title: The Times

text: In editorials published on 29 and 31 July 1914, Wickham Steed, the "Times's" Chief Editor, argued that the British Empire should enter World War I. On 8 May 1920, also under the editorship of Steed, "The Times" in an editorial endorsed the anti-Semitic fabrication "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" as a genuine document, and called Jews the world's greatest danger. In the leader entitled "The Jewish Peril, a Disturbing Pamphlet: Call for Inquiry", Steed wrote about "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion": What are these 'Protocols'? Are they authentic? If so, what malevolent assembly concocted these plans and gloated over their exposition? Are they forgery? If so, whence comes the uncanny note of prophecy, prophecy in part fulfilled, in part so far gone in the way of fulfillment?". The following year, when Philip Graves, the Constantinople (modern Istanbul) correspondent of "The Times", exposed "The Protocols" as a forgery, "The Times" retracted the editorial of the previous year.


title: The Times

text: In 1922, John Jacob Astor, son of the 1st Viscount Astor, bought "The Times" from the Northcliffe estate. The paper gained a measure of notoriety in the 1930s with its advocacy of German appeasement; editor Geoffrey Dawson was closely allied with those in the government who practised appeasement, most notably Neville Chamberlain. Candid news reports by Norman Ebbut from Berlin that warned of warmongering were rewritten in London to support the appeasement policy.


title: The Times

text: Kim Philby, a double agent with primary allegiance to the Soviet Union, was a correspondent for the newspaper in Spain during the Spanish Civil War of the late 1930s. Philby was admired for his courage in obtaining high-quality reporting from the front lines of the bloody conflict. He later joined British Military Intelligence (MI6) during World War II, was promoted into senior positions after the war ended, and defected to the Soviet Union when discovery was inevitable in 1963.


title: The Times

text: Between 1941 and 1946, the left-wing British historian E. H. Carr was assistant editor. Carr was well known for the strongly pro-Soviet tone of his editorials. In December 1944, when fighting broke out in Athens between the Greek Communist ELAS and the British Army, Carr in a "Times" leader sided with the Communists, leading Winston Churchill to condemn him and the article in a speech to the House of Commons. As a result of Carr's editorial, "The Times" became popularly known during that stage of World War II as "the threepenny "Daily Worker"" (the price of the Communist Party's "Daily Worker" being one penny).


title: The Times

text: On 3 May 1966, it resumed printing news on the front page – previously the front page had been given over to small advertisements, usually of interest to the moneyed classes in British society. Also in 1966, the Royal Arms, which had been a feature of the newspaper's masthead since its inception, was abandoned. In the same year, members of the Astor family sold the paper to Canadian publishing magnate Roy Thomson. His Thomson Corporation brought it under the same ownership as "The Sunday Times" to form Times Newspapers Limited.


title: The Times

text: An industrial dispute prompted the management to shut the paper for nearly a year from 1 December 1978 to 12 November 1979.


title: The Times

text: The Thomson Corporation management were struggling to run the business due to the 1979 energy crisis and union demands. Management sought a buyer who was in a position to guarantee the survival of both titles, and had the resources and was committed to funding the introduction of modern printing methods.


title: The Times

text: Several suitors appeared, including Robert Maxwell, Tiny Rowland and Lord Rothermere; however, only one buyer was in a position to meet the full Thomson remit, Australian media magnate Rupert Murdoch. Robert Holmes à Court, another Australian magnate had previously tried to buy "The Times" in 1980.


title: The Times

text: In 1981, "The Times" and "The Sunday Times" were bought from Thomson by Rupert Murdoch's News International. The acquisition followed three weeks of intensive bargaining with the unions by company negotiators John Collier and Bill O'Neill. Murdoch gave legal undertakings to maintain separate journalism resources for the two titles. The Royal Arms was reintroduced to the masthead at about this time, but whereas previously it had been that of the reigning monarch, it would now be that of the House of Hanover, who were on the throne when the newspaper was founded.


title: The Times

text: After 14 years as editor, William Rees-Mogg resigned upon completion of the change of ownership. Murdoch began to make his mark on the paper by appointing Harold Evans as his replacement. One of his most important changes was the introduction of new technology and efficiency measures. Between March 1981 and May 1982, following agreement with print unions, the hot-metal Linotype printing process used to print "The Times" since the 19th century was phased out and replaced by computer input and photo-composition. This allowed print room staff at "The Times" and "The Sunday Times" to be reduced by half. However, direct input of text by journalists ("single-stroke" input) was still not achieved, and this was to remain an interim measure until the Wapping dispute of 1986, when "The Times" moved from New Printing House Square in Gray's Inn Road (near Fleet Street) to new offices in Wapping.


title: The Times

text: Robert Fisk, seven times British International Journalist of the Year, resigned as foreign correspondent in 1988 over what he saw as "political censorship" of his article on the shooting-down of Iran Air Flight 655 in July 1988. He wrote in detail about his reasons for resigning from the paper due to meddling with his stories, and the paper's pro-Israel stance.


title: The Times

text: In June 1990, "The Times" ceased its policy of using courtesy titles ("Mr", "Mrs", or "Miss" prefixes) for living persons before full names on first reference, but it continues to use them before surnames on subsequent references. In 1992, it accepted the use of "Ms" for unmarried women "if they express a preference."


title: The Times

text: In November 2003, News International began producing the newspaper in both broadsheet and tabloid sizes. Over the next year, the broadsheet edition was withdrawn from Northern Ireland, Scotland, and the West Country. Since 1 November 2004, the paper has been printed solely in tabloid format.


title: The Times

text: On 6 June 2005, "The Times" redesigned its Letters page, dropping the practice of printing correspondents' full postal addresses. Published letters were long regarded as one of the paper's key constituents. According to its leading article "From Our Own Correspondents", the reason for removal of full postal addresses was to fit more letters onto the page.


title: The Times

text: In a 2007 meeting with the House of Lords Select Committee on Communications, which was investigating media ownership and the news, Murdoch stated that the law and the independent board prevented him from exercising editorial control.


title: The Times

text: In May 2008, printing of "The Times" switched from Wapping to new plants at Waltham Cross in Hertfordshire, and Merseyside and Glasgow, enabling the paper to be produced with full colour on every page for the first time.


title: The Times

text: On 26 July 2012, to coincide with the official start of the London 2012 Olympics and the issuing of a series of souvenir front covers, "The Times" added the suffix "of London" to its masthead.


title: The Times

text: In March 2016, the paper dropped its rolling digital coverage for a series of 'editions' of the paper at 9am, midday and 5pm on weekdays. The change also saw a redesign for the paper's app for smartphones and tablets.


title: The Times

text: In April 2018, IPSO upheld a complaint against "The Times" for its report of a court hearing in a Tower Hamlets fostering case.


title: The Times

text: In April 2019, culture secretary Jeremy Wright said he was minded to allow a request by News UK to relax the legal undertakings given in 1981 to maintain separate journalism resources for "The Times" and "The Sunday Times".


title: The Times

text: In 2019, IPSO upheld complaints against "The Times" over their article "GPS data shows container visited trafficking hotspot", and for three articles as part of a series on pollution in Britain's waterways – "No river safe for bathing", "Filthy Business" and "Behind the story". IPSO also upheld complaints in 2019 against articles headlined "Funding secret of scientists against hunt trophy ban", and "Britons lose out to rush of foreign medical students".


title: The Times

text: "The Times" features news for the first half of the paper; the Opinion/Comment section begins after the first news section with world news normally following this. The business pages begin on the centre spread, and are followed by The Register, containing obituaries, a Court & Social section, and related material. The sport section is at the end of the main paper. In April 2016, the cover price of "The Times" became £1.40 on weekdays and £1.50 on Saturdays.


title: The Times

text: "The Times" main supplement, every day, is the "times2", featuring various columns. It was discontinued in early March 2010, but reintroduced on 12 October 2010 after discontinuation was criticised. Its regular features include a puzzles section called "Mind Games". Its previous incarnation began on 5 September 2005, before which it was called "T2" and previously "Times 2". The supplement contains arts and lifestyle features, TV and radio listings, and theatre reviews. The newspaper employs Richard Morrison as its classical music critic.


title: The Times

text: "The Game" is included in the newspaper on Mondays, and details all the weekend's football activity (Premier League and Football League Championship, League One and League Two.) The Scottish edition of "The Game" also includes results and analysis from Scottish Premier League games. During the FIFA World Cup and UEFA Euros there is a daily supplement of The Game.


title: The Times

text: The Saturday edition of "The Times" contains a variety of supplements. These supplements were relaunched in January 2009 as: "Sport", "Saturday Review" (arts, books, TV listings and ideas), "Weekend" (including travel and lifestyle features), "Playlist" (an entertainment listings guide) and "The Times Magazine" (columns on various topics).


title: The Times

text: "The Times Magazine" features columns touching on various subjects such as celebrities, fashion and beauty, food and drink, homes and gardens or simply writers' anecdotes. Notable contributors include Giles Coren, Food and Drink Writer of the Year in 2005 and Nadiya Hussain, winner of "The Great British Bake Off".


title: The Times

text: "The Times" and "The Sunday Times" have had an online presence since 1996, originally at "the-times.co.uk" and "sunday-times.co.uk", and later at "timesonline.co.uk". There are now two websites: "thetimes.co.uk" is aimed at daily readers, and the "thesundaytimes.co.uk" site at providing weekly magazine-like content. There are also iPad and Android editions of both newspapers. Since July 2010, News UK has required readers who do not subscribe to the print edition to pay £2 per week to read "The Times" and "The Sunday Times" online.


title: The Times

text: Visits to the websites have decreased by 87% since the paywall was introduced, from 21 million unique users per month to 2.7 million. In April 2009, the "timesonline" site had a readership of 750,000 readers per day. In October 2011, there were around 111,000 subscribers to "The Times" digital products. A Reuters Institute survey in 2021 put the number of digital subscribers at around 400,000, and ranked "The Times" as having the sixth highest trust rating out of 13 different outlets polled.


title: The Times

text: At the time of Harold Evans' appointment as editor in 1981, "The Times" had an average daily sale of 282,000 copies in comparison to the 1.4 million daily sales of its traditional rival "The Daily Telegraph". By November 2005, "The Times" sold an average of 691,283 copies per day, the second-highest of any British "quality" newspaper (after "The Daily Telegraph", which had a circulation of 903,405 copies in the period), and the highest in terms of full-rate sales. By March 2014, average daily circulation of "The Times" had fallen to 394,448 copies, compared to "The Daily Telegraph"'s 523,048, with the two retaining respectively the second-highest and highest circulations among British "quality" newspapers. In contrast "The Sun", the highest-selling "tabloid" daily newspaper in the United Kingdom, sold an average of 2,069,809 copies in March 2014, and the "Daily Mail", the highest-selling "middle market" British daily newspaper, sold an average of 1,708,006 copies in the period.


title: The Times

text: "The Sunday Times" has a significantly higher circulation than "The Times", and sometimes outsells "The Sunday Telegraph". In January 2019, "The Times" had a circulation of 417,298 and "The Sunday Times" 712,291.


title: The Times

text: In a 2009 national readership survey, "The Times" was found to have the highest number of ABC1 25–44 readers and the largest numbers of readers in London of any of the "quality" papers.


title: The Times

text: "The Times" is the originator of the widely used Times New Roman typeface, originally developed by Stanley Morison of "The Times" in collaboration with the Monotype Corporation for its legibility in low-tech printing. In November 2006, "The Times" began printing headlines in a new typeface, Times Modern. "The Times" was printed in broadsheet format for 219 years, but switched to compact size in 2004 in an attempt to appeal more to younger readers and commuters using public transport. "The Sunday Times" remains a broadsheet.


title: The Times

text: "The Times" commissioned the serif typeface "Times New Roman", created by Victor Lardent at the English branch of Monotype, in 1931. It was commissioned after Stanley Morison had written an article criticizing "The Times" for being badly printed and typographically antiquated. The typeface was supervised by Morison and drawn by Victor Lardent, an artist from the advertising department of "The Times". Morison used an older typeface named Plantin as the basis for his design, but made revisions for legibility and economy of space. "Times New Roman" made its debut in the issue of 3 October 1932. After one year, the design was released for commercial sale. "The Times" stayed with "Times New Roman" for 40 years, but new production techniques and the format change from broadsheet to tabloid in 2004 have caused the newspaper to switch typeface five times since 1972. However, all the new typeface have been variants of the original New Roman type:


title: The Times

text: Historically, the paper was not overtly pro-Tory or Whig, but has been a long time bastion of the British Establishment and empire. In 1959, the historian of journalism Allan Nevins analysed the importance of "The Times" in shaping the views of events of London's elite, writing:


title: The Times

text: For much more than a century "The Times" has been an integral and important part of the political structure of Great Britain. Its news and its editorial comment have in general been carefully coordinated, and have at most times been handled with an earnest sense of responsibility. While the paper has admitted some trivia to its columns, its whole emphasis has been on important public affairs treated with an eye to the best interests of Britain. To guide this treatment, the editors have for long periods been in close touch with 10 Downing Street.


title: The Times

text: "The Times" adopted a stance described as "peculiarly detached" at the 1945 general election; although it was increasingly critical of the Conservative Party's campaign, it did not advocate a vote for any one party. However, the newspaper reverted to the Conservatives for the next election five years later. It supported the Conservatives for the subsequent three elections, followed by support for both the Conservatives and the Liberal Party for the next five elections, expressly supporting a Con–Lib coalition in 1974. The paper then backed the Conservatives solidly until 1997, when it declined to make any party endorsement but supported individual (primarily Eurosceptic) candidates.


title: The Times

text: For the 2001 general election, "The Times" declared its support for Tony Blair's Labour government, which was re-elected by a landslide (although not as large as in 1997). It supported Labour again in 2005, when Labour achieved a third successive win, though with a reduced majority. In 2004, according to MORI, the voting intentions of its readership were 40% for the Conservative Party, 29% for the Liberal Democrats, and 26% for Labour. For the 2010 general election, the newspaper declared its support for the Conservatives once again; the election ended in the Tories taking the most votes and seats but having to form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats in order to form a government as they had failed to gain an overall majority.


title: The Times

text: Its changes in political alignment make it the most varied newspaper in terms of political support in British history. Some columnists in "The Times" are connected to the Conservative Party such as Daniel Finkelstein, Tim Montgomerie, Matthew Parris, and Matt Ridley, but there are also columnists connected to the Labour Party such as David Aaronovitch and Jenni Russell.


title: The Times

text: "The Times" occasionally makes endorsements for foreign elections. In November 2012, it endorsed a second term for Democrat Barack Obama although it also expressed reservations about his foreign policy.


title: The Times

text: During the 2019 Conservative leadership election, "The Times" endorsed Boris Johnson, and subsequently endorsed the Conservative Party in the general election of that year.


title: The Times

text: In 2019, "The Times" published an article about Imam Abdullah Patel which wrongly claimed Patel had blamed Israel for the 2003 murder of a British police officer by a terror suspect in Manchester. The story also wrongly claimed that Patel ran a primary school that had been criticised by Ofsted for segregating parents at events, which Ofsted said was contrary to "British democratic principles". "The Times" settled Patel's defamation claim by issuing an apology and offering to pay damages and legal costs. Patel's solicitor, Zillur Rahman, said the case "highlights the shocking level of journalism to which the Muslim community are often subject".


title: The Times

text: In 2019, "The Times" published an article titled "Female Circumcision is like clipping a nail, claimed speaker". The article featured a photo of Sultan Choudhury beside the headline, leading some readers to incorrectly infer that Choudhury had made the comment. Choudhury lodged a complaint with the Independent Press Standards Organisation and sued "The Times" for libel. In 2020, "The Times" issued an apology, amended its article and agreed to pay Choudhury damages and legal costs. Choudhury's solicitor, Nishtar Saleem, said "This is another example of irresponsible journalism. Publishing sensational excerpts on a ‘free site’ whilst concealing the full article behind a paywall is a dangerous game".


title: The Times

text: In December 2020, Cage and Moazzam Begg received damages of £30,000 plus costs in a libel case they had brought against "The Times" newspaper. In June 2020, a report in "The Times" had suggested that Cage and Begg were supporting a man who had been arrested in relation to a knife attack in Reading in which three men were murdered. "The Times" report also suggested that Cage and Begg were excusing the actions of the accused man by mentioning mistakes made by the police and others. In addition to paying damages, "The Times" printed an apology. Cage stated that the damages amount would be used to "expose state-sponsored Islamophobia and those complicit with it in the press. ... The Murdoch press empire has actively supported xenophobic elements and undermined principles of open society and accountability. ... We will continue to shine a light on war criminals and torture apologists and press barons who fan the flames of hate".


title: The Times

text: "The Times", along with the British Film Institute, sponsors "The Times" "bfi" London Film Festival. It also sponsors the Cheltenham Literature Festival and the Asia House Festival of Asian Literature at Asia House, London.


title: The Times

text: An Irish digital edition of the paper was launched in September 2015 at TheTimes.ie. A print edition was launched in June 2017, replacing the international edition previously distributed in Ireland. The Irish edition was set to close in June 2019 with the loss of 20 jobs.


title: The Times

text: "The Times Literary Supplement" ("TLS") first appeared in 1902 as a supplement to "The Times", becoming a separately paid-for weekly literature and society magazine in 1914. The "TLS" is owned and published by News International and co-operates closely with "The Times", with its online version hosted on "The Times" website, and its editorial offices based in 1 London Bridge Street, London.


title: The Times

text: Between 1951 and 1966, "The Times" published a separately paid-for quarterly science review, "The Times Science Review". "The Times" started a new, free, monthly science magazine, "Eureka", in October 2009. The magazine closed in October 2012.


title: The Times

text: Times Atlases have been produced since 1895. They are currently produced by the Collins Bartholomew imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. The flagship product is "The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World".


title: The Times

text: In 1971, "The Times" began publishing the "Times Higher Education Supplement" (now known as the "Times Higher Education") which focuses its coverage on tertiary education.


title: The Times

text: In the dystopian future world of George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four", "The Times" has been transformed into an organ of the totalitarian ruling party. The book's lead character Winston Smith is employed in the task of rewriting past issues of the newspaper for the Ministry of Truth.


title: The Times

text: Rex Stout's fictional detective Nero Wolfe is described as fond of solving the London "Times" crossword puzzle at his New York home, in preference to those of American papers.


title: The Times

text: In the James Bond series by Ian Fleming, James Bond reads "The Times". As described by Fleming in "From Russia, with Love": "The Times" was "the only paper that Bond ever read."


title: Branch Davidians

text: The Branch Davidians (or the General Association of Branch Davidian Seventh-day Adventists) were an apocalyptic new religious movement founded in 1955 by Benjamin Roden. They regard themselves as a continuation of the General Association of Davidian Seventh-Day Adventists, established by Victor Houteff in 1935.


title: Branch Davidians

text: Houteff, a Bulgarian immigrant and a Seventh-day Adventist, wrote a series of tracts entitled the "Shepherd's Rod", which called for the reform of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. After his ideas were rejected by Adventist leaders, Houteff and his followers formed the group that later became known as "Davidians" and some of them moved onto a tract of land on the western outskirts of Waco, Texas, United States, where they built a community called the Mount Carmel Center, which served as the headquarters for the movement. After Houteff's death in 1955, his wife Florence took control of the Davidian organization. That same year, Roden (a follower of Houteff), proclaimed what he believed to be a new message from God and wrote a series of letters presenting it to Davidians. He signed these letters "The Branch" believing that to be the new name Jesus had taken (according to biblical prophecies such as Revelation 3:12 and Zechariah 6:12-13) to reflect a new stage of his work in the heavenly sanctuary. Those who accepted Roden's teachings became known as Branch Davidians Seventh Day Adventists.


title: Branch Davidians

text: In 1957, Florence sold the original Mount Carmel Center and purchased 941 acres near Elk, Texas – thirteen miles northeast of Waco – naming the property New Mount Carmel Center. After the failure of Florence's prophecy of apocalyptic events on or near April 22, 1959, she dissolved the Davidian Association in 1962 and sold all but 77.86 acres of the New Mount Carmel property. Roden took possession of New Mount Carmel in 1962 and began his efforts to purchase the remaining 77.86 acres. On February 27, 1973, New Mount Carmel was sold to "Benjamin Roden, Lois Roden, and their son George Roden, Trustees for the General Association of Branch Davidian Seventh-day Adventists." From this point on, the property was simply known as Mount Carmel. Upon the death of Roden in 1978, his wife Lois became the next Davidian prophet at the compound.


title: Branch Davidians

text: In 1981, a young man named Vernon Howell, later known as David Koresh, came to New Mount Carmel and studied biblical prophecy under Lois Roden. By the end of 1983, Howell had gained a group of followers and they separated from the Lois's organization to form a new organization by the name "The Davidian Branch Davidian Seventh Day Adventist Association." Meanwhile, Lois continued to operate the Branch Davidian Seventh Day Adventist Association from Mt. Carmel Center near Waco. It is notable that Howell's group and the Branch Davidians (Lois's group) were two separate organizations with different leaders and different names operating from different locations from 1983 forward. It was not until 1987, after Lois had died, that Howell filed a document claiming to be the president of the Branch Davidian Seventh Day Adventist Association (even though he had been leading a competing group for several years). Also in 1987, Koresh and some of his followers went to Mt. Carmel center and engaged in a shootout with George Roden that eventually resulted in Koresh's group occupying the land. The actions of Koresh and his followers in 1987 (taking the name and property of the Branch Davidian SDA organization) are regarded by Branch Davidians who remained loyal to Lois Roden as an act of identity theft against them. Koresh's leadership of his group ended at the climax of the Waco siege of 1993, a 51-day standoff between members of the sect and federal agents, when New Mount Carmel was destroyed in a fire. Four agents of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) and two residents of Mt. Carmel were killed by members of the sect during the initial raid, while four sect members were killed by ATF agents on February 28, 1993. Seventy-six members of Koresh's group, many of them children, died in a fire that erupted during the siege on April 19, 1993.


title: Branch Davidians

text: In 1929, Victor Houteff, a Bulgarian immigrant and a Seventh-day Adventist Sabbath School teacher from southern California, claimed that he had a new message for the entire Adventist church. He presented his views in a book, "The Shepherd's Rod: The 144,000 – A Call for Reformation". The Adventist leadership rejected Houteff's views as contrary to the church's basic teachings, and local church congregations disfellowshipped Houteff and his followers.


title: Branch Davidians

text: In 1934, Houteff established his headquarters to the west of Waco, Texas, and his group became known as the Davidians. In 1942, he renamed the group the General Association of Davidian Seventh-day Adventists 'Davidian' which indicated its belief in the restoration of the Davidic Kingdom of Israel. Following Houteff's death in 1955, his wife Florence usurped the leadership believing herself to be a prophet. Convinced that an apocalypse would occur in 1959, a date which is not found in her husband's original writings, Florence and her council gathered hundreds of their faithful followers at the Mount Carmel Center, the group's compound which was located near Waco, for the fulfillment of the prophecy which is written in Ezekiel 9.


title: Branch Davidians

text: The anticipated events did not occur, and following this disappointment, Benjamin Roden formed another group which he called the Branch Davidians and succeeded in taking control of Mount Carmel. The name of this group is an allusion to the anointed 'Branch' (mentioned in Zechariah 3:8; 6:12). When Benjamin Roden died in 1978, he was succeeded by his wife Lois Roden. Members of the Branch Davidians were torn between allegiance to Ben's wife or to his son, George. After Lois died, George assumed the right to the Presidency. However, less than a year later, Vernon Howell rose to power and became the leader over those in the group who sympathized with him.


title: Branch Davidians

text: Howell's arrival at Mount Carmel in 1981 was well received by nearly everyone at the Davidian commune. He had engaged in an affair with Lois Roden while he was in his late 20s and she was in her late 60s. Howell wanted to father a child with her, who, according to his understanding, would be the Chosen One. When she died, George Roden inherited the positions of prophet and leader of the sect. A power struggle ensued between Roden and Howell, who soon gained the loyalty of the majority of the Davidians. In 1984, Howell and his followers left Mount Carmel (Roden accused Howell of starting a fire that consumed a $500,000 administration building and press), which Roden subsequently renamed "Rodenville". Another splinter group, led by Charlie Pace, also left, and settled in Alabama.


title: Branch Davidians

text: As an attempt to regain support, Roden challenged Howell to raise the dead, going so far as to exhume the corpse of a two-decades deceased Davidian in order to demonstrate his spiritual supremacy (Roden denied this, saying he had only been moving the community cemetery). This illegal act gave Howell an opportunity to attempt to file charges against Roden, but he was told that he needed evidence in order to substantiate the charges. On November 3, 1987, Howell and seven of his followers raided Mount Carmel, equipped with five .223 caliber semi-automatic rifles, two .22 caliber rifles, two 12-gauge shotguns and nearly 400 rounds of ammunition, in an apparent attempt to retake the compound. Although Howell's group claimed that it was trying to obtain evidence of Roden's illegal activities, its members did not take a camera with them.


title: Branch Davidians

text: The trial ended with the jury finding Howell's followers not guilty, but the jury members were unable to agree on a verdict for Howell himself. After his followers were acquitted, Howell invited the prosecutors to Mount Carmel for ice cream.


title: Branch Davidians

text: It is claimed that Howell was never authorized to name his breakaway sect the "Branch Davidians", and the church which bears that name continues to represent the members of the Branch church who did not follow him.


title: Branch Davidians

text: Howell, who acquired the position of spiritual leader from Roden, asserted it by changing his name to David Koresh, suggesting that he had ties to the biblical King David and Cyrus the Great (Koresh is the Hebrew version of the name Cyrus). He wanted to create a new lineage of world leaders. This practice later served as the basis for allegations that Koresh was committing child abuse, which contributed to the siege by the ATF.


title: Branch Davidians

text: Interpreting Revelation 5:2, Koresh identified himself with the Lamb mentioned therein. This is traditionally believed to symbolize Jesus Christ; however, Koresh suggested that the Lamb would come before Jesus and pave the way for his Second Coming.


title: Branch Davidians

text: By the time of the 1993 Waco siege, Koresh had encouraged his followers to think of themselves as "students of the Seven Seals," rather than as "Branch Davidians." During the standoff, one of his followers publicly announced that he wanted them to thereafter be identified by the name "Koreshians".


title: Branch Davidians

text: On February 28, 1993, at 4:20 am, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms attempted to execute a search warrant relating to alleged sexual abuse charges and illegal weapons violations. The ATF attempted to breach the compound for approximately two hours until their ammunition ran low. Four ATF agents (Steve Willis, Robert Williams, Todd McKeehan, and Conway Charles LeBleu) were killed and another 16 agents were wounded during the raid. The five Branch Davidians killed in the 9:45 am raid were Winston Blake (British), Peter Gent (Australian), Peter Hipsman, Perry Jones, and Jaydean Wendell; two were killed by the Branch Davidians. Almost six hours after the ceasefire, Michael Schroeder was shot dead by ATF agents who alleged he fired a pistol at agents as he attempted to re-enter the compound with Woodrow Kendrick and Norman Allison. His wife said he was merely returning from work and had not participated in the day's earlier altercation. Schroeder had been shot once in the eye, once in the heart, and five times in the back.


title: Branch Davidians

text: After the raid, ATF agents established contact with Koresh and others inside of the compound. The FBI took command after the deaths of federal agents, and managed to facilitate the release of 19 children (without their parents) relatively early into the negotiations. The children were then interviewed by the FBI and the Texas Rangers. The children had been physically and sexually abused before the raid.


title: Branch Davidians

text: On April 19, 1993, the FBI moved for a final siege of the compound using large weaponry such as .50 caliber (12.7 mm) rifles and armored Combat Engineering Vehicles (CEV) to combat the heavily armed Branch Davidians. The FBI attempted to use tear gas to flush out the Branch Davidians. Officially, FBI agents were only permitted to return any incoming fire, not to actively assault the Branch Davidians. When several Branch Davidians opened fire, the FBI's response was to increase the amount of gas being used. Around noon, three fires broke out simultaneously in different parts of the building. The government maintains that the fires were deliberately started by Branch Davidians. Some Branch Davidian survivors maintain that the fires were started either accidentally or deliberately by the assault. Of the 85 Branch Davidians in the compound when the final siege began, 76 died on April 19 in various ways, from falling rubble to suffocating effects of the fire, or by gunshot from fellow Branch Davidians. The siege had lasted 51 days.


title: Branch Davidians

text: In all, four ATF agents were killed, 16 were wounded, and six Branch Davidians died in the initial raid on February 28. 76 more died in the final assault on April 19. The events at Waco spurred criminal prosecution and civil litigation. A federal grand jury indicted 12 of the surviving Branch Davidians charging them with aiding and abetting in murder of federal officers, and unlawful possession and use of various firearms. Eight Branch Davidians were convicted on firearms charges, five convicted of voluntary manslaughter, and four were acquitted of all charges. As of July 2007, all Branch Davidians had been released from prison.


title: Branch Davidians

text: Civil suits were brought against the United States government, federal officials, former governor of Texas Ann Richards, and members of the Texas Army National Guard. The bulk of these claims were dismissed because they were insufficient as a matter of law or because the plaintiffs could advance no material evidence in support of them. One case, "Andrade v. Chojnacki", made it to the Fifth Circuit, which upheld a previous ruling of "take-nothing, denied".


title: Branch Davidians

text: There are several groups that claim descent from the Branch Davidians today. The group that retains the original name "Branch Davidian Seventh Day Adventist" regards Lois Roden's immediate successor to have been Doug Mitchell (who joined the Branch Davidians in 1978 and led the group from 1986 until his death in 2013) and Mitchell's successor to be Trent Wilde (who has led the group since 2013). This group never followed David Koresh.<br>


title: Branch Davidians

text: Another group exists under the leadership of Charles Pace, called The Branch, The Lord Our Righteousness. It is a legally recognized denomination with 12 members. Pace, while regarding Koresh as appointed by God, says that Koresh twisted the Bible's teachings by fathering more than a dozen children with members' wives. Pace believes that the Lord "has anointed me and appointed me to be the leader", but he says he is "not a prophet" but "a teacher of righteousness". Others, led by Clive Doyle, continue to believe Koresh was a prophet and await his resurrection, along with the followers who were killed. Both of these groups are still waiting for the end of times. Doyle died in June 2022.


title: Branch Davidians

text: The Seventh-day Adventist Church, the main church in the Adventist tradition, rejected Victor Houteff's teachings and revoked his membership in 1930.


title: Branch Davidians

text: Houteff then went on to found the Davidian Seventh Day Adventist Church (an offshoot which is also known as the Shepherd's Rod). The Branch Davidians are an offshoot of the Davidians and they are also a product of a schism which was initiated by Benjamin Roden, after Houteff’s death and in light of Florence’s (Houteff’s wife) usurpation of power.


title: Branch Davidians

text: Florence believed that she was a prophet. But her prediction of the demise of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, which according to her should’ve occurred 42 months after Houtte’s death (1959) failed to materialize. Likewise, Ben Roden believed that he was a prophet as well as a rightful heir to the leadership of the Davidians.


title: Branch Davidians

text: While they were still formally members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, the Branch Davidian leaders demanded a reform of the church and when their demand was met with opposition (by both the Seventh-day Adventists and the Davidians), they decided to leave that denomination and at the same time, they widely distanced themselves from the Davidians.


title: Branch Davidians

text: The Seventh-day Adventist Church deprived both the Branch Davidians and the Davidians of their membership in the denomination, in spite of this fact, the Branch Davidians actively continued to "hunt" members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and encourage them to leave it and join their group. The Seventh-day Adventists were reportedly "apprehensive" about the group's views because Branch Davidians claimed that they were the "only rightful continuation of the Adventist message", based on their belief that Victor Houteff was the divinely selected prophet and the successor of Ellen G. White. Both the Davidians and the Branch Davidians claimed that Houteff was their spiritual inspiration, as the founder of the Davidians. The Seventh-day Adventist Church issued warnings about the Branch Davidian sect's views to its members on a regular basis.


title: Branch Davidians

text: There is documented evidence (FBI negotiation transcripts between Kathryn Shroeder and Steve Schneider with interjections from Koresh himself) that David Koresh and his followers did not call themselves Branch Davidians. In addition, David Koresh, through forgery, stole the identity of the Branch Davidian Seventh-day Adventists for the purpose of obtaining the New Mount Carmel Center's property.


title: Branch Davidians

text: The doctrinal beliefs of the Branch Davidians differ on teachings such as the Holy Spirit and his nature, and the feast days and their requirements. Both groups have disputed the relevance of the other's spiritual authority based on the proceedings which followed Victor Houteff's death. From its inception in 1930, the Davidians/Shepherd's Rod group believed that it was living in a time when Biblical prophecies of the Last Judgment were coming to pass as a prelude to Christ's Second Coming.


title: Branch Davidians

text: In the late 1980s, Koresh and his followers abandoned many Branch Davidian teachings. Koresh became the group's self-proclaimed final prophet. "Koreshians" became the majority as a result of a schism which occurred among the Branch Davidians, but some of the Branch Davidians did not join Koresh's group, instead, they gathered around George Roden or they became independent. Following a series of violent shootouts between Roden's and Koresh's group, the New Mount Carmel compound was eventually taken over by the "Koreshians".


title: Branch Davidians

text: In 2021, the Branch Davidians were one of the subjects on Season 1, episode 7 of Vice Media's "Dark Side of the 90's" entitled "A Tale of Two Cults", the other being Heaven's Gate.


title: Black-body radiation

text: Black-body radiation is the thermal electromagnetic radiation within, or surrounding, a body in thermodynamic equilibrium with its environment, emitted by a black body (an idealized opaque, non-reflective body). It has a specific, continuous spectrum of wavelengths, inversely related to intensity, that depend only on the body's temperature, which is assumed, for the sake of calculations and theory, to be uniform and constant.


title: Black-body radiation

text: A perfectly insulated enclosure which is in thermal equilibrium internally contains black-body radiation, and will emit it through a hole made in its wall, provided the hole is small enough to have a negligible effect upon the equilibrium.


title: Black-body radiation

text: The thermal radiation spontaneously emitted by many ordinary objects can be approximated as black-body radiation.


title: Black-body radiation

text: Of particular importance, although planets and stars (including the Earth and Sun) are neither in thermal equilibrium with their surroundings nor perfect black bodies, black-body radiation is still a good first approximation for the energy they emit. The sun's radiation, after being filtered by the earth's atmosphere, thus characterises "daylight", which humans (also most other animals) have evolved to use for vision.


title: Black-body radiation

text: A black body at room temperature () radiates mostly in the infrared spectrum, which cannot be perceived by the human eye, but can be sensed by some reptiles. As the object increases in temperature to about , the emission spectrum gets stronger and extends into the human visual range, and the object appears dull red. As its temperature increases further, it emits more and more orange, yellow, green, and blue light (and ultimately beyond violet, ultraviolet).


title: Black-body radiation

text: Tungsten filament lights have a continuous black body spectrum with a cooler colour temperature, around , which also emits considerable energy in the infrared range. Modern-day fluorescent and LED lights, which are more efficient, do not have a continuous black body emission spectrum, rather emitting directly, or using combinations of phosphors that emit multiple narrow spectrums.


title: Black-body radiation

text: Black holes are near-perfect black bodies in the sense that they absorb all the radiation that falls on them. It has been proposed that they emit black-body radiation (called Hawking radiation) with a temperature that depends on the mass of the black hole.


title: Black-body radiation

text: The term "black body" was introduced by Gustav Kirchhoff in 1860. Black-body radiation is also called thermal radiation, "cavity radiation", "complete radiation" or "temperature radiation".


title: Black-body radiation

text: Black-body radiation has a characteristic, continuous frequency spectrum that depends only on the body's temperature, called the Planck spectrum or Planck's law. The spectrum is peaked at a characteristic frequency that shifts to higher frequencies with increasing temperature, and at room temperature most of the emission is in the infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum. As the temperature increases past about 500 degrees Celsius, black bodies start to emit significant amounts of visible light. Viewed in the dark by the human eye, the first faint glow appears as a "ghostly" grey (the visible light is actually red, but low intensity light activates only the eye's grey-level sensors). With rising temperature, the glow becomes visible even when there is some background surrounding light: first as a dull red, then yellow, and eventually a "dazzling bluish-white" as the temperature rises. When the body appears white, it is emitting a substantial fraction of its energy as ultraviolet radiation. The Sun, with an effective temperature of approximately 5800 K, is an approximate black body with an emission spectrum peaked in the central, yellow-green part of the visible spectrum, but with significant power in the ultraviolet as well.


title: Black-body radiation

text: All normal (baryonic) matter emits electromagnetic radiation when it has a temperature above absolute zero. The radiation represents a conversion of a body's internal energy into electromagnetic energy, and is therefore called thermal radiation. It is a spontaneous process of radiative distribution of entropy.


title: Black-body radiation

text: Conversely, all normal matter absorbs electromagnetic radiation to some degree. An object that absorbs all radiation falling on it, at all wavelengths, is called a black body. When a black body is at a uniform temperature, its emission has a characteristic frequency distribution that depends on the temperature. Its emission is called black-body radiation.


title: Black-body radiation

text: The concept of the black body is an idealization, as perfect black bodies do not exist in nature. However, graphite and lamp black, with emissivities greater than 0.95, are good approximations to a black material. Experimentally, black-body radiation may be established best as the ultimately stable steady state equilibrium radiation in a cavity in a rigid body, at a uniform temperature, that is entirely opaque and is only partly reflective. A closed box with walls of graphite at a constant temperature with a small hole on one side produces a good approximation to ideal black-body radiation emanating from the opening.


title: Black-body radiation

text: Black-body radiation has the unique absolutely stable distribution of radiative intensity that can persist in thermodynamic equilibrium in a cavity. In equilibrium, for each frequency, the intensity of radiation which is emitted and reflected from a body relative to other frequencies (that is, the net amount of radiation leaving its surface, called the "spectral radiance") is determined solely by the equilibrium temperature and does not depend upon the shape, material or structure of the body. For a black body (a perfect absorber) there is no reflected radiation, and so the spectral radiance is entirely due to emission. In addition, a black body is a diffuse emitter (its emission is independent of direction). Consequently, black-body radiation may be viewed as the radiation from a black body at thermal equilibrium.


title: Black-body radiation

text: Black-body radiation becomes a visible glow of light if the temperature of the object is high enough. The Draper point is the temperature at which all solids glow a dim red, about . At , a small opening in the wall of a large uniformly heated opaque-walled cavity (such as an oven), viewed from outside, looks red; at , it looks white. No matter how the oven is constructed, or of what material, as long as it is built so that almost all light entering is absorbed by its walls, it will contain a good approximation to black-body radiation. The spectrum, and therefore color, of the light that comes out will be a function of the cavity temperature alone. A graph of the amount of energy inside the oven per unit volume and per unit frequency interval plotted versus frequency is called the "black-body curve". Different curves are obtained by varying the temperature.


title: Black-body radiation

text: Two bodies that are at the same temperature stay in mutual thermal equilibrium, so a body at temperature "T" surrounded by a cloud of light at temperature "T" on average will emit as much light into the cloud as it absorbs, following Prevost's exchange principle, which refers to radiative equilibrium. The principle of detailed balance says that in thermodynamic equilibrium every elementary process works equally in its forward and backward sense. Prevost also showed that the emission from a body is logically determined solely by its own internal state. The causal effect of thermodynamic absorption on thermodynamic (spontaneous) emission is not direct, but is only indirect as it affects the internal state of the body. This means that at thermodynamic equilibrium the amount of every wavelength in every direction of thermal radiation emitted by a body at temperature "T", black or not, is equal to the corresponding amount that the body absorbs because it is surrounded by light at temperature "T".


title: Black-body radiation

text: When the body is black, the absorption is obvious: the amount of light absorbed is all the light that hits the surface. For a black body much bigger than the wavelength, the light energy absorbed at any wavelength "λ" per unit time is strictly proportional to the black-body curve. This means that the black-body curve is the amount of light energy emitted by a black body, which justifies the name. This is the condition for the applicability of Kirchhoff's law of thermal radiation: the black-body curve is characteristic of thermal light, which depends only on the temperature of the walls of the cavity, provided that the walls of the cavity are completely opaque and are not very reflective, and that the cavity is in thermodynamic equilibrium. When the black body is small, so that its size is comparable to the wavelength of light, the absorption is modified, because a small object is not an efficient absorber of light of long wavelength, but the principle of strict equality of emission and absorption is always upheld in a condition of thermodynamic equilibrium.


title: Black-body radiation

text: In the laboratory, black-body radiation is approximated by the radiation from a small hole in a large cavity, a hohlraum, in an entirely opaque body that is only partly reflective, that is maintained at a constant temperature. (This technique leads to the alternative term "cavity radiation".) Any light entering the hole would have to reflect off the walls of the cavity multiple times before it escaped, in which process it is nearly certain to be absorbed. Absorption occurs regardless of the wavelength of the radiation entering (as long as it is small compared to the hole). The hole, then, is a close approximation of a theoretical black body and, if the cavity is heated, the spectrum of the hole's radiation (that is, the amount of light emitted from the hole at each wavelength) will be continuous, and will depend only on the temperature and the fact that the walls are opaque and at least partly absorptive, but not on the particular material of which they are built nor on the material in the cavity (compare with emission spectrum).


title: Black-body radiation

text: The radiance or observed intensity is not a function of direction. Therefore, a black body is a perfect Lambertian radiator.


title: Black-body radiation

text: Real objects never behave as full-ideal black bodies, and instead the emitted radiation at a given frequency is a fraction of what the ideal emission would be. The emissivity of a material specifies how well a real body radiates energy as compared with a black body. This emissivity depends on factors such as temperature, emission angle, and wavelength. However, it is typical in engineering to assume that a surface's spectral emissivity and absorptivity do not depend on wavelength so that the emissivity is a constant. This is known as the "gray body" assumption.


title: Black-body radiation

text: With non-black surfaces, the deviations from ideal black-body behavior are determined by both the surface structure, such as roughness or granularity, and the chemical composition. On a "per wavelength" basis, real objects in states of local thermodynamic equilibrium still follow Kirchhoff's Law: emissivity equals absorptivity, so that an object that does not absorb all incident light will also emit less radiation than an ideal black body; the incomplete absorption can be due to some of the incident light being transmitted through the body or to some of it being reflected at the surface of the body.


title: Black-body radiation

text: In astronomy, objects such as stars are frequently regarded as black bodies, though this is often a poor approximation. An almost perfect black-body spectrum is exhibited by the cosmic microwave background radiation. Hawking radiation is the hypothetical black-body radiation emitted by black holes, at a temperature that depends on the mass, charge, and spin of the hole. If this prediction is correct, black holes will very gradually shrink and evaporate over time as they lose mass by the emission of photons and other particles.


title: Black-body radiation

text: A black body radiates energy at all frequencies, but its intensity rapidly tends to zero at high frequencies (short wavelengths). For example, a black body at room temperature () with one square meter of surface area will emit a photon in the visible range (390–750 nm) at an average rate of one photon every 41 seconds, meaning that, for most practical purposes, such a black body does not emit in the visible range.


title: Black-body radiation

text: The study of the laws of black bodies and the failure of classical physics to describe them helped establish the foundations of quantum mechanics.


title: Black-body radiation

text: According to the Classical Theory of Radiation, if each Fourier mode of the equilibrium radiation (in an otherwise empty cavity with perfectly reflective walls) is considered as a degree of freedom capable of exchanging energy, then, according to the equipartition theorem of classical physics, there would be an equal amount of energy in each mode. Since there are an infinite number of modes, this would imply infinite heat capacity, as well as a nonphysical spectrum of emitted radiation that grows without bound with increasing frequency, a problem known as the ultraviolet catastrophe.


title: Black-body radiation

text: In the longer wavelengths this deviation is not so noticeable, as formula_1 and formula_2 are very small. In the shorter wavelengths of the ultraviolet range, however, classical theory predicts the energy emitted tends to infinity, hence the ultraviolet catastrophe. The theory even predicted that all bodies would emit most of their energy in the ultraviolet range, clearly contradicted by the experimental data which showed a different peak wavelength at different temperatures (see also Wien's law).


title: Black-body radiation

text: Instead, in the quantum treatment of this problem, the numbers of the energy modes are quantized, attenuating the spectrum at high frequency in agreement with experimental observation and resolving the catastrophe. The modes that had more energy than the thermal energy of the substance itself were not considered, and because of quantization modes having infinitesimally little energy were excluded.


title: Black-body radiation

text: Thus for shorter wavelengths very few modes (having energy more than formula_1) were allowed, supporting the data that the energy emitted is reduced for wavelengths less than the wavelength of the observed peak of emission.


title: Black-body radiation

text: Notice that there are two factors responsible for the shape of the graph. Firstly, longer wavelengths have a larger number of modes associated with them. Secondly, shorter wavelengths have more energy associated per mode. The two factors combined give the characteristic maximum wavelength.


title: Black-body radiation

text: Calculating the black-body curve was a major challenge in theoretical physics during the late nineteenth century. The problem was solved in 1901 by Max Planck in the formalism now known as Planck's law of black-body radiation. By making changes to Wien's radiation law (not to be confused with Wien's displacement law) consistent with thermodynamics and electromagnetism, he found a mathematical expression fitting the experimental data satisfactorily. Planck had to assume that the energy of the oscillators in the cavity was quantized, which is to say that it existed in integer multiples of some quantity. Einstein built on this idea and proposed the quantization of electromagnetic radiation itself in 1905 to explain the photoelectric effect. These theoretical advances eventually resulted in the superseding of classical electromagnetism by quantum electrodynamics. These quanta were called photons and the black-body cavity was thought of as containing a gas of photons. In addition, it led to the development of quantum probability distributions, called Fermi–Dirac statistics and Bose–Einstein statistics, each applicable to a different class of particles, fermions and bosons.


title: Black-body radiation

text: The wavelength at which the radiation is strongest is given by Wien's displacement law, and the overall power emitted per unit area is given by the Stefan–Boltzmann law. So, as temperature increases, the glow color changes from red to yellow to white to blue. Even as the peak wavelength moves into the ultra-violet, enough radiation continues to be emitted in the blue wavelengths that the body will continue to appear blue. It will never become invisible—indeed, the radiation of visible light increases monotonically with temperature. The Stefan–Boltzmann law also says that the total radiant heat energy emitted from a surface is proportional to the fourth power of its absolute temperature. The law was formulated by Josef Stefan in 1879 and later derived by Ludwig Boltzmann. The formula is given, where "E" is the radiant heat emitted from a unit of area per unit time, "T" is the absolute temperature, and is the Stefan–Boltzmann constant.


title: Black-body radiation

text: For a black body surface, the spectral radiance density (defined per unit of area normal to the propagation) is independent of the angle formula_13 of emission with respect to the normal. However, this means that, following Lambert's cosine law, formula_14 is the radiance density per unit area of emitting surface as the surface area involved in generating the radiance is increased by a factor formula_15 with respect to an area normal to the propagation direction. At oblique angles, the solid angle spans involved do get smaller, resulting in lower aggregate intensities.


title: Black-body radiation

text: Wien's displacement law shows how the spectrum of black-body radiation at any temperature is related to the spectrum at any other temperature. If we know the shape of the spectrum at one temperature, we can calculate the shape at any other temperature. Spectral intensity can be expressed as a function of wavelength or of frequency.


title: Black-body radiation

text: A consequence of Wien's displacement law is that the wavelength at which the intensity "per unit wavelength" of the radiation produced by a black body has a local maximum or peak, formula_16, is a function only of the temperature:


title: Black-body radiation

text: where the constant "b", known as Wien's displacement constant, is equal to formula_18 (where formula_19 is the Lambert W function). So approximately formula_16 equals 2898 um/T(K). At a typical room temperature of 293 K (20 °C), the maximum intensity is at .


title: Black-body radiation

text: Planck's law was also stated above as a function of frequency. The intensity maximum for this is given by


title: Black-body radiation

text: In unitless form, the maximum occurs when formula_22, where formula_23. The approximate numerical solution is formula_24. At a typical room temperature of 293 K (20 °C), the maximum intensity is for .


title: Black-body radiation

text: By integrating formula_25 over the frequency the radiance formula_26 (units: power / [area * solid angle] ) is


title: Black-body radiation

text: On a side note, at a distance d, the intensity formula_31 per area formula_32 of radiating surface is the useful expression


title: Black-body radiation

text: By subsequently integrating formula_26 over the solid angle formula_35 for all azimuthal angle (0 to formula_36) and polar angle formula_13 from 0 to formula_38, we arrive at the Stefan–Boltzmann law: the power "j"* emitted per unit area of the surface of a black body is directly proportional to the fourth power of its absolute temperature:


title: Black-body radiation

text: The human body radiates energy as infrared light. The net power radiated is the difference between the power emitted and the power absorbed:


title: Black-body radiation

text: where "A" and "T" are the body surface area and temperature, formula_43 is the emissivity, and "T" is the ambient temperature.


title: Black-body radiation

text: The total surface area of an adult is about 2 m, and the mid- and far-infrared emissivity of skin and most clothing is near unity, as it is for most nonmetallic surfaces. Skin temperature is about 33 °C, but clothing reduces the surface temperature to about 28 °C when the ambient temperature is 20 °C. Hence, the net radiative heat loss is about


title: Black-body radiation

text: The total energy radiated in one day is about 8 MJ, or 2000 kcal (food calories). Basal metabolic rate for a 40-year-old male is about 35 kcal/(m·h), which is equivalent to 1700 kcal per day, assuming the same 2 m area. However, the mean metabolic rate of sedentary adults is about 50% to 70% greater than their basal rate.


title: Black-body radiation

text: There are other important thermal loss mechanisms, including convection and evaporation. Conduction is negligible – the Nusselt number is much greater than unity. Evaporation by perspiration is only required if radiation and convection are insufficient to maintain a steady-state temperature (but evaporation from the lungs occurs regardless). Free-convection rates are comparable, albeit somewhat lower, than radiative rates. Thus, radiation accounts for about two-thirds of thermal energy loss in cool, still air. Given the approximate nature of many of the assumptions, this can only be taken as a crude estimate. Ambient air motion, causing forced convection, or evaporation reduces the relative importance of radiation as a thermal-loss mechanism.


title: Black-body radiation

text: For this reason, thermal imaging devices for human subjects are most sensitive in the 7–14 micrometer range.


title: Black-body radiation

text: The Sun emits that power equally in all directions. Because of this, the planet is hit with only a tiny fraction of it. The power from the Sun that strikes the planet (at the top of the atmosphere) is:


title: Black-body radiation

text: Because of its high temperature, the Sun emits to a large extent in the ultraviolet and visible (UV-Vis) frequency range. In this frequency range, the planet reflects a fraction formula_53 of this energy where formula_53 is the albedo or reflectance of the planet in the UV-Vis range. In other words, the planet absorbs a fraction formula_55 of the Sun's light, and reflects the rest. The power absorbed by the planet and its atmosphere is then:


title: Black-body radiation

text: Even though the planet only absorbs as a circular area formula_57, it emits in all directions; the spherical surface area being formula_58. If the planet were a perfect black body, it would emit according to the Stefan–Boltzmann law


title: Black-body radiation

text: where formula_60 is the temperature of the planet. This temperature, calculated for the case of the planet acting as a black body by setting formula_61, is known as the effective temperature. The actual temperature of the planet will likely be different, depending on its surface and atmospheric properties. Ignoring the atmosphere and greenhouse effect, the planet, since it is at a much lower temperature than the Sun, emits mostly in the infrared (IR) portion of the spectrum. In this frequency range, it emits formula_62 of the radiation that a black body would emit where formula_62 is the average emissivity in the IR range. The power emitted by the planet is then:


title: Black-body radiation

text: For a body in radiative exchange equilibrium with its surroundings, the rate at which it emits radiant energy is equal to the rate at which it absorbs it:


title: Black-body radiation

text: Substituting the expressions for solar and planet power in equations 1–6 and simplifying yields the estimated temperature of the planet, ignoring greenhouse effect, "T":


title: Black-body radiation

text: In other words, given the assumptions made, the temperature of a planet depends only on the surface temperature of the Sun, the radius of the Sun, the distance between the planet and the Sun, the albedo and the IR emissivity of the planet.


title: Black-body radiation

text: Notice that a gray (flat spectrum) ball where formula_67 comes to the same temperature as a black body no matter how dark or light gray.


title: Black-body radiation

text: This is the temperature of the Earth if it radiated as a perfect black body in the infrared, assuming an unchanging albedo and ignoring greenhouse effects (which can raise the surface temperature of a body above what it would be if it were a perfect black body in all spectrums). The Earth in fact radiates not quite as a perfect black body in the infrared which will raise the estimated temperature a few degrees above the effective temperature. If we wish to estimate what the temperature of the Earth would be if it had no atmosphere, then we could take the albedo and emissivity of the Moon as a good estimate. The albedo and emissivity of the Moon are about 0.1054 and 0.95 respectively, yielding an estimated temperature of about 1.36 °C.


title: Black-body radiation

text: Estimates of the Earth's average albedo vary in the range 0.3–0.4, resulting in different estimated effective temperatures. Estimates are often based on the solar constant (total insolation power density) rather than the temperature, size, and distance of the Sun. For example, using 0.4 for albedo, and an insolation of 1400 W m, one obtains an effective temperature of about 245 K.


title: Black-body radiation

text: Similarly using albedo 0.3 and solar constant of 1372 W m, one obtains an effective temperature of 255 K.


title: Black-body radiation

text: The cosmic microwave background radiation observed today is the most perfect black-body radiation ever observed in nature, with a temperature of about 2.7 K. It is a "snapshot" of the radiation at the time of decoupling between matter and radiation in the early universe. Prior to this time, most matter in the universe was in the form of an ionized plasma in thermal, though not full thermodynamic, equilibrium with radiation.


title: Black-body radiation

text: According to Kondepudi and Prigogine, at very high temperatures (above 10 K; such temperatures existed in the very early universe), where the thermal motion separates protons and neutrons in spite of the strong nuclear forces, electron-positron pairs appear and disappear spontaneously and are in thermal equilibrium with electromagnetic radiation. These particles form a part of the black body spectrum, in addition to the electromagnetic radiation.


title: Black-body radiation

text: In his first memoir, Augustin-Jean Fresnel (1788–1827) responded to a view he extracted from a French translation of Isaac Newton's "Optics". He says that Newton imagined particles of light traversing space uninhibited by the caloric medium filling it, and refutes this view (never actually held by Newton) by saying that a black body under illumination would increase indefinitely in heat.


title: Black-body radiation

text: In 1858, Balfour Stewart described his experiments on the thermal radiative emissive and absorptive powers of polished plates of various substances, compared with the powers of lamp-black surfaces, at the same temperature. Stewart chose lamp-black surfaces as his reference because of various previous experimental findings, especially those of Pierre Prevost and of John Leslie. He wrote, "Lamp-black, which absorbs all the rays that fall upon it, and therefore possesses the greatest possible absorbing power, will possess also the greatest possible radiating power." More an experimenter than a logician, Stewart failed to point out that his statement presupposed an abstract general principle: that there exist, either ideally in theory, or really in nature, bodies or surfaces that respectively have one and the same unique universal greatest possible absorbing power, likewise for radiating power, for every wavelength and equilibrium temperature.


title: Black-body radiation

text: Stewart measured radiated power with a thermopile and sensitive galvanometer read with a microscope. He was concerned with selective thermal radiation, which he investigated with plates of substances that radiated and absorbed selectively for different qualities of radiation rather than maximally for all qualities of radiation. He discussed the experiments in terms of rays which could be reflected and refracted, and which obeyed the Stokes-Helmholtz reciprocity principle (though he did not use an eponym for it). He did not in this paper mention that the qualities of the rays might be described by their wavelengths, nor did he use spectrally resolving apparatus such as prisms or diffraction gratings. His work was quantitative within these constraints. He made his measurements in a room temperature environment, and quickly so as to catch his bodies in a condition near the thermal equilibrium in which they had been prepared by heating to equilibrium with boiling water. His measurements confirmed that substances that emit and absorb selectively respect the principle of selective equality of emission and absorption at thermal equilibrium.


title: Black-body radiation

text: Stewart offered a theoretical proof that this should be the case separately for every selected quality of thermal radiation, but his mathematics was not rigorously valid. He made no mention of thermodynamics in this paper, though he did refer to conservation of "vis viva". He proposed that his measurements implied that radiation was both absorbed and emitted by particles of matter throughout depths of the media in which it propagated. He applied the Helmholtz reciprocity principle to account for the material interface processes as distinct from the processes in the interior material. He did not postulate unrealizable perfectly black surfaces. He concluded that his experiments showed that in a cavity in thermal equilibrium, the heat radiated from any part of the interior bounding surface, no matter of what material it might be composed, was the same as would have been emitted from a surface of the same shape and position that would have been composed of lamp-black. He did not state explicitly that the lamp-black-coated bodies that he used as reference must have had a unique common spectral emittance function that depended on temperature in a unique way.


title: Black-body radiation

text: In 1859, not knowing of Stewart's work, Gustav Robert Kirchhoff reported the coincidence of the wavelengths of spectrally resolved lines of absorption and of emission of visible light. Importantly for thermal physics, he also observed that bright lines or dark lines were apparent depending on the temperature difference between emitter and absorber.


title: Black-body radiation

text: Kirchhoff then went on to consider some bodies that emit and absorb heat radiation, in an opaque enclosure or cavity, in equilibrium at temperature .


title: Black-body radiation

text: Here is used a notation different from Kirchhoff's. Here, the emitting power denotes a dimensioned quantity, the total radiation emitted by a body labeled by index at temperature . The total absorption ratio of that body is dimensionless, the ratio of absorbed to incident radiation in the cavity at temperature . (In contrast with Balfour Stewart's, Kirchhoff's definition of his absorption ratio did not refer in particular to a lamp-black surface as the source of the incident radiation.) Thus the ratio of emitting power to absorptivity is a dimensioned quantity, with the dimensions of emitting power, because is dimensionless. Also here the wavelength-specific emitting power of the body at temperature is denoted by and the wavelength-specific absorption ratio by . Again, the ratio of emitting power to absorptivity is a dimensioned quantity, with the dimensions of emitting power.


title: Black-body radiation

text: In a second report made in 1859, Kirchhoff announced a new general principle or law for which he offered a theoretical and mathematical proof, though he did not offer quantitative measurements of radiation powers. His theoretical proof was and still is considered by some writers to be invalid. His principle, however, has endured: it was that for heat rays of the same wavelength, in equilibrium at a given temperature, the wavelength-specific ratio of emitting power to absorptivity has one and the same common value for all bodies that emit and absorb at that wavelength. In symbols, the law stated that the wavelength-specific ratio has one and the same value for all bodies, which is to say for all values of index . In this report there was no mention of black bodies.


title: Black-body radiation

text: In 1860, still not knowing of Stewart's measurements for selected qualities of radiation, Kirchhoff pointed out that it was long established experimentally that for total heat radiation, of unselected quality, emitted and absorbed by a body in equilibrium, the dimensioned total radiation ratio , has one and the same value common to all bodies, which is to say for every value of the material index . Again without measurements of radiative powers or other new experimental data, Kirchhoff then offered a fresh theoretical proof of his new principle of the universality of the value of the wavelength-specific ratio at thermal equilibrium. His fresh theoretical proof was and still is considered by some writers to be invalid.


title: Black-body radiation

text: But more importantly, it relied on a new theoretical postulate of "perfectly black bodies," which is the reason why one speaks of Kirchhoff's law. Such black bodies showed complete absorption in their infinitely thin most superficial surface. They correspond to Balfour Stewart's reference bodies, with internal radiation, coated with lamp-black. They were not the more realistic perfectly black bodies later considered by Planck. Planck's black bodies radiated and absorbed only by the material in their interiors; their interfaces with contiguous media were only mathematical surfaces, capable neither of absorption nor emission, but only of reflecting and transmitting with refraction.


title: Black-body radiation

text: Kirchhoff's proof considered an arbitrary non-ideal body labeled as well as various perfect black bodies labeled . It required that the bodies be kept in a cavity in thermal equilibrium at temperature . His proof intended to show that the ratio was independent of the nature of the non-ideal body, however partly transparent or partly reflective it was.


title: Black-body radiation

text: His proof first argued that for wavelength and at temperature , at thermal equilibrium, all perfectly black bodies of the same size and shape have the one and the same common value of emissive power , with the dimensions of power. His proof noted that the dimensionless wavelength-specific absorptivity of a perfectly black body is by definition exactly 1. Then for a perfectly black body, the wavelength-specific ratio of emissive power to absorptivity is again just , with the dimensions of power. Kirchhoff considered, successively, thermal equilibrium with the arbitrary non-ideal body, and with a perfectly black body of the same size and shape, in place in his cavity in equilibrium at temperature . He argued that the flows of heat radiation must be the same in each case. Thus he argued that at thermal equilibrium the ratio was equal to , which may now be denoted , a continuous function, dependent only on at fixed temperature , and an increasing function of at fixed wavelength , at low temperatures vanishing for visible but not for longer wavelengths, with positive values for visible wavelengths at higher temperatures, which does not depend on the nature of the arbitrary non-ideal body. (Geometrical factors, taken into detailed account by Kirchhoff, have been ignored in the foregoing.)


title: Black-body radiation

text: Thus Kirchhoff's law of thermal radiation can be stated: "For any material at all, radiating and absorbing in thermodynamic equilibrium at any given temperature , for every wavelength , the ratio of emissive power to absorptivity has one universal value, which is characteristic of a perfect black body, and is an emissive power which we here represent by ." (For our notation , Kirchhoff's original notation was simply .)


title: Black-body radiation

text: Kirchhoff announced that the determination of the function was a problem of the highest importance, though he recognized that there would be experimental difficulties to be overcome. He supposed that like other functions that do not depend on the properties of individual bodies, it would be a simple function. Occasionally by historians that function has been called "Kirchhoff's (emission, universal) function," though its precise mathematical form would not be known for another forty years, till it was discovered by Planck in 1900. The theoretical proof for Kirchhoff's universality principle was worked on and debated by various physicists over the same time, and later. Kirchhoff stated later in 1860 that his theoretical proof was better than Balfour Stewart's, and in some respects it was so. Kirchhoff's 1860 paper did not mention the second law of thermodynamics, and of course did not mention the concept of entropy which had not at that time been established. In a more considered account in a book in 1862, Kirchhoff mentioned the connection of his law with Carnot's principle, which is a form of the second law.


title: Black-body radiation

text: According to Helge Kragh, "Quantum theory owes its origin to the study of thermal radiation, in particular to the "black-body" radiation that Robert Kirchhoff had first defined in 1859–1860."


title: Black-body radiation

text: The relativistic Doppler effect causes a shift in the frequency "f" of light originating from a source that is moving in relation to the observer, so that the wave is observed to have frequency "f"':


title: Black-body radiation

text: where "v" is the velocity of the source in the observer's rest frame, "θ" is the angle between the velocity vector and the observer-source direction measured in the reference frame of the source, and "c" is the speed of light. This can be simplified for the special cases of objects moving directly towards ("θ" = π) or away ("θ" = 0) from the observer, and for speeds much less than "c".


title: Black-body radiation

text: Through Planck's law the temperature spectrum of a black body is proportionally related to the frequency of light and one may substitute the temperature ("T") for the frequency in this equation.


title: Black-body radiation

text: This is an important effect in astronomy, where the velocities of stars and galaxies can reach significant fractions of "c". An example is found in the cosmic microwave background radiation, which exhibits a dipole anisotropy from the Earth's motion relative to this black-body radiation field.


title: Mustard gas

text: Mustard gas or sulfur mustard is a chemical compound belonging to a family of cytotoxic and blister agents known as mustard agents. The name "mustard gas" is technically incorrect: the substance, when dispersed, is often not actually a gas, but is instead in the form of a fine mist of liquid droplets. Mustard gases form blisters on exposed skin and in the lungs, often resulting in prolonged illness ending in death.


title: Mustard gas

text: The active ingredient in typical mustard gas is the organosulfur compound bis(2-chloroethyl) sulfide. In the wider sense, compounds with the structural element are known as "sulfur mustards" and "nitrogen mustards", respectively. Such compounds are potent alkylating agents, which can interfere with several biological processes.


title: Mustard gas

text: As a chemical weapon, mustard gas was first used in World War I, and has been used in several armed conflicts since then, including the Iran–Iraq War, resulting in more than 100,000 casualties. Today, sulfur-based and nitrogen-based mustard agents are regulated under Schedule 1 of the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention, as substances with few uses other than in chemical warfare (though since then, mustard gas has been found to be useful in cancer chemotherapy). Mustard agents could be deployed by means of artillery shells, aerial bombs, rockets, or by spraying from aircraft.


title: Mustard gas

text: In the Meyer method, thiodiglycol is produced from chloroethanol and potassium sulfide and chlorinated with phosphorus trichloride:


title: Mustard gas

text: Thionyl chloride and phosgene, the latter of which is also a choking agent, have also been used as chlorinating agents. These compounds have the added advantage in that if they are used in excess, they remain as impurities in the finished product and can therefore produce additional mechanisms of toxicity.


title: Mustard gas

text: Mustard gas is a viscous liquid at normal temperatures. The pure compound has a melting point of and decomposes before boiling at .


title: Mustard gas

text: The idealized combustion of mustard gas in oxygen produces hydrochloric acid and sulfuric acid, in addition to carbon dioxide and water:


title: Mustard gas

text: Other compounds that have been used for decontamination include sodium ethoxide, which gives ethanol instead of water.


title: Mustard gas

text: Sulfur mustards readily eliminate chloride ions by intramolecular nucleophilic substitution to form cyclic sulfonium ions. These very reactive intermediates tend to permanently alkylate nucleotides in DNA strands, which can prevent cellular division, leading to programmed cell death. Alternatively, if cell death is not immediate, the damaged DNA can lead to the development of cancer. Oxidative stress would be another pathology involved in mustard gas toxicity.


title: Mustard gas

text: In the wider sense, compounds with the structural element BCHX, where X is any leaving group and B is a Lewis base, are known as "mustards". Such compounds can form cyclic "onium" ions (sulfonium, ammonium, etc.) that are good alkylating agents. Other such compounds are bis(2-haloethyl)ethers (oxygen mustards), the (2-haloethyl)amines (nitrogen mustards), and sesquimustard, which has two α-chloroethyl thioether groups (ClCHS−) connected by an ethylene bridge (−CH−). These compounds have a similar ability to alkylate DNA, but their physical properties vary.


title: Mustard gas

text: Mustard gases are extremely toxic and have powerful blistering effects on victims. Their alkylating capabilities make them strongly carcinogenic and mutagenic. Furthermore, they are highly lipophilic, which accelerates their absorption into the body. Because people exposed to mustard agents rarely suffer immediate symptoms, and contaminated areas may appear completely normal, victims can unknowingly receive high doses. Within 24 hours of exposure, victims experience intense itching and skin irritation. If this irritation goes untreated, blisters filled with yellow fluid (pus) can start to form wherever the agent contacted the skin. These are chemical burns and are very debilitating. Mustard gases easily penetrate clothing fabrics such as wool or cotton, so it is not only exposed skin that gets burned. If the victim's eyes were exposed, then they become sore, starting with conjunctivitis (also known as pink eye), after which the eyelids swell, resulting in temporary blindness. Extreme ocular exposure to mustard gas vapors may result in corneal ulceration, anterior chamber scarring, and neovascularization. In these severe and infrequent cases, corneal transplantation has been used as a treatment option. Miosis, when the pupil constricts more than usual, may also occur, which is probably the result of the cholinomimetic activity of mustard. At very high concentrations, if inhaled, mustard agents cause bleeding and blistering within the respiratory system, damaging mucous membranes and causing pulmonary edema. Depending on the level of contamination, mustard agent burns can vary between first and second degree burns, though they can also be every bit as severe, disfiguring, and dangerous as third degree burns. Burns that are severe (i.e. covering more than 50% of the victim's skin) are often fatal, with death occurring after only days or weeks. Mild or moderate exposure to mustard gases is unlikely to kill, though victims still require lengthy periods of medical treatment and convalescence before recovery is complete.


title: Mustard gas

text: Mustard gases' carcinogenic and mutagenic effects mean that victims, even if they fully recover, have an increased risk of developing cancer later in life. In a study of patients 25 years after wartime exposure to chemical weaponry, c-DNA microarray profiling indicated that 122 genes were significantly mutated in the lungs and airways of mustard gas victims. Those genes all correspond to functions commonly affected by mustard gas exposure, including apoptosis, inflammation, and stress responses. The long-term ocular complications include burning, tearing, itching, photophobia, presbyopia, pain, and foreign-body sensations.


title: Mustard gas

text: Mustard gases' blistering effects can be neutralized by oxidation or chlorination, using household bleach (sodium hypochlorite), or by nucleophilic attack using decontamination solutions such as "DS2" (2% NaOH, 70% diethylenetriamine, 28% 2-methoxyethanol). After initial decontamination of the victim's wounds is complete, medical treatment is similar to that required by any conventional burn. The degree of pain and discomfort suffered by the victim is also comparable. Mustard agent burns do not heal quickly, and (as with other types of burns) present a risk of sepsis caused by pathogens such as "Staphylococcus aureus" and "Pseudomonas aeruginosa". The mechanisms behind mustard gas's effect on endothelial cells are still being studied, but recent studies have shown that high levels of exposure can induce high rates of both necrosis and apoptosis. In vitro tests have shown that at low concentrations of mustard gas, where apoptosis is the predominant result of exposure, pretreatment with 50 mM N-acetyl-L-cysteine (NAC) was able to decrease the rate of apoptosis. NAC protects actin filaments from reorganization by mustard gas, demonstrating that actin filaments play a large role in the severe burns observed in victims.


title: Mustard gas

text: Mustard gases were possibly developed as early as 1822 by César-Mansuète Despretz (1798–1863). Despretz described the reaction of sulfur dichloride and ethylene but never made mention of any irritating properties of the reaction product. In 1854, another French chemist, Alfred Riche (1829–1908), repeated this procedure, also without describing any adverse physiological properties. In 1860, the British scientist Frederick Guthrie synthesized and characterized the mustard agent compound and noted its irritating properties, especially in tasting. Also in 1860, chemist Albert Niemann, known as a pioneer in cocaine chemistry, repeated the reaction, and recorded blister-forming properties. In 1886, Viktor Meyer published a paper describing a synthesis that produced good yields. He combined 2-chloroethanol with aqueous potassium sulfide, and then treated the resulting thiodiglycol with phosphorus trichloride. The purity of this compound was much higher and consequently the adverse health effects upon exposure were much more severe. These symptoms presented themselves in his assistant, and in order to rule out the possibility that his assistant was suffering from a mental illness (psychosomatic symptoms), Meyer had this compound tested on laboratory rabbits, most of which died. In 1913, the English chemist Hans Thacher Clarke (known for the Eschweiler-Clarke reaction) replaced the phosphorus trichloride with hydrochloric acid in Meyer's formulation while working with Emil Fischer in Berlin. Clarke was hospitalized for two months for burns after one of his flasks broke. According to Meyer, Fischer's report on this accident to the German Chemical Society sent the German Empire on the road to chemical weapons.


title: Mustard gas

text: Mustard gas can have the effect of turning a patient's skin different colors, including shades of red, orange, pink, and in unusual cases, blue. The German Empire during World War I relied on the Meyer-Clarke method because 2-chloroethanol was readily available from the German dye industry of that time.


title: Mustard gas

text: Mustard gas was first used in World War I by the German army against British and Canadian soldiers near Ypres, Belgium, "on the night of July 12, 1917." Later also against the French Second Army. Yperite is "a name used by the French, because the compound was first used at Ypres." The Allies did not use mustard gas until November 1917 at Cambrai, France, after the armies had captured a stockpile of German mustard shells. It took the British more than a year to develop their own mustard agent weapon, with production of the chemicals centred on Avonmouth Docks (the only option available to the British was the Despretz–Niemann–Guthrie process). This was used first in September 1918 during the breaking of the Hindenburg Line.


title: Mustard gas

text: Mustard gas was originally assigned the name LOST, after the scientists Wilhelm Lommel and Wilhelm Steinkopf, who developed a method of large-scale production for the Imperial German Army in 1916.


title: Mustard gas

text: Mustard gas was dispersed as an aerosol in a mixture with other chemicals, giving it a yellow-brown color. Mustard agent has also been dispersed in such munitions as aerial bombs, land mines, mortar rounds, artillery shells, and rockets. Exposure to mustard agent was lethal in about 1% of cases. Its effectiveness was as an incapacitating agent. The early countermeasures against mustard agent were relatively ineffective, since a soldier wearing a gas mask was not protected against absorbing it through his skin and being blistered. A common countermeasure was using a urine-soaked mask or facecloth to prevent or reduce injury, a readily available remedy attested by soldiers in documentaries (e.g. "They Shall Not Grow Old" in 2018) and others (such as forward aid nurses) interviewed between 1947 and 1981 by the British Broadcasting Corporation for various World War One history programs; however, the effectiveness of this measure is unclear.


title: Mustard gas

text: Mustard gas can remain in the ground for weeks, and it continues to cause ill effects. If mustard agent contaminates one's clothing and equipment while cold, then other people with whom they share an enclosed space could become poisoned as contaminated items warm up enough material to become an airborne toxic agent. An example of this was depicted in a British and Canadian documentary about life in the trenches, particularly once the "sousterrain" (subways and berthing areas underground) were completed in Belgium and France. Towards the end of World War I, mustard agent was used in high concentrations as an area-denial weapon that forced troops to abandon heavily contaminated areas.


title: Mustard gas

text: Since World War I, mustard gas has been used in several wars and other conflicts, usually against people who cannot retaliate in kind:


title: Mustard gas

text: In 1943, during World War II, a shipment of mustard gas from the US exploded aboard SS John Harvey that was bombed during an air raid in the harbor of Bari, Italy. Eighty-three of the 628 hospitalized victims who had been exposed to the mustard agent died.


title: Mustard gas

text: After WWII, stockpiled mustard gas was dumped by the British in the sea near Port Elizabeth, South Africa, resulting in many cases of burns among trawler crews.


title: Mustard gas

text: The use of toxic gases or other chemicals, including mustard gas, during warfare is known as chemical warfare, and this kind of warfare was prohibited by the Geneva Protocol of 1925, and also by the later Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993. The latter agreement also prohibits the development, production, stockpiling, and sale of such weapons.


title: Mustard gas

text: In September 2012, a US official stated that the rebel militant group ISIS was manufacturing and using mustard gas in Syria and Iraq, which was allegedly confirmed by the group's head of chemical weapons development, Sleiman Daoud al-Afari, who has since been captured.


title: Mustard gas

text: As early as 1919 it was known that mustard agent was a suppressor of hematopoiesis. In addition, autopsies performed on 75 soldiers who had died of mustard agent during World War I were done by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania who reported decreased counts of white blood cells. This led the American Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) to finance the biology and chemistry departments at Yale University to conduct research on the use of chemical warfare during World War II.


title: Mustard gas

text: As a part of this effort, the group investigated nitrogen mustard as a therapy for Hodgkin's lymphoma and other types of lymphoma and leukemia, and this compound was tried out on its first human patient in December 1942. The results of this study were not published until 1946, when they were declassified. In a parallel track, after the air raid on Bari in December 1943, the doctors of the U.S. Army noted that white blood cell counts were reduced in their patients. Some years after World War II was over, the incident in Bari and the work of the Yale University group with nitrogen mustard converged, and this prompted a search for other similar chemical compounds. Due to its use in previous studies, the nitrogen mustard called "HN2" became the first cancer chemotherapy drug, mustine (also called chlormethine), to be used.


title: Mustard gas

text: In the United States, storage and incineration of mustard gas and other chemical weapons were carried out by the U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency. Disposal projects at the two remaining American chemical weapons sites were carried out near Richmond, Kentucky, and Pueblo, Colorado. Although not yet declassified, toxicology specialists who dealt with the accidental puncturing of World War I gas stockpiles add that Air Force bases in Colorado have been made available to assist veterans of the 2003 American war with Iraq in which many Marines were exposed to gas as caches of up to . The United Nations definition of a weapon of mass destruction for mustard gas is , typically the Marines and other coalition allies discovered caches of located across a road from caches as multiple memoirs attest. These were discovered by the assistance of host country allies, or through leaks affecting personnel in an area with a weapon and gas cache called an ASP.


title: Mustard gas

text: New detection techniques are being developed in order to detect the presence of mustard gas and its metabolites. The technology is portable and detects small quantities of the hazardous waste and its oxidized products, which are notorious for harming unsuspecting civilians. The immunochromatographic assay would eliminate the need for expensive, time-consuming lab tests and enable easy-to-read tests to protect civilians from sulfur-mustard dumping sites.


title: Mustard gas

text: In 1946, 10,000 drums of mustard gas (2,800 tonnes) stored at the production facility of Stormont Chemicals in Cornwall, Ontario, Canada, were loaded onto 187 boxcars for the journey to be buried at sea on board a long barge south of Sable Island, southeast of Halifax, at a depth of . The dump location is 42 degrees, 50 minutes north by 60 degrees, 12 minutes west.


title: Mustard gas

text: A large British stockpile of old mustard agent that had been made and stored since World War I at M. S. Factory, Valley near Rhydymwyn in Flintshire, Wales, was destroyed in 1958.


title: Mustard gas

text: Most of the mustard gas found in Germany after World War II was dumped into the Baltic Sea. Between 1966 and 2002, fishermen have found about 700 chemical weapons in the region of Bornholm, most of which contain mustard gas. One of the more frequently dumped weapons was "Sprühbüchse 37" (SprüBü37, Spray Can 37, 1937 being the year of its fielding with the German Army). These weapons contain mustard gas mixed with a thickener, which gives it a tar-like viscosity. When the content of the SprüBü37 comes in contact with water, only the mustard gas in the outer layers of the lumps of viscous mustard hydrolyzes, leaving behind amber-colored residues that still contain most of the active mustard gas. On mechanically breaking these lumps (e.g., with the drag board of a fishing net or by the human hand) the enclosed mustard gas is still as active as it had been at the time the weapon was dumped. These lumps, when washed ashore, can be mistaken for amber, which can lead to severe health problems. Artillery shells containing mustard gas and other toxic ammunition from World War I (as well as conventional explosives) can still be found in France and Belgium. These were formerly disposed of by explosion undersea, but since the current environmental regulations prohibit this, the French government is building an automated factory to dispose of the accumulation of chemical shells.