolve into the Mediterranean tropical cyclone, developed in its place on 15 January. At the time of formation, high clouds indicated the presence of intense convection, and the cyclone featured an axisymmetric cloud structure, with a distinct, cloud-free eye and rainbands spiraling around the disturbance as a whole. Soon thereafter, the parent low separated from the medicane entirely and continued eastward, meandering toward the Aegean Sea and Turkey. Initially remaining stationary between Greece and Sicily with a minimum atmospheric pressure of 1,002 mbar (29.6 inHg), the newly formed system began to drift southwest-to-south in the following days, influenced by northeasterly flow incited by the initial low, now far to the east, and a high-pressure area above central and eastern Europe. The system's atmospheric pressure increased throughout 15 January due to the fact it was embedded within a large-scale environment, with its rising pressure due to the general prevalence of higher air pressures throughout the region, and was not a sign of weakening. Initial wind speeds within the young medicane were generally low, with sustained winds of merely 28 to 46 km/h (17 to 29 mph; 15 to 25 kn), with the highest recorded value associated with the disturbance being 63 km/h (39 mph) at 0000 UTC on 16 January, slightly below the threshold for tropical storm on the Saffir–Simpson hurricane wind scale. Its structure now consisted of a distinct eye encircled by counterclockwise-rotating cumulonimbi with cloud top temperatures colder than −50 °C (−58 °F), evidencing deep convection and a regular feature observed in most tropical cyclones. At 1200 UTC on 16 January, a ship recorded winds blowing east-southeast of about 50 knots (93 km/h) south-southwest about 50 km (31 mi) north-northeast of the cyclone's center. Intense convection continued to follow the entire path of the system as it traversed the Mediterranean, and the cyclone made landfall in northern Libya at approximately 1800 UTC on 17 January, rapidly weakening after coming ashore. As it moved inland, a minimum atmospheric pressure of 1,012 mbar (29.9 inHg) was recorded, accompanied by wind speeds of 93 km/h (58 mph; 50 kn) as it slowed down after passing through the Gulf of Sidra. Although the system retained its strong convection for several more hours, the cyclone's cloud tops began to warm, evidencing lower clouds, before losing tropical characteristics entirely on 17 January. Offshore ship reports recorded that the medicane produced intense winds, copious rainfall, and abnormally warm temperatures. ### 11–13 Sep 1996 Three notable medicanes developed in 1996. The first, in mid-September 1996, was a typical Mediterranean tropical cyclone that developed in the Balearic Islands region. At the time of the cyclone's formation, a powerful Atlantic cold front and a warm front associated with a large-scale low, producing northeasterly winds over the Iberian peninsula, extended eastward into the Mediterranean, while abundant moisture gathered in the lower troposphere over the Balearic channel. On the morning of 12 September, a disturbance developed off of Valencia, Spain, dropping heavy rainfall on the coast even without coming ashore. An eye developed shortly thereafter as the system rapidly traversed across Majorca and Sardinia in its eastward trek. It made landfall upon the coast of southern Italy on the evening of 13 September with a minimum atmospheric pressure of 990 mbar (29 inHg), dissipating shortly after coming ashore, with a diameter of about 150 km (93 mi). At Valencia and other regions of eastern Spain, the storm generated heavy precipitation, while six tornadoes touched down over the Balearic Islands. While approaching the coast of the Balearic Islands, the warm-core low induced a pressure drop of 11 mbar (0.32 inHg) at Palma, Majorca in advance of the tropical cyclone's landfall. Medicanes as small as the one that formed in September 1996 are atypical, and often require circumstances different even from those required for regular Mediterranean tropical cyclone formation. Warm low-level advection–transfer of heat through air or sea–caused by a large-scale low over the western Mediterranean was a primary factor in the rise of strong convection. The presence of a mid- to upper-level cut-off cold-core low, a method of formation typical to medicanes, was also key to the development of intense thunderstorms within the cyclone. In addition, interaction between a northeastward-drifting trough, the medicane, and the large-scale also permitted the formation of tornadoes within thunderstorms generated by the cyclone after making landfall. ### 4–6 Oct 1996 The second of the three recorded Mediterranean tropical cyclones in 1996 formed between Sicily and Tunisia on 4 October, making landfall on both Sicily and southern Italy. The medicane generated major flooding in Sicily. In Calabria, wind gusts of up to 108 km/h (67 mph; 58 kn) were reported in addition to severe inundation. ### Cornelia (6–11 Oct 1996) The third major Mediterranean tropical cyclone of that year formed north of Algeria, and strengthened while sweeping between the Balearic Islands and Sardinia, with an eye-like feature prominent on satellite. The storm was unofficially named Cornelia. The eye of the storm was distorted and disappeared after transiting over southern Sardinia throughout the evening of 8 October, with the system weakening as a whole. On the morning of October 9, a smaller eye emerged as the system passed over the Tyrrhenian Sea, gradually strengthening, with reports 100 km (62 mi) from the storm's center reporting winds of 90 km/h (56 mph; 49 kn). Extreme damage was reported in the Aeolian Islands after the tropical cyclone passed north of Sicily, though the system dissipated while turning southward over Calabria. Overall, the lowest estimated atmospheric pressure in the third medicane was 998 mbar (29.5 inHg). Both October systems featured distinctive spiral bands, intense convection, high sustained winds, and abundant precipitation. ### Querida (25–27 Sep 2006) A short-lived medicane, named Querida by the Free University of Berlin, developed near the end of September 2006, along the coast of Italy. The origins of the medicane can be traced to the alpine Atlas mountain range on the evening of 25 September, likely forming as a normal lee cyclone. At 0600 UTC on 26 September, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) model analyses indicated the existence of two low-pressure areas along the shoreline of Italy, one on the west coast, sweeping eastward across the Tyrrhenian Sea, while the other, slightly more intense, low was located over the Ionian Sea. As the latter low approached the Strait of Sicily, it met an eastward-moving convection-producing cold front, resulting in significant intensification, while the system simultaneously reduced in size. It then achieved a minimum atmospheric pressure of approximately 986 mbar (29.1 inHg) after transiting north-northeastward across the 40 km (25 mi)-wide Salentine peninsula in the course of roughly 30 minutes at 0915 UTC the same day. Wind gusts surpassing 144 km/h (89 mph; 78 kn) were recorded as it passed over Salento due to a steep pressure gradient associated with it, confirmed by regional radar observations denoting the presence of a clear eye. The high winds inflicted moderate damages throughout the peninsula, though specific damage is unknown. Around 1000 UTC, both radar and satellite recorded the system's entry into the Adriatic Sea and its gradual northwestward curve back toward the Italian coast. By 1700 UTC, the cyclone made landfall in northern Apulia while maintaining its intensity, with a minimum atmospheric pressure at 988 mbar (29.2 inHg). The cyclone weakened while drifting further inland over the Italian mainland, eventually dissipating as it curved west-southwestward. A later study in 2008 evaluated that the cyclone possessed numerous characteristics seen in tropical cyclones elsewhere, with a spiral appearance, eye-like apparatus, rapid atmospheric pressure decreases in advance of landfall, and intense sustained winds, concentrated near the storm's eyewall; the apparent eye-like structure in the cyclone, however, was ill-defined. Since then, the medicane has been the subject of significant study as a result of the availability of scientific observations and reports related to the cyclone. In particular, the sensitivity of this cyclone to sea-surface temperatures, initial conditions, the model, and the parameterization schemes used in the simulations were analyzed. The relevance of different instability indices for the diagnosis and the prediction of these events were also studied. ### Rolf (6–9 Nov 2011) In November 2011, the first officially designated Mediterranean tropical cyclone by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) formed, christened as Tropical Storm 01M by the Satellite Analysis Branch, and given the name Rolf by the Free University of Berlin (FU Berlin), despite the fact that no agency is officially responsible for monitoring tropical cyclone activity in the Mediterranean. On 4 November 2011, a frontal system associated with another low-pressure area monitored by FU Berlin, designated Quinn, spawned a second low-pressure system inland near Marseille, which was subsequently named Rolf by the university. An upper-level trough on the European mainland stalled as it approached the Pyrenees, before approaching and interacting with the low known as Rolf. Heavy rainfall consequently fell over regions of southern France and northwestern Italy, resulting in widespread landslides and flooding. On 5 November, Rolf slowed while stationed above the Massif Central, maintaining a pressure of 1,000 mbar (30 inHg). A stationary front, stationed between Madrid and Lisbon, approached Rolf the same day, with the cold front later encountering and becoming associated with Rolf, which would continue for a couple of days. On 6 November, the cyclone drifted toward the Mediterranean from the southern shoreline of France, with the storm's frontal structure shrinking to 150 km (93 mi) in length. Slightly weakening, Rolf neared the Balearic Islands on 7 November, associating with two fronts producing heavy rain throughout Europe, before separating entirely and transitioning into a cut-off low. On the same day, the NOAA began monitoring the system, designating it as 01M, marking the first time that the agency officially monitored a Medicane. A distinct eye-like feature developed while spiral banding and intense convection became evident. At its highest, the Dvorak technique classified the system as T3.0. Convection then gradually decreased, and a misalignment of the mid- and upper-level centers was noted. The cyclone made landfall on 9 November near Hyères in France. The system continued to rapidly weaken on 9 November, before advisories on the system were discontinued later that day, and FU Berlin followed suit by 10 November, removing the name Rolf from its weather maps and declaring the storm's dissipation. The deep warm core of this cyclone persisted for a longer time compared to most of the other documented tropical-like cyclones in the Mediterranean. At peak intensity, the storm's maximum sustained wind speed reached 83 km/h (52 mph; 45 kn), with a minimum pressure of 991 mbar (29.3 inHg). During a nine-day period, from 1–9 November, Storm Quinn and Rolf dropped prolific amounts of rainfall across southwestern Europe, the vast majority of which came from Rolf, with a maximum total of 605 mm (23.8 in) of rain recorded in southern France. The storm caused at least \$1.25 billion (2011 USD) in damages in Italy and France. The sum of fatalities totaled 12 people from Italy and France. ### Qendresa (7–9 Nov 2014) On 6 November 2014, the low-level circulation centre of Qendresa formed near Kerkennah Islands. As the system was moving north-northeastwards and combining with an upper-level low from Tunisia early on 7 November, the system occluded quickly and intensified dramatically with an eye-like feature, thanks to favourable conditions. Qendresa directly hit Malta when it had lost its fronts with a more well-defined eye, with ten-minute sustained winds at 110.9 km/h (68.9 mph; 59.9 kn) and the gust at 153.7 km/h (95.5 mph; 83.0 kn). The central pressure was presumed to be 978 hPa (28.9 inHg). Interacting with Sicily, the cyclone turned northeastwards and started to make an anticlockwise loop. On 8 November, Qendresa crossed Syracuse in the morning and then significantly weakened. Turning southeastwards then moving eastwards, Qendresa moved over Crete, before dissipating over the island on 11 November. ### 90M/"Trixi" (28–31 Oct 2016) Early on 28 October 2016, 56 km/h (35 mph) an extratropical cyclone began to develop to the south of Calabria, in the Ionian sea. The system quickly intensified, attaining wind speeds of 80 km/h (50 mph) as it slowly moved to the west, causing high waves and minor damage to cars near the Maltese city of Valletta, weakening the following day and beginning to move eastwards. However, later that day, it began to re-intensify and underwent a tropical transition. At 12:00 UTC on 30 October, the system showed 10-minute sustained winds of 104 km/h (64 mph; 56 kn). It became a tropical storm on 31 October. After passing over Crete, the storm began to quickly weaken, with the storm degenerating into an extratropical low on 1 November. Tropical Storm 90M was also nicknamed "Medicane Trixi" by some media outlets in Europe during its duration. No fatalities or rainfall statistics have been reported for this system that was over open waters for most of the time. ### Numa (16–19 Nov 2017) On 11 November 2017, the remnant of Tropical Storm Rina from the Atlantic contributed to the formation of a new extratropical cyclone, west of the British Isles, which later absorbed Rina on the next day. On 12 November, the new storm was named Numa by the Free University of Berlin. On 14 November 2017, Extratropical Cyclone Numa emerged into the Adriatic Sea. On the following day, while crossing Italy, Numa began to undergo a subtropical transition, though the system was still extratropical by 16 November. The storm began to impact Greece as a strong storm on 16 November. Some computer models forecast that Numa could transition into a warm-core subtropical or tropical cyclone within the next few days. On 17 November, Numa completely lost its frontal system. On the afternoon of the same day, Météo France tweeted that Numa had attained the status of a subtropical Mediterranean depression. According to ESTOFEX, Numa showed numerous 83-kilometre-per-hour (52 mph; 45 kn) flags of 10-minute sustained winds in satellite data. Between 18:00 UTC on 17 November and 5:00 UTC on 18 November, Numa acquired evident tropical characteristics, and began to display a hurricane-like structure. ESTOFEX again reported 83 km/h (52 mph; 45 kn). Later on the same day, Numa made landfall in Greece with a station at Kefalonia reporting peak winds of 110 km/h (69 mph; 60 kn) at 998 hPa (29.5 inHg). The cyclone rapidly weakened into a low-pressure area, before emerging into the Aegean Sea on 19 November. On 20 November, Numa was absorbed into another extratropical storm approaching from the north. Numa hit Greece at a time when the soil was already heavily soaked from other storm systems that did arrive before Numa. The area was forecast to receive up to more than 400 mm (16 in) of additional rains in an 48 hours period starting with 16 November. No rainfall forecasts or measurements are known for the following days while Numa was still battering Greece. Numa resulted in 21 reported deaths. At least 1,500 homes were flooded, and residents had to evacuate their homes. The storm caused an estimated US\$100 million in damages in Europe and was the deadliest weather event Greece had experienced since 1977. ### Zorbas (27 Sep – 1 October 2018) A first outlook about the possible development of a shallow warm-core cyclone in the Mediterranean was issued by ESTOFEX on 25 September 2018, and a second extended outlook was issued on 26 September 2018. On 27 September 2018, an extratropical storm developed in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Water temperatures of around 27 °C (81 °F) supported the storm's transition into a hybrid cyclone, with a warm thermal core in the center. The storm moved northeastward toward Greece, gradually intensifying and developing characteristics of a tropical cyclone. On September 29, the storm made landfall at peak intensity in the Peloponnese, west of Kalamata, where a minimum central pressure of 989.3 mbar (29.21 inHg) was reported. ESTOFEX reported on Zorbas as "Mediterranean Cyclone 2018M02", with the same pressure of 989 mbar (29.2 inHg) at Kalamata, further estimating the minimum central pressure of the cyclone to be 987 mbar (29.1 inHg), with one-minute maximum sustained winds of 120 km/h (75 mph; 65 kn) and a Dvorak number of T4.0, which all translate into marginal Category 1 hurricane characteristics for the cyclone. It is unknown who named the system Zorbas, but the name is officially recognized for a medicane by the Deutscher Wetterdienst. Early on 1 October, Zorbas emerged into the Aegean Sea, while accelerating northeastward. On 2 October, Zorbas moved over northwestern Turkey and dissipated. A cold wake was observed in the Mediterranean Sea, with sea surface temperatures dropping 3–4 °C (5–7 °F) along the track of Zorbas due to strong upwelling. During its formative stages, the storm caused flash flooding in Tunisia and Libya, with around 200 mm (7.9 in) of rainfall observed. The floods killed five people in Tunisia, while also damaging homes, roads, and fields. The Tunisian government pledged financial assistance to residents whose homes were damaged. In advance of the storm's landfall in Greece, the Hellenic National Meteorological Office issued a severe warning. Several flights were canceled, and schools were closed. The offshore islands of Strofades and Rhodes reported gale-force winds during the storm's passage. A private weather station in Voutsaras measured wind gusts of 105 km/h (65 mph; 56 kn). The storm spawned a waterspout that moved onshore. Gale-force winds in Athens knocked down trees and power lines. A fallen tree destroyed the roof of a school in western Athens. Dozens of roads were closed due to flooding. In Ioannina, the storm damaged the minaret on the top of the Aslan Pasha Mosque, which dates to 1614. From 29 to 30 September, Zorbas produced flash flooding in Greece and parts of western Turkey, with the storm dropping as much as 200 mm (7.9 in) in Greece and spawning multiple waterspouts. Three people were reporting missing in Greece after the flash floods; one person was found dead, but the other two individuals remained missing, as of 3 October. Zorbas was estimated to have caused millions of dollars (2018 USD) in damages. ### Ianos (14–20 Sep 2020) On 14 September 2020, a low-pressure area began to develop over the Gulf of Sidra, quickly developing in the coming hours while slowly moving northwest with a wind speed of around 50 km/h (31 mph; 27 kn). By 15 September, it had intensified to 65 km/h (40 mph; 35 kn) with a minimum pressure of 1010 hPa, with further development predicted over the coming days. The cyclone had strong potential to become tropical over the next several days due to warm sea temperatures of 27 to 28 °C (81 to 82 °F) in the region. Weather models predicted that it would likely hit the west coast of Greece on 17 or 18 September. Ianos gradually intensified over the Mediterranean Sea, acquiring an eye-like feature. Ianos made landfall on Greece at peak intensity on 03:00 UTC on September 18, with winds peaking near 160 km/h (99 mph; 86 kn) and a minimum central pressure estimated at 984.3 hPa (29.07 inHg), equivalent to a minimal Category 2 hurricane. Greece assigned the system the name "Ianos" (Ιανός), sometimes anglicized to "Janus", while the German weather service used the name "Udine"; the Turkish used "Tulpar", and the Italians "Cassilda". As Ianos passed to the south of Italy on 16 September, it produced heavy rain across the southern part of the country and in Sicily. As much as 35 mm (1.4 in) of rain was reported in Reggio Calabria, more than the city's normal monthly rainfall. Ianos left four dead people and one missing, in addition to strong tides in Ionian islands such as Kefalonia, Zakynthos, Ithaca and Lefkada, and 120 km/h (75 mph; 65 kn) winds at Karditsa which brought down trees and power lines, and caused landslides. ### Apollo (22 Oct – 2 Nov 2021) Around 22 October 2021, an area of organized thunderstorms formed near the Balearic Islands, with the disturbance becoming more organized and developing an area of low pressure around 24 October. The low started to form a low level center the next day and moved around the Tyrrhenian Sea, and around 28 October, the low became better organized, prompting forecast offices in Europe to name it. The most commonly used name for the cyclone is Apollo, which was used by the Free University of Berlin. On the same day, the agency Meteo of the National Observatory of Athens in Greece named it Nearchus, after the voyager of the same name. Heavy rain from the cyclone and its precursor caused heavy rainfall and flooding in Tunisia, Algeria, Southern Italy, and Malta, killing seven people in total. The storm caused over US\$245 million (€219 million) in damages. ### Blas (5–18 Nov 2021) On 5 November, the Spanish Meteorological Agency (AEMET) started tracking a low near the Balearic Islands and named it Blas. An orange alert was issued for these islands, for coastal impacts and rain. The north of Catalonia was declared an Orange Zone, as strong winds blew inland from the Spanish Navarre and Aragon. Météo-France also issued a yellow alert for Aude and Pyrénées-Orientales for wind, as well as Corsica for rain. As the system stalled between Sardinia and the Balearic Islands on 8 November, AEMET predicted a strengthening trend for the next two days and maintained its alerts. At 00:00 UTC on 11 November, the system came very close to the Balearic Islands again. On 13 November, the storm developed a spiral structure similar to those of tropical cyclones, while shedding its frontal structure. After striking the islands again, the storm then slowly weakened while drifting back southeastward. On 14 November, the cyclone turned northward, moving over Sardinia and Corsica, before curving back southwestward on 15 November and moving over Sardinia again, while restrengthening in the process. On 16 November, Blas turned eastward once again, passing just south of Sardinia and moving towards Italy, before dissipating over the Tyrrhenian Sea on 18 November. On 6 November, gusts of 75 km/h (47 mph; 40 kn) were recorded at Es Mercadal and 95 km/h (59 mph; 51 kn) at the lighthouse of Capdepera in the Balearic Islands where waves of 8 m (26 ft) hit the coast. Menorca was cut off from the world after the closure of the ports of Mahón and Ciutadella. On 9 and 10 November, Blas brought high winds and heavy rain again to the Balearic Islands, causing at least 36 incidents, mostly flooding, landslides and blackouts. A crew member had to be rescued after his sailboat's mast broke, leaving the boat adrift 80 km (50 mi) west of Sóller. On 6 November, a waterspout was reported in Melilla, a Spanish enclave on the coast of Morocco. In France, gusts of 140 km/h (87 mph; 76 kn) were recorded on 7 November at Cap Béar, as well as 111 km/h (69 mph; 60 kn) in Leucate and 100 km/h (62 mph; 54 kn) in Lézignan-Corbières. The storm caused severe weather on the Algerian coast, with exceptional rainfall. On 9 November, a building collapsed in Algiers, following torrential rains on the city, causing the deaths of three people. On 11 November, the heavy rain falling on Algiers caused another landslide to strike houses in the Raïs Hamidou neighborhood, causing the deaths of three other people. From 8 to 11 November, convective bands associated with the storm caused 3 deaths in Sicily, bringing the total death toll to nine people. Damage from the storm has not yet been assessed. ### Other tropical-like cyclones Numerous other Mediterranean tropical-like cyclones have occurred, but few have been as well-documented as the medicanes in 1969, 1982, 1983, 1995, 1996, 2006, 2011, 2014, 2017, 2018 and 2020. These not-so-much investigated tropical-like cyclones and their dates are given below. A first study in 2000 revealed five notable and well-developed medicanes. A second study in 2013 revealed several additional storms with their formation days and also additional information on medicanes. A third study, conducted in 2007, revealed additional storms with their formation days. A fourth study from 2013 presented several other cyclones and their days of development. A survey made by EUMETSAT resulted in many more cyclones. - September 1947 - September 1973 - 18–20 August 1976 - 26 March 1983 - 7 April 1984, - 29–30 December 1984 - 14–18 December 1985 - January 1991, 5 December 1991 - 21–25 October 1994 - 10–13 December 1996 - 22–27 September 1997, 30–31 October 1997, 5–8 December 1997 - 25–27 January 1998 - 19–21 March 1999, 13 September 1999 - 10 September 2000, 9 October 2000 - 27–28 May 2003, 16–19 September 2003, 27–28 September 2003, 8 October 2003 - 19–21 September 2004, 3–5 November 2004 - August 2005, 15–16 September 2005, 22–23 October 2005, 26–28 October 2005, 14–16 December 2005 - 9 August 2006 - 19–23 March 2007 16–18 October 2007, 26 October 2007 - June 2008, August 2008, September 2008, 4 December 2008 - January 2009, May 2009, twice in September 2009, October 2009 - 12–14 October 2010, 2–4 November 2010 - Twice in February 2012, 13–15 April 2012. - "Scott", October 2019 - "Trudy" ("Detlef"), November 2019 - November 2020 - 03M/"Elaina", December 2020 - Cyclone Hannelore, January 2023 - Cyclone Helios, February 2023 - Cyclone Juliette, February–March 2023 ## Climatological statistics There have been 100 recognized tropical-like cyclones in the Mediterranean Sea between 1947 and 2021 from the databases of the Laboratory of Climatology and Atmospheric Environment, University of Athens, and METEOSAT. By steady accrual of reported and recognized occurrences of tropical-like cyclones (medicanes), the number count reached at least 89 by 15 November 2021. Unlike most northern hemisphere cyclone seasons, Mediterranean tropical-like cyclone activity peaks between the months of September and January. The numbers do not necessarily mean that all occurrences of medicanes have been fetched in particular before the end of the 1980s. With the development (and constant improvement) of satellite-based observations, the number count of clearly identified medicanes increased from the 1980s onward. There might be an additional impact from climate change in the frequency of the observed medicanes, but this is not deducible from the data. ## Deadly storms The following is a list of all medicanes that caused deaths. ## Tropical-like cyclones in the Black Sea On a number of occasions, tropical-like storms similar to the tropical-like cyclones observed in the Mediterranean have formed in the Black Sea, including storms on 21 March 2002, 7–11 August 2002, and 25–29 September 2005. ## See also - Unusual areas of tropical cyclone formation - Tropical cyclone effects in Europe - European windstorm (fully extratropical) - South Atlantic tropical cyclone - 1996 Lake Huron cyclone - 2006 Central Pacific cyclone - Subtropical Storm 96C - Subtropical Cyclone Katie - Subtropical Cyclone Lexi - Tropical cyclone basins - Tropical cyclogenesis

Khadeen Carrington

Trinidadian-American basketball player (1995–)

Khadeen Carrington (born October 3, 1995) is a Trinidadian-American basketball player for Hapoel Jerusalem of the Israeli Basketball Premier League and the Basketball Champions League (BCL). He played college basketball for Seton Hall. The son of former professional soccer player and coach Reynold Carrington, he starred at Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School in Brooklyn, New York. As a senior, he led the Catholic High School Athletic Association (CHSAA)'s Class AA division in scoring with 24.2 points per game and was named the Brooklyn Boys' Player of the Year by the New York Daily News. Carrington was a highly sought-after recruit and received several college offers, but chose Seton Hall. As a junior at Seton Hall, he was named to the Second-team All-Big East and averaged 17.1 points per game. Carrington's scoring declined to 15.6 points per game as a senior but he led the Pirates to an NCAA Tournament win over NC State. ## Early life and high school career Carrington is the son of Reynold Carrington, a former professional soccer player and coach from Trinidad and Tobago. His older brother Kariym played Division II basketball. Khadeen first started playing basketball at the age of eight. Carrington attended Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School and averaged 22.5 points per game as a sophomore to lead the team to the Catholic High School Athletic Association (CHSAA) Class AA intersectional quarterfinals. He was an All-City second team selection by the New York Post as a sophomore. Carrington competed in Amateur Athletic Union play with the New York Lightning. As a junior, Carrington averaged 24.7 points per game and was a Daily News All-City first-team selection. He teamed with Mike Williams to lead Bishop Loughlin to a CHSAA 'AA' intersectional championship game. Carrington led the CHSAA's Class AA division in scoring with 24.2 points per game as a senior and had one 42-point game. He was named the Brooklyn Boys' Player of the Year by the New York Daily News. Carrington was also named the CHSAA Player of the Year as he led the Lions to the Catholic Intersectional title game. He finished his career with 2,196 points — the most in school history. Carrington was ranked the 127th best player in the Class of 2014 by Rivals.com. He received collegiate offers from Iowa State, Dayton, St. John's, Rutgers, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Providence, Iowa, West Virginia, South Carolina, DePaul and Hofstra. Eventually, he settled for Seton Hall, joining fellow Brooklyn product Isaiah Whitehead. He credited his commitment to feeling a connection with Seton Hall coach Kevin Willard and the staff. ## College career As a freshman, Carrington started eight games but mostly played as a backup to Isaiah Whitehead. However, with Whitehead missing several games in January 2015 due to a foot injury, Carrington was able to demonstrate his potential, contributing 17 points in an overtime win against Villanova. Carrington posted 8.8 points and 2.9 rebounds per game in his freshman season. He had his first double-double in an 83–63 win over Marquette on December 30, 2015, with 17 points and 10 rebounds. Carrington scored 27 points in a Big East Tournament game against Creighton as a sophomore. He averaged 14.1 points and 2.5 assists per game. Carrington averaged 19.2 points per game during the 2016–17 non-conference season, but hit a slump in the early part of conference play due to increased defensive attention and a dislocated pinkie finger. He scored 41 points in an 87–81 win against Creighton on February 15, 2017 and had 10 points in the final minute. In the NCAA tournament loss against Arkansas, Carrington had 22 points and four turnovers. He was a Second Team All-Big East selection as a junior. Carrington averaged 17.1 points, 3.1 rebounds and 2.9 assists per game as a junior while shooting 42.4 percent from the field and 38.2 percent from three-point range. He tested the waters of the 2017 NBA draft but ultimately returned to Seton Hall. Coming into his senior year, Carrington and Angel Delgado were named to the preseason All-Big East First Team. He made the switch to point guard over the summer by studying video with coach Kevin Willard and assistant Shaheen Holloway. On January 6, 2018, Carrington scored a season-high 29 points in a comeback win over Butler. He was Big East Player of the Week on February 26, after leading Seton Hall to a win against Providence by scoring 25 points. Carrington led the Pirates to their first NCAA tournament victory in 14 years as a senior, scoring 26 points to defeat NC State. He was named to the First Team All-Met after averaging 15.6 points and 4.4 assists per game. “It sounds weird, but I really enjoyed the ups and downs,” Carrington said of his Seton Hall career. “The downs taught me a lot. It made me become a man. I learned a lot of things here in my four years, not only on the court but off the court — probably more off the court.” After the season Carrington was invited to the Portsmouth Invitational Tournament. ## Professional career After going undrafted in the 2018 NBA draft, Carrington signed with the Detroit Pistons for the NBA Summer League. On July 21, 2018, he signed a contract with Montenegrin team Mornar. Carrington then played for Limburg United of the Belgian league and averaged 14.1 points, 4.8 assists and 3.6 rebounds per game. On July 3, 2019, he signed with Riesen Ludwigsburg of the Basketball Bundesliga. He averaged 17.2 points, 3.9 rebounds, and 3.3 assists per game for the team. His season high 27 points came on October 20, against Ratiopharm Ulm. On July 19, 2020, Carrington signed a two-year deal with TD Systems Baskonia of the Liga ACB and the EuroLeague. On September 11, 2020, Carrington was released because he experiencing delays with the renewal of his Trinidadian passport due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On September 15, 2020, he has signed with Monaco of the LNB Pro A. On October 19, Carrington was ruled out for several months after tearing his ACL. On August 5, 2021, he signed with Real Betis of the Liga ACB. Carrington averaged 6.9 points, 1.9 rebounds, 1.2 steals and 1.1 assists per game. On November 15, he signed with JDA Dijon Basket of the LNB Pro A. On July 19, 2022, he signed with Hapoel Jerusalem of the Israeli Basketball Premier League.

Half a Life (Star Trek: The Next Generation)

"Half a Life" is the 22nd episode of the fourth season of the American science fiction television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, the 96th episode overall. It was originally released on May 6, 1991, in broadcast syndication. The episode was the first of the series written by Peter Allan Fields, who later joined the writing staff. Director Les Landau said that "Half a Life" was a morality play about "how society deals with the elderly". Set in the 24th century, the series follows the adventures of the Starfleet crew of the Federation starship Enterprise-D. In this episode, Lwaxana Troi (Majel Barrett) falls in love with Timicin (David Ogden Stiers), a Kaelon scientist who is attempting to test his theories of stellar ignition in the hopes of saving his world's dying star. The experiment fails, and Lwaxana encourages Timicin to continue his research, but as he is about to turn sixty years of age, he prepares instead for a ritual suicide. According to Timicin's cultural tradition, his people voluntarily choose euthanasia to prevent the aged from becoming a burden to the younger generation. The episode features the first appearance of Michelle Forbes in the Star Trek franchise; she would later appear as Ensign Ro Laren during season five. The cast praised the story and the expansion of the Lwaxana character. The episode received positive reviews, with critics noting the performances of Stiers and Barrett, their character's love story, and the changes to the Lwaxana character. ## Plot The U.S.S. Enterprise takes aboard Deanna Troi's (Marina Sirtis) eccentric mother Lwaxana (Majel Barrett) and Dr. Timicin (David Ogden Stiers) of Kaelon II. Timicin is brought aboard to conduct an experiment which he hopes will save his threatened home planet, as its sun is in a state of near-collapse. The Federation enlists the Enterprise to take Timicin to a sun in a similar state of decay to conduct experiments which may yield a method for saving the Kaelon system from destruction. Upon arrival at their destination, the crew assists Timicin in modifying photon torpedoes to launch into the proxy sun with the expectation that it will repair the damaged star and prove that the technique can be safely applied to the Kaelon sun. The torpedoes are fired and, although the experiment seems initially to work, the effect is short-lived and the star explodes. The Enterprise returns to Kaelon II. Timicin is crushed, and after some questioning by Lwaxana, he reveals that there are other things troubling him. Timicin tells Lwaxana that he is about to turn 60, and on Kaelon II, everyone who reaches that age performs the "Resolution", a ritual act of voluntary euthanasia. Lwaxana is outraged to learn of this and brings it to the attention of Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart). Picard makes it clear to Lwaxana that due to the Prime Directive, he will not interfere in the planet's local affairs. Lwaxana tries to beam herself down to the planet to halt the process herself but she is thwarted by Deanna who comforts her. After Lwaxana and Timicin spend an evening together, he tries to explain the custom of the Resolution. He tells her that a fixed age had to be selected by the Kaelons because just randomly choosing a time to die would be heartless. Lwaxana finds the practice barbaric and refuses to accept the Kaelon tradition. She tells Timicin how a Betazed woman on her planet successfully fought the tradition of wearing ornate wigs that contained live, captive animals. It only took one courageous woman to step forward and end this cruel tradition (it is implied that the woman was Lwaxana herself). Lwaxana also compares Timicin's plans to end his life with his research to save his star. If it is Timicin's time to die, Lwaxana argues, perhaps it is also time for his star to die as well, so why should he continue to try to prevent it? Timicin thinks about what Lwaxana has told him. Timicin's analysis of the failed test turns up some promising options, but if he follows through with the Resolution, no one will have his experience and knowledge to carry on his work to save his world. Concerned, Timicin requests asylum on the Enterprise so that he can renounce the Resolution and continue his research. B'Tardat (Terrence E. McNally), the Science Minister on Kaelon II, is outraged after learning of Timicin's request for asylum, and he sends up two warships to ensure that the Enterprise does not leave the system with Timicin on board. As Picard orders the bridge crew to analyze the offensive capabilities of the Kaelonian ships, Timicin realizes that his situation is not as simple as he had hoped, for his home planet will not accept any further reports from him, and he is told that even if he does find a solution, they will not accept it. Dara (Michelle Forbes), Timicin's daughter, beams on board the Enterprise to insist that he return to Kaelon II and undergo the Resolution. She tells him that she cannot bear the thought of him being laid to rest anywhere but next to her mother and, although she loves him, she is ashamed of him. Timicin realizes that he is not the man to forge a cultural revolution, and agrees to return to Kaelon II. Lwaxana, despite her disagreement, realizes that Timicin's decision is his to make. As it is the custom for loved ones to be present at the Resolution, Lwaxana beams down to be with him at his side at the time of his death. ## Production "Half a Life" was the first Star Trek credit for writer Peter Allan Fields, who would later co-write "The Inner Light" with Morgan Gendel before becoming a staff writer on Star Trek: The Next Generation during season five. Prior to writing the script, Fields reviewed "Haven" and "Manhunt", the two previous Lwaxana Troi episodes, but did not use them as references except to note Lwaxana's level of privilege. "I realized that you give her as much as they'll let her have. She'll take it", he explained. Marina Sirtis, who played Lwaxana's daughter Deanna Troi on the show, thought that compared to earlier episodes, "Half a Life" showed a different side of her character's mother. Lwaxana's interactions in the episode, argues Sirtis, considerably broadened the character; previous episodes had a tendency to become centered around Deanna and Lwaxana. Sirtis and director Les Landau felt that the plot of "Half a Life" resembled a morality play. Landau noted the similarity between the episode and the morality play-style plots that franchise creator Gene Roddenberry included in Star Trek: The Original Series. "It deals with the whole issue of growing old and how society deals with the elderly and, in my mind, it was one of the most pertinent story-lines I have done", Landau recalled. ### Casting The episode guest starred David Ogden Stiers, best known for his role as Major Charles Emerson Winchester III on the American television series M\*A\*S\*H. Stiers, a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation, was enthusiastic when the producers asked him if he would be interested in appearing on the show. On the set during production, Stiers met Gene Roddenberry, the series producer, and was invited to his house to practice scenes with Roddenberry's wife, Majel Barrett. Stiers described Roddenberry as "a grand old man - not in his behaviour but in people's deference to him". Speaking highly of the story in "Half a Life", Stiers indicated that the mood of the episode accentuated the debate over Timicin's decision to end his life. "It was an emotionally involved piece. The script quite responsibly argued both sides [of the suicide] issue and left the viewer to determine whether such a practice is acceptable or not," Stiers said. "That episode was more powerful than simply a discussion." Michelle Forbes makes her first The Next Generation appearance in "Half a Life", in a performance which led directly to her later casting in the larger role of Ensign Ro Laren, a recurring character from season five onwards. ## Reception "Half a Life" was first released within the United States on May 6, 1991, in broadcast syndication. Keith DeCandido, in a review for Tor.com, commended Stiers' acting, saying that he gave "a noble, nuanced performance as Timicin." He also approved of the episode, saying that it was the first time that Lwaxana Troi was treated as a real character without causing him to cringe; at the same time, DeCandido did not forget the problems with her previous appearances on the show. Noting that it was one of the best episodes to feature a Prime Directive debate, DeCandido endorsed the writer's idea not to take sides regarding the suicide. "This is a magnificent, tragic love story, one that takes a thin character and gives her depth, one that gives us a beautifully realized guest character in Timicin (casting Stiers was a masterstroke, as he always brings subtle nuance to his roles), and one that takes its issues seriously," DeCandido wrote. He gave the episode a score of eight out of ten, later concluding that it featured "one of the show's most tragic love stories." In their book The Unauthorized Trek: The Complete Next Generation, James Van Hise and Hal Schuster observed a significant improvement in Majel Barrett's performance in this episode compared to her previous appearances. They said that Barrett was "capable of depth and feeling", and described the ending of the episode as "touching and disturbing". A society shouldn't naturally evolve to include ritual suicide, Van Hise and Schuster argue, but population control methods such as the one-child policy in China, appear linked to a similar required effect, albeit through different means. Reviewing the episode for The A.V. Club, Zack Handlen said that Timicin served as an "excellent foil" for Lwaxana and made her "seem less ridiculous". The relationship between Lwaxana and Timicin "has a believable core", even if it is "broad and arguably rushed", writes Handlen. "There are some powerful moments... and it's pleasant for once to see Lwaxana adding, rather than subtracting, from a storyline." Handlen, however, criticizes the setup of Timicin's situation, as it reduced the characterization available to some of the Enterprise crew. In spite of its flaw, Handlen decides that "the episode largely redeems itself by staying true to its main point: No matter how much time you have left, it's never enough." In 2017, Den of Geek ranked David Ogden Stiers as Timicin, in Star Trek: The Next Generation "Half a Life" as one of the top ten guest star roles on Star Trek: The Next Generation. ## Media releases "Half a Life" was first released on VHS cassette in the United States and Canada on July 23, 1996. The episode was later released in the United States on September 3, 2002, as part of the Star Trek: The Next Generation season four DVD box set. The first Blu-ray release was in the United Kingdom on July 29, 2013, followed by the United States on July 30.

Trauma Team

2010 video game

Trauma Team is a 2010 simulation video game developed and published by Atlus for the Wii. It is the fifth and current final entry in the Trauma Center series. The narrative of Trauma Team follows six protagonists who operate in different sectors of the medical profession, and their united conflict with a virulent infection dubbed "Rosalia". The gameplay combines medical simulation with visual novel-style storytelling through motion comic cutscenes. The different storylines focus on simplified versions of surgery, emergency medicine, endoscopy, diagnosis, orthopedics and forensic medicine. Beginning preproduction in late 2007 following the completion of Trauma Center: New Blood, the development team's aim was for Trauma Team to be both a "conglomeration" of the series and something different. The wish for variety after multiple titles with similar gameplay resulted in the different playable medical professions, which each required a dedicated designer. The story was influenced by the 2009 swine flu pandemic, and reduced the usage of supernatural and science fiction elements prominent in earlier entries to create a more grounded narrative. While it met low sales, reception was generally positive. Critics praised the narrative's grounded tone, presentation, and greater variety compared to earlier Trauma Center games. Criticism focused on the control and pacing issues of some gameplay modes. A pilot episode for a live-action series of the same name was produced, but the series was not taken up and the pilot received no official release. ## Gameplay Trauma Team is a video game that combines simulation gameplay with non-interactive visual novel storytelling using fully-voiced motion comic segments. The campaign is split between six medical-themed disciplines; surgery, emergency medicine, endoscopy, diagnosis, orthopedics and forensic medicine. Each of the six main characters have episodic storylines that interweave to form a larger narrative, with a seventh chapter involving all the characters once all six storylines are completed. Across each campaign, players control the action with the Wii Remote and Nunchuk. Surgery and emergency medicine follow the gameplay pattern of earlier Trauma Center titles, with characters working under pressure to save patients. In the surgery segments, players operate on patients using a variety of tools, including scalpel, antibiotic gel and sutures. Players must perform a number of tasks to complete the operation while keeping vital signs stable. During the emergency medicine segments, the player must treat a number of patients with a basic set of tools while each patient loses health. The types of injuries include surface burns, wounds and broken limbs that must be reset. Tools include cotton pads, splints and scissors to cut clothing and expose wounds. Endoscopy and orthopaedics are also invasive surgical professions, but have different gameplay to surgery and emergency medicine. Endoscopy has players guiding the endoscope through a patient's internal organs and carry out operations on small injuries such as ulcers, located using a radar. Players navigate using the Remote functions to mimic the endoscope's motion, while the Nunchuck is used to steer, move the camera, and select medical tools. Orthopaedics, which almost exclusively uses the Remote, has players performing scripted skeletal operations, including bone reconstruction and replacement. Tools are provided depending on the operation, with successful use creating a score chain which continues until a mistake is made. Rather than patient vitals, the player has five hearts represented on-screen, depleting when a mistake is made. Compared to the other professions, diagnosis and forensics play very differently, being based around dialogue-based investigation and deduction with gameplay elements similar to point-and-click games. Diagnosis has players asking patients questions and examining them for symptoms. Between these sections, the player looks over the described victims and medical reports which include X-rays and CT scans to deduce what the patient is suffering from. Forensics sees players investigating crimes, going between the crime scene and the lead character's offices where the body and evidence ranging from clues on the corpse to witness testimony are collected. The player gathers clues represented as cards, with different cards combining to create either new clues or solid evidence. These trigger question-answer segments which can produce further clue cards and evidence. Two difficulty levels are available from the start, "Intern" and "Resident", with a higher difficulty dubbed "Specialist" are available after the game's completion. Depending on their performance during each chapter, players are ranked and higher ranks unlock new content. The "XS" ranking is only achievable on the post-game "Specialist" difficulty. In addition to single-player, a second player can join in for local cooperative multiplayer during surgical levels; players can either take turns with actions, or work together in real-time. ## Synopsis ### Setting and characters Trauma Team is set in the same fictional universe as the other Trauma Center titles, although there is little to no narrative connection. Most of the game is based in and around Resurgam First Care, a fictional hospital in the United States which many of the protagonists work at or visit. The storyline follows six protagonists working at Resurgam. "CR-S01" is an amnesiac prisoner convicted of bioterrorism; due to his surgery skills, he begins working at Resurgam to take years off his sentence. Maria Torres is a bombastic paramedic whose perfectionism and independence has isolated her from her colleagues. Gabriel Cunningham is a diagnostician whose troubled personal life gives him a pessimistic view of humanity, and during the game he is reluctantly partnered with the AI system RONI. Hank Freebird is an idealistic former soldier who changed careers after growing sick of violence, becoming Resurgam's resident orthopaedic surgeon. Tomoe Tachibana is an endoscopic surgeon from a wealthy Japanese background, having rebelled against her family's control and moved to America. Naomi Kimishima returns from Trauma Center: Second Opinion; following Second Opinion, she was infected with a fatal disease, which left her with nothing in life but her work as a coroner at the Cumberland Institute of Forensic Medicine, but also granted her the ability to hear a dead person's last words. ### Plot The story opens with six interweaving plotlines involving the game's six main characters. CR-S01 is called from prison to perform a risky heart operation, done using the authority of Cunningham to save a key politician, and due to its success CR-S01's deal is struck. Naomi's storyline has her investigating multiple cases, alongside her growing relationship with a young girl named Alyssa. During her final case involving a serial bomber, Alyssa is almost killed by a bomb meant for Naomi, killing Alyssa's family. CR-S01 escapes from his observers to save Alyssa, forfeiting his deal. After the case is resolved, Naomi decides to adopt the orphaned Alyssa. Alongside these events, Maria confronts both her difficulty working with others and visions of Rosalia, a girl from her childhood; Tomoe successfully defies the restrictive heritage of her clan and saves her father from a life-threatening condition; Hank juggles his dual life as doctor and masked vigilante, in addition to helping a woman who attempted suicide to rediscover her love of life; and Cunningham struggles with the difficulties of his work and clashes with RONI, ultimately diagnosing his son's emerging Wermer's syndrome. During each story, the characters notice black bruises on patients' bodies, often associated with other severe medical issues. With Naomi, the bruises are found on the bodies of people who displayed erratic or insane behavior. The name "Rosalia" also arises in connection with multiple cases. Ultimately there is a mass outbreak of the disease causing the black bruises, eventually diagnosed as a virulent strain of viral hemorrhagic fever. Resurgam is flooded with patients, and a quarantine is established. Cunningham, who diagnoses a patient suffering from the fever, retrieves a skeleton that carries the live infection. The skeleton is the remains of Albert Sartre, a medical professor and CR-S01's adoptive father, who was responsible for the crime CR-S01 was imprisoned for and disappeared shortly afterwards. With his memory returning, CR-S01 escapes captivity and goes with Maria to uncover more information, coming across a photograph of his adopted sister Rosalia Rossellini, later revealed to be the virus's natural host. The virus—dubbed "Rosalia"—could have been a cure-all due to its ability to destroy other harmful organisms, but was too virulent and attacked any infected organism. If left untreated, the virus will wipe out the USA within a week. As all the characters come together at Resurgam, they deduce Rosalia's location in Mexico and Naomi flies down there with Maria. They find Rosalia's corpse, now turned into adipocere, in a field of Asclepias flowers near her house. Naomi uncovers that Sartre attempted to create a panacea from the virus, but was infected himself and killed Rosalia in an insane attempt to stop it spreading. Her blood seeped into the surrounding Asclepias, with the monarch butterflies feeding on them becoming the virus's vector due to shedding their scales during their yearly migration. While Rosalia's blood is unusable, an antiserum is developed using the infected Asclepias. They return to Resurgam and the doctors bring the epidemic under control. Naomi then collapses; she is infected with Rosalia, which has merged with her own condition to form a mutant strain. CR-S01 successfully destroys the infection, which in turn eradicates Naomi's condition. ## Development Preproduction of Trauma Team began in 2007, following the completion of Trauma Center: New Blood. The concept was to create a gameplay experience unlike anything in the series. After much discussion, the team opted to combine a wide variety of medical practises into a single game. While director Daisuke Kanada himself described the concept as "pretty farfetched", the team felt Atlus were the ones best suited to successfully turning the concept into a game. While initially planned as a sequel to the other Trauma Center titles, it was decided to change the title from the beginning of development, and by its completion the title had changed substantially from previous entries so that Kanada compared it more to an original title. The new Japanese title Hospital referenced the increased number of represented medical procedures. Kanada defined the game as a "conglomeration" of the series up to that point. The decision to include so many medical professions was influenced by perceived fatigue with players experiencing only surgery in previous entries. Each gameplay style had a different planner and programmer due to the radically different gameplay designs, with Kanada supervising them all. Each of the concepts were designed around the functions of the Wii. The first two decided upon were surgery and forensic medicine, described by Kanada as being opposite ends of the medical spectrum. After that, the team included endoscopy, diagnosis, orthopaedics and emergency medicine. The forensics segments were included partly at the request of Atlus USA and partly due to popularity in North America of forensic crime dramas. The design team examined earlier Trauma Center games for what could stay or needed to be changed. Discarded elements included the often-strict victory conditions and lack of clarity about loss conditions. Supernatural and science fiction elements present in earlier titles, such as the Healing Touch, were removed or downplayed to promote greater realism. The gameplay of surgery was refined from earlier Wii entries, in addition to its difficulty being lowered. Emergency medicine was tricky to design so it would be "compelling" for players, with the staff suggesting elements based on drama series which showed the profession; a successful suggestion was CPR. Endoscopy was suggested to the team by a real doctor who had played New Blood and asked whether the feature could be included. It was the only part of the game that was in full 3D. The easier difficulty of Orthopaedics was designed to contrast other surgical game modes. For Diagnosis, the team had to conduct extensive research to make the gameplay fun. All the CT scans, X-rays, MRIs and ultrasound clips were real, provided by staff members. Forensic medicine, inspired by the team's liking of crime dramas, focused on investigation over autopsies at the suggestion of Atlus USA. The card fusion elements were directly inspired by the Demon Fusion of Atlus's Megami Tensei series. Due to a greater focus on action, programmer Takaaki Ikeda used programming modified from the script engine of Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne. The adventure-style gameplay of Cunningham and Kimishima's chapters were the most difficult due to Takaaki Ikeda's inexperience with the genre. The game originally took up too much disc space and had overly long load times. This was due to each individual asset of the game using a separate programming file, a common issue in development magnified by the sheer number of files. The file number was double that of New Blood, and because they would all be put in without modification, the game would have needed two discs to play. Tataaki Ikeda remembered the efforts to fit the game onto a single disc as one of the most difficult parts of the programming stages. These issues were compounded by Kanada's insistence that the game run at 60 frames per second. ### Scenario and art design The scenario was written by Teppei Kobayashi, who was working on the scenario of Etrian Odyssey II. Kanada approached him and asked for "a tear-jerking story with [six] doctors as the main characters". A recurring difficulty with the scenario was the number of technical terms he had to employ, with a cited example being his ignorance about the similar-sounding terms apoptosis and necrosis. At the same time, he had to make the story and medicine comprehensible to as wide an audience as possible. He also had to be careful with how he portrayed the conflict, as the characters' "fight" with illness could potentially be interpreted negatively when coupled with their role in saving lives. During 2009 when the game was in the middle of development, the swine flu pandemic of that year occurred and dominated the news. In response, Kobayashi revised the story to emphasise how people live their lives in a world that could have such terrible life-threatening events in it. To prevent the narrative from becoming dull, the team kept the number of characters that appeared in scenarios as low as possible. Kobayashi combined the Japanese style of "unusual" settings with the more Western focus on characters' struggles. The main challenge with the six-part scenario structure was retaining a sense of unity within the story despite changing perspectives, and the ability for players to begin with and switch between any scenario. CR-SO1 was created to stand out from the other surgeon characters featured in the Trauma Center series up to that point. The six professions were picked as Kanada thought that they could be believably involved in a viral outbreak. Originally Kimishima was intended to be a veterinarian. A remnant of this initial plan appears when Kimishima treats a cat during her narrative. A concept Kanada had to abandon was the lead doctor being openly gay; while appearing masculine, he would have a more feminine personality like a "strong elder sister", an archetype common in Japanese entertainment in addition to anime and manga. While Japan had little problem with such characters, both his own research and consultation with Atlus USA made Kanada feel North American gamers might be offended. There was a large amount of dialogue, with a total of 15,000 voiced lines; this was estimated as being greater than most RPGs of the time. The character and art design were handled by Masayuki Doi, who had worked on the series since Second Opinion. Once the six medical professions were decided upon, Kanada said there should be six unique protagonists. Each character had a different inspiration. Doi drew CR-SO1 based on the scenario team's concept for the character, designing him as a quiet loner with an "arresting" air. Kimishima was designed with a cold look referencing her short life expectancy, with her black clothing deliberately referencing her appearance in Second Opinion. Hank was designed to evoke classic American action heroes; inspirations for his design included sentai series such as Kamen Rider, Elvis Presley and unspecified comic book superheroes. His Native American influence was much stronger in earlier designs, but elements of it were retained due to positive staff feedback. Tomoe always wore traditional Japanese dress style, her face being a more traditional Japanese beauty came later. Cunningham was given a stylised adult air, combining both American and British adult male fashion styles. Maria went through multiple redrafts, until Doi settled on making her an energetic archetype to balance against the calm Kimishima and innocent Tomoe. A problem with character designs was the multi-ethnic casts more common in Western stories than Japanese, in addition to aspects of ethnic and gender equality not often presented in Japanese media. The Japanese version's logo design incorporated flowers and butterflies, tying into the game's narrative. The presentation, including cutscenes and UI, was co-created by Doi and designer Naoya Maeda. Describing the art design, Doi called it a conscious move away from the color schemes of contemporaneous games, which seemed to favour a greyed or washed-out palette. The game used strong and contrasting primary colors, also opting to contrast the 2D cutscenes against 3D surgery segments. With that decided, Maeda had to craft the gameplay graphics to communicate the operation without being "gross" or "painful". Doi attributed the success to the high number of female staff members working on the game. Kanada requested a storytelling style unseen in the series, so Maeda designed the cutscenes as motion comics, with the camera panning over static and moving 2D images to create a 3D illusion. They tested this style by rendering a story sequence from New Blood in this way, opting for it after positive feedback. Doi asked Maeda to use high contrast colors to highlight different internal organs during gameplay. Due to the different professions, each mode had different organ and body designs fitting their gameplay styles and themes. Their art design was also made less realistic than in earlier Trauma Center titles. ### Audio The music was primarily composed by Atsushi Kitajoh, a veteran of New Blood, and newcomer Ryota Kozuka. Further tracks were contributed by Shoji Meguro, an established Atlus composer who worked on Trauma Center: Under the Knife. Some of the music was remixed from earlier Trauma Center themes created by Kenichi Kikkawa. Due to the variety of the game's cast and the wish to avoid repetition of themes, Kitajoh divided the work between himself and Kozuka. This variety was expressed through different lead instruments, such as a guitar for surgery segments, jazz elements for the diagnosis chapters, and Japanese instruments for the endoscope sections. Including one-off cues and short jingles, the music came to over 100 tracks. Cutscene tracks were difficult as they needed to synch with specific events. To create tracks, the composers drew inspiration from Doi's early character drafts and watched prototype cutscenes. To mirror the changing gameplay flow, the team was asked by Kanada to create different versions of one track that changed in intensity similar to classic games he played in his youth. The team's main challenge was syncing them in-game so each version would lead into one another depending on the situation. The group also handled general sound design, with one particular instance being overcoming technical problems with the stethoscope function during diagnosis chapters, which were hampered by the Wii Remote's limited sound output. The vocal theme "Gonna Be Here" was composed by Kitajoh, with lyrics by Kobayashi and Atlus sound staff member Benjamin Franklin. Franklin, a frequent collaborator with the Atlus team on their earlier soundtracks, also sang the theme. Kitajoh decided upon a vocal ending theme with English lyrics, which fitted in with the project goal of doing something different. When Kitajoh saw the game in progress, he did not think a female singer would fit, instead wanting a male hard rock sound. The lyrics were written based on the game's themes. A two-disc soundtrack album was published by 5pb. Records on September 23, 2010. ## Release The game was first announced under its Japanese title Hospital.: 6 Doctors in a late May issue of Famitsu. At the time, Kanada said that development was 30% complete. It was announced for a North American release two days later, with a trailer being released at the 2009 Electronic Entertainment Expo. Outside Japan, the game was titled "Trauma Team", more clearly showing its relation to the Trauma Center series. The game is the fifth and to date final game in the Trauma Center series, and the third developed for the Wii. Previously scheduled for a North American release in April, the date was later delayed to May 18, 2010. The Japanese release, originally scheduled for May, was similarly delayed to June 17 of the same year. A guidebook, which also included artwork from the game, was published by Enterbrain on July 30, 2010. Trauma Team was not released in Europe. The game was later ported to the Wii U in 2015 through Nintendo's Virtual Console service; it released on August 19 in Japan and December 3 in North America. Trauma Team was the first third-party Wii title to be ported to the Wii U. The game was incompatible with the Wii U's Off-TV Play option, and requires the original Wii controls to play. The English and Japanese voice tracks were produced at the same time alongside the game's production. Kanada wanted to include the English and Japanese voices in both releases, but disc space restrictions meant the idea had to be abandoned. The game's marketing created troubles inherent to the Trauma Center series as a whole with portraying its gameplay, and presented new challenges due to the wider range of medical professions represented. In Japan, the video marketing focused on the game's narrative, while in North America the focus was on the different gameplay styles. The cover art was also different; the Japanese version was very colourful, while North America used a plainer cover art similar to earlier Trauma Center titles. Between its announcement and release, Atlus USA were able to turn comments from the developers and other staff into featurettes. Due to its greater story and character emphasis, the team had to translate a large amount of text and cast numerous actors. The localization was led by Yu Namba, with the script edited by Mike Meeker. The English voice work was recorded at PCB Productions, which had worked on the Trauma Center series since the first Trauma Center. ### Television pilot Prior to the game's release, an American live-action television pilot based on the game was produced by Instavision/1212 Entertainment, Atlus and INdiGO, a joint venture between Atlus' then-parent company Index Holdings and Japanese animation studio Gonzo. The series was pitched as a grounded hour-long medical drama consisting of a 13-episode first season at a budget of \$1 million per episode. The pilot was shot in Los Angeles in early 2010 and starred Brandon Quinn, Eden Riegel, Jackson Davis and Julie Mond as a group of medical students who perform illegal surgeries for patients unable to afford proper treatment. It was presented to potential investors at the 2010 MIPCOM tradeshow, but did not go to a series. In late 2016, the pilot was leaked online. ## Reception Upon its debut week in Japan, Trauma Team failed to reach the top ten best-selling titles, coming in at nineteenth place. By the end of the year, the game had sold over 16,700 units, selling through just under 60% of its stock. In their fiscal summary of the period when Trauma Team released, Index Holdings did not include the game among their commercially successful titles at the time, which included Persona 3 Portable and Demon's Souls. The narrative was seen as generally enjoyable and more grounded than earlier entries despite still having some outlandish elements, and some noted poor pacing in the cutscenes. Surgery was noted as a polished version of the series' previously established gameplay. The faster pace of emergency medicine was seen as a pleasant change while carrying over mechanics from surgery. Endoscopy saw a mixed response, as several critics found its controls awkward. Orthopedics was seen as enjoyable and a change of pace from the other modes. Diagnosis met with mixed reactions due to its unconventional approach. The forensics sections were praised for their innovative style and entertaining progress. Several noted Diagnosis and Forensics had pacing issues or grew repetitive. The controls were generally lauded for their implementation. The graphics also met with general praise. Japanese magazine Famitsu praised the additional gameplay modes and motion comic style, though one reviewer found the switching between screens in some modes disorienting. 1Up.com's Ray Barnholt enjoyed his time with Trauma Team, and said he would enjoy a sequel if one were developed. Chris Schilling of Eurogamer lauded the new direction the game had taken, saying it was a refreshing change for the series. G4's Alexandra Hall called it "a decent game that's held back by its weaker elements" in story and gameplay pacing. Brian Vore of Game Informer enjoyed the greater realism and added modes compared to earlier entries. GamePro's Stewart Shearer disliked the stories and faulted the gameplay for uneven difficulty, but overall found it an enjoyable addition to the series. Chris Watters of GameSpot summarised the game with an overall positive view: "Though the characters and the activities have their flaws, the whole comes together impressively, making Trauma Team a great bet no matter what your specialty is." GamesRadar's Andrew Hayward noted a lack of tension and faulted the forensic and endoscopy gameplay, but overall found the game enjoyable and praised its narrative and graphics over previous entries. GameTrailers enjoyed the ability to switch between gameplay modes, and praised the title as a positive step forward for the series. Ryan Clements, reviewing for IGN, most enjoyed the surgery and emergency sections, but felt that the overall gameplay experience was mixed due to uneven implementation and pacing. Nintendo World Report's Neal Ronaghan called it the most accessible title in the Trauma Center series to date, praising its gameplay and calling it one of the best titles released for the Wii.

Clock Tower (1996 video game)

1996 video game

Clock Tower, known in Japan as is a survival horror point-and-click adventure game developed by Human Entertainment and released for the PlayStation in 1996. It is the second game in the Clock Tower series after the original Clock Tower, which was released exclusively in Japan for the Super Famicom one year prior. The story takes place in Norway and follows a variety of characters as they attempt to survive the return of Scissorman and uncover the mystery of his seemingly immortal state. The scenarios encountered and endings vary widely based upon the player's actions. Director Hifumi Kono was not interested in developing a sequel to the original Clock Tower at first, but was swayed after seeing the technical possibilities of the next-generation consoles. Kono had difficulty in choosing the platform to develop on, but eventually settled for the PlayStation despite its uncertain future. Clock Tower was one of the first games developed by Human Entertainment to utilize a 3D graphics engine. The team felt challenged to create high-quality graphics after being impressed by the visuals of Resident Evil (1996), which was announced during development. Clock Tower was commercially successful, selling close to half a million copies. Kono attributed some of this success to Resident Evil generating interest in horror games and the success of the PlayStation. Critical reviews of Clock Tower were mixed. The game's horror atmosphere and storyline were praised, although most other aspects were found to be mediocre. Most of the negative critique was directed towards the game's slow pace, which was compared unfavorably to other PlayStation games of the era, particularly the more action-oriented and fast-paced Resident Evil. These factors influenced some critics to recommend Clock Tower purely for point-and-click adventure fans. ## Gameplay Clock Tower is a point-and-click adventure game with 3D graphics. The player may use a PlayStation controller or mouse to move the cursor on the screen. The cursor changes shape when placed over certain objects, which the player can click to interact with. Clicking on any location guides the player character in that direction. Moving the cursor to the top of the screen reveals the player's inventory. Clicking on an item and then clicking on an object on the screen uses the item on that object or in that location. Some items such as keys are used automatically when clicked. The player character has three levels of strength. The strength level is indicated by the cursor which will either be white, flashing yellow, or red. Strength will decrease after extreme actions or being attacked by the game's enemy, Scissorman, and recovers with time. When the character's life is being threatened, the cursor will blink red, indicating panic mode. If the character is being chased, click points are only effective on objects that will make Scissorman retreat. In escape mode, actions do not lower strength and recovery is suspended. This mode stays active until Scissorman is somehow forced to retreat. If the player's strength reaches zero, then it is game over and the player must continue from the last room they entered with one level of strength. The game features four scenarios including the prologue. The actions during the prologue determine who will be the central character in the story, either Jennifer Simpson or Helen Maxwell. The scenarios and player characters that follow are determined by the player's actions. There are five different endings per heroine depending on how the scenarios progress. After each scenario is a save screen and an intermission mode that allows the player to explore without the threat of Scissorman. During the intermission, the player can have conversations with various characters. The next scenario begins after the required conditions of the intermission are met. ## Plot After the events of the original Clock Tower, central protagonist Jennifer Simpson was adopted by Helen Maxwell, an assistant professor of criminal psychology in Oslo, Norway. She begins undergoing treatment at a university research building in order to learn more about the Scissorman murder case at Barrows Mansion and help her cope with her trauma. Over a year has passed, and now a series of brutal murders have made headline news. It appears that the Scissorman has returned. Having heard the details of Jennifer's original encounters with the Scissorman, Helen begins searching for information that could put an end to the seemingly immortal killer. The scenarios that follow, including the player characters and settings, are vastly different depending on player actions throughout the game. The first chapter places the player in control of either Jennifer or Helen, escaping from Scissorman within the university research building. The second chapter will have the player retrieve the Demon Idol, a clue to the murder investigation. The scenario in which the idol is retrieved can change depending on choices made by the player earlier. Helen may search for it within the city library, or reporter Nolan Campbell or detective Stan Gotts will search for it in the home of a Barrows family butler. The final chapter occurs at Barrows Castle, putting the player in control of the same character they controlled in chapter one. Jennifer or Helen must use the Demon Idol to open a vortex in the castle basement and destroy Scissorman. Depending on the narrative followed and choices made along the way, 10 different endings can be seen. ## Development Clock Tower was developed by a team of about 30 people and was the first game at Human Entertainment to utilize a 3D graphics engine, although team veterans preferred to have used 2D graphics instead. At first, director Hifumi Kono was not interested in working on a sequel to the first Clock Tower, but after seeing the technical possibilities with newly-released hardware of the time, he agreed. For Kono, one of the most difficult parts of developing Clock Tower was choosing the platform. At the time, the PlayStation and Sega Saturn were already on the market. The Saturn was seen as an icon of next-generation gaming with games like Virtua Fighter (1994). The PlayStation was new to the industry, and despite having a preliminary lead in popularity over the Saturn, its future was uncertain. Meanwhile, the Nintendo 64 was scheduled to arrive on the market soon, coming off the success of the Super Nintendo. Kono eventually settled on the PlayStation, and in retrospect considers it the best choice he could have made since the console's future success helped Clock Tower sell better than expected. Capcom's Resident Evil (1996) was announced during development. Since it was also a horror game and the visuals were impressive, the team challenged themselves to develop higher quality graphics and outshine Resident Evil. According to Kono, Clock Tower was developed with a "material comes first" mindset, as opposed to the "game system" given priority with the "material" superimposed on top. The team used 3D graphics and extensive animation as they sought to portray murders as real as possible in both normal and surreal settings. Kono was pleased with their 3D engine, as it allowed him to use camera angles effectively. The music was composed with a theme of "noise and silence", placing sounds in obscure places and not playing sound when there should be some. ## Release ASCII Entertainment marketed Clock Tower as one of the first "true" horror games for the PlayStation console, and claimed it had the most terrifying story ever in a video game. It was released in Japan on December 13, 1996, North America on October 1, 1997, and finally in Europe in February 1998. Since the release date was close to that of the horror game Enemy Zero (1996) for the Sega Saturn, video game stores in Japan laid out their racks as if a rivalry existed between the two horror games. The game sold close to half a million copies and was successful enough for Human that each staff member received a ¥100,000 bonus. Kono attributed some of this success to Resident Evil generating interest in horror games and the success of the PlayStation console. In Japan, Clock Tower 2 sold well enough to get a discounted release under "The Best" banner on March 19, 1998. Clock Tower was also re-released digitally on the PlayStation Network on February 22, 2012 exclusively in Japan. ## Reception Clock Tower holds a score of 72% on rating aggregator GameRankings. The atmosphere, storyline, and full-motion video cinematics were generally well received. The game's horror themes were praised, with GameSpot's Glenn Rubenstein stating that it "truly feels like an interactive horror film." Mark Skorupa of Gamezilla compared Scissorman favorably to slasher film villains such as Freddy Krueger and Michael Myers, and declared Clock Tower'''s atmosphere to rival that of any horror movie ever made. Critics particularly credited the game's strong tension to the appearance of a musical theme whenever Scissorman approaches. Although the point-and-click interface was well received, the game's pace was overwhelmingly found to be slow. Both Rubenstein and IGN's Jaz Rignall compared the game less favorably to more fast-paced and action oriented games on the PlayStation, including Resident Evil. Shawn Smith of Electronic Gaming Monthly, however, asserted that "there are plenty of instances in Clock Tower that'll keep you on the edge of your seat - more so than Resident Evil in my estimation," and Next Generation, noting particularly the tension created by the gameplay mechanics involved when trying to elude Scissorman, similarly concluded, "Even Resident Evil, with its focus on shooting things, can't deliver the creepy feeling Clock Tower does." Critics recommended the game to players looking for slow-paced point-and-click adventure games, with Rignall stating that "for the vast majority of PSX players out there...buying a point and click adventure is simply not even a consideration," when compared to the rest of the PlayStation's library. GamePro recommended the game to patient gamers looking for a challenge with respect to the complex storyline and puzzles. The multiple endings feature was noted for adding replay value and interactivity to the story, but some critics found that the puzzles can be excessively difficult. In 2006, GameTrailers placed Clock Tower'' at \#10 on their "Top Ten Scariest Games" list. X-Play ranked it as \#8 on their "Top 10 Scariest Games".

No Code

No Code is the fourth studio album by the American rock band Pearl Jam, released on August 27, 1996, through Epic Records. Following a troubled tour for its previous album, Vitalogy (1994), in which Pearl Jam engaged in a much-publicized boycott of Ticketmaster, the band went into the studio to record its follow-up. The music on the record was more diverse than what the band had done on previous releases, incorporating elements of garage rock and worldbeat. Although No Code debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, making it Pearl Jam's third consecutive number one album, it left a large section of the band's fanbase unsatisfied and quickly fell down the charts. Critical reviews were also mixed, with praise to the musical variety but criticism to the album's inconsistency. The album became the first Pearl Jam album to not reach multi-platinum status, receiving a single platinum certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in the United States. ## Recording For its fourth album, Pearl Jam again worked with producer Brendan O'Brien, with whom they had worked on predecessors Vs. (1993) and Vitalogy (1994). No Code was the band's first album with drummer Jack Irons, who had joined the band as Vitalogy was being completed. Following the summer U.S. leg of the band's Vitalogy Tour, the band began work on No Code at the Chicago Recording Company studios in Chicago for a week in July 1995 during the infamous Chicago heat wave. During a break in a string of make-up dates for the 1995 tour the band went into the studio for a week-long session in New Orleans, Louisiana, where the band recorded "Off He Goes". The rest of the recording took place in the first half of 1996 in Seattle at Studio Litho, which is owned by guitarist Stone Gossard. The album was then mixed by O'Brien at his mixing facility at Southern Tracks in Atlanta. The sessions for the album began with strife and tension. Bassist Jeff Ament was not made aware that the band was recording until three days into the sessions, and said that he "wasn't super involved with that record on any level". Guitarist Mike McCready said, "I'm sure Jeff was pissed, but it was more about separating, because if we played all together nothing would get done. We'd all just get pissed off at each other." At one point Ament even walked out of the recording sessions, and considered quitting the band due to lead vocalist Eddie Vedder's control of the creation process. Due to Pearl Jam balancing recording and touring, Irons commented that the band was "more on-the-fly during the making of No Code, and some good things happened out of that, but we were also really tired. It was difficult to tour and play these shows that were two or three hours long and then force ourselves to produce something in a studio." McCready said that a lot of the songs were developed out of jam sessions, and said "I think we kind of rushed it a little bit." Ament said that the band members would bring in fragments of songs, and it would take hours before Vedder could have music to which he could add vocals. He added that "Ed's typically the guy who finishes off the songs...But by the end of No Code, he was so burnt, it was so much work for him." The band's mood had gotten better by the time the album was finished, and the bandmembers gave credit for this to Irons. Regarding Irons, O'Brien stated that "everybody was on their best musical behavior around him." McCready said that Irons urged the band members to discuss their problems, and called him "a big spiritual influence, if not the biggest." Vedder said, "Making No Code was all about gaining perspective." Commenting upon the sessions as a whole, O'Brien said, "It was really a transitional record. We had a good time making it." ### Outtakes Two outtakes from the recording sessions ended up as B-sides, "Black, Red, Yellow" on the "Hail, Hail" single, and "Dead Man", which was originally intended for the film Dead Man Walking, on "Off He Goes". Both songs were included on the 2003 Lost Dogs collection of rarities, along with four other tracks from the No Code sessions, two of which ended up on compilations – "Leaving Here", which appeared on Home Alive, and "Gremmie Out of Control", featured on Music for Our Mother Ocean Vol. 1. The other rejected songs were "All Night" and "Don't Gimme No Lip". "Olympic Platinum", written by the album's mixer Nick DiDia around the time of the 1996 Summer Olympics, was recorded by the band and released on its 1996 fan club Christmas single. ## Music and lyrics While Vitalogy had shifted away from the earlier albums' accessible compositions and polished production, No Code represented a deliberate break from Tens stadium sound, favoring experimental ballads and noisy garage rock songs. It stood out with its emphasis on subtle harmony ("Off He Goes"), Eastern influences ("Who You Are"), and spoken word ("I'm Open"). Irons lends a tribal drum sound on the songs "Who You Are" and "In My Tree". Irons stated, "To turn my drum music into a song is pretty challenging, but the guys have been really supportive of me doing it, and we've worked some things into a few songs." Vedder said, "We realized that we had an opportunity to experiment." David Browne of Entertainment Weekly stated that "No Code displays a wider range of moods and instrumentation than on any previous Pearl Jam album." The lyrical themes on the album deal with issues of spirituality, morality, and self-examination. Vedder said, "I think there's a little self-examination in those songs, something that a lot of my friends are going through too, as they approach 30." Ament said, "In some ways, it's like the band's story. It's about growing up." The lyrics of "Hail, Hail" refer to two people in a troubled relationship struggling to hold it together. Vedder has said that he wrote the song "Off He Goes" about himself and how he is a "shit friend", adding, "I'll show up and everything's great and then all of the sudden I'm outta there..." "Lukin" is about the "pretty intense stalker problem" Vedder faced during the mid-1990s. "Around the Bend" was written by Vedder as a lullaby that Irons could sing to his son. The lyrics to "Smile" are taken from a note that Dennis Flemion of The Frogs hid inside Vedder's notebook while he was onstage performing. The words used in the note are taken from the Frogs songs "This Is How I Feel" and "Now I Wanna Be Dead". Flemion is given credit in the vinyl, but the credit is absent from the CD version. The lyrics to "Red Mosquito" were inspired by the events surrounding Pearl Jam's June 24, 1995, concert at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, which happened on the same day Vedder was hospitalized due to food poisoning. Vedder only made it through seven songs and the band was forced to cancel the remaining dates of the short tour that it was on. For the first time on a Pearl Jam album, a band member other than Vedder contributed lyrics, with Gossard writing the lyrics to "Mankind". Gossard also sang lead vocals on the track. ## Packaging and title The album package consists of 156 Polaroid photos that unfold into a 2×2 square. The Polaroid photos are seemingly random. One of the photos featured on the front cover is the eyeball of Dennis Rodman, former Chicago Bulls player and friend of the band, while another photo is of Vedder's foot after he had been stung by a stingray. The pictures, when viewed from afar, blend to form the No Code triangle/eyeball logo that is the theme throughout the album. Later pressings of the CD featured a 1x4 format packaging, losing the hidden message effect. The CD and vinyl came with lyrics printed on the back of replica Polaroids. Only nine Polaroids came in a set, leaving one to have to obtain another set to accumulate all thirteen songs. When discussing the album's title, Vedder said "it's called No Code because it's full of code. It's misinformation." In medical terminology, a "no code" order is a medical order to withhold CPR on a patient. It is also known as a "do not resuscitate" order. In another interview, Vedder said that "if the record is a complete failure you've kind of owned up to it in a subliminal way. No Code was the same thing. For me, No Code meant 'Do Not Resuscitate'." ## Tour Pearl Jam promoted the album with tours in North America and Europe in the fall of 1996. The short tour of North America focused on the East Coast of the United States. As with Vitalogy, very little touring was done in the United States to promote No Code because of the band's refusal to play in Ticketmaster's venues. The band chose to use alternate ticketing companies for the shows. A European tour followed in the fall of 1996, of which the band's November 3, 1996, show in Berlin, Germany at Deutschlandhalle was broadcast on many radio stations worldwide. During the North American tour fans complained about the difficulty in obtaining tickets and the use of non-Ticketmaster venues, which were judged to be remote and impersonal. Gossard stated that there was "a lot of stress associated with trying to tour at that time" and that "it was growing more and more difficult to be excited about being part of the band." He added, "Ticketmaster, as monopolistic as it may be, is very efficient so we weren't playing the venues we wanted to play." On October 17, 2014, at the iWireless Center in Moline, Illinois, during the Lightning Bolt Tour, Pearl Jam played the entire album in order as part of their set. ## Release and reception ### Commercial performance No Code sold 366,500 copies in its first week of release, topping the Billboard 200, but falling short of analysts' predictions of at least 535,000 copies. This was significantly less than what the band's previous two albums sold in their respective first weeks of release. It was, however, the seventh biggest-selling debut of what was a slow year for the industry. It stayed at number one for two weeks, and was Pearl Jam's last album to debut at number one on the album chart until Backspacer was released in 2009. By its sixth week, the album had sold 790,000 copies. No Code was certified platinum by the RIAA, but was the band's first album to not reach multi-platinum status. As of 2013, the album has sold 1.7 million copies in the United States according to Nielsen SoundScan. Three singles were released from No Code. The lead single "Who You Are" peaked at number 31 on the Billboard Hot 100, and reached number one on the Modern Rock charts and number five on the Mainstream Rock charts. Neither of the album's other singles, "Hail, Hail" and "Off He Goes", charted on the Hot 100, but both placed on the Mainstream Rock and Modern Rock charts, as did album track "Red Mosquito". Present Tense reached number 1 on iTunes Top 40 US Rock Songs on May 18, 2020, after being featured in the ending of the ESPN documentary series "The Last Dance." ### Critical response Upon its release, No Code received a mixed to positive critical reception. Rolling Stone staff writer David Fricke gave No Code four out of five stars, saying that the album "is abrupt in its mood swings almost to the point of vertigo." He praised the album as "the kind of impulsive, quixotic, provocative ruckus that has become rare in a modern-rock mainstream" and added that "No Code basically means no rule books, no limits and, above all, no fear." Q gave the album four out of five stars. The review said that the album "constantly adds unexpected and fascinating details....A solid attraction amid intriguing oddities is the powerful array of guitar sounds." Critic Robert Christgau described the album as "slowly winning a heartwarming battle against constitutional melancholia." AllMusic staff writer Stephen Thomas Erlewine gave the album three and a half out of five stars, saying, "While a bit too incoherent, No Code is Pearl Jam's richest and most rewarding album to date as well as their most human." NME gave No Code a seven out of ten. In the review, it is stated that "Vedder is still preoccupied with his own mortality, but now he appears more quasi-mystical than miserable....for all its relative placidity, No Code is still a difficult beast." Referring to the songs on the album, Jon Pareles of The New York Times said "about half are worth the effort." He observed that "too often, [Vedder] falls into American culture's Disney syndrome, idealizing childhood innocence above all." David Browne of Entertainment Weekly gave the album a C, saying that while No Code "cracks open their sound", it "becomes a collection of fragments that don't add up to much of anything, except a portrait of a musically disjointed band." On the change in mood compared with the band's previous releases, he said that "the album leaves you with the vaguely unsettling feeling that Pearl Jam without pain are like a pretzel without salt, or Seattle without rain." Ryan Schreiber of Pitchfork stated that "there's a ton of filler here. In fact, it's almost all filler." Time reviewer Christopher John Farley said that the album "makes it sound as if they're having a midlife crisis." Farley added that "too few of the songs on the Pearl Jam CD explore the musical possibilities they suggest in any kind of definitive or provocative manner." ## Track listing ## Personnel Pearl Jam - Jeff Ament – bass guitar, vocals, guitar on "Smile", Chapman, Polaroids, black-and-white photography - Stone Gossard – guitar, vocals, piano, lead vocals on "Mankind" - Jack Irons – drums - Mike McCready – guitar, piano on "Sometimes", Polaroids - Eddie Vedder – lead vocals, guitar, harmonica, electric sitar, Polaroids; credited as "Jerome Turner" for layout, concept of No Code Production - Barry Ament, Chris McGann – Polaroids, layout - Matt Bayles, Caram Costanzo, Jeff Lane – assistant engineering - Dr. Paul J. Bubak, A. Fields – Polaroids - Nick DiDia – mixing, recording - Bob Ludwig – mastering - Lance Mercer – Polaroids, black-and-white photography - Brendan O'Brien – production, mixing, piano - Pearl Jam – production ## Chart performance ### Weekly charts ### Year-end charts ### Singles - I' Despite charting, "Red Mosquito" was never released as a single. ## Certifications

Genetic assimilation

Mechanism which genetically encodes phenotypes through evolutionary processes

Genetic assimilation is a process described by Conrad H. Waddington by which a phenotype originally produced in response to an environmental condition, such as exposure to a teratogen, later becomes genetically encoded via artificial selection or natural selection. Despite superficial appearances, this does not require the (Lamarckian) inheritance of acquired characters, although epigenetic inheritance could potentially influence the result. Waddington stated that genetic assimilation overcomes the barrier to selection imposed by what he called canalization of developmental pathways; he supposed that the organism's genetics evolved to ensure that development proceeded in a certain way regardless of normal environmental variations. The classic example of genetic assimilation was a pair of experiments in 1942 and 1953 by Waddington. He exposed Drosophila fruit fly embryos to ether, producing an extreme change in their phenotype: they developed a double thorax, resembling the effect of the bithorax gene. This is called a homeotic change. Flies which developed halteres (the modified hindwings of true flies, used for balance) with wing-like characteristics were chosen for breeding for 20 generations, by which point the phenotype could be seen without other treatment. Waddington's explanation has been controversial, and has been accused of being Lamarckian. More recent evidence appears to confirm the existence of genetic assimilation in evolution; in yeast, when a stop codon is lost by mutation, the reading frame is preserved much more often than would be expected. ## History ### Waddington's experiments Conrad H. Waddington's classic experiment (1942) induced an extreme environmental reaction in the developing embryos of Drosophila. In response to ether vapor, a proportion of embryos developed a radical phenotypic change, a second thorax. At this point in the experiment bithorax is not innate; it is induced by an unusual environment. Waddington then repeatedly selected Drosophila for the bithorax phenotype over some 20 generations. After this time, some Drosophila developed bithorax without the ether treatment. Waddington carried out a similar experiment in 1953, this time inducing the cross-veinless phenocopy in Drosophila with a heat shock, with 40% of the flies showing the phenotype prior to selection. Again he selected for the phenotype over several generations, applying heat shock each time, and eventually the phenotype appeared even without heat shock. ### Waddington's explanation Waddington called the effect he had seen "genetic assimilation". His explanation was that it was caused by a process he called "canalization". He compared embryonic development to a ball rolling down a slope in what he called an epigenetic landscape, where each point on the landscape is a possible state of the organism (involving many variables). As a particular pathway becomes entrenched or "canalized", it becomes more stable, likely to occur even in the face of environmental changes. Major perturbations such as ether or heat shock eject the developmental pathway from the metaphorical canal, exploring other parts of the epigenetic landscape. Selection in the presence of that perturbation leads to the evolution of a new canal; after the perturbation is discontinued, developmental trajectories continue to follow the canalized pathway. ### A Darwinian explanation Other evolutionary biologists have agreed that assimilation occurs, but give a different, purely quantitative genetics explanation in terms of Darwin's natural or artificial selection. The phenotype, say cross-veinless, is presumed to be caused by a combination of multiple genes. The phenotype appears when the sum of gene effects exceeds a threshold; if that threshold is lowered by a perturbation, say a heat shock, the phenotype is more likely to be seen. Continued selection under perturbing conditions increases the frequency of the alleles of genes that promote the phenotype until the threshold is breached, and the phenotype appears without requiring the heat shock. Perturbations can be genetic or epigenetic rather than environmental. For example, Drosophila fruit flies have a heat shock protein, Hsp90, which protects the development of many structures in the adult fly from heat shock. If the protein is damaged by a mutation, then just as if it were damaged by the environmental effects of drugs, many different phenotypic variants appear; if these are selected for, they quickly establish without further need for the mutant Hsp90. ### A mutational explanation In 2017, L. Fanti and colleagues replicated Waddington's experiments, but included DNA sequencing, revealing that the wing phenotypes were due to mutational events, small deletions and the insertions of transposable elements that were mobilised by the heat exposure. ## Neo-Darwinism or Lamarckism Waddington's theory of genetic assimilation was controversial. The evolutionary biologists Theodosius Dobzhansky and Ernst Mayr both thought that Waddington was using genetic assimilation to support so-called Lamarckian inheritance. They denied that the inheritance of acquired characteristics had taken place, and asserted that Waddington had simply observed the natural selection of genetic variants that already existed in the study population. Waddington himself interpreted his results in a Neo-Darwinian way, particularly emphasizing that they "could bring little comfort to those who wish to believe that environmental influences tend to produce heritable changes in the direction of adaptation." The evolutionary developmental biologist Adam S. Wilkins wrote that "[Waddington] in his lifetime... was widely perceived primarily as a critic of Neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. His criticisms ... were focused on what he saw as unrealistic, 'atomistic' models of both gene selection and trait evolution." In particular, according to Wilkins, Waddington felt that the Neo-Darwinians badly neglected the phenomenon of extensive gene interactions and that the 'randomness' of mutational effects, posited in the theory, was false. Even though Waddington became critical of the neo-Darwinian synthetic theory of evolution, he still described himself as a Darwinian, and called for an extended evolutionary synthesis based on his research. Waddington did not deny the threshold-based conventional genetic interpretation of his experiments, but regarded it "as a told to the children version of what I wished to say" and considered the debate to be about "mode of expression, rather than of substance". Both genetic assimilation and the related Baldwin effect are theories of phenotypic plasticity, where aspects of an organism's physiology and behaviour are affected by the environment. The evolutionary ecologist Erika Crispo states that they differ in that genetic assimilation decreases the level of plasticity (returning to Waddington's original definition of canalization; whereas the Baldwin effect may increase it) but does not change the mean phenotypic value (where the Baldwin effect changes it). Crispo defines genetic assimilation as a kind of genetic accommodation, "evolution in response to both genetically based and environmentally induced novel traits", which in turn is in her view central to the Baldwin effect. ## Relationship to adaptation Mathematical modeling suggests that under certain circumstances, natural selection favours the evolution of canalization that is designed to fail under extreme conditions. If the result of such a failure is favoured by natural selection, genetic assimilation occurs. In the 1960s, Waddington and his colleague the animal geneticist J. M. Rendel argued for the importance of genetic assimilation in natural adaptation, as a means of providing new and potentially beneficial variation to populations under stress, enabling them to evolve rapidly. Their contemporary George C. Williams argued that genetic assimilation proceeds at the cost of a loss of previously adaptive developmental plasticity, and therefore should be seen as resulting in a net loss rather than gain of complexity, making it in his view uninteresting from the perspective of the constructive process of adaptation. However, the preceding phenotypic plasticity need not be adaptive, but simply represent a breakdown of canalization. ## In natural populations Several instances of genetic assimilation have been documented contributing to natural selection in the wild. For example, populations of the island tiger snakes (Notechis scutatus) have become isolated on islands and have larger heads to cope with large prey animals. Young populations have larger heads by phenotypic plasticity, whereas large heads have become genetically assimilated in older populations. In another example, patterns of left-right asymmetry or "handedness", when present, can be determined either genetically or plastically. During evolution, genetically determined directional asymmetry, as in the left-oriented human heart, can arise either from a nonheritable (phenotypic) developmental process, or directly by mutation from a symmetric ancestor. An excess of transitions from plastically determined to genetically determined handedness points to the role of genetic assimilation in evolution. A third example has been seen in yeast. Evolutionary events in which stop codons are lost preserve the reading frame much more often than would be expected from mutation bias. This finding is consistent with the role of the yeast prion [PSI+] in epigenetically facilitating stop codon readthrough, followed by genetic assimilation via the permanent loss of the stop codon. ## See also - Evolutionary developmental biology - List of genetics-related topics

Prince Family Paper

"Prince Family Paper" is the thirteenth episode of the fifth season of the American comedy television series The Office. The show's 85th overall episode, it originally aired on NBC in the United States on January 22, 2009. In the episode, Michael and Dwight go undercover to seek information on a family-owned business competitor, and Michael has a crisis of conscience when they turn out to be very nice people. Meanwhile, the others in the office passionately debate whether actress Hilary Swank can be considered "hot". The episode was directed by Asaad Kelada and written by B. J. Novak, who also plays Ryan on the show. The script addresses the Darwinistic nature of capitalism in its portrayal of the larger corporation Dunder Mifflin threatening a small mom-and-pop business, as well as societal definitions of beauty in the differing arguments regarding Swank's attractiveness. Dan Bakkedahl makes a guest appearance as the business owner's son. The episode received generally mixed reviews. According to Nielsen Media Research, "Prince Family Paper" was seen by 8.74 million viewers, a slight increase from the previous week's episode, "The Duel". ## Plot Dunder Mifflin CFO David Wallace (Andy Buckley) enlists Michael Scott (Steve Carell) to report on the success of a small family-owned local paper company named Prince Paper, that works in an area where Dunder Mifflin has never acquired clients. Michael brings Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson) to help gather information. Michael visits business owner Roger Prince (Dan Desmond) posing as a potential customer named "Michael Scarn", while Dwight pretends to request a job. The kind and overly trusting Roger Prince gives Michael the company's customer list to use as a reference, and Michael and Dwight leave triumphantly. However, Michael damages his car while exiting his parking space, which catches the attention of the Prince family. They come out to help fix the car as Michael watches. Michael is moved by their kindness and has a change of heart regarding giving the customer list to David, though Dwight remains unmoved. Back at the office, Dwight tries to convince Michael he cannot let his heart get in the way of business. Michael agrees to send the list and his information to Wallace, but then tries to get rid of the list. Dwight chases Michael down and takes the list from him, causing Michael to give in. David calls Michael to congratulate him on getting the list. Michael claims he is feeling a "bittersweet" moment: bitter because he potentially ruined a decent family, but sweet because he satisfied David Wallace. The rest of the office debates whether Hilary Swank is "hot". Kevin Malone (Brian Baumgartner) leads the group voting she is not hot, claiming she looks like a "monster". Jim convinces Kevin to switch sides by having him imagine Hilary kissing him, only for Kevin to switch back, saying the debate is whether she is hot, not whether he would have sex with her. Angela Martin (Angela Kinsey) votes "hot" after getting offended by Kevin's crude remarks. Kelly Kapoor (Mindy Kaling), who believes herself less attractive than Swank, gets emotional when Toby Flenderson (Paul Lieberstein) defends his "not hot" vote. Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer) argues they should not let the Kevins of the world decide who is hot. Oscar Martinez (Oscar Nuñez) gives a presentation about the structure of Swank's facial features, concluding she is "attractive...but she is not hot." An uncharacteristically uplifting Stanley Hudson (Leslie David Baker) votes hot, pointing out flaws are no way to live life. At the end of the debate, the sides are still tied until Michael, oblivious of their debate, passes by the pictures on the wall and casually calls her hot. ## Production "Prince Family Paper" was directed by Asaad Kelada and written by B. J. Novak, who also plays Ryan Howard on the show. The episode portrays capitalism as Darwinistic in nature, particularly through its portrayal of the larger corporation Dunder Mifflin threatening the small mom-and-pop business Prince Family Paper, as well as societal definitions of beauty in the differing arguments regarding the hotness of Hilary Swank. Dan Bakkedahl, a comedian best known as a correspondent from the Comedy Central comedy program The Daily Show, made a guest appearance as Robert Prince, Jr., the son of the Prince Paper owner. When Michael infiltrates Prince Family Paper, he identifies himself as Michael Scarn. This is a reference to the second season episode "The Client", in which Pam discovers an action film screenplay starring a character based on himself named Agent Michael Scarn. ## Cultural references Robert Prince tells Michael he started his business after Vietnam, a reference to the Vietnam War, but Michael mistakes it for a reference to the country itself and says he has heard it is a nice place. During one scene, Michael said to David Wallace, "What'chu talking 'bout, Wallace?" in the style of Gary Coleman's catchphrase "What'chu talking 'bout, Willis?" from the sitcom Diff'rent Strokes. While discussing Hilary Swank, Kevin said he finds her so unattractive that he expected her to have a real penis in Boys Don't Cry, the 1999 drama film in which Swank played a transgender man. When Angela votes that Hilary Swank is hot, she declares her "a female Boris Becker", a reference to the German professional tennis player. Michael plans to meet Dwight at the IHOP pancake eatery after they visit Prince Family Paper, but Dwight insists IHOP is "socialist" and prefers the American restaurant chain Denny's. ## Reception ### Ratings In its original American broadcast on January 22, 2009, "Prince Family Paper" was watched by 8.74 million overall viewers, about a five percent increase in viewership over the previous episode, "The Duel". "Prince Family Paper" received a 5.3 rating/14 share among viewers aged between 18 and 34, and a 4.6 rating/11 share among viewers between 18 and 49. It was outperformed by CSI: Crime Scene Investigation on CBS, which was seen by 17.53 million households, and Grey's Anatomy on ABC, which was seen by 14.25 million households, although commentators said The Office still fared well against the tough competition. "Prince Family Paper" earned higher ratings than the Fox series Bones, which moved to Thursday for the first time and drew 7.5 million viewers. ### Critical reception "Prince Family Paper" received generally mixed reviews. Travis Fickett of IGN called it one of the show's better Michael-and-Dwight centric episodes, and called the chase between them "a classic scene and perfectly executed". Fickett also praised several character moments, like Kelly's breakdown over whether Hilary Swank is hot, but said the Swank subplot was less interesting than the main story. Brian Howard of The Journal News said he appreciated that the script had Michael follow through on betraying the Princes, rather than deciding to spare them, because he felt it was more realistic. Howard said, "They didn’t let Michael off the hook. Instead the writers took a dark and dirty turn toward the truly tragic, in the literal sense of the word." He also praised the Hilary Swank subplot as funny and a realistic conversation topic among officemates, although he admitted it was "relegated to almost buffer status" to the main plot. Alan Sepinwall, television columnist with The Star-Ledger, said Michael's conflicted feelings about betraying the Prince family came up too late and resolved too abruptly to work well, and that the chase between Michael and Dwight was a poorly constructed "misfire". However, he called the subplot about Hilary Swank "genius with a capital G". TV Squad writer Jay Black praised the main plot, and wrote, "I was delighted that the trip to the Prince Family Paper Company became a test of Michael's morals rather than the usual exercise in his stupidity." Black said Dwight's attempts to get Michael to give up the client list were among the best set of scenes for the season. However, Black said the Hilary Swank subplot suffered in comparison, and felt like a vain attempt to find something for the supporting cast to do. The A.V. Club writer Nathan Rabin was disappointed with "Prince Family Paper", calling it overly dependent on throwaway gags and describing it as "about as inconsequential as The Office gets". Rabin complimented the opening gag with Jim and Dwight, but said it "felt like the kind of gag the show has pulled off dozens, if not hundreds of times, before". Alynda Wheat of Entertainment Weekly said it was not one of the strongest Office episodes and that the script took a particularly mean tone with the Prince Family Paper subplot, but that it also included some enjoyable moments like Jim's prank against Dwight in the opening scene. Will Leitch of New York magazine was very critical of the episode, especially the Hilary Swank subplot (which he said "sounded like a conversation B. J. Novak had with himself at a party and submitted as a backup script") and the fact that the episode had nothing to do with the show's ongoing plotlines. ### Hilary Swank's reaction Hilary Swank said of the episode in an interview with Time magazine, "I'm not a big television watcher, but definitely everyone made me aware of it. It's flattering anytime someone mentions you. But I don't think of myself in terms of that." She elaborated later in the interview, "There is so much [emphasis] put on the way we look, which is interesting, going back to the Office question. Are you hot, or are you not? It really does a disservice. There's so much more to life than looking a certain way."

Lier Line

Railway line in Norway

The Lier Line (Norwegian: Lierbanen) or LB is an abandoned railway line that ran through Lier in Norway. The private, narrow gauge railway branched from the Drammen Line at the old Lier Station, and ran 21.15 kilometers (13.14 mi) to Svangstrand on the lake Tyrifjorden, where it connected with a steam ship operated by the railway company. Among the villages the line served were Egge, Sjåstad and Sylling, in addition to two branch lines, from Iledalen to Tronstad Bruk, and from Egge to Egge Gravel Pit. Discussions regarding the building of a line through Lier started in 1895, and construction commenced in 1901. The line opened on 12 July 1904 and was initially profitable, in part because of tourist traffic. In 1920, the Drammen Line was converted to standard gauge, resulting in expensive transshipment between the two lines. This and falling traffic caused the line to become unprofitable. The Lier line was closed for ordinary traffic on 23 October 1932. All traffic ceased on 1 January 1937 and the track was demolished shortly afterwards. ## Route The line was built with narrow gauge, a minimum curve radius of 100 metres (330 ft) and a steepest gradient of 3.0 percent. It was the only line in Norway for which no blasting was done during construction. At the old Lier Station, located 24.5 meters (80 ft) above mean sea level (AMSL), the line connected with the Drammen Line and then ran 21.15 kilometers (13.14 mi) northwards up the Lier Valley. The line passed through stations at Landfald and Egge before reaching a branch line to the gravel pit at Egge. The line continued past Utengen and Sjåstad before crossing the wooden, 49-meter-long (161 ft) Sjåstad Bridge. It then ran past Muggerud and ran along the 46-meter-long (151 ft) viaduct across Sverregropen until passing Iledalen. A 0.80-kilometer (0.50 mi) branch line ran from Iledalen via a wooden 30-meter-long (98 ft) bridge over Solbergelva to Tronstad Bruk. The main line continued across the wooden, 90-meter-long (300 ft) bridge over the creek Solbergelva before reaching Sylling. This was the line's highest elevation, at 128.8 meters (423 ft) AMSL. Between there and Holsfjorden, a branch of the Tyrifjorden lake, the line was built with a zig-zag, so the train had to back 1 kilometer (0.6 mi) and then continue forward. At Svangstrand, located 65.0 meters (213.3 ft) AMSL there was connection with a steam ship. The only track left after the demolishing was a short section at Lier Station, which remained until the station closed in 1973. The old Lier Station has been preserved. The section between Reenskaug, located a few hundred meters (yards) from Lier Station, to Landfald has become the suburban street Lijevegen. From Landfall to Egge, the right-of-way is an overgrown path. From Egge to Muggerud, the right-of-way is used as the street Banevegen. In 1993, the right-of-way from Muggerud to Rønningen was rebuilt as a hiking and riding path. The branch towards Tronstad Bruk has been converted to a street, although most of the right-of-way north of Rønning has disappeared, as it has been reclaimed as agricultural land, particularly north of Sylling. The station area at Svangstand in intact, with the station building looking just like it did in 1904. Other station buildings have been converted to homes or commercial buildings. ## History The first political consideration of a proposal to build a line through the Lier Valley occurred on 2 March 1895, when the municipal council discarded the idea, stating that it was of no interest for the community. However, there were many locals who had observed the economic impact the Drammen Line had on the southern part of the municipality, and called for a line also to the northern parts. In 1896, a committee was established, led by captain and entrepreneur H. J. Hofgaard. Engineering reports estimated the costs to NOK 700,000, including NOK 37,000 for a steamship on Tyrifjorden. Estimates called for 23,900 passengers and 17,000 tonnes (17,000 long tons; 19,000 short tons) of cargo each year, which was sufficient to break even. They argued that the valley's two roads were insufficient for the valley's transport needs. At the same time, they pointed out that there was no industry in Lier that would need a railway, and that by building a line, such industry would be established. In April 1897, the committee held a public offering of shares in A/S Lierbanen. At the same time, they sent an application for a social grant to the Ministry of Labour for NOK 330,000, plus NOK 30,375 from the Norwegian State Railways (NSB). The committee proposed that the municipality buy shares for NOK 150,000. When the issue was debated in the municipal council on 9 June, it met with resistance from representatives from Tranby in the west of Lier, who stated that they felt that the railway would have no impact on them, and that the municipality should only buy shares for NOK 75,000. It resulted in a compromise where the municipality bought shares for NOK 100,000. A year later, the municipality purchased shares for an addition NOK 30,000. The other major shareholders were Drammen Municipality with NOK 30,000, Buskerud County Municipality with NOK 50,000 and private investors, who supplied NOK 174,050. During the debate in the Parliament of Norway in 1899, it was proposed that construction be delayed until the Drammen Line was upgraded to standard gauge, but this was rejected by the majority. The plans to build the line were passed on 18 May 1899 and parliament gave a grant of NOK 350,800. In 1903, this was supplemented with NOK 22,500. Construction started in late 1901 and was led by Engineer E. Richter. No blasting was done, but difficulties arose because of the large amounts of clay, which contributed to increase costs to NOK 800,000. The line opened on 12 July 1904 and at the opening there were delivered two six-axle steam locomotives from Hartmann, which were named Lier and Hole. The railway also took delivery of two passenger cars, a combined freight and conductor car, and a number of freight cars. Periodically the railway needed extra haulage power, and therefore sometimes leased locomotives from the Norwegian State Railways. The initial fares were NOK 1.30 from Lier to Svangstrand, while the ferry across the lake cost an additional NOK 1.50. The greatest ridership was during the summer, when tourists took the line to reach the steam ships. During winter, the ridership fell, and the railway terminated at Sylling instead of Svangerstrand. The company bought the steamship Activ, which supplemented the incumbent ferry Ringerike on Tyrifjorden. She had a capacity of 50 passengers and a crew of two, and a power output of 6 kilowatts (8 hp). She had been built in 1892 or 1894, and sold to A/S Lierbanen in 1904 or 1906. Activ was then put into service on the route from Sundvollan and Svangstrand. She was in bad shape, and was taken out of service in 1909, sold in 1911 and dismantled in 1914, after an accident. The first year of operation had 40,000 passengers and gave a small profit, but the next two gave deficits of NOK 5,000. Fiscal year 1907–08 gave a profit of NOK 11,000, increasing to NOK 18,562 in 1912–13—by then the line had 64,080 passengers. The line had a large impact on Sylling, where the population increased from 467 in 1900 to 713 in 1910. In 1920, the Drammen Line was rebuilt to standard gauge, and all cargo between the two lines had to be transshipped, increasing costs. The cheap construction methods, combined with bad geological conditions, caused derailing and other limitations to operation, including frequent delays. From 1922, the section from Lier to Egge was rebuilt to dual gauge to allow gravel trains to operate to the gravel pit at Egge. In 1927, a bus services started through the western part of Lier, claiming many of the trains' patrons. To help save the company, the employees offered to work for half wage, but it was not sufficient to save the line. All scheduled traffic was terminated on 23 October 1932, although the section to Tronstad Bruk was retained for some industrial trains until 31 December 1936. The line was then demolished. ## See also - Narrow gauge railways in Norway

Fennec Shand

Star Wars character

Fennec Shand is a fictional character in the Star Wars franchise portrayed by Ming-Na Wen in the Disney+ television series The Mandalorian, The Bad Batch, and The Book of Boba Fett. An elite mercenary and assassin, she was introduced in "Chapter 5: The Gunslinger" of The Mandalorian, in which she is sought by the show's title character and another bounty hunter, Toro Calican, who seemingly kills her. In "Chapter 14: The Tragedy", it was established that Fennec was saved by Boba Fett, leaving her in his debt, and had parts of her body replaced with cybernetics. As Fett's new partner, she assists him in his mission to recover his old armor from the Mandalorian, and later to rescue Grogu to honor an agreement made with the latter. Once their mission is completed, the two conquer Tatooine and the remnants of the Hutt cartels. In The Book of Boba Fett, Fennec and Fett come into conflict with various enemies attempting to seize power from them, leading them to ally with the Mandalorian once more to defend their new crime empire. The character has been received positively by reviewers and fans alike and has been described as a fan favorite. ## Concept and creation Elements of Fennec Shand's personality and development were inspired by the character's name, which Wen said brought to mind the idea of the namesake fennec fox. Anthony Breznican of Vanity Fair noted the fennec fox is a particularly appropriate model for the character because, like Fennec Shand, it is both predator and prey. Wen felt the character shared common attributes with the fox, including trickiness, stealthiness, maneuverability, and the ability to survive. The character of Fennec Shand and the casting of Wen was first announced at the D23 Expo in Anaheim, California on August 23, 2019. Bob Iger, CEO of The Walt Disney Company, announced the news on the same day that Wen was named one of the Disney Legends for her past work in Disney works. Footage of Fennec Shand was first publicly shown in a 30-second teaser trailer for The Mandalorian released on November 4, 2019. The teaser concluded with a shot of Fennec delivering the line: "Your name will be legendary." Abbey White said the character was "eagerly anticipated" by the time The Mandalorian premiered. ### Portrayal Fennec Shand is portrayed by Ming-Na Wen. It marks one of several notable performances by Wen in Walt Disney Company projects, including voicing Mulan in the animated films Mulan (1998), Mulan II (2004) and the video game Kingdom Hearts II (2005), making a cameo appearance in the 2020 live-action remake as a court guest, and portraying Melinda May on the Marvel series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Patrick Hipes of Deadline Hollywood called this a "Disney franchise trifecta". Wen has jokingly said of Disney: "Please just keep acquiring all these different franchises, because I just keep getting employed by them. I have hit every bucket list thanks to Disney." Wen was a fan of the original Star Wars trilogy, and as one of the few Asian girls growing up in Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania during her childhood, she could relate in particular to the character Luke Skywalker and his dreams of a more meaningful life. She said: "Just that image of him looking at the binary suns and wishing for more, it always stays with me." She has described Star Wars as her "favorite all-time genre". Wen grew up in the same town as The Mandalorian executive producer Dave Filoni, who also directed the episode in which she appears. Fennec Shand is the first major Star Wars villain/antihero portrayed by an Asian actress. Wen said she is pleased there has been more representation of Asians among the casts of Star Wars projects in recent years, citing Kelly Marie Tran's character Rose Tico in Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) as another example. She noted that the Star Wars franchise has often been influenced by Asian culture in its costumes and set design elements, despite an earlier lack of Asian actors. Wen said: "There was all this incredible imagery, but yet there were very few Asians in the films. Any sort of representation is important and necessary. And I'm just happy that I got chosen." After attending the premiere of The Mandalorian on November 13, 2019, Wen posted photos from the event on Twitter and wrote: "What a night! If you told my 13 yr old self that I’d be on the red carpet celebrating being IN a @starwars project, she’d think you were nuts! Well, that little girl inside me still think it’s nuts!" ### Costume Fennec Shand's costume was created by Joseph Porro, the costume designer for The Mandalorian. A black, leather outfit of armor with broad shoulders and accents of orange, it was inspired by the fennec fox referenced in the character's name. Wen referred to it as an "amazing outfit that I fell in love with right away". Original plans for Fennec's hair called for it to be loose and unkempt, but Wen suggested her hairstyle include some of "the fennec fox architecture", similar to the costume. She also felt the original plan was too similar to the long, flowing hair of her Melinda May character on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and she wanted the two characters to be more differentiated. Wen brought these ideas to Dave Filoni and The Mandalorian creator and showrunner Jon Favreau, and they responded enthusiastically. As a result, the hairstylist on The Mandalorian conceived a braiding system with triangular points, similar to the ears of a fennec fox. The braids are pulled back tight against her head and threaded with orange, which was also influenced by the fennec fox animal. Wen said felt the hairstyle "gives her such a strong, unique look". ## Characterization Fennec Shand is characterized as an elite assassin, one who is mysterious and very dangerous.[^1] She is a highly skilled fighter at both firearms and hand-to-hand combat, and displays a sharpshooter's ability with a sniper rifle. She is very graceful and agile, and stealthy, demonstrating an ability to maneuver and survive. Ming-Na Wen, the actress who portrays Fennec, felt the character has a moral ambiguity similar to that of popular Star Wars character Han Solo. She is also very tricky, playing mind games with her victims, as demonstrated by her attempts to manipulate Toro Calican once captured. Anthony Breznican of Vanity Fair has noted that the character is rather talkative in this way, in contrast to the usually stoic and silent title character, the Mandalorian. Wen feels the character "has a good sense of humor about it all as well". Nevertheless, she also at times demonstrates a gruff and reserved personality. Fennec is ruthless, independent, unpredictable, and is loyal to herself first and foremost. She occasionally shows errors in judgment, such as when she almost fatally underestimates the ruthlessness of Toro Calican. ## Appearances ### The Mandalorian In The Mandalorian, Fennec Shand is presented as an elite mercenary and assassin who developed a significant reputation committing murders for the galaxy's top crime syndicates, including the Hutts, before their leaders were imprisoned by the New Republic. Little else about her backstory is revealed. She appears in the Mandalorian episode "Chapter 5: The Gunslinger", starting the episode in hiding on the desert planet Tatooine, because a large bounty has been placed upon her. Toro Calican, an aspiring bounty hunter, takes the bounty on Fennec as his first assignment, believing capturing such a notorious target would bring him prestige and allow him to join the Bounty Hunters' Guild. Toro recruits the show's protagonist, a bounty hunter known as "The Mandalorian", to help him find and capture her. They track Fennec to a part of the planet known as the Dune Sea, where they discover the dead body of another bounty hunter she had previously killed. While they investigate, Fennec opens fire on them with a long-ranged blaster rifle, keeping them pinned down from a high vantage point. The Mandalorian and Toro eventually charge toward her position on speeder bikes and use flash charges to temporarily blind and distract her. After a brief fight, they incapacitate Fennec, and restrain her with handcuffs. When the Mandalorian temporarily departs to secure their transportation, Fennec informs Toro that the Mandalorian is wanted by the Bounty Hunters Guild and that capturing him would bring Toro a legendary reputation. She offers to work with Toro to subdue the Mandalorian and turn him over to Guild. Instead, Toro shoots Fennec and leaves her for dead in the desert, believing she intended to eventually kill him. In a later scene, an unidentified person approaches Fennec's body. Shand returns in the second-season episode "Chapter 14: The Tragedy", in which it is revealed that she was rescued by Boba Fett, who nursed her back to health using cybernetics and recruited her as his partner. She accompanies Fett to Tython, where they attempt to recover the latter's old armor from the Mandalorian, and ensure the safety of Grogu, a Force-sensitive alien infant that the Mandalorian has adopted, in exchange for the armor's return. When Moff Gideon's Imperial remnant attacks the group, Fennec helps the Mandalorian and Fett fend off the stormtroopers deployed to capture Grogu, but fail to prevent him from being taken by Gideon's Dark Troopers. To repay their debt to the Mandalorian for returning Fett's armor, Fennec and Fett aid his efforts to rescue Grogu in both "Chapter 15: The Believer" and ''Chapter 16: The Rescue''. After the latter episode, after their debt has been paid off, Fennec and Fett return to Tatooine and kill Bib Fortuna, who has been in charge of Jabba the Hutt's palace since his death. Fett then sits on the throne that once belonged to Jabba, with Fennec at his side. ### The Bad Batch A younger Fennec appears in the animated series Star Wars: The Bad Batch, with Ming-Na Wen returning to voice the character. Set 28 years before The Mandalorian, Fennec is depicted as a bounty hunter who attempts to capture Omega for the bounty on her head. In the episode "Cornered", a docking official contacts her about the Bad Batch and Omega's presence on Pantora, and Fennec arrives there. After getting lost, Omega encounters Fennec, who gains her trust by offering to help her find her friends and also steals fruit for her. They eventually run into Hunter, the leader of the Bad Batch, who realizes that Fennec is a threat and tells Omega to flee. After Fennec fights Hunter and later knocks out Wrecker, she gives chase on a stolen speeder, but the Bad Batch and Omega eventually escape from Pantora. Fennec then informs her client of the escape but says that she will find Omega. She later returns in "Bounty Lost", in which it is revealed that she was hired by Nala Se to bring her Omega, who has been kidnapped by Cad Bane. Fennec arrives at an abandoned facility on Bora Vio and kills Taun We, to whom Bane was supposed to deliver Omega. She then confronts Cad Bane. As the bounty hunters fight each other, Omega is saved by the Bad Batch and they escape again. Fennec leaves the planet, but not before sabotaging Bane's ship, leaving him stranded. Nala Se tells her that Omega is "safe" as long as she is not in the hands of Kaminoan Prime Minister Lama Su and that she will transfer Fennec her payment. ### The Book of Boba Fett Fennec appears in all episodes of The Book of Boba Fett, which premiered on December 29, 2021, with Wen reprising her role. She serves as Fett's right-hand woman following his takeover of Jabba's criminal empire and assists him with running it and eliminating any possible rivals. When Fett prepares to go to war with the Pyke Syndicate for control of Tatooine, Fennec recruits the Mandalorian to their side. She subsequently partakes in the fight against the Pykes and their allies, before assassinating the Pyke boss, as well as the mayor of Mos Espa and the leaders of the crime families who betrayed Fett. ### Other appearances On February 9, 2022, Fennec was added to Fortnite Battle Royale alongside Black Krrsantan. ## Reception Fennec Shand has been received positively by reviewers and fans alike. Izak Bulten of Screen Rant wrote: "Despite appearing in just one episode, she had a clear, well-realized character and has quickly become a favorite amongst fans of the series." Men's Health writer Evan Romano said "In only a few lines, this character has already had some very impressive lore built around her". Vanity Fair writer Anthony Breznican felt the character continued a positive and significant trend of greater diversity in Star Wars casting, citing other examples of Asian actors in recent projects such as Kelly Marie Tran in The Last Jedi and Christopher Sean in Star Wars Resistance. Joanna Robinson, also of Vanity Fair, praised the character, saying she had a "coiled power in her", and complimented the casting of Wen. Jackson McHenry of Vulture praised Wen's performance, and called the character "one of the badder-ass badasses in the world of The Mandalorian". Fennec Shand was included on Vulture's list of the show's 15 best cameo appearances from season one. Before her return in the second season, several reviewers felt the character was eliminated too quickly and did not get the chance to live up to her potential. Joanna Robinson said she would have preferred a full episode of word play between Fennec and the Mandalorian, and said of Fennec's role in the episode: "There's a real potential there, and it was over too quickly for my taste. I would've loved more of it." Dirk Libbey of CinemaBlend called the character "criminally underused", and Allie Gemmill of Inverse called her death "hasty". Breznican said, "There's way too much potential for that character to just vanish like this." Keith Phipps of Vulture wrote that she "seemed too clever to be taken out so easily by a rookie". Kerr Lordygan of TV Fanatic wrote that "Fennec's demise was too easily obtained, though the possibility of her return was left open". TV Insider's Emily Hannemann stated that she is just "plain cool" saying, "Not every character can steal a scene by sitting and drinking spotchka, but not every character is Fennec Shand." Stating that Ming-Na Wen's Fennec Shand, like Din Djarin and Grogu, has left a mark in the Star Wars franchise, Cinemablend's Erik Swann praised Fennec Shand. Several reviewers correctly speculated that the character was still alive, with some arguing this is foreshadowed by the final scene of "Chapter 5: The Gunslinger", during which a mysterious stranger investigates her body. Allie Gemmill called that scene "one of the most tantalizing closings to a Mandalorian episode since the series premiere revealed Baby Yoda". Dirk Libbey called the mysterious character's identity and his interest in Fennec "one of our bigger cliffhanger moments" from the series. Evan Romano said he would not be surprised to see Fennec Shand turn up again in a future Star Wars film or series, writing: "This character seems just a little too capable, and a little too cool to be disarmed and killed after just a single brief appearance". Stephanie Dube Dwilson of Heavy.com'' said she so enjoyed Wen's acting that she hopes the character returns. [^1]:

De Lackner HZ-1 Aerocycle

1954 experimental personal helicopter model by de Lackner Helicopters

The HZ-1 Aerocycle, also known as the YHO-2 and by the manufacturer's designation DH-5 Aerocycle, was an American one-man "personal helicopter" developed by de Lackner Helicopters in the mid-1950s. Intended to be operated by inexperienced pilots with a minimum of 20 minutes of instruction, the HZ-1 was expected to become a standard reconnaissance machine with the United States Army. Although early testing showed that the craft had promise for providing mobility on the atomic battlefield, more extensive evaluation proved that the aircraft was in fact too difficult to control for operation by untrained infantrymen, and after a pair of crashes the project was abandoned. A single model of the craft was put on display. ## Design and development During the early 1950s, Charles H. Zimmerman of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) developed a system for control of a rotorcraft in which, with the rotors mounted on the underside of the aircraft, the machine could be steered by the pilot through the simple shifting of his weight, and kept stable through the actions of his natural reflexes. Known as kinesthetic control, and similar in principle to the mechanics of riding a bicycle or a surfboard, it was hoped that the concept would allow for pilots to operate an aircraft with little to no training time. NACA testing proved that the idea had merit, and several companies, including Bensen Aircraft, Hiller Aircraft, and de Lackner Helicopters, began development of rotorcraft using the concept. The concept proposed by de Lackner Helicopters was a one-man flying platform, and it received the company designation "DH-4". The DH-4 was expected to be able to carry up to 120 pounds (54 kg) of cargo or an auxiliary 5-US-gallon (19 L; 4.2 imp gal) fuel tank to extend its range up to 50 miles (80 km) in addition to its pilot, a cargo lifting line could be threaded through the rotor shaft for the carrying of slung loads underneath the craft. The machine was a simple, cross-shaped frame, with the pilot standing on a platform, secured by a safety harness. The harness also secured the aircraft's engine, which was an outboard motor manufactured by Mercury Marine. The engine was controlled by a twist-grip motorcycle-style throttle and transferred power to the 15-foot (4.6 m) diameter, contra-rotating rotors via belt drive with a chain reduction unit. The aircraft's landing gear consisted of airbags at the end of each arm of the frame along with a large rubber float in the middle, allowing for amphibious capability, although this arrangement was later replaced by a pair of conventional helicopter-type skids. ## Testing Originally designated YHO-2 by the U.S. Army, then later re-designated HZ-1 and named "Aerocycle", the prototype made its first tethered flight on 22 November 1954, with its first free flight taking place in January 1955 at the Brooklyn Army Terminal. Over 160 flights totaling more than 15 hours of flight time were conducted, and the results of this early test flight program were considered promising enough that a dozen examples of the type were ordered (serial numbers 56-6928 to 56-6939). Predictions were made that the craft could provide transport to a modern version of the old horse cavalry, providing airborne "eyes and ears" for the Army. In 1956, the test program was transferred to Fort Eustis, Virginia, where Captain Selmer Sundby took over test-flying duties. The HZ-1 had been designed to be very easy to fly, and early testing indicated that untrained soldiers could learn to operate the craft in less than 20 minutes, and some claiming that only five minutes of instruction were required. In addition, the HZ-1 proved to be faster than other flying platform designs evaluated by the Army. Sundby, however, quickly determined that the craft was much more difficult to fly than had been expected, and would not be safe in the hands of an inexperienced pilot. In addition, the low-mounted rotors proved to be prone to kicking up small rocks and other debris. Over a series of tethered and free-flying test flights lasting up to 43 minutes, the HZ-1 suffered a pair of accidents. Both crashes occurred under similar conditions – the contra-rotating rotors intermeshed and collided, the blades shattering, causing an immediate loss of control resulting in a crash. Aerodynamic testing was conducted in the full-scale wind tunnel at the Langley Research Center, and it was discovered that the Aerocycle's forwards speed was limited by an uncontrollable pitching motion, but rotor-tip clearance was always sufficient. The inability to determine the precise cause of the intermeshing, combined with the fact that the "personal lifting device" concept was failing to live up to its expectations, led to the decision to terminate the project. Sundby was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his test-flying work with the HZ-1, going on to test-fly the H-21 and H-34 helicopters, as well as seeing combat in the Vietnam War before retiring with the rank of colonel. ### Parachute development An entirely new type of parachute with extremely fast opening characteristics, the "Ultra-Fast Opening Personnel Parachute Type XMP-2", was developed for use in testing of the HZ-1 and Hiller VZ-1 flying platforms. Designed for use from 0 to 50 miles per hour (0–80 km/h) and at altitudes as low as 25 feet (7.6 m), the XMP-2 proved to have insufficient reliability for use as a personnel parachute. ## Variants DH-4 Heli-Vector: Initial prototype of the Aerocycle design; one built. DH-5 Aerocycle: Company designation for the development prototype of the HZ-1. HZ-1 Aerocycle: the limited production aircraft delivered to the US Army; 12 built. HO-2 Aerocycle: Designation in the US Army HO series ## Aircraft on display Of the dozen examples of the type ordered by the U.S. Army, only a single example of the HZ-1 has survived, and this aircraft is currently on display in the U.S. Army Transportation Museum at Fort Eustis, Newport News, Virginia. ## Specifications (HZ-1 Aerocycle) ## See also

Blackout (Britney Spears album)

2007 studio album by Britney Spears

Blackout is the fifth studio album by American singer Britney Spears. It was released on October 25, 2007, by Jive Records. Its production and release occurred as Spears' personal struggles were highly publicized and overshadowed her professional projects. She executive-produced the album, working with producers Danja, Bloodshy & Avant, Sean Garrett, and the Neptunes, among others; it remains Spears' sole album to be executive produced by her. The final result was primarily a dance-pop and electropop record with Euro disco and dubstep influences, with lyrical themes revolving around love, fame, media scrutiny, sex, and clubbing. Blackout was originally slated for November 13, 2007, but was rush-released after leaking online. Contemporary reviews were polarized: some critics described it as Spears' most progressive and consistent album to date, while others dismissed it due to Spears' controversial public image. Although it was expected to debut atop the US Billboard 200, it entered at number two due to a last-minute change in Billboard's rules, with first-week sales of 290,000 copies; it became Spears' first studio effort not to debut at the summit. The album was later certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It won Best Album at the 2008 MTV Europe Music Awards. By the end of 2008, it had sold 3.1 million copies worldwide, but was deemed commercially disappointing compared to its predecessors. Blackout produced three singles. "Gimme More" peaked at number three on the US Billboard Hot 100, becoming her highest-peaking single on the chart since "...Baby One More Time" (1998), and reached the top ten in additional 16 countries. "Piece of Me" peaked at number 18 on the Billboard Hot 100, but replicated the international commercial success of its predecessor. Its accompanying music video won Spears her first MTV Video Music Award, winning Video of the Year, Best Female Video and Best Pop Video in 2008. "Break the Ice" did not fare as well as its predecessors, peaking at number 43 on the Billboard Hot 100. Originally intended as the fourth single, "Radar" was later included on Spears' following studio album Circus and was released as its fourth and final single in June 2009. Unlike her previous albums, Spears did not heavily promote Blackout; her only televised appearance for the album was a universally panned performance of "Gimme More" at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards. However, a number of its songs were performed on her subsequent tour the Circus Starring Britney Spears (2009) and later on her concert residency Britney: Piece of Me (2013–2017). In retrospect, the album has been cited as a career highlight for Spears and has been praised for its significant impact on the ensuing 2010s decade of pop music, being credited for bringing the electropop and avant-disco genres to mainstream prominence. Referred to as the "Bible of Pop" due to its influence, Blackout has been listed among the best albums of all time by multiple publications. ## Background and development In November 2003, while promoting her fourth studio album In the Zone, Spears told Entertainment Weekly that she was already writing songs for her fifth studio album and was also hoping to start her own record label in 2004. Henrik Jonback later confirmed that he had written songs with her during the European leg of the Onyx Hotel Tour (2004), "in the bus and in her hotel room between the concerts." Following her marriage with Kevin Federline in October 2004, Spears announced through a letter on her official website that she was going to "take some time off to enjoy life." However, on December 30, she made a surprise appearance at the Los Angeles radio station KIIS-FM to premiere a rough mix of a new midtempo track "Mona Lisa". Spears had recorded the song live with her band while on tour, and dedicated it to all the "legends and icons out there". The lyrics lament the fall of Mona Lisa, calling her "unforgettable" and "unpredictable", and cautions listeners not to have a "breakdown". She also revealed she wanted the song to be the lead single from her upcoming album, tentatively titled The Original Doll, and hoped to release it "probably before summertime [2005], or maybe a little sooner than that." In January, Spears posted another letter on her website, saying: > I think I should rephrase myself from my previous letters when I was talking about taking a 'break'. What I meant was I am taking a break from being told what to do. ... It's cool when you look at someone and don't know whether they are at work or play since it's all the same to them. The things I've been doing for work lately have been so much fun, because it's not like work to me anymore. I've been even more 'hands on' in my management and the business side of things, and I feel more in control than ever. A representative for Jive Records stated that although Spears was working in the studio, "no album is scheduled at the moment" and "there are no plans to service 'Mona Lisa' to radio." "Mona Lisa" was released on the bonus CD included with the DVD of Britney and Kevin: Chaotic (2005), in a re-recorded version with altered lyrics. Spears gave birth to her first son Sean Preston on September 14. In an interview with People in February 2006, Spears explained that she was anxious to resume her career, commenting she missed "traveling [...] the road, seeing different places and being with the dancers and having fun. That feeling of being on the stage, knowing it's your best – I love that. I needed a break. I needed to be hungry again." When asked about her next album, she said she had been experimenting in her home studio with live musicians, stripping down her sound and playing the piano. Spears wanted the album to represent her Louisiana roots, explaining that she grew up listening to blues. "When I was little, I would listen to myself [...] But the record label signs you, and you're just thankful to get a hit song. You can't really show off your voice and where you came from. I would like to try to have more influences of that sound. Not that I'm going to be like frickin' Tina Turner. But you never know", she stated. She also said that she hoped the album would reinvigorate the current pop scene, adding that "It's been boring. Nothing's been wow to me." On May 9, Spears announced she was pregnant with her second child. A few days later, producers such as J. R. Rotem and Sean Garrett told MTV News they were working with Spears. On September 12, Spears gave birth to her second son Jayden James. She filed for divorce from Federline on November 7, citing irreconcilable differences; the divorce was finalized in July 2007, when the two reached a global settlement and agreed to share joint custody of their sons. During the divorce, her partying and public behavior drew attention from the worldwide media. Spears' maternal aunt Sandra Bridges Covington, with whom she had been very close, died of ovarian cancer in January. In February, Spears suffered from a nervous breakdown and shaved her head, which caused intense media scrutiny. Consequently, she ended with two separate stints at Promises Treatment Centers in Malibu, California. Her manager Larry Rudolph released a statement on March 20, saying that she "successfully complet[ed] their program." In May, she produced a series of promotional concerts at House of Blues venues across the United States, titled The M+M's Tour. ## Recording and production Spears was the executive producer of Blackout, and the album remains her sole album to be executive produced by her. Earnest recording of the album began in 2006, according to a Spears representative. Spears first met J.R. Rotem in Las Vegas in March, and enlisted him to work on the album after listening to Rihanna's "SOS". They wrote and recorded four songs together, including "Everybody", which was originally offered to Rihanna and the Cheetah Girls. In July, she started working with Danja, who contacted songwriters such as Keri Hilson, Jim Beanz and Corté Ellis to work with him. The team wrote seven tracks for Spears–"Gimme More", "Break the Ice", "Get Naked (I Got a Plan)", "Hot as Ice", "Perfect Lover", "Outta This World" and "Get Back". Danja explained that the creative process was not difficult at first since he was "left to do pretty much whatever I wanted to", and "if she felt it, she was gonna ride with it. If she didn't, you'd see it in her face." Hilson wrote "Gimme More" with Spears in mind after Danja played her the instrumental, saying: "I just started singing, 'Give me, Give me' and added a little more in and just having fun and messing around really." Spears began recording with them at the Studio at the Palms in Las Vegas in August, while she was eight months pregnant with Jayden James. Recording continued at Spears' house in Los Angeles, three weeks after she gave birth. Hilson commented that "She gave 150 percent. [...] I don't know any other mother that would do that." Danja added that despite all the problems in her personal life, "As far as her work ethic, I haven't seen anybody come in like that and do what you go to do." Regarding the sound of the album, he deemed it as bigger, more mature and "a new Britney", explaining: "I come from hip-hop, so it's underlined with [it], but I throw it down." Kara DioGuardi, who also worked on "Heaven on Earth", co-produced and co-wrote "Ooh Ooh Baby" with a pregnant Spears. DioGuardi said that Spears "worked really hard" and called her "unstoppable". In September, Rotem told MTV News that he and Spears were trying to innovate the current sound of radio at the time, exemplifying Nelly Furtado's "Promiscuous". On November 8, the day after she filed for divorce from Federline, Spears recorded "Radar" with Ezekiel Lewis and Patrick M. Smith of the Clutch at the Sony Music Studios in New York City. Lewis had wanted to work with her for a long time and was motivated to produce something for her that was going to "help her project become a great project to come back with". Smith stated that the team tried to create a record "for the Britney Spears that we know and love" and that it did not "touch on anything that was really dealing with all the stuff that she was dealing with." Both commented that although Spears arrived late to the recording sessions, she caught them off guard with her efficiency and professionalism, with Lewis adding: "It was absolutely nuts, and she took directions very well. [...] I don't know what I was expecting because we went in to cut that record the day after she filed divorce from Kevin [Federline]." "Heaven on Earth" was written by Nicole Morier, Nick Huntington and Michael McGroarty, the latter two known as Freescha. Although Morier had been writing songs with Greg Kurstin and other artists, she felt she "hadn't really found [her] niche" until she wrote "Heaven on Earth", which she described as "a very honest song". After she played the song to her publisher, they met with Spears and her A&R executive Teresa LaBarbera Whites, who both loved it. Morier described "Heaven on Earth" as the song that transformed her career. T-Pain, who co-wrote "Hot as Ice", was in the studio with Spears in February 2007, and stated that one of the three songs they recorded was finished in only an hour. He said that he "thought she was going to be sitting on the couch eating Doritos or nachos or something [...] but she came in, shook my hand, gave me a hug and went right in the booth. She got in there and put it down." Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg, known as Bloodshy & Avant, co-wrote and co-produced "Radar", "Freakshow" and "Toy Soldier" in late 2006. When the album was considered to be finished, they were persuaded by LaBarbera Whites to work on a new track. Winnberg commented that it had always been "an unwritten rule" to not write songs about Spears' personal life, since "Sweet Dreams My LA Ex", an answer song to Justin Timberlake's "Cry Me a River", was rejected by Jive Records. However, the duo wrote "Piece of Me" with Klas Åhlund anyway, as an answer to Spears' critics, and sent it to Spears, who "loved it". Winnberg stated: "We knew that the song broke all the rules we had, [...] When she came to the studio, she was extremely psyched, had learned the lyrics by heart in the car, and recorded the song on half an hour." Before the album's release, LaBarbera Whites told MTV News that the album "shows a lot of growth as a performer. [...] She was very involved in the songs and how they turned out. It's her magic that turns these songs into what they are." Among the producers who worked on Blackout but didn't make the album were Scott Storch, Dr. Luke and Ne-Yo. ## Music and lyrics Danja stated that Spears' objective was to make Blackout a fun, danceable album with uptempo, high-energy music, saying: "She wanted to stay away from being personal. It's fun, it's basic and there's nothing wrong with that. It's about feeling good, celebrating womanhood." The result was a primarily dance-pop, electropop, techno and avant-disco album with R&B elements. The album opens with the lead single "Gimme More", a dance-pop and electropop song. The song opens with a spoken intro in which Spears says the line "It's Britney, bitch". While the lyrics appear to be about dance and sex, they are actually about the media's fascination with her private life, as noted in the lines "Cameras are flashin' while we're dirty dancin' / They keep watchin', keep watchin'". The next track and second single "Piece of Me" runs through a down-tempo dance beat and consists of over-the-top vocal distortions, causing a split sound effect and making it difficult to discern which voice is Spears'. It talks about fame and is written as a biography retelling her mishaps, while she sings in a nearly spoken manner. The third track "Radar" is an electropop and Eurodisco song which features distorted synthesizers emulating sonar pulses, that received comparisons to those of Soft Cell's "Tainted Love" (1981). In its lyrics, Spears lets the subject know he is on her radar, while she lists the qualities the man has. The fourth track and third single "Break the Ice" opens with Spears singing the lines "It's been a while / I know I shouldn't have kept you waiting / But I'm here now". The song features a choir, with Keri Hilson providing backing vocals, causing the song to sound almost like a duet. Hilson explained the song is about "two people, a girl and a guy, [...] and the girl is saying, 'You're a little cold. Let me warm things up and break the ice.'" After the chorus, the bridge begins with Spears saying "I like this part", mimicking Janet Jackson on "Nasty" (1986). The album's fifth track "Heaven on Earth" is a Eurodisco love song with new wave influences. It was inspired by Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" (1977), with three vocal lines taking place over the beat. Nicole Morier commented that the song was written from a very dark place, saying: "I was thinking of someone and thinking they were so perfect and that I have all these imperfections. [...] I think what's touching about it is that it's from the perspective of someone who feels like they really need this person just to feel safe and feel good." At the time of its release, Spears named the song her favorite from Blackout. "Get Naked (I Got a Plan)" is an uptempo track about sex. It is a duet between Spears and Danja, who sings the chorus with his voice distorted to sound like a decaying moan. Spears contributes a series of gasps, sighs and chants and her voice is also distorted. "Freakshow" is built around the "wobbler" effect of dubstep. Spears sings about dancing and being in the spotlight in lyrics such as "Make them other chicks so mad / I'm 'bout to shake my ass / Snatch that boy so fast". During the bridge, her vocals are pitched down low, making her sound masculine. Nearly a decade after the release of Blackout, Spears stated "Freakshow" was one of her favorite non-single tracks, describing it as "sassy". The eighth track "Toy Soldier" is an upbeat dance-pop song reminiscent of Destiny's Child's song "Lose My Breath" (2004), showcasing a military drumroll and features Spears singing about needing a new lover. On "Hot as Ice", she sings in a higher register: "I'm just a girl with the ability to drive a man crazy / Make him call me 'mama', make him my new baby." "Ooh Ooh Baby" contains a flamenco guitar and blends the beat from Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll" (1972) and the melody of the Turtles' "Happy Together" (1967). In its lyrics, she sings to a lover: "Touch me and I come alive / I can feel you on my lips / I can feel you deep inside". Kara DioGuardi said she was inspired by the relationship between Spears and her first son in the studio, saying: "I would look at the two of them, the way they looked at each other and the way she would hold the baby. It kind of struck me as interesting. At times it'd be about a kid at times about a lover." "Perfect Lover" has a propulsive, clattery belly-dance beat, against which Spears sings lyrics such as "Tick-tock / Tick-tock / Come and get me while I'm hot". Standard edition of Blackout closes with "Why Should I Be Sad", a midtempo song directed to her ex-husband Kevin Federline. Bonus track "Outta This World" is a mid-tempo electro song with Spears singing romantic lyrics to a lover: "I keep singing universes about you / There'll always be verses about you." "Everybody" samples Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" (1983) and features Spears singing about the dancefloor in a breathy lower register. "Get Back" is an uptempo dance track with a dark musical tone described as "spooky-sassy". ## Title and packaging In June 2007, Spears posted a message on her official website asking for assistance with a title for her fifth studio album. Among the options were OMG Is Like Lindsay Lohan Like Okay Like, What If the Joke Is on You, Down Boy, Integrity and Dignity. On October 6, Jive Records announced through a press release that the album would be titled Blackout, referring to "blocking out negativity and embracing life fully." Its album cover and booklet images were photographed by Ellen von Unwerth. Jive revealed the cover alongside the album's track listing on October 12. It features Spears sporting black hair and wearing a pink dress, and a white fedora; the rear cover of the physical CD pressings shows the dress in blue. The cover received negative critical response. The album's booklet contains photographs of empty chairs with ripped tabloid pages and still images from the music video for "Gimme More". It does not include a thank-you list, unlike her previous albums' booklets. The centerfold photographs for Blackout feature Spears and a priest posing suggestively inside a confessional. The first image shows Spears, who wears a cross and fishnet stockings, sitting on the priest's lap, while in the second one she leans suggestively against the confessional with the priest sitting on the other side of the partition. After the album was released, the Catholic League's director of communications Kiera McCaffrey stated that the group considered the photos a "cheap publicity stunt" to promote the album and condemned Spears for "mocking a Catholic sacrament". McCaffrey added: "All we see is how troubled this girl is now, especially with her family, losing her kids, with her career on a downward slide. And now she's put out this album and this is her tactic to promote it?" Gil Kaufman of MTV said that the images were reminiscent of Madonna's music video for "Like a Prayer" (1989). ## Release and promotion After days of media speculation, it was confirmed on September 6, 2007, that Spears would open the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards at the Palms Hotel and Casino's Pearl Theatre in Las Vegas on September 9. It was also announced that she was going to perform "Gimme More", with a magic act from illusionist Criss Angel in some parts of the performance. However, the bit is thought to have been rejected by the show's organizers at the last minute. The performance began with Spears singing the first lines of Elvis Presley's 1958 song "Trouble". "Gimme More" began, and the camera panned out to reveal Spears wearing a black, jewel-encrusted bikini and black boots. She was accompanied by male and female dancers dressed in black outfits. Several pole dancers danced in smaller stages around the audience. The performance was universally panned by critics. Jeff Leeds of The New York Times said that "no one was prepared for Sunday night's fiasco, in which a listless Ms. Spears teetered through her dance steps and mouthed only occasional words in a wan attempt to lip-synch her new single". Vinay Menon of the Toronto Star commented Spears "looked hopelessly dazed. She was wearing the expression of somebody who had been deposited at the Palms Casino Resort by a tornado, one that promptly twisted away, taking her clothing and sense of purpose. [...] [She was] lumbering, in slow motion, as if somebody had poured cement into her streetwalker boots". David Willis of BBC stated her performance would "go down in the history books as being one of the worst to grace the MTV Awards". Blackout was set to be released on November 13. However, Jive Records announced on October 10 that the release date would be moved up two weeks, to October 30, due to unauthorized leaks. The following day, Zomba Label Group filed a lawsuit against Perez Hilton, claiming he illegally obtained and posted on his gossip blog at least ten songs and unfinished demos of the album. Zomba representatives alleged the posts had taken place over the course of the previous three months, and requested real and punitive damages as well as legal costs. On June 30, 2009, the parties submitted a stipulation to dismiss the case, pursuant to an undisclosed settlement agreement. The following month, The District Court judge dismissed the case with prejudice. Unlike Spears' previous studio albums, Blackout was not heavily promoted through magazine interviews, talk show appearances or televised performances besides the performance at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards, and was not accompanied by a tour either. On November 27, 2007, MTV launched the contest "Britney Spears Wants a Piece of You", in which fans could direct a separate video for "Piece of Me", using footage of interviews and performances from Spears. Using the MTV Video Remixer, fans could mix and create a mashup of the footage. The winning video premiered on Total Request Live on December 20, and MTV, Jive Records, and Spears herself picked the winner. The winner also received a Haier Ibiza Rhapsody device along with a one-year subscription to Rhapsody, as well as Spears' entire discography released in the United States. ## Singles "Gimme More" was released as the lead single from Blackout on August 31, 2007, to critical acclaim. It peaked at number three on the US Billboard Hot 100, becoming her fifth top-ten entry and also her second highest-peaking single at the time, after her number-one debut single "...Baby One More Time" (1998). It also peaked atop the Canadian Hot 100 and within the top five in Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Croatia, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine and the United Kingdom. Its Jake Sarfaty-directed accompanying music video premiered on October 5. It displayed Spears as a stripper and introduced a departure from Spears' previous highly-choreographed music videos. The video received mixed to negative reviews from critics, who panned Spears' pole dancing as well as the lack of storyline. "Piece of Me" was released as the second single from Blackout on November 27, 2007. Critics gave the song positive reviews, praising its production and defiant lyrics, while citing it as one of the highlights from the album. Rolling Stone ranked the song at number 15 on their list of the 100 best songs of 2007. It peaked at number one in Ireland and within the top ten in Australia, Austria, Canada, the Commonwealth of Independent States, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, New Zealand, Slovakia, Sweden and the United Kingdom. In the United States, it became Spears' fourth Dance Club Songs number-one single, and peaked at number 18 on the Billboard Hot 100. Its accompanying music video, directed by Wayne Isham, portrayed Spears' life at the time and showed her with her friends disguising themselves in order to confuse the paparazzi. Isham's concept was to have Spears confidently parodying her situation. It received mixed reviews from critics, most of whom argued her body was digitally altered. The video was nominated in three categories at the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards and won all of them–Video of the Year, Best Female Video and Best Pop Video–marking Spears' first MTV Video Music Award wins ever. "Break the Ice" was released as the third and final single from Blackout on March 3, 2008. It received acclaim from critics, some of whom called it an album highlight. The song reached the top ten in Canada, Finland and Ireland, peaking within the top 40 in most other countries. In the US, the song peaked at number 43 on the Billboard Hot 100, but became Spears' third consecutive Dance Club Songs number-one single. An accompanying music video, directed by Robert Hales, was released on March 12. The anime video was based on the superheroine character of Spears' 2004 music video for "Toxic", and portrays her destroying a highly secured laboratory with several clones, including one of herself. "Radar" was originally planned to be released as the third single from Blackout, according to Ezekiel Lewis of the Clutch. "Break the Ice" was released instead and "Radar" was chosen as the fourth single. It had already charted in the CIS, New Zealand and Sweden prior to its official release, even reaching the top ten in Sweden. However, the release was pushed back when Spears began recording new material for her sixth studio album Circus (2008). It was later included as a bonus track on Circus and released as the fourth and final single from the album on June 22, 2009. Peaking at number 88 on the US Billboard Hot 100, it became Spears' lowest-peaking US single. ## Critical reception Upon its release, Blackout received mixed to positive reviews from music critics. On music review aggregator Metacritic, the album holds a score of 61 out of 100, indicating "generally favorable reviews", based on 24 reviews. Stephen Thomas Erlewine, senior editor of AllMusic, described the album as "state-of-the-art dance-pop, a testament to skills of the producers and perhaps even Britney being somehow cognizant enough to realize she should hire the best, even if she's not at her best." Dennis Lim of Blender deemed it "her most consistent [album], a seamlessly entertaining collection of bright, brash electropop." Margeaux Watson of Entertainment Weekly commented that while the album was not poetry, "there is something delightfully escapist about Blackout, a perfectly serviceable dance album abundant in the kind of bouncy electro elements that buttressed her hottest hits." A reviewer for NME said that the heavily-processed vocals made Spears sound robotic, adding that "it could really do with a few more human touches." Pitchfork'''s Tom Ewing called "Get Naked (I Got a Plan)" the centerpiece of Blackout, and branded the album "superb modern pop, which could probably only have been released by this star at this moment. Britney as walking catastrophe makes for great car-crash copy and her record can fit into that if you want it to." Ewing also compared the relationship between Spears and the album with American television series Twin Peaks, saying that what made the show "so great wasn't the central good-girl-gone-bad story, it was the strangeness that story liberated. And Britney's off-disc life is both distraction from and enabler for this extraordinary album". Mike Schiller of PopMatters was more critical, saying: "Right down to its utterly garish cover, Blackout is utterly disposable and ultimately forgettable." Melissa Maerz from Rolling Stone explained that the album "is the first time in her career that she's voiced any real thoughts about her life" and that "she's gonna crank the best pop booty jams until a social worker cuts off her supply of hits." Slant Magazine writer Sal Cinquemani unfavorably compared the album to In the Zone, saying that although Blackout "scores well, and its hotness quotient is remarkably high, [it] isn't much of a step forward for Britney following 2003's surprisingly strong In the Zone, for which she received a writing credit on a majority of the songs (as opposed to a scant three here)." Andy Battaglia of The A.V. Club said the album "counts both as a significant event and as a disquieting aberration that couldn't be more mysteriously manufactured or bizarrely ill-timed" in which "every song counts as markedly progressive and strange." Alexis Petridis from The Guardian called it "a bold, exciting album: the question is whether anyone will be able to hear its contents over the deafening roar of tittle-tattle." He elaborated that when faced with a public image in freefall, an artist has two options: making music "that harks back to your golden, pre-tailspin days" to "underlin[e] your complete normality" or "to throw caution to the wind: given your waning fortunes, what's the harm in taking a few musical risks?" Petridis commented that Spears opted for the latter and the results were "largely fantastic." Kelefa Sanneh of The New York Times said: "The electronic beats and bass lines are as thick as Ms. Spears's voice is thin, and as the album title suggests, the general mood is bracingly unapologetic." Sanneh added that Spears had a spectral presence on the album, explaining that when compared to her previous records, "[she] cuts a startlingly low profile on Blackout [...] Even when she was being marketed as a clean-cut ex-Mouseketeer, and even when she was touring the country with a microphone that functioned largely as a prop, something about her was intense." Peter Robinson of The Observer stated that Spears "delivered the best album of her career, raising the bar for modern pop music with an incendiary mix of Timbaland's Shock Value and her own back catalogue." The Phoenix's Ellee Dean said the album "may be more a tribute to the skills of the A-list producers who guided her through the disc than to any of her own talents. But at least she was smart enough to accept that guidance." In his consumer guide for MSN Music, critic Robert Christgau gave the album a B+ and said that "From 'Gimme More''s 'It's Britney bitch' hiya to 'Piece of Me''s single-of-the-year sonics, from 'Ooh Ooh Baby''s 'feel you deep inside' to 'Perfect Lover''s 'touch me there', this album is pure, juicy, plastic get-naked." Retrospective critical reviews, however, have praised Blackout and noted its strong influence on the music of the late 2000s and early 2010s. Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone described it as "one of the most influential albums in modern pop". In a retrospective review published in 2017, Alim Kheraj of Dazed called the album "one of the most inventive pop records in recent history", the record that "forevermore proved that [Spears'] career was way more than just an 'inept pantomime'[.]" Kheraj also said that the album "was the result of a hazardous moment in pop culture history that saw a serendipitous and symbiotic relationship between an artist eroding her past and producers forging their future that payed off." Publications such as Billboard, The Fader, Nylon and Vice have regarded Blackout as Spears' best effort to date. In 2022, Elise Soutar of PopMatters noted the album "feels fresher than ever 15 years on". ## Accolades ### Awards and nominations \|- ! scope="row"\| 2008 \| NRJ Music Award \| International Album of the Year \| rowspan="2"\| Blackout \| \| align="center"\| \|- ! scope="row"\| 2008 \| MTV Europe Music Award \| Best Album \| \| align="center"\| ### Listings ## Commercial performance In the United States, Blackout sold 124,000 copies during its first day of availability according to Nielsen SoundScan. Jessica Letkemann of Billboard compared the sales favorably to those of the previous week's number-one album Carnival Ride by Carrie Underwood, which sold 49,000 copies, estimating that Blackout would possibly debut atop the Billboard 200. On November 6, 2007, Billboard announced that even though the Eagles's first-week sales of Long Road Out of Eden had handily surpassed Spears, they would not debut atop the chart because of rules forbidding albums exclusively sold at one retail outlet–Walmart in this case–from entering the Billboard 200. During the afternoon of the same day, Walmart issued a press release announcing that Long Road Out of Eden had sold 711,000 copies. At night, it was announced through an article on Billboard.biz that after an agreement with Nielsen SoundScan, Billboard would allow exclusive albums only available through one retailer to appear on the charts, effective that same week. Hence, Long Road Out of Eden topped the Billboard 200, while Blackout debuted at number two, with first-week sales of 290,000 copies. It became Spears' first studio album not to debut at number one. The album, however, set the record for the highest first-week digital sales for a female artist at the time. Following the release of Circus in December 2008, Blackout re-entered the chart at number 198, with sales of 4,600 copies; it has spent a total of 34 weeks on the chart. As of March 2015, the album has sold one million copies in the country, being certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). In Canada, Blackout debuted atop the Canadian Albums Chart with sales of 29,000 units, becoming her first number-one album there since Britney (2001). It was certified platinum by the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) for shipments of 100,000 copies. In Mexico, the album debuted at number 18, peaking at number two in its third week. In Australia and New Zealand, the album debuted at numbers three and eight, respectively. It was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) and gold by the Recording Industry Association of New Zealand (RIANZ). In Japan, the album peaked at number four on the Oricon Albums Chart, being certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ). In the United Kingdom, Blackout debuted at number two on the UK Albums Chart with sales of 42,000 units, behind Long Road Out of Eden, and stayed on the chart for 28 weeks. It was certified platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) for shipments of 300,000 copies. The album debuted at the summit in Ireland and on the European Top 100 Albums. Across Europe, it reached the top ten in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Switzerland. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the album was the world's 32nd best-selling album of 2007. By the end of 2008, Blackout had sold 3.1 million copies worldwide. ## Impact and legacy When Blackout was released, Spears' behavior in public began to clash with her image. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic stated that Spears was an artist that always relied on her "carefully sculpted sexpot-next-door persona", but for Blackout "those images [we]re replaced by images of Britney beating cars up with umbrellas, wiping her greasy fingers on designer dresses, and nodding off on-stage, each new disaster stripping away any residual sexiness in her public image." Erlewine added that the album served as a soundtrack "for Britney's hazy, drunken days, reflecting the excess that's splashed all over the tabloids", while noting that the album had a coherence that the public Spears lacked. "When she dropped Blackout in 2007, the music industry scoffed, but then proceeded to spend the next few years imitating it to death, to the point where everything on pop radio sounded like Blackout," said Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone. Blackout has been referred by contemporary critics and fans as the "Bible of Pop" for its impact on the music industry, and is considered one of the most influential albums of all time. English singer and songwriter Sam Smith wrote on their Instagram page, "One of the greatest fucking albums of all time. No arguments". Tom Ewing of Pitchfork noted that after "Freakshow" leaked online, a dubstep forum thread on the song hit seven pages in twenty-four hours, generating mixed reactions and exemplifying that "it still seems [that] when the mainstream borrows underground music, [it] brings it into the wider pop vocabulary." He also attributed the quality of every track of Blackout to economic reasons, since one of the main causes album sales began to suffer during the digital era is due to the "unbundling" of albums in online stores – making it easier for consumers to buy some tracks rather than the entire album. Ewing explained that "The Revolver blueprint for pop albums – every track good, every track a potential hit – makes more sense than ever. Especially if a star can keep sonically up-to-date in a fast-moving market." Reviewers noted the use of Auto-Tune in Spears' voice. Ewing said that Blackout serves as a reminder of how instantly recognizable Spears' vocals are, saying that "treated or untreated: her thin Southern huskiness is one of the defining sounds of 00s pop." He noted that the album "is a masterclass in autotune and vocal treatment as a studio instrument, disrupting and jamming the songs as much as it helps them." While reviewing Spears' demo of "Telephone", Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone compared it to "Piece of Me", "proving yet again how much impact Britney has had on the sonics of current pop. People love to make fun of Britney, and why not, but if 'Telephone' proves anything, it's that Blackout may be the most influential pop album of the past five years." In June 2012, Blackout was added to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's musical library and archive. Calling it a "mutant pop classic", Dazed cited Blackout as one of the most influential albums of the last decade for the way it suffused hip hop, pop, R&B and EDM, and further said "Spears once lamented that she wasn't a girl but not yet a woman... Blackout was the signal that this transition had reached its climax. Yet rather than emerging as a Stepford pop princess, the Britney that appeared was disruptive and peddling demented pop music." ## Track listing Notes - signifies a vocal producer - signifies a co-producer - signifies a remixer - signifies an additional producer Sample credits - "Ooh Ooh Baby" blends the beat from Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll", and the melody of The Turtles' "Happy Together". - "Everybody" contains a sample from "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)", as written by Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart. ## Personnel Credits are adapted from the liner notes of Blackout. - Klas Åhlund – bass (track 2), songwriting (track 2) - Marcella "Ms. Lago" Araica – engineering (tracks 1, 4, 6, 9 and 11), mixing (tracks 1, 4, 6, 9 and 11), programming (tracks 1, 4 and 6), songwriting (tracks 1, 4, 6, 9 and 11) - Jim Beanz – backing vocals (tracks 1, 4, 9 and 11), songwriting (tracks 1, 4 and 11), vocal production (tracks 1, 4, 6, 9 and 11) - Bloodshy & Avant – bass (tracks 2, 3, 7 and 8), engineering (tracks 2, 3, 7 and 8), guitar (tracks 2, 3, 7 and 8), keyboards (tracks 2, 3, 7 and 8), production (tracks 2, 3, 7 and 8), programming (track 2, 3, 7 and 8), songwriting (tracks 2, 3, 7 and 8) - Kobie "The Quarterback" Brown – clearance - Miguel Bustamante – mixing assistance (track 9) - Jim Carauna – engineering (tracks 3 and 7) - Robyn Carlsson – backing vocals (track 2) - The Clutch – engineering (tracks 3 and 7), production (tracks 3 and 7) - Erick Coomes – bass (track 10), guitar (track 10), songwriting (track 10) - Tom Coyne – mastering (all tracks) - Danja – production (tracks 1, 4, 6, 9 and 11), songwriting (tracks 1, 4, 6, 9 and 11) - Kara DioGuardi – backing vocals (track 10), production (tracks 5 and 10), songwriting (track 10), vocal production (track 5) - Corté "The Author" Ellis – backing vocals (track 6), songwriting (track 6) - Damon Ellis – clearance - David M. Erlich – production coordination (tracks 1, 4, 6, 9 and 11) - Devine Evans – digital effects (track 6), Pro Tools editing (track 6) - Mike Evans – production coordination (tracks 1, 4, 6, 9 and 11) - Niklas Flyckt – mixing (tracks 2, 3, 7 and 8) - Freescha – engineering (track 5), instrumentation (track 5), production (track 5), songwriting (track 5) - Sean "The Pen" Garrett – backing vocals (track 8), production (track 8), songwriting (track 8) - Brian Garten – engineering (track 12) - Hart Gunther – engineering assistance (track 12) - Mark Gray – engineering assistance (track 4) - Jeri Heiden – art direction, design - Keri Hilson – backing vocals (tracks 1, 4 and 11), songwriting (tracks 1, 4 and 11), vocal production (track 1) - Mike Houge – engineering (track 10), mixing assistance (track 10) - Chad Hugo – mixing (track 12), production (track 12) - Richard "Segal" Huredia – engineering (track 10) - Cara Hutchinson – Zomba production coordination - Lisa Jachno – manicure - Henrik Jonback – bass (track 7), guitar (tracks 2, 3 and 7), songwriting (tracks 2, 3 and 7) - Ryan Kennedy – engineering assistance (track 12) - Ezekiel Lewis – backing vocals (track 7), songwriting (tracks 3 and 7) - Tony Maserati – mixing (tracks 5 and 10) - Miike Snow – engineering assistance (tracks 9 and 11), mixing assistance (tracks 1, 4, 6, 9 and 11) - Jeff Monachino – clearance - Nicole Morier – backing vocals (track 5), songwriting (track 5) - Balewa Muhammad – songwriting (track 3) - Vernon Mungo – engineering (track 8) - Jackie Murphy – art direction, design - Glen Nakasako – art direction, design - Farid "Fredwreck" Nassar – guitar (track 10), keyboards (track 10), production (track 10), songwriting (track 10) - Candice Nelson – backing vocals (tracks 3 and 7), songwriting (track 3) - Brian Paturalski – engineering (track 10), vocal engineering (track 5) - Jenny Prince – A&R coordination - J. Que – songwriting (tracks 3 and 7) - Nancy Roof – A&R administration - David Schmidt – clearance - Rob Skipworth – engineering assistance (track 8) - Britney Spears – executive production, songwriting (tracks 7 and 10), vocals (all tracks) - Supa Engineer Duro – mixing (track 12) - T-Pain – arrangement (track 9), backing vocals (track 9), songwriting (track 9) - Ron Taylor – editing (tracks 1, 4, 6, 9 and 11) - Francesca Tolot – make-up - Valente – engineering assistance (track 1) - Kristen Vallow – prop styling - Ellen von Unwerth – photography - Windy Wagner – backing vocals (track 9) - Magnus "Mango" Wallbert – additional programming (track 8), songwriting (track 8) - Teresa LaBarbera Whites – A&R - Pharrell Williams – backing vocals (track 12), production (track 12), songwriting (track 12) - Patti Wilson – styling - Jordan "DJ Swivel" Young – additional engineering (track 12), mixing assistance (track 12) ## Charts ### Weekly charts ### Year-end charts ## Certifications and sales ## Release history ## See also - Britney Spears discography - List of number-one albums of 2007 (Canada) - List of number-one albums of 2007 (Ireland) - Rolling Stone'''s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time

Greenville Bridge

Bridge in United States of America

The Greenville Bridge, or the Jesse Brent Memorial Bridge, is a cable-stayed bridge over the Mississippi River, in the United States, carrying US 82 and US 278 between Refuge, Mississippi, and Shives, Arkansas. When it opened in 2010, it was the fourth-longest cable-stayed bridge in North America. The Benjamin G. Humphreys Bridge, the first bridge to connect the two towns, had become functionally obsolete. Its narrow road had only two lanes with no shoulders. Because of its location near a sharp bend in the Mississippi River, the bridge had become a hazard to river traffic; barges and towboats frequently collided with it. In 1994, a study concluded that a new bridge was needed and the old one should be torn down. Construction was begun in 2001 and the new bridge opened in 2010. In 2011, the process of removing the old bridge began. ## Description Opened in 2010, the Greenville Bridge carries US 82/278 over the Mississippi River between Refuge, Mississippi and Shives, Arkansas. It is located 0.5 miles (0.80 km) down river from the original bridge, built in 1940. Designed by HNTB, it is a four-lane cable-stayed bridge with more than 2.5 miles (4.0 km) of bridge deck straddled by two concrete towers 425 feet (130 m) feet high and anchored by concrete piers planted 120 feet (37 m) below the riverbed. It has four fans of strand steel cable connected to the top of the towers which support the deck. Each of the bridge's four lanes is 12 feet (4 m) wide. The outside shoulders are 12 feet (4 m) wide and the inside shoulder width is 8 feet (2 m). The bridge has a main span of 1,378 feet (420 m). At the time of its opening, it was the fourth-longest cable-stayed bridge in North America. Both the old and new bridges are geographically mostly in Arkansas, as the state lines were determined prior to the shift west of the Mississippi River. ## History The first Greenville Bridge, Benjamin G. Humphreys Bridge, was built by the company now known as HNTB and opened to much fanfare in 1940 as the "pathway to progress" for the Mississippi Delta. It was a through-truss design and had a span of 840 feet (260 m). Until 1943, this was the longest bridge for vehicles on the Mississippi River. Over time, the bridge supported increasing volumes of highway traffic and vehicles hitting the bridge. In the 1950s, an Air Force plane crashed into the bridge. Though the bridge remained structurally sound, it was becoming functionally obsolete. It had only two narrow highway lanes and no shoulders. An accident or the crossing of very large vehicles such as a large combine could force the bridge to close. With river traffic increasing, damage from barge collisions increased. By 1972, the Greenville Bridge was hit more times by barges than any other bridge on the Mississippi. The bridge was located close to a sharp bend in the Mississippi; towboats and barges had difficulty making the sharp turn and regaining their course in time to avoid a collision with the bridge. Over the years, many have not been able to make the turn quickly and have hit it. The bridge had become a danger to river traffic. A 1994 engineering study by the Mississippi Department of Transportation explored alternatives to upgrading the crossing of US 82 and issued a report that explored a four-lane crossing at Greenville. It concluded the best of several alternatives it identified was to build a new bridge 0.5 miles (0.80 km) downriver from the old one and to remove the old bridge. Additional studies evaluated the type of bridge to build, and by 1995 the cable-stayed bridge was chosen as the best design to fit the river and soil conditions, as well as providing sufficient clearance for river navigation. Engineering plans were completed in 1999. US 278 is panned to be relocated to the proposed Charles W. Dean Bridge when if and when built and completed. ## Construction HNTB, of Kansas City, Missouri, was the designer and consulting engineer for both the new bridge as well as the original Benjamin G. Humphreys Bridge. The federal government provided \$110 million to begin building the main part of the bridge consisting long spans supported by cables. The main superstructure construction began in December 2001. Massman Construction Company in a joint venture with Traylor Brothers, Inc. received the contract to construct two large piers in the river; these were built using both floating caissons and open caisson construction. The construction on the last main span section of the bridge was finished in April 2006. Building the approaches, including shorter spans of approach bridge work and structural support systems for the bridge, was the responsibility of each state. For both states, the approach bridges are constructed of a series of three span units, each unit 120 feet (37 m) long. Construction of Arkansas' 2.5 miles (4 km) approach of highway and bridge, costing \$66 million, began in March 2006; Mississippi began its 1.8 miles (2.9 km) approach in April 2006, costing almost \$86 million. Hill Brothers Construction and Jensen Construction, in a joint venture with the Rasmussen Group, were awarded the contract for the eastern approach of US 82 in Greenville to the Mississippi River crossing. Hills Brothers Construction was awarded an \$85.9 million contract to work on the road deck of the Mississippi approach to the bridge, the concrete footings, and the substructure and superstructure of that portion. Austin Bridge and Road was awarded a \$65 million contract to build Arkansas's 4,657 feet (1,419 m) of approach bridge and 3,225 feet (983 m) of connecting roadway which was completed in August 2009. The remaining contract, to apply a latex surface to the bridge, add stripes, tie US 82 into the approaches and dismantle the Humphreys Bridge, was awarded in January 2010. It took sixteen years from the initial developing stage begun in 1994, until the Greenville Bridge opened to traffic on August 4, 2010. The entire cost of the bridge totaled \$336 million. In 2011, the massive process of removing the old bridge by cutting it into small sections to be recycled was begun and was expected to be completed by September 2012. At times, the river has been closed to traffic to aid the demolition. The job was dangerous and at least two workers died during the demolition. ## See also - List of crossings of the Lower Mississippi River - Charles W. Dean Bridge

John S. Loisel

American pilot

Colonel John Simon Loisel (May 21, 1920 – January 20, 2010) was an American air ace, credited with having shot down 11 Japanese aircraft during World War II. Loisel was born in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho and joined the United States Army Air Forces in 1941. By age 25, Loisel had spent more time in combat than any other American pilot in World War II, with over three years in the Pacific. Serving in the Pacific he quickly distinguished himself by first becoming an ace after achieving five kills in just a two-month period, and then becoming a double ace. He became a career Air Force officer when the United States Army Air Forces was disbanded in 1947 and would serve in the United States Air Force until 1970. Loisel commanded Fighter Groups in both World War II and Korea, along with several peacetime commands. He retired from the Air Force as a colonel. Following his military career, Loisel taught high school physics for 15 years in the Plano Independent School District. ## Early life Loisel was born in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho on May 21, 1920, and moved with his family to Norfolk, Nebraska by 1922. His parents, Simon M. and Lucille Loisel were first-generation Americans of French-Canadian parents. The elder Loisel worked as a commercial traveler in the lumber industry. Simon Loisel did well enough to keep a live-in servant and to reside in an expensive house for the time. Prior to John being born, Lucille Loisel had been employed as a teacher at a Catholic school in Coeur d'Alene. John Loisel was the eldest child, with six younger brothers and two sisters. After graduating from high school, Loisel attended Wayne State Teacher's College, Nebraska (now Wayne State College) and the University of Nebraska from 1938 to 1941. He then entered the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) for flight training at Mather Field, California on March 10, 1941, and received his pilot wings on October 31, 1941. ## Military career ### World War II Upon receiving his wings and a commission as a second lieutenant, Loisel was initially posted for duties as a flight instructor while waiting for assignment. He was then posted to a unit in the Philippine Islands. When he was en route by ship, he learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In late-1941 he was assigned as a Bell P-39 Airacobra fighter pilot with the 36th Fighter Squadron, 8th Fighter Group, based in New Guinea. By June 1943, he had flown 83 combat missions in both the P-39D and the P-400 versions. Loisel was then selected as cadre for the newly formed 432nd Fighter Squadron, 475th Fighter Group, the first Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter group formed in the USAAF. Once assigned to the 432nd Fighter Squadron, Loisel began to quickly show his abilities once he started flying an aircraft that could compete with the top-line Japanese fighters. Flying a P-38H, serial no. 42–66682, named the Screaming Kid, he shot down five Japanese fighters within his first two months of flying in the P-38s and earned a promotion to captain. On August 21, 1943, while escorting USAAF bombers near Wewak, New Guinea, he shot down two Kawasaki Ki-61 "Tony" fighters, his first two victories. Less than a month later, on September 22, 1943, he claimed a Mitsubishi A6M "Zero" fighter near Finschafen, New Guinea. Slightly less than two months later Loisel obtained "ace" status by downing two more Zeroes near Oro Bay, New Guinea. In December 1943, he picked up two more kills, a Zero on the 15th and another Zero on the 21st, during the build-up for the landings at Cape Gloucester. Loisel picked up his eighth victory on January 23, 1944, over a Zero. On April 3, 1944, while escorting Douglas A-20 Havoc bombers near Hollandia, New Guinea, he shot down a Nakajima Ki-43 "Oscar" fighter and a Mitsubishi A6M3 "Hamp" fighter over Lake Sentani, giving him his ninth and tenth kills and making him a double ace. On January 22, 1944, he assumed command of the 432nd Fighter Squadron. This unit was tasked with striking targets in New Guinea and the Indonesian Spice Islands to support General Douglas MacArthur's return to the Philippines. In August 1944, Loisel returned to the United States as a major. In January 1945, Loisel returned to the 475th Fighter Group as the Operations Officer. After his return to combat following his assignment in the United States, Loisel had his eleventh and final aerial victory on March 28, 1945, when he shot down a Nakajima Ki-84 "Frank" fighter near Tree Island, Indochina (Vietnam). On May 15, 1945, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and on July 15, 1945 he became the Commanding Officer of the 475th Fighter Group. He relinquished command on April 18, 1946, and returned to the United States. He had, by the age of 25, become a lieutenant colonel, a fighter group commander, and earned the Silver Star. His assignment to the Pacific Theatre of Operations for over three years was longer than any other American fighter pilot served in combat, and he flew more than 875 hours in combat. Loisel was the fourth leading ace in the 475th Fighter Group, flying with notable aces Thomas McGuire (38 kills), Charles MacDonald (27 kills) and Daniel T. Roberts, Jr. (15 kills). He was known for his aggressiveness, instructing his pilots to "Head for the main body of the enemy – disregard stragglers ... [and] plow into the largest bunch you see." ### Korea On return to the United States in 1946, he married Rachel 'Rae' Hultman, and re-enrolled at the University of Nebraska to earn his bachelor's degree in physics, graduating in 1949. Beginning in May 1947, he served as the commanding officer of the 63rd Fighter Squadron (an Air Defense – Interceptor unit), based at Selfridge Air Force Base, Michigan, where he led the transition of the unit to the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star jet fighter. After a staff tour at Headquarters, Air Defense Command, Loisel returned to combat in Korea in May 1953, having been promoted to full colonel on December 1, 1951. Once there, Loisel commanded the 474th Fighter Bomber Group, flying the Republic F-84 Thunderjet fighter. He flew an additional 22 combat missions. One of the subordinate squadrons under his command (the 429th Fighter Bomber Squadron) set an Air Force record for the number of combat sorties flown (80 in one day) in June 1953 and the 474th Fighter Bomber Group set a Fifth Air Force record of 254 sorties on that same day. ### Post-war career Following the Korean War, Loisel had assignments that included tours as the Commander, 83rd Fighter Group and Deputy Commander, 4th Tactical Fighter Wing. In 1970, having achieved the rank of colonel, over 5,500 flying hours, and 323 combat missions, he retired from the Air Force. ## Later life Following his retirement from the Air Force, Loisel attended North Texas State University (now the University of North Texas), obtaining his master's degree in physics in 1972. Loisel then taught physics at Plano Senior High School in Plano, Texas from 1972 to 1985. Loisel was an "avid golfer" and a member of the American Fighter Aces Association. Loisel was married to Rae Loisel for 63 years. They had a son, John S. Loisel, Jr., and a daughter, Susan Bryan. He died of natural causes on January 20, 2010, in Plano, Texas and is buried at the Dallas-Fort Worth National Cemetery. He is survived by his wife, daughter, and two sisters, Mary Margaret Pappas and Anne Schueth. His son John, Jr. and his brothers predeceased him. ## Awards and decorations - USAF command pilot badge - Silver Star - Legion of Merit - Distinguished Flying Crosses with three oak leaf clusters - Air Medal with two silver oak leaf clusters - Presidential Unit Citation with four oak leaf clusters - American Defense Service Medal with one star - Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with two silver stars - World War II Victory Medal - Army of Occupation Medal - National Defense Service Medal - Korean Service Medal - Air Force Longevity Service Ribbon with silver oak leaf - Philippine Liberation Medal - Philippine Independence Medal - Republic of Korea Ulchi Medal with silver star - United Nations Korea Medal ### Other honors - Grand Marshal, Dallas Veteran's Day Parade, Dallas, Texas, 2007 - Nebraska Aviation Hall of Fame, inducted 1994 - U.S. Air Force Gathering of Eagles, inducted 1991

Cómplices

2008 studio album by Luis Miguel

Cómplices (transl. Accomplices) is the 18th studio album by Mexican singer Luis Miguel, released on 2 May 2008 by Warner Music Latina. The record is a collaboration with Spanish musician Manuel Alejandro, who wrote and arranged the songs, and co-produced the album with Luis Miguel. Musically, it is a pop album of mostly ballads and a few uptempo tracks with lyrics emphasizing romance. Two singles were released to promote the album: "Si Tú Te Atreves" and "Te Desean". To further promote the record, Luis Miguel embarked on the year-long Cómplices Tour from September 2008 to September 2009. He performed in North America and a few countries in South America. Upon its release, Cómplices was met with mixed reactions from music critics. While Luis Miguel's vocals and his decision to work with Alejandro were praised, the record was criticized for sounding too similar to his previous albums. Cómplices was nominated as Best Latin Pop Album at the 51st Annual Grammy Awards (2009) as well as Latin Pop Album of the Year by a Solo Artist at the 2009 Latin Billboard Music Awards. Commercially, Cómplices reached number one in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Spain, and the Billboard Top Latin Albums chart in the United States. By November 2015, the record had sold over 1.2 million copies. ## Background In 2006, Luis Miguel released Navidades, a holiday album of Christmas standards sung in Spanish. On 17 July the following year, Billboard reported that Luis Miguel was set to release an album of original material on September. Spanish singer and songwriter Rosana mentioned that she wrote songs for Luis Miguel's next project—as they shared the same record label—and she hoped he would accept them. On 14 March 2008, Luis Miguel announced that he planned to release an album on May of that year featuring original tracks composed by Spanish musician Manuel Alejandro and co-produced by both. The record's title, Cómplices, was announced on 1 April 2008 and was his first pop album of new material since 33 (2003). Alejandro previously composed the tracks "Al Que Me Siga" and "Si Te Perdiera", for Luis Miguel's albums Mis Romances (2001) and Grandes Éxitos (2005), respectively. The album was mainly recorded at the Record Plant studio in Los Angeles, California, with additional recordings done at Ocean Way Recording and Westlake Recording Studios; the mixing was completed at Record Plant studio as well. Cómplices is the first disc where Luis Miguel allowed someone else to have complete control of the project. Alejandro, a respected composer in the Latin pop field, formerly worked with other artists such as Julio Iglesias, Plácido Domingo, Raphael, and José José. According to Luis Miguel, it took eight or nine years to prepare the disc. ## Composition The ballads on Cómplices are accompanied by an orchestra that included a piano, violins, and cellos. All but three of the songs are ballads with "De Nuevo el Paraíso", "Estrenando Amor", and "Tu Imaginación" being uptempo numbers which incorporate "funky" wind instruments, a female choir, and a "seductive rhythm." Luis Miguel likened the songs on the disc to movies, stating: "Sometimes you are the bad guy, other times the good guy, and some even, the third in discord." The opening track, "Te Desean," is an "envy-drenched" song in which Luis Miguel sings to his beloved that "other men court her and desire her as he did before she was his." It is followed by "Dicen", about a love that is "on the verge of falling apart." In "Ay, Cariño", the artist asks "What are you made of?" and is excited about the cradle and a home. Luis Miguel dedicated the track to his son, who was born before the album's release. On "De Nuevo el Paraíso", his love "fears commitment" while he celebrates the liberty of being alone again. "Si Tú Te Atreves", a half ballad and half bolero song, speaks of "an intense and impossible love" in which the singer proposes a "passionate encounter with a person as tied up or committed as he is." "Amor a Mares" is a Peruvian waltz and the lyrics include: "Te quiero cerca para mi noche fría" / "Te quiero cerca para mi ser vacío" / "Para morir contigo de muerte lenta" / "De darte tanta vida" / "Y amor divino" ("I want you near for my cold night" / I want you near to be my emptiness"/ "To die slowly with you" / "To give you so much life"/ "And divine love"). On "Estrenando Amor," he chants: "Hoy otra vez de nuevo estoy / Estrenando amor / Sueños y caricias / Nuevos besos, nueva vida / Estrenando amor / Amasando amor / Construyendo amor / Divino amor" ("Now I'm new again" / Dreams and caresses" / New kisses, new life" / "Premiering love" / "Kneading love" / "Constructing love"/ "Divine love"). "Bravo Amor, Bravo" is a "filmic analogy of the couple who feigns love and passion" and "fakes kisses." The proceeding track "Tu Imaginación", a disco tune, has the artist enjoying listening to his lover's "diversity, fantasy and ambiguity." The title track deals with "eroticism without measure that surpasses reason." Luis Miguel cites on "Amor de Hecho": "Mejor mil veces amor de hecho; mejor mil veces, que amor deshecho ("Better a thousand times love indeed; Better a thousand times, than undone love"). The final cut on the album, "Se Amaban", is about a love who "steals partners" and chronicles a couple "who adored each other, in whose relationship a stranger intervened, awakening black passions in her heart and sowing weeds in his." The bonus track, "Disfraces", is dedicated to his then-partner Aracely Arámbula. Manuel Alejandro wrote this song while living with Luis Miguel in Acapulco. ## Promotion ### Release Cómplices was released in Spain on 2 May 2008 and worldwide four days later to coincide with Mother's Day. On 6 May Luis Miguel held a press conference at the Casino Español in Mexico City to celebrate the launch of the album. Three days later he held another press conference in Madrid, Spain to present the album. A two-disc holiday edition of the record was released in Spain on 2 December 2008 and contains both Cómplices and Navidades. A special edition of the album, Cómplices: Edición Especial was issued on 28 April 2009. It includes a DVD featuring the music videos for "Si Tú Te Atreves" and "Te Desean" as well as a new track "Disfraces", five commemorative postcards, and a digital download for the remix of "Tu Imaginación" by Hex Hector. The special edition was also launched to tie-in with Mother's Day. ### Singles "Si Tú Te Atreves" was released as the album's lead single on 7 April 2008, and it reached number 11 and four on the Billboard Hot Latin Songs and Latin Pop Airplay charts in the US, respectively. It reached the top of the Chilean music charts according to the Associated Press. The music video for the song was filmed in Los Angeles, California, directed by Rebecca Blake, and released on 27 April 2008. The second single, "Te Desean", was released on 30 June 2008, and also reached number one in Chile and number five in Uruguay. The accompanying music video, also directed by Blake, was filmed in Malibu and released on 14 July 2008. In addition to the singles, the title track and "Ay, Cariño" peaked at number two and three in Uruguay, respectively, and in Nicaragua at number two. "Amor de Hecho" also received radio airplay in Panama. "Amor a Mares" peak at number one in Chile. "Disfraces" was released in 2009 as a promo single for the special edition of Cómplices. ### Tour To promote Cómplices, Luis Miguel embarked on a worldwide tour commencing in the United States. The North American leg of the tour cumulated 40 concerts, including a show in Toronto, Canada. Luis Miguel also toured in the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Chile. In Argentina, his four shows in the Vélez Sarsfield Stadium in Buenos Aires sold 200,000 tickets, an additional 100,000 tickets were purchased throughout the country. The first leg of the tour ended 5 December 2008 in Punta del Este, Uruguay, completing 53 concerts in 94 days. The second leg of the tour began in Mexico City's Nacional Auditorium on 20 January 2009. He tried to break his previous record in this venue with 30 concerts in the same tour, achieved with México En La Piel Tour. However, he only completed 25 shows. Luis Miguel continued his Mexican tour with four concerts in the Telmex Auditorium of Guadalajara, and another four concerts in Monterrey's Arena. He completed the last 10 concerts of 25 scheduled in Mexico City between 24 February to 8 March. From 12 to 15 September he played the last four concerts of the tour in The Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The entire tour consisted of 91 concerts in 42 cities and 8 countries. Miguel was accompanied by a 12-piece band during his tour which included horns, keyboards, guitars, two female backup singers, and a 11-piece mariachi band. His hour and forty-five minute concert consisted mainly of pop songs and ballads from Cómplices and his earlier career, as well as medleys of boleros and mariachi songs from his past catalog in a couple of medleys. The stage was made up of LED screens displaying abstract images in each song, 3 big screens, one in the middle and one on each side of the stage, also included crystal clear steps and a gleaming floor, surrounded by a display of powerful lights and sound. Regarding Luis Miguel's performance in Chicago, the Chicago Sun-Times editor Laura Emerick commented that the concert "displayed Luismi in his many musical phases: Latin pop crooner, bolero specialist, pop-rock swinger and mariachi master". She noted that Miguel "was all smiles, all upbeat attitude and genuinely happy to be there", and complimented the five-minute overture and video-clip reel that "Elvis might have admired". Also commented that "Luismi appeared to be at his peak on his ranchera section — where his rich baritone sounds most at home, he even can hold his own with greats of the past". According to Pollstar, the tour grossed 36.1 million and was attended by 450,000 spectators in 73 shows reported. During his concerts in Mexico City he received a special award, a Silver Dahlia for his 180 concerts at the National Auditorium since 1991, gathering 1.5 million spectators in total. In addiction, the tour received a nomination at the 2009 Latin Billboard Music Awards for the Latin Tour of the Year. ## Critical reception and accolades On its release, Cómplices was met with mixed reactions from music critics. AllMusic editor Andree Farias rated the album 3.5 of 5 stars, calling it his most "hopelessly romantic disc" of the artist's career and "pristinely executed by Latin pop standards. She lauded Luis Miguel's decision to collaborate with Alejandro, questioning why it took long for both artists to work together, and stated that the composer's "eye for detail" is "exquisite." Farias noted that while the record is "poetically" flawless, it "doesn't result in a big sonic departure for the vocalist." Billboard En Español critic Marcela Álvarez wrote a positive review of the album, also praising the collaboration between Luis Miguel and Alejandro. She found "Si Tú Te Atreves" to be the record's best track and concluded that "more than one summer love will be born from this album." A.D. Amorosi of The Philadelphia Inquirer, rating it three of four stars, named Luis Miguel "a Mexican Sinatra of sorts," comparing Alejandro's production as the Spanish version of Nelson Riddle. Amorosi praised Luis Miguel's vocals as a "romantic voice whose caramel-coated tones oozed perfectly through the grandest of strings and the slightest of Latin rhythms." A reviewer for Vista magazine called it the "Hottest CD of the Season" and declared that fans of the singer will not "stop playing it." In a mixed review of the album, El Nuevo Herald writer Sandra Palacios denoted the production as a result of Luis Miguel's experiences, and called it "retro, just like the 70's." Palacios noted that songs such as "Si Tú Te Atreves" were similar to his previous songs such as "Por Debajo de la Mesa" and "O Tú o Ninguna" and wondered when the singer would release new material that is "fresh and renovative." A reviewer for Montreal Gazette was not impressed with the record. While admiring Luis Miguel's vocals, the writer criticized Cómplices as a "collection of cookie-cutter boring tracks" which would "put one to sleep." Similarly, writing for Vida en el Valle, Olivia Ruiz found the songs to be "monotonous" and felt none of them stood out. She regarded tracks like "De Nuevo al Paraíso" and "Tu Imaginación" giving "little variety to the sounds of the ballads" and surmised the disc is "perfect for a romantic evening." In a negative review of Cómplices, José María Álvarez of Reforma criticized Luis Miguel for being unimaginative and felt the tracks were identical to each other. He unfavorably regarded "Ay, Cariño" as an overtone of fellow Mexican singer Emannuel and found the strings on the record to be "bland." At the 51st Annual Grammy Awards in 2009, Cómplices received a Grammy nomination for Best Latin Pop Album, which went to La Vida... Es Un Ratico (2007) by Juanes. At the 2009 Latin Billboard Music Awards, it was nominated for Latin Pop Album of the Year by a Solo Artist, but lost to 95/08 Éxitos (2008) by Enrique Iglesias. ## Commercial performance Within 24 hours of it release, Cómplices sold over 320,000 copies and received four platinum certifications. In Mexico, it debuted at the top of the Top 100 Mexico chart and spent six weeks on this spot. Cómplices was certified diamond by AMPROFON in just three weeks after its launch for sales of 400,000 copies and was the second best-selling album of 2008 in the country after Para Siempre (2007) by Vicente Fernández. In the US, Cómplices debuted and peaked at number 10 in the Billboard 200 on the week of 24 May 2008, making it the singer's highest ranking album on the chart, which was previously held by Romances (1997) at number 14. The set bowed at No. 10 with 32,000 copies on its opening week. Leila Cobo noted, however, that it was not the singer's best sales week ever. In addition, the record debuted at number one on the Billboard Top Latin Albums chart, where it spent two weeks on this spot. This made Luis Miguel the artist with the most number ones on the chart, until his record was broken by Marco Antonio Solís in 2013. It sold over 72,000 units in the country and was eventually awarded a platinum certification in the Latin field by the Recording Industry Association of America for shipments of 100,000 units. In Spain, Cómplices reached number one on its album charts and sold 65,000 copies in 2008, making it the 14th best selling album of the year. Cómplices was certified platinum by PROMUSICAE for shipping over 80,000 copies. In South America, the disc reached number one in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. Additionally, it was certified multi-platinum in Argentina and Chile and platinum in Venezuela. As of November 2015, Cómplices had sold over 1.2 million units worldwide. ## Track listing ## Personnel Adapted from the Cómplices liner notes: ### Performance credits Musicians - Victor Loyo – drums - Gerardo Carrillo – bass - Victor Feijoo – guitar - Manuel Alejandro – keyboards - Pepe Dougan – keyboards - Francisco Loyo – acoustic piano - Bruce Dukov – violin solo - Larry Corbett – cello solo - Wayne Bergeron – trumpet - Gary Grant – trumpet - Daniel Higgins – saxophone - William Reichenbach – trombone - Tommy Aros – percussion - Alejandro Carballo – orchestra director Violin - Bruce Dukov - Richard Altenbach - Charlie Bisharat - Rebecca Bunnell - Nicole Bush - Darius Campo - Mario DeLeón - David Ewart - Armen Garabedian - Alan Grunfeld - Tamara Hatwan - Peter Kent - Razdan Kuyumjian - Alyssa Park - Michelle Richards - Guillermo Romero - Mari Tsumura - Josefina Vergara Cello - Larry Corbett - Jodi Burnett - Mattehew Cooker - Trevor Handy - Paula Hochalter - Armen Ksajikian - Dane Little - Timothy Landauer - Miguel Martínez - Steve Richards - Daniel Smith - Christina Soule - Rudolph Stein - Kevan Torfeh - Sebastian Tottcher - John Walz Chorus - Juan Del Castillo - Bambi Jones - Leyla Hoyle Guerrero - Carlos Murguia - Kenny O'Brien - Giselda Vatcky - Terry Wood ### Technical credits - Luis Miguel – producer - Manuel Alejandro – producer, basic arrangements, arrangements (keyboards, strings, pianos) - Alejandro Asensi – executive producer - Francisco Loyo – music co-production - David Reitzas – mixer - Rafa Sardina – engineer - Ron McMaster – mastering engineer - Victor Feijoo – basic arrangements ("Tú Imaginación" and "Estrenando Amor"), arrangements (programming, chrorus, guitars), brass arrangements - Pepe Dougan – basic arrangements ("Tú Imaginación" and "Estrenando Amor"), arrangements (programming, chrorus, guitars), brass arrangements - Jerry Hey – brass arrangements - Nate Hertwick – recording assistant - Ryan Kennedy – recording assistant - Wesley Seidman – recording assistant - Antonio Resendéz – recording assistant - Alberto Tolot – photography - Jeri Heiden – graphic design - Shari Sutcliffe – production coordinator ### Recording and mixing locations - Ocean Way Recording Studios, Hollywood, CA – recording - Record Plant Studios, Hollywood, CA - recording, mixing - Westlake Recording Studios, Hollywood, CA – recording - Capitol Mastering, Hollywood, CA – mastering ## Charts ### Weekly charts ### Monthly charts ### Year-end charts ## Certifications and sales ## Release history ## See also - 2008 in Latin music - List of number-one albums of 2008 (Mexico) - List of number-one Billboard Top Latin Albums of 2008 - List of number-one Billboard Latin Pop Albums from the 2000s - List of number-one debuts on Billboard Top Latin Albums

Google Earth

3D globe-based map program owned by Google

Google Earth is a computer program that renders a 3D representation of Earth based primarily on satellite imagery. The program maps the Earth by superimposing satellite images, aerial photography, and GIS data onto a 3D globe, allowing users to see cities and landscapes from various angles. Users can explore the globe by entering addresses and coordinates, or by using a keyboard or mouse. The program can also be downloaded on a smartphone or tablet, using a touch screen or stylus to navigate. Users may use the program to add their own data using Keyhole Markup Language and upload them through various sources, such as forums or blogs. Google Earth is able to show various kinds of images overlaid on the surface of the earth and is also a Web Map Service client. In 2019, Google revealed that Google Earth now covers more than 97 percent of the world, and has captured 10 million miles of Street View imagery. In addition to Earth navigation, Google Earth provides a series of other tools through the desktop application, including a measure distance tool. Additional globes for the Moon and Mars are available, as well as a tool for viewing the night sky. A flight simulator game is also included. Other features allow users to view photos from various places uploaded to Panoramio, information provided by Wikipedia on some locations, and Street View imagery. The web-based version of Google Earth also includes Voyager, a feature that periodically adds in-program tours, often presented by scientists and documentarians. Google Earth has been viewed by some as a threat to privacy and national security, leading to the program being banned in multiple countries. Some countries have requested that certain areas be obscured in Google's satellite images, usually areas containing military facilities. ## History The core technology behind Google Earth was originally developed at TerraVision in the late 1990s at Berlin, Germany. At the time, the company was developing 3D gaming software libraries. As a demo of their 3D software, they created a spinning globe that could be zoomed into, similar to the Powers of Ten film. The demo was popular, but the board of Intrinsic wanted to remain focused on gaming, so in 1999, they created Keyhole, Inc., headed by John Hanke. Keyhole then developed a way to stream large databases of mapping data over the internet to client software, a key part of the technology, and acquired patchworks of mapping data from governments and other sources. The product, called "Keyhole EarthViewer", was sold on CDs for use in fields such as real estate, urban planning, defense, and intelligence; users paid a yearly fee for the service. Despite making a number of capital deals with Nvidia and Sony, the small company was struggling to pay and retain employees. Fortunes for the company changed in early 2003 during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, when Dave Lorenzini (Director at Keyhole) enticed CNN, ABC, CBS and other major news networks to use their sophisticated 3D flyby imagery to illustrate Baghdad Activities, in exchange for on-air attribution. During the invasion, It was used extensively by Miles O'Brien and other on-air broadcasters, allowing CNN and millions of viewers to follow the progress of the war in a way that had never been seen before. Public interest in the software exploded and Keyhole servers were not able to keep up with demand. Keyhole was soon contacted by the Central Intelligence Agency's venture capital firm, In-Q-Tel, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, for use with defense mapping databases, which gave Keyhole a much-needed cash infusion. Intrinsic Graphics was sold in 2003 to Vicarious Visions after its gaming libraries did not sell well, and its core group of engineers and management including Brian McClendon and Michael Jones transitioned to Keyhole with Hanke remaining at the head. At the time, Google was finding that over 25% of its searches were of a geospatial character, including searches for maps and directions. In October 2004, Google acquired Keyhole as part of a strategy to better serve its users. In 2021, Google replaced its layers feature with a new one on its Google Earth software. This replacement consolidated some layers, but also removed some layers and features. ## Imagery Google Earth's imagery is displayed on a digital globe, which displays the planet's surface using a single composited image from a far distance. After zooming in far enough, the imagery transitions into different imagery of the same area with finer detail, which varies in date and time from one area to the next. The imagery is retrieved from satellites or aircraft. Before the launch of NASA and the USGS's Landsat 8 satellite, Google relied partially on imagery from Landsat 7, which suffered from a hardware malfunction that left diagonal gaps in images. In 2013, Google used datamining to remedy the issue, providing what was described as a successor to the Blue Marble image of Earth, with a single large image of the entire planet. This was achieved by combining multiple sets of imagery taken from Landsat 7 to eliminate clouds and diagonal gaps, creating a single "mosaic" image. Google now uses a myriad of sources to provide imagery in a higher quality and with greater frequency. Imagery is hosted on Google's servers, which are contacted by the application when opened, requiring an Internet connection. Imagery resolution ranges from 15 meters of resolution to 15 centimeters. For much of the Earth, Google Earth uses digital elevation model data collected by NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission. This creates the impression of three-dimensional terrain, even where the imagery is only two-dimensional. `Google asserts that every image created from Google Earth using satellite data provided by Google Earth is a copyrighted map. Any derivative from Google Earth is made from data on which Google claims copyright under United States Copyright Law. Google grants licenses in this data allowing, among other things, non-commercial personal use of the images (e.g., on a personal website or blog) as long as copyrights and attributions are preserved. By contrast, images created with NASA's globe software WorldWind use The Blue Marble, Landsat, or USGS imagery, each of which is in the public domain.` `In version 5.0, Google introduced Historical Imagery, allowing users to view earlier imagery. Clicking the clock icon in the toolbar opens a time slider, which marks the time of available imagery from the past. This feature allows for observation of an area's changes over time. Utilizing the timelapse feature allows for the ability to view a zoomable video as far back as 32 years.` ### 3D imagery Google Earth shows 3D building models in some cities, including photorealistic 3D imagery made using photogrammetry. The first 3D buildings in Google Earth were created using 3D modeling applications such as SketchUp and, beginning in 2009, Building Maker, and were uploaded to Google Earth via the 3D Warehouse. In June 2012, Google announced that it would be replacing user-generated 3D buildings with an auto-generated 3D mesh. This would be phased in, starting with select larger cities, with the notable exception of cities such as London and Toronto which required more time to process detailed imagery of their vast number of buildings. The reason given is to have greater uniformity in 3D buildings and to compete with Nokia Here and Apple Maps, which were already using this technology. The coverage began that year in 21 cities in four countries. By early 2016, 3D imagery had been expanded to hundreds of cities in over 40 countries, including every U.S. state and encompassing every continent except Antarctica. In 2009, in a collaboration between Google and the Museo del Prado in Madrid, the museum selected 14 of its paintings to be photographed and displayed at the resolution of 14,000 megapixels inside the 3D version of the Prado in Google Earth and Google Maps. ### Street View On April 15, 2008, with version 4.3, Google fully integrated Street View into Google Earth. Street View displays 360° panoramic street-level photos of select cities and their surroundings. The photos were taken by cameras mounted on automobiles, can be viewed at different scales and from many angles, and are navigable by arrow icons imposed on them. Using Street View on Google Earth, users can visit and explore 30 UNESCO World Heritage Sites with historical context and pins for each. The sites include the Great Pyramid, the Taj Mahal, Sagrada Família, the Dolomites, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and the Great Sphinx. In 2019, Walt Disney World partnered with Google to create Pixar Street View. A unique activation that enabled viewers to search for hidden Pixar Easter eggs in Toy Story Land at Disney's Hollywood Studios through street view. This creative collaboration elevated Pixar's iconic tradition of hiding Easter eggs in films and introduced it to an immersive new platform. ### Water and ocean Introduced in Google Earth 5.0 in 2009, the Google Ocean feature allows users to zoom below the surface of the ocean and view the 3D bathymetry. Supporting over 20 content layers, it contains information from leading scientists and oceanographers. On April 14, 2009, Google added bathymetric data for the Great Lakes. In June 2011, Google increased the resolution of some deep ocean floor areas from 1-kilometer grids to 100 meters. The high-resolution features were developed by oceanographers at Columbia University's Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory from scientific data collected on research cruises. The sharper focus is available for about 5 percent of the oceans. This can be seen in the Hudson off New York City, the Wini Seamount near Hawaii, and the Mendocino Ridge off the U.S. Pacific coast. ## Outer space Google has programs and features, including within Google Earth, allowing exploration of Mars, the Moon, the view of the sky from Earth and outer space, including the surfaces of various objects in the Solar System. ### Google Sky Google Sky is a feature that was introduced in Google Earth 4.2 on August 22, 2007, in a browser-based application on March 13, 2008, and to Android smartphones, with augmented reality features. Google Sky allows users to view stars and other celestial bodies. It was produced by Google through a partnership with the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, the science operations center for the Hubble Space Telescope. Dr. Alberto Conti and his co-developer Dr. Carol Christian of STScI planned to add the public images from 2007, as well as color images of all of the archived data from Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys. Then-newly released Hubble pictures were added to the Google Sky program as soon as they were issued. New features such as multi-wavelength data, positions of major satellites and their orbits as well as educational resources are provided to the Google Earth community and also through Christian and Conti's website for Sky. Also visible on Sky mode are constellations, stars, galaxies, and animations depicting the planets in their orbits. A real-time Google Sky mashup of recent astronomical transients, using the VOEvent protocol, is provided by the VOEventNet collaboration. Other programs similar to Google Sky include Microsoft WorldWide Telescope and Stellarium. ### Google Mars Google Mars is an application within Google Earth that is a version of the program for imagery of the planet Mars. Google also operates a browser-based version, although the maps are of a much higher resolution within Google Earth, and include 3D terrain, as well as infrared imagery and elevation data. There are also some extremely high-resolution images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera that are of a similar resolution to those of the cities on Earth. Finally, there are many high-resolution panoramic images from various Mars landers, such as the Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, that can be viewed in a similar way to Google Street View. Mars also has a small application found near the face on Mars. It is called Meliza, a robot character the user can speak with. ### Google Moon Originally a browser application, Google Moon is a feature that allows exploration of the Moon. Google brought the feature to Google Earth for the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission on July 20, 2009. It was announced and demonstrated to a group of invited guests by Google along with Buzz Aldrin at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. Google Moon includes several tours, including one for the Apollo missions, incorporating maps, videos, and Street View-style panoramas, all provided by NASA. ## Other features Google Earth has numerous features that allow the user to learn about specific places. These are called "layers", and include different forms of media, including photo and video. Some layers include tours, which guide the user between specific places in a set order. Layers are created using the Keyhole Markup Language, or KML, which users can also use to create customized layers. Locations can be marked with placemarks and organized in folders; For example, a user can use placemarks to list interesting landmarks around the globe, then provide a description with photos and videos, which can be viewed by clicking on the placemarks while viewing the new layer in the application. In December 2006, Google Earth added a new integration with Wikipedia and Panoramio. For the Wikipedia layer, entries are scraped for coordinates via the . There is also a community layer from the project Wikipedia-World. More coordinates are used, different types are in the display, and different languages are supported than the built-in Wikipedia layer. The Panoramio layer features pictures uploaded by Panoramio users, placed in Google Earth based on user-provided location data. In addition to flat images, Google Earth also includes a layer for user-submitted panoramic photos, navigable in a similar way to Street View. Google Earth includes multiple features that allow the user to monitor current events. In 2007, Google began offering users the ability to monitor traffic data provided by Google Traffic in real-time, based on information crowdsourced from the GPS-identified locations of cell phone users. ### Flight simulators In Google Earth 4.2, a flight simulator was added to the application. It was originally a hidden feature when introduced in 2007, but starting with 4.3, it was given a labeled option in the menu. In addition to keyboard control, the simulator can be controlled with a mouse or joystick. The simulator also runs with animation, allowing objects such as planes to animate while on the simulator. Another flight simulator, GeoFS, was created under the name GEFS-Online using the Google Earth Plug-in API to operate within a web browser. As of September 1, 2015, the program now uses the open-source program CesiumJS, due to the Google Earth Plug-in being discontinued. ### Liquid Galaxy Liquid Galaxy is a cluster of computers running Google Earth creating an immersive experience. On September 30, 2010, Google made the configuration and schematics for their rigs public, placing code and setup guides on the Liquid Galaxy wiki. Liquid Galaxy has also been used as a panoramic photo viewer using KRpano, as well as a Google Street View viewer using Peruse-a-Rue Peruse-a-Rue is a method for synchronizing multiple Maps API clients. ## Versions Google Earth has been released on macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android. The Linux version began with the version 4 beta of Google Earth, as a native port using the Qt toolkit. The Free Software Foundation considers the development of a free compatible client for Google Earth to be a High Priority Free Software Project. Google Earth was released for Android on February 22, 2010, and on iOS on October 27, 2008. The mobile versions of Google Earth can make use of multi-touch interfaces to move on the globe, zoom or rotate the view, and allow to select the current location. An automotive version of Google Earth was made available in the 2010 Audi A8. On February 27, 2020, Google opened up its web-based version of Earth to browsers like Firefox, Edge, and Opera. ### Google Earth Pro Google Earth Pro was originally the business-oriented upgrade to Google Earth, with features such as a movie maker and data importer. Up until late January 2015, it was available for \$399/year, though Google decided to make it free to the public. Google Earth Pro is currently the standard version of the Google Earth desktop application as of version 7.3. The Pro version includes add-on software for movie making, advanced printing, and precise measurements, and is currently available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. ### Google Earth Plus Discontinued in December 2008, Google Earth Plus was a paid subscription upgrade to Google Earth that provided customers with the following features, most of which have become available in the free Google Earth. One such feature was GPS integration, which allowed users to read tracks and waypoints from a GPS device. A variety of third-party applications have been created which provide this functionality using the basic version of Google Earth by generating KML or KMZ files based on user-specified or user-recorded waypoints. ### Google Earth Enterprise Google Earth Enterprise is designed for use by organizations whose businesses could take advantage of the program's capabilities, for example by having a globe that holds company data available for anyone in that company. As of March 20, 2015, Google has retired the Google Earth Enterprise product, with support ended on March 22, 2017. Google Earth Enterprise allowed developers to create maps and 3D globes for private use, and host them through the platform. GEE Fusion, GEE Server, and GEE Portable Server source code was published on GitHub under the Apache2 license in March 2017. ### Google Earth Studio Google Earth Studio is a web-based version of Google Earth used for animations using Google Earth's 3D imagery. As of June 2021, it is preview-only and requires signing up to use it. It features keyframe animation, presets called "Quick-Start Projects", and 3D camera export. ### Google Earth 9 Google Earth 9 is a version of Google Earth first released on April 18, 2017, having been in development for two years. The main feature of this version was the launching of a new web version of Google Earth. This version added the "Voyager" feature, whereby users can view a portal page containing guided tours led by scientists and documentarians. The version also added an "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, represented by a die, which takes the user to a random location on Earth along with showing them a "Knowledge Card" containing a short excerpt from the location's Wikipedia article. ### Google Earth Plug-in The Google Earth API was a free beta service, allowing users to place a version of Google Earth into web pages. The API enabled sophisticated 3D map applications to be built. At its unveiling at Google's 2008 I/O developer conference, the company showcased potential applications such as a game where the player controlled a milktruck atop a Google Earth surface. The Google Earth API has been deprecated as of December 15, 2014, and remained supported until December 15, 2015. Google Chrome ended support for the Netscape Plugin API (which the Google Earth API relies on) by the end of 2016. ### Google Earth VR On November 16, 2016, Google released a virtual reality version of Google Earth for Valve's Steam computer gaming platform. Google Earth VR allows users to navigate using VR controllers, and is currently compatible with the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive virtual reality headsets. On September 14, 2017, as part of Google Earth VR's 1.4 update, Google added Street View support. ## Google Earth Outreach Google Earth Outreach is a charity program, through which Google promotes and donates to various non-profit organizations. Beginning in 2007, donations are often accompanied by layers featured in Google Earth, allowing users to view a non-profit's projects and goals by navigating to certain related locations. Google Earth Outreach offers online training on using Google Earth and Google Maps for public education on issues affecting local regions or the entire globe. In June 2008, training was given to 20 indigenous tribes in the Amazon rainforest, such as the Suruí, to help them preserve their culture and raise awareness for the problem of deforestation. Non-profit organizations featured in Google Earth via the Outreach program include Arkive, the Global Heritage Fund, WaterAid, and the World Wide Fund for Nature. ## Google Earth Engine Google Earth Engine is a cloud computing platform for processing satellite imagery and other geospatial and observation data. It provides access to a large database of satellite imagery and the computational power needed to analyze those images. Google Earth Engine allows observation of dynamic changes in agriculture, natural resources, and climate using geospatial data from the Landsat satellite program, which passes over the same places on the Earth every sixteen days. Google Earth Engine has become a platform that makes Landsat and Sentinel-2 data easily accessible to researchers in collaboration with the Google Cloud Storage. Google Earth Engine provides a data catalog along with computers for analysis; this allows scientists to collaborate using data, algorithms, and visualizations. The platform provides Python and JavaScript application programming interfaces for making requests to the servers, and includes a graphical user interface for developing applications. An early prototype of Earth Engine, based on the Carnegie Institute for Science's CLASlite system and Imazon's Sistema de Alerta de Desmatamento (SAD) was demonstrated in 2009 at COP15, and Earth Engine was officially launched in 2010 at COP16, along with maps of the water in the Congo basin and forests in Mexico produced by researchers using the tool. In 2013, researchers from University of Maryland produced the first high-resolution global forest cover and loss maps using Earth Engine, reporting an overall loss in global forest cover. Other early applications using Earth Engine spanned a diverse variety of topics, including: Tiger Habitat Monitoring, Malaria Risk Mapping, Global Surface Water, increases in vegetation around Mount Everest, and the annual Forest Landscape Integrity Index. Since then, Earth Engine has been used in the production of hundreds of scientific journal articles in many fields including: forestry and agriculture, hydrology, natural disaster monitoring and assessment, urban mapping, atmospheric and climate sciences and soil mapping. Earth Engine has been free for academic and research purposes since its launch, but commercial use has been prohibited until 2021, when Google announced a preview of Earth Engine as a commercial cloud offering and early adopters that included Unilever, USDA and Climate Engine. ## Controversy and criticism The software has been criticized by a number of special interest groups, including national officials, as being an invasion of privacy or posing a threat to national security. The typical argument is that the software provides information about military or other critical installations that could be used by terrorists. Google Earth has been blocked by Google in Iran and Sudan since 2007, due to United States government export restrictions. The program has also been blocked in Morocco since 2006 by Maroc Telecom, a major service provider in the country. In the academic realm, increasing attention has been devoted to both Google Earth and its place in the development of digital globes. In particular, the International Journal of Digital Earth features multiple articles evaluating and comparing the development of Google Earth and its differences when compared to other professional, scientific, and governmental platforms. Google Earth's role in the expansion of "Earth observing media" has been examined to understand how it is shaping a shared cultural consciousness regarding climate change and humanity's capacity to treat the Earth as an engineerable object. ### Defense - In 2006, one user spotted a large topographical replica in a remote region of China. The model is a small-scale (1/500) version of the Karakoram Mountain Range, which is under the control of China but claimed by India. When later confirmed as a replica of this region, spectators began entertaining military implications. - In July 2007, it was reported that a new Chinese Navy Jin-class nuclear ballistic missile submarine was photographed at the Xiaopingdao Submarine Base south of Dalian. - Hamas and the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades have reportedly used Google Earth to plan Qassam rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza. (See: Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel) - On February 13, 2019, 3D imagery was launched in four of Taiwan's cities: Taipei, New Taipei, Taoyuan, and Taichung. This has caused concerns from Taiwanese officials, such as Taiwan's Defense Minister Yen Teh-fa, saying that the 3D imagery exposed some of its Patriot missile sites. Ten days later on February 23, Google confirmed that it would be removing all of its 3D imagery from Taiwan. ### National security - Former President of India A. P. J. Abdul Kalam expressed concern over the availability of high-resolution pictures of sensitive locations in India. Google subsequently agreed to censor such sites. - The Indian Space Research Organisation said Google Earth poses a security threat to India and seeks dialogue with Google officials. - The South Korean government expressed concern that the software offers images of the presidential palace and various military installations that could possibly be used by its hostile neighbor North Korea. - In 2006, Google Earth began offering detailed images of classified areas in Israel. The images showed Israel Defense Forces bases, including secret Israeli Air Force facilities, Israel's Arrow missile defense system, military headquarters and Defense Ministry compound in Tel Aviv, a top-secret power station near Ashkelon, and the Negev Nuclear Research Center. Also shown was the alleged headquarters of Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence service, whose location is highly classified. - As a result of pressure from the United States government, the residence of the Vice President at Number One Observatory Circle was obscured through pixelization in Google Earth and Google Maps in 2006, but this restriction has since been lifted. The usefulness of this downgrade is questionable, as high-resolution photos and aerial surveys of the property are readily available on the Internet elsewhere. Capitol Hill also used to be pixelized in this way. The Royal Stables in The Hague, Netherlands, also used to be pixelized. This is also true for airports in Greece. - The lone surviving gunman involved in the 2008 Mumbai attacks admitted to using Google Earth to familiarise himself with the locations of buildings used in the attacks. - Michael Finton, aka Talib Islam, used Google Earth in planning his attempted September 24, 2009, bombing of the Paul Findley Federal Building and the adjacent offices of Congressman Aaron Schock in Springfield, Illinois. ### Other concerns - Operators of the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, asked Google to censor high-resolution pictures of the facility. They later withdrew the request. - In 2009, Google superimposed old woodblock prints of maps from 18th- and 19th-century Japan over Japan today. These maps marked areas inhabited by the burakumin caste, formerly known as eta (穢多), literally "abundance of defilement", who were considered "non-humans" for their "dirty" occupations, including leather tanning and butchery. Descendants of members of the burakumin caste still face discrimination today and many Japanese people feared that some would use these areas, labeled etamura (穢多村 "eta village"), to target current inhabitants of them. These maps are still visible on Google Earth, but with the label removed where necessary. - Late 2000s versions of Google Earth require a software component running in the background that will automatically download and install updates. Several users expressed concerns that there is not an easy way to disable this updater, as it runs without the permission of the user. - In February 2014, the Berlin-based ART+COM charged that Google Earth products infringe U.S. Patent No. RE44,550, entitled "Method and Device for Pictorial Representation of Space-related Data" and had remarkable similarity to Terravision which was developed by ART+COM in 1993 and patented in 1995. The court decided against Art+Com both at trial and on appeal because trial testimony showed that Art+Com was aware of an existing, substantially similar invention that it failed to mention as "prior art" in its patent application, thereby invalidating their patent. Stephen Lau, a former employee of federally funded, not-for-profit Stanford Research Institute ("SRI") testified that he helped develop SRI Terravision, an earth visualization application, and that he wrote 89% of the code. He further testified that he shared and discussed SRI Terravision code with Art+Com. Both systems used a multi-resolution pyramid of imagery to let users zoom from high to low altitudes, and both were called Terravision. Art+Com agreed to rename their product because SRI's came first. Stephen Lau died from COVID-19 in March 2020. ## In popular culture Google Earth is featured prominently in the 2021 German miniseries The Billion Dollar Code, which serves as a fictionalized account of a 2014 patent infringement lawsuit brought against Google by the German creators of Terravision. The series, which was shown on Netflix is prefaced by an episode of interviews with the ART+COM developers of Terravision and their legal representative. One of the co-founders of Keyhole has published a first-hand account claiming to debunk the origins, timelines and interpretations depicted in the fictionalized miniseries. ## See also - Elevation - Space flight simulation game - List of space flight simulation games - Planetarium software - List of observatory software - Orthophotomap, the type of aerial and satellite imagery present in Google Earth - Virtual globe, the category of software that includes Google Earth - Web mapping

Rob Refsnyder

Korean-American baseball player (born 1991)

Robert Daniel Refsnyder (born Kim Jung-tae (Korean: 김정태), March 26, 1991) is a Korean American professional baseball second baseman and right fielder for the Boston Red Sox of Major League Baseball (MLB). He has previously played in MLB for the New York Yankees, Toronto Blue Jays, Tampa Bay Rays, Texas Rangers, and Minnesota Twins. Refsnyder was born in Seoul, South Korea, and adopted by a couple from Southern California when he was five months old. He became a three-sport star at Laguna Hills High School, and enrolled at the University of Arizona, where he played college baseball for the Arizona Wildcats as their right fielder. Winning the 2012 College World Series (CWS) with the Arizona Wildcats baseball team, Refsnyder was named the CWS Most Outstanding Player. The Yankees selected Refsnyder in the fifth round of the 2012 MLB draft. They converted him from a right fielder into a second baseman, and he became one of their top prospects. He made his MLB debut in 2015, but did not become a regular for the Yankees. He was traded to the Blue Jays in 2017, and played for the Rays in the 2018 season. After spending the 2019 season in the minor leagues, Refsnyder made the Rangers' roster in 2020. He played for the Twins in 2021 and joined the Red Sox in 2022. ## Early life Refsnyder was born Kim Jung-tae in Seoul, South Korea. When he was five months old, he was adopted by Jane and Clint Refsnyder, a couple of German and Irish descent from Laguna Hills, California, through Holt International Children's Services. Three years before the Refsnyders adopted Rob, they had adopted a girl, Elizabeth, also from South Korea. Clint, a former college basketball player at Muhlenberg College, never let his son win at anything, pushing him to compete at his best. Rob did not beat Clint at a pick-up game of basketball until he was 17. Refsnyder became a fan of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim of Major League Baseball (MLB), rooting for Vladimir Guerrero. He attended annual Christmas day games of the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association with his father. ## Amateur career Refsnyder attended Laguna Hills High School in Laguna Hills, California, and he played baseball, basketball, and American football. He played as a wide receiver and outside linebacker for the football team in his junior year, and as the quarterback in his senior year. In his senior season, he was named his division's Offensive Player of the Year for the football team and co-most valuable player of the Pacific Coast League for the baseball team. Colleges in the Pacific-10 Conference recruited Refsnyder to play quarterback for their football teams. Enrolling at the University of Arizona, Refsnyder played college baseball for the Arizona Wildcats baseball team in the Pacific-10 Conference. In his freshman year, in the 2010 season, Refsnyder batted .344 with two home runs in 57 games. He was an All-Pacific-10 Honorable Mention. As a sophomore, Refsnyder played in all 60 Wildcats games and batted .320 with six home runs. Refsnyder was a first team selection for the All-Pacific 10 Conference teams. After his sophomore season, Refsnyder played collegiate summer baseball for the Wareham Gatemen of the Cape Cod Baseball League. As a junior during the 2012 Wildcats season, Refsnyder batted .364, leading the Wildcats with eight home runs, and recording 66 runs batted in (RBIs) and 14 stolen bases. In the first game of the 2012 College World Series (CWS), Refsnyder hit a home run. Refsnyder batted 10-for-21 (.476) in the 2012 CWS and the Wildcats defeated the South Carolina Gamecocks. He was named the CWS Most Outstanding Player. ## Professional career ### New York Yankees #### Minor leagues (2012–2015) The New York Yankees selected Refsnyder in the fifth round, with the 187th overall selection, in the 2012 MLB draft. Though he played as a right fielder for Arizona, the Yankees profiled Refsnyder as a second baseman. Refsnyder signed with the Yankees on July 6, receiving a \$205,900 signing bonus. He reported to the Charleston RiverDogs of the Class A South Atlantic League, where he made his professional debut on July 10. He batted .241 for Charleston. The Yankees assigned Refsnyder to Charleston to start the 2013 season. After posting a .370 batting average and a .452 on-base percentage (OBP) in 13 games, Refsnyder was promoted to the Tampa Yankees of the Class A-Advanced Florida State League on April 19. He batted .283 with a .408 OBP and a .404 slugging percentage in 117 games for Tampa, hitting six home runs and recording 51 RBIs. Refsnyder began the 2014 season with the Trenton Thunder of the Class AA Eastern League. With the help of Marcus Thames, the Thunder's hitting coach, Refsnyder made changes to his swing that reduced unnecessary movement, resulting in an increase in his power output. He won the Eastern League Player of the Week Award for the week of May 26 – June 1. After batting .342 with six home runs in 60 games for Trenton, including a .430 average in his last 28 games, while also improving his defense at second base, the Yankees promoted Refsnyder to the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders of the Class AAA International League on June 10. After batting .371 with three home runs in his first 19 games with Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, Yankees general manager Brian Cashman described Refsnyder's progress as "pretty impressive", and added that "he's forcing us to pay attention." Cashman had Refsnyder play in the outfield to prepare for a possible promotion to the major leagues. Refsnyder finished the season with a .300 average, eight home runs, and 33 RBIs in 77 games for Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. The Yankees gave Refsnyder an opportunity to compete for a spot with the major league team in 2015, but assigned him to Scranton/Wilkes-Barre to start the season so that he could continue to work on his defense. #### Major leagues (2015–2017) After he batted .290 with seven home runs, 17 doubles, and 37 RBIs in 81 games for the RailRiders, the Yankees promoted Refsnyder to the major leagues on July 11. With his callup, Refsnyder became the fourth position player in MLB history to be born in South Korea, following Hee-seop Choi, Shin-Soo Choo, and Jung-ho Kang. He made his major league debut that day, and recorded his first two hits, including a two-run home run, on July 12. After playing four games, where he batted 2-for-13 (.167), the Yankees optioned Refsnyder to Scranton/Wilkes-Barre to activate Carlos Beltrán from the disabled list. He batted .225 in the second half of the RailRiders' season. The Yankees promoted Refsnyder to New York on September 1, 2015, as part of their September call-ups. Refsnyder played infrequently, with the Yankees initially using José Pirela, until late September, when he began to receive more regular playing time. He ended the regular season with a .302 average with two home runs, and started for the Yankees in the 2015 American League Wild Card Game, which they lost. During spring training in 2016, the Yankees began to play Refsnyder as a third baseman. He competed with Ronald Torreyes for a utility infielder role with the Yankees for Opening Day. The Yankees chose Torreyes and optioned Refsnyder to Scranton/Wilkes-Barre on March 27. He played third base, second base, and right field with Scranton/Wilkes-Barre before the Yankees promoted him to the major leagues on May 17. Following injuries to first baseman Mark Teixeira and Dustin Ackley, the Yankees began to play Refsnyder at first base. He batted .262 in 122 at bats before he was optioned back to the RailRiders on August 11. He was again promoted to the major leagues as a September call-up. Refsnynder finished the 2016 season with a .250 average in 58 major league games, while he batted .316 in 54 games for the RailRiders. After competing for a role on the Yankees' Opening Day roster for the 2017 season, the Yankees optioned Refsnyder to Scranton/Wilkes-Barre for the start of the season. The Yankees chose Pete Kozma, who could play shortstop, over Refsnyder. When the Yankees acquired David Robertson, Todd Frazier, and Tommy Kahnle on July 19, Refsnyder was designated for assignment to make room on their 40-man roster. Through July 19, Refsnyder had a .135 batting average in 37 at bats for the Yankees and a .312 batting average in 38 games for the RailRiders. ### Toronto Blue Jays (2017) On July 23, 2017, the Yankees traded Refsnyder to the Toronto Blue Jays for Ryan McBroom. The Blue Jays assigned Refsnyder to the Buffalo Bisons of the International League. After he played in four games for Buffalo, shortstop Troy Tulowitzki went on the disabled list, and the Blue Jays promoted Refsnyder to the major leagues on July 29 to provide infield depth behind Ryan Goins and Darwin Barney. Refsnyder made his debut with the Blue Jays later that day, pinch running in the ninth inning of a 6–5 loss to the Los Angeles Angels. As second baseman Devon Travis was also injured, Refsnyder got playing time with Toronto as a second baseman. Refsnyder batted .196 in 32 games for Toronto. ### Tampa Bay Rays (2018) The Cleveland Indians claimed Refsnyder from the Blue Jays off of waivers on November 20, 2017. He competed for a spot on Cleveland's 2018 Opening Day roster, but batted .191 during spring training. When setting their Opening Day roster, the Indians chose Brandon Guyer over Refsnyder, and traded Refsnyder to the Tampa Bay Rays for cash considerations on March 27, 2018. The Rays included Refsnyder on their Opening Day roster and he batted ninth in the batting order as the designated hitter on Opening Day. Primarily playing against left-handed pitchers, Refsnyder batted .167 in 40 games before the Rays designated him for assignment on June 19. Refsnyder cleared waivers and was sent outright to the Durham Bulls of the International League. Refsnyder batted .283 in 51 games for Durham. Durham won the International League championship, and Refsnyder was named the postseason's most valuable player, as he batted .367 with two home runs and six RBIs. ### Arizona Diamondbacks and Cincinnati Reds (2019) Refsnyder signed a minor-league contract with the Arizona Diamondbacks for the 2019 season on November 20, 2018, receiving a non-roster invitation to spring training. The Diamondbacks assigned him to the Reno Aces of the Class AAA Pacific Coast League to start the 2019 season. He played one game for Reno, going 0-for-4 with one strikeout. On April 7, the Diamondbacks traded Refsnyder to the Cincinnati Reds in exchange for a player to be named later or cash considerations. The Reds assigned him to the Louisville Bats of the International League. Refsnyder batted .315 with 10 home runs and 45 RBIs in 85 games for the Bats. The Reds released him from the organization in August. ### Texas Rangers (2020) Refsnyder signed a minor league contract with the Texas Rangers for the 2020 season on December 5, 2019. He made the Rangers' Opening Day roster in 2020, which had been delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. After hitting .200/.265/.233 without a home run in 34 plate appearances for the Rangers, Refsnyder was designated for assignment on August 24. He elected to become a free agent. ### Minnesota Twins (2021) The Minnesota Twins signed Refsnyder to a minor league contract with a non-roster invitation to spring training on December 17, 2020. He began the 2021 season with the St. Paul Saints. On May 15, the Twins selected Refsnyder to the active roster. With center fielders Byron Buxton and Jake Cave injured, the Twins had Refsnyder serve as the backup center fielder to Max Kepler, despite having never before played center field in the major leagues. When Kepler went on the injured list, on May 30, Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said that he had no choice but to "ride Refsnyder" in center field. He batted .320 in 16 games before going on the seven-day injured list due to concussion symptoms that began after he ran into the wall at Camden Yards while chasing a home run during the game of June 2. In his first game back, on June 8, Refsnyder strained his left hamstring while running out a double, and he went back onto the injured list. Refsnyder finished the 2021 season with a .245 batting average, two home runs, 12 RBIs, and one stolen base in 51 games. On November 5, 2021, the Twins outrighted him off of the 40-man roster, and he elected for free agency two days later. ### Boston Red Sox (2022–present) Refsnyder signed a minor league contract with the Boston Red Sox on November 30, 2021. The Red Sox invited Refsnyder to spring training, where he competed with Travis Shaw, Franchy Cordero, Christin Stewart, Jonathan Araúz, and Yolmer Sánchez for one of two available spots on Boston's Opening Day roster. Refsnyder opened the 2022 season with the Worcester Red Sox of the International League. After starting the season batting 14-for-35 (.400) for Worcester, he was added to Boston's active roster on April 19 after Araúz was placed on the coronavirus list, and made his debut with Boston on April 23 as the team's designated hitter. Refsnyder batted 2-for-5 with two doubles and one RBI in three games before he was returned to Worcester on April 29. On June 10, the Red Sox selected Refsnyder's contract, adding him to the 40-man roster and promoting him to the major leagues. He served as a fourth outfielder until being placed on the injured list with a right knee sprain on August 2. He rejoined the team on August 16. The Red Sox placed Refsnyder on the injured list due to back spasms on October 3, ending his season with a .307 average, a .384 OBP, and six home runs in 177 plate appearances across 57 games played. On June 3, 2023, Refsnyder signed a one-year, \$1.85 million contract extension with the Red Sox that included a club option for 2025. ## Personal life Refsnyder met his wife, Monica (née Drake), while they were both students at the University of Arizona in 2012. She is an All-American swimmer and competed in the 2008 and 2012 United States Olympic trials, attempting to qualify for the 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympics. They married in December 2015. Johnny Field, a teammate with the Wildcats, was a groomsman. Their son was born in 2021. Refsnyder is supportive of adoption, and hopes to adopt in the future. He helped to design a T-shirt with Athletes Brand to raise money for A Kid's Place, an organization in the Tampa Bay area that helps foster children. He also hopes to visit South Korea with his sister in order to learn about the culture of Korea and the Korean language. ## See also - List of Major League Baseball players from South Korea - International adoption of South Korean children

Bilbo Baggins

Protagonist in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit

Bilbo Baggins is the title character and protagonist of J. R. R. Tolkien's 1937 novel The Hobbit, a supporting character in The Lord of the Rings, and the fictional narrator (along with Frodo Baggins) of many of Tolkien's Middle-earth writings. The Hobbit is selected by the wizard Gandalf to help Thorin and his party of Dwarves to reclaim their ancestral home and treasure, which has been seized by the dragon Smaug. Bilbo sets out in The Hobbit timid and comfort-loving, and through his adventures grows to become a useful and resourceful member of the quest. Bilbo's way of life in the Shire, defined by features like the availability of tobacco and a postal service, recalls that of the English middle class during the Victorian to Edwardian eras. This is not compatible with the much older world of Dwarves and Elves. Tolkien appears to have based Bilbo on the designer William Morris's travels in Iceland; Morris liked his home comforts, but grew through his adventurous journeying. Bilbo's quest has been interpreted as a pilgrimage of grace, in which he grows in wisdom and virtue, and as a psychological journey towards wholeness. Bilbo has appeared in numerous radio and film adaptations of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and in video games based on them. Several astronomical features and both living and fossil species have been named for him. ## Appearances ### The Hobbit The protagonist of The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, is a hobbit in comfortable middle age. He is hired as a "burglar", despite his initial objections, on the recommendation of the wizard Gandalf and 13 Dwarves led by their king in exile, Thorin Oakenshield. The company of dwarves are on a quest to reclaim the Lonely Mountain and its treasures from the dragon Smaug. The adventure takes Bilbo and his companions through the wilderness, to the elves haven, Rivendell, across the Misty Mountains where, escaping from goblins, he meets Gollum and acquires a magic ring. His journey continues via a lucky escape from wargs, goblins, and fire, to the house of Beorn the shapeshifter, through the black forest of Mirkwood, to Lake-town in the middle of Long Lake, and eventually to the Mountain itself. As burglar, Bilbo is sent down the secret passage to the dragon's lair. He steals a golden cup and takes it back to the Dwarves. Smaug awakes and instantly notices the theft and a draught of cold air from the opened passage. He flies out, nearly catches the Dwarves outside the door, and eats their ponies. Bilbo and the Dwarves hide inside the passage. Bilbo goes down to Smaug's lair again to steal some more, but the dragon is now only half-asleep. Wearing his magic ring, Bilbo is invisible, but Smaug at once smells him. Bilbo has a riddling conversation with Smaug, and notices that the dragon's armour does indeed have a gap. He escapes the dragon's flames as he runs up the passage, and tells the Dwarves about the gap in Smaug's armour. An old thrush hears what he says, and flies off to tell Bard in Lake-town. Smaug realizes that Lake-town must have helped Bilbo, and flies off in a rage to destroy the town. The Dwarves and Bilbo hear that Smaug has been killed in the attack. The Dwarves reclaim the Lonely Mountain, and horrify Bilbo by refusing to share the dragon's treasure with the lake-men or the wood-elves. Bilbo finds the Arkenstone of Thrain, the most precious heirloom of Thorin's family, but hides it. Thorin calls his relative Dáin to bring an army of Dwarves. Thorin and his dwarves fortify the entrance to the mountain hall, and are besieged by the Wood-elves and Lake-men. Bilbo tries to ransom the Arkenstone to prevent fighting, but Thorin sees his action as betrayal, and banishes Bilbo. Dain arrives, and the army of Dwarves faces off against the armies of Elves and Men. As battle is joined, a host of goblins and wargs arrive to take over the mountain, now that Smaug is dead. The armies of Elves, Men, and Dwarves, with the help of Eagles and Beorn, defeat the goblins and wargs. Thorin is fatally wounded, but has time to make peace with Bilbo. Bilbo accepts only a little of the treasure which was his share, though it still represents great wealth for a Shire hobbit. Bilbo returns to his home in the Shire to find that several of his relatives, believing him to be dead, are trying to claim his home and possessions. ### The Lord of the Rings The Lord of the Rings begins with Bilbo's "eleventy-first" (111th) birthday, 60 years after the beginning of The Hobbit. The main character of the novel is Frodo Baggins, Bilbo's cousin, who celebrates his 33rd birthday and legally comes of age on the same day. Bilbo has kept the magic ring, with no idea of its significance, all that time; it has prolonged his life, leaving him feeling "thin and stretched". At the party, Bilbo tries to leave with the ring, but Gandalf persuades him to leave it behind for Frodo. Bilbo travels to Rivendell and visits the dwarves of the Lonely Mountain before returning to retire at Rivendell and write books. Gandalf discovers that Bilbo's magic ring is the One Ring forged by the Dark Lord Sauron, and sets in motion the quest to destroy it. Frodo and his friends set off on the quest, finding Bilbo, now obviously old, but spry, in Rivendell. When they have destroyed the Ring, they return to the Shire, via Rivendell, where Bilbo looks "very old, but peaceful, and sleepy". Two years later Bilbo accompanies Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel, and Frodo to the Grey Havens, there to board ship bound for Tol Eressëa across the sea. ### Narrator In Tolkien's narrative conceit, in which all the writings of Middle-earth are translations from the fictitious volume of the Red Book of Westmarch, Bilbo is the author of The Hobbit, translator of various "works from the elvish", and the author of the following poems and songs: - "A Walking Song" - "All that is gold does not glitter", based on Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, which uses "glisters" instead of "glitters" - "The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late", adapted from the nursery rhyme "Hey Diddle Diddle", supposedly as its ancestral form - "The Road Goes Ever On" - "Bilbo's Last Song", describing Bilbo's contemplation of his forthcoming voyage to the Undying Lands. ## Interpretations ### Name The critic Tom Shippey notes that "Baggins" is close to the spoken words bæggin, bægginz in the dialect of Huddersfield, Yorkshire, where it means a substantial meal eaten between main meals, most particularly at teatime in the afternoon; and Mr Baggins is definitely, Shippey writes, "partial to ... his tea". The choice of the surname may be connected to the name of Bilbo's house, Bag End, also the actual name of Tolkien's aunt's farmhouse, which Shippey notes was at the bottom of a lane with no exit. This is called a "cul-de-sac" in England; Shippey describes this as "a silly phrase", a piece of "French-oriented snobbery", and observes that the socially aspiring Sackville-Bagginses have similarly attempted to "Frenchify" their family name, Sac[k]-ville = "Bag Town", as a mark of their bourgeois status. The journalist Matthew Dennison, writing for St Martin's Press, calls Lobelia Sackville-Baggins "Tolken's unmistakable nod to Vita Sackville-West", an aristocratic novelist and gardening columnist as passionately attached to her family home, Knole House, which she was unable to inherit, as Lobelia was to Bag End. The opposite of a bourgeois is a burglar who breaks into bourgeois houses, and in The Hobbit Bilbo is asked to become a burglar (of Smaug the dragon's lair), Shippey writes, showing that the Bagginses and the Sackville-Bagginses are "connected opposites". He observes that the name Sackville-Baggins, for the snobbish branch of the Baggins family, is "an anomaly in Middle-earth and a failure of tone". ### Period Bilbo's period can be defined, Shippey notes, by the presence of tobacco, brought to Europe in 1559, and a postal service, introduced in England in 1840. Like Tolkien himself, Bilbo was "English, middle class; and roughly Victorian to Edwardian", something that as Shippey observes, does not belong to the much older world of elves, dwarves, and wizards. ### Character Marjorie Burns, a medievalist, writes that Bilbo's character and adventures match the fantasy writer and designer William Morris's account of his travels in Iceland in the early 1870s in numerous details. Like Bilbo's, Morris's party set off enjoyably into the wild on ponies. He meets a "boisterous" man called "Biorn the boaster" who lives in a hall beside Eyja-fell, and who tells Morris, tapping him on the belly, "... besides, you know you are so fat", just as Beorn pokes Bilbo "most disrespectfully" and compares him to a plump rabbit. Burns notes that Morris was "relatively short, a little rotund, and affectionately called 'Topsy', for his curly mop of hair", all somewhat hobbit-like characteristics. Further, she writes, "Morris in Iceland often chooses to place himself in a comic light and to exaggerate his own ineptitude", just as Morris's companion, the painter Edward Burne-Jones, gently teased his friend by depicting him as very fat in his Iceland cartoons. Burns suggests that these images "make excellent models" for the Bilbo who runs puffing to the Green Dragon inn or "jogs along behind Gandalf and the dwarves" on his quest. Another definite resemblance is the emphasis on home comforts: Morris enjoyed a pipe, a bath, and "regular, well-cooked meals"; Morris looked as out of place in Iceland as Bilbo did "over the Edge of the Wild"; both are afraid of dark caves; and both grow through their adventures. ### Quest The Christian writer Joseph Pearce describes The Hobbit as "a pilgrimage of grace, in which its protagonist, Bilbo Baggins, becomes grown up ... in wisdom and virtue". Dorothy Matthews sees the story rather as a psychological journey, the anti-heroic Bilbo being willing to face challenges while firmly continuing to love home and discovering himself. Along the way, Matthews sees Jungian archetypes, talismans, and symbols at every turn: the Jungian wise old man Gandalf; the devouring mother of the giant spider, not to mention Gollum's "long grasping fingers"; the Jungian circle of the self, the ring; the escape from the dark underground imprisoning chambers of the wood-elves and Bilbo's symbolic rebirth into the sunlight and the waters of the woodland river; and the dragon guarding the contested treasure, itself "an archetype of the self, of psychic wholeness". Later research has extended Matthews' analysis using alternative psychological frameworks such as Erik Erikson's theory of development. ### Genealogy The Tolkien scholar Jason Fisher notes that Tolkien stated that hobbits were extremely "clannish" and had strong "predilections for genealogy". Accordingly, Tolkien's decision to include the Baggins and other hobbit family trees in Lord of the Rings gives the book, in Fisher's view, a strongly "hobbitish perspective". The tree also, he notes, serves to show Bilbo's and Frodo's connections and familial characteristics, including that Bilbo was both "a Baggins and a Took". Fisher observes that Bilbo is, like Aragorn: a "distillation of the best of two families"; he notes that in the game The Quest of Erebor, Gandalf is given the (non-Tolkien) lines "So naturally, thinking over the hobbits that I knew, I said to myself, 'I want a dash of the [adventurous] Took ... and I want a good foundation of the stolider sort, a Baggins perhaps.' That pointed at once to Bilbo". The Tolkien critic Tom Shippey notes that Tolkien was very interested in such names, describing Shire names at length in The Lord of the Rings "Appendix F". One category was the names that meant nothing to the hobbits "in their daily language", like Bilbo and Bungo; a few of these, like Otho and Drogo in the family tree, were "by accident, the same as modern English names". ## Adaptations In the 1955–1956 BBC Radio serialisation of The Lord of the Rings, Bilbo was played by Felix Felton. In the 1968 BBC Radio serialisation of The Hobbit, Bilbo was played by Paul Daneman. The 1969 parody Bored of the Rings by "Harvard Lampoon" (i.e. its co-founders Douglas Kenney and Henry Beard) modifies the hobbit's name to "Dildo Bugger". Nicol Williamson portrayed Bilbo with a light West Country accent in the 1974 performance released on Argo Records. In the 1977 Rankin/Bass animated version of The Hobbit, Bilbo was voiced by Orson Bean. Bean also voiced both the aged Bilbo and Frodo in the same company's 1980 adaptation of The Return of the King. In Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated version of The Lord of the Rings, Bilbo was voiced by Norman Bird. Billy Barty was the model for Bilbo in the live-action recordings Bakshi used for rotoscoping. The 3000th story to be broadcast in the BBC's long-running children's programme Jackanory was The Hobbit, in 1979. Four narrators told the story with Bilbo's part being played by Bernard Cribbins. In the BBC's 1981 radio serialisation of The Lord of the Rings, Bilbo is played by John Le Mesurier. In the unlicensed 1985 Soviet version on the Leningrad TV channel, Хоббита ("The Hobbit"), Bilbo was played by Mikhail Danilov [ru]. In the 1993 television miniseries Hobitit by Finnish broadcaster Yle, Bilbo is portrayed by Martti Suosalo. In Peter Jackson's films The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) and The Return of the King (2003) Bilbo is played by Ian Holm, who had played Frodo in the BBC radio series 20 years earlier. Throughout the 2003 video game The Hobbit, the players control Bilbo, voiced by Michael Beattie. The game follows the plot of the book, but adds the elements of platform gameplay and various side-objectives along the main quests. In The Lord of the Rings Online (2007) Bilbo resides in Rivendell, mostly playing riddle games with the Elf Lindir in the Hall of Fire. In Peter Jackson's The Hobbit film series, a prequel to The Lord of the Rings, the young Bilbo is portrayed by Martin Freeman while Ian Holm reprises his role as an older Bilbo in An Unexpected Journey (2012) and The Battle of the Five Armies (2014). ## See also - The Quest of Erebor

Dwarf dog-faced bat

Species of bat

The dwarf dog-faced bat (Molossops temminckii) is a species of free-tailed bat from South America. It is found in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Paraguay and Uruguay, typically at lower elevations. It is one of two species in the genus Molossops, the other being the rufous dog-faced bat (M. neglectus). Three subspecies are often recognized, though mammalogist Judith Eger considers it monotypic with no subspecies. It is a small free-tailed bat, with a forearm length of 28.9–32.5 mm (1.14–1.28 in) and a weight of 5–8 g (0.18–0.28 oz); males are larger than females. It is brown, with paler belly fur and darker back fur. Its wings are unusual for a free-tailed bat, with exceptionally broad wingtips. Additionally, it has low wing loading, meaning that it has a large wing surface area relative to its body weight. Therefore, it flies more similarly to a vesper bat than to other species in its own family. As it forages at night for its insect prey, including moths, beetles, and others, it uses two kinds of frequency-modulated echolocation calls: one type is to navigate in open areas and to search for prey, while the other type is used for navigating in cluttered areas or while approaching a prey item. Little is known about its reproduction, with pregnant females documented July through December in various parts of its range. Females might be capable of becoming pregnant multiple times per year, unlike some bats which have an annual breeding season. It roosts in small groups, typically three or fewer, which can be found under tree bark, in rocky outcrops or buildings, or even within holes in fence posts. Its predators may include owls, though the extent of owl depredation is unknown. It has a variety of internal and external parasites, including nematodes, cestodes, trematodes, mites, ticks, and bat flies. ## Taxonomy The dwarf dog-faced bat was first named by Danish zoologist Peter Wilhelm Lund in 1842, who placed it in the now-defunct genus Dysopes, with a scientific name of Dysopes temminckii. However, Lund's name was deemed a nomen nudum ("naked name", or unaccepted due to inadequate taxon description), and thus Lund is not recognized as the taxonomic authority. Instead, the authority is given as German zoologist Hermann Burmeister, who was judged to have adequately described the taxon in 1854. The holotype had been collected in Lagoa Santa, Minas Gerais, Brazil. American zoologist Gerrit Smith Miller Jr. was the first to use its present name combination, placing it in the genus Molossops in 1907. The eponym for the species name "temminckii " is Dutch zoologist Coenraad Jacob Temminck. A variable number of subspecies are recognized. Four subspecies of Molossops temminckii have been named: M. t. temminckii, M. t. griseiventer, M. t. sylvia, and M. t. mattogrossensis. The former three are still recognized as subspecies by some, though M. t. mattogrossensis is now most frequently recognized not only as a distinct species, but also in a separate genus, Neoplatymops mattogrossensis. Mammalogist Judith Eger, however, did not recognize any subspecies in Mammals of South America (2008). The dwarf dog-faced bat and the rufous dog-faced bat (M. neglectus) are the only two species in the genus Molossops. Genetic analysis suggests that the Molossops species are closely related to those in the genus Cynomops; they are in a clade along with the genera Eumops, Molossus, Promops, Nyctinomops, and Neoplatymops. ## Description The dwarf dog-faced bat is considered small for the free-tailed bat family, Molossidae. Individuals have a total length of 60–84 mm (2.4–3.3 in), forearm length of 28.9–32.5 mm (1.14–1.28 in), and tail length of 21–34 mm (0.83–1.34 in). It weighs 5–8 g (0.18–0.28 oz). It is sexually dimorphic, with females smaller than the males; this is particularly noticeable in skull measurements. Its fur coloration is variable; back fur ranges from dark to light brown, with individuals found in forested areas darker than those in more arid ones. The belly fur is lighter in color and typically grayish. Its ears are small and triangular, with triangular tragi (cartilage projections in front of the ear canal). Its skull has a flattened top, with a weak sagittal crest. Its snout is long and flat, with a blunt tip and smooth lips. The nostrils are surrounded by wart-like bumps. Males have a gular gland used for scent marking members of a colony. It has a dental formula of for a total of 26 teeth. It has short thumbs with a well-developed pad at the base of each. It has distinct calcars (cartilage spurs) on the edge of its uropatagium (tail membrane); the calcars are more than half the length of the hind foot to the tail. Its wings attach to its hind limbs at the middle of the tibia. Its wings are large and broad, and it has low wing loading, meaning that it has a large wing area relative to its body weight. Its wingtips are exceptionally broad for a free-tailed bat. The dwarf dog-faced bat can differentiated from the rufous dog-faced bat by its smaller size; the latter typically has a forearm length greater than 36 mm (1.4 in). ## Biology and ecology ### Reproduction Overall, little is known about its reproduction. Pregnant females have been found in July in Venezuela, September and December in Brazil, September in Bolivia, and October and November in Argentina. Some authors have hypothesized that females may be polyestrous, or capable of becoming pregnant multiple times a year. Two pregnant females found in Argentina each had a litter size of one offspring. ### Behavior The dwarf dog-faced bat is moderately social, typically roosting in small groups of no more than three individuals. Groups of up to fifteen have been found roosting under the bark of Pithecellobium trees. It has flexible roosting needs, and can use rocky outcrops, buildings, tree hollows, or hollow fence posts for roosting. It is nocturnal, with individuals leaving their roosts around dusk to forage. ### Diet and foraging The dwarf dog-faced bat is an insectivore, catching insects mid-flight. It is relatively slow for a free-tailed bat, which are generally adapted for high speeds, and has flight characteristics more similar to a vesper bat. Its predicted flight speed is 6.3 m/s (23 km/h; 14 mph). It uses echolocation to navigate and locate prey, utilizing two kinds of calls. The first kind of calls are upward-sloping, frequency modulated calls, starting at around 40 khz frequency and ending at 50 kHz. The calls' duration is relatively long, at an average of 7.8 miliseconds, and they are more spaced out, with 97 miliseconds between calls. These calls are used when searching for prey or navigating in uncluttered space. The second kind of calls are downward-sloping, frequency modulated calls, starting at around 65 – 70 kHz and ending at 30 – 35 KHz. These calls have a shorter duration (4.7 miliseconds) and occur closer together (interpulse interval of 50.8 miliseconds). They are used while navigating in more cluttered environments, or when approaching a prey item. Its echolocation characteristics are considered unusual for a free-tailed bat, as it uses short, frequency modulated calls at high frequencies spaced close together. These echolocation characteristics are adapted for differentiating small prey items from background clutter such as vegetation. Its diet includes beetles, moths, flies, true bugs, Hymenoptera species, and grasshoppers and katydids. ### Predators and parasites Little is known about its natural predators, but its remains were once documented within the pellet of a barn owl in Argentina. Its endoparasites (internal parasites) include cestodes in the genus Vampirolepis; nematodes of the genera Allintoshius, Capillaria; and Molostrongylus, and trematodes of the genera Anenterotrema, Ochoterenatrema, and Urotrema. Its ectoparasites (external parasites) include the ticks Ornithodoros hasei and Amblyomma; the mites Chiroptonyssus venezolanus, Spinturnix americanus, Macronyssus, Trombicula, Steatonyssus, and Chiroptonyssus; the bat flies Basilia carteri (Nycteribiidae) and Trichobius jubatus (Streblidae); and true bugs of the genus Hesperoctenes. ## Distribution and habitat The dwarf dog-faced bat is found only in South America, with a wide range encompassing Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. The proposed subspecies M. t. sylvia is known from Corrientes Province, Argentina and Uruguay. Molossops temminckii griseiventer is known from Colombia in the Magdalena River Valley, as well as the Tolima, Meta, and Cundinamarca Departments. The nominate subspecies, M. t. temminckii, has been reported from Paraguay, northern Argentina, and several Brazilian states. The species is generally found in lower altitude areas. The greatest elevation record for this species is 770 m (2,530 ft) above sea level, which was in Colombia. It has been found in a variety of biomes and ecoregions, including the Amazonian lowlands, Cerrado (tropical savanna), Caatinga (dry shrubland), Pantanal (wetlands), Atlantic Forest, Alto Paraná Atlantic forests, and Argentine Espinal.

Cyclone Mala

North Indian Ocean extremely severe cyclonic storm in 2006

Extremely Severe Cyclonic Storm Mala was the strongest tropical cyclone of the 2006 North Indian Ocean cyclone season. In mid-April 2006, an area of disturbed weather formed over the southern Bay of Bengal and nearby Andaman Sea. Over a period of several days, the system became increasingly organized and was classified as a depression on April 24. Situated within a region of weak steering currents, the storm slowly intensified as it drifted in a general northward direction. It attained gale-force winds and was named Mala the next day. Conditions for strengthening improved markedly on April 27 and Mala subsequently underwent rapid intensification which culminated in the cyclone attaining its peak. Early on April 28, the cyclone had estimated winds of 185 km/h (115 mph). The Joint Typhoon Warning Center considered Mala to have been slightly stronger, classifying it as a Category 4-equivalent cyclone. Steady weakening ensued thereafter and the storm made landfall in Myanmar's Rakhine State on April 29. Rapid dissipation took place once onshore and Mala was last noted early the next morning. In contrast to Mala's intensity, damage was relatively minimal across Myanmar due to adequate early warnings, while timely and effective evacuations minimized loss of life along the coast. The greatest damage resulted from a thunderstorm near Yangon on April 28 that spawned a possible tornado in an industrial zone. A total of 586 homes were damaged there. Just outside the city in the Hinthada District, a flash flood killed at least 18 people. Overall, the storm claimed 37 lives in the country and left US\$6.7 million in damage. In the wake of Mala, the Red Cross distributed relief aid to affected residents while local officials set up shelters to house those left homeless. Government and social organizations donated 5.4 million kyat (US\$4,320) in cash to survivors in the Ayeyarwady Region. ## Meteorological history In mid to late April 2006, a pulse in the Madden–Julian oscillation, coupled with a Kelvin wave (which later contributed to the formation of Typhoon Chanchu in the western Pacific), enhanced convective activity over the Bay of Bengal. By April 22, a trough developed along an axis from the southern Bay of Bengal eastward to the Andaman Sea. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) began monitoring the system for potential tropical cyclogenesis the following day. By 0600 UTC on April 24, an area of low pressure formed southeast of the Andaman Islands and the India Meteorological Department (IMD) began monitoring the disturbance. Quickly organizing, the low developed into a tropical depression later on April 24 and the JTWC began writing full advisories on the cyclone without issuing a Tropical Cyclone Formation Alert. Organization slowed thereafter due to moderate wind shear, but continued at a near-climatological rate as upper-level outflow allowed for continued convective development. Early on April 25, the JTWC estimated the system to have attained gale-force winds. The IMD followed suit later that day and subsequently assigned it the name Mala. Weak steering currents prompted slow and erratic movement with an overall northward trajectory. Forecasters at this time anticipated little intensification as the system was expected to move into a region of higher shear. However, on April 27, the system moved under a subtropical ridge and conditions quickly became favorable for intensification. The presence of the ridge greatly enhanced the outflow over the cyclone and an eye developed by 1200 UTC. By this time, both the JTWC and IMD estimated Mala to have attained hurricane-force winds with the latter classifying it as a very severe cyclonic storm. The previously weak steering currents became more established as well, with the storm now tracking northeast toward Myanmar through a weakness in a ridge over Southeast Asia. Situated in an area with sea surface temperatures of 28 to 29 °C (82 to 84 °F), the cyclone was able to undergo rapid intensification as wind shear abruptly diminished. The IMD estimated Mala to have reached its peak intensity at 0900 UTC on April 28 with winds of 185 km/h (115 mph) and a barometric pressure of 954 mbar (hPa; 28.17 inHg). Using the Dvorak technique, a method of determining a tropical cyclone's strength via satellite imagery, the agency gave Mala a rating of T#5.5 which yields an intensity of 189 km/h (117 mph). The JTWC estimated Mala to have been a stronger system, with peak winds of 220 km/h (135 mph) and a pressure of 922 mb (hPa; 27.23 inHg) — equivalent to a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir–Simpson hurricane wind scale. Their Dvorak values peaked at T#6.5 or 235 km/h (145 mph). As the powerful storm approached Myanmar, the combined effects of increasing wind shear and land interaction soon took their toll on Mala. At 0700 UTC on April 29, Mala made landfall just south of Thandwe in Myanmar's Rakhine State as a very severe cyclonic storm. The JTWC estimated winds at this time to have been 165 km/h (105 mph). Rapid weakening ensued once the cyclone moved onshore. Within 12 hours of landfall, Mala weakened to a deep depression and was last noted as a dissipating system earl on April 30. Sea surface temperatures in the wake of Cyclone Mala decreased up to 4–5 °C (7–9 °F) due to upwelling. From April 28–29, the low-level inflow associated affected much of the northern Bay of Bengal and resulted in northwesterly winds as far away as Hyderabad, India. These winds brought dry, dust filled air over the bay with mean particulate-matter doubling over the region. ## Preparations On April 26, the local Department of Meteorology and Hydrology in Myanmar stated that the Ayeyarwady, Bago Region, and Yangon regions were likely to be affected within two days and Rakhine State within three days. Officials began broadcasting storm warning to the public over radio the following day. Evacuations of at-risk coastal areas were conducted, though specifics are unknown. Once the storm moved inland, residents across the country were advised of the likelihood of widespread heavy rain from the remnant system. Despite never being forecast to strike Bangladesh, officials there warned residents that the storm could strike the nation and cause loss of life. Cautionary signals were raised at ports in Chittagong, Cox's Bazar, and Mongla, advising seafaring vessels to remain docked until the storm's passage. Roughly 34,000 members of the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society were placed on standby for possible relief efforts. Flash flood warnings were issued across northern Thailand on April 29 under the threat of heavy rains from Mala's remnants. ## Impact Throughout almost the entire existence of Mala, it produced rainfall in the Andaman and Nicobar islands. Daily totals peaked on April 27 at 100 mm (3.9 in) in Car Nicobar. After moving through Myanmar, Mala brought heavy rains to northern Thailand. According to local meteorologists the storm also accelerated the onset of the seasonal monsoon which would contribute to a wetter-than-average year for the region. ### Myanmar Though Mala struck Myanmar as a powerful cyclone, early warnings and proper evacuations minimized loss of life along coastal areas. Additionally, no major storm surge was reported, limiting the potential for major damage. The most significant effects were caused inland from torrential rains rather than at the coast. Overall, the storm claimed 37 lives and left 1.24 billion kyat (US\$6.7 million) in damage. Approximately 12,000 families were significantly affected by the cyclone. Rakhine State suffered a direct hit from the cyclone, with Gwa Township reporting the worst damage. There, 88 homes were destroyed and 1,246 more were damaged. One person was killed and at least four others were injured in the township. Ra Haing Ku Toe village suffered significant losses as well, with 132 homes destroyed and 531 more damaged. A storm surge of 4.57 m (15.0 ft) struck the region, but did not impact populated areas. Across the Irrawaddy Delta, hurricane-force winds caused extensive damage to housing and infrastructure. Haigyi Island was the first area struck by the storm. Several homes were destroyed and many more lost their roof there. Thunderstorms from the storm's outer bands on April 28 damaged 586 homes in Hlaingthaya Township. Residents described what appeared to be a tornado as the cause of the damage. The Hlaingthaya industrial zone was hardest hit, with five factories destroyed and dozens of homes having their roof torn off. Locals, however, claimed that the damage was more severe than reported by the government. Cars were reportedly tossed into the air during the storm. Two people were killed and fourteen others were injured in Hlaingthaya. The winds also downed numerous power lines, leaving many without electricity. In Labutta Township, near the southern tip of the Delta, 88 homes were destroyed. In the Hinthada District, torrential rains caused flash flooding that killed 18 people and left 14 others missing. ## Aftermath By May 1, the local branch of the Red Cross distributed essential supplies to residents in Labutta Township. In coordination with the Disaster Assistance Response Team, the areas in greatest need for aid were identified and requests for tarpaulin were made. Members of the Cabinet of Burma donated 3.7 million kyat (US\$2,960) in cash and 140 bags of rice to victims in the Ayeyarwady Region. On May 3, another 1.7 million kyat (US\$1,360) was donated by social organizations to residents in rural areas outside Yangon. Temporary shelters were set up across Gwa Township. Local donations provided residents in the town with 200,000 kyat (US\$160) worth of blankets, clothes, and cash. A local newspaper, The New Light of Myanmar, claimed that government officials immediately provided assistance to affected residents across the country. Red Cross operations continued through November 30, by which time 3,485 families were provided with aid. Additionally, though the agency planned to assist 4,000 families with rebuilding their homes, a lack of necessary funds prevented the operation. Instead, a cash donation was provided to the 1,000 most affected families. ## See also - 2006 North Indian Ocean cyclone season - Cyclone Nargis – A storm of similar intensity two years later that devastated the Irrawaddy Delta - Cyclone Giri – A storm of similar intensity in 2010 that caused significant damage in areas just north of where Mala struck - Cyclone Maarutha – A storm of weaker intensity in 2017 that caused some notable damage in northwestern areas of Myanmar in April - Cyclone Mocha - A destructive storm of similar intensity and path in 2023 that caused widespread damages in Myanmar.

Rhythm Inside (Loïc Nottet song)

2015 song by Loïc Nottet

"Rhythm Inside" is a song by Belgian singer Loïc Nottet. It was released as his debut single on 10 March 2015 for radio airplay, while Sony Music Entertainment distributed it digitally one day later. The track was written by Nottet alongside Beverly Jo Scott, while production was solely handled by Luuk Cox. Previously, Nottet had participated in his native singing competition The Voice Belgique in 2014—where he finished second and thus rose to prominence—and had chosen Scott's team. "Rhythm Inside" has been described as an alternative-inspired pop, new wave, R&B, electro, soul and hip hop song, with its minimalistic instrumentation consisting of finger clicks, percussion and synthesizer pads. "Rhythm Inside" lyrically discusses moral universalism. The track represented Belgium in the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna, Austria after being internally selected by the country's public broadcaster RTBF. The country ultimately reached fourth place in a field of 27, scoring a total of 217 points. During Nottet's minimalistic and black and white-themed show, he was accompanied by four backing vocalists while the background LED screens displayed white 3D boxes moving to the song's rhythm. "Rhythm Inside" was well-received by music critics, who praised Nottet's vocals, as well as the song's production and lyrics. Several reviewers compared it to the works of Lorde and Sia. In order to promote and support "Rhythm Inside", Nottet performed it on several occasions. The song was also covered by various artists and included on the setlist for his Selfocracy Tour (2017–2018). Three accompanying music videos were released for the track in 2015, of which one is titled "Alice in Nightmareland" and features Justine Vercleven portraying the fictional character Alice. The other two visuals focus on "opposites and fighting conceptions" and science fiction, respectively. Commercially, "Rhythm Inside" reached the top 100 of several countries after the Eurovision Song Contest and peaked at number one in the Wallonian and Flemish regions of Belgium. It was certified Platinum by the Belgian Entertainment Association (BEA) for sales exceeding 20,000 units. ## Background and composition Belgian singer Loïc Nottet became prominent after finishing second in his native singing competition The Voice Belgique in 2014, as part of Beverly Jo Scott's team. She would eventually help Nottet write his debut single, "Rhythm Inside", while production was solely handled by Luuk Cox. It was mastered by Stuart Hawkes at the Metropolis Studios in London, United Kingdom. After a snippet of the track surfaced online prior to its premiere, "Rhythm Inside" was released for radio airplay on 10 March 2015 and was first broadcast by Belgian radio station VivaCité. The song's digital availability followed one day later in various countries, conducted by Sony Music Entertainment. "Rhythm Inside" has been described as an alternative-inspired pop, new wave, R&B, electro, soul and hip hop song. Its minimalistic instrumentation consists of finger clicks, percussion and synthesizer pads. While Shioban Palmer of The Daily Telegraph described the track as "punchy and funky", Moustique's Sébastien Ministru noticed a "tribal atmosphere". Lyrically, Nottet stated that the song deals with moral universalism. Music critics also identified other lyrical themes; according to Theo Vatmanidis of EuroVisionary, "Rhythm Inside" is about "getting attuned to a cosmic rhythm of love". A writer of RTVE concluded that the track "conveys[s] the mechanism of our hearts is invariable and that only our individual decisions mark what we will leave in this world". They further wrote: "Do not force yourself to please others, find your own rhythm and you will see that you do not walk alone". Daphne Dee of Wiwibloggs noted that the singer "philosophise[s] on good and evil". One line in the track is "We gonna ra-pa-pap, ra-pa-pap/We gonna ra-pa-pap tonight", which Nottet sings in a reggae-inspired accent to modulate the sound of a beating heart. Another editor of Wiwibloggs mentioned that the singer provided gospel vocals in the song. ## Critical reception and accolades Music critics positively received "Rhythm Inside". In a Wiwibloggs review containing several reviews from individual critics, praise was outspoken towards the song's catchiness, as well as its contemporary and dark nature. Nottet's voice was commended alongside the track's complex lyrics and production. Overall, the reviewers on the website gave "Rhythm Inside" 8.31 out of 10 points. Benny Royston of Metro called the track "slick, smooth and almost hypnotic", while Moustique's Ministru praised its production and described Nottet's voice as "confusing, transgender and powerful". Echoing Ministru's thoughts, an editor of B.Z. noted that Nottet's English pronunciation during the song had a Wallonian accent. Multiple reviewers likened "Rhythm Inside" to material released by Sia and Lorde. The track would go on to win in the Hit of the Year category at the 2015 D6bels Music Awards, and it was also crowned as the best song in Belgium's history at the Eurovision Song Contest by website Songestival.be in 2018. ## Music videos An accompanying music video for "Rhythm Inside" was uploaded onto Eurovision Song Contest's official YouTube channel on 10 March 2015, although it has been since deleted. The same day, the clip was first broadcast on Belgian television channel La Une. It was directed by Josh Brandão and Nicolai Kornum at the BlitzWerk studio in London, while Nottet carries credits for the clip's storyboard, outfits and choreography. It starts with shots of cogwheels and other mechanism, while Nottet is eventually presented sitting on a red chair wearing black clothing. Subsequently, shots of a topless man looking at his phone, a woman staring in a compact, a girl wearing a dress and holding a doll in her hands, as well as a boy playing video games are shown. Over the course of the next couple of seconds, several other people are introduced; some of them later stand next to the aforementioned persons in similar postures. Interspersed, water and red paint is ejected on Nottet, and eventually on the people. The clip ends with a "soaking wet" Nottet looking into the camera. Several shots in the music video are pulsating or blinking. According to Chris Haplin of Wiwibloggs, the clip "focuses on opposites and fighting conceptions, with shots including two young girls: one a beauty queen, the other playing with dinosaurs". Shioban Palmer of The Daily Telegraph likened the music video to the work of Jedward. In May 2015, a "dance-based reinterpretation" of the song titled "Alice in Nightmareland" was released online. Nottet carries several credits, including the director, costume designer and choreographer. The music video commences with the sentence "Before being a singer, I was and am a dancer" being displayed onscreen, after which shots of "creepy" and "evil" nurses walking inside a hospital are shown. A surgeon subsequently appears, carrying a screaming woman (played by Justine Vercleven) wearing a yellow dress. He brings her into a room where she is ultimately left alone sitting on a chair; she runs to another room to perform choreography with the aforementioned nurses and surgeon, who also undress her in white. After all falling asleep, the woman awakens again and proceeds to leave the building. Running in a multicolored forest, she finds a clock on a tree and subsequently encounters a "shirtless, gyrating" Nottet. They perform choreography in the forest and in an abandoned building. Both are eventually found by the nurses and surgeon presented in the video's beginning and fight against them. The video ends with all standing in one line and staring at the camera. According to Halpin of Wiwibloggs, Vercleven plays the character of Alice. He likened the clip and choreography to Sia's music video for "Elastic Heart" (2013) and suggested it was a source of inspiration for Nottet. A third and final music video for "Rhythm Inside" was uploaded onto Nottet's YouTube channel on 13 October 2015. The clip begins with several people—including Nottet—placed inside a container. A man subsequently opens one of its doors and leads the persons to a warehouse. In groups of two each, selected people are tied up, showered down, undressed and then led into another room. When coming for his turn, Nottet manages to run away through a hallway, and reaches another room similar to an amphitheatre. However, the singer falls down towards the video's end and is approached from behind by a creature whose face cannot be seen. Robyn Gallagher of Wiwibloggs opined that the music video took place in a "bleak, dystopian sci-fi world", while identifying The Hunger Games, as well as the music videos for Lorde's "Team" (2013) and Stromae's "Ta fête" (2014) as possible inspirations. She further concluded that "there are echoes of events in the real world, both past and present", and likened the creature introduced towards the visual's end to "the sort of creature that wouldn't be out of place on an episode of Doctor Who". An editor of NRJ suggested that the people at the beginning could have been brought together for human experimentation. Jonathan Hamard of Pure Charts described the clip's atmosphere as "subdued and disturbing". ## Live performances and other usage For promotion, Nottet performed the song on several occasions. He first appeared on the radio stations Qmusic and Joe FM on 30 March 2015. In April 2015, the singer performed for MNM, while for The Voice Belgique on in May 2015. Other performances in 2015 include on NRJ in June, on Één in July, and on NRJ's C'Cauet programme in December. In 2017, Nottet sang "Rhythm Inside" for RFM in March, for Qmusic's Q-Beach House event in July, as well as for VivaCité's Viva for Life event in December. "Rhythm Inside" was also included on the setlist of the singer's Selfocracy Tour, which ran from 2017 to 2018. The track was covered by several artists, including singers Sennek, SuRie, and Lidia Isac, as well as the band Elaiza. ## At Eurovision ### Internal selection Belgian broadcaster RTBF confirmed their intentions to participate in the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest on 3 June 2014, however without mentioning the selection method for their entrant. Subsequently, the broadcaster announced on 3 November 2014 that they had internally selected Nottet to represent Belgium in the competition. On 10 March 2015, RTBF held a press conference at the Maison de Vienne in Brussels, where "Rhythm Inside" was unveiled as the Belgian entry for the contest. Label Sony Music Entertainment's Philippe Coppens stated during an interview: "Our first objective was to choose a song that definitely does not sound like a typical Eurovision Song Contest song. The world of Nottet is very far from the contest". ### In Vienna The Eurovision Song Contest 2015 took place at the Wiener Stadthalle in Vienna, Austria and consisted of two semi-finals on 19 and 21 May, and the final on 23 May 2015. According to Eurovision rules, each country, except the host country and the "Big 5" (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom), is required to qualify from one of two semi-finals to compete for the final; the top ten countries from each semi-final progressed to the final. Nottet sang third in the first semi-final following Armenia and preceding the Netherlands, while he performed 13th in the Grand Final following Australia and preceding Austria. Nottet was one of the favorites to win the contest according to bookmakers. For his performance, Nottet contributed in terms of choreography, outfits and visual effects. Described as minimalistic and black and white-themed, the singer's show sees him accompanied by five backing vocalists—Katie Bernstein, Michael Storrs, Susanna Marie Cork, Sarah Covey and Nicolas Dorian. They wear all-white costumes "to match the stage presentation", while Nottet sports a "futuristic" black suit. They occasionally perform choreography in the form of "jerky moves". Nottet is shown marching, while also performing pirouettes. At one point, he lies on the floor, with one vocalist putting her foot up on his chest to add "a surrealy and dangerous element to the performance". At the end of the show the backing vocalists fall to the floor and align horizontally, after which Nottet looks into camera in a close-up shot. During the performance, the background LED screen displays white 3D boxes moving to the song's rhythm. "Strobe" flash lighting and lighting in form of dots is also used, while black lines are projected on the stage. Nottet's performance received generally positive reviews from critics. Paidraig Muldoon of Wiwibloggs thought the show had avant-garde elements, while The Fader's Michael Cragg drew attention that Nottet and his backing vocalists visually created a "human chess board". Nottet's performance was praised by the Prime Minister of Belgium Charles Michel, however an editor of The Guardian criticized the singer's facial expressions, stating he "mainly looks like he is suffering from indigestion". #### Points awarded to Belgium Below is a breakdown of points awarded to Belgium in the first semi-final and Grand Final of the contest. On the first occasion, the country finished in second place with a total of 149 points, including 12 from the Netherlands, France, Finland and Denmark, ten from Hungary, Spain and Estonia, as well as eight from Russia and Australia. In the Grand Final of the Eurovision Song Contest, Belgium finished in fourth position, gathering a total of 217 points, including 12 awarded by the Netherlands, Hungary and France, ten by Sweden and Russia, and eight by Germany and Belarus. ## Track listing - Digital download 1. "Rhythm Inside" – 2:52 ## Charts ### Weekly charts ### Year-end charts ## Certifications ## Release history

Lobaria pulmonaria

Species of lichen

Lobaria pulmonaria is a large epiphytic lichen consisting of an ascomycete fungus and a green algal partner living together in a symbiotic relationship with a cyanobacterium—a symbiosis involving members of three kingdoms of organisms. Commonly known by various names like tree lungwort, lung lichen, lung moss, lungwort lichen, oak lungs or oak lungwort, it is sensitive to air pollution and is also harmed by habitat loss and changes in forestry practices. Its population has declined across Europe and L. pulmonaria is considered endangered in many lowland areas. The species has a history of use in herbal medicines, and recent research has corroborated some medicinal properties of lichen extracts. ## Description It is a foliose lichen and its leaf-like thallus is green, leathery and lobed with a pattern of ridges and depressions on the upper surface. Bright green under moist conditions, it becomes brownish and papery when dry. This species often has a fine layers of hairs, a tomentum, on its lower surface. The cortex, the outer protective layer on the thallus surface, is roughly comparable to the epidermis of a green plant. The thallus is typically 5–15 centimetres (2.0–5.9 in) in diameter, with individual lobes 1–3 centimetres (0.39–1.18 in) wide and up to 7 cm long. The asexual reproductive structures soredia and isidia are present on the thallus surface. Minute (0.5–1.5 mm in diameter) cephalodia—pockets of cyanobacteria—are often present on the lower surface of the thallus; these spots are conspicuously darker than the green surface of the thallus. Like other foliose lichens, the thallus is only loosely attached to the surface on which it grows. ### Photobionts The thallus contains internal structures known as cephalodia, characteristic of three-membered lichen symbioses involving two photobionts (the photosynthetic symbionts in the lichen relationship). These internal cephalodia, found between the "ribs" of the thallus surface, arise when blue-green algae (from the genus Nostoc) on the thallus surface are enveloped during mycobiont growth. Structurally, cephalodia consist of dense aggregates of Nostoc cells surrounded by thin-walled hyphae—this delimits them from the rest of the thallus which contains a loose structure of thick-walled hyphae. Blue-green cyanobacteria can fix atmospheric nitrogen, providing a nutrient for the lichen. The other photobiont of L. pulmonaria is the green alga Dictyochloropsis reticulata. ## Reproduction Lobaria pulmonaria has the ability to form both vegetative propagation and sexual propagules at an age of about 25 years. In sexual reproduction, the species produces small reddish-brown discs known as apothecia containing asci, from which spores are forcibly released into the air (like ballistospores). Based on studies of ascospore germination, it has been suggested that L. pulmonaria spores use some mechanism to inhibit germination—the inhibition is lifted when the spores are grown in a synthetic growth medium containing an adsorbent like bovine serum albumin or α-cyclodextrin. Dispersal by vegetative propagules (via soredia or isidia) has been determined as the predominant mode of reproduction in L. pulmonaria. In this method, the protruding propagules become dry and brittle during the regular wet/dry cycles of the lichen, and can easily crumble off the thallus. These fragments may develop into new thalli, either at the same locale or at a new site after dispersal by wind or rain. A number of steps are required for the development of the vegetative propagules, including the degeneration of the thallus cortex, replication of green algal cells, and entanglement of fungal hyphae with the green algal cells. These steps lead to an increase in internal pressure which eventually breaks through the cortex. Continued growth leads to these granules being pushed upwards and out of the thallus surface. ## Distribution and habitat It has a wide distribution in Europe, Asia, North America and Africa, preferring damp habitats with high rainfall, especially coastal areas. It is the most widely distributed and most common Lobaria species in North America. In Wales, the Dolmelynllyn estate is notable for the variety of rare bryophytes and lichens there, including the genus Lobaria, in particular Lobaria pulmonaria. Associated with old-growth forests, its presence and abundance may be used as an indicator of forest age, at least in the Interior Cedar-Hemlock biogeoclimatic zone in eastern British Columbia. It is also found in pasture-woodlands. It usually grows on the bark of broad-leaved trees such as oak, beech and maple but will also grow on rocks. In the laboratory, L. pulmonaria has been grown on nylon microfilaments. Various environmental factors are thought to affect the distribution of L. pulmonaria, such as temperature, moisture (average humidity, rapidity and frequency of wet-dry cycles), sunlight exposure, and levels of air pollution. Attempts to quantitatively evaluate the contribution of these factors to lichen growth is difficult because differences in the original environment from which the lichen thalli are collected will greatly affect heat and desiccation tolerances. Due to declining population, L. pulmonaria is considered to be rare or threatened in many parts of the world, especially in lowland areas of Europe. The decline has been attributed to industrial forestry and air pollution, particularly acid rain. L. pulmonaria, like other lichens containing a blue-green algal component, are particularly susceptible to the effects of acid rain, because the subsequent decrease in pH reduces nitrogen fixation through inhibition of the algal nitrogenase enzyme. ## Chemical compounds Lobaria pulmonaria is known to contain a variety of acids common to lichens, such as stictic acid, desmethyl stictic acid, gyrophoric acid, tenuiorin, constictic acid, norstictic acid, peristictic acid, and methylnorstictic acid. These compounds, collectively known as depsidones, are known to be involved in defense against grazing herbivores like lichen-feeding molluscs. It also contains the sugar alcohols D-arabitol, volemitol, in addition to several carotenoids (total content \> 10 mg/kg), such as alpha carotene, beta carotene, and beta cryptoxanthin. The upper cortex of the lichen contains melanins that screen UV and PAR radiation from the photobiont. The synthesis of melanin pigments in the lichen increases in response to greater solar irradiation, and shade-adapted thalli are greenish-grey in the air-dry state, while sun-exposed thalli can be dark brown in color. This adaptation helps protect the photosymbiont D. reticulata, known to be relatively intolerant to high light levels. Also known to be present are various steroids, namely ergosterol, episterol, fecosterol, and lichesterol. ## Uses ### Medicinal Its shape somewhat resembles the tissue inside lungs and therefore it is thought to be a remedy for lung diseases based on the doctrine of signatures. The lichen's common English names are derived from this association. Gerard's book The Herball or General Historie of plants (1597) recommends L. pulmonaria as medicinally valuable. It is still used for asthma, urinary incontinence and lack of appetite. In India it is used as a traditional medicine to treat hemorrhages and eczema, and it is used as a remedy for coughing up blood by the Hesquiaht in British Columbia, Canada. An ethnophytotherapeutical survey of the high Molise region in central-southern Italy revealed that L. pulmonaria is used as an antiseptic, and is rubbed on wounds. A hot-water extract prepared using this species has been shown to have anti-inflammatory and ulcer-preventing activities. Also, methanol extracts were shown to have a protective effect on the gastrointestinal system of rats, possibly by reducing oxidative stress and reducing the inflammatory effects of neutrophils. Furthermore, methanol extracts also have potent antioxidative activity and reducing power, probably due to the presence of phenolic compounds. ### Other uses Lobaria pulmonaria has also been used to produce an orange dye for wool, in the tanning of leather, in the manufacture of perfumes and as an ingredient in brewing.

William Henry Powell (soldier)

American Medal of Honor recipient (1825–1904)

William Henry Powell (May 10, 1825 – December 26, 1904) was an American soldier who fought for the Union in the American Civil War. He was a leader in the iron and nail business before the war, and his leadership abilities proved useful in the military. Powell began as a captain, and quickly ascended to higher roles in the cavalry, including commanding a regiment, a brigade, and then a division. Powell was awarded his country's highest award for bravery during combat, the Medal of Honor, for heroism at Sinking Creek, Virginia, when, as leader of a group of 22 men, he captured an enemy camp and took over 100 prisoners. This was accomplished without the loss of any of his men on November 26, 1862. He was honored with the award on July 22, 1890. In July 1863, Powell was shot while leading cavalry in Wytheville, Virginia. Although surgeons on both sides of the conflict believed his wound was fatal, Powell survived—and became a prisoner of war. He was later exchanged, and returned to his command of the 2nd West Virginia Volunteer Cavalry Regiment. In 1864, Powell commanded brigades while fighting mostly in the Shenandoah Valley under the direct supervision of General William W. Averell in an army commanded by General Philip Sheridan. Eventually, Powell replaced Averell as division commander. Powell led cavalry in numerous battles, including Moorefield, Opequon, and Fisher's Hill. He resigned as a brigadier general in January 1865 to tend to family health issues. He was later brevetted to major general. Powell returned to his original profession working in the iron making industry, and was active in the Grand Army of the Republic, a fraternal organization of Union veterans of the American Civil War. In a letter sent to headquarters in 1864, General George Crook said "Colonel Powell has served with me often since the commencement of the war. He has distinguished himself in every battle he was engaged in under me. He has been recommended by me on several occasions, for promotion. I regard him as one of the best cavalry officers I have ever seen in the service." ## Early life William Henry Powell was born on May 10, 1825, in Pontypool, South Wales. At the time, the community was part of Monmouthshire, an iron-making region. Both of his parents, William and Sarah Griffith Powell, were Welsh. His father immigrated to the United States in 1827, and his mother followed in 1830 with the rest of the family. Originally, they lived in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, but they moved to Nashville, Tennessee, in 1833. Powell's father was an ironworker, and was employed by the Gennessee Iron Works. Powell began to learn his father's profession while still a boy, working in a rolling mill and nail factory in Nashville. In 1840, the Gennessee Iron Works closed because of a recession. The family moved north to Wheeling, Virginia, in 1843. Powell's father began employment at Wheeling's Rolling Mill Nail Factory. Powell continued learning his father's profession in Wheeling. Four years after the move to Wheeling, he built the Benwood Nail Works while only 22 years old, and became its superintendent. In 1846, he was involved in an accident at the nail iron works and lost vision of his right eye. Powell married Sarah Gilchrist in 1847, and they eventually had six children. Two children died in infancy, and one died at age 20. In 1853, the family moved to Ironton, Ohio, which is located southwest of Wheeling along the Ohio River. In Ironton, Powell built the Bellfonte Nail Works. When the American Civil War began in 1861, Powell was general superintendent and financial agent of this large iron works. He left the business in August to begin service as a cavalry captain. ## American Civil War: Western Virginia Between September 20, 1860, and February 1, 1861, seven southern states seceded from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America. Fighting began on April 12, 1861, when American troops were attacked at Fort Sumpter in South Carolina. This is considered the beginning of the American Civil War. Four additional states, including Virginia, seceded during the next three months. Some of the northwestern counties of Virginia disagreed with secession and they met in Wheeling to form a Restored Government of Virginia loyal to the United States. Initially, the "War of the Rebellion" was not expected to last long. However, the war continued through the summer, and President Abraham Lincoln called for volunteers to fight against the rebels of the Confederacy. Powell resigned his civilian job on August 1, 1861, and recruited enough men to form a company of cavalry and was elected their captain. Ten companies were united to form a cavalry regiment which consisted mostly of men from the Ohio counties located close to the Ohio River. The regiment was originally intended to be the 4th Ohio Cavalry, but Ohio governor William Dennison refused to accept the unit's application because he had been instructed to accept no more new cavalry. The regiment's application was accepted by the provisional governor of the Restored Government of Virginia, Francis Harrison Pierpont, and became the 2nd Regiment of Loyal Virginia Volunteer Cavalry. Powell's company was designated Company B, and he was commissioned as its captain on August 14. The regiment's first significant action was on January 7, 1862, in Louisa, Kentucky, where it assisted a force commanded by Colonel James A. Garfield, future President of the United States. Powell led his company, reinforced with men from the regiment's Company C, in a charge that drove back a Confederate rearguard. ### Kanawha Valley During 1862–1863, the 2nd Loyal Virginia Cavalry spent much of its time confronting bushwhackers—who were despised. The bushwhacker was thought of as an "unprincipled scoundrel who was too cowardly to join the army and fight as a man...", who would "sneak around like a thief in the night...." Eventually, Union forces in the mountains of what became West Virginia became very ruthless in their treatment of bushwhackers. Powell was usually stationed near the Kanawha River Valley, in the southwestern portion of present West Virginia—which was part of Virginia at the time. Entire regiments were not needed for bushwhacker duty, so the regiment often worked in detachments of two companies. In April 1862, Powell's regiment was divided into two battalions. Powell's battalion, commanded by Colonel William M. Bolles, joined some Ohio infantry regiments to form the 3rd Brigade of General Jacob Dolson Cox's Kanawha Division. The brigade was commanded by Colonel (later Major General) George Crook, a professional soldier with fighting experience in the American West. Crook's brigade normally operated independently from the other portion of Cox's division. Its camp was located at Meadow Bluff, west of Lewisburg in Greenbrier County. Powell's major fighting experience as part of this brigade happened on May 27, against Confederate General Henry Heth. Crook's brigade ambushed Heth's force in Lewisburg, killing or wounding over 150 enemy soldiers and capturing over 150. The cavalry pursued the fleeing rebels and stopped only when a bridge was destroyed. Shortly after this engagement, Colonel Bolles resigned and several officers of the 2nd Loyal Virginia Cavalry were promoted. On June 25, 1862, Powell was promoted to major because of his gallant conduct in Kentucky and to fill a vacancy caused by the Bolles resignation. ### Kanawha Valley Campaign During August 1862, many of the Union soldiers stationed in western Virginia were sent to Washington to reinforce the Army of Virginia. This caused the two battalions from the 2nd Loyal Virginia Cavalry to be reunited, and it was stationed with two infantry regiments in Kanawha Falls, close to Gauley Bridge, in what is now south central West Virginia. The small force was commanded by Colonel Joseph Andrew Jackson Lightburn. In September, the Confederate Army became aware of the Union Army's lack of manpower, and devised a plan of attack. The Confederates sent a large force led by General William W. Loring, incorrectly rumored to be 10,000 men, to attack Lightburn from the southeast. A cavalry brigade of about 550 men led by Colonel Albert G. Jenkins patrolled along the Ohio River with the intention of preventing a retreat by Lightburn. A large portion of the 2nd Loyal Virginia Cavalry, commanded by Colonel John C. Paxton, was sent to confront Jenkins. Powell led the advance guard, which happened to be Powell's company (Company B) before his promotion to major. On September 8, Powell's advance group led the attack on Jenkins' rebel camp outside of Barboursville, which is close to the Ohio River. The camp was captured, and Jenkins barely escaped. The rebel force, which was much larger than Paxton's cavalry, was driven southward up the Guyandotte River. Thus, Powell's advance guard for Paxton enabled a safe retreat to the Ohio River for the remaining portion of Lightburn's small force. Lightburn's report said "The Second Virginia Cavalry, under Colonel Paxton, did good service in keeping Jenkins' force at bay, thereby preventing an attack in our rear. I wish, also, to state that Colonel Paxton, with 300 men, attacked Jenkins' whole force (from 1,200 to 1,500), and drove them from Barboursville, which, no doubt, kept them from an attempt to harass our retreat." ### Sinking Creek raid `Confederate gains in the Kanawha Valley did not last long, and Union troops reoccupied much of the valley. In November 1862, the 2nd Loyal Virginia Cavalry camped for the winter along the Kanawha River, about 12 miles (19 km) upriver from Charleston. Newly promoted Brigadier General George Crook commanded Union troops in the valley, and Paxton commanded Powell's regiment, the 2nd Loyal Virginia Cavalry. Crook was an experienced Indian fighter, and believed that adverse weather was an advantage in the hit-and-run fighting style of raids. On November 23, he ordered Paxton to rendezvous with an infantry regiment on Cold Knob Mountain, and then lead an attack on two rebel camps in Sinking Creek Valley. Before the cavalry regiment departed, Crook confidentially told Powell to not return without good results.` The cavalry reached their meeting place near the top of Cold Knob Mountain on November 26. The 11th Ohio Infantry had arrived a few hours earlier. The men from the infantry had marched through rain, and were caught (as was the cavalry) in a snowstorm. After a conference between Paxton and the infantry's Colonel Philander P. Lane, the infantry aborted their mission and began a return to camp. Paxton also considered aborting the mission, but was persuaded by Powell to continue. Paxton sent Powell and 2nd Lieutenant Jeremiah Davidson with 20 men from Company G down the mountain to scout for the rebel camps. Powell and his men found one of the camps, determined that it was poorly guarded, and decided to capture it themselves. Each member of Powell's advance guard was armed with a saber and two six-shot revolvers. Powell decided to attack with sabers so that the other rebel camp would not be alarmed. They charged into the 500-man rebel camp with sabers drawn, and completely surprised the rebels. Many of the weapons captured were not loaded. Although hundreds of the rebels scattered into the countryside, a captain, a lieutenant and 112 enlisted men were captured, along with 200 weapons, a few wagons and some camping equipment. Powell's only casualties were the loss of two horses. Two rebels were killed and two wounded. The trip back to camp was difficult because of the cold weather, and two men were hospitalized at the infantry's Summerville camp because of frostbite. Ten horses were lost because of cold and exhaustion. Paxton ended his report by writing "I cannot close this report without deservedly complimenting the officers and men, but, where all behaved so gallantly, it is impossible to particularize. But all honor is due Major Powell, who led the charge...." Powell and Davidson were promoted shortly afterwards—Powell from major to lieutenant colonel, and Davidson from second lieutenant to first lieutenant. After the war, Powell was awarded the Medal of Honor for his performance in the Sinking Creek raid. In 1889, Crook said that he regarded the "expedition as one of the most daring, brilliant and successful of the whole war." ### Regiment commander During March 1863, Powell became severely ill, and was unable to recover at camp. He eventually resigned from the cavalry, and returned to his home in Ohio. Powell was also unhappy with Paxton, although this was revealed to only a few. On May 1, Paxton led a night raid (without Powell) near Lewisburg, and the regiment was defeated with significant casualties. Total losses were sixteen killed, missing, or wounded—plus 28 horses killed. General Eliakim P. Scammon, the division commander after Crook had been sent elsewhere, dismissed Paxton after the regiment returned to camp. Paxton was popular with his troops, but the troops also respected Powell. At the time of Paxton's dismissal, Powell's resignation had yet to be accepted, and he was still at home in Ohio regaining his health. After a petition by the regiment, Powell was persuaded to retract his resignation. He was promoted to colonel and became the regiment's commander effective May 13, 1863. ### Wytheville raid `The Wytheville raid occurred on July 18, 1863, in southwestern Virginia. Powell was second in command of a small 800-man brigade of cavalry and mounted infantry. He had some disagreements with how his commander, an infantry veteran named Colonel John Toland, handled the cavalry, and both men were shot early in the raid; Toland being killed on a street in Wytheville, and Powell believed to be mortally wounded. Although the Union brigade was able to secure the town, it suffered numerous casualties—and left town less than 24 hours after its arrival. Powell's wound was painful enough that he could not be moved, and he became a prisoner of the Confederates.` The citizens of Wytheville blamed Powell for the burning of several homes and buildings, although the damage occurred after he was wounded. When it appeared he might be harmed, a few of the local women intervened by hiding him in a hotel. Powell unexpectedly recovered enough that he could be moved, and was eventually sent to Richmond's Libby Prison. He was placed in solitary confinement on charges of robbery and murder. One of the men from the 2nd West Virginia cavalry wrote that "It was well known that the confederate authorities had placed Colonel Powell in a dungeon for some imaginary wrong...." One of the main causes for his predicament was the burning of a house and barn near Lewisburg, West Virginia, an act that the Confederate army and Lewisburg community considered unjustified and without military purpose. On January 29, 1864, Powell was paroled for 30 days to negotiate his exchange for Confederate Colonel Richard H. Lee. This negotiation was successful (Lee was a distant relative of Confederate General Robert E. Lee), and Powell returned to Ironton, Ohio, to continue his recuperation. On February 22, friends presented him with a gold watch, money to purchase a horse, a saber, and "a brace of Colt's ivory mounted 44 calibre navy revolvers." On March 20, 1864, he returned to Charleston and resumed command of the 2nd West Virginia Cavalry regiment. ### Cove Mountain Around the time of Powell's return, Crook was assigned command of the entire Kanawha Division. In April, General William W. Averell arrived in Charleston with two regiments of cavalry. On April 30, Crook organized a two prong attack against strategic Confederate locations along the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad. Crook led infantry from Charleston toward the Confederate regional headquarters at the Dublin Depot in Virginia. He sent cavalry under the command of Averell to attack Saltville, Virginia. Averell found Saltville strongly defended, so he decided to attack Wytheville instead. To get to Wytheville, Averell needed to move the cavalry through the mountains at Cove Gap (also known as Grassy Lick) in northern Wythe County. On May 10, Averell's path through the gap was blocked by a large force commanded by Confederate General William E. "Grumble" Jones reinforced by cavalry led by General John Hunt Morgan. Originally, Averell's plan was to have Powell lead a cavalry charge into the gap with sabers drawn. However, the charge was cancelled after a reconnaissance mission discovered a mass of Confederate soldiers waiting to ambush the Union cavalry. Instead, the Union cavalry formed a battle line that drew the Confederates out of the gap. A four-hour battle ensued. Averell's forehead was grazed by a bullet, and he temporarily relinquished command. The second in command, General Alfred N. Duffié, had a "conspicuous absence", so command fell to Powell. Powell was unable to get the cavalry through the gap, but he was able to make effective use of the 2nd West Virginia Cavalry, and hold off the larger Confederate force. The result of the battle was an inconclusive standoff that ended at dusk. During the night, a local slave led Averell's force on a difficult alternative route (Crab Orchard) through the mountains, and they eventually linked with Crook. Averell's report said "The General commanding desires to express his high appreciation of the skillful evolution of the 2nd Regiment, West Virginia Cavalry, under Colonel Powell, upon the field of battle. It was a dress parade that continued without disorder under a heavy fire for four hours." ### Hunter's Lynchburg Campaign On June 9, an army commanded by General David Hunter was reorganized, and Powell was assigned command of the 3rd Brigade under Averell's 2nd Cavalry Division of the Army of West Virginia. This brigade consisted of the 1st West Virginia Cavalry and the 2nd West Virginia Cavalry. On June 10, Hunter's Lynchburg Campaign was organized, and troops departed from Stanton, Virginia, toward Lynchburg. Powell's brigade often took the advance for the main portion of Hunter's force, moving south to Lexington, then southeast toward Lynchburg. Powell's cavalry approached Lynchburg from Campbell Courthouse, and pushed cavalries led by General John McCausland and General John D. Imboden to within four miles of Lynchburg during the morning of June 17. Fighting continued periodically all day, and stopped at dusk. During this time, additional rebel troops were arriving in Lynchburg via the railroad. Powell's brigade was sent out during the evening, and got close enough to the city that "the church spires of the city could be plainly seen." Later during that morning, Powell was surprised to find out that the Union army (which had an ammunition shortage) was in full retreat, leaving his brigade in a dangerous situation. The brigade caught up with the rest of the retreating army near New London—just when the pursuing Confederates caught up with them. Averell's entire division, including Powell's brigade, became the rear guard as Hunter's army retreated west toward Charleston. ## American Civil War: Shenandoah Valley After the retreat from Lynchburg to Charleston, the Army of West Virginia rested and resupplied. During July, it was transferred to the Shenandoah Valley. Powell commanded three West Virginia cavalry regiments as the 2nd Brigade of Averell's 2nd Cavalry Division. His brigade left Charleston on July 8, and arrived at a Baltimore & Ohio Railroad station in Parkersburg, West Virginia, on July 12. A few days later the brigade began its train ride to Martinsburg, West Virginia. Portions of the brigade arrived in Martinsburg on July 19, but the entire brigade did not arrive until around July 23. ### Rutherford's Farm and Kernstown II The Battle of Rutherford's Farm occurred on July 20. General Averell's force of infantry and cavalry defeated a larger force commanded by General Stephen Dodson Ramseur. The battle took place on some farmland north of Winchester, Virginia, and is sometimes called the Battle of Carter's Farm. In this battle, two regiments from Powell's brigade (2nd West Virginia Cavalry and 3rd West Virginia Cavalry) caused the rebels to be "thrown into confusion" and "driven from the woods". A few days later (July 24), the Second Battle of Kernstown was fought. In this Confederate victory, Crook's Army of West Virginia was driven north by General Jubal Early's Army of the Valley. The Union retreat started south of Winchester and ended in the rain on the north side of the Potomac River. The disorganized retreat featured panicking soldiers, burning Union supply wagons, and one cavalry commander becoming separated from his brigade. By the next day, Powell's brigade was the only cavalry unit still organized, and an infantry brigade commanded by (future President) Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes was among only two that remained organized. Both units were instrumental in enabling the Union force to escape from pursuing rebel cavalry. ### Moorefield Powell's brigade participated in one of Averell's most impressive victories on August 6, when it charged across the South Branch of the Potomac River, attacked McCausland's cavalry and recovered a portion of private property taken on July 30 from the residents of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. The attack drove McCausland's brigade "to the mountains, with the loss of his remaining artillery and many prisoners." This battle ruined Early's Confederate cavalry in the Shenandoah Valley, and it was never again the dominant force it once was. ### Opequon and Fisher's Hill The Third Battle of Winchester, also known as Opequon, occurred on September 19. By this time, Major General Philip Sheridan had been assigned command of Union armies in the Shenandoah Valley. This battle was a major victory for Sheridan, and it resulted in numerous casualties for both sides—including generals and colonels. Powell remained in command of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade of Averell's 2nd Cavalry Division, which consisted of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd West Virginia Cavalry Regiments. The brigade captured 80 prisoners and two pieces of artillery in a charge on the Winchester Heights. The Battle of Fisher's Hill occurred on September 21 and 22. Sheridan wrote that the battle was "in a measure, a part of the battle of Opequon". Following the fighting at Winchester, Powell's brigade led the pursuit of Early's army. On July 22, they fought dismounted because of the nature of the terrain. After infantry commanded by Crook created a gap in the Confederate line, Powell's brigade (remounted) pushed through and pursued the fleeing Confederates. The pursuit was successful, and "[m]any prisoners were taken in this chase". ## Division commander In early September, several of Powell's superiors recommended him for promotion. Averell wrote that Powell "is a gentleman of high character, and one of the best brigade commanders that I know." In a letter sent to headquarters in 1864, Crook said "Colonel Powell has served with me often since the commencement of the war. He has distinguished himself in every battle he was engaged in under me. He has been recommended by me on several occasions, for promotion. I regard him as one of the best cavalry officers I have ever seen in the service." Sheridan also recommended Powell for promotion. President Lincoln wrote that Powell should at least be given a "brevet appointment, if a full commission is impracticable". Following the Battle of Fisher's Hill, the Union army continued pursuing Early's Army as it retreated south. At this time, Sheridan became dissatisfied with the pace of Averell's pursuit, and dismissed him as commander of the 2nd Cavalry Division. Powell was assigned command of the division on September 23. Powell's command consisted of two brigades and a four-gun battery. The division's manpower when Powell became commander was 101 commissioned officers and 2,186 enlisted men present. Present and absent men totaled to 276 commissioned officers and 6,950 enlisted men. Because all but one person from Averell's staff left with Averell, and took the division's records, Powell had difficulty with the administrative work required of division commanders. He did not submit his first written report as division commander until October 27. On September 24, shortly after assuming command of the division, Powell moved his division from the Valley Pike to a road that leads to Harrisonburg. His advance guard skirmished with some rebel pickets, and it was discovered he was nearing cavalries commanded by Generals Imboden, Bradley Johnson, and McCausland. A major battle did not ensue, but Powell captured 18 prisoners, 14 wagons, and a large quantity of ammunition. Fifteen rebels were killed. The skirmish occurred at Forest Hill, and was the first of two that would happen over the next few days. Powell's division reached Harrisonburg on September 25. For the next week, the division would spend its time patrolling a region bounded mostly by Harrisonburg, Brown's Gap, and Stanton. On September 27, Powell was ordered to cross the South River. His division crossed while leaving one regiment behind to guard their camp and wagons. After the river crossing, the guarding regiment was attacked by Fitzhugh Lee's cavalry supported by infantry. Powell re–crossed the river, changed fronts, and eventually drove back the attackers. The main portion of this skirmish occurred at Weyer's Cave. Powell guarded his left flank by slowly falling back toward the community of Port Republic while additional Confederate forces joined Lee and pursued. Powell crossed the North River and moved to Cross Keys where he met with General George Armstrong Custer. At that time, Custer assumed command of the 2nd Cavalry Division. General Ulysses S. Grant, commander of all Union forces, had two major goals in the Shenandoah Valley: eliminate Early's army and make the Valley unable to support any Confederate armies. With Early almost eliminated, the Union Army began to focus on the second goal. Troops were sent to destroy or consume livestock, crops, and forage. Structures such as barns, mills and tanneries were destroyed. This destruction of the fertile Shenandoah Valley became known as "The Burning". On September 29, Custer moved the 2nd Cavalry Division from Cross Keys to Mount Sidney, where the division collected local horses and livestock, and destroyed forage, grain, and flour mills. The division moved to Mount Crawford, following the same orders to make the land unable to support the Confederate Army. On September 30, Custer was assigned to command the 3rd Cavalry Division, and Powell was again assigned to command the 2nd. Powell and his division reported to Major General Alfred T. Torbert at Harrisonburg on September 30. ### Luray Valley On October 1, Powell moved the division north to Luray (as ordered by Torbert), "driving off all stock of every description, destroying all grain, burning mills, blast furnaces, distilleries, tanneries, and all forage". While camped in Luray until the morning of October 7, Powell sent smaller groups on scouting expeditions and to hunt bushwhackers. On October 6, Powell destroyed a tannery used by the rebel army. The unfinished leather was said to be worth \$800,000 (over \$12 million in 2016 dollars). The division moved north from Luray to Front Royal on October 7, and then departed for Sperryville October 11—passing through Chester Gap to get there. This is where Powell began to face challenges from Confederate Colonel John S. Mosby's "guerrillas". On October 13, Powell learned that one of his soldiers had been the victim of a "cold-blooded murder" by two members of Mosby's gang. In retaliation, Powell hanged one of his prisoners that was part of Mosby's command. He left a sign on the hanged man that said "A.C. Willis, member of Company C, Mosby's command, hanged by the neck in retaliation for the murder of a U.S. Soldier by Messrs. Chancellor and Myers". In addition, Powell had Chancellor's house, barn, and livestock destroyed. ### Battle of Cedar Creek On October 19, 1864, Powell was promoted to brigadier general. On the same day, the Battle of Cedar Creek took place southwest of Middletown, Virginia. The battle began in the morning with a Confederate attack. At that time, Powell's 1st Brigade was eight miles away from Powell and the 2nd Brigade, and closer to Cedar Creek. When the battle started, this brigade was needed to support the Union Army's left, so it was detached to General Wesley Merritt. Powell positioned the 2nd Brigade on the road to Front Royal, and prevented the Confederate cavalry under General Lunsford L. Lomax from flanking the main Union force. A week later, the division skirmished with Lomax's Division further northwest at Middletown. ### Nineveh On November 12, Powell again fought Lomax's Cavalry. Elsewhere, Custer and Merritt attacked General Thomas L. Rosser's cavalry, and drove it back rapidly enough that Lomax was called for reinforcement. This left a smaller force (still larger than a brigade) commanded by McCausland to face Powell. Powell sent most of his 1st Brigade out beyond Front Royal, where it encountered McCausland's force. The Confederates slowly pushed the 1st Brigade back. Powell brought his 2nd Brigade to the front, and the 1st Brigade moved to the rear. The 2nd Brigade charged, resulting in a short clash that ended with the Confederates retreating as fast as they could. They were chased for eight miles. Powell captured all of the rebel artillery (two guns), their ammunition train, and took 180 prisoners. A newspaper account said that "Gen. Powell was on the field in person, and superintended the formation of the line of battle...." The newspaper also added that 40 Confederates were killed or wounded. Among those killed were a colonel and two majors, and among those wounded (slightly) was McCausland—"the scoundrel who burned Chambersburg". ## Resigns Powell resigned from the Union Army on January 5, 1865, because of family issues. His father had died and his mother was seriously ill. He issued a farewell address on January 10. In accepting the resignation on January 14, Torbert wrote of his "appreciation of your valor and ability as a soldier, your zeal, efficiency and untiring energy as a cavalry commander." Sheridan thanked Powell for his "faithful support, and for your gallantry which has contributed so much to make the victories of the Shenandoah Valley decisive." A tribute to Powell by Sheridan and officers from Powell's division was published on the front page of a Wheeling newspaper. Five days later, the same newspaper published a biographical sketch and Powell's farewell address. During the American Civil War, Powell was involved in 61 battles and engagements, and rose from captain to brigadier general. On February 24, 1866, Powell was nominated to be appointed to major general of the volunteers by brevet. The appointment was retroactive to March 13, 1865, and was for "gallant and meritorious services during the campaign of 1864 in West Virginia, and particularly at the battle of Front Royal." ## Animosity with Confederacy Powell was strongly disliked by supporters of the Confederacy. No matter what his rank was, he was often leading Union cavalry attacks. Weather and terrain were not deterrents to Powell's aggression, as proven in the 1862 Sinking Creek raid. Powell had been accused by Confederate General Sam Jones of shooting a prisoner "in cold blood". In another incident, he was accused of setting fire to a home with a family asleep inside. Powell became "one of the Confederacy's most wanted Union officers". After Powell was wounded and captured in Wytheville, he was eventually moved to Libby Prison and initially kept in a dungeon. Jones, who was the general in command of Confederate army regional headquarters in western Virginia, wrote at that time that Powell "is a bold, daring man, and one of the most dangerous officers we have had to contend with in the northwest of the state, and I am particularly anxious that he should not be allowed to return to the Kanawha Valley if it can be avoided." As a division commander, Powell ordered the execution of at least three prisoners in retaliation for what he considered the murder of his men by bushwhackers. He called the bushwhackers "illegal and outlawed bands of horse-thieves and murderers, recognized and supported by rebel authorities". The treatment of bushwhackers by both Custer and Powell caused Mosby to write an open letter to Sheridan threatening retaliation. Powell reported that he would not be intimidated by threats from the Richmond press. He wrote that he wished it be known to rebel authorities that if hanging two rebels for every one of his men murdered by bushwhackers was not enough, "I will increase it to twenty-two to one". Contrary to newspaper reports that stated Powell resigned because of family issues, one source believes that Powell was dismissed from active duty because one of the rebels he executed was related to former Senator John Crittenden, Union General Thomas L. Crittenden, and Confederate General George Crittenden. In Powell's farewell speech, he said "No one regrets the existence of the cause that necessitates the act more than I." ## Post war After leaving the military, Powell returned to the iron and nail business, becoming general manager of the Ironton Rolling Mill in Ironton, Ohio. He declined a Republican nomination for congress. In the spring of 1867, he moved to Clifton, West Virginia, to form the Clifton Nail Works, which he managed. His Clifton home is now part of the National Register of Historic Places. In the Presidential election of 1868, Powell was a Ulysses S. Grant elector in the Electoral College. In 1870, Powell was almost killed in a horse and buggy accident, and was unable to work in the iron works business. He sold his interest in the nail works, and moved to Kansas City, Missouri. At Kansas City, Powell worked for Standard Oil until he moved to St. Louis and worked for American Central Insurance. In 1876, Powell had recovered enough from his accident that he could work in the iron/nail business again. This time, he moved to Belleville, Illinois, where he lived for the rest of his life. He became one of the town's most respected citizens. Powell was manager of the Waugh Company Nail Works until 1882, when he organized the Western Nail Works. He worked at this Belleville company, as president, superintendent and general manager, until 1892. During this time, one source claimed that Powell had "more intimate practical knowledge of the nail business than any other man in the United States". Two years after Powell's move to Belleville, his wife Sara died. She had been diagnosed with cancer, and died seven months later while only 54 years old. A year later in 1879, he married local resident Emma Weaver. Powell was acquainted with two Presidents: Hayes, and a long-time friend William McKinley—they all fought in the Army of West Virginia during the Civil War. McKinley also came from an iron-making family, and appointed Powell as an Internal Revenue Collector in 1895. Powell was a strong participant in a fraternal organization of Civil War veterans that fought for the Union, the Grand Army of the Republic. He was the Illinois department commander for that organization in 1895 and 1896. The bullet that wounded Powell in Wytheville was never removed. It was lodged in his lung, and contributed to health difficulties that included rheumatism and respiratory problems. Powell died at his home in Belleville on December 26, 1904. He was survived by his wife and three of his children. Powell is buried at Chicago's Graceland Cemetery.

Stony Brook Railroad

Railroad line in Massachusetts

The Stony Brook Railroad (formally the Stony Brook Railroad Corporation), chartered in 1845, was a railroad company in Massachusetts, United States. The company constructed a rail line between the Nashua and Lowell Railroad's main line at the village of North Chelmsford and the town of Ayer, Massachusetts (then the village of South Groton) where it connected to the Fitchburg Railroad. Rather than running its own trains, upon opening in 1848 operations were contracted to the Nashua and Lowell; this arrangement continued until the Nashua and Lowell was leased by the Boston and Lowell Railroad in 1880. The Boston and Maine Railroad (B&M) took over operation of the Stony Brook in 1887 when it leased the Boston and Lowell Railroad. In 1983 the B&M was purchased by Guilford Rail System, which renamed itself Pan Am Railways (PAR) in 2006. Passenger service last ran on the line in 1961, but it saw significant freight service under Pan Am Railways. While it never owned rolling stock or ran trains, the Stony Brook Railroad Corporation existed until 2022 as a nearly wholly owned subsidiary of the Boston and Maine, itself a PAR subsidiary. That year, it was merged into CSX Transportation as part of CSX's purchase of Pan Am Railways. The Stony Brook Railroad was named after Stony Brook, a tributary of the Merrimack River, which the line follows for several miles. ## History ### Formation, construction, and Nashua and Lowell operations The Stony Brook Railroad was chartered in 1845 by citizens of Lowell, Massachusetts, to connect the city with points south and west. Construction of the line, which connected North Chelmsford and Ayer, was begun in 1847 and completed the following year. As the line approached completion, the Stony Brook decided to contract out train operations to the Nashua and Lowell Railroad (N&L), which connected to the line at its eastern terminus in North Chelmsford, rather than purchasing and operating their own trains. While the Stony Brook Railroad Corporation maintained its existence as the owner of the tracks, the N&L operated the Stony Brook line as a part of its own system, and this continued when the N&L formed a railroad pool with the Boston and Lowell Railroad in 1857. The Nashua and Lowell only made a modest profit from operating the Stony Brook Railroad, but this was considered preferable to allowing the competing Fitchburg Railroad to gain control of the line. In 1877, the B&L and N&L decided to terminate their joint operating agreement, and the line reverted to sole control and operation by the Nashua and Lowell Railroad. One unusual source of traffic on the Stony Brook Railroad was ice, which was cut from several ponds adjacent to the right of way and shipped to customers via the railroad. ### Boston and Lowell and Boston and Maine operations Following the breakup of the joint Nashua and Lowell and Boston and Lowell operating agreement, the Boston and Lowell leased its former partner in 1880, becoming the operator of the Stony Brook Railroad as well. The Boston and Maine Railroad (B&M) leased the Boston and Lowell in 1887, also gaining control of the Stony Brook Railroad. Under the B&M, the line grew in importance as a route for traffic between Maine and the rest of the United States which bypassed the busy city of Boston. #### Infrastructure improvements The B&M installed block signals on the Stony Brook around 1914, as a means of improving the line's capacity. This proved insufficient on its own, so in 1917 the B&M followed up by installing double track on the first few miles of each end of the line, both between West Chelmsford and North Chelmsford, and between Willows and Ayer Junction. A decade later, continued heavy traffic led to the installation of both double track and centralized traffic control (CTC), the latter believed to be the first such installation in New England. These improvements began in 1927 and were completed the following year. A wye was constructed in 1930 at North Chelmsford, which allowed trains traveling to or from Nashua, New Hampshire, to use the line without having to make a reverse movement. As built, the Stony Brook Railroad's tracks paralleled those of the Fitchburg Railroad between Ayer Junction and Willows. In April 1946, the B&M built a connection between the two lines at Willows, allowing for the duplicate trackage to Ayer Junction to be abandoned. This reduced the Stony Brook Railroad to 10.86 miles (17.48 km) in length. In 1957, the second track was taken up from Willows to Graniteville and from Westford to North Chelmsford, a change made possible by CTC. #### Buffalo Bill derailment On May 24, 1911, a circus train carrying Buffalo Bill's Wild West show derailed on the Stony Brook Railroad near Brookside. The accident, described by The Boston Globe as "one of the most spectacular in the history of railroading in this section," was later reported to have been caused by a ramp for loading and unloading elephants. This ramp was not securely fastened and became loose while the train traveled, hitting an assortment of lineside objects until finally hitting a switch stand in Brookside, derailing the train. While no one was killed, three showmen were seriously injured, and two unfortunate burros were fatally crushed by an elephant. Members of the show, with the assistance of a Boston and Maine Railroad wrecking crew, gradually freed the trapped men and animals from the derailed cars, and the Wild West show proceeded to Lowell by road instead. ### Pan Am Railways operations The Boston and Maine Railroad became a part of Guilford Transportation Industries in 1983. Until May 2022, the Stony Brook line was operated by Pan Am Railways as part of its main line through Massachusetts. It served as a connection between Northern New England and points west. The Stony Brook Railroad Corporation nominally still existed as a paper railroad until 2022, under 99.27 percent ownership by the Boston and Maine, which was in turn owned by Pan Am Railways. As part of CSX Transportation's purchase of Pan Am Railways, the Stony Brook Railroad Corporation was merged into CSX with the rest of PAR on June 1, 2022, ending its existence as a company. ## Stations

Soviet frigate Rezvyy

Krivak-class frigate

Rezvyy or Rezvy (Russian: Резвый, "Frisky") was the lead Project 1135M Burevestnik-class (Russian: Буревестник, "Petrel") Guard Ship (Сторожевой Корабль, SKR) or 'Krivak II'-class frigate. Launched on 30 May 1975, the vessel was designed to operate in an anti-submarine role in the Soviet Navy, with armament built around the Metel Anti-Ship Complex. Part of the Northern Fleet, the vessel undertook operations in the Atlantic Ocean, including visits to Congo and Cuba, and participating in the Atlantic-84 major naval exercise in 1984. After a major refit between 1989 and 1992, Rezvyy was recommissioned into the Russian Navy. The ship continued to travel, visiting Norway in 1993. After more than twenty-five years service, Rezvyy was decommissioned on 1 June 2001 and subsequently broken up. ## Design and development Rezvyy was the first of eleven Project 1135M ships launched between 1975 and 1981. Project 1135, the Burevestnik (Russian: Буревестник, "Petrel") class, was envisaged by the Soviet Navy as a less expensive complement to the Project 1134A Berkut A (NATO reporting name 'Kresta II') and Project 1134B Berkut B (NATO reporting name 'Kara') classes of anti-submarine ships called Large Anti-Submarine Ships (Большой Противолодочный Корабль, BPK) by the Soviets. The design, by N. P. Sobolov, combined a powerful missile armament with good seakeeping for a blue water role. Project 1135M was an improvement on the basic Project 1135 developed in 1972 with slightly increased displacement and heavier guns. They also mounted the dual-role URPK-5 Rastrub which provided secondary anti-ship capability. The ships initially retained the same BPK designation as the larger vessels but were designated Guard Ship (Сторожевой Корабль, SKR) from 28 July 1977 to reflect their substantial greater anti-ship capability than the earlier members of the class and the Soviet strategy of creating protected areas for friendly submarines close to the coast. NATO forces called the vessels 'Krivak II'-class frigates. The class was also sometimes known as the Rezvyy-class after this vessel. Displacing 2,935 tonnes (2,889 long tons; 3,235 short tons) standard and 3,305 t (3,253 long tons; 3,643 short tons) full load, Rezvyy was 123 m (403 ft 7 in) long overall, with a beam of 14.2 m (46 ft 7 in) and a draught of 4.5 m (14 ft 9 in). Power was provided by two 22,000 shp (16,000 kW) M7K power sets, each consisting of a combination of a 17,000-shaft-horsepower (13,000 kW) DK59 and a 5,000 shp (3,700 kW) M62 gas turbine arranged in a COGAG installation and driving one fixed-pitch propeller. Design speed was 32 knots (59 km/h; 37 mph) and range 3,900 nautical miles (7,223 km; 4,488 mi) at 14 kn (26 km/h; 16 mph). The ship's complement was 194, including 23 officers. ### Armament and sensors Rezvyy was designed for anti-submarine warfare around four URPK-5 Rastrub missiles (NATO reporting name SS-N-14 'Silex'), backed up by a pair of quadruple launchers for 533 mm (21 in) torpedoes and a pair of RBU-6000 213 mm (8 in) Smerch-2 anti-submarine rocket launchers. Both the URPK-5 and the torpedoes also had anti-ship capabilities. Defence against aircraft was provided by forty 4K33 OSA-M (SA-N-4 'Gecko') surface to air missiles which were launched from two sets of twin-arm ZIF-122 launchers. Two 100 mm (4 in) AK-100 guns were mounted aft in a superfiring arrangement. The ship had a well-equipped sensor suite, including a single MR-310A Angara-A air/surface search radar, Don navigation radar, the MP-401S Start-S ESM radar system and the Spectrum-F laser warning system. Fire control for the guns was provided by a MR-143 Lev-214 radar. An extensive sonar complex was fitted, including the bow-mounted MG-332T Titan-2T and the towed-array MG-325 Vega that had a range of up to 15 kilometres (9.3 mi). The vessel was also equipped with the PK-16 decoy-dispenser system which used chaff as a form of missile defense. ## Construction and career Laid down on 10 December 1973 with the yard number 159 at the Yantar Shipyard in Kaliningrad, Rezvyy was launched on 20 May 1975. The vessel, named for a Russian word that can be translated as frisky, was commissioned on 30 December and joined the Northern Fleet. Rezvyy, along with many other ships of the class, undertook a number of visits to friendly nations. For example, between 7 and 11 September 1982, the ship spent time in Pointe-Noire, Congo. From 2 to 10 December, Rezvyy could be found at the port of Havana, Cuba. The crew would often spend these visits involved in cultural interchanges with the local population. In Cuba, they also hosted a celebration in honour of the foundation of the Soviet Union as well as undertaking joint exercises in the Caribbean Sea. The vessel returned to Havana at the end of December 1984. On this trip, Rezvyy, along with the Project 1134A cruiser Admiral Isakov, sailed within 30 miles (48 km) of the Mississippi Delta, the closest that a Soviet Navy vessel had been to the US mainland since they started entering the Caribbean in 1969. The ship also took part in large naval exercises, like Atlantic-84, which ran between 31 March and 8 April 1984 and involved over 29 warships including the Project 1144 Orlan (NATO reporting name 'Kirov'-class) battlecruiser Kirov, in the Atlantic Ocean. One of the aims of the exercise was to demonstrate blue water capabilities of the Soviet Navy. On 8 December 1989, requiring maintenance after a long period of continuous service, Rezvyy was sent to Shipyard No. 35 in Murmansk to be refitted. The vessel was recommissioned on 6 August 1992. By this time, the dissolution of the Soviet Union had meant that the Soviet Navy ceased to exist. Rezvyy entered service with the Russian Navy. Visits to other ports continued, but the range of nations expanded, For example, between 14 and 18 May 1993, the ship visited Tromsø in Norway, a member country of NATO. On 1 June 2001, Rezvyy was decommissioned, disarmed at Murmansk and subsequently broken up.

Sri Lankan Tamils

South Asian ethnic group

Sri Lankan Tamils ( or ), also known as Ceylon Tamils or Eelam Tamils, are Tamils native to the South Asian island state of Sri Lanka. Today, they constitute a majority in the Northern Province, form the plurality in the Eastern Province and are in the minority throughout the rest of the country. 70% of Sri Lankan Tamils in Sri Lanka live in the Northern and Eastern provinces. Modern Sri Lankan Tamils descend from residents of the Jaffna Kingdom, a former kingdom in the north of Sri Lanka and Vannimai chieftaincies from the east. According to the anthropological and archaeological evidence, Sri Lankan Tamils have a very long history in Sri Lanka and have lived on the island since at least around the 2nd century BCE. The Sri Lankan Tamils are mostly Hindus with a significant Christian population. Sri Lankan Tamil literature on topics including religion and the sciences flourished during the medieval period in the court of the Jaffna Kingdom. Since the beginning of the Sri Lankan Civil War in the 1980s, it is distinguished by an emphasis on themes relating to the conflict. Sri Lankan Tamil dialects are noted for their archaism and retention of words not in everyday use in Tamil Nadu, India. Since Sri Lanka gained independence from Britain in 1948, relations between the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamil communities have been strained. Rising ethnic and political tensions following the Sinhala Only Act, along with ethnic pogroms carried out by Sinhalese mobs in 1956, 1958, 1977, 1981 and 1983, led to the formation and strengthening of militant groups advocating independence for Tamils. The ensuing civil war resulted in the deaths of more than 100,000 people and the forced disappearance and rape of thousands of others. The civil war ended in 2009 but there are continuing allegations of atrocities being committed by the Sri Lankan military. A United Nations panel found that as many as 40,000 Tamil civilians may have been killed in the final months of the civil war. In January 2020, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa said that the estimated 20,000+ disappeared Sri Lankan Tamils were dead. The end of the civil war has not fully improved conditions in Sri Lanka, with press freedom not being restored and the judiciary coming under political control. One-third of Sri Lankan Tamils now live outside Sri Lanka. While there was significant migration during the British colonial era to Singapore and Malaysia, the civil war led to more than 800,000 Tamils leaving Sri Lanka, and many have left the country for destinations such as Canada, United Kingdom, Germany and India as refugees or emigrants. According to the pro-rebel TamilNet, the persecution and discrimination that Sri Lankan Tamils faced has resulted in some Tamils today not identifying themselves as Sri Lankans but instead identifying themselves as either Eelam Tamils, Ceylon Tamils, or simply Tamils. Many still support the idea of Tamil Eelam, a proposed independent state that Sri Lankan Tamils aspired to create in the North-East of Sri Lanka. Inspired by the Tamil Eelam flag, the tiger also used by the LTTE, has become a symbol of Tamil nationalism for some Tamils in Sri Lanka and the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora. ## History There is little scholarly consensus over the presence of the Sri Lankan Tamil people in Sri Lanka, also known as Eelam in Sangam literature. One older theory states that there were no large Tamil settlements in Sri Lanka until the 10th century CE. According to the anthropological and archaeological evidence, Sri Lankan Tamils have a very long history in Sri Lanka and have lived on the island since at least around the 2nd century BCE. ### Prehistoric period The Indigenous Veddas are ethnically related to people in South India and early populations of Southeast Asia. It is not possible to ascertain what languages that they originally spoke as Vedda language is considered diverged from its original source (due to Sinhalese language influence). According to K. Indrapala, cultural diffusion, rather than migration of people, spread the Prakrit and Tamil languages from peninsular India into an existing mesolithic population, centuries before the common era. Tamil Brahmi and Tamil-Prakrit scripts were used to write the Tamil language during this period on the island. During the protohistoric period (1000-500 BCE) Sri Lanka was culturally united with Southern India, and shared the same megalithic burials, pottery, iron technology, farming techniques and megalithic graffiti. This cultural complex spread from southern India along with Dravidian clans such as the Velir, prior to the migration of Prakrit speakers. Settlements of culturally similar early populations of ancient Sri Lanka and ancient Tamil Nadu in India were excavated at megalithic burial sites at Pomparippu on the west coast and in Kathiraveli on the east coast of the island. Bearing a remarkable resemblance to burials in the Early Pandyan Kingdom, these sites were established between the 5th century BCE and 2nd century CE. Excavated ceramic sequences similar to that of Arikamedu were found in Kandarodai (Kadiramalai) on the north coast, dated to 1300 BCE. Cultural similarities in burial practices in South India and Sri Lanka were dated by archaeologists to 10th century BCE. However, Indian history and archaeology have pushed the date back to 15th century BCE. In Sri Lanka, there is radiometric evidence from Anuradhapura that the non-Brahmi symbol-bearing black and red ware occur in the 10th century BCE. The skeletal remains of an Early Iron Age chief were excavated in Anaikoddai, Jaffna District. The name Ko Veta is engraved in Brahmi script on a seal buried with the skeleton and is assigned by the excavators to the 3rd century BCE. Ko, meaning "King" in Tamil, is comparable to such names as Ko Atan, Ko Putivira and Ko Ra-pumaan occurring in contemporary Tamil Brahmi inscriptions of ancient South India and Egypt. ### Historic period Potsherds with early Tamil writing from the 2nd century BCE have been found from the north in Poonagari, Kilinochchi District to the south in Tissamaharama. They bore several inscriptions, including a clan name—veḷ, a name related to velir from ancient Tamil country. Once Prakrit speakers had attained dominance on the island, the Mahavamsa further recounts the later migration of royal brides and service castes from the Tamil Pandya Kingdom to the Anuradhapura Kingdom in the early historic period. Epigraphic evidence shows people identifying themselves as Damelas or Damedas (the Prakrit word for Tamil people) in Anuradhapura, the capital city of Rajarata the middle kingdom, and other areas of Sri Lanka as early as the 2nd century BCE. Excavations in the area of Tissamaharama in southern Sri Lanka have unearthed locally issued coins, produced between the 2nd century BCE and the 2nd century CE, some of which carry local Tamil personal names written in early Tamil characters, which suggest that local Tamil merchants were present and actively involved in trade along the southern coast of Sri Lanka by the late classical period. Other ancient inscriptions from the period reference a Tamil merchant, the Tamil householder residing in Iḷabharata and a Tamil sailor named Karava. Two of the six ancient inscriptions referring to the Damedas (Tamils) are in Periya Pullyakulam in the Vavuniya District, one is in Seruvavila in Trincomalee District, one is in Kuduvil in Ampara District, one is in Anuradhapura and one is in Matale District. Literary sources make references about Tamil rulers bringing horses to the island in water crafts in the second century BCE, most likely arriving at Kudiramalai. Historical records establish that Tamil kingdoms in modern India were closely involved in the island's affairs from about the 2nd century BCE. Kudiramalai, Kandarodai and Vallipuram served as great northern Tamil capitals and emporiums of trade with these kingdoms and the Romans from the 6th–2nd centuries BCE. The archaeological discoveries in these towns and the Manimekhalai, a historical poem, detail how Nāka-Tivu of Nāka-Nadu on the Jaffna Peninsula was a lucrative international market for pearl and conch trading for the Tamil fishermen. In Mahavamsa, a historical poem, ethnic Tamil adventurers such as Ellalan invaded the island around 145 BCE. Early Chola king Karikalan, son of Eelamcetcenni utilised superior Chola naval power to conquer Ceylon in the first century CE. Hindu Saivism, Tamil Buddhism and Jainism were popular amongst the Tamils at this time, as was the proliferation of village deity worship. The Amaravati school was influential in the region when the Telugu Satavahana dynasty established the Andhra empire and its 17th monarch Hāla (20–24 CE) married a princess from the island. Ancient Vanniars settled in the east of the island in the first few centuries of the common era to cultivate and maintain the area. The Vanni region flourished. In the 6th century CE, a special coastal route by boat was established from the Jaffna peninsula southwards to Saivite religious centres in Trincomalee (Koneswaram) and further south to Batticaloa (Thirukkovil), passed a few small Tamil trading settlements in Mullaitivu on the north coast. The conquests and rule of the island by Pallava king Narasimhavarman I (630–668 CE) and his grandfather King Simhavishnu (537–590 CE) saw the erection and structural development of several Kovils around the island, particularly in the north-east—these Pallava Dravidian rock temples remained a popular and highly influential style of architecture in the region over the next few centuries. Tamil soldiers from what is now South India were brought to Anuradhapura between the 7th and 11th centuries CE in such large numbers that local chiefs and kings trying to establish legitimacy came to rely on them. By the 8th century CE Tamil villages were collectively known as Demel-kaballa (Tamil allotment), Demelat-valademin (Tamil villages), and Demel-gam-bim (Tamil villages and lands). ### Medieval period In the 9th and 10th centuries CE, Pandya and Chola incursions into Sri Lanka culminated in the Chola annexation of the island, which lasted until the latter half of the 11th century CE. Raja Raja Chola I renamed the northern throne Mummudi Chola Mandalam after his conquest of the northeast country to protect Tamil traders being looted, imprisoned and killed for years on the island. Rajadhiraja Chola's conquest of the island led to the fall of four kings there, one of whom, Madavarajah, the king of Jaffna, was a usurper from the Rashtrakuta Dynasty. These dynasties oversaw the development of several kovils that administered services to communities of land assigned to the temples through royal grants. Their rule also saw the benefaction of other faiths. Recent excavations have led to the discovery of a limestone Kovil of Raja Raja Chola I's era on Delft island, found with Chola coins from this period. The decline of Chola power in Sri Lanka was followed by the restoration of the Polonnaruwa kingdom in the late 11th century CE. In 1215, following Pandya invasions, the Tamil-dominant Arya Chakaravarthi dynasty established an independent Jaffna kingdom on the Jaffna peninsula and other parts of the north. The Arya Chakaravarthi expansion into the south was halted by Alagakkonara, a man descended from a family of merchants from Kanchipuram in Tamil Nadu. He was the chief minister of the Sinhalese king Parakramabahu V (1344–59 CE). Vira Alakeshwara, a descendant of Alagakkonara, later became king of the Sinhalese, but he was overthrown by the Ming admiral Zheng He in 1409 CE. The next year, the Chinese admiral Zheng He erected a trilingual stone tablet in Galle in the south of the island, written in Chinese, Persian and Tamil that recorded offerings he made to Buddha, Allah and the God of Tamils Tenavarai Nayanar. The admiral invoked the blessings of Hindu deities at Temple of Perimpanayagam Tenavaram, Tevanthurai for a peaceful world built on trade. The 1502 map Cantino represents three Tamil cities on the east coast of the island - Mullaitivu, Trincomalee and Panama, where the residents grow cinnamon and other spices, fish for pearls and seed pearls and worship idols, trading heavily with Kozhikode of Kerala. The Arya Chakaravarthi dynasty ruled large parts of northeast Sri Lanka until the Portuguese conquest of the Jaffna kingdom in 1619 CE. The coastal areas of the island were conquered by the Dutch and then became part of the British Empire in 1796 CE. The Sinhalese Nampota dated in its present form to the 14th or 15th century CE suggests that the whole of the Tamil Kingdom, including parts of the modern Trincomalee District, was recognised as a Tamil region by the name Demala-pattana (Tamil city). In this work, a number of villages that are now situated in the Jaffna, Mullaitivu and Trincomalee districts are mentioned as places in Demala-pattana. The English sailor Robert Knox described walking into the island's Tamil country in the publication An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon, referencing some aspects of their royal, rural and economic life and annotating some kingdoms within it on a map in 1681 CE. Upon arrival of European powers from the 17th century CE, the Tamils' separate nation was described in their areas of habitation in the northeast of the island. The caste structure of the majority Sinhalese has also accommodated Tamil and Kerala immigrants from South India since the 13th century CE. This led to the emergence of three new Sinhalese caste groups: the Salagama, the Durava and the Karava. The Tamil migration and assimilation continued until the 18th century CE. ## Society ### Demographics According to the 2012 census there were 2,270,924 Sri Lankan Tamils in Sri Lanka, 11.2% of the population. Sri Lankan Tamils constitute an overwhelming majority of the population in the Northern Province and are the largest ethnic group in the Eastern Province. They are minority in other provinces. 70% of Sri Lankan Tamils in Sri Lanka live in the Northern and Eastern provinces. There are no accurate figures for the number of Sri Lankan Tamils living in the diaspora. Estimates range from 450,000 to one million. ### Other Tamil-speaking communities The two groups of Tamils located in Sri Lanka are the Sri Lankan Tamils and the Indian Tamils. There also exists a significant population in Sri Lanka who are native speakers of Tamil language and are of Islamic faith. Though a significant amount of evidence points towards these Muslims being ethnic Tamils, they are controversially listed as a separate ethnic group by the Sri Lankan government. Sri Lankan Tamils (also called Ceylon Tamils) are descendants of the Tamils of the old Jaffna Kingdom and east coast chieftaincies called Vannimais. The Indian Tamils (or Hill Country Tamils) are descendants of bonded labourers sent from Tamil Nadu to Sri Lanka in the 19th century to work on tea plantations. Most Sri Lankan Tamils live in the Northern and Eastern provinces and in the capital Colombo, and most Indian Tamils live in the central highlands. Historically, both groups have seen themselves as separate communities, although there has been a greater sense of unity since the 1980s. In 1948, the United National Party government stripped the Indian Tamils of their citizenship. Under the terms of an agreement reached between the Sri Lankan and Indian governments in the 1960s, about forty percent of the Indian Tamils were granted Sri Lankan citizenship, and most of the remainder were repatriated to India. By the 1990s, most Indian Tamils had received Sri Lankan citizenship. ### Regional groups Sri Lankan Tamils are categorised into three subgroups based on regional distribution, dialects, and culture: Negombo Tamils from the western part of the island, Eastern Tamils from the eastern part, and Jaffna or Northern Tamils from the north. #### Eastern Tamils Eastern Tamils inhabit a region that spans the Trincomalee, Batticaloa, and Ampara districts. Their history and traditions are inspired by local legends, native literature, and colonial documents. In the 16th century the area came under the nominal control of the Kingdom of Kandy, but there was scattered leadership under Vannimai chiefs in Batticaloa District who came with Magha's army in 1215. From that time on, Eastern Tamil social development diverged from that of the Northern Tamils. Eastern Tamils are an agrarian-based society. They follow a caste system similar to the South Indian or Dravidian kinship system. The Eastern Tamil caste hierarchy is dominated by the Mukkuvar, Vellalar and Karaiyar. The main feature of their society is the kudi system. Although the Tamil word kudi means a house or settlement, in eastern Sri Lanka it is related to matrimonial alliances. It refers to the exogamous matrilineal clans and is found amongst most caste groups. Men or women remain members of the kudi of their birth and be brother or sister by relation. No man can marry in the same kudi because woman is always become sister to him. But, a man can only marry in one of his sampantha kudis not in the sakothara kudis. By custom, children born in a family belong to mother's kudi. Kudi also collectively own places of worship such as Hindu temples. Each caste contains a number of kudis, with varying names. Aside from castes with an internal kudi system, there are seventeen caste groups, called Ciraikudis, or imprisoned kudis, whose members were considered to be in captivity, confined to specific services such as washing, weaving, and toddy tapping. However, such restrictions no longer apply. The Tamils of the Trincomalee district have different social customs from their southern neighbours due to the influence of the Jaffna kingdom to the north. The indigenous Veddha people of the east coast also speak Tamil and have become assimilated into the Eastern Tamil caste structure. Most Eastern Tamils follow customary laws called Mukkuva laws codified during the Dutch colonial period. #### Northern Tamils Jaffna's history of being an independent kingdom lends legitimacy to the political claims of the Sri Lankan Tamils, and has provided a focus for their constitutional demands. Northern Tamil society is generally categorised into two groups: those who are from the Jaffna peninsula in the north, and those who are residents of the Vanni to the immediate south. The Jaffna society is separated by castes. Historically, the Sri Lankan Vellalar were in northern region dominant and were traditionally husbandman involved in agriculture and cattle cultivation. They constitute half of the population and enjoyed dominance under Dutch rule, from which community the colonial political elites also were drawn from. The maritime communities existed outside the agriculture-based caste system and is dominated by the Karaiyars. The dominant castes (e.g. the Vellalar or Karaiyar) traditionally use the service of those collectively known as Kudimakkal. The Panchamars, who serve as Kudimakkal, consists of the Nalavar, Pallar, Parayar, Vannar and Ambattar. The castes of temple priests known as the Kurukkals and the Iyers are also held in high esteem. The artisans who are known as Kammalar also serve as Kudimakkal, and consists of the Kannar (brass-workers), Kollar (blacksmiths), Tattar (goldsmiths), Tatchar (carpenters) and Kartatchar (sculptor). The Kudimakkal were domestic servants who also gave ritual importance to the dominant castes. People in the Vanni districts considered themselves separate from Tamils of the Jaffna peninsula but the two groups did intermarry. Most of these married couples moved into the Vanni districts where land was available. Vanni consists of a number of highland settlements within forested lands using irrigation tank-based cultivation. An 1890 census listed 711 such tanks in this area. Hunting and raising livestock such as water buffalo and cattle is a necessary adjunct to the agriculture. The Tamil-inhabited Vanni consists of the Vavuniya, Mullaitivu, and eastern Mannar districts. Historically, the Vanni area has been in contact with what is now South India, including during the medieval period and was ruled by the Vanniar Chieftains. Northern Tamils follow customary laws called Thesavalamai, codified during the Dutch colonial period. #### Western Tamils Western Tamils, also known as Negombo Tamils or Puttalam Tamils, are native Sri Lankan Tamils who live in the western Gampaha and Puttalam districts. The term does not apply to Tamil immigrants in these areas. They are distinguished from other Tamils by their dialects, one of which is known as the Negombo Tamil dialect, and by aspects of their culture such as customary laws. Most Negombo Tamils have assimilated into the Sinhalese ethnic group through a process known as Sinhalisation. Sinhalisation has been facilitated by caste myths and legends. The Western Tamils caste hierarchy is principally dominated by the maritime Karaiyars, along with other dominant groups such as the Paravars. In Gampaha District, Tamils have historically inhabited the coastal region. In the Puttalam District, there was a substantial ethnic Tamil population until the first two decades of the 20th century. Most of those who identify as ethnic Tamils live in villages such as Udappu and Maradankulam. The coastal strip from Jaffna to Chilaw is also known as the "Catholic belt". The Tamil Christians, chiefly Roman Catholics, have preserved their heritage in the major cities such as Negombo, Chilaw, Puttalam, and also in villages such as Mampuri. Some residents of these two districts, especially the Karaiyars, are bilingual, ensuring that the Tamil language survives as a lingua franca among migrating maritime communities across the island. Negombo Tamil dialect is spoken by about 50,000 people. This number does not include others, outside of Negombo city, who speak local varieties of the Tamil language. The bilingual catholic Karavas are also found in the western coastal regions, who trace their origins to the Tamil Karaiyar however identify themselves as Sinhalese. Negombo Tamil indicates that the Karavas immigrated to Sri Lanka much later than Tamils immigrated to Jaffna. This would suggest that the Negombo dialect continued to evolve in the Coromandel Coast before it arrived in Sri Lanka and began to get influenced by Sinhala. So, in some ways, the dialect is closer to those spoken in Tamil Nadu than to Jaffna Tamil. Some Tamil place names have been retained in these districts. Outside the Tamil-dominated northeast, the Puttalam District has the highest percentage of place names of Tamil origin in Sri Lanka. Composite or hybrid place names are also present in these districts. ### Genetic affinities Although Sri Lankan Tamils are culturally and linguistically distinct, genetic studies indicate that they are closely related to other ethnic groups in the island while being related to the Indian Tamils from South India as well. There are various studies that indicate varying degrees of connections between Sri Lankan Tamils, Sinhalese, and Indian ethnic groups. A study conducted by Kshatriya in 1995 found that both ethnolinguistic groups of Sri Lanka, including the Tamils, were closest to the Tamil population of India and also the Muslim population of South India. They were found to be the most distant group from the Veddahs, and quite distant from both North-West Indians (Punjabis and Gujratis) and North-East Indians (Bengalis). In comparison to Indian Tamils, the Tamils of Sri Lanka had a higher admixture with the Sinhalese, though the Sinhalese themselves share a 69.86% (+/- 0.61) genetic admixture with the Indian Tamils. The study stated that any admixture from migrations several thousand years ago must have been erased through millennia of admixture among geographically local peoples. ### Religion In 1981, about eighty percent of Sri Lankan Tamils were Hindus who followed the Shaiva sect. The rest were mostly Roman Catholics who converted after the Portuguese conquest of Jaffna Kingdom. There is also a small minority of Protestants due to missionary efforts in the 18th century by organisations such as the American Ceylon Mission. Most Tamils who inhabit the Western Province are Roman Catholics, while those of the Northern and Eastern Provinces are mainly Hindu. Pentecostal and other churches, such as Jehovah's Witnesses, are active among the internally displaced and refugee populations. The 2012 Sri Lanka Census revealed a Buddhist population of 22,254 amongst Sri Lankan Tamils, i.e. roughly 1% of all Sri Lankan Tamils in Sri Lanka. The Hindu elite, especially the Vellalar, follow the religious ideology of Shaiva Siddhanta (Shaiva school) while the masses practice folk Hinduism, upholding their faith in local village deities not found in formal Hindu scriptures. The place of worship depends on the object of worship and how it is housed. It could be a proper Hindu temple known as a Koyil, constructed according to the Agamic scripts (a set of scriptures regulating the temple cult). More often, however, the temple is not completed in accordance with Agamic scriptures but consists of the barest essential structure housing a local deity. These temples observe daily Puja (prayers) hours and are attended by locals. Both types of temples have a resident ritualist or priest known as a Kurukkal. A Kurukkal may belong to someone from a prominent local lineage like Pandaram or Iyer community. In the Eastern Province, a Kurukkal usually belongs to Lingayat sect. Other places of worship do not have icons for their deities. The sanctum could house a trident (culam), a stone, or a large tree. Temples of this type are common in the Northern and Eastern Provinces; a typical village has up to 150 such structures. The offering would be done by an elder of the family who owns the site. A coconut oil lamp would be lit on Fridays, and a special rice dish known as pongal would be cooked either on a day considered auspicious by the family or on the Thai Pongal day, and possibly on Tamil New Year Day. There are several worshipped deities: Ayyanar, Annamar, Vairavar, Kali, Pillaiyar, Murukan, Kannaki Amman and Mariamman. Villages have more Pillaiyar temples, which are patronised by local farmers. Kannaki Amman is mostly patronised by maritime communities. Tamil Roman Catholics, along with members of other faiths, worship at the Shrine of Our Lady of Madhu. Hindus have several temples with historic importance such as those at Ketheeswaram, Koneswaram, Naguleswaram, Munneswaram, Tondeswaram, and Nallur Kandaswamy. Kataragama temple and Adam's Peak are attended by all religious communities. ### Language Sri Lankan Tamils predominantly speak Tamil and its Sri Lankan dialects. These dialects are differentiated by the phonological changes and sound shifts in their evolution from classical or old Tamil (3rd century BCE–7th century CE). The Sri Lankan Tamil dialects form a group that is distinct from the dialects of the modern Tamil Nadu and Kerala states of India. They are classified into three subgroups: the Jaffna Tamil, the Batticaloa Tamil, and the Negombo Tamil dialects. These dialects are also used by ethnic groups other than Tamils such as the Sinhalese, Moors and Veddhas. Tamil loan words in Sinhala also follow the characteristics of Sri Lankan Tamil dialects. Sri Lankan Tamils, depending on where they live in Sri Lanka, may also additionally speak Sinhala and or English. According to the 2012 Census 32.8% or 614,169 Sri Lankan Tamils also spoke Sinhala and 20.9% or 390,676 Sri Lankan Tamils also spoke English. The Negombo Tamil dialect is used by bilingual fishermen in the Negombo area, who otherwise identify themselves as Sinhalese. This dialect has undergone considerable convergence with spoken Sinhala. The Batticaloa Tamil dialect is shared between Tamils, Muslims, Veddhas and Portuguese Burghers in the Eastern Province. Batticaloa Tamil dialect is the most literary of all the spoken dialects of Tamil. It has preserved several ancient features, remaining more consistent with the literary norm, while at the same time developing a few innovations. It also has its own distinctive vocabulary and retains words that are unique to present-day Malayalam, a Dravidian language from Kerala that originated as a dialect of old Tamil around 9th century CE. The Tamil dialect used by residents of the Trincomalee District has many similarities with the Jaffna Tamil dialect. The dialect used in Jaffna is the oldest and closest to old Tamil. The long physical isolation of the Tamils of Jaffna has enabled their dialect to preserve ancient features of old Tamil that predate Tolkappiyam, the grammatical treatise on Tamil dated from 3rd century BCE to 10th century CE. Also, a large component of the settlers were from the Coromandel Coast and Malabar Coast which may have helped with the preservation of the dialect. Their ordinary speech is closely related to classical Tamil. Conservational Jaffna Tamil dialect and Indian Tamil dialects are to an extent not mutually intelligible, and the former is frequently mistaken for Malayalam by native Indian Tamil speakers. The closest Tamil Nadu Tamil variant to Jaffna Tamil is literary Tamil, used in formal speeches and news reading. There are also Prakrit loan words that are unique to Jaffna Tamil. ### Education Sri Lankan Tamil society values education highly, for its own sake as well as for the opportunities it provides. The kings of the Aryacakravarti dynasty were historically patrons of literature and education. Temple schools and traditional gurukulam classes on verandahs (known as Thinnai Pallikoodam in Tamil) spread basic education in religion and in languages such as Tamil and Sanskrit to the upper classes. The Portuguese introduced western-style education after their conquest of the Jaffna kingdom in 1619. The Jesuits opened churches and seminaries, but the Dutch destroyed them and opened their own schools attached to Dutch Reformed churches when they took over Tamil-speaking regions of Sri Lanka. The primary impetus for educational opportunity came with the establishment of the American Ceylon Mission in Jaffna District, which started with the arrival in 1813 of missionaries sponsored by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. The critical period of the missionaries' impact was from the 1820s to the early 20th century. During this time, they created Tamil translations of English texts, engaged in printing and publishing, established primary, secondary, and college-level schools, and provided health care for residents of the Jaffna Peninsula. American activities in Jaffna also had unintended consequences. The concentration of efficient Protestant mission schools in Jaffna produced a revival movement among local Hindus led by Arumuga Navalar, who responded by building many more schools within the Jaffna peninsula. Local Catholics also started their own schools in reaction, and the state had its share of primary and secondary schools. Tamil literacy greatly increased as a result of these changes. This prompted the British colonial government to hire Tamils as government servants in British-held Ceylon, India, Malaysia, and Singapore. By the time Sri Lanka became independent in 1948, about sixty percent of government jobs were held by Tamils, who formed barely fifteen percent of the population. The elected Sinhalese leaders of the country saw this as the result of a British stratagem to control the majority Sinhalese, and deemed it a situation that needed correction by implementation of the Policy of standardization. ### Literature According to legends, the origin of Sri Lankan Tamil literature dates back to the Sangam period (3rd century BCE–6th century CE). These legends indicate that the Tamil poet Eelattu Poothanthevanar (Poothanthevanar from Sri Lanka) lived during this period. Medieval period Tamil literature on the subjects of medicine, mathematics and history was produced in the courts of the Jaffna Kingdom. During Singai Pararasasekaran's rule, an academy for the propagation of the Tamil language, modelled on those of ancient Tamil Sangam, was established in Nallur. This academy collected manuscripts of ancient works and preserved them in the Saraswathy Mahal library. During the Portuguese and Dutch colonial periods (1619–1796), Muttukumara Kavirajar is the earliest known author who used literature to respond to Christian missionary activities. He was followed by Arumuga Navalar, who wrote and published a number of books. The period of joint missionary activities by the Anglican, American Ceylon, and Methodist Missions also saw the spread of modern education and the expansion of translation activities. The modern period of Tamil literature began in the 1960s with the establishment of modern universities and a free education system in post-independence Sri Lanka. The 1960s also saw a social revolt against the caste system in Jaffna, which impacted Tamil literature: Dominic Jeeva, Senkai aazhiyaan, Thamizhmani Ahalangan are the products of this period. After the start of the civil war in 1983, a number of poets and fiction writers became active, focusing on subjects such as death, destruction, and rape. Such writings have no parallels in any previous Tamil literature. The war produced displaced Tamil writers around the globe who recorded their longing for their lost homes and the need for integration with mainstream communities in Europe and North America. The Jaffna Public Library which contained over 97,000 books and manuscripts was one of the biggest libraries in Asia, and through the Burning of the Jaffna Public Library much of Sri Lankan Tamil literature has been obliterated. ### Cuisine The cuisine of Sri Lankan Tamils draws influence from that of India, as well as from colonialists and foreign traders. Rice is usually consumed daily and can be found at any special occasion, while spicy curries are favourite dishes for lunch and dinner. Rice and curry is the name for a range of Sri Lankan Tamil dishes distinct from Indian Tamil cuisine, with regional variations between the island's northern and eastern areas. While rice with curries is the most popular lunch menu, combinations such as curd, tangy mango, and tomato rice are also commonly served. String hoppers, which are made of rice flour and look like knitted vermicelli neatly laid out in circular pieces about 12 centimetres (4.7 in) in diameter, are frequently combined with tomato sothi (a soup) and curries for breakfast and dinner. Another common item is puttu, a granular, dry, but soft steamed rice powder cooked in a bamboo cylinder with the base wrapped in cloth so that the bamboo flute can be set upright over a clay pot of boiling water. This can be transformed into varieties such as ragi, spinach, and tapioca puttu. There are also sweet and savoury puttus. Another popular breakfast or dinner dish is Appam, a thin crusty pancake made with rice flour, with a round soft crust in the middle. It has variations such as egg or milk Appam. Jaffna, as a peninsula, has an abundance of seafood such as crab, shark, fish, prawn, and squid. Meat dishes such as mutton, chicken and pork also have their own niche. Vegetable curries use ingredients primarily from the home garden such as pumpkin, yam, jackfruit seed, hibiscus flower, and various green leaves. Coconut milk and hot chilli powder are also frequently used. Appetizers can consist of a range of achars (pickles) and vadahams. Snacks and sweets are generally of the homemade "rustic" variety, relying on jaggery, sesame seed, coconut, and gingelly oil, to give them their distinct regional flavour. A popular alcoholic drink in rural areas is palm wine (toddy), made from palmyra tree sap. Snacks, savouries, sweets and porridge produced from the palmyra form a separate but unique category of foods; from the fan-shaped leaves to the root, the palmyra palm forms an intrinsic part of the life and cuisine of northern region. ## Politics Sri Lanka became an independent nation in 1948. Since independence, the political relationship between the Sinhalese and Sri Lankan Tamil communities has been strained. Sri Lanka has been unable to contain its ethnic violence as it escalated from sporadic terrorism to mob violence, and finally to civil war. The Sri Lankan Civil War has several underlying causes: the ways in which modern ethnic identities have been made and remade since the colonial period, rhetorical wars over archaeological sites and place name etymologies, and the political use of the national past. The civil war resulted in the death of at least 100,000 people and, according to human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch, the forced disappearance of thousands of others (see White van abductions in Sri Lanka). Since 1983, Sri Lanka has also witnessed massive civilian displacements of more than a million people, with eighty percent of them being Sri Lankan Tamils. ### Before independence The arrival of Protestant missionaries on a large scale beginning in 1814 was a primary contributor to the development of political awareness among Sri Lankan Tamils. Activities by missionaries of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and Methodist and Anglican churches led to a revival among Hindu Tamils who created their own social groups, built their own schools and temples, and published their own literature to counter the missionary activities. The success of this effort led to a new confidence for the Tamils, encouraging them to think of themselves as a community, and it paved the way for their emergence as a cultural, religious, and linguistic society in the mid-19th century. Britain, which conquered the whole island by 1815, established a legislative council in 1833. During the 1833 Colebrooke-Cameron reforms the British centralised control to Colombo and amalgamated all administrative territories including the Tamil areas which had previously been administered separately. A form of modern central government was established for the first time in the island, followed by gradual decline of local form of feudalism including Rajakariya, which was abolished soon after. In the legislative council the British assigned three European seats and one seat each for Sinhalese, Tamils and Burghers. This council's primary function was to act as advisor to the Governor, and the seats eventually became elected positions. There was initially little tension between the Sinhalese and the Tamils, when in 1913 Ponnambalam Arunachalam, a Tamil, was elected representative of the Sinhalese as well as of the Tamils in the national legislative council. British Governor William Manning, who was appointed in 1918 however, actively encouraged the concept of "communal representation". Subsequently, the Donoughmore Commission in 1931 rejected communal representation and brought in universal franchise. This decision was opposed by the Tamil political leadership, who realised that they would be reduced to a minority in parliament according to their proportion of the overall population. In 1944, G. G. Ponnambalam, a leader of the Tamil community, suggested to the Soulbury Commission that a roughly equal number of seats be assigned to Sinhalese and minorities in an independent Ceylon (50:50)—a proposal that was rejected. But under section 29(2) of the constitution formulated by the commissioner, additional protection was provided to minority groups, such requiring a two-thirds majority for any amendments and a scheme of representation that provided more weight to the ethnic minorities. ### After independence Shortly after independence in 1948, G.G. Ponnambalam and his All Ceylon Tamil Congress joined D.S. Senanayake's moderate, western-oriented United National Party led government which led to a split in the Tamil Congress. S.J.V. Chelvanayakam, the leader of the splinter Federal Party (FP or Illankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi), contested the Ceylon Citizenship Act, which denied citizenship to Tamils of recent Indian origin, before the Supreme Court, and then in the Privy council in England, but failed to overturn it. The FP eventually became the dominant Tamil political party. In response to the Sinhala Only Act in 1956, which made Sinhala the sole official language, Federal Party Members of Parliament staged a nonviolent sit-in (satyagraha) protest, but it was violently broken up by a mob. The FP was blamed and briefly banned after the riots of May–June 1958 targeting Tamils, in which many were killed and thousands forced to flee their homes. Another point of conflict between the communities was state sponsored colonisation schemes that effectively changed the demographic balance in the Eastern Province, an area Tamil nationalists considered to be their traditional homeland, in favour of the majority Sinhalese. In 1972, a newly formulated constitution removed section 29(2) of the 1947 Soulbury constitution that was formulated to protect the interests of minorities. Also, in 1973, the Policy of standardization was implemented by the Sri Lankan government, supposedly to rectify disparities in university enrolment created under British colonial rule. The resultant benefits enjoyed by Sinhalese students also meant a significant decrease in the number of Tamil students within the Sri Lankan university student population. Shortly thereafter, in 1973, the Federal Party decided to demand a separate Tamil state. In 1976 they merged with the other Tamil political parties to become the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF). By 1977 most Tamils seemed to support the move for independence by electing the Tamil United Liberation Front overwhelmingly. The elections were followed by the 1977 riots, in which around 300 Tamils were killed. There was further violence in 1981 when an organised Sinhalese mob went on a rampage during the nights of 31 May to 2 June, burning down the Jaffna public library—at the time one of the largest libraries in Asia—containing more than 97,000 books and manuscripts. ### Rise of militancy Since 1948, successive governments have adopted policies that had the net effect of assisting the Sinhalese community in such areas as education and public employment. These policies made it difficult for middle class Tamil youth to enter university or secure employment. The individuals belonging to this younger generation, often referred to by other Tamils as "the boys" (Podiyangal in Tamil), formed many militant organisations. The most important contributor to the strength of the militant groups was the Black July massacre, in which between 1,000 and 3,000 Tamils were killed, prompting many youths to choose the path of armed resistance. By the end of 1987, the militant youth groups had fought not only the Sri Lankan security forces and the Indian Peace Keeping Force also among each other, with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) eventually eliminating most of the others. Except for the LTTE, many of the remaining organisations transformed into either minor political parties within the Tamil National Alliance or standalone political parties. Some also function as paramilitary groups within the Sri Lankan military. Human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, as well as the United States Department of State and the European Union, have expressed concern about the state of human rights in Sri Lanka, and both the government of Sri Lanka and the rebel LTTE have been accused of human rights violations. Although Amnesty International in 2003 found considerable improvement in the human rights situation, attributed to a ceasefire and peace talks between the government and the LTTE, by 2007 they reported an escalation in political killings, child recruitment, abductions, and armed clashes, which created a climate of fear in the north and east of the country. ### End of the civil war In August 2009, the civil war ended with total victory for the government forces. During the last phase of the war, many Tamil civilians and combatants were killed. The government estimated that over 22,000 LTTE cadres had died. The civilian death toll is estimated to be as high as 40,000 or more. This is in addition to the 70,000 Sri Lankans killed up to the beginning of the last phase of the civil war. Over 300,000 internally displaced Tamil civilians were interred in special camps and eventually released. As of 2011, there were still a few thousand alleged combatants in state prisons awaiting trials. The Sri Lankan government has released over 11,000 rehabilitated former LTTE cadres. Bishop of Mannar (a northwestern town) Rayappu Joseph said that 146,679 people seemed to be unaccounted between 2008 October and at the end of the civil war. The Tamil presence in Sri Lankan politics and society is facing a revival. In 2015 elections the Tamil national alliance got the third largest number of seats in the Parliament and as the largest parties UNP and SLFP created a unity government TNA leader R. Sampanthan was appointed as the opposition leader. K. Sripavan became the 44th Chief justice and the second Tamil to hold the position. ## Migrations ### Pre-independence The earliest Tamil speakers from Sri Lanka known to have travelled to foreign lands were members of a merchant guild called Tenilankai Valanciyar (Valanciyar from Lanka of the South). They left behind inscriptions in South India dated to the 13th century. In the late 19th century, educated Tamils from the Jaffna peninsula migrated to the British colonies of Malaya (Malaysia and Singapore) and India to assist the colonial bureaucracy. They worked in almost every branch of public administration, as well as on plantations and in industrial sectors. Prominent Sri Lankan Tamils in the Forbes list of billionaire include: Ananda Krishnan, Raj Rajaratnam, and G. Gnanalingam, and Singapore's former foreign minister and deputy prime minister, S. Rajaratnam, are of Sri Lankan Tamil descent. C. W. Thamotharampillai, an Indian-based Tamil language revivalist, was born in the Jaffna peninsula.Before the Sri Lankan civil war, Sri Lankan Tamil communities were well established in Malaysia, Singapore, India and the UK. ### Post civil war After the start of the conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, there was a mass migration of Tamils trying to escape the hardships and perils of war. Initially, it was middle class professionals, such as doctors and engineers, who emigrated; they were followed by the poorer segments of the community. The fighting drove more than 800,000 Tamils from their homes to other places within Sri Lanka as internally displaced persons and also overseas, prompting the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to identify them in 2004 as the largest asylum-seeking group. The country with the largest share of displaced Tamils is Canada, with more than 200,000 legal residents, found mostly within the Greater Toronto Area. and there are a number of prominent Canadians of Sri Lankan Tamil descent, such as author Shyam Selvadurai, and Indira Samarasekera, former president of the University of Alberta. Sri Lankan Tamils in India are mostly refugees of about over 100,000 in special camps and another 50,000 outside of the camps. In western European countries, the refugees and immigrants have integrated themselves into society where permitted. Tamil British singer M.I.A (born Mathangi Arulpragasam) and BBC journalist George Alagiah are, among others, notable people of Sri Lankan Tamil descent. Sri Lankan Tamil Hindus have built a number of prominent Hindu temples across North America and Europe, notably in Canada, France, Germany, Denmark, and the UK. Sri Lankan Tamils continue to seek refuge in countries like Canada and Australia. The International Organization for Migration and the Australian government has declared some Sri Lankans including Tamils as economic migrants. A Canadian government survey found that over 70% of Sri Lankan Tamil refugees have gone back to Sri Lanka for holidays raising concerns over the legitimacy of their refugee claims. However, the inability of Tamils to settle in their own lands indicate the ongoing hostilities and differential treatment of Tamils even after the end of armed war in May 2009. ## See also - List of Sri Lankan Tamils - Sri Lankan Tamils in Indian cinema - Tamil inscriptions in Sri Lanka

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

1984 film directed by Steven Spielberg

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is a 1984 American action-adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg from a script by Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, based on a story by George Lucas. It is the second installment in the Indiana Jones film series and a prequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark. The film features Harrison Ford who reprises his role as the title character. Kate Capshaw, Amrish Puri, Roshan Seth, Philip Stone and Ke Huy Quan, in his film debut, star in supporting roles. In the film, after arriving in British India, Indiana Jones is asked by desperate villagers to find a mystical stone and rescue their children from a Thuggee cult practicing child slavery, black magic, and ritual human sacrifice in honor of the goddess Kali. Not wishing to feature the Nazis as the villains again, executive producer and story writer George Lucas decided to regard this film as a prequel. Three plot devices were rejected before Lucas wrote a film treatment that resembled the final storyline. As Lawrence Kasdan, Lucas's collaborator on Raiders of the Lost Ark, turned down the offer to write the script, Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, who had previously worked with Lucas on American Graffiti (1973), were hired as his replacements. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was released on May 23, 1984, to financial success, grossing \$333.1 million worldwide, making it the highest grossing film of 1984. Initial critical reviews were mixed, criticizing its strong violence and gore, as well as some of its story elements. However, critical opinion has improved since 1984, citing the film's intensity and imagination. In response to some of the more violent sequences in the film, and with similar complaints about the Spielberg produced Gremlins (which released two weeks later), Spielberg suggested that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) alter its rating system, which it did within two months of the film's release, creating a new PG-13 rating. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score and won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. A sequel, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, followed in 1989. ## Plot In 1935, American archeologist Indiana Jones survives a murder attempt from Shanghai crime boss Lao Che, who hired him to retrieve the remains of Nurhaci. Indy flees from the city in the company of the young orphan Short Round and nightclub singer Willie Scott, unaware that the plane he is traveling on is owned by Che. The plane's pilots dump the fuel and parachute away, but Indy, Willie and Short Round escape using an inflatable raft before the plane crashes. The trio ride down the slopes of the Himalayas and fall into a river before arriving at the Indian village of Mayapore. There, the villagers plead for Indy's aid in retrieving a sacred lingam stone stolen along with the village's children by evil forces from the nearby Pankot Palace. Indy agrees to do so, hypothesizing that the stone is one of the five Sankara stones given by the Hindu gods to help humanity fight evil. Traveling to the palace, the trio are warmly welcomed and allowed to stay for the night as guests, attending a banquet hosted by the palace's young maharaja. During the night, Indy is attacked by an assassin, but manages to kill him. He discovers a series of tunnels underneath the palace and explores them with Willie and Short Round. There, they discover Thuggee cultists conducting a human sacrifice. The cult, which possesses three Sankara stones, is revealed to have abducted the children of Mayapore, using them to find the remaining stones. During an attempt to retrieve the stones, Indy is captured alongside Willie and Short Round. Thuggee high priest Mola Ram forces Indy to drink a potion that places him into a trance-like state which makes him prepare Willie for sacrifice. Short Round is put to work in the tunnels, but he escapes and interrupts the sacrifice by freeing Indy from his trance, who rescues Willie in turn. The trio defeat the Thuggee, collect the Sankara stones and free the children, escaping an attempt by Mola Ram to drown them. As they cross a rope bridge above a river, Mola Ram ambushes them again, leading Indy to cut the bridge in two, causing a number of cultists to fall into the crocodile-infested water below. As Indy, Willie, Short Round, and Mola Ram struggle to climb up the broken bridge, Indy invokes the name of Shiva, causing the stones to burn through his satchel; Mola Ram tries to grab one and falls into the river, and he is likewise devoured by the crocodiles. British Indian Army soldiers arrive and defeat the remaining cultists, and Indy, Willie and Short Round return to Mayapore and hand over their last remaining stone. As the villagers are reunited with their children, Indy and Willie embrace. ## Cast - Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones: An archaeologist adventurer who is asked by a desperate Indian village to retrieve a mysterious stone and rescue the missing village children. Ford undertook a strict physical exercise regimen headed by Jake Steinfeld to gain a more muscular tone for the part. - Kate Capshaw as Wilhelmina "Willie" Scott: An American nightclub singer working in Shanghai. In a nod to the Star Wars franchise, the nightclub is called Club Obi Wan. Willie is unprepared for her adventure with Indy and Short Round, and appears to be a damsel in distress. She also forms a romantic relationship with Indy. Over 120 actresses auditioned for the role, including Sharon Stone. To prepare for the role, Capshaw watched The African Queen and A Guy Named Joe. Spielberg wanted Willie to be a complete contrast to Marion Ravenwood from Raiders of the Lost Ark, so Capshaw dyed her brown hair blonde for the part. Costume designer Anthony Powell wanted the character to have red hair. - Ke Huy Quan as Short Round: Indy's young Chinese sidekick, who drives the 1936 Auburn Boat Tail Speedster that allows Indy to escape during the opening sequence. Quan was chosen as part of a casting call in Los Angeles. Around 6,000 actors auditioned worldwide for the part, including Peter Shinkoda; Quan was cast after his brother auditioned for the role. Spielberg liked his personality, so he and Ford improvised the scene where Short Round accuses Indy of cheating during a card game. - Amrish Puri as Mola Ram: A Thuggee priest who performs rites of human sacrifices. The character is named after an 18th-century Indian painter. Lucas wanted Mola Ram to be terrifying, so the screenwriters added elements of Aztec and Hawaiian human sacrificers and European devil worship to the character. To create his headdress, make-up artist Tom Smith based the skull on a cow (as this would be sacrilegious), and used a latex shrunken head. - Roshan Seth as Chattar Lal: The Prime Minister of the Maharaja of Pankot. Chattar, also a Thuggee worshipper, is enchanted by Indy, Willie and Short Round's arrival, but is offended by Indy's questioning of the palace's history and the archaeologist's own dubious past. - Philip Stone as Captain Philip Blumburtt: A British Indian Army officer on a routine inspection tour of Pankot Palace and the surrounding area. He assists Indiana by fighting off Thuggee cultists at the bridge with his regiment, the 11th Poona Rifles. Additionally, Roy Chiao portrays Lao Che, a Shanghai crime boss who, with his sons Chen (Chua Kah Joo) and Kao Kan (Ric Young), hires Indy to recover the cremated ashes of one of his ancestors. David Yip (in his film debut) portrays Wu Han, a friend of Indy, who is killed in Club Obi Wan. Raj Singh portrays Zalim Singh, the adolescent Maharajá of Pankot, and D. R. Nanayakkara portrays the village Shaman, the leader of a small village that recruits Indy to retrieve their stolen sacred Shiva lingam stone. Denawaka Hamine and Iranganie Serasinghe play two of the village women. Professional wrestler Pat Roach plays the Thuggee overseer in the mines whom Indy has a large brawl with; Roach had previously appeared as a German mechanic and a Giant Sherpa who brawls with Indy in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Dan Aykroyd appears briefly and with a British accent as Weber, who escorts Jones, Short Round and Willie from their car to the plane. Spielberg, Lucas, Marshall, and Kennedy have cameos at the airport. ## Production ### Development Spielberg later recalled that when Lucas first approached him for Raiders of the Lost Ark, "George said if I directed the first one then I would have to direct a trilogy. He had three stories in mind. It turned out George did not have three stories in mind and we had to make up subsequent stories." Both men later attributed the film's tone, which was darker than Raiders of the Lost Ark, to their personal moods following the breakups of their relationships. In addition, Lucas felt "it had to have been a dark film. The way Empire Strikes Back was the dark second act of the Star Wars trilogy." Spielberg had said "The danger in making a sequel is that you can never satisfy everyone. If you give people the same movie with different scenes, they say why weren't you more original?" "But if you give them the same character in another fantastic adventure, but with a different tone, you risk disappointing the other half of the audience who just wanted a carbon copy of the first film with a different girl and a different bad guy. So you win and you lose both ways." Lucas set the film in an earlier year than the first to avoid repeating the use of Nazis as the villains. Spielberg originally wanted to bring Marion Ravenwood back, with Abner Ravenwood considered as a possible character. In developing the story, Lucas conceived of an opening chase scene with Indiana Jones on a motorcycle on the Great Wall of China, followed by the discovery of a "Lost World pastiche with a hidden valley inhabited by dinosaurs". Another idea was to feature the Monkey King as the plot device. However, Chinese authorities refused permission for them to film in the country, requiring a different setting. Lucas wrote a film treatment that included a haunted castle in Scotland, but Spielberg felt it was too similar to Poltergeist; so the setting transformed into a demonic temple in India. Lucas came up with ideas that involved a religious cult devoted to child slavery, black magic, and ritual human sacrifice. Lawrence Kasdan of Raiders of the Lost Ark was asked to write the script. "I didn't want to be associated with Temple of Doom," he reflected. "I just thought it was horrible. It's so mean. There's nothing pleasant about it. I think Temple of Doom represents a chaotic period in both their [Lucas's and Spielberg's] lives, and the movie is very ugly and mean-spirited." Lucas hired Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz to write the script because of their knowledge of Indian culture. Gunga Din served as an influence for the film. Huyck and Katz spent four days at Skywalker Ranch for story discussions with Lucas and Spielberg in early 1982. They later said the early plot consisted of two notions of Lucas': that Indy would recover something stolen from a village and decide whether to give it back, and that the picture would start in China and work its way to India. Huyck says Lucas was very single-minded about getting through meetings, while "Steve would always stop and think about visual stuff." Lucas's initial idea for Indiana's sidekick was a virginal young princess, but Huyck, Katz, and Spielberg disliked the idea. Just as Indiana Jones was named after Lucas's Alaskan Malamute, the character of Willie was named after Spielberg's Cocker Spaniel, and Short Round was named after Huyck's dog, whose name was derived from The Steel Helmet. Lucas handed Huyck and Katz a 20-page treatment in May 1982 titled Indiana Jones and the Temple of Death to adapt into a screenplay. Scenes such as the fight scene in Shanghai, the escape from the airplane, and the mine cart chase came from earlier scripts of Raiders of the Lost Ark. In Raiders, the headpiece for the Staff of Ra was originally conceived to be in two pieces, with the first piece in the museum of General Hok, a Japanese-allied Chinese warlord in Shanghai. Jones was planned to steal that piece, and then use a giant gong as a shield as General Hok fired a submachine gun at him during his escape, much like the final moments in Club Obi-Wan. Kasdan said that was too expensive to produce for the earlier movie. After that, Jones was to fly to Nepal to find Marion and the second piece. In flight, he fell asleep and all of the other passengers on the plane bailed out and parachuted to safety, leaving him to escape alone using an inflatable raft to slide down a Himalayan slope to Marion's bar. Kasdan said this was cut because it interrupted the story flow and was "too unbelievable," a complaint leveled by some critics at the finished scene. Lucas, Huyck, and Katz had been developing Radioland Murders (1994) since the early 1970s. The opening music was taken from that script and applied to Temple of Doom. Spielberg reflected, "George's idea was to start the movie with a musical number. He wanted to do a Busby Berkeley dance number. At all our story meetings he would say, 'Hey, Steven, you always said you wanted to shoot musicals.' I thought, 'Yeah, that could be fun.'" Lucas, Spielberg, Katz, and Huyck were concerned how to keep the audience interest while explaining the Thuggee cult. Huyck and Katz proposed a tiger hunt but Spielberg said, "There's no way I'm going to stay in India long enough to shoot a tiger hunt." They eventually decided on a dinner scene involving eating bugs, monkey brains, and the like. "Steve and George both still react like children, so their idea was to make it as gross as possible," says Katz. Lucas sent Huyck and Katz a 500-page transcript of their taped conversations to help them with the script. The first draft was written in six weeks, in early August 1982. "Steve was coming off an enormously successful movie [E.T.] and George didn't want to lose him," said Katz. "He desperately wanted him to direct (Temple of Doom). We were under a lot of pressure to do it really, really fast so we could hold on to Steve." A second draft was finished by September. Captain Blumburtt, Chattar Lal, and the boy Maharaja originally had more crucial roles. A dogfight scene was deleted, as were scenes where those who drank the Kali blood turned into zombies with physical superhuman abilities. During pre-production, the Temple of Death title was replaced with Temple of Doom. From March to April 1983, Huyck and Katz simultaneously performed rewrites for a final shooting script. Huyck and Katz later said Harrison Ford took many of the one liners originally given to Short Round. ### Casting Harrison Ford reprised his role of Indiana Jones from Raiders of the Lost Ark. For the role of Willie Scott, more than 1000 actresses auditioned. Among the totally unknown actresses auditioning for the role was Sharon Stone. Finally, Spielberg chose Kate Capshaw after viewing her videotaped test and showing it to Harrison Ford. For the role of Short Round, casting director Mike Fenton arranged open calls for East Asian boys to come in to audition in several major cities, including New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Hawaii, Toronto, Chicago, Montreal, Hong Kong and London. Originally, Ke Huy Quan's younger brother went to audition for the role while Quan tagged along. The producers had noticed that Quan was giving his brother directions behind the camera during the audition, so the casting director had asked Quan to give it a shot, and was cast a few days later. For the various Indian characters in the film, the villagers were played by Sri Lankan actors and actresses, while the characters in Pankot Palace were primarily played by Indian actors. For the role of Mola Ram, the arch-villain, they searched through England and the United States to find someone to play the part, as both Lucas and Spielberg were most anxious that they did not cast the principal Indian roles with Western actors darkened down. They couldn't find anybody amongst the resident Indian actors in the United States, and so they got a permit for Amrish Puri, who was working on 18 films in India simultaneously at the time of his casting. Puri had met with Spielberg and initially declined the role, but was convinced after speaking with Richard Attenborough, whom Puri had worked with on a small part in Gandhi. Roshan Seth, who played prime minister Chattar Lal, also appeared in Gandhi alongside Puri. ### Filming The filmmakers were denied permission to film in North India and Amer Fort, due to the government finding the script offensive. Producer Frank Marshall explained that "originally the scenes were going to be shot in India at a fantastic palace. They required us to give them a script, so we sent it over and we didn't think it was going to be a problem. But because of the voodoo element with Mola Ram and the Thuggees, the Indian government was a little bit hesitant to give us permission. They wanted us to do things like not use the term Maharajah, and they didn't want us to shoot in a particular temple that we had picked. The Indian government wanted changes to the script and final cut privilege." As a result, location work went to Kandy, Sri Lanka, with matte paintings and scale models applied for the village, temple, and Pankot Palace. Budgetary inflation also caused Temple of Doom to cost \$28.17 million, \$8 million more than Raiders of the Lost Ark. Filming began on April 18, 1983, in Kandy, and moved to Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire, England on May 5. Marshall recalled, "when filming the bug scenes, crew members would go home and find bugs in their hair, clothes and shoes." Eight out of the nine sound stages at Elstree housed the filming of Temple of Doom. Lucas biographer Marcus Hearn observed, "Douglas Slocombe's skillful lighting helped disguise the fact that about 80 percent of the film was shot with sound stages." Danny Daniels choreographed the opening music number "Anything Goes". Capshaw learned to sing in Mandarin and took tap dance lessons. However the dress was fitted so tightly that Capshaw was not able to dance in it. Made by Barbara Matera out of original 1920s and 1930s beads, the dress was one of a kind. The opening dance number was actually the last scene to be shot, but the dress did feature in some earlier location shots in Sri Lanka, drying on a nearby tree. Unfortunately an elephant had started to eat it, tearing the whole back of the dress. Consequently, some emergency repair work had to be done by Matera with what remained of the original beads, and it was costume designer Anthony Powell who had to fill in the insurance forms. As to the reason for damage, he had no option but to put "dress eaten by elephant". In a 2003 documentary on the making of the film (first released when the original trilogy made its debut on DVD), costume designer Anthony Powell stated that only one evening dress was made for Capshaw due to the limited amount of original 1920s and 1930s beads and sequins (story above). However, there have been more than one of Capshaw's evening dresses on display at the same time in different countries during exhibitions – from late 2014, a dress was on display at the Hollywood Costume exhibition in Los Angeles (exhibition ran from October 2, 2014 – March 2, 2015). At the very same time, the traveling "Indiana Jones: Adventure of Archaeology" exhibition was on display in Edmonton in Canada (October 11, 2014 – April 6, 2015) and there featured another of the red and gold dresses. Production designer Norman Reynolds could not return for Temple of Doom because of his commitment to Return to Oz. Elliot Scott (Labyrinth, Who Framed Roger Rabbit), Reynolds' mentor, was hired. To build the rope bridge the filmmakers found a group of British engineers from Balfour Beatty working on the nearby Victoria Dam. Harrison Ford suffered a severe spinal disc herniation by performing a somersault while filming the scene with the assassin in Jones's bedroom. A hospital bed was brought on set for Ford to rest between takes. Lucas stated, "He could barely stand up, yet he was there every day so shooting would not stop. He was in incomprehensible pain, but he was still trying to make it happen." With no alternatives, Lucas shut down production while Ford was flown to Centinela Hospital on June 21 for recovery. Stunt double Vic Armstrong spent five weeks as a stand-in for various shots. Wendy Leech, Armstrong's wife, served as Capshaw's stunt double. Macau (then a Portuguese colony) was substituted for Shanghai, while cinematographer Douglas Slocombe caught fever from June 24 to July 7 and could not work. Ford returned on August 8. Despite the problems during filming, Spielberg was able to complete Temple of Doom on schedule and on budget, finishing principal photography on August 26. Various pickups took place afterwards. This included Snake River Canyon, in Idaho, Mammoth Mountain, Tuolumne and American River, Yosemite National Park, San Joaquin Valley, Hamilton Air Force Base and Arizona. Producer Frank Marshall directed a second unit in Florida in January 1984, using alligators to double as crocodiles. The mine chase was a combination of a roller coaster and scale models with dolls doubling for the actors. Minor stop motion was also used for the sequence. Visual effects supervisors Dennis Muren, Joe Johnston and a crew at Industrial Light & Magic provided the visual effects work, while Skywalker Sound, headed by Ben Burtt, commissioned the sound design. Burtt recorded roller coasters at Disneyland Park in Anaheim for the mine cart scene. ### Editing "After I showed the film to George [Lucas], at an hour and 55 minutes, we looked at each other," Spielberg remembered. "The first thing that we said was, 'Too fast'. We needed to decelerate the action. I did a few more matte shots to slow it down. We made it a little bit slower, by putting breathing room back in so there'd be a two-hour oxygen supply for the audience." ## Music ## Release ### Box office Temple of Doom was released on May 23, 1984, in the United States, accumulating a record-breaking \$45.7 million in its first week. The film went on to gross \$333.1 million worldwide, with \$180 million in North America and \$153.1 million in other markets. The film had the highest opening weekend of 1984, and was that year's highest-grossing film (third in North America, behind Beverly Hills Cop and Ghostbusters). It was also the tenth highest-grossing film of all time during its release. It sold an estimated 53,532,800 tickets in the United States. ### Promotion Marvel Comics published a comic book adaptation of the film by writer David Michelinie and artists Jackson Guice, Ian Akin, Brian Garvey, and Bob Camp. It was published as Marvel Super Special No. 30 and as a three-issue limited series. LucasArts and Atari Games promoted the film by releasing an arcade game. Hasbro released a toy line based on the film in September 2008. ### Home media The video was released at Christmas 1986 with a retail price of \$29.95 and sold a record 1.4 million units. A DVD version of the film was released in 2003 together with the two other films in the then Indiana Jones trilogy series. A Blu-ray version for the film was released in 2012 as part of a box set for the series, which had four films at the time. In 2021, a remastered 4K version of the film was released on Ultra HD Blu-ray, produced using scans of the original negatives. It was released as part of a box set for the then four films in the Indiana Jones film series. ### Television In Japan, the film was aired on Nippon TV (NTV), on October 16, 1987. It became NTV's most-watched film up until then with a 26.9% audience rating, surpassing the 25.3% record previously set by First Blood in 1985. In turn, Temple of Doom was later surpassed by Tsuribaka Nisshi 4 in 1994, but remained NTV's most-watched foreign film up until Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in 2004. In the United Kingdom, the film's 2005 airing was watched by 5 million viewers on BBC1, becoming the channel's ninth most-watched film during the first half of 2005. ## Reception ### Critical response Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom received mixed reviews upon its release, but over the years the film's critical reception has improved. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The site's critical consensus reads, "It may be too 'dark' for some, but Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom remains an ingenious adventure spectacle that showcases one of Hollywood's finest filmmaking teams in vintage form." On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 57 out of 100, based on 14 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Roger Ebert gave the film a perfect four-star rating, calling it "the most cheerfully exciting, bizarre, goofy, romantic adventure movie since Raiders, and it is high praise to say that it's not so much a sequel as an equal. It's quite an experience." Vincent Canby felt the film was "too shapeless to be the fun that Raiders is, but shape may be beside the point. Old-time, 15-part movie serials didn't have shape. They just went on and on and on, which is what Temple of Doom does with humor and technical invention." Neal Gabler commented that "I think in some ways, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was better than Raiders of the Lost Ark. In some ways it was less. In sum total, I'd have to say I enjoyed it more. That doesn't mean it's better necessarily, but I got more enjoyment out of it." Colin Covert of the Star Tribune called the film "sillier, darkly violent and a bit dumbed down, but still great fun." Pauline Kael, writing in The New Yorker, said that "nobody has ever fused thrills and laughter in quite the way that [Spielberg] does here" and claimed that the movie was "the most sheerly pleasurable physical comedy I've seen in years." Dave Kehr stated "The film betrays no human impulse higher than that of a ten-year-old boy trying to gross out his baby sister by dangling a dead worm in her face." Ralph Novak of People complained "The ads that say 'this film may be too intense for younger children' are fraudulent. No parent should allow a young child to see this traumatizing movie; it would be a cinematic form of child abuse. Even Harrison Ford is required to slap Quan and abuse Capshaw. There are no heroes connected with the film, only two villains; their names are Steven Spielberg and George Lucas." The Observer described it as "a thin, arch, graceless affair." The Guardian summarized it as "a two-hour series of none too carefully linked chase sequences ... sitting on the edge of your seat gives you a sore bum but also a numb brain." Leonard Maltin gave the movie only 2 out of 4 stars, saying that the film is "headache inducing" and "never gives us a chance to breathe", and chiding the "'gross-out' gags." In 2014, Time Out polled several film critics, directors, actors and stunt actors to list their top action films. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was listed at 71st place on this list. Director Quentin Tarantino has stated that Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is his favorite of the series, as well as Spielberg's second-best film behind Jaws."[Spielberg] pushes the envelope, he creates PG-13, a movie so badass it created a new level in the MPAA," further adding "there is a comedy aspect as gruesome as the cinema is; there is an ultimate comedy aspect that's just not quite there as much in the first one." ### Reception from the cast and crew Kate Capshaw's performance as Willie Scott has often been criticized for its shrillness, with Capshaw calling Willie "not much more than a dumb screaming blonde," further adding that she "was blind-sided" by the reaction to her character. "The thing that surprised me the most was that the critics, women critics in particular, were very critical of Willie Scott, as if we were making a political statement and I was doing nothing for my sisters. I found it odd that it was an action-adventure film and we were meant to be doing message work." When promoting Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in 1989, Steven Spielberg said "I wasn't happy with Temple of Doom at all. It was too dark, too subterranean, and much too horrific. I thought it out-poltered Poltergeist. There's not an ounce of my own personal feeling in Temple of Doom." He later added during the Making of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom documentary, "Temple of Doom is my least favorite of the trilogy. I look back and I say, 'Well the greatest thing that I got out of that was I met Kate Capshaw.' We married years later and that to me was the reason I was fated to make Temple of Doom." George Lucas, who had been going through a divorce with Marcia Lucas during the making of the film, attributed the film's darkness to his relationship problems, but in regard to the film said, "I love the movie, it's just slightly darker in tone and not as fun as the first." Harrison Ford stated "I felt it was funny and explored interesting, dark places. That scene where he takes the heart out, that was a new thing, a dark thing. But I enjoyed that about it. It also possesses some of the craziest action, the most energy. I think it is a good film." ### Awards Dennis Muren and Industrial Light & Magic's visual effects department won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects at the 57th Academy Awards. Soundtrack composer John Williams was, as he had been for his work on Raiders of the Lost Ark, again nominated for Original Music Score. The visual effects crew won the same category at the 38th British Academy Film Awards. Cinematographer Douglas Slocombe, editor Michael Kahn, Ben Burtt and other sound designers at Skywalker Sound received nominations. Spielberg, the writers, Harrison Ford, Jonathan Ke Quan, Anthony Powell and makeup designer Tom Smith were nominated for their work at the Saturn Awards. Temple of Doom was nominated for Best Fantasy Film but lost to Ghostbusters. ## Controversy ### Depiction of India The depiction of India caused controversy, with the film receiving a temporary ban in India, as it did not release in cinemas. The film was later released in the country when it came out on home video. A small protest group of around 30 to 50 people in Seattle, Washington, appeared in the local newspapers when they protested against the film for depicting Indians as either helpless or evil. The depiction of Indian cuisine was heavily criticized, as dishes such as baby snakes, eyeball soup, beetles, and chilled monkey brains are not Indian foods. Professors such as Yvette Rosser have criticized the film for its portrayal of India, with Rosser writing "[it] seems to have been taken as a valid portrayal of India by many teachers, since a large number of students surveyed complained that teachers referred to the eating of monkey brains." Another heavily criticized aspect was the film's white savior narrative, with Indiana being depicted as a great white hero upon landing in a remote Indian village, with the villagers unable to help themselves. Roshan Seth, who played Chattar Lal, mentioned that the banquet scene was a joke that went wrong, saying, "Steven intended it as a joke, the joke being that Indians were so smart that they knew all Westerners think that Indians eat cockroaches, so they served them what they expected. The joke was too subtle for that film." In his autobiography, Amrish Puri expressed the whole controversy around the film as "silly". He wrote that "it's based on an ancient cult that existed in India and was recreated like a fantasy. If you recall those imaginary places like Pankot Palace, starting with Shanghai, where the plane breaks down and the passengers use a raft to jump over it, slide down a hill and reach India, can this ever happen? But fantasies are fantasies, like our Panchatantra and folklore. I know we are sensitive about our cultural identity, but we do this to ourselves in our own films. It's only when some foreign directors do it that we start cribbing." ### PG rating Many parents who took their children to see the film complained that some sequences in the film were too violent for its PG rating, particular sequences involving human sacrifice and children being flogged. Spielberg had initially defended the violence, stating "the picture is not called Temple of Roses, it is called Temple of Doom. There are parts of this film that are too intense for younger children, but this is a fantasy adventure. It is the kind of violence that does not really happen and cannot be perpetuated by people leaving the cinema and performing those tricks on their friends at home." In response to some of the more violent sequences in the film, and with similar complaints about Gremlins (which released two weeks later), Spielberg suggested that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) alter its rating system by introducing an intermediary between the PG and R ratings. The MPAA concurred, and a new PG-13 rating was introduced two months after the film's release. In the UK, the film was heavily censored for a PG rating. The United Kingdom followed suit five years later, with the BBFC introducing the 12 rating and Batman (1989) being the first film to receive it. Temple of Doom was itself re-rated 12, uncut, in 2012.

Tropical Storm Hermine (1980)

Atlantic tropical storm in 1980

Tropical Storm Hermine caused significant flooding in Mexico during September 1980. The eleventh tropical cyclone and eight named storm of the 1980 Atlantic hurricane season, Hermine developed from a tropical wave that emerged into the Atlantic from the west coast of Africa on September 11. After uneventfully crossing the Atlantic Ocean, the system developed a well-defined circulation while in the Caribbean Sea on September 20 and was then classified as a tropical depression. After becoming a tropical cyclone, the depression steadily strengthened as it tracked nearly due westward. By September 21, it strengthened into Tropical Storm Hermine and brushed the northern coast of Honduras shortly thereafter. It nearly became a hurricane before it made landfall in Belize on September 22. After weakening over the Yucatan Peninsula, Hermine restrengthened to near-hurricane status again over the Gulf of Mexico before making landfall in the Mexican state of Veracruz. Hermine steadily weakened inland and eventually dissipated on September 26. In Belize, the storm knocked out communications, though damage in that country was minimal. Heavy rainfall in Guatemala triggered landslides, causing eight fatalities. Additionally, portions of the Pan-American Highway were shut down due to flooding. In Mexico, many areas reported at least 10 inches (250 mm) of precipitation, while a few locations experience more than 30 inches (760 mm) of rain. At the capital city of Mexico City, ten districts reported significant street flooding. As a result of torrential rainfall, at least 30 fatalities occurred, with dozens more missing, and leaving 25,000 homeless. However, no estimates of damage associated with the storm were produced. ## Meteorological history A tropical wave emerged into the Atlantic from the west coast of Africa on September 11, though the system lacked a well-defined circulation. The tropical wave tracked westward for several days with minimal development, until reaching near the Lesser Antilles where a low-level cloud banding feature appeared, along with an increase in central convection. This suggested a possible low-level circulation, though an Air Force Reserve Flight on September 17 indicated little evidence of a circulation. On the following day, the system crossed the Lesser Antilles and entered the Caribbean Sea. As it passed near Jamaica on September 20, a low-level circulation became more apparent on satellite imagery. It is estimated that Tropical Depression Eleven developed at 1200 UTC on that day, while it was centered about 240 miles (390 km) south of Kingston, Jamaica. However, the National Hurricane Center did not initiate advisories until 2200 UTC on September 20. The depression tracked just north of due west, and by September 21, it was upgraded to Tropical Storm Hermine. Later on September 21, Hermine passed only 5 miles (8.0 km) offshore of northeast Honduras. An Air Force Reserve flight investigated if landfall occurred, though Hermine had remained offshore. After the storm moved to the northwest away from Honduras, it began to significantly strengthen. By September 22, maximum sustained winds had increased to 70 mph (110 km/h). Shortly thereafter, Hermine made landfall near Belize City at the same intensity. The storm weakened somewhat over the Yucatán Peninsula, and sustained winds were 50 mph (80 km/h) when Hermine emerged into the Bay of Campeche on September 23. The storm quickly began to re-strengthen as it tracked generally westward in the Gulf of Mexico. Although several computer models suggested a northward turn, Hermine drifted southwestward, possibly due to high terrain over Mexico. Hermine attained its peak intensity with winds of 70 mph (110 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 993 mbar (29.3 inHg) early on September 24, as measured by reconnaissance aircraft. After peak intensity, Hermine weakened slightly to a 65 mph (105 km/h) tropical storm. At 1200 UTC on September 24, the storm made landfall near Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, Mexico. Hermine steadily weakened inland and by late 1500 UTC on September 25, it was downgraded to a tropical depression. Later that day, the National Hurricane Center noted that a low-level circulation could no longer be located, and by early on the following day, Hermine dissipated over the Mexican state of Oaxaca. ## Impact On September 21, the government of Belize issued a gale warning, as well as a hurricane watch, for most of the eastern coast of the country. It was canceled after Tropical Storm Hermine had moved inland. In eastern Mexico, an estimated 15,000 people evacuated from low-lying areas. Additionally, the Government of Mexico sent "advices" to "interests" in the Yucatan Peninsula. Officials in Mexico urged numerous residents along the southern Gulf of Mexico coast and surrounding states to evacuate prior to the storm's arrival. Timely warnings were later credited for reducing the loss of life. While crossing the southern Yucatán Peninsula, Hermine brought locally heavy rains and strong winds to eastern Mexico and much of Belize – then a colony of the United Kingdom. Between 9 and 10 inches (230 and 250 mm) of rain fell at the Philip S. W. Goldson International Airport. In Quintana Roo, more than 7 in (180 mm) of precipitation fell in localized areas, leading to floods. The storm also temporarily knocked out communication to all of Belize and Chetumal, Mexico. According to officials in the region, little damage took place during Hermine's passage. Heavy rains in Guatemala triggered landslides, killing at least eight people after crushing a bus. Portions of the Pan American Highway were shut down due to debris. Tropical Storm Hermine and the remnants caused heavy rainfall across along most of the southern and eastern parts of Mexico. Rainfall totals from Hermine peaked at 31.15 in (791 mm) in San Pedro Tapanatepec, Oaxaca. When the remnants of Hermine reached the Pacific coast of Mexico, several inches of rain were recorded. Throughout the country, the hardest hit areas were Veracruz, Oaxaca, Chiapas and Guerrero. More than 30 people were killed by the storm and dozens more left missing. Ten districts in Mexico City were brought to a standstill as flood waters blocked off streets. In the small towns of Cintalapa and Jiquiplan, flooding killed eight people and left twenty more missing. In addition to the loss of life, at least 25,000 residents were left homeless due to severe flooding. Two small dams broke due to excessive rains near Tuxtla Gutiérrez, prompting the evacuation of 2,000 residents in nearby areas. In response to the storm, an estimated 15,000 personnel were deployed to assist in relief efforts. ## See also - Tropical Storm Barry (2013) - Tropical Storm Harvey (2011) - 1980 Atlantic hurricane season - Other tropical cyclones named Hermine

Fort Greble

Historic fort in Washington, D.C.

Fort Greble was an American Civil War-era Union fortification constructed as part of the defenses of Washington, D.C. during that war. Named for First Lieutenant John Trout Greble, the first West Point graduate killed in the U.S. Civil War, it protected the junction of the Anacostia and Potomac rivers, and from its position on a bluff in the Congress Heights, precluded any bombardment of the Washington Navy Yard and southeastern portions of the city. It was supported by Fort Carroll to the northeast and Fort Foote to the south. It never fired a shot during the war, and after a brief stint as a U.S. Army Signal Corps training facility, was abandoned and the land returned to its natural state. As of July 2007, the site of the fort is a community park. ## Planning and construction Prior to the outbreak of war, Congress Heights (so called because the Capitol building in downtown Washington could be seen from the tops of the hills) were owned by the Berry family, who also owned much of the Anacostia River bottomland to the west of the Heights. In the days following the First Battle of Bull Run, panicked efforts by the Union were made to defend Washington from what was perceived as an imminent Confederate attack. These makeshift entrenchments were largely confined to the direct approaches to Washington and the bridges that spanned the Potomac. Multiple forts were constructed in the Arlington region to the southwest of Washington on land rented or leased from the pre-war owners. Despite these efforts, following General George B. McClellan assuming command of the Military Division of the Potomac on July 26, 1861, he found that > not a single defensive work had been commenced on the Maryland side [of the Potomac]. There was nothing to prevent the enemy shelling the city from heights within easy range, which could be occupied by a hostile column almost without resistance. In the wake of his declaration, fort construction was accelerated and expanded, with new strong points and artillery positions springing up around the entire 37-mile (60-km) perimeter of the District of Columbia. In order to prevent an attack on the undefended Maryland side of the Potomac, Brigadier General John G. Barnard, chief engineer of the Department of Washington, directed that several forts be constructed on the Congress Heights in order to protect the Navy Yard and Washington Arsenal from bombardment. At the crucial western end of the Heights would be the then-unnamed Fort Greble. Planning and surveying for the proposed line of forts progressed quickly, and by the end of September 1861, work had begun on what was to become Fort Greble. Under the direction of U.S. Army engineers, the work progressed quickly, and the fort, which was constructed as several closely supporting redoubts, was completed before Christmas. General Barnard, in a report to General Totten, chief engineer of the U.S. Army was able to report "Forts Greble and Stanton are completed and armed;" on December 10, 1861. The fort was named for Lt. John Trout Greble, killed at the Battle of Big Bethel. The fort had a perimeter of 327 yards and places for 17 guns. A fall 1862 review of Washington's fortifications described Fort Greble as a "large and powerful work, well provided with magazines and bomb-proofs." Despite that praise, the report also recommended new gun platforms and protection for gun crews. The rapid completion of the fort did have some drawbacks, however. The fort lacked some of the refinements that would be present at later forts like Fort Foote. In 1864, civil engineer William C. Gunnell requested the removal of the wooden buildings that served as company quarters at Fort Greble so that the ammunition for the fort could be safely placed in magazines to be built in place of the shanties. There simply had not been time in 1861 to construct proper earthen magazines. This sort of constant renovation and improvement would continue throughout the war as forts were adapted to new purposes and new garrisons. ## Wartime use From the time of its construction, Fort Greble was never intended to serve as part of a continuous line of defenses stretching from the Potomac to Fort Lincoln at the extreme eastern end of the District of Columbia. Rather, the fort and its sister emplacements on the east bank of the Potomac were intended to deny the Confederacy the possibility of infiltrating guns across the Potomac in order to bombard the Washington Navy Yard. This fact is best illustrated by the 1862 report of the Commission on the Defenses of Washington, which was created by Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton to provide oversight to the Army Engineers constructing the defenses. Their report, released in December 1862, illustrated the isolated nature of the Eastern Branch defenses: > In relation to this group of works, the Commission express the opinion that an enemy will not attempt to enter Washington from this direction, and that we cannot (as a general rule) expect to be able to meet him with a line of troops. What is to be prevented is the seizure of these heights for the purpose of establishing batteries to destroy the navy-yard and arsenal. For this purpose the works should be self-sustaining, or relying only upon such aid as a small movable body of troops can furnish, and upon succor, which may be thrown over the Branch after an attack is developed. Over the course of the war, these words would prove prophetic. No Confederate forces would bring Fort Greble under fire during its entire four-year active military career, and its garrison units, rotated regularly, served quietly behind its earthen walls. ### Life at the fort Daily life at Fort Greble was similar to that experienced by soldiers at other forts in the Washington defenses. A soldier's normal day began with reveille before sunrise and was immediately followed by morning muster, at which the soldiers of the garrison were counted and reported for sick call. Following muster, the day was filled with work on improving the fort's defenses and drill of various types, usually consisting of gunnery practice, but also including infantry and parade drill. This schedule usually continued, broken by meal and rest breaks, until taps was called at 8:00 or 9:00 p.m. Sunday was a break in the routine as the muster was immediately followed by a weekly inspection and church call. Sunday afternoons were a soldier's free time, and this was usually filled by writing letters home, bathing, or simply catching up on extra sleep. For much of the year, the garrison would be plagued by mosquitoes and the heat and humidity common to the Washington area during the summer. Though Fort Greble was built on a hill, the area immediately surrounding the fort consisted of swampy bottomland drained by the Anacostia and Potomac rivers, a breeding ground for malaria. Communication with the outside world was provided by the military road that served the Eastern Branch line of forts, and supply wagons would usually arrive on a weekly schedule. Trips to Washington or Uniontown from the fort were uncommon, and by virtue of its location at the extreme end of the Eastern Branch defenses, Fort Greble was isolated even from its neighboring forts. Until 1864, communications between Fort Greble and its neighbors had to be routed through departmental headquarters in Washington. After a test of the system completely failed, efforts were made to establish signaling points between the forts, and the forts themselves were connected to Washington via telegraph wire. Signal detachments were present at Fort Stanton, near Uniontown, and sometimes visited Fort Greble as part of training efforts. ### The garrison In accordance to a plan laid out in an October 1861 report by General Barnard, "rear line" forts were to receive one man per yard of fort perimeter when fully garrisoned. Front-line forts were to receive two men per yard, when needed. However, most forts were not kept fully garrisoned at all times. Due to its location north of the Potomac River, Fort Greble was considered a rear-line fort. To man Fort Greble's 327 yards (299 m) of perimeter, Barnard designated a force of 165 men. If the fort needed to be fully garrisoned due to an impending attack, the difference in the actual garrison and the plan would be made good from Washington's reserve force. As General Barnard would say in a December 24, 1862 report, "It is seldom necessary to keep these infantry supports attached to the works." However, this plan only applied to men manning the walls of the fort, not the artillerymen who would be serving the fort's guns. To man the guns of Fort Greble and those of Washington's other forts, Barnard designated three crews for each gun. These crews would be permanently located at the fort, unlike the men assigned to the walls of the fort. To fire Fort Greble's planned complement of 15 guns, Barnard assigned 255 artillerymen. This plan was affected by the needs of the war. As the fighting dragged on and casualties mounted, the various commanders of the Army of the Potomac repeatedly raided the Washington garrison for trained artillerymen and infantry replacements. By 1864, Washington had been stripped to a total less than half that of Barnard's 1861 recommendation. According to a May 1864 report by General Albion P. Howe, Inspector of Artillery, the garrison of Fort Greble consisted of a single company of the Seventh Unattached Heavy Artillery, Massachusetts Volunteers, commanded by Captain George S. Worcester. 125 men of various ranks served six 12-pounder field howitzers, six 32-pounder barbette guns, one 8-inch (200 mm) siege howitzer, one Coehorn mortar, one 10-inch (250 mm) mortar, and one 30-pounder Parrott rifle. The same report lists the garrison as "drilled some at artillery and infantry," putting it a step ahead of the garrisons of neighboring forts Wagner and Ricketts, which were judged as "Drilled but little at artillery and infantry; not efficient." ## Post-war use After the surrender of General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865, the primary reason for manned defenses protecting Washington ceased to exist. Initial recommendations by Col. Alexander, chief engineer of the Washington defenses, were to divide the defenses into three classes: those that should be kept active (first-class), those that should be mothballed and kept in a reserve state (second-class), and those that should be abandoned entirely (third-class). Fort Greble fell into the second-class category. To this end, the 22nd Army Corps issued General Order 89, which stated (in part) that the guns and ammunition removed from the dismantled forts should be kept in storage. Fort Greble was chosen as one of the storage locations. As a second-class fort, Fort Greble continued to receive regular maintenance and upkeep. By the end of August 1865, however, with funds running low, and no further appropriations likely, this work began to slack off. As the money ran out, more and more forts were designated as second- or third-class locations, and were dismantled and the land returned to its original owners. In August 1867, the commander of the Department of Washington wrote to the Chief of Ordnance, asking how much longer he needed Fort Greble as an ordnance depot for materiel removed from dismantled forts. When it could do so, the Ordnance Department removed its property to the Washington Arsenal, now Fort McNair, or transferred it to a still-garrisoned fort, though with post-war budget cuts, these were becoming few and far between. The infant Army Signal Corps, which had played a valuable part in the Civil War, had a need for a post-war training ground. In 1866, the Army allowed the Chief Signal Officer of the Army, General Albert J. Myer, to use Fort Greble for this purpose. Then, in 1868, Myer requested and received control over Fort Greble as a signal communications school for instruction in electric telegraphy and visual signaling. In January 1869, however, Myer moved the school from Fort Greble and soon established it at Fort Whipple, Virginia. Following that move, the fort was sold back into private ownership, where the land was later purchased for use as a park. Throughout the 20th century, various attempts were made to include Fort Greble as the terminus of a "ring" of parks surrounding the city of Washington. The parks would be connected by a 23.5-mile (37.8-km) Fort Circle Drive, but these plans never made it off the drawing board, due to budget concerns and the political issues involved. Though many of the forts—including Fort Greble—did become parks, they were not connected in a grand plan surrounding Washington. Today, the site of Fort Greble is home to Fort Greble Recreation Center, a community center for local youths and neighborhood events. In 2006, a lighted baseball field was built at the site as part of a Washington-wide renovation of city parks.